Foreign literature of the XX century (Edited by V.M. Tolmachev) XV

France is a country ahead of others. It was here that the first revolutions took place, and not only social, but also literary, which influenced the development of art in the whole world. and poets achieved unprecedented heights. It is also interesting that it was in France that the work of many geniuses was appreciated during their lifetime. Today we will talk about the most significant writers and poets of the 19th - early 20th centuries, and also open the curtain over the interesting moments of their lives.

Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885)

It is unlikely that other French poets can match the scope of Victor Hugo. A writer who was not afraid to raise acute social topics in his novels, and at the same time a romantic poet, he lived a long life full of creative successes. Hugo as a writer was not only recognized during his lifetime - he became rich by doing this craft.

After Notre Dame Cathedral, his fame only increased. Are there many writers in the world who could live 4 years on the street? At 79 years of age (on the birthday of Victor Hugo), a triumphal arch was erected on Eylau Avenue - in fact, under the writer's windows. 600,000 admirers of his talent passed through it that day. The street was soon renamed Avenue Victor-Hugo.

After himself, Victor Marie Hugo left not only wonderful works and a large inheritance, 50,000 francs of which was bequeathed to the poor, but also a strange clause in the will. He ordered to rename the capital of France - Paris - in Guugopolis. Actually, this is the only item that has not been fulfilled.

Théophile Gaultier (1811-1872)

When Victor Hugo fought classicist criticism, he was one of its brightest and most loyal supporters. French poets received an excellent replenishment of their ranks: Gaultier not only mastered the writing technique impeccably, but also opened a new era in French art, which subsequently influenced the whole world.

Having sustained his first collection in the best traditions of the romantic style, Théophile Gaultier at the same time excluded traditional themes from his poems and changed the vector of poetry. He did not write about the beauty of nature, eternal love and politics. Moreover, the poet proclaimed the technical complexity of the verse as the most important component. This meant that his poems, while remaining romantic in form, were not essentially them - feelings gave way to form.

The latest collection, "Enamels and Cameos", which is considered the pinnacle of Théophile Gaultier's creativity, also includes the manifesto of the "Parnassian school" - "Art". He proclaimed the principle of "art for art's sake", which the French poets accepted unconditionally.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud inspired more than one generation with his life and poetry. On several occasions he ran away from home to Paris, where he met Paul Verlaine, sending him the poem "The Drunken Ship". The friendship between the poets very soon developed into a love affair. This is what caused Verlaine to leave the family.

During Rimbaud's lifetime, only 2 collections of poetry were published and, separately, the debut verse "The Drunken Ship", which immediately brought him recognition. Interestingly, the poet's career was very short: he wrote all his poems between the ages of 15 and 21. And after that Arthur Rimbaud simply refused to write. Absolutely. And he became a merchant, selling spices, weapons and ... people until the end of his life.

Famous French poets and Guillaume Apollinaire are the recognized heirs of Arthur Rimbaud. His work and persona inspired Henry Miller for his essay "Time for Assassins", and Patti Smith constantly talks about the poet and quotes his poems.

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

French poets of the late 19th century chose Paul Verlaine as their "king", but there was little from the king: a rowdy and a reveler, Verlaine described the unsightly side of life - dirt, darkness, sins and passions. One of the "fathers" of impressionism and symbolism in literature, the poet wrote poetry, the beauty of the sound of which no translation can convey.

No matter how vicious the French poet was, Rimbaud played a huge role in his future destiny. After meeting the young Arthur, Paul took him under his wing. He looked for housing for the poet, even rented a room for him for some time, although he was not wealthy. Their love affair lasted for several years: after Verlaine left the family, they traveled, drank and indulged in pleasure as best they could.

When Rimbaud decided to leave his lover, Verlaine shot him in the wrist. Although the victim refused the application, Paul Verlaine was sentenced to two years in prison. After that, he never recovered. Due to the impossibility of abandoning the society of Arthur Rimbaud, Verlaine was never able to return to his wife - she achieved a divorce and ruined him completely.

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

The son of a Polish aristocrat, born in Rome, Guillaume Apollinaire belongs to France. It was in Paris that he lived his youth and adulthood, right up to his death. Like other French poets of that time, Apollinaire was looking for new forms and possibilities, he strove for shocking - and succeeded in this.

After the publication of prose works in the spirit of deliberate immoralism and a mini-collection of poetry "Bestiary, or Orpheus's cortege", published in 1911, Guillaume Apollinaire published the first full-fledged poetry collection "Alcohol" (1913), which immediately attracted attention by the lack of grammar, baroque imagery and tone drops.

The collection of "Caligrams" went even further - all the poems that were included in this collection are written in an amazing way: the lines of the works are lined up in various silhouettes. The reader sees a woman in a hat, a dove flying over a fountain, a vase of flowers ... This form conveyed the essence of the verse. The method, by the way, is far from new - the English began to give form to poetry in the 17th century, but at that moment Apollinaire anticipated the emergence of "automatic writing", which the surrealists loved so much.

The term "surrealism" belongs to Guillaume Apollinaire. He appeared after the staging of his "surrealistic drama" "Sostsy Tiresias" in 1917. The circle of poets led by him at that time began to be called surrealists.

André Breton (1896-1966)

The meeting with Guillaume Apollinaire became a landmark. It happened at the front, in a hospital, where young Andre, a physician by training, served as an orderly. Apollinaire received a concussion (a shell fragment hit the head), after which he never recovered.

Since 1916 André Breton takes an active part in the work of the poetic avant-garde. He met Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupot, Paul Eluard, discovered the poetry of Lautréamont. In 1919, after the death of Apollinaire, outrageous poets began to organize around André Breton. Also this year comes out a joint essay "Magnetic Fields" with Philippe Soupaud, written according to the "automatic writing" method.

Since 1924, after the proclamation of the first Manifesto of Surrealism, André Breton becomes the head of the movement. In his house on Avenue Fontaine, the Bureau of Surrealist Studies opens, magazines begin to be published. This was the beginning of a truly international movement - similar offices began to open in many cities around the world.

The French communist poet André Breton actively encouraged his supporters to join the Communist Party. He believed in the ideals of communism so much that he even deserved to meet with Leon Trotsky in Mexico (although at that time he was already expelled from the Communist Party).

Louis Aragon (1897-1982)

A loyal ally and comrade-in-arms of Apollinaire, Louis Aragon became the right hand for André Breton. French poet, communist until his last breath, in 1920 Aragon published the first collection of poems "Fireworks", written in the style of surrealism and dadaism.

After the poet entered the Communist Party in 1927, together with Breton, his work was transformed. He became in some way the “voice of the party”, and in 1931 he was prosecuted for the poem “The Red Front”, imbued with a dangerous spirit of incitement.

Peru Louis Aragon also belongs to "History of the USSR". He defended the ideals of communism until the end of his life, although his last works returned a little to the traditions of realism, not tinged with "red".

International Day of Francophonie is celebrated annually on March 20. This day is dedicated to the French language, which is spoken by more than 200 million people around the world.

We took advantage of this occasion and propose to recall the best French writers of our time, representing France in the international book arena.

Frederic Beigbeder ... Prose writer, publicist, literary critic and editor. His literary works, with descriptions of modern life, man's throwing in the world of money and love experiences, very quickly won fans around the world. The most sensational books "Love lives for three years" and "99 francs" were even filmed. The novels "Memories of an Unreasonable Young Man", "Vacation in a Coma", "Tales under Ecstasy", "Romantic Egoist" also brought the writer well-deserved fame. Over time, Beigbeder founded his own literary prize, the Flora Prize.

Michelle Houellebecq ... One of the most widely read French writers of the early 21st century. His books have been translated into a good three dozen languages, he is extremely popular among young people. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the writer was able to touch the painful points of modern life. His novel Elementary Particles (1998) won the Grand Prix, Map and Territory (2010) - the Goncourt Prize. They were followed by "Platform", "Lanzarote", "Island Opportunity" and others, and each of these books became a bestseller.

New novel of the writer"Obedience" tells about the collapse in the near future of the modern political system of France. The author himself defined the genre of his novel as "political fiction." The action takes place in 2022. A Muslim president comes to power in a democratic way, and the country begins to change before our eyes ...

Bernard Verber ... Cult science fiction writer and philosopher. His name on the cover of the book means only one thing - a masterpiece! The total world circulation of his books is over 10 million! The writer is better known for the trilogies "Ants", "Thanatonauts", "We, the Gods" and "Third Humanity". His books have been translated into many languages, and seven novels have become bestsellers in Russia, Europe, America and Korea. On the account of the author - a lot of literary prizes, incl. Jules Verne Prize.

One of the most sensational books of the writer -"Empire of Angels" where fantasy, mythology, mysticism and the real life of the most ordinary people are intertwined. The main character of the novel goes to heaven, undergoes the "last judgment" and becomes an angel on Earth. According to heavenly rules, he is given three human clients, whose lawyer he must later become at the Last Judgment ...

Guillaume Musso ... A relatively young writer, very popular among French readers. Each of his new works becomes a bestseller, films are made based on his works. Deep psychologism, piercing emotionality and vivid figurative language of books fascinate readers all over the world. His adventure psychological novels are set all over the world - in France, the USA and other countries. Following the heroes, the readers set out on adventures full of dangers, investigate riddles, plunge into the abyss of the heroes' passions, which, of course, gives rise to a glimpse into their inner world.

At the heart of the new novel of the writer"Because I love you" - the tragedy of one family. Mark and Nicole were happy until their little daughter - the only, long-awaited and adored child - disappeared ...

Mark Levy . One of the most famous novelist writers, whose works have been translated into dozens of languages ​​and published in huge editions. The writer is a laureate of the Goya National Prize. Steven Spielberg paid two million dollars for the right to film his first novel, Between Heaven and Earth.

Literary critics note the versatility of the author's work. In his books - "Seven Days of Creation", "Meet Again", "Everyone Wants to Love", "Leave to Return", "Stronger than Fear", etc. - the theme of disinterested love and sincere friendship, the secrets of old mansions and intrigue is often encountered , reincarnation and mysticism, unexpected plot twists.

Writer's new book"She and he" is one of the best novels at the end of 2015. This is a romantic story about an irresistible and unpredictable love.

Anna Gavalda ... The famous writer who conquered the world with her novels and their refined, poetic style. She is called “the star of French literature” and “the new Françoise Sagan”. Her books have been translated into dozens of languages, awarded with a whole constellation of awards, plays are staged and films based on them. Each of her works is a story about love and how it adorns every person.
In 2002, the first novel of the writer was published - "I loved her, I loved him." But this was all just a prelude to the real success that the book brought her."Just together" , which eclipsed even the novel "Da Vinci Code" by Brown in France.This is an amazingly wise and kind book about love and loneliness, about life and, of course, happiness.

Hello everyone! Came across a list of the 10 best French novels. I, frankly, did not work out with the French, so I will ask the connoisseurs - how do you like the list that you have read / did not read from it, what would you add / remove to it?

1. Antoine de Saint-Exupery - "The Little Prince"

The most famous work of Antoine de Saint-Exupery with author's drawings. A wise and "humane" fairy tale-parable, which simply and soulfully speaks about the most important things: about friendship and love, about duty and loyalty, about beauty and intolerance towards evil.

“We all come from childhood,” the great Frenchman reminds us and introduces us to the most mysterious and touching hero of world literature.

2. Alexandre Dumas - "The Count of Monte Cristo"

The plot of the novel was gleaned by Alexandre Dumas from the archives of the Parisian police. The true life of François Picot, under the pen of the brilliant master of the historical and adventure genre, turned into a gripping story about Edmond Dantes, a prisoner of the Château d'If. Having made a daring escape, he returns to his hometown to administer justice - to take revenge on those who destroyed his life.

3. Gustave Flaubert - "Madame Bovary"

The main character, Emma Bovary, suffers from the inability to fulfill her dreams of a brilliant, social life, full of romantic passions. Instead, she is forced to drag out the monotonous existence of the wife of a poor provincial doctor. The painful atmosphere of the boondocks strangles Emma, ​​but all her attempts to break out of the joyless world are doomed to failure: a boring husband cannot satisfy the needs of his wife, and her outwardly romantic and attractive lovers are actually self-centered and cruel. Is there a way out of life's impasse? ..

4. Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera

“The Phantom of the Opera really existed” - one of the most sensational French novels of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries is devoted to the proof of this thesis. It belongs to the pen of Gaston Leroux, the master of the police novel, the author of the famous Mystery of the Yellow Room, The Scent of the Lady in Black. From the first to the last page, Leroux keeps the reader in suspense.

5. Guy de Maupassant - "Dear friend"

Guy de Maupassant is often called the master of erotic prose. But Dear Friend (1885) goes beyond this genre. The story of the career of an ordinary seducer and play-off of life, Georges Duroy, developing in the spirit of an adventure novel, becomes a symbolic reflection of the spiritual impoverishment of the hero and society.

6. Simone De Beauvoir - "Second Sex"

Two volumes of the book "The Second Sex" by the French writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) - "a born philosopher", according to her husband J.-P. Sartre, - are still considered the most complete historical and philosophical study of the entire complex of problems associated with women. What is “female destiny”, what is behind the concept of “natural purpose of sex”, how and why the position of a woman in this world differs from the position of a man, is a woman capable, in principle, to take place as a full-fledged person, and if so, in what conditions, what circumstances limit a woman's freedom and how to overcome them.

7. Scholerlot de Laclos - "Dangerous Liaisons"

Dangerous Liaisons, one of the most striking novels of the 18th century, is the only book by Chauderlos de Laclos, a French artillery officer. The heroes of the erotic novel, the Viscount de Valmont and the Marquis de Merteuil, are plotting a sophisticated intrigue, wanting to take revenge on their opponents. Having developed a cunning strategy and tactics of seduction of the young girl Cecile de Volange, they masterly play on human weaknesses and shortcomings.

8. Charles Baudelaire - Flowers of Evil

Among the masters of world culture, the name of Charles Baudelaire shines like a bright star. This book includes a collection of the poet "Flowers of Evil", which made his name famous, and a brilliant essay "School of the Gentiles." The book is preceded by an article by the remarkable Russian poet Nikolai Gumilyov, and the rarely published essay on Baudelaire by the outstanding French poet and thinker Paul Valery ends.

9. Stendhal - "Parma monastery"

The novel, written by Stendhal in just 52 days, received worldwide recognition. The dynamism of the action, the intriguing course of events, the dramatic denouement combined with the depiction of strong characters capable of anything for the sake of love are the key moments of the work that never cease to excite the reader until the last lines. The fate of Fabrizio, the protagonist of the novel, a freedom-loving young man, is filled with unexpected ups and downs that take place during a period of historical turning point in Italy at the beginning of the 19th century.

10. André Gide - The Counterfeiters

A novel that is significant both for the work of André Gide and for French literature of the first half of the 20th century in general. A novel that largely predicted the motives that later became the main ones in the work of the existentialists. The tangled relationships of three families - representatives of the big bourgeoisie, united by crime, vice and a labyrinth of self-destructive passions - become the background for the story of the growing up of two young men - two childhood friends, each of whom will have to go through their own, very difficult school of "education of feelings."

Xv
FRENCH LITERATURE
SECOND HALF OF THE XX CENTURY

Sociocultural situation in France after 1945. The concept of "engaged literature". - Sartre and Camus: a controversy between two writers; artistic features of the post-war existentialist novel; development of existentialist ideas in drama ("Behind a Closed Door", "Dirty Hands", "The Recluses of Altona" by Sartre and "Fair" by Camus). - Ethical and aesthetic personalism program; Carol's work: poetics of the novel "I will live by the love of others", essays. - The concept of art as "anti-destiny" in Malraux's later work: the novel "The Hazel Trees of Altenburg", the book of essays "The Imaginary Museum". - Aragon: Interpretation of "Engagement" (novel "Doom Seriously"). - Creativity Selina: the originality of the autobiographical novels "From castle to castle", "North", "Rigaudon". - Creativity of Zhenet: the problem of myth and ritual; drama "High Surveillance" and the novel "Our Lady of Flowers". - "New novel": philosophy, aesthetics, poetics. Robbe-Grillet's work (novels "Elastic Bands", "The Spy",
"Jealousy", "In the labyrinth"), Sarroth ("Planetarium"), Butera ("Distribution of time", "Change"), Simon ("Roads of Flanders", "Georgiki"). - "New criticism" and the concept of "text". Blanchot as a literary theorist and novelist. - French postmodernism: the idea of ​​a "new classic"; Le Clézio's work; the novel "The Forest King" Tournier (peculiarities of poetics, the idea of ​​"inversion"); language experiment of Novarina.

French literature of the second half of the 20th century has largely retained its traditional prestige as a trendsetter in world literary fashion. Its international authority remained deservedly high, even if we take such a conditional criterion as the Nobel Prize. Its laureates were André Gide (1947), François Mauriac (1952), Albert Camus (1957), Saint-Jon Perce (1960), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964), Samuel Beckett (1969), Claude Simon (1985).

It would probably be wrong to equate literary evolution with the movement of history as such. At the same time, it is obvious that the key historical milestones are May 1945 (liberation of France from fascist occupation, victory in World War II), May 1958 (coming to power of President Charles de Gaulle and the relative stabilization of the country's life), May 1968 . ("Student revolution", counterculture movement) - help to understand the direction in which the society was moving. The national drama associated with the surrender and occupation of France, the colonial wars that France waged in Indochina and Algeria, the left movement - all this turned out to be the backdrop for the work of many writers.

During this historical period, General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) became a key figure for France. From the first days of the occupation, his voice sounded on the BBC waves from London, calling for resistance to the forces of the Wehrmacht and the authorities of the "new French state" in Vichy, led by Marshal A. -F. Peten. De Gaulle succeeded in transforming the shame of the inglorious surrender into an awareness of the need to fight against the enemy, to give the Resistance movement during the war years the character of a national revival. The program of the National Committee of Resistance (the so-called "charter"), containing in the long term the idea of ​​creating a new liberal democracy, required a profound transformation of society. It was expected that the ideals of social justice shared by the members of the Resistance would be realized in post-war France. To a certain extent, this happened, but it took more than one decade for this. De Gaulle's first post-war government lasted only a few months.

In the Fourth Republic (1946-1958), de Gaulle, as an ideologist of national unity, was largely unclaimed. This was facilitated by the Cold War, which again polarized French society, and the painfully endured process of decolonization (the fall of Tunisia, Morocco, then Algeria). The era of "Great France" came only in 1958, when de Gaulle, who finally became the sovereign president of the Fifth Republic (1958-1968), managed to put an end to the Algerian war, approve the line of France's independent military policy (the country's withdrawal from NATO) and diplomatic neutrality. Relative economic prosperity and industrial modernization led to the formation of the so-called "consumer society" in France in the 1960s.

During the war years, French writers, like their compatriots, were faced with a choice. Some preferred collaboration, one or another degree of recognition of the occupying authorities (Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Robert Brasillac, Louis-Ferdinand Celine), others - emigration (Andre Breton, Benjamin Pere, Georges Bernanos, Saint-Jon Perce, André Gide), others joined to the Resistance movement, in which the Communists played a prominent role. André Malraux under the pseudonym Colonel Berger commanded an armored column, the poet Rene Char fought in the poppies (partisan movement; from the French maquis - bushes) of Provence. Louis Aragon's poetry was quoted by Charles de Gaulle on the radio from London. Leaflets with the poem "Liberty" by Paul Eluard were dropped over French territory by British planes. The common struggle forced the writers to forget about past disagreements: under one cover (for example, the magazine Fontaine, published clandestinely in Algeria), were printed communists, Catholics, democrats - "those who believed in heaven" and "those who did not believe in it" , as Aragon wrote in the poem "Rose and Reseda". The moral authority of the thirty-year-old A. Camus, who became editor-in-chief of the magazine Combat (Combat, 1944-1948), was high. F. Mauriac's journalism temporarily eclipsed his fame as a novelist.

Obviously, in the first post-war decade, literary men who took part in the armed struggle against the Germans came to the fore. The National Committee of Writers, created by the communists headed by Aragon (a staunch Stalinist in those years), compiled "black lists" of "traitors" writers, which caused a wave of protest from many members of the Resistance, in particular Camus and Mauriac. A period of tough confrontation began between the authors of the communist, pro-communist persuasion and the liberal intelligentsia. Typical publications of this time were the communist press against existentialists and surrealists (Literature of the Gravediggers by R. Garaudy, 1948; “Surrealism Against Revolution” by R. Vaillant, 1948).

In journals, politics and philosophy prevailed over literature. This is noticeable in the personalist "Esprit" (Ed. E. Mounier), the existentialist "Tan modern" (Ed. J. -P. Sartre), the communist "Lettre française" (Les Lettres françaises , chief ed. L. Aragon), the philosophical and sociological "Critique" (Critique, chief ed. J. Bataille). The most authoritative pre-war literary magazine, La Nouvelle revue française, ceased to exist for some time.

The artistic merits of literary works seemed to be relegated to the background: the writer was expected, first of all, to be moral; political, philosophical judgments. Hence the concept of engaged literature (litterature engagee, from the French engagement - commitment, recruiting as a volunteer, political and ideological position), citizenship of literature.

In a series of articles in the magazine Comba, Albert Camus (1913-1960) argued that the duty of a writer is to be a full participant in History, to tirelessly remind politicians of conscience, protesting against any injustice. Accordingly, in the novel The Plague (1947), he tried to find those moral values ​​that could unite the nation. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) went "even further": according to his concept of engaged literature, politics and literary creation are inseparable. Literature should become a “social function” in order to “help change society” (“I thought I was giving myself to literature, but I took the tonsure,” he wrote ironically about this).

For the literary situation of the 1950s, the controversy between Sartre and Camus is very indicative, which led to their final break in 1952 after the release of Camus's essay "The Rebellious Man" (L "Homme revoke, 1951). In it Camus formulated his credo:" I rebel , therefore, we exist ", but nevertheless condemned the revolutionary practice, for the sake of the interests of the new state, legalized repression of dissidents. Camus opposed the revolution (which gave birth to Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler) and the metaphysical rebellion (de Sade, Ivan Karamazov, Nietzsche)" ideal rebellion "- a protest against an inappropriate reality, which actually boils down to self-improvement of the individual. Sartre Camus's reproach for passivity and conciliation outlined the boundaries of the political choice of each of these two writers.

Political engagement of Sartre, who set himself the goal of "supplementing" Marxism with existentialism, led him in 1952 to the camp of "Friends of the USSR" and "fellow travelers" of the Communist Party (a series of articles "Communists and the World", "Answer to Albert Camus" in "Tan Modern" for July and October — November 1952). Sartre participates in international congresses in defense of peace, regularly, up to 1966, visits the USSR, where his plays are staged with success. In 1954, he even became vice-president of the France-USSR Friendship Society. The Cold War forces him to make a choice between imperialism and communism in favor of the USSR, just as in the 1930s R. Rolland saw the USSR as a country capable of resisting the Nazis, giving hope for building a new society. Sartre has to make compromises, which he had previously condemned in his play Dirty Hands (1948), while Camus remains an implacable critic of all forms of totalitarianism, including socialist reality, the Stalinist camps that became the property of publicity.

A characteristic feature of the confrontation between the two writers was their attitude to the "Pasternak case" in connection with the award of the Nobel Prize to the author of "Doctor Zhivago" (1958). There is a letter from Camus (1957 Nobel laureate) to Pasternak expressing solidarity. Sartre, on the other hand, having refused the Nobel Prize in 1964 (“a writer should not turn into an official institution”), expressed regret that Pasternak had been given the prize earlier than Sholokhov, and that the only Soviet work awarded such an award was published abroad and prohibited in their country.

The personality and creativity of J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus had a tremendous influence on the intellectual life of France in the 1940s and 1950s. Despite their disagreements, in the minds of readers and critics, they personified French existentialism, which took on the global task of solving the main metaphysical problems of human existence, substantiating the meaning of its existence. The very term "existentialism" was introduced in France by the philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) in 1943, and then was taken up by criticism and Sartre (1945). Camus, on the other hand, refused to recognize himself as an existentialist, considering the category of absurdity as the starting point of his philosophy. However, despite this, the philosophical and literary phenomenon of existentialism in France had integrity, which became obvious when it was replaced in the 1960s by another hobby - "structuralism". Historians of French culture speak of these phenomena as defining the intellectual life of France over the thirty post-war years.

The realities of war, occupation, and Resistance pushed existentialist writers to develop the theme of human solidarity. They are busy substantiating the new foundations of humanity - “the hopes of the desperate” (as defined by E. Munier), “being-against-death”. This is how Sartre's programmatic speech "Existentialism is humanism" (L "Existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), as well as Camus's formula:" The absurd is the metaphysical state of man in the world ", however," we are not interested in this discovery in itself, but its consequences and rules of conduct derived from it. "

Perhaps, one should not overestimate the contribution of French existentialist writers to the development of the philosophical ideas of the "philosophy of existence" proper, which has deep traditions in German (E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers) and Russian (N. A. Berdyaev, L. I Shestov) thoughts. In the history of philosophy, French existentialism does not belong to the first place, but in the history of literature it undoubtedly remains with it. Sartre and Camus, both graduates of philosophy departments, eliminated the gap that existed between philosophy and literature, substantiated a new understanding of literature ("If you want to philosophize, write novels," Camus said). In this regard, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), a like-minded person and companion of Sartre's life, quotes in her memoirs the witty words of the philosopher Raymond Aron, addressed to her husband in 1935: “You see, if you are engaged in phenomenology, you can talk about this cocktail [the conversation took place in a cafe] and it will already be philosophy! " The writer recalls that Sartre, upon hearing this, literally turned pale with excitement (The Force of Age, 1960).

The influence of existentialism on the post-war romance went along several lines. An existentialist novel is a novel that solves the problem of human existence in the world and society in a generalized way. His hero is “the whole person who has absorbed all people, he is worth everyone, everyone is worth it” (Sartre). The corresponding plot is rather arbitrary: the hero wanders (literally and figuratively) through the desert of life in search of lost social and natural connections, in search of himself. Longing for genuine being is immanent in man (“you would not have looked for me if you had not already found me,” noted Sartre). The "wandering man" ("homo viator", in the terminology of G. Marcel) experiences a state of anxiety and loneliness, a feeling of "lost" and "uselessness", which can be filled to one degree or another with social and historical content. There must be a “borderline situation” in the novel (the term by K. Jaspers), in which a person is forced to make a moral choice, that is, to become himself. Existentialist writers treat the disease of the century not with aesthetic, but with ethical means: gaining a sense of freedom, affirming a person's responsibility for his fate, the right to choose. Sartre stated that for him the main idea of ​​creativity was the conviction that "the fate of the universe depends on each work of art." He establishes a special relationship between the reader and the writer, interpreting it as a dramatic clash of two freedoms.

Sartre's literary work after the war opens with the tetralogy Roads of Freedom (Les Chemins de la liberté, 1945-1949). The fourth volume of the cycle "Last Chance" (La Derniere Chance, 1959) was never completed, although it was published in excerpts in the magazine "Tan Modern" (under the title "Strange Friendship"). This circumstance can be explained by the political situation in the 1950s. What should be the participation of heroes in History with the beginning of the Cold War? The choice became less obvious than the choice between collaboration and Resistance. "With its incompleteness, Sartre's work reminds of that stage in the development of society when the hero realizes his responsibility to history, but does not have enough strength to make history," said the literary critic M. Zeraffa.

The tragedy of existence and insurmountable ideological contradictions receive from Sartre not only prosaic, but also scenic embodiment (plays “The Flies”, Les Mouches, 1943; “Behind a Closed Door”, Huis cios, 1944; “Respectful Slut”, La putain respectueuse, 1946; The Dead Without Burial, Morts sans sépultures, 1946; Dirty Hands, Les Mains sales, 1948). Plays of the 1950s are marked with the stamp of a tragicomedy: the anatomy of the state machine (primitive anti-communism) becomes the theme of the farce play "Nekrassov" (Nekrassov, 1956), the moral relativism of any activity in the field of History and society is postulated in the drama "The Devil and the Lord God" (Le Diable et le Bon Dieu, 1951).

The play Flies, written by Sartre at the request of director Charles Dulen and staged during the occupation, explains the reasons why Sartre turned to theater. He was attracted not by a passion for the stage, but by the possibility of a direct impact on the audience. An engaged writer, Sartre influenced History, through the mouth of Orestes, calling on his compatriots (the humiliated people of Argos) to resist the invaders.

However, created free, a person may never find freedom, remaining a prisoner of his own fears and insecurities. Fear of freedom and inability to act are characteristic of the protagonist of the drama "Dirty Hands" Hugo. Sartre believes that "existence" (existence) precedes "essence" (essence). Freedom as an a priori sign of a person, at the same time, must be acquired by him in the process of existence. Are there limits to freedom? Responsibility becomes its limit in Sartre's ethics. Therefore, we can talk about the Kantian and Christian essence of existentialist ethics (compare with the well-known words of J.-J. Rousseau: "The freedom of one person ends where the freedom of another begins"). When Jupiter warns Orestes that his discovery of the truth will not bring happiness to the people of Argos, but will only plunge them into even greater despair, Orestes replies that he has no right to deprive the people of despair, since "a person's life begins on the other side of despair." Only after realizing the tragedy of his existence, a person becomes free. Everyone needs their own "trip to the end of the night" for this.

In the play “Behind the Closed Door” (1944), which was initially called “The Others” during the work on it, the three dead (Ine, Estelle and Garsen) are condemned to be forever in each other's company, knowing the meaning of the fact that “hell is others ". Death put a limit to their freedom, "behind a closed door" they have no choice. Each is a judge of the other, each tries to forget about the presence of a neighbor, but even silence “screams in their ears”. The presence of another takes away from a person his face, he begins to see himself through the eyes of another. Knowing that his thoughts, which “tick off like an alarm clock,” can be heard, he becomes a provocateur, not only a puppet, a victim, but also an executioner. In a similar way, Sartre considered the problem of the interaction of “being-for-oneself” (awareness of oneself as a free personality with the project of one's own life) with “being-for-others” (feeling oneself under the gaze of another) in the book “Being and Nothingness” (1943) ...

The plays "Dirty Hands" and "The Recluses of Altona" (Les Séquestrés d "Altona, 1959), separated by a decade, are an interpretation of communism and Nazism. In the play" Dirty Hands "Sartre (who had before his eyes the Soviet experience of building a socialist society) opposed personal morality and revolutionary violence. In one of the states of Central Europe, on the eve of the end of the war, the communists seek to seize power. The country (possibly Hungary) will be occupied by Soviet troops. Opinions of the members of the Communist Party are divided: for the sake of success, to enter into a temporary coalition with other parties or rely on One of the leaders of the party, Höderer, is in favor of a coalition. Opponents of such a step decide to eliminate the opportunist and entrust this to Hugo, who becomes Höderer's secretary (Sartre played here the circumstances of Trotsky's murder.) After many hesitation, Hugo commits a murder, but also he himself perishes as an unnecessary witness, he is ready to accept death.

The play is structured in the form of Hugo's reflections on what happened - he is waiting for his comrades, who must declare him useful. Hugo's reasoning about morality Hoederer calls bourgeois anarchism. He is guided by the principle that “clean hands are with those who do nothing” (compare with the revolutionary formula of L. Saint-Just: “You cannot rule innocently”). Although Sartre stated that "Hugo was never sympathetic to him" and he himself considers Höderer's position more "healthy", in fact the play became a denunciation of the bloody Stalinist terror (foreign activities of Soviet intelligence), and this is how it was perceived by the audience and critics.

The play "The Recluses of Altona" is one of the most complex and profound plays by Sartre. In it, Sartre tried to portray the tragedy of the 20th century as a century of historical catastrophes. Is it possible to demand personal responsibility from a person in the era of collective crimes, what were the world wars and totalitarian regimes? In other words, Sartre translates F. Kafka's question “can a person be considered guilty in general” into the historical plane. Former Nazi Franz von Gerlach is trying to accept his age with all its crimes "with the stubbornness of a vanquished". Fifteen years after the end of the war, he spent in seclusion, haunted by terrible memories of the war years, which he lived out in endless monologues.

Commenting on the play Behind a Closed Door, Sartre wrote: “Whatever the circle of hell we live in, I think we are free to destroy it. If people do not destroy it, then they remain in it voluntarily. So they voluntarily imprison themselves in hell. " Franz's hell is his past and present, since history cannot be reversed. No matter how much the Nuremberg court would talk about collective responsibility for crimes, everyone - according to Sartre's logic, simultaneously an executioner and a victim - will experience them in their own way. Franz's hell is not others, but himself: "One plus one equals one." The only way to destroy this hell is by self-destruction. Franz puts himself on the brink of insanity, and then resorts to the most radical way of self-justification - kills himself. In his final monologue, recorded on tape before his suicide, he says the following about the burden of his choice: “I carried this century on my shoulders and said: I will answer for it. Today and forever. " Trying to justify his existence in the face of future generations, Franz claims that he is a child of the 20th century and, therefore, has no right to condemn anyone (including the father; the theme of fatherhood and sonship is also one of the central ones in the play).

"The Recluses of Altona" clearly demonstrate Sartre's disillusionment with engaged literature, with a rigid division of people into guilty and innocent.

A. Camus worked no less intensely than Sartre after the war. The poetics of his "The Stranger" (1942) makes it clear why he was not ready to call himself an existentialist. The seeming cynicism of the narrative has a double orientation: on the one hand, it evokes a feeling of the absurdity of earthly existence, but, on the other hand, behind this manner of Meursault lies an innocent acceptance of every moment (the author brings Meursault to this philosophy before execution), capable of filling life with joy and even justifying human destiny. “Can we give physical life a moral foundation?” Asks Camus. And he himself is trying to answer this question: a person has natural virtues that do not depend on upbringing and culture (and which social institutions only distort), such as masculinity, patronage of the weak, in particular women, sincerity, aversion to lies, a sense of independence , love of freedom.

If existence has no meaning, and life is the only good, why risk it? Reasoning on this topic led the writer Jean Gionot (1895-1970) in 1942 to the idea that it is better to be "a living German than a dead French." Giono's telegram to French President E. Daladier is known about the conclusion of the Munich Agreement (September 1938), which postponed the outbreak of World War II: "I am not ashamed of peace, whatever its conditions." Camus's thought moved in a different direction, as follows from the essay "The Myth of Sisyphe" (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942). "Is life worth the labor to be lived" if "a sense of absurdity can strike a person in the face at the bend of any street"? In the essay, Camus tackles "the only really serious philosophical problem" - the problem of suicide. Contrary to the absurdity of being, he builds his concept of morality on a rational and positive vision of a person who is able to bring order to the initial chaos of life, to organize it in accordance with his own attitudes. Sisyphus, the son of the wind god Aeolus, for his resourcefulness and cunning was punished by the gods and condemned to roll a huge stone onto a steep mountain. But at the very top of the mountain, each time a stone breaks down, and the "useless worker of the underworld" again takes up his hard work. Sisyphus "teaches the highest fidelity, which denies the gods and raises the debris of the rocks." Every moment Sisyphus rises in spirit above his destiny. "We must imagine Sisyphus happy" - this is Camus's conclusion.

In 1947, Camus publishes the novel "The Plague" (La Peste), which was a resounding success. Like Sartre's Roads of Freedom, he expresses a new understanding of humanism as a personality's resistance to the catastrophes of history: ... the way out is not in banal disappointment, but in an even more stubborn striving "to overcome historical determinism, in the" fever of unity "with others. Camus describes an imaginary plague epidemic in the city of Oran. The allegory is transparent: fascism spread like a plague across Europe. Each hero goes his own way to become a fighter against the plague. Dr. Riyo, expressing the position of the author himself, sets an example of generosity and dedication. Another character, Tarru, the son of a wealthy prosecutor, on the basis of his life experience and as a result of the search for "holiness without God" comes to the decision "in all cases to take the side of the victims in order to somehow limit the scope of the disaster." Epicurean journalist Rambert, seeking to leave the city, eventually stays in Oran, admitting that "it is a shame to be happy alone." Camus's laconic and clear style does not betray him this time either. The narration is emphatically impersonal: only towards the end does the reader realize that it is being led by Dr. Riyo, stoically, like Sisyphus, doing his duty and convinced that “a microbe is natural, and the rest is health, honesty, the result of will. "

In his last interview with Camus, when asked whether he himself could be considered an "outsider" (according to the vision of the world as universal suffering), he replied that he was originally an outsider, but his will and thought allowed him to overcome his destiny and made his existence inseparable from time in which he lives.

Theater Camus (the writer was engaged in drama at the same time as Sartre) has four plays: "Misunderstanding" (Le Malentendu, 1944), "Caligula" (Caligula, 1945), "State of Siege" (L "État de siège, 1948)," The Just " (Les Justes, 1949) Particularly interesting is the last play based on the book "Memories of a Terrorist" by B. Savinkov. combined with the assertion of the right to kill (he later analyzes this situation in the essay "The Rebellious Man"). The basis of terrorists' morality is their willingness to give their lives in exchange for the one taken from another. Only if this condition is met, individual terror is justified by them. otherwise, any political murder becomes “meanness.” “They start with a thirst for justice, and end up being in charge of the police,” brings this thought to its logical conclusion Head of the Police Department Skuratov. The planned and then carried out murder of the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich is accompanied by a dispute between the revolutionaries about the price of the revolution and its victims. The bomber Kaliayev violated the order of the Organization and did not throw a bomb into the carriage of the Grand Duke, since there were children in it. Kaliayev wants to be not a murderer, but a "creator of justice", because if children suffer, the people "will hate the revolution." However, not all revolutionaries think so. Stepan Fedorov is convinced that a revolutionary has "all rights", including the right to "step over death." He believes that "honor is a luxury that only carriage owners can afford." Paradoxically, the love for which terrorists act is also an unaffordable luxury. The heroine of the play Dora, who loves the "noble" terrorist Kaliayev, formulated this contradiction: "If the only way out is death, we are not on the right path ... First love, and then justice." Love for justice is incompatible with love for people, this is Camus's conclusion. The inhumanity of the coming revolutions is already embedded in this antinomy.

Camus considers illusory any hope that the revolution can become a way out of the situation that caused it. It was natural in this connection that Camus turned to the experience of FM Dostoevsky. In addition to the original plays, Camus wrote a stage version of the novel Demons (1959). In Dostoevsky, highly esteemed by him, the writer admired the ability to recognize nihilism in a variety of guises and find ways to overcome it. Camus's "Just" is one of the best examples of the theater of "borderline situations" so fruitful in the 1950s.

Camus's latest novel, The Fall (La Chute, 1956), is undoubtedly his most enigmatic work. It is deeply personal in nature, and probably owes its appearance to the author's polemic with Sartre about the essay "The Rebellious Man" (1951). In a dispute with the left-wing intelligentsia, who "caught" Camus of being good-hearted, he brought out in "The Fall" the "false prophet, of whom there are so many today," a person seized with a passion for blaming others (exposing his age) and self-accusation. However, Clamance (his name is taken from the expression "vox clamans in deserto" - "a voice crying in the wilderness") is perceived, according to the writer's biographers, rather as a kind of double of Camus himself than as a caricature of Sartre. At the same time, he resembles Rameau's nephew from the eponymous work of D. Diderot and the hero of "Notes from the Underground" by FM Dostoevsky. In The Fall, Camus masterfully used theatrical technique (the hero's monologue and implicit dialogue), turning his hero into a tragic actor.

One of the variants of the existentialist novel was the personalist novel, the samples of which are quite few, since around the main theorist of this philosophical trend, E. Mounier, were united mainly philosophers and critics, and not writers. The exception is Jean Cayrol (p. 1911). Sartre, I think, not without reason, noted that "in the life of every person there is a unique drama", which is the essence of his life. The drama experienced by Keyrol, a member of the Resistance, a prisoner of the Mauthausen concentration camp, had a dimension that makes it possible to recall the Old Testament Job. The writer tried to answer the questions generated by his life experience: “The prisoner returned, although he seemed doomed. Why did he come back? Why exactly did he come back? What is the meaning of the death of others? "

The answer to these questions was the trilogy "I will live by the love of others" (Je vivrai l "amour des autres, 1947-1950. , 1947) were awarded the Renaudot Prize (1947) and brought the writer wide fame. The novel "They Speak With You" is written in the first person and is a monologue of an unnamed character. exclusivity), since from the experience of the war, I learned that “an ordinary person is the most extraordinary.” From the confusing confession of the narrator, we learn about some facts of his childhood, youth, imprisonment in a concentration camp, about the details of his present life, passing in search of work and in the eternal fear of losing a roof over his head - in a word, about his inner life, woven of memories and reflections.

The plot of the novel is the narrator's wanderings around the city. Meeting people on the streets, talking with neighbors in the apartment in which he is renting a corner - this is the outer outline of the novel. At the same time, due to the evangelical reminiscences, Keyrol gives the character's subjective experiences an almost cosmic scale: he is not only the “first comer”, but represents the entire human race.

"My life is an open door" - this is the principle of the existence of the character of Carol. Here he meets his former fellow prisoner Robert, who makes his living by enlarging photos, and takes him under the protection of the reader in front of the reader: “Keep in mind, if you come across a guy who offers to enlarge photos, do not refuse him. He needs it not in order to survive, but to believe that he is living. " The willingness to sympathize with a person is what, according to the writer, makes a person a person, and a similar quality is inherent in his hero.

Carol's hero solves the problem of choosing a path in life not in favor of society. To join the life of society for him means betraying himself, losing his human dignity: "The harness does not talk, and they do not talk to it." The episode when the hero finds a hundred-franc ticket on the pavement is symbolic. With his beggarly existence, the banknote seems to him a pass to a new life, but “Imagine, I never spent that money; never ... Maybe the day will come when I will cease to be afraid to become one of you ... I do not want to eat, my hunger is too great. " What looks unlikely in terms of events is full of meaning in terms of the philosophy of an act. The values ​​offered to the hero by the surrounding society (personal and material success) are not genuine in his eyes. What is he longing for? “He's in search of a life that is Life,” says Keyrol of his narrator in the preface. Keyrole's hero lives an intense spiritual life, looking for a high meaning in everyday life.

“We are being burned by a fire not kindled by us” - such a spiritual anxiety eats away the protagonists F. Mauriac and J. Bernanos, they refuse to accept the world as it is. The novel offers two ways of confronting an improper world order and loyalty to the ideals of humanity and compassion. On the one hand, this is creativity. Keyrole's hero dreams of writing "a novel in which loneliness explodes like the sun." On the other hand, it is suffering. It regenerates a person, compels him to do great, and not only aesthetic, inner work. Thus, the author is looking for the possibility of true self-fulfillment of the individual, which corresponds to the personalist concept of a “reborn person”. (Compare: "A work of art involves a person in a" productive imagination "; an artist, competing with the world and surpassing it, imparts new values ​​to individuals, makes a person seem to be reborn - this is the most important - the demiurgic aspect of artistic creation, E. Mounier. )

The very title of the trilogy: "I will live by the love of others", clearly opposes the thesis of J.-P. Sartre that “hell is others” (1944). Keyrol insists on an "open position" in relation to the "other", as was characteristic of E. Mounier's personalism, who assimilated the range of topics and problems discussed in non-religious philosophies, primarily in existentialism and Marxism. However, the ways of overcoming the crisis were supposed to be fundamentally different. They are based on the preaching of moral self-improvement, education of others by personal example of "openness" to people, denial of "irresponsibility and selfishness", individualism.

An important document in the creative biography of Carol is the essay "Lazare among us" (Lazare parminous, 1950). The story of the resurrection of Lazarus (Gospel of John, ch. 12) is linked by the author with his own experience of "resurrection from the dead." Thinking about why he was able to survive in the inhuman conditions of the concentration camp, Keyrol comes to the conviction that this can only be explained by the invulnerability of the human soul, its diverse and endless ability for creativity, for imagination, which he calls "the supernatural protection of man."

From an existentialist point of view, the existence of concentration camps was an argument in favor of recognizing the absurdity of the world, as evidenced by David Rousset (1912-1919). Returning from his imprisonment in a concentration camp, Rousse published two essays: "The Concentration World" (L "Univers concentrationnaire, 1946) and" Days of Our Death "(Les Jours de notre mort, 1947), in which he attempted a philosophical analysis of the" world of concentration camps. " , introduced into the post-war French literature the concept of "concentration", "concentration everyday life", seeing in the events of the Second World War confirmation of the absurdity of history.

Keyrol objected to Rousse. The absurd is not omnipotent as long as a person exists: "He fights and needs help." Therefore, the writer was looking for a fulcrum for this struggle, taking as a basis the thesis of a person's focus on proper being, on the "additional development" of reality, which "does not close in itself, but finds its completion outside of itself, in truth." Longing for “being of a“ higher order ”reveals the features of the romantic worldview inherent in Carroll and personalism in general:“ Our immediate future is to feel the concentration camp in our souls. There is no concentration myth, there is a concentration everyday life. It seems to me that the time has come to witness these strange impulses of the Concentrationate, his still timid penetration into the world, born of great fear, his stigmata on us. Art born directly from human convulsion, from catastrophe, should have been called "Lazarev's" art. It is already taking shape in our literary history. "

Existentialist writers did not create a new type of discourse and used traditional varieties of the novel, essay, and drama. They did not create a literary group either, remaining some kind of "loners" in search of solidarity (solitaire et solidaire - the key words in their worldview): "Loners! you will say contemptuously. Maybe so, now. But how lonely you will be without these loners ”(A. Camus).

In the 1960s, with the death of A. Camus, the final stage in the evolution of existentialism begins - the summing up. The "Memoirs" of Simone de Beauvoir ("Memoirs of a well-bred girl", Mémoires d "une jeune filie rangée, 1958;" The force of age ", La Force de Gâge, 1960;" The power of things ", La Force des choses, 1963) are very popular , Sartre's autobiographical novel "Words" (Les Mots, 1964). Assessing his work, Sartre notes: "I have long mistook the pen for the sword, now I am convinced of our powerlessness. It does not matter: I write, I will write books; they are needed, they are still useful. Culture does not save anyone or anything, and it does not justify. But it is the creation of man: he projects himself into it, recognizes himself in it; only in this critical mirror does he see his appearance. "

In the last years of his life, Sartre was more involved in politics than literature. He ran extreme left-wing newspapers and magazines such as JTa Cause du peuple (La Cause du peuple), Libération (Liberation), supporting all protest movements against the existing government, and rejecting the alliance with the communists, who by this time had become its ideological opponents. Struck with blindness in 1974, Sartre died in the spring of 1980 (see the reminiscences of the last years of Sartre's life in Simone de Beauvoir's book The Farewell Ceremony, La cérémonie des adieux, 1981).

The work of A. Malraux (André Malraux,

1901 - 1976). André Malraux is a man-legend, the author of the novels “The Royal Road” (La Voie royale, 1930), “The Lot of Man” (La Condition humaine, 1933), “Hope” (L "Espoir, 1937), which thundered before the war. Resistance in the south of the country, Colonel Maki, commander of the Alsace-Lorraine brigade, Malraux was repeatedly wounded and taken prisoner. In 1945 he met de Gaulle and from that moment remained his loyal companion until the end of his life. In the first post-war government became minister of information, four years later - general secretary of the De Gaulle party, in 1958 - minister of culture.

Although after 1945 Malraux no longer publishes novels, he continues to be active in literary activity (essays, memoirs). In part, his life attitudes are changing: an independent supporter of socialism in the 1930s, after the war he is fighting against Stalin's totalitarianism; formerly a committed internationalist, he now places all his hopes on the nation.

Malraux presented his last novel, Les Noyersde l "Altenburg, Swiss edition - 1943, French edition 1948, as the first part of the novel" Battle with the Angel ", which was destroyed by the Nazis (the author found it impossible to write it again). It lacks the unity of place and time, characteristic of Malraux's previous works, there are features of different genres: autobiography, philosophical dialogue, political novel, military prose.The novel deals with three generations of the respectable Alsatian Berger family (under this pseudonym Malraux himself fought). The narrator's grandfather Dietrich and his brother Walter, friends of Nietzsche, on the eve of 1914 organize philosophical colloquia at the Altenburg monastery, in which famous German scientists and writers participate, solving the question of the transcendence of man (the prototype of these colloquia was Malraux's conversations with A. Gide and R. Martin du Gard in the Abbey of Pontilly, where European intellectuals met in the 1930s.) The narrator's father Vincent Berger, a participant in the 1914 war, experienced the horror of the first use of chemical weapons on the Russian front. The narrator himself begins his story with a recollection of a camp of French prisoners (among whom he was) in Chartres Cathedral in June 1940 and ends the book with an episode of a military campaign of the same year, when he, commanding a tank crew, found himself in an anti-tank ditch under the crossfire of the enemy and miraculously survived: “Now I know what the ancient myths about heroes who returned from the kingdom of the dead mean. I hardly remember the horror; I carry the solution to a mystery, simple and sacred. This is probably how God looked at the first man. "

New horizons of Malraux's thought are outlined in The Hazel Trees of Altenburg. Heroic action - the core of his first novels - fades into the background. It is still about how to overcome anxiety and conquer death. But now Malraux sees victory over fate in artistic creation.

One of the most striking episodes of the novel is symbolic, when Friedrich Nietzsche, who has fallen into madness, is being taken home to Germany by friends. In the Saint Gotthard tunnel, in the darkness of a third-class carriage, Nietzsche's singing is suddenly heard. This singing of a man struck by madness transformed everything around. The carriage was the same, but in its darkness the starry sky shone: “It was life - I say simply: life ... millions of years of the starry sky seemed to me swept away by man, as our poor destinies sweep away the starry sky”. Walter adds: “The greatest mystery is not that we are left to chance in the world of matter and stars, but that in this prison we are able to take out images powerful enough to disagree with the fact that we are nothing "(" Pieg notre néant ").

All of Malraux's post-war work - books of essays "Psychology de l" art, 1947-1949), "Voices of Silence" (Les Voix du silence, 1951), "Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture" (Le Musée imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale , 1952-1954), "Metamorphoses of the Gods" (La Metamorphose des dieux, 1957-1976) - devoted to reflections on art as "anti-destiny".

Following O. Spengler, Malraux is looking for features of similarity between extinct and modern civilizations in a single space of culture and art. The world of art created by man is not limited to the real world. He “devalues ​​reality, as Christians and any other religion devalue it, devalue by their belief in privilege, the hope that man, and not chaos, carries within himself the source of eternity” (“Voices of Silence”). An interesting remark by the critic C. Roy: “An art theorist, Malraux does not describe works of art in their diversity: he tries to collect them, merge them into one permanent work, into the eternal present, a constantly renewed attempt to escape the nightmare of history.<...>At 23 in archeology, at 32 in the revolution, at 50 in the historiography of art, Malraux seeks religion. "

1967 Malraux published the first volume of Antimémoires. In them, in accordance with the name, there are no recollections of the writer's childhood, there is no story about his personal life ("is it important what is important only for me?"), There is no recreation of the facts of his own biography. It is mainly about the last twenty-five years of his life. Malraux starts from the end. Reality is intertwined with fiction, the characters of his early novels come to life in unexpected contexts, the leaders of nations (de Gaulle, Nehru, Mao Zedong) become heroes of the narrative. Heroic destinies triumph over death and time. Compositionally, "Anti-memoirs" are formed around several dialogues that Malraux conducted with General de Gaulle, Nehru and Mao. Malraux takes them beyond the framework of his era, places them in a kind of eternity. He opposes the destructive nature of time to the heroism of the Promethean principle - the actions of a person "identical to the myth about him" (Malraux's statement about de Gaulle, applied to himself).

In the 1960s, new trends in philosophy, the humanities, and literature were heading in the opposite direction to the concerns of the existentialists. A writer who tries to solve all the problems of culture and history evokes both respect and mistrust. It is especially characteristic of structuralists. J. Lacan begins to talk about “decentering the subject”, K. Levi-Strauss argues that “the goal of the humanities is not the constitution of a person, but his dissolution”, M. Foucault expresses the opinion that a person can “disappear like a drawing in the sand, washed away by the coastal wave.

Philosophy moves away from existential themes and deals with the structuring of knowledge, the construction of systems. Accordingly, the new literature addresses the problems of language and speech, neglects philosophical and moral problems. The creativity of S. Beckett and his interpretation of the absurd as nonsense is becoming more relevant.

In the 1970s, it can be stated that existentialism has completely lost its leading positions, but one should not underestimate its deep indirect influence on modern literature. Perhaps Beckett goes further in the development of the concept of absurdity than Camus, and Jean Genet's theater surpasses Sartre's drama. It is obvious, however, that without Camus and Sartre there would be no Beckett or Genet. The influence of French existentialism on post-war French literature is comparable to that of surrealism after World War I. Each new generation of writers, up to the present time, has developed its own attitude towards existentialism, towards the problem of engagement.

Louis Aragon (Louis Aragon, nast, name - Louis Andrieux, Louis Andrieux, 1897-1982), like Malraux, Sartre, Camus, is one of the engaged writers. This resulted in his commitment to communist ideas. If A. Gide became interested in communism by reading the Gospel, then Aragon was captured by the idea of ​​social revolution, to which he came from the idea of ​​revolution in art, being one of the founders of surrealism. It took him ten years of artistic experimentation in the circles of the "golden youth" to then master the method he called "socialist realism" and to recreate the era of the 1920s and 1930s in the novels of the cycle "The Real World" ("Basel Bells", Les Cloches de Bâle, 1934; "Rich Quarters", Les Beaux quartiers, 1936; "Passengers of the Imperial", Les Voyageurs de l "іmregialе, 1939, 1947;" Aurelien ", Aurélien, 1944) and" Communists "(Les Communistes, 1949-1951, 2nd ed. 1967-1968).

An active member of the Resistance, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of France, Aragon on the pages of the Lettre Française newspaper tried, although not always consistently (carried away by the works of Yu. Tynyanov, V. Khlebnikov, B. Pasternak), to pursue the party line in art. But after the XX Congress of the CPSU, he is revising his previous political views. In the novel "Holy Week" (La Semaine sainte, 1958), he implicitly draws a parallel between the tumultuous times of the Napoleonic hundred days and the debunking of the Stalinist cult of personality. The core of the novel turns out to be the betrayal of Napoleon's officers (and, accordingly, the communists - Stalin) and their sense of guilt. In the novel “Doom Seriously” (La Mise à mort, 1965), of particular interest are the description of the funeral of A.M. an eyewitness to events that at first did not seem to be anything particularly significant. And when later I comprehended their meaning, I felt like a simpleton: after all, seeing and not understanding is the same as not seeing at all.<...>All I saw was the luxurious marbled and sculptured metro stations. So talk about realism after that. The facts are striking, and you turn away from them with beautiful-minded judgments ... Such an awkward thing life. And we all try to find meaning in it. We are all trying ... Naive people. Can you trust the artist? Artists go astray, are mistaken: "he is either a satellite or a criminal."

“We use books as mirrors in which we try to find our reflection,” writes Aragon in the afterword to the novel. The hero's double, Antoan, is the Aragon-Stalinist, whom the writer himself wants to kill in himself ("death seriously"). He seems to be able to take such a step with impunity ("Goethe was not accused of murdering Werther, and Stendhal was not prosecuted because of Julien Sorel. If I kill Antoan, at least there will be extenuating circumstances ..."). But it turns out that Antoan the Stalinist cannot be killed. Firstly, because he is “long dead”, and secondly, because “I would have to go to meetings instead of him”. In a word, the past lives in us, it is not so easy to bury it.

The events of Prague in 1968 reconciled Aragon with its own falling away from Soviet-style communism. He ceases to worry about how to match his role as an orthodox party member - speaks in defense of A. Solzhenitsyn, A. Sinyavsky, Y. Daniel, petitions the Soviet government to release film director S. Parajanov from prison. His newspaper, Lettre Française, was closed in the early 1970s.

The problem of engagement appears in a completely different way in the work of Louis-Ferdinand Céline (crust, name - Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, 1894-1961). "This is a person who has no significance in the team, he is just an individual" - these words of Celine (play "Church", 1933), which served as an epigraph to Sartre's Nausea, are applicable to Celine himself, who refused to recognize the responsibility of a person to society.

The posthumous fate of this writer is no less surprising than his life: according to critics, none of the French writers of the 20th century currently has a more lasting literary status than him. His "black lyricism", accompanied by deconstruction-reconstruction of the syntax of the French language, is an artistic achievement comparable in importance with the sonnets of S. Mallarmé and the prose of M. Proust. In addition to the artistic merit of the style, many French writers of the 20th century (including Sartre and Camus) were influenced by the general intonation of Celine's works. “The relationship between Sartre and Celine is striking. Obviously, Nausea (1938) follows directly from Journey to the End of the Night (1932) and Death on Credit (1936). The same irritation, prejudice, desire to see the ugly, absurd, disgusting everywhere. It is noteworthy that the two greatest French novelists of the 20th century, no matter how far from each other, are united in their disgust for life, hatred for existence. In this sense, Proust's asthma - an allergy that has taken on the character of a common disease - and Celine's anti-Semitism are similar, served as a crystal basis for two different forms of rejection of the world, "writes postmodernist writer M. Tournier about Celine.

During the First World War, Celine was mobilized and at the age of twenty ended up at the front, was wounded in the arm. For Selin, participation in the war became that very unique drama that determined his future life. A doctor by training, he had all the prerequisites to make a career: in 1924 he brilliantly defended his dissertation, made reports at the Academy of Sciences, went on business trips to North America, Africa and Europe, and in 1927 opened a private practice. However, the sphere of his true interests turned out to be different. Without breaking completely with the profession of a doctor, Celine begins to write and immediately becomes famous: his first novels Voyage au bout de la nuit (Renaudot Prize 1932) and Death on Credit (Mort à crédit, 1936) produced the effect of a bomb exploding. The sympathetic content of the novels was enhanced by their extraordinary stylistic originality.

The material for "Traveling ..." was the writer's life experience: memories of the war, knowledge of colonial Africa, trips to the United States, which had been booming in the first third of the century with the triumph of industrial capitalism, as well as medical practice in a poor suburb of Paris. The picaresque hero of the novel, Bardamu, tells his story in the first person, drawing before the reader a ruthless panorama of the absurdity of life. The ideology of this antihero is provocative, but his language is even more provocative. S. de Beauvoir recalled: “We knew many passages from this book by heart. His anarchism seemed to us akin to ours. He attacked war, colonialism, mediocrity, common places, society in a style and tone that captivated us. Celine has cast a new tool: writing is as lively as speaking. What pleasure we got from him after the frozen phrases of Gide, Alain, Valerie! Sartre grasped its essence; he finally abandoned the prim language that he had used until now. "

However, Celine's pre-war anti-Semitic pamphlets and demonstrative collaboration (“To become a collaborator, I did not wait for the Commandant's Office to fly its flag over the Crillon Hotel”) during World War II caused his name to almost disappear from the literary horizon, although in 1940s - j950s he wrote and published a novel about his stay in London in 1915, "Puppets" (Guignol's Band, 1944), the story "Trench" (Casse-pipe, 1949), as well as notes about the bombing 1944 and stay in a political prison "Extravaganza for another occasion" (Féerie pour une autre fois, 1952) and continued their essay "Normans" (Normance, 1954).

In 1944, after the collapse of the Vichy government, Celine fled to Germany, then to Denmark. The Resistance Movement sentenced him to death. Sartre wrote that Celine was “bought” by the Nazis (Portrait of an Anti-Semite, 1945). Denmark refused to extradite him, nevertheless, in Copenhagen, the writer was put on trial and sentenced to fourteen months in prison, living under police supervision. In 1950, Celine was amnestied, he was given the opportunity to return to France, which he did in 1951.

In France, Celine works a lot and begins to publish again, although it was difficult for him to expect an unbiased attitude towards himself and his work. Only after the death of Selin did his rebirth begin as a major writer who blazed new paths in literature. For literary France at the end of the 20th century, he turned out to be the same iconic figure as J. Joyce for England and U Faulkner for the United States.

Celine explained his creative intention solely as an attempt to convey an individual emotion that must be overcome. The prophetism inherent in his works testifies to the fact that the writer gave dark pleasure to the role of Cassandra: one against all.

The autobiographical chronicles "From castle to castle" (D "un château l" autre, 1957), "North" (Nord, 1960) and the posthumously published novel "Rigodon" (Rigodon, 1969) describe Selina's apocalyptic journey accompanied by his wife Lily, a cat Beber and actor friend Le Vigan in Europe on fire. Selin's path first lay in Germany, where at Sigmaringen Castle he joined the agonizing Vichy government in exile and worked as a doctor for several months, treating collaborators. Then, having secured permission to leave through friends, Celine, under the bombs of allied aviation, managed to reach Denmark on the last train. Explaining his intention to depict the dying days of the Pétain government, Celine wrote: “I am talking about Pétain, Laval, Sigmaringen, this is a moment in the history of France, like it or not; maybe sad, you can regret him, but this is a moment in the history of France, he took place and someday they will talk about him at school. " These words of Selina require, if not sympathy, then understanding. In the face of complete military defeat, the government of Marshal Petain (national hero of the First World War) managed to achieve the division of the country into two zones, as a result of which many of those who wanted to leave France were able to do so through the south of the country.

The "lace" style of the trilogy, written in the first person (like all Selinov's works), conveys a feeling of total chaos and confusion. However, the hero, the prototype of which is the author himself, is obsessed with the desire to survive at all costs, he does not want to admit that he is defeated. The parodic tone of the tragicomic narrative hides a storm of feelings and regrets in his soul.

The seeming ease of Celine's conversational manner is the result of hard and thoughtful work ("five hundred printed pages equals eight thousand handwritten pages"). The writer R. Nimier, a great admirer of Celine's work, characterized him as follows: “The North teaches more a lesson in style than a lesson in morality. Indeed, the author does not provide advice. Instead of attacking the Army, Religion, Family, he constantly talks about very serious things: the death of a person, his fear, his cowardice. "

The trilogy covers the period from July 1944 to March 1945. But the chronology is not consistent: the first should have been the novel "North", and the action of the novel "Rigaudon" unexpectedly for the reader breaks off at the most interesting place. A disjointed narrative that does not fit into the framework of any genre, imbued with nostalgic memories of the past. Finding himself at the crossroads of History, the hero is trying to be aware of what is happening and find an excuse for himself. Celine creates his own myth: he is a great writer ("one might say, the only genius, and it does not matter whether damned or not"), a victim of circumstances. The dance of death and the atmosphere of general madness depicted by Celine work to create the image of an extravagant lone rebel. The question of who is crazier - a misunderstood prophet or the world around him - remains open: “Every person who speaks to me is a dead man in my eyes; dead man in respite, if you like, living by chance and for a moment. Death lives in me. And she makes me laugh! Here's something to remember: my dance of death amuses me like a boundless farce ... Trust me: the world is funny, death is funny; that's why my books are funny and at heart I am cheerful. "

In contrast to the biased literature, the fascination with Celine began in the 1950s. The counterculture movement in 1968 also raised him on the shield as an anti-bourgeois writer and a kind of revolutionary. By the end of the 20th century, Selin's work became, in the works of postmodernist theorists (Y. Kristev), an antithesis of all previous literature.

Jean Genet (1910-1986) became a similar, at first glance, marginal, but in fact a significant literary figure. He did not belong to any school, did not follow the principles of existentialism. Nevertheless, when in 1951 the publishing house "Gallimard" began to publish the collected works of Genet, a short introduction to it was commissioned by Sartre. Work on it grew into work on a rather voluminous book "Saint Wife, Comedian and Martyr" (1952), written in the mainstream of existentialist psychoanalysis (reading this book caused Zhenya to be depressed and creative crisis). Sartre referred Genet to the circle of writers close to existentialism, on the basis that he was an eternal outcast - both as a person who found himself at the bottom of society from childhood, and as a marginal artist. There was a certain truth in this premise: an orphanage foster child, a juvenile delinquent, a frequenter of correctional institutions, a thief who spent a significant part of his life in prison, Zhenet mythologizes the thieves' community, bringing its symbolism (as he believes, going back to the first characters of human consciousness) with an existentialist vision the world.

Ancient Greek tragedy with its categories of necessity (ananke) and fate (moira) can serve as the key to his dramas and novels. Although the characters of Zhenet do not belong to the generation of heroes, but to the lowest social stratum in the social hierarchy (those who have violated the law), the writer exalts them, poeticizes their passions. The very names of his novels - "Our Lady of Flowers" (Notre-Dame-des-fleurs, 1944), "The Miracle of the Rose" (Miracle de la rose, 1946), "Funeral Rite" (Pompes funèbres, 1948) - testify to the unbridled desire the writer to curse the world of prisons, criminals and murderers by sublimating archetypal human passions (“to see myself as I cannot or dare not imagine myself, but what I really am”).

In addition to the novels, from 1943 to 1949, Genet published the plays Haute surveillance (1943, publ. 1949) and The Maids (Les Bonnes, 1947). The undoubted influence on Genet's work was the brilliant Jean Cocteau, his friend and patron, a meeting with whom in 1943 played a decisive role in his development as a writer. Zhenet also tried himself in other genres: he wrote poetry, screenplays (Song of Love, 1950; Hard labor, 1952), libretto for ballet (Adam's Mirror) and opera, philosophical essays.

In the 1950s, Genet worked on the plays "Balcon" (Le Balcon, 1955, publ. 1956), "Negroes" (Les Nègres, 1956, publ. 1959), "Screens" (Les Paravents, 1957, publ. 1961 ). Of great interest are his comments to them: "How to play the" Balcony "" (Comment jouer Le Balcon, 1962), "How to play" The Handmaids "" (Comment jouer Les Bonnes, 1963), "A letter to Roger Blain in the margins of the" Screens " (Lettre a Roger Blin en marge des Paravents, 1966). Genet's plays have a happy stage life, they are staged by the best directors of the second half of the 20th century (Louis Jouvet, Jean-Louis Barrot, Roger Blanc, Peter Brook, Peter Stein, Patrice Chereau, etc.).

The goal of the tragedy is thought of by Zhenet as a ritual purification (“the original task was to get rid of self-loathing”). Paradoxically, crime leads to holiness: "Holiness is my goal ... I want to make sure that all my actions lead me to it, although I do not know what it is." The core of Genet's works is "some irreversible action by which we will be judged, or, if you like, a cruel action that judges itself."

Wanting to return the theater to ritual significance, Zhenet turns to the origins of the drama. During the burial in ancient times, the participants in this ritual (the mysteries of death) reproduced the dromene (the Greek word drama has the same root) of the deceased, that is, his lifetime deeds. Genet's first play, High Surveillance, brings three criminals imprisoned into a cell onto the stage. In terms of content, it has something in common with Sartre's play Behind a Closed Door. "I" and "the other" turn out to be connected by relations of fatal necessity, in which neither "I" nor "the other" are in control.

The protagonists of the play - seventeen-year-old Maurice and twenty-three-year-old Lefranc vie for the attention of the third prisoner, twenty-two-year-old Green-Eyed, who is sentenced to death for murder. Each of the prisoners made his own "great leap into the void", separating him from other people, and even in the cell continues to fall. Everyone's crime was necessary, no matter how they resisted it: they were chosen, they "attracted trouble." Their dizzying path on the other side of good and evil can only be stopped by death. The presence of death, first in the stories of Green-Eyed (about the murder he committed), and then in real life (Lefranc kills Maurice) is "too sweet", its beauty and mystery are mesmerizing. Death is inseparable from crime, it is the "misfortune" that is "needed in its entirety." ("Green-eyed. - You don't know anything about trouble if you think you can choose it. Mine, for example, chose me herself. I would have hoped for anything to avoid it. I did not want what happened to me at all. Everything was simply given to me. ")

Poeticization of death in the stories of Green-eyed ("There was no blood. Only lilacs"), the beauty of Maurice ("trash of precious, white metal") and Green-eyed ("They called me" Paulo with a flower in my teeth "Who else is as young as I am? remained as beautiful after such a misfortune? ”), the emphatically young age of the drama participants, who can“ turn into a rose or periwinkle, daisy or snapdragon, ”paradoxically create an uplifted, almost festive atmosphere. The feeling of catastrophe is rapidly growing, the participants of the action are circling in a round dance of death ("You should have seen how I danced! Oh, guys, I danced - so I danced!"). As a result of the provocative behavior of Maurice, Lefranne, who "the day after tomorrow" is released, commits a "real" crime: he kills Maurice, thereby entering the circle of initiates in the mystery of death. In front of the audience, "trouble" has chosen its next victim. In other words, “high surveillance” is carried out not by the senior warden who appears in the last scene of the play, but by fate itself, which betrothed Green-eyed to death, dazzlingly beautiful and attractive, first (“[The cell door opens, but no one is on the doorstep]. "No? She came"), and then Lefrante ("I did my best for love of trouble").

In a similar way, the narrative in Genet's novels at the climax acquires the features of a myth, the action is identified with the ritual. In one of his best novels, The Mother of God of Flowers (1944), at the moment of reading the death sentence, the hero ceases to be a criminal and becomes a victim to be slaughtered, a “cleansing victim”, “a goat, a bull, a child”. He is treated as someone who has received "God's grace." And when forty days later, “on a spring night”, in the prison yard he was executed (the image of a sacrificial knife appears), this event became “the path of his soul to God”.

The irony inherent in the narrator (the narration is in the first person) does not interfere with the transformation of reality into a myth - the transformation of the criminal who "took upon himself all the sins of the world" into a kind of redeemer. This readiness for sacrifice is emphasized by the names of the characters of Zhenet, who speak of their special chosenness: Divine, First Communion, Mimosa, Our Lady of Flowers, Prince Monsignor, etc. .) By committing a crime, a person goes into the other world, the laws of this world lose their power over him. It is this moment of transition that depicts Zhenet as a ritual of initiation into the mystery of death. Taking someone's soul, the killer gives his. In a sense, Genet plays up the situation that was addressed by both M. Maeterlink ("The Blind") and A. Strindberg ("Frocken Julie").

The theme of the tragic loneliness of a person in the face of fate does not fail. Wife to what interested the existentialists - to the problem of ethical choice, the responsibility of the individual for his choice. -Although the hero Zhenet declares that he condemns himself to death and frees himself from custody, the reader does not forget that the hero's power over reality and himself is ephemeral. In a certain sense, Genet's philosophy is close to understanding the world as a game, a theater.

As interest in biased literature declined by the mid-1950s, the crisis of traditional forms of writing, dating back to romanticism and naturalism, was increasingly asserting itself. I must say that the thesis about the "death of the novel" did not come as something unexpected. Already in the 1920s, the Symbolists (P. Valery) and especially the surrealists (A. Breton, L. Aragon) did a lot to abolish the "dilapidated" idea of ​​the main prose genre. A. France was "sent to the dump", M. Proust moved to the fore. And later, each new generation of writers undertook a revolutionary alteration of the novel world. In 1938, Sartre condemned the manner of F. Mauriac, and in 1958, Sartre and Camus themselves were subjected to the same destructive criticism from the "new novelist" A. Robbe-Grillet.

On the whole, however, it must be admitted that after the Second World War in France there was no such flourishing of the novel as in the interwar period. The war dispelled many illusions associated with the possibility of an individual's confrontation with society, which, as we think, is the essence of the novel's conflict. After all, "to choose a genre of a novel (a genre is itself a statement about the world) for a writer means to admit that an essential feature of reality is discord, a discrepancy between the norms of society, the state and the aspirations of an individual who is trying to pave his own path in life ..." (G.K. Kosikov).

The reaction to this situation was the emergence of the "new novel" and "theater of the absurd" on the forefront of French literature. Post-war avant-gardists declared themselves quite powerfully. For six years, from 1953 to 1959, the novels "Elastic Bands", "The Spy", "Jealousy", "In the Labyrinth" were published, as well as theoretical articles (including the manifesto "The Way for a Future Novel", Une voie pour le roman futur, 1956) Alain Robbe-Grillet, novels "Martero" (Martereau, 1953), "Tropisms" (Tropismes, 1938, 1958), "Planetarium" by Natalie Sarrott, novels "Milan passage" (Passage de Milan , 1954), "The distribution of time", "Change", article "The novel as a search" (Le Roman comme recherche, 1955) Michel Buthor, the novel "Wind" by Claude Simon.

Most of these works were published on the initiative of the publisher J. Lyndon at the Minuit publishing house (Midnight), founded during the Resistance to publish underground literature. Critics immediately started talking about the “Minuis novelists”, the “school of the gaze” (R. Barth), and the “new novel”. "New Novel" is a convenient, albeit vague, name, introduced to denote the abandonment of traditional novel forms and their replacement by a narrative discourse, which is designed to embody a special reality. However, each of the neo-Romanists imagined it in an original way. A certain commonality of theoretical attitudes of N. Sarrott and A. Robbe-Grillet did not prevent these writers from being profoundly different in their style. The same can be said about M. Butor and K. Simon.

Nevertheless, representatives of this generation (by no means school!) Were united by a common desire to renew the genre. They were guided by the innovation of M. Proust, J. Joyce, F. Kafka, U Faulkner, V. Nabokov, B. Vian. In his autobiography "The Rotating Mirror" (Le Migoig qui revient, 1985) Robbe-Grillet admitted that he was admired by Camus's "The Stranger" and Sartre's "Nausea".

In the collection of essays "The Age of Suspicion" (L "Eredusoupęon, 1956), Sarroth argues that the model of the 19th century novel has exhausted itself. Intrigue, characters (" types "or" characters "), their movement in fixed time and space, the dramatic sequence of episodes have ceased , in her opinion, of interest to novelists of the 20th century. In turn, Robbe-Grillet declares the "death of a character" and the primacy of discourse (in this case, the whimsicality of writing) over history. He demands that the author forget about himself, disappear, giving up the entire field depicted, he stopped making characters his projection, a continuation of his socio-cultural environment. The dehumanization of the novel, according to Robbe-Grillet, is a guarantee of the freedom of the writer, the opportunity to “look at the world with free eyes.” The purpose of this view is to debunk the “myth of the depth” of being and replace it sliding on the surface of things: "The world does not mean anything and is not absurd. It is extremely simple ... There are things. Their surface is smooth and pure, virgin, it is neither double-valued, nor transparent. are just things, and a person is just a person. Literature must refuse to feel the connection of things through metaphor and be content with a calm description of the smooth and clear surface of things, renouncing any idle interpretation - sociological, Freudian, philosophical, taken from the emotional sphere or from any other. "

Freeing things from the captivity of their stereotypical perception, “desocializing” them, the new-Romanists intended to become “new realists”. "Reality" in their understanding was associated with the idea not of representation, but of writing, which, separating itself from the author, creates its own special dimension. Hence the rejection of the idea of ​​an integral character. It is replaced by “things” in which it is reflected - the space of objects, words, far from any statics.

The New Novel also redefined the relationship between reader and text. Passive trust based on the identification of the reader and the character had to give way to the identification of the reader with the author of the work. Thus, the reader was drawn into the creative process and became a co-author. He was forced to take an active position, to follow the author in his experiment: “Instead of following the lead of the obvious, which everyday life taught him because of his laziness and haste, he should, in order to distinguish and recognize the characters as their the author himself distinguishes, from the inside, by implicit signs that can be recognized only by abandoning the habit of comfort, immersed in them as deeply as the author, and gain his vision ”(Sarroth). Robbe-Grillet substantiates this idea no less persistently: “Far from neglecting his reader, the author proclaims today the absolute necessity of active, conscious and creative help from the reader. He is required not to accept a complete image of the world, integral, focused on himself, but to participate in the process of creating fiction ... in order to learn how to create his own life in the same way. "

The “disembodiment” of the character through the efforts of the neo-Romanists led to the fact that the gaze of the observer replaces the action. The motives of the characters' actions are often not named, the reader can only guess about them. This is where the "new novel" technique of paralipse, which is widely used, which is to give less information than necessary, comes into force. It is often used in detective literature. J. Genette proposed the following formula for him: "Omission of any action or important thought of the hero, which the hero and the narrator cannot but know, but which the narrator prefers to hide from the reader." On the basis of slips of the tongue and fragmentary recollections, the reader can, in principle, reconstruct a kind of "coherent" picture of events.

A common technique of neo-Romanists is the displacement of temporal and narrative planes (in French structuralist criticism, it is called the technique of metalleps). J. Genette defines it as follows: “In the narrative, it is impossible to rationally separate fiction (or dream) from reality, the author’s statement from the character’s statement, the world of the author and the reader merge with the world of characters” (Figures III, Figures III). A typical example of the use of metalleps is the stories of H. Cortazar (in particular, the short story "Continuity of Parks"). As the boundary between reality and fiction disappears in the character's consciousness, his dreams and memories become a "second life", and the past, present and future receive a new reading. Thus, in the reader, doubts about the reality of the depicted are constantly maintained: it can equally be a fact of the hero's biography, a project of the future, or a lie that its carrier will expose on the next page. We will never know whether Matthias from the novel "The Spy" by Robbe-Grillet really committed murder or was only indulging in his dreams. We will never know how and for what the unknown killed his beloved in the novel by Marguerite Duras "Moderato cantabile" (1958).

Methods like metalps suggest the idea of ​​being as something irrational, whimsical, entirely relative: “All incidents and facts are transient, like a light breeze, like a gust of wind, and disappear, leaving only a fleeting trail, misunderstood, escaping from memory ... We have not been able to figure anything out. We conclude about the impenetrability of creatures evolving in an oscillating world, about the lack of communication of interlocutors; the consequence of this is the abuse of the monologue ”(J. Keyrol). Before the reader is actually a “deceptive” model of the novel (fr. Déception - deceived expectation): “It seems that the narrative strives for the greatest sincerity. But in fact, the narrator only sets traps for the reader, he deceives him all the time, makes him endlessly search for who the statement comes from, and this is not out of trust in him, but in order, having abused his trust, to confuse him ... The narrator becomes elusive, captivating the reader with fiction, in which he hides himself, becoming another fiction. The expectation of the fullness of the truth and, therefore, a clear presentation is deceived ”(P. Emon). The metamorphoses of artistic time in the novel are closely related to such metamorphoses of narrative logic. It “sometimes shrinks (when the hero forgets something), then stretches (when he invents something)” (R. Barthes).

Publishing house "Gallimard" refused to print the first novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet (p. 1922). The image of the city in "Elastic bands" (Les Gommes, 1953) - streets, canals, houses - is a triumph of the obvious, while the characters exist only in the form of silhouettes and shadows set in motion by motives we do not understand. The perfect mechanics of the narrative is striking, creating a special scale by repeating the same gestures and actions that does not coincide with either personal experience of time or astronomical time. This chronotope, in fact, sets the detective intrigue of the "Rubber Bands" into action. In "The Spy" (le Voyeur, 1955), a novel that admired V. Nabokov, the action is a series of gestures and actions that frame the murder of a girl by a traveling salesman. If this event had not been hidden from us and replaced with a temporary gap, the narrative would have disintegrated. Accordingly, the novel is dedicated to the killer's efforts to mask a certain lacuna in time, to return to the world, the order of which has been violated by crime, a "smooth and smooth" surface. The killer needs things, objects for this. Restoring their "equanimity", he kind of erases his presence and shifts his blame onto the world. Not being, by virtue of the unnaturalness of crime, a natural part of the universe, the killer wants to become it, to reduce himself to the "surface", that is, a set of gestures and actions.

In Jealousy (La Jalousie, 1957) Robbe-Grillet dispenses with not only a plot, but also without any recognizable characters, and unfolds before the reader a mosaic of either imaginary or real actions overlapping each other. As a result, the phantom of a love triangle appears against the background of a certain colonial country. Instead of filling in information gaps, Robbe-Grillet deals with the description of places, the spatial arrangement of things, the movement of the sun and shadow at different times of the day, constantly returning to the same structural cores (objects, gestures, words). The result is unusual: the reader feels as if he is in a theater of shadows, which he should materialize based on the suggested clues. However, the more we see the world through the eyes of a jealous husband, the more we begin to suspect that everything in him is a play of morbid imagination.

The world described by Robbe-Grillet would be completely empty and devoid of meaning if the person who was introduced to its boundaries did not try to enter into a complex relationship with him. They are associated both with the desire to make it habitable, to make it human, and to dissolve in it. The will to disappear, to dissolve, according to the novel In the Labyrinth (Dans le labyrinthe, 1959), habitual for Robbe-Grillet balancing on the verge of the real and the unreal, is no less subjective than the will to create. In the novel, the ghost town becomes the background of “being, non-being”. A soldier wanders along its snow-covered streets, among houses that are no different from each other, who must hand over to the relatives of one of the murdered comrades a box with letters and objects of no particular value. Lanterns, staircase doors, corridors, stairs - all this acts as ominous mirrors ... In his further works Robbe-Grillet (for example, the screenplay for A. Rene's film “Last Summer in Marienbad”, 1961) changes the aesthetics of “shozism” ( from French chose - a thing) to its directly opposite - the aesthetics of "boundless subjectivity", which is based on obsessive states of the psyche, erotic fantasies.

Unlike Robbe-Grillet, who in the 1950s fundamentally limited himself to fixing everything "superficial", Nathalie Sarraute (nast, name - Natalia Chernyak, 1902-1999) tries to give an idea of ​​the invisible side through the banal details of everyday life human relations. To penetrate beyond the appearance of things, to show the lines of force of existence that are born as a reaction to social and mental stimuli - the goal of Sarroth's analysis. First of all, it is based on subtext (in this case, these are gestures, defaults, contradicting words). In "Planetarium" (Le Planétarium, 1959), perhaps the most striking book by Sarrott, the "underwater" world takes on a special relief. It identifies a young fool who pretends to be artistry, his manic aunt, a broken family, as well as the type of a famous writer. As it indirectly follows from the title of the novel, the author is not interested in intrigue, but in the movement of the characters - "planets" within a certain cosmic system. The property of cosmic bodies to approach each other along a special trajectory, to be attracted to each other, and then to repel only emphasizes their isolation. The image of the closedness of consciousness to the outside world passes into another novel by Sarroth, "Golden Fruits" (Les Fruits d "or, 1963): we exist only for ourselves; our judgments about objects, works of art, which seemed to us absolutely correct, are entirely relative; in general, they do not inspire confidence, although the writer is comparable to an acrobat on a trapezoid.

Another neo-Romanist, Michel Butor, differs from Robbe-Grillet (p. 1926). He is not sure that romagi * ist should become a "killer" of moving time. Time, according to Buteur, is the most important reality of creativity, but not so self-evident as in the classic novel. It must be conquered, otherwise it will be swept away by the events we are experiencing: we manifest ourselves through time and time reveals itself through us. Buthor tries to express this dialectical connection in the form of a special "chronicle" through a careful analysis of the smallest details.

The narrator in the novel "The Allocation of Time" (L "Emploi du temps, 1956) is a writer. He tries to put on paper the events of seven months ago associated with his stay in the English city of Bleston. For him it is an unpleasant and difficult task. On the one hand, the present It follows from previous events. On the other hand, it gives them a fundamentally different meaning. What is reality in the light of such a dialogue? ”“ Apparently, this letter, which has no beginning or end, is an act of constantly renewed creativity. Butera suddenly breaks off.

The dramatic effect of La Modification (1957 Renaudot Prize) is that it is narrated in the form of a vocative (plural second person used in politeness formulas). Its content is quite traditional. It is about the inner evolution of a person who goes to Rome to pick up his beloved from there; in the end, he decides to leave everything as it is and continue to live with his wife and children, shuttling as a sales agent between Paris and Rome. Sitting on the train, he is in the grip of the impulse to start a new life. But during the journey, reflections and memories, in which the past and the present were mixed, forced him to "modify" his project. The use of the reference to "you" allowed Buthor to redefine the traditional relationship of the novelist with his work. The author establishes a distance between himself and his narrative, acting as a witness and even arbiter of what is happening, while avoiding the temptation of false objectivism and narrative omniscience.

Mobile (Mobile, 1962) is set on the American continent. Its hero is the US space as such, measured either by the change of time zones (when moving from the east coast of the US to the west), or by the endless repetition of the same spectacle of human life, which becomes the personification of a naked number, a superhuman reality.

Another major neo-Romanist is Claude Simon (p. 1913). Simon's debut novel is The Deceiver (Le Tricheur, 1946), the central character of which is somewhat reminiscent of Meursault Camus. After a decade of various searches (the novels "Gulliver", Gulliver, 1952; "The Rite of Spring", Le Sacre du printemps, 1954) Simon, who by this time had passed the fascination with W. Faulkner, reaches maturity in the novels "The Wind" (Le Vent, 1957) and "Grass" (L "Herbe, 1958). The title of the novel" Grass "contains the image of B. Pasternak:" Nobody makes history, you can't see it, just like you can't see how the grass grows. "In Simon, he hints at the impersonality of history , a fatal force hostile to a person, as well as the difficulty of telling about something or reconstructing the past.The characters of the novel (a dying old woman, her niece, cheating on her husband) have no history in the sense that their life is extremely ordinary. less in the presentation of Simon, this matter doomed to death and blown through by the wind of time begins to "sing", receives an artistic "regeneration".

In the novel "Roads of Flanders" (La Route des Flandres, 1960), a military disaster (Simon himself fought in the cavalry Ttolka), imprisonment in a prisoner of war camp and adultery are intertwined. The narrator (Georges) witnessed the strange death of his commander. It seems to him that de Reyhak exposed himself to a sniper's bullet. Georges is trying to understand the reason for this act, connected either with a military defeat or with the betrayal of Reihak's wife. After the war, he finds Corinne and, wanting to unravel the riddle of the past, draws closer to her, trying to put himself in the place of de Reihak. However, the possession of Corinne (the object of his erotic fantasies) does not shed further light on what happened in 1940. An attempt to understand the nature of time and establish at least some identity of the personality with itself is duplicated in the novel by switching the narrative from the first person to the third, reproducing the same event from the past (the death of Reihak) through an internal monologue and a direct story about it. The result is an image of a dense, gloomy fabric of time, full of various gaps. The web of memory seeks to tighten them, but its threads, which each "spider-man" carries with him, intersect only conditionally.

The novel "Hotel" (Le Palace, 1962) recreates an episode of the Spanish Civil War. It is about the murder of a republican by enemies from their own republican ranks. A special place in the narration is given to the description of the revolutionized Catalonia (Barcelona) - a kaleidoscope of street shows, colors, smells. The novel clearly portrays Simon's disillusionment with Marxism and the desire to remake the world along the lines of violence. His sympathies are on the side of the victims of history.

The monumental novel "Georgiki" (Les Géorgiques, 1981) is one of the most significant works of Simon, where the author again turns to the theme of the collision of man with time. Three narratives are intertwined in the novel: the future general of the Napoleonic empire (hiding behind the initials L. S. M.), a cavalryman, a participant in World War II, and an Englishman, a soldier of the international brigades (O.). It is curious that all these characters left behind a literary trace. The life of the general is reconstructed according to his letters and diaries (a similar archive was kept in the family of Simon); the cavalryman writes a novel about Flanders, where Georges appears; O.'s text is a book by J. Orwell "A Tribute to Catalonia", "rewritten" by Simon. Problematizing the very complex relationship between knowledge, writing and time, Simon opposes the archetype of the earth, the changing of the seasons to the destructive element of war (in the end, the general returns to the family estate to watch the grapes sprouting as a guarantor of the continuity of generations, an "ancestor"). This is hinted at by the name taken from Virgil. Another Virgilian motive (the fourth book "Georgik") runs through the whole novel - the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Simonovskaya Eurydice is the wife of L.S.M., whom he lost at the birth of his son. The already complex narrative structure is complicated by references to Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice (1762).

While the neo-Romanists were sorting out their relationship with existentialism, the controversy between traditional university literary criticism (which adhered to a predominantly sociological approach to literature) and criticism, which declared itself "new", and all previously practiced methods of analysis - "positivist" gradually gained strength. Under the banner of the "new criticism" such different figures as ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss (b. 1908) and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), philosophers Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Louis Althusser (1918-1990), semiotics Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and Gerard Genette (b. 1930), literary and communication theorists Tsvetan Todorov (b. 1939) and Yulia Kristeva (b. 1941) and many other humanitarians who focused on the development of culturological problems and proposed for this special conceptual tools. One of the main organs of this movement, where Marxism and formalism, psychoanalysis and structural anthropology, linguistics and updated sociology, scientific methodology and essayism, the legacy of F. de Saussure, the Moscow and Prague linguistic circles, M. Bakhtin, J. - NS. Sartre, became the journal Tel quel (Tel quel, 1960-1982). His ideological attitudes changed more than once as the "new criticism" evolved from structuralism and narratology to poststructuralism and deconstructivism. Under her influence, the traditional concept of a work of art gave way to the non-genre concept of the text as a form of verbal creativity.

To a certain extent, this was confirmed by the experience of the new wave of humanities themselves. The ethnographer K. Levi-Strauss, a philosopher by education and theorist of structuralism, who successfully applied linguistic models in ethnology, became the author of the original autobiographical work "Sad Tropiques" (Tristes Tropiques, 1955). A similar observation can be made and the later work of Roland Barthes (Roland Barthes). While studying the novel by O. de Balzac “Sarrazine” in the book “S / Z” (1970), he, describing the polyphony of “alien” voices sounding through the fabric of Balzac's narrative, turns from an analyst into a histrion, an actor. This trend is even more noticeable in the works "Pleasure from the text" (Le Plaisir du texte, 1973) and, especially, in "Roland Barthes on Roland Barthes" (Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, 1975), "Fragments d "un discours amoureux, 1977)," Camera lucida (Le Chambre claire, 1980) on photography.

This metamorphosis of French prose is largely associated with the name of the writer and philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1907 - 2003), who expanded the boundaries of the novel to the "space of literature" (L "Espace littéraire, 1955). Creativity for Blanchot is the other side of" nothing ", Since all writing and speech are associated with the dematerialization of the world, silence, death. This idea resounds in the very titles of his works" Literature and the right to death "(La Littérature et le droit à la mort, 1970)," Catastrophic writing "(L "Écriture du désastre, 1980). The relationship of the writer with his work is described by Blanchot through the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The first interpretations of this myth are already contained in his early novels ("Dark Tom", Thomas l "Obscur, 1941;" Aminadav ", Aminadab, 1942).

Blanchot traces his understanding of literature as overcoming the existing given to the ideas of S. Mallarmé (The Crisis of Verse), F. Nietzsche and M. Heidegger (seeing reality as absence), creating a kind of “negative dialectic”: “If I say: this woman - it is necessary that I take away from her in one way or another her real being, so that she becomes absence and non-being. In the word, being is given to me, but it is given to those who are devoid of being. The word is the absence, non-existence of an object, what remains of it after it has lost its being. " A writer should not “say something”, “create” a semblance of the world. “To speak,” according to Blanchot, means to be silent, since the writer “has nothing to say” and he can only say this “nothing”. Blanchot considers F. Kafka to be an exemplary writer through whom nothing sounds. Reality, which exists outside of things and independently of the writer, lives according to its own laws and cannot be recognized ("something says and says, like a speaking emptiness"). As a poet of emptiness, frightening silence, Blanchot is close in his novels not only to F. Kafka (the hero's wandering through the labyrinth of rooms in the novel "The Castle"), but also to the existentialists.

The evolution of Blanchot's artistic creativity followed the path of the merger of his novels with essays: the plot decreased, and the world of his books became more and more unstable, acquiring the features of a philosophical and artistic discourse. The story "Waiting for oblivion" (L "Attente l" Oubli, 1962) is a fragmentary dialogue. In the 1970s and 1980s, his writing finally became fragmentary (A Step on the Other Side, Le Pas au-delà, 1973; A Catastrophic Letter). The atmosphere of Blanchot's works is also changing: the oppressive image of all-destructive and at the same time creative death gives way to a subtle intellectual game.

The literary and philosophical experience of Barthes and Blanchot shows how blurred the boundaries of genres and specializations are. In 1981 (1980 - the year of the death of Sartre and Barthes, iconic figures of French literature of the second half of the century), the magazine "Read" ("Read", Lire) published a list of the most influential, in the opinion of the editorial board, contemporary writers in France. In the first place was the ethnologist K. Levi-Strauss, followed by the philosophers R. Aron, M. Foucault, the theorist of psychoanalysis J. Lacan. Only the fifth place was given to the "proper" writer - S. de Beauvoir. M. Tournier took eighth place, S. Beckett - twelfth, L. Aragon - fifteenth.

However, one should not assume that the 1960s - mid-1970s in French literature passed exclusively under the sign of the "new novel" and those political actions (the events of May 1968) with which he directly or indirectly associated himself as a neo-avant-garde phenomenon, but also mixing different modes of writing. So, Marguerite Yourcenar, crust, name - Marguerite de Crayencour, Marguerite de Crayencourt, 1903-1987) continued to be published; a model of the genre of a philosophical and historical novel. According to her, the prose of D. Merezhkovsky had a great influence on Yursenar's creative development. The novel “The Philosopher's Stone" (L "Oeuvre au noir, 1968) and the first two volumes of her autobiographical family saga" Labyrinths of the World ":" Pious Memories "(1974)," Northern Archive "(1977). In the last years of her life, the writer, elected in 1980 to the French Academy, continued to work on the third volume, “What is this? Eternity "(Quoi? L" éternité), published posthumously (1988) In addition to Yursenar, who belonged to the older generation, relatively traditional writers include, for example, Patrick Modiano (p. 1945), the author of numerous novels ( in particular, Rue des boutiques obscures, Rue des boutiques obscures, Goncourt Prize 1978) However, his works already contain signs of what will soon be called postmodern, which many of the revolutionary French “sixties” perceived as a betrayal of the ideals of freedom of spirit, neoconservatism.

The third post-war (or "postmodern") generation of French writers includes J.-M. G. Le Clésio, M. Tournier, Patrick Grenville (Trees of Fire, Les Flamboyants, Goncourt Prize 1976), Yves Navard (Botanical Garden, Le Jardin d "acclimatation, Goncourt Prize 1980), Jan Keffleck (Barbarian Weddings ", Les Noces barbares, Goncourt Prize 1985).

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (p. 1940), author of the novels "Protocol" (Le Proces verbal, Renaudeau Prize 1963), "Desert" (Le Désert, 1980), "Treasure Hunters" (Le Chercheurd "or, 1985), does not reflect on the form of the novel: he seeks to speak quickly, gasping for breath, realizing that people are deaf, and time is fleeting. the universal law of birth and death The stories of Le Clésio's characters with their problems and joys are essentially determined by the elemental forces of being, regardless of the social forms of their existence.

With amazing skill, Le Clésio manipulates the lens of an imaginary camera, sometimes reducing objects, then increasing them to infinity. Nature is limitless and devoid of a center. From a cosmic perspective, man is just a bug. From the insect's point of view, he is the almighty God, who controls life and death. Regardless of whether a person dissolves in society or accepts himself as the center of the universe, his passions, adventures, the meaning of life will still turn out to be banal, predetermined. According to Le Clésio, only the simplest sensations of life are genuine: joy, pain, fear. Joy is associated with understanding and love, pain causes a desire to withdraw into oneself, and fear - to flee from it. All other actions are the passing of time, which should have been used more profitably, given the randomness of our birth. His vision of earthly life Le Clésio could compare with the gaze of a resident of Sirius, who suddenly became interested in the distant fluttering of microscopic creatures.

Le Clésio, in other words, intends to make a breakthrough where the “new novel”, in his opinion, did not end the anthropocentric picture of the world, experimentally abolishing the traditional plot, character, but at the same time retaining certain rights for the human environment - his material, social , verbal correlates. As a writer of postmodern times - this term took root thanks to the philosopher J. -F. Lyotard (JeanFrançois Lyotard, p. 1924) and his book The Situation of Postmodernity. The Doral about knowledge "(La Condition postmoderne. Rapport śur le savoir, 1979), - the generation that replaced the neo-Romanists (in literature) and structuralists, as well as post-structuralists (in philosophy), Le Clésio intends to completely abandon any idea of ​​value, about the structure of the world. In this he, like other postmodernists, relies on the latest physics (I. Prigozhin, Yu. Klimontovich) and its concept of dynamic chaos, the explosive nature of evolution.

At the same time, seeing in its predecessors rationalists, positivists, ineradicable social reformers, literary postmodernity (as in its own way symbolism a hundred years ago) decided - this time on more consistently non-classical and also non-religious grounds - to restore the rights of art, games , fantasies that do not create everything for the first time, but exist in the rays of ready-made literary knowledge (plots, styles, images, quotes), as a conditional allegorical figure appearing against the background of the “world library”. As a result, the criticism started talking about the "new classics" - the restoration of the dramatic narrative, the whole characters. However, the resurrection of the hero did not mean an apology for the value principle in literature. At the center of postmodern art is the art of parody (here we can see a closeness to classicism, which exploited mythological plots for its own purposes), specific laughter and irony, somewhat flawed, erotically flavored baroque sophistication, mixing the real and the fantastic, high and low, history and its game reconstruction, masculine and feminine principles, detailing and abstraction. Elements of a picaresque and Gothic novel, a detective story, a decadent "scary novel", Latin American "magic realism" - these and other fragments (spontaneously moving through the space of words) are reintegrated on a fairly strong plot basis. The emerging emblem, the key to which is lost or accidental, claims to be plausible, which at the same time is absolutely implausible, indicates the unproductiveness of a "monological" view of anything (from gender to the interpretation of global historical figures and events). The personification of this tendency in French literary postmodernism was the work of M. Tournier.

Michel Tournier (p. 1924) is a philosopher by education. He turned to literature late, but immediately gained fame with his first novel, "Friday, or the Circles of the Pacific" (Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique, 1967). A member of the Academy of Goncourt, he is the author of works that play on the finished material - the adventures of Robinson Crusoe in Friday, the story of the ancient heroes of the Dioscuri twin brothers in the novel Meteora (Les Météores, 1975), the gospel story of the adoration of the Magi in the novel Gaspar, Cupronickel and Balthazar ”(Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar, 1980). His novel La Goutte d "or" was published in 1985, and Midnight Love (Le Médianoche amoureux) in 1989. As a writer of the postmodern era, characterized by artistic eclecticism, Tournier adheres to the so-called "soft" ethics , which allows him to overcome the characteristic, in particular existentialism, “frightening craving for the burden of values.” revealing the universal structure of the world in myth.

The fabric of Tournier's narrative is less eclectic than, for example, that of the Italian Umberto Eco (b. 1932), who also used the Robinson plot (the novel The Island Before, L "isola del giorno prima, 1994) as the archetype of escape from civilization to nature, but this does not negate the stylistics common to these writers of “intertextuality” (Y. Kristeva's term) - a secondary writing that has a prototype in the form of a primary letter, but rewrote it with the opposite sign.

At the center of one of the most famous works of Tournier, the novel "The Forest Tsar" (Le Roi des aulnes, Goncourt Prize 1970), is the fate of Abel Tiffauge - some modern "innocent", picaresque hero, "simplication", whose clear eye (hidden behind glasses with thick glasses) sees in the world around that that others are not able to see. Part of the novel is Abel's Dark Notes, written in the first person, part is an impersonal narration, which includes fragments of the same notes in italics. At first, an ordinary schoolboy, Tiffauge discovers magical abilities in himself: his only desire is enough to burn down the college he hates. Later, when he faces trial and prison, war breaks out and he is saved by conscription. Gradually, Tiffauge begins to realize the uniqueness of his fate. Deported to East Prussia, by the will of fate, he participates in the recruitment of boys for the Jungsturm school, which is located in the ancient castle of Kaltenborn, which once belonged to the knightly order of the sword-bearers. In the past, the owner of a garage in Paris, he is now becoming the "king of the forest" (or "king of the alder", as in the famous German fairy tale), kidnapping children and terrifying the whole neighborhood.

Germany appears to Abel as a promised land, a magical "land of pure essences" ready to reveal its secrets to him (Tournier himself, having arrived in Germany as a student for three weeks, stayed there for four years). The novel ends with a scene of the martyrdom of teenagers who entered an unequal battle with Soviet troops. Abel himself dies in the swamps of Masuria with a child on his shoulders (he was saved from a concentration camp), being the personification of either innocence, which even in war conditions does not know enemies, to which no dirt sticks, or the search for the truth of simple feelings and sensations (it is fatal the senile civilization of the 20th century does not want to know), the possibilities of initiation into higher knowledge, or counter-initiation - the powerlessness of the individual before the powerful myths.

Reflecting on these topics, the reader should not forget that their seriousness within the framework of the postmodern multiverse can hardly be overestimated. Tiffauge is not from the Cain tribe, but he is not a real Abel, not St. Christopher (who undertook to carry the child across the stream and found Christ himself on his shoulders). He is closer to his possible literary prototypes - Voltaire's Candide, Grass's Oscar Macerat ("Tin Drum") and even Nabokov's Humbert, a personality as extraordinary (Tiffauge has an unusually subtle ear), as well as schizophrenic. In a word, the "neoclassical" reality in the novel is also absolute madness, a paradoxical world where, as in Voltaire's story, "everything is for the best."

Confirming the conventionality of the border between the beautiful and the ugly, good and evil, Tournier himself in his book “Keys and Keyholes” (Des Clés et des serrures, 1978) notes: “Everything is fine, even ugliness; everything is sacred, even dirt. " If theorists of postmodernism talk about "undifferentiation, heterogeneity of signs and codes" (NB Mankovskaya), then Tournier is inclined to talk about "insidious, malicious inversion" (determining the fate of Tiffauges). But no matter how “opposite to ourselves” the confession of a madman in his defense and the novel “The Forest Tsar” itself, it is obvious that in addition to the hopelessness elevated in it to the rank of a fairy tale and high art, Tournier's longing for the ideal makes itself felt. gives his work a humanistic sound.

The field of literary experiment in France at the very end of the 20th century was, perhaps, not a novel, but a kind of hybrid text. An example of this is the publication of Valera Novarin, who has come to the fore in today's literary life (Ѵalège Novarina, p. 1947). His texts, starting from the 1970s, synthesized the features of essays, theatrical manifesto, diaries. As a result, the "theater of words" or "theater for the ears" was born. Such is Novarin's theatrical play "The Garden of Recognition" (Le Jardin de reconnaissance, 1997), which embodied the author's desire to "create something from the inside out" - outside of time, outside of space, outside of action (the principle of three unities "from the opposite"). Novarina sees the mystery of the theater in the act of the birth of the word: “In the theater, one must try to hear the human language in a new way, as reeds, insects, birds, non-speaking babies and animals immersed in hibernation hear it. I come here to hear the act of being born again. "

These and other statements of the writer indicate that he, like most other French authors of the late 20th century, claiming new discoveries, takes on the “well forgotten old”, adding to the poetics of M. Maeterlinck’s theater the philosophy of M. Blanchot (“to hear the language without words ”,“ echo of silence ”) and J. Deleuze.

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The twentieth century.

The publication of the "Decadent" magazine (1886–1889) became the realization of the prevailing mythologem of decadence. The crisis mood "at the end of the century", the popularization of F. Nietzsche's work largely determined the searches of French writers at the beginning. 20th century The firstborn of the theatrical avant-garde is considered the tragedy of A. Jarri (1837–1907) King Ubu (staged on December 10, 1896).

The strengthening of the nation was seen by the writers of the "rightist", sometimes with a tinge of chauvinism and orientation, as an opportunity to overcome the crisis. In the work of M. Barres (1862–1923), a subtle stylist, mystical motives are combined with radical nationalistic ones (the Cult I trilogy, 1892; the Roman trilogy of national energy, 1897, 1900, 1902). At the same time, a number of Catholic writers are showing themselves. The works of the writer and critic P.Sh.J. Bourget (1852–1935), heavy in style and full of didacticism, are aimed at protecting religious values ​​(Etap, 1902; The Meaning of Death, 1915). In the first decades of the 20th century. the activities of such Catholic thinkers and writers as J. Maritain (1882-1973), G. Marcel (1889-1973) (dramas of God's man, 1925; Ruined World, 1933), J. Bernanos (1888-1948) (novels Under Sun of Satan, 1926; Diary of a Country Priest, 1936), F. Moriak (1885-1970) (novels by Teresa Dequeiro, 1927; Tangle of Serpents, 1932). The poet and publicist Ch.Peguy (1873-1914) came to Catholicism (The Mystery of Mercy of Joan of Arc, 1910; Embroidery of Saint Genevieve, 1913). "; It included C. Wildra (1882-1971), J. Duhamel (1884-1966), J. Chenevier (1884-1972) and others. Peru, the founder of the group, J. Romain (1885-1972), owns the book People goodwill (27 volumes: 1932-1946), which became a collection of world history for 25 years (1908-1933) A. France (1844-1924) opposed the clerical-nationalist worldview (Church and Republic, 1904). The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard, 1881; Modern History, 1897-1901; Island of the Penguins, 1908; Gods Thirst, 1912) are marked by irony, sometimes cynicism, bordering on satire.

The decline of culture, the leitmotif of decadence in the vanguard, gave way to an aspiration for the future, to the pathos of total renewal. The “surrealistic drama” by G. Apollinaire (1880–1918) Chest Tiresias (post. 1917) continues the line of the King Kill Jarry. Plays by J. Giraudoux (1882-1944), A. de Monterlant (1895-1972), J. Anouil (1910-1987) and J. Cocteau (1889-1963) form the basis of the avant-garde repertoire of 1920-1930. The dramaturgy and poetry of Apollinaire had a decisive influence on the work of the Surrealist group. In 1924, the Manifesto of Surrealism by A. Breton (1896–1966), the founder and leader of the new movement, is included. Developing the ideological basis of Dadaism, the surrealists abandoned the logical construction of a work of art (poetry by R. Desnos, 1900-1945; R. Crevel, 1900-1935). The search for new sources of inspiration leads to the discovery of the technique of automatic writing (collection Magnetic Fields (1919) by Breton and F. Supo, 1897-1990). In an attempt to remove the subject from the creative process, the surrealists created joint works (The Immaculate Conception (1930) of Breton and P. Eluard, 1895-1952; Set aside the works (1930) of Breton, Eluard and R. Chara, 1907-1988; 152 proverbs for the need of the day (1925) Eluard and B. Pere, 1899-1959). The periodicals of the group were associated with their political activity (the journal "Surrealist Revolution", 1924-1929; "Surrealism in the service of the revolution", 1930-1933). Close to surrealism are the works of the poet, essayist and screenwriter J. Cocteau, the poet and playwright A. Arto (1896–1948), the creator of the “theater of cruelty” (Theater and its double, 1938). L. Aragon (1897–1982) (collection of poems Fireworks, 1920; novel The Parisian Peasant, 1926) began his creative activity with the Dadaists and Surrealists, but, like many other artists, after some time left the group. An active member of the Breton group was A. Malraud (1901–1976), whose novels of the 1930s are close to the existential worldview (Conditions of Human Existence, 1933; Years of Contempt, 1935; Nadezhda, 1937, etc.).

Around the journals "La Nouvelle revue francaise" in 1909 a group of authors appeared, headed by A.P.G. Gide (1869-1951) and P. Claudel (1868-1955). The magazine published plays by the Catholic writer Claudel (dramas Golden Head, 1890; Annunciation, 1912; collection Wood, 1901), essays by P. Valery (1871–1945), early works by R. Martin du Gard (1881–1958), novel by Alain -Fournier (1886-1914) Big Moln (1913). The originality of the prose writer Gide manifested itself in the novel Earthly Delights (1897) and was most fully embodied in the novel The Counterfeiters (1925): his characters discuss the composition of the work, inside which they are.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the tragic clash of culture and civilization became the dominant theme of anti-war works. The motives for the absorption of culture by civilization and the rejection of war are especially persistent in the works of J. Duhamel (Life of the Martyrs, 1917; Civilization, 1918; later - Archangel Adventure, 1955), R. Dorzheles (1885-1973) (Wooden crosses, 1919), R. Rolland (farce of Lilyuli, 1919; the story of Pierre and Luce, 1920; the novel of Clerambault, 1920), in the works of gr. "Clarte" (1919-1928) (A. Barbusse, 1873-1935; R. Lefebvre, 1891-1920; P. Vaillant-Couturier, 1892-1937; J.R. Bloch, 1884-1947; and others).

In the interwar period, the Roman river is popular (Rolland, Martin du Gard, J. Romain, Duhamel, etc.). In 1927, the publication of the novel by M. Proust (1871–1922), which had begun before the war (1913), was completed, In Search of Lost Time, in which the main stream of consciousness of the hero becomes; life in him is presented at the existential, concrete-personal, intimate-sensory levels. The aesthetic and philosophical views of the writer, embodied in the novel and expressed in theoretical works (Against Sainte-Beuve, ed. 1954, etc.) still feed French culture.

In the 1930s, writers of the "right" orientation appeared, with a reputation for collaborationists: A. de Montherland (1895-1972) (novels The Dream, 1922; Bestiaries, 1926; Bachelors, 1934; plays The Dead Queen, 1942; Master of the Order of Santiago, 1945 and etc.); P. Drieu la Rochelle (1893-1945) (essays Fascist socialism, 1934; European Frenchman, 1944, and others; novel Gilles, 1939, etc.), P. Moran (1888-1976). LF Selin (1894-1961) (Journey to the End of the Night, 1932; Death on Credit, 1936) transformed the language of prose, actively using the colloquial language, the slang of urban marginalized groups.

In the end. 1930 - early. In the 1940s, the early works of J.-P. Sartre (1905-1980) (Nausea, 1938; Mukhi, 1943), A. Camus (1913-1960) (The Stranger, 1942; Caligula, 1944) were created, marking the emergence of existentialism. They call for rebellion against the meaninglessness of life, against the fate of the "man of the crowd." Existentialism is distinguished by the convergence of a literary work with a philosophical treatise. Turning to a parable, an allegory, the writers of the direction recreate a philosophical conflict in prose and drama.

The literary process in French literature was interrupted by the events of World War II. During the years of the fascist occupation of France, an extensive underground literature arose. In the manifesto of the "Midnight Publishing House" ("Les Editions de Minuit") (1942), written by P. de Lescure (1891-1963), declared the determination to resist the invaders. Until 1945, the publishing house published 40 books by the writers of the Resistance, including: The Avignon Lovers of E. Triolet, The Black Notebook of F. Mauriac, The Dead Time of K. Avlin, The Way Through the Disaster of J. Maritain, The Panopticon of L. Aragon, Thirty-Three Sonnets, Created in prison J. Cassou, and others. Underground press is developing: the literary weekly newspaper "Le Lettre francaise" (1942-1972), the magazine "Resistance" and "La pance libre" (under the direction of J. Decour, 1910-1942; J. Polan, 1884-1968). In September 1942, a manifesto of the National Front of Writers appeared, written by J. Decour. In 1941, the "Rochefort School" of poets was born (J. Bouillet, b. 1912; R. Guy Cadoux, 1920-1951; M. Jacob, 1876-1944; P. Reverdi, 1889-1960), which stated in her declaration the need to defend poetry , the principle of convergence of poets outside of ideologies. The work of A. de Saint-Exupery (1900–1944), a military pilot: Planet of People, 1939 is associated with the Resistance; Military pilot, 1942, The Little Prince, 1943.

The liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944 was the signal for the start of a gradual revival of the cultural life of France. In the literary life of post-war France, there was a tendency towards ideological unity and a similar understanding of the tasks of art by different writers. The bestseller was the underground story of Vercourt (1902–1991) The Silence of the Sea (1942). The historical novel is being replaced by its philosophical variety and documentary genres, parable forms and variants of the "novel of ideas"; the novel is being politicized. In his keynote article For Engaged Literature (1945), Sartre spoke out against those who did not accept socially significant art, “engaged” literature. However, already in 1947, J. Duhamel's book The Harrowing of Hope. Chronicle 1944-1945-1946 marks the demarcation in the literary environment. The end of the 1940s is associated with the collapse of post-war hopes, in the beginning. In the 1950s, a sense of internal crisis spreads. The break of Sartre and Camus after the release of the last Rebel man (1951) becomes a landmark.

In parallel, in the artistic practice of the absurdists, there is a rethinking of the values ​​of existentialism. The plays The Bald Singer (1950) by E. Ionesco and Waiting for Godot (1953) by S. Beckett are considered manifestos of absurdism (namely, the theater of the absurd, "anti-theater"). The concept of absurdity as the main characteristic of the existential situation in which human life takes place goes back to the philosophical works of A. Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942) and J.P. Sartre (Being and Nothing, 1943), and partly to their early artistic work ( The Outsider (1942) Camus; Nausea (1938) Sartre). However, in the literature of absurdism, this concept has undergone a radical revision: in contrast to the work of existentialists, for whom the category of absurdity is inseparable from the philosophy of rebellion against the "human lot", adherents of absurdism (such as A. Adamov, 1908-1970; J. Vautier, 1910- 1992) are alien to the mood of rebellion, as well as to any kind of "big ideas". Rebellion does not change anything in the absurd world of the plays of J. Genet (1910-1986) (Servants, 1947; Balcon, 1954; Negry, 1958).

“Aliterature” comes to the fore (Modern aliterature (1958) by K. Moriak, b. 1914): it receives theoretical substantiation in the program texts of N. Sarrott (1902–1999) (Era of Suspicion, 1956), A. Robbe-Grillet (b. . 1922) (The future of the novel, 1956; On several obsolete concepts, 1957), the creators of the "new novel". His first samples passed unnoticed (Tropisms (1946), Portrait of an Unknown Man (1947) by N. Sarrott). Neo-Romanists polemicized with tradition, accompanying works of art with theoretical performances, in which they emphasized their non-ideology.

The "new novel" was developed in the newest novel, associated primarily with the writers of the group "Tel Kel", united around a magazine with the same name (published since 1960). The group saw its task in the search for new forms excluded from the literary context, in the rejection of the literature of "evidence". The Telkelevtsy actively popularized the works of A. Artaud, J. Bataille (1897-1962), F. Pong (1899-1988), which formed the theoretical basis of their views. Along with the appeal to structuralism and semiotics, the group promoted the social role of literature (“from depicting literature to transforming literature”). Refusing, like the neo-Romanists, from the "plot", "intrigue", they, in addition, follow the path of depersonalization of the narrator (Drama (1965) and Numbers (1968) of Sollers).

In 1950, with the publication of the novel The Blue Hussar by R. Nimier (1925–1962), the “lost generation”, the “generation of hussars,” a special phenomenon in post-war French literature, made itself felt. In the end. The 1950-1960s published the most popular novels of the poet, prose writer, literary theorist and essayist R. Keno (1903-1976) (Zazi in the metro, 1959; Blue Flowers, 1965; Polet Icarus, 1968), who debuted back in the 1930s. His works are marked by sophisticated language play and comic interpretation of events. The creativity of the "hussars" and Keno, each partly marginal against the background of the general opposition of French literature of the time, nevertheless found its followers.

An important phenomenon in the literary situation of this period was the writer's clear orientation toward the reading group: the "neo-Romanists" toward the elite, others toward the inexperienced. Among the transitional phenomena are the family novel of A. Truaille (born 1911) (The Egletier family, 1965-1967) and the cycle of historical novels by M. Druon (born 1918) (Damned Kings, 1955-1960). A special place is occupied by the work of F. Sagan (born 1935), who made her debut with a resounding success with the novel Hello, Sadness (1954). The theme of love dominates in her novels (The Signal for Surrender, 1965; A Little Sun in Cold Water, 1969), short stories (the collection Tender Look, 1979) and even "military" prose (the novel Out of Strength, 1985).

The center of the traditional novel is still the person in his relationship with the world, and the narrative is based on the “story” told. The genre of autobiography is becoming popular (Memories of an Inner Life (1959) and New Memories of an Inner Life (1965) by F. Mauriac; J. Green's trilogy (born 1900) Exit at Dawn (1963), A Thousand Open Roads (1964), Distant Land (1966)) and an autobiographical novel (Anti-memoir (1967) by A. Malraud), autobiographical motives in the narrative (The Rezo family (1949–1972) by E. Bazin, born 1911). F. Nourisier (born 1927) is polemically autobiographical (Petty Bourgeois, 1964; One French History, 1966). A. Robbe-Grillet (Returning Mirror, 1984) and F. Sollers (born 1936) (Portrait of a Player, 1984) turned to the autobiographical genre. The lyrical beginning in French literature of the 1960s was combined with a philosophical, objectifying movement - that tried to determine the place of man in modern scientific and technical civilization (Ostrov (1962), Reasonable Animal (1967) by R. Merkle; People or Animals (1952) , Silva (1961) Vercora). In the 1960s, a "new realism" entered French poetry (Ship's Journal (1961), Documents (1966) by F. Venaille (born 1936); a collection of B. Delvay, J. Godot, G. Belle, etc.).

The end of the 1960s was defined by the atmosphere of student unrest and workers' strikes. A particularly noticeable phenomenon in French literature was the dispute over dramatic art, which peaked at the Avignon festival in 1968. The striving of the playwright and director A. Gatti (born 1924) is characteristic of this time to establish "an open and passionate relationship between art and politics." , embodied in his plays (Public song in front of two electric chairs, 1962; The Lonely Man, 1964; Passion for General Franco, 1967; B like Vietnam, 1967). The greatest resonance was received by R. Planchon's performance, staged in the fall of 1968, The ridicule and torn apart of the most famous of French tragedies, Sid by Corneille, accompanied by the “cruel” execution of the playwright and the free distribution of canned culture. Young playwrights actualized A. Arto's experience. The cultural 1970s and 1980s were defined by the "revolution of 1968". In literary terms, these were decades after the heyday of the "new novel": its opposition to the traditional, tough in the game. 1950s, is gradually dying out. After 1970, the "new novel" gives way to the traditional one. However, his formulas penetrate into the work of writers who are far from the "anti-novel", and the "newest novel" (Laws, Ash (both - 1973) F. Sollers; Eden, Eden, Eden (1972) P. Guyot; The Prose-Taking of Constantinople (1965) and Little Revolutions (1971) by J. Ricardo, born 1932) and textual ("structuralist") writing became its genetic continuation, proclaiming "not a description of adventures, but an adventure of descriptions" (Ricardo). The same Ricardo develops a theory of generators - lexical units that, having an implicit formal (homonyms, anagrams) or semantic (denoting objects that have a common quality) connection, build a story about themselves.

N. Sarrott argues not only with the “traditional”, but also with the “newest” novel, remaining at the level of tropisms, elusive and undetectable movements of the soul (Do you hear them ?, 1972; Childhood, 1983; You don’t love yourself, 1989 ). K. Simon continues his program, significantly correcting it, approaching the theory of generators (Fersal battle, 1969; Bodies-conductors, 1971) and moving away from it in later books - Subject lesson, 1975; Georgiki, 1981; Invitation, 1987). The novels of L. Aragon of the 1960s – 70s are called experimental (Death in earnest, 1965; Blanche, or Oblivion, 1967; Theater / novel, 1974), existing in the context of the “literature of inner vision” (T.V. Balashova), which inherits creativity N. Sarrott. The novels of J.-M.-G. Leclezio (born 1940) of the 1960s – 1980s recreate the picture of the subjective perception of the world as catastrophically hostile. The novels by J.-L. Trassard (born 1933) are built on tropisms, on the absence of an event (collection Brooks without a name and meaning, 1981). The genre of the short story was transformed in the 1970s – 1980s towards a fragment of poetic prose (Rooms with a View of the Past (1978), In the Last Breath (1983) Trassard; Teacher from France (1988) J. Joubert, born 1928; Man for another person (1977) A. Boske, 1919-1998).

Creativity D. Salnav (born 1940) combines attention to tradition with experimentation (Doors in the city of Gubio, 1980); the novel A Journey to Amsterdam, or Rules of Conversation (1977) belongs to the feminist direction in literature. In her collection of short stories Cold Spring (1983), the novel The Phantom Life (1986), the plot is barely outlined, but in the manner of the narrative there are connections with the 19th century. Neoclassical forms of narrative are seen in the works of P. de Mandiarga, P. Modiano (born 1945), M. Tournier (born 1924), R. Camus (born 1946). Mandiarg artistically embodies the theoretical interest of J. Bataille (Literature and Evil, 1957; Tears of Eros, 1961) and P. Klossowski (born 1905) (Sad, my neighbor, 1947; Delayed vocation, 1950) in erotic literature. Mandiargus made his debut with prose poems (In the Vile Years, 1943), wrote successful novels (Sea Lily, 1956; Motorcycle, 1963; On the Fields, 1967), but gave preference to the short story (Night Museum, 1946; Wolf Sun, 1951; Fire of the Fire, 1964; Under the Wave, 1976). Following Mandiargus, P. Grenville (born 1947) makes baroque its aesthetic principle (Fire Trees, 1976). But the writers of the early. 1970s are not alien to the traditional "description" (Hawk from May (1972) J. Career; Cannibal (1973) J. Shesex, born 1934). In the 1970s, R. Camus made his debut (Transition, 1975). The adventures of life and text form the content of his essay novels (Poperek, 1978; Buena Vista Park, 1980).

In French literature of the 20th century. The Kafkaesque tradition is very influential, it was perceived, in particular, by V. Pius (Irradiator, 1974; Pompeya, 1985). Surreal, inexplicable events take place in the Man among the Sands (1975) and in the novels by J. Joubert (collection of the Teacher from France, 1988). To The History of the Bat (1975), P. Fletho's debut, the preface was written by J. Cortazar. A grotesque allegory is woven into the plot of her works (History of the Abyss and the Spyglass, 1976; History of the Picture, 1978; Fortress, 1979; The Queen's Metamorphoses, 1984). S. Germain turned to the fabulous parable element (Night Book, 1985; Days of Wrath, 1989; Child Medusa, 1991). M. Gallo's novel The Bird-Progenitor (1974) and the cycle of "Stories" by J. Ceyrol (History of the meadow, 1969; History of the desert, 1972; History of the sea, 1973) revive the traditions of Catholic literature.

In prose after the "new novel", the process of thinking about the very manner of writing touched even such writers who were far from wanting to update the narrative technique, such as B. Clavel (Silence of the Weapon, 1974), A. Style (We Will Love Each Other Tomorrow, 1957; Collapse, 1960), E. Triole (Intrigues of Fate, 1962), A. Lanu (When the Sea Retreats, 1969), F. Nurisier (Death, 1970), E. Robles (Stormy Age, 1974; Norma, or Heartless Link, 1988) ... Vercors, after novels and stories inheriting the rationalistic traditions of French prose (Weapons of Darkness, 1946; Wrathful, 1956; On This Shore, 1958-1960), writes The Raft of Medusa (1969), where he seeks extraordinary artistic solutions.

R. Gary (1914-1980), continuing to write in the traditional manner (Farewell, Gary Cooper, 1969; White Dog, 1971; Kites, 1980), which was outlined in his early novels (European Education, 1945; Roots of Heaven, 1956) , under the pseudonym E. Azhar published novels of a new style (Bolshoi Laskun, 1974; All Life Ahead, 1975). But his innovation rather lies in the mainstream not of the “new novel”, but of the experiments of R. Keno, as well as the book Capital Letters (vols. 1–2: 1967, 1974) by J. Grack. The movement of "hussars" is again asserting itself, the central figure of which was P. Besson (born 1956) (Light disappointments of love, 1974; I know many stories, 1974; House of a lonely young man, 1979; Have you seen my gold chain ?, 1980; Letter to a Lost Friend, 1980).

The turn to the historical novel, indicated in the works of L. Aragon (Holy Week, 1959), M. Yursenar (Memoirs of Adrian, 1951; Philosopher's Stone, 1968) and J.-P. Chabrol (Madmen of God, 1961), after 1968 was especially fruitful (Fearless and black-faced robbers (1977), Camizar Castane (1979) A. Shamson; Pillars of Heaven (1976-1981) B. Clavel; Sovereign Jeanne, or the Vicissitudes of constancy (1984) P. Laine; Anna Boleyn (1985) Vercors) ...

Along with the flourishing of the historical and regional novel (Garricana (1983), The Gold of the Earth (1984), Amarok (1987) by B. Clevel; The Predator (1976) by G. Crussi), feminist literature was formed during this period. An attempt to create a "feminine" language of prose (manifesto of the sisters F. and B. Gru Feminine plural, 1965) led either to the displacement of men from the artistic world, or to the exploitation of male characters by female characters in E. Sixus (Inside, 1969; The Third Body, 1970; Neutral, 1972; Breathing, 1975) and B. Gru (Part of life, 1972; Such as it is, 1975; Three quarters of life, 1984). However, most of the novels devoted to a woman's relationship with the world are alien to aggressive feminism (The Key at the Door (1972) M. Cardinal; The Ice Woman (1981) A. Erno; When an Angel Winks (1983) F. Mallet-Joris, etc.) ... The novels of M. Duras (born 1914) were perceived in the force field of feminism.

In connection with the experimental sentiments in post-war French literature, mass literature expanded its audience. However, sometimes rebellious motives began to sound in it, and work with the language began. Indicative in this sense are the detectives of San Antonio, J. Simenon (cycle about Maigret, 1919-1972), T. Narsezhak, P. Bouileau, J.-P. Manchet, J. Vautrain. P. Coven's sentimental "love" novel transforms. An absurdist narrative became widespread (novels by D.Boulanger).

“Tension bordering on despair” (TV Balashova) of French poetry of the 1960s was replaced by a new awareness of the life-affirming function of poetry. If in prose the 1970s – 1980s were marked by the return of the hero and the plot, poetry turns to the landscape, making it the center of philosophical reflection. J. Roubaud (born 1932), who was initially fond of theoretical searches (collection Epsilon, 1967; Thirty-one cubed, 1973), in the 1980s rather struggles with form on the way to “naivety” and to “lyrical tradition” (R Davre) (Dream, 1981; Something terrible, 1986). J. Rista (born 1943) experiments with archaic poetics, remaining faithful, like Roubaud, to the love theme (On the coup d'état in literature with examples from the Bible and ancient authors, 1970; Ode to accelerate the arrival of the universe, 1978; Entrance to the Bay and the capture of the city of Rio de Janeiro, 1980). B. Vargaftig (born 1934) made his debut with a collection Everywhere at home (1965), close to "new realism", but the material component quickly disappeared from the space of his poetry (Maturity Eve, 1967; Utory, 1975; Description of the Elegies, 1975; Glory and Pack, 1977). Poetry of the 1980s is characterized by an “anti-surrealist” revolt - against a functional approach to poetry, against an overly metaphorical language. Since the beginning of the 1990s, even the poetry of the recognized experimenter I. Bonfua returns to the narrative (collection of Snega beginning and ending, 1991).

One of the extreme incarnations of the literary practice of postmodernism (which emerged in the 1960s), which is characterized by the abundant use of intertextual connections, was the "rewriting of the classics." For example, P. Menet (Madame Bovary shows her claws, 1988), J. Selagh (Emma, ​​oh Emma! 1992), R. Jean (Mademoiselle Bovary, 1991) offer their own versions of the development of the classic plot, changing the time of action, conditions, introducing into the novel world, the figure of the author himself, Flaubert.

The prose of the 1990s includes the most diverse traditions of French literature of the 20th century. The books of Leklesio (Onitsha, 1991), P. Kignyar (born 1948) (All mornings of the world, 1991), R. Camus (The Hunter for the Light, 1993), O. Rolen (born 1947) (Invention of the World, 1993 ), Sollers (The Secret, 1993), Robbe-Grillet (The Last Days of Corinth, 1994). Particularly successful are the novels that continue the line of existentialists, partly B. Vian (1920-1959), directed against the "consumer society", the glossy world of advertising pictures (99 francs (2000) F. Begbeder, born 1965). The proximity of utopian and apocalyptic motifs distinguishes the narrative of M. Houellebecq (born 1958) (Elementary Particles, 1998; Platform, 2001). The French press refers to the work of Houellebecq and other lesser-known contemporary writers with the term "Depressionism." The popularity of the last two authors is not least associated with the scandals that arise around the release of their books.

In the 20th century. the French-language literature of African countries and the Antilles is developing intensively. The works of the writers of the colonies gaining independence recreate the atmosphere of socio-cultural dialogue, often conflict.

Alexey Evstratov