Russian historical novel of the 19th century in the context of cultural consciousness. Post-reform Russia and the Russian novel of the second half of the 19th century (now

Despite the spread of travel literature, the successes of stories and prose miniatures, the most beloved and readable type of narrative prose in early XIX century, according to contemporaries, a novel remained. In 1802, Karamzin wrote about this (“On the book trade and the love of reading in Russia”), in 1808 the same fact was stated by Zhukovsky (“Letter from the district to the publisher”).

TO end of the XVIII centuries, the Russian reader had at his disposal an extensive fund of translated novels - gallantly adventurous, moralizing, philosophical and satirical, sentimental, pre-romantic.

The quality of translations was inevitably affected by the limited experience of Russian prose, and, above all, its consequence - the lack of development of Russian literary language. But since the 1790s. the expanding stream of translations assimilates the achievements of original literature, the arsenal of means for conveying a range of ideas, impressions, and feelings of heroes is steadily growing and improving.

At the same time, translations become a kind of school of mastery, preparing Russian prose for the perception of new narrative forms.

Ironically characterizing the reader's repertoire of the beginning of the century as “horrible, funny, sensitive, satirical, moral novels, etc., etc.,” Zhukovsky called on the Russian public to “change the concept of reading,” because “reading does not mean forgetting, it does not mean ridding oneself of a hard life.” time, but in silence and freedom to use the noblest part of your being - thought.”

10 According to Zhukovsky, not a novel traditional type, and the modern magazine, with its thematic and genre diversity, was designed to educate and satisfy this need for serious reading.

To a certain extent, Zhukovsky was right. Travel literature, story, lyrical picture, anecdote, various descriptive fragments and other genres of magazine prose of the 1800-1810s. carried a number of elements important for updating the form of the novel. Without their assimilation, the transition from an adventurous, didactic, morally descriptive novel to a novel of a new type was impossible.

Even at the turn of the 19th century. a novel appeared in which an attempt was made to connect together the themes and images of satirical journalism XVIII century using the outline of the hero’s “adventures,” traditional for grassroots democratic fiction of the 18th century. It's about about the novel by A. E. Izmailov “Eugene, or the harmful consequences of bad education and community” (1799-1801).

The author tells the life story of Yevgeny Negodyaev, a young nobleman, the darling of rich and ignorant parents. Enlisted in the guard as an infant, the hero undergoes a full course of fashionable noble education, and continues it in communication with the unprincipled Voltairian Razratin.

From Moscow Evgeniy comes to St. Petersburg, where in metropolitan society Vetrovs, Milovzorovs, etc., completes his moral “education”, squanders his father’s fortune at the age of five and dies himself.

In Izmailov's novel there are no subtle psychological characteristics, nor the sublime feelings and passions characteristic of art world sentimental story. All of his main characters are guided by base inclinations and impulses.

From the heroic-comic poem “Eugene” he inherited a penchant for comic burlesque, playing with exaggerated signs of social and moral indecency. Ignorant and vicious nobles, greedy officials, a French milliner from girls of easy virtue, a tutor-convict, a freethinker from squandered nobles replace each other on the pages of the novel.

The “meaningful” names of the characters connect Izmailov’s work with the tradition of satirical-didactic literature. Her motley material is connected in “Eugene” to individual moments of the hero’s everyday adventures.

Essentially, Izmailov has not one, but two main characters - the noble scoundrel Scoundrels and the freethinker from the seminary scholastics Razvratin. Accordingly, the novel presents two versions of the moral and everyday way of life (Moscow noble and provincial raznochinsky) and two systems of education. Both of them are equally subject to denial.

And yet, in the end, Razratin, whom life has confronted with many difficulties unfamiliar to the noble minion Negodyaev, turns out to be a hero of a different type. Intellectual inquiries and knowledge are not alien to him, although from the teachings of the French encyclopedists, for the sake of the author's didactics, he only takes out godlessness and immoral everyday philosophy.

If Evgenia is always subjugated by circumstances in everything, then Razvratin - an active nature - for the time being knows how to subordinate them to his power. Both of Izmailov's heroes become victims of their vices and die young. Despite the obvious moralizing tendency in Eugene, there are, however, neither virtuous characters nor attempts to find in the negative the ability for moral rebirth.

The search for ways to update the novel genre began in the early 1800s. V different directions. Close to the traditions of moralizing satire, like Izmailov’s novel, is N. F. Ostolopov’s story “Eugenia, or the current education” (1803), which tells about the disastrous consequences of fashionable French education.

The moral and everyday line is opposed by the quests of the young N. I. Gnedich: his novel “Don Corrado de Guerrera” (1803) in style and issues is focused on the youthful rebellious tragedies of Schiller and, more broadly, the German literature of “sturm and stress”.

Attempts to expand the framework of a sentimental story with the help of a conventional historical plot or elements of an adventurous narrative are reflected in the novels by N. N. Muravyov “Vsevolod and Veleslava” (1807) and P. Casotti “Boyar B...v and M...v, or consequences of ardent passions and violations of vows" (1807).

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.

“Russian novel” is not a national concept, but a global one. This is what is commonly called one of the most amazing pages of world culture. The art of the 20th century stands on the shoulders of Russian giants: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. They entered the spiritual history of mankind as the authors of great novels. What is a Russian novel?

The Russian novel is the highest rise of literature of the 19th century. The rise cannot be long, so the era of the Russian novel fits into less than three decades.

This is the chronology of the era of the Russian novel.

Of course, even before Turgenev’s “Rudin” there were novels: “Eugene Onegin”, “ Captain's daughter", "Hero of our time." “The novel and story have now become at the head of all other types of poetry” - this is how V. G. Belinsky characterized the literary situation that developed at the end of the 40s XIX century, and then continued: “The reasons for this are in the very essence of the novel ... as a kind of poetry.” Let's comment on the quote and figure out what “the very essence of the novel” is.

Belinsky called him epic privacy . Indeed, the novel appears where and when interest in individual, when the motives of her actions, her inner world become no less important than the actions and actions themselves. But a person does not exist on his own, without connections with society, and more broadly, with the world. “I” and the world, “I” in the world, “I” and fate - these are the questions that the novel poses. Thus, for it to arise, it is necessary for a person to “emerge”, but not only to arise, but also to become aware of himself and his place in the world. Psychological analysis became the need of the era. Russian literature responded instantly: a Russian novel appeared.

The key problem of the Russian novel has become hero's problem looking for a way life renewal, a hero who expressed the movement of time. At the center of the first Russian novels are precisely such heroes - Evgeny Onegin and Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin. The plot of Pushkin's novel is based on private intrigue, but the characters' characters and their life stories are consistently and multifacetedly motivated. True, the writer is still looking for a new form, and at first “not a novel, but a novel in verse” is born. And the difference is truly “diabolical.” It is in the author’s free handling of the plot, in a bold intervention in the course of events, in “free chat” with the reader - in a word, in everything. Could Pushkin imagine what and how he created? Surely not. But the tradition was established. From Pushkin came a series of novels named after the main characters: “Oblomov”, “Rudin”, “Messrs. Golovlevs”, “Anna Karenina”, “The Brothers Karamazov”. The search for a new novel form began.

M. Yu. Lermontov’s novel “Hero of Our Time” will mark the beginning psychologism in Russian prose: the writer opened completely “ new world art" in " inner man" The cycle of stories, united by the image of the main character, successively replaced narrators and the author's preface, turned into a novel. Its genre nature is still debated, because it synthesized all the achievements of Russian prose of the first decades of the 19th century. But the novel form seemed small to Gogol, and he created a prose poem.

Thus, as soon as it emerged, the Russian novel boldly violated genre canons and began to develop so rapidly that in almost a quarter of a century, if it did not exhaust itself, it then pushed the narrow boundaries of the genre form to the limit. This was the most significant contribution of Russian literature of the 19th century to world culture.

Exactly in the 60-70s works were created that defined the person national identity and the greatness of our literature. Novels were written after 1880, but they no longer had such global significance. The point is not the lack of talented writers - Russian literature has never lacked them, but the fact that the time of the novel has passed.

60-70s years XIX centuries were turning points in the history of Russia. This time was accurately characterized by L.N. Tolstoy: “All this has turned upside down and is just settling down.” “This” is the former, seemingly unshakable way of life, “inverted” by the reform of 1861. Was blown up first peasant life, and the peasantry in Russia was synonymous with the word “people”. The worldview and way of life of the peasantry were conservative and stable, and when they begin to collapse, each person feels that the ground is disappearing from under his feet.

The whole old system is bursting at the seams life values. That's when it arises nihilism aimed at destroying existing foundations. He was not an invention of young cynics, for whom nothing is sacred. Russian nihilism had a very serious basis. Bazarov is right in his own way when he says that his “direction,” that is, nihilism, is caused by the “folk spirit.” After all, the people themselves were experiencing a painful breakdown of traditions at that time.

In the middle of the 19th century, stratification began and after the reform began in full swing, destruction of patriarchal ideals peasant communal world. This sometimes took tragic, sometimes disgusting forms. There was a destruction, on the one hand, of the ancient peasant culture, on the other, of the nobility, and the creation of a new, national culture took more than one century.

For a person, the loss of habitual values ​​and guidelines is a loss of the meaning of life. It is impossible to live without it, even if the person himself does not realize it. In each national culture there are “bearers of the answer” to this question: either religion, or philosophy, or politics, or economics, or public opinion. In Russia, literature was “responsible for the meaning of life.”

Why did this happen? Because, due to circumstances, literature in Russia remained the only relatively free view activities, and she took on religious, philosophical, and political issues. Literature has become more than literature, more than art. And it was literature that took up the search for the meaning of life for man, the search for the right path for all humanity. This is how a new hero of Russian life appeared - Turgenev’s Bazarov. This is how the type of “novel of private life” is overcome in Russian literature and the “hero of the time” becomes the “son of the century.”

Why to answer the question about the meaning of life, the genre of the novel was required, and not some other genre? Because finding the meaning of life requires a spiritual change in the person himself. A person in search changes. The era itself, the turning point in which he lives, pushes him to search for the meaning of life. It is impossible to imagine the path of Pierre Bezukhov outside the war of 1812; Raskolnikov’s throwings are out of time, when only “a fantastic, gloomy thing, a modern thing, a case of our time, sir” could happen; Bazarov's drama - outside the pre-storm atmosphere of the late 50s. An era in a novel is a chain of collisions between a person and people in a whirlpool of events. And to show a changing person in a changing time, a large genre is needed.

On the pages of “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy, the “dialectics of the soul” of man was recreated. And, although the inner life of Tolstoy’s personality acquired intrinsic significance, the epic element in the narrative only intensified.

But the Russian novel, which has set itself such high and complex tasks, of course, broke the usual ideas about this genre. The reaction of foreign readers to the appearance of the works of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky is very characteristic. First of all, I was struck by the simplicity of the plot, the lack of acute intrigue, or external entertainment; the composition seemed like a chaotic jumble of events. Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, for example, produced French writers the impression of a “formless element.” The Englishman Somerset Maugham explained this by saying that the Russians are a “semi-barbarian people”, and for them there are no European ideas about “ belles lettres" This, he says, is the dignity of Russian literature: an uncivilized person is able to “see things naturally, as they are.”

However, it soon became clear that unusual shape Russian novel - an expression of new content that I did not yet know European literature. First of all, the hero of the novel was new. One more genre feature Russian novel - plot incompleteness. Raskolnikov is in hard labor, and Dostoevsky promises us to continue his story. Pierre in the epilogue is a happy father of a family, and we feel the drama brewing. And the main thing is that important, “damned” questions have not been fully resolved. Why? You will draw your own conclusions with the help of our questions, which will be your guides when reading novels.

IZVESTIYA RAS. LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE SERIES, 2013, volume 72, no. 5, p. 3-15

CLASSIC RUSSIAN NOVEL OF THE 19TH CENTURY: ORIGINALITY OF HERO AND GENRE

© 2013 V. A. Nedzvetsky

What allowed the classic Russian novel to take a leading position, first in Western European and then in world fiction, by the end of the 19th century? What problems and with what goals are its central characters striving to resolve? Answers to these questions are offered in this article.

What allows for the fact that, by the end of the 19th century, the classical Russian novel has taken the lead in the Western European and in the World literary prose? What are the goals and aspirations of the novels" central characters? Such are the major concerns addressed by the author of this article.

Key words: social novel, ontological novel, " modern man", "Russian wanderer", unlimited connections, personal, social, world harmony.

Key words: essential artistic schooling; social novel; ontological novel; "contemporary human being"; "the Russian wanderer"; boundless connections; individual, social, and universal harmony.

Let's start by indicating the most general signs of the Russian classic novel of the 19th century. In the eyes of the classic writers themselves, this is a novel that strives to “capture everything” (L. Tolstoy) not in the “external conditions of life”, but in “the man himself” (I. Goncharov) of his existence; a novel perfect as a phenomenon of verbal art and completely original in its forms.

All these criteria are fully met by Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” (according to V.G. Belinsky, “an encyclopedia of Russian life” and “a historical poem in the full sense of the word, although among its heroes there is not a single historical person"), Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", with significant reservations (since, according to the author himself, this is first of all a "poem"), Gogol's " Dead Souls", then - Goncharov's" An ordinary story" ("This is where you learn to live," L. Tolstoy exclaimed after reading it), "Oblomov" ("the most capital thing" of "non-temporal" significance), "Cliff", as well as Turgenev's "Rudin", "Noble Nest", "On the Eve", "Fathers and Sons", "Smoke", "New", the famous "Pentateuch" by F.M. Dostoevsky ("Crime and Punishment", "Idiot", "Demons", "Teenager", "The Brothers Karamazov" ) and "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection" by L.N.

So, the classic Russian novel is represented by only twenty works, which is less

the number of novels written by the Scotsman Walter Scott or the Frenchman Emile Zola, and two and a half times less than that what amounted to " The human comedy"Honoré Balzac.

Nevertheless, it was he who became the pinnacle of all Russian literary prose of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. First of all, Russian literature owes to him a huge fruitful influence on prose writers all over the world, but especially Western European ones, who were the first to discover the classic Russian novel, albeit with a fair delay. Here are two indicative facts in this regard.

In 1878, the first International Writers' Congress met in Paris, designed to discuss issues of how to protect literary property, i.e., in today's language, to protect writers from pirated translations of their works into the languages ​​of other countries. Among the participants of the congress is I.S., well known to French prose writers. Turgenev (Victor Hugo was elected honorary president); he also heads the Russian delegation. And in this capacity he pronounces short speech about Russian literature, in which, of all its figures, he names (note that the year is 1878, when all the novels of not only Turgenev himself, but also Goncharov, the two main novels of L. Tolstoy and the four main novels of Dostoevsky were already published) only D. Fonvizin, I Krylov, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov and N. Gogol.

And the reason for this Turgenev silence is simple: about the existence of other Russian writers, including great novelists, in Western Europe So far nothing is known.

But less than ten years will pass, at the end of which the French writer and diplomat Melky-or de Vogüe, who personally knew Dostoevsky, Turgenev and L. Tolstoy and read them with delight in Russian, will publish his book “Le roman russe” (1886) in Paris (“Russian Novel”), the Spanish writer and literary critic Emilia Pardo Ba-san will publish her three-volume study “Revolution and the Novel in Russia” (1887) in Madrid, and in Denmark “Russian Impressions” (1888) dedicated to the same Russian artists will appear Scandinavian aesthetics and literary critic Georg Brandes, and the attitude towards Russian writers on the part of their Western colleagues will change radically.

An intense and endless stream of transfers will begin for everything European languages"War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Notes from House of the Dead", "Crimes and Punishments", "Oblomo-va"... And soon the famous Russian bibliographer and literary critic S.A. Vengerov will testify: "...Russian literature, which until recently was given four or five pages in Western European manuals, suddenly began to excite surprise, close to enthusiasm. Tolstoy's works are distributed in the international book trade in so many editions, every word of the great Russian writer is listened to with such endless attention that<...>you might even wonder where he is more famous and loved - at home or abroad. Dostoevsky made a strong impression."

Already at the end of the 19th - the first third of the 20th centuries, the main Russian novelists became the rulers of the thoughts of both European readers and major prose writers. And among them are such outstanding names as the French Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, Marcel Proust, Martin du Gard, Francois Mauriac, Henri Barbusse, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, British Robert Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, the Germans Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Bernard Kellerman, Lion Feuchtwanger and the German-speaking Swiss Hermann Hesse, Americans Henry James, William Faulkner, John Dos Paz-sos, William Dean Howells, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, John Ernst Steinbeck, Thomas Woolf, Margaret Mitchell, Scandinavians August Strind-

Berg, Knut Hamsun, Martin Andersen-Nexe, Austrians Stefan Zweig and Franz Kafka. Later they would be joined by the Japanese Ftabatei Shimei, Tokutomi Roka, Takeo Arishima and Yukio Mishima, the Chinese Lu Xun, and the Indian Rabindranath Tagore.

Author wonderful novels“Buddenbrooks”, “The Magic Mountain” and “Doctor Faustus” Thomas Mann (the expression “holy Russian literature” belongs to him) admitted that in his youth the Russian novel was closer to him than classical German prose, including I.- IN. Goethe. In the workroom of the Frenchman Charles Louis-Philippe hung portraits of L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and he advised his friend Jean Girod to read their works to educate the heart and soul.

In general, for most foreign prose writers of the twentieth century, venerable or beginners, the Russian classic novel turns not only into a favorite reading, but also into art school, without a deep assimilation of which it was no longer possible to do anything significant in literature, according to their confessions.

But what exactly is the creative originality of this novel, which so amazed and delighted Western European novelists? Was Leo Tolstoy quite right when in 1864 he asserted: “We Russians generally do not know how to write novels in the sense in which this type of writing is understood<...>in Europe".

The fact is that this observation cannot in any way be attributed to the authors of those peripheral Russian novels the first half of the 19th century, which owe their very formation to foreign language forms of the novel genre, or some significant motives. And among them is not only the Russian moral-descriptive-didactic novel by Vasily Narezhny ("Russian Gilblaz, or the Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov", 1814) and Thaddeus Bulgarin ("Ivan Vyzhigin", 1829), openly focused on French novel Alain Rene Lesage "The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana" (1715-1735). The genre version of the novels of the “Scottish sorcerer” (A. Pushkin) by Walter Scott will be Russian historical novel Mikhail Zagoskin ("Yuri Miloslavsky, or the Russians in 1612", 1829; "Roslavlev, or the Russians in 1812", 1831) and Ivan Lazhechnikov ("The Ice House", 1831; "Basurman", 1838). In the stories “The Ideal” (1837), “A Vain Gift” (1842) by Elena Gan and in “Polinka Saks” (1847) by Alexander Druzhinin, then in the story by Alexei Pisemsky “Is She Guilty?” (1855) will find its Russian modification in the novel by the Frenchwoman Aurora Dudevant (printed

went under the pseudonym Georges Sand). Family ideals of the Englishman Samuel Richardson (in the novels "Pamela...", 1740; "Clarissa", 1747-1748), the German Augustus La Fontaine (1758-1831), who wrote on family themes 150 novels, as well as central characters"The Dungeon of Edinburgh" (1818) by Walter Scott and "Indiana" (1832) by George Sand will respond in "The Kholmsky Family" (1832) by Dmitry Begichev, in "The Family Chronicle" (1856) and "The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson" (1858) by Sergei Aksakov, as well as in “Family Happiness” (1859) by Leo Tolstoy. Finally, the Russian analogue of the Western European “novel of fortune” (“roman de réussite”) will be “A Thousand Souls” (1858) by Alexei Pisemsky.

The very fact that peripheral Russian novelists studied (and even directly borrowed) from their foreign-language predecessors does not at all diminish their merits to Russian literature. None of the major ones national literatures did not bypass in its development, without the risk of remaining provincial, the literary achievements of other peoples, starting with biblical and Greco-Roman antiquity. Moreover, in literary creativity, as in technology, do not reinvent the wheel (in our case - genre forms), if they have already been created, but adapt them in accordance with local life characteristics, social tasks and goals. This was the case with the Russian novel, the very genre of which appeared in our literature in the early

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NOVIKOVA E.V. - 2008

The nineteenth century is a special time for world literature. He gave us unsurpassed masterpieces both domestic and foreign literature, which already captivated readers around the world and which continue to fascinate them today.

Below is a selection of the best romance novels XIX century.

Victor Hugo

Not the first, but one of the most famous love quadrangles in the history of literature. Gypsy Esmeralda has such a unique charm that three men fall in love with her at once, one of whom is the hunchback bell-ringer Quasimodo, although her heart is forever given to another.

Leo Tolstoy

Don Juan. George Gordon Byron

Byron's Don Juan is the writer's last work, a novel in verse that brought him worldwide fame. Without him there would not have been Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. The name of the main character has become a household name by our time. This is a handsome, gallant and educated character, an insatiable seducer, whose only fault was that his unearthly beauty easily captivated women's hearts.

Charlotte Bronte

When it comes to classic love stories, Jane Eyre ranks and always will rank first. The story of the difficult relationship between the governess and Edward Rochester, filled with unimaginable plot twists, passions and inexpressible feelings, has attracted readers young and old at all times. And today this book occupies a worthy place in the home library of every self-respecting young lady.

Charles Dickens

This is a story about beautiful love that the main character literally carries throughout his entire life. Pip met Estella when they were both children. But from then on, hope settled in his soul that his fate would be favorable to him. The novel of the great Charles Dickens is very vital, largely due to this it resonates in the hearts of many generations of readers.

Prose of the Sovremennik magazine and the Russian realistic novel of the middle XIX century

The Sovremennik magazine, created by Pushkin and headed by Pletnev after his death, passed into the hands of Panaev and Nekrasov in 1846 and became the printed organ for new literature. It was on the pages of this magazine that Belinsky, who was part of the editorial staff, published his articles “A Look at Russian Literature of 1846” and “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847.” In these works, the critic formulated the concept of new literature.

The literature depicting the life of the lower social classes that appeared in the late 1830s was negatively received by critics. She was reproached for excessively following nature, that is, for depicting unsightly, unaesthetic pictures of the life of the social majority. Therefore, Thaddeus Bulgarin, in a review of the collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg,” called the new literature belonging to the “natural literary school" This is how the name “natural school” literature arose.

According to Belinsky, it is this literature that determines the first stage literary development, which began with Gogol. In this regard, it is also called Gogol's. The author of “The Overcoat” was the first, according to the critic, to draw attention to the crowd and began to “depict ordinary people, and not only accepted exceptions from general rule, which always seduce people into idealization.” Already in his assessment of Gogol’s discoveries, Belinsky affirms the first and main feature literature of the natural school - to depict life as it is for the most part, “to reproduce reality in all its truth.”

The second feature of the literature of the natural school is its new hero. This hero is a social type, a “little man”, a representative of the social majority. The writer of the “natural school” is interested in his interaction with the environment. He is convinced that the environment has a detrimental effect on a person, disfigures his nature, turning him into a “small” person, into a social type. Therefore, the third feature of the literature of the “natural school” is the discovery new topic research: “little man” and environment.”

In the literature of the “natural school” the concept of ideal is rethought. Her hero cannot be a role model. Therefore, “the ideal is understood not as decoration (hence, a lie), but as the relationship into which the author establishes the types he creates to each other, in accordance with the thought that he wants to develop with his work.” Ideal is a mobile category, born in creative process writing and reading a work. Therefore, the literature of the “natural school” is assigned a special cognitive task. It should not entertain the reader, but show him a life that has never been depicted in literature before. At the same time, following the natural school does not mean following naturalism. The work should not be a copy of reality. The author “needs to be able to understand the phenomena of reality guide them through their fantasy, give them new life" The degree of artistry of a work depends on the author’s talent. Moreover, Belinsky, who affirms the objectivity of new literature, does not abandon the unconscious in the creative process. It is the author’s talent that helps the reader create a clear picture of the era from the contradictory facts of reality.

And Belinsky must admit that there are no great talents in the literature of the natural school. But new literature is important not for its talents, but for the very fact of its existence: “it is only being established, but has not yet been established” . She paves the way for future talent. Opens up ways for further development of literature.

The main genre of new literature was the physiological essay, short story, and novella. But if two latest genre were familiar to the reader, then the physiological essay is a genre born precisely new prose. It was most consistent with its content. The genre of the essay presupposes adherence to the facts of reality and excludes abstract fantasy and speculative images. The purpose of a physiological essay is to create a picture public life Russia 1840s Like a person, society also has its own organism, its own physiology. The primary task of a physiological essay is to describe the social mechanism. His heroes do not go beyond the boundaries of social types, the authors do not go beyond the reproduction of life social environment.

An example of a physiological essay is the collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg,” published in 1845 by Nekrasov. It included essays by Belinsky, Dahl, Grigorovich, Grebenka, Nekrasov, Kulchitsky, Panaev. The titles of the works speak for themselves. “Petersburg organ grinders”, “Petersburg corners”, “Petersburg feuilletonist”, “Petersburg janitor”. The purpose of the collection is to describe existing social types and depict their habitat. Other problems, for example, psychological problems, cannot be solved by a physiological essay. The essay classifies social phenomena. But at the same time, he prepares the emergence of literature that will turn to the study of the psychology of the social type.

For example, Grigorovich’s essay “St. Petersburg Organ Grinders” describes three types of organ grinders, Russian, German and Italian. Characteristics of their features are exclusively in the area social description. But at the same time, exits to social psychology, national character. “There is nothing more careless than a Russian organ grinder; he never cares about the next day, and if he happens to intercept some money that provides him for several days, he will not hesitate to invite his comrades to the nearest cafe-restaurant.... Like a Neapolitan lazzaroni, he will not work if the money obtained in the morning , enough for the evening.”

By the end of the 1840s, the literature of the “natural school” had fulfilled its purpose. She created a gallery of social phenomena and types. The need for such literature to exist has disappeared. The essay begins to be replaced by a new story, a novel. Already in 1846, works appeared depicting the psychology of social types discovered by the “natural school”. These are “Poor People” and “The Double” by Dostoevsky.

The formation of the new Russian novel, which began in the mid-1840s. the works of Herzen, Goncharov, Dostoevsky were accompanied by the development of the genre, discovered by literature"natural school" But the physiological essay becomes irrelevant; it is replaced by a cycle of essays, a genre association based on thematic, ideological and artistic principles.

One of the first cycles of essays was “Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev (1852). The unity of this cycle is determined by the cross-cutting hero-narrator, the hunter, and the general theme - human life. Turgenev's genre innovation was that in a series of essays he connected the social phenomena of reality with their philosophical content, outlined a way out through the social to the universal, which would subsequently determine the originality of the Russian classical novel of the 19th century.

The development of the classic Russian novel took place outside of Sovremennik, and cycles of essays were created within the magazine. “Essays on the Bursa” (1862-1863) N.G. Pomyalovsky, “Podlipovtsy” by F.M. Reshetnikov (1864) in external form gravitate toward a novel. But if Pomyalovsky included the genre in the title of the work, Reshetnikov indicated it in the subtitle “Ethnographic Essay.” Famous novel N.G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” (1863) the author refers to as “Stories about New People.”

Within the framework of Sovremennik, another novel was being formed, born from the cycle. For example, Yu. Rudenko considers the main structural principle of the novel “What to do?” – the principle of cyclicity. Adherence to the literary tradition of the “natural school” did not allow either Pomyalovsky or Reshetnikov to rise above the social facts of life and look at them through the prism of universal categories. But unlike the literature of the 1840s, following the tradition of the 1860s, they solve the problem of relationships differently “ little man” and the environment, put forward the idea of ​​an individual trying himself in resistance to the environment.

For example, in “Essays on the Bursa”, against the background of descriptions of the types of students, the story of a boy nicknamed Karas stands out. Once in the Bursak environment, he is forced to obey its laws. But internally, resistance to them is brewing within him. This is expressed in the way he studies, he can sit at the first tables as an excellent student or in Kamchatka as a poor student. But real resistance begins when he is deprived of the right to spend Easter at home. The hero does everything to prevent this from happening. Forces circumstances to work for oneself, and not against oneself.

But the various pictures of Bursat life are not assembled into a coherent epic canvas due to the absence of a hero, not of a social type, but of a bright pronounced character, with its own psychology, history of the soul.

Addressed to the facts of social reality, to the masses, the authors did not see in them a new hero, perhaps because he had not yet grown out of his environment, had not yet taken shape and was not defined. Such self-determination of a hero from the people will happen later and will be reflected in the work of N.S. Leskova.

But Reshetnikov in “Podlipovtsy” portrays folk heroes, Pila and Sysoika, with a pronounced personal beginning. Saw voluntarily took on the function of mediator between the world of the village and the world of power. The world of Podlipovka is a world before civilization, before morality. Its inhabitants, led by Sysoika, know neither God, nor love, nor the fear of death. They live and die like plants from hunger, cold, and everyday inconveniences. The exit of Pyla and Sysoika from Podlipovka into the world of civilization and their acquaintance with it deprives them of hope that the heroes will find happiness. If the sons of Jigsaw found in this world at least quiet life, then Pila and Sysoika are doomed to death. They die under the blows of a broken chain, having realized only that the world was not created for people like them. The heroes cannot and do not know how to resist the reality that is killing them.

Reshetnikov’s work, although designated by the author as an ethnographic essay, is to a greater extent gravitates towards social novel, which is just beginning to emerge in the literature. The structure of such a novel is still very fluid; the main genre principle of plot organization has not been determined. Here, the development of relationships is only outlined in embryo, there is no love conflict. Before us is the journey of heroes along the road of life. One picture is strung on top of another, giving rise to a panorama of social reality.

In the 1870s, we will meet this principle of plot organization in the satirical novel by Saltykov-Shchedrin “ Modern idyll", in Leskov's stories. But the nature of generalization in the work of these artists is already different, which allows us to expand the social picture of reality to a universal one.

"What to do?" Chernyshevsky is also at the origins of the new genre of the novel. This work is often called a utopian novel, a social novel. Yu. Rudenko reveals in it the tendencies of the future polyphonic system. The ambiguity of genre interpretations is indicative. Chernyshevsky breaks the usual ideas about the novel, and this is part of his author’s task, which he announces in his introduction. But the principle of cyclicity underlying the new structure also does not contribute to its genre integrity. The expanding space of the novel with the introduction of new themes and characters and the departure of old ones reflects the moving panorama of life; the open ending enhances this movement. But the author’s idea, striving to regulate the moving flow of life, comes into conflict with it, which does not contribute to strengthening the genre.

Russian realistic and classical novel XIX century is created in the creative laboratories of Turgenev and Goncharov. The main structure-forming principle of such a novel is the principle of dialogism. The origins of the genre are the novels of A.I. Herzen "Who is to blame?" and I.A. and “Ordinary History”, which appeared in 1846-1847. The plot in them is based on dialogic conflict

The very structure of Herzen's novel reflects the formation of the genre. Its first part resembles essays of the “natural school”. It presents the biographies of the heroes, but the arrangement of the characters does not add up to conflict. And only the appearance in the second part of Beltov, a noble hero who embodies the type “ extra person", gives impetus to the novel's action. The love conflict that arises thanks to his introduction into the plot develops into a philosophical debate. The dialogical conflict is revealed in the fact that all the characters are tormented by questions of philosophical content: can a person be the master of his destiny, and, as a consequence, can he be happy. Krutsifersky believes in fate, on which a person’s happiness and misfortune depends, and therefore is afraid of it. Dr. Krupov thinks like a physiologist, that is, he rejects what cannot be proven as a fact. Therefore, personal failures, in his opinion, cannot be a manifestation of fate, and a person can get rid of them if he leads a healthy lifestyle, for example, douse himself with cold water and not believe in what does not exist. For him, man is the truth.

Beltov complicates the situation of dialogue-dispute about fate and happiness. He introduces into it the idea of ​​history as fate, which selects from the mass of people only those who are needed for its construction. People “not demanded by history” are doomed and therefore can do what they want with their lives. Beltov, being one of these types of people, chooses for himself last method self-realization. But at the same time, he involves Krutsiferskaya in his game, torn between love and pity for her husband and for Beltov, which as a result kills her.

At the end of the novel, all participants in the dialogue-dispute are defeated. None of the proposed answers to the main questions stand the test of life. The question posed in the title of the novel also remained unanswered: who is to blame for the fact that a person has not succeeded in life? This question belongs to the author and expresses his position: the answer is in life itself, and it is unknown to man.

In the works of Turgenev and Goncharov there is a dramatization of a dialogic conflict. Its essence is that the logic of life includes an inevitable confrontation as a result of a change certain periods development. Therefore, heroes cannot exist outside of conflict. He can leave characters' dialogues. But he will never leave another dialogue that each hero conducts to the best of his spiritual potential with existence. The possibility of such a dialogue is due to the hero’s consciousness opening towards life.

For example, in Goncharov, the confrontation between such heroes as the younger and older Aduevs, Oblomov and Stolz, Raisky and Volokhov is dictated by their life experiences. None of them denies the subjects about which they come into conflict. Both Aduevs do not deny love, but argue about its essence. The dispute is futile only because in youth and maturity love is presented differently, but as a result, its hero discovers the presence of a different point of view, which expands the boundaries of his own existence. In dialogue with others and one’s own self, the hero’s spiritual mastery of life and self-determination takes place. Therefore, the 19th century novel achieves its universality.

A special place in the development of the genre of the realistic novel is occupied by Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel, in which the principle of dialogism reaches its completion. Dialogue becomes not only the structural principle of the novel, but also the way of existence of the hero’s consciousness. Without dialogue, the consciousness of the hero and the author is impossible.

New novel meets the requirements of the new art formulated by Chernyshevsky - “to reproduce what is generally interesting in life.” But at the same time, it deviates from them, because life in a realistic novel is not determined only by its physical and social manifestations. A realistic novel, along with a careful study of the facts of human social existence, affirms the metaphysics of life, which contradicts the logic of the main provisions of Chernyshevsky’s philosophy. Therefore, within the framework of the Sovremennik magazine, we find trends only in the social, public romance.

Artistic works

Physiology of St. Petersburg. Almanac (1845). Pomyalovsky N.G. Essays on the Bursa (1862-1863). Reshetnikov F.M. Podlipovtsy (1864)

Research

Kuleshov, V.I. Natural school in Russian literature of the 19th century / V.I. Kuleshov. – M., 1982.

Egorov, B.V. The struggle of aesthetic ideas in Russia in the mid-19th century / B.V. Egorov. – L., 1982

Sazhin, V.M. Books of bitter truth / V.M. Sazhin. – M., 1992

Markovich, V.M. I.S. Turgenev and the Russian realistic novel / V.M. Markovich. – M., 1982. – Ch. 1.2.

For more details, see: Markovich. V.M. Turgenev and the Russian realistic novel. – M., 1982.– Ch. 2.

Markovich V.M. Decree ed.