German literature in the late 19th - early 20th century. German literature of the late 19th - early 20th century

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GERMAN LITERATURE AFTER 1945

development of the expressionist tradition. "Left Expressionism" and Borchert's drama "On the street in front of the door". - "Group 47". Böll's work: moral issues (“life is not based on lies”), “poetics of participation”; novels "Billiards at half past ten", "Through the eyes of a clown", "Group portrait with a lady".
Social criticism of literature in the 1960s. - "Magical Realism" and the novel by Cossack "The City Beyond the River"; Jünger's work. — Comprehension of history in the literature of the FRG (Sachs) and the GDR (Bobrovsky, Fuman); the psychologism of Wolf's prose (the novels Reflections on Krista T., Images of Childhood, the stories Cassandra, What Remains). — Grass: essay on creative biography; Danzig theme; "the effect of alienation", "game" (the novel "The Tin Drum"), the crisis of the language (the story "Meeting in Telgte"), the ratio of conformism and non-conformism (the novel "Under Local Anesthesia"). — The vanity of history in the dramaturgy of Hein, the alternative literature of the GDR. — German postmodernism in prose (the novels of Mikel, Süskind, Hein) and dramaturgy (Müller).

The twentieth century as a whole is a time of intense politicization of German literature. Under these conditions, writers often, even against their will, became involved in the struggle of various parties, groups, and ideologies. But even if they tried to stay away from this struggle, the deadly whirlwinds of the century sought out their victims and forcibly drew them into their cycle. Three dramatic events determined the fate of Germany and its literature in the past century: the First World War, the years of the fascist dictatorship (1933-1945), the split of the country first into four occupation zones (1945-1949), and then into two states - the FRG and the GDR (1949). — 1990). German literature captured these events using the entire palette of styles of the 19th-20th centuries: from the naturalistic poetics of “pieces of life” to the reconstruction of the world through symbol, abstraction, autonomy of form.

Perhaps the most powerful literary and artistic movement in Germany in the 20th century was expressionism, which, after a break (it fell in the second half of the 19th century), brought German (and Austrian) literature to the forefront of European literary life. Therefore, it is advisable to start a review of German literature, tours after 1945 (let's try to look at it in the unity of the literatures of the FRG and the GDR - in the unity of their most important artistic achievements) with an analysis of the modifications of late expressionism.

As you know, in the 1910s - early 1920s there was a differentiation of expressionism. The leftist, "activist" group linked their utopian quest for the "new man" with the belief in the possibility of a radical renewal of the world on the basis of communist ideas. These writers (that is, those who managed to survive National Socialism, emigration or imprisonment) formed the backbone of the literature of the GDR after the Second World War (Johannes R. Becher, 1892-1958; Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956; Anna Segers, 1900- 1983; Friedrich Wolf, 1886-1953). To these can be added younger authors who have remained faithful to the expressionist tradition (Peter Huchel, 1903-1981; Erich Arendt, 1907-1984; Stefan Hermlin, 1915-1997). In Germany, Leonhard Frank (1882-1961) completed his work, giving his last novel a very characteristic title “To the left, where the heart is” (Links, wo das Herz ist, 1952).

Expressionism also developed in West Germany. Its most prominent representative was Wolfgang Borchert (Wolfgang Borchert, 1921-1947). In his work, although bizarre, but quite organically, the experience of the new “lost generation” (Borchert fought) and the independently developed anti-fascist position (during the years of the Third Reich he was repeatedly arrested and persecuted) were combined with the active development of expressionist experience (E. Toller, B . Brecht). The main thing in the creative heritage of V. Borchert - the drama "On the Street in Front of the Door" (Draußen vor der Tür, 1947) and two "collections of stories and essays (about seventy in total) - was created by him in two and a half post-war years, when the writer was already dead sick. But it was this drama and these stories that gave some critics reason to talk about the "hour zero", when both the country and literature had to start all over again. Borchert's voice turned out to be one of those few that were not only heard and perceived, but also for a long time they retained the role of a certain tuning fork: "We do not need poets with good grammar ... We need poets to write hot and hoarse, sobbing. To call a tree a tree, a woman a woman, to say yes, say no": loudly and distinctly, twice and thrice, and without subjunctive forms... The dead are not dead so that the living live, as before, in their cozy apartments... not so that their children are fooled by the same nasal Studienrats who so cleverly processed for the war of their fathers" (from the essay "Here is our manifesto", 1945, trans. A. Karelsky).

Borchert's drama "On the Street in Front of the Door", sounded as a radio play in February 1947, and staged by the Hamburg Chamber Theater in November, was then successfully staged at many venues in Germany and Europe. The broken psyche of a soldier who returned from the war, but is not able to forget about her shock; Expressionistically tense, "screaming" scenes, compressing the most characteristic signs of military and post-war reality into generally accessible symbols, the bright, metaphorically rich language of the characters - all this could not but evoke a corresponding response.

On the basis of the moral understanding of "German guilt" in West Germany in 1947, the "Group 47" (Gruppe 47) arose - an association of writers who did not want the revival of militarism and nationalism. Its origins are the activities of the magazine Appeal (Der Ruf, 1946-1947). The founders of the "Group 47", Hans Werner Richter (1908-1993), Alfred Andersch (Alfred Andersch, 1914-1980), Walter Kolbenhoff (Walter Kolbenhoff, 1908-1993), - with all the differences in their life experience - gravitated to a specific analysis of social relations in Germany (on Anders, author of the novels Zanzibar, or the Last Reason, Sansibar oder Der letzte Grund, 1957; Ephraim, Efraim, 1967; Winterspelt, Winterspelt, 1974; autobiographical book Cherries of Freedom ”, Die Kirschen der Freiheit, 1952, existentialism also had a significant influence). Socially critical, anti-militarist and even sometimes pacifist literature was in demand by that part of German society, which in the "Adenauer era" (Konrad Adenauer, Konrad Adenauer, 1876-1967, was the Federal Chancellor of Germany in 1949-1963 and chairman of the Christian Democrats in 1946-1966) was alarmed by the course taken by the government to support the Cold War, the remilitarization of the FRG. In addition, the "Group 47" timely fit into the publishing policy and the book market of Germany, who were looking for new guidelines after the defeat of National Socialism. Awarded since 1950, the Group of 47 awards have been among the most prestigious in Germany. They were received by Gunther Eich (1950), Heinrich Böll (1951), Ilse Eichinger (1952), Ingeborg Bachmann (1953), Martin Walser (1955), Gunther Grass (1958), Johannes Bobrovsky (1962) and some other famous writers.

The most creatively consistent of this group of writers was Heinrich Boll (1917-1985). He not only gained worldwide fame, but also became a kind of "conscience of the nation", the revival and preservation of which he tirelessly contributed to both artistic creativity and numerous publicistic speeches. His tragic life experience, in many ways similar to the experience of millions of Germans of the front-line generation (born in Cologne in a large and prosperous family of a cabinetmaker, a staunch Catholic, Böll witnessed the ruin of the family business in the second half of the twenties, managed to study for a semester at the University of Cologne, studying German studies and classical philology, was a soldier on different fronts for six years, survived all the hardships of the war, four wounds, American captivity and post-war devastation), he managed to keep in memory and elevate to art. German pain, shame, guilt, along with a deeply personal experience of being “forgotten into history,” became the leitmotifs of his work, which claimed to be a kind of moral tuning fork. He seemed capable of bringing out the slightest falsity in the state of West German society. The national revival of the Germans, "life without a lie" is possible only if they constantly turn to historical memory, which has absorbed (especially in the 20th century) all the ups and downs of the German spirit - this is the main leitmotif of Böll's creativity and social activities.

In the Frankfurt Lectures (Frankfurter Vorlesungen, 1966), where the ideological and aesthetic credo of the writer is presented in the most thoughtful and systematized form, Böll argues: “There are too many murderers openly and brazenly walking around this country, and no one will prove that they are murderers. Guilt, repentance, repentance, insight never became public categories, let alone political ones. Against this background, something has been formed and exists that now - twenty years later and with some reservations - can be called post-war German literature ”(translated by A. Karelsky).

In 1947, Böll's first story, The News (Die Botschaft), was published, followed by Der Zug war pünctlich (1949), Der Zug war pünctlich (1949), followed by Der Zug war pünctlich (1949), a collection of 25 stories, Traveler, When You Come to Spa... (Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa..., 1950). After the publication of the novels Where Have You Been, Adam? (Wo warst du, Adam?, 1951), “And I didn’t say a single word” (Und sagte kein einziges Wort, 1953) Böll became the leader of the Group 47 in the eyes of the ueke of his many readers and, in fact, until the end of his creative path, he continued high carry her banner. Perhaps, at the same time, he did not so much open up new artistic horizons as he varied, deepened his main theme - understanding the ways to protect humanity in a cruel and inhuman world. This topic seemed to Böll of cardinal importance, he consciously sought to bring it to the center of his "prose of ideas". Having suffered from personal experience the humiliating violence of the state and ideology over the individual, the writer has always remained a nonconformist. This concerned issues of faith (“Letter to a young Catholic”, Brief an einen jungen Katholiken, 1958, 1961; criticism of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae), the spiritual life of society (criticism of the phenomenon of the “economic miracle” and the corresponding philistine materialism), politics, defense persecuted (support for Dr. I. Solzhenitsyn, whom Böll sheltered in his house in 1974 after the author of The Gulag Archipelago was expelled from his homeland). Böll did not spare the "holy of holies" of the Western world - the press. He particularly clearly brought out her informational terror in the novel “The Lost Carry of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Arises and It Can Lead to It” (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann, 1974).

Indeed, revealing pathos is characteristic of all of Böll's work. But he does not exhaust it at all. At some points, the writer is close to existentialism. Sometimes, despite his criticism of the church, he reminds himself of himself as an undeniably Catholic author. If we talk about the influences on his work, then this is a natural interest for the former front-line soldier (who, due to the shock of the war, finds no place for himself in post-war reality) in the experience of the “lost generation” (E. Hemingway, R. Aldington, E. M. Remarque). Perhaps Böll's acquaintance with late expressionism is noticeable, but unlike G. Eich, W. Borchert, W. Köppen, who have passed the passion for the "new efficiency", he is stylistically much more transparent. However, as necessary, it can be complex (for example, using the technique of "stream of consciousness" in the spirit of Faulkner's "The Noise and Fury"), but without prejudice to the main goal - the fulfillment of one or another moral task. “I proceed from the conviction that a person is made human by language, love, participation; it is they who connect him with himself, with other people, with God - a monologue, a dialogue, a prayer ”(“ Frankfurt Lectures ”) - this is how Böll himself defined the main content of his work. The key word in this autocharacteristic is the word "complicity".

It is the poetics of participation, which Böll developed and cultivated all his life, that gives his works a unique originality. His characters come into contact with the world by virtue of some original properties of their nature - they simply cannot be different. There is a certain schematism in this predetermination of the deepest properties of the personality, but there is also its own artistic convexity. This applies to both positive and negative characters: none of them can "jump out of themselves", true nature still prevails. Finally, many of Böll's works are characterized by lyricism, which makes him not so much a writer of everyday life as a bearer of existentially hard-won truth.

Böll's early stories, short stories, novels, as a rule, cover some one key episode in the life of the protagonist, from which more or less visible threads stretch to the past. This episode is connected in one way or another with military experience - the story is usually told from the perspective of a young man, either crippled on the front line, or inevitably (“on schedule”) approaching his inevitable death. But already starting with the novels "A House Without a Master" (Haus ohne Hüter, 1954) and "Billiards at half past nine" (Billard um halbzehn, 1959), both the temporal structure of the narrative and the circle of characters expand significantly. These novels are among Böll's best - if you wish, you can see in them a semblance of a family chronicle, although it is not as ordered as, say, The Buddenbrooks (1901) by T. Mann, a classic novel of this type. Frequent change of narrative angles, jumps in time are designed to convey the damage to the natural course of life. Fatally turned into the past, it has very problematic chances for a sequel. Particularly indicative in this sense is the novel Billiards at half past ten.

The German history of the 20th century is presented in it by three generations of a family of architects. In 1907, Heinrich Femel, having won a competition, builds a Catholic abbey; his son Robert blows up the abbey during the Second World War; Femel's grandson Josef, after the war, undertakes the restoration of the monastery. The thread of the story passes in turn to each of the Femels, who, due to their age, as well as the ability to “remember” or “not remember” (those who retained memory in the novel receive the symbolic designation “lambs”, while those who have lost belong to those who have taken the “buffalo communion”) - recreate the key episodes of the family's history, trying to fit it into the context of the first half of the 20th century.

The composition of this polyphonic novel (Böll called this technique "Facetten-Technik") is built in such a way that the organizing event is the celebration of the 80th birthday of Heinrich Femel on September 6, 1958, and the conflict unfolds around the billiard room in the Prince Heinrich Hotel, where Robert Femel , who, like Hemingway's lieutenant Henry, has concluded his "separate world", who does not want to be a "fellow traveler" of history, plays billiards daily from half past ten to eleven. There are few works in the German literature of the 20th century where the split of the German nation into adherents of war and violence and those who, despite their defenselessness, cannot come to terms with war and violence (such is the case in the novel by Johann Femel shooting at the minister), is depicted with the same unintentional scale, psychological subtlety. If we try to find a key phrase to characterize this multi-layered novel (raising the question of resistance to evil, first of all on a deeply personal level), then it varies in the thoughts and conversations of Robert and Shrella, who studied in the thirties at the same gymnasium and started their “quiet” resistance together. fascism. Shrella, who managed to elude the Gestapo, lives in exile and is still afraid to finally return to his native places: “I would love to live next door to you, but not here. I'm scared here; I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but the people I see in this city seem to me no better than those from whom I once fled. Robert and his father, in fact, think the same thing, who do not want to attend the feast of the consecration of the restored abbey, since both are convinced that along with this event, another reminder of the past can be erased from the memory of most residents of the city, which, in in principle, should not be erased.

The most significant of Böll's subsequent novels are Through the Eyes of a Clown (Ansichten eines Clowns, 1963) and Group Portrait with a Lady. They develop the theme of non-conformism familiar to Böll in a new way. When analyzing the novel Through the Eyes of a Clown, one cannot fail to recall The Tin Drum (1959) by G. Grass. Böll seems to borrow the themes and problems of the scandalous novel of his younger contemporary, but at the same time frees the narrative from Grass's modernist "tricks", thereby translating it into the mainstream of general plausibility. Hans Schnier, of course, is a kind of double of Oscar Macerath. Both are artists (artists), outsiders. Both achieve success and love in a society they despise and voluntarily give up their success, tired of pulling the strap of conformity inevitable with success ... It seems that A. V. Karelsky’s observation, made, however, about Hans Schnier alone, is applicable to both novels : "The theme of the unconquered past comes into significant contact with the theme of the "jester": here not only are any possibilities of individual happiness in the world of social trouble consistently cut off, but the rebellion against this world itself is recognized as a tragic clowning" (in our opinion, True, not so much tragic as tragicomic).

The novel Group Portrait with a Lady (Gruppenbild mit Dame, 1971) tells the life story of Leni Gruyten (Pfeiffer). She was born in 1922, became a contemporary of the rise of the Nazis to power, the war, the post-war reconstruction of Germany. Leni is by no means a "lady". This woman (who was briefly married; who fell in love with the Russian prisoner of war Boris Koltovsky; who is raising an illegitimate son, Leo; who is experiencing life difficulties - bailiffs can take away her apartment), without evaluating her actions as heroic or anti-fascist, lives and loves according to the natural human laws of complicity, and not according to the wolf laws of Nazi ideology, a well-fed bourgeois society. Therefore, Leni is a saint, a saint-sinner, the only saint that is possible in the modern fallen world. Her Christianity is far from the requirements of church morality, but for Böll this is not so important, since he characteristically opposes the true Catholicism of his lambs to the Catholic Church as a social and especially political institution. The image of Leni Pfeiffer is woven from fragments. An anonymous “author” (Verf.) undertakes to compile the “life” of the new “saint”, collecting various information about her, both factual and “miraculous” (Leni believes that the Mother of God appears to her on the TV screen). Goodness, displayed in the novel, is somewhat eccentric. Nevertheless, against the background of modernity and its all-pervading dirt, it is shown as pure, sublime, balancing on the verge, there were also legends.

The image of Leni Pfeiffer was developed in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1974), a novel about a woman hunted by the Springer press and killing an unscrupulous journalist with a pistol. Like Leni, Katarina is a simple woman. This housekeeper is morally pure by nature, and if she commits an offense (helping a terrorist escape), then out of ignorance, falling in love with a stranger at first sight. Her shot at Tetges is akin to that of Johanna Femel. True, this time it is a sign of the complete despair of a person who is powerless before the arbitrariness of the press and responds to violence organized by instinctive, anarchic violence. Responding to events related to German ultra-left terrorism (the Baader-Meinhof group), Böll wrote a novel in the genre of "documentary prose" in a somewhat uncharacteristic manner. It is both factographic and satirical. The topic of legalized violence, which deprives a person of any privacy, is also devoted to the novel “Caring Siege” (translated as “Under the escort of care”, Fürsorgliche Belagerung, 1979) about Fritz Tholm, head of the newspaper “concern. Already after the death of Böll, the novels “ Women from the banks of the Rhine (Frauen vom Flußlandschaft, 1986), The Angel Was Silent (Der Engel schwieg, 1992).

In addition to Böll, the prose writer and satirical journalist Wolfdietrich Schnurre (Wolfdietrich Schnurre, 1920-1989), author of novels, short stories, plays for radio and television Pvul Shalluk (Paul Schallück, 1922-1976), prose writer and poet Wolfgang Weyrauch (Wolfgang Weyrauch, 1907-1980), playwright and prose writer Wolfgang Hildesheimer (Wolfgang Hildesheimer, 1916-1991), prose writers Walter Jens (Walter Jens, p. 1923), Siegfried Lend (Siegfried Lenz, p. 1926), Martin Walser (Martin Walser, p. 1927), poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Hans Magnus Enzensberger, p. 1929); a complete list of participants in the meetings of the group in 1947-1967. has over 200 names. This literature, biased in its own way, embodied a high moral principle, in one way or another developed the problematics of the “unsurmounted past” and was predominantly a center-left opposition to right-wing extremist and nationalist tendencies in the social life of Germany in the 1950s and 1960s.

Conventionally, it can be called German "sixties" literature (and regardless of what manner, relatively traditional or experimental, focused on Kafka, expressionism or mythopoetics, it was characteristic). The monuments of this literature are, first of all, novels. In addition to Böll's works, these are Doves in the Grass (Tauben in Gras, 1951) and Death in Rome (Der Tod in Rom, 1954) by Wolfgang Koppen (Wolfgang Koppen, 1906-1996), The Case of d "Artez" (Der Fall d "Arthez, 1968) Hans Erich Nossack (Hans Erich Nossack, 1901 - 1977), "Intertime" (Halbzeit, 1960) and "Unicorn" (Das Einhorn, 1966) Martin Walser, "German Lesson" (Deutsch-stunde, 1968 ) Siegfried Lenz.

The authority of the "sixties" writers (and sometimes their direct agitation) largely contributed to the coming to power of the Social Democratic Party led by Willy Brandt (W. Brandt was Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969-1974, chairman of the SPD in 1964-1987. ). When in the second half of the 1960s the post-war generation of young people represented by the “new left” entered the arena of public life and literature (in art they declared themselves as neo-avant-garde), even G. Grass, who in the 1950s was unanimously called left avant-garde, repeatedly urged young people to "come to their senses", "settle down": in his artistic prose this is captured in the novel "Under Local Anesthesia" (1969), the publicistic book "From the Diary of a Snail" (1972).

In the 1940s and 1950s, along with socio-critical prose, which gravitated either to naturalism or to an existentialist understanding of the world, as well as to avant-garde poetry (its most striking representative is G. Verteidigung der wölfe, 1957; "Language of the Country", landessprache, 1960; "Type of the Blind", blindenschrift, 1964), "magical realism" also actively developed in West German literature. The term was proposed by the art critic F. Roo as early as 1923 by analogy with Novalis' formula "magical idealism" (1798). It denoted one of the versions of late expressionism, and later began to spread not only to German, but also to Latin American literature. In the early post-war years, "magic realism", which survived the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, successfully competed with the "Group 47". Critics compared and contrasted both phenomena, although the writers themselves rarely entered into controversy: they were united by an anti-totalitarian position. However, they differed in understanding the meaning of creativity. "Magical realists" rarely addressed the problems of current social and political life. They believed that social existence ultimately obeys cosmic laws, and not human willfulness, and a person will never be able to rationalize Life and transform it according to his own understanding. Hence the “magical” (“non-rational”, by G. Kazak’s definition) poetics of their works, reflecting the chaotic fuss and meaninglessness of most human deeds and at the same time striving to catch in this Chaos a manifestation of a universal necessity incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. Of course, the philosophy and poetics of these writers were conditioned by the social experience of the 20th century - they all represent the so-called "internal emigration" (hence the active, and often peremptory rejection of them by "external" emigrants, for example, T. Mann).

The “magical realists”, who alone survived the German disgrace during the years of Nazism, did not form a single group after the war. The most prominent representatives of "magical realism" in post-war Germany were Ernst Kreuder (Ernst Kreuder, 1903 - 1972), author of the novel "The Elusive" (Die Unauffindbaren, 1948), evoking the reader's "Castle" F. Kafka; Elisabeth Langgässer (1899-1950) with her poetry, the novel "The Indelible Seal" (Das unauslöschliche Siegel, 1939-1944, publ. 1946), the collection of short stories "Labyrinth" (Das Labyrinth, 1949), and Herman Kazak ( Hermann Kasack, 1896-1966), of whose post-war works the most famous novel was The City Beyond the River (Die Stadt hinter dem Strom, 1947).

At the center of the novel are the observations and experiences of the art historian Dr. Lindhof in the "city of the dead", an intermediate link between the real world (from where Lindhof was invited to the "city beyond the river" to fulfill the position of a chronicler) and Non-Being, where almost all the inhabitants of the city go after study of their "cases" by the servants of the city Archives. If the “intermediate city” is shown as a replica of the real world with its everyday problems and contradictions (they are described in a generalized, timeless, essential aspect that brings together various historical epochs), then the Archive is presented as an instance designed to personify, although not religious, but some undoubted the highest meaning of the universe. It excludes predestination and delegates to people the independence of thought and action, the right to choose. Lindhof finds himself in a unique position. In the Archive, all the wisdom of mankind accumulated over thousands of years is open to him, if he wishes, he can enter into personal contact with one or another "immortal"; in the city, the whole everyday outline of modern history is available to him, here he meets dead friends, relatives, acquaintances, tries to exhaust conflicts and disputes unresolved during their lifetime with them. Lindhof is the only living person among the "dead" who, moreover, can return to the real world at will, which he eventually does. The real world is a metaphorically given, but really recognizable post-war Germany, where Lindhoff, as an itinerant preacher, tries to spread the light of Truth, which was revealed to him during his stay in the “city beyond the river”.

Ernst Junger (Ernst Jünger, 1895-1997), a staunch anti-communist, author of the dystopian novel Heliopolis (Heliopolis, 1949), stands apart from both “magic realism” and the socio-critical work of the writers of the “Group of 47”, numerous and very original essay (“A Walk in the Woods”, 1951; “At the Threshold of Time”, 1959; “Gods and Numbers”, 1974), a multi-volume Diary. Even in his youth, this career soldier, having shown exceptional courage during the First World War, became the holder of the highest German military awards and published the sensational book In Steel Thunderstorms (In Stahlgewittern, 1920). Having glorified war in a Nietzsche style as a form of existence of a strong personality, Jünger did not then support the Nazis (although he served in the army, fought on the Eastern Front), opposing them to the “vulgarity” “aristocratism” of his lifestyle and writing. In the 1950s, Jünger’s heroics and preaching of the national idea give way to a criticism of civilization (here one can feel his dependence on F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler), understanding the mythologies of “earth” and “space”, developing what could be called original Junger's variation of atheistic existentialism (it has points of intersection with the late essays of M. Heidegger).

On August 28, 1949, on the day of the 200th anniversary of the birth of J.W. Darmstadt. Since 1951, the Darmstadt Academy began to award the Georg Büchner Literary Prize, which became, along with the Group 47 Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Germany. In 1953-1963, G. Kazak was at the head of the Darmstadt Academy; this fact, as well as the list of laureates of the first years, testify that the Academy and the "Group of 47" were initially in opposition to each other, but by the end of the 1950s, this opposition was practically leveled. Among the laureates of the academic award were the brightest representatives of German, Austrian, Swiss literature: Gottfried Benn (1951), Ernst Kreuder (1953), Marie-Louise Kashnitz (1955), Karl Krolov (1956), Erich Kestner (1957), Max Frisch (1958), Günter Eich (1959), Paul Celan (1960), Hans Erich Nossack (1961), Wolfgang Köppen (1962), Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1963), Ingeborg Bachmann (1964), Günther Grass (1965), Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1966), Heinrich Böll (1967), Golo Mann (1968^, Helmut Heisenbüttel (1969), Thomas Bernhard (1970), Uwe Jonsohn (1971).

A huge array of post-war German literature was the so-called authentic literature, which sought to convey with maximum authenticity the feelings and experiences of the Germans: prisoners of concentration camps; soldiers who went through the hardships of war; pain, despair and hope of those who tried to resist fascism. It is this literature that could serve as confirmation of the well-known thesis of T. Adorno about the impossibility of literary creativity after Auschwitz. But in practice, it turned out that the experienced sufferings, when trying to verbalize them, seemed to themselves begin to require epithets, comparisons, metaphors, and the text striving for authenticity involuntarily, as if against the will of the author, was transformed into a literary one. In 1946 Albrecht Haushofer's Moabiter Sonette (1903-1945) saw the light of day, at the same time the anthology De Profundis was published in Munich, bringing together the poems of 65 poets who survived the horrors of Nazism. In 1947, G. Kazak published a collection of "Worlds" (Welten) - selected poems by Gertrud Kolmar (Gertrud Kolmar, 1894-1943?), A talented poetess who died in a concentration camp. The collections Der Sand aus den Urnen (1948) and Memory and Forgetting (Mohn und Gedächtnis, 1952) by Paul Celan (real name Paul Leo Antschel, 1920-1970) are published. 1 - the first of them contains the famous * poem "The Fugue of Death" (Todesfuge, 1946), as well as "Dance of Death" (Totentanz und Gedichte zur Zeit, 1947) by Marie Luise von Kaschnitz-Weinberg (1901 - 1974) . One of the most notable examples of authentic poetry is the work of Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), awarded the Nobel Prize in 1966.

The life of Nelly Sachs was divided between Germany and Sweden. The future poetess was born in Berlin, in a wealthy Jewish family, she studied at a privileged school, was fond of music and dancing. From the age of eighteen she began to write poetry. With the coming to power of the Nazis, the life of German Jews became extremely complicated. In 1940, with the help of Selma Lagerlöf, with whom she corresponded for many years, Sachs emigrated with her mother to Sweden, which became her second home. Fate saved the German poetess, little known at that time, from the concentration camp. And, perhaps, only in Sweden, comprehending the events of the Second World War, Nelly Sachs truly realized the meaning of this event as a gift from above, as a period allotted to her to fulfill a certain mission: to capture, express, convey the pain and suffering of the dead and the dead, all those to whom life did not provide the same happy chance as she did.

She took on this huge burden of pain and suffering and carried it until the end of her life, not complaining about its exorbitance. Therefore, in the mature poetic heritage of Sachs there are no light or entertaining, playful or ironic poems - the burden of the past did not become easier over the years and even, on the contrary, oppressed more and more. Such preoccupation with one idea is not so common in poetry, but it was this sacrificial vocation that gave birth to elements of visionaryism in Nelly Sachs's poetry, made her look for special symbolism to express her pain, which is not always easy to understand. In Sacks' poems, not only the dead and the dead speak quite naturally, but all nature comes to life, actively participating in the mysteries of Life and Death: "wind of death", "nests of horror", "twig spasm", "ashes of anguish", "pain of sunset" , "knife of farewell", "doors of the night". Emotions, abstract concepts - everything is personified, takes on flesh: "fear is sucked by babies instead of mother's milk", "the worms of fear still eat us", "death has already made flutes from our hollow bones", "the smell of suffering". Such images do not tolerate speed reading. Not being completely innovative in the history of world poetry (since they are already found among the Symbolists, Expressionists, Imagists), they are at the same time included in the context of the cosmic cycle, where everything is connected with everything: “Through / night lava / like quiet / eyelids / winks the first cry / volcanoes of creation. / Among the branches of your body / forebodings / their chirping nests. / As a milkmaid / at dusk / you reach out with your fingers / to the innermost udder / of light” (“Dancer”, Die Tänzerin, translated by V. Mikushevich).

The quoted lines are taken from a poem about a "dancer", a ballerina, whose art Nelly Zaks interprets both in natural and spiritual terms. This is how the double optics of her poetry arises, the detailed metaphors of which (“as a milkmaid in the twilight you reach out with your fingers to the innermost udder of light”) abolish any raid of chance in the universe. What may seem private to an individual, without any basis, cannot be so, according to Sacks, on a universal scale. But how to understand and justify in this case the countless crimes and murders committed on Earth? As an inevitable component of the endless cosmic whirlwind?

Asking these most important questions in all her collections - from the early books In den Wohnungen des Todes (1947), The Eclipse of the Stars (Srernverdenklungen, 1949) to the latest, where mystical accents are strengthened - Sachs herself and indirectly answers them. “Sacrifice” is not only the state of the Jewish soul that went through the Holocaust, but also the suffering from the evil of all mankind. At the same time, recognizing oneself as a “victim”, according to Zaks, speaks of a somewhat simplified human interpretation of one’s place in the world, where nothing happens just like that, everything has not only material, but also spiritual (always difficult for human understanding) consequences.

In terms of the intensity of the experience of the war years, next to Sachs, one can put not only her West German contemporaries, but also writers from East Germany.

One of the most original poets and prose writers of the GDR was Johannes Bobrowski (Johannes Bobrowski, 1917-1965), who managed to publish only two collections of poems during his lifetime - The Time of the Sarmatians (Sarmatische Zeit, 1961) and Land of Shadows (Schattenland, 1962). However, he was immediately noticed throughout the German-speaking region, received literary awards from the FRG, Austria, Switzerland, and the GDR. In 1961, Bobrovsky expressed his special historical and cultural mission as follows: “I began to write poetry about Russian nature in 1941 near Lake Ilmen but as a stranger, as a German. The following topic arose from here: the Germans and the European East, for I come from an area near Memel, where Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Germans lived side by side, and among them all were Jews. This is a very long story of grief and guilt, which has been a grave sin on my people since the days of the German Order. It can neither be eliminated nor redeemed, but hope cannot be taken away from it—it is worth writing about in German verse.” Having felt in his youth an interest in the Slavic-Baltic culture, Bobrovsky was able during the war years, and then in Soviet captivity, to delve into his main topic. From the mid-1950s, he began to publish poetry in the magazine "Zinn und Form", immediately appearing as an original poet. His free verse-meditation originates in antiquity, but becomes itself thanks to the interpretations that German poetry gave him in the person of Klopstock and Hölderlin.

Having created in his imagination the country of Sarmatia, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Bobrovsky used the mythological and folklore heritage of the peoples living mainly in the Baltic region. Poems dedicated to the exterminated Slavic-Baltic tribe of the Prussians, having become a kind of organizing center for all of Bobrovsky's work, explained the meaning of his constant appeal to history. The past is an integral component of culture, it is not dead, it continues to live. And this sacred life must be felt with the heart, included in one's daily experience - without such a spiritual, even prayerful attitude to the past, a person has neither the present nor the future.

The religious beginning is characteristic not only of poetry, but also of Bobrovsky's prose - the novels "Levin's Mill" (Levins Mühle, 1964), "Lithuanian Claviers" (Litauische Klaviere, publ. 1966) 1965). The significance of Bobrovsky's work consisted primarily in the fact that, under the conditions of the GDR, this writer, in a highly artistic way, made it clear that class conflicts, although important, are only part of the huge problems that humanity faces on the path of its spiritual perfection. He showed that spiritual values ​​are preserved and passed on from generation to generation not by one class, but by the best representatives of all strata of society. Having accepted socialism as a humane idea alternative to fascism, Bobrovsky was never so naive as to assume that this idea had already been really realized in the GDR, as the East German party apparatchiks and many writers engaged by the state claimed.

The genre of documentary-autobiographical prose turned out to be very productive for East German literature, in which writers of the older generation summed up their lives. Some of these books, perhaps, have not lost their significance even today. The genre of authentic chronicle includes Bruno Apitz's (1900-1979) novel Naked Among Wolves (1958), translated into more than 30 languages ​​of the world. The secret of Apitz's success lies in the factual nature of the narrative (eight years spent in Buchenwald, saving a Polish child born in a concentration camp). The need of the then reader for plausible life pictures easily explains the success of The Adventures of Werner Holt (vols. 1–2, 1960–1963) by Dieter Noll (b. 1927) and a number of other works usually classified as a “novel of education” and a military novel. . Their authors, in particular, include Erwin Strittmatter (1912-1994). His most famous novel, by and large written from the standpoint of socialist realism, is Ole Bienkopp (1963). It was conceived under the influence of Sholokhov and is dedicated to collectivization in the GDR

Among the most interesting writers of the GDR was Franz Fühmann (1922-1984). Drafted into the ranks of the Wehrmacht, he ended up in Soviet captivity during the war. These years (1945-1949) made him a communist from a Nazi. Subsequently, Fuman said: "I belong to the generation that came to socialism ... through the awareness of the misanthropic crimes of the National Socialists." The main theme of Fümann's works is the exposure of fascism in all its manifestations (the story "Fellow Soldiers", 1955; the cycle of short stories "The Jewish Car", 1962; the stories "Barlach in Gustrow", 1963; "Oedipus the King", 1966; in the cinema, or Dream Island, 1970). The hope that the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU would lead to an improvement in the social situation in the GDR allowed Fuman to turn to contemporary topics and create a story about the difficult fate of the migrants Bohemia by the Sea (1962).

Fuhmann's evolution can be traced through three autobiographical books covering the period of German history starting in 1929 - The Jewish Car, Twenty-Two Days, or Half a Life (1973) and Above the Fire Pit (1982). If in the first book the writer reveals the soul-corrupting nature of fascism, those ideological myths with which the Nazis recruited their supporters in Germany and abroad (the writer’s childhood passed in the Sudeten Mountains in Bohemia), and in the second he tries to understand and at least fragmentarily express herself the essence of myth as a form of human consciousness, then the book “Above the fiery abyss” is already a synthesis of all previous searches: “Until now, I perceived the formation of a person as a consistent change in properties and qualities, even in development, but now ... I understand that this becoming is also simultaneity: you lose nothing of what you once were, and you already were what you will one day become. My childhood was removed from me for fifty years and became so incomprehensibly different to me, now suddenly closer than my today, from which I entered into the past ...

The comprehension and assimilation of the "mythical element" (this topic was the focus of the writer's keynote speech to the students of the University of Berlin in 1974) took the most diverse forms in Fuman's work. These are retellings-reworkings of mythological plots (with elements of unobtrusive modernization) - Reinecke the Fox (1964), Wooden Horse. The legend of the death of Troy and the wanderings of Odysseus "(1968)," The Song of the Nibelungs "(1971); essays on the most diverse problems of language, literature and culture - "Smoking cereals of horses in the Tower of Babel" (1978), "Fräulein Veronica Paulman from the suburbs of Pirna, or Something terrible about E. T. A. Hoffmann" (1979 ), an essay on Trakl (1981 - 1982), "My Bible" (1983); fairy tales.

The appeal to the past among the writers of the GDR was accompanied by a renewal of the poetics of historical prose. A prominent place among the authors who worked in this genre was occupied by Martin Stade (Martin Stade, p. 1931, novels on the theme of Prussian history of the 18th century - The King and His Fool, 1974; Stupid War, 1981), as well as Stefan Geim (Stefan Heym, Nast, name - Hellmuth Fliegel, Hellmuth Fliegel, 1913 - 2002), who published his works in English and German versions ("Agasfer", Ahasver, 1981). Heim's "Message of King David" (Der König David Bericht, 1972) "interspersed" criticism of Stalinism, which censorship realized only after the publication of a novel parodying "A Short Course in the History of the CPSU (b)".

A notable figure in the literature of the GDR in the 1950s and 1960s was Anna Seghers (Anna Seghers, 1900-1983), since 1952, she headed the Writers' Union of the GDR Willy-nilly Segers - her fame was brought by the novels "The Seventh Cross" (Das siebte Kreuz, 1942 ) and "Transit" (Transit, 1944) - was supposed to "serve as an example", to be a conductor of the Communist Party line in literature. Such are the novels Decision (1959) and Trust (1968), panorama works made in accordance with the principles of socialist realism. And yet the historical story on the theme of the French Revolution "Light on the Gallows" (1961), the documentary book of stories "The Power of the Weak" (1965), built on autobiographical material, the story "The Real Blue" (1967) testified that Zegers did not stopped creative search.

Zegers had a certain influence on young writers. It is noticeable in the novel by Christa Wolf (Christa Wolf, p. 1929) "Split Sky" (Der geteilte Himmel, 1963). Depicting a seemingly private plot, the tragic love of Rita Seidel and Manfred Herfurt, K. Wolf managed to weave it into the context of the “split sky” - the tragedy of “two Germanys”, although it is comprehended in line with the official understanding of events. It should be noted that in the 1960s, psychological prose, the study of the contradictory nature of human nature, gradually began to assert itself in the GDR (the official attitude allowed only a “positive” approach to it). The first major works of this plan were the novels by K. Wolf "Reflections on Krista T." (Nachdenken über Christa T. 1968) and G. de Bruyn "Buridan's donkey" (1968).

K. Wolf tells about the life and fate of an outstanding woman who never realized her talents. But is it only because it happened that Krista T. died of cancer at 35? Of course, the writer was interested in another question, the question of whether a society can be considered truly humane if it sets any goals for its members, except for the main one - the knowledge of each person himself and the meaning of life? Starting with this novel, Wolf is becoming more and more convinced that the modern writer no longer has the right to build himself a "know-it-all" or stand in the pose of an uninterested observer. In an effort to be extremely honest in the transfer of her experience, the writer developed the theory of "subjective authenticity" and tried to implement it in the novel Images of Childhood (Kindsheimutter, 1976). The three leading points of view intersect in each of the 18 chapters. The reader sees the events of the 1930s and 1940s a) through the eyes of Nelly Jordan, a girl born in Landsberg in 1929 in the family of a shopkeeper; b) through the eyes of the same Nelly and her relatives, now citizens of the GDR, who in 1971 go to Landsberg (now a Polish town); c) finally, through the eyes of Christa Wolf herself, who, together with Nelly, is trying to connect the past and the present. The perspective of a "constantly repeating moral act" helps the writer raise the question of the price of memory. Nelli's memory (like the memory of many Germans) says nothing about concentration camps, although they were reported in all Nazi newspapers (Nelli's parents look through them before going to bed). In other words, memory often acts selectively - it completely erases what is unprofitable or even dangerous for a person in all respects, including deeply personal ones.

Having created this novel, K. Wolf for a while departs from modern themes, plunging first into the history of German romanticism, and then into the era of antiquity. The story "Kassandra" (Kassandra, 1983) is a work of a historical and mythological nature, in which the writer (following in many ways in the footsteps of T. Mann) seeks to psychologize and modernize the myth of the Trojan War. It is built as a memoir of the daughter of the Trojan king Priam Cassandra, endowed with the gift of clairvoyance. What is the war for? For a ghost, for a nonexistent phantom? Cassandra, analyzing the prerequisites for the campaign against Troy, gradually begins to see their essence. At first, it simply foresees the facts, but cannot comprehend their causes and consequences and, therefore, cannot offer any alternative to the inevitable impending terrible events. However, then, gradually freed from the prejudices of his class and his time, he gains spiritual freedom, knowledge of himself as a woman, as well as popular aspirations.

In the summer of 1990, the story “What Remains” (Was bleibt) was published, in which Wolf reproduced episodes of her life in the late 1970s, when she was already in opposition to power. Without exaggerating her personal courage, she describes police surveillance, recreates the atmosphere of threats, wiretapping, perusal of letters, shows how different people behaved then, depicts the spirit and style of the totalitarian regime, which has stepped over not only reasonable, but also all conceivable limits. It is this story, completed, as noted in the manuscript, in November 1989, that helps today to understand why the events in the GDR unfolded so rapidly - the wave of hatred for the party-bureaucratic apparatus turned out to be stronger than the feeling of fear on which in recent decades (especially after April 1985) kept the regime of E. Honecker...

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Günter Grass in 1972, twenty-seven years after Heinrich Böll. During this considerable period, none of the Germans received the most prestigious international award. Böll, as you know, in the harsh post-war years took on the mission of reminding the Germans not only of the cruelties and wounds of the war, but also that the Germans themselves were guilty of these cruelties, and for them repentance and purification are no less important than restoration destroyed cities. Grass is ten years younger than Böll, and this difference affected their work. Böll is somehow religious, Grass is indifferent to Christianity and much more ironic.

At the same time, there are two features that bring these writers together: firstly, it is an interest in their roots, the theme of the “small motherland”, and secondly, they were never afraid to express what they were convinced of, and this firmness of convictions allowed tell them the bitter truth in the 1950s, when both were at the zenith of fame, and in subsequent decades, when they, as if competing with each other, took on grotesque and sometimes very annoying politicians and townsfolk plots in which vivid metaphors coexisted with naturalistic written out details.

Günther Grass was born in 1927. His birthplace was Danzig, in 1793-1918. owned by Prussia and renamed from Gdansk to Danzig, under the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, it received a special status of the "free city of Danzig" under the control of the League of Nations; after World War II, the city regained its Polish name. Already this fact could be enough to leave a noticeable imprint on the work of Grass.

Many German writers of the 20th century were born and raised in lands with a mixed (Polish-German, Czech-German, Serbo-Lusatian-German, German-French) population: K. Wolff is from Silesia, F. Fuhmann is from Bohemia, E. Strittmatter from the Serbian Lusatia, J. Bobrovsky - from the Balto-Slavic "Sarmatia". In the case of Grass, the situation is further complicated by the fact that not only Germans and Poles lived in his homeland, but also Kashubians, who represent a special ethnic group of Poles (Kashubian is considered a dialect of Polish, but retains noticeable differences from it). The Kashubians have their own history and their own literature. Grass, brought up in a German-speaking environment, introduced to German culture, at the same time turned out to be involved in the Poles and Kashubians - his maternal grandmother was a Kashubian. Isn't that why the figure of the grandmother in Grasse's first famous novel, The Tin Drum, is so colorful in a special way?

The main milestones of Grass's life path: childhood in Danzig in the family of a middle-income owner of a food shop, school and interrupted studies at the gymnasium, early conscription into the army, first to the "labor front", and then to the real one (1944), wounded in April 1945 and , upon recovery, American captivity; then there is a struggle for survival: Grass is a hired worker in the village, a miner in a potash mine near Düsseldorf, an assistant to a stonemason who made cemetery monuments. Since childhood, having a craving for literature and drawing, the young man - as soon as the opportunity arose - enters the art academy in Düsseldorf, is engaged in graphics and sculpture (1949-1952); in 1954-1956 he continues his art education in Berlin. In 1954, Grass received his first literary prize for surrealist poems, designed by his own illustrations; in 1956 his first art exhibition was held in Stuttgart. In the 1950s, Grasse traveled a lot: Italy (1951), France (1952), Spain (1955), Poland (several times in 1958 and 1959); in 1956-1960 he lived mainly in Paris. In the Paris years, the novel The Tin Drum was written, one of the chapters of which Grass read "for trial" at a meeting of the "Group of 47" and was already awarded the Group Prize in 1958 for this. The novel itself, published in 1959, became a literary scandal, the subject of ten years of fierce debate, marking a radically new stage in the history of German literature with its appearance.

The literature of the FRG of the first post-war decade, describing the experience of the generation that went through National Socialism, the war, the experience of one's own guilt and repentance, appealed for the most part to traditional values ​​(Christianity or faith in the democratic values ​​of "goodness, beauty and truth," as the poet XIX V. L. Uland). Anti-fascist writers who believed in the promise of socialism returned after emigration mainly to the GDR (Becher, Brecht, Zegers, and others). In The Tin Drum and the subsequent novels Cats and Mice (Katzund Maus, 1961) and the novel Dog Years (Hundejahre, 1963) - these works constituted the so-called "Danzig trilogy" - Grass shows a demonstrative distrust of any there was no “ideology”, moreover, it seemed to many readers that there was nothing sacred for the writer, because he ridicules the church, marriage bonds, homeland and even love, bringing all forms of traditionalism to the point of absurdity.

I must say that Grass has a lot to do with the absurdists. But if the "theater of the absurd", as a rule, was limited to modeling situations of loss of meaning, then for Grass, absurdist exposure is only one of the components of the narrative. The specificity of his narrative style lies in the fact that a grotesque-absurd, implausible in itself plot or episode unfolds against the backdrop of very specific socio-historical, political, geographical and topographical circumstances. Grass studied the grotesque naturalism of descriptions from Rabelais, Grimmelshausen, and also from his older contemporary A. Döblin (in particular, the novel "Berlin, Alexanderplatz"), in contrast to which he creates a much stronger gap between what is narrated about him and what , as the story goes. The reader of Grass constantly feels that he is being played, but they do it so subtly that it brings him aesthetic pleasure.

The narration in the novel "The Tin Drum" (Die Blechtrommel, 1959) is conducted on behalf of the main character, Oscar Macerath. He appears before the reader in several guises at once. They all converge in 1954, when Matzerath celebrates his thirtieth birthday. True, Oscar "celebrates" this event in a lunatic asylum: he is suspected of murder, but the court found him mentally deranged. However, as it turns out, the hero is mentally healthy and organized a solitary confinement for himself: he is fed up with life in society, and he uses his imprisonment to write detailed memoirs. They cover not only thirty years of the life of Macerate himself, but also the stories of dozens of people whose life paths intersected with the fate of the protagonist. The author endows Oscar with unique abilities: he begins to perceive the world consciously already in the womb, and at the age of three he decides to stop his growth at the level of 94 centimeters in order to remain “himself”, to free himself from the compulsion to play “adult games”. Remaining an underdeveloped, stubborn child in the eyes of the "senior" (even speech and reading are allegedly difficult for him), Oscar develops a heightened observation ability, reaching clairvoyance (for example, he is able to talk about events that happened long before his birth). Macerate's "clairvoyance" allows the author to vary the scale of the narrative all the time, as if the microscope in the hands of the narrator could at any moment become a telescope. But neither the microscopic nor the telescopic representation of certain events suffers from edification - Grass carefully hides that he is smarter than his hero. At the age of three, he is given a tin drum. With his help, he learned to express all his feelings and emotions, which later allows him to turn into a virtuoso, with great success touring the country with solo concerts.

Oscar is not only a brilliant drummer. If desired, he can make sounds of a certain frequency that destroy everything that breaks - from glass and chandeliers to porcelain vases and glasses. The main task that Grass solves with the help of his Simplicissimus is the "alienation effect" familiar to the reader from the aesthetics of B. Brecht. We are talking about the intention of the author to free the mind of the reader from all sorts of clichés, conventional wisdom. And they affect in a kaleidoscopic sequence of episodes the entire history of Germany in the 20th century, the relations of different nations (Germans, Poles, Jews). But Grass doesn't stop there. Achieving a grotesque-satirical and burlesque-comic effect with the help of an outsider hero in exposing any ideologemes (national socialist, liberal democratic, communist, etc.), Grass at the same time casts doubt on his hero himself and his rebellion, which is on verification turns out to be only a specific form of philistine conformism. Thus, he strikes at the German burgher, who, having survived all the wars and upheavals, again settled comfortably in his “Biedermeier nest”, without being able to truly comprehend the lessons of German history.

In the years of writing the "Danzig trilogy", Grass himself hardly had a positive program. The "tin drum" originated in the "Adenauer era". It aroused active rejection in Grass, and as an artist, he found an adequate form for his protest, which ensured reader interest and provoked public consciousness. It is no coincidence that some right-wing politicians publicly demanded a ban on the first Grassian novels.

From Grass's subsequent prose, connected with the development of artistic techniques found in The Tin Drum and in the Danzig trilogy as a whole, the novella "Meeting in Telgte" (Das Treffen in Telgte, 1979) is of the greatest interest. war (1618-1648): the most important German writers gathered to discuss the "crisis of language", that is, that tragic situation of national catastrophe, which Grass himself witnessed, adjusted for time. In this story, just as clearly, but even more concentrated than in The Tin Drum, two interrelated qualities of Grass's personality appeared: liveliness of talent and intellectualism. For Grass, the joy of fabulation (in German fabulieren - to compose, write, narrate, tell, invent, fantasize) is inextricably linked with the need for an intellectual game, in bringing to the narrative everything that arises in the mind of the writer as the plot is constructed (regardless of the complexity of these associative moves, their accessibility for the reader). As a result, the story lives a full-blooded life, unlike many other super-intellectual, but at the same time lifeless, labored works.

Precisely because of his vitality, Grass, it seems, could not be satisfied for a long time with just one statement of acute social questions or an all-pervading denial. Being at the beginning of his career rather apolitical, the writer in the 1960s was actively involved in the political struggle, showing truly inexhaustible energy in the election propaganda of the SPD and its leader Willy Brandt. In the 1965 elections, Grass traveled the length and breadth of Germany, speaking to voters dozens of times. The main pathos of his speeches was reduced to the fight against extremism in all its forms, right and left. The novels Under Local Anesthesia (Örtlich betäubt, 1969), From the Diary of a Snail (Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke, 1972), and Flounder (Der Butt, 1977) became a reflection of his new social experience. This series can also include "The Wide Field" (Das weite Feld, 1995), a novel in which the results of German reunification are comprehended. In the first two novels from this list, Grass's desire to change his previous style of narration, as well as to deprive his characters of the mask of "outsiderness", to make them active participants in socio-political battles, is especially noticeable. The writer, as it were, consciously “grounds” conflicts and images, makes them ordinary in the true sense, at the risk of descending to everyday writing. Much later (in the Nobel speech, in a speech to students in 1990), Grass himself summed up his attempts to approach traditional writing: Moreover, he must expose himself to the vicissitudes of the current existence, intervene in what is happening and take one side or another. The risk of such interference and such partiality is known: the writer is in danger of losing the chosen distance; his tongue will have to live from hand to mouth; the poverty of the environment can narrow and curb the power of his imagination accustomed to free flight; he doesn't have to breathe. This risk has accompanied me for decades. But what would a writing profession be without risk? (hereinafter - translated by A. Stavinskaya, S. Sukharev).

In the novel Under Local Anesthesia, at first glance, nothing remains of Grasse's early manner. The characters are ordinary even at their best, moreover, they are all "notorious", focused on some minor problems. This time the story is told on behalf of a German language and history teacher in one of the Berlin gymnasiums, Eberhard Starush, a native of Danzig; his biography surprisingly resembles the biography of Oscar Macerat, but only Shtarush is completely normal - he is a good teacher, passionate about his subjects, sincerely concerned about the fate of his students. It makes no sense to retell the plot of the novel, which has been repeatedly published in Russian, it is much more important to emphasize now what is new, which Grass manages to achieve with the help of everyday grounded narration. Perhaps, for contrast, it is only worth recalling that if Oskar Macerath writes down a chronicle of his life in a psychiatric hospital, then Shtarush tells about his life and school affairs to a dentist, either sitting in a dental chair, then by phone, then mentally (when "local anesthesia" does not allow him to move his tongue). It is important to keep in mind the historical background of the story.

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, there was an increase in leftist movements in the West, which reached their apogee in youth demonstrations and riots of 1968-1969 (in the Warsaw Pact countries, this was reflected in its own way in the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia), which were transformed then into the numerous terrorist attacks of the next decade.

Studienrat Starusch (his last name is significant: German Starusch - “old, old man”, a person who has seen a lot in his lifetime) seeks to take the position of an objective observer, that is, he tries to understand the arguments of the left-wing radical youth; he cannot fail to recognize the justice of her criticism of the social situation in the FRG, a criticism directed primarily against the "bourgeois" consciousness. However, based on long studies in history and his own experience, Shtarush realized that a mass protest, no matter how fair it may be, leads to consequences that are diametrically opposed to the aspirations of the protesters. Moreover, the energy of the masses, diverted after a riot into a calm channel, can then be used against these masses. The philistine consciousness (and Grass is inclined to consider mass indignation and enthusiasm as one of the manifestations of the philistine consciousness) does not go beyond its immediate needs and benefits, it. unable to perceive events in a historical perspective. It is this feeling that Grass tries to instill in his readers, from the 1960s to the present day. In a number of his novels, he, as it were, predicts in advance the possible development of the socio-political situation in Germany, and these forecasts come into conflict with the philistine consciousness, with the goals pursued by individual political parties. In his Nobel speech, Grass, not without bitterness, noted: “Books can offend, cause rage, even hatred. The accusations thrown against the country out of love for it were perceived as polluting the native nest.

The central question solved by Grass in the novel "Under Local Anesthesia" is the question of the relationship between conformism and nonconformity. The writer rejects the extreme manifestations of both, but where and how to find the "golden mean" between these extremes? Grass's hope is the intellect, embodied in the novel by the high school student Philip Scherbaum, whom the writer does not idealize at all, but who, unlike other characters, provides the opportunity for spiritual growth, analysis (in the context of his own searches) of historical events and different points of view on life. Good characters in literature, with rare exceptions, are sketchy. Sherbaum is also schematic to a certain extent. Feeling this, in his later work, Grass again and again makes attempts to return to the "vitality" of his early novels.

The writer repeatedly emphasized, speaking about the driving motives of his work, that the memory of his “small homeland” was of great importance to him: “Telling stories, I tried - no, not to regain the destroyed, lost city of Danzig, but at least call it with a spell” . The theme of Danzig (Gdańsk) still does not let go of Grass, bringing to life the most full-blooded episodes in the fantastic dystopian novels "Flounder" and "The Rat" (Die Rättin, 1986) or capturing the entire narrative space, as, for example, in the romantically touching a story about the late love of two widowers: the German Alexander and the Polish Alexandra (“The Cry of the Firebell”, Unkenrufe, 1992). Grass’s last large-format work, My Age (Mein Jahrhundert, 1999), did not do without this theme, where in one hundred short stories (one short story for each year of the twentieth century), he tries to fashion a three-dimensional image of the 20th century through history “in fragments”. generally. This panorama is by no means comforting. In the book, a motif sounds intrusive, which can be briefly formulated with the help of a well-known syllogism: history teaches only that it teaches nothing. He is particularly reminiscent of himself in several short stories that recreate fictitious conversations about the First World War by writers Ernst Junger (1895-1998) and Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970). Nevertheless, Grass considers it possible to complete the book with a poetic hymn to human memory, "reviving" his long-dead mother in the last short story and forcing her to speak in the first person about her life, about her son (Günter Grass), about how she is going to celebrate her birthday. centenary in the circle of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The idea of ​​the futility of history, which is characteristic of the experience of the “end of the century”, turned out to be consonant with not only prosaic, but also dramatic quests. Such, for example, is the work of Christoph Hein (Christoph Hein, p. 1944), who began his literary career in the GDR as a staff writer at the Volksbühne theater in Berlin. On his stage, in 1974, his first drama, Shletel, or Whatever It Means, was staged as an experiment. It was followed by "Cromwell" (1978), "Lassalle asks Mr. Herbert about Sona" (post. 1980, Germany), "The True Story of A Kyu" (1983), "Passage" (1988). Hine abandoned most of the trappings of modernist theater and took the path of psychological development of character, an extraordinary personality, personifying "transitivity".

Extraordinary personalities appear in the image of Hine as people with exorbitant ambitions. Having built a certain model of the world in their minds, they never realize it, becoming, as a rule, a powerless toy in the hands of historical forces far from any idealism and “passionate power”. In the drama about Cromwell, the title character, who at first dreamed of creating a new and more just social order, gradually "chops off his wings" and ultimately fights to keep - no matter what means - power. But Hine is not satisfied with the psychological development of these constantly recurring incidents in history: all his plays are written not so much about history as for the present and for contemporaries, and he very carefully makes this clear by introducing the latest realities into the lines of his characters, which correct the perception of the reader and viewer. However, Hine also displays the “transitional epochs” in a tragicomic form. In the drama "Knights of the Round Table" (Die Ritter Tafelrunde, 1989), the "knights" are depicted at the last stage of degradation: none of them even wants to hear about the Holy Grail, and the Cup itself appears as a kind of phantom behind which the "knights" senselessly chased all their lives, gradually ceasing to understand the meaning and goals of their exploits. And only King Arthur formulates an idea that is apparently close to the author of the drama himself: he does not so much regret the loss of the idea of ​​the Grail, but looks to the future, promising a new “transitional period” and the idea of ​​a new Grail, which needs to be worked on now, soberly rethinking the past.

Alternative literature made itself known in the GDR as early as the 1970s. Then its development went "increasingly". Western researchers are inclined to interpret this process as a natural consequence of the way of life of an industrial society, the consumer consciousness of which contributes to the development of individualism and alienation. But when considering the subcultures that took shape in the GDR, it must be remembered that, unlike the FRG, they arose in semi-legal, and most often in illegal conditions, which automatically gave them a political coloring, made it difficult to integrate into the dominant mass culture (in the West, this integration, although not without friction, it happened and is happening), and also led to an irreconcilable struggle of officialdom with "modernism", the underground and other forms of forbidden art.

With the similarity of postmodernism in the GDR and the FRG (for example, the work of Uwe Jonson, Uwe Johnson, 1934-1984, who lived in West Berlin since 1959) - in both countries it became a reaction to the next crisis of the rationalist model of the world - we must not forget that this crisis seen and captured from opposite sides. If fundamental pluralism (the relativity of all values), the diversity of language games, and intertextuality are recognized as the main features of postmodernity, then it is obvious that works imbued with a similar spirit - in the case when they were written in the GDR - could pass through censorship slingshots only in the 1980s (in particular, the novel by F. R. Freese "The New Worlds of Alexander", 1983). Friz's novel The Road to Obliadoch (1966, published in Germany), which fits perfectly into the framework of the philosophy and aesthetics of postmodernism, came to the reader of the GDR in 1989.

Attempts to legitimize at least part of alternative literature in the GDR produced only one noticeable result: from 1987 to 1991, the famous critic and writer Gerhard Wolf (b. a whole generation of young poets declared itself (B. Papenfus-Gorek, R. Shedlinski, J. Factor, G. Kahold, S. Döring, U. Preuss, A. Katziohl, I. Ek, J. Nibelyjuts, T. Kunst) . Despite the individuality of these authors, they are united by the fact that they sought both to “withdraw themselves” from the political and cultural life of the GDR and to go beyond the rational mentality that prevails in the modern world. G. Wolf, who constantly wrote about these poets, believed that the search they conducted was closest to the traditions of the German surrealists (K. Schwitters, G. Arp) and V. Khlebnikov.

Apparently, the most striking demonstration of the artistic possibilities of German-language postmodernism is the novel by Karl Mikel (Karl Mickel, 1935 - 2001) "Friends of Lachmund" (Lachmunds Freunde). The author worked on it in 1968-1983, but the publishing houses of the GDR were afraid to publish it, and the prose writer refused to transfer his offspring "to the side". In 1988, Mikel revised the text somewhat, and the novel was published in 1990 by the Mitteldeutscher Verlag publishing house in the sixth volume of Mikel's collected works. The epigraph from Jean Paul's "Titan" is characteristic: "Yes, we do not have a present, and the past must give rise to the future without it." The beginning of the first chapter already contains, in fact, the whole idea: “The story of three men will be told; their paths widen, and yet they remain friends. One is named Baer, ​​another is Günther Hammer, the third is Eckart Immanuel Lachmund. Amazing women and exciting images of girls gliding past them, crossing their paths or turning on them. Each of these persons is itself the center of the moving circle. Where will they meet, these three? Where the circle of air seems to thicken, in the eye of the typhoon, where cyclones are studied.” Further, regarding the cyclones, of course, nothing is explained.

The novel combines maximum specificity (a detailed description of the world of objects), the deployment of a "stream of consciousness" of numerous characters, mysterious verbal and syntactic constructions. This variation in writing creates a narrative tension designed to outline the contours of some universal context. It is important for the author to illustrate the thesis that everything in the universe is fluid, devoid of a fixed place. That is why Mikel “launches” cinema, which has neither beginning nor end, and where the natural, natural (like the end of the GDR?) and random, bizarre (the forecast of the end of the GDR did not occur to even the most sophisticated analysts) at any moment can swap places. Everything illogical, according to Mikel, is absolutely logical. Such a deep consciousness constantly pushes the characters to unforeseen reactions and unforeseen actions. And this whole motley world, combining rational reflection and spontaneity of impulse, rejoices and mourns, pretends to be able to comprehend something and laughs at this stupidity. Nevertheless, almost everything rational constantly demonstrates its immorality. The irrational beginning looks more natural against its background, but when confronted with rationality, it cannot substantiate anything.

Michel's novel is a kind of experimental platform on which postmodernism has a chance for self-destruction. Most of the German postmodernists, lacking the talent of Miquel, were, so to speak, fragmentary rather than total postmodernism. Many of their works, even those that have become international bestsellers, bear a clear imprint of secondary: plot, figurative, compositional. Often they are saved only by a detective intrigue, neo-Gothic, associated with the manias of modern villains - either a kind of Dracula, or the Antichrists. The most sensational novels of this type include "Perfumer" (Das Parfüm, 1985) by Patrik Süskind (Patrik Süskind, p. 1949). It is subtitled "The Story of a Murderer" and is a remake of E. T. A. Hoffmann's novel "Mademoiselle de Scudery".

If we talk about the German theater of the second half of the 20th century as a whole, then it should be recognized that its evolution was marked by a dialogue with the ideas of B. Brecht. At first, the emphasis was on mastering the techniques of "epic" and "dialectical" theater - the peak of Brecht's European and world popularity (the Berliner Ensemble troupe, led by Helena Weigel, who cultivated the original Brechtian beginning) fell on the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, the greatest playwrights developed their own poetics in the Brecht polemics. In the GDR, this was especially difficult. Most of the controversial plays in the 1970s did not hit the stage there, were not published (many dramas by H. Müller were first staged in the West and returned to the GDR only years later). An acutely conflicted play could be rehearsed in the theater, but never wait for the premiere. If it was allowed before the premiere, then a great success with the audience was, as a rule, evidence against the play, and it was immediately removed from the repertoire. At the same time, the dramaturgy of the GDR produced during this period at least one author of European renown (H. Müller) and several of an all-German scale (P. Hax, F. Braun, W. Plenzdorf, R. Strahl, K. Hein).

Heiner Müller (1929-1995), who had already declared himself as the brightest successor of Brecht's epic theater since the 1950s, directed his efforts in the 1960s to an experimental search for new forms of intellectual theater. To an even greater extent than in Brecht's theater, the technique of "alienating" the conflict is used by him to unexpectedly confront readers and spectators with their everyday experience. After sharply criticizing the dramas The Settler (1964) and Construction (1965, post. 1980), in which official criticism revealed a “lack of party spirit” and “historical pessimism”, Müller departs from the direct depiction of modernity, turns to plays in ancient, mythological and historical subjects. These are Philoktetes (Philoktet, 1965, post. 1968), Hercules 5 (Herakles 5, 1966, post. 1974), Oedipus Tyrann (Ödipus Tyrann, according to Sophocles and Hölderlin, 1967), Prometheus ( Prometheus, according to Aeschylus, 1968, post. 1969), “Macbeth” (Macbeth, according to Shakespeare, 1972), “Mauser” (Mauser, 1970, post, in the USA 1975, published in Germany 1975), “Germany. Death in Berlin” (Germania Tod in Berlin, 1971, published in Germany, 1977, post. 1979), “The Life of Gundling. Friedrich of Prussia. Dream Dream Cry Lessing "(Leben Gundlings Friedrich von Preußen Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei, 1977, post. 1979), "Hamlet Machine" (Hamletmaschine, 1977, post. 1978), "Task" (Der Auftrag, based on the novel by A. Zegers "Light on the gallows", 1979, post. 1980), etc.

The departure from modern themes did not mean that Müller's plays lost their topicality. Thus, in Philoctetes and other dramas, he shows how moral conflicts are conditioned by socio-political circumstances. Odysseus, Achilles, Neoptolemus, other heroes, being drawn into the political events of their time, must either die or act immorally. Historical epochs, within which politics can only be immoral, Muller designated as the "prehistory" of mankind. With the advent of socialism, he argued in the 1970s (and partly in the 1980s), humanity entered the "historical" phase of its development - a real opportunity appeared in the world to bring politics and morality closer together, but it is realized not automatically, but through contradictory human deeds.

All these plays have gained great popularity as a one-of-a-kind attempt at a "synthetic" approach to modern civilization: Müller does not believe that the solution of the most painful problems of our time is possible within the framework of only one single social system, ideology. Sometimes this pushes him to despair, the creation of things close in spirit to postmodernism ("Hamlet Machine", "Quartet"). In Hamlet Machine, Müller deconstructs two traditions of perception of Hamlet: the Brechtian (Hamlet is an idealist who becomes a cynic) and Nietzsche's (Hamlet as a man who has discovered the destructive forces of modern history). “It is unlikely that anyone has managed to create a more gloomy parable about the tragedy of the consciousness of an Eastern European intellectual ... whose hopes for democratic socialism are collapsing after the suppression of a whole host of anti-Stalinist uprisings,” wrote one of the critics about the Muller tragedy. But in essence, in this play, as in other late dramas by Muller, it is rather about something else - about the collapse of the rationalist model of world perception, a model that humanity is not yet able to abandon and which, therefore, will apparently try to reanimate. .

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was officially torn down, since August 13, 1961, not only tightly dividing two Berlins and two states, but also a symbol of the separation of two warring world systems. On October 3, 1990, an agreement was signed on the accession of the GDR to the FRG. The 45-year experiment of building a new society on German soil was thus completed. The integration of the literature of the GDR into the literature of the FRG began, and continues to this day. But discussions about the possibility of combining both literatures, which were very intensive until the mid-1990s, today no longer attract German society. The writers themselves continue to comprehend the zigzags of German history, the results of the 20th century. Among the most notable works of this kind are the novel The Wide Field (1995) and the epic in the short stories My Age (1999) by Günter Grass, the six-voiced novel Medea by Christa Wolff (Medea, 1996), the autobiographical prose of Hermann Kant and Günter de Bruijn, essays and prose by Martin Walser, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Wolf Biermann's Zongs, and three novels by Christoph Hein: Playing Napoleon (Das Napoleonspiel, 1993), From the Beginning (Von allem Anfang an, 1997), Willenbrock (2000).

Christoph Hein, who emerged as a playwright in the 1970s, later published the novels Der fremde Freund (1982), Horns Ende (1985), the collection of short stories Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 1980), the story "The Accompanist" (Der Tangospieler, 1989), collections of political, philosophical and literary essays. Hein, the son of a priest, could not get a complete secondary education in the GDR and graduated from a gymnasium in West Berlin, but it was there, in his own words, that “I better understood some of the features of life in the GDR, I began to appreciate the calmness and poise of our people, their genuine interest to each other—qualities that are much more difficult to develop in a profit-oriented society.” Hein later saw how the East German state was also changing in a "profit-oriented" direction. Hine never concealed his critical position in relation to "real socialism", but in discussions with Western colleagues he did not forget to remind him of his commitment to socialist ideas. In 1983, arguing with the unscrupulousness of the “new left”, he stated the following in one of the Hamburg magazines: “We are so behind here that even Stalin is still not a “dead dog” for us. He remains an open wound of the socialist movement. All the mistakes and crimes, all the bloody deeds of socialist history were and are our mistakes, our crimes, our bloody deeds. We have no choice, for it is... a reality... inseparable from us."

The characters in Hine's works are always inscribed in a specific life situation. Criticism (in the GDR and in the West), predominantly sociologically oriented, as a rule, limited itself to its analysis. And only a few readers paid attention to the layer of his works, which is more important for the writer himself. At their center is a person who, nevertheless, did not accidentally, not without his own * will, fall into one or another whirlpool of history. Hine reveals with equal depth both the mechanism of the functioning of society and its institutions (as well as the impact of this most powerful mechanism on the mass consciousness), and the subtle structure of the personality itself. All her life, day after day, she faces this or that choice, which is influenced by many conscious and unconscious factors.

If the unconscious plays such an important role in the fate of each individual, then it cannot but influence the whole society, the formation of its historical memory, where the foreseen and the unforeseen intersect. The latter refers to "random", alternative ways of social evolution. Unpredictably declaring themselves, forcing themselves to be reckoned with, they demand (in hindsight) a rewriting of the past, a kind of false motivation. By pitting two types of lies (the rational and the irrational) against each other, Hine essentially encourages his readers to abandon the "two systems" opposition and focus on the essential problems of human existence. This motif runs, in particular, through Hein's latest novel Willenbrock (it tells about the fate of an engineer from the GDR who became a successful entrepreneur in the Federal Republic).

Literature

History of literature of Germany / Ed. ed. I. M. Fradkin. - M., 1980.

Khotynskaya G. A. The novels of Siegfried Lenz. - Saratov, 1985.

Zachevsky E. A. "Group 47" and the formation of West German literature. - L., 1989.

History of Literature in Eastern Europe after the Second World War: T. 1 - 2. - M., 1995-2001.

Gladkov I. V. Prose of Christoph Hein in the context of German literature of the last quarter of the 19th century. — M.; Novopolotsk, 2002.

Reinecke (Vinogradova) Yu. S. Historical novel of postmodernism (Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Russia). - M., 2002.

Tendenzen der deutschen Literatur seit 1945 / Hrsg. von Th. Koebner. — Stuttgart, 1971.

Kröll F. Gruppe 47. - Stuttgart, 1979.

Schröter K Heinrich Boll. — Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1982.

Reich-Ranicki M. Mehr als ein Dichter. Uber Heinrich Boll. — Koln, 1986.

WormwegH. Gunther Grass. — Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1986.

HilzingerS. Christa Wolf. — Stuttgart, 1986.

Hornigk Th. Christa Wolf. - Berlin, 1989.

Emmerich W. Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR. 1945-1949. — Frankfurt a. M., 1989.

Der deutsch-deutsche Literaturstreit oder "Freunde, es spricht sich schlenht mit gebundener Zunge" / Hrsg. von K. Deiritz and H. Krauss. — Hamburg; Zurich, 1991.

Schnell R. Gechichte der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945. - Stuttgart; Weimar, 1993.

Neuhaus V. Günter Grass. — Stuttgart, 1993.

Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart / Hrsg. von W. Barner. —München, 1994.

Arnold H. L. Die westdeutsche Literatur 1945 bis 1990. Ein kritischer Überblick. — Munich, 1995.

Deutsche Literatur seit 1945. Texte und Bilder. Von Volker Bohn. — Frankfurt a. M., 1995.

Deutsche Literatur zwischen 1945 and 1995: eine Sozialgeschichte / Hrsg. von H. A. Glaser. — Bern; Stuttgart, 1997.

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Notes

1 In addition to those named, this outstanding poet, who published his first collection in Vienna and then lived in Paris since 1948, owns the following books of poems: From Threshold to Threshold (Von Schwelle zu Schwelle, 1955), The Grid of Language (Sprachgitter, 1959), Rose to Nobody (Die Niemandrose, 1963), Change of Breath (Atemwende, 1967), Threads of the Sun (Fadensonnen, 1968), Inevitability of Light (Lichtzwang, 1970). Unlike the late Benn, with whom he is often compared, Celan perceives the poetic word not as a sophisticated emblematic that hides the emptiness of the world, but as a source of supreme value (“Among all the losses, only one remains achievable, close and unlost: language”), which he calls "you".

In the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th century. continued development of realism. Realism does not disassociate itself from aesthetic quests, it tends - often in obvious interaction with other artistic phenomena - to be analytic, voluminous in its view of reality, to its adequate artistic depiction. New forms of artistic embodiment of reality appear, the range of topics and problems expands. So, if in the realistic works of the XIX century. the social and domestic beginning prevailed, then at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. it begins to be replaced by philosophical-intellectual, spiritual-personal issues.

A special place among the artistic phenomena of the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th century. occupies neo-romanticism. Rejection of reality; a strong personality, often lonely, guided in his activities by altruistic ideals; acuteness of ethical problems; maximalism and romanticization of feeling, passion; tension of plot situations; the priority of the expressive beginning over the descriptive, the emotional over the rational; an active appeal to the events of the past, legends and legends, fantasy, grotesque, exotic, the cultivation of adventurous and detective stories are the characteristic features of neo-romanticism, which reached its climax in the 90s of the XIX century.

Second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries - a rather short period in comparison with some previous historical and cultural epochs, sometimes spanning more than one century. Nevertheless, it is quite comparable with these and other stages of the cultural development of mankind, for it included a number of events of world significance and turned out to be marked by outstanding achievements in the art of different countries.

The causes, meaning and scale of the crisis experienced by human consciousness in that period were substantiated by many philosophers. The works of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer were widely spread. Under the influence of A. Schopenhauer, the philosophical views of Friedrich Nietzsche were formed, who had a huge impact on the art of the word at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The impact on the literary and artistic world was also very significant, especially already at the beginning of the 20th century, by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, the creator of intuitionism - the doctrine of intuition as the main way of knowing the essence of life, and the Austrian psychiatrist, author of the theory and method of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. Bergson's views served as one of the starting points for the symbolists, and later for representatives of various avant-garde movements. Freud's psychoanalytic theory stimulated a deeply innovative approach not only to many specific sciences, but also to mythology, religion, painting, literature, aesthetics, and ethnography.

It was at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, when there was a rethinking of spiritual and aesthetic values ​​and the old beliefs collapsed. This whole period is characterized by the widest experimentation, when many writers became the prey of one or another literary hobby. German naturalism had predecessors in France and Scandinavia. According to the then philosophical and natural-science theories, the personality was determined by heredity and environment. The humanist writer was now primarily interested in the ugly reality of industrial society, with its unresolved social problems. The most typical naturalist poet was A. Holtz (1863–1929); there were no bright discoveries in the field of the novel. However, the clashes of heterogeneous characters, whose lack of freedom was aggravated by determinism, contributed to the emergence of a number of dramatic works that have not lost their significance. Hauptmann, who began as a naturalist and steadily expanded the scope of his work, than he is quite comparable with Goethe. The diversity inherent in Hauptmann's dramas is also found in his narrative prose. With the advent of Freud's pioneering work, the center of gravity in literature has shifted from social conflicts to a more subjective study of the individual's reactions to the environment and himself. In 1901, A. Schnitzler (1862–1931) published the story Lieutenant Gustl, written in the form of an internal monologue, and a number of impressionistic theatrical sketches, which fused subtle psychological observations and pictures of the degradation of metropolitan society (Anatole, 1893; Horovod, 1900). The pinnacle of poetic achievements is the work of D. Lilienkron (1844-1909) and R. Demel (1863-1920), who created a new poetic language that can vividly express lyrical experience. Hoffmannsthal, combining the style of impressionism with the Austrian and European literary tradition, created unusually deep poems and several poetic plays (The Fool and Death, 1893). No less significant achievements took place in prose. T. Mann is the most prominent representative of a galaxy of writers, among whom was his elder brother G. Mann (1871–1950), known for his satirical and political novels.

1. Sociocultural situation and historical landmarks that determined the nature of the development of German culture. The formation of the world system of monopoly capitalism in Germany was belated, but by the beginning of the 20th century. the transition has ended. Germany has surpassed England in economics. With the reign of Wilhelm II from 1888, an aggressive policy was established under the slogan - "to achieve a place under the sun for Germany." It was also the slogan that united the empire. Ideological foundations - the teachings of German philosophers (Nietzsche, Spengler, Schopenhauer)

In the popular social-democratic movement, the gravitation towards the gradual peaceful resolution of conflicts, as opposed to the revolutionary theory of Marxism. For a short time, apparent calm was established, but in literature - a premonition of the apocalypse. The impact of the 1905 revolution led to the strengthening of the social democratic ideology and the growth of the labor movement in 1911. - a clash of interests between France and Germany in North America, almost leading to war.

The Balkan crisis and the First World War of 1914, the revolution of 1917 in Russia led to mass strikes and the November People's Revolution in Germany (1918). The revolutionary situation was finally crushed in 1923. The post-war revolutionary upsurge was replaced by ... the stabilization of capitalism.

1925. - The Weimar bourgeois republic, Germany is actively involved in the process of Americanization of Europe. After the need and disasters of the war, the need for entertainment was natural (which caused the development of the corresponding industry, the cultural market, the emergence of mass culture). The general characteristic of the period is the "golden twenties".

The 1930s that followed were called "black". 1929 America's overproduction crisis paralyzed the world economy. In Germany, there is an economic and political crisis - a change of governments that do not control the situation. Unemployment is massive. The National Socialist Party is gaining strength. The confrontation between the forces of the developed KKE (Communist Party of Germany) and the NSP (National Socialist Party) ended in victory for the latter. 1933 - Hitler came to power. The militarization of the economy has become the main means of social stability. At the same time cultural life was politicized. The era of literary "isms" is over. The era of reaction and the struggle against objectionables began. From this period, German literature developed in anti-fascist emigration. The Second World War.

2. Literature of the turn of the century and the 1st half of the 20th century was marked by a crisis of bourgeois culture, expressed by F. Nietzsche.

In the 1890s, there was a move away from naturalism. 1894 - Hauptmann's naturalistic drama "Weavers". A feature of German naturalism is "Consistent naturalism," which required a more accurate reflection of objects that changed with lighting and position. The “second style” developed by Schlaf suggests dividing reality into many instantaneous perceptions. "the photographic image of the era" could not reveal the invisible signs of the impending new EPOCH. In addition, a protest against the concept of a shelf dependence of a person on the environment has become a sign of the new time. Naturalism has declined, but its techniques have survived in critical realism

Impressionism not received distribution in Germany. German writers were hardly attracted by the analysis of infinitely changing states. Infrequently engaged in a neo-romantic study of special psychological states. German neo-romanticism included features of symbolism, but there was almost no mystical symbolism. The romantic duality of the conflict between the eternal and the mundane, the explainable and the mysterious was usually emphasized.

The predominant trend in the first half of the 20th century. was expressionism. Leading Genre - Scream Drama

Along with "-isms" at the turn of the century to the end of the 20s. a layer of proletarian literature was actively taking shape. Later (in the 1930s), socialist prose developed in emigration (A. Zegers and Becher's poetry).

The popular genre at that time was the novel. In addition to the intellectual novel, there were historical and social novels in German literature, which developed a technique close to the intellectual novel, and also continued the traditions of German satire.

Heinrich Mann(1871 - 1950) worked in the genre of a socially accusatory novel (influenced by French literature). The main period of creativity - 1900-1910. The novel The Loyal Subject (1914) brought fame to the writer. In the words of the author himself, "The novel depicts the previous stage of that tal, which then reached power." The hero is the embodiment of loyalty, the essence of the phenomenon, embodied in a living character.

The novel is a biography of a hero who has worshiped authority since childhood: a father, a teacher, a policeman. The author uses biographical details to enhance the nature of the hero; He is a slave and a despot at the same time. His psychology is based on cringing and a thirst for power to humiliate the weak. The story about the hero captures his constantly changing social position (second style!). The mechanistic nature of actions, gestures, words of the hero - convey the automatism, the mechanistic nature of society.

The author creates an image according to the laws of caricature, deliberately shifting the proportions, sharpening and exaggerating the characteristics of the characters. G. Mann's heroes are characterized by the mobility of masks = caricature. All of the above in the aggregate is G. Mann's “geometric style” as one of the variants of conventionality: the author balances on the verge of authenticity and implausibility.

Lion Feuchtwanger(1884 - 1954) - a philosopher who was interested in the East. He became famous for his historical and social novels. In his work, the historical novel, more than the social novel, depended on the technique of the intellectual novel. Common features

* The transfer of modern problems that concern the writer to the situation of the distant past, modeling them in a historical plot - the modernization of history (the plot, facts, description of life, national color are historically reliable, modern problems are introduced to the relationship of the characters).

* Historically costumed modernity, a novel of streaks and allegories, where modern events and faces of “False Nero” - L. Feuchtwanger, “The Cases of Mr. Julius Caesar” B. Brecht) are depicted in a conditional historical shell.

Subject: Second half of the 20th century.

post-war Europe. The mood is appropriate. Feelings of crisis and disintegration, confrontation deepen. All this "happiness" comes to literature.

Neoavant-garde- First of all, the ideas of the avant-garde artists of the beginning of the century were taken. The idea of ​​rebellion, the process, comes to the fore. The idea of ​​the absurd is adopted. Opposition to the laws and norms that exist in society. Everywhere they added "anti" - "anti-roman" ("new novel").

· "Anti-novel" - "New novel" - a predominantly French phenomenon, the writers opposed the existence of a plot, against characters, against psychological motivation. Description, detailed attention to detail came to the fore. Fixation, statement of facts. Alain Rob Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor.

· "Anti-poetry" - "concrete poetry". Originates in Germany. He sets himself the task of removing moralizing and moralizing from poetry. They create “subjectless” poetry. No position of the author. It was divided into "visual" and "auditory" - the visual had to be seen exactly how it was printed. Ernst Young, Eugen Gonringer, Joachim Richhert, Rudolf Otto Wiemer.

· "Antidrama" - "the theater of the absurd". The immediate forerunner is called Jean Genet. The first prehistory was his play The Maids, 1947. But the actual history of the theater of the absurd is associated with Eugene Eonesco and Samuel Beckett. A kind of "pessimistic" response to life after the war. "To say in words that mean nothing, about things that can't be said." It is based on the idea that the world is on the verge of collapse. Main features: shows not life, but the appearance of life, its illusion. The action is replaced by the process of speaking. Most of the action takes place in a closed space. The presence of walls - emphasizes the limitations of norms and laws. The first example is Eugene Eonesco, "The Bald Singer" (in the process of "communication" people do not hear each other). Beckett came to the fore with the idea of ​​loneliness, when there is a need for communication, but there is no way to realize it. The most famous "Waiting for Godot". Also "The Sound of Footsteps", "Rhinos", "Oh Beautiful Days".

After 68 years.

Europe was shaken by a wave of student riots. After the 60s, European society also changed, a “mass society” (“consumer society”) arose. The split of literature into elite and mass.

In literature, "everything has already happened." This is where the phenomenon of postmodernism comes from.

Postmodernism“The world is a text.” Postmodernists create their "new" texts from pieces of old ones. Mixing different lexical levels. Quoting - plots, characters, writing style + direct quoting.

Topic: German literature of the first half of the 20th century.

The first and main feature is that German literature was greatly influenced by various historical and political events.

The countdown to the 20th century is from 1871. Year of the proclamation of the German Empire.

Since that time, a split in literature begins. On "pleasing" and "objectionable" authors. Decadence was rather poorly represented in Germany. Naturalism and echoes of symbolism and impressionism developed here.

The philosophical basis of decadence was most clearly manifested - ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche.

At the turn of the century, of the avant-garde movements, the maximum reaches impressionism.

But, the writers achieved the greatest achievements within the framework of realism. German literature of the beginning of the century - flourishing of prose, especially the novel.

By the end of the 1920s, 2 opposing camps were formed:

· "Writers of blood and soil" - "pleasing to the state." Adhered to and propagated the theory of the purity of the Aryan race. True "Aryan" is possible only in rural areas.

· "Literature of asphalt" - the writers of this direction did not call themselves that.

1933 is a turning point. For Hitler comes to power.

May 10, 1933 is the day when a fire was lit from "undesirable" books on the central square of Berlin. At the same time, lists of objectionable authors are created - i.e. those who were subject to direct destruction. A wave of mass emigration began in the 1930s. Most often they went to France, Switzerland and the USA.

Heinrich Mann (1871-1950).

One of the greatest satirist writers of the 20th century. Social and political issues came to the fore in his works. His name became famous in 1900, after the novel " Country of kissel shores».

World fame comes in 1905, the novel " Teacher Gnus or the End of a Tyrant". The text is sharp and problematic at the time. Initially, it was devoted to the problems of the German school system of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

His success was further consolidated by the novel “ loyal subject". It was completed in 1914. This is the first part of the Mann trilogy, which was called " Empire". Two other parts: Poor», « Head". In fact, " loyal subject"- the continuation of" Teacher Gnus ", logical. GG - a man brought up in these rules. The novel itself became a kind of "bestseller" of the time. After the publication of this book, the government began to pay unhealthy attention to G. Mann. By the 30s, his name was "first on the list for destruction." In exile, he changes the genre - from satire he goes into a historical novel. First of all, they note: Youth of King Henry IV», « Mature years of King Henry IV».

Thomas Mann (1875-1955).

As he himself joked: he and his brother had a division of labor - G. Mann created satire; T. Mann - philosophical/psychological literature.

Founder of the "intellectual novel". First of all, in such a novel, the author refers to the past, but using the past as an example, he speaks about issues that are relevant for a contemporary. Such a novel has rich intellectual and philosophical problems: “What is good and evil?”, “Where does war come from?”. The hero of such a novel is a hero with a rich inner world, an intellectual hero. The main content of such a novel is not the action, but the reflections and conversations of the characters.

Before such works, T. Mann created a number of short stories, in 1901 he wrote the novel " Buddenbrooks". For this novel, in 1929 he will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature for this novel.

The first "intellectual" novel - " magic mountain". 1924. The main content is conversations with patients.

The second "intellectual" sample: a cycle of 4 novels " Joseph and his brothers". Based on the biblical legend.

Often, the pinnacle of his novels is called " Doctor Faustus". Written in 1947. The basis is not the tragedy of Goethe, but a medieval legend, because the legend unambiguously condemns Faust.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962).

The author was greatly influenced by his childhood. He was born in the south of Germany, in the most freedom-loving lands. Interested in the East. He escaped from the seminary without receiving a secondary education. But at the same time - one of the most educated writers of that time. Tried to kill himself several times. Passed several sessions of hypnosis "Just for lulz".

Those. – main ideas: philosophy of the East and introspection. In relation to his texts: "The way inside", "The way to yourself".

In 1919, his story " Demian". There was no name of G. Hess on the cover, the story was signed "Emil Sinclair" - by the name of GG. This work is considered the first global step in the development of "The Way into Yourself". It's about school, about growing up, about trying to commit suicide, about a collision with the adult world.

World fame brings the story " steppe wolf". "Notes only for lunatics". Here another important idea appears - “the duality of the human soul”. GG says that 2 creatures coexist in it. For the youth of the 60s (the Hippie movement), this book will become virtually a cult.

Also famous for the novel Bead game". Text that takes you to the future. Time - people stopped reading books, the top of the intellectual level - a crossword puzzle in the newspaper. And there is a "bead game" - a game with the values ​​of all worlds, cultures, sciences and peoples.

1946 - Nobel Prize in Literature.

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970).

His real name is "Erich Paul Remarque", but he changes his second name in honor of his mother. Entered the literature after the 1st World War. I went to war myself. This war came as a shock to him. He was wounded in the arm/leg/head. After recovering, he learns that his mother, whom he adored, died of cancer. He returns home, but his father has already married a second time and Remarque cannot find his place at home. Tried to "forget" in alcohol. But he finds another means - to write down all his experiences on paper. This is how his first work appears. All Quiet on the Western Front". It is often called "the first true book about the war" (which Sasha would gladly argue with). Dirt of war, trenches, lice, torn off arms/legs. He wrote a novel for himself, but his friend persuaded him to take the manuscript to the publisher. And this brought Remarque both fame and money. Within the framework of this novel, he refers to the so-called "Literature of the Lost Generation". About young people who went through the first world war, and they either died in the war, or they are lost in life.

2 more novels are devoted to this topic: “ Return», « Three comrades».

Remarque was also interested in "love on the verge of death."

Remarque himself emigrated in the 30s, but before Hitler came to power. For with the proceeds, he simply went to Switzerland, because "because he could." But he set himself the goal of becoming a famous and rich writer. But he himself was tormented by self-loathing all his life.

Rushed from woman to woman, from country to country.

« Triumphal Arch», « Living in loans". Although the Germans themselves know it, study it, but do not like it.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924).

He wrote mainly parables and short stories. The most famous of them is "Transformation". He also wrote 3 unfinished novels: "America", "Process", "Castle".

In his work, Kafka followed the path of simplifying the plot and simplifying the language. But at the same time, his texts are very difficult to understand. He complicates his texts from novel to novel. From Kafka's point of view, a person is doomed to loneliness in the world.

Existentialism, surrealism and…

Bertolt Brecht (1887-1956).

He started as a poet in the 20s of the 20th century. The first verses were included in the collection "Home Sermons". In fact, his poems are parodies of the poems of Schiller and Goethe.

In the mid-20s, Brecht became a representative of the "left" art in Germany. He gets close to the communists, takes a lot of ideas from their movement. Many of his poems become "the anthem of the German workers." At the same time, Brecht turned to dramaturgy.

He became the creator of the "epic theater". Those. from his point of view, the "old theater" has completely outlived its usefulness. Brecht believed that one had to go to the theater in order to think. The theater should raise the most pressing problems of our time. A person, coming to the Brechtian theater, should never forget that everything he sees is a fake. The hero does not need to empathize. The task of the viewer is to understand the motives of behavior. At the end, the viewer should come to the conclusion: "The hero always has another way out."

To solve these problems, Brecht used a set of techniques. He himself staged plays, he himself was a director. First take:

The effect of "alienation". Brecht tried to show the object/plot from an unexpected angle.

· The action taking place on the stage does not always coincide with the plot of the play.

The use of insert songs. ("Zongov").

· Use of previously known stories.

Brecht used costumes and sets to a minimum (mustache, nameplates and scenery names)

The most famous: "Mother Courage and her children", "Caucasian chalk circle", "Kind man from Sachuan", "Life of Gallileo".

Topic: German literature of the second half of the 20th century.

After World War II, Germany was divided into East Germany and West Germany. Accordingly, the literature was "divided". The main stumbling block was the question "Who was to blame for the 2nd World War." The GDRites very simply answered - "Hitlar and his party are to blame and that's it."

FRGshtsy - "Every German is to some extent to blame," they didn’t think of it right away.

The split occurred in 1947, when the first congress of German writers took place, where the question “Whom to judge?” was raised.

GDR- everything is owl. Everything is communion-positive.

The leading figure was Anna Zegers. For a long time she headed the Union of Writers of the GDR. Her most famous novel was written before the war, The Seventh Cross.

Of those who were not pleased with the literature of the GDR, two are the following:

Johannes Bobrovsky.

The main theme of his work is the interaction of the Germans and Eastern Europe. Almost all the action takes place in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus.

2 novels: Levin's Mill, Lithuanian Glavirs.

Christo Wolf.

Psychological and historical-mythological prose. One of the most famous: "Cassandra". Later, she would write “honestly and openly” about what happened on the territory of the GDR.

Germany: the theme of "the past not overcome" became the leading theme. An attempt to understand the causes of the war, in its consequences.

Heinrich Bell. (1917-1985).

Started with the theme of the past. He tried to reveal, comparing the events of the present and the events of the past. 2 novels were created: "A house without a master", "Billiards at half past ten". In the 1950s and 1960s Böll became interested in the topic of the absurdity of life. Within the framework of this theme, he creates the novel Through the Eyes of a Clown. He does not introduce a new image of the “sad jester” in it, but it is thanks to Böll that the term “sad clown” enters the literature more fully.

At the end of Böll's life, the topic of violence will become more interesting. "The Desecrated Honor of Katharina Blum". 1972 - Blum wins the Nobel Prize.

Günther Grass. (1927-…).

It was he who was one of those who developed and started the themes of the Absurd, the Jester and clowning.

1959 - creates the novel "The Tin Drum".

With all his works, Grass tries to respond to the actual problems of our time.

One of his last works: "My century". A text in which Grass tries to show the entire 20th century in 100 chapters. It was for this novel that he won the Nobel Prize.

Patrick Zyuskind (1949-…).

He is often referred to as the "phantom of literature". Not advertised and does not interact. The work with which he enters literature is the play "Double bass".

Also famous: the stories "The Dove", "The History of Mr. Sommer".

Benjamin Lebert (1982-…).

He rose to fame in 1999 when he released the novel Crazy. In addition, they came out: "Not a white crow", "You can ...".

Topic: French literature of the first half of the 20th century.

The countdown of the 20th century is also conducted from the 70s of the 19th century. Peculiarity - at the turn of the century, it was France that determined the literary processes, the largest number of directions was concentrated here. Characteristic - struggle and interpenetration of these directions.

Directions: naturalism / impressionism / symbolism / realism.

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896).

During his lifetime, he received the title "Singer of Decline and Sorrow." A typical, flamboyant decadent poet. Initially, his work was dominated by impressionism.

Initially, Verlaine led a rather quiet life, until he met Arthur Rimbaud. Together with him he leaves to "wander around Europe." Actively writes at this time, is considered the "peak" of his work.

Their relationship ends tragically - Verlaine shoots Rimbaud and ends up in prison (1873).

In prison, Verlaine turns to religious themes. His poems of the subsequent period are as close as possible in form and content to prayer and sermon.

By the 90s, he becomes famous.

His best creations were included in the collection Songs / Romances without Words, published in 1847. In fact, his best impressionistic poems are collected there. They are sometimes called "soul landscapes".

Fleeting moments, natural motifs. Emotional experiences that are reflected in these very landscapes / moments.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891).

It is considered the most-most French poet. His work is called "the gospel of every poet." His life has been a constant challenge/escape of sorts. Started writing at the age of 8, knew several languages. Often left home. Gradually, he created a poetic theory/setting for himself: “Poetry of Clairvoyance”. Later, as an adult, he will call this period of his life: "It's time for Hell." Those. - its entire peak is a period of 4 years: from 15 to 19 years. It was at this time that he creates his masterpieces.

Actually, in 1873 he published the collection "It's time in Hell". Rambo's poetry is primarily symbolism.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).

It is believed that Maupassant completes the realism of the 19th century and begins the realism of the 20th with his work. He was a student of Flaubert.

He became famous for his novels. A total of 16 collections of short stories and 6 novels have been released. Thanks to him, the short story has become a leading, popular genre.

Maupassant is a master of psychological prose. Experiences and the inner world of the hero. He is also called the "master of subtext."

Short stories about love prevail, but there are works about politics and religion.

The most famous short story is Pyshka.

His most famous novels are "Life", "Dear Friend". The best and most famous is "Life".

Literature of the early 20th century.

Avant-garde trends: France is the birthplace of surrealism.

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918).

His real name is "Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apolinary Kostrovitsky". Never Belarusian. Born in Rome. He liked to emphasize his "chips" - Slavic roots, birth in Italy, life in Paris.

He gets to Paris at the age of 18, and, not being a Frenchman by origin, begins to rustle in full. The first publications - 1901. In 1913, a collection of his poems "Alcohols" was published. In the foreground - love lyrics. Themes of rejected/unaccepted love. Top - "Ponte Mirabeau" - "the anthem of the rejected world." It was in this collection that Apollinaire completely abandoned the rejection of punctuation marks.

1918 2nd collection: “Calligrams. Poems of peace and war. Calligram - "poetry / drawings". Most famous: "The slaughtered dove and the fountain."

2/3 of his poems were published posthumously, only in the 50s.

Paul Eluard (1895-1952).

Eugene Grendel on the passport. He started as a surrealist poet, but was not a very bright adherent of all the chips in this direction. But his poetry is distinguished by the brightness of images. At the beginning of everything - an unexpected image, bright, delusional.

Collections "City of Sorrow" "Love Poetry" "Life Itself" "Rose for All".

"Love Poetry" - the brightest.

Eluard is one of the brightest masters of love lyrics. The best poems are dedicated to his wife.

In the 30s, Eluard departed from the traditions of surrealism and took a civil anti-fascist position. His most famous later poem is "Freedom".

In the French prose of this time, the main theme is "the clash of man and society", "the clash of culture and civilization".

Prose writers:

Henri Barbusse. He won fame for his anti-war writings. Most: the novel "Fire". Was approved in the Scoop.

Anatole Franz. One of the brightest realists. Grotesque-parody philosophical novel "Penguin Island". The author discusses the history of France and Europe on the example of an island where penguins were endowed with intelligence.

Romain Rolland. Affirmed the heroic beginning. He was interested in the fate of creative people. 10-volume epic novel "Jean-Christophe". A novel about the composer's life, based on the life stories of Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. The novel Colas Breugnon.

André Gide. Addressed in his prose to moral problems. In his books he tried to resolve the conflict between the spiritual and the sensual. The novel "The Counterfeiters".

Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He was interested in questions of the meaning of life, the place of man in it. How to live in order to remain human. "Planet of People". ,

XVIII
THE CREATIVITY OF THE MANN BROTHERS AND THE GERMAN
LITERATURE OF THE EARLY XX CENTURY

Culture of Germany under Wilhelm II. - The value of Nietzsche's work. — German naturalism. — Expressionism and the deformation of the artistic languages ​​of the 19th century. Two points of view on expressionism.
— T. Mann. The ratio of "life" and "creativity" in his prose. The short story "Death in Venice": the interpretation of love, the paradox of humiliation / exaltation; antique parallels; Nietzsche's influence. Poetics of the novel "Buddenbrooks" and the role of leitmotifs in it. - The conflict of the neo-romantic ideal and everyday life in the pre-war work of G. Mann. The poetics of the novel "Teacher Tnus": the movement from naturalism to expressionism, the ambivalence of the central character, the compositional purpose of the image of Loman.

In German literature, the era of the "end of the century" falls on the second half of the 1880s-1910s. The most important historical event that preceded it was the unification of Germany in 1871 as a result of the Franco-Prussian war. In 1888 Wilhelm II becomes Kaiser. In 1890, he dismissed Bismarck, in 1891 the "All-German Union" was created, whose goal of activity is the further unification under the auspices of Prussia of all the lands where the Germans live. If in the 1880s Taine's "environmental theory" and the works of Darwin enjoyed a certain influence, now there is a need for such values ​​that would correspond to the spirit of the time - the militarization of the country, the construction of a powerful navy. Politicians are considering the possibility of world expansion under the rule of the Germans, and intellectuals are raising the problem of the "Nordic race".

However, the industrial development of Germany, on the one hand, and the growth of the bureaucracy, on the other, caused an ambiguous attitude. Representatives of the so-called “regional art” (F. Lienhard, A. Bartels, G. Frensen and others) saw this as a threat to the destruction of patriarchal life and portrayed as an ideal a peasant, an “eternal sower”, for whom it is unthinkable to exchange his land for “ city ​​hell. In turn, the work of the Swiss Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italy, published back in 1860, was perceived as a statement of the crisis of the Bismarckian era, which succeeded in solving political problems, but was accompanied by spiritual decline. The most influential figure of German decadence was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who keenly felt the gap between the external prosperity of the nation and its secret trouble.

This philosopher expressed his understanding of modernity in the form of philological writings, essays and aphorisms, he outlined the problems that, as it turned out later, no major writer of the era could get around. Nietzsche was not only a thinker, but also a poet. As a lyricist, both literally and figuratively, he expressed the fermentation of the world "in the depths" - a myth that formed the core of European culture at the turn of the century. Nietzsche himself preferred to call this property of his compositions musicality: "... in fact, this is music accidentally recorded not with notes, but with words." Mature Nietzsche's works are a synthesis of philosophical discourse, poetry, journalism, and fiction. The most important works of Nietzsche are "The Origin of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" (Die Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872), "Untimely Reflections" (UnzeitgemaBe Betrachtungen, 1873-1876), "Merry Science" (Die frohliche Wissenschaft, 1882), "Human, too human" (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878-1880), "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883-1885), "Beyond Good and Evil" (Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 1886), " Toward a Moral Genealogy” (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887), “Twilight of the Idols” (Gotzendammerung, 1889).

The formation of the views of Nietzsche, a classical philologist by education, was influenced by the passion for music and aesthetics of R. Wagner, the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer. Then Nietzsche, in his usual manner, made a “turn around” and abandoned the ideas of late German romanticism in order to paradoxically return to them already in his later work on the basis of the Darwinian idea of ​​​​evolution. This is how the neo-romantic mythologemes "will to power", "eternal return", "superman" became possible. These new "values ​​of life" are opposed by Nietzsche to "passive nihilism", which, in his opinion, goes back to Socrates, as well as to Christianity, called by the German writer "Platonism for the herd." For Nietzsche, decadence is not so much a literary and artistic phenomenon as a social, psychological and cultural one. It is the triumph of the dead Apollonian form over the Dionysian effervescence of life, of the majority, of the “herd animals” over the aristocratic minority. Those who are able to discover relativity, or the historical, changeable nature of any values, are endowed with both poetic intuition, the ability to create a new horizon of things, and faith in the absolute, god-like freedom of creativity, in realizing oneself as the center of the universe.

The quintessence of Nietzsche's views lies in the artist's need to deform the world in such a way as to be able to survive in it. This tragic formula concerns not only the criticism of “devalued” values, but also self-criticism, the “eternal return” to oneself. Nietzsche's aesthetics of the "new optics of life" is further developed by the Viennese writer Hermann Bahr in a series of articles under the general title "Overcoming Naturalism" (Die Uberwindung des Naturalismus, 1891), in the work of W. Worringer "Abstraction and Empathy" (Abstraktion und Einfuhlung, 1908 ), V. Kandinsky's treatise "On the Spiritual in Art" (1910) - works important for the formation of expressionism.

German literature includes: naturalism (drama by Hermann Sudermann, 1857-1928), impressionism (landscape lyrics by Detlev von Lilienkron, 1844-1909), symbolism (poetry by Stefan George, 1868-1933).

The formation of German naturalism proceeded under the influence of Russian, Scandinavian and, above all, French literature (the brothers Goncourt, Zola, Maupassant). In 1889, A. Holz completed the development of his theory of consistent naturalism and, in collaboration with J. Schlaf, turned to its implementation in dramaturgy (the play The Zelike Family, 1890). The activities of the theatrical “Free Stage Society” (Verein freie Buhne) by O. Brahm, who staged Ibsen’s “Ghosts” in September 1889 and a month later “Before Sunrise” by G. Hauptmann, also belong to this time. Naturalism not only found direct embodiment in the work of many German writers (in addition to Holz, Schlaf and, of course, Hauptmann, who had a pan-European fame, these are M. Kretzer, G. Conradi, W. von Polenz, R. Demel, M. Halbe), but and influenced the work of G. and T. Mann, where it combines in a complex way with the German everyday writing tradition of the second half of the 19th century, elements of symbolism, neo-romanticism, and even early expressionism (by G. Mann). So, for example, T. Mann, not being a naturalist, resorts to the form of a naturalistic novel about degeneration, but fills it with a different content.

One of the most striking phenomena of German culture at the beginning of the 20th century. became expressionism (from lat. - expressio). Traditionally, expressionism is seen as a phenomenon of the era of modernism, which, along with other programs of radical (“avant-garde”) renewal of the artistic language (Italian Futurism, French Surrealism, Swiss Dadaism), outlines a decisive break with the poetics of the 19th century, including symbolism. However, another, less politicized, tendency to interpret expressionism has been outlined quite a long time ago (for example, the pioneering work of the outstanding English art critic H. Reed “A Brief History of Modern Painting”, 1959), according to which expressionism is an original part of the pan-European symbolist culture, which received in Germany, Scandinavian countries (later A. Strindberg), Poland (drama by S. Przybyszewski), Austria-Hungary (Prague writers) have a different reading than in France. To a large extent, this applies to pre-war German expressionism. It is characterized not only by the neglect of tradition, but also by its unexpected reproduction. In particular, this applies to the baroque and romantic aspects of the poetics of expressionism. If one adheres to this point of view, then one can assume that the “great” symbolism existed in Germany in several versions. One of them is pro-French, "neoclassical". He declares himself in the poetry of S. George and his followers. The other is originally German, expressionistic.

He showed himself in the early 1910s in lyrics, drama, journalism, and a little later in the novel. Compared to French, this symbolism, which already by its name programmatically hints at the rejection of the system of values ​​associated with Paris and the impressionism of creativity (in German perception, this art is illusory, superficial, soulless), is much more brutal, mystical, ecstatic, much more thoughtful about , "how to live", about the unconscious, about spiritual rebellions and revolutions.

At first, expressionism arose in German painting and was associated with the activities of the Dresden art association "Bridge" (Die Briicke: E. Kirchner, F. Bleil, E. Heckel, K. Schmidg-Rotluff, M. Pechstein, O. Müller; founded in 1905 who saw their teachers in W. Van Gogh, E. Munch, E. Nolde), as well as the Blue Rider association (Der blaue Reiter, 1911), which developed in Munich around W. Kandinsky. Around the same time, his most important ideological motives - the conflict of fathers and children, surface and depth, as well as the feeling of impending universal catastrophes, funerals - made themselves known in a special way in the lyrics of Elsa Lasker-Schüler (1976-1945), Georg Geim ( 1887-1912), Alfred Lichtenstein (1889-1914), Ernst Wilhelm Lotz (1890-1914), Ernst Stadler (1883-1914), August Stramm (1874-1915), Johannes Becher (1891-1958). On the eve of the war, expressionism began to take shape in drama (Ernst Barlach, 1870-1938; Georg Kaiser, 1878-1945; Fritz von Unruh, 1885-1970; Walter Hasenklewer, 1890-1940, etc.). There were also two main journals of expressionism - the radical Action (Die Aktion, 1911-1932), founded by F. Pfemfert, and the predominantly aesthetic Sturm (Der Sturm, 1910-1932), headed by X. Walden.

However, literary expressionism with its characteristic "spirit of lyrics", new "storm and stress" only began to take shape in the early 1910s, continuing its history after the First World War. In the 1900s, the main place in German literature was occupied by prose writers (for example, Jakob Wassermann, author of the famous novel Kaspar Hauser, 1908), who to a large extent developed the traditions of writers of the older generation (T. Storm's short stories, T. Fontane's novels). A special place "at the junction" of old and new prose in German pre-war literature is occupied by the Mann brothers. Already before the First World War, Thomas Mann (Thomas Mann, 1875-1955) declared himself as one of the most significant German prose writers. In the early period, he tries his hand not only in the epic, but also in lyrics, drama. It was at this time that the range of genres he used was the widest. The following novels were created: "Buddenbrooks" (Buddenbrooks. Verfall einer Familie, 1901), "Royal Highness" (Konigliche Hoheit, 1909), a book of short stories "Little Mr. Friedemann" (Der kleine Herr Friedemann, 1898) was published. More novels will follow later. The most significant of them are Tonio Kroger (Tonio Kroger, 1903), Tristan (Tristan, 1903) and Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1913). Mann also tries himself in drama (Fiorenza, Fiorenza, 1906, post. 1907).

Denoting the uniqueness of Mann's manner, researchers often use the terms "intellectual", "polyphonic", "musical". Indeed, Mann's world is manifested through harmony - a sound in which the spirit of the times is combined with culture and tradition, and life's problems are presented in a collision with Beauty. That is, listening to the phenomena, Mann experiences them in a special way, perceives life through music and turns it into art. In a certain sense, O. Mandelstam's words can be attributed to him: "And, word, return to music." Mann himself remarked in one of his letters: "I have always considered my talent a kind of modification of musicianship and perceive the artistic form of the novel as a kind of symphony, as a fabric of ideas and musical construction."

Thomas Mann was born in the ancient Hanseatic city of Lübeck in 1875. His father, Johann Heinrich Mann, is a successful merchant, head of a trading house, senator, “grandson and great-grandson of the Lübeck burghers. Mother, Julia da Silva-Bruns, a native of Rio de Janeiro, the daughter of a German planter and a Brazilian of Portuguese-Creole origin, brought to Germany at the age of seven” (“Sketch of my life”). The writer deeply honored his father: “... he secretly serves as an example for me, determining my way of thinking and activity. ... his dignity and prudence, his ambition and zeal, the sophistication of his appearance and his spiritual grace, good nature towards the common people, who had a completely patriarchal affection for him, charm in society and humor. ... We also inherited from our father the "severity of honest rules", an ethical principle that largely coincides with the concept of burgher, civility.

In 1891, J. G. Mann died, and his grain trading company was liquidated. Soon the Manns moved to Bavaria. In Munich, Thomas, working as an insurance agent, published his first story, "The Fallen" (1894), written under the influence of G. de Maupassant. Then, in 1894, Mann entered the University of Munich as a volunteer. He likes the student environment much more than the school environment, he communicates with writers, artists, artists, participates in the student production of H. Ibsen's Wild Duck. 1896-1898 Thomas and Heinrich Mann spend in Italy (Florence, Palestrina). Upon his return to Munich, Thomas became an employee (1899-1900) of the weekly magazine Simplicissimus, where F. Wedekind, G. Storm, J. Wasserman, A. Zweig and A. Schnitzler were published, as well as translated literature (A. P. Chekhov , H. Ibsen, K. Hamsun, B. Bjornson).

While still in Italy, Mann began to work on autobiographical notes, which eventually became the novel Buddenbrooks. The story of the death of a family. After the huge success of this work, Mann was able to live on his writing earnings. In 1905 he married Kate Prinsheim, daughter of a professor of mathematics at the University of Munich and an expert in Wagner music. The writer's love experiences were reflected not only in letters to his brother Heinrich, but also in the novel "Royal Highness", which has signs of "fabulous" and "opera ending". The central event of the novel is the marriage of Crown Duke Klaus-Heinrich to a wealthy heiress, the daughter of an American millionaire of German origin, Imma Spelman, like the writer's bride, who was fond of mathematics.

For Mann, this romance was not only about pre-marital experiences, but also about deep hopes for a future family life. Hence the element of fabulousness, not fully appreciated by readers after the Buddenbrooks written in a naturalistic vein. However, in the "Royal Highness" not everything is so smooth. The Duke lives in a special world in which he feels more "flawed" than comfortable. Even communication with subjects requires special efforts from him, his experience of communicating with people is too small. Marked not only by a high birth, but also by a mutilation, nevertheless, he dreams of serving the people and believes in his special destiny, that the roses in the ducal park, smelling of decay, will find their fragrance.

Perhaps the central problem of Mann's first works is the relationship between life and creativity. Reality is the world of life, its natural little joys, everything visible and tangible. Ordinary life, living today, is full of peace and self-satisfaction. In contrast, creativity penetrates beyond life. The fate of the artist, the bearer of some eternal impulse, is a meeting with Beauty, which leads to death and through it to eternity. The feeling of the tragic duality of being is familiar to Mann. He knew both spiritual ups and downs, and a state of deep despair, he thought about suicide. But Mann never spills his experiences into literature. His artistic style, somewhat restrained and coldish, emphasizes the importance of painstaking work and purposeful efforts.

In short stories about creativity (Tonio Kröger, Death in Venice), the gift of writing is a tragedy of renunciation and self-denial. The short story "Tonio Kröger" reveals the problem of being an artist, opposing "spirit" and "life" in a Nietzsche way. The reader expects a plot resolution of Tonio's relationship with childhood friend Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm, a girl with whom the hero was once in love. However, what should have united separates. In the story of an adult Kroeger, Hans and Ingeborg are connected, and Tonio exists in another dimension - he lives by creativity. The hero tells the artist Lizaveta Ivanovna about his vocation. The meeting of Tonio with Hans and Ingeborg is significant. He sees them at one of the receptions and finds out they are not his. The embodiment of "life", blond and blue-eyed Hans and Ingeborg are not able to notice, recognize the artist who sacrifices everything for the sake of creativity. This lyrical short story, beloved by the author, reveals the writer's most intimate experiences: “Literature is not a vocation, but a curse. When do you start feeling it for yourself? Early, very early. At a time when it is still easy to live in harmony with God and man, you already see the stigma on yourself, feel your mysterious dissimilarity with other, ordinary positive people; the abyss gaping between you and those around you, the abyss of disbelief, irony, protest, knowledge, insensitivity is getting deeper and deeper; you are alone - and you can no longer come to any agreement with people. In Tonio Kröger, the spirit is both in love with life and feels the impossibility of merging with it.

This collision is even more pointed in the short story "Death in Venice". In a letter to the literary critic K. M. Weber on July 4, 1920, T. Mann, commenting on his pre-war work, emphasizes: “The relationship between spirit and life is an extremely delicate, difficult, exciting, painful relationship charged with irony and eroticism. ... Passion comes from both spirit and life. Life also desires the spirit. Two worlds whose relationship is erotic, without a clear polarity of the sexes, without one world representing the masculine and the other feminine - that's what life and spirit are. Therefore, they do not have a merger and agreement, and tension reigns between them without resolution ... The problem of beauty lies in the fact that the spirit perceives life as "beauty", and life - the spirit.

The problem formulated by Mann is considered by him on the example of the love of the aging writer Gustav Aschenbach for the young Polish aristocrat Tadzio, who came with his mother to rest in Venice. The fifty-year-old prose writer is widely known, he received personal nobility from the emperor for a novel about Frederick the Great (which Mann himself was going to write at one time), but at the same time he wrote himself out, ceased to receive joy from creativity. And this “new Flaubert”, sacrificing everything for the sake of form, is being tested by something in his position as a “classic” that is clearly unlawful and spontaneous. This ordeal costs him his life.

Aschenbach dies of cholera that breaks out in Venice. When an epidemic begins, the writer does not seek to leave the city. He had never felt so liberated, so joyfully creating, as in the moments of contemplation of the "divinely beautiful" Tadzio on the seashore. This passion looks, if not immoral, then selfish - when Aschenbach does not inform the young man's mother about the epidemic; she is pitiful and ridiculous - when, in order to match the object of his love, he rejuvenates in every possible way. But the condemnation of Aschenbach, who, like R. Wagner, met death in Venice, was not part of Mann's intentions. Aschenbach dies not only because in the future he will not see Tadzio, this new god Eros, who came out of the sea, but also because he is not destined to survive the higher moments of meetings with Beauty, the miracle of which, in the interpretation of the novel, is beyond borders. gender. At the same time, the true experience of Beauty, according to Mann, cannot but be erotic. He correlates the paradox of Aschenbach's humiliation/elevation with the biography of Goethe, when this "old man" was inflamed with passion for the eighteen-year-old Ulrika von Levetsov.

So, love in the image of Mann is symbolic. It has many shades: from depravity, a feeling that Aschenbach himself is ashamed of, to the deepest aesthetic pleasure, accessible only to the mind of a freely creative artist: “Ashenbach suddenly realized: nowhere, neither in nature, nor in plastic art, did he meet anything more happily created." Significantly, Mann's setting is Venice. The irony of this circumstance is that the true glory of the Republic of Venice lies in the distant past. Now it is a “museum”, the embodiment of civilization, in a word, the city of the dead, from which life has gone. But Mann's Venice and the "queen of the seas", the center of masquerade, disguise, adventure, where everything is possible. Aschenbach seems to be torn between two Venices. His feeling for Tadzio bypasses the usual contours of the city and seeks his salvation in the waters of the Adriatic, in some prehistoric element. Only she is able to give birth to a perfect artist - a creator who is inspired by love not "vulgar" ("popular", according to Plato), but "heavenly", accessible to a few. Aschenbach's love for Tadzio is associated primarily with the image of the sea. In the report “Lübeck as a form of spiritual life” (Ltibeck alsgeistige Lebensform, 1926), Mann says the following about this: “The sea is not a landscape, it is an image of eternity, nothingness and death, it is a metaphysical dream.”

In "Death in Venice" the motif "a young man on the seashore" is played up repeatedly. It is on the shore, on the beach, that Gustav Aschenbach dies, seeing for the last time the “child of the South”, the “god” Tadzio emerging from the water. Mann's short story not only brings together a variety of reminiscences (Plato, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Wagner), not only gives a modern interpretation of famous images ("classical Walpurgis Night", Tristanisold's identity of love-death), but also poses a riddle to readers about the relationship between art and life. Does it have a single solution? Hardly. As in similar cases (“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde, “The Beast in the Thicket” by G. James), Mann's creativity is ambivalent, it is the bearer of an insoluble contradiction, which forms the basis of the foundations of decadent romanticism. The relationship between the artist and the boy will be reproduced by Mann in the novel "Doctor Faustus" (1947), with the difference that there they lead to the death of a child, the personification of purity, innocence and kindness, and the artist, who sold his soul for the gift of creativity, radiates death with all his nature .

The most important work of Mann's pre-war work is the novel Buddenbrooks. The author himself called it naturalistic and admitted that he decided to take up this book after getting acquainted with the works of the Goncourt brothers (Rene Mauprin).

In the center of the novel is the German burghers. This concept is not so much of a social as of a spiritual nature. The greatest representative of the burghers, or a kind of German "world responsiveness", according to Mann, is Goethe. In the report “Goethe as a representative of the burgher era” (Goethe als Reprasentant des btirgerlichen Zeitalters, 1932), Mann states: “His main heart inclination is to please people, to make the world pleasant for them. The concept of "pleasantness" plays a special role in those benevolent life advice with which he endows people, and Goethe's purely burgher trait - but in a higher, spiritual sense - is reflected in the fact that in "Poetry and Truth" he reduces all the pleasantness of life to a natural the circulation of external phenomena, the change of day and night, the seasons, flowering and harvest, and all that is periodically repeated from epoch to epoch. In fatigue from this natural rhythm of the phenomena of nature and life, he sees downright mental illness, a threat to life, the main motivation for suicide.

In "Buddenbrooks" the tradition of German prose (novellas by T. Storm, R. Huh's novel "Memoirs of Ludolf Ursley the Younger", 1893) and the naturalism of E. Zola are intertwined; the impressionism of the Goncourts and the leitmotif technique of Wagner. Mann's interest in naturalism is reminiscent of the novel's subtitle, "The Story of the Death of a Family." However, giving a chronicle of the rise and fall of the company, Mann also explores another topic in parallel - the theme of musicality as a special, fatal property of burgher spirituality. The extinction of the Buddenbrook family and the appearance of an artistically gifted child in this family are tragically linked.

The traditional qualities of the burghers are embodied in the central character of the novel, Thomas Buddenbrook. He is able to continue the glorious work of his father, is distinguished by diligence and decency. True, unlike Johann Buddenbrock, work does not always bring him joy, and the world of his family is far from that “organic wholeness” of being, which personifies the Bible and family silver that he inherited. And it's not that next to Thomas is his brother Christian, an egoist and unprincipled person. "Lost burgher" - Thomas himself, a nervous and impressionable nature. It is characteristic that he takes up the reading of Schopenhauer, and also ventures into a confession, hardly possible in the past for his father: firmly, as before ... What, in fact, is success? This is a mysterious, inexplicable force - prudence, composure, the consciousness that you influence the course of life events by the very fact of your existence, the belief that life obsequiously adapts to you. Happiness and success is within us. And we must hold them firmly, tenaciously. And as soon as here, inside, something begins to soften, weaken, succumb to fatigue, then there, outside, all forces break free, oppose you, rise up against you, slip away from under your influence.

The last representative of a dying family is the son of Thomas Ganno. He is the opposite of his grandfather. More precisely, Ganno is endowed with a family burgher genius, but he lacks a “practical” orientation and therefore, due to his “immateriality”, or musicality, is doomed to flee into oblivion. Note that the novel was originally conceived by Mann as the story of Ganno, but then expanded to a family saga.

Wagner's music had a certain influence on the poetics of the Buddenbrooks. Most of all, this applies to leitmotifs. In music, a leitmotif is a melodic passage associated with a particular image. The leitmotifs in Wagner's operas are both concrete and symbolic, which allows them to be the carrier of a "continuous stream" of music, organized on the principle of contrasting polyphony. Mann's leitmotifs are not so ambiguous and serve for portrait characterization. The greatest number of leitmotifs in the novel is associated with Toni Buddenbrook, because it is she who determines the emotional atmosphere of the family. In some cases, these leitmotifs are concrete and mundane (when it comes to the husbands of this woman: "" Trundlich! Yes!" It sounded like a war cry, like a short call of fanfare "), in others, as in communication with Ganno, they are lyrical and ironic: “After all, her grandfather traveled around the country on four horses.”

The originality of the "Buddenbrooks" is determined not only by the influence of Wagner's work on Mann, but also by his passion for the philosophy of Nietzsche. In the essay "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Our Experience" (1947), Mann notes that in Germany at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. “Nietzsche caused such a change in the spiritual atmosphere, such a Europeanization, such a psychologism of German prose, that the conservatively German spirit became stuffy and lost all lofty meaning. It was, in essence, he, Nietzsche, who sharpened that old antithesis between south and north, between the romantic and the classical, the destruction of which was the work of the great Germans, and expanded it to the antithesis between national and European.

The Nietzsche layer of the novel is connected with its main problem-thematic nodes: decadence, the destruction of the organic integrity of culture, the morbidity of modern genius (“genius as a disease”). Hence Mann's interpretation of musicality: "Music is the realm of the demonic... Christian art with a negative sign." Nietzsche's writings for many years became for Mann that "magic screen" on which he consciously or unconsciously projected his most intimate thoughts and experiences. At the same time, Mann's relationship with this "demon", with this "other self" has always been extremely difficult, developed into a tense Socratic dialogue, the content of which cannot be exhausted by the antithesis of acceptance - denial.

Compared with the early works of T. Mann, the pre-war prose of his older brother Heinrich Mann (Heinrich Mann, 1871 - 1950) is not so integral in its manner. Thus, the style of the novel Teacher Gnus, or the End of a Tyrant (Professor Unrat oder Das Ende eines Tyrannen, 1905) is both naturalistic and post-naturalistic. It can be assumed that G. Mann unconsciously raises the question of the boundaries of naturalism, about what French naturalism could become in the artistic environment during the 19th century. traditionally opposed "spirit" and "flesh", "musical" and "painting" beginning. The conflict of north and south, Germanic and Romance values ​​determines the problems of many of Mann's novels, and somewhat later turns out to be very significant for expressionism (see the characteristic title of W. Worringer's work "Abstraction and Empathy"). The trilogy “Goddesses, or Three Novels of Duchess Assy” (Die Gottinnen oder drei Romane der Herzogin von Assy, 1903), for example, tells about a woman who dreams of ultimate self-realization in politics (“Diana”, Diana), art ( "Minerva", Minerva), love ("Venus", Venus) only under the Romanesque sun. A peculiarly understandable Mediterraneanism is the theme of Mann's subsequent works. In the novel "Between the Races" (Zwischen den Rassen, 1907), the "Latin" Purdy and the "German" Arnold Acton fought for possession of the actress Lola.

If T. Mann chose an emphatically German, burgher path in his work, inseparable, in his understanding, from Goethe, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, R. Strauss, the Faustian myth, as well as the musical tradition of the Viennese classics, then Heinrich is a fan of French culture ( Flaubert, Zola, the latest painting and theater). He was sharply critical of German romanticism. The dissimilarity in the cultural preferences of the Mann brothers reminded of itself during the First World War, when Heinrich, in the article "Zola" (Emile Zola, 1915), spoke, like the radical expressionists, for the revolutionary cleansing of the German nation, which caused the extremely sharp criticism of Thomas - in those the years of the conservative and soil activist (see the book of essays "Reflections of the Apolitical", Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 1918).

However, at the level of searching for his own style of writing, the relationship between "Romance" and "Germanic" for G. Mann was not so unambiguous. Rather, these two beginnings alternate. Fairyland: A Novel of Great Men (Im Schlaraffenland: Ein Roman unter feinen Leuten, 1900) follows the line of French naturalist prose (the theme of the "dear friend" of the provincial Zumsee trying to conquer Berlin thanks to his success with the aging wife of the powerful financier Türkheim), although and something specifically Mannian manifests itself in it - a craving for sharpening, extremes: everything in the world of money (“magic”) is chimerical, caricatured. This becomes especially evident in the pursuit of "great" love, the profanation of which is the leitmotif of pre-war Mann novels. Insolvent for one reason or another in love, Mann's characters appear as grotesque people, they are indicated by two or three screamingly bright strokes. At the same time, G. Mann, unlike Zola, does not link nature and society into a single whole. Hence the absence of his urban landscape, the presence of "masks", the almost scenic conventionality of many details. However, Mann clearly dreams of other characters. In comparison with the Turkheims and Andreas Zumsee, Violanta d'Assi is an obvious goddess, the character is clearly neo-romantic, which allows us to see in her some analogue of Nietzsche's "blonde beast".

The style that colors naturalism with something clearly not naturalistic is indicative of the German literature of the 1890s.

For example, in the dramaturgy of G. Hauptmann, in addition to the main naturalistic line (“Before Sunrise”, “Weavers”, “The Carter Genschel”, “Rose Bernd”), it is justified to speak of a combination of elements of naturalism and romanticism (“Ascension of Gannele”), romanticism and symbolism (“The sunken bell”, “And Pippa is dancing!”). It is just as difficult to separate late naturalism, impressionism and symbolism in different directions in the dramaturgy of F. Wedekind, which is very significant for H. Mann (“Spring Awakening”, Fruchlings Erwachen, 1891; “Spirit of the Earth”, Erdgeist, 1895). Thus, the characterization of G. Mann, given to him in 1911 by A. Bely, becomes possible (“... a chic realist of an impressionistic hue”).

What expresses the naturalism of the novel "Teacher Gnus"? First of all, this is a novel about modernity, in which the interpretation of the material has a socio-biological character. Gnus (Unrat) is a pillar of the German bureaucratic society. The education system he personifies, in the interpretation of Mann, cripples both the soul and the body of adolescents. The problems of gender in the novel are a sphere of prohibition, a taboo, but at the same time a sower of unrest, an ally in the fight against philistinism, the church, public hypocrisy and even embezzlement. Many generations of high school students, on the orders of Gnus, perform the same task, write an essay about the Maid of Orleans, but at the same time dream of corrupt caresses. Fathers of families also dream of breaking free at least once a year. Public morality is represented by the tyrant of nature. This is the reason for the degeneration and death of the city. In contrast, the artist Rosa Frelich from the Blue Angel cabaret, albeit a caricature, personifies everything forbidden, freedom in love (“freilich” - free).

Falls in love with Rosa and Gnus, which causes a public scandal. However, this feeling leads him to complete degradation. Manipulating Rosa, he begins to diligently corrupt the townspeople. Such is the teacher's revenge on the city, which, in the person of the students of the gymnasium, did not obey him. At the same time, Gnus believes that forbidden love, put at the service of the state, can save society from degeneration. Therefore, despite the grotesque appearance (“yellow nails”, “toothless mouth”, “withered body”, “poisonous green gleaming eyes”, etc.), Gnus sometimes looks like a romantic madman.

He is a brilliant provocateur and undertakes to prove that most of the townspeople do not live their true lives - everywhere there is deceit and hypocrisy, and only the cabaret is triumphantly real. However, G. Mann's plans did not include excessive romanticization of the character. From the “rebel” (Un-rat) Gnus becomes Unrat "oM (impurity), as he begins to trade in Rosa and goes crazy with greed. In the novel, not only Gnus is bred, but also a number of his students. The main place among them is occupied by Loman, either a repeat school student, or a young man who returned to his native city after a break.It is interesting that this sworn enemy of Gnus bears a slightly modified surname of the author of the novel, is, according to the plot, the son of the "Hanseatic" consul.

In the gymnasium years, Gnus was for his students the complete embodiment of a soulless state machine, false fatherhood. Later, the "madness" of the former teacher raised questions of a personal nature before Loman, who had finally escaped from the care of the Loman family.

Having matured and acquired respectability, he would like to consider himself free from all the "complexes" of youth. But in many ways, Loman remains the same high school student. The burden of failed dreams, an inferiority complex, "fear of reality" - in a word, "romanticism" continues to weigh on him. Loman would like to relieve himself of this burden of the past, but it is irreducible to the figure of Gnus. After the “madman” Gnus is taken away by a police “coach” in the finale of the novel, Loman is left alone with himself, but he is still not free. It is possible that his lack of freedom, under a certain set of circumstances, will turn into its opposite, the choice of a writer's path. So, Gnus becomes an unexpected ally of Loman, the embodiment of not lust, but "terrible burning and loneliness, heavy as a curse."

Mann emphasizes that Loman is a reader of Zola, Verlaine, "an ironic spectator", a poet imitating Heine, an opponent of "traditional morality"; he is elegant, distinguished, he has a thin hand and "independent manners". The image of Loman, in other words, is intended to outline the theme of creative vocation in the novel. The former high school student, having left his native land, is able to look from the outside at Gnus, Rosa, his gymnasium friends, the urban bourgeoisie, at himself, “an artist in his youth” (the author of poems about the moon, an admirer of the “beautiful lady” Dora Bregpot). Observing Gnus, he comes to a previously impossible conclusion for himself. Art, in a certain sense, must be despotic. Who will Loman become - a burgher or an artist?

The somewhat crumpled ending of the novel suggests that Loman's line, if properly designed, could become the core of the story. But G. Mann, not wanting to creatively depend on his brother, leaves the emerging theme of a romantic artist and, against the background of the "death of a hero" - the weakness of Loman's spiritual and narrative rights - receives a second life, seemingly completely debunked Gnus. He ceases to be a "petty demon" and paradoxically finds himself in the position of a "dying god." Shifting the axis of the novel, presumably, was not the intention of the author. But precisely because of this circumstance, Mann outlined the movement of German prose from naturalism to expressionism.

Literature

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