Periodization of literature of the 19th century. Russian culture in the first quarter of the 19th century

Russian literary and social thought of the first quarter of the 19th century.

The leading literary movement in the countries of Western Europe at the beginning of the 19th century is romanticism, which replaced classicism, educational realism and sentimentalism. Russian literature responds to this phenomenon in a unique way. It borrows a lot from romanticism of the Western European type, but at the same time solves the problems of its own national self-determination. Compared to Western European romanticism, Russian romanticism also has its own specifics, its own national-historical roots. And in addition, Russian literature of the early 19th century faces the problem of creating a mature literary language, which has long been solved in the literatures of Western countries, which significantly complicates Russian literary development. What is the similarity of Russian romanticism with Western European and what are its national differences?

The end of the 18th century in the history of Christian Europe was marked by a profound social cataclysm, which blew up the entire social order to the ground and called into question faith in human reason and world harmony. The bloody upheavals of the Great French Revolution of 1789-1793, the era of the Napoleonic wars that followed them, the bourgeois system established as a result of the revolution with its selfishness and commercialism, with the “war of all against all” - all this cast doubt on the truth of the educational teachings of the 18th century, which promised to humanity the triumph of freedom, equality and fraternity on a reasonable basis.

In the letter “Melodora to Philalethes” published in 1794, N.M. Karamzin noted: “We considered the end of our century to be the end of the main disasters of mankind and thought that it would be followed by an important, general combination of theory with practice, speculation with activity, that people, having become morally confident in the elegance of the laws of pure reason, they will begin to fulfill them in all accuracy and, under the canopy of peace, in the shelter of silence and tranquility, they will enjoy the true blessings of life. O Philalethes! Where is this comforting system now?... It has collapsed at its foundation!... The Age of Enlightenment! I don’t recognize you - in the blood, in the flames I don’t recognize you, among the murders and destruction I don’t recognize you!...” People of the end of the century are shocked by what happened. “Here are the fruits of your enlightenment! - they say, “here are the fruits of your sciences, your wisdom!... May your philosophy perish!” And the poor, deprived of a fatherland, and the poor, deprived of shelter, and the poor, deprived of a father, or a son, or a friend, repeat: “Let him perish!” And a good heart, torn by the sight of cruel disasters, repeats in its grief: “Let it perish!”

The perception of the events of the French Revolution as a universal catastrophe was characteristic of both Radishchev in his last dying work - the ode “The Eighteenth Century” (1801-1802), and for D. I. Fonvizin in his last comedy “The Governor’s Choice” (1790), where “ “equality of fortune” he called “an invention of false philosophers, whose eloquent speculations brought the French to their present situation.”

But let's return to Karamzin. In a response letter to Melodore, Philalethes seems to agree with his friend: “...We overly magnified the eighteenth century and expected too much from it. The incidents have proven what terrible delusions the minds of our contemporaries are still susceptible to!” But unlike Melodorus, Philalethes does not become despondent. He believes that these errors lie not in the nature of the mind, but in human pride. “Woe to that philosophy that wants to solve everything! Lost in the labyrinth of inexplicable difficulties, it can drive us to despair...” What does Karamzin’s hero see as salvation, what is the source of his optimism? “Like a sailor who, in the disastrous hour of a shipwreck... does not lose hope, fights the waves and grabs a floating plank with his hand,” Philalethes turns to faith: “Let them prove to me in advance that God does not exist, that Providence is one word without meaning, that we children of chance, cohesion of atoms and nothing more! ...I will look at the sapphire sky, at the flowering earth, put my hand on my heart and say to the atheist: “You are crazy!”... God put feeling in our heart, God put in my and your soul hatred of evil, love of virtue - this God , of course, will turn everything towards the goal of the common good.”

In the words of Philaletus there is a Russian response to that confusion of minds, to that ideological crisis that the European world was experiencing at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. The collapse of faith in reason led European humanity to “cosmic pessimism,” hopelessness and despair, and doubt about the value of modern civilization. Starting from the imperfect earthly world order, the romantics turned to eternal and unconditional ideals. A deep discord arose between these ideals and reality, which led to the so-called romantic dual world.

In contrast to the abstract mind of the 18th century enlighteners, who preferred to extract the “general” and “typical” from everything, the romantics proclaimed the idea of ​​the sovereignty and self-worth of each individual person with the richness of her spiritual needs and the depth of her inner world. They focused their main attention not on the circumstances surrounding the person, but on his experiences and feelings. The Romantics revealed to their readers the previously unknown complexity and richness of the human soul, its inconsistency and inexhaustibility. They had a passion for depicting strong and vivid feelings, fiery passions or, on the contrary, the secret movements of the human soul with its intuition and subconscious depths.

In Russia, romantic trends also arose under the influence of the events of the Great French Revolution, but strengthened during the years of liberal politics at the beginning of the reign of Alexander I, who came to the Russian throne after a palace conspiracy and the murder of his father, Emperor Paul I, on the night of March 11, 1801. These trends were fueled by the rise of national and personal consciousness during the Patriotic War of 1812. The reaction that came after the victorious war, the refusal of the government of Alexander I from the liberal promises of the beginning of his reign led society to deep disappointment, which became even more acute after the collapse of the Decembrist movement. These are the historical background of Russian romanticism, which was characterized by common features that brought it closer to Western European romanticism. Russian romantics are also characterized by a heightened sense of personality, aspiration to “the inner world of a person’s soul, the hidden life of his heart” (V.G. Belinsky), increased subjectivity and emotionality of the author’s style, interest in Russian history and national character.

At the same time, Russian romanticism had its own national characteristics. First of all, in contrast to Western European romanticism, he retained historical optimism and hope for the possibility of overcoming the contradictions between the ideal and reality. In the romanticism of Byron, for example, Russian poets were attracted by the pathos of love of freedom, rebellion against an imperfect world order, but Byronic skepticism, “cosmic pessimism,” and the mood of “world sorrow” remained alien to them. Russian romantics also did not accept the cult of a smug, proud and selfishly minded human personality, contrasting it with the ideal image of a patriotic citizen or a humane person, endowed with a sense of Christian love, sacrifice and compassion. The romantic individualism of the Western European hero did not find support on Russian soil, but was met with severe condemnation.

These features of our romanticism were associated with the fact that Russian reality at the beginning of the 19th century concealed hidden opportunities for radical renewal: the peasant question was on the agenda, the preconditions for great changes that took place in the 60s of the 19th century were maturing. A significant role in the national self-determination of Russian romanticism was played by the thousand-year-old Orthodox Christian culture with its desire for general agreement and a conciliar solution to all issues, with its rejection of individualism, with its condemnation of selfishness and vanity. Therefore, in Russian romanticism, unlike Western European romanticism, there was no decisive break with the spirit and culture of classicism, enlightenment and sentimentalism.

Karamzinsky Philalethes, condemning the despondency and skepticism of Melodor, says: “I know that the spread of some false ideas has done a lot of evil in our time, but is enlightenment to blame? Do not sciences, on the contrary, serve as a means to discover truth and dispel errors that are detrimental to our peace?... The lamp of sciences will not go out on the globe... No, the Almighty will not deprive us of this precious consolation of the kind, sensitive, and sad. Enlightenment is always beneficial; enlightenment leads to virtue, proving to us the close union of the private good with the general and revealing an inexhaustible source of bliss in our own chest; enlightenment is a cure for a corrupted heart and mind...” Karamzin here not only does not oppose faith to reason, but speaks of their natural and eternal union: he defends the truth of enlightening reason, warmed by the rays of faith, permeated with the light of high moral truths. This tendency towards a synthesis of romanticism with the Enlightenment contributed to an earlier and easier overcoming of the dual worlds inherent in romanticism and the transition of Russian literature to a realistic exploration of reality with a dialectical interaction between ideal and reality, human character and the circumstances surrounding it.

But the romantic movement itself more or less clearly triumphed in Russian literature only in the 1820s. In the first decade of the 19th century, sentimentalism occupied a predominant position in Russian poetry and prose, leading a successful fight against moribund classicism and clearing the way for the romantic movement. However, researchers have long noticed that defining the literary process of the 1800-1810s as the history of the struggle between sentimentalism and classicism can only be done with great reserve, that “the specifics of this period cannot be characterized by analogy with one or another of the pan-European artistic movements” (E N. Kupreyanova). Only one thing is clear so far: Batyushkov and Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky and young Pushkin - all considered themselves “Karamzinists.”

Karamzin was and remained the recognized head of Russian sentimentalism. But quite significant changes took place in his work at the beginning of the 19th century. Sentimentalism at the level of “Poor Lisa” is a thing of the past and has become the lot of epigones like Prince P. I. Shalikov. Both Karamzin and his comrades went ahead, developing that promising side of Russian sentimentalism, which organically connected it with the Enlightenment at one pole and with romanticism at the other, which opened Russian literature towards the most diverse Western European influences that it urgently needed in the process of its formation. The sentimentalism of the Karamzin school at the beginning of the 19th century was brightly colored by pre-romantic trends. This movement is transitional, capacious, synthesizing the features of classicism, enlightenment, sentimentalism and romanticism. Without enriching Russian spiritual culture with Western European social and philosophical ideas, aesthetic concepts and artistic forms, further development and self-determination of new Russian literature, striving to become “on par with the century,” was impossible.

On this path, Russian literature faced great obstacles at the beginning of the 19th century: it was necessary to solve “a problem of enormous national-historical importance - to bring the lexical composition of the Russian language into conformity with foreign Western European ideas and concepts that had already been mastered by the educated part of society, to make them a national property "(E.N. Kupreyanova). The educated layer of noble society expressed these ideas and concepts in French, and to translate them into Russian there were no words of adequate meaning and meaning in the Russian language.

Of course, the gallomania of the noble society manifested cosmopolitanism and a disdainful attitude towards Russia and the Russian people. It is no coincidence that Chatsky in Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit” wittily calls the language of the noble society of Moscow “a mixture of French and Nizhny Novgorod.” But there was another, perhaps more significant, reason for the passion for the French language, which had nothing to do with gallomania and sycophancy before the West. After Peter's reforms in Russia, a gap arose between the spiritual needs of an enlightened society and the semantic structure of the Russian language. All educated people were forced to speak French, because in the Russian language there were no words and concepts to express many thoughts and feelings. Even for Pushkin, sometimes the “language of Europe” was “more familiar than ours” (letter to Chaadaev dated July 6, 1831).

By the way, at that time the French language really had a pan-European distribution; not only the Russian, but, for example, the German intelligentsia preferred it to their native language, which offended Herder’s national feelings no less than Karamzin’s. In an article of 1801 “On love for the fatherland and national pride,” Karamzin wrote: “Our trouble is that we all want to speak French and do not think about working on mastering our own language; Is it any wonder that we don’t know how to explain to them some of the subtleties in conversation” - and called for giving the native language all the subtleties of the French language. Karamzin successfully solved this problem in three ways:

1. Possessing an extraordinary stylistic flair, he introduced into the Russian language such barbarisms (direct borrowings of foreign words) that organically took root in it: “civilization”, “era”, “moment”, “catastrophe”, “serious”, “aesthetic” , “moral”, “sidewalk” and many others.

2. Karamzin created new words and concepts from Russian roots following the example of foreign ones: “in-flu-ence” - “in-li-yanie”; “de-veloppe-ment” – “development”; “raffine” – “refined”; “touchant” – “touching”, etc.

3. Finally, Karamzin invented neologism words by analogy with the words of the French language: “industry”, “future”, “need”, “generally useful”, “improved”, etc.

In the article “Why there are few authorial talents in Russia” (1802), Karamzin drew attention to the need to update not only the lexical, but also the syntactic structure of Russian speech. “We still had so few true writers that they did not have time to give us examples in many genera; did not have time to enrich the words with subtle ideas; They didn’t show how to express pleasantly some even ordinary thoughts.” Therefore, “a Russian candidate for authorship, dissatisfied with books, must close them and listen to conversations around him in order to completely recognize the language. Here is a new problem: in our best houses they speak more French... What can the author do? Invent, compose expressions; guess the best choice of words; to give the old some new meaning, to offer them in a new connection, but so skillfully as to deceive the readers and hide from them the unusual expression!” (Italics are mine. - Yu. L.).

Karamzin deeply reformed the very structure of Russian literary speech. He decisively abandoned the heavy German-Latin syntactic construction introduced by Lomonosov, which was not in keeping with the spirit of the Russian language. Instead of long and incomprehensible periods, Karamzin began to write in clear and concise phrases, using light, elegant and logically harmonious French prose as a model. Therefore, the essence of Karamzin’s reform cannot be reduced to the convergence of “book” norms with the forms of the spoken language of the noble “society”. Karamzin and his associates were busy creating a national language, literary and colloquial at the same time, a language of intellectual communication, oral and written, differing both from the “book” style and from everyday vernacular, including the nobility. In carrying out this reform, the “sentimentalist” Karamzin, strange as it may seem, was guided by the linguistic norms not of sentimentalism or romanticism, but of French classicism, the language of Corneille and Racine, as well as the language of the French Enlightenment. And in this sense, he was a much more consistent “classic” than his opponent A. S. Shishkov. The focus on the mature and processed French language allowed Karamzin’s supporters Zhukovsky and Batyushkov to create a “school of harmonic precision” in poetry, the assimilation of the lessons of which helped Pushkin complete the formation of the language of new Russian literature.

And this suggests that neither classicism, nor sentimentalism, nor romanticism in its pure form simply existed in Russian literature. This is understandable: in its development it strived to create realism of a national scale and sound, realism of the Renaissance type. Researchers of Renaissance literature have long drawn attention to the fact that the art of writers and poets of that time, as if in grain, contained all subsequent directions in the development of European literature, all elements of future literary movements. Gathering into a powerful synthesis on a national-Russian spiritual and moral basis the trends that had scattered in Western European literature, Russian realism formally seemed to be moving “backward,” but in fact it was rushing far forward.

Karamzin was unable, of course, to avoid extremes and miscalculations. V. G. Belinsky noted: “Probably Karamzin tried to write, as they say. His mistake in this case is that he despised the idioms of the Russian language, did not listen to the language of the common people and did not study his native sources at all.” Indeed, the desire for grace of expression led Karamzin’s language to an abundance of aesthetic periphrases, replacing a simple and “rude” word: not “death”, but a “fatal arrow”: “Happy doormen! Your whole life is, of course, a pleasant dream, and the most fatal arrow should meekly fly into your chest, not outraged by tyrant passions.”

Russian literature of the first quarter of the 19th century balanced this one-sidedness of Karamzin with the appearance of the fabulist I. A. Krylov. In Krylov’s language, vernacular, colloquial and folk-poetic turns, idioms, idiomatic and phraseological combinations have ceased to be signs of “low style”: they are used not deliberately, but naturally, in accordance with the spirit of the language itself, behind which hides the historical experience of the people, the structure of the people consciousness. Following Krylov, A. S. Griboyedov in the comedy “Woe from Wit” mastered the language of the Moscow Famus society and gave an example of noble vernacular.

The desire for subtlety of thought and accuracy of its verbal expression often led Karamzin, and especially his epigones, to mannerism, pretentiousness, and excessive periphrasticism. “Sensitivity” degenerated into cloying tearfulness. The sharp break with Church Slavonicisms, with the high style of Old Russian literature and Russian classicism limited the possibilities of the new style to the depiction of intimate experiences. The “new syllable” turned out to be poorly suited for expressing civic and patriotic feelings. Karamzin himself felt this and in his later works tried to correct his shortcomings. The story “Marfa Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novagorod,” especially “The History of the Russian State,” to which the writer devoted the last twenty years of his life, was written in the style of not only a sensitive author, but a citizen and patriot, which turns Karamzin’s work into the greatest achievement of Russian pre-Pushkin prose. The style of “History of the Russian State”, without a doubt, had a direct influence on the formation of the civil lyricism of the Decembrists and on the freedom-loving lyricism of Pushkin in the St. Petersburg and southern periods of his work.

The dispute between the “Karamzinists” and the “Shishkovists.”

The beginning of the 19th century in the history of Russian literature was marked by disputes about language. It was a dispute between “archaists” and “innovators” - “Shishkovists” with “Karamzinists”. In the person of the admiral and Russian patriot A. S. Shishkov, the founder of the literary society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word,” Karamzin met with a strong and noble opponent. An Old Believer, an admirer of Lomonosov's language, Shishkov was a literary classic with very significant reservations. In contrast to Karamzin’s Europeanism, he put forward the idea of ​​nationality in literature. But the problem of nationality is the most important sign not of a classicist, but of a romantic worldview. From this point of view, Shishkov can also be counted among the pre-romanticists, but not of the progressive, but of the conservative direction, who denied post-revolutionary Western reality from aristocratic noble, and not from democratic positions.

In 1803, Shishkov made a “Discourse on the old and new syllable of the Russian language”, in 1804 he added an “Addition” to this work, and then published “Discourse on the eloquence of Holy Scripture and what constitutes wealth, abundance, beauty and the power of the Russian language" (1810) and "Conversations about literature between two persons..." (1811). In them, Shishkov advocated for the return of literature to oral folk art, to popular vernacular, to Orthodox Church Slavonic books. In “Reflections on the Old and New Style,” he reproached the “Karamzinists” for succumbing to the temptation of European revolutionary false teachings: “Instead of depicting our thoughts according to the rules and concepts accepted from ancient times, which have grown for many centuries and taken root in our minds, we depict them according to the rules and the concepts of a foreign people...” He considered the style of language to be a sign of the author’s ideological affiliation.

It seemed to Shishkov that the language reform carried out by Karamzin was anti-patriotic and even anti-religious. “Language is the soul of the people, the mirror of morals, a true indicator of enlightenment, an incessant witness of deeds. Where there is no faith in the hearts, there is no piety in the language. Where there is no love for the fatherland, the language does not express domestic feelings,” stated Shishkov. And since Karamzin reacted negatively to the abundance of Church Slavonic words in the Russian language, Shishkov argued that Karamzin’s “innovations” “distorted” his noble and majestic simplicity. Shishkov mistakenly considered the Russian language to be a dialect of the Church Slavonic language and believed that all its expressive wealth lay in the use of Slavicisms from liturgical books. Shishkov reproached Karamzin for the excessive use of barbarisms (“epoch”, “harmony”, “enthusiasm”, “catastrophe”), he was disgusted by neologisms (“coup” - translation of the word “revolution”, “concentration” - “concentrer”), his ear they cut up artificial words: “presentness,” “futureness,” “readiness.”

Sometimes his criticism was pointed and precise. Shishkov was outraged, for example, by the evasiveness and aesthetic affectation in the speech of Karamzin and the “Karamzinists”: why, instead of the expression “when travel became a need of my soul,” not simply say: “when I fell in love with traveling”? Why can’t the refined and periphrased speech – “motley crowds of rural Oreads meet with dark bands of reptile pharaohs” – be replaced by an expression that everyone understands: “Gypsies are coming to meet the village girls”? The censures of such fashionable expressions in those years as “support your opinion” or “nature sought to please us” were fair, but “the people have not lost the first imprint of their value.”

In “Conversation...” the first steps were taken in studying the monuments of ancient Russian writing, here they enthusiastically studied “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, studied folklore, and advocated the rapprochement of Russia with the Slavic world. Pre-romantic trends were manifested in the fact that even Shishkov not only defended Lomonosov’s “three calms,” but also recognized the need to bring the “pompous” “Slovenian” style closer to the common language, and in his poetic work (“Poems for Children”) he paid tribute to the tradition of sentimentalism.

Finally, in a dispute with Karamzin, Shishkov put forward a compelling argument about the “idiomatic nature” of each language, about the unique originality of its phraseological systems, which make it impossible to literally translate thoughts from one language to another. Shishkov wrote: “The origin of words or the concatenation of concepts for each people is done in its own special way.” The Russian idiomatic expression “old horseradish,” for example, when literally translated into French “vieux raifort” loses its figurative meaning and “means only the thing itself, but in the metaphysical sense it has no circle of signification.” Consequently, “each nation has its own composition of speeches and its own combination of concepts.” Here Shishkov came to understand the unique originality of the national character in general and Krylov’s fable style in particular. V. G. Belinsky also later spoke about the “originally Russian images and phrases that cannot be translated into any language in the world” of Krylov’s fables.

In defiance of Karamzin, Shishkov proposed his own reform of the Russian language: he believed that the concepts and feelings missing in our everyday life should be denoted by new words formed from the roots of the Russian and Old Church Slavonic languages. Instead of Karamzin’s “influence” he proposed “inspiration”, instead of “development” - “vegetation”, instead of “actor” - “actor”, instead of “individuality” - “intelligence”. “Wet shoes” were approved instead of “galoshes” and “wandering” instead of “labyrinth”. Most of his innovations did not take root in the Russian language. Shishkov was a sincere patriot, but a poor philologist: a sailor by profession, he studied the language at an amateur level.

However, the pathos of his articles evoked a sympathetic attitude among many writers. And when Shishkov, together with G.R. Derzhavin, founded the literary society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” (1811) with a charter and its own magazine, P.A. Katenin, I.A. Krylov, and later V.K. joined this society. Kuchelbecker and A. S. Griboyedov. One of the active participants in the “Conversation...”, the prolific playwright A. A. Shakhovskoy, in the comedy “New Stern,” ridiculed Karamzin, and in the comedy “A Lesson for Coquettes, or Lipetsk Waters,” in the person of the “balladeer” Fialkin, he created a parody image of V. A. Zhukovsky.

This caused a unanimous rebuff from young people who supported Karamzin’s literary authority. Thus, D.V. Dashkov, P.A. Vyazemsky, D.N. Bludov composed several witty pamphlets addressed to Shakhovsky and other members of the “Conversation...”. One of Bludov’s pamphlets “Vision in the Arzamas tavern” gave the circle of young defenders of Karamzin and Zhukovsky the name “Society of unknown Arzamas writers” or, simply, “Arzamas”. The organizational structure of this society, founded in the fall of 1815, was dominated by a cheerful spirit of parody of the serious “Conversation...”. In contrast to the official pomposity, simplicity, naturalness, openness prevailed here, and a large place was given to jokes. Parodying the official ritual of the “Conversation...”, upon joining Arzamas, everyone had to read a “eulogy” to his “late” predecessor from among the living members of the “Conversation...” or the “Russian Academy” (Count D.I. Khvostov, S. A. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, A. S. Shishkov himself, etc.). “Eulogies” were a form of literary struggle: they parodied “high” genres and ridiculed the stylistic archaism of the poetic works of the “talkers.” At the meetings of the society, the humorous genres of Russian poetry were honed, a bold and decisive struggle was waged against all kinds of officialdom, and a type of independent Russian writer, free from the pressure of any ideological conventions, was formed. P. A. Vyazemsky called “Arzamas” a school of “literary camaraderie” and mutual literary education. The society became the center of literary life and social struggle in the second quarter of the 19th century. Members of "Arzamas" had their own literary nicknames: Zhukovsky - "Svetlana", Pushkin - "Cricket", etc.

The Arzamas participants shared Karamzin’s concern about the state of the Russian language, which was reflected in his 1802 article “On Love for the Fatherland and People’s Pride.” In their literary work, they sought to instill in the national language and consciousness the European culture of thinking, and looked for means of expressing “subtle” ideas and feelings in their native language. When in 1822 Pushkin read Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon” in Zhukovsky’s translation, he said: “It must be Byron in order to express with such terrible force the first signs of madness, and Zhukovsky in order to re-express it.” Here Pushkin precisely defined the essence of Zhukovsky’s creative genius, who strived not for translation, but for re-expression, turning “someone else’s” into “his own.” In the times of Karamzin and Zhukovsky, a huge role was assigned to such translations and re-expressions, with the help of which our literary language was enriched, complex philosophical thoughts and refined psychological states became national property.

Both the “Karamzinists” and the “Shishkovists,” with all their differences, ultimately strived for one thing - to overcome the bilingualism of Russian cultural consciousness of the early 19th century. Their dispute was soon resolved by the history of Russian literature itself, which revealed Pushkin, who dialectically resolved the contradictions that arose in his work.

It is noteworthy that Karamzin himself did not take part in these disputes, but treated Shishkov with respect, not harboring any resentment towards his criticism. In 1803, he began the main work of his life - the creation of the “History of the Russian State”. Karamzin had the idea for this major work a long time ago. Back in 1790, he wrote: “It hurts, but it must be fairly admitted that we still do not have a good history, that is, written with a philosophical mind, with criticism, with noble eloquence... They say that our history in itself is less than others entertaining: I don’t think so, all you need is intelligence, taste, talent.” Karamzin, of course, had all these abilities, but in order to master the capital work associated with studying a huge number of historical documents, material freedom and independence were also required. When Karamzin began publishing “Bulletin of Europe” in 1802, he dreamed of the following: “Being not very rich, I published a magazine with the intention that through forced work of five or six years I would buy independence, the opportunity to work freely and ... compose Russian history, which For some time now it has occupied my whole soul.”

And then Karamzin’s friend, fellow Minister of Education M.N. Muravyov, turned to Alexander I with a petition to help the writer in realizing his plan. In a personal decree of December 31, 1802, Karamzin was approved as a court historiographer with an annual pension of two thousand rubles. Thus began the twenty-two-year period of Karamzin’s life, associated with the creation of “The History of the Russian State.”

Karamzin said about how history should be written: “A historian must rejoice and grieve with his people. He must not, guided by bias, distort facts, exaggerate happiness or belittle disaster in his presentation; he must first of all be truthful; but maybe, even should, convey everything unpleasant, everything shameful in the history of one’s people with sadness, and speak with joy and enthusiasm about what brings honor, about victories, about a flourishing state. Only in this way will he become a national writer of everyday life, which, first of all, a historian should be.”

Karamzin began writing “The History of the Russian State” in Moscow and in the Olsufyevo estate near Moscow. In 1816, due to the efforts to publish the completed eight volumes, he moved to St. Petersburg. Here he unwittingly found himself close to the court, personally communicating with Alexander I and members of the royal family. The Karamzin family spent the summer months in Tsarskoye Selo, where they were visited by the young lyceum student Pushkin. In 1818, eight volumes of “History...” were published, in 1821 the ninth, dedicated to the era of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, was published, in 1825 - the tenth and eleventh volumes.

“History...” was created based on the study of vast factual material, among which chronicles occupied a key place. Combining the talent of a scholar-historian with artistic talent, Karamzin skillfully conveyed the very spirit of chronicle sources by abundantly quoting them or skillfully retelling them. The historian valued not only the abundance of facts in the chronicles, but also the very attitude of the chronicler towards them. Comprehension of the chronicler’s point of view is the main task of Karamzin the artist, allowing him to convey the “spirit of the times”, popular opinion about certain events. And Karamzin the historian made comments. That is why his “History...” combined a description of the emergence and development of Russian statehood with the process of growth and formation of Russian national identity.

By his convictions, Karamzin was a monarchist. The events of the French Revolution had a huge influence on him, which, in his opinion, determined “the fate of people for many centuries.” Karamzin was well acquainted with the political teachings of the French enlighteners, formulated in the “Persian Letters” and “The Spirit of the Laws” by Montesquieu. The French thinker distinguished three types of government: republic, monarchy and despotism. He considered the latter type to be “wrong” and requiring destruction. Montesquieu proclaimed the ideal form of government to be a republic, the life principles of which are the republican virtues adopted by enlightened citizens: love of the fatherland, love of equality, attachment to the laws. In the “Persian Letters”, Montesquieu put the following words into the mouth of a Persian: “Monarchy is a state full of violence, always perverted into despotism... The sanctuary of honor, good name and virtue, apparently, must be sought in republics and in countries where it is allowed to pronounce the name of the fatherland "

This idealization of republican morals by French enlighteners played a fatal role in the fate of the French monarchy. And the Jacobin dictatorship that replaced it was a terrible and bitter parody of their ideal republican ideas. Karamzin, although he called himself a “republican at heart,” was convinced that this social system is a beautiful, kind, but unfulfillable utopia in practice, because it requires such virtues from a person darkened by sin that he is beyond his power. The principle of modern society, Karamzin noted, is indescribably far from the beautiful ideas of the enlighteners about freedom, fraternity and equality: “first money - and then virtue!” Therefore, Karamzin believed that the autocratic form of government was historically justified and most organic for such a huge country as Russia.

But at the same time, following Montesquieu, he noticed the constant danger that awaited autocracy in the course of history - the danger of its degeneration into “autocracy.” This happens whenever the sovereign violates the principle of separation of powers, the “symphonic” relationship between secular and spiritual power. When secular power evades the control of spiritual power, it becomes tyrannical, “autocratic.” This is how Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov appeared in the last volumes of “History...” published during Karamzin’s lifetime, the ninth, tenth and eleventh. The image of the crowned villain John and the criminal Tsar Boris shocked the imagination of contemporaries and had a direct influence on the formation of Decembrist ideology.

Karamzin acted completely consciously. He said that “the present is a consequence of the past. To learn about the first, you need to remember the last.” That is why Pushkin called “History...” “not only the creation of a great writer, but also the feat of an honest man.” When the ninth volume was published in 1821, K. F. Ryleev did not know “what to be more surprised at, the tyranny of John or the talent of our Tacitus.” And the Decembrist V.I. Shteingel called the ninth volume, “depicting with bold, sharp features all the horrors of unlimited autocracy and calling one of the great kings a tyrant,” “a phenomenon unprecedented in Russia.” The volumes about Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles were published four months before the Decembrist uprising and evoked a response from Pushkin: “This is topical, like a fresh newspaper.” During these four months, Pushkin wrote Boris Godunov.

Refuting the widespread view of peasant rebellions and riots as a manifestation of popular “savagery” and “ignorance,” Karamzin showed that popular revolts were generated by deviations of the monarchical government from the principles of autocracy towards autocracy and tyranny. Through popular indignation, the Heavenly Court administered punishment for the crimes committed by the tyrants. It is in the life of the people that, according to Karamzin, the Divine will in history manifests itself; it is the people that most often turn out to be a powerful instrument of Providence.

When Pushkin became acquainted with this “Note...” in manuscript at the end of the 1830s, he said: “Karamzin wrote his thoughts about Ancient and New Russia with all the sincerity of a beautiful soul, with all the courage of a strong and deep conviction.” “Someday posterity will appreciate... the nobility of a patriot.”

Karamzin passed away on May 22 (June 3), 1826, while working on the twelfth volume of “History...”, where he was supposed to talk about the people’s militia of Minin and Pozharsky, which liberated Moscow and ended the unrest in our Fatherland. The manuscript of this volume ended with the phrase: “The nut did not give up...”

The significance of “The History of the Russian State” is difficult to overestimate: its publication was a major act of Russian national self-awareness. According to Pushkin, Karamzin revealed to the Russians their past, just as Columbus discovered America. The writer in his “History...” gave a model of a national epic, making each era speak its own language. In the last volumes, Karamzin used the experience of Walter Scott's historical novel, giving Boris Godunov a deep moral and psychological characterization. Karamzin's work had a great influence on Russian writers. Relying on Karamzin, Pushkin created his “Boris Godunov”, and Ryleev composed his “Dumas”. “The History of the Russian State” stimulated the development of the Russian historical novel from M. N. Zagoskin, I. I. Lazhechnikov to L. N. Tolstoy. “The pure and high glory of Karamzin belongs to Russia,” said Pushkin.

Literary societies and magazines of the first quarter of the 19th century.

Beginning with the publication of the Moscow Journal (1791-1792; second edition without changes: 1801-1803), Karamzin appeared before Russian public opinion as the first professional writer and journalist. Before him, only third-tier writers decided to live on literary earnings. The cultured nobleman considered the pursuit of literature rather as fun and certainly not as a serious profession. Karamzin, with his work and constant success among readers, established the authority of writing in the eyes of society and turned literature into a profession, perhaps the most honorable and respected. According to legend, the enthusiastic young men of St. Petersburg dreamed of walking to Moscow, just to look at the famous Karamzin. The changed attitude of the noble youth of the early 19th century to literary work is evidenced by a letter from young Zhukovsky to Alexander Turgenev: “A writer who respects his title is as useful a servant of his fatherland as a warrior who defends him, as well as a judge and guardian of the law.”

In 1802, Karamzin began publishing “Bulletin of Europe” - a magazine not only literary, but also socio-political, which gave the prototype to the so-called “thick” Russian magazines that existed throughout the 19th century and survived until the end of the 20th century. The name of the magazine corresponded to its purpose - Karamzin considered it necessary to acquaint the Russian public with the latest achievements of not only Russian, but also Western European culture. The magazine reported Russian and foreign political news, published and reviewed the most interesting works of Russian literature. Karamzin not only expanded the circle of readers of good Russian books, but also cultivated aesthetic taste, prepared cultural society to perceive the poetry of V. A. Zhukovsky and A. S. Pushkin. His magazines were no longer limited to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but penetrated into the Russian provinces.

S. N. Glinka’s “Russian Messenger,” published since 1808, followed a different direction. In the programmatic introduction to his journal, S. Glinka wrote: “The philosophers of the eighteenth century never cared about evidence: they wrote political, historical, moralizing, metaphysical novels; they condemned everything, rejected everything, promised boundless enlightenment, unlimited freedom... in a word, they wanted to transform everything in their own way... We saw what these novels, these dreams of an inflamed and vain imagination led to! So, noticing current morals, education, customs, fashions, etc., we will contrast them not with romantic fiction, but with the morals and virtues of our forefathers.” In contrast to Karamzin's European orientation, Glinka paid attention to the defense of national foundations, devoting the best pages of the magazine to Russian history, Russian literature and art. He fought against the Frenchmania of noble society. Zealously defending the purity of the Orthodox Christian faith, Glinka did not allow the publication of poems containing mythological names. His magazine played an important role in nurturing patriotic feelings during the era of the anti-Napoleonic campaign (1805-1806) and especially during the Patriotic War of 1812, after which it began to lose its readership and was closed by the publisher himself in 1824.

In the wake of a nationwide patriotic upsurge, in 1812, another magazine was opened in St. Petersburg - “Son of the Fatherland.” The initiators of this publication were the director of the Imperial Public Library A. N. Olenin and the trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district S. S. Uvarov. N.I. Grech became the long-term editor of the magazine. At first, news about the progress of military operations prevailed here, but then the magazine acquired a literary and artistic character, defending the principles of civil romanticism, the Decembrist movement. In the 1820s, together with the “Competitor of Education and Charity” and the Decembrist almanacs “Polar Star” and “Mnemosyne”, the magazine contributed to the unification of oppositional social and literary forces.

A specific feature of social life at the beginning of the 19th century was the organization of literary societies, which was an indicator of the relative maturity of literature and the desire to give it the character of a public matter. The earliest of them was the “Friendly Literary Society” that arose in Moscow in January 1801, which grew out of a student circle of students of Moscow University and the university Noble boarding school - brothers Andrei and Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, A. F. Voeikov, A. S. Kaisarov, V. A. Zhukovsky, S. G. Rodzianki. According to the senior participant, poet and teacher at Moscow University A.F. Merzlyakov, in this society “young people, united by acquaintance and friendship, composed, translated, analyzed their translations and works, and thus improved themselves on the difficult path of literature and taste.” One of the initiators of the society, Andrei Turgenev, began his literary career as a convinced “Karamzinist.” He wrote the original elegy “The deadening hand of gloomy autumn...” (1802), which anticipates the translated “Rural Cemetery” by V. A. Zhukovsky. His early death (1803) did not allow his promising talent to develop. V. K. Kuchelbecker noted in his “Diary”: “Russia is unhappy about people with talent; this young man, who was Zhukovsky’s rival at the Noble boarding school and would probably have surpassed him, died before he was even 20 years old.”

Soon, disagreements arose between members of the society in relation to Karamzin. The radically minded Andrei Turgenev and A.S. Kaisarov, under the influence of Schiller, began to affirm the romantic idea of ​​nationality and high citizenship in literature. At the end of March 1801, Andrei Turgenev gave a speech at a meeting of the “Friendly Literary Society” in which he condemned Karamzin and his followers for the lack of “high” content in their poems, for being unpopular and “imitative.” Karamzin “inclined us too much towards softness and softness,” said A. Turgenev. – I’ll tell you frankly: he is more harmful than useful to our literature... He is harmful because he writes beautifully in his own way; Let the Russians continue to write worse and not so interestingly, if only they would deal with the most important subjects, write more original, more important, and not so much apply themselves to petty issues.” At one of the meetings of the society, in a speech addressed to the fatherland, Andrei Turgenev said: “Oh, you, before whom our hearts at this moment stand in awe in ecstasy of joy! Kings want slaves to grovel in the dust before them; let flatterers with dead souls crawl before them; here your sons stand before you! Bless all their enterprises! Heed our sacred vows! We will live for your good!” Moving away from the elegiac mood of the “Karamzinists,” Andrei Turgenev in the poem “To the Fatherland” (1802) revives the traditions of the solemn ode, heroic and courageous poetry, anticipating the civil lyricism of the Decembrists for many years to come:

You, holy fatherland, To love you, to serve you - This is our direct title! We buy our lives Prosperity is ready for you...

The radical sentiments of Andrei Turgenev and Andrei Kaisarov were not shared by successive “Karamzinists” Vasily Zhukovsky, Alexander Turgenev, Semyon Rodzianka. They adhered to more moderate views, focusing their attention on moral problems, cultivating personal rather than public virtue in the spirit of Karamzin. In the fall of 1801, the society collapsed, many of its participants left Moscow.

As a circle of young like-minded people, on July 15, 1801, the “Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and Arts” opened in St. Petersburg. His interests were not limited to literature alone. The society included sculptors (I. I. Terebenev, I. I. Galberg), artists (A. I. Ivanov), archaeologists, historians, doctors (A. I. Ermolaev, I. O. Timkovsky, D. I. languages, etc.). “The society chose literature, science and art as the subject of its exercises,” wrote V.V. Popugaev, with the goal of “mutually improving ourselves in these three branches of human abilities” and “contributing to the best of our ability to improve these three branches.”

But the leading position in society was, of course, occupied by writers. Unlike the Friendly Literary Society, they were alien to the Karamzin direction, adhered to educational traditions and developed a civic theme in their work. Among them were people of different social origins: people from petty bureaucrats, clergy, and merchants. The Kazan merchant, for example, was the poet G. P. Kamenev, the author of the first Russian ballad “Gromval” (1804). Poets and publicists I.M. Born and V.V. Popugaev, representatives of the most radical part of society, were commoners. The poet and philologist A. Kh. Vostokov and the poet and publicist I. P. Pnin came from illegitimate children of the nobility. It is no coincidence that Pnin, who was not recognized by his father, Field Marshal I.V. Repnin, wrote the treatise “The Cry of Innocence Rejected by the Laws” (1802), which represents “a remarkable critique of family and marriage in contemporary noble society in its strength of civic feeling” (V.V. Orlov). Among the participants in the “Free Society” was N. A. Radishchev, a writer, the son of the author of “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.”

A group of poets from this circle was often called in literary studies “Radischevite poets”, since they developed in their work ideas close to the educational ideology of the 18th century. But their worldview did not rise to the radicalism of the author of “Journey...”. They were supporters of the gradual improvement of public morals and government institutions through the dissemination of educational ideas. The most complete reflection of their socio-political views is Pnin’s second treatise, “An Experience on Enlightenment regarding Russia,” in which the author sees the causes of social evil in the ignorance of the people.

Members of the “Free Society...” hoped to achieve government support for their educational endeavors. Pnin, for example, sent both treatises to Alexander I and received the highest approval. The activities of the society were officially recognized and legalized. Members of the society received the right to hold open meetings and publish their works. First it was the almanac “Scroll of the Muses” (1802-1803), then the magazine “Periodical publication of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences and Arts” (only one issue of the magazine was published in 1804), and also collaborated in other periodical publications . Adjacent to the direction of the society were the magazines “Northern Herald” (1804-1805) and “Lyceum” (1806), published by I. I. Martynov, “Journal of Russian Literature” (1805) by N. P. Brusilov, “Flower Garden” (1809-1810 ) A.E. Izmailov and A.P. Benitsky, “St. Petersburg Bulletin” (1812), created by decision of the society.

From 1804-1805 poets K. N. Batyushkov, A. F. Merzlyakov, S. S. Bobrov, N. I. Gnedich were accepted as members of the society. The brightest period in his activity coincides with the heyday of government liberalism (1801 - 1807). After the death of one of the active members, I.P. Pnin (1809), the society experienced a crisis. During the intense struggle between its members, the initiative passes to the moderate wing, led by D. I. Yazykov and A. E. Izmailov.

The activities of the society revived and largely changed their direction with the arrival of the “Karamzinist” writers - D. N. Bludov, V. L. Pushkin and especially D. V. Dashkov, who in 1811 was elected president of the society and tried to give it combative in nature, directed against Shishkov’s “Conversation...”. But conservative members expressed dissatisfaction and distrust of the new president. After his speech at a meeting with a caustic “eulogy” to Count Khvostov, a mediocre but prolific poet and “bumpster,” Dashkov was expelled from the society, after which it ceased its activities in 1812.

It resumed in 1816, headed by a new president, A.E. Izmailov, who gathered around him minor writers and published the magazine “Blagomarnenny”. At this time, society found itself on the periphery of literary life. Significant changes took place in it in the early 1820s in connection with the arrival here of poets from the Lyceum circle, the future Decembrists. As the Decembrist movement emerged and developed, secret societies (first the Union of Salvation, then the Union of Prosperity) set the task of subordinating previously created legal literary organizations to their influence. Gradually, the Decembrists achieved a dominant position in the “Free Society...”. This includes K. F. Ryleev, A. A. Bestuzhev, V. K. Kuchelbecker, A. F. Raevsky (brother of V. F. Raevsky), O. M. Somov and other prominent Decembrist writers.

In 1811, the “Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature” was organized at Moscow University, which existed for more than 100 years. It included among its ranks teachers, writers and simply lovers of fine literature. At first, the chairman of the society was Professor Anton Antonovich Prokopovich-Antonsky. The society organized a preparatory committee of six active members, which prepared the next open meetings: selected works for oral reading, discussion or publication in the proceedings of the society. The meetings usually opened with the reading of an ode and ended with the reading of a fable. In between, other genres of literature in poetry and prose were discussed, articles of a scientific nature were read (about the Russian language by A. Kh. Vostokov, on the literature of D. F. Merzlyakov, on the Church Slavonic language of D. I. Kachenovsky, on word order and paradoxes from Cicero I I. Davydova, etc.). At a meeting of the society, N. I. Gnedich for the first time read an excerpt from his translation of Homer’s “Iliad,” and V. A. Zhukovsky read translations from Gerbel “Oatmeal Kissel” and “Red Carbuncle.” V. L. Pushkin most often amused the audience with a fable at the end of the meeting. The activities of the society were devoid of a strict literary direction, although thanks to A.F. Merzlyakov and other organizers a tilt towards classicism was outlined. In 1818, Merzlyakov spoke out here against the hexameter and the ballad genre.

“Conversation of lovers of the Russian word” (1811-1816) and its opposing “Arzamas” fell into the center of the literary and social struggle of the first quarter of the 19th century. With the closure of “Conversation...” and the end of the literary dispute with it, a crisis began in the activities of “Arzamas” (1815-1818). In 1817, members of secret Decembrist organizations - N. M. Muravyov, M. F. Orlov, N. I. Turgenev - joined it. Dissatisfied with the fact that society is busy discussing literary issues, the Decembrists are trying to give it a political character. The loose structure of society does not satisfy their serious intentions. They are trying to adopt strict “laws” of society at the meeting and insist on publishing a special journal. A split ensues, and in 1818 the society's activities ceased.

Founded in 1818-1819, the “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature” and the “Green Lamp” became branches (“governments”) of secret Decembrist organizations. Participants in the Union of Welfare, in accordance with the charter, were obliged to penetrate legal literary societies and monitor their activities.

The meetings of the “Green Lamp” took place in the house of N. Vsevolozhsky, in a hall illuminated by a lamp with a green lampshade. It was a literary association with a radical political orientation, not registered in government circles. This included young oppositionists, among whom were people with republican convictions. The meetings of the “Green Lamp” were attended by poets (F. Glinka, N. Gnedich, A. Delvig, A. Pushkin), theater critics (D. Barkov, Ya. Tolstoy), publicist A. Ulybyshev, society dandies seething with freethinking (P. Kavelin, M. Shcherbinin).

In 1816, with the permission of the government, the “Free Society of Competitors of Education and Charity” was founded, which in 1818 received the highest approval under the name “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature”, with the right to publish its own magazine “Competitor of Education and Charity. Proceedings of the “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.” All benefits from the publication were assigned to “those who, while engaged in the sciences and arts, require support and charity.” The Decembrists (F. Glinka, brothers N. and A. Bestuzhev, K. Ryleev, A. Kornilovich, V. Kuchelbecker, O. Somov), having become members of this society, began a decisive struggle against its well-intentioned wing (N. Tsertelev, B Fedorov, D. Khvostov, V. Karazin). The struggle was crowned with success, and from 1821 the society became a legal branch of the Decembrist movement. Regular meetings began to be held to discuss the most pressing problems of the humanities, literature and art. Members of the society support with their works the magazines close to their convictions: “Son of the Fatherland”, “Nevsky Spectator”, and then the almanac “Polar Star” created by Ryleev and Bestuzhev. The publication of its own magazine “Competitor of Education and Charity” becomes permanent. Thus, in the early 1820s, the “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature” “became the most influential and most significant of all organizations of this type” (R.V. Jesuitova). The activities of the society were discontinued at the end of 1825 due to the Decembrist uprising and the investigation into their case.

In 1823 in Moscow, with the participation of V.F. Odoevsky, D.V. Venevitinov, I.V. Kireevsky, S.P. Shevyrev and M.P. Pogodin, the “Society of the wise” was opened - an association of a new type, gravitating not to socio-literary and political, but to philosophical and aesthetic problems, which acquired particular popularity and significance in the post-Decembrist era.

Russian poetry 1800-1810s

Russian poetry of the 1800-1810s was not a single movement. Already at the beginning of the century, it was demarcated into the psychological pre-romanticism of the school of N. M. Karamzin and the civil pre-romanticism of classically oriented poets. Both of these movements had historical optimism and faith in the future of Russia. But their paths to achieving the desired ideal were different.

The poets of Karamzin's school saw the source of evil and social ill-being not in social relations, but in the disharmonious nature of modern man, darkened by sin. Therefore, they looked for ways to heal a sick society in internal rebirth, in the self-education of a person, in curbing his inherent egoism. Hence their special interest in the inner world of the human personality, moral problems, and subtle insight into the secrets and mysteries of the human psyche. In 1802, N. M. Karamzin published the poem “Melancholy. Imitation of Delille":

O Melancholy! The most delicate shimmer From sorrow and melancholy to the joys of pleasure! There is no fun yet, and there is no more torment; Despair has passed... But, having dried my tears, You still don’t dare look at the light joyfully And you look like your mother, Sadness.

In this transitional state of the soul, intermediate between grief and joy and so beneficial for an imperfect person, Karamzin sees salvation and refuge from the troubles and worries of the surrounding life. He defines melancholy as “the passion of tender, meek souls, oppressed by fate, the unfortunate, happiness and sweetness of the saddened.”

The poets of “civil pre-romanticism,” on the contrary, saw the source of evil in the circumstances surrounding a person and affirmed the ideal of a patriotic citizen who loves his fatherland and enters into a decisive struggle against “autocracy” and the imperfect structure of society. They saw literature as an effective means of patriotic education of a human fighter.

The first thing that catches your eye when comparing Russian poetry of this period with the poetry of the second half of the 18th century is the infinitely more complex idea of ​​the world and man. The crisis of the educational ideology of the 18th century is reflected in the very figurative system of all directions of Russian poetry at the beginning of the new century. “The new century came in such a complex interweaving of social issues that many of the aspirations and beliefs of the previous one seemed naive,” notes Yu. M. Lotman. – The consciousness of the 18th century perceived life as a combination of many simple tasks, each of which can be isolated and resolved separately. Contradiction was perceived not as an internal property of a phenomenon, but as a forced connection of two opposing, but internally simple entities. Derzhavin also understood the complexity and inconsistency:

My body is crumbling into dust, I command thunder with my mind...

It took a deep revolution in consciousness for the materialist and like-minded Helvetia Radishchev to sum up the past century in the following verses:

No, you will not be forgotten, a century of madness and wisdom. You will be damned forever, forever by the surprise of everyone...

The 18th century knew the idea of ​​the people. Moreover, it was at this time that the doctrine of popular sovereignty was put forward, the idea that everything in political life should be done for the people and through the people. However, the people themselves were conceived as a quantitative category, as multiple repetitions of individual, homogeneous human units. It was believed that all the properties of a people could be studied using the example of an artificially isolated person, Robinson. In this sense, the idea of ​​individual rights and the idea of ​​popular sovereignty did not oppose, but complemented each other. That is why unconditional and complete democracy was so easy for the advanced theorists of the 18th century.

At the beginning of the new century, the people appeared as a unity, possessing not only the same qualities as each of the constituent units. The problem of nationality has acquired an independent existence, independent of the idea of ​​individual rights, and sometimes even in conflict with this idea... Freedom of man and freedom of the people for the enlightener of the 18th century are one and the same question. Their separation, from his point of view, is absurd... The events of the late 18th century revealed historical reality in deep and dramatic internal conflicts, and this could not but affect the movement of literature and social thought. The problems of the individual and the people became separated from each other. Each of them has become internally richer, more specific, more contradictory.”

The catastrophic events of the Great French Revolution, the subsequent European Napoleonic Wars, in which Russia was drawn in, and the Patriotic War of 1812, finally showed clearly the eternal truth of Christian ideas about the original inconsistency of human nature, darkened by original sin, the painful flaws of which are manifested as the life of an individual, and in the destinies of entire nations, which are collective personalities, not reducible to the arithmetic sum of the units that make up a people.

The inconsistency of man, the disharmony of his nature is the focus of attention of the Russian pre-romantic consciousness of the early 19th century. Andrei Turgenev will say about the man in 1802:

You're filled with light And you see the abysses before you; But you strive for them, you are passionate A blind, fiery soul. A mournful sigh flies to the sky, You are weak - it torments you, Despair pours into you And he tells you to be firm. You have achieved bliss in freedom, But the chains on you rattle; Love has achieved perfection - And drink poison together with love.

“In the future, this theme will sound with particular force in Zhukovsky’s poetry and will enter the poetic world of Russian romanticism,” notes Yu. M. Lotman. – Contradictions within a person’s consciousness, a conflict between feeling and consciousness, a clash between a person and society, a tragic gap between “dreams and reality”, dissatisfaction with the prose of earthly existence and a thirst for a different existence - this whole circle of experiences typical of the poetry of those years is marked by one common feature - a feeling of disharmony life and at the same time a passionate impulse towards harmony.”

The leading motives of Zhukovsky's lyrics are anticipated in the works of many poets of the early 19th century, forming a kind of “choir” from which the solo voice of the author of “Rural Cemetery” sometimes stands out. The same Andrei Turgenev writes the elegy “Autumn”, in which the key themes of Zhukovsky’s poetry are guessed, starting with the epigraph from J.-J. Rousseau “So everything that instantly shines on earth fades away!”:

Gloomy autumn deadening hand Gloom and gloom are spreading everywhere; The cold, stormy wind devastates the fields, And the roaring river foams menacingly, Where the shadows of peace hitherto stretched. Careless joy where songs were heard, - The faded forests stand in silence, Fogs creep over the valley, over the hills. “Look how everything dries, grows cold, and decays; See how menacing and merciless death All your joys are consumed forever! Everything lived, everything blossomed, only to die later!”

And this contradiction is resolved in Andrei Turgenev’s elegy, as in Zhukovsky, by hope in the eternal bliss that awaits mortal man beyond the grave:

You won’t languish here forever either! Comfort yourself; and let your gaze be directed there, Where will your troubled spirit find peace? And he will forget everything that tormented him before; Where faith is not needed, where there is no place for hope, Where is the eternal kingdom of holy love alone!

These same contradictions also appear in civil poetry, which at first glance follows the classical educational tradition of the 18th century, using its high vocabulary and its figurative system. But in the lyric poetry of the early 19th century, old images receive a new sound and a new, pre-romantic meaning, not only because the poetry of the early 18th century becomes more expressive, but because these images are surrounded by a purely personal, emotional aura. The idea of ​​civil service changes radically; the person himself, who devotes himself to it, acquires complexity and inconsistency unknown in the era of Russian and European enlightenment.

The Enlightenmentists were deeply convinced that a person’s desire for personal happiness does not contradict the common good. “What is happiness? - Holbach asked and answered. – In continuous pleasure, and pleasure is given to us by what arouses in us a movement consistent with our individual nature, causes in us activity that does not tire our body, interest is the only driver of human actions, there are no unselfish people, but it is customary to call those whose actions, while useful to others, seem to us useless to the one who commits them. This view is false, for no one does anything that is useless to himself.”

I do my own thing, doing everyone’s will, -

Radishchev will say. “The victim is soft-boiled boots,” Chernyshevsky will say through the mouth of one of the heroes of the novel “What is to be done?” For the enlightener, the desire for personal happiness does not contradict the desire for the public good: this is how man is constructed, these are the natural needs of his nature.

Civil poetry of the first half of the 19th century is distinguished by the fact that its main character, renouncing personal happiness, sacrifices himself for the happiness of others - for the people, for the Fatherland. Addressing the Fatherland, Andrei Turgenev says:

Death for you is bliss, And death is immortality for us!

He is echoed by A. Kh. Vostokov in “Ode to the Worthy,” which opened the first issue of the almanac “Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences and Arts” “Scroll of the Muses” (1802):

No - who, seeing how the fatherland suffers, I didn’t feel jealousy burning in my heart And the guilty one remained inactive, - He's not worth my praise. But who sacrifices life, property, To save fellow citizens from disaster And give them a happy fate, - Sing, holy one, your hymn to him!

The theme is picked up by A.F. Merzlyakov (translation of the Second Ode of Tyrtaeus, 1805):

What glory, joy, honor For wives, for dear children There is a boiling heart in battle And die a hundred times!

F. N. Glinka in his verse “War Song, Written as the Enemy Approached the Smolensk Province” (1812) poeticizes the mass sacrifice of heroes - defenders of the Fatherland:

And, it seems to me, I will heed the oath: You don't know fun and joys, How long will the enemy take his native land? Stop staining with blood! There a friend calls a friend to battle, The wife, sobbing, sends her husband, And the mother into battle - her sons! The groom does not think about the bride, And louder than trumpets on the field of honor Love calls to the fatherland!

The motif of sacrifice in the civil poetry of the early 19th century, opposed to the optimistic and simplified view of the French enlightenment on human nature, increasingly takes on the features of Christian self-sacrifice. Hence the biblical coloring of the image of the hero, his direct connection with the Russian hagiographic and church cultural tradition. The ridicule of Christian ethical ideals was the combat program of the French enlighteners (“The Virgin of Orleans” by Voltaire). “In Russia,” wrote Yu. M. Lotman, “the issue was complicated to a large extent by the fact that church literature was perceived as a tradition of national art. Lomonosov made an attempt to build a style of new Russian literature, synthetically combining the artistic heritage of the past ("church books") and contemporary norms of the national language... Interest in ancient Russian and church literature acquired a special meaning at the beginning of the 19th century. In an effort to contrast the ethics of pleasure with the poetry of heroism and joyful death, the writer of those years turned to the biblical and ancient Russian hagiographic tradition. The stylistics of biblicalisms introduced an atmosphere of high achievement into poetry. Ancient and heroic-biblical images were perceived not as opposites, but as variants of the same heroic ideal.”

In the works of civil poets, the heroic theme is often accompanied by menacing satirical invective directed against tyrants and temporary workers. N. I. Gnedich’s poem “A Peruvian to a Spaniard” (1805), imbued with political allusions and widely distributed among the Decembrists, contains a direct call to fight against tyranny:

Or do you think, villain, exhausting my composition, Bowing my head to the ground in torment, That the feelings in me will be killed? Oh, no, tyrants are the only ones who lack them!... Even though I'm alive for the food of animals, I'll give in to you, What am I equal to you... am I equal? No, I'm ashamed When I want to compare myself with you, villain, And I’m horrified to be like you! I am a wild man and unhappy in simplicity; … You are enlightened with your mind, but your heart is a terrible tiger. And not crowds of slaves, militiad by violence, Or mercenaries, excited by self-interest, But you will see menacing hosts of men, Burnt with vengeance for the burden of their chains.

The master of political satire M.V. Milonov anticipates in his message stylized as antiquity “To Rubellius. Persiev's satire" (1810) figurative and stylistic structure of K. F. Ryleev's satire "To the Temporary Worker". The reference to an ancient sample is used here to lull the vigilance of censorship. The Roman poet Persia does not have such satire:

A treacherous flatterer of a king, a pompous nobleman, There is poison in the depths of the heart, Not by the valor of the soul, exalted by cunning, You look at me with contempt!

The addressee of this satire is the same as that of Ryleev - the temporary worker Arakcheev, beloved and favored by Alexander I. When creating his satire “To the Temporary Worker,” Ryleev will give it the subtitle “Imitation of the Persian satire “To Rubellius,”” also used to divert attention and at the same time referring the reader to Milonov’s poem.

In the civil poetry of the early 19th century, many poetic discoveries of Pushkin's time are anticipated. Thus, “Hymn to Indignation” by A. Kh. Vostokov, which is a translation of “Hymn to Nemesis” by the Greek lyricist Mesomedes, will be echoed in the poem “Indignation” by P. A. Vyazemsky, and then in Pushkin’s “Village”. Free translations from “Pharsalia” by Lukan F. F. Ivanov will influence the young Pushkin, the author of the Lyceum poem “Licinia”.

In Russian civic poetry of the early 19th century, there is another movement, also guided by the traditions of French classicism and the Enlightenment and also colored by pre-romantic trends. Along with the lyrics, permeated with the ideas of heroic asceticism, lyrics are developing that defend the desire for personal happiness, joy, and pleasure. Its head turns out to be K.N. Batyushkov in the first period of his work.

“If anti-tyrant civic poetry realized itself in a relatively narrow range of themes and genres,” says Yu. M. Lotman, “then the lyrics of the second type were distinguished by great diversity, containing a wide range of works from conventionally ancient idylls to friendly messages and love poetry. Plot breadth was combined here with a certain ideological diffuseness - poetry of this type easily turned into the lyrics of the “Karamzinists”. Then the theme of happiness, love, fullness of life began to be perceived as a kind of illusory poetic ideal, possible only in dreams opposed to the chaos of reality.” If the poetry of heroic citizenship anticipated the romantic lyrics of the Decembrists, then the moderate wing of the second movement (K. N. Batyushkov and poets of his circle), strongly influenced by the subjectivism of the Karamzin school, contributed to the formation of the style of “harmonic precision” and played a decisive role in the formation of the work of the young Pushkin.

The school of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov occupied a leading position in Russian poetry at the beginning of the 18th century. It was she who carried out a complete transformation of the language of poetry. Both poets were able to fulfill this role, relying on the Karamzin reform. In “A Note on the Works of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov” (1822), P. A. Pletnev wrote: “We saw that true poetry never shunned our gloomy fatherland. From the 12th century to the end of the 18th century, she sometimes less often, sometimes more often enlivened the lyres of our singers, albeit with different, but equally captivating sounds. All we lacked was a decisive finishing of the language. The all-encompassing Lomonosov, the brave Petrov and the inimitable Derzhavin enriched our literature with lofty, perhaps unique, works of poetry, but did not defeat the capricious language” (my italics - Yu. L.). With the reign of Alexander I, a new period of Russian poetry began. “During this period, two people appeared who completely mastered” its “language” - Zhukovsky and Batyushkov.”

The word in the poetry of Batyushkov and Zhukovsky begins to speak not only with its direct objective, material meaning, but also with those associative meanings that the poet “awakened” in it to express an individual state that does not have a direct designation or name in the language. These are Zhukovsky’s metaphors “golden bondage”, “sweet silence”, “a family of playing hopes”, “the day is already turning pale”, “how incense is fused with the coolness of plants”, “rumor wanders like a monster”. Metaphor and epithet begin to capture the emphatically subjective shades of individual worldview. “An epithet in the traditional meaning of a poetic trope disappears in the era of romanticism,” notes V. M. Zhirmunsky, “and is replaced by an individual, characterizing definition.” The direct, objective meaning of a word is enveloped, like a cloud, in numerous associations, acquires polysemantic poetic overtones, sounds like music, not only with its direct meanings, but also with its secondary meanings, overtones (polysemanticism), including those that the author himself gives it in poetic context of your work (poetic etymology).

Following the restructuring of the figurative system, the system of genres in new poetry also changes decisively. In place of the “high” poetic genres of classicism (ode, hymn), “small” genres come to the forefront of the literary process: friendly message, elegy, satire, ballad, song, romance. At the same time, a profound restructuring takes place within genres: the sharp boundary between civil oratorical and intimate lyrical genres, characteristic of the poetics of classicism, disappears. “High” content begins to penetrate into the elegy (Batyushkov - “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden”, 1814) and a friendly message (Batyushkov - “To Dashkov”, 1812), the intimate lyrical theme is organically combined with the patriotic, civil theme (A. F. Merzlyakov - translations of Tyrtey's odes, 1805; Zhukovsky - “Singer in the camp of Russian warriors”, 1812). Behind this lies the growth of personal self-awareness; civil, patriotic feelings are also colored with individual lyricism, acquiring a completeness and warmth unusual for them in classicism. At the same time, moral quests, intimate feelings and experiences of the individual begin to acquire social significance, come “out of the shadows”, from the peripheral genres of classicism to the forefront of literary development.

At the same time, in the poetry of the first half of the 19th century, the system of genre thinking inherited from classicism still remains. In the literary message, with its ease, with its lively intonations, stylistic freedom, the “conversational style” of Russian lyric poetry is honed, which will later influence the new genres of poetic epic - the “novel in verse”, the poetic story, the humorous poem, as well as the formation realistic style of Russian prose. Elegy, plunging into the inner world of the individual, touching on the “eternal” existential problems of human existence, moves towards romanticism: it is no coincidence that one of its leading movements in poetry of the 1820s is sometimes called elegiac. The ballad introduces folk flavor into Russian poetry.

By the mid-1810s, the Karamzin school triumphed over the “Shishkovists.” Even the decisive opponent of the romantic trend, M. A. Dmitriev, was forced to admit: “Those who stuck to the old lyrical forms introduced by Lomonosov, and in the language of high expressions, those who did not accept the newest freedom, lightness and playfulness of expression in the style, those despite other advantages, they seemed to be in second place.”

However, at the end of the 1810s, the school of “harmonic precision” began to experience polemical attacks not only from adherents of the “old style”, but also from young poets who supported the creation of a poetic style that included all the richness of the Russian language (F. Glinka, P. Katenin, A. Griboyedov). This is connected with the problem of the nationality of literature, which is increasingly asserting itself on the Russian Parnassus. In 1811, F. Glinka published the article “Notes on the Slavic and Russian, or secular dialect” in the Russian Bulletin: “What abundance! What sublime and what majestic beauties are in the Slavic dialect! And what a skillful and correct combination of words, without which even the best thoughts lose their beauty.” He was echoed by P. Katenin in “Son of the Fatherland” in 1822: “I know all the ridicule of the new school against the Slavophiles, Varyagorossians, etc., but I will gladly ask the scoffers themselves, in what language should we write an epic, a tragedy, or even an important noble prose? A light syllable, as they say, is good without Slavic words; let it be so, but not all literature lies in a light syllable: it cannot even take first place in it; it does not contain essential virtues, but luxury and panache of language.”

Simultaneously with the defense of high style in poetry, the problem of the nationality of literature is raised with new urgency. It worried not only the conservative part of Russian writers who shared Shishkov’s views. Already in 1801, in a speech directed against Karamzin and the “Karamzinists,” the head of the “Friendly Literary Society” Andrei Turgenev delivered it with all directness and intransigence. Andrei Turgenev considered turning to folk songs as a means of transforming literature, designed to reveal “all the originality, all the power of the Russian spirit”: “Now we find the remnants of Russian literature only in fairy tales and songs. In these precious remains, and especially in songs, we still feel the character of our people. They are so strong, so expressive, whether in a cheerful or sad way, that they must certainly produce their effect on everyone. In most of them, especially the sad ones, there is such a captivating sadness, such beauty of feeling that we would look in vain in the latest imitative works of our literature.”

The founders of the genre of Russian song can be considered the poets of the late 18th - early 19th centuries - I. I. Dmitriev (“The gray dove is groaning ...”, 1792; “Ah! If only I had known before ...”, 1792) and Yu. A. Neledinsky-Meletsky (“Oh! I feel sick…”, 1791; “Should I go out to the river...”, 1796). In the first half of the 19th century, the appeal to folklore became more meaningful and theoretically supported. Researchers distinguish two types of appeal by Russian poets to folklore: 1) poetry that sought to reproduce folk-epic genres; 2) imitation of folklore lyrics (Yu. M. Lotman). In the minds of Russian poets, folk genres (fairy tale, legend, epic) were not yet differentiated and were often mixed with motifs from 18th-century novels and phenomena of their own imagination. This was due to a special understanding of the very nature of oral folk art. Written poetry was considered “artificial” poetry, and folklore was seen as improvisation. The folk singer is guided by immediate spiritual movements and does not know the prescriptions of theory. What we now consider tradition, genre ritual, stable epic and lyrical formulas, was perceived as a bizarre play of fantasy, a whim of individual inspiration. Therefore, the desire to get closer to folklore in the first half of the 19th century was not reduced to reproducing one or another plot from works of oral folk art, but was thought of as a game of free fantasy, not regulated by any rules. And the more bizarre this fantasy was, the further it departed from the norms of written speech, the more popular the work was considered, the closer to folklore. This view was reflected in the ballads of Zhukovsky, in the fiction of Kuchelbecker, in “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by Pushkin.

The second direction was the desire to recreate the very structure of the people's consciousness. This was reflected in the fables of I. A. Krylov and in the songs of A. F. Merzlyakov, which reproduced the characteristic features of the language, style, rhythmic pattern and composition of the folk song. Even V. G. Belinsky considered Merzlyakov’s songs to be examples of true nationality. N. I. Nadezhdin, in a review of “Songs and Romances of A. Merzlyakov” (1830), noted that “their essential charm lies not in the nationality, which rubs around the inns and overhears the sayings of cab drivers, but in the pure and sublime nationality, listening to the beat inner life, diffused through all the veins of the people’s body.” “It is very clear why Merzlyakov’s songs immediately passed into the people’s mouths: they returned to their beginning.” Recreating the poetic forms of folk lyrics, deliberately condensing elements of folk style, Merzlyakov contrasted his songs with the salon poetry of the “Karamzinists”. At the same time, as Yu. M. Lotman noted, he raised the folklore image to the level of an “ideal” people created by the theoretical thought and creative imagination of the poet. Of Merzlyakov’s songs, very popular in the first half of the 19th century, “Black-browed, black-eyed...” (1803) has been preserved in the modern oral repertoire; “Oh, what are you doing, my dear...”, (1806); “Song” (“Among the flat valley...”, 1810).

Another way to recreate folk character in literature was to turn to an ancient theme. At that time, ancient poetry was seen as an expression of the worldview of a free, non-oppressed people approaching the “norm.” Many were inclined to consider ancient culture close in spirit and genetically related to the Russian national character. Connected with this is the desire to “Russify” the ancient theme, most consistently manifested in the translations of Vostokov, Merzlyakov and especially Gnedich. Merzlyakov translated Sappho’s lyrical works in “Russian meter” (gravitating towards the dolnik with a rhymeless trochee) and introduced into the text the phraseology of Russian folk lyrics – “winged sparrows”, “what is sad”, “don’t crush my spirit”, “beating with wings”, etc. And the poems “Take away, take away the terrible burden...” anticipate the “Russian songs” of A. V. Koltsov. Gnedich, using hexameter and Homeric motifs, writes the “Russian idyll” “Fishermen” (1821):

Everything is asleep; Not a single smoke curls over the village. The fire only smokes in front of the elder fisherman’s tent. The cauldron by the fire stands already removed from the tripod: The old man brewed fish soup in it in anticipation of a friend; The ear, having cooled down, began to foam with amber foam. He didn’t have dinner and was bored, waiting for his fellow countryman...

It was the feeling of the deep spiritual community of the poetry of Ancient Greece and the Homeric epic with the national character of the Russian people that allowed Gnedich to complete his life’s work by creating the world’s best translation of Homer’s Iliad, to the publication of which Pushkin responded with a heartfelt couplet (1830):

I hear the silenced sound of divine Hellenic speech; I feel the shadow of the great old man with my troubled soul...

Prose of the first quarter of the 19th century

Prose of the first quarter of the 19th century developed more dramatically than poetry, which for thirty years, right up to Pushkin’s “Tales of Belkin” and Gogol’s prose, occupied a leading position in the literary process. The inertia of the classical period of the history of Russian literature of the 18th century had its effect. The poetics of classicism established a special relationship between poetry and prose. Prose was considered a “low” type of literature. Complex philosophical and moral problems were the subject of poetry or the “high” genres of drama (tragedy). “Despised prose” dealt with “base” reality, alien to rational foundations, bathed in ignorance and depravity. This prose naturalistically described the mores of society and did not shy away from everyday vernacular. Pictures of vicious reality in it served as models for edification, which usually invaded the narrative like “God ex machina”: either in the form of the author’s moralizing conclusions and comments, or through the inclusion in the course of action of heroes-reasoners, walking bearers of virtue. Behind all this, of course, was the pride of the human mind, which imagined itself to be God, and from the heights of abstract theories contemptuously treated living life. Artistic depiction captured only its vulgar side, while the bright side was brought in from the outside in the form of a ready-made moral maxim. The bias towards naturalism and reasoning was the weak side of the so-called “Enlightenment realism” of the second half of the 18th century. But its traditions migrated to the literature of the early 19th century. They appeared in the works of two novelists of this period - A. E. Izmailov and V. T. Narezhny.

A. E. Izmailov’s novel “Eugene, or the harmful consequences of bad upbringing and community” (1799-1801) is a biography of the young nobleman Evgeny Negodyaev, spoiled by rich and ignorant parents. The corruption is completed by the communication of the noble undergrowth with the dissolute “Voltairian” Razratin, who from the teachings of the French encyclopedists only takes out godlessness and immoral worldly philosophy. Scoundrels crown his moral “education” in the capital, where he manages to squander his father’s fortune in five years and give his soul to God. All the heroes of this novel are guided in life only by base motives and actions. Ignorant and vicious landowners, covetous officials, French milliners from girls of easy virtue, a convict tutor, a “freethinker” from commoners... The moralizing tendency comes from the author, resonating with the image of vice and debauchery. The writer makes no attempt to find anything bright in the characters themselves.

V. T. Narezhny tried to publish his first novel “Russian Zhilblaz, or the Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov” in 1812. But its depiction of the life and customs of Russian society was so harsh that the police imposed a ban on three parts of the novel published in 1814, removing them from circulation and prohibiting further publication. The next three parts, the last of which remained unfinished, saw the light only in Soviet times. Therefore, the novel actually did not enter the literary life of the early 19th century. In the preface, the author connects his idea with the educational moral-descriptive tradition: his goal is “the depiction of morals in various states and relationships.” At the same time, Narezhny allows significant deviations from this genre norm: the orgy of shamelessness and disgrace in his work eludes the resonant control of the author, who is not completely confident in the truth and omnipotence of educational ideas. In the context of the work, one feels some uncertainty of the author’s position, sliding towards moral indifference, one can feel Narezhny’s bleak view of human nature, which, willy-nilly, knocks his novel out of the strict educational tradition.

Thus, the secretary of the all-powerful statesman Latron (from the Latin latro - robber) with the no less colorful surname Gadinsky admonishes Gavrila Chistyakov: “Get out of your head the old words, which are now considered dilapidated and almost out of use. These words are: virtue, charity, conscience, meekness and others like them. I think that these words will soon be completely expelled from the lexicons of all languages ​​in the world, and for good reason. You can’t make anything with them except scrip.” Gavrila Chistyakov, behind whom the author himself sometimes hides, cannot object to anything on this score. Narezhny’s hero is not even a rogue (not a classic picaro), as such a hero was in the tradition coming from Lesage’s novel “The History of Gilles Blas of Santillana,” but a weak-willed creature, passively accepting any life circumstances. Having left his hut in Falaleevka, he visited a landowner's estate, a monastery, a district town, a provincial town, Moscow, and Warsaw. He was tried, he was in prison, he was a clerk of a Moscow merchant, a student of the “metaphysician” Babinarius, a secretary of the nobleman Yastrebov, a secretary of the head of the Masonic lodge Kuroumov, in the service of Prince Latron. Like a chameleon, he takes on the color of the environment into which whimsical fate throws him. All of Russia reveals its ugly sides to him. And it seems that not only Chistyakov, but also the author himself is ready to accept them as a sad, but irremovable norm of life. The unexpected moral rebirth of the hero at the end of the novel is somehow hard to believe. It seems that the author himself feels this: is this why the reasoning background in the novel is so sluggish and inconsistent? Narezhny is obviously not in tune with educational philosophy. But this drawback turns into a certain advantage, perhaps not even realized by the author himself: the description of everyday life in his novel becomes self-sufficient and, in its lack of control, picturesque.

This feature of Narezhny’s narrative style was clearly manifested in two novels from Ukrainian life - “Bursak” (1824) and “Two Ivans, or the Passion for Litigation” (1825). The description of the Bursat freemen in the first novel brings to mind the opening pages of N.V. Gogol’s story “Viy”. The comic quarrel between two Ukrainian gentlemen Ivans and their neighbor Khariton Zanoza, which breaks out over trifles and leads to a long-term lawsuit, recalls in the second novel Gogol’s “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.”

The weakening of the educational principle leads Narezhny to humor, which in some ways anticipates Gogol’s. “For Gogol,” notes K). V. Mann, - highly characteristic is what can be called the involuntary and naivety of comedy, which avoids surprise and affectation (which often accompany comedy in didactic literature). The characters “don’t know” about their funny sides, they don’t intend to expose them to public display - they just show themselves involuntarily. And life as a whole “does not know” about the comedy contained in it - it only naturally functions according to its own laws. The funny is revealed, as Gogol said, “by itself.” But even in Narezhny, his beginnings, his outlines are noticeable. Hence the roll calls, sometimes surprisingly unexpected.”

Half a century after Narezhny’s death, I. A. Goncharov summed up his work. Having become acquainted with three volumes of “Russian Gilblaz” in 1874, Goncharov wrote to M.I. Semevsky: “One cannot help but do full justice to Narezhny’s mind and extraordinary ability at that time to get rid of the old and create the new. Belinsky is deeply right in distinguishing his talent and assessing him as the first Russian novelist of his time. He is the school of Fonvizin, his follower and forerunner of Gogol. I don’t want to exaggerate, read it carefully, and you will see in it hints, of course, weak, vague, often in a distorted form, of the characteristic types created in such perfection by Gogol. He often falls into the manner of Fonvizin and seems to predict Gogol. Naturally, his ideas could not develop into characters due to the absence of new forms and techniques of art that subsequently appeared among us; but these ideas are carried in vague images - of the stingy, and of the old landowners, and of all that life that later came to life so realistically among our artists - but he entirely belongs to the real school, begun by Fonvizin and raised to the highest level by Gogol. And here in this “Zhilblaz”, and even more so in “Bursaks” and “Two Ivans”, where there was a lack of image, the character is explained with intelligence, often with a satirical or humorous seasoning. In modern literature this would be a strong figure.

Also remarkable are his successful efforts in the fight against the old language, against the Shishkov school. ‹…› This struggle, in which he had not yet managed, like almost everyone else then (in 1814), to completely get rid of the old school, makes his language heavy, rough, a mixture of Shishkovsky and Karamzinsky. But very often he manages, as if from the thicket of a forest, to emerge onto the road and then speaks easily, freely, sometimes pleasantly, and then again falls into archaisms and heavy phrases.”

Thus, it was possible to evaluate Narezhny’s work only retrospectively. Contemporaries treated him differently. The novel “The Black Year, or the Mountain Princes,” presented by the writer to the “Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and the Arts” in 1818, was rejected: the author was shocked by the stylistic and linguistic rudeness of the author, as well as “jokes about religion and autocratic power.” The main line of development of Russian prose at the beginning of the 19th century went in a different direction, since it was faced with the task of mastering the high content of Russian life and developing a language that would correspond to it.

Prose learns from poetry, expands its thematic boundaries, develops a language capable of depicting not only low, but also high objects, and capturing the complex processes of the spiritual life of a modern person. The formation of Russian prose of modern times was completed in the 1830s by Pushkin and Gogol. Until that time, its language is in the stage of experimental growth and creative development. In the first half of the 19th century, prose was still very dependent on verse; “poetic” content predominated in it. Previous forms of educational moral-descriptive novel are perceived as an obstacle to its development. Lyrical prose is spreading - landscape sketches, meditations, a kind of “elegy in prose”, psychological portraits. “Small genres,” notes N. N. Petrunina, “win the right of literary citizenship and become those “cells” through which new trends penetrate into prose... A unique form of combining these miniatures becomes travel, which in the literature of Russian sentimentalism turns out to be the main “large genre” “, relegating the plot narrative to the background.”

The experiences of the first decade of the 19th century go back to “Letters of a Russian Traveler” (1801) by Karamzin.

Following Karamzin, many Russian writers turn to the genre of travel: “A Travel Throughout the Crimea and Bessarabia” by P. Sumarokov (1800), “A Travel to Midday Russia” by V.V. Izmailov (1800-1802), “A Travel to Kazan, Vyatka and Orenburg" by M. Nevzorov (1803), "Travel to Little Russia" book. P. Shalikova (1803). The focus here is not on the outside world, but on the traveler’s reaction to it. The mind and heart of the wanderer, the way he perceives and evaluates reality, his habits, feelings and experiences - this is what becomes the narrative nerve and the main goal of the journey. It is in the genre of travel that for the first time in Russian literature the image of a modern person, the cultural and historical type of his personality, is formed. It is noteworthy that it is the “private” person, with his inclinations and habits, with his emotional and intellectual world, who wins his place in literature and strives to become a hero of the new time.

In the 1810s, the travel genre was significantly updated. The epochal historical shifts and upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars and the Patriotic War of 1812 cause a flow of letters and notes from their participants. The first place here belongs to “Letters of a Russian Officer” by F. N. Glinka (1808, 1815-1816). Their creative history is extended over time. First, the notes of the young author, a participant in the foreign campaign of 1805-1806, appear. Then Glinka describes peacetime, her trips around Russia. Finally, the Patriotic War of 1812 and European battles until the complete victory over Napoleon and the entry of Russian troops into Paris. History itself involuntarily shapes the design of this book and intrudes into its narrative.

Before us is a new type of storyteller, whose “journey” is not made out of idle curiosity, but out of “duty,” out of military duty. At the center of the story is the problem of the connection between the individual and the history of his time. Glinka's impressions of Russian and European reality are woven together. The turning point in Russian and world history immeasurably expands the scope of letters compared to the travel genre of the previous period. It was not without reason that L.N. Tolstoy was an attentive reader of this book. The story closely intertwines two themes: war and peace. The Austrian campaign, unexpectedly for the author, turns out in his letters to be a prologue to the formidable and majestic epic of the Patriotic War. We see the spiritual growth of the author, we see how the national self-determination of the Russian person gradually becomes the central problem of the story. Already in the first part of the story about a foreign way of life, the author’s thought about Russia and its national way of life is constantly present. A trip to the inner provinces strengthens this idea. In the depths of Russia, Glinka looks closely at the peculiarities of ancient Russian life, at the national “mores, customs, fundamental virtues”, not affected by “alluvial vices”. During this peaceful journey, he is especially interested in “native talents,” forms of manifestation of people’s initiative, initiative, and enterprise.

The year 1812 gives the author’s thoughts a new direction; he feels the popular nature of the war: “The soldiers will fight terribly! Villagers exchange their braids for pikes. All they talk about is a general recruitment, a general uprising. “Command, Sovereign!” Every single one of us, let’s go!” The spirit is awakening, the souls are ready. The people are asking for freedom. ‹…› Arm yourself, everyone, arm yourself, everyone who can, finally says the commander-in-chief in his last proclamation. “And so – a people’s war!” He paints incomparable pictures of the Battle of Borodino, giving living historical material to M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem “Borodino”: “Everything is silent!... The Russians, with a clear, impeccable conscience, quietly doze, draped in the smoking lights... Stars occasionally sparkle in the cloudy sky. So everything is calm on our side.

On the contrary: the arranged lights shine brightly in the enemy camps; music, singing, trumpets and shouts spread throughout their camp.” Let's compare with Lermontov:

I lay down to take a nap by the gun carriage, And it was heard until dawn, How the Frenchman rejoiced. But our open bivouac was quiet...

Glinka looks at the events of European life through the eyes of a Russian Orthodox Christian, providing living material for L. N. Tolstoy’s epic novel. In Napoleon he sees the direct offspring of the French Revolution, the events of which he evaluates in a Christian way as a direct consequence of the superstition of people who deified their minds: “The revolution that befell France began with a revolution of fundamental opinions and general concepts. Self-interest (l’egoisme) and superstition are the two main springs that moved all the wheels of the infernal machine - the revolution!... Self-interest drowned out the heavenly teachings of faith, inflamed in people an incurable thirst for money, for their own benefits, and protected their hearts with a cruel bark of indifference. Then all the teachings of the Gospel fell on the stones, and mercy, pity and love for one’s neighbor could no longer enter the souls of the hardened. Then strange phenomena appeared in society: people without merits, talents and enlightenment enjoyed the countless benefits of wealth at the same time as merits, talents and enlightenment were groaning in terrible poverty!

This is how the historiosophical thinking of the Russian officer, the future Decembrist, is formed. L. N. Tolstoy in “War and Peace” relies on these thoughts of Glinka, explaining the reasons for the aggressive wars of the French led by Napoleon: “In order for the peoples of the West to make the warlike movement to Moscow that they made, it was necessary: ​​1) so that they form a warlike group of such a size that it would be able to withstand a clash with the warlike group of the east; 2) so that they renounce all established traditions and habits and 3) so that, making their militant movement, they have at their head a person who, both for himself and for them, could justify the deceptions, robberies and murders that were accompanied this movement.

And since the French Revolution, the old group, not great enough, is destroyed; old habits and traditions are destroyed; a group of new sizes, new habits and traditions are being developed step by step, and the person is being prepared who must stand at the head of the future movement and bear all the responsibility of what is to come.

A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a name, not even a Frenchman, by the most strange accidents, it seems, moves among all the parties that worry France and, without attaching himself to any of them, is brought to a prominent place.”

Following Glinka’s “Letters,” a whole series of Decembrist “travels” and “letters” appears - letters from M. F. Orlov to D. P. Buturlin, “Letters to a friend in Germany,” attributed to A. D. Ulybyshev (1819-1820) , etc. In them, the role of social and civil issues is strengthened, which is gradually replacing the “sensitive” style of sentimentalist prose. Sentimentalist style and imagery are preserved only in “Camping Notes of a Russian Officer” (1820) by I. I. Lazhechnikov, the first major work of the future historical novelist. But even here the national-patriotic theme, the focus on the impressions of the “simple observer”, is reminiscent of Glinka’s “Letters”.

Another popular genre of Russian prose at the beginning of the 19th century was the story. Karamzin, standing at the origins of new Russian literature, was the first to give its genre examples: 1. Plotless lyrical story - “Village”. 2. A love and psychological story with complex social and moral issues - “Poor Liza.” 3. Ironic story-fairy tale - “The Beautiful Princess and Happy Karl.” 4. Different types of historical stories. 5. A mysterious story with elements of pre-romantic Gothic - “Bornholm Island”. 6. A satirical story about the morals of the modern nobility - “My Confession.” 7. The beginning of the socio-psychological novel - “A Knight of Our Time.”

The most common type of sentimental story about unhappy lovers at the beginning of the 19th century, continuing the tradition of “Poor Lisa”: “Poor Masha” (1801) by A. E. Izmailov, “Seduced Henrietta” (1802) by I. Svechinsky, “Lindor and Lisa, or The Oath" (1803) and "The History of Poor Marya" (1805) by N.P. Brusilova, "Beautiful Tatiana, Living at the Foot of the Sparrow Hills" (1804) by V.V. Izmailova, "Inna" (1806) by G.P. Kamenev, etc. Here the first attempts to socially concretize the heroes are encountered, the theme of the struggle between feelings and duty, ardent passions and virtue arises, and the analysis of the contradictory movements of the human soul grows.

A mysterious pre-romantic story, with Gothic elements, developing the motifs of horror and mystery of the English Gothic novel (H. Walpole, Anna Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis), the genre of which was discovered by Karamzin at the end of the 18th century (“Sierra Morena” and “Bornholm Island” "), was developed in the story by V. A. Zhukovsky “Maryina Roshcha” (1809). If Karamzin in “Poor Liza” created a legend that poeticized the surroundings of the Simonov Monastery, then Zhukovsky surrounded another corner of Moscow with dreamy romance - Maryina Grove.

The action of his story-elegy is dated to the times of Prince Vladimir. Names with the flavor of the Russian Middle Ages are used - Rogdai, Peresvet, Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya. Signs of the historical life of Ancient Rus' are given - “druzhina”, “people’s gathering”, “Novgorod mayors”. But these historical details are nothing more than decoration, a historical accessory. The story is colored with the flavor of pre-Romantic Gothic: gloomy Ossianic lyricism, a composition built on the contrasts of landscape, lighting, and lyrical tonality. The theme of the innocent “sentimental” love of the girl Maria and the singer Uslad is intruded by a demonic motif associated with the knight Rogdai, whose house rises above the “low huts of farmers” as a symbol of fate hanging over the happiness of the peaceful singer and the poor villager. Rogdai, with his mighty power and the strength of his passionate nature, defeats Maria during the long absence of her beloved Delight. But his triumph is fragile, he is unable to win Mary’s heart. A jealous person destroys his victim and dies himself. And the life of the returning singer Uslad, after the shock he experienced, turns “into a sweet expectation, into a comforting hope for the imminent end of separation,” for a date with Mary beyond the grave. The story is autobiographical and permeated with motifs from Zhukovsky’s ballads. The example of this story shows how Russian prose of the first half of the 19th century mastered the achievements of poetry. She “masters the compositional principles of poetic genres - lexical and syntactic repetitions, ring construction, rhythmic structure, sound writing techniques. Complex periphrases and psychological epithets become of great importance. Interest in contrasting states is characteristic: in nature and man, sometimes the peaceful, idyllic, sometimes stormy, destructive or mournful-melancholic beginning is emphasized” (N. N. Petrunina).

One of the achievements of mature romanticism was a comprehensive historicism, covering not only the forms of statehood, but also the private life of a person (life, morals, psychology, way of thinking), connecting it with the general course of history. Each era from this point of view was thought of as a unique individual whole, and each person in it was an organic part of it. The life of a particular people in history was perceived as natural growth and the revelation of an initially inherent historical idea, from which, like a plant from a seed, a national historical organism developed. On the path to mature romanticism, Russian literature had to overcome the abstraction inherent in classicism and the Enlightenment in its approach to understanding historical time, and learn to see the specificity of each given life moment in its connection with the past and future fate of the people.

One of the forms of the emerging European pre-romantic historicism was “Ossianic” poetry and prose. Its historical roots were associated with the Scottish poet James Macpherson, a collector of folklore who created sentimental and lyrical mystification poems attributed to the never-existent Celtic bard of the third century AD - Ossian. In 1765, Macpherson published a two-volume work, “The Songs of Ossian,” which was accepted in Europe as the works of the northern Homer, who revealed to humanity the poetic antiquity of the northern peoples. In all European countries, a real cult of the “Scottish bard” arose, which was a fact of awakening national self-awareness. This cult stimulated writers and poets to turn to distant eras, to the prehistory of all Indo-European humanity, to the origins of their own people, to national deities and heroes. At the heart of Ossian's elegiac lyricism was the image of a powerful and inexorable time, carrying away ancient heroes and the very memory of their valor. “Songs of Ossian” were painted with the color of harsh northern nature and sustained in a single musical tonality - elegiac sorrow.

Ossianism had a great influence on the formation of the national heroic theme in Russian literature. He determined the spiritual atmosphere in which our perception and assimilation of epics, chronicles, and the newly discovered “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” took place. Translations and imitations of the “Songs of Ossian” began to appear in our country in the 1780s. In 1792, E.I. Kostrov published a prose translation of 24 of his poems. The first attempts at original Ossian prose date back to the 1790s: “Oskold” by M. N. Muravyov (published by Karamzin in 1810), “Rogvold” by V. T. Narezhny (1798). They recreate the atmosphere of an ancient historical legend, depict heroic characters, and depict a gloomy night landscape. Their lyrical composition merges the traditions of a sentimental story and a historical-heroic elegy.

In 1803, in the “Bulletin of Europe”, Zhukovsky published the beginning of his historical story “Vadim Novgorodsky”. The influence of Ossian permeates its figurative and intonation structure and determines a special “song” interpretation of history. The times of “glory, the exploits of the brave Slavs, their generosity, their loyalty in friendship, holy respect for vows and oaths” are sung. Ancient pagan gods are mentioned, historical and fictitious names of Gostomysl, Radegast, Vadim are used. The story is told about the expulsion and death of the Novgorod heroes, about the triumph of the “foreigners”. The past is given the features of modernity: the world of human feelings and relationships is typical for the literature of sentimentalism. The whole story is permeated with gloomy and harsh lyrical tension. Its historicism, of course, is conditional, and Zhukovsky did not set the goal of creating historical characters. The story is preceded by an elegy in prose - “a tribute to sorrowful friendship” and “to the memory of Andrei Ivanovich Turgenev.” The tonality of this elegy, like a tuning fork, sets the entire story in a mournful elegiac mood.

The formation of historicism in Russian prose can also be traced through the example of the work of K. N. Batyushkov. His first historical experience, the “old story” “Predslava and Dobrynya” (1810), takes the action to ancient Kyiv, during the time of Prince Vladimir. The story is told about the unhappy love of the daughter of Prince Predslava for the young hero Dobrynya: the grand ducal origin is an obstacle to their rapprochement - the princess was betrothed to the stern, proud and vengeful Bulgarian prince Radmir. Lovers become victims of his jealousy. The story is far from historical truth. The action in it is immersed in the atmosphere of a fairy tale. The “knightly” setting corresponds to the romantic appearance of the heroes with the tragic intensity of their passions. Here Batyushkov is not original: he moves in line with the tradition of the historical story of the early 19th century.

Batyushkov's participation in the historical European campaign of the Russian army, which ended with the complete defeat of Napoleon and the entry of Russian troops into Paris, forced the writer to turn to modern events. In the story “Journey to the Castle of Sirey” (1814), Batyushkov describes a visit to the castle associated with the name of Voltaire. Unlike Karamzin, he comes to this castle not as a simple traveler, but as a participant in a great historical event that affected the destinies of all European humanity. Therefore, the nerve of the essay is the spirit of rapid historical change. The author feels himself not only the heir of French culture, but also a participant in historical events that decide the fate of France and all of Europe. His image of France has many faces: this is France during the time of Voltaire, France during the revolution, France of Napoleon and the defeated France of 1814. Modern events are perceived by the author through the historical prism of different eras. Modernity is a product of history, a direct consequence of it.

Batyushkov’s historicism further triumphs in the sketches “Walk to the Academy of Arts” (1814) and “Evening at Cantemir’s” (1816). The description of the exhibition at the Academy is preceded by a picture of the emergence of St. Petersburg from the swamp of “Finnish blats,” which Pushkin used in the introduction to the poem “The Bronze Horseman.” Petersburg under Alexander I and the art of modern times are put in connection with Batyushkov’s reform activities of Peter.

The dialogue “Evening at Cantemir’s” depicts a discussion between a Russian representative of the new Europeanized culture and French enlighteners. At the same time, Batyushkov strives to give his heroes a language appropriate to their time. But Batyushkov still fails to depict the past in its vital concreteness. The process of development of Russian literature will include his ability to perceive modernity as a product of history.

In 1822, Pushkin wrote: “The question is, whose prose is the best in our literature. The answer is Karamzin.” Pushkin came to this conclusion after reading the first eight volumes of “The History of the Russian State,” under the influence of which the development of Russian artistic and historical prose took place from the late 1810s to the 1830s.

Dramaturgy of the early 19th century

The dramaturgy of the early 19th century developed in line with the general transition processes of the pre-romantic movement in Russian literature of that time. The traditions of high tragedy classicism were developed by the then very popular playwright V. A. Ozerov (1769-1816). He wrote five tragedies: Yaropolk and Oleg (1798), Oedipus in Athens (1804), Fingal (1805), Dimitri Donskoy (1807) and Polyxena (1809). Ozerov's innovation as a playwright was that he introduced elements of sentimentalism into high tragedy. In Oedipus in Athens, sentimental poetics is used to describe the suffering of the unfortunate father, whose life is left “to shed tears.” The hero of "Fingal" knew "the suffering of love, despondency, melancholy, despair of separation." In “Dimitri Donskoy” the patriotic theme faded into the background, and the hero’s love for Ksenia was in the center. Thus, Ozerov switched the viewer’s attention from the general to the particular - from “life in debt,” which was the subject of the tragedy of classicism, he transferred his heroes to “life in feeling.” The playwright also significantly reformed the language of tragedy, making it easy, natural and correct, which did not offend aesthetic taste. “The Russian language took a big step forward in Ozerov’s tragedies,” wrote V. G. Belinsky. But at the same time, his tragedies turned out to be devoid of a sense of historicism: his ancient Russian prince speaks like a modern sentimental lover.

The genre of high poetic comedy, which reached its peak in the 18th century in “The Yabed” (1798) by V. V. Kapnist, tried to revive A. A. Shakhovskoy (1777-1846).

There the prickly Shakhovskoy brought out A noisy swarm of their comedies, -

This is how Pushkin described Russian theater at the beginning of the century in Eugene Onegin. The most significant comedies of this period - “Fashion Shop” (1806) and “Lesson for Daughters” (1807) were written by I. A. Krylov in prose. And the high traditions of Kapnist’s poetic comedy were then supplanted by translated French sentimental dramas. Shakhovskoy returned the significance of the problematic to Russian comedy and brought this genre to first place in the theatrical repertoire. The main theme of his plays was an attack against the “foreignism” of the Russian nobility, their thoughtless admiration for everything foreign. Shakhovskoy was a member of the “Conversation...” and shared the conservative views of Shishkov. But against the background of the national upsurge of the 1810s, his plays were received with enthusiasm and were relevant.

Shakhovskoy made his stage debut with the comedy “Insidious” (1804). In the estate of Prince Kermsky near Moscow, the Italian Montoni, a sentimental and cunning hypocrite, finds shelter. Kermsky's daughter Sophia is in love with Count Velsky. Montoni wants to stop the wedding and take possession of the bride's rich dowry. He deceives Velsky, becomes Sophia's fiancé, but at the last minute his intrigues are exposed and he is expelled in disgrace. In Montoni's character, deceit and false sensitivity are organically combined: baseness is covered with words about purity of thoughts, about love for nature. Princess Kermskaya, Sophia's aunt, brought up on Richardson's sensitive novels, turns out to be Montoni's assistant. She looks at the whole world through the pages of translated books: “Nature is sweet to sensitive souls... Gloomy clouds feed the melancholy of an extraordinary soul...”

After the publication of Shishkov’s book “Discourses on the Old and New Syllables” (1803), Shakhovskoy came out in support of it and in the comedy “New Stern” (1805) used some of Shishkov’s reasonings. In his treatise, Shishkov especially attacked the neologism “touch”, “touching” invented by Karamzin. “Karamzinist” Count Pronsky speaks at Shakhovsky with the peasant woman Kuzminishna:

Graph. Good woman, you touch me!

Kuzminishna. What are you doing, master, cross yourself! I didn't even touch you.

Foka. Is it not a sin for you to slander an old woman?

The play exposes the absurdities of sentimental education, which creates a blatant break with reality. Count Pronsky retired as a young man, having read foreign books, and set out to travel. He lives in a ghostly idyllic world, falls in love with the miller's daughter Melania, whom he calls Melanie in French, and is going to marry her. But as soon as Pronsky comes into contact with real life, an ardent serf owner awakens in him. The whole play is permeated with criticism of the falsity of sentimental simplicity. Contemporaries believed that in the person of Count Pronsky, Shakhovskoy brought out Karamzin. However, the play's polemical pathos is broader. Shakhovskoy speaks here against Karamzinism as a literary movement. He uses for parody purposes not so much the works of Karamzin, but the literary products of his followers. Both the biography and the way of thinking of Pronsky are in many ways reminiscent, for example, of the features of the life and work of V. Izmailov, the author of “Journey to Midday Russia.” The romance composed by Pronsky is an obvious parody of Izmailov's romance included in his journey. The comedy also contains parody arrows addressed to another “Karamzinist” - Prince P. Shalikov. It can be argued that “New Stern” destroyed not so much Karamzin as his epigones.

The success of the comedy strengthened Shakhovsky's literary fame. His comedies rose high above the motley theatrical repertoire of that time: sensitive dramas by N. Ilyin (“Liza, or the Triumph of Gratitude”, “Generosity, or Recruitment”), V. Fedorov (“Liza, or the Consequence of Pride and Seduction”), S. Glinka (“Natalia – the boyar’s daughter”).

Shakhovskoy took part in the Patriotic War of 1812: he was the commander of a squad of warriors of the Tver militia. At the end of the war, he wrote the vaudeville “Peasants, or Meeting of the Uninvited” (1814), in which he depicted the characters of men with two feelings characteristic of them: adoration of the Tsar and hatred of the French. In the vaudeville “Ivan Susanin,” the first time to address the figure of the Russian peasant patriot, Shakhovskoy made a happy ending: at the last minute, the enemies were captured by a Russian detachment that freed Susanin.

The pinnacle of Shakhovsky’s creativity was his comedy “A Lesson for Coquettes, or Lipetsk Waters” (1815), which towers above everything created in poetic comedy after Kapnist’s “Sneak.” Shakhovsky's contemporaries - playwrights B. Fedorov, F. Kokoshkin, N. Sushkov, N. Khmelnitsky, A. Gendre, A. Pisarev - were mainly limited to translations and adaptations of foreign language plays to Russian reality. Shakhovskoy created an original Russian comedy. It gives a broad picture of the life of noble society in the year of the end of the Patriotic War. At the center of the conflict is the clash between patriots and cosmopolitans. Patriots - participants in the war, Prince Kholmsky, Colonel Pronsky. Cosmopolitans - Count Holguin, Countess Leleva and their entourage: the elderly celadon, Baron Volmar, the retired hussar Ugarov and the sensitive poet, “balladeer” Fialkin. Positive heroes, as is customary in the plays of classicists, are mouthpieces of the author’s ideas. They talk a lot about their love for Russia, but their love is based on faith in the inviolability of the old patriarchal foundations. Prince Kholmsky is ironic about Count Holguin, who even his illnesses

...Took me out of Paris... With freedom, scold everything, value no one. Daring couplets and free-thinking nonsense - His only learned conversation.

The negative characters are painted in more vivid colors - the evil-tongued Count Holguin, the old Princess Kholmskaya, Countess Leleva, the sentimental poet Fialkin. Fialkin’s appearance has nothing in common with Zhukovsky’s appearance, but the very nature of his work parodies the themes and motifs of his ballads:

And midnight, and the rooster, and the clinking of bones in the coffins, And chu!... Everything is scary about them; but everything is nice for dears, Everything is amazing, yet incredible.

The image of Fialkin generalizes not only the features of Zhukovsky, but also V. L. Pushkin and S. S. Uvarov. Contemporaries accepted the comedy one-sidedly; they reduced everything in it to a satire on Zhukovsky. The unfortunate Shakhovskoy was even forced to make a public apology to the author of Lyudmila. But here is a living portrait of a friend of Gnedich and Zhukovsky, who still flaunted freethinking in his youth - Count S. S. Uvarov, made by F. Wiegel: “He, flaunting social dexterity, all kinds of successes and French poetry, tried to take precedence over his peers... Well-mannered ... some learned abbot, he was filled with an aristocratic spirit early in the morning... He spoke and wrote French in prose and poetry, like a real Frenchman. The baric and gallomaniac was visible in everything; That’s why many members of the conversation didn’t like him at all.” Uvarov's evil tongue, his penchant for gossip and intrigue are reflected in the characterization of Count Olgin.

In this comedy, Shakhovskoy achieved great success in conveying spoken language. The dialogue between Leleva and Olgin in the 5th act with apt characteristics of visitors to secular salons is reminiscent of Chatsky’s first meeting with Sophia in Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”. In 1818, Shakhovskoy wrote the comedy “If you don’t like it, don’t listen, and don’t interfere with lying,” in which he used a variety of free iambics, anticipating Griboyedov’s verse, to convey natural speech. Thus, Shakhovsky’s activities largely prepared the appearance of the first realistic comedy on the Russian stage.

Sources and benefits

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Lesson summary for 10th grade. Russian literature and Russian history of the 19th century

Author: Galina Vasilievna Klimeshina, teacher of Russian language and literature, MBOU "OOSH No. 3", Astrakhan
This lesson will be useful for an overview of the literary and historical process at the beginning of the 19th century. This lesson can serve as an introductory lecture and will take 2 hours.

Russian literature and Russian history of the 19th century.

Works of writers of the late 18th – early 19th centuries. (Review)

Target: introduce the general characteristics and originality of Russian literature of the 19th century from the point of view of history and literature
Tasks: show the significance of Russian literature of the 19th century in the development of the Russian and world literary process, continue acquaintance with the works of writers of the romantic and realistic periods of Russian literature, repeat what was studied in grade 9;
identify the role of artistic means and language of the work in depicting the world and human feelings, revealing the author’s intention;
develop children's speech through detailed, reasoned answers, analysis of poetic text and creative work
cultivate sensitivity, the ability to be attentive and the ability to observe
Equipment:
1. Collections of poems “Russian Classics”
2. Computer, projector, screen

During the classes

1. Teacher's introduction.

Today is our first literature lesson. The entire course of Russian literature is designed for two years; we will devote lessons to it in grades 1–11.
The journey through the magnificent land of Fantasy begins with romantic works of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and ends with modern Russian literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Let's hit the road as soon as possible, because every new lesson brings us closer to the finish line!

2. The most important historical and literary events of the 1st period
(late 18th – early 19th century).

A) The reign of Alexander I, the War of 1812, the emergence of secret freedom-loving societies.
B) The Decembrist uprising of 1825, the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I.
C) The beginning of the development of capitalism and democratization of society.
D) The emergence and development of leading literary movements: romanticism and realism. The 1810s saw the formation of romanticism, the journal “Bulletin of Europe” was published, edited by V.A. Zhukovsky. The appearance of the first realistic works of Pushkin.
D) The beginning of the literary activity of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol.
Undoubtedly, historical events were of great importance not only for the development of the country, they affected the literary process in Russia.
What do we know from the 9th grade course about romanticism and realism? Let's repeat what we learned.
Romanticism- the leading direction in European literature of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The pathos of romanticism is associated with absolute personal freedom. In the center of the world, according to romantics, there is a person surrounded by a hostile reality. The romantic hero is a fighter, his element is passion.
Realism– (in Russia and Europe at the end of the 18th – first quarter of the 19th century) this artistic method is based on the principle of life’s truth, the desire to fully and accurately reflect life. A.S. Pushkin is considered the founder. It was based on patriotism, sympathy for the people, the search for a positive hero in life, and faith in the bright future of Russia. The main genre of realism is the novel.

3. “Psychological” romanticism of V.A. Zhukovsky and “dreamy” romanticism of K.N. Batyushkov.

The work of writers of the late 18th - early 19th centuries (using the example of poems by Zhukovsky and Batyushkov).
Zhukovsky and Batyushkov can rightfully be considered one of the best representatives of Russian romanticism of this period. In order to get a more complete understanding of their works, let's do the following work:
- read excerpts from poets’ poems,
- compare them, defining phonetic, syntactic, lexical means of expressiveness of speech,
- let’s draw a conclusion about the characteristics of each author’s poetic style.

Batyushkov in 1816.

Portrait of V. A. Zhukovsky. Orest Kiprensky, 1816.
Fig.2
Batyushkov “My genius”. Zhukovsky "Desire".
I remember the voice of sweet words, Oh the limit of charm!
I remember blue eyes, How lovely spring is there!
I remember golden curls like the breath of young roses
Carelessly curly hair. The soul is revived there!
My incomparable shepherdess I will fly there... in vain!
I remember the whole outfit is simple, There are no paths to these shores;
And a dear, unforgettable image, Before me is a terrible stream
Travels everywhere with me. Menacingly rushes along the rocks.
Both poems are written in a romantic vein, but Batyushkov uses alliteration (mn-l, m-l-l, mn-l...)
shows tenderness, sweetness and harmony with your beloved. Syntactic parallelism (I remember)
and the reverse word order emphasize fascination with the cute girl and admiration for her. The image of the beloved is created by metaphors, epithets, personifications (“golden curls”, “voice of sweet words”, “dear image... travels with me everywhere”). The poet will never forget his beautiful beloved.
In Zhukovsky, alliteration (rdl-r-rl, stn...) conveys the cheerfulness and liveliness of the picture. The pause in line 5 is an image of an abyss. Syntactic parallelism and reverse word order emphasize the absence of a way back, exclamatory sentences create an emotional upsurge in speech, the antithesis of parts 1 and 2 of the stanza is emphasized by epithets, metaphor, personification, anaphora: “the limit of charm”, charming-terrible, “the breath of young roses”). For the poet, love is a memory, it is in the past and there is no way to those shores. There is no harmony between the past, present and future.

4. Russian realism of the 19th century

Let's continue our journey and turn to the main movement in literature - realism.
Representatives of this literary movement of the first half of the 19th century were Pushkin, Griboedov, Krylov, Lermontov, Gogol, poets of the Pushkin galaxy: Baratynsky, Vyazemsky, Yazykov, Delvig.
The second half of the 19th century symbolizes the heyday of the Russian novel, writers of this period: Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky; playwrights: Ostrovsky, Sukhovo-Kobylin, Chekhov; poets: Tyutchev, Fet, Nekrasov.
We will study the works of these poets and writers this academic year.

5. Practical work. Essay – sketch “I remember these lines.”

You have already become acquainted with the works of many poets and writers in the process of studying literature in grades 5–9. This means that working on an essay – a sketch – will not be difficult for you. The topic “I remember these lines” invites you to remember one of the studied works and write a short essay according to plan.
Plan.
1. Introduction.
2. Main part.(A) I couldn’t... (couldn’t) remain indifferent while reading the lines of (author, title). It is difficult to disagree with the author that...
B) Can someone tell me that he was not offended by the words ... from (author, title). I am close to the writer’s idea that...
C) The problem that society faces is reflected in the lines... (author, title). The writer is right in asserting that...).
3. Conclusion.(Authoritative source: the point of view of a writer, scientist, cultural figure, and possibly a quote or rhetorical question).
Sample work.
Here it is - a cry for freedom and life, including the life of a poet! This is what I thought after reading A.S. Pushkin’s poem “Anchar”:
The man sent the man to the anchar with an imperious glance,
And he obediently set off on his way, and by morning he returned with poison...
Can anyone be left indifferent by the words of a great poet?! He didn’t walk, didn’t trudge, but “flowed” like a river. But if the river lives freely, in harmony with the surrounding world, then the human ruler is only trying to show his own power and might, destroying not only his slave, but also his neighbors in the distant reaches. What about the slave? Why doesn't he protest?
It’s hard to disagree with the author that it’s difficult to be a free person, it’s easier to live in subordination, you don’t have to decide anything, think about anything, he – your master – will do everything for you. Perhaps someone will say that it was a long time ago, in modern life we ​​are all free, we live in a democratic state, that Pushkin died a long time ago, and the themes of his poems are outdated. No, I will tell them, these lines cannot become obsolete, cannot die, they are needed, we need them today. And Pushkin is immortal, because in these poems we hear his “voice”.

6. Lesson summary. Reflection.

Our first lesson has come to an end. Remember how we worked and determine what it was like for you (indicate a number):
1 difficult, I know almost nothing from the course I took;
2 accessible, I know a lot, I remember, but I did a poor job with written work;
3 was simple and clear, I completed all the tasks easily.

7. Homework.

A) For the whole class:
- know the definition of romanticism and realism, as well as representatives of these movements,
- repeat the biography of Pushkin, the main themes of his work,
- read and bring the poem “The Bronze Horseman”.
B) Individual assignment on the studied works of Pushkin
- Group 1 repeat chapters from the story “The Captain’s Daughter”,
- Group 2 read the poem “Stanzas”,
- Group 3 repeat an excerpt from the poem “Poltava”.

10. Literary movement of the first third of the 19th century. Romanticism. Creativity V.A. Zhukovsky. Main stages of evolution. Early work of Zhukovsky (elegy “Rural Cemetery”). Patriotic lyrics related to the War of 1812 (“Singer in the camp of Russian soldiers”). Elegy "The Inexpressible", "Theon and Aeschines". Ballads of Zhukovsky and their literary significance. Romance of the mysterious and wonderful.

Romanticism has a common universal basis throughout Europe, but does not deny national specificity.

Differences between Russian romanticism and Western European:

Lag (occurs at the turn of the century, not the 1790s)

A consequence of the general lag of Russia, the delay of the era of classicism and Enlightenment in relation to Western Europe (classicism from the 1730s instead of the 17th century; Enlightenment in the 1760-1790s instead of the entire 18th century)

A consequence of the educational nature of Russian romanticism in general. In Russia, the Enlightenment did not have time to discredit itself by the beginning of the era of romanticism. The belief in social progress among active romantics coincided with the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Lack of desire for mysticism

A consequence of the partial rationalism of Russian romanticism is that mysticism is completely irrational.

The exception was V.A. Zhukovsky, who was heavily influenced by the Germans.

Weakening individualism

A consequence of the national tendency towards collectivism, as well as the influence of patriotic ideas of 1812.

Lack of hedonism (pleasure is the main virtue, the highest good and purpose of life) (exception is the hedonistic romanticism of K. N. Batyushkov)

Weakening of “romantic irony” (generating absolute self-confidence and the creator’s power, ironic play with created realities, ridiculing the “believing” reader).

Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky(1783-1852) - Russian poet, one of the founders of romanticism in Russian poetry, translator, critic. Full member of the Imperial Russian Academy; honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Privy Councilor.

In 1802, Zhukovsky met Karamzin, becoming interested in sentimentalism. His “Rural Cemetery” was published in the “Bulletin of Europe” - a free translation of the elegy of the English sentimentalist Gray. The poem attracted everyone's attention. The following year, the story “Vadim Novgorodsky” appeared, written in imitation of the historical stories of Karamzin.

In another poem, written somewhat later, the original elegy “Poetic Evening,” the appearance of Vasily Zhukovsky is already completely defined. In this “meditative” elegy, the main thing is the author’s experience, emotionality, and the poet’s language amazes with its musicality, harmony and “proportionality”.

Working as editor-in-chief of Vestnik Evropy, Zhukovsky was one of the first to attract the reader’s attention to criticism as such and “forced it to be respected” as a special, independent genre of literary creativity. In his critical articles, the poet declares a new direction in Russian literature - romanticism.

In 1808, the literary community was excited by an unexpected publication. Connoisseurs of fine literature could read on the pages of the same “Bulletin of Europe” Zhukovsky’s first ballad entitled “Lyudmila” - like many other works of the author in the same genre - a free translation, in this case, of the German poet G. Burger.

Zhukovsky’s next ballad, “Svetlana,” is no longer a translation, but an original work.

Later, in Zhukovsky’s original ballad “Eolian Harp” (1814), the reader finds a rare combination of lyrical element and ballad poetry. The leitmotif of dual worlds, which runs through the poet’s entire work, sounds especially poignant here: the heroine of the ballad does not die, but “smoothly passes” into “enchanted there,” where the union with her lover occurs.

“The Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors” is a “romantic ode” that captivated contemporaries with its intimate, personal refraction of the patriotic theme, and it is not without reason that Russia in “The Singer...” is “not the Fatherland, but the “sweet Motherland,” dear to the heart with childhood memories.”

And after 1812 a new “war” began, this time a literary one. At one pole are the members of the “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” society, headed by Shishkov, at the other - the Arzamas society, of which Zhukovsky becomes the permanent secretary. Zhukovsky’s poetry has a pronounced romantic character. In 1812, the poet joined the Moscow militia, took part in the Battle of Borodino and a little later wrote the poem “A Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors.”

The work includes many toasts proclaimed by the singer in honor of the famous Russian commanders of the past and present.

Zhukovsky's enormous merit to Russian poetry is the development of the ballad genre, which became widespread in the literature of romanticism.

However, Zhukovsky himself uses poetic language in a unique way. His favorite words - love, beauty, the invisible, the inexplicable, silence, joy - vary in different ways and flow from one poem to another, creating a bizarre pattern, carrying the reader into another, better world, into a distant, promised land. A true romantic, he believes that “the external accuracy of the description prevents one from comprehending the secrets of the universe, accessible only to intuition, to instant poetic insight...”.

Over the years, Zhukovsky thinks more and more about the “heavenly”, about the “holy”; in his poems, a religious and sometimes mystical connotation sounds more and more clearly.

The style of his works becomes somewhat stricter, sometimes he abandons both stylistic excesses and traditional rhyme. Over the years, Zhukovsky mastered poetic speech more and more perfectly. Evidence of this is, first of all, his original works of the 20s, perhaps the most perfect creations of his lyrics - “The Inexpressible”, “Moth and Flowers”, “Mysterious Visitor”, poems imbued with the fantastic interweaving of human life and the secret life of the world and nature .

In the 20-30s, the poet worked very hard and fruitfully on ballads and translations. Zhukovsky takes his subjects from Schiller (“The Knight of Togenburg”, 1818), “The Cup” (1831), from Goethe (“The Fisherman”, 1818), from Walter Scott (“Sméagolm Castle, or Midsummer’s Evening”, 1822), from Uhland ( “Alonze”, 1831)… Alas, the motif of “eternal separation” sounds in all the mentioned works as a sad, inevitable refrain...

In addition, back in the 20s, Zhukovsky translated the recently discovered “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” into modern Russian, in 1818-1822 he translated Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon”, Schiller’s “The Maid of Orleans”, and experienced a strong passion for Goethe, with whom in 1821, during his first trip abroad, he met personally.

One of the works performed in a similar genre, the result of many years of work, is a translation of the prose novel by the German writer Lamotte-Fouquet Ondine, which was published in 1836. “Ondine” amazes not so much with its volume as with the scope of the themes raised in it - about the meaning of human suffering, about fate, about the destiny of man, about love as a force, “what moves the sun and luminaries”, finally about betrayal and retribution...

At the same time, the poet does not at all strive to reflect his contemporary reality; he is more interested in the eternal in man. Zhukovsky's late ballads, translations of Indian and Iranian poems "Rustem and Zorab", "Nal and Damayanti" are truly masterpieces of Russian poetry, wise, dramatic and, paradoxically, modern. After all, Zhukovsky is concerned with enduring themes, he is looking for the origins of a broad generalizing view of life and fate, and his frequent use of free verse brings his later translations even closer to our time.

A. S. Griboyedov. “Woe from Wit” as the pinnacle of Russian comedy in the first quarter of the 19th century.

"Woe from Wit"- comedy in verse A. S. Griboyedov is a work that made its creator a classic of Russian literature. It combines elements of classicism and new for the beginning of the 19th century romanticism and realism.

The comedy "Woe from Wit" - a satire on the aristocratic Moscow society of the first half of the 19th century - is one of the peaks of Russian drama and poetry; actually completed “comedy in verse” as a genre. The aphoristic style contributed to the fact that she “went into quotations.”

The comedy by A. S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit” was written after the Patriotic War of 1812, during the period of the rise of the spiritual life of Russia. The comedy raised the topical social issues of that time: about public service, serfdom, education, education, about the slavish imitation of the nobles to everything foreign and contempt for everything national and popular.

The ideological meaning of comedy lies in the opposition of two social forces, ways of life, worldviews: the old, serfdom, and the new, progressive, in exposing everything that is backward and proclaiming the advanced ideas of that time. The conflict of the comedy is the conflict between Chatsky and Famusov’s society, between “the present century and the past century.”

What are the warring parties? The comedy society was named Famusovsky after the name of Pavel Afanasyevich Famusov. He is a typical representative of his society, has all the virtues valued in it: wealth, connections; he is an example to follow.

Famusov is an official, but treats his service only as a source of income. He is not interested in the meaning and results of labor - only ranks. The ideal of this person is Maxim Petrovich, who “knew honor before everyone,” “ate on gold,” “drove forever in a train.” Famusov, like the rest of society, admires his ability to “bend to the extreme,” “when it is necessary to serve oneself,” since it is this ability that helps in Moscow “to reach the famous levels.” Famusov and his society (Khlestovs, Tugoukhovskys, Molchalins, Skalozubs) represent “a bygone century.”

4. Chatsky, on the contrary, is something new, fresh, bursting into life, bringing change. He is a representative of the “present century”. This is an exponent of the advanced ideas of his time. His monologues reveal a political program: he exposes serfdom and its products: inhumanity, hypocrisy, stupid military, ignorance, false patriotism. He gives a merciless characterization of Famus’s society, branding “the meanest traits of a past life.” Chatsky’s monologue “And who are the judges?..” was born of his protest against the “Fatherland of the Fathers”, since he does not see in them a model that should be imitated.

He calls the serf-landowners “noble scoundrels” for their inhumane attitude towards the serfs. One of them, “that Nestor of noble scoundrels,” exchanged his faithful servants, who “save his life and honor more than once,” for three greyhounds; another scoundrel “brought to the serf ballet on many wagons from mothers and fathers rejected children,” who were then all “sold off one by one.” In Famus society, external form as an indicator of career success is more important than education, selfless service to the cause, sciences and arts.

All the benefits and privileges that Famus society enjoys are achieved through servility, servility before superiors and boorish arrogance before those below. This causes enormous moral damage to society, depriving people of self-esteem.

In the comedy, Famusov and Chatsky are opposed to each other: on the one hand, gray, limited, mediocre, Famusov and the people of his circle, and on the other, the talented, educated, intellectual Chatsky. The air that Famusov’s Moscow breathes is the air of lies, deception, “submission and fear.” Famusov’s society is mired in ignorance, laziness, commitment to everything foreign, does not want and cannot develop, because otherwise the ideals of the “past life” will be destroyed, and therefore it is afraid of everything new, progressive, embodied in the personality of Chatsky, who carries fresh ideas. Chatsky’s daring mind immediately alarms Moscow society, accustomed to calm. “Fathers” and “judges” are not used to objections and criticism; they do not want any changes. The dialogues between Famusov and Chatsky are a struggle, and it begins from the very first minutes of the meeting between Famusov and Chatsky.

The attitude of Famusov and Chatsky to service is also opposite. Chatsky sees service to the cause as his main goal. He does not accept “serving elders” or pleasing his superiors:

I would be glad to serve, but being served is sickening.

For Famusov, service is an easy matter:

And what matters to me, what doesn’t matter,

My custom is this:

Signed, off your shoulders.

The entire comedy is permeated by contradictions in views between the “present century” and the “past century.” And the more Chatsky communicates with Famusov and his entourage, the greater the gulf that separates them. Chatsky speaks harshly of this society, which, in turn, calls him “Voltairian”, “Jacobin”, “Carbonari”.

Chatsky is forced to renounce even his love for Sophia, realizing that she does not love him and does not see him as an ideal, remaining a representative of the “past century.” Each new face in the comedy joins Famus’s society, which means it becomes in opposition to Chatsky. He scares them with his reasoning and ideals. It is fear that forces society to recognize him as crazy. And this was the best way to combat freethinking.

Who is Chatsky - the winner or the loser? I. A. Goncharov in his article “A Million Torments” says:

“Chatsky is broken by the amount of old power, having dealt it, in turn, a fatal blow with the quality of fresh power. He is an eternal exposer of lies...” Chatsky’s drama is that he sees tragedy in the fate of society, but cannot influence anything.

A. S. Griboedov raised important issues of the era in his comedy: the question of serfdom, the fight against serfdom reaction, the activities of secret political societies, education, Russian national culture, the role of reason and progressive ideas in public life, duty and human dignity.

11. Creativity of A. S. Pushkin. Lyceum years. First poetic experiments: The genre of historical elegy (“Memoirs in Tsarskoe Selo”) and messages (“Town.” “To the Students”). Petersburg period. The influence of Decembrism. Civic poetry: “Liberty”, “Village”. "To Chaadaev." Romanic period. Southern link. Formation of realism. Michael's link. Love lyrics: “Burnt letter.” “I remember a wonderful moment...”, “Keep me safe, my talisman...”. Poems about the lyceum brotherhood, (excerpt by heart). The tragedy "Boris Godunov".

The time range of works included in the literature program for applicants to universities is approximately twenty years: from the ode “Liberty” (1817) to the last works completed in 1836: the novel “The Captain’s Daughter” and the poem “I have erected a monument to myself not made by hands.” ...". Understanding their ideological meaning and artistic features largely depends on how clearly the applicant understands the main factors that influenced the fate of the poet and the periodization of Pushkin’s work.

The poet himself was aware of the milestones of his creative development, reflected on the works already created, and prepared the final books. Changes in creativity, as a rule, are easily correlated with turning points in his personal destiny.

Lyceum period (1813 - May 1817). The first period of creativity is the time of Pushkin’s poetic self-determination, the time of choosing a path.

Pushkin was born at the end of the 18th century, on May 26 (June 6), 1799. As a twelve-year-old boy, he entered the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, which opened on October 19, 1811. Six years later, having completed the lyceum course, Pushkin became not only a highly educated person, but also the most promising poet Russia.

His first poems are dated 1813. Over the next three years, over 130 works were written. The development of the poet-youth was rapid. In 1814, the magazine "Bulletin of Europe" published Pushkin's first poem - "To a friend the poet." In January 1815, the young poet, in the presence of Derzhavin, reads his poem “Memoirs in Tsarskoe Selo.”

In Pushkin's Lyceum poems there are many similarities with the works of Russian and French writers. He was not ashamed of his apprenticeship, borrowed themes, motifs, images, poetic vocabulary, and used genres that emerged in the poetry of the early 19th century: ode, elegy, epistle, madrigal. Pushkin the lyceum student worked in the aura of the poetic culture of his time. An important “review” of old and new literature for the young poet, the poem “Town” (1814) is an echo of Batyushkov’s “My Penates” (1811). Elegies 1815-1816 (“Dreamer”, “To Her”, “Singer”, etc.) were written under the influence of Zhukovsky. In a few civil poems (“Memoirs in Tsarskoe Selo”, “Licinia”), Pushkin appears as a student of Derzhavin.

Petersburg period (June 1817 - early May 1820). After graduating from the Lyceum, having entered the civil service - the College of Foreign Affairs, Pushkin lived in St. Petersburg. He entered the St. Petersburg “big society” and found himself in a completely unfamiliar, motley world. This is a world of ranks and awards, balls and entertainment, intrigue and slander.

Important for Pushkin’s fate was his entry into the world of big social ideas, disputes about politics and religion, and projects for saving Russia.

The poems “Liberty” (1817) and “Village” (1819) were written under the direct influence of the ideas of the participants in the “Union of Welfare”. Pushkin’s bright political temperament manifested itself in the evil satire on Alexander I, “Fairy Tales. Noеl" (“Hurray! He’s galloping to Russia..”) (1818), in an epigram to the all-powerful temporary worker Arakcheev. The message “To Chaadaev” (1818) was dictated by a young impulse of a free heart. All these poems were distributed in manuscripts, they were read, discussed, and rewritten.

Pushkin's poetry of the late 1810s. is largely of a “laboratory” nature. It is characterized by sharp genre and style contrasts. Side by side are an archaic ode and a romantic elegy, high civil verse and rough impromptu. Contrasts of style are also felt in the freedom-loving poems. Pushkin the lyricist in his message “To Chaadaev” and in “The Village” tried to fuse the archaized poetic language, based on allegorical images and metonymic periphrases, with the subjectivity and expression of romantic poetry.

The poetry of the St. Petersburg period is a decisive stage in the formation of Pushkin’s original poetic style.

The poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” was conceived while still at the Lyceum and completed shortly before exile. The poet finally conquered the large epic form - he ceased to be only a lyric poet. Starting from the tradition created by Zhukovsky (the fairy-tale poem “The Twelve Sleeping Virgins”), Pushkin created a deeply original work. This was the completion of his genre and stylistic quests of the 1810s.

Period of southern exile (May 1820 - July 1824) - a turning point in the life and work of Pushkin. His life status changed: while remaining an official, he turned into a disgraced nobleman, an exiled poet. No terms of service away from St. Petersburg were established - the exile could easily become indefinite. The poet’s further life depended only on where “the autocracy would blow.”

The stormy gusts of the royal “wind” were initially favorable for Pushkin. In May-September 1820, he traveled south with the family of General I.N. Raevsky (Ekaterinoslav - Caucasus - Crimea). Echoes of Caucasian and Crimean impressions, echoes of communication with representatives of this large family sounded in Pushkin’s poetry for almost a decade. In 1820-1823. Pushkin served in Chisinau. In November 1820 - January 1821, Pushkin stayed for a long time at the Davydovs' estate Kamenka, Kiev province, which was one of the centers of opposition to the regime of Alexander I, visited Kiev, Odessa, together with I.P. Liprandi at the end of 1821 traveled through Moldavia.

Pushkin during the period of southern exile was a brilliant romantic poet. The leading position in “southern” lyrics was occupied by romantic genres: elegy and friendly poetic message. He was also attracted to the genre of romantic ballads (“Song of the Prophetic Oleg”). Elegies “The daylight has gone out...”, “I don’t feel sorry for you, the year of my spring...”, “The flying ridge of clouds is thinning...” and “I have outlived my desires...” - like romantic epigraphs to the new chapter of the creative biography of Pushkin. They draw a sharp line between the St. Petersburg years, filled with friendly communication, feasts, the joys of love, and a new life “under the storms of cruel fate,” “in boring exile,” “far away freedom-loving friends.”

The romantic lyrics capture the unique psychological appearance of Pushkin himself. The poems created a romantic model of reality, which became relevant for many Russian romantic poets. The poems “Caucasian Prisoner” (1821), “Robber Brothers” (1821-1822), “Bakhchisarai Fountain” (1821-1823) and “Gypsies” (finished in 1824 in Mikhailovskoye) are Pushkin’s main achievement during the period of southern exile . Despite the contradictory assessments of readers and critics, the poems strengthened Pushkin’s fame as the first poet of Russia.

The period of exile in Mikhailovskoye (August 1824 - September 1826). During these years, Pushkin is still an exile, although his status has changed significantly. Mikhailovskoye is a real, undisguised link. The poet was deprived of freedom of movement. He was placed under double surveillance: police and church, because on behalf of the tsar they brought one of the most terrible accusations against him - atheism and a corrupting influence on the minds of young people. No terms of reference were specified. An attempt to leave Mikhailovskoye under the pretext of illness did not lead to success. Pushkin found himself virtually erased from life.

The Mikhailovsky period of creativity is a time of change in Pushkin’s aesthetic guidelines. His artistic system lost the integrity and certainty characteristic of the period of southern exile. Pushkin rushed towards the unknown and unknown. Realizing the exhaustion of the artistic system of romanticism, he moved towards new principles of depicting man and reality, which were later called realistic.

In Mikhailovsky, the best romantic poem “Gypsies” was completed, a masterpiece of romantic lyricism was written - the poem “To the Sea”. The motifs and images of romanticism are palpable in many poems (“Conversation between a bookseller and a poet,” “Desire for Glory,” “Andrei Chenier,” “Prophet”). It was in the lyrics that the power of romantic inertia was greatest.

However, both in his lyrics and especially in his epic poetic works, Pushkin’s desire to overcome the genre and style canons of romanticism, to change the romantic point of view on the world and man became more and more obvious. The style of love lyrics is changing - the poet’s word accurately captures the psychological uniqueness of his experiences (“K***” (“I remember a wonderful moment...”), “Burnt letter”, “Under the blue sky of his native country...”, “ Confession"). Pushkin creates a cycle of poems “Imitations of the Koran” and “Songs about Stenka Razin”, in which he masters the imagery of oriental poetry and Russian folklore. In the poem “Count Nulin” and in the central chapters of “Eugene Onegin” (III-VI), written in Mikhailovsky, Pushkin moves even further away from romanticism.

A milestone in the creative self-determination of Pushkin the realist is the historical tragedy “Boris Godunov,” completed on November 7, 1825. It reflected the poet’s new ideas about the relationship between history and personality, history and people, and his interest in tragic, turning points in the history of Russia. Pushkin's first experience as a playwright was anti-romantic: he did not make his characters mouthpieces for the author's ideas, and avoided straightforward comparisons of the past and the present. Pushkin sought to show the tragedy of the monarch and the tragedy of the people, and most importantly, to look at history “through Shakespeare’s eyes,” that is, to objectively, impartially understand the real complexity of the relationship between the authorities and the people.

“Boris Godunov,” highly appreciated by the writer himself, was considered by many contemporaries to be unsuccessful and not in accordance with the laws of the stage. The depth of Pushkin's historical insights also eluded them. And this is a very remarkable fact: it was during the Mikhailovsky period of creativity that the first contradictions emerged between Pushkin and modern romantic literature, which subsequently led to a misunderstanding of many of his works. The works created at Mikhailovsky clearly defined the realistic perspective of the creative development of Pushkin the artist. He was already ahead of the literature of his time.

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Tutorial

HISTORY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 19TH CENTURY

1. Introduction

2.Russian literature of the 1st quarter of the 19th century

This textbook is intended for students starting to study the history of Russian literature of the 19th century, as well as for literature teachers working in the 9th grade and needing a general picture of the Russian literary process at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

First of all, the manual explains the meaning of the very concept of “literary process”, the content of what is called the history of literature. Secondly, it introduces the features of the literary process in Russia in the 19th century and the content of this process in the first quarter of the century.

The manual introduces names, literary associations, publications, without which an idea of ​​Russian literature of the first quarter of the 19th century is unthinkable.

A short list of scientific and educational literature will help those wishing to expand their understanding of the subject being studied.

1. Introduction

history literature

What do we mean by the term “literary history”? What is the content of the literary process in its historical extent? There are different answers to this question. In some cases, the history of literature means a certain formal connection in chronological order of authors and their literary works. And then the literary process appears as a mechanical and meaningless phenomenon. While history is always a complex unity of contradictory but interconnected elements.

From another point of view, the history of literature is a reflection in literary works of various, successive trends in social development, the dominant political, social and philosophical ideas of different eras. The approach to the history of Russian literature from the point of view of “three stages of the liberation movement” is the most crude, elementary expression of such a position. Its depravity lies in the fact that in this case the literary process is deprived of its own content, and the literary work turns into an illustration for a history textbook. Those literary works that are not quite suitable for this role are declared to be of little significance.

Of course, the history of literature is connected with the development of society, with the history of social life, with philosophical, ethical, social ideas of various eras. However, art (and literature as well) has its own internal, autonomous laws of development. It is hardly a coincidence, for example, that the youth of all national literatures is associated primarily with poetic genres, that the 19th century in almost all European literature turned out to be the century of the novel. From this position, the history of literature can be viewed as the history of evolution and change of artistic forms. I will try to follow this approach in my lectures. Of course, we are not talking about a purely formal process. The evolution and change of artistic forms is a deeply meaningful process. It is closely related to the way of life of society, its cultural level, aesthetic tastes, concepts and ideas of people, and the state of social psychology.

Features of Russian literature of the 19th century

The 19th century is a classical period in the development of Russian literature, a period similar to antiquity in European literary development, the period from Racine to Voltaire in France, the era of Goethe and Schiller in Germany. Russian literature of the 19th century is one of the foundations of Russian national culture. It is from the pages of literary works of this period that the Russian reader receives ideas about the completeness and perfection of a work of art. The poems of A. Pushkin and M. Lermontov, the prose of N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy and A. Chekhov became the standard of excellence in art in the public consciousness.

One of the features of Russian artistic culture is its logocentric nature. This is primarily a verbal culture. And the 19th century is the best proof of this. During this period, literature had a decisive influence on the development of other arts: theater, painting, music.

The 19th century for the Russian literary process is a century of accelerated artistic development. Over the course of a century, Russian literature has traveled a path equal to 2 - 2.5 centuries in the history of any Western European literature. If at the beginning of the century it was completing its period of apprenticeship, then by the middle of the century it had not only caught up with the most developed literatures of Europe, but also in many ways occupied a leading position in the European literary process. The result of the rapid literary development of Russia in the 19th century was that various literary schools, movements, seemingly belonging to different periods of literary history, did not have time to replace each other and existed simultaneously, intricately intertwined even in the work of one writer. For example, sentimentalism, romanticism and realism in the works of N. Gogol and F. Dostoevsky.

The accelerated development of literature in Russia in the 19th century also affected the literary and everyday destinies of writers. Many of them found themselves on the sidelines of the literary process long before the end of their life and creative journey. V.A. Zhukovsky was a very fashionable poet in the 10s and early 20s. But a few years later, in 1824, A.S. Pushkin, who highly valued Zhukovsky the poet and was sincerely attached to Zhukovsky the man, having received his older friend’s book from his brother, will write: “I received Zhukovsky. He was a nice dead man. May God grant him the Kingdom of Heaven." Zhukovsky still had several decades of literary work ahead of him, the translation of the Odyssey, the creation of a number of classical ballads, but for the young Pushkin he was already a literary dead man. His creative activity no longer coincided with the main directions of literary development. 1824 - 1826 were the peak of Pushkin’s popularity, but by the early thirties he would have to face the first signs of reader cooling, with the emergence of new idols of the public, satisfying its new needs.

The rapid flow of literary development brought unexpected names to the surface, either turning a novice writer into a public idol for an instant, as was the case with V. Benediktov, or attracting everyone's attention to the work of a previously little-known writer, as happened with M. Zagoskin. At the same time, the deep processes that took place in the late work of the same Pushkin, in the mature lyrics of E. Baratynsky, in the poetry of A. Fet or in the prose of N. Leskov were beyond the reader's attention.

2.Russian literature of the first quarter of the 19th century

Features of the literary process in Russia in the first quarter of the 19th century

The first quarter of the 19th century in Russia and, by the way, not only in Russia is a period when poetic genres play a leading role in the literary process. This is the time of the dominance of poetry in literature, the time of its heyday, the “golden age” of Russian poetry. It is difficult to imagine another era that would simultaneously accommodate so many outstanding poetic names. Not to mention A. Pushkin, E. Baratynsky, K. Batyushkov, P. Vyazemsky, F. Glinka, N. Gnedich, A. Griboedov, D. Davydov, A. Delvig, V. Zhukovsky, P. were creating at this time. Katenin, I. Kozlov, I. Krylov, A. Merzlyakov, K. Ryleev, N. Yazykov. And each of them left their noticeable mark in the history of Russian literature. There are 54 names in the anthology “Poets of Pushkin’s Era” compiled by Yu. Verkhovsky and published in 1919. But the anthology included only those authors whose work, even after a century, retained at least some artistic significance. This fact also speaks of a very high level of general development of poetic speech and mastery of poetic technique, which were achieved in the first quarter of the 19th century.

This is a time of accelerated formation of the Russian literary language, normalization and harmonization, aestheticization of Russian speech, primarily written. It was during this period that the Russian word learned to fully reveal its expressive and aesthetic capabilities and to be aesthetically attractive. This was accompanied by a convergence of the language of fiction with the language of the educated part of society. Literature of the 18th century is in many ways literature “for our own people,” for people who were in one way or another involved in literary creativity. Outside this circle, the number of readers is extremely limited. And the reason for this is largely in the state of the literary language. It is difficult even for the educated part of society. On the other hand, in the world of the Prostakovs and Skotinins, it was not clear why read at all. Russian literature at the beginning of the 19th century meets the reader halfway and at the same time shapes him. Reading Russian books ceases to be, in a sense, a professional activity; a relatively wide readership of Russian literature is being formed. Knowledge of the works of N. Karamzin, V. Zhukovsky, A. Pushkin now became the generally accepted norm for a person belonging to the cultural community in Russia, just like the previous knowledge of French literature. Reading Russian literature began to turn from work into pleasure. According to S. Shevyrev, “under Lomonosov, reading was a strenuous activity; under Catherine it became a luxury of education, a privilege of the elite; under Karamzin, a necessary sign of enlightenment; under Zhukovsky and Pushkin, the needs of society" (Shevyrev S. A look at the modern direction of Russian literature. - "Moskovite". 1842. No. 1. P. XII). A reader with a sufficiently developed literary taste and high aesthetic requirements for a literary work, a reader who strives to receive aesthetic pleasure from a Russian book, and literature capable of delivering such pleasure have emerged. It is clear that poetry was prepared primarily for solving this problem.

In this regard, the position of the writer in society changes significantly. A writer of the 18th century is most often a commoner. His literary activity is inseparable from his official position. Most often, it is connected either with scientific activity (M. Lomonosov), or with state or court service (V. Trediakovsky, G. Derzhavin, A. Radishchev, etc.). The author very often creates his works by appealing to the authorities and hoping for their approval. Therefore, in the eyes of both the authorities and society, the status of a writer is quite low. The case of the beating of the poet V. Trediakovsky by Chancellor A. Volynsky is quite indicative in this regard. The very high status of G. Derzhavin in the last decades of his life, firstly, his personal status associated with recognition by the authorities and high position at court, and, secondly, the first sign of beginning changes. As a modern researcher writes, “the concept of literary work, widespread in the 18th century, assumed that writers were a kind of officials in the service of the government (in fact, most of them were officials and formally), called upon to glorify power (primarily the king) , morally educate people (praising positive examples and criticizing, ridiculing negative ones) and enlighten them by imparting knowledge.” (Reitblat A.I. How Pushkin became a genius. M., 2001. P. 155)

With the advent of the 19th century, the situation changed fundamentally. Towards the end of the previous century, the public authority of literature and the writer gradually increased. In the new century, the leading writers are predominantly nobles, and not just nobles, but representatives of the family aristocracy: P. Vyazemsky, A. Pushkin, A. Perovsky, etc. This is a sign that the social status of the writer is changing, or rather, the status of literary activities. Now this is a completely respected type of activity, a manifestation of high culture, subtle mental structure, and intellectual independence of the individual. The literary activity and social behavior of N.M. played a huge role in changing the prestige of the writer. Karamzin. The prestige of a writer is now determined not by his relationship with the authorities, but by the reader’s interest in his work. The new social status and social position of the nobleman - writer allow him to feel independent, including from the authorities.

But literary work never becomes professional. For noble writers, creativity is, first of all, a way of personal self-realization, a sphere of spiritual freedom, including freedom from material calculation. The most typical example of this kind of writer - an amateur immersed in literary life - is P.A. Vyazemsky. As Pushkin wrote in the 30s, “literature has become a significant industry in our country for only about 20 years. Until now, it was considered only as an elegant and aristocratic occupation...” Literary activity is not perceived as a source of income. The lion's share of the profits from publishing a book goes to the publisher, not the author. The change in this situation is associated with the name of Pushkin. For his poem “The Bakhchisarai Fountain” he received an unheard of fee at that time - 3 thousand rubles. “For the poems of the “Bakhchisarai Fountain” they paid as much as has never been paid for any Russian poems,” noted the same Vyazemsky (P.A. Vyazemsky. About the “Bakhchisaray Fountain” not in a literary sense. - In the collection: Pushkin in lifetime criticism. 1820 - 1827. - St. Petersburg. 1996. P. 190). From that time on, literary earnings became the main source of income for Pushkin, and Pushkin became one of the first Russian professional writers of the 19th century. “The commercial success of the Bakhchisarai Fountain became one of the symptoms and factors of the professionalization of literary work” (Pushkin in his lifetime criticism. 1820 - 1827. - St. Petersburg. 1996. P. 408) in Russia. During the first quarter of the 19th century, the Russian writer goes from an amateur writer to a professional writer. On this path there is a combination of noble dignity, a sense of honor, personal independence with the awareness of one’s writing mission, the high purpose of writing.

Along with the emancipation of the writer comes the emancipation of literature. “High” literature of the first quarter of the 19th century is no longer a servant of certain political, moral or educational goals. It gradually acquires its own artistic content. This process becomes quite obvious in the works of A.S. Pushkin.

Literary struggle in Russia in the first quarter of the 19th century

The first quarter of the 19th century was a period of intense literary struggle and fierce polemics in Russian literature. In the historical space of two decades of the new century, two literary eras met: aesthetics, artistic experience and tastes of the outgoing stage of literary development, which ended the 18th century, and the trends of the new period. Hence the principled nature and fierceness of literary battles. The intensity of the development of literature in Russia during the period described does not allow us to identify the content of the literary struggle in Russia with the confrontation between the “classics” and the romantics in the literatures of Western European peoples, since in the course of this struggle those problems of literary development were resolved that, for example, in France took about two centuries .

Yu.N. Tynyanov called the literary “parties” that entered into fierce polemics in Russia at the beginning of the century “archaists” and “innovators.” At the center of the discussion was, at first glance, a purely scientific dispute about the relationship between Church Slavonic and modern Russian languages. However, in the context of the literary process of the early 19th century, this question acquired a fundamental character. This was a question not only about the place of Church Slavonicisms in the Russian literary language, but about the ways of development of Russian literature. The idea that the Church Slavonic language is a variety of the South Slavic dialect and, therefore, is not the direct ancestor of the modern Russian language, was not generally accepted at the beginning of the 19th century. “Archaists” and their leader - Admiral A.S. Shishkov categorically disagreed with this point of view. Their language platform was most fully outlined in Shishkov’s famous work “Discourse on the old and new syllable of the Russian language.” For the author of the “Discourse...” Church Slavonic and Russian languages ​​are historically the same language: “... our language Slavonic and Russian is the same. It differs only... into high and simple. The sacred books were written in the lofty, in the simple we speak among ourselves and write secular works...” (Quoted from: Uspensky B.A. A brief outline of the history of the Russian literary language. (XI - XIX centuries) M., 1994. P. 158). “Moreover, the Russian spoken language appears as a result of the corruption of the “Slavonic” language, caused mainly by foreign language influence” (Ibid.). Hence the desire of the “archaists” in their literary activity not only to stop this process of “damage” of the Church Slavonic language, but also to restore its lost strength, beauty and expressiveness.

While the “innovators” sought to bring the language of literature closer to the language of an educated society, including by maximizing the use of Church Slavonicisms, their opponents argued that the colloquial speech of the salon and the book language were incompatible. At the same time, the Church Slavonic language “is generally perceived as an extremely correct variety” of the Russian language (Ibid.). And “Slavicization (i.e., the use of Church Slavonic linguistic resources) appears with this understanding as a means of creating a literary language.” (op. cit. p. 159) The desire to cleanse the language of borrowed elements and repulsion from the spoken language - this is the essence of the language program of the “archaists,” which turned them into irreconcilable opponents of the “innovators”, supporters of N.M. Karamzin.

The “Karamzinists” in their literary practice defended the clarity, lightness, and elegant simplicity of the literary language; they sought to bring the book language closer to the spoken language of society. They recognize the natural and necessary enrichment of the Russian language with borrowings from more developed European languages, primarily French. The “innovators” solved the problem of harmonizing the literary language by cutting off extremes: not only ponderous, outdated Church Slavonicisms, but also vernacular language, from their point of view, rude and indecent in good society. They sharply narrowed the boundaries of the literary language, but at the same time developed its internal unity.

It was not only a scientific, but also a worldview and ideological dispute. It was a dispute about the relationship between the developing Russian culture and other European cultures, about whether literature should change its forms, its language along with changes in public tastes, life, and the level of cultural development of readers. Finally, it was a dispute about who literature should serve: the interests of the state or the tastes and concepts of society. “Archaists” defended the isolation of Russian culture and literature from Western European processes. Their ideas anticipated “the romantic idea of ​​the uniqueness of each people, their language, history and culture, the romantic cult of the national past” (Op. cit. p. 31). However, genre preferences, fundamental heaviness, oratorical monumentality made the works of the “archaists” similar to the traditions of Russian classicism of the 18th century. “Innovators” - Karamzinists sought to integrate Russian literature into the pan-European literary process. They defended ideas about grace that were common to all peoples, including the “ideal of balance and proportionality” that distinguished the “aesthetics of “old” classicism.” (Ibid.). But the interest in the individual, her inner world, the peculiar intimacy of their art opened the way for new phenomena in Russian literature and foreshadowed the approach of the romantic era.

In the early 20s, the debate between “archaists” and “innovators” became a thing of the past. They were replaced by talk of romanticism. But Russian romanticism of the first half of the 20s was not united. Within it there were various movements, including those whom Yu. Tynyanov would call “young archaists” and who would inherit some of the aesthetic ideas of Shishkov and his supporters.

Various forms of organization of literary life in Russia in the first quarter of the 19th century

The expansion of the circle of readers of Russian authors in Russian educated society, the emergence of independent and authoritative literary figures contributed to the development of diverse forms of organization of literary life. These forms not only served the communication of writers with each other, contributed to the development of new artistic ideas and literary discussions, but also allowed writers and readers to meet directly and gave rise to a literary environment, outside of which it is difficult to imagine normal literary development.

Among the forms of organization of literary life in the first quarter of the 19th century, we must mention, first of all, literary salons, literary and artistic circles, friendly societies and broader literary associations. They differed from each other in the number of participants, the presence or absence of a common literary “ideology”, program and, first of all, the degree of organizational formalization. This stage of literary development is characterized by the fact that the greatest imprint in the history of literature was left by associations that were of the least formal nature.

These included literary salons. The first quarter of the 19th century in Russia was the time of formation and development of the culture of literary salons, the heyday of which would be in the 30s. The most significant influence on the literary process of this time was the salon of A. N. Olenin. Alexey Nikolaevich Olenin - St. Petersburg nobleman of the Alexander era, director of the Public Library, president of the Academy of Arts, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Olenin combined his high social status with a sincere passion for art, especially antiquity, with widespread hospitality and a passion for patronage. His salon existed from the end of the first decade of the 19th century until at least the 30s. Among its regular participants were K. Batyushkov, N. Gnedich, I. Krylov, S. Uvarov, V. Ozerov, artists and actors. Krylov and Batyushkov were especially attached to the Olenin house, sometimes staying for a long time with the hospitable host. In the era of the struggle between “archaists” and “innovators,” the owner of the salon “lived peacefully with Shishkov and Karamzin” (Quoted from: Aronson M., Reiser S. Literary circles and salons. St. Petersburg. 2001. P. 163), thus remaining over the battle and gathering “representatives of real literature from Karamzin to Pushkin.” It was the atmosphere and range of literary interests of the Olenin salon that generated interest in Russian hexameter and pushed N. Gnedich to work on a translation of the Iliad. Let us also remember that it was at the Olenins that Pushkin first saw A.P. Kern.

The Friendly Literary Society also left a noticeable mark on the history of Russian literature of the early 19th century, despite the brevity of its existence and the narrow circle of participants. This society arose in Moscow in January 1801 and lasted only a few months. Among its members were A. Voeikov, V. Zhukovsky, M. and A. Kaisarov, A. Merzlyakov, A. Rodzianko, Andrei and Alexander Turgenev. All these young people were united not only by common literary tastes, for example, an interest in German literature, but also by the upbringing and education received at the Noble boarding school at Moscow University and at Moscow University itself. They were characterized by an interest not only in literary, but also in philosophical, ethical and social problems. The soul of the society, its highest authority and common favorite was Andrei Turgenev, who was destined to die early in the year the Friendly Society was founded. The literary and life paths of the members of the Friendly Literary Society then diverged. A. Merzlyakov turned from a poet into a professor of literature who defended the principles of normative aesthetics, and V. Zhukovsky became the founder of Russian romantic lyrics, alien to these principles. But some members of society carried friendships and personal affection throughout their entire lives. First of all, this applies to V. Zhukovsky, A. Voeikov and Alexander Turgenev.

Among the literary associations that had a clearly defined organizational structure (leaders, established admission procedures, strict frequency of meetings) and official status, two societies with similar names should be mentioned: the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences and Arts and the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. In addition, there was a Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. These associations were much more numerous than those mentioned above, they existed for a considerable time, but their real role in the literary process turned out to be quite modest.

The free society of lovers of literature, science and art was formed in 1801. Initially, its participants were not only writers, but also young artists and scientists, among them the poet and outstanding philologist A. Vostokov, poet, prose writer and playwright A. Izmailov, N. Radishchev (son of the author of “Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow”) and others . With the outbreak of the military campaign in 1812, the activities of the Society were suspended and resumed only in December 1816. The second half of the 1910s was the time of its greatest activity and the influx of new members. I.A. are elected as honorary members of the Society. Krylov, V.A. Zhukovsky, K.N. Batyushkov, P.A. Vyazemsky, N.I. Gnedich. The participants are F. Glinka, A. Delvig, V. Kuchelbecker, E. Baratynsky, P. Pletnev. On July 26, 1818, Pushkin was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and the Arts and attended its meetings at least twice thereafter. With the beginning of the 20s, the outflow of younger generation writers from the Society became noticeable, the leadership of the Society in the person of A. Izmailov took increasingly conservative positions in the literary process, and the Society moved to the periphery of literary life.

It was at this time that the activities of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature sharply intensified in St. Petersburg. It was formed in January 1816 and initially united a group of literary amateurs and their friends. But then famous writers began to join this Society: F. Glinka (1816), N. Grech (1818), A. Delvig, P. Pletnev and V. Kuchelbecker (1819), A. Bestuzhev (1820), E. Baratynsky, F. Bulgarin, N. Bestuzhev, K. Ryleev (1821), A. Griboyedov, I. Kozlov, N. Polevoy (1824). In 1819, the Society was headed by the outstanding writer and public figure F.N. Glinka. It was under his leadership that the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature became an influential literary and social force. The society, which received the characteristic name of a “learned republic,” organized a speech in support of Pushkin, who was being expelled from St. Petersburg to the south, and publicly condemned the denunciation activities of one of its leaders. At the meetings of the Society, works by A.S. were read. Pushkin, writers who participated in the Decembrist movement. In 1825, the activities of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature were discontinued.

But at the center of literary life in the first quarter of the 19th century were two literary associations: “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” and “Arzamas” or “Arzamas Society of Unknown People”. The origins of the “Conversation” go back to the winter of 1806 - 1807, when the most venerable writers, associated with the traditions of the bygone era, decided to gather in turns with each other for literary readings. Among the initiators of these meetings were the “living classic” G.R. Derzhavin, and I.A., who had just become famous for his first fables. Krylov, and the author of “Discourse on the Old and New Syllable” Admiral A.S. Shishkov, and comedian A.A. Shakhovskoy, and other writers. However, then they wanted to give their activities a public and official character. Then, in 1811, the charter of the literary society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” was prepared, approved by a special royal decree, and the activities of the society acquired their completed form, similar to the form of a state institution. “Like the State Council, composed of four departments, the Beseda was divided into four categories, and, just like his, each was given a chairman, and each was given a trustee,” recalled F.F., a participant in these meetings. Vigel. Members of the society were also divided into several categories: among them were full members, employee members and honorary members. Meetings of the “Conversation” were held in the mansion of G.R. Derzhavina on Fontanka. They were solemn and public in nature. According to the memoirs of the same Vigel, “the fair sex appeared in ball gowns, state ladies in portraits, nobles and generals wore ribbons and stars, and everyone in general was in uniform.” It is clear that these meetings were attended not only by writers, but also by high-ranking public, admitted by tickets.

The true ideologists and leaders of the “Conversations of Lovers of the Russian Word” were A.S. Shishkov and A.A. Shakhovskaya, and “Conversation” itself turned into the headquarters of literary “archaists”, from where “forays” were regularly made against Karamzin and especially his young supporters. On September 23, 1815, the premiere of Shakhovsky’s new comedy “Lipetsk Waters or a Lesson for Coquettes” took place. That evening among the spectators in the theater hall were Zhukovsky, A. Turgenev and other admirers of Karamzin and new poetry. Imagine their indignation when they recognized one of the characters in Shakhovsky’s comedy, the balladeer poet Fialkin, as a caricature of Zhukovsky! “Lipetsk Waters” was perceived by young “innovators” and their supporters as a challenge that required an answer. This answer became “Arzamas”, the main content of whose activities will be parodying and ridiculing “Conversations” and the literary activities of its main participants. The organizational meeting of “Arzamas” took place on October 14, 1815. Among the members of the new literary society, in addition to the already named Zhukovsky and A. Turgenev, are S. Uvarov, D. Bludov, D. Dashkov, who will then be joined by K. Batyushkov, A. Voeikov, P. Vyazemsky, D. Davydov, V. Pushkin , A. Pushkin, M. Orlov and others. Already in the title (“Arzamas Society of Unknown People”) there is a contrast to “Conversation”: “Not nobles with ribbons and orders, not statesmen, gray-haired and burdened with high positions, but unknown people - in the very name of the future society there is a polemic with “Conversation”, with its solemn ritual, with its impeccable veneration" (Gillelson M.I.. Young Pushkin and the Arzamas brotherhood. L, 1974. P. 43). The Arzamas residents contrasted the official and official atmosphere of the “Conversation” with the emphatically private, private, friendly nature of their association. The ponderous seriousness of the meetings in Derzhavin’s house is “nonsense,” in the words of Zhukovsky, i.e. an atmosphere of jokes, practical jokes, ridicule, youthful fun. Remembering the times of “Arzamas”, Zhukovsky wrote: “We united to laugh at the top of our lungs, like madmen...” But this “nonsense” had its own meaning, its deep content. By ridiculing and parodying the “Conversation” and its participants, the “Arzamas people” demonstrated the insignificance of their opponents, who turned out to be unworthy even of being taken seriously. Thus, the obvious superiority of the “innovators” over the “archaists” was asserted. This laughter was the laughter of triumphant victors.

It is clear that the fates of “Conversation” and “Arzamas” turned out to be closely connected. Therefore, when, after the death of Derzhavin, in 1816, the meetings of “Conversation” ceased, “Arzamas” lost not just an enemy, but the meaning of its activities. Attempts to give this society a broader socio-literary direction failed, and in 1818 Arzamas ceased to exist. But the commonality of literary tastes and personal sympathies will bind many “Arzamas residents” throughout their lives. It was the former “Arzamas residents” who would form the basis of Pushkin’s circle of writers in the 30s of the 19th century.

In 1818-1820 In St. Petersburg there was a literary and theatrical circle called “Green Lamp”. The memory of it was preserved mainly because one of its active participants was A.S. Pushkin. The reputation of the “Green Lamp” in the history of Russian public life is very contradictory. Some researchers saw in this society just a union of St. Petersburg’s “golden” youth, passionate about revelry, wine and women, including young actresses and theater school students. In the eyes of others, the “Green Lamp” is almost a branch of the Union of Welfare, one of the first Decembrist societies, a union of young freedom lovers. The truth, apparently, is somewhere in the middle. Indeed, the backbone of the circle consisted of officers of the guards regiments who belonged to noble noble families. These are N. Vsevolozhsky (founder of the Green Lamp), Ya. Tolstoy (one of its chairmen), P. Kaverin, whom Pushkin mentioned in the first chapter of Onegin, N. Krivtsov and others. Writers were a minority: A. Pushkin, A. Delvig, F. Glinka. But interest in literature and theater is typical for most of the Green Lamp participants. Yes, carousing, women, wine, and card games occupied a significant place in the range of activities of the association’s participants, but this range was not exhausted by them. Poems were read here, regular reviews of theatrical life were compiled, and essays on Russian history were read. One can agree with the historian A. Veselovsky: “... the activity of thought, the exchange of opinions, competition in poetic work and disputes, disputes without end, did not suffer from the Epicurean situation.” Moreover, the epicurean stop, freedom-loving poems, complete freedom in expressing any opinions - all this was united by a common spirit of liberty, internal and external freedom, which constituted the essence of the “Green Lamp”. It is characteristic that its members pledged not to disclose the content of their conversations, and the admission of new members could only occur with general consent.

In the early 20s, the first post-Pushkin literary generation will begin to make itself known. Some of its representatives will unite into the Society of Philosophers. This society will appear, apparently, in 1823, and its members will be only five people: the young poet D. Venevitinov, the young writer V. Odoevsky, the aspiring critic and philosopher I. Kirievsky, A. Koshelev and N. Rozhalin. However, the influence of the wise men will be much wider, and among the writers close to them in spirit and personal connections, one should name A. Khomyakov, M. Pogodin, and S. Shevyrev. Although most of the members of the Society of Philosophers were only 5-6 years older than Pushkin, they felt like people of a new generation and sought to have their say in literature, to declare their special position in it. The circle of wise men was a literary and philosophical circle. Its members were characterized by an interest not only in literature, but also in philosophy, primarily German. According to the wise men, Pushkin and his generation brought poetic form to the possible perfection, but Russian literature did not acquire content. They put forward the demand for thought in poetry. They dreamed of some kind of synthesis of philosophical thought and artistic form. The activities of the Society of Philosophers were interrupted by the events of December 1825. But the ideas first formulated by its participants received significant development in Russian literature of the second half of the 20s - 30s.

Periodical literary publications in the first quarter of the 19th century in Russia

The first quarter of the 19th century in Russia was the time of the formation of Russian literary journalism. This is a time when the need for literary magazines is already clearly felt, but at the same time a number of conditions for the stable development of the magazine business are missing. These conditions include a sufficient number of professional writers and the number of readers - subscribers necessary for the successful publication of the magazine. Since both were in short supply during this period, the age of Russian magazines of this time was short-lived. The need for a literary magazine and at the same time the lack of necessary conditions for its sustainable existence is evidenced by the fact that in the period from 1800 to 1820, attempts were made to publish forty magazines in Russia, but the average period of their existence did not exceed one and a half to two years. Examples include “Severny Vestnik”, published in 1804 - 1805, and “Nevsky Spectator”, published from January 1820 to July 1821, far from the worst publications of this time.

Against this background, Vestnik Evropy, which existed from 1802 to 1830, looks like a long-lived magazine. The publication was founded by N.M. Karamzin, who edited it for the first years. Initially, Vestnik Evropy was a political and literary magazine at the same time. In the first decade of its existence, the literary department of the magazine published primarily translations of the best works of Western European writers. Actually, the magazine was intended to introduce educated Russian people to the political, social and cultural life of Europe. However, the magazine also featured works by the best Russian authors: G.R. Derzhavin, N.M. himself Karamzina, I.I. Dmitrieva, K.N. Batyushkova, N.I. Gnedich, V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Vyazemsky, D.V. Davydov and others. Let us remember that it was in the “Bulletin of Europe” in 1814 that the work of A.S. first appeared in print. Pushkin - the poem “To a friend - a poet”. It is curious that at the time when Karamzin himself was in charge of the magazine, there was a complete absence of any literary criticism in it. After Karamzin immersed himself in his “History...”, he transferred the management of the magazine to other hands. For several years, V.A. was at the head of Vestnik Evropy. Zhukovsky. But for the longest time it was edited by Moscow University professor M.T. Kachenovsky. Under his leadership, the journal began to acquire a primarily scientific character. The aesthetic position of the magazine editor was conservative. On the pages of Vestnik Evropy, harsh criticism began to be voiced against Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, and Griboedov. In the last decade of its existence, the magazine turned into an organ of literary Old Believers.

The opposite trend to Karamzin’s “Bulletin of Europe” was expressed by the journal “Russian Bulletin” by S.N. Glinka, published from 1808 to 1824. The editor of the magazine, known for his ultra-patriotic positions, defended the patriarchal principles of Russian life and cultivated national isolation. The pages of the magazine ridiculed any form of imitation of the life and culture of other countries and peoples. S. N. Glinka sought on the pages of the Russian Messenger to attract the attention of readers to national history and traditional forms of national life. It is clear that the greatest success of the magazine was S.N. Glinka was used by readers during the Patriotic War. In subsequent years, “Russian Messenger” found itself further and further on the periphery of social and literary development and in 1824 it was discontinued by the publisher himself.

The emergence of the magazine “Son of the Fatherland” is associated with the period of social and patriotic upsurge of 1812 - 1813. He was destined for a long life. “Son of the Fatherland” existed from 1812 to 1852, but it managed to play a significant role in Russian literature only until the mid-20s. The publisher of the magazine was journalist and scientist - philologist N.N. Greek The initiative and support for the publication came from A.N. Venison. For the first two years, the magazine published exclusively military-patriotic materials, including patriotic works by Russian poets. Thus, it was in “Son of the Fatherland” that Krylov’s fables “The Wolf in the Kennel,” “The Wagon Train,” and “The Crow and the Hen” were first published. But later the literary program of the magazine became much wider, and until the mid-20s it was one of the main organs of the advanced literary movement. This was facilitated by the closeness of the magazine’s editorial staff to the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. During these years, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky, Krylov, A. Bestuzhev, Ryleev, Gnedich published their works in “Son of the Fatherland”. V. Kuchelbecker, P. Katenin, P. Vyazemsky present literary critical articles. The magazine was one of those publications that, back in the early 20s, called Pushkin the first poet of our time.

Among the notable publications of this era, one should mention the magazine “Competitor of Education and Charity,” published from 1818 to 1825. “Competitor” was the organ of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, which was already discussed earlier. From the beginning of the 20s, the works of writers of the Decembrist circle (F. Glinka, V. Kuchelbecker, K. Ryleev, N. Bestuzhev, etc.), full of civic pathos, began to occupy a significant place in the magazine. In the criticism department, the leading role was played by O. Somov and P. Pletnev. The magazine, like the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, ceased to exist after the events of December 14, 1825.

In the first half of the 20s, a short but very bright “almanac period” began in Russian literature. This is a time of extreme popularity of literary almanacs. Almanacs were then called annual collections of new works by contemporary writers. On the pages of the almanac, the reader not only met with the poetic and prosaic works of contemporary writers, but also with an annual review of Russian literature, from which he could learn about the most significant literary events and join in the debate around them. “The almanac tried to survey the current state of Russian literature, show that it is worthy of attention, and offer readers selected, if possible the best, newest examples of it” (Reitblat A.I. How Pushkin became a genius. M., 2001. P. 72) . Almanacs were most often published in 16th sheet format, with vignettes, elegantly and on the best paper. These were not only collections of literary works, but also works of typographic art. Poetry and prose published in almanacs are characterized by a certain intimacy, which allows us to associate literary almanacs with the tradition of literary albums and the atmosphere of the salon. Therefore, the almanac can be considered as a transitional form “from home circle and salon literature to general, open, magazine literature” (Op. op. p. 77).

N.M. tried to publish the first Russian almanacs. Karamzin at the end of the 18th century. But the “almanac period” in Russian literature was opened by “The Polar Star” in 1823. The almanac was published by A. Bestuzhev and K. Ryleev, who managed to publish three editions - for 1823, 1824 and 1825. The publishers really managed to collect all the authoritative names in literature on the pages of Polar Star. It is easier to name those whose works were not in the almanac than to list all the employees. Already in “Polar Star” in 1823 the works of E. Baratynsky, A. Bestuzhev, P. Vyazemsky, F. Glinka, N. Gnedich, N. Grech, D. Davydov, A. Delvig, V. Zhukovsky, I. Krylov were published , A. Pushkin, K. Ryleev, O. Senkovsky, O. Somov. In subsequent issues the names of K. Batyushkov, N. Bestuzhev, A. Griboyedov, I. Kozlov, V. Kuchelbecker will be added. Each issue opened with a literary review by A. Bestuzhev, which seemed to set the tone for the entire almanac, formulating the literary position of the publishers. "The Polar Star" was a rare reader success for that time. According to F. Bulgarin, “... 1,500 copies were sold out in three weeks: the only example in Russian literature, for, excluding Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State,” not a single book or magazine had such success” (Quoted from book: Pushkin in lifetime criticism. 1820 - 1827. St. Petersburg, 1996. P. 491). It was not only a purely literary, but also a commercial success. Publishers were not only able to pay decent fees to all their authors, but also received up to two thousand rubles in profit themselves.

Following “The Polar Star,” “Mnemosyne” appeared by V. Odoevsky and V. Kuchelbecker. "Mnemosyne" compared to "Polar Star" was closer to the magazine. The publishers intended to release four parts of the almanac per year. In total, they managed to publish five parts - four in 1824 and one in 1825. In addition to the publishers themselves, the almanac published works by E. Baratynsky, P. Vyazemsky, D. Davydov, A. Pushkin, as well as some young authors close to the circle of wise men. “Mnemosyne” was given its face primarily by the programmatic literary critical articles of the publishers V. Odoevsky and V. Kuchelbecker. If Odoevsky defended the union of literature with German philosophy, then Küchelbecker fought with the so-called elegiac poetry, defending the odic traditions of Russian poetry from the standpoint of civil romanticism.

In 1824, the first issue of the almanac “Northern Flowers” ​​was published, which would play a significant role in the literary process in the second half of the 20s.

Literature

1. History of Russian literature in four volumes. T.2. -L., 1980.

2. Aronson M., Reiser S. Literary circles and salons. - St. Petersburg, 2001.

3. Gasparov B.M. Pushkin's poetic language. (Introduction: Pushkin and his era in the history of Russian literature and literary language). -SPb., 1999.

4. Gillelson M.I.. Young Pushkin and the Arzamas brotherhood. -L, 1974.

5. Pushkin in lifetime criticism. 1820 - 1827.- St. Petersburg, 1996.

6.Reitblat A.I. Literary almanac of the 1820s -1830s. as a sociocultural form. - In his book: How Pushkin became a genius. - M., 2001.

7. Tynyanov Yu.N. Archaists and Pushkin. - In his book: Pushkin and his contemporaries. -M., 1968.

8. Uspensky B.A. A brief outline of the history of the Russian literary language. (XI - XIX centuries) - M., 1994.

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