Causes of the emergence of Russian literature of the 18th century. Methodological development in literature (grade 9) on the topic: Russian literature of the 18th century

There is a clear boundary between the creations of the first and second halves of the 18th century, and works created at the beginning of the century are very different from subsequent ones.

Large literary forms were already developing in the West and preparations were underway for the creation of the genre of the novel, while Russian authors were still copying the lives of saints and praising rulers in clumsy, unwieldy poems. Genre diversity in Russian literature is poorly represented; it lags behind European literature by about a century.

Among the genres of Russian literature of the early 18th century, it is worth mentioning:

• hagiographic literature(sources - church literature),
• panegyric literature(texts of praise),
• Russian poems(the origins are Russian epics, composed in tonic versification).

Vasily Trediakovsky, the first professional Russian philologist who was educated at home and consolidated his language and style skills at the Sorbonne, is considered a reformer of Russian literature.

Firstly, Trediakovsky forced his contemporaries to read, and his followers to write prose - he created a mass of translations of ancient Greek myths and European literature created on this classical basis, throwing a theme for future works to contemporary writers.

Secondly, Trediakovsky revolutionary separated poetry from prose, developed the basic rules of syllabo-tonic Russian versification, based on the experience of French literature.

Genres of literature of the second half of the 18th century:

• Drama (comedy, tragedy),
• Prose (sentimental journey, sentimental story, sentimental letters),
• Poetic forms (heroic and epic poems, odes, a huge variety of small lyrical forms)

Russian poets and writers of the 18th century

Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin occupies a significant place in Russian literature along with D.I. Fonvizin and M.V. Lomonosov. Together with these titans of Russian literature, he is included in the brilliant galaxy of the founders of Russian classical literature of the Enlightenment era, dating back to the second half of the 18th century. At this time, largely due to the personal participation of Catherine II, science and art were rapidly developing in Russia. This is the time of the appearance of the first Russian universities, libraries, theaters, public museums and a relatively independent press, though very relative and for a short period, which ended with the advent of A.P. Radishchev. By this time, as Famusov Griboedova called it, "the age of the golden Catherine", the most fruitful period of the poet's activity belongs.

Selected Poems:

Fonvizin's play is a classic example of a comedy in compliance with the traditional rules for creating plays:

• The trinity of time, place and action,
• Primitive typification of heroes (classicism assumed the lack of psychologism and depth of character of the hero, so they were all divided into either good and bad, or smart and stupid)

The comedy was written and staged in 1782. The progressiveness of Denis Fonvizin as a playwright lies in the fact that in a classical play he combined several problems (the problem of family and upbringing, the problem of education, the problem of social inequality) and created more than one conflict (love conflict and socio-political). Fonvizin's humor is not light, serving solely for entertainment, but sharp, aimed at ridiculing vices. Thus, the author brought realistic features to the classical work.

Biography:

Selected work:

Time of creation - 1790, genre - travel diary, typical for French sentimental travelers. But the journey turned out to be filled not with bright impressions of the voyage, but with gloomy, tragic colors, despair and horror.

Alexander Radishchev published Journey in his home printing house, and the censor, apparently having read the title of the book, mistook it for another sentimental diary and released it without reading it. The book had the effect of an exploding bomb: in the form of scattered memories, the author described the nightmarish reality and the life of the people he met at each station along the way from one capital to another. Poverty, filth, extreme poverty, mockery of the strong over the weak and hopelessness - these were the realities of the modern state for Radishchev. The author received a long-term exile, and the story was banned.

Radishchev's story is not typical for a purely sentimental work - instead of tears of tenderness and charming travel memories, so generously scattered by French and English sentimentalisms, an absolutely real and merciless life picture is drawn here.

Selected work:

The story "Poor Lisa" is an adapted European plot on Russian soil. Created in 1792, the story has become a model of sentimental literature. The author sang the cult of sensitivity and sensual human nature, put "inner monologues" into the mouths of the characters, revealing their thoughts. Psychologism, subtle portrayal of characters, great attention to the inner world of heroes - a typical manifestation of sentimental traits.

The innovation of Nikolai Karamzin was manifested in the original resolution of the heroine's love conflict - the Russian reading public, accustomed mainly to the happy ending of the stories, for the first time received a blow in the form of the main character's suicide. And in this meeting with the bitter truth of life turned out to be one of the main advantages of the story.

Selected work:

On the Threshold of the Golden Age of Russian Literature

Europe went from classicism to realism in 200 years, Russia had to hurry up with the development of this material in 50-70 years, constantly catching up and learning from someone else's example. While Europe was already reading realistic stories, Russia had to master classicism and sentimentalism in order to move on to creating romantic works.

The golden age of Russian literature is the time of the development of romanticism and realism. Russian writers prepared for the appearance of these stages at an accelerated pace, but the most important thing that was learned by the writers of the 18th century was the opportunity to assign to literature not only an entertaining function, but also an educational, critical, moral-forming one.

A. Beletsky and M. Gabel

History of Russian literature of the XVIII century. Soviet literary criticism has to a large extent to build anew, in the fight against a number of stable prejudices about this era, which dominated the bourgeois history of Russian literature. Among them is primarily the characteristic of the entire R. l. 18th century as imitative, completely covered by the influence of French "pseudoclassicism", - a kind of disease that was difficult to overcome by individual writers - the pioneers of "nationality" and "originality". All the complex variety of literature of the 18th century, which reflected the complexity and acuteness of the class struggle, was reduced by bourgeois historians to the activities of several writers-"luminaries" - Kantemir, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, Karamzin - and some of them were interpreted as bright representatives of " classicism", and others - as timid initiators of "realism". Bourgeois "third estate" literature of the 18th century fell out of the field of view of researchers, as well as peasant oral art and literature, represented by numerous manuscript collections, indiscriminately related to the continuation of the traditions of "ancient" literature. In bourgeois literary criticism, there were, of course, separate attempts to go beyond these established limits and begin the study of popular literature (Sipovsky's works on the novel, A. A. Veselovskaya on love lyrics, etc.); but the limitations of bourgeois research methods reduced them to the collection and preliminary classification of raw material, to the exposition of the content. The situation has not yet changed sufficiently even today: Soviet literary criticism has not yet paid due attention to this sector. In the same cases when these questions were approached, the literary process of the 18th century. was covered from the erroneous positions of Plekhanov's "History of Russian Social Thought": the Menshevik theory of the class struggle of the 18th century, which allegedly remained in a "hidden state", exhibited there, led to a characterization of R. l. 17th century as literature exclusively of the nobility, driven forward thanks to the struggle of the best part of the Europeanizing nobility with the government and partly with the autocracy - a "supra-class" institution. Only recently has the sharply posed problem of the critical, Marxist-Leninist development of the literary heritage caused a revival in the study of the heritage of R. l. 18th century The need came forward to revise the tradition, to reassess individual writers, to study the "grassroots" (as bourgeois historians called it) bourgeois, raznochinny, petty-bourgeois and peasant literature. An indicator of this revival is the issue of the Literary Heritage, dedicated to the 18th century, with a number of fresh materials and articles of fundamental importance, reprints of poets of the 18th century. (Tredyakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Derzhavin, heroic-comic poem, Vostokov, Radishchev poets), publication of Radishchev's works, works about Lomonosov, Radishchev, Chulkov, Komarov, etc.

History of literature of the XVIII century. represents the development of features that took shape from the middle of the 16th century, from the beginning of the absolutist-feudal period in the history of the country, and determined the main features of the literary movement throughout the entire time from the middle of the 16th century. until the end of the 18th century. But in the development of the literature of the era of feudalism, one can speak of a special period from the end of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century, when the triumph of the noble monarchy receives its complete expression in literature. She found her bright representative in the person of Peter I, who, according to Comrade Stalin, "did a lot to create and strengthen the national state of landowners and merchants ... did a lot to elevate the class of landowners and develop the emerging merchant class" (from a conversation with E. Ludwig, Bolshevik, 1932, No. 8, p. 33). Thus, Peter's activity turned out to be fraught with new contradictions, strengthening the "nascent merchant class", objectively creating a material basis for the growth of new capitalist relations and at the same time clearing the way for new cultural influences, "not stopping before barbaric means of struggle against barbarism" (Lenin. On "left" childishness and petty-bourgeoisness, Sochin., vol. XXII, p. 517). The entire history of the 18th century, especially since its middle, has been marked by the growth of class contradictions, the maturing crisis of the feudal system. The relatively sharp rise of capitalism marks the beginning of a new period from the 19th century.

Late 17th century period until the 30s. 18th century does not create a particular style in literature. On the one hand, the traditions of the old church (Slavonic in language) literature are still very strong; on the other hand, a system of new thoughts and feelings is growing, timidly seeking verbal form and giving complex combinations of new elements with old ones, familiar from the literature of the 17th century. The literature of the "Petrine era" is in the same stage of "formation" as the language, which is sometimes a curious mixture of elements of Slavic and Russian with Polish, Latin, German, Dutch, etc. The growth of trade relations is not yet getting a vivid literary expression , except for the oratorical speeches of Feofan Prokopovich and his own play - the "tragedo-comedy" "Vladimir" (1705), which, incidentally, refers to the Ukrainian period of his activity. The development of trade is associated with aggressive tendencies in foreign policy (access to the sea, new markets was required): official literature was in a hurry to support and advertise the military undertakings of the authorities, creating for this a special repertoire that came out mainly from the "Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy" in Moscow, from -under the pen of professors, immigrants from Ukraine (such are the allegorical plays - "A terrible image of the second coming of the Lord to earth", 1702; "The liberation of Livonia and Ingermanland", 1705; "God's despisers of the proud humiliation", 1702; "The politically splendid apotheosis of the Great Russian Hercules of Peter I " and etc.). Both these plays and panegyric verses on the occasion of victories are a direct continuation of school, “baroque” literature of the 17th century. More clearly, the psychological and everyday turning point in the life of the nobility - as a result of strengthening it and expanding the range of its social and state activities - is reflected in the unofficial narrative and lyrical work of the early 18th century. The handwritten anonymous story of the “Petrine era” bears distinct new features. Its hero is a service nobleman or merchant, a man who already lives in “Russian Europe”, and not in the Muscovite state, separated from the West by a protective wall of national and ecclesiastical exclusivity; he travels feeling at home abroad; he is successful in business and in particular in "affairs of love." The construction of the stories (“History of the Russian sailor Vasily Koriotsky”, “The story of the nobleman Alexander”, “The story of the Russian merchant John and the beautiful maiden Eleonora”) is biographical. A young man, seeking service, comes to St. Petersburg and enters the sailors. Having mastered the "sailor sciences", he goes "for a better knowledge of the sciences" abroad, where he embarks on trading enterprises. In this initial part of the hero's biography - a noble or merchant's son - the features of reality, the everyday situation of the early 18th century, are scattered. With the transfer of action abroad, they give way to the stereotyped scheme of the old adventure novel. A "Russian merchant" or a nobleman abroad turns into a romantic hero who falls from the arms of love into the hands of robbers, is separated from his beloved during a shipwreck and finds her after a long search. What is interesting is not so much the assimilation of a template that originates in the West from the novels of the late Hellenistic era, but the introduction of details into the story, prompted by observation of living life. From this side, the verbal design is also interesting, in particular the vocabulary, where the Old Slavonic elements are crowded out by barbarisms, technical expressions, words introduced by the new way of life (cavalier, flute, carriage, aria, “minovet”, etc.). One of the means of expressing the hero's love experiences is the lyrical monologues, romances and songs introduced into the story. By them, the story merges with the lyrics of this time - quantitatively significant, for the most part nameless (among the compilers of lyrical poems, we know, however, the Germans Gluck and Paus, Mons, favorite of Catherine I, his secretary Stoletov). Written either in syllabic or syllabic-tonic verse, these lyrical little pieces are a naive expression of the individualism of the noble elite, the result of the penetration of new principles into the old system of feudal relations. Freeing themselves from the "house-building fetters" in relations between the sexes, assimilating the "gallant" manners of the Western nobility, Mons and Stoletov seek expression for their intimate, almost exclusively love experiences in the forms of a conventional style, new to Russian literature and already completing its development in Europe: love - inextinguishable fire, disease, wound inflicted by the "Cupido's arrow"; beloved - "amiable lady", with a face-dawn, golden hair, eyes shining like rays, scarlet sugar lips; “fortune” rules over those who love, either in the traditional image of a mythological goddess, or with features reminiscent of the “fate-share” of oral art. Noble poetry of this time is not limited only to love lyrics. It also knows genres of greater social significance, for example, satire, significant examples of which were first given by Kantemir, although satirical elements appeared before him, for example, in the verses of Simeon of Polotsk, in the oratorical prose of Feofan Prokopovich, or in "interludes", which often caricatured the enemies of feudal politics. expansion. The satires of Cantemir served to propagate European cultural influences, which intensified sharply at the end of the 17th century. The satires of Cantemir went against the prevailing in the 30s. political tendencies and did not appear in print, spreading in manuscripts; they were published in 1762. Kantemir's satirical attacks are directed against all enemies of the feudal-absolutist Europeanization of Russia and against the distortion of this Europeanization: Kantemir denounces "ignoramuses", conservatives who see science as the cause of "heresies", "evil-minded nobles", who believe merit in the nobility of origin , assimilating only the appearance of culture, schismatics, hypocrites, bribe-takers, bad education is one of the main causes of ignorance. Rebuking, he at the same time agitates for "science", proves the practical importance of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and maritime affairs. Realistic in content, in everyday language, his satires formally follow the classical Latin (Horace, Juvenal) and French models - Boileau's satire, which required schematization of specific content to create generalized abstract images of "prudence", "dandy", "reveler", etc. P.

The literary diversity of this period is not limited to the literature of the nobility. Late 17th and early 18th centuries - the time is not yet so much printed as handwritten literature, numerous collections, where, passing from reader to reader, works of the previous era (legends, lives, walks, old translated and original stories, etc.) are preserved. According to the memoirs and the inscriptions on the books themselves, it can be argued that this handwritten literature was the favorite reading of both the conservative landowner and the old-fashioned merchant - all those groups that were not on the way to the growth of European trade relations. The creative output of these groups in the early 18th century. little studied and not even all known. But the material published so far is of great historical value. Opposition to the new forms of the ruling class of landlords and the emerging class of merchants was provided not only by a certain part of the nobility, but also by the patriarchal merchant class and, above all, by the peasantry, who languished under the unbearable yoke of recruitment duty, taxes, corvée, work in serf factories. Part of the protest of these latter groups was their withdrawal into schism and sectarianism. The schismatic literature of the “Petrine era” is the most striking expression of resistance to the Petrine reforms, which contained not only the aspirations of conservative groups, but, to a certain extent, the protest of the peasantry. A prominent place in it belongs to satire protesting against innovations: the new calendar, new science, poll tax, "vile potions" - tobacco, tea, coffee, etc. In the popular print with the text "Mice bury the cat" you can see a satire on Peter , depicted in the form of a cat Alabris, “a Kazan cat, Astrakhan mind, Siberian mind” (a parody of the royal title), who died on “gray (winter) Thursday, on the sixth or fifth number” (Peter died on Thursday of the winter month - January - between fifth and sixth hours of the day). The same satirical allusions to Peter are seen in the illustrations for the "Explanatory Apocalypse" (manuscript of the Historical Museum in Moscow), in the "folk drama" about "Tsar Maximilian", which remained in folklore until almost the end of the 19th century. Along with satire, the oral art of the same groups created a number of new "spiritual verses" imbued with a mood of gloomy despair in view of the approach of the "end times", the "antichrist kingdom" and calling for flight into the "desert", for suicide, self-immolation, etc. Many of the typical images and themes of this poetry survived in the everyday life of oral art until the 19th century.

The literary activity of Kantemir, Feofan Prokopovich and, to some extent, semi-official poets was the preparation for Russian classicism, which dominated a certain part of literature for almost a century, which was transformed at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. and left a noticeable imprint in the work of Batyushkov, Griboyedov, Pushkin, Baratynsky, and others. The design of this style in R. l. proceeded under the influence of French classicism (partly German, the influence of which was experienced by Lomonosov). However, many individual elements of Russian classicism are rooted in the school “baroque” Russian and Ukrainian literature of the 17th century. Classicism flourished most brightly in France in the 17th century. in the conditions of the growth of the big bourgeoisie, which gravitated towards the "court". Russian classicism received a different content, different from French, despite its formal imitativeness. The Russian bourgeoisie did not take part, as in France, in the creation of court classicism. It arose among the Russian nobility, its court elite, interested in strengthening feudal relations. The most aristocratic theory of Russian classicism, created by writers of non-noble origin - the commoner Tredyakovsky and the son of a peasant Lomonosov; the phenomenon is quite understandable - the result of the subjugation by the ruling class of individual people from the class of the exploited. The noble theoretician of classicism, Sumarokov, having mastered basically the same principles, reworked and “lowered” classical poetics in essential details and particulars, adapting it to the aesthetic needs of wider circles of the nobility, not only the courtier. This decline took place in an atmosphere of acute literary struggle. The aristocratic principles of Russian classicism consist, firstly, in the requirement that the poet choose “high” subjects: persons of “low” rank were allowed only in comedy, where, in turn, it was unacceptable to display persons of high origin. According to the subject of the image, the language of the work should also be “high”: the persons acting in it speak “the language of the court, the most prudent ministers, the wisest clergymen and the noblest nobility” (Tredyakovsky). To write on "high" topics, a poet must have an elegant and good "taste"; the development of taste is conditioned by an appropriate education: the poet is recommended a thorough knowledge of rhetoric, versification, mythology - the source of themes and images - and the study of literary images - Greek, Roman, French. The poetics of classicism, noble by its nature, perceives some elements of bourgeois ideology, making "reason", "common sense" the main guide of poetic inspiration. From the point of view of rationalism, the incredible is rejected, the principle of "plausibility", "imitation of nature" is put forward. But “imitation of nature” is still far from later realism: by “nature” is meant not real, changing reality, but the essence of phenomena, in the depiction of which everything individual, temporal, local is discarded. This "high" poetry, built on "common sense", seeking mathematical precision of expression, has high goals: it must teach, and classicism especially cultivates didactic genres. First of all, Russian classical poetics took up the development of questions of poetic language, which had to be adapted to new tasks. Lomonosov gave the theory of "three calms" - high, medium and low: the starting point is the use of "Slavic sayings". The theory provoked severe criticism of Sumarokov, but it held its own and determined poetic practice. Lomonosov, on the other hand, finally legitimized the transition from the syllabic system of versification to the syllabic-tonic system, which had been proposed even earlier by Tredyakovsky and practically carried out by the anonymous poets of the “Petrine era”. Classicism is most vividly represented by the works of Lomonosov, who promoted in his theoretical works (“Letter on the Rules of Russian Poetry”, “On the Usefulness of Church Books in the Russian Language”, “Rhetoric”, etc.) order. In the work of Lomonosov, problems were posed and artistically resolved, which were timidly and naively put forward by the literature of the beginning of the century, advocating the expansion and strengthening of the socio-economic base of feudal Russia. Without leaving the genre framework of high poetry, he used the ode, and partly tragedy and epic to propagate the trend of the feudal-absolutist, military-bureaucratic monarchy in its European "cultural" forms.

Since Peter I firmly and decisively outlined this program, he becomes an ideal for Lomonosov, a role model for subsequent monarchs. The differences between Lomonosov and Sumarokov and his school are, of course, explained not by their personal relations, but by the difference in their group, intra-class positions. The classicism of Sumarokov and his group is reduced and partly vulgarized. The performance of this last group is already characteristic of the second period of R. l. 18th century Sumarokov's school (Elagin, Rzhevsky, Ablesimov, Bogdanovich, and others) vigorously fights the Lomonosov system, parodying and ridiculing the poet's "high" style, leading a literal polemic with him. By the 60s. The "Sumarokovites" are defeating Lomonosov: his literary principles, temporarily broken, will be partially revived only in the 70s. in the ode of V. Petrov. In contrast to Lomonosov, who demanded "high soaring" (in works not intended for publication, Lomonosov himself did not follow these requirements, by the way), Sumarokov's literary theory seeks simplicity and naturalness. Lomonosov put forward mainly "high" genres - ode, tragedy, epic; Sumarokov implants "medium" and even "low" genres - a song, a romance, an idyll, a fable, a comedy, etc. In contrast to Lomonosov's pathetic, replete with tropes and figures, hampered by Slavic speech, Sumarokov uses a simple language that is not alien to vulgarisms. Instead of high problems of national importance, the Sumarokov school develops intimate, mostly love themes, creates "light poetry". However, there is no complete rejection of the "high" style: from the genres of "high" poetry, Sumarokov's tragedy has been preserved and enjoys special attention. The classical tragedy, despite the psychological schematism in the depiction of faces, despite the timelessness of the plot, was saturated with lively political content. Despite its "abstract", the Russian tragedy of the XVIII century. - a vivid display of the struggle of various currents in the nobility. Sumarokov himself and his followers saturated the tragedy with monarchical tendencies in the spirit of "enlightened absolutism", revealing in it the "heroic virtues" of the monarch and the idea of ​​"honor" of the subjects, which consisted in devoted service to the throne, in the rejection of personal feelings if they come into conflict with duty. loyal subject. In turn, the monarch must be a "father" (of course for the nobility), and not a "tyrant" and zealously guard the interests of those who are his support.

In the last third of the XVIII century. the crisis of the feudal-serf system is brewing. It is based on the crisis of the landlord economy, which is faced with growing capitalist relations, the growth of new class contradictions in the collision with the emerging bourgeois class, which comes forward with its demands and declares its rights. The search for a way out of the crisis in the growth of feudal exploitation leads to an explosion of acute class struggle: the national liberation movement and the peasant war of 1773-1775 shook the entire feudal system to its foundations.

On this basis, a kind of noble opposition grows, which is looking for a culprit in the bureaucratic apparatus of power. In the tragedy, the image of the tyrant king and the defender of freedom fighting against him appears, but in a specific noble interpretation of the plot. Comedy takes the clerk as its object. The new genre created in our country in the 18th century, the utopia, has the same orientation. Finally, a reflection of the emerging new social relations is the "decrease in style", its adaptation to new tastes.

Without touching on the tragedy, the "decrease" of the high style went on with Sumarokov and his followers along the line of lyrics and especially along the line of comedy. Lomonosov's theory attributed comedy to the category of low genres, allowing it greater freedom from "rules" and thereby "reducing" classicism in it. The broad literature of the nobility did not fail to exploit this relative freedom. In his Epistle on Poetry, Sumarokov pays much attention to comedy. She was given a didactic task: “the property of a comedy to correct temper with a mockery is to make people laugh and use its direct charter.” If the courtly-aristocratic theory of Boileau rebelled against buffoonery, condemning Molière for his passion for the people and rude jokes, Sumarokov willingly admits an element of rude comic into his comedy. The classical theory demanded that the action of the comedy be centered around the vicious passion of the human character, outside of its social and everyday coloring and outside of its individual reigns. The psychological schematism that followed from the classical understanding of "nature" and "plausibility" appeared like this. arr. the main method of comedy of characters with a strictly defined circle of characters (stingy, ignoramus, hypocrite, dandy, pedant, crooked judgment, etc.). The plot of the comedy, already outlined by the Roman comedians and repeated with variations in the comedies of Molière, Regnard, Detouche and others, is also limited. elements of the Italian comedy of masks (commedia dell'arte), which existed in the Russian theater in the first half of the 18th century. Exposing to ridicule dandies and dandies, pedants, ignoramuses, superstitious people, misers, Sumarokov's comedy does not forget about its didactic task: its heroes are representatives of the noble class, and "mocking" of them should "rule noble morals." Sumarokov's comedy knows only one enemy - the clerk, who, thanks to the Peter's table of ranks, could climb the social ladder, make his way into the ranks of the service nobility and sometimes even turn into a nobleman. The sense of caste makes Sumarokov hate clerks. Sumarokov in the circle of admirers very soon became known as the “Russian Molière”: however, despite the “decrease” of the genre, his comedy with narrowly noble educational tendencies did not satisfy the bourgeois-petty-bourgeois audience, almost simultaneously with its appearance met with sharp criticism. Lukin spoke out against the Sumarokov comedy, who was largely under the influence of bourgeois ideology and focused not on the noble, but on the "philistine" audience. He himself notes that the first production of his play Mot, Corrected by Love (1765) caused displeasure of the noble parterre; in the prefaces to his plays, he speaks of a new audience - of servants who read more than their masters; creating comedies, he, in his own words, took into account the peculiarities of the stage talent of theater actors created by the Yaroslavl bourgeoisie, actors who "played more merchants." From comedy, Lukin demands a concrete depiction of Russian customs; the borrowed plot should "incline to Russian customs"; it is necessary to abandon the foreign-sounding names of the characters and force the heroes of the comedy to speak pure Russian, allowing "foreign sayings" only for example. for the speech characteristics of a dandy and a dandy. In theory, Lukin turned out to be stronger than in practice: his own comedies did not implement completely new principles, but in some cases (for example, in "Schepetilnik", 1765), he also succeeded in sharp criticism of noble morals (put into the mouth of a merchant); he noted with satirical features the feudal manner of the noblemen's treatment of servants, lightly touching so. arr. throughout the feudal system. The bourgeois slogan "to incline comedy to Russian customs" was adopted by other playwrights - Fonvizin, Knyaznin, Nikolev, Kapnist and others. This suggests that in the 60-70s. the nobles had not only to listen to the voice of the bourgeois groups, but in the fight against them, reorganize themselves accordingly. The evolution of the noble comedy of the middle of the century goes from the abstract comedy of characters to the concrete everyday comedy, from psychological schematism to experiments in the typification of noble reality. The flourishing of household noble comedy is characteristic of the last third of the 18th century. Its task is to maintain, strengthen the nobility, re-educate it so that, having overcome its weaknesses, it could resist the peasantry and partly the bourgeoisie. Criticism of the nobility in the comedy of this time is generally devoid of accusatory pathos, friendly: the accusations do not concern the essence of the feudal-serf system, on the contrary, they seek to divert this theme, opposing the low cultural level of Ch. arr. provincial petty nobility, against the cultural "perversions" of the nobility of the capital. Everyday comedy became a means of enlightening noble politics, ridiculing French mania as a phenomenon of false education of the nobility, idle talk and idle thought of dandies and dandies, rudeness of small estate morals, ignorance of the noble "undergrowth". She warned against all kinds of freethinking - Voltairianism, materialism, Freemasonry, perceiving them as phenomena hostile to the integrity of the feudal landowner ideology, she took up arms against representatives of other classes - merchants and especially clerks, believing that it was in them that the reason for the shortcomings of the noble system - bribery , chicanery, judicial troubles - not noticing and not wanting to notice that bribe-takers and bureaucrats are a product of the state system, and putting it that way. arr. consequence instead of cause (Kapnist's Yabeda). The negative images of the nobles were contrasted by comedy with the images of the bearers of the noble "honor" - the Starodums, the Pravdins, the Milons. Especially zealously, Fonvizin proclaimed the principles of the noble educational policy, exposing the morally decaying court nobility through the mouth of Starodum, preaching nobility, which consists in “good deeds, and not in nobility”, in good manners, in the development of feelings. The preaching of the education of feeling, which is more valuable than reason, was a transformed assimilation of one of the principles of the Western advanced bourgeoisie of the 18th century. (see below for a description of Russian sentimentalism). While retaining a formal resemblance to classical comedy (unity, love affair, division of persons into “virtuous” and “evil”, the names-stamps of the characters - Khanzhakhina, Skotinin, Krivosudov, etc.), everyday comedy nevertheless differs in its artistic method from the psychological schematism of the comedy of characters. This is a method of typical everyday characterization, especially pronounced in the depiction of negative faces. Everyday typification is also achieved by the introduction of everyday figures of episodic significance (in "The Undergrowth" - Mitrofan's teacher, his mother, tailor Trishka), a speech characteristic that emphasizes the linguistic features of this environment (Russian-French language of dandies and dandies, professional and estate features of the language of clerks, seminarians and so on.). From this comedy, a direct path leads to the comedies of the early 19th century. - to Krylov, Shakhovsky, and then Griboyedov. Overcoming the classical "rules", developing in the direction of mastering the realistic method, comedy begins to absorb elements of the "third estate" literature. The same should be said about the genre of comic opera - "dramas with voices", that is, insert numbers for singing and musical accompaniment. Among the authors of comic operas we find e.g. "traveling in Italy serf Count Yaguzhinsky" Matinsky, a writer of noble ideology, whose play "Gostiny Dvor" was almost as successful as Ablesimov's famous comic opera "The Miller - a sorcerer, a deceiver and a matchmaker" (1779), which caused a number of imitations. “Sbitenshchik” by Knyazhnin, “Melnik and sbitenshchik - rivals” by Plavilshchikov, etc. Free from “rules” (unity of place and time), diverse in subject matter (plots from the life of the nobility, merchant, peasant, from Russian and Oriental fairy tales, history, mythology etc.), widely using folklore (songs, dramatizations of rituals, especially wedding ones), comic opera stopped halfway in its development and, approaching, for example, to the peasant theme, most often gave an idyllic image of serf life, in the cloudless sky of which clouds are possible, but not for long (“Misfortune from the carriage” by Knyazhnin with the characteristic final chorus of the peasants “trinket ruined us, but the trifle saved us”). Pursuing primarily the goals of entertainment, the genre of comic opera, curious as a movement forward along the path of "nationality", had no great social significance.

Despite the aggravation of class contradictions, the nobility was still so strong that it could put out from its midst the greatest poet, whose work to a certain extent synthesized different areas of landowner literature and which became an almost continuous hymn to the joy and fullness of noble life, and to a certain extent, life in general. . This poet - Derzhavin, overcoming the traditions of Lomonosov classicism in the very genre that Lomonosov glorified - in an ode. Just as Lomonosov is the "singer of Elisabeth", so Derzhavin is the "singer of Felitsa" (Catherine II): but Derzhavin's ode is full of deformations of the classical canon. And the interpretation of the theme is the praise of the monarch in a friendly, familiar, sometimes playful rut, and the introduction of realistic, sometimes rude scenes into the ode, and the lack of a strict plan, the logical construction, and the language, from the “high calm” sharply turning into vernacular, and the general, characteristic for all of Derzhavin's poetry, a mixture of styles and genres - all this runs counter to Lomonosov's poetics. On the whole, Derzhavin's poetry is a vivid expression of rapture with life, a panegyric of the pomp and luxury of the life of the capital's nobility and the abundant "simplicity" of the life of the estate nobility. Nature for Derzhavin is “a feast of colors, light”; figurative symbolism of his poetry is all based on the images of fire, sparkling precious stones, sunshine. Derzhavin's poetry is deeply material, objective. This “objectivity”, the materiality of language, is also incompatible with the magnificent abstractness of Lomonosov's speech, the traditions of which Derzhavin overcame. Only sometimes the poet seems to think for a moment about the future fate of his class, instinctively feeling that the system that feeds his being is already beginning to disintegrate. But the notes of doubt and thoughts of instability (“today God is dust tomorrow”) that sometimes break through Derzhavin are explained more by reflection on the fate of individual members of the class, on the vagaries of “chance”, than on the fate of the entire class as a whole. Destroying classical aesthetics, Derzhavin's poetry is gradually approaching (in recent years) sentimentalism, "neoclassicism" and Ossian romanticism, which dominated Russian lyrics in the early 19th century.

Under the conditions of the noble dictatorship, the literary development of other classes (the big and small bourgeoisie, and even more so the peasantry) was stifled, but nevertheless, along with the formation of capitalist relations by the end of the 18th century. the energy of the developing bourgeois literature of the 18th century is also growing. This literature has not yet been studied enough. Bourgeois literary criticism only noted the process of "descent" of noble literature into the middle class environment - from stories and novels to songs and lyrics in general, without explaining the complex deformation of the work that took place. The consumption of the literature of the ruling class by the subordinate classes is a natural phenomenon, but by no means mechanical. But not only in these revisions was in the XVIII century. creativity of the subordinate classes. It is enough to recall Sumarokov's protest against the "nasty kind of tearful comedies" (concerning the translation and staging of Beaumarchais's "Eugenie") to understand how dangerous bourgeois literature seemed to the nobility. In the 60-70s. “Third-class literature” is already perceived by writers of the nobility as an unpleasant and hostile symptom. This is the time when Lukin put forward the slogan “inclining comedy to Russian customs”, when satirical journalism flourished, partially captured by bourgeois ideologists, when parodies of the noble classical epic appeared (such as Kheraskov’s “Rossiada”) - iroico-comic poems, when in the literary ranks raznochintsy writers - Chulkov, Popov, Komarov - entered, when the genres of the novel and "tearful comedy" unforeseen by classical theory took shape, the popularity of the comic opera genre free from "rules" - "drama with voices" increased, when finally the first revolutionary from the nobles, who reflected in In his literary activity, to a large extent, the aspirations of the revolutionary peasantry, Radishchev, threw down his first challenge to the feudal-serf society, in order to decisively oppose it a few years later. Among the satirical journalism that arose on the model of English satirical and moralizing magazines, several publications appeared that definitely promoted bourgeois ideology (Parnassian Scribbler, 1770, Chulkov and Novikov’s magazines - Drone, 1769, Painter, 1772, and Wallet) , 1774). Satire was the main literary genre for expressing anti-noble tendencies, which otherwise, under the conditions of the infringement of the Russian bourgeoisie, could not be introduced into literature. The difference between noble and bourgeois satire in magazines is immediately evident. The nobility (for example, “All sorts of things”) stands for satire in a “smiling kind”, for light and soft criticism of noble manners, manifestations of hypocrisy, helicopterism, a tendency to gossip, etc.

Bourgeois satire unfolds in social terms, it is enough to pay attention to its slogan - the epigraph of Novikov's Drone - "they work, and you eat their bread", undoubtedly socially pointed, in the second edition it had to be replaced by another, more neutral one. Bourgeois satire declares war on the nobility, especially the noble aristocracy, opposing to it the image of "a perfect husband, virtuous, albeit vile, in the language of some stupid nobles." If we add to this such clearly anti-serf articles, as the story of a certain I. T. (apparently Radishchev) about a trip to the village of Ruined, published in The Painter, it becomes clear why satirical journalism of this type turned out to be a short-lived phenomenon. The activation of the "third-class literature" in this period also affected the creation of the "heroic-comic poem" (Chulkov), which also had an impact on the literature of the nobility (V. Maikov). This genre arises as a parody of the heroic poem of the "high" style (Kantemir, Tredyakovsky, Lomonosov). The "high calm" was kept in academic circles until the second decade of the 19th century, but it did not enjoy popularity even among the noble tribal environment. The comic poem interprets the "low" plot in a "high calm", parodying like this. arr. and pathos, and mythological scenery, and plot situations of the classical poem: the “hero” is shown in fights, in a drunken brawl; the introduction of sketches of "mean" reality - the life of the lower strata - provides material for characterizing the position of the people in the noble state. In the poem by V. Maikov (“Elisha, or the irritated Bacchus”, 1771), scenes depicting prison life, peasant work, fights and disputes in neighboring villages due to demarcation, peasant land shortages, latrines, a penitentiary house for “dissolute wives”, compared with the monastery, etc., are just as far from noble themes as the language of the poem with its focus on lively, "common" speech. Standing apart in the series of comic poems is Bogdanovich's Darling, a product of "light poetry", which came out of the "Sumarokov school", a product of "light poetry", opening the way for works whose peak in the 19th century. there will be "Ruslan and Lyudmila" by Pushkin. Chulkov's comic poems are distinguished by a different character, they are interesting by attracting folklore material that did not penetrate into the poetry of the nobility. Noble poets generally interpreted folklore from above: Derzhavin, for example. considered Russian fairy tales and epics “monochrome and monotonous”, in them he saw only “giant and heroic boasting of absurdity, barbarism and gross disrespect for the female sex expressed”. Chulkov was also the first collector and publisher of folklore material. The “heroic-comic poem” in its development breaks off after the 70s, only to be revived a little later in the form of a burlesque poem-parody of the converted “Aeneids” by Osipov, Kotelnitsky, Naumov and others. Even Boileau regarded burlesque as a folk genre. The interpretation of the heroic plot in a crudely vulgar tone was one of the means to push off from the ceremonial literature of the upper classes; this is what Russian travesty did, the creation of "petty-travesty" writers from a petty-bourgeois milieu. But the "third estate" literature in the field of the novel proved to be especially prolific. The classical theory did not say a word about the novel; from Sumarokov's point of view, novels are "a wasteland, invented by people who waste their time in vain, and serve only to corrupt human morals and to a greater stagnancy in luxury and carnal passions." Nevertheless, the novel filled the second half of the 18th century. According to the researcher's calculations, novels make up 13.12% of all printed matter of the 18th century, 32% of all "bells and whistles", especially increasing in number towards the end of the century, with the advent of "free printing houses". Along with this, they are also distributed by hand. Chulkov, in the journal Both That and Sio, describes a clerk who feeds on the correspondence of popular stories sold on the market about Bova, about Peter the Golden Keys, about Evdokha and Berf: he had to rewrite one Bov forty times. The novel penetrates the most diverse social groups: it fills the libraries of the landowners, it is read with enthusiasm by the merchants, the petty bourgeoisie, and literate courtyards; his popularity is evidenced by memoirists (Bolotov, Dmitriev, and others) and, finally, by literature itself, which captures the image of the reader and especially the reader. A lover of novels, a noble girl, discovering her ideal in the hero of the novel, embodied then in the first acquaintance she met, later became a classic image of noble literature (Griboyedov's Sophia, Pushkin's Tatiana). Genre diversity of the novel of the 18th century. very large. Among the nobility, on the one hand, translations - chivalric, shepherd, salon-heroic novels with a moralizing tendency, such as Fenelonov's Telemachus and Kheraskov's imitations of him ("Cadmus and Harmony"); on the other hand, a psychological novel depicting images of ideal nobles - like the translated Adventures of the Marquis G*. In the bourgeois environment, they are fond of the genre of the "picaresque" novel of the type "Gille Blas" by Le Sage or the genre of the novelized fairy tale (Chulkov, Komarov, Levshin, Popov). It is precisely the genre of the picaresque novel that receives particular distribution in the "third estate" literature. Telling about a dexterous hero who changes professions, by the force of circumstances either descending or ascending the social ladder, this novel made it possible to change the domestic environment, paying considerable attention to the life of the “social lower classes”. One of the most popular novels of the 18th century, which was preserved in the reader's everyday life and later - "The Story of Vanka Cain", - was based on a historical person, a certain Ivan Osipov, a peasant who from a courtyard becomes a thief, from a thief - a Volga robber, from a robber - a policeman spy and detective. His biography served as the outline of the "detective" novel, had several adaptations, the most popular of which belongs to the writer Matvey Komarov. Komarov also owns other popular novels - “About Milord George” (“About Milord Stupid”, mentioned in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” among samples of popular literature read by peasants) and the novel “Unfortunate Nikanor, or the Adventures of a Russian Nobleman ”, where the hero of a picaresque novel is a nobleman, who, after a series of misadventures, ends his life as a jester-habiter. The novel of the picaresque genre made it possible to introduce, as in the “heroic-comic” poem, material from the life of merchants, artisans, and the peasantry, thus contributing. arr. self-affirmation in the literature of the "third estate". The fairy-adventurous novel, which arose from a mixture of elements of a chivalrous novel with Russian epic and fairy-tale folklore, served the same purpose in its well-known part. The introduction of folklore (albeit often falsified, especially when it came to Slavic mythology) was also a literary achievement of the third estate, in whose life, as well as in the life of the “social lower classes” in general, folklore was still an integral part of everyday life. This is how the bourgeoisie has said its word in the realm of the novel. The relative weakness of the class did not allow him to master other genres, for example. dramatic, to the extent that it happened in the West. Since the half of the 60s. famous examples of Western bourgeois drama appear in Russian translations - Lillo's The Merchant of London, plays by Diderot, Mercier, and Lessing; introducing "pathetic phenomena" into comedy, Lukin tries to approach the genre of drama; in some of their plays Kheraskov, Verevkin (“So It Should Be”), Melters (“Sidelets”, “Bobyl”) approach it quite closely, but the genre of drama - with significant differences from Western European bourgeois dramas - is already receiving full development. in the age of sentimentality.

However, in the literature of the 70s. the sharpening of the class struggle was no longer going only along the line of the "third estate", but mainly and with the greatest force along the line of the peasantry. The Peasant War of 1773-1775, which resulted in the previous long peasant movements, revealed the sharpness of the contradictions of feudal society. The nobility realized the strength of the class hatred of the peasants, resolutely attacked the rebels and cracked down on them. In the literature of the nobility of this time, we have a number of speeches, where the political nature of the peasant movement causes a storm of indignation. Sumarokov speaks against "Pugachevshchina" in two poems, calling Pugachev "an infamous robber", the leader of a "robber crowd", a gang made up of "beasts", "fiends of nature"; he is fully aware of the goals of the movement, seeking to "exterminate the nobles" and "throw down the support of the throne." There is no execution that would be sufficient for Pugachev, from the point of view of Sumarokov. The anonymous author of the recently published "Poems on the Villain Pugachev" also demands the most cruel execution and eternal damnation for the "villain". An attempt to portray the era, of course, from a noble point of view, was made in Verevkin's comedy Just the Same (published in 1785, written in 1779). The author is a member of one of the punitive expeditions against the peasantry. The time of the action of the comedy is the final moment of the movement, when Pugachev has already been caught. In the comedy, there is a governor who left the city when the rebels approached him (a fact that has repeatedly taken place in reality); the stereotyped intrigue (obstacles met by lovers) is colored with the color of a historical moment: the hero goes to the army, because "it is shameful to think about marriages and love games when the blood of noble compatriots is shed." Meanwhile, the heroine falls into the hands of enemies and liked one of them; after the elimination of the uprising, she wants to go to the monastery, but the hero restores her "honor", considering her innocent. The play is full of glorification of the noble repulse to the insurgent peasantry: the leader of the rebuff, Panin, is likened to an “archangel from heaven”, with a “small” army he “smashed, dispersed, caught and pacified all this damned bastard”, etc .; another suppressor, Milizon (Mikhelson), also causes no less delight.

No less harshness - in relation to the nobility - we will find in the peasant creativity of this era (see the section "Oral poetry"). Starting from the “lament of serfs” (“Lament of the serfs of the last century”, “Complaint of the Saratov peasants against the Zemstvo court”) through songs about serf captivity, we come to the rich folklore about Pugachev. In everyday life of the peasantry of the XVIII century. the previously composed songs about Stepan Razin also live. Both songs about Razin and songs about Pugachev are saturated with a sense of acute class hatred. We have, of course, only fragments of the probably extensive "Pugachev cycle"; but they also constitute quite eloquent and historically valuable material that changes the face of Russian literature of the 18th century, created once by bourgeois researchers.

The revolutionary ferment among the peasantry, which did not directly find its reflection in written literature, nevertheless had a peculiar effect in it. As early as the beginning of the century, the protest of the peasantry against the exploitation of the landlords found expression in a certain part of splitting. Later, a number of bourgeois writers reflected in their work - inconsistently and contradictoryly - the seething stream of peasant consciousness hostile to the existing order. In terms of such criticism, Novikov, in the main a typical representative of liberalism of the 18th century, was already acting in part, later turning to the reactionary path of Freemasonry and mysticism. In 1790, Radishchev acted as a spokesman for revolutionary sentiments. The influence of the Enlightenment and the French bourgeois revolution played a decisive role in the creation of Radishchev's ideology. There can be no talk of Radishchev's "ideological loneliness", allegedly falling out of the literature of the 18th century, as bourgeois literary criticism claimed. In the conditions of the aggravated (especially after the French Revolution) government supervision of literature, it was difficult for works that criticized the feudal system to penetrate the press; this does not mean that there were few of them, and still less does it mean that the corresponding ideological currents were represented by individuals. Radishchev sets literature not only educational tasks, but also demands that the writer be a political and social fighter, striving for the social re-education of his readers. This was hindered by censorship - the demand for freedom of the press is put forward. "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" (1790) by Radishchev is directed against the two foundations of the feudal landowner state - autocracy and serfdom. The theme of "autocracy", developed in the "Journey" in journalistic discourses and in the ode "Liberty", is interpreted quite differently from the interpretation of noble and bourgeois writers close to them: in tragedies imbued with the spirit of intra-noble opposition, the monarch was a "tyrant" only when he did not share his power with the nobles, he strove for unlimited domination; Radishchev has an unlimited monarch - "the first killer in society, the first robber, the first violator of general silence, the most fierce enemy, directing his anger at the inside of the weak." Autocracy is a violator of the “agreement”, which determines the relationship between power and the people: the people conclude a “silent” agreement with the sovereign - the “first citizen”, trusting him with power, but reserving the right to control, judge and remove the monarch in case of abuse of power by him. Therefore, the English revolution is worthy of praise, punishing with death the king who abused the trust of the people. The main thing in the state is the “law”, before which all citizens must be equal: from the point of view of this democratic principle, Radishchev approaches his second topic. Serfdom is the worst evil for him, "a monster oblo, mischievous, huge, stozevno and barking" (a verse from Tredyakovsky's Telemachis, taken as an epigraph to Journey). From Radishchev's point of view, serfdom is not only incompatible with the humane principles of equality and freedom: it also undermines the economic power of the state and leads to the extinction of the population. Having based his views on the theories of the ideologists of Western European bourgeois democracy (Mably, Reynal, and others), Radishchev was able to apply them to Russian reality, outlining even the specific conditions for the abolition of serfdom with the allotment of land to the peasants and their transformation into small landowners. The theme of serfdom is developed by Radishchev both in pathetic journalism and in the fictional form of short stories that describe peasant life and poverty, revealing the horrors of lordly arbitrariness. Setting himself the educational tasks of social reorganization based on the principles of bourgeois democracy, Radishchev used a special method in his main work, which made it possible to combine elements of journalism with a display of living reality. In Journey, reasoning, lyrical outpourings, novellas and stories, descriptions (perhaps partly on the model of Stern) are combined into a whole. A form of "travel" from the end of the 18th century. becomes popular in the literature of the nobility (in 1794-1798 they published a separate edition of Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveler). But there are a number of sharp differences between Radishchev's book and the noble "journeys". The Radishevsky "traveler" is first of all the bearer of a certain class ideology and then a "sensitive" person in general: his sensitivity is a manifestation of social humanity; reality for him is not a reason for an outpouring of personal feelings or an expression of curiosity, but material for reflection and generalizations of a sociological nature. Radishchev's style is the result of a complex interaction between the rationalistic tendencies of classicism, a realistic striving for living reality, and some elements of sentimentalism. In 18th century literature the literary and public environment of Radishchev could not express itself widely, went into the "underground", but during the years of temporary weakening of censorship oppression, at the beginning of the 19th century. , Radishchev found followers - poets and publicists who united in the "Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences and Arts" (Pnin, Born, Popugaev, Nik. Radishchev and others).

At the end of the XVIII century. the rise of capitalism. Under these conditions, a certain part of the nobility, who felt the instability of feudal relations and at the same time did not accept new social trends, put forward a different sphere of life, previously ignored. It was an area of ​​intimate, personal life, the defining motives of which were love and friendship. This is how sentimentalism arose as a literary trend, the last stage in the development of R. l. XVIII century, covering the original decade and thrown into the XIX century. In contrast to the literature of classicism, sentimentalism put the middle man from the nobility, his everyday way of life, in the center of attention. In its class nature, Russian sentimentalism is profoundly different from Western European sentimentalism, which arose among the progressive and revolutionary bourgeoisie, which was an expression of its class self-determination. Russian sentimentalism is basically a product of noble ideology: bourgeois sentimentalism could not take root on Russian soil, because the Russian bourgeoisie was just beginning - and extremely uncertainly - its self-determination; the sentimental sensibility of Russian writers, which affirmed new spheres of ideological life, previously, at the time of the heyday of feudalism, of little importance and even forbidden, is a longing for the outgoing freedom of feudal life. But at the same time, Russian sentimentalism reflected some of the features of the new relationship. These are, first of all, certain individualistic tendencies, and then that - abstract, however, - attention to the non-noble elements of society, which was reflected in the assertion of the all-estate feeling (“And peasant women know how to feel”). There are no anti-noble tendencies left in this slogan, just as there is no criticism of the nobility in Karamzin's sentimentalism. Using eg. the common plot scheme of a Western sentimental novel - an aristocrat seduces a bourgeois girl ("Clarissa Harlow" by Richardson), - the same Karamzin in his "Poor Lisa" (1792) emasculated the class meaning from it. In Richardson, the aristocratic seducer is opposed to the virtue of the heroine, steadfast in all temptations and morally triumphant over vice. The heroine of Karamzin, the peasant woman Liza, does not oppose Erast, and the author himself does not condemn him, but only mourns over the unfortunate, but from his point of view, inevitable denouement. Sentimentalism in Russian literature was not, of course, the result of the creative initiative of Karamzin alone, as the bourgeois school textbooks once claimed: its elements, long before Karamzin, burst into the classical idyll, found a place for themselves in the comic opera, in the experiments of the Russian “tearful comedy”, in the psychological novel, in love lyrics. Karamzin is rather the result than the beginning of development. He himself, as often happens, was not aware of his connection with previous literature, pointing to foreign models (Shakespeare, Milton, Thompson, Jung, Gessner, Rousseau, etc.: the poem "Poetry"). In the field of prose, sentimentalism especially put forward two genres: the genre of sentimental travel and the genre of sensitive story. Karamzin’s “Letters from a Russian Traveler” caused a whole series of imitations (“Journey to Midday Russia” by Izmailov, 1800-1802; “Journey to Little Russia” by Shalikov, 1803; “Another Journey to Little Russia” by him, travels of Nevzorov, Gledkov, etc.). Karamzin's genre of travel is a relaxed combination of lyrical outpourings, portraits, landscapes, descriptions of urban life, social life, short stories and short stories. In the center, the traveler himself is a sensitive hero, an enthusiast of nature and humanity, pure and meek in heart, establishing friendly ties everywhere. It goes without saying that his attitude towards the French Revolution (he witnessed its initial stage) is completely negative. His “love for humanity” boils down to the desire to see around him contented and happy, so that scenes of misfortune do not disturb his peace; in the desire to be “touched”, to be touched by manifestations of human gratitude, paternal or filial love, friendship. Such an abstract "love" could be a convenient veil to cover up the reality of serfdom. The peasant, imbued with sensitivity, should love his masters and bless his yoke. Most of all, however, the sensitive hero is occupied with the analysis of his heart. A scrupulous analysis of feelings and experiences is combined in Journey with a careful drawing of the details of the background, with loving attention to the little things of everyday life. Another favorite genre of sentimentalism is the sensitive story. Its features stand out especially clearly when compared with the adventurous (picaresque) novel of third-class literature, from which Karamzin's story is clearly repelled. The novel is built on the complexity and rapid change of adventures: the story avoids complex plots, simplifying and curtailing the action, transferring it to the psychological plane. Here, too, the focus is on the analysis of feelings revealed in characterizations, monologues, and author's comments. The latter create a tense atmosphere of emotionality around the hero, further enhanced by lyrical descriptions of nature. The literary activity of Karamzin and his school was perceived as reformist, not only because they "discovered" a new world of human emotions, but also because, in connection with this, the system of artistic speech was reorganized. The main principle of the language reform was the desire for "pleasantness", opposed to the "incoherence" of the prose of the 17th century, with its syntactic disorder. Karamzin reformed the vocabulary, banishing Slavicisms and “common people” from it, symmetrical periods with uniform rises and falls are introduced in place of confused periods; neologisms are created. This is how the principle of syntactic and lexical ease and pleasantness is realized. A long struggle flared up around Karamzin’s language reform, which occupied the first decades of the 19th century, the struggle between the “Shishkovists” and the “Karamzinists”, a conservative feudal noble group and a group that moved away from perceived new, social phenomena (capitalism) into the sphere of private life, attractive for its sophistication. and closure. But at the same time, there is no doubt the progressive significance of Karamzin's linguistic "reform", which contributed to the expansion of the reading environment at the expense of the most extensive groups of the nobility ... With Karamzin and the "Karamzinists" we are already moving into the 19th century, the beginning of which is the era of sentimentism, and along the way, the development of a bourgeois offensive against noble literature, the growth of those bourgeois-realist tendencies that are rooted precisely in the 18th century.

Bibliography

Peretz VN, Essays on the history of poetic style in Russia. The era of Peter V. and the beginning of the 18th century, I-VIII, ZhMNP, 1905-1907

and dep. ott.: I-IV, St. Petersburg, 1905

V-VIII, St. Petersburg, 1907

Bush V. V., Old Russian literary tradition in the 18th century. (On the issue of social stratification of the reader), “Scientific notes of the Saratov State. University. N. G. Chernyshevsky, vol. IV, no. 3. Pedagogical. faculty, Saratov, 1925

Gukovsky G., Russian poetry of the 18th century, L., 1927 (formalist work)

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Desnitsky V., On the tasks of studying Russian literature of the 18th century. (in the book Heroic Comic Poem, see above)

"Literary Heritage", vol. 9-10. XVIII century., M., 1933 (articles of the editorial board, G. Gukovsky and others, a number of new publications of texts)

The same, vol. 19-21, M., 1935 (articles by V. Desnitsky, D. Mirsky and from the editor - Results of the discussion)

"XVIII century", Sat., Articles and materials, ed. ak. A. S. Orlova, ed. Academy of Sciences, M. - L., 1935 (among others - L. Pumpyansky, Essays on Literature of the First Half of the 18th Century)

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Berkov P., Lomonosov and literary controversy of his time, ed. Academy of Sciences, M. - L., 1936

General courses: Porfiryeva, Galakhova, Pypin, Loboda, etc. On the history of individual genres: A. Afanasiev, Russian satirical magazines of 1769-1774, M., 1859 (reprinted in Kazan in 1919), Krugly A., On theory poetry in Russian literature of the 18th century, St. Petersburg, 1893

Sipovsky V. V., Essays from the histories of the Russian novel, vol. I, no. 1-2 (XVIII century), St. Petersburg, 1909-1910

Veselovskaya A., Collection of love lyrics of the 18th century, St. Petersburg, 1910

Rozanov I. N., Russian lyrics. From impersonal poetry to "confession of the heart", M., 1914

His own, Songs about the living son, Sat. "XVIII century", see above

His own, Russian book poetry from the beginning of writing to Lomonosov, Sat. "Verses. Syllabic poetry of the 17th-18th centuries”, M. - L., 1935 (“Poet’s Bib”)

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Bagriy A., On the issue of Russian lyrics of the 18th century, "Russian Philological Bulletin", (M.), 1915, No. 3. See also the bibliography under the articles characterizing the genres.

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://feb-web.ru were used.

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Russian literature of the 18th century has come a long way in its development: from classicism to sentimentalism, from the ideal of an enlightened monarch to the intimate experiences of a person (naturally, a nobleman).
The beginning of the 18th century was stormy for Russia. The creation of our own fleet, wars for access to sea routes, the development of industry, the flourishing of trade, the construction of new cities - all this could not but affect the growth of national consciousness. People of Peter's time felt their involvement in historical events, with Peter I came to the state imitation of European customs, and with them, European ideals. A stream of foreign specialists attracted by the sovereign poured into the country. Russian classicism appeared and began its development under the influence of the Enlightenment.

Since the cult of science, reason, and enlightenment flourished in the country, the main character in literature is an enlightened monarch or an ideal citizen who shares the ideas of Peter. The ideals of classicism are a harmonious order and harmony, embodied in a certain hierarchy. Will, a sense of social duty, patriotism were exalted by classicist poets. They glorified the superiority of the state over the personal, reason over feelings, order over chaos, civilization over nature. Hierarchy manifested itself in literature itself. Classicism sharply divided its genres. The civic theme was clothed in the form of a solemn ode, and the description of private life fell to the "lower" genres.

by the middle of the 18th century, it became clear to many that the image of an ideal enlightened ruler was far from real life.

Under Catherine II, Russian absolutism reached unprecedented power. The nobility received unprecedented privileges, Russia became one of the first world powers. But the peasant war of 1773-1775, led by E.I. Pugachev, showed the irreconcilable contradictions that existed between the ruling class and the disenfranchised people. The basic principle of the educational ideology about absolutism as the only rational power has failed

During this period, a new literary trend appeared - sentimentalism (M. Kheraskov, M. Muravyov, N. Karamzin, I. Dmitriev and others), characterized by an increased interest in the inner world of man. Sentimentalists believed that a person is by nature kind, devoid of hatred, deceit, cruelty, that social and social instincts are formed on the basis of innate virtue, uniting people into society. In the works of that time, the main place began to be given to the education of the soul, moral improvement. And again, Russian reality invaded the world of poetry and showed that only in the unity of the general and the personal, and in the subordination of the personal to the general, can a citizen and a person take place. This was proved in his work by the "father of Russian poets" G.R. Derzhavin, who managed to show with his works that all aspects of life are worthy of poetry. But in the poetry of the end of the 18th century, the concept of "Russian man" was identified only with the concept of "Russian nobleman". Derzhavin took only the first step in understanding the national character, showing the nobleman both in the service of the Fatherland and at home. The wholeness and fullness of man's inner life has not yet been revealed.

2. Periodization of Russian literature of the 18th century.

1st period (1700-1730) the moment of transition from the traditions of Russian medieval literature to the verbal culture of the pan-European type. This is a time of whimsical mixing of the cultural settings of ancient Russian literature - anonymous, handwritten, associated with the culture of the church - and an orientation towards a new type of verbal culture - authorial, printed, secular. The culture of the Petrine era is dominated by the so-called “panegyric style”, generated, on the one hand, by the propaganda pathos of cultural figures of the era of state reforms, and, on the other hand, by the rapid assimilation of the symbolism and imagery of European art. The most representative figure of this era is Feofan Prokopovich, the founder of secular oratorical eloquence, the creator of the genre of sermon - "Words", which served as a kind of proto-genre for the literature of the following decades.

At the end of this period, AD Kantemir begins his literary activity. The year 1730 was marked by the publication of the translated novel “Riding to the Island of Love” by V. K. Trediakovsky, to which he also attached a collection of his lyrical poems. As the researcher rightly notes, “if Trediakovsky’s translation recorded qualitative shifts in literary consciousness generated by the situation that arose as a result of Peter the Great’s transformations, then in the works of Cantemir the choice of classicism as such an artistic system is already presciently outlined, which is most organic to the spiritual needs of absolutism, which has established itself in its power.

2 period (1730-1770) Formation and development of Russian classicism (V. K. Trediakovsky, M. V. Lomonosov, Sumarokov). The period of formation, strengthening and domination of classicism (1730s - mid-1760s). During the 1730-1740s. the main normative acts of Russian classicism were implemented, the meaning of which was to create stable, orderly norms of literary creativity: the reform of versification, the regulation of the genre system of literature, and the stylistic reform. Simultaneously with the theoretical activities of Russian writers, who at that time were also philologists, the genre system of Russian classic literature was also taking shape. In the work of Kantemir and Lomonosov, older genres are formed - satire and a solemn ode. Creativity Trediakovsky gives samples of artistic prose, poetic epic and begins to form a genre system of lyrics. Under the pen of the "father of the Russian theater" Sumarokov, genre models of tragedy and comedy are formed. The central literary figure of this period is Sumarokov - both because the concept of Russian classicism is especially closely associated with his name, and because his literary orientation to the genre universalism of creativity led to the formation of the genre system of Russian literature of the 18th century.

3 period (1780-1790) the final design of Russian classicism and in parallel the development of sentimentalism and enlightenment realism begins. (Fonvizin, Radishchev, Derazvin, Karamzin).

Literature of the Petrine era

The Petrine era is often called the most "non-literary era" in Russian history. Literature 1700-1720s is a strange picture of a mixture of old and new, it as a whole is still of a transitional nature. In the time of Peter the Great, the old manuscript tradition of ancient Russian literature continues to exist and develop - it remains on the periphery of the general literary process in Russia until the end of the 18th century. The secularization of culture entailed the liberation of artistic creativity; another thing is that the writer often did not know how to dispose of this freedom. Literature under Peter not only serves practical purposes, it also entertains, masters new, once forbidden topics for it. Old Russian literature almost did not know the theme of love). In the era of Peter the Great, love lyrics (the so-called "cantes") spread, in which folklore images from folk poetry peacefully coexisted with ancient mythological motifs. Secular stories with a fascinating adventure story gained particular popularity. These stories were distributed in manuscripts, were anonymous and were built according to the type popular in the late 17th - early 18th centuries. translated short stories and adventure novels. However, the hero of these stories was a young man, typical of the Petrine era. Usually humble, but educated, energetic and enterprising, he achieved fame, wealth, recognition solely due to his personal merits. Such is the "Story of the Russian sailor Vasily Koriotsky and Princess Heraclius of the Florentine land." These stories most clearly revealed the Achilles' heel of Peter's culture as a whole: the lack of a literary language that could adequately convey those new concepts in the field of culture, philosophy, and politics that the era of Peter's transformations brought with it. In Petrine literature, the traditions of school drama continued to develop. Here the emergence of a school theater within the walls of the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy played a big role. Religious plots in this dramatic genre were supplanted by secular ones, telling about political topical events, containing panegyrics to Peter I and his associates. In the future, the journalistic and panegyric nature of dramaturgy is further enhanced. The genre of school drama occupied a central place in the work of Feofan Prokopovich (1681-1736), a brilliant orator, publicist, playwright and poet. The tragic comedy "Vladimir" (1705) occupies a central place in his work. Depicting in this play the events connected with the adoption of Christianity in Rus' under Vladimir, Feofan allegorically glorified the transformations of Peter and satirically ridiculed his opponents. The tragic comedy "Vladimir" bore the features of the future classicist dramaturgy: the conflict between passion and reason, the unity of action and time, the clarity and clarity of the composition.

At the beginning of the 18th century, during the Petrine era, Russia began to develop rapidly due to transformations in all areas of state and cultural life. These transformations led to the centralization of autocratic statehood and themselves contributed to it. At this time, the independence of Russia was strengthened, its military power increased, the cultural rapprochement of the power with the countries of Europe took place, and its influence in the European arena increased.

Widely using the achievements of domestic and world science, culture, technology, industry, education, Peter I opened new paths for Russian literature with his reforms. Despite the fact that the movement of Russia after the death of Peter the Great slowed down, Russian society achieved tremendous results in the field of culture and education in the 18th century. The Russian monarchs, especially Peter I and Catherine II, clearly understood that it was possible to move the country forward, destroy the inert patriarchal orders, old superstitions that interfered with the growth of material values ​​and new social relations, and establish new secular state and moral norms and concepts only with the help of education, enlightenment, culture, press. In this regard, the literature has received exceptional attention.

Under these conditions, various sections of Russian society received the opportunity for broad intellectual and artistic activity: Moscow University, general education schools and vocational schools were opened, a new calendar was introduced, the first Russian newspaper was founded, the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Arts, the Free Economic Society, the first permanent Russian theater. The society got the opportunity to express their opinions, to criticize the affairs of the government, nobles and dignitaries.

Russian literature of the 18th century inherited from ancient Russian literature a lofty idea of ​​the art of the word and the mission of the writer, of the powerful educational impact of the book on society, on the minds and feelings of fellow citizens. She gave these historical features new forms, using the possibilities of classicism and the Enlightenment.

The main idea of ​​the development of literature in the era of classicism was the pathos of state building and transformation. Therefore, high civic-patriotic poetry and accusatory satirical criticism of the vices of society and the state, circumstances and people that hindered progress came to the fore in literature. The central genre of high civic poetry was the ode. The critical direction was represented by the genres of high satire close to ode, fable and everyday comedy of manners.

These main directions in the development of literature were determined at the beginning of the century. In the first third of the century, classicism was formed, the birth of which was facilitated by one of the highest hierarchs of the Orthodox Church - the writer Feofan Prokopovich. The founders of classicism were A. D. Kantemir, V. K. Trediakovsky and M. V. Lomonosov. In addition to them, the largest writer, whose work began in the first half of the 18th century, was A.P. Sumarokov.

In the second half of the 18th century, approximately from the 1760s, a new period began in literature. At this time, new genres appeared: a prose novel, a story, a comic opera and a “tearful drama”.

As social contradictions deepened, satire became more and more widespread. To mitigate its impact on society, Catherine II herself became the secret publisher of the satirical magazine Vsyakaya Vsyachina. The empress wanted to reduce the role of public satire and increase the importance of government satire, serving the political interests of the monarchy. She invited writers and publishers to follow her example. Russian society took advantage of this. In Russia, several satirical magazines immediately appeared ("Both, and Sio", "Mix", "Infernal Mail", "Drone", "Neither this nor this in prose and verse", "Podenshchina"). The most radical journals that fought with Catherine's "Vsyakoy svyachinoy" were the journals of the outstanding Russian educator N. I. Novikov - "Drone" and "Painter".

The satirical direction almost entirely dominated in poems (“Message to my servants Shumilov, Vanka and Petrushka”, “The Treasurer Fox”) and comedies (“Korion”, “Brigadier”, “Undergrowth”) by D. I. Fonvizin, in comedies I B. Knyazhnina (“Bouncer”, “Eccentrics”), in the comedy “Snake” by V.V. Kapnist, in prose and comedies by I.A. XIX century "Fashion shop" and "Lesson to daughters").

At the same time, interest in large high forms of literature does not cool down. After the tragedies of A. P. Sumarokov, in the last quarter of the 18th century, Ya. B. Knyazhnin ("Rosslav", "Vadim Novgorodsky") and other playwrights, for example, N. P. Nikolev ("Sorena and Zamir") turned to this genre.

In the second half of the 18th century, the genre system of classicism began to fetter the creative thought of writers, and they tried to destroy and reform it. The heroic poem, characteristic of Cantemir ("Petriad"), Lomonosov ("Peter the Great"), Sumarokov ("Dimitriada"), now fades into the background. The last attempt in this genre - "Rossiyada" by M. M. Kheraskov - was unsuccessful. Since then, the favorite genres for Russian authors have become the genres of the “heroic” poem, the playful poem and the comic opera, in which the genre of the heroic poem was ironically turned around (“The Ombre Player”, “Elisey, or the Irritated Bacchus” by V. I. Maikov; “Darling” by I. F. Bogdanovich).

The same tendencies of the exhaustion of classicism as a literary trend are also noticeable in the work of the greatest poet of the 18th century, G. R. Derzhavin, who updated the principles of classicism and preceded the emergence of romanticism.

At the end of the 18th century, a new literary trend emerged in literature - sentimentalism. He had a strong influence on A. N. Radishchev, the greatest Russian thinker and angry writer, whose feelings were outraged by the people's misfortunes, the oppressed position of the peasants and the common Russian people in general. His main work - "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" - was written in the genre of "travel" beloved by sentimentalists and was caused by emotional shock from the pictures of injustice and lawlessness he saw. This "sensibility", this concern of the heart is extremely close to the sentimentalists.

The founder of sentimentalism and the largest writer of this trend was N. M. Karamzin - a poet, prose writer, essayist, journalist, "the last chronicler and our first historian", according to Pushkin, and a reformer of the Russian literary language. Many poems, ballads and stories brought him all-Russian fame. His greatest merits are associated with such works as "Letters of a Russian Traveler", the story "Poor Liza", "History of the Russian State", as well as with the transformation of the literary language. Karamzin outlined and implemented a reform, thanks to which the gap between the oral, colloquial and written, book language of Russian society was eliminated. Karamzin wanted the Russian literary language to express the new concepts and ideas that developed in the 18th century as clearly and accurately as the French language, which was spoken by Russian educated society.

Karamzin’s closest associate was I. I. Dmitriev, the author of popular historical and patriotic writings, songs, romances, satirical tales and fables (“Ermak”, “Liberation of Moscow”, “The dove is moaning ...”, “Alien sense”, “ Fashionable wife, etc.). The principles of sentimentalism were talentedly embodied in his songs in the folk spirit by Yu. A. Neledinsky-Meletsky, who owns several songs (for example, “I will go out to the river ...”) that have survived in the song repertoire to this day.

Russian literature of the 18th century, in its rapid development, ensured the future great achievements of the art of the word, which followed in the 19th century. She almost caught up with the leading European literature and was able "... to become on a par with the century in education."

Literature and literary works are an opportunity to express one's attitude to what is happening, to ridicule or sing of the ongoing events, which writers of different centuries did. So was ancient Russian literature, it was replaced by medieval, and it was replaced by new literature, and today we have to characterize Russian literature of the 18th century.

Brief description of Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries

Working on the characteristics of the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, it should be noted that the development of literature is associated with the activities of Peter the Great. Now, making a characterization of the literature of the 18th century in the 9th grade, it should be noted that scientific books and books of journalistic content began to appear among literary works. Foreign words began to be used in literature, and most importantly, now literature and works are written not in Church Slavonic, but in common consumer Russian. Now the Age of Enlightenment begins.

Making a general literature of the 18th century, I will say that in the eighteenth century, writers continue to use such genres as drama, poetry in the verse form, the story, that is, those genres that existed in the 17th century, but such genres are added to this list, for example, love lyrics.

At the beginning of the 18th century, writers were mainly engaged in translations, and a little later, their own works of writers of that time began to appear. The writers' works were written in the spirit of classicism, where the genres were subdivided into low ones, among which one can single out a fable, satire, and comedy. Here the works are written in simple folk language. Literature is also divided into high genres, where odes, tragedies, heroic songs are distinguished, which, unlike low genres, where the work is dedicated to the life of ordinary people or the bourgeoisie, they praise the state, the upper strata of society.

All works of the 18th century had clear boundaries and were written according to the rule of three unities, that is, the work had one plot, mostly the events described take place within one day, and in one place. In the literature of the 18th century, one can clearly distinguish between positive and negative heroes, all heroes have speaking surnames, for example, Starodum, Prostakova. The literature of the 18th century touches on such issues as the problem of education, and the works themselves have a simple plot, easy to understand and perceive. Who is the representative of classicism? Here it is worth recalling Krylov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin and other writers.

But classicism was not eternal, and here it is replaced by sentimentalism, where in the works the writers began to stop and focus on the feelings of the characters. Here we can distinguish such writers as Kamenev, Karamzin, Zhukovsky.