Musical culture of romanticism: aesthetics, themes, genres and musical language. Creative principles of musical romanticism Musical language of romantic composers

Content

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3

XIXcentury……………………………………………………………..6

    1. General characteristics of the aesthetics of romanticism……………………………….6

      Features of Romanticism in Germany……………………………………...10

2.1. General characteristics of the category of tragic…………………………….13

Chapter 3. Criticism of Romanticism…………………………………………………...33

3.1. The critical position of Georg Friedrich Hegel……………………………..

3.2. The critical position of Friedrich Nietzsche…………………………………..

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………

Bibliography………………………………………………………

Introduction

Relevance This study lies, firstly, in the perspective of considering the problem. The work combines an analysis of ideological systems and the work of two outstanding representatives of German romanticism from different spheres of culture: Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Arthur Schopenhauer. This, according to the author, is the element of novelty. The study makes an attempt to combine the ideological foundations and works of two famous personalities based on the predominance of the tragic orientation of their thinking and creativity.

Secondly, the relevance of the chosen topic lies inthe degree of study of the problem. There are many major studies on German romanticism, as well as on the tragic in different spheres of life, but the topic of the tragic in German romanticism is represented mainly by small articles and individual chapters in monographs. Therefore, this area has not been thoroughly studied and is of interest.

Thirdly, the relevance of this work lies in the fact that the research problem is considered from different positions: not only representatives of the era of romanticism are characterized, proclaiming romantic aesthetics with their ideological positions and creativity, but also criticism of romanticism by G.F. Hegel and F. Nietzsche.

Target research - to identify specific features of the philosophy of art of Goethe and Schopenhauer, as representatives of German romanticism, taking as a basis the tragic orientation of their worldview and creativity.

Tasks research:

    Identify common characteristic features of romantic aesthetics.

    Identify the specific features of German romanticism.

    Show the change in the immanent content of the category of tragic and its understanding in different historical eras.

    To identify the specific manifestations of the tragic in the culture of German romanticism using the example of a comparison of ideological systems and the creativity of two major representatives of German cultureXIXcentury.

    To identify the limits of romantic aesthetics, considering the problem through the prism of the views of G.F. Hegel and F. Nietzsche.

Object of study is the culture of German romanticism,subject - mechanism of the constitution of romantic art.

Research sources are:

    Monographs and articles on romanticism and its manifestations in GermanyXIXcentury: Asmus V., “Musical aesthetics of philosophical romanticism”, Berkovsky N.Ya., “Romanticism in Germany”, Vanslov V.V., “Aesthetics of romanticism”, Lucas F.L., “The decline and collapse of the romantic ideal”, "Musical aesthetics of GermanyXIXcentury", in 2 volumes, comp. Mikhailov A.V., Shestakov V.P., Solleritinsky I.I., “Romanticism, its general and musical aesthetics”, Teteryan I.A., “Romanticism as an integral phenomenon.”

    Works of the studied personalities: Hegel G.F. “Lectures on Aesthetics”, “On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism”; Goethe I.V., “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, “Faust”; Nietzsche F., “The Fall of Idols”, “Beyond Good and Evil”, “The Birth of the Tragedy of Their Spirit of Music”, “Schopenhauer as an Educator”; Schopenhauer A., ​​“The World as Will and Representation” in 2 volumes, “Thoughts”.

    Monographs and articles dedicated to the personalities under study: Antiks A.A., “Goethe’s creative path”, Vilmont N.N., “Goethe. The story of his life and work,” Gardiner P., “Arthur Schopenhauer. Philosopher of German Hellenism", Pushkin V.G., "Hegel's philosophy: the absolute in man", Sokolov V.V., "Historical and philosophical concept of Hegel", Fischer K., "Arthur Schopenhauer", Eckerman I.P., " Conversations with Goethe in the last years of his life."

    Textbooks on the history and philosophy of science: Kanke V.A., “Main philosophical directions and concepts of science”, Koir A.V., “Essays on the history of philosophical thought. On the influence of philosophical concepts on the development of scientific theories”, Kuptsov V.I., “Philosophy and methodology of science”, Lebedev S.A., “Fundamentals of the philosophy of science”, Stepin V.S., “Philosophy of science. General problems: a textbook for graduate students and candidates for the academic degree of candidate of sciences."

    Reference literature: Lebedev S.A., “Philosophy of Science: Dictionary of Basic Terms”, “Modern Western Philosophy. Dictionary", comp. Malakhov V.S., Filatov V.P., “Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary”, comp. Averintseva S.A., “Aesthetics. Theory of literature. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Terms", comp. Borev Yu.B.

Chapter 1. General characteristics of the aesthetics of romanticism and its manifestations in Germany XIX century.

    1. General characteristics of the aesthetics of romanticism

Romanticism is an ideological and artistic movement in European culture, covering all types of art and science, which flourished at the end ofXVIII- StartXIXcentury. The term “romanticism” itself has a complex history. In the Middle Ages the word "romance" meant national languages ​​formed from the Latin language. Terms "enromancier», « romancar" And "romanz” meant writing books in the national language or translating them into the national language. INXVIIcentury the English word "romance"was understood as something fantastic, bizarre, chimerical, too exaggerated, and its semantics was negative. In French it was different "romanesque"(also with a negative connotation) and "romantic”, which meant “tender”, “soft”, “sentimental”, “sad”. In England in this sense the word was used inXVIIIcentury. In Germany the word "romantic» used inXVIIcentury in the French sense "romanesque", and from the middleXVIIIcentury in the meaning of “soft”, “sad”.

The concept of “romanticism” is also polysemantic. According to the American scientist A.O. Lovejoy, the term has so many meanings that it means nothing, it is both irreplaceable and useless; and F.D. Lucas, in his book The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal, counted 11,396 definitions of romanticism.

The first to use the term "romantic"in literature by F. Schlegel, and in relation to music - E.T. A. Hoffman.

Romanticism was generated by a combination of many reasons, both socio-historical and intra-artistic. The most important among them was the impact of the new historical experience that the Great French Revolution brought with it. This experience required comprehension, including artistic comprehension, and forced us to reconsider creative principles.

Romanticism arose in the pre-storm environment of social storms and was the result of public hopes and disappointments in the possibilities of a reasonable transformation of society based on the principles of freedom, equality and fraternity.

The invariant artistic concept of the world and personality for the romantics was a system of ideas: evil and death are irreducible from life, they are eternal and immanently contained in the very mechanism of life, but the struggle against them is also eternal; world sorrow is a state of the world that has become a state of spirit; resistance to evil does not give him the opportunity to become the absolute ruler of the world, but also cannot radically change this world and eliminate evil completely.

A pessimistic component appears in Romanesque culture. “The morality of happiness”, affirmed by philosophyXVIIIcentury is replaced by an apology for heroes deprived of life, but also drawing inspiration from their misfortune. The romantics believed that history and the human spirit move forward through tragedy, and they recognized universal variability as the basic law of existence.

Romantics are characterized by dualistic consciousness: there are two worlds (the world of dreams and the world of reality), which are opposite. Heine wrote: “The world split, and a crack passed through the poet’s heart.” That is, the consciousness of the romantic was split into two parts - the real world and the illusory world. This dual world is projected onto all spheres of life (for example, the characteristic romantic opposition between the individual and society, the artist and the crowd). This gives rise to the desire for a dream that is unattainable, and as one of the manifestations of this is the desire for exoticism (exotic countries and their cultures, natural phenomena), unusualness, fantasy, transcendence, various kinds of extremes (including in emotional states) and motive of wandering, wandering. This is due to the fact that real life, according to romantics, is located in an unreal world - a dream world. Reality is irrational, mysterious and opposed to human freedom.

Another characteristic feature of romantic aesthetics is individualism and subjectivity. The creative personality becomes the central figure. The aesthetics of romanticism put forward and first developed the concept of the author and recommended creating a romantic image of the writer.

It was in the era of romanticism that special attention to feeling and sensitivity appeared. It was believed that an artist should have a sensitive heart and compassion for his heroes. Chateaubriand emphasized that he strives to be a sensitive writer, appealing not to the mind, but to the soul, to the feelings of the readers.

In general, the art of the era of romanticism is metaphorical, associative, symbolic and gravitates towards the synthesis and interaction of genres, types, as well as to a connection with philosophy and religion. Each art, on the one hand, strives for immanence, but on the other, tries to go beyond its own boundaries (this expresses another characteristic feature of the aesthetics of romanticism - the desire for transcendence, transcendence). For example, music interacts with literature and poetry, as a result of which programmatic musical works appear; genres such as ballad, poem, and later fairy tale, legend are borrowed from literature.

ExactlyXIXcentury, the genre of the diary (as a reflection of individualism and subjectivity) and the novel appeared in literature (according to romantics, this genre unites poetry and philosophy, eliminates the boundaries between artistic practice and theory, and becomes a reflection in miniature of the entire literary era).

Small forms appear in music as a reflection of a certain moment of life (this can be illustrated by the words of Goethe’s Faust: “Stop, moment, you are beautiful!”). In this moment, romantics see eternity and infinity - this is one of the signs of the symbolism of romantic art.

In the era of romanticism, interest in the national specifics of art arose: in folklore, romantics saw a manifestation of the nature of life, in folk songs - a kind of spiritual support.

In romanticism, the features of classicism are lost - evil begins to be depicted in art. Berlioz took a revolutionary step in this in his Symphony Fantastique. It was during the era of romanticism that a special figure appeared in music - a demonic virtuoso, prime examples of which are Paganini and Liszt.

Summing up some of the results of this section of the study, it should be noted that since the aesthetics of romanticism was born as a result of disappointment in the Great French Revolution and similar idealistic concepts of the Enlightenment, it has a tragic orientation. The main characteristic features of romantic culture are dualistic worldview, subjectivity and individualism, the cult of feeling and sensitivity, interest in the Middle Ages, the Eastern world and in general all manifestations of the exotic.

The aesthetics of romanticism manifested itself most clearly in Germany. Next we will try to identify the specific features of the aesthetics of German romanticism.

    1. Features of Romanticism in Germany.

In the era of romanticism, when disappointment in bourgeois transformations and their consequences became universal, the peculiar features of the spiritual culture of Germany acquired pan-European significance and had a strong impact on social thought, aesthetics, literature and art of other countries.

German romanticism can be divided into two stages:

    Jensky (about 1797-1804)

    Heidelberg (after 1804)

There are different opinions regarding the period of development of romanticism in Germany when it flourished. For example: N.Ya. Berkovsky in the book “Romanticism in Germany” writes: “Almost all early romanticism comes down to the deeds and days of the Jena school, which developed in Germany at the very end of the 17th century.Icenturies. The history of German romance has long been divided into two periods: heyday and decline. It flourished during the Jena period.” A.V. Mikhailov in his book “The Aesthetics of the German Romantics” emphasizes that the heyday was the second stage of the development of romanticism: “Romantic aesthetics in its central, “Heidelberg” period is a living aesthetics of the image.”

    One of the features of German romanticism is its universality.

A.V. Mikhailov writes: “Romanticism claimed a universal view of the world, a comprehensive coverage and generalization of all human knowledge, and to a certain extent it really was a universal worldview. His ideas related to philosophy, politics, economics, medicine, poetics, etc., and always acted as ideas of extremely general significance.

This universality was represented in the Jena school, which united people of different professions: the Schlegel brothers, August Wilhelm and Friedrich, were philologists, literary critics, art critics, publicists; F. Schelling - philosopher and writer, Schleiermacher - philosopher and theologian, H. Steffens - geologist, I. Ritter - physicist, Gulsen - physicist, L. Tick - poet, Novallis - writer.

The romantic philosophy of art received a systematic form in the lectures of A. Schlegel and the works of F. Schelling. Also, representatives of the Jena school created the first examples of the art of romanticism: L. Tieck's comedy "Puss in Boots" (1797), "Hymns for the Night" lyrical cycle (1800) and the novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" (1802) by Novalis.

The second generation of German romantics, the “Heidelberg” school, was distinguished by an interest in religion, national antiquity, and folklore. The most important contribution to German culture was the collection of folk songs “The Boy’s Magic Horn” (1806-1808), compiled by L. Arnim and K. Berntano, as well as “Children’s and Family Tales” by the brothers J. and W. Grimm (1812-1814). Lyric poetry also reached high perfection at this time (the poems of J. Eichendorff can be cited as an example).

Based on the mythological ideas of Schelling and the Schlegel brothers, the Heidelberg romantics finally formalized the principles of the first deep scientific direction in folklore and literary criticism - the mythological school.

    The next characteristic feature of German romanticism is the artistry of its language.

A.V. Mikhailov writes: “German romanticism is by no means reduced to art, literature, poetry, however, both in philosophy and in the sciences it does not cease to use artistic and symbolic language. The aesthetic content of the romantic worldview lies equally in poetic creations and in scientific experiments.”

In late German romanticism, motives of tragic hopelessness, a critical attitude towards modern society and a feeling of discord between dreams and reality grew. The democratic ideas of late romanticism found their expression in the works of A. Chamisso, the lyrics of G. Müller, and in the poetry and prose of Heinrich Heine.

    Another characteristic feature relating to the late period of German romanticism was the increasing role of the grotesque as a component of romantic satire.

Romantic irony has become more cruel. The ideas of the representatives of the Heidelberg school often contradicted the ideas of the early stage of German romanticism. If the romantics of the Jena school believed in correcting the world with beauty and art, they called Raphael their teacher,

(self-portrait)

the generation that replaced them saw the triumph of ugliness in the world, turned to the ugly, and in the field of painting perceived the world of old age

(elderly woman reading)

and collapse, and at this stage called Rembrandt his teacher.

(self-portrait)

The mood of fear in front of an incomprehensible reality intensified.

German romanticism is a special phenomenon. In Germany, the trends characteristic of the entire movement received a unique development, which determined the national specifics of romanticism in this country. Having existed for a relatively short time (according to A.V. Mikhailov, from the very endXVIIIcenturies until 1813-1815), it was in Germany that romantic aesthetics acquired its classical features. German romanticism had a strong influence on the development of romantic ideas in other countries and became their fundamental basis.

2.1. General characteristics of the category of tragic.

Tragic is a philosophical and aesthetic category that characterizes the destructive and unbearable aspects of life, the insoluble contradictions of reality, presented in the form of an insoluble conflict. The clash between man and the world, personality and society, hero and fate is expressed in the struggle of strong passions and great characters. Unlike the sad and terrible, the tragic as a type of threatening or accomplished destruction is not caused by random external forces, but stems from the internal nature of the dying phenomenon itself, its insoluble self-division in the process of its implementation. The dialectic of life turns to man in its tragic and pathetic and destructive side. The tragic is akin to the sublime in that it is inseparable from the idea of ​​the dignity and greatness of man, manifested in his very suffering.

The first awareness of the tragic were the myths relating to the “dying gods” (Osiris, Serapis, Adonis, Mithras, Dionysus). On the basis of the cult of Dionysus, during its gradual secularization, the art of tragedy developed. Philosophical understanding of the tragic was formed in parallel with the formation of this category in art, in reflection on the painful and gloomy aspects of private life and history.

The tragic in the ancient era is characterized by a certain underdevelopment of the personal principle, above which the good of the polis rises (on its side are the gods, the patrons of the polis), and an objectivist-cosmological understanding of fate as an indifferent force that dominates nature and society. Therefore, the tragic in antiquity was often described through the concepts of fate and fate, as opposed to modern European tragedy, where the source of the tragic is the subject himself, the depths of his inner world and the actions caused by it. (as, for example, in Shakespeare).

Ancient and medieval philosophy does not know a special theory of the tragic: the doctrine of the tragic constitutes here an undivided moment of the doctrine of being.

An example of the understanding of the tragic in ancient Greek philosophy, where it acts as an essential aspect of the cosmos and the dynamics of the opposing principles in it, can be the philosophy of Aristotle. Summarizing the practice of Attic tragedies played out during the annual festivals dedicated to Dionysus, Aristotle identifies the following moments in the tragic: a pattern of action characterized by a sudden turn for the worse (peripeteia) and recognition, the experience of extreme misfortune and suffering (pathos), purification (catharsis).

From the point of view of the Aristotelian doctrine of nous (“mind”), the tragic arises when this eternal, self-sufficient “mind” is surrendered to the power of otherness and becomes from the eternal temporary, from the self-sufficient - subordinate to necessity, from the blessed - suffering and sorrowful. Then human “action and life” begins with its joys and sorrows, with its transitions from happiness to unhappiness, with its guilt, crimes, retribution, punishment, desecration of the eternally blissful innocence of “nous” and restoration of the desecrated. This escape of the mind into the power of “necessity” and “chance” constitutes an unconscious “crime”. But sooner or later, a recollection or “recognition” of the previous blissful state occurs, the crime is exposed and assessed. Then comes the time of tragic pathos, caused by the shock of the human being from the contrast of blissful innocence and the darkness of vanity and crime. But this recognition of the crime also means the beginning of the restoration of the violated, which occurs in the form of retribution, carried out through “fear” and “compassion”. The result is a “purification” of passions (catharsis) and restoration of the disturbed balance of the “mind”.

Ancient Eastern philosophy (including Buddhism, with its heightened awareness of the pathetic essence of life, but a purely pessimistic assessment of it), did not develop the concept of the tragic.

The medieval worldview, with its unconditional faith in divine providence and final salvation, overcoming the entanglements of fate, essentially eliminates the problem of the tragic: the tragedy of the world's fall, the falling away of created humanity from the personal absolute, is overcome in the atoning sacrifice of Christ and the restoration of creation to its pristine purity.

Tragedy received a new development during the Renaissance, then gradually transforming into classicist and romantic tragedy.

During the Age of Enlightenment, interest in the tragic in philosophy revived; At this time, the idea of ​​a tragic conflict as a clash of duty and feeling was formulated: Lessing called the tragic “a school of morality.” Thus, the pathos of the tragic was reduced from the level of transcendental understanding (in antiquity, the source of the tragic was fate, inevitable fate) to a moral conflict. In the aesthetics of classicism and the Enlightenment, analyzes of tragedy as a literary genre appear - in N. Boileau, D. Diderot, G.E. Lessing, F. Schiller, who, developing the ideas of Kantian philosophy, saw the source of the tragic in the conflict between the sensual and moral nature of man (for example, the essay “On the Tragic in Art”).

The identification of the category of the tragic and its philosophical understanding is carried out in German classical aesthetics, primarily in Schelling and Hegel. According to Schelling, the essence of the tragic lies in “... the struggle of freedom in the subject and the necessity of the objective...”, and both sides “... are simultaneously presented as both victorious and defeated - in complete indistinguishability.” Necessity, fate makes the hero guilty without any intention on his part, but due to a predetermined combination of circumstances. The hero must fight necessity - otherwise, with its passive acceptance, there would be no freedom - and be defeated by it. Tragic guilt lies in “also voluntarily incurring punishment for an inevitable crime, in order to prove precisely this freedom by the very loss of one’s freedom and to perish, declaring one’s free will.” Schelling considered the work of Sophocles to be the pinnacle of tragedy in art. He placed Calderon above Shakespeare, since his key concept of fate was of a mystical nature.

Hegel sees the theme of the tragic in the self-division of moral substance as the area of ​​will and accomplishment. Its constituent moral forces and active characters are different in their content and individual identification, and the deployment of these differences necessarily leads to conflict. Each of the various moral forces strives to realize a certain goal, is overwhelmed by a certain pathos, realized in action, and in this one-sided certainty of its content inevitably violates the opposite side and collides with it. The death of these colliding forces restores the disturbed balance at a different, higher level and thereby moves forward the universal substance, contributing to the historical process of self-development of the spirit. Art, according to Hegel, tragically reflects a special moment in history, a conflict that has absorbed all the acuteness of the contradictions of a particular “state of the world.” He called this state of the world heroic, when morality had not yet taken the form of established state laws. The individual bearer of tragic pathos is the hero, who completely identifies himself with the moral idea. In the tragedy, isolated moral forces are presented in a variety of ways, but can be reduced to two definitions and the contradiction between them: “moral life in its spiritual universality” and “natural morality,” that is, between the state and the family.

Hegel and the romantics (A. Schlegel, Schelling) provide a typological analysis of the new European understanding of the tragic. The latter proceeds from the fact that man himself is guilty of the horrors and suffering that befell him, whereas in antiquity he acted rather as a passive object of the fate he endured. Schiller understood the tragic as a contradiction between the ideal and reality.

In the philosophy of romanticism, the tragic moves into the area of ​​subjective experiences, the inner world of a person, especially the artist, which is contrasted with the deceit and inauthenticity of the external, empirical social world. The tragic was partly replaced by irony (F. Schlegel, Novalis, L. Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, G. Heine).

For Zolger, the tragic is the basis of human life, it arises between essence and existence, between the divine and the phenomenon, the tragic is the death of an idea in a phenomenon, of the eternal in the temporal. Reconciliation is possible not in the final human existence, but only with the destruction of existing existence.

Close to the romantic understanding of the tragic is S. Kierkegaard, who connects it with the subjective experience of “despair” by a person who was at the stage of his ethical development (which is preceded by the aesthetic stage and which leads to the religious one). Kierkugaard notes the different understanding of the tragedy of guilt in ancient times and in modern times: in ancient times, tragedy is deeper, the pain is less, in modern times it is the other way around, since pain is associated with awareness of one’s own guilt and reflection on it.

If German classical philosophy, and above all the philosophy of Hegel, in its understanding of the tragic, proceeded from the rationality of the will and the meaningfulness of the tragic conflict, where the victory of the idea was achieved at the cost of the death of its bearer, then in the irrationalistic philosophy of A. Schopenhauer and F. Nietzsche there is a break with this tradition, since the very existence of any meaning in the world is called into question. Considering the will to be immoral and unreasonable, Schopenhauer sees the essence of the tragic in the self-confrontation of blind will. In Schopenhauer’s teachings, the tragic lies not only in a pessimistic view of life, for misfortune and suffering constitute its essence, but in the denial of its highest meaning, as well as the world itself: “the principle of the existence of the world has absolutely no basis, i.e. represents the blind will to live." The tragic spirit therefore leads to the renunciation of the will to live.

Nietzsche characterized the tragic as the original essence of existence - chaotic, irrational and formless. He called the tragic “pessimism of force.” According to Nietzsche, the tragic was born from the Dionysian principle, opposite to the “Apollonian instinct of beauty.” But the “Dionysian underground of the world” must be overcome by the enlightened and transformative Apollonian force, their strict correlation is the basis of the perfect tragic art: chaos and order, frenzy and serene contemplation, horror, blissful delight and wise peace in images is tragedy.

INXXcentury, the irrationalistic interpretation of the tragic was continued in existentialism; the tragic began to be understood as an existential characteristic of human existence. According to K. Jaspers, the truly tragic consists in the realization that “... universal collapse is the basic characteristic of human existence.” L. Shestov, A Camus, J.-P. Sartre associated the tragic with the groundlessness and absurdity of existence. The contradiction between the thirst for life of a person “of flesh and blood” and the testimony of reason about the finitude of his existence is the core of the teaching of M. de Unamuno about “The tragic sense of life among people and nations” (1913). Culture, art and philosophy itself are viewed by him as a vision of “dazzling Nothingness”, the essence of which is total randomness, lack of conformity with law and absurdity, “the logic of the worst”. T. Adrono examines the tragic from the angle of criticism of bourgeois society and its culture from the position of “negative dialectics.”

In the spirit of the philosophy of life, G. Simmel wrote about the tragic contradiction between the dynamics of the creative process and those stable forms in which it crystallizes, F. Stepun - about the tragedy of creativity as the objectification of the inexpressible inner world of the individual.

The tragic and its philosophical interpretation became a means of criticizing society and human existence. In Russian culture, the tragic was understood as the futility of religious and spiritual aspirations, extinguished in the vulgarity of life (N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky).

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1794-1832) - German poet, writer, thinker. His work spans the last three decadesXVIIIcentury - the period of pre-romanticism - and the first thirty yearsXIXcentury. The first most significant period of the poet’s work, which began in 1770, is associated with the aesthetics of Sturm and Drang.

Sturm und Drang is a literary movement in Germany in the 70sXVIIIcentury, named after the drama of the same name by F. M. Klinger. The work of writers of this direction - Goethe, Klinger, Leisewitz, Lenz, Bürger, Schubert, Voss - reflected the growth of anti-feudal sentiments and was imbued with the spirit of rebellious rebellion. This movement, which owed much to Rousseauism, declared war on aristocratic culture. In contrast to classicism with its dogmatic norms, as well as the mannerisms of Rococo, the “stormy geniuses” put forward the idea of ​​“characteristic art,” original in all its manifestations; they demanded from literature the depiction of bright, strong passions, characters not broken by the despotic regime. The main area of ​​creativity of the Sturm und Drang writers was drama. They sought to establish a third-class theater that actively influenced public life, as well as a new dramatic style, the main features of which were emotional richness and lyricism. Having made the inner world of man the subject of artistic depiction, they developed new techniques for individualizing characters and created a lyrically colored, pathetic and figurative language.

Goethe's lyrics from the period of "Sturm und Drang" are one of the most brilliant pages in the history of German poetry. Goethe's lyrical hero appears as the embodiment of nature or in an organic fusion with it (“The Traveler,” “The Song of Mohammed”). He turns to mythological images, interpreting them in a rebellious spirit (“The Song of a Wanderer in the Storm,” a monologue of Prometheus from an unfinished drama).

The most perfect creation of the Sturm und Drang period is the novel in letters “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” written in 1774, which brought the author worldwide fame. This is the piece that appeared at the endXVIIIcentury, can be considered a harbinger and symbol of the entire coming era of romanticism. Romantic aesthetics forms the semantic center of the novel, manifesting itself in many aspects. Firstly, the very theme of personal suffering and the derivation of the hero’s subjective experiences are not the first plan; the special confessionalism inherent in the novel is a purely romantic tendency. Secondly, the novel contains a dual world characteristic of romanticism - a dream world, objectified in the form of the beautiful Lotte and faith in mutual love and a world of cruel reality, in which there is no hope for happiness and where the sense of duty and the opinion of the world are above the most sincere and deepest feelings. Thirdly, there is a pessimistic component characteristic of romanticism, which grows to the gigantic scale of tragedy.

Werther is a romantic hero who, with the final shot, challenges the cruel, unfair world - the world of reality. He rejects the laws of life, in which there is no place for happiness and the fulfillment of his dreams, and prefers to die rather than give up the passion born of his fiery heart. This hero is the antipode of Prometheus, and yet Werther-Prometheus are the final links of one chain of Goethe’s images from the period of Sturm and Drang. Their existence equally unfolds under the sign of doom. Werther empties himself in attempts to defend the reality of his fictional world, Prometheus seeks to perpetuate himself in the creation of “free” beings independent of the power of Olympus, creates slaves of Zeus, people subordinate to superior, transcendent forces.

The tragic conflict associated with Lotte's line, in contrast to Werther's, is largely associated with the classicist type of conflict - a conflict of feeling and duty, in which the latter wins. After all, according to the novel, Lotte is very attached to Werther, but her duty to her husband and younger brothers and sisters, left in her care by her dying mother, takes precedence over her feelings, and the heroine has to choose, although she does not know until the last moment that she will have to choose between life and the death of someone dear to her. Lotte, like Werther, is a tragic heroine, because perhaps only in death she learns the true extent of her love and Werther’s love for her, and the inseparability of love and death is another feature inherent in romantic aesthetics. The theme of the unity of love and death will be relevant throughoutXIXcentury, all the major artists of the Romantic era would turn to it, but it was Goethe who was one of the first to reveal its potential in his early tragic novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther.”

Despite the fact that during his lifetime Goethe was primarily the renowned author of The Sorrows of Young Werther, his most grandiose creation is the tragedy Faust, which he wrote over the course of almost sixty years. It was started during the period of Sturm and Drang, but ended in an era when the romantic school dominated in German literature. Therefore, “Faust” reflects all the stages through which the poet’s work followed.

The first part of the tragedy is in close connection with the period of “Storm and Drang” in Goethe’s work. The theme of an abandoned beloved girl who, in a fit of despair, becomes a child killer, was very common in the literature of the “Sturmanddrang"("The Child Killer" by Wagner, "The Priest's Daughter from Taubenheim" by Burger). The appeal to the age of fiery Gothic, knittelfers, monodrama - all this speaks of a connection with the aesthetics of Sturm und Drang.

The second part, which achieves special artistic expressiveness in the image of Helen the Beautiful, is more closely associated with the literature of the classical period. Gothic contours give way to ancient Greek ones, Hellas becomes the scene of action, the knittelfers is replaced by poems of an antique style, the images acquire some kind of special sculptural compactness (this expresses Goethe’s predilection in maturity for the decorative interpretation of mythological motifs and purely spectacular effects: masquerade - 3 scene of act 1, classic Walpurgis Night and the like). In the final scene of the tragedy, Goethe already pays tribute to romanticism, introducing a mystical chorus and opening the gates of heaven to Faust.

“Faust” occupies a special place in the work of the German poet - it is the ideological result of all his creative activity. The novelty and unusualness of this tragedy is that its subject was not one life conflict, but a consistent, inevitable chain of deep conflicts throughout a single life path, or, in Goethe’s words, “a series of increasingly higher and purer types of activity of the hero.”

In the tragedy "Faust", as in the novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther", there are many characteristic features of romantic aesthetics. The same dual world in which Werther lived is also characteristic of Faust, but unlike Werther, the doctor has the fleeting pleasure of fulfilling his dreams, which, however, leads to even greater sorrow due to the illusory nature of dreams and the fact that they collapse, bringing grief is not only for himself. As in the novel about Werther, in Faust the subjective experiences and sufferings of the individual are placed at the center, but unlike in The Sorrows of Young Werther, where the theme of creativity is not the leading one, in Faust it plays a very important role. At the end of the tragedy, Faust's creativity takes on enormous scope - this is his idea of ​​a colossal construction project on land reclaimed from the sea for the happiness and well-being of the whole world.

It is interesting that the main character, although in alliance with Satan, does not lose his morality: he strives for sincere love, beauty, and then universal happiness. Faust does not use the forces of evil for evil, but as if he wants to turn them into good, therefore his forgiveness and salvation are natural and expected; the cathartic moment of his ascension to paradise is not unexpected.

Another characteristic feature of the aesthetics of romanticism is the theme of the inseparability of love and death, which in Faust goes through three stages: the love and death of Gretchen and her daughter with Faust (as the objectification of this love), the final departure to the kingdom of the dead of Helen the Beautiful and the death of her and Faust's son (as in the case of daughter Gretchen, the objectification of this love), Faust's love for life and all humanity and the death of Faust himself.

“Faust” is not only a tragedy about the past, but about the future of human history, as it seemed to Goethe. After all, Faust, according to the poet, is the personification of all humanity, and his path is the path of all civilization. Human history is a story of search, trial and error, and the image of Faust embodies faith in the limitless possibilities of man.

Now let us turn to the analysis of Goethe's work from the point of view of the category of the tragic. The fact that the German poet was an artist of a tragic nature is supported, for example, by the predominance of tragic-dramatic genres in his work: “Goetz von Berlichingen”, the tragically ending novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, the drama “Egmont”, the drama “Torquato Tasso”, tragedy “Iphigenia in Tauris”, drama “Citizen General”, tragedy “Faust”.

The historical drama "Götz von Berlichingen", written in 1773, reflected the events on the eve of the Peasants' WarXVIcentury, sounding a harsh reminder of the princely tyranny and tragedy of the fragmented country. In the drama "Egmont", written in 1788 and connected with the ideas of "Sturm und Drang", at the center of events is the conflict between foreign oppressors and the people, whose resistance is suppressed, but not broken, and the ending of the drama sounds like a call to fight for freedom. The tragedy “Iphigenia in Tauris” is based on the plot of an ancient Greek myth, and its main idea is the victory of humanity over barbarism.

The Great French Revolution is directly reflected in Goethe's "Venetian Epigrams", the drama "Citizen General" and the short story "Conversations of German Emigrants". The poet does not accept revolutionary violence, but at the same time recognizes the inevitability of social reorganization - on this topic he wrote the satirical poem “Reinecke the Fox,” denouncing feudal tyranny.

One of Goethe’s most famous and significant works, along with the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and the tragedy “Faust,” is the novel “The Teaching Years of Wilhelm Meister.” In it one can again trace romantic tendencies and themes characteristic ofXIXcentury. In this novel, the theme of the death of dreams appears: the protagonist’s stage hobbies subsequently appear as a youthful delusion, and in the finale of the novel he sees his task in practical economic activity. The Meister is the antipode of Werther and Faust - creative heroes burning with love and dreams. His life drama lies in the fact that he abandoned his dreams, choosing routine, boredom and the actual meaninglessness of existence, because his creativity, which gives the true meaning of existence, went out when he gave up his dream of becoming an actor and playing on stage. Much later in literatureXXcentury, this theme is transformed into the theme of the tragedy of the little man.

The tragic direction of Goethe's work is obvious. Despite the fact that the poet did not create a complete philosophical system, his works set forth a deep philosophical concept associated with both the classicist picture of the world and romantic aesthetics. Goethe’s philosophy, revealed in his works, is in many ways contradictory and ambiguous, like his main work of life “Faust”, but it clearly shows, on the one hand, an almost Schopenhauerian vision of the real world as bringing severe suffering to a person, awakening dreams and desires, but not fulfilling them, preaching injustice, routine, routine and death of love, dreams and creativity, but on the other hand, faith in the limitless possibilities of man and the transformative powers of creativity, love and art. In a polemic against the nationalist tendencies that developed in Germany during and after the Napoleonic wars, Goethe put forward the idea of ​​“world literature”, without sharing Hegel’s skepticism in assessing the future of art. Goethe also saw in literature and art in general a powerful potential for influencing a person and even the existing social system.

Thus, perhaps Goethe's philosophical concept can be expressed as follows: the struggle of the creative creative forces of man, expressed in love, art and other aspects of existence, with the injustice and cruelty of the real world and the victory of the former. Despite the fact that most of Goethe's struggling and suffering heroes die in the end. The catharsis of his tragedies and the victory of the bright beginning are obvious and large-scale. In this regard, the end of Faust is indicative, when both the main character and his beloved Gretchen receive forgiveness and go to heaven. Such an end can be projected onto the majority of Goethe's searching and suffering heroes.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1786-1861) – representative of the irrational trend in the philosophical thought of Germany in the first halfXIXcentury. The main role in the formation of Schopenhauer's worldview system was played by influences from three philosophical traditions: Kantian, Platonic and ancient Indian Brahmanistic and Buddhist philosophy.

The views of the German philosopher are pessimistic, and his concept reflects the tragedy of human existence. The center of Schopenhauer's philosophical system is the doctrine of the negation of the will to live. He views death as a moral ideal, as the highest goal of human existence: “Death, undoubtedly, is the real goal of life, and at the moment when death comes, everything is accomplished for which throughout our entire life we ​​have only been preparing and starting. Death is the final conclusion, a summary of life, its result, which immediately unites into one whole all the partial and scattered lessons of life and tells us that all our aspirations, the embodiment of which was life, that all these aspirations were in vain, vain and contradictory and that salvation lies in renunciation of them.”

Death is the main goal of life, according to Schopenhauer, because this world, according to his definition, is the worst possible: “Leibniz’s obviously sophistic proofs that this world is the best of possible worlds can be quite seriously and conscientiously countered by the proof that this world - the worst of all possible worlds" .

Human existence is placed by Schopenhauer in the world of “inauthentic being” of ideas, determined by the world of the Will - truly existing and self-identical. Life in the time stream seems to be a bleak chain of suffering, a continuous series of large and small adversities; a person cannot find peace in any way: “... in the sufferings of life we ​​console ourselves with death, and in death we console ourselves with the sufferings of life.”

In Schopenhauer’s works one can often find the idea that both this world and people should not exist at all: “... the existence of the world should not please us, but rather sadden us;... its non-existence would be preferable to its existence;... it represents something that really shouldn’t exist.”

Human existence is just an episode that disturbs the peace of absolute existence, which must end with the desire to suppress the will to live. Moreover, according to the philosopher, death does not destroy true existence (the world of Will), since it represents the end of a temporary phenomenon (the world of ideas), and not the innermost essence of the world. In the chapter “Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our Being” of his large-scale work “The World as Will and Idea,” Schopenhauer writes: “... nothing invades our consciousness with such an irresistible force as the thought that creation and destruction do not affect the real essence of things , that the latter is inaccessible to them, that is, incorruptible, and that therefore everything that wills life really continues to live without end... Thanks to him, despite thousands of years of death and decay, nothing has yet perished, not a single atom of matter and, even less, not a single fraction of that inner essence which appears to us as nature.”

The timeless existence of the world of Will knows neither gains nor losses, it is always identical to itself, eternal and true. Therefore the state into which death takes us is the “natural state of the Will.” Death destroys only the biological organism and consciousness, and knowledge allows one to understand the insignificance of life and overcome the fear of death, as Schopenhauer claims. He expresses the idea that with knowledge, on the one hand, a person’s ability to feel grief, the true nature of this world, which brings suffering and death, increases: “A person, along with reason, inevitably developed a terrifying certainty of death.” . But, on the other hand, the ability of cognition leads, in his opinion, to a person’s awareness of the indestructibility of his true being, which manifests itself not in his individuality and consciousness, but in the world will: “The horrors of death are mainly based on the illusion that with itI disappears, but the world remains. In fact, rather the opposite is true: the world disappears, and the innermost coreI , the bearer and creator of that subject, in whose representation the world alone has its existence, remains.”

Awareness of the immortality of the true essence of man, according to the views of Schopenhauer, is based on the fact that one cannot identify oneself only with one’s own consciousness and body and make distinctions between the external and internal world. He writes that “death is a moment of liberation from the one-sidedness of the individual form, which does not constitute the innermost core of our being, but rather is a kind of perversion of it.”

Human life, according to Schopenhauer's concept, is always accompanied by suffering. But he perceives them as a source of purification, since they lead to the denial of the will to live and do not allow a person to take the wrong path of its affirmation. The philosopher writes: “The entire human existence speaks quite clearly that suffering is the true destiny of man. Life is deeply engulfed in suffering and cannot escape it; our entry into it is accompanied by words about this; in its essence, it always proceeds tragically, and its end is especially tragic... Suffering, this is truly the cleansing process that alone in most cases sanctifies a person, that is, deviates him from the false path of the will of life.” .

An important place in A. Schopenhauer's philosophical system is occupied by his concept of art. He believes that the highest goal of art is to free the soul from suffering and find spiritual peace. However, he is attracted only by those types and kinds of art that are close to his own worldview: tragic music, dramatic and tragic genre of stage art, and the like, since they are the ones who are able to express the tragic essence of human existence. He writes about the art of tragedy: “The peculiar effect of tragedy, in essence, is based on the fact that it shakes the indicated innate delusion (that a person lives in order to be happy - approx.), clearly embodying futility in a great and striking example human aspirations and the insignificance of all life and thereby revealing the deepest meaning of existence; That’s why tragedy is considered the most sublime kind of poetry.”

The German philosopher considered music to be the most perfect art. In his opinion, in her highest achievements she is capable of mystical contact with the transcendental World Will. Moreover, in strict, mysterious, mystically colored and tragic music, the World Will finds its most possible embodiment, and this embodiment is precisely that feature of the Will that contains its dissatisfaction with itself, and therefore the future attraction to its redemption and self-denial. In the chapter “On the Metaphysics of Music,” Schopenhauer writes: “...music, considered as an expression of the world, is an extremely universal language, which even relates to the universality of concepts almost as they relate to individual things... music differs from all other arts in that , that it does not reflect phenomena, or, more correctly, the adequate objectivity of the will, but directly reflects the will itself and, thus, for everything physical in the world it shows the metaphysical, for all phenomena - the thing in itself. Therefore, the world can be called both embodied music and embodied will.

The category of the tragic is one of the most important in the philosophical system of A. Schopenhauer, since human life itself is perceived by him as a tragic mistake. The philosopher believes that from the moment a person is born, endless suffering begins that lasts a lifetime, and all joys are short-lived and illusory. Existence contains a tragic contradiction, which lies in the fact that man is endowed with a blind will to live and an endless desire to live, but his existence in this world is finite and full of suffering. Thus, a tragic conflict arises between life and death.

But Schopenhauer's philosophy contains the idea that with the advent of biological death and the disappearance of consciousness, the true human essence does not die, but continues to live forever, incarnating in something else. This idea of ​​the immortality of man's true essence is akin to the catharsis that comes at the end of tragedy; Therefore, we can conclude not only that the category of the tragic is one of the basic categories of Schopenhauer’s worldview system, but also that his philosophical system as a whole reveals similarities with tragedy.

As was said earlier, Schopenhauer assigns an important place to art, especially music, which he perceives as the embodied will, the immortal essence of being. In this world of suffering, according to the philosopher, a person can follow the right path only by denying the will to live, embodying asceticism, accepting suffering and purifying himself both with its help and thanks to the cathartic influence of art. Art and music in particular contribute to a person’s knowledge of his true essence and the desire to return to the sphere of true existence. Therefore, one of the ways of purification, according to the concept of A. Schopenhauer, runs through art.

Chapter 3. Criticism of Romanticism

3.1. Critical position of Georg Friedrich Hegel

Despite the fact that romanticism became an ideology that spread throughout the world for some time, romantic aesthetics was criticized both during its existence and in the following centuries. In this part of the work we will look at the criticism of romanticism carried out by Georg Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche.

There are significant differences in the philosophical concept of Hegel and the aesthetic theory of romanticism, which caused criticism of the romantics by the German philosopher. Firstly, from the very beginning, romanticism ideologically opposed its aesthetics to the Age of Enlightenment: it appeared as a protest against Enlightenment views and in response to the failure of the French Revolution, on which the Enlightenment had placed great hopes. The romantics contrasted the classicist cult of reason with the cult of feeling and the desire to deny the basic postulates of the aesthetics of classicism.

In contrast, G. F. Hegel (like J. W. Goethe) considered himself the heir of the Enlightenment. Criticism of the Enlightenment by Hegel and Goethe never turned into a denial of the heritage of this period, as is the case with the romantics. For example, for the question of cooperation between Goethe and Hegel, it is extremely characteristic that Goethe in the first yearsXIXcentury discovers and, having translated, immediately publishes Diderot’s “Ramo’s Nephew” with his comments, and Hegel immediately uses this work to reveal with extraordinary plasticity the specific form of the dialectic of the Enlightenment. The images created by Diderot occupy a decisive place in the most important chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Therefore, the position of the romantics contrasting their aesthetics with the aesthetics of classicism was criticized by Hegel.

Secondly, the dual world characteristic of the romantics and the conviction that everything beautiful exists only in the world of dreams, and the real world is a world of sadness and suffering, in which there is no place for the ideal and happiness, is opposed to the Hegelian concept that the embodiment of the ideal is this is not a departure from reality, but, on the contrary, its deep, generalized, meaningful image, since the ideal itself is presented as rooted in reality. The vitality of the ideal rests on the fact that the main spiritual meaning, which should be revealed in the image, completely penetrates into all the particular aspects of the external phenomenon. Consequently, the image of the essential, characteristic, the embodiment of spiritual meaning, the transmission of the most important tendencies of reality is, according to Hegel, the disclosure of the ideal, which in this interpretation coincides with the concept of truth in art, artistic truth.

The third aspect of Hegel's criticism of Romanticism is subjectivity, which is one of the most important features of Romantic aesthetics; Hegel is especially critical of subjective idealism.

In subjective idealism, the German thinker sees not just a certain false direction in philosophy, but a direction whose emergence was inevitable, and to the same extent it was inevitably false. Hegel's proof of the falsity of subjective idealism is at the same time a conclusion about its inevitability and necessity and about the limitations associated with it. Hegel comes to this conclusion in two ways, which are closely and inextricably linked for him - historically and systematically. From a historical point of view, Hegel proves that subjective idealism arose from the deepest problems of our time and its historical significance, the preservation of its greatness for a long time, is explained precisely by this. At the same time, however, he shows that subjective idealism, of necessity, can only guess the problems posed by the times and translate these problems into the language of speculative philosophy. Subjective idealism has no answers to these questions, and this is where its inadequacy lies.

Hegel believes that the philosophy of subjective idealists consists of a stream of emotions and empty declarations; he criticizes the romantics for the dominance of the sensual over the rational, as well as for the unsystematization and incompleteness of their dialectics (this is the fourth aspect of Hegel’s criticism of romanticism)

An important place in Hegel's philosophical system is occupied by his concept of art. Romantic art, according to Hegel, begins with the Middle Ages, but he includes Shakespeare, Cervantes, and artistsXVII- XVIIIcenturies, and German romantics. The romantic art form, according to his concept, is the disintegration of romantic art in general. The philosopher hopes that from the collapse of romantic art a new form of free art will be born, the germ of which he sees in the work of Goethe.

Romantic art, according to Hegel, includes painting, music and poetry - those types of art that, in his opinion, can best express the sensual side of life.

The medium of painting is a colorful surface, a living play of light. It is freed from the sensory spatial fullness of the material body, since it is limited to a plane, and therefore is able to express the entire scale of feelings, mental states, and depict actions full of dramatic movement.

The elimination of spatiality is achieved in the next form of romantic art - music. Its material is sound, the vibration of a sounding body. Matter here no longer appears as spatial, but as temporal ideality. Music goes beyond sensory contemplation and covers exclusively the area of ​​inner experiences.

In the last romantic art - poetry - sound enters as a sign that has no meaning in itself. The main element of poetic representation is poetic representation. According to Hegel, poetry can depict absolutely everything. Its material is not just sound, but sound as meaning, as a sign of representation. But the material here is not arranged freely and arbitrarily, but according to the rhythmic musical law. In poetry, all types of art again seem to be repeated: it corresponds to the visual arts as an epic, as a calm narrative with rich images and picturesque pictures of the history of peoples; it is music as lyrics because it reflects the inner state of the soul; it is the unity of these two arts as dramatic poetry, as a depiction of the struggle between active, conflicting interests rooted in the characters of individuals.

We briefly examined the main aspects of G. F. Hegel's critical position in relation to romantic aesthetics. Now we turn to the criticism of romanticism carried out by F. Nietzsche.

3.2. Critical position of Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche's worldview system can be defined as philosophical nihilism, since criticism occupied the most important place in his work. The characteristic features of Nietzsche's philosophy are: criticism of church dogmas, revaluation of all existing human concepts, recognition of the limitations and relativity of all morality, the idea of ​​eternal formation, the idea of ​​a philosopher and historian as a prophet who overthrows the past for the sake of the future, problems of the place and freedom of the individual in society and history , denial of unification and leveling of people, a passionate dream of a new historical era, when the human race will mature and realize its tasks.

In the development of the philosophical views of Friedrich Nietzsche, two stages can be distinguished: the active development of the culture of vulgar literature, history, philosophy, music, accompanied by a romantic worship of antiquity; criticism of the foundations of Western European culture (“The Wanderer and His Shadow”, “Morning Dawn”, “The Gay Science”) and the overthrow of idolsXIXcenturies and past centuries (“The Fall of the Idols”, “Zarathustra”, the doctrine of the “superman”).

At the early stage of his creativity, Nietzsche’s critical position had not yet taken final shape. At this time, he was interested in the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, calling him his teacher. However, after 1878, his position was reversed, and the critical orientation of his philosophy began to emerge: in May 1878, Nietzsche published the book “Humanity, All Too Human” with the subtitle “A Book for Free Minds”, where he publicly broke with the past and its values: Hellenism , Christianity, Schopenhauer.

Nietzsche considered his main merit to be that he undertook and carried out a revaluation of all values: everything that is usually recognized as valuable, in fact, has nothing to do with true value. In his opinion, everything needs to be put in its place - in place of imaginary values, put true values. In this revaluation of values, which essentially constitutes Nietzsche’s philosophy, he sought to stand “beyond good and evil.” Ordinary morality, no matter how developed and complex it is, is always enclosed within a framework, the opposite sides of which constitute the idea of ​​good and evil. Their limits exhaust all forms of existing moral relations, while Nietzsche wanted to go beyond these boundaries.

F. Nietzsche defined his contemporary culture as being at the stage of decline and decay of morality. Morality corrupts culture from the inside, since it is a tool for controlling the crowd and its instincts. According to the philosopher, Christian morality and religion affirm an obedient “slave morality.” Therefore, it is necessary to carry out a “reassessment of values” and identify the foundations of the morality of the “strong man”. Thus, Friedrich Nietzsche distinguishes between two types of morality: master and slave. The morality of the “masters” affirms the value of life, which is most manifested against the background of the natural inequality of people, due to the difference in their wills and vital forces.

All aspects of Romantic culture were sharply criticized by Nietzsche. He overthrows the romantic double-world when he writes: “There is no point in writing fables about the “other” world, except if we have a strong urge to slander life, to belittle it, to look at it suspiciously: in the latter case we take revenge on life with phantasmagoria.” different”, “better” life.”

Another example of his opinion on this issue is the statement: “The division of the world into “true” and “apparent”, in the sense of Kant, indicates decline - it is a symptom of a declining life...”

Here are excerpts from his quotes about some representatives of the era of romanticism: “”Unbearable:... - Schiller, or the trumpeter of morality from Säckingen... - V. Hugo, or a lighthouse on a sea of ​​madness. - Liszt, or the school of bold onslaught in pursuit of women. - George Sand, or milk abundance, which in German means: a cash cow with “beautiful style”. - Offenbach's music. - Zola, or "love of stench."

About the bright representative of romantic pessimism in philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer, whom Nietzsche first considered and admired as his teacher, it will later be written: “Schopenhauer is the last of the Germans who cannot be passed over in silence. This German, like Goethe, Hegel and Heinrich Heine, was not only a “national”, local phenomenon, but also a pan-European one. It is of great interest to the psychologist as a brilliant and malicious challenge to the name of the nihilistic devaluation of life, the opposite of the worldview - the great self-confirmation of the “will to live”, the form of abundance and excess of life. Art, heroism, genius, beauty, great compassion, knowledge, the will to truth, tragedy - all this, one after another, Schopenhauer explained as phenomena accompanying the “denial” or impoverishment of the “will”, and this makes his philosophy the greatest psychological falsehood in history of mankind."

He gave a negative assessment to most of the prominent representatives of the culture of past centuries and contemporary ones. His disappointment in them is contained in the phrase: “I looked for great people and always found only monkeys of my ideal.” .

One of the few creative personalities who aroused Nietzsche’s approval and admiration throughout his life was Johann Wolfgang Goethe; he turned out to be an undefeated idol. Nietzsche wrote about him: “Goethe is not a German, but a European phenomenon, a majestic attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by returning to nature, by ascending to the naturalness of the Renaissance, an example of self-overcoming from the history of our century. All his strongest instincts were combined in him: sensitivity, passionate love for nature, ahistorical, idealistic, unrealistic and revolutionary instincts (this last is only one of the forms of the unreal)... he did not distance himself from life, but went deeper into it, he did not lose heart and how much he could take on himself, into himself and beyond himself... He achieved integrity; he fought against the disintegration of reason, sensuality, feeling and will (preached by Kant, Goethe’s antipode, in disgusting scholasticism), he educated himself towards integrity, he created himself... Goethe was a convinced realist in an unrealistically inclined age.”

In the quote above, there is another aspect of Nietzsche’s criticism of romanticism - his criticism of the detachment from reality of romantic aesthetics.

About the age of romanticism, Nietzsche writes: “Isn’t thereXIXcentury, especially at its beginning, only intensified, coarsenedXVIIIcentury, in other words: a decadent century? And isn’t Goethe, not for Germany alone, but for all of Europe, just an accidental phenomenon, lofty and vain?” .

Nietzsche's interpretation of the tragic is interesting, connected, among other things, with his assessment of romantic aesthetics. The philosopher writes about this: “The tragic artist is not a pessimist, he more willingly takes on everything mysterious and terrible, he is a follower of Dionysus.” . The essence of not understanding the tragic Nietzsche is reflected in his statement: “What does the tragic artist show us? Doesn't it show a state of fearlessness in the face of the terrible and mysterious? This state alone is the highest good, and those who have experienced it rank it infinitely highly. The artist conveys this state to us; he must convey it precisely because he is an artist—a genius of transmission. Courage and freedom of feeling in the face of a powerful enemy, in the face of great grief, in front of a task that inspires horror—this victorious state is chosen and glorified by the tragic artist!” .

Drawing conclusions on the criticism of romanticism, we can say the following: many arguments related to the aesthetics of romanticism negatively (including G.F. Hegel and F. Nietzsche) really do exist. Like any manifestation of culture, this type has both positive and negative sides. However, despite the censures of many contemporaries and representativesXXcentury, romantic culture, which includes romantic art, literature, philosophy and other manifestations, is still relevant and arouses interest, transforming and reviving in new ideological systems and directions of art and literature.

Conclusion

Having studied philosophical, aesthetic and musicological literature, as well as familiarized ourselves with works of art related to the area of ​​the problem under study, we came to the following conclusions.

Romanticism arose in Germany in the form of an “aesthetics of disillusionment” in the ideas of the Great French Revolution. The result of this was a romantic system of ideas: evil, death and injustice are eternal and cannot be eliminated from the world; world sorrow is the state of the world, which has become the state of the spirit of the lyrical hero.

In the fight against the injustice of the world, death and evil, the soul of the romantic hero seeks a way out and finds it in the world of dreams - this reveals the dualism of consciousness characteristic of the romantics.

Another important characteristic of romanticism is that romantic aesthetics tends towards individualism and subjectivity. The result of this was the increased attention of romantics to feelings and sensitivity.

The ideas of the German romantics were universal and became the foundation of the aesthetics of romanticism, influencing its development in other countries. German romanticism is characterized by a tragic orientation and artistic language, which manifested itself in all spheres of life.

The understanding of the immanent content of the category of tragic has changed significantly from era to era, reflecting changes in the general picture of the world. In the ancient world, the tragic was associated with a certain objective principle - fate, fate; in the Middle Ages, tragedy was viewed primarily as the tragedy of the Fall, which Christ redeemed with his feat; in the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of a tragic collision between feeling and duty was formed; In the era of romanticism, the tragic appeared in an extremely subjective form, putting at the center the suffering tragic hero, who is faced with the evil, cruelty and injustice of people and the entire world order and tries to fight it.

outstanding cultural figures of German romanticism - Goethe and Schopenhauer - are united by the tragic orientation of their worldview systems and creativity, and they consider art to be a cathartic element of tragedy, a kind of atonement for the suffering of earthly life, giving a special place to music.

The main aspects of criticism of romanticism come down to the following. The Romantics are criticized for their desire to contrast their aesthetics with the aesthetics of a bygone era, classicism, and their rejection of the legacy of the Enlightenment; dual world, which is considered by critics as a disconnect from reality; lack of objectivity; exaggeration of the emotional sphere and understatement of the rational; unsystematic and incompleteness of the romantic aesthetic concept.

Despite the validity of the criticism of romanticism, the cultural manifestations of this era are relevant and arouse interest even inXXIcentury. Transformed echoes of the romantic worldview can be found in many areas of culture. For example, we believe that the basis of the philosophical systems of Albert Camus and Jose Ortega y Gasset was German romantic aesthetics with its tragic dominant, but rethought by them in cultural conditionsXXcentury.

Our research helps not only to identify the general characteristic features of romantic aesthetics and specific features of German romanticism, to show the change in the immanent content of the category of the tragic and its understanding in different historical eras, as well as to identify the specifics of the manifestation of the tragic in the culture of German romanticism and the limits of romantic aesthetics, but also contributes understanding the art of the Romantic era, finding its universal imagery and themes, as well as building a meaningful interpretation of the work of the Romantics.

Bibliography

    Anikst A.A. Goethe's creative path. M., 1986.

    Asmus V.F. Musical aesthetics of philosophical romanticism // Soviet music, 1934, No. 1, pp. 52-71.

    Berkovsky N. Ya. Romanticism in Germany. L., 1937.

    Borev Yu. B. Aesthetics. M.: Politizdat, 1981.

    Vanslov V.V. Aesthetics of Romanticism, M., 1966.

    Vilmont N. N. Goethe. The story of his life and work. M., 1959.

    Gardiner P. Arthur Schopenhauer. Philosopher of German Hellenism. Per. from English M.: Tsentropoligraf, 2003.

    Hegel G.V.F. Lectures on aesthetics. M.: State. Social and economic publishing house, 1958.

    Hegel G.W.F. On the essence of philosophical criticism // Works of different years. In 2 volumes. T.1. M.: Mysl, 1972, p. 211-234.

    Hegel G.W.F. Full composition of writings. T. 14.M., 1958.

    Goethe I.V. Selected works, volumes 1-2. M., 1958.

    Goethe I.V. The Sorrows of Young Werther: A Novel. Faust: Tragedies / Trans. With. German M.: Eksmo, 2008.

    Lebedev S. A. Fundamentals of the philosophy of science. Textbook for universities. M.: Academic project, 2005.

    Lebedev S. A. Philosophy of science: dictionary of basic terms. 2nd ed., revised. And additional M.: Academic project, 2006.

    Losev A. F. Music as a subject of logic. M.: Author, 1927.

    Losev A.F. The main question of the philosophy of music // Soviet music, 1990, №йй, p. 65-74.

    Musical aesthetics of GermanyXIXcentury. In 2 volumes. T.1: Ontology/Comp. A. V. Mikhailov, V. P. Shestakov. M.: Music, 1982.

    Nietzsche F. The Fall of Idols. Per. with him. St. Petersburg: ABC-classics, 2010.

    Nietzsche F. Beyond Good and Evil //http: lib. ru/ NICSHE/ dobro_ i_ zlo. txt

    Nietzsche F. The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. M.: ABC-Classics, 2007.

    Modern Western philosophy. Dictionary. Comp. V. S. Malakhov, V. P. Filatov. M.: Publishing house. watered lit., 1991.

    Sokolov V.V. Historical and philosophical concept of Hegel // Philosophy of Hegel and modernity. M., 1973, pp. 255-277.

    Fischer K. Arthur Schopenhauer. St. Petersburg: Lan, 1999.

    Schlegel F. Aesthetics. Philosophy. Criticism. In 2 vols. M., 1983.

    Schopenhauer A. Selected works. M.: Education, 1993. Aesthetics. Theory of literature. Encyclopedic dictionary of terms. Ed. Boreva Yu.B.M.: Astrel.

To narrow down the search results, you can refine your query by specifying the fields to search for. The list of fields is presented above. For example:

You can search in several fields at the same time:

Logical operators

The default operator is AND.
Operator AND means that the document must match all elements in the group:

research development

Operator OR means that the document must match one of the values ​​in the group:

study OR development

Operator NOT excludes documents containing this element:

study NOT development

Search type

When writing a query, you can specify the method in which the phrase will be searched. Four methods are supported: search taking into account morphology, without morphology, prefix search, phrase search.
By default, the search is performed taking into account morphology.
To search without morphology, just put a “dollar” sign in front of the words in the phrase:

$ study $ development

To search for a prefix, you need to put an asterisk after the query:

study *

To search for a phrase, you need to enclose the query in double quotes:

" research and development "

Search by synonyms

To include synonyms of a word in the search results, you need to put a hash " # " before a word or before an expression in parentheses.
When applied to one word, up to three synonyms will be found for it.
When applied to a parenthetical expression, a synonym will be added to each word if one is found.
Not compatible with morphology-free search, prefix search, or phrase search.

# study

Grouping

In order to group search phrases you need to use brackets. This allows you to control the Boolean logic of the request.
For example, you need to make a request: find documents whose author is Ivanov or Petrov, and the title contains the words research or development:

Approximate word search

For an approximate search you need to put a tilde " ~ " at the end of a word from a phrase. For example:

bromine ~

When searching, words such as "bromine", "rum", "industrial", etc. will be found.
You can additionally specify the maximum number of possible edits: 0, 1 or 2. For example:

bromine ~1

By default, 2 edits are allowed.

Proximity criterion

To search by proximity criterion, you need to put a tilde " ~ " at the end of the phrase. For example, to find documents with the words research and development within 2 words, use the following query:

" research development "~2

Relevance of expressions

To change the relevance of individual expressions in the search, use the " sign ^ " at the end of the expression, followed by the level of relevance of this expression in relation to the others.
The higher the level, the more relevant the expression is.
For example, in this expression, the word “research” is four times more relevant than the word “development”:

study ^4 development

By default, the level is 1. Valid values ​​are a positive real number.

Search within an interval

To indicate the interval in which the value of a field should be located, you should indicate the boundary values ​​in parentheses, separated by the operator TO.
Lexicographic sorting will be performed.

Such a query will return results with an author starting from Ivanov and ending with Petrov, but Ivanov and Petrov will not be included in the result.
To include a value in a range, use square brackets. To exclude a value, use curly braces.


ROMANTISM (French romantisme) - ideological and aesthetic. and arts, a direction that has developed in Europe. art at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. The emergence of R., which was formed in the struggle against the Enlightenment-classicist ideology, was due to the deep disappointment of artists in politics. results of the Great French revolution. Characteristic of a romantic. method, an acute clash of figurative antitheses (real - ideal, clownish - sublime, comic - tragic, etc.) indirectly expressed the sharp rejection of the bourgeoisie. in reality, a protest against the practicalism and rationalism that prevailed in it. The contrast between the world of beautiful, unattainable ideals and everyday life permeated with the spirit of philistinism and philistinism gave rise to dramas in the works of the romantics, on the one hand. conflict, domination of the tragic. motives of loneliness, wandering, etc., on the other - idealization and poeticization of the distant past, people. life, nature. Compared to classicism, R. did not emphasize the unifying, typical, generalized principle, but the brightly individual, original one. This explains the interest in the exceptional hero, towering above his environment and rejected by society. The outside world is perceived by romantics in an acutely subjective way and is recreated by the artist’s imagination in a whimsical, often fantastical way. form (literary work of E. T. A. Hoffman, who first introduced the term “R.” in relation to music). In the era of R., music took a leading place in the art system, because in the most degree corresponded to the aspirations of the romantics in displaying emotions. human life. Music R. as a direction developed in the beginning. 19th century under the influence of early German literary and philosophical R. (F.W. Schelling, “Jena” and “Heidelberg” romantics, Jean Paul, etc.); subsequently developed in close connection with various. trends in literature, painting and theater (J. G. Byron, V. Hugo, E. Delacroix, G. Heine, A. Mickiewicz, etc.). The initial stage of music. R. is represented by the works of F. Schubert, E. T. A. Hoffmann, K. M. Weber, N. Paganini, G. Rossini, J. Field and others, the subsequent stage (1830-50s) - by the works F. Chopin, R. Schumann, F. Mendelssohn, G. Berlioz, G. Meyerbeer, V. Bellini, F. Liszt, R. Wagner, G. Verdi. The late stage of R. extends to the end. 19th century (I. Brahms, A. Bruckner, H. Wolf, the later works of F. Liszt and R. Wagner, early works by G. Mahler, R. Strauss, etc.). In some national comp. schools, the heyday of R. occurred in the last third of the 19th century. and beginning 20th century (E. Grieg, J. Sibelius, I. Albeniz, etc.). Rus. music based on on the aesthetics of realism, in a number of phenomena was in close contact with R., especially in the beginning. 19th century (K. A. Kavos, A. A. Alyabyev, A. N. Verstovsky) and in the 2nd half. 19 - beginning 20th centuries (works of P. I. Tchaikovsky, A. N. Scriabin, S. V. Rachmaninov, N. K. Medtner). Development of music. R. proceeded unevenly and decomposed. ways depending on the national and historical conditions, from individuality and creativity. artist's settings. In Germany and Austria, music. R. was inextricably linked with him. lyrical poetry (which determined the flowering of vocal lyrics in these countries), in France - with the achievements of drama. theater R.'s attitude towards the traditions of classicism was also ambiguous: in the works of Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, these traditions were organically intertwined with the romantic ones; in the works of Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz they were radically rethought (see also the Weimar School, the Leipzig School). Conquests of the muses. R. (in Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, and others) were more fully manifested in the disclosure of the individual world of the individual, the promotion of psychologically complicated lyricism, marked by features of duality. hero. The recreation of the personal drama of a misunderstood artist, the theme of unrequited love and social inequality sometimes acquire a touch of autobiography (Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner). Along with the method of figurative antitheses in music. R. is of great importance and the method is consistent. evolution and transformation of images ("Symph. Etudes" by Schumann), sometimes combined in one work. (Fp. Sonata in B minor by Liszt). The most important point in the aesthetics of music. R. had the idea of ​​​​a synthesis of arts, which he found most. a vivid expression in Wagner’s operatic work and in program music (Liszt, Schumann, Berlioz), which was distinguished by a wide variety of program sources (literature, painting, sculpture, etc.) and forms of its presentation (from a short title to a detailed plot). Express. techniques that developed within the framework of program music penetrated into non-program works, which contributed to the strengthening of their figurative concreteness and the individualization of dramaturgy. The sphere of fantasy is interpreted in a variety of ways by romantics - from elegant scherzo, adv. fabulousness ("A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Mendelssohn, "Free Shooter" by Weber) to the grotesque ("Fantastastic Symphony" by Berlioz, "Faust Symphony" by Liszt), fanciful visions generated by the sophisticated imagination of the artist ("Fantastic Pieces" by Schumann). Interest in people creativity, especially to its national and original forms, which means. least stimulated the emergence of new companies in line with R. schools - Polish, Czech, Hungarian, later Norwegian, Spanish, Finnish, etc. Everyday, folk-genre episodes, local and national. color permeates all music. art of the era of R. In a new way, with unprecedented concreteness, picturesqueness and spirituality, the romantics recreated images of nature. The development of genre and lyric-epic is closely related to this figurative sphere. symphony (one of the first works is Schubert’s “great” symphony in C major). New themes and images required the romantics to develop new means of music. language and principles of formation (see Leitmotif, Monothematism), individualization of melody and the introduction of speech intonations, expansion of timbre and harmonics. music palettes (natural modes, colorful comparisons of major and minor, etc.). Attention to figurative character, portraiture, psychological. detailing led to the flourishing of the wok genre among romantics. and fp. miniatures (song and romance, musical moment, impromptu, song without words, nocturne, etc.). The endless variability and contrast of life's impressions is embodied in the wok. and fp. cycles of Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, etc. (see Cyclic forms). Psychological and lyrical drama. the interpretation is inherent in the era of R. and large genres - symphony, sonata, quartet, opera. A craving for free self-expression, gradual transformation of images, end-to-end dramaturgy. development gave rise to free and mixed forms characteristic of romanticism. compositions in such genres as ballad, fantasy, rhapsody, symphonic poem, etc. Music. R., being the leading direction in the art of the 19th century, at its later stage gave birth to new directions and trends in music. art - verism, impressionism, expressionism. Music 20th century art In many ways, it develops under the sign of the denial of R.'s ideas, but its traditions live within the framework of neo-romanticism.
Asmus V., Muz. aesthetics of philosophical romanticism, "SM", 1934, No. 1; Sollertnsky I.I., Romanticism, its general and music. aesthetics, in his book: Historical. etudes, vol. 1, L., 21963; Zhitomirsky D., Schumann and Romanticism, in his book: R. Schumann, M., 1964; Vasina-Grossman V. A., Romantich. song of the 19th century, M., 1966; Kremlev Yu., The past and future of romanticism, M., 1968; Music aesthetics of France in the 19th century, M., 1974; Kurt E., Romantich. harmony and its crisis in Wagner's Tristan, [trans. from German], M., 1975; Music of Austria and Germany of the 19th century, book. 1, M., 1975; Music aesthetics of Germany in the 19th century, vol. 1-2, M., 1981-82; Belza I., Historical. the fate of romanticism and music, M., 1985; Einstein A., Music in the romantic era, N. Y., 1947; Chantavoine J., Gaudefrey-Demonbynes J., Le romantisme dans la musique europeenne, P., 1955; Stephenson K., Romantik in der Tonkttnst, Koln, 1961; Schenk H., The mind of the European romantics, L., 1966; Dent E. J., The rise of romantic opera, Camb., ; Boetticher W., Einfuhrung in die musikalische Romantik, Wilhelmshaven, 1983. G. V. Zhdanova.

New images of romanticism - the dominance of the lyrical-psychological principle, the fairy-tale-fantastic element, the introduction of national folk features, heroic-pathetic motives and, finally, the sharply contrasting opposition of different figurative plans - led to a significant modification and expansion of the expressive means of music.

Here we make an important caveat.

It should be borne in mind that the desire for innovative forms and a departure from the musical language of classicism characterizes composers of the 19th century far from the same extent. Some of them (for example, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Brahms, and, in a certain sense, Chopin) have clearly noticeable tendencies towards preserving the classicist principles of formation and individual elements of the classicist musical language in combination with new romantic features. For others, more distant from classicist art, traditional techniques recede into the background and are more radically modified.

The process of formation of the musical language of the Romantics was long, not at all straightforward and not related to immediate continuity. (For example, Brahms or Grieg, who worked at the end of the century, are more “classical” than Berlioz or Liszt were in the 30s.) However, for all the complexity of the picture, typical trends in the music of the 19th century of the post-Beethoven era emerge quite clearly. It's about these trends, perceived as something new, compared to the dominant ones expressive means of classicism, we say, characterizing the general features of romantic musical language.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the system of expressive means among the romantics is the significant enrichment colorfulness(harmonic and timbre), compared with classicist samples. The inner world of a person, with its subtle nuances and changeable moods, is conveyed by romantic composers mainly through increasingly complex, differentiated, detailed harmonies. Altered harmonies, colorful tonal comparisons, and chords of secondary degrees led to a significant complication of the harmonic language. The continuous process of strengthening the colorful properties of chords gradually affected the weakening of functional tendencies.

The psychological tendencies of romanticism were also reflected in the increased importance of the “background”. The timbre-color side acquired unprecedented significance in classicist art: the sound of a symphony orchestra, piano and a number of other solo instruments reached the utmost timbre differentiation and brilliance. If in classicist works the concept of “musical theme” was almost identified with the melody, to which both the harmony and the texture of the accompanying voices were subordinated, then for the romantics the “multifaceted” structure of the theme was much more typical, in which the role of the harmonic, timbre, texture “background” is often equivalent to the role melodies. Fantastic images, expressed mainly through the colorful-harmonic and timbre-figurative sphere, also gravitated towards the same type of thematicism.

Romantic music is not alien to thematic formations, in which the texture-timbre and colorful-harmonic element dominates completely.

We give examples of characteristic themes of romantic composers. With the exception of excerpts from Chopin's works, all of them were borrowed from works directly related to fantastic motifs, and were created on the basis of specific images of the theater or a poetic plot:

Let's compare them with the characteristic themes of the classicist style:

And in the melodic style of the romantics a number of new phenomena are observed. First of all his intonation sphere is updated.

If the predominant tendency in classicist music was the melodic nature of the pan-European operatic style, then in the era of romanticism, under the influence national folklore and urban everyday genres, its intonational content changes dramatically. The difference in melodic style of Italian, Austrian, French, German and Polish composers is now much more clearly expressed than it was in the art of classicism.

In addition, lyrical romance intonations begin to dominate not only in chamber art, but even penetrate into musical theater.

The closeness of the romance melody to intonations poetic speech gives it special detail and flexibility. The subjective lyrical mood of romantic music inevitably comes into conflict with the completeness and certainty of classicist lines. The romantic melody is more vague in structure. It is dominated by intonations expressing the effects of uncertainty, elusive, unsteady mood, incompleteness, and a dominant tendency towards the free “unfolding” of fabric *.

* We are talking specifically about a consistently romantic lyrical melody, since in dance genres or works that have adopted the dance “ostinato” rhythmic principle, periodicity remains a natural phenomenon.

For example:

The extreme expression of the romantic tendency to bring melody closer to the intonations of poetic (or oratorical) speech was achieved by Wagner’s “endless melody”.

The new figurative sphere of musical romanticism also appeared in new principles of shaping. Thus, in the era of classicism, the ideal exponent of modern musical thinking was the cyclic symphony. It was intended to reflect the dominance of theatrical, objective images characteristic of the aesthetics of classicism. Let us remember that the literature of that era is most clearly represented by dramatic genres (classicist tragedy and comedy), and the leading genre in music throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, until the emergence of the symphony, was opera.

Both in the intonational content of the classicist symphony and in the features of its structure, connections with the objective, theatrical and dramatic principle are noticeable. This is indicated by the objective nature of the sonata-symphonic themes themselves. Their periodic structure indicates connections with collectively organized action - folk or ballet dance, with a secular court ceremony, with genre images.

Intonation content, especially in the themes of sonata allegro, is often directly related to the melodic turns of operatic arias. Even the thematic structure is often based on a “dialogue” between heroically stern and feminine mournful images, reflecting the typical (for classicist tragedy and Gluck opera) conflict between “fate and man.” For example:

The structure of the symphonic cycle is characterized by a tendency towards completeness, “dismemberment” and repetition.

In the arrangement of material within individual parts (in particular, within the sonata allegro), the emphasis is placed not only on the unity of thematic development, but to the same extent on the “dismemberment” of the composition. The appearance of each new thematic formation or new section of the form is usually emphasized by a caesura, often framed by contrasting material. Starting from individual thematic formations and ending with the structure of the entire four-part cycle, this general pattern is clearly visible.

The work of the Romantics retained the importance of the symphony and symphonic music in general. However, their new aesthetic thinking led to both a modification of the traditional symphonic form and the emergence of new instrumental principles of development.

If the musical art of the 18th century gravitated towards theatrical and dramatic principles, then the composer’s work of the “Romantic Age” was closer in its composition to lyrical poetry, romantic ballads and psychological novels.

This closeness is manifested not only in instrumental music, but even in such theatrical dramatic genres as opera and oratorio.

Wagner's operatic reform essentially arose as an extreme expression of the tendency towards rapprochement with lyric poetry. The loosening of the dramatic line and the intensification of moments of mood, the approach of the vocal element to the intonations of poetic speech, the extreme detailing of individual moments to the detriment of the purposefulness of the action - all this characterizes not only Wagner’s tetralogy, but also his “Flying Dutchman”, and “Lohengrin”, and “Tristan” and Isolde”, and “Genoveva” by Schumann, and the so-called oratorios, but essentially choral poems, by Schumann, and other works. Even in France, where the tradition of classicism in the theater was much stronger than in Germany, a new romantic current is clearly perceptible within the framework of Meyerbeer’s beautifully composed “theater-musical plays” or in Rossini’s William Tell.

The lyrical perception of the world is the most important aspect of the content of romantic music. This subjective shade is expressed in the continuity of development that forms the antipode of theatrical and sonata “dismemberment”. The smoothness of motivic transitions and variational transformation of themes characterize the development methods of the romantics. In operatic music, where the law of theatrical opposition inevitably continues to prevail, this desire for continuity is reflected in the leitmotifs that unite the different actions of the drama, and in the weakening, if not complete disappearance of the composition associated with dismembered finished numbers.

A new type of structure is being established, based on continuous transitions from one musical scene to another.

In instrumental music, images of intimate lyrical outpouring give rise to new forms: a free, one-movement piano piece that ideally matches the mood of lyric poetry, and then, under its influence, a symphonic poem.

At the same time, romantic art revealed a sharpness of contrasts that objective, balanced classicist music did not know: the contrast between images of the real world and fairy-tale fantasy, between cheerful genre-everyday paintings and philosophical reflection, between passionate temperament, oratorical pathos and subtle psychologism. All this required new forms of expression that did not fit into the scheme of classicist sonata genres.

Accordingly, in the instrumental music of the 19th century there is:

a) a significant change in the classicist genres preserved in the works of the romantics;

b) the emergence of new purely romantic genres that did not exist in the art of the Enlightenment.

The cyclic symphony has changed significantly. A lyrical mood began to dominate in it (“Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony,” Mendelssohn’s “Scottish,” Schumann’s Fourth). In this regard, the traditional form has changed. The ratio of images of action and lyrics, unusual for a classicist sonata, with the predominance of the latter, led to the increased importance of the spheres of the secondary parts. The attraction to expressive details and colorful moments gave rise to a different type of sonata development. Variational transformation of themes became especially characteristic of the romantic sonata or symphony. The lyrical nature of music, devoid of theatrical conflict, manifested itself in a tendency towards monothematicism (Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, Schumann's Fourth) and towards continuity of development (dismembering pauses between parts disappear). The trend towards one-partness becomes the most characteristic feature of the romantic large form.

At the same time, the desire to reflect the multiplicity of phenomena in unity was reflected in the unprecedentedly sharp contrast between the different parts of the symphony.

The problem of creating a cyclic symphony capable of embodying the romantic figurative sphere remained essentially unresolved for half a century: the dramatic theatrical basis of the symphony, which developed in the era of the undivided dominance of classicism, did not easily lend itself to the new figurative system. It is no coincidence that romantic musical aesthetics is expressed in the one-movement program overture more clearly and consistently than in the cyclic sonata-symphony. However, most convincingly, completely, in the most consistent and generalized form, the new trends in musical romanticism were embodied in the symphonic poem - a genre created by Liszt in the 40s.

Symphonic music has summarized a number of leading features of modern music, which have consistently appeared in instrumental works for more than a quarter of a century.

Perhaps the most striking distinctive feature of a symphonic poem is software, contrasted with the “abstraction” of classicist symphonic genres. At the same time, it is characterized by a special type of programming associated with images modern poetry and literature. The overwhelming majority of names of symphonic poems indicate a connection with images of specific literary (sometimes pictorial) works (for example, “Preludes” according to Lamartine, “What is heard on the mountain” according to Hugo, “Mazeppa” according to Byron). Not so much a direct reflection of the objective world, but rather its rethinking through literature and art lies at the heart of the content of a symphonic poem.

Thus, simultaneously with the romantic attraction to literary programming, the symphonic poem reflected the most characteristic beginning of romantic music - the dominance of images of the inner world - reflection, experience, contemplation, as opposed to the objective images of action that dominated the classicist symphony.

In the thematic theme of the symphonic poem, the romantic features of melody and the enormous role of the colorful-harmonic and colorful-timbre elements are clearly expressed.

The manner of presentation and development techniques generalize the traditions that have developed both in the romantic miniature and in the romantic sonata-symphonic genres. Single-partness, monothematicism, colorful variation, gradual transitions between different thematic formations characterize the “poem” formative principles.

At the same time, the symphonic poem, without repeating the structure of the classicist cyclic symphony, is based on its principles. Within the framework of the one-part form, the unshakable foundations of sonatas are recreated in a generalized manner.

The cyclic sonata-symphony, which took on a classical form in the last quarter of the 18th century, was prepared in instrumental genres over the course of a whole century. Some of its thematic and formative features were clearly manifested in various instrumental schools of the pre-classicist period. The symphony was formed as a generalizing instrumental genre only when it absorbed, ordered and typified these diverse trends, which became the basis of sonata thinking.

The symphonic poem, which developed its own principles of thematism and form-building, nevertheless recreated in a generalized manner some of the most important principles of classicist sonata, namely:

a) the contours of two tonal and thematic centers;

b) elaboration;

c) reprisal;

d) contrast of images;

e) signs of cyclicity.

Thus, in a complex interweaving with new romantic principles of form-building, relying on a new thematic style, the symphonic poem within the one-part form retained the basic musical principles developed in the musical creativity of the previous era. These features of the form of the poem were prepared in the piano music of the romantics (the fantasy “The Wanderer” by Schubert, the ballads of Chopin), and in the concert overture (“The Hebrides” and “Beautiful Melusine” by Mendelssohn), and in the piano miniature.

The connections between romantic music and the artistic principles of classical art were not always directly perceptible. The features of the new, unusual, and romantic relegated them to the background in the perception of their contemporaries. Romantic composers had to fight not only the inert, philistine tastes of the bourgeois audience. And from enlightened circles, including from the circles of the musical intelligentsia, voices of protest against the “destructive” tendencies of the romantics were heard. The guardians of the aesthetic traditions of classicism (including, for example, Stendhal, the outstanding musicologist of the 19th century, Fetis and others) mourned the disappearance in the music of the 19th century of the ideal balance, harmony, grace and refinement of forms characteristic of musical classicism.

Indeed, romanticism as a whole rejected those features of classicist art that retained connections with the “conventional cold beauty” (Gluck) of court aesthetics. The Romantics developed a new idea of ​​beauty, which gravitated not so much towards balanced grace, but towards extreme psychological and emotional expressiveness, freedom of form, colorfulness and versatility of musical language. And yet, all outstanding composers of the 19th century have a noticeable tendency to preserve and implement on a new basis the logic and completeness of the artistic form characteristic of classicism. From Schubert and Weber, who worked at the dawn of romanticism, to Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Dvorak, who completed the “musical 19th century,” one can trace the desire to combine the new achievements of romanticism with those timeless laws of musical beauty, which first took on a classical form in the works of composers of the Enlightenment.

A significant feature of the musical art of Western Europe in the first half of the 19th century is the formation of national romantic schools, which brought forward the world's largest composers from their midst. A detailed examination of the characteristics of the music of this period in Austria, Germany, Italy, France and Poland forms the content of subsequent chapters.

Despite all the differences from realism in aesthetics and method, romanticism has deep internal connections with it. They are united by a sharply critical position in relation to epigonic classicism, the desire to free themselves from the shackles of classicist canons, break out into the vastness of life's truth, and reflect the richness and diversity of reality. It is no coincidence that Stendhal, in his treatise “Racine and Shakespeare” (1824), which puts forward new principles of realistic aesthetics, speaks under the banner of romanticism, seeing in it the art of modernity. The same can be said about such an important, programmatic document of romanticism as Hugo’s “Preface” to the drama “Cromwell” (1827), in which a revolutionary call was openly made to break the rules pre-established by classicism, outdated norms of art and ask advice only from life itself.

There have been and are ongoing great debates around the problem of romanticism. This controversy is due to the complexity and inconsistency of the very phenomenon of romanticism. There were quite a few misconceptions in solving the problem, which reflected in the underestimation of the achievements of romanticism. The very application of the concept of romanticism to music was sometimes questioned, while it was in music that it gave the most significant and enduring artistic values.
In the 19th century, romanticism was associated with the flourishing of the musical culture of Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the development of national schools in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and later in other countries - Norway, Finland, Spain. The greatest musicians of the century - Schubert, Weber, Schumann, Rossini and Verdi, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner and Brahms, right up to Bruckner and Mahler (in the West) - either belonged to the romantic movement or were associated with it. Romanticism and its traditions played a big role in the development of Russian music, manifesting itself in its own way in the works of composers of the “mighty handful” in Tchaikovsky, and further – in Glazunov, Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Scriabin.
Soviet scientists have revised a lot in their views on romanticism, especially in the works of the last decade. A tendentious, vulgar sociological approach to romanticism as a product of feudal reaction, an art that leads away from reality into the world of the artist’s arbitrary fantasy, that is, anti-realistic in its essence, is being eliminated. The opposite point of view, which makes the criteria for the value of romanticism entirely dependent on the presence in it of elements of another, realistic method, has not justified itself. Meanwhile, a truthful reflection of the essential aspects of reality is inherent in romanticism itself in its most significant, progressive manifestations. Objections are raised by the unconditional opposition of romanticism to classicism (after all, many advanced artistic principles of classicism had a significant influence on romanticism), and the exclusive emphasis on the pessimistic features of the romantic worldview, the idea of ​​“world grief,” its passivity, reflection, and subjectivist limitations. This point of view affected the general concept of romanticism in musicological works of the 30s and 40s, expressed, in particular, in Article II. Sollertinsky “Romanticism, its general and musical aesthetics.” Along with the work of V. Asmus “Musical Aesthetics of Philosophical Romanticism”4, this article is one of the first significant generalizing works on romanticism in Soviet musicology, although time has made significant amendments to some of its main provisions.
Currently, the assessment of romanticism has become more differentiated; its various trends are considered in accordance with historical periods of development, national schools, types of art and major artistic individuals. The main thing is that romanticism is assessed in the struggle of opposing tendencies within itself. Particular attention is paid to the progressive sides of romanticism as the art of a subtle culture of feeling, psychological truth, emotional wealth, art that reveals the beauty of the human heart and spirit. It was in this area that romanticism created immortal works and became our ally in the fight against the anti-humanism of modern bourgeois avant-gardeism.

In interpreting the concept of “romanticism,” it is necessary to distinguish two main, interconnected categories—artistic movement and method.
As an artistic movement, romanticism emerged at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries and developed in the first half of the 19th century, during a period of acute social conflicts associated with the establishment of the bourgeois system in Western Europe after the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794.
Romanticism went through three stages of development - early, mature and late. At the same time, there are significant temporary differences in the development of romanticism in different Western European countries and in different types of art.
The earliest literary schools of romanticism arose in England (the Lake School) and Germany (the Vienna School) at the very end of the 18th century. In painting, romanticism originated in Germany (F. O. Runge, K. D. Friedrich), although its true homeland is France: it was here that the general battle of classicist painting was fought by the heralds of romanticism, Kernko and Delacroix. In music, romanticism received its earliest expression in Germany and Austria (Hoffmann, Weber, Schubert). Its beginning dates back to the second decade of the 19th century.
If the romantic movement in literature and painting basically completed its development by the middle of the 19th century, then the life of musical romanticism in the same countries (Germany, France, Austria) was much longer. In the 30s, he entered only the time of his maturity, and after the revolution of 1848-1849, his last stage began, lasting approximately until the 80-90s (late Liszt, Wagner, Brahms; the work of Bruckner, early Mahler). In some national schools, for example in Norway and Finland, the 90s constituted the culmination of the development of romanticism (Grieg, Sibelius).
Each of these stages has its own significant differences. Particularly significant changes occurred in late romanticism—in its most complex and contradictory period, marked simultaneously by new achievements and the emergence of moments of crisis.

The most important socio-historical prerequisite for the emergence of the romantic movement was the dissatisfaction of various strata of society with the results of the French Revolution of 1789-1794, with that bourgeois reality, which turned out to be, according to F. Engels’ definition, “a caricature of the brilliant promises of the Enlightenment.” Speaking about the ideological atmosphere in Europe during the period of the emergence of romanticism, Marx in his famous letter to Engels (dated March 25, 1868) notes: “The first reaction to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment associated with it, naturally, was to see everything in the medieval, romantic light, and even people like Grimm are not free from this." In the quoted passage, Marx speaks of the first reaction to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, which corresponds to the initial stage in the development of romanticism, when reactionary elements were strong in it (Marx associates the second reaction, as is known, with the direction of bourgeois socialism). They expressed themselves most actively in the idealistic premises of philosophical and literary romanticism in Germany (for example, among representatives of the Viennese school - Schelling, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Wackenroder, the Schlegel brothers) with its cult of the Middle Ages and Christianity. The idealization of medieval feudal relations is inherent in literary romanticism in other countries (the Lake School in England. Chateaubriand, de Maistre in France). However, it would be incorrect to extend the above statement of Marx to all movements of romanticism (for example, revolutionary romanticism). Generated by enormous social upheavals, romanticism was not, and could not be, a single movement. It developed in the struggle of opposing tendencies - progressive and reactionary.
A vivid picture of the era and its spiritual contradictions was recreated in the novel “Goya or the Hard Path of Knowledge” by L. Feuchtwanger:
“Humanity is tired of passionate efforts to create a new order in an extremely short time. At the cost of the greatest effort, peoples tried to subordinate public life to the dictates of reason. Now their nerves gave way, people ran back from the blinding bright light of the mind - into the twilight of feelings. All over the world the old reactionary ideas were being uttered again. From the coldness of thought, everyone strived for the warmth of faith, piety, and sensitivity. Romantics dreamed of a revival of the Middle Ages, poets cursed a clear sunny day, and admired the magical light of the moon.” Such is the spiritual atmosphere in which the reactionary movement within Romanticism matured, the atmosphere that gave rise to such typical works as Chateaubrnac's story "René" or Novalis's novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen." However, “new ideas, clear and precise, already dominated the minds,” continues Feuchtwanger, “and it was impossible to uproot them. Privileges, hitherto unshakable, were shaken, absolutism, the divine origin of power, class and caste differences, the preferential rights of the church and the nobility - everything was questioned.”
A. M. Gorky correctly emphasizes the fact that romanticism is a product of the transitional era; he characterizes it as “a complex and always more or less unclear reflection of all the shades, feelings and moods that embrace society in transitional eras, but its main note is the expectation of what something new, anxiety before the new, a hasty, nervous desire to learn this new.”
Romanticism is often defined as a rebellion against the bourgeois enslavement of the human person and is rightly associated with the idealization of non-capitalist forms of life. It is from here that the progressive and reactionary utopias of romanticism are born. An acute sense of the negative aspects and contradictions of the emerging bourgeois society, a protest against the transformation of people into “mercenaries of industry”3 was the strong point of romanticism! “Awareness of the contradictions of capitalism puts them (the romantics - N.N.) above the blind optimists who deny these contradictions,” wrote V.I. Lenin.

Different attitudes towards ongoing social processes, towards the struggle between the new and the old, gave rise to deeply fundamental differences in the very essence of the romantic ideal, in the ideological orientation of artists of different romantic movements. Literary criticism distinguishes between progressive and revolutionary movements in romanticism, on the one hand, and reactionary and conservative movements, on the other. Emphasizing the opposition of these two movements in romanticism, Gorky calls them “active; and "passive". The first of them “seeks to strengthen a person’s will to live, to arouse in him a rebellion against reality, against all its oppression.” The second, on the contrary, “tries to either reconcile a person with reality, embellishing it, or to distract him from reality.” After all, the romantics' dissatisfaction with reality was twofold. “Discord is different from discord,” Pisarev wrote on this occasion. “My dream can overtake the natural course of events, or it can go completely to the side, to where no natural course of events can ever come.” The criticism expressed by Lenin addressed economic romanticism: “The plans of romanticism are portrayed as very easy to implement precisely because of that ignorance of real interests, which is the essence of romanticism.”
Differentiating the positions of economic romanticism, criticizing Sismondi’s projects, V.I. Lenin spoke positively about such progressive representatives of utopian socialism as Owen, Fourier, Thompson: “These writers anticipated the future, brilliantly guessed the trends and tone of the “breaking” that the former was undergoing before their eyes machine industry. They looked in the same direction where actual development was going; they really were ahead of this development.”3 This statement can also be applied to progressive, especially revolutionary, romantics in art, among whom the figures of Byron, Shelley, Hugo, and Manzoni stood out in the literature of the first half of the 19th century.
Of course, living creative practice is more complex and richer than the scheme of two currents. Each movement had its own dialectic of contradictions. In music, such differentiation is especially difficult and hardly applicable.
The heterogeneity of romanticism was sharply revealed in its attitude towards the Enlightenment. Romanticism's reaction to enlightenment was by no means direct and one-sidedly negative. The attitude towards the ideas of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment was the point of collision between different directions of romanticism. This was clearly expressed, for example, in the contrast to the positions of the English romantics. While the poets of the Lake School (Coleridge, Wordsworth and others) rejected the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the traditions of classicism associated with it, the revolutionary romantics Shelley and Byron defended the idea of ​​the French Revolution of 1789-1794, and in their work followed the traditions of heroic citizenship, typical for revolutionary classicism.
In Germany, the most important link between Enlightenment classicism and romanticism was the Sturm und Drang movement, which prepared the aesthetics and images of German literary (partly musical - early Schubert) romanticism. Enlightenment ideas are heard in a number of journalistic, philosophical and artistic works of German romantics. Thus, “Hymn to Humanity” by Fr. Hölderlin, an admirer of Schiller, was a poetic adaptation of Rousseau’s ideas. The ideas of the French Revolution are defended in his early article “Georg Forster” by Fr. Schlegel, the Jena romantics highly valued Goethe. In the philosophy and aesthetics of Schelling, then generally recognized as the head of the romantic school, there are connections with Kant and Fichte.

In the work of the Austrian playwright, a contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert, Grillparzer, romantic and classicist elements (appeal to antiquity) were closely intertwined. At the same time, Novalis, called by Goethe “the emperor of romanticism,” writes treatises and novels that are sharply hostile to Enlightenment ideology (“Christianity or Europe,” “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”).
In musical romanticism, especially Austrian and German, the continuity from classical art is clearly visible. It is known how significant the connections of the early romantics - Schubert, Hoffmann, Weber - with the Viennese classical school (especially with Mozart and Beethoven) were. They are not lost, but in some ways become stronger later (Schumann, Mendelssohn), right up to his late stage (Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner).
At the same time, progressive romantics opposed academicism, expressed acute dissatisfaction with the dogmatic tenets of classicist aesthetics, and criticized the schematism and one-sidedness of the rationalist method. The most acute opposition to French classicism of the 17th century was marked by the development of French art in the first third of the 19th century (although here, too, romanticism and classicism crossed, for example, in the work of Berlioz). The polemical works of Hugo and Stendhal, the statements of George Sand, and Delacroix are permeated with heated criticism of the aesthetics of classicism of both the 17th and 18th centuries. For writers, it is directed against the rational-conventional principles of classicist drama (in particular, against the unity of time, place and action), the immutable distinction between genres and aesthetic categories (for example, the sublime and the ordinary), and the limitations of the spheres of reality that can be reflected by art. In their desire to show all the contradictory versatility of life, to connect its most diverse aspects, the romantics turn to Shakespeare as an aesthetic ideal.
The dispute with the aesthetics of classicism, going in different directions and with varying degrees of severity, also characterizes the literary movement in other countries (in England, Germany, Poland, Italy, and very clearly in Russia).
One of the most important incentives for the development of progressive romanticism was the national liberation movement awakened by the French Revolution, on the one hand, and the Napoleonic Wars, on the other. It gave rise to such valuable aspirations of romanticism as interest in national history, the heroism of popular movements, the national element and folk art. All this inspired the struggle for national opera in Germany (Weber) and determined the revolutionary-patriotic orientation of romanticism in Italy, Poland, and Hungary.
The romantic movement that swept the countries of Western Europe and the development of national romantic schools in the first half of the 19th century gave an unprecedented impetus to the collection, study and artistic development of folklore - literary and musical. German romantic writers, continuing the traditions of Herder and the Sturmers, collected and published monuments of folk art - songs, ballads, fairy tales. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the collection “The Wonderful Horn of the Boy,” compiled by L. I. Arnim and C. Brentano, for the further development of German poetry and music. In music, this influence extends throughout the 19th century, right up to the song cycles and symphonies of Mahler. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, collectors of folk tales, did a lot to study German mythology and medieval literature, laying the foundation for scientific German studies.
In the field of development of Scottish folklore, the great merits of W. Scott, the Polish - A. Mickiewicz and J. Slovacki. In musical folkloristics, which was at the cradle of its development at the beginning of the 19th century, the names of composers G. I. Vogler (teacher of K. M. Weber) in Germany, O. Kohlberg in Poland, A. Horvath in Hungary, etc. are put forward.
It is known what fertile soil folk music provided for such clearly national composers as Weber, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms. Appeal to this “inexhaustible treasury of melodies” (Schumann), a deep comprehension of the spirit of folk music, genre and intonation principles determined the power of artistic generalization, democracy, and the enormous universal impact of the art of these romantic musicians.

Like any artistic movement, romanticism is based on a specific creative method peculiar to it, the principles of artistic reflection of reality, approach to it, and understanding of it, typical for this movement. These principles are determined by the artist’s worldview, his position in relation to contemporary social processes (although, of course, the connection between the artist’s worldview and creativity is by no means direct).
Without touching on the essence of the romantic method for now, we note that certain aspects of it find expression in later (relative to the movement) historical periods. However, going beyond the specific historical direction, it would be more accurate to talk about romantic traditions, continuity, influences, or about romance as an expression of a certain elevated emotional tone associated with a thirst for beauty, with the desire to “live tenfold life”
So, for example, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the revolutionary romanticism of early Gorky flared up in Russian literature; the romance of dreams, poetic fantasy determines the originality of A. Green’s work and finds its expression in the early Paustovsky. In Russian music of the early 20th century, the features of romanticism, which at this stage merged with symbolism, marked the work of Scriabin and the early Myaskovsky. In this regard, it is worth recalling Blok, who believed that symbolism is “connected with romanticism more deeply than all other movements.”

In Western European music, the line of development of romanticism in the 19th century was continuous until such late manifestations as Bruckner’s last symphonies, Mahler’s early work (late 80s-90s), and some symphonic poems by R. Strauss (“Death and Enlightenment” , 1889; “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, 1896) and others.
Many factors usually appear in the characteristics of the artistic method of romanticism, but they cannot give an exhaustive definition. There is debate about whether it is even possible to give a general definition of the method of romanticism, because, indeed, it is necessary to take into account not only the opposing trends in romanticism, but also the specifics of the art form, time, national school, and creative individuality.
And yet, I think, it is possible to generalize the most essential features of the romantic method as a whole, otherwise it would be impossible to talk about it as a method at all1. It is very important to take into account the complex of defining features, since, taken separately, they may be present in another creative method.
Belinsky has a general definition of the two most essential aspects of the romantic method. “In its closest and most essential meaning, romanticism is nothing more than the inner world of a person’s soul, the innermost life of his heart,” writes Belinsky, noting the subjective and lyrical nature of romanticism, its psychological orientation. Developing this definition, the critic clarifies: “Its sphere, as we said, is the entire inner soulful life of a person, that mysterious soil of the soul and heart, from where all vague aspirations for the better and sublime rise, trying to find satisfaction in the ideals created by fantasy.” This is one of the main features of romanticism.
Another fundamental feature of it is defined by Belinsky as “a deep internal discord with reality.” II, although Belinsky gave a sharply critical shade to the last definition (the desire of the romantics to go “past life”), he puts the right emphasis on the conflictual perception of the world by the romantics, the principle of contrasting the desired and the actual, caused by the conditions of the very social life of the top era.
Similar provisions were found earlier in Hegel: “The world of the soul triumphs over the external world. and as a result, the sensory phenomenon is devalued.” Hegel notes the gap between desire and action, the “longing of the soul for the ideal” instead of action and implementation4.
It is interesting that A. V. Schlegel came to a similar characterization of romanticism, but from a different perspective. Comparing ancient and modern art, he defined Greek poetry as the poetry of joy and possession, capable of concretely expressing the ideal, and romantic poetry as the poetry of melancholy and longing, unable to embody the ideal in its desire for the infinite5. From this follows the difference in the character of the hero: the ancient ideal of man is internal harmony, the romantic hero is internal duality.
So, the desire for the ideal and the gap between dream and reality, dissatisfaction with the existing and the expression of a positive principle through images of the ideal, the desired - another important feature of the romantic method.
The promotion of the subjective factor constitutes one of the defining differences between romanticism and realism. Romanticism “hypertrophied the individual, the individual, and gave universality to his inner world, tearing him away from the objective world,” writes Soviet literary critic B. Suchkov
However, one should not elevate the subjectivity of the romantic method to an absolute and deny its ability to generalize and typify, that is, ultimately, to objectively reflect reality. The very interest of the romantics in history is significant in this regard. “Romanticism not only reflected the changes that occurred after the revolution in public consciousness. Sensing and conveying the mobility of life, its variability, as well as the mobility of human feelings, changing with the changes taking place in the world, romanticism inevitably resorted to history when defining and comprehending the prospects for social progress.”
The setting and background of action appear brightly and in a new way in romantic art, constituting, in particular, a very important expressive element of the musical image of many romantic composers, starting with Hoffmann, Schubert and Weber.

The conflictual perception of the world by the romantics is expressed in the principle of polar antitheses, or “two worlds.” It is expressed in polarity, two-dimensionality of dramatic contrasts (real - fantastic, man - the world around him), in a sharp comparison of aesthetic categories (sublime and everyday, beautiful and terrible, tragic and comic, etc.). It is necessary to emphasize the antinomies of romantic aesthetics itself, in which not only deliberate antitheses operate, but also internal contradictions - contradictions between its materialistic and idealistic elements. This refers, on the one hand, to the sensualism of the romantics, attention to the sensory-material concreteness of the world (this is strongly expressed in music), and on the other hand, the desire for some ideal absolute, abstract categories - “eternal humanity” (Wagner), “eternal femininity” "(Leaf). Romantics strive to reflect the concreteness, individual uniqueness of life phenomena and at the same time their “absolute” essence, often understood in an abstract-idealistic sense. The latter is especially characteristic of literary romanticism and its theory. Life and nature appear here as a reflection of the “infinite,” the fullness of which can only be guessed by the inspired feeling of the poet.
Philosophers and theorists of romanticism consider music to be the most romantic of all arts precisely because, in their opinion, it “has as its subject only the infinite”1. Philosophy, literature and music, as never before, united with each other (a striking example of this is the work of Wagner). Music took one of the leading places in the aesthetic concepts of such idealist philosophers as Schelling, the Schlegel brothers, and Schopenhauer2. However, if literary and philosophical romanticism was most affected by the idealistic theory of art as a reflection of the “infinite”, “divine”, “absolute”, in music we will find, on the contrary, the objectivity of “image”, unprecedented before the romantic era, determined by the characteristic, sound-painted colorfulness of images . The approach to music as a “sensual realization of thought”3 is at the heart of Wagner’s aesthetic principles, who, contrary to his literary predecessors, affirms the sensual concreteness of the musical image.
In assessing life phenomena, romantics are characterized by hyperbolization, expressed in the sharpening of contrasts, in a gravitation towards the exceptional, unusual. “The ordinary is the death of art,” proclaims Hugo. However, in contrast to this, another romantic—Schubert—speaks with his music about “man as he is.” Therefore, to generalize, it is necessary to distinguish at least two types of romantic hero. One of them is an exceptional hero, towering above ordinary people, an internally divided tragic thinker, who often comes to music out of fear; literary works or epics: Faust, Manfred, Childe Harold, Wotan. It is characteristic of mature and especially late musical romanticism (Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner). The other is a simple person who deeply feels life, closely connected with the life and nature of his native land. Such is the hero of Schubert, Mendelssohn, partly Schumann, Brahms. Romantic affectation is contrasted here with sincerity, simplicity, and naturalness.
Equally different is the embodiment of nature, its very understanding in romantic art, which devoted enormous space to the theme of nature in its cosmic, natural-philosophical, and, on the other hand, lyrical aspect. Nature is majestic and fantastic in the works of Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner and intimate, hidden in Schubert’s vocal cycles or in Schumann’s miniatures. These differences are also manifested in musical language: the songfulness of Schubert and the pathetically elevated, oratorical melodicism of Liszt or Wagner.
But no matter how different the types of heroes, the range of images, the language, in general, romantic art is distinguished by special attention to the individual, a new approach to it. The problem of the individual in its conflict with the environment is fundamental to romanticism. This is precisely what Gorky emphasizes when he says that the main theme of literature of the 19th century was “the individual in its opposition to society, the state, and nature,” “the drama of a person to whom life seems cramped.” Belinsky writes about this in connection with Byron: “This is a human personality, indignant against the common and, in its proud rebellion, leaning on itself”2. With great dramatic force, the romantics expressed the process of alienation of the human personality in bourgeois society. Romanticism illuminated new aspects of the human psyche. He embodied personality in its most intimate, psychologically multifaceted manifestations. The romantics, due to the revelation of their individuality, appear to be more complex and contradictory than in the art of classicism.

Romantic art generalized many typical phenomena of its era, especially in the field of human spiritual life. In different versions and solutions, the “confession of the son of the century” is embodied in romantic literature and music - sometimes elegiac, like Musset, sometimes heightened to the point of grotesque (Berlioz), sometimes philosophical (Liszt, Wagner), sometimes passionately rebellious (Schumann) or modest and at the same time tragic (Schubert). But in each of them the leitmotif of unfulfilled aspirations sounds, “the melancholy of human desires,” as Wagner said, caused by the rejection of bourgeois reality and the thirst for “true humanity.” The lyrical drama of personality essentially turns into a social theme.
The central point in romantic aesthetics was the idea of ​​a synthesis of arts, which played a huge positive role in the development of artistic thinking. In contrast to classicist aesthetics, romantics argue that not only are there no uncrossable boundaries between the arts, but, on the contrary, there are deep connections and commonality. “The aesthetics of one art is also the aesthetics of another; only the material is different,” wrote Schumann4. He saw in F. Rückert “the greatest musician of words and thoughts” and strove in his songs to “convey the thoughts of the poem almost word for word”2. In his piano cycles, Schumann introduced not only the spirit of romantic poetry, but also forms, compositional techniques - contrasts, interruption of narrative plans, characteristic of Hoffmann's short stories. II, on the contrary, in Hoffmann’s literary works one can feel “the birth of poetry from the spirit of music”3.
Romantics of different directions come to the idea of ​​a synthesis of arts from opposite positions. For some, mainly philosophers and theorists of romanticism, it arises on an idealistic basis, on the idea of ​​art as an expression of the universe, the absolute, that is, a certain unified and infinite essence of the world. For others, the idea of ​​synthesis arises as a result of the desire to expand the boundaries of the content of an artistic image, to reflect life in all its multifaceted manifestations, that is, essentially, on a real basis. This is the position, the creative practice of the greatest artists of the era. Putting forward the well-known thesis about theater as a “concentrated mirror of life,” Hugo argued: “Everything that exists in history, in life, in man, should and can find its reflection in it (in the theater. - N.N.), but only with the help of the magic wand of art."
The idea of ​​a synthesis of arts is closely connected with the interpenetration of various genres—epic, drama, lyric poetry—and aesthetic categories (sublime, comic, etc.). The ideal of modern literature becomes “drama that fuses in one breath the grotesque and the sublime, the terrible and the clownish, tragedy and comedy.”
In music, the idea of ​​a synthesis of arts was especially actively and consistently developed in the field of opera. The aesthetics of the creators of German romantic opera - Hoffmann and Weber, and the reform of Wagner's musical drama are based on this idea. On the same basis (synthesis of arts) the program music of the romantics developed, such a major achievement of the musical culture of the 19th century as program symphonism.
Thanks to this synthesis, the expressive sphere of music itself expanded and enriched. For the premise about the primacy of the word, poetry in a synthetic work does not at all lead to a secondary, complementary function of music. On the contrary, in the works of Weber, Wagner, Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann, music was the most powerful and effective factor, capable in its own way, in its “natural” forms, of embodying what literature and painting bring with it. “Music is the sensual realization of thought” - this thesis of Wagner has a broad meaning. Here we come to the problem of second-order s and n-thesis, an internal synthesis based on the new quality of musical imagery in romantic art. With their creativity, the romantics showed that music itself, expanding its aesthetic boundaries, is capable of embodying not only a generalized feeling, mood, idea, but also “translating” into its own language with minimal help from words or even without it, images of literature and painting, recreating the course of development of literary plot, to be colorful, picturesque, capable of creating a vivid characterization, a portrait “sketch” (remember the amazing accuracy of Schumann’s musical portraits) and at the same time not losing its fundamental property of an expresser of feelings.
This was realized not only by great musicians, but also by writers of that era. Noting the unlimited possibilities of music in revealing the human psyche, Georges Sand, for example, wrote that music “recreates even the appearance of things, without falling into petty sound effects or into a narrow imitation of the noises of reality.”i. The desire to speak and paint with music was the main thing for the creator of the romantic program symphony of Berlioz, about which Sollertinsky so vividly said: “Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, street battles, orgies of bandits, philosophical monologues of a lonely thinker, the vicissitudes of a secular love story, storms and thunderstorms, riotous fun carnival crowds, performances of farce comedians, funerals of revolution heroes, funeral speeches full of pathos - Berlioz strives to translate all this into the language of music.” At the same time, Berlioz did not attach such a decisive meaning to the word as it might seem at first glance. “I don’t believe that in terms of strength and power of expression, such arts as painting and even poetry could be equal to music!” - said the composer3. Without this internal synthesis of musical, literary and pictorial principles in the musical work itself, there would not have been Liszt’s program symphony, his philosophical musical poem.
The synthesis of expressive and figurative principles, new in comparison with the classical style, appears in musical romanticism at all its stages as one of the specific features. In Schubert's songs, the piano part creates the mood and “outlines” the setting of the action, using the possibilities of musical painting and sound recording. Vivid examples of this are “Margarita at the Spinning Wheel”, “The Forest Tsar”, many of the songs of “The Beautiful Miller’s Woman”, “Winter Retreat”. One of the striking examples of precise and laconic sound recording is the piano part of “The Double.” Picturesque storytelling is characteristic of Schubert's instrumental music, especially his symphony in C major, sonata in B major, and fantasy “The Wanderer.” Schumann’s piano music is permeated with a subtle “sound recording of moods”; it is no coincidence that Stasov saw him as a brilliant portrait painter.

Chopin, like Schubert, alien to literary programming, in his ballads and fantasies in f-minor creates a new type of instrumental drama, which reflects the diversity of content, dramatic action and picturesque imagery characteristic of a literary ballad.
Based on the dramaturgy of antitheses, free and synthetic musical forms arise, characterized by the isolation of contrasting sections within a one-part composition and the continuity and unity of the general line of ideological and figurative development
We are talking, in essence, about the romantic qualities of sonata dramaturgy, a new understanding and application of its dialectical capabilities. In addition to these features, it is important to emphasize the romantic variability of the image, its transformation. The dialectical contrasts of sonata dramaturgy acquired a new meaning among the romantics. They reveal the duality of the romantic worldview, the above-mentioned principle of “two worlds.” This is expressed in the polarity of contrasts, often created by transforming one image (for example, the single substance of Faustian and Mephistophelian principles in Liszt). What is at work here is the factor of a sharp leap, a sudden change (even distortion) of the entire essence of the image, and not the pattern of its development and change, due to the growth of its qualities in the process of interaction of contradictory principles, as in the classics, and above all in Beethoven.
The conflict dramaturgy of the romantics is characterized by its own, which has become typical, direction of development of images - an unprecedented dynamic growth of a bright lyrical image (a side party) and a subsequent dramatic breakdown, a sudden interruption of the line of its development by the invasion of a formidable, tragic beginning. The typicality of such a “situation” becomes obvious if we recall Schubert’s symphony in B minor, Chopin’s sonata in B minor, especially his ballads, the most dramatic works of Tchaikovsky, who with new strength as a realist artist embodied the idea of ​​​​the conflict between dreams and reality, the tragedy of unfulfilled aspirations in conditions of a cruel reality hostile to man. Of course, one type of romantic drama is highlighted here, but the type is very significant and typical.
Another type of dramaturgy" - evolutionary - is associated among the romantics with the subtle nuance of the image, the disclosure of its multifaceted psychological shades and details. The main principle of development here is melodic, harmonic, timbre variation, which does not change the essence of the image, the nature of its genre, but shows deep, outwardly barely perceptible processes of mental life, their constant movement, changes, transitions.The song symphony born by Schubert with its lyrical nature is based on this principle.

The originality of Schubert’s method was well defined by Asafiev: “In contrast to the sharply dramatic formation, there are those works (symphonies, sonatas, overtures, symphonic poems) in which a widely developed lyrical song line (not a general theme, but a line) generalizes and smoothes out the constructive sections of the sonata-symphonic allegro. Wave-like rises and falls, dynamic gradations, “swelling” and rarefaction of tissue - in a word, the manifestation of organic life in this kind of “song” sonatas take precedence over oratorical pathos, over sudden contrasts, over dramatic dialogue and the rapid disclosure of ideas. Schubert's Great B-c1ig sonata is a typical example of this trend.”

Not all essential features of the Romantic method and aesthetics can be found in every art form.
If we talk about music, then romantic aesthetics received its most direct expression in opera, as a genre especially closely related to literature. Here, such specific ideas of romanticism are developed as the ideas of fate, redemption, overcoming the curse weighing on the hero, through the power of selfless love (“Freischütz”, “The Flying Dutchman”, “Tannhäuser”). The opera reflects the very plot basis of romantic literature, the opposition of the real and fantastic worlds. It is here that the fantasy inherent in romantic art and the elements of subjective idealism characteristic of literary romanticism are especially manifested. At the same time, in opera, for the first time, poetry of a folk-national character, cultivated by the romantics, flourishes so brightly.
In instrumental music, a romantic approach to reality is manifested, bypassing the plot (if it is a non-programmatic composition), in the general ideological concept of the work, in the nature of its dramaturgy, embodied emotions, and in the peculiarities of the psychological structure of images. The emotional and psychological tone of romantic music is distinguished by a complex and changeable range of shades, heightened expression, and the unique brightness of each experienced moment. This is embodied in the expansion and individualization of the intonational sphere of romantic melody, in the intensification of the colorful and expressive functions of harmony. The discoveries of romantics in the field of orchestra and instrumental timbres are inexhaustible.
Expressive means, musical “speech” itself and its individual components acquire independent, vividly individual, and sometimes exaggerated development among the romantics1. The importance of phonism itself, colorfulness, and characteristic sound is increasing enormously, especially in the field of harmonic and textural-timbre means. The concepts of not only leitmotif appear, but also leitharmony (for example, the stristan chord in Wagner), leittimbre (one of the striking examples is the symphony “Harold in Italy” by Berlioz).

The proportional relationship between the elements of musical language, observed in the classical style, gives way to a tendency towards autonomy (this tendency will be exaggerated in the music of the 20th century). On the other hand, the romantics intensify synthesis - the connection between the components of the whole, mutual enrichment, mutual influence of expressive means. New types of melody emerge, born from harmony, and, conversely, harmony is melodized, saturated with non-chord tones that intensify melodic tendencies. A classic example of a mutually enriching synthesis of melody and harmony is the style of Chopin, about which, to paraphrase the words of R. Rolland about Beethoven, we can say that this is the absolute of melody, filled to the brim with harmony.
The interaction of opposing tendencies (autonomization and synthesis) covers all spheres - both musical language and the form of the romantics, who created new Liubi of free and synthetic forms on the basis of sonatas.
Comparing musical romanticism with literary romanticism in their meaning for our time, it is important to emphasize the special vitality and unfading of the first. After all, romanticism is especially strong in expressing the richness of emotional life, and this is precisely what music is most capable of. Therefore, the differentiation of romanticism not only by trends and national schools, but also by types of art is an important methodological point in revealing the problem of romanticism and in its assessment.