Creative history of the novel "Fathers and Sons". Creative history

Nathan Eidelman The creative history of the “Queen of Spades” Magazine “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER” Issue 11/2004. Nathan Eidelman quickly burst into our literature, into our historical science, moreover, in our social and spiritual life, and even more so, in privacy each of us, in

Chapter 1. My story, your story, our story (disgusting, but true)

Chapter 1: My Story, Your Story, Our Story (disgusting, but that's how it is) This book could save your life, no, not like a life preserver, but by giving you the information you need. You may have noticed that the title says “live food for health”, but it’s about

The creative history of the work is the process of creating a literary work from conception to implementation to the final text, as well as scientific description this process. IN modern literary criticism The creative history of a work is also called the genesis of the text, dynamic poetics. Knowledge of the creative history of a work is the most important criterion for the objectivity of reading and a guideline in the many interpretations with which the work “acquires” in the process of its functioning. How ancient monument literature, the less reliable evidence there is about it and its author, the more hypothetical the creative history of the work is. When studying works medieval literature, in particular, Old Russian, in most cases anonymous and created in accordance with the established genre and stylistic canons, textual criticism data are an invaluable help; hence the importance of a thorough study of the manuscript, lists, variants, and editions of monuments.

As a type of scientific research, the creative history of the work was substantiated in the 1920s by N.K. Piksanov, who considered it necessary to consider such materials related to the work as written and oral auto-testimonies recorded in letters, diaries, memoirs of contemporaries, as well as plans, sketches, rough and white autographs, lists, proof sheets, lifetime and printed editions. By comparing the initial and subsequent lists, reflecting the progress of work on the work, it is possible to reconstruct the evolution of the main idea, the “overall constructive intentionality.” The possibility and necessity of taking into account all factors in the creative history of a work depends on the specific features of the text being studied. There are a number of difficulties here associated with the terminological vagueness of the concepts of “influence” and “similarity”. The issue related to prototypes and proto-plots and, as Piksanov pointed out, is resolved unambiguously: if there is no direct authorial evidence of the prototypes, this issue is excluded from the creative history of the work. At the same time, it can be central to research seeking to establish prototypes of known literary heroes using indirect data. By various reasons the creative history of a work is not always established by direct documentation. It happens that an artist’s idea is hatched in his head and poured out onto paper immediately final version. Thus, according to P.N. Medvedev, “The Stranger” (1906) by A. Blok, the draft of which remained almost without revisions, “has no history” (“Blok’s dramas and poems: From the history of their creation”).

The study of the creative history of the work dough is connected with textual criticism and is based on its data, so the question arises about their relationship and delimitation. Textual criticism, tracing the history of the formation of the text, substantiating the main one and accompanying it with the necessary real-historical commentary, presents it as a model, a standard for replication. The creative history of a work, based on the history of the text, ideally gives the history of the creation of the entire work as a whole. Sometimes it is difficult to determine what relates to the creative history of a work and what to textual criticism, attribution, and linguistic stylistics. Piksanov considered the decisive factor here to be the presence of elements of analysis and generalization in a work that claims to be the creative history of a work. Textual data and descriptions of manuscripts are not included in it, but serve as source material for it. Piksanov’s “teleogenetic method” involved studying, first of all, the immediate, contemporary factors that influenced the work. But the creative history of the work can be viewed in a broader context. historical poetics. In this case, the basis for reconstruction author's intention it turns out that the genealogy of a work is infinitely extended; we are no longer talking so much about prototypes (in life and in literature) as about archetypes. This approach cannot but rely on the achievements of both scientific schools of the 19th century and trends of the 20th century, focused on genetic problems, issues of intertextual connections, or intertextuality, etc.

Style

One of the main features of Goncharov’s style is the change of image plans - points of view, as well as their interaction and synthesis.

IN " Ordinary history"The author used many options psychological point vision. This fully applies to the main character. An image of the external plan of the image of Alexander Aduev is presented using the following techniques: objective non-judgmental narration; objective evaluative narrative; the hero's position is clarified in his statements; the external plan of the hero is revealed by the “all-seeing” narrator; direct speech; portrait descriptions. The internal plan of the image of Alexander Aduev includes: the author’s presentation using verbs of the internal state (thought, felt, sensed); internal monologues; indirect and direct speech. The image plans in the novel are characterized by diversity and many relationships, which also determines the composition of the novel.

The next significant feature of Goncharov’s style is the rhythm of the narrative. The rhythm of “Ordinary History” is set by the confrontation between St. Petersburg and the provinces. Pace metropolitan life emphatically tense, strictly measured, based on rational goal setting and bound by linear time. The pace of provincial life in Rooks is slow and eventful, as it is associated with cyclical time. At the narrative level, dialogues rhythmically alternate with the author's word.

You can notice the relationship between the character of the hero and his speech. The speech of Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev is distinguished by neutral or ironic intonation, measured pace, clear, logically verified syntax, which corresponds to his personality type. Alexander’s speech is replete with emotionally expressive intonation, bookish rhetoric, abundance literary quotes, accelerated pace, ornate syntactic structures.

ROMAN "OBLOMOV"

The history of the creation and publication of the novel “Oblomov” is exhaustively recreated by L. S. Geiro. The idea of ​​Goncharov's trilogy arose in 1845 - 1846. In the spring of 1849, “Oblomov's Dream” - “overture” - was published. Materials published by the researcher indicate that by the fall of 1849, sketches for the first part were made. The work did not progress further for eight years. Goncharov expressed a desire to publish the completed fragment, but there was no talk of a continuation.

According to the original plan, the novel was defined as “physiology”. The object of analysis should have been not so much the type of couch potato landowner, but rather the phenomenon that gave rise to it. The future work was to be called “Oblomovshchina”. The author intended to develop the narrative from the general to the specific.

In the process of work, Goncharov felt that the “lazy image of Oblomov” is not only a phenomenon of a social order, that he absorbs “little by little the elementary properties of the Russian person,” that is, the problem develops into an archetypal one. It sounds in full in “Oblomov’s Dream,” which was later called “the overture of the entire novel.” It is quite obvious that the “physiological” framework for the author turned out to be narrow. “Oblomov’s Dream” determined the leitmotif of the entire symphony. The “type” hero was supposed to become an “idealist” hero.

But the search for a path to such a metamorphosis dragged on painfully; Goncharov already believed that there was no need to continue the novel. In 1857 he went to Marienbad for the waters, where he felt a surge of creative energy and the previous hopelessly frozen idea was transformed into a new one in seven weeks. Three parts of the novel were written. The author takes his hero out of the dusty apartment into space perfect love. The text gradually freed itself from the signs of style " natural school" After all, by the end of the 50s. this direction no longer determined the literary process.

In 1859, the novel “Oblomov” was published in the journal “Otechestvennye zapiski”. Critics gave the work mixed reviews. An attempt at an archetypal interpretation of the image of Oblomov is made in their articles by A. V. Druzhinin and A. A. Grigoriev. A narrow social, ideological interpretation of the image is given by N. A. Dobrolyubov and D. I. Pisarev. Dobrolyubov in his article draws attention to social status the hero, on his “three hundred Zakharovs”, which contribute to the development of laziness and passivity. However, the most important thing escapes the attention of the critic - the complex and contradictory life of the spirit of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov.

The famous historian V. O. Klyuchevsky gives the following interpretation of Oblomovism: “Oblomov’s mood or life understanding, personal or mass, is characterized by three dominant features: this is 1) a tendency to bring into the field moral relations an aesthetic element, replacing the idea of ​​duty with the tendency of pleasure, exchanging the commandment of truth for institutional dreams of muslin happiness; 2) idle killing of time for the lazy and careless inventing of social theories, divorced from all reality, from existing conditions, from any historically established and rationally conceivable community of life; and 3) as a well-deserved punishment for both of these sinful characteristics, loss of hunting..., with complete weakness of will and with a neurasthenic aversion to work and activity, but with the preservation of purity of heart and nobility of spirit, protected by idleness and lack of will.”

Literary studies of the twentieth century. continued to interpret the novel in the spirit of Pisarev-Dobrolyubov.

Modern researchers propose to consider the concept of Oblomov’s image as an archetypal image in the classical, Jungian understanding of the word. This tradition goes back to the first critical responses to Goncharov's novel, when the concept of archetype was not yet associated with Jung's experience. The connection between Oblomov’s image and the world of folklore, mythology, and the Russian Middle Ages is obvious, and perhaps Goncharov himself unconsciously turned to these traditions.

The process of creating a literary work - from conception to implementation to the final text, as well as the scientific description of this process, is called differently: the genesis of the text, dynamic poetics and, more traditionally, creative history.

Biography is considered as a fact of history, and the creation of a work is considered as a fact of biography. Knowledge historical context helps to understand the writer’s work as a whole and evaluate the merits of this work.

The focus is on the mythological (Ya. and V. Grimm, M. Miller, F.I. Buslaev, etc.), cultural and historical (I. Ten, A.N. Pypin, N.S. Tikhonravov, etc.), Comparative-historical (T. Benfey, A.N. Veselovsky, etc.) schools remained folklore, literary tradition, and not the creative will of the author.

To understand the originality of a work, it is important to know the tradition, in particular the genre. Bakhtin: “the work has its roots in the distant past. Great works of literature take centuries to prepare; in the era of their creation, only the ripe fruits of a long and complex ripening process are harvested.” Creative history is only part of the genesis of a work; it should be distinguished from much more broad concept genesis.

Interest in “personal creativity” comes to the fore creative individuality the author and, accordingly, the history of the work he created, the sources of which could be heterogeneous, often borrowed. So, to recreate the creative history of many works of the XVIII V. it is necessary to establish literary sources and influences. The problem remains relevant in the future (for example, Pushkin “The History of the Village of Goryukhin”).

Various literary approaches to the work recognize to varying degrees the need to study creative history.

This aspect of research was given important direction in the 19th century. psychological school in Russian literary criticism and the biographical direction in the West (biographical dictionaries appear in Russia).

In the 20th century under the influence of the ideas of S. Freud and C. Jung, many biographical studies are at the same time psychoanalytic (among Russian writers, they especially wrote about Dostoevsky in this vein).

Sociological school V.F. Pereverzeva contrasted the “simple” path from a work to the writer’s biography with a “difficult” research path “through a poetic text” to the “being” of the class and the psychology that grew on this soil. The writer depicted various variants of class psychology in his work. In this context, it is natural to be indifferent to biographical facts that are not of sociological interest.

According to the theory of the formal school, structuralism, a work is autonomous, independent of the biography of its creator. Researchers study the inherent properties of the text, leaving aside the history of its creation and the biography of the author.

In Anglo-American literary criticism there are historical direction, whose representatives “consider the work against the background of the circumstances and facts of the life of its author and time.”

In Soviet literary criticism of the 1920s, the creative history of a work as type of scientific research received detailed justification in the works of N.K. Piksanov “The New Path of Literary Science” and “The Creative History of “Woe from Wit”. He considered the reconstruction of creative history to be the basis of the genetic study of literature. Piksanov believes that it is not enough to rely on the data of the final text, and proposes to consider other materials related to the work: written and oral auto-testimonies recorded in letters, diaries, memoirs of contemporaries, as well as plans, sketches, rough and white autographs, lists, proofs sheets, lifetime and printed editions. The researcher must reconstruct the evolution of the underlying design, the “overall design intentionality.” It was recommended to use both the biography of the writer, various types comments (literary, real, historical), and explore the evolution of the language of the work, its verse, metrics, plot, composition. Those. the researcher must inevitably touch upon how it is “made” and vice versa.

By the time Piksanov put forward this method (“telogenetic method”) in domestic literary criticism a crisis emerged: literature was given the role of illustration public life. The reaction to this devaluation of art was the formal method.

Piksanov’s method still had limitations: it was applied to the nearest, modern work factors that influenced it.

But creative history can also be considered in the broader context of the genesis of a work in general, in the context of historical poetics. In this case, the basis for reconstruction author's creativity it turns out to be an infinitely extended pedigree of the work. We are no longer talking so much about prototypes (in life and literature) as about archetypes. This approach cannot but rely on the achievements of both scientific schools of the 19th century. (mentioned above), as well as the trends of the twentieth century, focused on genetic issues (sociogenetic, psychoanalytic directions, post-structuralism, with an important issue for it about intertextual connections, or intertextuality, etc.)

For Piksanov, creative history was primarily the history of the text, as well as the identification of life and literary facts that had a direct impact on the writer and his work. The experience of this interpretation is presented by him in the book “The Creative History of “Woe from Wit.” The scientist shows the history of the comedy text from legends about early editions to the first printed text. This establishes the canonical text of the play. In the section devoted to the creative history of comedy itself, Piksanov states the dynamics of style in the course of revisions from book language to living speech, traces the evolution of images, the “evolution of the ideological nature of the play” (considers the “first outline” of the comedy, its rough draft, comments on everyday, historical, sets out the “composition of ideology” according to the final text). As a result, he comes to the conclusion that ideological plan formed at an early stage of work, before the poet’s meetings with the Decembrists.

Comparison of different editions and variants of one work, in addition, clarifies individual scenes, episodes, actions of heroes, the reasons for which are not always obvious due to the fact that the author, in the process of revision, for some reason eliminates individual remarks and actions in a later text .

The reconstruction of creative history is closely related to textual criticism and is necessarily based on its data. Therefore, the question arises about the relationship and delimitation of the tasks of creative history and textual criticism, which studies the same materials. Textual criticism, tracing the history of the formation of the text, substantiating the main text and accompanying it with the necessary real-historical commentary, presents it as sample, standard for replication. Creative history, based on the history of the text, ideally gives history of creation the entire work as a whole. When it is difficult to determine what belongs to creative history and what to textual criticism, Piksanov proposed to consider the presence of “at least elements of analysis and generalization” in a work claiming to be creative history.

Knowledge of the creative history of a work is the most important criterion for the objectivity of reading and a guideline in the many interpretations with which the work “acquires” in the process of its functioning. The author’s work on a work reveals his intentionality, creative will, that aspect of literary activity that actively influences the reader.

Exploring creative history classical works that have stood the test of time is the most important task of literary criticism. The older a piece of literature is, the less reliable evidence there is about it and its author, the more hypothetical its creative history is. When studying works of medieval literature, in particular Old Russian, in most cases anonymous and created in accordance with established genre and stylistic canons, textual criticism data are an invaluable aid. Borrowing, variation, repetition of the same plots, characters, verbal formulas, etc. was the norm in the era of traditionalism.

For the creative history of works realistic literature data about proto-plots and prototypes of heroes is important. For example, it is known that true incidents underlie the plots of Pushkin’s “Dubrovsky,” Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” Turgenev’s “Rudin,” and Dostoevsky’s “Demons.”

Many lyrical miniatures also have a creative history. There are cases when they underwent significant changes in preparation not only for the first, but also for later editions. These changes could contribute to the most complete and vivid embodiment of the author’s intentions, but could, on the contrary, obscure them under the pressure of various circumstances (censorship, editing, fundamental changes in the worldview of the poet himself). For example, the editorial participation of I.S. Turgenev in some editions of poems by his friend-poets F.I. Tyutchev (1854) and A.A. Fet (1856) significantly distorted the texts, so it is necessary to turn to earlier, author’s editions that express the musical, emotional character of Fet’s lyrics, the originality of Tyutchev’s versification.

The possibility and necessity of taking into account all factors in creative history depends on the specific features of the work being studied. There are a number of difficulties here associated with the terminological vagueness of the concepts of “influence” and “similarity”.

For various reasons, creative history is not always established by direct documentation (as is the case with the comedy “Woe from Wit”). It happens that an artist’s idea is hatched in his head and poured out onto paper immediately in its final version (for example, “The Stranger” by Blok). But most major works has rich history text, revisions, variants, printing (Turgenev - “formular lists”: conventional biographies of his heroes, detailed plans for novels).

To understand the author’s intent of a work, facts of its external history may be important: the history of reprints, censorship interventions, editors, reviews of the author and literary professionals, connections with the writer’s biography, etc.

(“Introduction to Literary Studies” edited by L.V. Chernets).

Previously, works were first published in parts in different magazines. Publication in a particular journal helps to understand the author’s intentions (each journal has its own editorial board with its own position).

The reaction of contemporaries immediately after publication is of great importance. “Contemporaries feel very well the unwritten rules characteristic of a given era,” feel innovation, but often react negatively (for example, “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by Pushkin - the poem used to be heroic, on a topic important for the state, Chekhov’s stories - they thought that they are anti-art). Every work has a reputation. Tracing the formation of this reputation is the task of literary history. It is important to understand why some writer was not accepted, and someone was overestimated. Often writers were not accepted because they were ahead of their time and wrote the way they would write after them. Sometimes the picture is the opposite: there is no time for oblivion popular writer. For example, in the 30-40s. XIX century Bulgarin was very popular. As a rule, such authors belong to mass literature(it is believed that mass litera appeared in Russia in the 17th century, when the novel genre was very popular).