Part two. Russian literature of the late XIX and 10-ies of the XX

Pushkin's estates and parks in the verses of Russian poets of the late 18th - early 20th centuries Anthology Wonderful estates and parks, where the great Pushkin lived and worked, attract more and more pilgrims every year, seeking not just to see the sights and find out what -

Russian literature XVIII- beginning of the 19th century So, you now know a lot about the development of Western European literature, about such phenomena in it as the Renaissance, classicism, baroque, sentimentalism... But what was happening at that time in Russian literature? In it

Russian literature of the early 19th century You, of course, understand that the division of the literary process into several stages is arbitrary. Many writers, having begun their creative activity in the 18th century, continued to create works after 1800, but some of them we

For what and to whom did Kudzhava pray in poems and songs of the late fifties and early sixties? Although many of Okudzhava’s creations were born at a time when the word “God” was avoided as much as possible in works of art, in his writings,

In the 2nd half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The development of realism continued. Realism does not dissociate itself from aesthetic quests; it strives - often in obvious interaction with other artistic phenomena - to be analytical, three-dimensional in its view of reality, and to its adequate artistic depiction. New forms of artistic embodiment of reality are emerging, and the range of topics and problems is expanding. So, if in realistic works of the 19th century. social and everyday life prevailed, then at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. it begins to be replaced by philosophical-intellectual, spiritual-personal issues.

A special place among artistic phenomena of the 2nd half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. neo-romanticism occupies. Rejection of reality; a strong personality, often lonely, guided in his activities by altruistic ideals; the severity of ethical issues; maximalism and romanticization of feelings, passions; tension of plot situations; priority of the expressive principle over the descriptive, emotional – over the rational; Active appeal to events of the past, legends and traditions, fantasy, grotesque, exotic, cultivation of adventure and detective stories are characteristic features of neo-romanticism, which reached its culmination of development in the 90s of the 19th century.

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

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

It was at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, when a rethinking of spiritual and aesthetic values ​​took place and previous beliefs collapsed. This entire period was characterized by widespread experimentation, when many writers became prey to one or another literary hobby. German naturalism had predecessors in France and Scandinavia. According to the philosophical and natural science theories of that time, personality was determined by heredity and environment. The humanist writer was now primarily interested in the ugly reality of industrial society, with its unresolved social problems. The most typical naturalist poet was A. Holtz (1863–1929); There were no bright discoveries in the field of the novel. However, the clashes of disparate characters, whose lack of freedom was aggravated by determinism, contributed to the emergence of a number of dramatic works that have not lost their significance. Hauptmann, who began as a naturalist and steadily expanded the scope of his creativity, provided his works with enduring literary value, up to classicism (plays on ancient subjects), in in which he is quite comparable to Goethe. The diversity inherent in Hauptmann's dramas is also found in his narrative prose. With the advent of Freud's pioneering works, the center of gravity in literature shifted from social conflicts to a more subjective exploration of the individual's reactions to his environment and himself. In 1901, A. Schnitzler (1862–1931) published the story Lieutenant Gustl, written in the form of an internal monologue, and a number of impressionistic theatrical sketches, which fused subtle psychological observations and pictures of the degradation of metropolitan society (Anatol, 1893; Round Dance, 1900). The pinnacle of poetic achievements is the work of D. Lilienkron (1844–1909) and R. Demel (1863–1920), who created a new poetic language capable of vividly expressing lyrical experience. Hofmannsthal, combining the style of impressionism with the Austrian and pan-European literary tradition, created unusually deep poems and several poetic plays(The Fool and Death, 1893). No less significant achievements took place in prose. T. Mann is the most outstanding representative of a galaxy of writers, among whom was his older brother G. Mann (1871–1950), known for his satirical and political novels.

Romanticism in German literature began as a protest against Weimar neoclassicism, which was associated with the work of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The main theoreticians of the new direction were the brothers August and Friedrich von Schlegel.

Augustus studied literature, he is the author of “Lectures on Fine Literature and Art” and “Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature” (1797 - 1810), which laid the ideological foundations of romanticism. Friedrich Schlegel wrote the novel “Lucinda” (1799).

One of the first romantics was the poet and writer Novalis, author of the poems “Hymns for the Night” (1800) and the historical novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” (1802). Members of the Heydedberg Romantic Circle, poets Ludwig von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, published a collection of German folk songs, “The Boy's Magic Horn” (1806-1808). Von Arnim is also the author of the historical novel The Guardians of the Crown (1817).

The titan of German romanticism was the poet Heinrich von Kleist, author of the comedy “The Broken Jug” (published 1811), the poems “Prince Friedrich of Homburg” (1810, published 1821) and “Kätchen of Heilbronn” (published 1810).

The rise of the democratic movement in Germany put an end to romanticism, which idealized the Middle Ages. In the 1830s, liberal writers united in the Young Germany movement, whose members began to write in the style of realism. The most significant realist was the poet Heinrich Heine, who for political reasons was forced to leave his homeland and emigrate to Paris.

In 1833, he published the book “Germany” in France, in which he introduced the French to German culture. Heine's work was distinguished by bright satire and protest against social injustice. He wrote the following poems: “Tannhäuser” (1836), “Atta Troll” (1843), “Germany. Winter's Tale" (1844).

The real flowering of German literature occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. At this time, a whole galaxy of writers and poets appeared who determined the development of German culture for decades. Austria became the epicenter of this literary Renaissance.

German symbolism is associated with the name of the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He owns the collections of poems “The Book of Images” (1902), “The Book of Hours” (1905) and the collection of short stories “The Last” (1902). Rilke was also the first to make a poetic translation into German of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

Austrian writer Franz Kafka worked in the style of expressionism. His phantasmagoric novels “The Trial” (published 1925) and “The Castle” (published 1926) became a prophecy and protest against the emerging totalitarianism.

The works of another Austrian writer Stefan Zweig are imbued with subtle psychologism. He is the author of the historical novels “Mary Stuart” (1931) and “Magellan” (1937), a series of essays “Humanity’s Finest Hours”, short stories “Amok” (1922), “Confusion of Feelings” (1927).

In the literature of Germany of this period, the work of the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann occupies a special place. Heinrich Mann is the author of the novels "Master Unrath" (1905), the trilogy "The Loyal Subject", "The Youth of King Henry IV" (1935) and "The Maturity of King Henry IV" (1937).

Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, published in 1901, brought him worldwide fame. In 1924, his novel “The Magic Mountain” was published; in 1933-1943, the writer worked on a series of novels based on the biblical story “Joseph and His Brothers”; in 1947, the novel “Doctor Faustus” was published. In 1929, Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Erich Maria Remarque literally burst into literature as the author of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), which for the first time truthfully illuminated the ruthlessness of the First World War. In 1938, he published the novel “Three Comrades,” and in 1946, his most significant work, the novel “Arc de Triomphe,” was published.

The work of the Swiss writer Hermann Hesse occupies a very special place in German literature. His most famous works are: the philosophical novels “Sidkarta” (1922), “Steppenwolf” (1927), “The Glass Bead Game” (1943). In 1946, Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize.

LITERATURE OF THE EARLY XIX century.
NOVALIS. TEAK. JEAN-PAUL RICHTER.
GELDERLIN. LATE SCHILLER. KLEIST.
HEIDELBERG ROMANTICS

In Germany, as in other European countries, the Great French Revolution caused ferment in the minds and raised many questions before every thinking German. But the political experience of the French revolutionaries was interpreted by German ideologists primarily in philosophical and aesthetic categories. The formulas and concepts used by the leaders of the Convention and the educators who preceded them (“freedom”, “equality”, “the kingdom of reason”) were, as it were, removed from the political context and transferred to a general theoretical plane. According to the logic of many German thinkers, such an interpretation of the problems of the era seemed more significant than the political ones themselves. It seemed to them that they were seeking understanding of cardinal universal human principles, while the political conflicts themselves revealed their instability and transience in the rapid change of events in France. This tendency manifested itself in German idealistic philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and in the aesthetics and creativity of the great Weimarians - Goethe and Schiller, and in the activities of the romantics. The replacement of the idea of ​​a political revolution with a program of aesthetic education by Schiller, the educational pathos of the first part of Faust (completed after the revolution in France), the famous statement of F. Schlegel, in which Fichte’s “Science”, Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister” and the French Revolution are on equal terms designated as “the greatest trends of our time” - all these are links in one chain. At the same time, F. Schlegel justified this comparison with arguments that were equally valid not only for the romantics, but also for their Weimar contemporaries: “Whoever opposes this comparison, who does not consider important a revolution that does not occur loudly and in material forms, has not risen yet to the broad horizons of the general history of mankind."

One of the most important spiritual movements of this era was romanticism. In Germany it began to take shape in the last years of the 18th century. The basic principles of romantic theory were formulated by Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) in his “Fragments”, published in the almanac “Lyceum fine arts"(1797) and in the magazine "Athenaeus" (1798); in 1797, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s book “The Heartfelt Outpourings of a Monk, Lover of the Arts” was published. In 1798, Novalis's Fragments were also published in the Athenaeum magazine. In the same years, the activities of A. V. Schlegel (1767-1845) and L. Tieck began. This group of writers received the name of the Jena school in the history of literature. The philosophy of Fichte and Schelling played an important role in the formation of romantic aesthetics.

The theorists and writers of the Jena school not only laid the foundations for a new artistic movement in German literature. They formulated principles that received wide resonance in many European literatures.

Romanticism from the very first steps declared itself as the enemy of everything frozen and dogmatic. The Romantics sought to overcome the finite in the name of the infinite. Enlightenment rationalism seemed to them to be such a manifestation of the finite, self-contained. The Schlegel brothers rejected normative aesthetics - they were characterized by a broad perception of the aesthetic values ​​of the past, the artistic discoveries of other peoples; F. Schlegel designated romantic poetry as universal. The translation practice of A. V. Schlegel was of fundamental interest. His translations (partly together with Tieck) of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Calderon constituted an era in the history of German culture. F. Schlegel studied Sanskrit, and his book “On the Language and Wisdom of the Hindus” (1808) introduced German readers to the treasures of one of the eastern cultures. It was in the first decades of the 19th century. Oriental studies as a science are taking shape, the number of translations from Arabic, Persian and other languages ​​is increasing, oriental motifs are organically included in the poetic work of both the late Goethe and the young Heine. Finally, Goethe’s concept of “world literature” undoubtedly took shape in the atmosphere of this romantic universalism, the broad appeal of the romantics to the cultural wealth of the various peoples of the West and East.

F. Schlegel, however, used the very concept of “universality” in another, deeper sense: as the ability of a romantic poet to comprehend the world in its integrity and versatility, to see the same phenomenon from different angles. Here the fundamental position of all romantic aesthetics was also embodied, according to which the poet, the creator was endowed with the most unlimited powers and possibilities (“The true poet is omniscient: he is truly the universe in a small refraction,” said Novalis). In this sense, romantic universalism was specific: it expressed, first of all, a subjective, personal attitude towards the world around us. F. Schlegel’s teaching on romantic irony is connected with this complex of ideas.

The Romantics are credited with establishing the historical approach to literature. The ideas of romantic historicism were already outlined - in many ways as a continuation of Herder's ideas - in the early work of A. V. Schlegel "Letters on Poetry, Prosody and Language" (1795) and more fully developed in his Vienna course "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature" (1808).

The Schlegel brothers' contribution to the development of the theory of genres was significant: A. V. Schlegel paid great attention to dramaturgy. His “Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature” reveal on extensive material the antithesis between ancient and modern art in different genres, characteristic of romanticism.

F. Schlegel declared the novel to be the leading genre of the modern era. The novel, in his opinion, met the requirement of universality to the greatest extent, because it was able to cover the most diverse facets of reality. In accordance with the general attitude of romanticism, which brought to the fore the personality of the artist-creator and elevated his will and imagination to the only law of art, F. Schlegel defined the novel as “an encyclopedia of the entire spiritual life of a brilliant individual.” F. Schlegel saw an example of the novel as a genre in Goethe’s novel “The Years of the Teaching of Wilhelm Meister,” to which he devoted a detailed critical review, as well as a number of fragments.

F. Schlegel also wrote the novel “Lucinda” (1799), the appearance of which was perceived by many contemporaries as a literary scandal. They were shocked by the assertion of female emancipation, which was provocative at that time, and by the disregard for the norms of the so-called “respectable” society, and, finally, by the very image of carnal love as an all-consuming passion.

An important contribution to the development of romantic aesthetics was the book “The Heartfelt Outpourings of a Monk, Lover of the Arts” by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798), dedicated mainly to painting and music. He rejects modern German art because it has lost the greatness of Raphael and the sincerity of Durer, and laments that “man has ceased to deserve the attention” of the artist: “... he is no longer thought of in art, and they prefer the empty play of colors and various kinds sophistication in their lighting."

Speaking, like other romantics, against the rational normative aesthetics of the Enlightenment and Weimar classicism, Wackenroder was one of the first to proclaim the principle of “universality,” a holistic perception of a work of art. The world for him is revealed through nature and art; it is in art that he sees the contradiction between the particular and the universal, the finite and the infinite, being overcome.

The essays and sketches of the early deceased Wackenroeder, published by Tieck in the book “Fantasies about Art for Friends of Art” (1799), outlined many lines of development of German literature: romantic universalism, anti-rationalist aspects of aesthetics and criticism, a national theme (the image of Dürer). The idea of ​​“tolerance”, the equalization in meaning of the Venus of Medicea and the many-armed idols of India prepared the concept of world literature.

Finally, Wackenroeder’s novella “The Remarkable Musical Life of the Composer Joseph Berglinger” opened a gallery of images that were programmatic not only for German but also for European romanticism - images of artists confronting the surrounding social environment, which was felt as hostile to genuine art.

A reassessment of the place and significance of music among other arts begins with Wackenroder. Goethe (and to a certain extent the entire Enlightenment) was characterized by an interest in the visual arts. Theorists of classicism saw the standard of art in ancient sculpture. Romantics, within the framework of fine art, more emphasize the principle of picturesqueness, and proclaim music to be the most romantic of the arts. It should be noted that in German art of the first half of the 19th century. It was music that was destined to win world fame.

The most prominent writer of the Jena school was Friedrich von Hardenberg, who took the literary name of Novalis (1772-1801). His short career was marked by intense searches. In the sphere of philosophy, Novalis is characterized by a movement from the subjective idealism of Fichte to pantheism, mystically colored, in certain facets in contact with the philosophy of Jacob Boehme and Schelling, but also of Spinoza and Hemsterhuys. For Novalis, nature is not just an object of philosophical contemplation, but an object of practical activity: he seriously studied geology and mining, and performed responsible work in the mining department. Therefore, Schelling’s philosophical category of nature was interpreted by him in the light of natural scientific experience. The idealist philosopher, mining engineer and poet sometimes argued with each other in it, but more often they merged into a single whole, creating the unique image of a thinker and artist. There is a well-known fragment from Novalis, in which, in the spirit of Schelling, the superiority of irrational knowledge over rational knowledge, or more precisely: imagination over scientific empirical knowledge, is asserted: “The poet comprehends nature better than the mind of a scientist.” This paradox, however, does not exhaust the essence of the matter - in fact, Novalis the poet constantly turned to Novalis the scientist, although the opposite is also possible: the poetic perception of nature also stimulated his scientific studies.

The poet's socio-political views were determined by disappointment in French Revolution, in its methods, in its results. They were reflected in the article “Christianity or Europe,” created in 1799. The article caused a sharp protest from Novalis’s colleagues in the Jena school, and they did not publish it; it was published only a quarter of a century after his death, in 1826. Novalis does not deny the progressive march of history, but he is frightened by the victory of rationalism.

Novalis, essentially, is interested not so much in social as in ethical problems. He is concerned not with how to restore the medieval empire, but with how to fill the vacuum that, in his opinion, has formed in the souls of people after the authority of religion was destroyed and the new society was unable to offer any sustainable ethical values.

Associated with a complex of religious ideas are “Hymns for the Night” (1799) and “Spiritual Songs” (1799) - an extreme expression of crisis moods in the work of Novalis. These works contrasted sharply with the main direction of his aesthetic quest - the desire to comprehend the world in its universality.

Novalis entered the history of German and world literature primarily as the author of the unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (published 1802). Although the action dates back to the 13th century, Novalis is not writing a historical novel, and therefore attempts to evaluate the book from the point of view of the authenticity of the people, events and era depicted in it and to talk about idealization or some kind of distortion in the picture of medieval life are groundless. The duration of the action is conditional, and this allows us to speak of a mythical novel, which is also saturated with polysemantic symbolism. Symbolism appears already on the first page: Henry dreams of an amazing flower, from whose blue petals, as if from a lace collar, a tender girl’s face emerges. The blue flower is a symbol of poetic dreams, romantic longing, longing for an ideal, romantic love, in which lovers are initially destined for each other.

In the surviving version, the novel consists of two parts: “Waiting” and “Accomplishment.” The first part—the hero’s journey, his experience of communicating with people from different walks of life—is developed more clearly, more specifically, and with more meaning. Merchants, a miner, an eastern captive and, finally, the poet Klingsor and his daughter Matilda introduce Henry to the present and the past, to nature and poetry. Behind every image there is a whole world. In particular, in the episode with the eastern captive, the idea of ​​a synthesis of the cultures of East and West was first presented, which would become the most important for all German romanticism and would also find the clearest response in Goethe in his “West-Eastern Divan.”

For the hero of Novalis, the intuitive nature of knowledge, characteristic of the poet, is true. “I see two paths leading to an understanding of human history. One path, difficult and vastly distant, with countless bends - the path of experience; the other, accomplished as if in one leap, is the path of inner contemplation.” Experience for him is only the primary impetus for intuitive penetration into the mystery of a phenomenon.

Novalis's novel embodies the entire optimistic philosophy of early German romanticism, its belief in the triumph of the ideal. From the retelling of the supposed content of the next parts of the novel published by L. Tick, it is clear that the writer was reflecting on the philosophical categories of time and space, looking for ways to figuratively embody the idea of ​​​​merging the past, present and future.

The search for some hidden secret that must be comprehended by man is revealed in the poetic parable “The Disciples in Sais” (published in 1802).

Novalis's mythologism remained the romantic poet's unfinished bid to solve many difficult philosophical and ethical problems. In the history of European culture, the writer’s legacy was most often perceived one-sidedly: both by those who relied on him, like Maeterlinck, and by those who rejected him in a dispute, like Heine. What was underestimated, first of all, was the activity of Novalis's artistic consciousness, the persistence of his searches, his passionate commitment to the ideal of a perfect, harmonious person, embodied in the image of an artist, a poet, to whom he conveyed his anxieties and hopes.

In its desire to embrace in art the entire breadth of the world, its past and present, visible and spiritual, German romanticism sought a variety of genre forms. In this regard, the creative individuality of Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) is very remarkable. He wrote poetry, novels, rock dramas and daring ironic comedies, and was one of the creators of the fairy tale genre. Tick ​​owns translations of the dramas of Shakespeare's predecessors, Don Quixote by Cervantes; together with A. V. Schlegel, he created classic translations of Shakespeare.

Tieck did a lot as a collector and publisher of the heritage of many German writers close to him in time and spirit: Lenz, Novalis, Kleist. He was the first to draw attention to German folk books, about which F. Engels wrote that they had “extraordinary poetic charm”; Engels noted that “Tick’s main argument lay precisely in this poetic charm” (Marx K., Engels F. From early works. M., 1956. P. 352). (Tick owns dramatic adaptations of the folk books "Genoveva" and "Emperor Octavian".)

Tick's first novel, The History of Mr. William Lovell (1795-1796), was largely in line with Enlightenment traditions. He represents the type of individualist who is not stopped by any ethical standards. Tick ​​drew on the tradition of Sturm und Drang, but his stormy hero sought only pleasure; for all its anti-bourgeois orientation, the book was devoid of the social acuity of Sturmer's works.

Tieck made his mark as a romantic writer in 1797-1798, demonstrating his innovation in several genres at once. The novel “The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald” (1798), the action of which dates back to the 16th century, is related in plot to Wackenroder’s essays “In Memory of Our Illustrious Ancestor Albrecht Dürer”, and in genre it is an educational novel, like Goethe’s “The Years of the Teaching of Wilhelm Meister”. The hero of Tick's novel is the painter Sternbald, who is looking for his self-determination.

The author did not seek to convey the complex historical collisions of that turbulent era. At the center is the problem of the relationship between art and society, but it is not presented in historical terms, but in projection onto the emerging bourgeois age with its acute contradictions.

Tieck's novel, replete with many side episodes, poetic inserts, and lyrical monologues, opened a new page in the history of German prose. After the strict, precise language of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, Tieck, like Novalis in Heinrich von Ofterdingen, created an unusual fusion of epic narrative and lyricism. Individual pieces of the novel are perceived as poems in prose; the author skillfully weaves musical motifs into the narrative fabric, creates landscapes that should hint at the mysterious meaning of natural phenomena (“... Everything breathes, everything listens, everything is full of eerie expectation,” Heine later commented Thika landscape).

Not being himself a theorist of romanticism, Tieck quickly picked up the aesthetic ideas that were emerging in the Jena circle, and even if he sometimes simplified them, he gave them a visual and “popular” character. This was the case with the concept of romantic irony, which is artistically embodied in such comedy-fairy tales by Tieck as Puss in Boots (1797), The World Inside Out (1799), and The Prince of Zerbino, or a Journey in Search of Good Taste (1799). Here the dramatic structure of the comedy itself is most clearly exposed to irony: the willfulness of the playwright and director is boldly demonstrated, the conventions of stage action are exposed (the curtain rises ahead of time, the audience hears a conversation between the playwright and the stage driver, etc.). But daring play with dramatic form is not an end in itself. It allows Tick to create a cheerful and angry satire on feudal rulers and autocratic law and on the audience themselves - narrow-minded, philistine, evaluating the play from the standpoint of flat philistine morality. At the same time, irony extends to romantic art itself, demonstrating (in the comedy “The World Inside Out”) “the collapse of optimistic hopes for the triumph of poetry over the prose of real life” (A. Karelsky).

German romanticism owes the creation of the fairy tale genre primarily to Tieck. And although to a certain extent Tik relies on the folklore tradition, the structure of the short stories, the images of the heroes and the motivations for their actions radically distinguish the literary fairy tale from the folk tale.

Most often the author depicts tragic destinies. The social reasons for this tragedy are easily discernible: the pursuit of material interest, the temptations of wealth and city bustle, the invasion of relationships between people by gold - the “yellow-eyed metal”. But even where this thirst for gold is extremely naked, as in the short story “Runenberg” (1802), social motives are complicated by irrational moments, a person appears as a toy of incomprehensible, mysterious forces. Complex relationships connect the hero of the story with the surrounding nature, which lives a special mysterious life.

In the short story “Blond Ecbert” (1797), the concept of “forest solitude” first appeared, serving as a romantic ideal of detachment from the hardships of the mercantile world. Exploring in detail state of mind of his unusual heroes, the author strives to reveal the mystery of their not always logical actions, finding in them most often what is vague, unclear, and difficult to explain. Tick, and after him other romantics, saturate their prose with such meaningful words as “languor,” “inexpressible,” “unspeakable.”

The most intense period of Tieck's artistic creativity falls on the years associated with the activities of the Jena school. Subsequently, the writer devoted himself mainly to translation and editorial and publishing activities.

When Tieck returns to narrative prose in the 1920s, a different style emerges. The creator of an emotional and poetic style in the genre of short story-fairy tale, he is now influenced by Goethe’s clear and precise prose in language, and features of a realistic approach to reality are revealed in his work. New for Thicke is the historical genre. Having devoted many years to translations of Shakespeare and the study of his era, he creates the historical story “The Life of a Poet” (1826-1830), in which he sketches living images of Marlowe, Greene, Shakespeare and their contemporaries. The great historical novel Vittoria Accorombona (1840) reproduces scenes of life from the Italian Renaissance.

In general, Tieck's late prose already goes beyond romanticism. However, the writer’s contribution to German literature is undoubtedly associated with the early period of his work, when he proved himself to be a true innovator in the creation and development of romantic genres. The narrative (or, more precisely, stylistic) mastery of the early Tieck had a great influence on the development of romantic prose, in particular on Arnim, Hoffmann, and to a certain extent on Heine, who in the “Romantic School” highly appreciated many other facets of Tieck’s talent: his ironic fantasy, his commitment to the traditions of ancient folk tales.

Romanticism developed in special ways, outside the framework of the Jena school, in the works of Jean-Paul Richter and Hölderlin.

Jean-Paul Richter (1763-1825) in the new century continued his literary activity, which began with his books of the 80s of the 18th century. At the turn of the century he was already a popular writer. Living in Weimar, he occupied a completely isolated position, not joining either the great Weimarians Goethe and Schiller, or the new school of romantics, which was vigorously asserting itself in neighboring Jena. Goethe and Schiller treated Jean-Paul with restraint and wariness. But it was in Weimar that great fame came to Jean-Paul, and in the then capital of the muses he found devoted admirers and admiring readers.

Jean-Paul designated the genre of his novels as idylls, although at the same time they are also parodies of the idyll. Drawing fate little man, sympathizing with his hardships and admiring his ability to be content with little, Jean-Paul, “the lawyer of the poor,” as he was called, immediately ironically removes this idyll of a miserable existence, exposing to the reader the ephemerality of the happiness of a snail crawling “into the most comfortable crease of its shell.”

Drawing on the tradition of the European sentimental novel, Jean-Paul in his early works creatively rethought Stern's artistic experience. But his Sternian humor of relativity acquired such a complex structure that the reader often got lost, making his way through the labyrinths of the plot.

At the same time, Jean-Paul did not accept romantic subjectivism, and in 1800 he published “The Key to Fichte,” a humorous pamphlet in which he ironically played with the concept of “I,” constructing absurd situations in which the existence of the philosopher himself was in doubt - a technique that Heine later used in his essay “On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany.”

The most significant novels written by Jean-Paul in the 19th century are "Titan" (1800 - vol. 1, 1801 - vol. 2, 1802 - vol. 3, 1803 - vol. 4), "Naughty Years" (1805) , "The Comet, or Nikolaus Marggraff" (1820-1822). The novel "Titan" is close to the genre of "educational novel", and almost all researchers compare it with Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister". But the difference here is more significant than the commonality. Goethe tells the story of the hero's consistent establishment in life, and he conducts his story in a narrative manner that is vaguely oriented towards the epic tradition, betraying it only at the end of the novel. Jean-Paul paints his heroes in sharp contrast, sharpens their characteristics, makes them exceptional in their vocation, attraction or passion.

Jean-Paul, as a rule, gave appendices to his novels. In addition to the Key to Fichte, the first volumes of Titan also include the Travel Journal of the Aeronaut Gianozzo. The author not only deepens the satirical assessments already contained in the novel itself (the arbitrariness of feudal rulers, the debauchery reigning at the courts, the servility of the courtiers, etc.), but also gives a general assessment of German reality - some entries in the “Journal” are closer in tone to Swift than to Stern. "The Appendix" refutes the illusions that might arise when reading the novel itself. Here the transformation of the genre of educational novel becomes especially noticeable, reflecting the process of revising educational illusions without replacing them with romantic illusions - this is the uniqueness of Jean-Paul’s position. The desire to get away from the dirt of the real world is, as it were, materialized: a person, not in a dream, not in a mystical impulse, but in reality - in a balloon - rises above the ground, admires nature, space and thinks with contempt about those who. turns life into a bitter and joyless existence.

In Jean-Paul's novels, signs of an educational parable often appear. The novel “Naughty Years” can also be considered as a variant of the “educational novel” - with the peculiarity that the hero’s upbringing is nullified by the complete impossibility for him to adapt to circumstances and accept the rules of the game that reality dictates. From the parable comes the very idea of ​​testing the hero according to a carefully developed program formulated in the will, and the symmetrical arrangement of two hero-brothers, each of whom represents different facets of the worldview.

Jean-Paul worked on his last novel, “Comet,” for a long time (1811–1822), making adjustments to the concept and structure of the work along the way. Thus, the author initially planned to include his autobiography in the novel entitled “The Truth of My Life, the Poetry of the Life of a Pharmacist,” but then, in 1818, he separated it into a separate book, “The Truth from the Life of Jean-Paul” (Goethe, author of “Poetry and truth”, was shocked by this ironic allusion). The plot of the novel is based on a burlesque situation: the pharmacist Nikolaus Marggraf claims - based on vague guesses about his origin - to princely title. The pharmacist appears as a “comic Titan” or “Anti-Titan”, and this reduction in image, the paradoxical combination of insignificance with irrepressible pretensions, gives the author the opportunity to boldly and unambiguously express his attitude towards the modern legal order.

There is little action in Jean-Paul's novels; the events happening to the characters drown in the flow of the author’s reasoning and characters. Length often makes it difficult to understand, and this explains Jean-Paul's very selective popularity with the reader. F. Schlegel, who generally paid tribute to the writer’s talent, at the same time reproached him that he “could not tell a single story well.” Jean-Paul's style intricately combines features of Baroque, sentimentalism and romanticism. “A mixture of different types of narration and different tonalities of style, a fusion of lyricism, satire, pathos, buffoonery, mockery and dithyramb - such is the art of Jean-Paul” (M. L. Tronskaya).

“Preparatory School of Aesthetics” (1804) by Jean-Paul is a work no less original in its structure and genre than his novels. It bears little resemblance to the aesthetic works popular in those years. Its content is narrower than the title, because the author does not deal with traditional categories of aesthetics, paying main attention to the poetics of narrative prose, and at the same time broader, because the author’s field of vision includes all modern literature. Jean-Paul's aesthetic is very personal; He develops most fully precisely those categories that are close to him as an artist, primarily humor. The author examines humor in all possible aspects; Moreover, humor permeates the presentation of all other aesthetic problems. Although Jean-Paul’s “School” is carefully divided into departments and paragraphs (“programs,” as he designates them), its systematic nature is conditional, and it is no coincidence that in its structure and style it is compared not with one or another systematic course in aesthetics, but with the novels of the Jean-Paul, with their baroque-sentimental-romantic poetics. Therefore, it is impossible to answer the question of which of the literary trends contemporary to the author is theoretically interpreted by this “School”. A passionate admirer of Herder, a supporter of F. G. Jacobi, an opponent of Kant and Fichte, Jean-Paul justifies his special place in the literary debates of the early 19th century, although many facets of his work, and above all the pathos of the rejection of all normativity, and put him if not in one row, but somewhere close to the romantics. Jean-Paul's aesthetics cannot be assessed unambiguously as romantic, but there is no doubt that “The Preparatory School of Aesthetics” is a work of the romantic era.

The great popularity among his contemporaries gave way to almost complete oblivion of the writer for a whole century after his death. But in the 20th century. Interest begins to grow in both his whimsical prose and his idiosyncratic aesthetics.

The creative path of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) covers a relatively short period of time - from 1792 to 1804, when spiritual development the poet's career was prematurely interrupted by mental illness. In time, Hölderlin’s work coincided with the years of active work of Goethe and Schiller and the initial stage of romanticism, and the poet himself is often considered in line with the phenomena “between classicism and romanticism.” The great Weimarians, however, did not accept him into their circle. Schiller, however, contributed to the publication of Hölderlin's poems and the novel Hyperion, but Goethe limited himself to advice that indicated a complete misunderstanding of the creative aspirations of the young poet. Both of them were inclined to see Hölderlin as a follower of Sturmerism and, from their new positions, condemned his subjectivism. Meanwhile, Hölderlin's subjectivism carried a different quality. This was not a return to Sturm und Drang, but the affirmation of a new, romantic worldview. The cult of antiquity, characteristic of Hölderlin, gave rise to the correlation of his work with the system of Weimar classicism. However, Hölderlin has a different perception of ancient mythology than in Schiller’s “Gods of Greece” or in Goethe’s “Iphigenia in Tauris”.

Hölderlin contrasted Winckelmann’s ideal of “noble simplicity and calm grandeur,” which Goethe largely followed, Schiller’s conviction in the irrevocability of ancient beauty, and his theory of aesthetic education with the active affirmation of a humanistic program in which ancient images were interpreted in the light of the ideas and principles of the French Revolution. Hölderlin's ancient Greek myths are organically intertwined with the myths created by the French revolutionaries. Researchers of the poet’s work (in particular, N. Ya. Berkovsky) noted this feature of the figurative system of his lyrics: “Hymn to Humanity” (1791), “Hymn to Friendship” (1791), hymns to freedom (1790-1792) resembled not only the pathos of speeches in Convention, but also republican holidays organized by the Jacobins in honor of the Supreme Being, in honor of Freedom and Reason.

Hölderlin's work is connected with the traditions of Rousseau in many ways. In the context of “Hymn to Humanity,” he conceptualizes Rousseau as a forerunner of the revolution; the ideas of the “Social Contract” naturally fit into the concept of heroic antiquity. Finally, in line with the same tradition, Hölderlin develops his concept of nature. Nature acts for him both as a criterion for assessing human behavior and as the original element, the cosmos, within which man exists, sometimes breaking away from it, sometimes returning to it.

Hölderlin's ideal is a universal harmonious personality. But the awareness of the unattainability of this ideal in post-revolutionary society determines the deep tragedy of the poet’s worldview. Together with all the romantics, he harshly judges this society, calling it in a letter to his brother in September 1793 “depraved, slavishly submissive, inert”: “... I love the humanity of the coming centuries.”

Hölderlin's figurative system is complex and, as a rule, does not allow for an unambiguous interpretation. Its leitmotif is a romantic confrontation between ideal and reality, and the tragic sound of this leitmotif intensifies over the years. This is a sharp difference between Hölderlin and his contemporary romantics of the Jena school with their pathos of universality and faith in the power of art.

Hölderlin's tragic worldview is expressed most fully in the novel Hyperion (vol. 1 - 1797, vol. 2 - 1799). This largely final work absorbed all the poet’s historical experience, all the main problems that worried him for a whole decade. The hero of the novel, Hyperion, sees his calling in establishing the high principles of humanity and freedom, equality and brotherhood of all people, and dreams of reviving the highest ethical standards bequeathed by the heroes of the ancient city-republics. “To have no measure in the great, even though your earthly limit is immeasurably small, is divine”—these words are the epigraph to the novel.

The hero and heroine (Diotima) are distinguished by maximalism of feelings and aspirations, which, however, also conceals the danger of an insoluble conflict. Real life soon brutally shatters the illusions. The disappointment of the hero of the novel is akin to the disappointment of Schiller's Karl Moor. Hyperion blames himself for trying to "plant paradise with the help of a gang of robbers."

Hölderlin is very stingy in his depiction of external events. Sometimes Hyperion is compared to The Sorrows of Young Werther. But the similarity here is only external - a novel in letters; the difference is in the worldview, artistic method, type of hero. The very nature of the conflict in Hölderlin is different from that of Goethe, and the main idea is different from that of Schiller. Hyperion opposes not only the world of social evil, but also the entire reality. If Werther’s personal happiness is destroyed by Charlotte’s marriage, then the love of Hyperion and Diotima is destroyed by a tragic discrepancy between ideal and reality; the obstacle to happiness is not a rival or a specific social system, but the disorder of the world itself, in which the human personality cannot reveal the possibilities inherent in it.

Fragments of the tragedy “The Death of Empedocles” have been preserved in three versions from 1798-1800. (published 1846). In the image of the ancient Greek thinker, who claimed the role of a prophet and divinity, the romantic Hölderlin emphasizes the heroic loneliness of the thinker, the conflict with a world that does not understand him, and, finally, the idea of ​​merging man with nature, realized in the unusual death of the hero. However, the poet did not fully develop the concept of the tragedy about Empedocles, and the work remained unfinished.

Hölderlin's work did not receive a worthy response from his contemporaries. Although some of his ideas were close to the searches of the Jena people (first of all, the idea of ​​universality), neither his Hellenism nor the pathos of the struggle for a happy future were understood and accepted by them. Hölderlin turned out to be even more alien to the Heidelbergers, especially to their nationalist aspirations.

In general, early romanticism was fraught with an insoluble contradiction: romantic irony not only implied the overcoming of everything finite associated with the real world, it also undermined the foundations of the romantic ideal. The optimism of the early romantics was crumbling before our eyes.

The tragedy of the socio-historical situation in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. was clearly reflected not only among the romantics, but also in the late work of Friedrich Schiller. The few years that he had left to live in the 19th century were filled with intense creative work, the search for new themes and new artistic means for their development. At the same time, Schiller, while remaining generally in an educational position and recognizing historical meaning social changes that had taken place (“the old forms of the foundation were crushed,” he wrote in the 1801 poem “The Beginning of a New Century”), at the same time he felt confusion in front of reality, which no longer left room for enlightenment illusions (“And in the whole immeasurable land there is room for ten lucky people No").

Schiller actively rejected the principles of the romantic school and more than once spoke out against the Jenes, ridiculing the Schlegel brothers in Xenia. One can understand that Kant’s student did not accept Fichte’s subjective idealism, that the admirer of ancient harmony was wary of the destruction of this harmony. In the works and theoretical statements of the early German romantics, Schiller saw only artistic arbitrariness, and not an aesthetic system dictated by the needs of the time. But Schiller's judgments about the romantics far from determined the essence of the very internal connections of his worldview and creativity, in particular poetic, with romanticism.

A complex process takes place, during which it is revealed that Weimar classicism (specifically in its Schiller version) anticipated the aesthetics of romanticism with certain facets and the doctrine of the high role of art, and especially the idea of ​​aesthetic education proclaimed by Schiller. It is no coincidence that the German democrats of the 30s of the 19th century, who announced the end of the “artistic period” in German literature, combined both Weimar classicism and romanticism in this concept. And in Russia, V. G. Belinsky generally classified Schiller as a romantic (which was greatly facilitated by the translations of V. A. Zhukovsky).

It is also significant that the aesthetic theory of the Schlegel brothers was prepared by the concept of naive and sentimental poetry, formulated by Schiller in 1795. A modern artist, according to Schiller, either criticizes a reality that does not correspond to the ideal (in satire), or expresses longing for the ideal (in elegy) . Based on this terminology, the “elegiac” approach also characterizes many works of romantic poetry, since the theme of discord between the ideal and life is one of the central ones in romanticism. The “elegiac” (more precisely, tragic) worldview is manifested in many of the poems of the late Schiller: “Cassandra” (1802), “The Triumph of the Winners” (1803), “The Traveler” (1803). In particular, “The Triumph of the Winners” - one of the masterpieces of his late lyrics - has its own tragic meaning, for victory is colored by both the bitterness of losses and anxiety for the future.

Schiller the playwright continues his search, begun in the mid-90s, taking into account the experience of romanticism. After the psychological drama Mary Stuart (1800), he created the romantic tragedy The Maid of Orleans (1801). The system of artistic images in this tragedy is polemically pointed against the entire concept of Voltaire’s ironic poem. If the French enlightener deheroized the legendary image, then Schiller again elevates Joan of Arc to a heroic pedestal, preserving and even enhancing everything wonderful and fantastic in her story. This was Schiller's only experiment in the genre of drama with a fantastic motivation. And for the first time, Schiller raised a national theme on such a large scale. Together with Hölderlin's Hyperion, The Maid of Orleans anticipated the problematics of many works of the first thirds of the XIX c. associated with national liberation movements.

“The Bride of Messina” (1802) by Schiller is a tragedy with choirs, and the choir performs two different functions: it seems to contemplate and reflect from the outside, outside the play, but in communication with the audience; then appears as an actor representing certain groups of the population of Messina. At the same time, in terms of genre, this “drama of fate” is close to the “tragedies of fate” of the romantics.

The article justifying the role of the chorus, which precedes the drama, is an important theoretical document in Schiller’s legacy. The playwright opposes both romantic arbitrariness and the desire to “imitatively reproduce reality.” At the same time, Schiller does not at all strive to restore the structure of the ancient performance, for which he was often reproached; By giving the choir two functions, he proposes to update the modern theater and enrich the means of its influence on the viewer. B. Brecht, in his discussions about the “epic theater,” referred, in particular, to this article.

One of the peaks of Schiller's late dramaturgy is William Tell (1804). The peculiarities of the plot associated with the depiction of a popular uprising required the search for a new drama structure. Even two years before its creation, Schiller reflected on this structure, setting himself the goal (he wrote about this to G. Körner on 9. IX. 1802) - “to clearly and convincingly show on stage an entire people in certain local conditions, an entire distant era and “The main thing is that it is a completely local, almost individual phenomenon.” The mastery of reproducing the Swiss “local color” is another example of Schiller’s rapid movement, his tireless search, and the continuous renewal of artistic means. In the preface to The Bride of Messina, he defended the artist's right to convention; William Tell is the least conventional of all his dramas.

Historical in plot, the drama was at the same time a lively and passionate response to the events of the last 15 years. Despite all the contradictory nature of his attitude towards the French Revolution, Schiller was able to feel that the events beyond the Rhine, and above all the entry into the arena of the masses, overturned the old ideas about the driving forces of history. At the end of the drama, the old nobleman Attinghausen, having learned that the peasants are rising up to fight against the Austrians without the support of knighthood, “in the greatest surprise” utters significant words: “... other forces will henceforth lead the people to greatness.”

In “The Maid of Orleans” the heroine spoke on behalf of the people, but at the same time she rose above the people as an exceptional person, acting on the basis of her own will. In the drama "William Tell" representatives of the people themselves dominate. William Tell is not even present at Rütli and only later joins the popular movement, killing the Austrian governor and thereby fulfilling the will of his fellow citizens.

"William Tell" is the writer's last completed drama. Death interrupted his work on the drama from Russian history, Dmitry. Schiller's impostor Dmitry is a tragic hero, because at first he was sincerely convinced that he was the son of Ivan IV, and he learned the truth about his origin already on the outskirts of Moscow. The two acts written by Schiller and the plan for subsequent ones indicate the scale of the plan related to the problem of power and the relationship between the ruler and the people.

The structure of Schiller's drama was constantly changing, and significant changes were also taking place in the very method of depicting human character. But regardless of this, throughout his entire creative path Schiller sought to present a hero - the bearer of one or another positive program, an exponent of the Enlightenment ideal. It was in this sense that Schiller called himself an idealist.

In his later work, Schiller did not escape the influence of the social and ideological situation that gave rise to romanticism. But this influence did not make him a romantic - he was quite firmly associated with a complex of educational ideas.

Schiller resisted all influences, but, remaining an original artist, absorbed many of the artistic discoveries of his contemporaries, especially Goethe with his spontaneous attraction to realism. In particular, comparing “William Tell” with the trilogy about Wallenstein, one cannot help but note the deepening of historicism, overcoming the features of rationalism, so characteristic of Schiller in the 90s of the 18th century. Artistic method William Tell anticipates nineteenth-century critical realism in many ways.

The influence of Schiller's work, and primarily his dramaturgy, on public consciousness was enormous. In the theaters of many countries, it was primarily the pathos associated with the images of program characters that found its lively response. In Russia in the 19th century. Schiller became, according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, “a participant in mental development.” In the early years Soviet power His early dramas caused great public resonance in the Soviet theater.

A complex social and ideological situation arose in Germany during the war of liberation against Napoleon (1806-1813). The war against the French occupiers was just and national liberation. But it was carried out under the leadership of feudal rulers. Under the motto “With God, for the King and the Fatherland,” everything French was condemned, including the revolution, which so frightened German conservatives. It was during these years that the ideology of nationalism took shape, which later played such a fatal role in German history. This is why Goethe did not support the war of liberation, and Jean-Paul Richter, Friedrich von Zelln and Friedrich Buchholz wanted the war of liberation to end with internal reforms as well. But many did not escape the influence of nationalist ideology; moreover, they made a significant contribution to its establishment. Thus, G. von Kleist in the “Catechism of the Germans” called for hating Napoleon and all the French.

The most popular poet of the liberation war was Theodor Körner (1791-1813), a poet-warrior who participated in battles as part of Colonel Lützow’s “black riflemen” detachment and died on the battlefield. His poems contain pathetic calls for the extermination of the French - in the name of establishing the legal order that existed in Germany. Posthumously, his war lyrics were published in the collection “Lyre and Sword” (1814).

A complex set of ideas represents the legacy of the poet and publicist Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860). His journalistic activities at the beginning of the century brought upon him the displeasure of the Prussian authorities, because he advocated the elimination of serfdom where it still existed, criticized philistinism, loyalty, and apoliticality. However, during the war years, Arndt’s position was a compromise - he thought of the unity of the Germans not only as the unity of the German lands, but also as the unity of Germans of all classes. At the same time, he met the decisions of the Vienna Congress critically.

In general, the lyrics and journalism of the liberation movement left a certain mark on the history of German poetry in the 19th century. Poets sought to speak on behalf of the people and for the people, so their songs were widely disseminated. And in subsequent years, some of these songs began to sound like a call for a democratic renewal in Germany. Thus, Arndt’s “Fatherland of the Germans” was sung on the Viennese barricades in 1848.

The work of Friedrich de la Motte Fouquet (1777-1843) is connected in certain aspects with the period of the liberation war. In any case, it was during these years - more precisely, from 1800 to 1816 - that his works about the German Middle Ages enjoyed the greatest popularity, responding to the mood of the general national upsurge. The author of numerous novels, fairy tales, short stories, he, however, very quickly lost contact with readers, for this singer of chivalry was deprived of an elementary sense of time; Literary historians classify most of what he wrote as trivial literature of romanticism. At the same time, his “quixoticism,” which made Heine smile, was not an aesthetic pose—he was sincerely devoted to his romantic ideal, creating a kind of myth about the Middle Ages with its knightly code of honor.

Of Fouquet's vast legacy, only a few short stories and fairy tales entered German literature; Among them, the story “Ondine” (1811), a poetic tale about the love of a mermaid for a knight, became world famous.

A special place in the literary movement of the first decade of the 19th century. occupies the work of playwright and short story writer Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811). He went down in the history of German literature as the most tragic of the romantics.

The category of the tragic in the worldview of the romantics stemmed from the very concept of the individual opposing the hostile outside world. This concept, as already noted, was generated by the era of revolution. The catastrophic nature of the transition from illusions to harsh reality determined the essential features in Kleist’s worldview. His stay in Paris (1803) strengthened his disgust for bourgeois civilization, and he dreamed of a patriarchal idyll in the spirit of Rousseau. But in his work itself there was nothing resembling an idyll - on the contrary, it was oversaturated with insoluble conflicts and disasters.

During Kleist's lifetime, many of his dramas did not receive recognition and theaters did not stage them. Thus, Goethe, the head of the Weimar theater, essentially rejected Kleist the playwright, not first of all accepting his brokenness and irrationality. “In me, this writer, with the purest readiness on my part to take sincere participation in him, always aroused horror and disgust, like an organism beautifully created by nature, overwhelmed incurable disease" We have to admit that the great Goethe failed to appreciate the enormity of Kleist’s talent only because many of the writer’s ideas and images were alien to him. Kleist really was a kind of antipode to Goethe, and this is especially clearly revealed in his drama Penthesilea (1808), written in antique plot.

Kleist's interpretation of antiquity differs sharply from its interpretation in the classicist and enlightenment traditions. Of course, the antiquity of Winckelmann and Weimar classicism was not genuine Greek antiquity - it was largely conventional and idealized. But Kleist “barbarizes” his heroine and introduces such characters that truly could only cause horror in Goethe. Captured by a rush of frantic passion for Achilles, Penthesilea, however, cannot defeat him in open battle and, having been defeated, sets the dogs on him. The pathology and madness of the heroine are presented in a naturalistic, naked way. Antiquity as a form of expression of the tragic also appears in another play - “Amphitryon” (1807), which is largely polemical in relation to Plautus and Moliere, who wrote on this plot. Thus, the concept of antiquity, not only Weimar, but also early romantic, is challenged: for F. and A. W. Schlegel, the concepts of integrity, harmony, and joy were associated with antiquity.

Two tragedies were written by Kleist on subjects from the Middle Ages: “The Schroffenstein Family” (1803), “Kätchen of Heilbronn” (1810). The first is close in the genre of “tragedy of fate”, the second is a drama-fairy tale, in the center of which is the ideal image of the daughter of a gunsmith from Heilbronn, Kötchen, overcome by a fatal, like Penthesilea, love for the knight Count von Strahl. But, unlike Penthesilea, Ketchen goes to any humiliation, remaining faithful and devoted to her beloved. This glorification of fidelity not only expressed the maximalism of feeling, but also echoes of feudal ethical norms were heard. Thus, the play cannot be assessed according to the laws of the historical genre. True, many participants in the events depicted bear the signs of the era, but the development of the dramatic conflict is determined by the heroine, who belongs to another world - the world of legend or fairy tale. This fabulousness of the image, of course, is far from folklore: Kätchen is the heroine of a literary fairy tale, the embodiment of the romantic concept of the world and man. Prophetic dreams and premonitions form an organic part of the romantic motivation for action.

The comedy “The Broken Jug” (1808) by Kleist falls out of all his dramatic work, full of tragedy. The content of the comedy is the trial of Martha Rull's claim regarding a broken jug. Kleist masterfully mastered the art of comedic intrigue. During the trial, different versions of events are played out (for example, three versions of the disappearance of the judge's wig). Literary historians often unconditionally classify this comedy as realism, citing its rich everyday flavor, realistic motivation for the conflict, lively spoken language, and social types. And yet it is wrong to see in it only a realistic satire on legal proceedings. The structure of comedy is more complex. The ambiguous symbolism of the jug, the irony that permeates the entire course of the action, and the daring play with versions allow us to speak about the romantic nature of the comic in this play.

Kleist experienced the invasion of Napoleon's troops painfully both as a publicist (Catechism of the Germans) and as a poet, taking the most irreconcilable nationalist position. In the drama “The Battle of Hermann” (1808), he reproduced an episode from ancient history in such a way that it was completely obvious that by the Romans we must mean modern French. Kleist created this drama, trying to rouse the Germans to fight, while he portrayed the leader of the Germans as merciless and cruel, not recognizing any rules of war when it comes to exterminating enemies.

The events in Kleist's last tragedy, Prince Friedrich of Homburg (1810), take place in 1675, when the rise of Prussia began after the victory over the Swedes. Elector Friedrich Wilhelm is presented in the tragedy as wise and ultimately fair, and the hero, the Prince of Homburg, is infinitely devoted to the Elector and is ready to accept a death sentence from him. The meaning of the tragic conflict comes down to the question: what does true loyalty consist of - in conscious service to the cause of the sovereign or in unquestioning blind obedience to his commands. His decision is ambiguous: Kleist does not rise to the condemnation of autocratic tyranny, but he also cannot accept the soulless formalism of the state and military machine.

Kleist's contribution to the history of German and European short stories is significant. The artistic discoveries of the German romantics, along with lyrics, are especially noticeable in this genre. Kleist stands at its origins. He created a novella of extraordinary emotional power, turning the story of an incident, “news” (in Goethe’s terminology), into a work in which the social and ethical conflict is brought to the greatest tragic tension.

The novella “Betrothal in Saint-Domingue” (1811) is notable for its appeal to a plot related to the revolution in France, and therefore makes it possible to trace the origins of the author’s tragic concept. The German romantic saw in the course of events on the island confirmation of his doubts and disappointments. According to Kleist, the Convention made a thoughtless decision, because, having unleashed passions, it not only did not establish the principles of justice, but shook the entire moral world order. The very absurdity of the ending - the hero kills the girl he loves and loves him - emphasizes the tragic disorder of the modern world, when, according to Kleist, normal criteria of human behavior have been lost, trust between people has been undermined and a person finds himself completely defenseless.

In the short story “Earthquake in Chile” (1807), events are pushed into the past, exceptional circumstances are depicted. A general catastrophe - the earthquake of 1647 - unexpectedly brings liberation to the heroes of the story: the young man Jeronimo is freed from a destroyed prison, and his beloved Josepha emerges from the ruins of the monastery. But a crowd of believing Spaniards brutally kill two innocent young people. The circle is closed: you can escape among the collapsing stone buildings, but you cannot escape from fate, which this time has chosen as its instrument people who are fanatically convinced that it is the heretics who are to blame for the shaking of the earth’s crust.

The story "Michael Kohlhaas" (1810) is a broad historical canvas, and many people are involved in the course of events historical figures: Martin Luther, Elector of Saxony and others. The realities of the era, the social types characteristic of Germany in the 16th century, give rise to talk about the features of realism. However, the tragic conflict of the story is associated with a romantic perception of post-revolutionary reality. There is a well-known connection between “Michael Kohlhaas” and “Prince Friedrich of Homburg” (they were written around the same time) - both works explore the question of human rights and duties.

Already on the first page, Kleist introduces his hero as “one of the most just and at the same time one of the most terrible people of his time,” whom “a sense of justice made a murderer and robber.” When the cadet Wenzel von Tronka harmed the hero and insulted his servant, Kohlhaas filed a complaint against the headstrong feudal lord, demanding justice. Not having achieved it, Kohlhaas was indignant and began to administer justice himself. A squad of avengers is formed around him, strong enough to lay siege to an entire city. But, unlike the leaders of the recent peasant war, Kohlhaas does not think about destroying the feudal rulers; moreover, he wants to achieve justice from them. At the end of the story, this justice formally triumphs: by court decision, Kohlhaas is given back the horses taken from him by the cadet Tronka, but he is immediately put to death as a rebel. (This situation of a paradoxical verdict in a slightly different version was later repeated by Hugo in the novel “The Ninety-Third Year” in the scene with Lantenac and the man who heroically saved the cannon on the ship.)

Literary historians express different opinions about the ending: some say that Kleist criticizes feudal tyranny, sympathizing with the just anger of Kohlhaas; others see the ending as an idealization of the feudal ruler. But the content of the story cannot be assessed straightforwardly; at its center is not a criticism of this or that social system, but an ethical problem, the problem of personality, which Kleist comprehended in the light of the historical experience of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. He is frightened by the elements of rebellion, although he shares the pathos of the search for justice that his hero is obsessed with. The paradoxical nature of the ending emphasizes the intractability of the conflict between man and state institutions. This is just one aspect of Kleist’s tragic worldview. Kleist the short story writer and Kleist the playwright gained his greatness thanks to his masterful portrayal tragic conflicts, the mental struggles of a hero involved in the cycle of social contradictions, often finding himself, in modern language, in a “borderline situation.”

The war of liberation against Napoleon gave rise to a set of ideas that differed significantly from the judgments and views of the romantics of the Jena school. Now the concepts of nation, nationality, and historical consciousness are coming to the fore. A kind of center of the romantic movement in the first decade of the 19th century. became Heidelberg, where a circle of poets and prose writers formed, representing a new generation of romantics and showing an increased interest in everything German, history and culture. This interest often acquired a nationalistic character. Anti-French sentiments were combined with the idea of ​​national exclusivity, condemnation of Napoleon - with rejection of the French Revolution. But the national idea at the same time fertilized German culture. The romantics of the second stage aroused interest in national antiquities. During these years, monuments of medieval German literature were published and commented on. An outstanding achievement of the Heidelberg romantics was their turn to folk song. The collection of songs “The Boy's Magic Horn” (1805-1808), published by A. von Arnim and C. Brentano, caused a great stir in the country, and Goethe approved it. The Heidelbergers continued Herder's initiative, but with a very significant adjustment: Herder was interested in the “voices of the people”, Arnim and Brentano were focused exclusively on the German national folk song tradition. (It should be noted that a significant part of the collection consisted of original poems belonging to little-known, forgotten by that time poets of the 16th-17th centuries; however, their inclusion in the collection had its reasons - they were widespread and often perceived as folk songs.)

The thematic composition of the collection was quite wide: songs of love and everyday life, soldiers, robbers, songs about nuns. A few songs of social protest coexisted with religious ones that affirmed submission to fate. Of course, folklore also captured the prejudices and sentiments existing among the people, generated by fear of the forces of nature and of feudal rulers; At the same time, a certain bias in the selection of the text appeared, reflecting the conservative mindset of the compilers. The estate-guild system of the Middle Ages, patriarchal relations, combined with stable norms of moral behavior, seemed to them an ideal in comparison with modern society, marked by the struggle of selfish interests and the devaluation of ethical standards. Therefore, Arnim and Brentano preferred songs that captured the features of the patriarchal way of life, which, in their opinion, was originally German. But still, these songs express the feelings and moods of countless generations, and Heine could rightfully say that in them “beats the heart of the German people.”

“Children's and family tales”, published by the brothers Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm (vol. 1 - 1812, vol. 2 - 1815; composition and text in the final edition) received an even wider response throughout the world - 1822). The themes of fairy tales fully reflected the multifaceted artistic world that has developed over the centuries in the popular consciousness. There were fairy tales about animals, and fairy tales, and fairy tales, in different situations pitting a smart, kind, brave fairy-tale hero (often a simple peasant) with his opponents, both in human form and in the guise of various monsters embodying the evil principle of the world .

In the collection of the Brothers Grimm, compared to collections of fairy tales of other peoples, there are fewer satirical subjects. There is reason to believe that in some cases the compilers rejected accusatory options, preferring texts in which the moral idea prevailed over the social one.

The Brothers Grimm had to solve a difficult textual problem, determining to what extent the original ancient form of the fairy tale should be preserved and to what extent it meets the norms of modern literary language. The Grimms did not consider themselves only collectors and publishers: being experts in the history of language and national culture, they not only commented on the texts, but also gave them a stylistic form that made their collection an outstanding literary monument of the Romantic era. Therefore, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm have not become an ethnographic rarity of interest only to specialists. They are an integral part of German literature.

The merits of the Brothers Grimm in the history of German culture are multifaceted: they studied medieval literature, the mythology of the Germanic peoples, laid the foundations of German linguistics. Jacob Grimm began publishing an academic dictionary in 1852 German language- a publication for which one life was not enough and which was completed only in 1961 by the Academies of Sciences in Berlin (GDR) and Göttingen (FRG).

Turning to the national past, the Heidelberg romantics inevitably projected into it the problems of our time that worried them. An expressive example is the prose of Achim von Arnim (1781-1831), who went down in the history of German literature both as an original short story writer and as the author of two novels: Poverty, Wealth, Guilt and the Redemption of Countess Dolores (1810) and Guardians of the Crown ( 1817). Coming from an old noble family, Arnim tragically experienced the decline of his class. His work reflected the longing for the patriarchal past, the search for positive moral values ​​in it, which he would like to contrast with modernity. But at the same time, as a thoughtful artist, Arnim could not help but see the inevitability of the changes taking place. The experience of the post-revolutionary years convinces him that the old regime cannot be revived, and in Germany itself he does not see real forces capable of uniting the nation - hence the romantic dream of its spiritual insight and revival. This issue forms the ideological basis of the novel “Keepers of the Crown.” Its action takes place at the beginning of the 16th century, during the reign of Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg, but the historical background is very conventional. Arnim's novel - and expression romantic dream that the restoration of the Hohenstaufen Empire could return Germany to its lost greatness, and at the same time the recognition of the complete failure of this dream.

Among Arnim's short stories, the most famous is Isabella of Egypt (1812), a fantasy novella. Inscribed in a half-historical, half-fantasy background is a romantic story about the tragic love of the gypsy Isabella and Charles V. The idea of ​​the fragility of human lot runs through the entire story. A person is a plaything of chance and his passions, his freedom of will is relative, even if we are talking about such a ruler as Karl. According to Arnim, Karl's main sin was that he listened too much to the voice evil spirits- Alraun, who was looking for treasure for him. Arnim's anti-bourgeois theme, like that of many other German romantics, is mystified. “Woe to us, the descendants of his era!” - the author exclaims, as if the ill-fated alraun predetermined the victory of monetary interests in the 19th century. “Arnim derives reliable consequences from unreliable causes” (N. Ya. Berkovsky).

The short story “Raphael and His Neighbor” (1824), a polemical transcription of the image of the “divine Raphael”, new for the romantics, has a historical flavor - although in a different light. Raphael, like Wackenroder, - genius master, who has the amazing gift of incarnating an “unearthly” spirit. But in Arnim this image is layered with ideological reminiscences from Schlegel’s “Lucinda”, which in in this case partly contribute to the reconstruction of a more accurate historical flavor, because they convey one of the important facets of the Renaissance worldview - the rehabilitation of the flesh. However, the integrity of the humanistic ideal is called into question. Raphael finds himself between two women: the very earthly, sensual Gita and the sublime Benedetta. The author introduces many irrational aspects into the motivation of events; The struggle between the divine and carnal principles takes on an irrational character both in Raphael’s soul and in the artistic images that he creates. Arnim thereby rejects the enthusiasm of Wackenroder and the entire Jena school for this great era European culture. Here, as in many other works, conservative beliefs prevent the writer from historically objectively assessing the past.

Clemens Brentano (1778-1842), a poet, prose writer and playwright, embodied the main trends of the Heidelberg school, its ups and downs, with the greatest poignancy in his work. In the atmosphere of those years when, during trips to the Rhine, he enthusiastically listened to and recorded folk songs, preparing them for publication, Brentano’s own poetic voice was formed. His poems and songs of the first decade of the century are marked by simplicity and clarity of form and musicality. But the tradition of folk song in Brentano's lyrics - love and philosophical - is combined with a sharply dramatic depiction of human fate. Thus, the Rhineland impressions inspired the poet to create the original ballad “Lore Ley” (1802). The romantic image of the Rhineland beauty, the sorceress Lorelei, attracted the attention of many poets, who then created new variations on Brentano’s plot (Eichendorff, Heine, Gerard de Nerval, etc.). Brentano's ballad, with its tragic intonations, fits into the general context of his love lyrics. Poems and songs about broken fidelity, about lost or unrequited love thematically precede the motifs of “Winter Reise” by W. Müller and “Lyrical Intermezzo” by Heine. But, unlike Müller and Heine, loneliness lyrical hero, his alienation is revealed in Brentano as a fatal feature of human existence. And perhaps there was no other romantic poet in Germany who would have treated the theme of death so passionately - and not even tragically, but in the intonation of a kind of pacifying fatalism - as Brentano did.

The legacy of Brentano the prose writer is small, but is represented by different genres. In the novel “Godvi” (1801-1802), the intricate plot is designed to show the complexity of human destinies themselves. The author argues with the concept of personality of the Jena romantics, questioning its moral meaning. Among the short stories, the most popular is the tragic “The Tale of the Glorious Kasperl and the Beautiful Annerl” (1817), in which the author gives features of the fatal inevitability of the death of two lovers. The bearer of folk wisdom is an old peasant woman who glorifies submission to the will of God as the main virtue.

Soon after the completion of this short story, Brentano’s religious sentiments intensify; he not only abandons creative activity, but declares art itself to be sinful in nature. “For a long time now I have felt a kind of fear of all poetry in which the artist expresses himself and not God,” wrote Brentano to Hoffmann in 1816. This idea is revealed in the large poetic cycle “Romances of the Rose Wreath” (completed in 1810 -1812). It meant complete dissolution in a religious idea, a severance of all social ties, self-isolation, renunciation of independence - essentially, a rejection of the romantic concept of personality, which presupposed the active opposition of the sovereign human “I” to the surrounding world. And the name itself is ambiguous: “Rosenkranz” is not only a “pink wreath”, but also a “rosary”.

German literature of the 30s - 70sI10th century.

Lecture outline

2. Tall Biedermeier

3. “Pre-March” literature

4. German literature of the second half of the 19th century. Poetic realism.

1. The socio-political situation of Germany in the 30s – 70s of the 19th century and the development of German literature.

In the diversity of literary movements in Germany in the 1930s XIX century, undoubtedly, reflected significant changes in the economic and socio-political development of the country.

In 1815, after the final defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna took place, the purpose of which was to determine state borders and principles of existence of post-Napoleonic Europe. The Congress of Vienna and its decisions marked the beginning of a new era in the development of the social and cultural life of the German lands - the era of the Restoration. The end of the era is considered to be the March Revolution of 1848, which became a response to the revolutionary events in France.

In accordance with the resolution of the Congress of Vienna, a new public education, so-called German Union. It consists of 38 practically independent territories, which perpetuates a centuries-old tradition of fragmentation in Germany. Relying on a monarchical state structure, the official policy of 1815–1848 consolidates the class superiority of the nobility and clergy - the two pillars of the monarchy. At the same time, the rights of the remaining segments of the population are limited: the emerging bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, bureaucrats, artisans, peasants, and the growing layer of the industrial proletariat. The forces opposed to the Restoration regime continue to fight for the ideals of “unity” and “freedom.”

Despite the dominance of monarchical regimes in the German lands, in the 1930s Germany took tangible, real steps along the path of bourgeois development. Already at this time, those economic and political prerequisites began to be determined that in 1871 would lead to the proclamation of a unified German Empire. At the same time, during this period, the struggle for a united republican Germany began.

The 1930s in Germany were marked, although slower in comparison with such advanced European powers as England and France, but still quite definite in the growth of productive forces. Despite a number of unfavorable conditions, industry is steadily developing in the country. The continental blockade, established during the years of the Napoleonic dictatorship in Europe, was a fairly effective, albeit peculiar, stimulus in the development of the German national economy. Bourgeois relations are clearing the way for themselves in German agriculture, developing particularly rapidly after the agrarian reform of 1807–1811.

News of the revolutionary explosion in July 1830 in Paris, like a refreshing, life-giving whirlwind, swept through Germany, provincial and fragmented, deceived in its rosy hopes generated by the patriotic enthusiasm of the liberation war against Napoleon. These events were received with particular delight by German youth, whose sentiments were very clearly expressed by Heine. Having learned about the revolution in France, he wrote in his diary: “Lafayette, the tricolor banner, the Marseillaise... I seem to be intoxicated. Bold hopes rise passionately, like trees with golden fruits, with wildly growing branches stretching their foliage to the very clouds... I am all joy and song, I am all sword and flame!”

The July Revolution in France was the impetus that caused revolutionary outbreaks in Germany, prepared by the internal development of class contradictions in the country. The revolutionary movement of the early 30s was politically immature here and was much weaker than in France. However, it showed that even in such a backward, fragmented country as Germany, political reaction could not delay the general course of economic development. Uprisings broke out in Hesse-Darmstadt, where peasants, armed with scythes and clubs, smashed the hated landlords, estates and tax institutions. In Bavaria, students protested against the government. Unrest resulted in revolutions in some other small German states. This was the case, for example, in Saxony and Hanover, where constitutions were introduced as a result of these unrest.

The liberal press became more active, and articles demanding a constitution and the unification of Germany began to appear frequently on its pages. Numerous appeals and petitions were sent to the government, reflecting the demands of the liberal bourgeoisie. In May 1832, Bavarian liberals, on the anniversary of the local constitution, organized a demonstration in Hambach, which was attended by about 30 thousand people (the so-called “Hambach Festival”). Speeches were made here demanding the unity of Germany and a republican system in the country; speakers spoke of support for the liberation movement in Poland and revolutionary France. Significant student unrest occurred in April 1833 in Frankfurt, where an attempt was made to take control of the city and occupy the building of the Federal Diet.

These events reflected the growth of class consciousness of the German bourgeoisie, its desire to eliminate the political fragmentation of the country, which was hindering the development of trade and economy.

Popular unrest in Germany occurred against the backdrop of a revolutionary upsurge throughout Europe (the national liberation movement in Poland, revolutionary movement in Belgium, uprisings in a number of Italian states, completion of the struggle for parliamentary reform in England). The opposition movement caused a series of repressions from the ruling circles of the German states. Encouraged by the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the German Federal Diet passed reactionary decrees in 1832 prohibiting political meetings and demonstrations, the making of political speeches and the filing of petitions. Numerous arrests are taking place in the country, especially among participants in the Hambach Festival. The reaction is noticeably intensifying after the Frankfurt events. The courts pronounce sentences on the participants in the uprising; all meetings are dispersed by troops. In the summer of 1834, a conference of ministers of German states in Vienna developed and issued the so-called Vienna Act, directed against the progressive press and universities and limiting constitutional principles.

These changes in the economic and socio-political life of the country were not slow to have an impact on various forms of social consciousness, in particular on the closely related philosophy and literature. The philosophical movements of the 30s in Germany had a significant influence on the formation of German realism.

In the 30s, sharp contradictions emerged in the camp of Hegel's followers - a group of old or right Hegelians (Gabler, Hinrichs, Erdmann) and a left Hegelian wing, or young Hegelians (Bruno and Edgar Bauer, David Strauss, Max Stirner) stand out. From the position of bourgeois radicalism, the left Hegelians had a negative attitude towards Prussianism and sharply criticized the dogmas of the Christian religion.

The character of German literature of this decade changes decisively compared to the literature of the 10s and 20s. The contradictions between the conservative orientation of official ideology and politics and the increasingly clear need for new forms of social existence determine the spiritual culture of the Restoration era and the first decade after its end. One of the reasons for the convergence of literature with the “spirit of the times” is the democratization of the literary market, the expansion of the readership and the change in the very status of writers: an increasing number of authors are moving into the category of professional writers.

Continuing and transforming the tradition of Weimar classicism and romanticism and anticipating many of the principles of realism, the verbal artistic culture of the Restoration also possesses a number of specific features that are not reducible to the aesthetics of previous or subsequent literary movements.

In his famous work “The Romantic School,” Heine emphasized that “with the death of Goethe a new beginning begins in Germany.” literary era; old Germany went to the grave with him, the age of aristocratic literature came to an end, the democratic age begins.”

If Heine's prediction about the advent of a democratic age in German literature was too optimistic, nevertheless, the main phenomena in the German literary process of the 30-70s indicate its certain democratization in comparison with the previous stage. Moreover, these new trends affected primarily the ideological and aesthetic evolution of Heine himself, who already in the 20s, as the author of the “Book of Songs” and “Travel Pictures,” rightfully took his place in the forefront of German literature. But it was precisely in the 30s that the much more clearly defined advanced socio-political orientation of Heine’s work led to his turning to the genre of journalism, revolutionary-democratic in content. Speaking against the epigones of German romantic poetry, Heine polemically sharpens his understanding of the democratization of literature - he even stops writing poetry for quite a long time, sincerely believing that poetry has outlived its usefulness, and focuses his attention on prose.

For Heine, as for most German writers of that time, understanding the experience of the July Revolution in France became of utmost importance. The perception of the ideas of Saint-Simonism, the prospects of bourgeois-democratic movements and increasing attention to the actions of the working class - this is the range of issues that underlies Heine’s creative work in the 30s.

In his first newspaper correspondence from Paris, where he moved in 1831 (“French Affairs” (1832)), Heine tells German readers about the lively, active socio-political life of the capital of France, still full of living echoes and reminders of the hot days of late July 1830 of the year. Issues of philosophy, literature and art, which occupy such a large place in Heine’s journalism of this decade, are considered by him in close connection with the socio-political struggle of his time. A brilliant example of this are his most important works: “On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany” (1834) and “The Romantic School” (1836). In these works, having sharply criticized idealistic trends in German philosophy, the poet dealt a devastating blow to reactionary romanticism in German literature.

During this period, Heine's work, like almost all German literature, was associated with the process of formation of the method of critical realism. The literary life of these years was characterized by sharp polemics with the ideological and aesthetic principles of romanticism, a struggle with the late romantics, who still played a prominent role in German literature.

An important feature of German literature from 1815 to 1848 is its appeal to the cultural values ​​of the 18th century. Many important qualities artistic literature The Enlightenments, which were intensively refuted by the romantics at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, are now becoming relevant again. They are “restored” either in the form of outright journalisticism and didacticism, which was sometimes not shunned by the most outstanding representatives of post-Romantic literature (Heine, Stifter), then in the form of sentimental-idyllic utopias (Gothelf, Mörike) or in the form of Sternian irony, which was perceived and assimilated through the work of Jean-Paul (Immermann, Heine, early Stifter). Respect for documentary and “near-fiction” forms of travel writing, correspondence, and literary critical essays is returning, largely thanks to the activities of Heine and Young Germany.

The well-known “duality”, “bidirectionality” of the political and cultural atmosphere during the Restoration era inevitably gave rise to polarization literary context depending on a positive (or just loyal) or critical-oppositional attitude towards officially proclaimed social values. “It is impossible to discuss our latest German literature without descending into the depths of politics,” Heine wrote in 1832, referring to the first post-Romantic generation of writers.

A group of conservatively (politically and aesthetically) oriented German-speaking authors of the Restoration era gravitate toward the designation “Biedermeier.” Opposing it in socio-political orientation and political program, the liberal-democratic movement of 1815 - 1848 in German histories of literature is called the literature of the pre-March period (that is, preceding the March revolution of 1848) or “pre-March literature”. Often one of these two terms is used as a general designation for all literature of the Restoration period. It still seems logical to draw a dividing line between two important concepts of literary history, each of which had its own worldview, its own aesthetics and a separate direction in literature.

In addition to the two identified groups of “conservatively” and “liberal-democratically” oriented authors - Biedermeier and the pre-March movement in literature - in the context of poetry, drama and prose of the Restoration era, there are also lonely literary figures who do not fit completely into any of the designated movements. Thus, writer K.L. Immerman (1796 – 1840), creator of two voluminous epic novels “Epigones. Family memories in 9 books" (1825–1836) and "Munchausen. History in Arabesques" (1838 - 1839) is called in German sources a theorist and practitioner of literary "epigonism", including in the said movement the poet A. von Platen (1796 - 1835), author of the famous collections "Gazelles" (1823), "Sonnets" from Venice" (1825) and "Polish Songs" (1831 - 1832, published 1839). The same Platen, together with N. Lenau, due to the dominant theme of their lyrics, are sometimes combined into the group of “poets of world sorrow.” (Sometimes this group is wrongfully expanded, supplementing it with Buchner, Heine and Grabbe.) The playwright, prose writer and poet F. Goebbel represents the “young Hegelian” line in the literature of the era.

It is obvious that German literature of this period did not give the world such significant writers as Stendel and Balzac, Dickens and Thackeray. At the same time, the same processes took place in it as in the literatures of European countries; the formation of a new literary direction was actively underway.

The process of the formation of realism in German literature of the 30s was most clearly manifested in the work of Georg Büchner (1813 – 1837). Büchner lived for less than 24 years and left behind only four small literary texts: one short story and three dramas, which are currently included in the treasury of German literature.

Buchner was born shortly before the beginning of the Restoration era on the territory of the Rhineland principality of Hesse in an enlightened burgher family. His father, an ardent admirer of Napoleon, was a hereditary doctor. Following my father's wishes, future writer enters the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Strasbourg. In Strasbourg, Buchner established contacts with utopian socialists of Saint-Simonian orientation. In the mind of a young student there is a firm idea of ​​the revolution as the only way, capable of leading Germany out of socio-political stagnation. Therefore, having transferred to the University of Giessen, Buchner became one of the leaders of a secret political organization - the “Society of Human Rights” - which aimed to restore the basic human rights of the poorest segments of the population and had a revolutionary orientation.

The clandestinely published “Hessian Bulletin” became the press organ of the Society. However, the propaganda efforts of Buchner and his comrades were not successful among the general population. Thus, in most cases, peasants took the “Hessian Herald” to the nearest police station, without even looking at the leaflet. In 1835, many of the society's leaders were arrested. Buchner avoids arrest only by fleeing to Strasbourg, where after some time he completes his education with a thesis “On the cranial nerves.”

The revolutionary's career is cut short. Büchner embarks on a scientific path, accepting an offer to take the position of Privatdozent of Natural History at the newly founded University of Zurich. However, Buchner’s teaching career was not destined to continue. In February 1837, he died suddenly of typhoid fever, without completing his first teaching semester.

Buchner the writer occupies a special place in the literature of the Restoration era. The author's democratic beliefs, the spontaneous materialism of his aesthetic ideas, and his polemical attitude towards established literary canons (for example, towards Schiller's dramaturgy) bring Buchner closer to Young Germany.

The four-act drama "The Death of Danton" was written by Buchner in five weeks in 1835, shortly before leaving for Strasbourg. Turning to the events of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789 was to a certain extent logical for the ex-revolutionary Buchner, who was also under the fresh impression of the failure of the Society of Human Rights and under the fear of possible arrest. The author of the drama asks questions about the role of the individual in history, about the need and possibility of changing social conditions, about the nature of social progress. The writing of “The Death of Danton” was preceded by a thorough study of historical sources, in particular “The History of the French Revolution” (1823 – 1827) by Thiers. Approximately one-sixth of the text of the drama consists of verbatim excerpts from the speeches of participants in the events, borrowed from historical documents.

Raising the problem of revolutionary violence, the leader and the people in the revolution on the basis of the French Revolution of the late 18th century, Buchner naturally took into account the experience of the events of July 1830 in Paris, clearly showing the limitations of the bourgeois revolution.

Focusing on the historical dramas of Shakespeare and Grabbe, Buchner consciously contrasts his concept of history with that followed by Schiller. The main conflict of Schiller's dramas - the conflict between necessity and freedom - is essentially abolished in Buchner. The individual in Danton's Death no longer has the freedom to make decisions. The emphasis is shifted to the flow of historical existence, absolutely independent of the efforts of the subject. Schiller's belief in the moral invincibility of the individual - the bearer of positive moral principle contrasted is Buchner’s conviction in the “diabolical fatalism of history” (from a letter to his bride dated March 10, 1834). Personality, according to Buchner, is nothing more than “foam” on the crest of a wave of history, a puppet in the hands of fate. The logic of history is incomprehensible to an individual, life is “chaos”, controlled by a god named “Nothing”.

The conflict in "The Death of Danton" is no longer a classic confrontation between two antagonistic heroes - it looks much more complex. Danton and Robespierre, political opponents, are in a certain sense “on the same side of the barricade,” if we mean the isolation of the leaders of the revolution from the vital interests of the French people. At the same time, in accordance with Buchner’s fatalistic concept, both heroes, along with the masses of the people, act in the historical process as only “puppets” given over to “unknown forces.”

In the composition of the drama and the construction of individual scenes, a decisive departure from the principles of classical theater is important. The individual episodes of Danton's Death do not follow from one another according to the principle of formal logical sequence. Crowd scenes or the introduction of “random” representatives of the people, who appear only once in action, outwardly look like retardation techniques; however, they play their artistically significant role: they help to concretize the historical conflict. Buchner provides in “The Death of Danton” a brilliant example of “open”, “epic” drama, acting in many respects as a direct predecessor of “ epic theater» 20th century playwright B. Brecht.

The tragedy "Woyzeck", created during 1836 and left unfinished due to the death of the author, is the highest achievement of Buchner the playwright.

As in “The Death of Danton,” Buchner bases his “Woyzeck” on real events supported by documentary evidence, only now this is not material from world history, but a criminal incident from the life of the lower strata of society, described in detail in newspapers. In 1821, in Leipzig, the soldier-barber Woyzeck of 1941, out of jealousy, stabs his mistress, the 46-year-old widow of the regimental surgeon Voost, with a piece of a dagger, and is sentenced to death. The execution is carried out despite ample evidence that Woyzeck, a mentally ill man, was obviously in a state of mental insanity at the time of the crime.

Doing this real event the plot basis of his drama (6 years earlier, Stendhal similarly used the story of Antoine Berthe in “The Red and the Black”), Buchner revolutionized his contemporary ideas about tragedy. The hero of a full-fledged tragic action is made lumpen, “the most insignificant person,” wretched, deprived spiritually and physically. The psychology of the suffering of the “little man” is as interesting to Buchner the artist as the psychopathological foundations of murder are attractive to Buchner the natural scientist. The truth of life, the author’s first aesthetic commandment, is combined with the no less important principle of penetration into the inner world of an “insignificant” human being.

The theme of alienation and isolation of man, both socially and natural world becomes the leading motive of the drama. Soldier Woyzeck is poor and sick: he is haunted by voices and ghosts. He has a beloved woman, whom he, as a military man, has no right to marry, and an illegitimate son, for whose support there is not enough money. In order to provide food for the child, Woyzeck agrees to act as a guinea pig in the experiments of a materialist doctor, forcing him to eat only peas for six months. Woyzeck's only "natural" connection with the universe is destroyed when Maria, his sensual lover, cheats on him with a drum major full of vital force. An attempt to stand up for one’s honor ends in failure: the enemy is physically stronger than the sick man, who is also weakened by Woyzeck’s “pea diet.” The way out of the “vicious circle,” as in a classic tragedy, is murder: Woyzeck stabs the unfaithful Maria to death. The preparation for the murder (buying a knife, saying goodbye to a barracks comrade) and the very mechanism of committing the crime are presented in detail, detachedly and cruelly in the work. However, the author’s indifference to what is happening is only apparent. The “grandmother’s tale” interspersed into the drama sounds like a symbolic reflection of the restlessness, hopelessness and hopelessness of the protagonist’s fate, but it also carries a huge charge of compassion for the fate of the “little man”. The “poor child,” abandoned by everyone in this world, turns his complaint to the heavenly bodies. But the sun appears to him as a “withered sunflower”, the moon as a “rotten thing”, the stars as “bread crumbs”, the earth as an “overturned pot”. At the end of the fairy tale, the child “sat down and cried”, “and so it still sits alone.” The plot of the tale, along with the entire course of action, is an additional confirmation of the final conclusion of the drama: Woyzeck is not a monster or a stupid animal, but an unfortunate man, hunted by life. (“Suffering is my prayer,” he says one day.) The measure of suffering turns out to be overflowing, and this pushes him to commit a crime.

Elements of the Hessian dialect in the speech of the characters, proverbs interspersed in the characters’ remarks and fragments of folk songs create a specific stylistic flavor in the drama. The spontaneous flow of warm folk “spirituality” that arises in this way contrasts with the inevitably cruel course of events.

Mental suffering and mental illness, loneliness, isolation, alienation, abandonment by God and people are themes common to “Woyzeck” and the short story “Lenz” (1836), discovered in Buchner’s drafts after his death.

The plot was based on an episode from the life of one of the most prominent representatives the “Storm and Drang” movement, playwright J. M. R. Lenz (1751 – 1792). In 1778, the writer, tormented by severe attacks of schizophrenia, spends two weeks in the Alsatian village of Walderbach (in the short story - Waldbach) in the family of pastor I. F. Oberlin (1740 - 1826), a famous teacher of the Enlightenment. Out of habit of working with documentary sources, Buchner, who had long been interested in the life and work of Lenz, turned to Oberlin’s diary notes, which contained a detailed description of the condition of the sick Lenz during his stay in Alsace.

Adhering rather strictly to the sequence of Oberlin's notes (many fragments of the novella are verbatim quotations from the pastor's manuscript), Buechner places emphasis differently in his text. The author replaces the point of view of an objective observer, which was dominant in Oberlin, with an internal perspective, a “look from the inside,” masterfully imitating the form of perception (“stream of consciousness”) of a mentally ill person. In addition, absolutely original episodes of the hero’s external and internal life related to the experience of nature and God, as well as Lenz’s dispute with the writer Kaufman about art, are added to the substantial corpus of Oberlin’s notes.

The source of the hero’s mental suffering, the reason for the “nameless fear” that continually engulfs Lenz, is the transformation of a previously harmonious world into a chaotic heap of disordered debris. The natural and human world have lost their former integrity in the eyes of the hero; the universe for Lenz is no longer space, there is a “huge hole” in it. The ability to perceive the needs of the entire universe as one’s personal pain is Lenz’s quality, which is equally associated with both his mental illness and the widespread tendency at the time of Sturm und Drang to glorify the individual (“geniomania”). “The universe seemed to him wounded; it caused him deep, unspeakable pain.”

Lenz is trying to take upon himself, along with the “universal pain,” also responsibility for all the incongruities of the world. The inability to somehow influence the imperfection of existence plunges the hero into an even greater abyss of despair, as after a failed attempt to resurrect a dead girl. (Lenz behaves in this situation like Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus.) Calmness and bliss visit Lenz’s soul only for a short period of time: while reading the Bible, horseback riding with Oberlin, and also on Sunday, when the pastor allows him to preach a sermon in his place. .

Lenz's schizophrenia, the hero's gradual loss of an integral picture of the world, is presented by Buchner as a reaction to disintegrated social relationships, to the alienation of the individual from the world. The composition of the short story (individual fragments are built one after another without a specific connection or transitions), as well as a specific lapidary style, stand out artistic forms reflections of a “disintegrated” world. The ending of the work can also be interpreted in this sense. By interrupting the short story in mid-phrase (“This is how he lived further...”), Buchner creates an artistically necessary correspondence to the chaotic, unbalanced lifestyle and inner world of the hero.

Qualitatively new trends in the German literary process had an active influence in the 30s and on creative evolution Karl Immermann (1796 - 1840), a writer who made a significant contribution to the development of German progressive literature, in particular, to the development of the genre social novel. Immermann's creative quests led him to close personal friendship, and sometimes active creative collaboration, with Heine, despite the differences in their political views.

The early period of Immermann's work, dating back to the early 20s, was marked by the significant influence of romanticism. During this period, the writer did not create any significant works. He publishes individual poems and romantic tragedies “The Valley of Ronseval,” “King Periander,” “Cardenio and Celinda.” By the end of the 20s, the ideological orientation of Immerman’s work was more clearly defined. Not only among his works of these years, but also in the writer’s legacy as a whole, the historical drama “Tragedy in Tyrol” (1827), subsequently called “Andreas Hofer” in an abbreviated and revised form, occupies a significant place. Abandoning his unsuccessful quests along the paths of romanticism, Immerman is looking here for ways to realistically reflect reality. Having chosen a national historical plot for his drama, he turns to the recent past - to the Tyrolean uprising in 1809 against Napoleon, led by Andreas Hofer. But due to the limitations of his social positions, the writer did not understand the deep contradictions of this uprising, which consisted in the fact that it was the only major uprising of the masses against the Napoleonic occupation in Germany at that time. However, it was inspired by the Austrian government and was inspired by reactionary Catholic ideas, setting as its task the restoration of the Austrian monarchy. Accordingly, Immermann erroneously chose Andreas Hofer as tragic hero, since in reality he did not fight for the interests of the people, but was an executor of the will of the Austro-Catholic reaction, which, frightened by the scale of the guerrilla war, betrayed it popular movement. However, a strong positive side of the drama is Immerman's desire to promote the idea of ​​​​the decisive role of the masses in national liberation movements. He critically portrays the Austrian chancellor, whom contemporaries easily recognized as Metternich.

Some aesthetic aspects of the drama reveal its significant weaknesses - the visions and dreams of the heroes of the play, which play a significant role in the development of the plot, the angel who directs the course of events, the length and somewhat stilted pathos of the monologues, undoubtedly weaken the realistic sound of the drama.

Immermann's keen interest in the socio-political conflicts of reality was reflected in a collection of his poems in 1830. The cycle of sonnets about the homeland stands out here. The civil poems characteristic of the collection are imbued with rejection of the surrounding reality. The author seeks to show the poet’s conflict with reality, to paint pictures of the pitiful, deplorable state of contemporary Germany. Sonnet IX, dedicated to the theme of the unity of the homeland, sounds especially powerful. True, the poet’s social protest in these, in many ways still weak, poems is not clearly expressed, and there is no definite positive program in them.

Despite the writer’s unabating attraction to drama and theater (in 1834 Immermann became the head of the city theater in Düsseldorf), his most significant works, which influenced the subsequent development of German literature, were the novels “Epigones” (1836) and “Munhausen” (1835). – 1839). These novels reflected some of the most important moments in the socio-political development of modern Germany - the gradual displacement of the feudal nobility from the historical arena by a new emerging class, the bourgeoisie.

At the center of the novel “Epigones” is the image of Herman, a burgher by origin, who after his wanderings ends up in the Duke’s castle. The writer shows the development of the hero's character. And it is in this regard that Immermann’s novel has often been compared to Goethe’s educational novel, The Teaching Years of Wilhelm Meister. Immerman paints a picture of the impoverishment of the ancient noble family. The Duke's estates gradually pass into the hands of the millionaire manufacturer, Uncle Herman. Duke William's close associate calls the nobility a passing class, and its current representatives - epigones. The dying aristocracy is described in the novel with some sympathy, with sadness, with sympathy. The author did not take the ideological positions of the nobility. Sad intonations are heard in the work because the writer saw the predatory, self-interested traits of the bourgeoisie, which was replacing the aristocracy, which retained in the author’s eyes a certain romanticized aura of refined nobility.

Immermann was one of the first in German literature to reflect in “Epigones” the process of the withering away of the old feudal order. At the same time, the writer even clearly underestimates the strength of the German nobility, which, due to the economic backwardness of Germany, held in its hands for a long time the key political positions. However, the general trend of the novel is correct. The work contains individual sketches that reflect the characteristic features of the then social and political life of Germany. For example, in the chapter “Demagogues” the student anti-Prussian opposition is quite successfully shown. Much is said on other pages of the novel about political persecution, censorship persecution, and the fragmentation of the country. Describing the industrial enterprises of the manufacturer, Immerman draws attention to the plight of the workers.

Criticizing bourgeois progress, Immermann was still far from understanding the right paths leading to the reorganization of society. His ideal had a very definite conservative connotation in the spirit of the populism of the German romantics. The hero of the novel, Herman, having destroyed his deceased uncle's factory, becomes a landowner and farmer, and gives most of his land to the peasants. The novel has significant artistic weaknesses. Lack of a single storyline replaced by long dialogues and reasoning. The characters of the characters are palely outlined.

The further ideological and aesthetic evolution of the writer was convincingly reflected in the novel Munchausen. As in. “Epigonakh”, the same theme of the development of new bourgeois relations and the death of the old feudal world is raised here, but it is revealed with greater depth and specificity. The traditional image of the liar Baron Munchausen is reinterpreted in the novel in the spirit of modernity - he appears as the personification of idle talk and projectism, as a symbol of lies and hypocrisy. The writer expressed his hostility towards the Prussian officers in the image of the thieving deceiver and adventurer Rucciopuccio. It is obvious that Immermann is to a certain extent freed from his illusions in relation to the nobility. In the satirical and caricatured images of the decrepit, impoverished landowner Baron Shnik-Shnak-Shnur and his daughter Emerentia, one no longer feels any sympathy from the author. The criticism of bourgeois entrepreneurship takes on greater satirical sharpness in Munchausen.

In Munchausen, Immermann’s positive conservative-populist ideal, revealed by the author in the large insert story “Starostin’s Dvor,” also receives a more detailed and convincing artistic motivation. A rich farmer who preserves the patriarchal way of life in his everyday life and in his vast farm is the healthy social foundation on which, according to Immerman, society should rest. However, with all his desire to idealize the village kulak, the writer noticed in him traits of cold prudence and acquisitiveness. The realistic tendencies of the novel were also reflected in some attempts to depict class differentiation in the village, although the tendency towards depicting idyllic patriarchal relations somewhat blurs the picture of the contradictions between the farm laborer and the rich farmer.

Close to Immermann in aesthetic positions was the playwright Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801 - 1836), whose work o played a significant role in German literature of the 30s.

Like Heine, Grabbe was one of the “troublemakers” in the literary life of Restoration Germany. Unlike the author of the “Book of Songs” and “Travel Pictures,” Grabbe realized his creative potential exclusively in the field of drama, considering renewal German theater main task modern literature.

Heine, who judged modern literature on principle, spoke with great respect of Grabbe's talent. In his Memoirs (volume 9), Heine wrote: “...Grabbe was one of the greatest German poets and among all our dramatic poets is one of the most akin to Shakespeare.”

Grabbe's worldview and aesthetics did not represent a harmonious, harmonious system of ideas. Positive attitude towards the ideals of the French bourgeois revolution, admiration for the personality of Napoleon, enthusiastic acceptance of the revolutionary events of 1830 in France, criticism current state German life and literature bring him closer to the “pre-March” writers, in particular with Heine (Grabbe became friends with him for a short time while studying in Berlin). At the same time, Grabbe is alien to the cosmopolitanism of the Young Germans and Heine. “Motherland”, “people”, “national history” are no less important values ​​for him than “freedom, equality, brotherhood”.

Bourgeois literary criticism tried to explain the contradictions of Grabbe's creativity and the weaknesses of his artistic skill by the properties of his unbalanced character, passing by the truly plight of the writer.

Grabbe's talent manifested itself most clearly in the genre of historical drama, where, in particular, the writer's interest in national historical themes was reflected. The writer strives to concentrate the action of his dramas around the central character - some historical figure. Although Grabbe, being an idealist, did not correctly understand the course of historical development in everything, he constantly correlated the actions of his heroes with historical events. Thus, moving away from the “cult of heroes,” he moved toward realistic historical drama.

Most significant works Grabbe are two tragedies from the “Hohenstaufen” cycle - “Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa” (1829) and “Emperor Henry VI” (1830), the drama “Napoleon, or the Hundred Days” (1830), the play on the ancient plot “Hannibal” (1838 - 1835) and "Battle of Hermann" (1835).

The central conflict of Grabbe's dramaturgy is the conflict between the personal and the superpersonal. The heroes of Grabbe's plays are, as a rule, strong, prominent figures. Often these are historical figures (Sulla, Hannibal, Napoleon, Frederick Barbarossa) or “eternal” images of world literature (the drama “Don Juan and Faust” (1828)). The peculiar “geniocentrism” of Grabbe’s aesthetic ideas and the author’s undisguised admiration for the “strong personality” connect his work with the tradition of romanticism.

At the same time, in Grabbe’s work, the anti-romantic, “superpersonal” principle, manifested as the “idea of ​​history,” makes itself felt. The heroes of his historical and mythological tragedies, bearers of a pronounced individual principle, invariably suffer defeat at the end of the play. Circumstances (the will of the masses, the logic of the movement of history, fate, fate, chance) turn out to be stronger. Strong personalities Faust and Don Juan become prey to Satan; the great Napoleon, after returning to his former glory within 100 days, was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo (“Napoleon, or the Hundred Days”); pursued by the Romans, betrayed by his compatriots, Hannibal (“Hannibal”) dies in the consciousness of the uselessness of his own great deeds; the prince of one of the German tribes, Hermann (“Battle of Hermann”), although he helps his people free themselves from Roman dependence, is not able to inspire his fellow tribesmen to conquer Rome.

The author's sympathies, as a rule, are on the side of the individualist hero, even if defeated in the struggle of life. The leitmotif of Grabbe's dramas is grief over the “unheroicness” of the modern era. The author has in mind precisely his own time, the post-Napoleonic era, when he puts prophetic words into the mouth of his Don Juan: “The time is approaching when war and peace, love and happiness, God and faith will be just empty words.” With all the awareness of the “unheroic” nature of the modern era, Grabbe still sees deep meaning in the existence of single heroes: their bright, comet-like destinies remind from time to time of the high purpose of the individual, thereby preventing humanity from wallowing in the abyss of everyday life.

Reality, “circumstances,” the objective “course of things” are another important component of Grabbe’s experimental dramas. The destinies of the heroes unfold against a real, historically and geographically defined background. In the play “Don Juan and Faust” these are specific streets and squares of Rome, Mount Mont Blanc; in historical dramas these are “pivotal” places for German and European history where great battles took place and “fateful” decisions were made. Grabbe strives to bring dramatic action closer to the living movement of history. In the dramatic dilogy about the Hohenstaufens, in Napoleon, Hannibal and the Battle of Hermann, large-scale crowd and battle scenes play an important role. Contrary to the canons of classical theater, Grabbe introduces into the stage action fragments of battles involving cavalry and artillery, elements of violence, suffering and the groans of the dying. Stage directions and comments on individual scenes often exceed in volume the monologues and dialogues of the characters.

The specific features of Grabbe's dramaturgy were especially clearly reflected in the dramas about the Hohenstaufens. The author's main attention is paid to the main characters of the plays, but folk scenes also play a significant role in them, revealing the social or political origins of the conflicts that underlie the action. This is exactly how the play about Frederick Barbarossa begins, in the first scene of which the Milanese rebel against the emperor.

The dramatic duology also testifies to Grabe's obvious attraction to certain principles of Shakespearean dramaturgy, which is reflected in the appeal to acute conflicts of history, to the well-known diversity of numerous scenes, in the frequent change of scene and a large number of characters. While maintaining the flavor of the time, Grabe sometimes achieves deep philosophical generalizations in revealing the eternal themes of life and death.

Grabbe's dramas gravitate towards the type of tragicomedy: “heroic” and comic scenes and situations replace each other. Grabbe's language reveals two stylistic levels. This, on the one hand, is pathetic, full of rhetorical figures, and sometimes pompous style of the main characters. The monologues of the main characters are written, as a rule, in blank verse of classical tragedy; they show traces of the influence of the “brilliant” style of “sturm und drang”. On the other hand, prose is actively introduced into dramas as the language of the crowd, ordinary soldiers, "rabble".

Grabbe's central work, which most fully embodied his socio-historical principles, is the drama “Napoleon, or the Hundred Days.” The events of the play, especially the battle scenes, reminded the Germans of the recent struggle for national liberation and aroused opposition sentiments.

The play begins with vivid scenes of Parisian street life, in which big number characters representing different social strata of Paris. These are soldiers of the former Napoleonic army, merchants, Jacobins, emigrant nobles, and the future French king Louis Philippe. Already in the first remarks of the characters representing the lower social classes, the idea of ​​a decisive rejection of the Bourbon regime by the broad masses of France is affirmed. Louis XVIII, who tried to implement a policy of liberal reforms, is shown as a helpless puppet who cannot resist his ultra-reactionary environment.

The versatile realistic characterization of the image of Napoleon testifies to Grabbe's great historical flair. In addition, it should be noted that the main character plays a much smaller role in this drama than in the dramas about the Hohenstaufens. The main role in the work belongs to the people. In the climactic scenes depicting the famous Battle of Waterloo, where, in addition to Napoleon and his marshals, outstanding German commanders Blucher, Bülow, Gneisenau, Zieten also appear, the image of the mass of soldiers takes up a larger place. Napoleon in the play is a great commander and statesman, in comparison with whom the Bourbons are just pitiful nonentities. And at the same time, it is the strangler of the revolution, arrogant and contemptuous of the people. He says about himself that he managed to curb the revolution and thereby protect the European thrones. But the greatness of Napoleon, with all its contradictions, contrasts sharply with the general European situation of political reaction, with the role of a secondary power that was assigned to France in the international life of Europe after 1815. And in this sense, Napoleon’s words sound prophetic that he, one great tyrant, will be replaced by many little ones. It is noteworthy that both the Bourbons and Napoleon are contrasted in the play by the Parisian Jacobin worker Jouve.

Friedrich Hebbel (1813 – 1863) stood apart from all the notable literary movements and schools of the Restoration era. There is no doubt about its connection with the classical (French classicist tragedy, I.V. Goethe, F. Schiller), and in prose - with the romantic (E.T.A. Hoffmann, L. Tieck) tradition. At the same time, Goebbel was not on the same path either with the representatives of the high Biedermeier movement or with the Young Germans, like him, who set themselves the task of updating literature.

Hebbel was distinguished from the first by a passion for conflicts sharpened to the limit, for bright and strong human characters, with a certain contempt for details, for the “average measure” of existence. A passionate follower of Hegelian philosophy, Goebbel insists on the priority of the “universal” over the “particular”; he is convinced of the need for art to reflect “universal” laws, leaving aside “particular” manifestations of the “world will.”

In the aesthetic ideas of the Young Germans and the “pre-March” poets, Hebbel did not accept the worship of the “spirit of the times”, the commandment of the “relevance” of literature. Hebbel contrasted the Young Germans’ conviction of the absolute superiority of “prose” as the “language of modernity” with his own confidence that the highest form of art at all times and for all peoples is drama. Therefore, he saw the task of modern literature in updating classical tragedy and raising this genre to its proper height.

The “idea” as the basis of a dramatic conflict makes Hebbel’s work similar to Schiller’s dramaturgy. In Goebbel, like in Schiller, the “ideological” conflict between the individual and the world is outlined with extreme severity and brought to a tragic conclusion. However, there are also serious differences. In Schiller, the death of a hero, the bearer of a moral ideal, appears as a triumph of a high moral principle (Don Carlos, The Virgin of Orleans). In Hebbel, heroes represent not for an “idea”, but for themselves: their personal dignity, male (female) nature, individual “will to live”. Not the loftiness of moral ideas, but strength of character is the main advantage of Hebbel's characters. The craving for the realization of a certain enormous charge of personal energy inevitably prompts Hebbel’s heroes to active action, to a collision with objective circumstances, and therefore to death, since Hebbel, unlike Schiller, insists on the triumph of the “general world will” over the particular manifestation of the individual hero energy.

In the form of his dramas, Goebbel consciously follows the traditions of French classicist tragedy and Goethe's dramaturgy of the period of "Weimar classicism". Plays usually consist of five, less often three acts, the number of characters is strictly limited, and the principle of unity of action is ideally maintained. Dramas on historical and mythological subjects are written in blank verse (“The Nibelungen” (1855 – 1860), “Herod and Mariamne” (1849), “Gyges and his Ring” (1856)); plays on a “burgher” plot use prose (“ Mary Magdalene", "Agnes Bernauer" (1852)).

The central place in Hebbel’s work is occupied by the “philistine tragedy” “Mary Magdalene” (1843). The drama takes place in a small German provincial town. At the center of the action is a typical “burgher” family, the head of which, carpenter Anton, is presented as the bearer of traditional moral values. Anton's children, Clara and Karl, each in their own way, protest against rigid moral precepts that have taken the form of dogma.

Karl, although he studies, according to tradition, his father’s craft, does not want to subordinate his private life to his father’s ascetic commandments: he spends his free time in cheerful companies and playing cards. Karl's frivolous lifestyle brings on him suspicion of theft, which, although later exposed as a delusion, costs the life of his terminally ill mother. At the end of the play, Karl decides, having left the city (his home is “basement”, “crypt”, “grave”), to become a sailor on a long-distance ship.

Anton's daughter Clara is torn apart by a complex internal conflict. She is pregnant by her unloved fiancé Leonhard and, knowing that the revelation of a premarital affair will have a devastating effect on her father, she hurries Leonhard into the wedding. At the same time, she is trying to drown out the awakened tender feeling to a friend from his early youth, who unexpectedly returned to his hometown after graduation (in the play he is designated as “Secretary”, according to the type of service he performs). However, Leonhard, carried away by the prospect of a more profitable match, refuses to marry, citing the “shame” brought on Anton’s family by Karl being arrested. The Secretary's admission that he still loves Clara does not change anything about her desperate situation. Deciding to sacrifice herself, she throws herself into the well. The play ends with the words of the old master Anton: “I no longer understand this world.”

The central conflict of “Mary Magdalene” resembles in general terms the typical conflict of a classical tragedy: the clash of duty and feelings. The traditional commandment of the primacy of the first over the second also retains its effectiveness. An individual who sees no alternative in the extreme narrowness of the living space provided to him voluntarily decides to follow the principle of “honor.” However, an abstract moral covenant is no longer capable of restoring the individual’s harmony with the environment and with himself: in a situation of “misunderstanding” of the world, at the end of the play, in addition to Anton, Karl and the Secretary remain.

In “Mary Magdalene,” Goebbel managed to highlight the “internal conflict” of the third estate and draw a line under the long-term development of bourgeois drama in Germany. Somewhat later, in the era of Gründerism, the naturalist G. Hauptmann, based on the experience of Hebbel, placed the fourth estate - the workers - at the center of the artistic world of drama, thereby laying the foundation for the tradition of German social drama.