It is necessary to describe the origins of Russian literary criticism. The problem of the emergence of literary criticism

Criminal law of Russia. A common part. Ed. Chuchaeva A.I., Nyrkova N.A.

R. n /D.: 2009. - 5 49 p.

The structure and content of the textbook correspond to the program of the course “Criminal Law”. The textbook has been prepared taking into account the latest changes in legislation and decisions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The authors tried to avoid a detailed analysis of controversial issues of criminal law, focusing on explaining the provisions of the current criminal legislation. * A concise and accessible presentation of the course material will allow you to quickly and effectively learn it and prepare well for taking tests and exams.

The textbook is intended for use by students of higher legal educational institutions, non-law universities, secondary legal educational institutions, as well as graduate students, applicants for academic degrees and teachers of law universities.

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CONTENT
Chapter 1
Concept, subject, tasks and principles of criminal law 3
§ 1. The concept of criminal law, its subject,! method and system 3
§ 2. Objectives of criminal law 8
§ 3. Principles of criminal law 11
Chapter 2
Criminal Law 17
§ 1. The concept and meaning of criminal law. Structure of criminal law 17
§ 2. History of criminal legislation of Russia 25
§ 3. Effect of criminal law in time 35
§ 4. Operation of criminal law in space 39
§ 5. Extradition of persons who have committed a crime 46
§ 6. Interpretation of criminal law 47
Chapter 3
Crime 53
§ 1. Concept of crime 53
§ 2. Signs of a crime 59
§ 3. Minority of the act 62
§ 4. Categories of crimes 65
§ 5. Delimitation of crimes from other offenses 69
Chapter 4
Multiplicity of crimes 72
§ 1. Plurality of crimes: concept and general characteristics 72
§ 2. The difference between plurality and complex single crimes 74
§ 3. Concept, signs and types of crimes 75
§ 4. Concept, signs and types of recidivism 80
Chapter 5
Composition of the crime..84
§ 1. Concept and structure of the crime 84
§ 2. Types of crimes 91
§ 3. Meaning of the crime 97
Chapter 6
Criminal Responsibility 101
§ 1. The concept of criminal liability 101
§ 2. Implementation of criminal liability 108
§ 3. Grounds for criminal liability 114
Chapter 7
Object of crime 119
§ 1. The concept and meaning of the object of the crime. 119
§ 2. Classification of objects of crime 125
§ 3. Subject of the crime. Victim 132
Chapter 8
The objective side of the crime 136
§ 1. The concept and meaning of the objective side of the crime 136
§ 2. Socially dangerous act 140
§ 3. Socially dangerous consequences 157
§ 4. Causality 166
§ 5. Optional signs of the objective side and their meaning 172
Chapter 9
The subjective side of the crime 176
§ 1. The concept and meaning of the subjective side of the crime 176
§ 2. The concept of guilt 178
§ 3. Forms of guilt 180
§ 4. Intention and its types 183
§ 5. Negligence and its types 192
§ 6. Innocent causing of harm 199
§ 7. Crimes with two forms of guilt 201
§ 8. Motive and purpose of the crime 204
§ 9. Error and its meaning 208
Chapter 10
Subject of the crime 217
§ 1. Concept and characteristics of the subject of a crime 217
§ 2. Age as a sign of the subject of a crime 219
§ 3. Sanity as a sign of the subject of a crime 225
§ 4. Criteria and signs of insanity 229
§ 5. Special subject of crime 233
Chapter 11
Stages of committing a crime 237
§ 1, Concept and types of stages of committing a crime 237
§ 2. Preparation for a crime 238
§ 3. Attempted crime 245
§ 4. Completed crime 251
§ 5. Voluntary renunciation of a crime 254
Chapter 12
Complicity in crime 2)59
§ 1. The concept and signs of complicity in a crime 2(59
§ 2. Types of accomplices in a crime 265
§ 3. Forms of complicity in a crime. 272
§ 4. Liability of accomplices in a crime 278
Chapter 13
Circumstances excluding the criminality of the act 287
§ 1. Concept, socio-legal characteristics and significance of circumstances excluding the criminality of the act 287
§ 2. Necessary defense 294
§ 3. Causing harm during the detention of a person who committed a crime 305
§ 4. Extreme necessity 312
§ 5. Physical or mental coercion 319
§ 6. Justified risk 321
§ 7. Execution of an order or instruction 326
Chapter 14
Concept, signs and purposes of criminal punishment 330
§ 1. Concept and signs of criminal punishment 330
§ 2. Criminal punishment in the system of state coercive measures 336
§ 3. Purposes of punishment 340
Chapter 15
System and types of punishments 347
§ 1. Penal system 347
§ 2. Fine 350
§ 3. Deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities 352
§ 4. Deprivation of a special, military or honorary title, class rank and state awards 355
§ 5. Mandatory work 357
§ 6. Correctional work 358
§ 7. Restriction on military service 361
§ 8. Restriction of freedom 362
§ 9. Arrest 364
§ 10. Confinement in a disciplinary military unit 365
§ 11. Imprisonment for a fixed period 366
§ 12. Life imprisonment 371
§ 13. Death penalty 372
Chapter 16
Assignment of punishment 375
§ 1. General principles of sentencing 375
§ 2. Circumstances mitigating punishment 377
§ 3. Mandatory mitigation of punishment 382
§ 4. Aggravating circumstances 388
§ 5. Mandatory enhancement of punishment 395
§ 6. Rules for imposing punishment for a crime committed in complicity, calculating terms of punishment and offsetting punishment 405
§ 7. Conditional sentence 407
Chapter 17
Exemption from criminal liability 415
§ 1. Concept and types of exemption from criminal liability 415
§ 2. Exemption from criminal liability in connection with active repentance 419
§ 3. Exemption from criminal liability in connection with reconciliation with the victim 429
§ 4. Exemption from criminal liability due to the expiration of the statute of limitations 433
Chapter 18
Exemption from criminal punishment 440
§ 1. General characteristics of the institution of exemption from punishment 440
§ 2. Conditional early release from serving a sentence 444
§ 3. Replacement of the unserved part of the punishment with a milder form 1 451
§ 4. Exemption from punishment due to changes in the situation 457
§ 5. Exemption from punishment due to illness 460
§ 6. Deferment of serving sentences for pregnant women and women with young children 466
§ 7. Exemption from punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for a court conviction 473
Chapter 19
Amnesty. Pardon. Criminal record 477
§ 1. Amnesty 477
§ 2. Pardon 483
§ 3. Criminal record 490
Chapter 20
Criminal liability of minors 498
§ 1. Features of criminal liability and punishment of minors 498
§ 2. Release of minors from criminal liability and punishment 510
Chapter 21
Other measures of a criminal legal nature 521
§ 1. Legal essence of other measures of a criminal law nature 521
§ 2. Concept, conditions, grounds and purposes of applying compulsory medical measures 529
§ 3. Types of compulsory medical measures 532
§ 4. Extension, modification and termination of the application of compulsory medical measures 536
§ 5. Compulsory medical measures and punishment 538
§ 6. Confiscation of property 540

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Chapter I. N. D. Sergeevsky: service to the Fatherland

Nikolai Dmitrievich Sergeevsky 1 - an outstanding forensic scientist, teacher, statesman and public figure - was born on September 24, 1849 in the Pskov province 2. Nobleman. In 1868 he graduated from the Pskov gymnasium with a gold medal. He received his legal education at St. Petersburg University.

In 1872 he remained at the university as a master's student. At the same time, Sergeevsky taught in several more private gymnasiums in St. Petersburg. His successes in science and pedagogy did not go unnoticed. The young teacher is appointed acting associate professor of the Department of Criminal Procedure of the Demidov Legal Lyceum (Yaroslavl). The scientist’s introductory lecture on the basic principles and forms of the criminal process, given on November 14, 1874, was so highly praised that it was published in the “Vremennik of the Demidov Legal Lyceum” 3.

For almost two years, Sergeevsky was abroad: in Leipzig, listening to lectures by Binding, who had already become famous by that time, and then in Graz (Austria) taking classes with Varg.

On April 21, 1880, the defense (dispute) of the master's thesis “On the meaning of causality in criminal law” 4 by N. D. Sergeevsky took place. The official opponents were famous criminologists - professors N. S. Tagantsev and I. Ya. Foinitsky. Professor of the Military Law Academy N.A. Neklyudov acted, as they said then, as a private opponent 5. Professor I.F. Foinitsky made the most comments. He even expressed regret that during the debate he was forced to limit himself to a brief statement of his objections. The opponent stated that, in view of the importance of the book “The Application of the Doctrine of Causation to Fraud,” he intends to subsequently continue the dispute with the master’s student on the pages of the legal press 6.

The master's degree was awarded to Sergeevsky unanimously.

Professor N.A. Neklyudov played a major role in the future fate of the young scientist. Thanks to his efforts, in 1882 he was invited to become an adjunct professor in the department of criminal law and legal proceedings at the Military Law Academy. N.D. Sergeevsky almost simultaneously became a teacher of criminal law in three educational institutions.

The move to St. Petersburg coincided with the end of the editorial board's consideration of the draft General Part of the Criminal Code, compiled by N. S. Tagantsev, and its distribution for review to senators, judicial institutions, prosecutors, universities, law societies and individual Russian and foreign specialists. In this step of the emperor, the scientist saw an appeal to society to actually take part in the drafting of new criminal legislation. That is why he dedicated his inaugural lecture at St. Petersburg University to the role of the masses in legislative activity. Then this lecture was published in the “Journal of Civil and Criminal Law” under the title “Modern problems of criminal legislation in Russia” 7.

He presented to the commission a detailed analysis of the draft General Part of the Criminal Code - a work of exceptional value. Special attention it focuses on the significant shortcomings of the project.

Sergeevsky’s participation in the preparation of criminal legislation was not limited to the submission of these comments. Under his chairmanship of the editorial committee of the St. Petersburg Law Society in 1884–1887. The sections on encroachments on personal and property drafts of the Special Part of the Criminal Code were considered. The prepared documents (comments, proposals, etc.) represent a significant work of over 400 pages. Most of the work was carried out personally by Nikolai Dmitrievich.

Subsequently, Sergeevsky was involved in the draft of the Criminal Code as Secretary of State of the State Council, managing the department of the Code of Laws. This time his task was reduced to the problems of legislative technology and codification, interbranch relations of criminal law.

The comments of the Code of Laws department formed the basis for the work of a special commission chaired by N. S. Tagantsev, whose task was to draw up additional legislation to the Criminal Code; to some extent, these comments were taken into account in the final editing of the draft criminal law.

Since 1893, Sergeevsky has been in public service. On December 16, 1893, he was appointed assistant secretary of state of the State Council, but did not remain in this position for long. In July 1894, he was transferred to the Ministry of Justice as a member of the consultation and at the same time appointed editor of the magazine. At the same time, N.V. Muravyov attracted him to participate in another truly colossal program - the reform of the judicial system and legal proceedings.

After the appointment of V.K. Plehve as Minister of State and Secretary of the Grand Duchy of Finland, Nikolai Dmitrievich became his closest assistant and soon acquired a reputation as one of the best specialists on the “Finnish question.” To a large extent, this was facilitated by the work he published in 1902, “On the Question of Finnish Autonomy and Fundamental Laws” 8.

It should be noted that Sergeevsky took an active part in the work of a number of commissions on Finland as either chairman or member of these commissions. Thus, in 1899, he headed a temporary commission established at the State Chancellery, whose task was to compile, according to Finnish laws, information necessary for the conduct of affairs in the State Council, as well as to systematize this legislation as a whole; in 1890 he was a member of the commission under the Finnish Secretary of State for the revision of certain laws relating to Finnish government; in 1891 - representative of the State Chancellery in the commission at the Main Directorate of Military Educational Institutions on the issue of transforming the Finnish cadet corps; in 1904 - a member of the preparatory commission (headed by senator Professor N.S. Tagantsev) to discuss proposals on the distinction between national and local Finnish legislation, developed by a commission of the Finnish Senate; in 1907 - member of a special meeting formed under the leadership of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers P. A. Stolypin on issues relating to the Grand Duchy of Finland, etc.

In parallel with this, Nikolai Dmitrievich, on behalf of V.K. Pleve, worked in two more commissions: on the development of measures due to the adoption of the new Criminal Code, which was headed by the Minister of Justice, and on the development of “the main grounds for harmonizing with the new criminal code the rules on criminal jurisdiction of the provisions, formed according to the law of June 29, 1889, as well as the most appropriate formulation of the administration of justice in the volost courts.”

The year 1904 was a turning point in Sergeevsky’s career as a government official - on October 7, 1904, he was appointed “to be present in the Government Senate.” Being a highly qualified lawyer, he quickly got up to speed on the matter that fell on his shoulders as a senator of the Second Department. Since May 1906, Nikolai Dmitrievich became a member of the State Council.

At the same time, the scientist returns to active research and literary work. In 1906, he published large articles “On the Doctrine of Religious Crimes” 9 and “The Enemy at the Gates” 10; brochure “Russian Spirit” 11; in 1907 - the work “Finnish Criminal Code” 12, etc.

However, fate would have it that Nikolai Dmitrievich ended his life as a professor of higher education. educational institution. In May 1906, the council of the Imperial School of Law itself approached the scientist with a proposal to head the department of criminal law, which was headed by N. S. Tagantsev for 40 years. The professor accepted this offer and thus again became a teacher of criminal law. In addition, on February 7, 1908, he was appointed a member of the school council, which was entrusted with the responsibility of directing and monitoring teaching and studies in the senior year (in the last three classes of the school, studying according to a program corresponding to the program of the Faculty of Law), in fact - Dean of the Faculty.

Sergeevsky's abilities as an organizer of higher education were probably the first to be appreciated by the Minister of Public Education, Count I.D. Delyanov. It was he who drew attention to the still very young professor, who presented very valuable comments on the draft of the new university charter. For many years, the scientist was a permanent adviser to the Ministry on issues of university teaching and a member of the commission on university affairs formed under the ministry.

Beginning in 1890, Sergeevsky was annually appointed by the chairman of the so-called legal testing commission (in modern terms, by the chairman of the state certification commission). So, in 1890 and 1891. he supervised the exams in Kyiv, in 1892 - in Odessa, in 1893 and 1895. - in Kazan, in 1894 - in Moscow. His reputation as an outstanding professor-administrator was firmly established. It was even suggested that if Sergeevsky had not joined the State Chancellery in 1893, he would have been offered the position of trustee of the educational district or some other senior administrative post.

Unfortunately, all of Nikolai Dmitrievich’s work on organizing education in Russia turned out to be unfinished. His workload in the civil service probably affected him. However, even in this form his notes are of great interest. They have come to us largely thanks to M. M. Borovitinov: with the permission of his family, he systematized and published the professor’s sketches after his death, and for the first time voiced their essence at an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Outlying Society, dedicated to memory Sergeevsky.

The first notes have no title or date. It can be assumed that they were written in 1899 or 1902. Other materials “less processed, but much more extensive, under the title “Our Higher School” undoubtedly date back to 1908, since P.M. is mentioned among the former ministers of public education. Kaufman, who remained at the head of this ministry, as is known, until the beginning of 1908.” 13.

In 1906, Sergeevsky began publishing the “Library of the Outskirts of Russia” as a supplement to the newspaper Outskirts of Russia. The editor-publisher considered it necessary to acquaint the reader with the legal position of the outskirts of Russia within the empire. The “Library” was sent out free of charge to subscribers of “Outskirts of Russia”.

There were six releases in total. The first two of them published Sergeevsky’s works “The Finnish Diet Charter” (together with the text of the Sejm charter, the election law and transitional rules) and “The Finnish Criminal Code” (together with the text of the Criminal Code of the Grand Duchy of Finland, the manifesto on its implementation and legislation related to the Code). The third issue of the Library contains an article by Professor P. A. Kulakovsky “The Polish Question in the Past and Present”; in the fourth issue - articles by Professor A. S. Budilovich “Can Russia give up its outskirts to foreigners” and N. N. Korevo “Publishing local laws”; in the fifth issue - the constitutional charter of 1815 and some other acts of the former Kingdom of Poland (1814–1881); in the sixth issue - inquiries on Finnish governance in the State Duma of 1908.

Journal reviews of judicial practice and reports on the most high-profile trials prepared by Sergeevsky are imbued with a sincere desire to help legal practitioners. For the scientist, this was the same material, using which he could substantively point out errors in law enforcement activities, seeking to make legal decisions. At the same time, the comments, being a scientific work of a famous criminologist, contain fundamentally important provisions that enrich the doctrine of criminal law, which have not lost their significance to this day. The scientific conscientiousness and scrupulousness with which the professor approached them is evidenced by their volume - some comments reach 100 pages of journal text.

Sergeevsky was not limited to developments theoretical problems criminal process; as already mentioned, he was quite seriously interested in forensic investigative practice, in particular, he paid a lot of attention to issues related to material evidence, since he reasonably believed that they “say a lot, but only to those who know how to talk with them, who understand their silent speech" 14.

The scientist conceived the idea of ​​writing “a complete, systematic study on the use of various kinds of evidentiary features in the form of a practical guide for police officers conducting searches and inquiries, for forensic investigators and judges” 15. For this purpose, he began collecting material at the beginning of his scientific career. Both in Russia and abroad I tried to get acquainted with forensic investigators and be more often present during investigative actions, especially during inspections of the crime scene. Over the course of three or four years, he collected a lot of material, which, however, remained unclaimed for a long time. Only in 1907, at the request of the editors of the journal “Police Bulletin,” Sergeevsky prepared seven essays, published in 1907–1908. under the general title “Silent Witnesses”: “Inspection of the Corpse”; "Extra items"; "Two murders for the purpose of robbery"; "Drowned Woman"; "Inconsistency"; "Forensic Investigator"; "Thieves and thieves." All of them, written in lively, figurative language, were well received by practical workers and highly appreciated by unbiased colleagues.

The essays combined the talent of a skillful, observant storyteller and a serious scientist who knew how to put together strokes in whole pictures, to draw conclusions and conclusions from such signs that in themselves, taken separately, do not say anything. At the same time, as always, the professor points to the role of science: “it must collect and develop the data that is obtained by forensic investigative practice, must monitor it and extract guidance for the future. The task is far from easy: it requires careful observation of individual cases, requires a mass of judicial material, moreover, predominantly domestic material, since foreign practice, due to the peculiarities of the everyday situation, does not always provide suitable instructions. To select typical judicial cases, indicate the appropriate investigative techniques that were used in them, note the mistakes made, find out the most convenient ways of revealing the truth - this is the task of literature in this regard” 16.

Sergeevsky wrote beautiful prose, published in 1893–1894. in “Books of the Week” under the pseudonym “N. D. Vasiliev" 17. We managed to find two of his works: the story "Portrait" 18 and eight essays united by the common title "Already Few" ("The Nineteenth of February", "Landowner Almazova", "Nikolai Vasilyevich", "Admiral Rykov", " The Blessed Ones,” “The Lord Forgave,” “The Savages,” and “Polkan the Hero”) 19.

Sergeevsky’s literary heritage is small, but it also testifies to the scientist’s talent.

Nikolai Dmitrievich Sergeevsky died unexpectedly for everyone - on the night of September 11-12, 1908, 59 years old. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg; the grave has not survived.

Chapter II. Criminal legal views

Preliminary remarks

In the literature, Sergeevsky is unconditionally classified as a representative classical school criminal law 20. As is known, this school arose in the 18th century, and it is distinguished by the following basic postulates: 1) crime is a manifestation of free will (the concept of indeterminism); 2) crime and punishment are purely legal categories; 3) punishment – ​​the legal consequence of a crime; 4) punishment is devoid of utilitarian, practical goals, it acts as retribution to restore violated justice or violated rights (it should be noted that some representatives of the classical school recognized the purpose of general and specific prevention, for example N. S. Tagantsev 21); 5) the provision on the absolute guilt of the criminal requires retribution in the form of punishment proportional to the crime and guilt; 6) formal definition of a crime as an act prohibited by criminal law (there is no crime without an indication of it in the law); 7) formal equality of all before the criminal law; 8) liability in the presence of intent or negligence; 9) exclusion of liability of the insane 22.

Some of the elements mentioned are undoubtedly present in the scientist’s views, but, in our opinion, they are not what determine Sergeevsky’s criminal legal views. One could confine oneself to the remark of the scientist himself, from which one can clearly see his approach, in particular to the law, which is fundamentally different from the position of the “classics”, who derived the content of legal norms not so much from the living conditions of society (political, economic, spiritual), but from the will legislator. “With this direction, the criminal code takes on the meaning not of a set of norms developed by real life in its constant progress, but of a system of more or less successful or unsuccessful office rules collected together in the office” 23.

One can cite his statement of a broader nature, which does not fit into the doctrine of the classical school: “...The state exists for the people, and not the people for the state. Achieving the maximum possible conditions for the material, mental and spiritual well-being of citizens is the goal of the state. There is nothing higher than a person's personality modern state; it is the starting point and the center around which all state activity revolves” 24.

The fallacy of unconditionally classifying Sergeevsky as a “classicist” can be better verified by analyzing his assessments of a number of concepts and institutions of criminal law, in particular the content and tasks of the science of criminal law, crime and punishment, since everything else in the doctrine seems to be derived from these points.

Sergeevsky can be formally considered, most likely, a supporter of the so-called historical school of criminal law, which arose in Germany, but did not receive sufficient development there. In Russia, interest in the history of criminal law began to actively manifest itself in the 40s of the 19th century. Scientists sought to interpret legislative monuments in order to “reveal the peculiarities of the national spirit of their regulations” 25. Unlike their German predecessors, Russian criminologists-historians did not absolutize the results of earlier studies, did not limit themselves to old methods of studying legislative acts, and initiated new approaches in the historical knowledge of criminal law . At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the historical school itself was heterogeneous. Historical-dogmatic, historical-philosophical, historical-comparative directions were distinguished. The scientist gravitated towards the last of them.

However, many problems were considered by Sergeevsky from the point of view of positivism - a direction that declares concrete (empirical) sciences to be the only source of true, real knowledge and denies the cognitive value of philosophical research. This was especially clearly manifested in his “Philosophical Techniques and the Science of Criminal Law” 26.

To the question: “what method should be adopted for the science of criminal law, for that legal discipline?” – the author proposes to look for the answer in the essence of those provisions that form or should form the content of positive criminal law. In this regard, he formulates a dilemma: 1) this right contains eternal, unshakable truths that stand above people, with their specific properties and needs, with those transitory forms in which humanity develops; 2) there are no such unshakable truths in criminal law; on the contrary, all the provisions and the entire content of criminal law follow from the specific properties of a person, and therefore change along with these properties and the conditions of the historical development of society.

If we take the first component of the dilemma as a basis, then we must admit “that there is natural or rational law as ideal legislation for all times and for all cases” (the starting point of the natural law school). All that remains for the researcher, detached from reality, is to establish it; and then, as Savigny believed, “improve positive law once and for all.” This approach, notes Sergeevsky, essentially means that criminal law must be recognized as a philosophical science. “On the contrary, if we accept the second position, then we must turn to the study of real reality and in it alone look for means to criticize what exists and to establish a new, better one. The science of criminal law will be a positive science” 27.

The positivist development of criminal law, in the view of the scientist, was reduced to the study of existing positive law, i.e. criminal legislation in the proper sense of the word, customary law (to the extent that it is valid) in its two types - as folk law and as custom, developed by judicial practice 28.

A number of Sergeevsky’s works are characterized by the so-called scientific-dogmatic approach, which consists in the creation of legal concepts through the logical generalization of individual provisions of Russian law and their verification using general philosophical principles. It is often found in his “Notes of a Special Part of Russian Criminal Law”.

At the same time, this does not give grounds to consider Sergeevsky a representative of the eclectic movement, partly based on the doctrine of natural law, partly on compromises based “on a combination of theoretical and positive law” 29.

He defined the science of criminal law as one of the legal sciences, the subject of which is crime and punishment. By exploring the legal nature of a criminal act and punishment, as well as the legal formulas that determine this nature, this science serves a practical purpose - developing recommendations for the correct understanding and application, criticism and drafting of criminal laws. According to Sergeevsky, what has been said determines the content of criminal law as a science; it contains doctrines about criminal law, general and special elements of a criminal act, and punishment. The subject of the study is laws in the broad sense of the word: “a) written laws; b) the history of their text, that is, the text of the draft law and the text of those prototypes that served as models in the development of the new law; c) laws established by custom, if they are recognized as positive law; d) laws as they are applied in practice” 30.

This is not enough to achieve the goals of the science of criminal law. Many criminal legal problems are insoluble without taking into account the provisions of civil, state and other branches of law.

The subject of this science also included foreign criminal law, i.e., the comparative method of jurisprudence was used. Sergeevsky warns that the task in this case is not to give foreign criminal law, its individual institution or position a meaning that it does not have; Foreign law should “serve as a means of becoming familiar with the experience of other peoples and a stock of ready-made knowledge, but not as a subject of blind imitation” 31.

It is in use comparative method jurisprudence in criminal law, the scientist sees the difference between the historical school of the times of its inception and the Russian historical school of the 19th century.

Criminal law cannot ignore the legal views prevailing in society, reflecting the needs, interests of the majority of the people, and the living conditions of society. This problem is most difficult to solve when determining punishment, its goals and types.

The scientist includes the history of criminal law in the subject of the science of criminal law. “The historical direction does not lead to a regression of criminal legislation, not a return to old forms, but on the contrary, it is a necessary condition for lasting progress... Only one who knows the conditions of this era and their foundations in the past can give a legal provision that corresponds to the needs of a given era.” 32.

According to Sergeevsky, criminal law should also take into account the knowledge acquired by other branches of science, in particular physiology, psychology, psychiatry (for example, when establishing the age of criminal responsibility, sanity-insanity, etc.).

Thus, in the subject of the science of criminal law, the scientist includes: current criminal legislation and the practice of its application; legislation of other branches of law, criminal law doctrines, public legal consciousness, history of criminal law, foreign legislation and provisions of other branches of science (in particular, about man), necessary to resolve certain problems of criminal law. From the perspective today it does not include research into international criminal law and criminal policy.

The first is not mentioned by Sergeevsky at all, although, it must be said, by that time the beginnings of international criminal law had already been laid in the works of some criminologists. For example, G.I. Solntsev wrote: “It will also be a crime even against enemy subjects, unarmed for the time of war, to kill them, to kill women, babies, priests and old people... to kill prisoners who are given mercy... violence against the female sex” 33.

The attribution of criminal policy to the subject of criminal law in modern theory is assessed ambiguously.

Sociology of criminal law, i.e. the study real life criminal law, Sergeevsky was given a place within the framework of the study of law enforcement practice.

The scientist’s works note that legal phenomena can be the subject of research in various sciences (sociology, biology, etc.), therefore, criminal law differs from other sciences in its method and purpose. Criminal law, unlike, for example, sociology, deals not with a specific crime, but with its general characteristics.

“Thus,” Sergeevsky concludes, “...legal research, on the one hand, biological and sociological, on the other, are different in both goals and method, and therefore cannot be part of one system; such a connection can only be mechanical, but not internal. The science of criminal law, as a legal science in the strict sense, cannot give place in its system to either biological or sociological research on criminal acts and punishment” 34.

Representatives of the sociological school of criminal law interpreted the science of criminal law more broadly. Thus, according to A. A. Piontkovsky (senior), criminal law is understood as a science that deals with the study of criminal activity, the disclosure of natural laws that determine this activity, and the study and establishment of means and methods of combating this activity. In this case, criminal law was recognized as a complex science, divided into several closely related branches: criminology, criminal policy and criminal dogmatics 35.

Criticizing Sergeevsky’s position, A. A. Piontkovsky notes that the author’s references to the uniqueness of the methods and tasks of these branches of science are hardly justified. Firstly, the research method does not at all seem to be a characteristic feature of the difference between one science and another; secondly, the difference is found only in the immediate tasks, and not in the final goals, in which the named sciences coincide 36.

Time has proven Sergeevsky right. Criminology and criminal policy, being closely interconnected and interdependent, are developing as independent branches of knowledge.

Sergeevsky’s criminal legal views are presented in a concentrated form in his lecture guide “Russian Criminal Law. The general part." First published in 1887, it went through 11 editions. The latest edition, posthumous, was prepared for publication by the extraordinary professor of the Alexander Military Law Academy and the Imperial School of Law S. N. Tregubov. He also wrote the preface to this publication.

Sergeevsky’s theoretical heritage does not include a complete course on the special part of criminal law. Only the lithographed edition of “Lecture Notes of the Special Part”, published with the permission of the author by M. Kuklin in 1884, and the manuscript “Notes of the Special Part of Russian Criminal Law” 37 have survived. These notes provide an analysis of crimes against life and honor, as well as theft ( Chapter 1, 4 of Section I and Chapter 1 of Section II). In 1885, the professor prepared additions to the “Synopsis of a special part of Russian criminal law”, also devoting them to crimes against life and honor 38.

The subject of a special part of criminal law as a science, according to the scientist, “is the study of the composition of individual crimes and their punishability. Thus, the immediate task of the special part is to determine the scope of punishable acts (punishable offenses), on the one hand, and to establish the amount of punishment for each such offense, on the other” 39.

The author distinguishes between the system of a special part of legislation and the system of science. At the same time, he does not connect the system of scientific presentation of the material with the system of the Code on Criminal and Correctional Punishments of 1845 and the Charter on Punishments Imposed by Justices of the Peace, 1864.

Sergeevsky proceeds from the fact that the scientific classification of crimes is determined first of all by the immediate object, i.e. those rights, benefits and interests that represent the subject of the norm being violated, then by the characteristics of the criminal action and the subject of the crime.

Further grouping of crimes can be carried out based on the content of rights, benefits and interests.

“Outline of a special part of Russian criminal law” opens with Section I, dedicated to crimes against the person. The author does not formulate the concept of these acts, does not define their range, does not give a general description, but immediately begins with an analysis of attacks against life. He lists these crimes as: murder; intentional infliction of bodily harm, negligently resulting in the death of the victim; abortion (destruction of the fetus); suicide; leaving in danger; failure to provide assistance to a dying person; duel.

Sergeevsky recognizes murder as the unlawful deprivation of a person’s life. The law does not make restrictions on criminal law protection for the circle of persons, therefore the object of this crime is “the life of every person.” The vitality of the person, the painful condition of the victim, his or her physical and mental disabilities do not affect the recognition of the act as murder. “For the corpus delicti of murder, it is only necessary that the person on whom the criminal attack with the purpose of murder is directed was alive at the time of the execution of the criminal plan” 40. Otherwise, there is an attempt on an unfit object. In relation to a newborn, the sign of “facial vitality” must be established by an expert.

History of Russian literary criticism

History of Russian literature of the 20th century (36)

1. Literature of the Silver Age: ideological and artistic directions, movements, schools (general characteristics).

2. Poetry and prose by I.A. Bunina. Writer's style.

3. Symbolism: origins, concept, philosophy, representatives, meaning.

4. Romantic and realistic works of the young M. Gorky. Tradition and innovation in early stories.

5. Aesthetic system of Acmeism. Poetry of N. Gumilyov.

6. A. Akhmatova and Acmeism: themes, images and details in poetry.

7. Russian futurism: heterogeneity of the futurist movement, aesthetic manifestos.

8. New peasant poetry. Lyrics by S. Yesenin.

9. A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”: history of creation, images, symbolism, interpretation.

10. Urbanistic character of V. Bryusov’s poetry.

11. The theme of a “terrible world” and “retribution” in the poetry of A.A. Blok.

12. Autobiographical motives in M. Gorky’s trilogy “Childhood”. Youth. My universities. Problems of the trilogy.

13. Realism and fantasy in the works of F. Sologub. Understanding the traditions of Russian classical realism in the novel “The Little Demon”.

14. Poetry of B. Pasternak: themes, images, artistic features.

15. Poetry of M. Tsvetaeva: themes, images, artistic features.

16. “Don Stories” by M. Sholokhov: themes, ideas, artistic features.

17. Themes and problems of V. Mayakovsky’s post-October lyrics. Drama by V. Mayakovsky.

18. Artistic originality of stories of the 20-30s. XX century (M. Zoshchenko, A. Tolstoy, I. Babel: topics, problems, style).

19. Roman M.A. Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" Problems of realism and modernism.

20. A. Platonov’s story “The Pit”: themes, ideas, images of the main characters.

21. The theme of the Great Patriotic War in poetry (using the example of the work of 2-3 authors of the examinee’s choice).

22. The concept of personality, its relationship with history and the universe in B. Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”.

23. “Lieutenant’s prose” and its role in the development of literature about the great Patriotic War(V. Bykov, V. Astafiev, V. Kazakevich).

24. Problems of morality in the works of V. Rasputin and V. Astafiev.

25. The fight against the machine of totalitarianism in the works of A. Solzhenitsyn.

26. Drama of the 1950-60s. Artistic discoveries of A. Vampilov.

27. Lyric poetry in the 1950s-70s: “pop poetry”, “quiet lyrics”. Author's song and its development in modern times.

28. Poems by A.T. Tvardovsky: lyrical and philosophical understanding of Soviet history; the image of the author, features of poetics.

29. Postmodernism as a literary movement. Features of Russian postmodernism.

30. V. Erofeev’s poem “Moscow-Petushki” in the context of postmodernism.

31. The fate of military prose of the 1980-1990s: a new vision of military events of the war of the 1940s. New truth of the war years in the novels by V. Astafiev “Cursed and Killed” and G. Vladimov “The General and His Army” (student’s choice).

32. Seteratura. Hypertext. Discussion about online literature in the mid-1990s. Competition "Teneta" Guest books.

33. “Women’s handwriting” in modern prose: T. Tolstaya, L. Ulitskaya, L. Petrushevskaya, V. Tokareva. Discussions about women's prose.

34. Modern Russian fiction: definition of the genre, its varieties.

35. Reflections on human destiny in the prose of V. Rasputin and V. Astafiev.

36. Mass literature of the late twentieth century: genre features, narrative features, types of heroes.

37. Dominants in Russian literature of the 1980-1990s: pop art, social art, the emergence of conceptualism, minimalism, Mitka and courtly mannerists.

1. The concept of “literary criticism”. Subject, tasks, genres of literary criticism.

2. Classical criticism. Literary-critical activity of M.V. Lomonosov, A.P. Sumarokova, V.K. Trediakovsky, M.M. Kheraskova, G.R. Derzhavin.

3. Sentimentalist criticism. Literary-critical activity of N.M. Karamzina, I.I. Dmitrieva.

4. Romantic criticism. Main currents. Literary-critical activity of V.A. Zhukovsky and K.N. Batyushkova.

5. Aesthetic and literary-critical views of A.S. Pushkin.

6. N.V. Gogol is a critic. The originality of N.V.’s critical articles. Gogol.

7. Place V.G. Belinsky in the history of Russian criticism. The main periods of literary critical activity.

8. Russian literary criticism second half of the 19th century century. The struggle of trends in criticism.

9. Writer’s criticism of the second half of the 19th century: I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, L.N. Tolstoy, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N.S. Leskov, F.M. Dostoevsky.

10. Radical democratic criticism in the journal Sovremennik.

11. Basic principles of literary criticism of the symbolists. Literary-critical activity of D.S. Merezhkovsky, V. Bryusov, A. Blok, A. Bely.

12. Literary criticism in Soviet Russia in the 1920s – early 1930s.

13. Literary criticism on the pages of the magazine “New World”. A.T. Tvardovsky is a critic.

14. Russian literary criticism of the 1990s.

History of Russian literary criticism - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "History of Russian Literary Criticism" 2017, 2018.

I. Ten made the first attempt to apply a strictly scientific method to art. But the field of aesthetic psychology is too little developed to consider this attempt complete.

In any case, activities in the same direction, i.e., research into the laws of creativity, its relationship to the laws of psychology and social sciences, the interaction of the artist and the cultural and historical environment, can be very fruitful in the future.

Another, no less significant and much more developed method is the subjective artistic one. In all the best critical studies of Saint-Beuve, Herder, Brandes, Lessing, Carlyle, Belinsky, you will find pages in which the critic turns into an independent poet.

Thus, an almost unknown to our times and increasingly developing genus arose artistic creativity. In his scattered notes about art and world literature, in epigrams and xenias, Goethe, and partly Schiller, gave the first examples of critical poetry. For a subjective artistic critic, the world of art plays the same role as the real world for an artist. Books are living people. He loves them and hates them, lives by them and dies by them, enjoys them and suffers from them. What this kind of poetry loses in brightness and real power, it gains in endless nobility and tenderness of shades. Some pages of Carlyle and Renan are in no way inferior the best works Tennyson or Hugo in the depth and originality of inspiration.

The poet-critic reflects not the beauty of real objects, but the beauty poetic images that reflected these objects. This is the poetry of poetry, perhaps pale, ghostly, bloodless, but unknown to any of the previous centuries, new, flesh of our flesh - the poetry of thought, the product of the 19th century with its boundless freedom of spirit and insatiable sorrow of knowledge. In the reflection of beauty there can be an unknown, mysterious charm that you will not find even in beauty itself: so in the weak, reflected light of the moon there is a charm that is not in the source moonlight, in the mighty rays of the sun.

The subjective artistic method of criticism, in addition to the poetic one, can also have great scientific significance. The secret of creativity, the secret of genius is sometimes more accessible to a poet-critic than to an objective scientific researcher. A random note about a book read in letters, in the diaries of Byron, Stendhal, Flaubert, Pushkin, with one hint, reveals greater psychological depth and penetration than the most conscientious articles of professional critics. If an artist reads the work of another artist, a psychological experience occurs that corresponds to that experiment in scientific laboratories when the chemical reaction of one body to another is studied.

Russian criticism, with the exception of the best articles by Belinsky, Al. Grigoriev, Strakhov, individual essays by Turgenev, Goncharov and Dostoevsky, brilliant notes scattered in Pushkin’s letters, has always been an anti-scientific and anti-artistic force. The trouble is that our critics were neither real scientists nor real poets. But among the previous generation, among Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, journalism was still hidden behind philosophical and scientific aspirations.

One of their warlike epigones, modern type Russian magazine reviewer, Mr. Protopopov, declares quite openly that a critic should be a publicist and only a publicist.

Mr. Protopopov has the so-called “glib pen”, the wit and political temperament of a newspaper worker by vocation. If he had been born in France, he could have become the editor of a widespread street leaflet for workers, written every day popular editorials with loud titles, like Rochefort in L'intransigeant, and - who knows - even accepted thank-you deputations from factory proletarians. But in modern Russian journalism, he had no choice but to become a critic-publicist. The dream of such people is to turn literature into a comfortable little pulpit for newspaper and magazine preaching. When the living originality of talent does not submit to them and does not want to serve as a pedestal for a political speaker, Mr. Protopopov is indignant and executes her. He does not explain, but tramples on the personality of the author as a step in order to more conveniently climb to his pulpit. Of course, journalism is a venerable newspaper craft. For an uncultured and immature crowd, popularization of even the most basic moral ideas is necessary. But to reduce that immense power world geniuses, which creates " Last Judgment", "Fausta" or " Last Supper", to the level of a secondary newspaper and magazine craft, journalism - this is not even a crime, this is our ancient and - alas! - a deeply national, popular ignorance to this day among the masses of readers.

G. Protopopov, like many of his colleagues, is troubled by the scholastic question: art for life, or life for art? Such a question for a living person, for a sincere poet, does not exist: whoever loves beauty knows that poetry is not a random superstructure, not an external appendage, but the very breath, the heart of life, that without which life becomes worse than death. Of course, art is for life and, of course, life is for art. One is impossible without the other. Take away beauty, knowledge, justice from life - what remains? Take life away from art - and it will be, according to the Gospel expression, salt that has ceased to be salty. Not idle people, not idle artists never argued about such issues - they always understood each other from the first word, they always agreed with each other, no matter what different, even opposing fields they worked in. The same great and ineffable thing that Goethe calls beauty, Marcus Aurelius called justice, Francis of Assisi and St. Teresa - love for God, Rousseau and Byron - human freedom. For living people, all this is one, the rays of one sun, manifestations of one principle, like light, heat, movement - in the physical world, modifications of one force. The question - life for beauty or beauty for life - exists only for dead people: for newspaper and magazine scholastics who have not experienced living life and have not known living beauty.

Meanwhile, all the fierce polemics, all the many years of activity of publicists like Mr. Protopopov, revolve around this dead question. The sad thing is that they still have a fairly large circle of readers and fans. Our old deplorable misunderstanding continues, the iconoclastic distrust of the free sense of beauty, the fearful demand from art to submit to the framework of pedagogical morality.

Mr. Skabichevsky, another representative of our modern criticism, has less polemical glibness and wit than Mr. Protopopov, but has a more sincere and conscientious attitude towards writers. He collected and prepared a lot of interesting materials for the future historian of Russian literature. His essays on the history of Russian censorship are significant. But, being a gifted chronicler of literary morals, Mr. Skabichevsky least of all, by his temperament, art critic. In his views on art there is that feature of murderous banality, enslavement to the generally accepted tastes of the crowd, which is easier to note than to express and define.

Once, at the Traveling Exhibition, I saw a painting by a famous Russian artist with approximately the following content: a drunkard, probably an artisan, with a threatening look and raised fists, stands on the threshold of a tavern. He wants to enter, but a woman with disheveled hair and an unnaturally tragic face, probably the wife of a craftsman, does not let her husband in. Wildly throwing her head back and spreading, as Potapenko or Zlatovratsky would certainly say, “pale, emaciated arms,” she closes the tavern door with her whole body. To complete the conventional tragedy, a frightened child clings to the rags of the unfortunate mother and looks with pleading eyes at the hard-hearted father. The picture was painted very poorly, with disdain for technique, with some dead, wooden paints. But the audience stopped in front of her: sympathy was visible on the faces of the intelligent ladies. They spoke in French about the suffering of our poor people, about drunkenness, and explained the artist’s tendency. Public, banal tragedy had its eternal effect on the crowd.

In all societies, at all times, there are people - their name is legion - who are attracted by a fashionable false feeling as invariably and irresistibly as a worm on a fishing rod attracts a fish. I am sure that if Mr. Skabichevsky had been among the audience, in front of the picture, the sensitive heart of the venerable critic would also have been touched by the banal, conventional tragedy of the picture, like the heart of the crowd. A conscientious and humane reviewer would have an irresistible desire to praise the artist for his warm attitude towards the people, for the amazing sincerity of immediate feeling, for the sobriety of healthy realism. I don’t know about others, but with such praise I feel an invincible resentment against undoubted virtues. Vice, at least, has the advantage that it is never oppressed with such banal praise, such murderously bourgeois sympathy, such bad taste and ugliness as poor virtue. Oh, the boredom of the highways! Oh, the eternal tenderness of the crowd before the beloved vulgarity of the popular great ideas!

Didn’t Mr. Skabichevsky admire this “worm on a fishing rod”, the banality of humane feelings and the pseudo-populist realism in the works of Mr. Potapenko? In vain he now denies and is indignant at his favorite. G. Potapenko emerged entirely from the depths of the venerable critic, from his incorrigibly virtuous heart, like Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus. The ill-fated writer has undoubted talent, sincere humor, some knowledge of the people - but the secret of his success was not in them. I am sure that many good people cried sincere tears over the works of Mr. Potapenko and fully sympathized with the praises of Mr. Skabichevsky, as their fathers cried over the sensitive novels of the 30s. But precisely these sincere tears of naive readers are an ominous sign of a general decline in taste.

The highest moral significance of art does not lie at all in touching moral tendencies, but in the disinterested, incorruptible truthfulness of the artist, in his fearless sincerity. The beauty of an image cannot be untruthful and therefore cannot be immoral; only ugliness, only vulgarity in art are immoral. No pornography, no seductive pictures of vices corrupt the human heart as much as lies about goodness, like banal hymns to goodness, like these hot tears of naive readers over false humane feelings and bourgeois morality. He who is accustomed to crying over a lie passes by the truth, by beauty, with a cold heart.

There is one terrible place in the Apocalypse: “...The Spirit says to the churches: And write to the Angel of the Laodicean church: thus says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God: I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot; Oh, that you were cold or hot! But because you are warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. For you say: I am rich, I have become rich, and I have need of nothing; but you don’t know that you are unhappy and pitiful, and poor, and blind, and naked.” These great words put an indelible mark on all vulgarity, on all mediocrity of feeling, no matter in religion or in art. For lovers of banal tragic effects, like Mr. Skabichevsky and Mr. Potapenko, preachers of generally accepted humane ideas, neither cold nor fire, but the so-called “spiritual warmth of feeling,” this hated warm water that replaces sincerity in moralizing novels, I would like to remind you of the terrible sentence Apostle: “Oh, if. whether you were cold or hot! But because you are warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”

People like Mr. Protopopov and Mr. Skabichevsky are completely unconsciously doing the work of destruction. These are, in essence, innocent victims of general anarchy, general misunderstanding. They continue to show writers the saving framework of populist realism as conscientiously as calligraphy teachers draw oblique and transverse lines so that it is easier for students to write the letters of the copybook. But how horrified these kind, honest people, teachers of artistic calligraphy, would be if they could suddenly understand what an abyss, what a mystery art is, and how ridiculous their little pedagogical rulers are in the boundless spontaneous freedom of creativity. All their lives they will talk seriously about inspiration, about poetry, although they have never seen beauty, and they will die without seeing it. These may be useful and witty publicists, but in art they are hopelessly misunderstanding people, born blind.

Goethe has one charming lyric poem - “Drops of Nectar”. When Minerva, pleasing her favorite Prometheus, brought a full cup of nectar to make the people he created happy and fill their hearts with love for beauty, the goddess was in a hurry, fearing that Jupiter would see her, and “the golden cup swayed and a few drops fell on the green grass.” Insects attacked these drops - bees, butterflies...

When I think that nature sometimes does not deny such writers as Mr. Burenin some artistic talent, I am reminded of the graceful legend about insects. However, perhaps he never tasted a drop of nectar, but at least he heard its fragrance from afar; he is still closer to poetry than the kind, honest and hopelessly blind people, Mr. Protopopov and Mr. Skabichevsky.

Probably few people know that this now bitter newspaper mocker in his distant youth had a capacity for almost sincere lyrical pathos. G. Burenin, wild and strange as it may be, wrote several poetic love elegies. Does that mean something? In any case, Mr. Protopopov will not write a readable elegy. We must be fair to Mr. Burenin. His witty parodies and literary pamphlets bear an undeniable mark - I won’t say talent, but something that in another person, under different conditions, could become talent. He has an evil, of course, base, rude and vulgar, but still a real evil laugh. And pamphlets require a certain amount of creativity, at least the creativity of insects. The spider weaves his web because he has tasted a drink intended not for spiders, but for the children of Prometheus.

But most characteristic of Mr. Burenin’s numerous works, in his stories, tragedies, pamphlets, short stories, novels, parodies, is one outstanding, typical feature - a striking lack of sense of literary morality. This is how he was created -

Insects - voluptuousness...

Angel - God will.

There's nothing you can do about it. I don’t even have the heart to blame him. We must blame the degree of general literary humiliation when the Burenins come to the fore and acquire importance. Amazing anecdotes are told about his unscrupulous attitude towards writers. Everyone knows who he is. And yet one has to talk about such a person almost seriously, as about a Russian art critic; This alone is a very deplorable sign of decline and general misunderstanding. The germs of decay are carried everywhere, but only where the work of death must be accomplished do they live and gain strength. The literary immorality of Mr. Burenin, who successfully celebrated his anniversary, feels at the pinnacle of glory, with which everyone has gradually come to terms and which many are even afraid of, is a very significant phenomenon for our modern newspaper and magazine morals.

It is interesting that the injustice of Mr. Burenin in the field of poetry entails exactly the same consequences as the bad taste of Mr. Protopopov or Mr. Skabichevsky. Criticism, that is, a disinterested assessment of the beautiful, is impossible in either case. As soon as Mr. Burenin stops joking and laughing, as soon as he wants to talk seriously, he becomes deadly boring, even more boring and ponderous than Mr. Skabichevsky. When envy and anger leave him, he becomes pitifully helpless, he has no words of his own, no thoughts of his own, and it feels like he simply has nothing to say.

It has always seemed to me very instructive that poetry is equally inaccessible to completely tasteless people, as well as to completely unjust ones. The essence of art, which cannot be expressed by any words, by any definitions, is not exhausted by either beauty or morality - it is higher than beauty and broader than morality, it is the beginning from which both the sense of grace and the sense of justice equally flow, which brings them together in life human heart and makes only the just beautiful and only the beautiful just. Their division leads to their decline.

But the saddest thing is when this senile, premature impotence, this ulcer of literary decay affects very young, just beginning writers, such as, for example, one of the representatives of the new newspaper and magazine type, Mr. Volynsky, a young and courageous reviewer of the Northern Messenger.

First of all, I must admit that Mr. Volynsky is ambivalent for me. In the first and best city of Volynsky I find nothing but cute. He has recently published a precious book, The Letters of Benedict Spinoza, in an excellent translation by Mrs. L. Gurevich. If only more such books were published in Russia!.. The naive biography of Colerus, the terrible act of excommunicating Spinoza from the synagogue - all this was translated by Mr. Volynsky with amazing beauty. In his explanations, notes, and editorial notes, you are captivated not so much by scientific conscientiousness as by touching, reverent love, almost superstitious devotion to the teacher. Yes, it is precisely with such superstitious, fanatical love that one should love the great!.. Almost as good and conscientious are Mr. Volynsky’s popular articles about Kant.

In all the works of Mr. Volynsky there is one characteristic- not Russian, but deeply cute. In this fiery, somewhat dry, but sublime mysticism of an admirer of the great Jewish philosopher, in the unquenchable hatred of the vulgar side of positivism, in this national, so to speak, innate ability for the subtlest metaphysical abstractions - the moral and philosophical temperament of the Semite is immediately felt. What attracts me most to such Semitic temperaments is the genuine purity, the naivety of philosophical fervour, the fiery and at the same time chaste passion of the mind. No wonder Jewish nationality is still the bearer of a terrible and blessed fire - the thousand-year-old thirst for God. How many times, dying, did she fertilize with her fire the calmer Aryan cultures, which were threatened with sterility by scientific materialism and positive balance.

Among the crude buffoonery of Mr. Burenin, among the banal populist realism of Mr. Protopopov and Mr. Skabichevsky, noticing in the new type of publicist-philosopher, Mr. Volynsky, a spark of this fruitful mystical fire, I cannot help but greet it with the greatest joy.

Perhaps I am partly exaggerating the importance of the first, better Mr. Volynsky, but let it be!.. This is out of hatred for the second Mr. Volynsky, who has nothing in common with the first, for his ill-fated double. As always happens, an ugly double, a painful caricature of his original, the art critic Volynsky pretended to be the most tender and devoted friend of the philosopher Volynsky, in order to more accurately destroy him. National temperament, the best assistant in a sincere matter of vocation, as soon as a person takes on something other than his own and turns all his power against it, becomes an irreparable weakness. Thus, abstract Semitic metaphysics, quite appropriate in Mr. Volynsky’s philosophical articles, amazes his artistic understanding with its deadly dryness and sterility. You seem to recognize the fanaticism and metaphysical irritation of the hard-hearted, narrow and embittered teachers of the Talmud. What pettiness! What despondency! Why does he say that he loves beauty, loves life?

The critic Mr. Volynsky despises the simple, human language of the philosopher Mr. Volynsky. He even pretends to be a Russian patriot, when there is absolutely nothing Russian about him. He unearths some incredible antediluvian flowers of eloquence, monstrously comic, from which it becomes not funny, but creepy in the hearts of readers, like those luxury items, once cheerful and captivating trinkets that are found thousands of years later among dead bones in coffins. God be with her, with light irony, with the carefree humor of Mr. Volynsky! And this sinister caricature of Spinoza, with its dead lips, with its wooden flowery tongue, preaches the wooden dead Talmudic God. In Edgar Poe's fairy tales, the dead appear, briefly resurrected, gifted with artificial life. They act, walk, talk, even laugh, just like alive. Their bloodless faces and the tense, feverish gleam in their eyes do not bode well. And real living people look at them with an unkind foreboding and think: bad luck. The young reviewer of the Severn West always seemed to me like a dead man from Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, gifted with some kind of unnatural life. He writes articles, preaches God, trashes materialism, even shows attempts at humor, just like a living person, and yet I don’t trust anything and think: it’s worse.

When you look at respectable people of the old generation, at petrified editors, at critics like Mr. Protopopov and Mr. Skabichevsky, and suddenly you feel that these people, in essence, have been dead for a long time, that they even seem to smell of death and decay, this feeling - I must admit - is quite scary. But, however, you can still come to terms with him: they had their own youth, their own life. But when young people, or, better to say, young dead men, like Mr. Volynsky, begin to appear in literature, when the coldness of the grave, the terrible smell of death and decay, already emanates from the youngest, just starting out, this is a sign last days of an entire generation: there is no doubt that there will be something worse here!

In fact, are we not facing an abyss? Caveant consules. If modern literary anarchy progresses along the same path, it is scary to think what we will reach in twenty, thirty years.

Salvation hardly lies in the problematic possibility of the emergence of a new great talent. Genius will revive poetry, but will not create literature, which is impossible without a great cultural principle, which, moreover, has universal, and not just Russian national significance. But our literature, or, better to say, our spontaneous poetry, has not yet consciously developed such a unifying principle.

In vain, proud of the great past, we would console ourselves with the thought that complete literary barbarism cannot befall a country that has Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy. The blessed geniuses of the past retreat from their people if they are unworthy of them. The English of the 16th century had Shakespeare, but already in the 17th century the main current of people's life took a different direction, and Shakespeare seemed to become a stranger in his homeland. Who knows, modern literary Russia may finally become unworthy of the great past, unworthy of Pushkin: Pushkin will become a stranger in wild literature, and his genius - it’s scary to say - will abandon his people. Caveant consules!

What is there in the dark future we face?

Death folk literature- the greatest disaster is the muteness of an entire people, the wordless death of their creative genius!..

In the following chapters I will try to show new creative forces, a new literary movement, which allows us to hope that such a terrible disaster will not befall Russian poetry. This trend, or, better to say, this vague need of an entire generation, barely defined, almost not expressed in words, arose not from metaphysical generalizations, but directly from the living heart, from the depths of the modern pan-European and Russian spirit. I don’t even know if this need can be called a literary movement. This is most likely just the first underground trickle spring water, weak and vital. Its characteristic feature is the combination of two deep contrasts - greatest power and the greatest powerlessness. I said that she was weak, and, in fact, nothing could be easier than to ridicule her and reject her, to contemptuously note that this is an old song in a new way. But after laughter and denial, it will still exist, even grow and intensify, because it is alive, it strives to satisfy the eternal need of the human heart.

So sometimes shoots of a young plant emerge from under a heavy stone. It seems that they must inevitably die, crushed by the stone. But there is no force in the world that could stop their stubborn, invincible growth. Infantly weak and helpless, sooner or later they will break free and, if necessary, lift the huge dead weight of the stone with the power of life.

I want to trace these first shoots of young literature, weak and living.

Periods of development of Russian literary criticism, its main representatives. Method and criteria of normative genre criticism. Literary and aesthetic ideas of Russian sentimentalism. The essence of romantic and philosophical criticism, the work of V. Belinsky.

Lecture course

RUSSIAN LITERARY CRITICISM OF THE XVIII-- XIX CENTURIES

Introduction

Lecture one. Normative genre criticism

Lecture two. Criticism as a judgment of elegant taste

Lectures three and four. Romantic criticism

Lecture five. Philosophical criticism

Lectures six - eight. Specific aesthetic criticism

Lecture nine. "Aesthetic" criticism

Lectures tenth - twelfth. "Real" criticism

Lecture thirteen. "Organic" criticism

Lecture fourteen. Subjective-sociological criticism

Introduction

Comprehension of the history of Russian literary criticism of the 18th - 19th centuries presents significant difficulties. This is not only a huge amount of factual material, sometimes comparable to the richness and diversity of artistic works. Russian literary criticism, rarely content with value judgments, was, at least in its largest phenomena, highest degree theoretical. It is largely a “speculative” discipline.

Since the time of N.M. Karamzin, V.A. Zhukovsky and the Decembrist poets, Russian criticism has not only raised such fundamental aesthetic questions as the nature and specificity of art (literature) and its place in society, the relationship between literature and education, literature and morality (morality), literature and pressing socio-political problems, but also offered answers to them. Later (in N.I. Nadezhdin, V.G. Belinsky) she will pose and deeply resolve the problems of artistry, typification, dialectics in a literary work of temporary and enduring, national and universal, as well as the problem of the novel and story as genres, to the greatest extent corresponding to the character of the new historical era and “modern man” (A.S. Pushkin).

Starting with the Decembrists, N.A. Polevoy and until the latest works of A.A. Grigorieva, N.K. Mikhailovsky, through most systems of Russian criticism, passes the idea of ​​nationality, the interpretation of which was an original merit of Russian aesthetic thought.

The philosophy of Russian criticism, sometimes truly organic, requires similar preparation from its reader. Addressing Nadezhdin, Belinsky, P.V. Annenkov, N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A. Dobrolyubov, D.I. Pisarev, A.A. Grigoriev, you must first delve into the works of F. Schelling, Hegel, L. Feuerbach, O. Comte, T. Carlyle.

Criticism of the Decembrists was already a direct form of socio-political activity. From this time on, journalisticism in turn became a generic sign of Russian criticism of the 19th century. After all, for a people “deprived of public freedom,” it, along with literature, was “the only tribune from the height of which they made them hear the cry of their indignation and their conscience” (Herzen A.I. Collected works in 30 volumes. Vol. VII. P. 198). Consequently, it is necessary to understand at least the main ideological trends in Russia of the last century: Slavophilism and Westernism, liberalism and democracy, enlightenment, “pochvennichestvo”, populism, etc.

And of course, it is necessary to have a good idea of ​​what was the subject of analysis of Russian criticism, on which it based its concepts and forecasts, in a word, the Russian literary process, the dialectics of its main directions and trends, the poetics of Russian classicism and sentimentalism, romanticism and the poetry of reality (realism ) - from Pushkin to H.C. Leskova and A.P. Chekhov.

Under these conditions, the study of Russian criticism would serve to generalize and synthesize all the knowledge about the literary and aesthetic thought of Russia acquired by a Russian philologist over the years of study at a university and graduate school. This, however, is a maximum task, presupposing a special and long-term interest in the subject.

The purpose of this course is different. The selection, volume and structure of the material in it are determined by the real capabilities of the student who is systematically becoming acquainted with Russian criticism for the first time, and are intended to help him prepare and successfully “pass” the corresponding exam. The history of Russian criticism of the 18th - 19th centuries is presented in it as a natural change in its main critical methods. This approach is justified scientifically, as it is dictated by the objective realities of the Russian literary-critical process, and is methodically expedient, since it relieves the student of the need to “embrace the immensity” and promotes the logical awareness of many facts.

The concept of “critical method” is not new in literary criticism. Essentially, it goes back to Belinsky, who in the fifth article of the Pushkin cycle (1844) gave definitions of the main “views of criticism” that preceded in Russian literature the one that he himself formulated at that time. Yu.V. Mann, relying on Belinsky and G.V. Plekhanov, calls the method in criticism “the internal principle of criticism itself, its hidden logic, the way it approaches literature” (Mann Yu.V. Critical method of V.G. Belinsky. Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. M. , 1964. P.4.).

Taking this definition as the initial one in our course, we believe that it should be supplemented by a clearer indication of the most important sources of the critical method - at least the developed one. The first of them is, in all likelihood, a literary phenomenon (direction, movement, school, works of one or more authors), which seems to one or another critic to be historically and aesthetically the most significant and fruitful. Thus, the innovative nature of Belinsky’s criticism in relation to the critical position of his contemporaries and teachers such as Polevoy and Nadezhdin was largely due to Belinsky’s orientation from the very beginning towards the realistic work of Pushkin and Gogol, which was not understood by Polevoy and Nadezhdin or was understood inadequately by them. “Poetry of reality”, typification, idea of ​​the leading role in the future realistic novel, the concept of artistry, the doctrine of pathos - all these categories and ideas of Belinsky (they are also the tools of his criticism) were born and formed with the undoubted “assistance” of both Pushkin and Gogol, then M.Yu. Lermontova, I.A. Goncharova, I.S. Turgenev in the process of understanding their creative principles.

The critical method of a certain critic and his aesthetics are not the same thing, because aesthetics is, first of all, a set of views on the nature of art and literature, their place and purpose in society, or “theoretical awareness, generalization, certain period literary development" (Mann Yu.V. Indicative work. P.4). This does not mean that the aesthetic (and, more broadly, philosophical) position of the critic does not affect the way he criticizes. On the contrary, this is the second, and in some cases very active, source of the critical method. This can be confirmed by the criticism of the already mentioned Nadezhdin and the articles of such writers as K.S. Aksakov, Annenkov. The latter, for example, ardently defended artistry in literature, rightly seeing in this quality the guarantee of the ennobling moral impact of a work on the reader. However, Annenkov understood artistry in the light of his general ideas about the indispensable objectivity of the impartiality of the writer and the harmonizing function of literature, designed to resolve real life contradictions. As a result, Annenkov’s main criterion acquired a dogmatic meaning, not allowing the critic to properly evaluate the actual artistic achievements (innovation) of, say, an author like M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The creative evolution of Belinsky and, on the other hand, his long-term opponent, Moscow University professor S.P. Shevyrev, convincingly testifies to the presence of a close connection and interaction between the literary-critical and socio-ideological positions of the critic. “Furious Vissarion” professed both reconciliation with the “Russian reality” and an angry rejection of it, in both cases remaining a deeply sincere and selfless person. However, different social states of the critic were accompanied by different critical approaches, literary sympathies and antipathies, which cannot be explained only by a change in philosophical and aesthetic guidelines and the situation in Russian literature of those years. Nor can they explain Belinsky’s transition in the 40s from abstract-aesthetic (philosophical, “German”) to concrete-aesthetic criticism. As Yu.V. correctly noted. Mann, for this “it took years of reflection, an exit from the period of “reconciliation with reality”, development... “in the bosom” of social and socio-political thought, assimilation of the “idea of ​​denial” ...” (Mann Yu.V. Decree. work. P.13).

In turn, not only in the aesthetics of Shevyrev and especially not in a certain literary deafness of this gifted interpreter of Goethe’s “Faust” is the reason for his sharply negative assessment of Lermontov’s Pechorin, the statement (in articles about “Dead Souls”) that “comic humor” interferes with Gogol “to embrace life in all its fullness and breadth.” This reason also lies in Shevyrev’s socio-political conservatism and his official Orthodoxy.

These examples, we think, are enough to consider the critic’s social ideology as one of the sources of his critical method.

Loyalty, insightfulness in the assessment and analysis of literary works, especially non-traditional ones, largely and sometimes decisively depend, finally, on such abilities as a subtle, unbiased aesthetic feeling and developed taste. He allowed Belinsky to immediately, contrary to his general aesthetic guidelines of that time, guess the enormous talent of Lermontov, and later F.M. Dostoevsky. On the contrary, the aesthetic sense changed the romance of Polevoy when meeting with Gogol’s “Dead Souls”, K. Aksakov - as a criticism of Dostoevsky’s “Poor People”; Nadezhdin also lacked it when assessing the largest phenomena of modern romanticism.

So, literature in its closest quality to the critic, philosophical and aesthetic views and the socio-ideological position of the critic, aesthetic taste - these are the main sources that are not only reflected in the critical method, but also themselves influence its originality, techniques, criteria, the most the results of Polevoy’s criticism are perhaps primarily due to his constant, up to the 40s, commitment to romanticism; in Nadezhdin it is primarily systematic (theoretical); in Dobrolyubov - real-social pathos; for Pisarev in the 60s - conscious utilitarianism, to which this critic sacrificed his deep aesthetic feeling. A critic, in whose articles modern aesthetic theory corrected by observations of the living literary process in its completeness and perspective, verified by developed and flexible taste and fertilized by the pathos of social and personal freedom, was Belinsky. However, the relationship between the sources of the critical method and Belinsky’s in different periods of his activity was different: first one, then the other came to the fore.

The conditionality of this or that method of criticism by the quantity and quality of its sources and the nature of the interaction between them obliges us to constantly keep them in our sight.

Let us now name the main critical methods that replaced each other (or polemically coexisted) in Russian literature of the 18th - 19th centuries. As already mentioned, a number of them were briefly characterized by Belinsky at the beginning of the fifth article of the Pushkin cycle.

The first “way to criticize,” says Belinsky, “consisted in analyzing the particular merits and demerits of a work, from which they usually took out the best or worst parts, admired them or condemned them, but did not pay any attention to the whole work, to its spirit and idea.” A literary work was considered “exclusively from the point of view of language and syllable.”

The stylistic and grammatical criteria and point of view were really important feature Russian criticism in the initial period of its existence, which coincided with the formation of Russian classicism. It would be wrong, however, to consider it, following Belinsky, only an assessment “at random...personal taste”: this approach was a direct consequence of the normative understanding of the genre and the corresponding language (calm) and had a general theoretical justification. It is therefore correct to define this criticism as normative-genre.

The criticism of N.M. was interpreted as a judgment of taste, but not arbitrary, but developed, elegant. Karamzin and V.A. Zhukovsky, who became the first fairly consistent (unlike, say, A.F. Merzlyakov) opponents of normative genre criticism and literary classicism in general.

“Since the twenties,” writes Belinsky, “Russian criticism began to make claims on philosophy and higher views. She had already stopped admiring successful onomatopoeia, beautiful verse or a clever expression, but started talking about nationality, about the demands of the century, about romanticism, about creativity and other similar, hitherto unheard of news.”

The demand for nationality in literature was made by Decembrist critics (A.A. Bestuzhev, V.K. Kuchelbecker, K.F. Ryleev), who practically and theoretically promoted romanticism of a civic-heroic nature. "Higher views", i.e. sublimely romantic ideas about the poet (artist), the sources of his inspiration and creativity, role and fate in society, were talentedly conveyed in his articles by the publisher of the Moscow Telegraph (1825-1834), Nikolai Polevoy. “Philosophical views”, i.e. Nadezhdin laid the ideas of German idealistic philosophy as the basis for his criticism. The critical activity of the Decembrists, Polevoy, Nadezhdin is the most important periods in the development of Russian criticism of the 20s and 30s, united by different but undeniable methodological unity. This is romantic criticism (civic romanticism and romantic criticism of Polevoy) and philosophical criticism. A whole series of its ideas and principles will be originally synthesized by Belinsky, whose critical method we consider in its evolution and define as concrete aesthetic.

A key figure in Russian criticism, Belinsky even in the 50s and 60s remains a source from which critics of different directions draw. But this is a very selective inheritance, due to heterogeneity, in addition to general aesthetic concepts, also ideas about the ways and means of social progress (revolutionary or evolutionary). If, for example, A.V. Druzhinin is closest to Belinsky’s ideas and principles of the era of his reconciliation with reality, while Chernyshevsky is closest to the position of the superiority of life over art and the real-social requirements for literature and the artist arising from it. This is how two almost polar critical methods were formed in the 50s: aesthetic criticism (Druzhinin, Annenkov, V.P. Botkin), on the one hand, and real criticism (Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, D.I. Pisarev, etc.) on the other. .

In opposition to both, as a unique alternative to them, there is organic criticism, giftedly presented by Apollon Grigoriev.

The analysis of current Russian literature from a real angle, namely in the light of social psychology and its tasks, continued from the 70s to the beginning of the twentieth century, the populist N.K. Mikhailovsky. The well-known a priori nature of his sociological categories and criteria encourages us to preserve the definition of Mikhailovsky’s criticism, widespread in science, as subjective-sociological.

This or that critical method has been considered by us in its internal logic and self-movement (if it existed); all of them are in that dialectic of attraction and repulsion, opposition and mutual influence, negation and inheritance, which was the core of the historical movement of Russian criticism of the 18th - 19th centuries. By focusing students' attention on the largest and most important phenomena of the subject being studied, the proposed analytical review protects them from the danger of drowning in the abundance of publications, titles, dates, nuances of opinions and assessments.

Labor-intensive academic discipline- Russian literary criticism is worth the effort spent on understanding it. After all, this is not only an integral facet of Russian philological thought, but also a direct part of the great spiritual heritage of Russia.

About the course apparatus. Sources of quotations from the works of researchers are indicated - for the convenience of readers - directly in the text of the lectures. Fragments from critical articles by certain authors do not have links to the publication or page. This is intentional: I want the student to know the critic not just by quotes alone, but to turn to his works as a whole. The most important of them, as well as research literature, basic and additional, are named in the bibliographic appendix to the manual.

Lecture one. NORMATIVE GENRE CRITICISM

This is a criticism of the era of Russian literary classicism.

This is the beginning of Russian literary criticism, the idea of ​​which can be dated back to 1739, when Antioch Cantemir for the first time in Rus' used (in the notes to his satire “On Education”) the concept of “critic” in its French spelling and in the meaning of “sharp judge”, “ everyone who judges our affairs." And he expressed regret that, unlike French, “our language” does not yet have this concept. Eleven years later, V.K. Trediakovsky, in his “Letter containing a discussion about a poem that has now been published by the author of two odes, two tragedies and two epistles, written from friend to friend,” in turn, complained that in our country “there has never been criticism anywhere on the composition of bad writers."

Indeed, Russian literary criticism by the middle of the 18th century; century, it was barely isolated from the theory of literature, poetics and rhetoric and was still insignificant in quantitative terms. At the same time, its foundations were formulated in a number of articles, reviews and comments devoted to both foreign (especially French) and domestic authors and belonging to V.K. Trediakovsky, M.B. Lomonosov, A.P. Sumarokov, who were also the first Russian literary critics.

The critical legacy of each of these Russian classic writers is marked by individual characteristics determined by the uniqueness of their socio-political position, as well as differences in the understanding of the social and state role and purpose of literature. For us, however, it is important to understand those generic principles of this criticism, which were determined primarily by the aesthetics of literary classicism and, on the other hand, the aesthetics and poetics of literary classicism were propagated.

What is the method and criteria of this criticism?

Let us turn to one of Trediakovsky’s own critical speeches - his analysis of Sumarokov’s first ode.

Contrary to later ideas about the primary task critical analysis Trediakovsky focuses on the grammar and language of the work. He accuses the author of the ode of many violations of grammatical rules and norms of word usage. Sumarokov, he believes, mixes in his ode words from different linguistic layers or, as Trediakovsky believes, dialects existing in the modern Russian language; puts the words of the “Russian dialect” next to the “Slavic-Russian” ones. “Many of his (Sumarokov - V.N.) speeches are made with vile use,” the critic declares.

The direction of Trediakovsky’s criticism is thus grammatical-stylistic (linguistic). This is how one of the authors of the academic “History of Russian Criticism” P.N. defines it with good reason. Berkov. Is it possible, however, for this reason to call Trediakovsky’s criticism, as the same researcher does, “petty and obsessively pedantic,” although with reservations regarding its general progressive significance, etc.?

I think not. The criticism of the first Russian classic writers was indeed grammatical and linguistic in form. But this feature naturally followed from the originality of literary classicism, especially at the first stage of its development, and met the requirements of its poetics.

Let's take another example - the critical speech of Trediakovsky's younger contemporary - A.P. Sumarokova. What is said in his article “Criticism on the Ode” ( we're talking about about Lomonosov’s ode “On the day of accession to... the throne... of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna”, 1747)? Here are a few excerpts from the article:

“Stanza I (that is, the first stanza of the Lomonosov ode. - V.N.).

Beloved silence,

bliss of villages, city fence...

It is impossible to say that there is a city fence. You can say the village is a fence, not a city fence; The city has its name because it is fenced.

I don’t know beyond that that there is silence behind the hail fence. I think that the fence of the city is an army and weapons, and not silence.

Stanza II...

On beads, gold and purple...

There is very little agreement with beads and porphyry gold. It would be proper to say: for beads, silver and gold, or for a crown, scepter and purple; These names would be more consistent among themselves.

Stanza XII

Oh, if it rattles in agreement...

“Ranging and jingling is the most vile word, but jingling is even better because it is used, but jingling is never used and is a newly invented word, and is vile both in reprimand and sign.”

Lomonosov’s verse “Be silent, fiery sounds” evokes the following comment from Sumarokov: “There are no fiery sounds, but there are sounds that come with flame.”

As we see, Sumarokov first of all considers the language (word usage) and grammar of the analyzed literary work. And in turn, he is indignant at the combination of words from different linguistic layers. In his 1762 message “To Elizaveta Vasilyevna Kheraskova,” he addressed the poet with the following appeal:

Clean, clean as much as you can,

You are your feet

And grammar regulations

Observe with extreme force.

Feel accurately, think clearly,

Sing simply and accordingly.

Let's consider another example of classicist criticism - now from the literary critical heritage of Lomonosov. This is a letter from the poet to I.I. Shuvalov (around October 16, 1753), containing an analysis of the panegyric poem by I.P. Elagin in honor of the Sumarokov tragedy “Semira” (1751).

Lomonosov's attention is again focused on Elagin's errors in word usage. Having quoted Elagin’s definition of “Semira is magnificent,” the critic writes: “... i.e. pouty, it’s an unpleasant name for him (Sumarokov - V.N.), and it’s not true, because she’s more tender.” The verse “A son born from the brain of a goddess” evokes the comment: “... that is, a grandson of the brain, I don’t think Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov would want to call himself.” Lomonosov also finds Elagin’s epithet “good teacher” addressed to Sumarokov unacceptable (“Good,” the critic notes, “in Slavonic, good signifies and, according to precise understanding, is subject to deity... I have no doubt that A.P. (Sumarokov. - V.N.) will not allow himself to be idolized. And so only the current Russian sign remains: good or blessed; an unbearable insult."

In the fragment “On the current state of verbal sciences in Russia” (1756), which represents an unfinished attempt at a critical article itself, Lomonosov speaks out against those modern Russian writers “who with awkward weaving (words - K.N.) want to be considered skillful.” The surviving outline of the article also indicates the main sins of such authors. Here they are: “1) Against grammar. 2) Cacophony. Marriages, marriages. 3) Slavism is out of place,<...>4) Against stress.” And only the sixth point indicates: “False thoughts.”

So, grammatical-linguistic orientation is a general and at the same time the most characteristic feature of classicist criticism. To a certain extent, this can be explained by the special relevance of the problem of Russian literary language, which is experiencing a period of its formation at this time. However, the problem of literary language will remain acute and controversial until Pushkin’s reform, which does not prevent, say, Decembrist (and even sentimentalist) criticism from being guided in its assessments not by stylistic, but by content-worldview criteria. But classicist critics seem to prefer the analysis of language and grammar to the latter. What's the matter?

The point is the direct, almost immediate connection that, in the eyes of a classicist, style, the correct or incorrect use of words in a particular work has with its genre consistency and, consequently, content. From an assessment of language (style), the first Russian critics moved directly to conclusions about, it would seem, incomparably more significant parties work - the degree of its “reasonableness”, truth, etc. This is exactly what Trediakovsky does in his analysis of Sumarokov’s first ode; ending his grammatical-style analysis with the following conclusion: “This... ode is vicious in composition, empty in mind, dark... in the composition of words... low in indiscriminate speeches, false in the narration of past affairs... reckless in the use of fabulosity (i.e. mythology. - V.N.), finally...partly unlawful.”

But where does this very idea of ​​almost identity between consistency of style, norms of word usage and genre-content consistency of a literary work come from? To answer this question, one should turn to the aesthetics of classicism and the interpretation of its content.

Let us pay attention to the word “reason” in Trediakovsky’s article. This is not just a synonym for the semantic side of the work. The concept of “mind” is one of the fundamental classicist categories in the system. After all, the classicist writer’s very perception of reality is marked by a rationalistic understanding of the world and man. The art of classicism in its relations with reality did not proceed from it, but from an ideal world built in accordance with the “eternal and unchanging” laws of reason and logic. In relation to this ideal, the concretely real world was perceived as an unreasonable world or not illuminated by reason and its categories (general and individual, absolute and relative, etc.), clearly and harmoniously interconnected. The real world was seen not as a system, but as a collection of objects and phenomena - for the most part isolated, random, or even simply ugly. The classic writers saw their task as precisely to contribute through their works to the ordering, regulation and rationalization of the contemporary empirical world (society and state) and bringing it closer to the “reasonable” ideal. As Trediakovsky wrote in his treatise “Opinion on the Beginning of Poetry and Poems in General,” literature is “not a representation of actions as they are in themselves, but as they can or should be”; “...fictional fiction occurs according to reason, that is, how a thing could have been or should have been.”

This does not mean that the aesthetics of classicism did not allow the depiction in literature of those diverse and motley phenomena and signs of ordinary and private life, the existence of which it explained by the “ignorance of the mind,” that is, a deviation from its norms and laws. “Literary matter,” Lomonosov already declared, “is everything that can be spoken and written about, that is, all the known things in the world.” This anticipates the later thesis of N.I. Nadezhdin and V.G. Belinsky: “Where there is life, there is poetry.” However, in the view of the classicist writer, the spheres and levels of human life and activity existing in his contemporary society are by no means equal. Thus, Lomonosov actually distinguishes “matter” as “high”, “mediocre” and “low”. If he includes national responsibilities and interests (more precisely, national ones) among the former, then the latter includes the concerns and life of “ordinary people.”

Human life is thus conceived as a strict hierarchy, the predominant principle in which belongs to the general (state) sphere, and not to the everyday-private, individual.

In accordance with the hierarchy of “matters”, an equally clear system of literary genres is built, finally developed in Lomonosov’s work “On the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language” (1757). There are different genres: high, medium and low. Lomonosov lists heroic poems, odes, and prose speeches about important subjects as the first; to the second - theatrical works that require the participation of ordinary people, friendly poetic messages, satires, eclogues, elegies, in prose - “descriptions of memorable deeds and noble teachings”; to the third - comedies, epigrams, songs, in prose - friendly letters, descriptions of ordinary affairs.

For a classicist writer, genre is a strictly normative structure. This means that genre norms are not derived from the specific material of a particular work (its themes, images, pathos, etc.), but are given to the writer as a set of corresponding “rules.” Their example is the famous three unities (place, time and action) of classical drama.

The rules in the poetics of classicism are a kind of supporting structures of the harmonious, rationally calculated image that the writer creates in his work. They cover not only the formal, but also the actual substantive aspects of tragedy, ode, eclogue or fable: each genre “knows” its hero, form (verse or prose), size, syllable and style.

Significantly easing the pains of creativity or, according to Lomonosov, “invention,” “decoration,” and “arrangement” (“Rhetoric”) for the classicist writer, the system of genre rules was at the same time intended to limit the author’s “literary freedom” and regulate it. creative imagination. After all, a writer who devoted himself uncontrollably to it inevitably came into conflict with the genre canons of the work he was creating, which, according to the theorists of classicism, led to aesthetic ugliness.

Knowing the rules and following them. Therefore, the first thing that is required from a classicist writer. The idea of ​​rules, one way or another, runs through most of the works of Trediakovsky, Lomonosov and Sumarokov. They teach knowledge of the rules, argue about the correct understanding of them, and seek to enlighten the reader's mind in the direction of better application of the rules.

Versification without directly knowing the measures,

There could not be Mzlgerb, Racine and Molière.

Writing poetry is not the fruit of a single hunt;

But diligence and hard work, -

Sumarokov declares and continues:

When there is no art, or you were born in the wrong way,

The voice will not be harmonious, and will be weak and forced.

And if nature has gifted you.

Try to make art repeat this gift.

Here “art” is nothing more than the poet’s knowledge of rules (“measures”). Lomonosov, in his article “Letter on the Rules of Russian Poetry” (1739), expresses dissatisfaction with the French, who, “relying on their imagination rather than rules, glue together the words in their poems so crookedly and obliquely that they cannot be called either prose or poetry.” Here he first sets out his recommendations on how to compose “correct poetry.” In “Rhetoric,” the poet gives the following definition of this science: “Rhetoric is the study of eloquence in general. This science proposes rules of three kinds” (that is, invention, decoration and arrangement). In terms of the article “On the current state of verbal sciences in Russia,” Lomonosov lists the conditions necessary to become a good writer: “Methods. Nature. Rules, Examples, Exercises."

Propaganda of genre norms and rules occupies a significant place in Sumarokov’s literary activity. In 1748, he published two epistles - on the Russian language and on poetry, which in 1774 he published under the general title “Instructions for those who want to be writers.” This is Horace’s “The Art of Poetry” and Boileau’s “Poetic Art” in a Russian, largely original version. “Instructor...” is a set of rules and norms characteristic of one or another genre of classicism.

Two words about what is the criterion of a particular genre measure.

After all, every writer can understand it in his own way. In this situation, the dispute is resolved by reference to authority - the “exemplary” work of antiquity or Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, etc.

Let's get back to the rules. It is important to take into account their directly meaningful nature in works of literary classicism. This can be seen, say, in the example of poetic meters. So, the tragedy could not have been not only prose work, but, with rare exceptions (“Titus’ Mercy” by Ya.B. Knyazhnin), and written in trimeter or free iambic. The significance of its collision and the greatness of the hero required iambic hexameter, which began to be replaced by pentameter only in the 19th century. On the contrary, dynamically mobile iambic trimeter was used primarily in anacreontic poems, songs, messages and other “light” genres.

No less meaningful was the style (“calm”), understood by the classicists as a set of verbal, linguistic and grammatical means firmly assigned to a particular genre. Three “matters” and three groups of genres corresponded to three styles: high, medium and low. They differed in the degree of significance and “importance” (remember A. Pushkin’s Onegin line: “His own syllable in an important mood, There was a fiery creator ...”) of the words-concepts included in them, their belonging to the national (state) or, on the contrary, to the private and everyday areas of life.

Now we can return to the question posed above: why did the primarily grammatical and linguistic orientation of criticism of Russian classicism not prevent it from drawing conclusions about the genre and content consistency of the work being analyzed?

For a classicist critic, language - style was not just the same meaningful feature of a work as a hero, conflict, size, plot and other genre rules. And among them, style turned out to be the most sensitive and visual indicator of the genre. After all, the author of, for example, a tragedy, ode, or epic could hardly make a mistake in choosing the corresponding hero or plot. Such a mistake would mean his complete “ignorance” in the poetics of classicism. But the same writer was by no means immune from larger or smaller errors in word usage, leading to inconsistent style. And therefore, from the point of view of the strict purist Aristarchus, to the genre failure of the work. This is precisely how Trediakovsky motivates his conclusion about the “illegitimateness” of Sumarokov’s first ode, which he criticized. “Oda,” he writes. - does not tolerate ordinary folk sayings: she completely moves away from them and only accepts the lofty and magnificent.”

Sumarokov insistently demands compliance with stylistic norms in his “Instructions for Those Who Want to Be Writers.”

In poetry, know the difference between genders,

And when you start, look for decent words for it. -

When there is no strength to create a tragedy,

But the creator won’t spare any speeches for Talia.

Then they mix comedy with tragedy

And people are greatly consoled by the news

And the dramatic composition is like this

They are deprived of horses, they harness horses.

Most of Sumarokov’s critical articles are devoted specifically to the language and style of his works. His protest, as P.N. correctly notes. Berkov, causes any deviation from generally accepted norms - semantic or accentual. He is extremely strict with each individual shade introduced into the word by the poet and which, in his opinion, interferes with the purity of the style. Let us recall his commentary on Lomonosov’s line “Be silent, fiery sounds.” However, considerable stylistic “pedantry” is characteristic, as we have seen, of the criticism of both Trediakovsky and Lomonosov. Another thing is that on this basis it would be wrong to limit the criticism of Russian classicism to the problem of language and style only.

In its essence and method it was normative genre criticism. Analysis of style and language was for her only a way (form) of solving her problem.

The rationalistic nature of the aesthetic ideal in classicism was refracted in the educational and pedagogical understanding of the general goal that normative genre criticism set for itself. It consisted of enlightening writers (and readers), enlightening their minds, thinking and illuminating - purifying their language and style. Moreover, both tasks turned out to be interdependent: the formation of the “correct” syllable taught one to think “correctly” and vice versa. The methods of such enlightenment offered to the writer are also extremely revealing. He had to study languages, grammar, and exemplary literary works. As G.N. writes in the article “A discussion on the qualities of a poet.” Teplov, “a poet who does not know lower grammatical rules, lower rhetorical ones, and even insufficient in knowledge of languages, and even more so in the original authors... who have remained a model of poetry from ancient centuries,” will be likened to a physicist who does not know mathematics, chemistry and hydraulics. Such a poet “cannot achieve the knowledge of direct poetry.”

Not a flight of fancy, but general and actually philological erudition, not inspiration (cf. later in Pushkin: “A poet in an inspired lyre...”), but, so to speak, the prudence of the creative act - this is what a critic primarily values ​​in a writer. classicist And woe to the author who “did not study verbal science.” Here is a more than expressive portrait of him, sketched in Teplov’s article cited above: “Having impudently read his works to many and heard praise either through flattery or caresses, he got used to considering himself perfect, and in that pride he became ossified after many years. Oh, what a great blow it will be when he hears from the side that no one has dared to call his song awkward. He will not let go of this, either in this or in the next century; he will spew out all his poison on him; promises all the abysses of the earth; he raises a church ban on him. Runs and rushes with rage to friend and foe in the house; curses the desire to serve the people with science..."

Lecture two. CRITICISM AS A JUDGMENT OF GREAT TASTE

This is how, in our opinion, criticism should be defined, reflecting the literary and aesthetic ideas and criteria of Russian sentimentalism. It can be understood against the backdrop of normative genre criticism and in the context of sentimentalism, which has been emerging in Russia since the 70s of the 18th century.

As a literary ideology, sentimentalism was generated by a reaction against the absolutist statehood, which was already exhausting its progressive role (this was shown, in particular, by Pugachev’s uprising), its inherent rationalistic worldview and the hierarchical system of ethical and aesthetic values.

Sentimentalism revises the traditional idea of ​​the relationship between the official-state (general) and individual-private spheres of public life, for the first time asserting and defending the human and social significance and value of private life. Without encroaching on the class social structure, Russian sentimentalism at the same time advocates for the non-class value of the individual (N.M. Karamzin: “Even peasant women know how to love”), measured by the ability to humanely and sublimely feel. In “Conversation with Anacreon” (1758-1761) M.V. Lomonosov wrote:

At least some heartfelt tenderness

I am not deprived of love

Hero of eternal glory

I'm more delighted.

The sentimentalists contrasted the dominant cult of heroes (monarchs, generals, statesmen, etc.) in classicism, committed primarily to duty, to which they sacrifice individual passions and aspirations, with an interest in the ordinary person, his inner and home life. An apology for reason, which should guide a citizen and a writer, is replaced by a reliance on feeling as a more faithful and reliable human ability than reason.

From these general positions, sentimentalism undertakes a real revaluation of traditional social values. Read the stories by P.Yu. Lvova, M.N. Muravyova, N.M. Karamzina, V.V. Izmailova, G.P. Kameneva, P.I. Shalikova, M.V. Sushkova, N.P. Milonov (for example, according to the collection: Russian sentimental story, Introductory article and comments by P.A. Orlov. Moscow State University Publishing House, 1979). Everywhere here nature (nature) is opposed to civilization, the village is opposed to the city, the villager is opposed to the inhabitant of rich chambers, metropolitan offices, the hut (hut, hut, house) is opposed to the palace, a modest life among nature, in the circle of friends is the search for honors and glory.

The ideal of sentimentalists is a person who is not rational, but “sensitive”, that is, proceeding in his behavior, attitude towards the world and people from an immediate heartfelt impulse, dictated in turn by his individual nature (nature), and not abstractly - by the universal laws of reason.

The largest representative of Russian criticism of the era of sentimentalism was the founder of this trend in Russia, H.M. Karamzin (1766-1826)

Karamzin first expressed his literary sympathies in the 1787 poem “Poetry.” One of the notes to it noted that the author here “talks only about those poets who most touched and occupied his soul at the time when this play was composed.” Who are they? Having spoken highly of such biblical and ancient authors as David and Solomon, Homer, Sophocles and Euripides, Theocritus and Ovid, Karamzin then directly moves on to English and German poets new time. In first place here, after Ossian, whose songs “tender melancholy” poured into the “languid spirit”, are Shakespeare (“Shakespeare, friend of Nature! who knew the hearts of people better than you?”), Milton (“high spirit”), Jung ( “the unfortunate friend, the unfortunate comforter”), Thomson (“Nature’s dear son... You taught me to enjoy nature...”), as well as Gesner (“the sweetest singer”) and Klopstock (“He is inspired by God...”). Literally all representatives of French classicism (Maherbe, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire), whose works were considered exemplary among Russian writers and critics of the Lomonosov period, were outside this series.

A number of the best, from Karamzin’s point of view, authors of world literature were later supplemented by the names of the largest sentimentalist writers Richardson and Stern, as well as J.J. Rousseau, whose attitude towards the “paradoxes” of the Russian writer, however, is ambivalent (see the article “Something about the Sciences, Arts and Enlightenment”; 1794). If Richardson is a “skillful painter” of the human soul, then the author of “A Sentimental Journey” is called “incomparable.” “...At what academic university,” Karamzin asks him, “did you learn to feel so tenderly? What rhetoric revealed to you the secret of shaking the finest fibers of our hearts with two words?”

Already in the poem “Poetry,” the poet’s greatest merit is that he sang “man, his dignity and important dignity.” Thirty years later, in “A Speech Delivered at a Ceremonial Meeting of the Imperial Russian Academy” (1819), Karamzin put the human personality at the center public and state-historical interests as their goal and criterion. “Is it for this,” he says, “that powers are formed, or that they rise on the globe, so that they can only amaze us with the formidable colossus of power and its sonorous fall... No! Both our life and the life of empires must contribute to the revelation of the great abilities of the human soul; here everything is for the soul, everything for the mind and feelings; all immortality lies in their successes!”

These humanistic postulates (which also had an anti-classicist orientation: after all, the classicist writer glorified not so much a person as an enlightened-reasonable person, fulfilling his duty to the state) were not simple declarations for Karamzin, but were directly reflected in his work and criticism. The title of the collected works published by Karamzin is indicative - “My trinkets” (1794). This was a challenge to the traditional ideas of Fr. important and unimportant in literature. I followed Karamzin’s example. I.I. Dmitriev, who released the collection “And My Trinkets.” In 1796-1799, Karamzin will publish four books in the almanac “Aonids”. specially undertaken for the publication of “new small poems.”

As a preface to the second volume of the almanac (1797), Karamzin published an article, the meaning of which is the fundamentally important advice to writers “to find the creative side in the most ordinary things.” “You shouldn’t think,” says the author, “that only great objects can ignite a poet and serve as proof of his talents; on the contrary, a true poet finds the poetic side in the most ordinary things...” And then the author explains how this can be achieved. It is necessary to “mean” the depicted feeling (phenomenon, character) “not only general features", "but special, related to the character and circumstances of the poet." It is important to “bring vivid colors to everything, attach a witty thought, a tender feeling or an ordinary thought to everything, decorate an ordinary feeling with expression, show shades... find inconspicuous analogies, similarities... and sometimes make small things great, sometimes make great things small.”

Essentially, this is a whole program and at the same time a “mechanism” of an artistic generalization other than in the literature of classicism, which makes it possible to discover universally significant interest in the most ordinary, ordinary and purely personal human experiences, passions and motivations. If, for these purposes, a classicist writer abstracted from the individually specific aspects of what he depicted, abstracting, like a thinker, general beginning phenomenon from its originality, then Karamzin calls for focusing on the totality of precisely “personal,” special, unique features, colors and shades. General content The depicted object is thus thought not in isolation from the individual, but in its form - as a deep and comprehensive penetration into the individual. The connection between the individual and the general in the literary image is still far from true dialecticism in Karamzin, as in sentimentalism in general. This does not prevent us from regarding the article in “Aonides” as the first premonition in Russian criticism of that future “poetry of reality”, the creator of which will be A.S. Pushkin, and theorist V.G. Belinsky.

In direct connection with Karamzin’s stated theoretical considerations is his high assessment of Richardson’s novel “The Memorable Life of the Maiden Clarissa Garlov,” which appeared in Russian translation in 1791. "Write interesting novel in eight volumes,” he says in his review for the same year, “without resorting either to the miracles with which epic poets try to arouse curiosity in readers, or to the sweet pictures with which many of the newest novelists seduce our imagination, and without describing anything, in addition to the most ordinary scenes of life - this requires, of course, excellent art in describing details and characters.” “The English,” the critic continues, “have many novels that are excellent in their kind, more than other nations, because they have more originality in morals, more interesting characters,” however, in the words of one new writer, Clarissa they have one, just as the French have one New Heloise (i.e. the famous novel by J. J. Rousseau - V.N.).”

In Karamzin's judgments about central hero to Richardson's novel Clarissa and especially Lovelace, “in which we see such a wonderful thing, but... natural, a mixture of good and evil personalities,” the researchers rightly see “the grain of a whole theory of characters.” According to V.I. Kuleshov, and “Karamzin thought about the problem of character as a critic and as a writer. He felt that this problem was central to sentimentalism and logically follows from the principles of depicting sensitivity, individuality and social character” (Kuleshov V.I. History of Russian criticism. 2nd ed. M., 1978. P.52)

A concise but extremely capacious formulation of character - as distinguished from temperament - is already contained in one of the fragments of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” marked in 1789. “Temperament,” writes Karamzin, “is the basis of morality. our being, and character is a random (in the sense of concrete - V.N.) form of it. We are born with a temperament, but without a character, which is formed little by little from external impressions. Character depends, of course, on temperament, but only partly, depending, however, on the type of objects acting on us. The special ability to receive impressions is temperament; the form that these impressions give to a moral being is character.”

Thinking of character as a mental and psychological unity, sometimes complex and contradictory (this is clearly seen in the experiment “Sensitive and Cold”, 1803), Karamzin, perhaps, moves farthest away from the rationalistic ideas of Russian classicism, which saw in man the bearer of one dominant passion.

Hence his enormous interest in Shakespeare, who, according to Voltaire, wrote “without rules” and remained practically unknown in Russia. “It’s true that Shakespeare,” writes Karamzin in 1787 in the preface to his own adaptation of the tragedy “Julius Caesar,” “didn’t stick to the rules.” The real reason for this, I think, was his ardent imagination, which could not submit to any instructions. His spirit soared like an eagle, and could not measure its soaring with the same measure that sparrows measure their flight. He did not want to observe the so-called unities, which our current dramatic authors so firmly adhere to; he did not want to put tight limits on his imagination; he looked at nature, not caring, however, about anything” my italics. - V.N.).

It is not by chance that we have isolated the concepts of “imagination” and “nature” here. After all, according to Karamzin, the source of imagination is not in the transpersonal laws of the mind, but in nature - the nature of the writer himself. There is no need to regulate creative imagination with rules, since it is not they, but imagination that allows the author, as Shakespeare shows, to penetrate into “human nature” and “directly imitate.”

But if the guarantee of creative success is not in the rules, on what in this case should the critic’s and reader’s judgment of the work be based? “Delicate taste,” Karamzin and his associates answer. “Judging about the works of feeling and imagination,” says Karamzin in “Speech ... at the solemn meeting of the Imperial Russian Academy” (1819), “let us not forget that our verdicts are based solely on taste, inexplicable to the mind; that they cannot always be decisive; that taste changes in men and nations; that the pleasure of readers is born from their secret sympathy with the author and is not subject to the laws of reason...; that the example of the elegant has a stronger effect on the success of literature than any criticism; that we do not so much want to teach writers (this is exactly the task that the critics of classicism set themselves. - V.N.), but to encourage them with our attention to them, our judgment, filled with goodwill.”

Normative genre criticism actually did not know taste as a tool of literary and aesthetic evaluation. The very concept of taste appears precisely in Karamzin’s criticism. In his “Monument to the Dactylochoreic Knight” (1801-1802) A.N. Radishchev, in the light of this concept, will formulate his general opinion about the poetry of Trediakovsky, whose “misfortune... was that he, being a learned man, had no taste.” As for Trediakovsky or Sumarokov, they would consider such an approach completely arbitrary.

For Karamzin, meanwhile, aesthetics itself “is the science of taste.” She “teaches to enjoy the graceful.” Criticism of Russian sentimentalism also becomes a judgment of elegant taste. This is her focus and method. Moreover, for supporters of this criticism, both the relativity of taste criteria and assessments and their variability - social and historical - are clear.

The task of the “experienced art lover” is not to compare the work with genre rules external to it. He must “deep his gaze, so to speak, into the innermost soul of the writer, in order to feel together with him, seek expressions and strive for some kind of mental model, which is the goal ... for every talent.” In other words, when evaluating a work, a critic must proceed from the author’s mood and ideal expressed in this work. In this case, the analysis of the book will be combined “with the demonstration of its special beauties,” which is the most important goal of criticism of taste. Here, again, one involuntarily recalls Belinsky’s later demand to penetrate, before judging the social or historical significance of a work, into the “innermost spirit” of the author, into the pathos of consciousness.

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