Novel of education in Russian literature. Chugunov D

The origins of the novel of education go back to the 18th century. This traditional genre variety of the novel received its complete classical form in the works of the great German educators K.M. Vilanda, I.V. Goethe. Then the tradition of the novel of education was continued among the German romantics of the first quarter of the 19th century, in the works of realist writers of the past and present. Already at the first stage of the existence of the novel of education, ideas of harmonious development of personality and moral freedom arose. Particular attention was paid to personality development. Writers strived for a deep analysis of the reasons influencing the formation and development of a person, the process of educating the main character.

Most novels of the 19th century are related to the Bildungsroman genre - a novel reflecting “problems of education, upbringing and general development of the character” [Makhmudova 2010: 106]. The study of this novel is associated with the name of the German philosopher and cultural historian W. Dilthey. In his works, he identified three types of educational novel, each of which has its own literary term: “Entwicklungsroman,” or developmental novel; "Erziehungsroman" - novel education or pedagogical novel; "Kunstlerroman" is a novel about a representative of art.

In the book “Questions of Literature and Aesthetics” M.M. Bakhtin examines the problems of the novel of education and its types. The key features in his research are such features as the type of relationship between the author and the hero and the features of artistic space and time. He characterizes the novel of education as an artistic structure, the main organizing center of which is the idea of ​​formation, and distinguishes 4 types: the idyllic-cyclical novel of formation (partly age-related and purely age-related), biographical, didactic-pedagogical novel and the realistic type of novel of formation [Bakhtin 1969: 81 ].

In the monograph “Renaissance Realism,” L. Pinsky connects the features of the novel of education with the tradition of plot-situation and plot-fable. And researcher N.Ya. Berkovsky in his monograph “Romanticism in Germany” puts forward the concept of phylogeny and ontogenesis. According to the author, the European novel of the 18th - early 19th centuries was occupied with “a narrative about how everyday life, family, social and personal well-being are built,” while the novel of education told about “how a person is built and how personality arises” [ Berkovsky 1973: 128].

In his work “The Educational Novel in German Literature of the Enlightenment” A.V. Dialektova highlights the theoretical problems of the educational novel and gives this genre variety a definition: “The term educational novel means a work in which the dominant plot structure is the process of educating the hero: life for the hero becomes a school” [Dialektova 1982: 136].

The West German literary critic J. Jacobs studied the problem of the novel of education. His work illuminates the background of the novel of education, its traditions and development. The author gives Hegel's interpretation of the word “Bildungsroman”. According to G.V. F Hegel, this is “the process of development through which the individual is directly attached to the universal.” Y. Jacobs notes that in the novel of education the main character is at odds with various spheres of the world. The defining criterion of this type of novel is overcoming the gap between ideal and reality, loss of illusions, deep disappointment or death of the hero [Pashigorev 2005: 56].

The artistic nature of the German novel of education allows us to compare it with the French “novel of career” and the English novel of education. The French “career novel” in its structure is the hero’s movement up the social ladder. It depicts the process of adaptation of the hero to unfavorable conditions of social life, the process of his moral degradation. Examples include the novels of O. de Balzac, F. Stendhal’s novel “The Red and the Black,” and “Beloved Friend” by G. de Maupassant. Thus, the basis of the French “career novel” is destruction, moral destruction; in the German novel of education, personality is formed from a positive social perspective; The English novel of education focuses attention on moral and psychological issues; it is characterized by a moralizing tendency (C. Dickens).

The American novel of education has specific features. Its plot is based on the process of formation of the main character, gradual personal development and self-determination, the search for the possibility of self-affirmation in society and self-realization. The environment plays an important role, as well as the events happening to the hero that influence the formation of his personality. The novel of education was based on a description of the hero’s childhood and adolescence, the period of his growing up, and was associated with the concept of the “American Dream” (“The Path to Abundance”, “Autobiography” by B. Franklin). In the twentieth century, ideas of education are transformed, the main problem of the work becomes the inability of the hero to influence his destiny (“The Education of Henry Adams” by G. Adams). Some novels drew a parallel between the “American dream” and “American tragedy” (S. Lewis, T. Dreiser).

Thus, we can highlight the following genre features of the Western European educational novel: the author’s educational position, the depiction of the process of educating the hero from childhood to adulthood; the didactic nature of the ending, the conditioning of the results of the hero’s formation throughout his life; the function of minor characters as “educators” in relation to the main character; close interaction of a person with the environment in the process of formation.

1. Adults and children in Gorky’s story “Childhood.”
2. Natasha’s selfless love for her mother in Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace.”
3. The child’s resentment in Bunin’s story “Numbers.”
4. Raising little Ilya in Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”.
5. The attitude of parents towards children in Odoevsky’s work “Excerpts from Masha’s Journal”.

The relationship between “fathers” and “children” is a very complex problem that exists at all times. The conflict between the generation of “fathers” and the generation of “children” is highlighted in many works of Russian classical literature. But difficulties in relationships do not arise suddenly. They are a direct consequence of inattentive and disrespectful attitude towards children. Turning to works of Russian classical literature allows us to see with our own eyes the mistakes adults made when raising children, and the obvious consequences of these mistakes.

Let us recall the autobiographical work of M. Gorky “Childhood”. The main character, after the death of his father, returns with his mother to his grandfather's house. Here he has to face cruelty and injustice. This is the attitude towards children that flourishes in families of relatives. Gorky himself says that in the work he showed “the leaden abominations of life.” All relatives are gloomy, greedy people, angry with everyone and everything. And the grandfather is no less cruel and despotic.

Children grow up in an atmosphere of bitterness and mutual hatred. They are constantly beaten for any, even the most insignificant, offense. This is exactly the kind of “upbringing” that my grandfather adheres to. Literally in the first days of his stay at the relatives’ house, the grandfather caught the boy until he lost consciousness. The children did not feel any love or attention towards themselves. Only the grandmother was the only kind person who showed love and respect to Alyosha. As time passes, the main character only remembers his grandmother with a kind word. And the grandfather received in full for all the evil that he caused to others: “... when the grandmother had already calmed down forever, the grandfather himself walked the streets of the city, a beggar and a madman, pitifully begging under the windows:

- My good cooks, give me a piece of pie, I would like some pie! Oh you-and...”

At the end of his life, the old man was forced to beg, despite the fact that he had a large family. But no one seemed willing to take care of him. And no wonder, because the grandfather himself did not show kindness towards his loved ones.

But in L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace,” Natasha Rostova touchingly cares for her mother. After the death of Petya, Natasha's brother, the Countess immediately turned into an old woman. Natasha does not leave her mother's side. “She alone could keep her mother from insane despair. For three weeks Natasha lived hopelessly with her mother, slept in a chair in her room, gave her water, fed her and talked to her incessantly - she talked because her gentle, caressing voice alone calmed the countess.” Love for her mother makes Natasha stronger. A young girl finds the strength to support and help a loved one. There is nothing surprising about this. In the Rostov family, children were always treated with attention, love and care. And when the time came, the now grown-up children began to treat their parents the same way. There have never been any conflicts, mutual enmity or hatred in their family. Therefore, Natasha, forgetting about everything, does not leave her mother, trying to support and help her.

If we compare the atmosphere in the Kashirins’ house, which is described in Gorky’s story “Childhood,” with the atmosphere in the Rostovs’ house, the difference will be enormous. And the point is not only that the Rostov family did not know financial difficulties and problems. Mutual love and respect reign in the Rostov family, which no one even thinks about in little Alyosha’s family.

Childhood memories remain forever in the memory of an adult. Conflicts between older and younger generations are often predetermined by negative memories. Sometimes a seemingly unnoticed and insignificant episode can have a strong impact on the developing character of a child. Let us recall I. A. Bunin’s story “Numbers”. This short work clearly shows us how inattentive adults can be towards a child. In a family, among several adults there is only one child. And it’s not at all difficult for relatives to be a little more attentive to him. But no, adults are unhappy that the child is a “big naughty person.” In fact, the boy does not come across as spoiled. He is inquisitive and explores the world with interest. But his relatives are doing everything possible to pacify him. They don’t even try to understand that the child is overwhelmed with energy, that he cannot sit in one place, as they themselves do. Here we learn that the boy, overwhelmed with the joy of life, shouted. “He shouted, completely forgetting about us and completely surrendering himself to what was happening in your soul overflowing with life - he shouted with such a ringing cry of causeless, divine joy that God himself would have smiled at this cry.” The boy's behavior seems unacceptable to adults. And his uncle begins to shout at him, even allowing himself to spank the baby. This behavior on the part of adults undermines the child’s faith in them. I don’t want to justify my uncle’s actions towards the boy. It would seem that this is a single episode. But how many such situations arise while children are small. All this remains in memory forever. And it is no longer surprising that in the souls of grown-up children there is no boundless respect and love for their elders. In Bunin's story we see that his uncle's unfair act greatly offended the boy. The baby is crying. But neither mother nor grandmother seeks to calm and caress the offended baby. They adhere to the principles of strict education. But from the outside they seem indifferent and callous people. In fact, it’s hard even for an uncle to hear a child cry: “It was unbearable for me too. I wanted to get up from my seat, open the door to the nursery and immediately, with one hot word, put an end to your suffering. But is this consistent with the rules of reasonable upbringing and with the dignity of a fair, albeit strict uncle? And the child was disappointed in his uncle. He used to love him truly and unconditionally. Now the boy looks at his uncle with “evil eyes full of contempt.” This is completely justified. After all, an adult uncle offended a defenseless child.

It is impossible not to agree that raising children is a very, very difficult task. The task of adults is not only to love and respect the child, but also to provide him with the necessary freedom to realize his aspirations. The absence of this freedom will lead to the child growing up weak and weak-willed. This is exactly what happened to the main character of Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”. If we remember the childhood of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, we can say with confidence that it was happy and carefree. The boy was loved very much, he was surrounded by attention and care. But at the same time, the child was not given the opportunity to express himself. Little Ilya could not take a single step on his own. If his mother “let him go for a walk in the garden, in the yard, in the meadow, with strict confirmation to the nanny not to leave the child alone, not to allow him near horses, dogs, a goat, not to go far from the house, and most importantly, not to let him into the ravine, as the most terrible place in the neighborhood, which enjoyed a bad reputation.” The boy was deprived of the opportunity to learn something new, to express his desires and abilities. Little Ilya loved to listen to the fairy tales that his nanny told him. Fairy tales became the only possible reality for him, because he did not know or see anything else in his life. And this daydreaming served him badly. “Although the adult Ilya Ilyich later learns that there are no honey and milk rivers, no good sorceresses, although he jokes with a smile at his nanny’s stories, this smile is insincere, it is accompanied by a secret sigh: his fairy tale is mixed with life, and he is powerless sometimes it makes me sad, why isn’t life a fairy tale, and why isn’t life a fairy tale....” It is quite possible that Oblomov’s life would have turned out completely differently if, from childhood, he had learned to show independence and try to do something. But, alas. Oblomov could only dream. He never learned to act. He spent whole days in useless dreams, while real life passed by. “Everything pulls him in that direction, where they only know that they are walking, where there are no worries and sorrows; he always has the disposition to lie on the stove, walk around in a ready-made, unearned dress and eat at the expense of the good sorceress.” This is largely the fault of his parents. They did not allow the child to feel independent. And, having become an adult, he remained as lethargic and lacking initiative as he was in childhood.

In my opinion, an excellent example of proper upbringing is shown in the work of V. F. Odoevsky “Excerpts from Masha’s Journal.” The work is written in the genre of diary notes. The diary is kept by a ten-year-old girl named Masha. Thanks to her records, we get the opportunity to learn about the upbringing of children in noble families. Masha's parents are smart and far-sighted. They do not hide the difficulties of real life from children and give children the opportunity to show their independence. We see how parents instill a sense of responsibility in the girl, how they help her learn how to run a household.

It is very interesting how parents explain to their daughter issues related to spending money. Mom gives Masha the opportunity to manage the funds allocated for her wardrobe. The girl, of course, cannot resist the temptation to buy expensive and beautiful fabric for her dress. But mom delicately, but very clearly explains the unwiseness of large expenses, because you need to buy several things. It is noteworthy that Masha has no grudge against her mother, who refused to buy expensive fabric. No, the girl herself begins to understand the need to save on something in order to be able to purchase what she needs. Mom says to her daughter: “I’m very glad that you want to use the money for a real need, and not for a whim. Today you have taken a big step towards the important science of living.” She also invites Masha to remember Franklin’s words: “If you buy what you don’t need, then soon you will sell what you need.”

In addition to money issues, the work shows that parents instill in their children the need to study and receive an education. Using examples from the families of close friends, parents show the difficulties and problems that can occur in life. Thus, the character of children is formed. They learn to answer serious questions, become smarter and more serious.

Parents treat Masha and her brothers as adults. They explain to children what they do not yet understand. And children are not afraid to contact their parents with this or that question. If relationships based on mutual understanding and trust in each other reign in a family, conflicts are unlikely to ever arise. We do not know what the future fate of Masha and her brothers was. But, judging by the atmosphere in the family, it can be assumed that in the future they never had disagreements or hostility towards each other. Using the example of only a small number of works, we are convinced that the topic of raising children is one of the most complex and pressing problems of humanity. This is precisely what can explain her demand among writers.

D. A. Cast iron

FEATURES OF THE "NOVEL OF EDUCATION" IN THE NEWEST GERMAN LITERATURE

VESTNIK VSU. Series: Philology. Journalism. 2006, no. 1
Voronezh State University
http://www.vestnik.vsu.ru/content/phylolog/2006/01/tocru.asp

Possibility of stylistic definitions of literature of the 1990s. significantly difficult for the reason that in the reader's consciousness works that are completely different from each other are juxtaposed."Handke's consistent anti-realism" 1 is combined with close attention to the experiments of realism on the part of Michael Kumpfmüller, the demonstrative cynicism of Christian Kracht and the irony of Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre are adjacent with the melancholy intonation of Judith Hermann and the soulful lyricism of Siegfried Lenz...

Such combinations are explained by the fact that the described period in the history of German society is characterized by many historical - political, social and, accordingly, cultural transformations. According to the political scientist A. Dugin, addressed in the 1990s, “we live in an era of fundamental paradigm change,” 2 which, undoubtedly, affects the literary process. It is no coincidence that Marcel Bayer, one of the popular young authors of the late 20th century, spoke very skeptically about the rules of literary creativity: “The meaning of literature cannot be adherence to norms. Literature can only express a rejection of norms” 3. The multicultural and multinational European reality emerging after 1989, unlike previous years, does not imply any cultural unity (which previously arose under the conditions of a single statehood and a relatively single state ideology). The rapid flow of modern reality is not conducive to long-term stylistic searches. This circumstance is well understood by literary scholars. I'll give just one example. Characterizing the latest German-language lyrics, G. Korte insightfully used a line from a poem by Bert Papenfuss - “Free from all isms” 4.

This observation is especially applicable to authors of the younger generation, who entered literature precisely in the 1990s. Tanya Dykkers wrote in an essay in the fall of 1998 about a new understanding of the creative process: “Literature should be a rapidly living, quickly and loudly presented product of everyday life...” (italics - D. Ch.) 5 . In such a situation, the concept of “style” most often turns into a necessary set of techniques that provides the author with a sufficient level of market success 6. In other words, there is often an almost absolute coincidence of the concepts of “style” and “brand”, which led in the 1990s. the beauty of so-called 7 “pop literature”. At the same time, the combination of the pan-European situation of postmodernist trends in literature (according to the apt observation of modern culturologist A. Tsvetkov, “the general relaxation of authors and the mass rejection of any mission and extra-artistic pretension of art” 8) and noticeable attempts to overcome it also determine a certain complexity of stylistic assessments.

It is quite natural that one of the main ones in this situation becomes the question of the aesthetic and ethical value of works, their axiological content. Literary critic I. Arend rather ironically assesses modern writing practice, drawing attention to the passion for electronic literary projects: “An increasing number of authors are creating their own Internet pages. Everyone hopes for the opportunity to be published as soon as possible and go directly to the reader. The page of Martin Auer from Vienna looks like catalog of goods. You can request everything - from a novel to lyrics and smoky chanson...<...>But thanks to the way texts are promoted on the Internet, the author loses his greatness, turning into a lecturer, even a censor, when he exercises control over his guest page... Martin Auer asks visitors to the home page at the end of the exhibited excerpts from his novel, as in a questionnaire: " Weren't you bored? If so, in what places? "Frightened Christine Eichel 9 from Wiesbaden can already see how the plebiscite of readers displaces the solipsistic author" 10 .

Of course, in literature of a traditional form of existence (not electronic), this is not so noticeable, however, even here the author’s close attention to the needs of the public, reflected in the form, plot, collisions and the actual public presentation of the text, appears quite often. In 1998, she successfully used the image of the author of a new generation, Judith Hermann, thanks to a competent publishing policy and timely advertising announcements, becoming famous even before the publication (!) of her debut book. The thoughtful combination of the creative process and the cultivated author’s image into a kind of “artistic-commercial whole” 11 distinguishes other modern writers - I. Schulze, K. Kracht, B. von Stuckrad-Barre.. - and even Günther Grass was forced to listen to the demands of the public , when he created the sensational "Trajectory of the Crab" 12.

In this article, we do not set ourselves the task of exploring the entire diversity of stylistic features of German literature in the 1990s, limiting ourselves to addressing only one aspect of the modern literary process. The object of our attention will be the traditional German “novel of education.” Using the example of artistic transformations taking place in this genre at the end of the century, we will try to show what is often referred to as “Zeitgeist”, as the spirit of the time in art, which is formed from popular models of author and reader behavior.

At the same time, it seems that the trends that will be discussed are reflected in the works of both well-known and young authors, so we will not divide (with some exceptions) a single literary process into any streams or directions.

The depiction of life “as an experience, as a school through which every person must go,” characteristic of the “novel of education” from its very inception, was a characteristic feature of many works of all German post-war literature. Let's name here, for example, "Assembly Hall" (1964) and "Imprint" (1972) by Herman Kant, Erwin Strittmatter's multi-volume epic "The Wizard" (1957-1980), continuing the tradition of "German Lesson" (1968), "Living Example" ( 1973), "Museum of Local Lore" (1978) and "Training Ground" (1985) by Siegfried Lenz...

Openly aimed at understanding the “private” issues of life, offering a special look at a person - as a variable quantity depending on external circumstances, showing how a person “becomes together with the world, reflects the historical formation of the world itself” - this genre turned out to be naturally also in demand in modern German literature. “The problems of reality and human possibility, freedom and necessity, and the problem of creative initiative,” which M. M. Bakhtin wrote about in relation to the “novel of education,” became the most pressing problems of reality itself, taking shape after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is not difficult to trace that the traditional scheme of the “novel of education” was also implemented in works of the 1990s that became widely known, for example, in “Hampel’s Flight” by Michael Kumpfmüller, and “Heroes Like Us” by Thomas Brussig.

The main character of the first of these novels, Heinrich Hampel, as a teenager, and later in his teenage years, absorbs the cruel science of survival in war and post-war reality. Fate takes him from country to country, from continent to continent, his life turns into a kaleidoscope of meetings and partings; and only at the end of his life, at the end of Honecker’s reign, Hampel comes to the realization of a number of bitter truths for himself. The story of Klaus Ulzst, written by Brussig, begins in childhood. Throughout his life, this character is included in the rigid structure of East German society, and only postfactum does he understand the real essence of the years he lived... In general, these works are constructed in a familiar way:

1. the main character goes through certain stages of his personal development: “years of learning” - “years of wandering” - “years of wisdom”;

2. the reader reveals the inner world of the hero, the hidden motives of his behavior;

3. the novel receives a monocentric structure, where the epic tendency gives way to a subjective lyrical narrative;

4. the paradigm of the hero’s spiritual growth is built through a personalized, “mirror” arrangement of characters: the characters surrounding the hero appear as his reflections, options for his possible development; The “tests” and temptations of the hero are carried out in meetings and ideological disputes;

5. The work has a step-by-step plot-compositional structure that demonstrates the spiritual development of the hero.

The characteristic structural elements of the “novel of education” are also present in other works of the 1990s, demonstrating the traditional relevance of this genre for the German consciousness:

— in the novel by Jens Sparshu “The Indoor Fountain” the main character, already in adulthood, is forced to go through the difficult path of “re-education”, rethinking his former life under the socialist system and adapting to the new German reality; — in Andreas Mayer’s novel “Spirit Day,” a significant place is occupied by the depiction of the deep internal metamorphoses of his hero, Anton Wiesner, his overcoming of various everyday and spiritual difficulties on the way to gaining a new view of the world and his place in it. The action of the novel takes only a few days, but the story of the hero’s “upbringing” presented in a concentrated form, the openness and plot importance of his thoughts and experiences convince us of the author’s inheritance of tradition; - a characteristic paradigm describing the spiritual growth of the hero is also found in the novel “The Well-Fed World” by Helmut Krausser: without being deceived by the fundamental everyday disorder of the character, we observe his constant desire for the Highest principle of life, which manifested itself already in Hagen’s distant childhood, and at the same time we trace the situations , in which the material beginning of real life is spiritualized from above...

Genre elements of the “novel of education” are also present in “The Daughter” by Maxim Biller, “Sunny Alley” by Thomas Brussig, “Willenbrock” by Christoph Hein, “Crazy” by Benjamin L-bert, in Siegfried Lenz’s novels “Resistance” and “Arne’s Legacy”. .

At the same time, it is necessary to point out certain changes in the genre that occurred in the 1990s. and conditioned by the very specifics of the new historical era.

The “novel of education” was a natural creation of the Enlightenment, which believed that the natural kindness of man needs to be processed by reason. The traditional construction of the plot in the educational “novel of education” implied that the strength of the natural, “natural” principle 13 in the hero was sufficient to resist the “unreasonable” that surrounded this hero, the “unnatural” conditions in which he found himself.

Without touching on the general problems of the historical development of the “novel of education” in our work, we will note that such an ideological and compositional attitude is radically rethought in the German novel of the 1990s.

“The hesitation” of the human principle that characterizes the European reality of the 20th century. and in particular - his second half, painful individualism and other value characteristics of personality, which were discussed in the previous chapter, led to a change in emphasis in the relationship “man - world”, depicted in the “novel of education”. In this regard, a significant event in literary life after 1945 was the satirical novel “The Tin Drum” by Günter Grass, which presented the public with an unusual hero - as a sign of protest against the reality that “educated” him, he refused to grow and “switched off” himself from the usual social connections. The development of Grasse’s author’s thought, reflected in the 2002 work “Trajectories of the Crab,” is indicative. The writer here questioned the final part of the process in which the hero of the traditional “novel of education” participates. In the fate of Paul Pokriefke, a journalist wearily telling the story of his life, inextricably linked with the history of post-war Germany, recalling certain events of the past and present, a seemingly well-known pattern of personality development is realized. However, Grass deprived this scheme of completion: the hero’s accumulation of knowledge about the world, life experience, which should have led to the establishment in the hero’s mind of the idea of ​​​​serving people, a real “exit” to them, does not give the expected result. The hero of Grasse speaks, of course, about the necessity, about his duty to “enlighten” others, but at the same time, the mournful final lines of the entire work convince of the opposite: he actually admits his own helplessness to change anything in life for the better (as he also admitted “ the old man who has written himself off”, in whose image one can guess the figure of Grasse himself). Remembering the human madness that colored the entire 20th century. in dark tones, he tragically pronounces, leaving no alternative to the future: “There will never be an end to this. Never.”

On the understanding and interpretation of human destiny, characteristic of the “novel of education”, in the 1990s. reflections on the totalitarian trends of the 20th century were noticeably reflected. The key anthropological problem of literature—the transformation of a “private” person into a “cog in the system,” into a person “in the service of the state”—has changed both the previous understanding of personal capabilities and the assessment of its interaction with society. Let us trace these changes using the example of the already mentioned novels by Brussig and Kumpfmüller.

The merciless irony addressed to the East German past, permeating the novel “Heroes Like Us”, turns the process of raising the hero into something the opposite - into a process of active assimilation by him of all kinds of psychic and mental complexes of the era, distorting his private existence. The structure of the traditional educational novel is distorted to the extreme. The hero's overcoming of difficulties (point 1 of the genre scheme) on the way to mastering a useful business (point 2) in Klaus Ulitscht's version of fate looks like his conscious discovery and invention of these difficulties in order to become the greatest pervert in the history of humanity. Immersion in the reflections and experiences of the hero, the depiction of his deep internal metamorphoses (point 3) appears in Brussig’s novel not as self-knowledge and a search for truth, but as a demonstration of the fundamental inadequacy of the thoughts and feelings of a typical resident of a socialist society. The hero does not appear before us as a truly deep personality, although he tries in every possible way to convince the reader of the opposite. Most of the pages of the novel are filled with a truly Kafkaesque spirit, and Klaus Ulzst's experiences of the absurd reality surrounding him also border on the absurd. To a certain extent, the novel preserves the stylistic confession of the protagonist (point 4) and the episodes of his acquisition of true knowledge about the world (point 5), however, here too a transformation of the genre is noticeable. In some places, the author prompts the reader that Klaus Ulzst’s confession is far from conscious, not natural, but forced, due to special investigations into the activities of the MGB carried out after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In other episodes, he turns the confessional nature of the narrative into a conscious game for the public, which is so characteristic, for example, of descriptions of Klaus’s childhood and youth (let us remember here at least his self-determination - “Klaus das Titelbild”!). Finally, let us point out that what is fundamental for the author is not the protagonist’s insight at the end of the story, his acquisition of some stable knowledge about the world, but his experience of the situation of consciousness split by the era. The very becoming linear time of the “novel of education” (point 6) unexpectedly unfolds here (in a semantic sense), and an open ending arises, filled with the hero’s painful retrospective immersions in the past.

A genre metamorphosis also occurs in Kumpfmüller's novel Hampel's Flight. The work covers the entire life of the hero, stretching from childhood to the death of Heinrich Hampel, telling about the years of his growing up and first love, about his search for himself and his place on earth, about numerous attempts to find stability in existence. It is easy to identify the stages of his biography, but such step-by-step, gradual narration only indirectly resembles an important mode of spiritual development in the “novel of education.” We can observe how the hero changes, and sometimes these changes are unusual for him, 14 but Hampel never moves from an unenlightened, profane state to a state of enlightenment. Understanding his own life does not create in him a real need to enlighten others.

Michael Kumpfmüller realizes in the genre form of an “educational novel” a vision of human destiny characteristic of the end of the 20th century; and this author's aspiration makes noticeable changes in the form. The hero here acts as a victim, and not as an active creative force, independently choosing a way of communicating with the outside world. He cannot be called a typical conformist, because he also knows how to subjugate circumstances to himself and take advantage of what is happening. And at the same time, all of Hampel’s “activity” comes down to achievements at the everyday level: the ability to get scarce goods, the ability to make friends with the right people... In the episodes where Hampel begins to “preach” his worldview, the satirical content of the novel is instantly revealed: the author each time it emphasizes the collapse of the hero’s independence (remember the state’s hope for personal happiness with the Russian girl Lyusya, dashed by the state, the shameful fiasco in the ideological dispute with his brother Theodore, etc.).

A bitterly satirical interpretation of the pages of the recent past, projecting itself onto the understanding of the entire human history of the 20th century, leads to the fact that the figure of the Teacher, a kind mentor who helps the hero on the path of knowledge, characteristically disappears from both works. With a conscious focus on ridiculing the dark pages of the past, this is seen as a sad summing up of the century. It is no coincidence that at different moments in the narrative the figure of the Teacher is replaced by characters who personify the system in the grip of which the character is squeezed. In “Heroes Like Us,” these are faceless school teachers, Eberhard Ulzst, one of the highest state security officers, Major Wunderlich and Hauptmann Grabe, Klaus’s colleagues in the Stasi. In "Hampel's Escape" - this is a friendly intelligence officer Harms, "comrade" Gisela Müller, the party directorate of the plant where the Hampel family works... "Education" on the part of the system, which in fact grinds the personality - this is what it turns out to be in the 1990s. a characteristic vision of human "discipleship".

N. F. Kopystyanskaya, reflecting on the structural nature of the literary genre, rightly emphasized its duality: general theoretical stability and at the same time variability, revealing itself “in continuous historical development and national identity.” Awareness of such duality is fundamentally important for our research. Changes in the artistic form of the “novel of education” were caused precisely by the uniqueness of the 1990s. as a new literary era that put forward “its own aesthetic demands in direct and indirect dependence on socio-political circumstances.”

NotesI.

1 Scalla M. Da hat etwas angefangen / M. Scalla // Der Freitag. - 2002. - No. 6. - Rez. zu: Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos / P. Handke. - Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, ​​2002. - 760S. - (http://www.freitag.de/2002/06/02061402.php).

2 Further, A. Dugin refers to Baudrillard: “Baudrillard calls this “post-history,” an era when the “sign” ceases to be in clear interdependence with the “signified.” In other words, in the previous phase of history, the “sign” necessarily pointed to something, let something be floating and elusive, variable, but having certain permanent limits, therefore, any discourse was amenable to a fairly unambiguous interpretation, although this could be carried out at different levels." See: Is the concept of style relevant today? (Poll) // Russian magazine. - 2002. - March 22. - (http://www.russ. ru/culture/20020322zzz. html).

3 Quoted by: WichmannH. Von K. zu Karnau: Ein Gespräch mit Marcel Beyer über seine literarische Arbeit (2O. August 1993) / H. Wichmann. - (http://www.thing, de/neid/archiv/sonst/text/beyer. htm).

4 Korte G. German lyrics from 1945 to the present day / G. Korte // Arion. - 1997. -No. 4. - (http://magazines. russ. ru/arion/1997/4/99. html).

5 Diickers T. Close that gap! Berliner Literaturszene high and low / T. Diickers // Hundspost: Hamburger Literaturzeitschrift. - Herbst 1998. - (http://www.tanjadueckers.de).

6 For example, the remark of E. Sokolova is fair: “The very concept of pop literature in the Fiedlerian sense has been shaken - many of its elements were borrowed by the entertainment industry, and individual representatives - Rainald Goetz (1954), Andreas Neumaster (1959), Thomas Meinecke (1955) , - on the contrary, they got the opportunity to publish in the publishing house "Suhrkamp", the most authoritative in the "high" culture of Germany, and thus moved into "serious" literature. The themes, language and forms characteristic of pop literature at the time of its formation, are henceforth used only to the extent that they can contribute to an increase in circulation. As a result, at the turn of the century there was a growing tendency to designate entertaining literature in general with this term, ignoring the original priority of a critical attitude towards traditional forms." Cm.: .

7 We use the words “so-called” due to the noticeable uncertainty and vagueness of this literary phenomenon. There is a lot of debate about its essence; noteworthy, for example, is the situation of mutual divergence and misunderstanding between theorists of “pop literature” who write about it in special publications, and “practical” writers who formed in 1999. pop culture quintet "Tristesse Royale". See, for example, an interview with I. Bessing, which took place on the anniversary of the literary group:.

8 See: Is the concept of style relevant today? .

9 One of the visitors to this website.

10. er durchkommen zu können. Bei Martin Auer aus Wien sieht die Homepage aus wie ein Warenhauskatalog. Vom Roman bis zur Lyrik und dem rauchigen Chanson kann man alles abrufen. Meist ist das Angebot aber alles andere als erhebend. Mag sein, dass sich bei pool manclie Autoren. hinter nktiven Identitäten niclit nur verstecken, sondern in die Literatur hineinproben. Doch wer Null und pool im Netz anklickt, wird sich schnell wieder aus dem digitalen Staub machen ob der vielen, gahnend langweiligen Privatstreitereien. Wenn sich Moritz von Uslar, Christian Kracht und Ge org M Oswald über die Einsamkeit des Schriftstellers, Thomas Meinecke und Helmut Krausser iiber den Kosovo—Rrieg streiten, spricht das zwar dafür, dass man im Netz unmittelbarer und beweglicher kommunizieren kann. Das kann man aber auch iibertreiben. Auf die Dauer bieten solche Jetzt—ist—Jetzt—Absonderungen beleidigter Leberwürste wie Maike Wetzel Nirvana, die sich am 5. 9. 99 um 14:12:22 iiber die "Verbal—Attacken von dieser München—Tussi Katrin" aufregt, wenig anspruchsvolles Lesefutter"". Natürlich beeinilusst das Medium den Text. Der verfliissigt sich zu beiläufigen Mitteilungen mit begrenzter Haltbarkeit. Furs Netz greifen Autoren schneller zu bildschirmkompatiblen Kurzformen wie Aphorismen. Am meisten wandelt sich aber der Autorenbegriff. So wie im Netz Texte herumgerückt werden, verliert der Autor die Hoheit dariiber, wird selbst zum Lektor, gar Zensor, wenn er die Gästebücher seiner Homepage kontrolliert. Mancher ist noch direkter. Martin Auer fragt seine Homepage—Besucher am Ende seiner ausgestellten Romanentwürfe in einem Fragebogen: "Haben Sie sich gelangweilt? Wenn ja, an welchen Stellen?" Erschrocken sah die Wiesbadener Autorin Christine Eichel schon das "Plebiszit der Leser" den solipsistischen Autor verdrängen".

See: Arendl. Haben Sie sich gelangweilt? / I. Arend // Der Freitag. - 1999. - 17. September. - (http://www.freitag.de/1999/38/99381502.htm).

11 Definition by E. Sokolova.

12 Thus, considering the history of the creation of his story “The Trajectory of the Crab”, assessing the nuances of the socio-political situation that arose in Europe at the end of the century, S. Margolina comes to an interesting conclusion: “The last decade was marked by a surge in ethnic cleansing around the world. Before the eyes of a confused Europe, the nightmare of Srebrenica. Undoubtedly, Germany's consent to NATO action was a consequence of historical responsibility for the Holocaust, the creed of "never again Auschwitz." And as soon as the expulsion of the Kosovars was publicly compared with the extermination of the Jews, the voices of critics of the bombing died down. This is not the place to discuss legitimacy bombings or the validity of the comparison, but it is necessary to point out the paradox of such a comparison in the context of the “understanding” we are describing. After all, it is precisely this that relativizes the Holocaust, places it among other events and makes it an integral part of universal history. In any case, the last decade has been filled with events against the background of which it became increasingly difficult to keep “comprehension” at the same level. Politically, the move of the government to Berlin, the creation of the new Berlin Republic and the impending enlargement of the EU required the “normalization” of relations with all former victims, the final payment of all bills. The countries of Central Europe began their own “understanding” of history, including the post-war deportation of Germans. In this atmosphere, it would be politically myopic to pretend that the German refugee problem does not exist. At the same time, a global context of “victim culture” begins to emerge, which began with the Holocaust, but was soon adopted by a variety of minorities - sexual, ethnic and any other who wish to join this, in many respects, convenient category. Jews have to make room. German exiles are thus able to enter on an equal footing into the international community of victims and demand respect for their suffering. In this global situation, Günter Grass turns out to be not an encroacher on a taboo, but a representative of the mainstream who was almost late for the distribution of elephants. In an effort to retain the title of conscience of the nation at any cost, he creates a banal work, in which many even saw a transparent political super-task: on the eve of the elections, to attract the sympathy of exiles and their sympathizers to the ruling Social Democratic Party, the political homeland of Grasse, which found itself in a dead end. If this is really the case, then such instrumentalization of a previously taboo topic not only does not do honor to the writer, but is also a sure symptom of the meaninglessness of “comprehension”, the devaluation of its emotional and ethical super value” (emphasis added. - D.Ch.).

See: Margolina S. The End of a Beautiful Era. On the German experience of understanding national socialist history and its limits / S. Margolina // Untouched reserve. — 2002. —№22. - (http://magazines. russ. ru/ nz/2002/22/mar. html).

13 This “natural beginning” noticeably manifests itself in the construction of such works of the 1990s as “Resistance” by Z. Lenz, “South of Abisko” by K. Böldl.

14 So, having met Bella, one of his mistresses, Hampel honestly admits: “Before you, I knew nothing about myself.” Cm.: .

LITERATURE

1. Bakhtin M. M. Novel of education and its significance in history / M. M. Bakhtin // Aesthetics of verbal creativity. - M., 1979. - P. 188-236.

2. Grass G. Trajectory of the crab/G. Grass. — M.: ACT; Kharkov: Folio, 2004. - 285 p.

3. Kopystyanskaya N. F. The concept of “genre” in its stability and variability / N. F. Kopystyanskaya//Context. 1986: Literary and theoretical studies. - M., 1987. - P. 178-204.

4. Sokolova E. From East to West and back. Literature of Germany after unification / E. Sokolova // Foreign. lit. - 2003. -No. 9. - (http://magazines. russ. ru/inostran/2003/9).

5. Brussig Th. Helden wie wir / Th. Brussig. —Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998. -325 S.

6. KumpfmüllerM. Hampels Fluchten / M. Kumpfmüller. - Köln: Kiepenheuer&Witsch, 2000. - 494S.

7. StemmerN. T. Interview mit Joachim Bessing, Herausgeber von "Tristesse Royale" / N. T. Stemmer. — (http://www.pro—qm. de/ Veranstaltungen/tristesse/tristesse. html).

An educational novel or educational novel (German: Bildungsroman) is a type of novel that became widespread in the literature of the German Enlightenment. Its content is the psychological, moral and social formation of the personality of the protagonist.
I have always been interested in this topic. Books about youth, their problems, thoughts and aspirations. Often these are autobiographies. How do teenagers and young people of different times perceive the world around them, what do they want from life and what do they bring to it? I believe that while a person is young, he is characterized by “quests” that sometimes diverge from generally accepted conventions, norms, etc. As you get older, you want some kind of stability more and more. The person calms down and humbles himself. Not always, but it happens often. In this note, I would like to dwell on the most interesting works to me of the 18th-21st centuries that touch on this issue: youth, first of all. Everything is very subjective. Moreover, I haven’t read the vast majority of the books yet. I'm just getting ready. This is the result of searches on the network, including this LiveJournal, almost all the annotations are not mine. I hope this topic will be of interest not only to me. If you have anything to add to the list, or want to discuss books or a topic, that would be great! The heroes of “The Jester” and “Courier” are especially interesting. If you know books of this kind, please recommend them!
I read from list 3, 4, 6, 9, 21, 22, 23, 26, 29, 33, 49.

1) Goethe I.-W. The years of teaching of Wilhelm Meister (1796). The genre is a novel of education, revealing the organic spiritual development of the hero as he accumulates life experience.

2) Dickens C. David Copperfield (1850). This is the story of a young man who is ready to overcome any obstacles, endure any hardships and, for the sake of love, commit the most desperate and courageous acts.

3) Tolstoy L.N. Childhood. Adolescence. Youth (1852-1857). The main topic was the study of the inner world of man, the moral foundations of the individual. A painful search for the meaning of life, a moral ideal, and the hidden laws of existence run through all of his work.

4) Olcott L.M. Little Women (1868). The book is about four sisters growing up during and after the Civil War. They live in a small American town, their father is fighting at the front, and they have a very difficult time. But, despite all the difficulties, the March family tries to maintain good spirits and support each other in everything. The sisters work, study, help their mother around the house, stage family plays, and write a literary newspaper. They soon welcome another member into their company - Laurie - a rich and bored young man who lives next door and who becomes a close friend of the whole family. Each of the March sisters has their own character, their own dreams, interests and ambitions. Each has its own shortcomings, bad inclinations that they have to overcome. There are no big incidents or big twists in Little Women. This is a book (film) about the small tragedies and small joys of an ordinary family.

5) Flaubert G. Education of feelings (1869). The hero of the novel, Frederic Moreau, is trying to make a career, realize his natural abilities, he wants and knows how to love. But his chosen one is tied by marriage, and all of Frederick’s endeavors - writing, painting, jurisprudence - remain endeavors...

6) Dostoevsky F.M. Teenager (1875). In the novel, Dostoevsky outlined the complex mental and moral path of development of a Russian youth from the lower classes, who early learned the wrong side of life, suffering from general “disorder” and social “disgrace.”

7) Belykh G., Panteleev A. Republic of ShKID (1927). 1920s. Colorful and pitiful street children roam the streets of Petrograd, who are caught from time to time for children's foster homes. In one of them - the Dostoevsky School of Social and Labor Education (SHKID) - hungry, arrogant and smart ragamuffins gathered. This shelter for comedians is run by an old-regime director who has not lost either honor or intelligence under Soviet rule. His disarming trust taught the boys manhood and helped them not to dissolve in the rush of troubled times...

8) Mishima Yu. Confession of a Mask (1949). A novel that glorified the twenty-four-year-old author and brought him world fame. The key theme of this famous work is the theme of death, in which the hero of the story sees “the true purpose of life.”

9) Salinger Jerome. The Catcher in the Rye (1951). On behalf of a 17-year-old boy named Holden, it tells in a very frank manner about his heightened perception of American reality and rejection of the general canons and morality of modern society. The work was extremely popular, especially among young people, and had a significant impact on world culture in the second half of the 20th century.

10) Golding W. Lord of the Flies (1954). Dystopia. A group of boys who survived a plane crash end up on a desert island. An unexpected turn of fate pushes many of them to forget about everything: first - about discipline and order, then - about friendship and decency, and in the end - about human nature itself.

11) Brushtein A.Ya. The road goes into the distance; At the dawn hour; Spring (trilogy, 1956-1961). The novel is about the girl Sasha, her personal development, about her childhood dreams (Sasha’s childhood takes place in the pre-revolutionary period in the city of Vilna), problems, about everything that a teenager’s life is so replete with, and the difficulties seem almost insurmountable at that age. After all, you need to try to find a common language with your peers and adults around you, and to understand yourself. All these problems live in Sasha’s soul, and she solves them with childish spontaneity, with little life experience, as her childish soul tells her.

12) Bradbury R. Dandelion Wine (1957). The events of the summer lived by a 12-year-old boy, behind whom the author himself can easily be discerned, are described in a series of short stories connected by peculiar “bridges” that give the story integrity. Enter his bright world and live with him one summer, filled with joyful and sad, mysterious and alarming events; summer, when amazing discoveries are made every day, the main thing of which is that you are alive, you breathe, you feel!

13) Grass G. Tin Drum (1959). The story is narrated by a patient of a psychiatric clinic, striking in his sanity, Oscar Matzerath, who, in order to avoid the fate of an adult, in early childhood decided not to grow up anymore.

14) Harper L. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). This is a story about three years in the life of the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, about how children become adults, recognizing the cruel world in which they have to live, and comprehending its harsh laws.

15) Balter B. Goodbye, boys (1962). This is a story about the pre-war generation, about a southern city filled with sun, sea and amazing smells. The story is told from the perspective of Volodya Belov, and it combines a boy and a 40-year-old man who has gone through the war and has seen a lot.

16) Burgess E. A Clockwork Orange (1962). The author made an exhaustive analysis of the causes of crime among young people, the intolerance of the new generation towards the usual moral values ​​and the principles of life of modern society. The ruthless leader of a gang of teenagers who commit murder and rape is sent to prison and undergoes special treatment to suppress the subconscious desire for violence. But life outside the prison gates is such that measures taken to “correct cruelty of character” cannot change anything.

17) Kaufman B. Up the Downstairs (1965). A novel about schoolchildren and their teachers, children and adults, about those who go against the system. A young teacher, Miss Barrett, after graduating from college, ends up in a school for difficult children, Calvin Coolidge High School. The relationship between teachers and students is very difficult...

18) Fowles D. Magus (1966). The novel takes place in England (parts I and III) and Greece (part II) in the 1950s. The novel is filled with quite recognizable realities of the time. The main character of the work is Nicholas Erfe (the story is told on his behalf in the traditional form of an English novel of education), an Oxford graduate, a typical representative of the post-war English intelligentsia. A romantic loner who hates the present time and is skeptical about his “Englishness,” Nicholas Erfe flees from the ordinariness of the present and the predictability of his future to the distant Greek island of Thraxos in search of a “new mystery,” an imaginary life, and thrills. For Erfe, fascinated by the ideas of existentialism that were fashionable at the time, the fictional, unreal world is more valuable and interesting than the world in which he is forced to reside...

19) Unknown - Go Ask Alice (1971). This is the diary of a young drug addict.
Names, dates, city names have been changed at the request of the participants in this story. This book does not pretend to be a detailed description of the world of drug addicts; it chronicles the life of just one girl who stumbled. Alice's Diary has sold over four million copies in America alone and has long become a modern classic. This is a merciless, uncompromising, honest and very bitter story of a teenage girl about life under drugs. The book is based on real events.

20) Le Guin W. Far, far from everywhere (1976). A very realistic and strong-willed novel by Ursula Le Guin. The main character, Owen Griffiths, is only seventeen. He is handsome and thinks he knows what he wants from life. But one day, having met Natalie, Owen realizes that he still doesn’t really know anything. Through his friendship with Natalie, who has dedicated her life to music, Owen tries to find his own path to the future...

21) Krapivin V.P. Lullaby for Brother (1978). It's easy to be in a crowd. It is much more difficult to go against the grain, standing up for what you believe in. But if you are sure that you are right? If you can’t indifferently watch how some people offend the weak, while others don’t care? Kirill feels the strength to change the current situation. His conscience does not allow him to simply close his eyes...

22) Carroll D. The Basketball Diaries (1978). Autobiography. A classic about a young hipster growing up on the mean streets of New York. The book brought Jim Carroll enormous fame in the underground environment. After this period, the author became famous as a poet and rock musician, but The Basketball Diaries remains the pinnacle of his talent - a witty, free-flowing, rebellious narrative characterized by keen observation. Jim wanders around his domain - New York - and he himself belongs flesh and blood. Plays basketball. He cheats and steals. He gets high and suffers from withdrawal symptoms. Seeks purity.

23) Selby H. Requiem for a Dream (1978). The book follows the fate of four New Yorkers who, unable to bear the difference between their dreams of an ideal life and the real world, seek solace in illusions. Sarah Goldfarb, who lost her husband, dreams only of being on a TV show and appearing in her favorite red dress. To “fit” into it, she goes on a diet of pills that alter her consciousness. Sarah's son Harry, his girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone are trying to get rich and escape from the life that surrounds them by selling heroin. The guys themselves indulge in drugs. Life seems like a fairy tale to them, and none of the four realizes that they have become dependent on this fairy tale. Requiem for all those who, for the sake of Illusion, betrayed Life and lost the Human in themselves.

24) Christiane F. We, the children from the Zoo station (Me, my friends and heroin, 1979). This story is about a drug addict girl. She was only 12 years old when she first tried heroin. Then she had no idea what she was dooming herself to, how difficult it would be for her later to get out of the quagmire into which drugs would drag her. This book opens up to us the world of people like Christina, tells us what and how they experience, what pushes them to do this...

25) Barnes D. Metroland (1980). In a cozy bourgeois suburb of London, in a house with a flower garden, a boy grew up who hated everything cozy and bourgeois. Together with his best friend, the boy revered the poetry of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, considered people over a certain age to be dull dullards, defined politeness as lying, poise as indifference, marital fidelity as a tribute to conventions, etc. The boy dreamed of changing the world. Or at least live in opposition to the world, when every gesture would be a sign of struggle. But it turned out differently: the world changed the boy...

26) Vyazemsky Yu.P. Jester (1982). Once upon a time there lived a Jester. But none of those around him knew his real name. His father called him Valentin, his mother - sometimes Valenka, sometimes Valka. At school they called him Valya. And only he himself knew his true name - the Jester, was proud of it, protecting it from other people's curious ears and immodest tongues, carried it deep under his heart, like the greatest secret and the most intimate wealth, and only in the evenings, alone with himself, having waited, until his parents went to bed and could not disturb his loneliness, he wrote this name in his “Diary”.

27) Bukowski Ch. Bread and Ham (1982). "Bread and Ham" is Bukowski's most heartfelt novel. Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, it is written from the point of view of an impressionable child dealing with the duplicity, pretentiousness and vanity of the adult world. A child who gradually discovers alcohol and women, gambling and fighting, Hemingway, Turgenev and Dostoevsky.

28) Townsend S. The Diaries of Adrian Mole (1982). Life is not easy when you are 13 years old, especially if you have a volcanic pimple on your chin, you can’t decide which of your careless parents to live with next, an evil bully is waiting for you around the corner of the school, you don’t know who to become - a country veterinarian or a great writer , your beautiful classmate Pandora didn’t look in your direction today, and in the evening you have to go cut the nails of an old grumpy disabled person... Sue Townsend makes us laugh at her characters and turns inside out any absurd situation in which they drive themselves, be it a divorce of parents, publication in a literary journal or a failed school exam. But, having laughed it off, the reader understands that “Diaries” is, first of all, a book about loneliness and overcoming it, about love and devotion, about how to find yourself in this world. And it becomes clear why Adrian Mole is so popular all over the world - any of us could subscribe to his “Diaries”.

29) Shakhnazarov K.G. Courier (1982). A typical representative of youth, “the most curious specimen” and “an unrequited dreamer,” Ivan shocks not only his peers, but also the respectable honored professor with his extravagant antics. However, the professor's daughter Katya confuses the very lover of “playing the fool.”

30) Banks I. Wasp Factory (1984). The famous novel by an outstanding Scot, the most scandalous debut in English prose of recent decades. Meet sixteen-year-old Frank. He killed three. He is not at all what he seems. He is not at all who he thinks he is. Welcome to the island guarded by the Pillars of Sacrifices. To the house where the deadly Wasp Factory waits in the attic.

31) McInerney D. Bright Lights, Big City (1984). The hero of the novel is an energetic and promising young man who could achieve a lot in life, but risks being left with nothing at all. He voluntarily crossed the line beyond which the disintegration of personality begins, and he can no longer stop. The painful haze in his eyes means that he has already taken too much, but what can he do if all the cells of his body resemble little Bolivian soldiers who are hungry. And they need Bolivian camp powder...

32) Dee Snider, Teenage Survival Course (1987). This book is about how to protect yourself from all sorts of troubles and what to do if you cannot avoid them. A variety of dangers await a teenager in the concrete jungles of cities, on hiking trips, and even in the safe and familiar space of his own apartment. Dee Snyder conducts an honest conversation on equal terms with teenagers - high school students who, on the threshold of independent life, are faced with many intimate and psychologically difficult issues. After such a frank heart-to-heart conversation, young readers may be able to take a fresh look at their problems and find a worthy solution to them.

33) Ellis B.I. Rules of Attraction (1987). At the prestigious Camden College they are having fun and drinking for five. Falling in love and cheating on each other, quarreling and taking their own lives, local bohemians rush to thoroughly study all the forbidden passions and vices. This is a touching, sharp, sometimes even piercing drama about human nature based on the example of three students, whose stories are closely intertwined with each other...

34) Palliser C. Quincunx (1989). Imagine a novel written in the style of Dickens, but with a dynamic plot and an incredible amount of mystery. The main character of "Quincanx", the boy John, lives with his mother on an estate near a remote village and does not suspect that some terrible secret is connected with his birth. He will have to grow up and solve it - and the reader will, with bated breath, follow the bizarre twists of the plot and try to understand what John himself was silent about in this confessional novel. After all, “Quincunx”, like a rose (“quincunx” means a four-petalled rose), is fraught with many possible solutions. Each of the characters in the novel can lie or make mistakes, and although the author left many clues and hints in the book, revealing all the secrets of the novel is not an easy task!

35) Lukyanenko S. Knights of the Forty Islands (1992). The first novel by Sergei Lukyanenko. A tough and fascinating story of the adventures of boys and girls, “thrown out” from our world - and thrown into the world of the Forty Islands. Into a world where they will have to fight each other. Until victory - or until death. A game? Almost a game. Only losers die - for real...

36) Kulikchia D. You still have to drive (1994). The novel by the Italian writer of the new generation Giuseppe Culicchia tells the story of a forced but entertaining encounter between a modern young man and the world around him. The main character of the book, Walter, is twenty-something years old, experiencing his entry into adulthood, while experiencing uncertainty, disappointment, youthful fears, quite fully reflecting the mood of the youth environment of Turin in the late 80s of the twentieth century - but at the same time relating to everything that happens with a considerable amount of irony. People of the opposite sex, the Ministry of Defense, university residents, employers, just idiots - this is a short list of those with whom he will have to establish relationships. Upon publication of the Italian edition, the novel was awarded the Mont Blanc literary prize, awarded by adult critics, and was immediately filmed.

37) Welsh I. Nightmares of the Marabou Stork (1995). Roy Strang is in a coma, but his mind is filled with memories. Some are more real - about the life of the Edinburgh outskirts - and are conveyed in grotesquely vulgar, inert language. Others - a fantasy about the hunt for an African marabou stork - are told in the vivid, imaginative language of an English gentleman. Both stories are fascinatingly interesting both in themselves and in their counterpoint - as a sharp contrast between real life, full of dirt and violence, and fictional life - noble and sublime. The story of Roy Strang is a shocking trip into the life and consciousness of a modern English lumpen.

38) Garland A. Beach (1996). A dystopian novel about the self-awareness of modern young people who grew up in the urban jungle in the context of the global commercialization of the world. The search for earthly paradise, its acquisition and destruction reveal the internal contradictions and spiritual tragedy of a generation without illusions.

39) Joyce G. The Tooth Fairy (1996). There is a belief: if a child, while falling asleep, puts a fallen baby tooth under his pillow, the Tooth Fairy will take it and leave a coin instead of the tooth. Waking up one night, seven-year-old Sam discovers the Tooth Fairy at his bed, looking less like a Charles Perrault character or the Brothers Grimm, and more like an evil chap of indeterminate gender. He himself is to blame: he shouldn’t have woken up, he shouldn’t have seen the fairy. Now she (or he?) will accompany Sam throughout his childhood and adolescence, changing with him, now helping him, now threatening him, but never giving an answer to the question: is this reality or a nightmare, and who is dreaming of whom?

40) Gilmore D. Lost Among the Houses (1999). His name is Simon Albright and he is 16. That explains a lot. Much, but not all. Simon tries to be his mother's best friend. The man his girlfriend adores, the man his father respects. But this is not so easy to do when childhood is gone and the mother moves away, the girl is too beautiful, and the father is stricken with mental illness...

41) Brasm A. I breathe (2000). The novel by a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl from Metz is the loudest debut, a sensation in French literature in recent years. A novel about peers. About the thirst for power, cynical and cruel. About the thirst for freedom, sometimes just as cruel and merciless. About a passionate friendship that develops into slavish obedience, and about a rebellion that ends in murder. And most importantly, about the merciless struggle of two individuals, two psychologies, which lasts several years and ends tragically. The charm of the book lies in the contrast between the acuteness of the main character’s experiences and the laconic style of the leisurely narrative chosen by the author. There is no language of choking emotions, the confused syntax of gasps, or the immediate slips of a youthful diary. Memories flow evenly and seemingly unhurriedly. And this even breathing of the story serves as the key to the image of the main character.

42) Likhanov A. Nobody (2000). Nobody - the nickname given to the main character, a “graduate” of a banal orphanage by bandits, is simply deciphered: Nikolai Toporov, by first and last name. But it's a symbol. In one of the richest countries in the world - present-day Russia, any boy of simple origin in response to the question: “Who are you?” He will probably first answer in surprise: “nobody...” and only then - “man.” So he will say: “Nobody... Man.”

43) McDonell N. Twelve (2002). Told by a seventeen-year-old author, the frightening story, set in Manhattan, follows the lives of urban teenagers. Left unattended, the children of wealthy parents party in luxurious mansions, entertaining themselves with drugs and sex, leading to a tragic, shocking ending.

44) Whittenborn D. Cruel people (2002). This is a furious and fascinating modern novel of education, telling about what is going on in the head of a fifteen-year-old teenager - hardly anyone could imagine such a thing, and about the world of "cruel people" - hardly anyone dared to think so.

45) Stark W. Oddballs and bores; Can you whistle, Johanna? (2002-2005). Often we - both adults and children - miss a loved one nearby. And then life becomes very difficult. But the heroes of the books of the wonderful Swedish writer Ulf Stark do not want to waste time on despondency and melancholy, they decisively intervene in the course of events and boldly decide their destiny...

46) Lebert B. Crazy (2003). In his autobiographical novel, sixteen-year-old Benjamin Lebert talks about the difficulties of growing up with amazing warmth, a great sense of humor and a fair amount of irony.

47) Nothomb A. Antichrist (2003). Two young heroines engage in a fight to the death. Both are sixteen years old, but one has already blossomed, and the other does not even believe that this will ever happen. The caterpillar looks at the butterfly as if spellbound, because beauty is most important to it. But as soon as she comes to her senses, she uses her, so far only, weapon - a cold and ruthless mind - the intrigue is rapidly gaining momentum.

48) Pierre DC, Vernon Lord Little (2003). Vernon G. Little, a teenager from a provincial Texas town, becomes an accidental witness to the massacre of his own classmates. The police immediately take him into account: first as a witness, then as a possible accomplice, and finally as a murderer. The hero flees to Mexico, where a palm paradise and his beloved girl await him, and meanwhile more and more crimes are pinned on him. With some similarities to J.D. Salinger’s story “The Catcher in the Rye,” this work is tragicomic: the plot cliches of mass fiction become, under the pen of DBC Pierre, a breeding ground for a smart and evil narrative about today’s world, about methods of manipulating mass consciousness, about sins and the weaknesses of modern man.

49) Raskin M.D. Little New York Bastard (read, 2003). The true story of the misadventures of a young outsider from New York who can be compared to a new age Holden Caulfield.

50) Iwasaki F. The Book of Unhappy Love (2005). What are you willing to do to win the heart of your beloved girl? Are you ready to break Olympic records or become an inline skating ace? Are they capable of turning into a revolutionary or a devout Jew? Can you learn a dozen serenades in a day and then yell them under your beloved’s window, scaring half the block? And if your inhuman efforts never touch your cherished heart, will you be able not to fall into despair, but, on the contrary, to look at your own love attempts with irony? How, for example, did the Peruvian Japanese Fernando Iwasaki, the author of The Book of Unhappy Love, do this?

52) Dunthorne DY, Oliver Tate (2008). This is the diary of a fifteen-year-old teenager who does not know where to apply his excessive erudition. Oliver looks into the dictionary every day to learn a few new words like the word "euthanasia", writes a detailed letter to a classmate who is being bullied, explaining to her how to become the class favorite...

History of Russian literature of the 18th century Lebedeva O. B.

Genre models of the travel novel and the novel of emotional education in the works of F. A. Emin

Fyodor Aleksandrovich Emin (1735-1770) is considered the first original Russian novelist of modern times. This figure in Russian literature is completely unusual, and one might even say symbolic: in the sense that the novel genre was founded in literature by a person whose biography in itself is completely romantic and incredible. There are still many ambiguities in this biography. Emin was the grandson of a Pole who was in Austrian military service and married to a Bosnian Muslim; Emin’s mother was a “slave of Christian law,” whom his father married in Constantinople. The first years of the future novelist's life were spent in Turkey and Greece, where his father was a governor, and Emin received his education in Venice. Subsequently, after exile to one of the islands of the Greek archipelago, Emin's father fled to Algeria, where his son joined him - both took part in the Algerian-Tunisian war of 1756. After the death of his father, Emin was captured by Moroccan corsairs; From captivity in Morocco, Emin fled through Portugal to London, where he appeared at the Russian embassy, ​​converted to Orthodoxy and very quickly mastered the Russian language. In 1761, Emin appeared in St. Petersburg and began teaching numerous foreign languages ​​known to him (according to various sources, he knew from 5 to 12), and from 1763 he acted as a novelist, translator and publisher of the satirical magazine “Hell Mail”.

Emin published for only six years - from 1763 to 1769, but during this short period of time he published about 25 books, including 7 novels, at least 4 of which are original; in 1769, he single-handedly published the magazine “Hell Mail”, where he was the only author and, in addition, actively participated with his publications in other magazines of that year. In order to lay the foundations of the novel genre in Russian literature, Emin was simply an ideal figure: his turbulent youth and universal acquaintance with many European and Asian countries gave him the necessary experience that allowed him to step over a certain psychological barrier that exists in the aesthetic consciousness of Russian prose writers - translators because of the extreme dissimilarity of the picture of the world that grew up in the narrative of the European love-adventure novel with the national Russian public and private life. Emin, on the other hand, felt like a fish in water in a European adventure novel - his own life fit well into the genre framework of an adventure novel, and he himself was quite suitable for its hero. He made himself and his life (or the legend about it, which he himself created - this is still unclear) the subject of a narrative in one of his first novels, “Fickle Fortune, or the Adventures of Miramond” (1763), saying in the preface that in the image One of the heroes of the novel, Feridat, he depicted himself and his life.

The very word “adventure” in the title of the novel indicates that its genre model was based on the traditional adventurous scheme of the travel novel. However, Emin complicated it with numerous realities of other narrative models: “The hero’s voyage by sea is interrupted by shipwrecks or attacks by pirates, on land he is attacked by robbers, he finds himself either sold into slavery, then ascended to the throne, or thrown into the wilds of the forest, pondering the meaning of life , reads some wise book about how to treat subjects, ministers, friends ‹…›. On this basis are superimposed elements of a novel about the education of feelings. ‹…› the hero hides from civilization in some desert and there indulges in moral self-improvement. Numerous author's digressions (especially at the beginning of the novel) are designed to educate the Russian reader in terms of economic, historical and ethno-geographical: the author leads the reader (following Miramond and Feridat) to the Maltese, Kabyles, Marabouts, Portuguese, to Egypt - to the Mamelukes, in France and Poland. Some digressions grow into real essays on morals ‹…›. In some places, inserted short stories are deeply wedged into this motley structure, often of a fantastic nature, reminiscent of the fabulous incidents of the Arabian Nights. All this is held together by the ties of a love conflict, but it comes into its own only after the author has devoted more than a hundred pages to her unique backstory. Probably, one can see an early harbinger in it stories of the soul, which will subsequently occupy a crucial place in the characterology of developed sentimentalism, romanticism and realism.”

Thus, we can say that in his first novel Emin created a kind of encyclopedia of forms of novel narrative and genre varieties of the novel. A travel novel that combines a documentary-essay and a fictional adventure, a love novel, an educational novel, a magical-fantasy novel, a psychological novel, an educational novel - “The Adventure of Miramond” presents all these genre trends of novel narration. And if we take into account the fact that “Miramond’s Adventure” takes place in the geographical space of almost the entire world - from real European and Asian countries to a fictional desert, as well as the fact that the name “Miramond” itself contains twice repeated - in Russian and in French the concept of “world” (the whole world, the universe, social life) - then the concept of the novel genre, as it is outlined in the first Russian original novel, acquires a distinct overtone of epic universality, the comprehensiveness of being, recreated through the fate, character and biography of a peculiar “ citizen of the world."

It is easy to notice that in his first novel Emin picks up the already familiar traditions of Russian original and translated fiction of the 18th century. – from authorless stories about “a citizen of Russian Europe” to the journey of the conventional hero Thyrsis around the fictional Island of Love. Just as the Russian sailor grows spiritually and intellectually from an arty and poor nobleman to an interlocutor of European monarchs, just as Thyrsis becomes a hero, citizen and patriot as a result of mastering the culture of love relationships and nurturing feelings in the “academy of love,” Emin’s hero Miramond is also represented in the process spiritual growth: “it is constantly changing; he becomes more mature, wiser, life experience allows him to understand what was previously inaccessible to him.” This is, perhaps, the main trend that emerged in “The Adventure of Miramond”: the tendency for the novel-journey to develop into a novel - a spiritual path, a tendency towards the psychologization of the novel, which found its full embodiment in Emin’s best novel “Letters of Ernest and Doravra” (1766).

The genre form that Emin gave to his last novel (and the time interval between “Miramond” and “Letters of Ernest and Doravra” is only three years) - the epistolary novel - testifies, firstly, to the rapid evolution of the Russian novel, and secondly, about the rapidity with which the just emerging Russian novelism gained contemporary Western European aesthetic experience and rose to the Western European level of development of the novel genre in terms of the evolution of genre forms of artistic prose. The epistolary novel in the 1760s. was a vital aesthetic innovation not only in Russia, but also in European literature. In 1761, the novel by J.-J. was published. Rousseau’s “Julia or the New Heloise,” which marked a new stage in European novelism both with its class conflict, acutely relevant in pre-revolutionary France, and with its epistolary form, which opened up new opportunities for the psychologization of the novel narrative, since it gave the characters all the traditionally author’s ways of revealing their inner world .

Emin, who gravitated toward the psychologization of the novel narrative already in “The Adventures of Miramond,” certainly felt the opportunities that the epistolary form provides for revealing the inner world of the heroes, and, having adopted the epistolary form of Rousseau’s novel, subordinated all other components to the task of depicting the life of the “sensitive heart.” novel narrative. Having retained the general outlines of the love conflict - Doravra's nobility and wealth prevented her marriage with the poor, unofficial Ernest, he nevertheless softened the severity of Rousseau's love conflict, where the main obstacle to the love of Julia and Saint-Preux was the difference in their class status - the aristocrat Julia and the commoner Saint-Preux could not be happy only for this reason, while Ernest and Doravra both belong to the noble class, and the reasons for the unhappiness of their love are of a different, psychological nature.

Emin focused entirely on the patterns and nature of human emotional life, recreating in his novel the story of the long-term, faithful and devoted love of Ernest and Doravra, which survived all existing obstacles - wealth and poverty, Doravra’s forced marriage, the news that Ernest’s wife, whom he considered dead, alive, but at the moment when these obstacles disappeared (Ernest and Doravra were widowed), the inscrutable mystery and unpredictability of the life of the heart makes itself felt: Doravra marries a second time, but not to Ernest. Emin pointedly does not try to explain the reasons for her action, offering the reader a choice of two possible interpretations: the marriage with Ernest could have been prevented by the fact that Doravra blames herself for the death of her husband, who was shocked when he discovered a bunch of Ernest’s letters in his wife’s possession, and soon after that he fell ill and died . The marriage with Ernest could also have been hindered by the fact that Doravra simply stopped loving Ernest: it is impossible to rationally explain why love arises and it is also impossible to know the reasons why it passes.

Emin himself was well aware of the unusual nature of his novel and the obstacles that the strong foundations of classicist morality and the ideology of educational didactics created for his perception. Rational normative aesthetics required unambiguous moral assessments; Enlightenment didactics demanded from fine literature the highest justice: punishment of vice and reward of virtue. But in the Russian democratic novel, focused more on the sphere of the emotional life of the heart than on the sphere of intellectual activity, this clarity of moral criteria began to blur, the categories of virtue and vice ceased to be functional in the ethical assessment of the hero’s actions. The ending of the love story is not at all what one would expect from a reader brought up on the classicist apology for virtue and the overthrow of vice. In the preface to his novel, Emin tried to explain his initial principles that led the novel to this ending:

‹…› It will be possible for some to discredit my taste due to the fact that the last parts do not correspond to the first, for in the first constancy in love was elevated to almost the highest degree, and in the last it suddenly collapsed. I myself will say that such strong, virtuous and reasonable love should not change. Believe me, kind reader, that it would not be difficult for me to raise my romantic constancy even higher and finish my book to the pleasure of everyone, uniting Ernest with Doravra, but fate did not like such an ending, and I am forced to write a book to her taste...

Emin’s main aesthetic attitude, which he tries to express in his preface, is not an orientation towards the proper, the ideal, but an orientation towards the true, life-like. For Emin, the truth is not the abstract rational formula of passion, but the real, everyday implementation of this passion in the fate of an ordinary earthly inhabitant. This attitude also dictated a concern for reliable psychological motivations for the actions and actions of the heroes, which is obvious in the same preface to the novel:

Some ‹…› will have reason to say that in some of my initial letters there is a lot of unnecessary moralizing; but if they consider that the innate pride of every lover prompts the adored person to show his knowledge, then they will see that much less should be blamed on those who, having corresponded with their mistresses, who are very intelligent, “…› philosophize and subtly argue about various roundabout things so that, In this way, having captivated the mind of a previously strict person, it was possible to more conveniently approach her heart.

However, this focus on depicting the truth of a person’s spiritual and emotional life, largely successfully implemented in Emin’s novel, came into conflict with a completely conventional, non-domestic space: the novel, conceived and implemented as an original Russian novel about Russian people, the writer’s contemporaries, is in no way correlated with realities of national life. Here, for example, is how the hero’s rural solitude is described:

Here nature, in its delicate flowers and green leaves, shows its gaiety and liveliness; here the roses, in vain for us admiring them, blush as if ashamed, and the pleasant lilies, which are not like roses, have a pleasant appearance, seeing their natural shyness, as if in their gentle light they show a pleasant smile. The vegetables of our gardens satisfy us better than the most pleasant and skillfully seasoned foods consumed on magnificent tables. Here, a pleasant marshmallow, as if it had its own home, is hugging with different flowers ‹…›. The pleasant singing of songbirds serves us instead of music ‹…›.

If for the Russian democratic reader of the second half of the 18th century, for the most part unfamiliar with the life of European countries, the exotic geography of “Miramonda” is no different from the conventionally European geography of authorless histories or even from the allegorical geography of the fictional island of Love, then from the Russian novel the Russian the reader had the right to demand recognition of the realities of national life that were practically eliminated from the novel “Letters of Ernest and Doravra.” Thus, the next step in the evolutionary development of the novel turned out to be prescribed by this situation: the life-like novel in spiritual and emotional terms, but conventional in everyday life, is being replaced by Emin’s novel by Chulkov’s authentic everyday novel, created with a democratic attitude towards reproducing another truth: the truth of the national social and private life of the grassroots democratic environment. So the Russian democratic novel of 1760-1770. in its evolution, it reflects the pattern of projection of the philosophical picture of the world onto the national aesthetic consciousness: in the person of Emin, the novel masters the ideal-emotional sphere, in the person of Chulkov - the material and everyday sphere.

“Necessity” of the novel Gaining and Losing Interest in a person’s life, his actions against the backdrop of historical events gives rise to the actualization of the novel genre. Any novel strives to pose the most pressing and at the same time eternal questions of existence. The ideology of the novel states