Gukovsky and Russian literature xviii. Russian literature of the 18th century

centuries

Grigory Aleksandrovich Gukovsky (1st of May ( 19020501 ) , St. Petersburg - April 2, Moscow) - Soviet literary scholar, philologist, critic, leading specialist in Russian literature of the 18th century, close to the formalists.

Biography

Born into the family of industrial engineer Alexander Moiseevich Gukovsky, a native of Odessa. My father was the managing director of the joint-stock company of the iron-copper-foundry and mechanical plant "Atlas" and the director of the board of the company "Volta", accounted for cousin Victoria Leontyevna Gukovskaya (1864-1881), participant in the People's Will movement in Odessa.

During his high school years, he experienced a fascination with symbolist culture and was influenced by the prominent critic Akim Volynsky, an acquaintance of his father. He entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Petrograd University, teachers noted his erudition and interest in science. In 1923 he graduated from the faculty social sciences Leningrad University, in the same year he became a teacher at secondary school No. 51 in the city of Leningrad, located on Pravda Street (worked until 1928).

Literary activity

Area of ​​professional interests is the history of Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. The author of the first systematic course in the USSR on the history of Russian literature of the 18th century (Lydia Ginzburg recalled: “At Gukovsky’s early youth(we had just met then) there was a special complex of confrontation. It included various archaics, a taste for the noble way of Russian life. This naive, cocky position brought, oddly enough, excellent results - the discovery of Russian literature of the 18th century.” ).

At first scientific activity Gukovsky was a member of the circle of Young Formalists, and in the 30s he was sincerely interested in Marxism in its sociological version. The sociological interpretation of Russian literature of the 18th century he proposed is still accepted, although with many reservations. In his scientific trilogy “Pushkin and the Russian Romantics”, “Pushkin and the Problems of the Realistic Style”, “Gogol’s Realism”, Gukovsky made a kind of journey from Marxism to Hegelianism, building a completely teleological model of the history of Russian literature. Under the traditional historical and literary scheme of “classicism - romanticism - realism”, he brought the triad “state - individual - people”, in which folk literature realism naturally acts as a dialectical synthesis of the two previous stages.

Family

Wife - Natalia Viktorovna Rykova (1897-1928), friend of Anna Akhmatova, dedicated to her famous poem“Everything was stolen, betrayed, sold...” She died in childbirth. Their daughter is Natalya Dolinina, a teacher and children's writer.

Second wife - Zoya Vladimirovna Gukovskaya (née Artamonova; 1907-1973), philologist and translator.

Main works

• Russian poetry of the 18th century, 1927 (republished in 2001)
• Essays on the history of Russian literature of the 18th century: The noble front in the literature of 1750-1760, M.-L., 1936
• Essays on the history of Russian literature and social thought XVIII century, 1938
• Russian literature of the 18th century, 1939 (regularly republished since 1998)
• On the issue of teaching literature at school, 1941 (Co-authored with S. S. Klitin)
• Love for the Motherland in Russian classical literature, 1943 (Co-authored with V. Evgeniev-Maksimov)
• , 1946
• Essays on the history of Russian realism. Part 1. Saratov, 1946
• , M., 1957
• , M.-L., 1959
• , 1966.

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Notes

Links

• Lydia Lotman.. UFO, 2002 N55. Retrieved February 19, 2011. .
• Natalia Dolinina
• V. Markovich// New Literary Review. - 2005. - No. 55.

Excerpt characterizing Gukovsky, Grigory Alexandrovich

At the beginning of 1806, Nikolai Rostov returned on vacation. Denisov was also going home to Voronezh, and Rostov persuaded him to go with him to Moscow and stay in their house. At the penultimate station, having met a comrade, Denisov drank three bottles of wine with him and, approaching Moscow, despite the potholes of the road, he did not wake up, lying at the bottom of the relay sleigh, near Rostov, which, as it approached Moscow, came more and more to impatience.
“Is it soon? Soon? Oh, these unbearable streets, shops, rolls, lanterns, cab drivers!” thought Rostov, when they had already signed up for their holidays at the outpost and entered Moscow.
- Denisov, we’ve arrived! Sleeping! - he said, leaning forward with his whole body, as if by this position he hoped to speed up the movement of the sleigh. Denisov did not respond.
“Here is the corner of the intersection where Zakhar the cabman stands; Here he is Zakhar, and still the same horse. Here is the shop where they bought gingerbread. Soon? Well!
- To which house? - asked the coachman.
- Yes, over there at the end, how can you not see! This is our home,” said Rostov, “after all, this is our home!” Denisov! Denisov! We'll come now.

Source: “Crucified”, author-compiler Zakhar Dicharov.
Publishing house: Historical and Memorial Commission of the Union of Writers of St. Petersburg,
"North-West", St. Petersburg, 1993.
OCR and proofreading: Alexander Belousenko ( [email protected]), December 24, 2002.

Grigory Alexandrovich Gukovsky

(1902-1950)

Committee
State Security of the USSR
Management by Leningrad region
March 11, 1990
№ 10/28-517
Leningrad

Gukovsky Grigory Alexandrovich, 1902 the year of birth, native of Leningrad, Jew, citizen of the USSR, non-party member, head. Department of Russian Literature, Professor of Leningrad State University, lived: Leningrad, V. O., 13 line, building 58, apt. 3
wife - Gukovskaya Zoya Vladimirovna, 34 years old
daughter - Gukovskaya Natalya Grigorievna, 13 years old
Arrested on October 19, 1941 by the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region. Charged under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda).
By a resolution of the NKVD LO of November 27, 1941, the case against G. A. Gukovsky was terminated due to insufficient evidence to stand trial and he was released from custody.

From the case materials

Gukovsky G. A. studied from 1912 to 1923. From 1923 to 1928 he was a teacher at high school No. 51 (Pravdy St.).
From 1924 to 1930 - Art. Researcher State Institute art history.
From 1930 to 1935 - associate professor and then professor at the Communist Institute of Journalism.
Since 1935 - at Leningrad State University.
Since 1937 - head. Department of Literature of the Leningrad Institute of Advanced Training for Teachers.
From 1931 to 1941 - art. Researcher at the Institute of Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Since 1933 - member of the SSP.

From the book “Writers of Leningrad”

Gukovsky Grigory Aleksandrovich (1.V.1902, St. Petersburg - 2.IV.1950), literary scholar and critic. Doctor philological sciences, Professor. Graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Leningrad University (1923). Simultaneously with research he conducted a large pedagogical work: in high school (1923-1928), at the Higher Courses at the Institute of Art History (1924-1930), at the Communist Institute of Journalism (1928-1936). From 1935 until the end of his life he taught at Leningrad University, was a professor, and then head. Department of Russian Literature, at the same time a researcher at the Institute of Literature, since 1938 - head. department of the Leningrad Institute for Advanced Training of Teachers and head. sector of the Leningrad Region of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. During the Great Patriotic War taught a course at Saratov University, and then was vice-rector for scientific work the same university. Literary work led since 1925. His creative interests included the history of Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. Author of the first systematic course in Soviet literary criticism on the history of Russian literature of the 18th century. As a text critic and scientific editor, he took part in the publication of the collected works of Radishchev, Fonvizin, Krylov, Derzhavin, Sumarokov and others. He wrote a number of chapters in the ten-volume History of Russian Literature. IN last years Life worked on a book about Gogol (published posthumously in unfinished form). Part of the archive is located in LGALI.

Russian poetry of the 18th century. L., 1927; Essays on the history of Russian literature of the 18th century: The noble front in the literature of 1750-1760. M.-L., 1936; Essays on the history of Russian literature and social thought of the 18th century. L., 1938; Russian literature of the 18th century. M., 1939; On the issue of teaching literature at school. L., 1941; Love for the Motherland in Russian Classical Literature. Saratov, 1943.- In collaboration with V. Evgeniev-Maksimov; Pushkin and Russian romantics. Saratov, 1946 and M., 1965; Pushkin and the problems of realistic style. M.-L., 1957; Gogol's realism. M.-L., 1959; Studying a literary work at school (Methodological essays on methodology). M.-L., 1966.

HUMAN DIGNITY AND ITS ENEMIES

Grigory Gukovsky was born into a family of intellectuals. My father, an engineer, believed humanities frivolous and did not want the children to deal with them, but Grigory Alexandrovich made the choice immediately and irrevocably. In 1918, a sixteen-year-old young man entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Petrograd University and student years stood out for his erudition and original thoughts.
Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky recalled: “They told me about a student who quotes Klopstock by heart. Interested. We met." Soon this acquaintance turned into intimacy, and then into friendship of equals. For a short time, Gukovsky worked at school, then at the Institute of Art History, at the Pushkin House, and at the same time at the university.
In the 20s, the most noticeable movement in literary criticism was OPOYAZ, whose participants were especially successful in analyzing literary form. Gukovsky was not a member of OPOYAZ, but he certainly experienced his influence. He also paid tribute to vulgar sociologism, but the most determining factor for his method was the historical approach to the phenomena of the spiritual life of society.
Formerly a student of Gukovsky, now a professor University of California Ilya Zakharovich Serman wrote in the journal “Syntax”:
“In 1927 his (Gukovsky.- E.F.) the first book "Russian poetry of the 18th century". It has verbal and poetic culture XVIII century was examined from the point of view of a philologist who grew up in the era of free creativity of the great poets of the 20th century - Blok, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova - brought up on their poetry. The young scientist talentedly combined the ability to understand the pathos of Russian poetry of the 18th century in its own dynamics, conditioned general movement culture, from the point of view of a person of the 20th century, who sees and knows where it was going poetic movement era of Lomonosov-Derzhavin and what Pushkin and post-Pushkin poetry owe to him”*.
Raised in best traditions Russian intelligentsia, who from the first steps declared himself as an outstanding researcher, Grigory Aleksandrovich Gukovsky entered an active creative life when the declared destruction of the world of violence turned into the destruction of the world of culture. It was probably still possible to emigrate, but this idea was never seriously discussed in the family.
Lidia Yakovlevna Ginzburg, who experienced a similar experience, wrote that among the intelligentsia of those years there was both repulsion and fascination. “The fascination increased with the intensity of the desire to live and act. This can be clearly measured by the reactions of Grigory Aleksandrovich Gukovsky: he was devastatingly active, and his thought - very strong - was excited, just as passion is excited."**

* Serman I. Grigory Gukovsky. Syntax. Paris, 1982, p. 189-217.
** Ginzburg L. Ya. Once again about the old and the new (Generation at the Turning), Tynyanovsky collection. Second Tynyanov readings. Riga, “Zinatne”, 1986, p. 137-138.

Students at the university where the young scientist began teaching greeted him warily at first. He was not much older than them and had no outward dignity; he lectured while walking between the rows; sometimes, driven by a sudden thought, he almost ran. He could stop and turn to someone: “Zhenya Petrov, give me a cigarette.” And, most importantly, he did not express his thoughts as the ultimate truth, did not call on them to take their word for it, on the contrary, he challenged students to argue, to try to figure it out on their own. This was unusual and was met with caution. True, the wariness did not last long. All of Gukovsky's students, in whom there was still undistorted humanity, loved him. In the 30s, auditoriums No. 12 and 36, and later the large assembly hall, were crowded with listeners who came for purely special lectures on the history of Russian literature.
University professor Vladislav Evgenievich Kholshevnikov recalls: “He was a cheerful person. It was fun for him not only to study himself, but also to teach.
I remember the conference in the Pushkin House. Its nominal director was A.V. Lunacharsky. There should have been a report by P.N. Berkov. Lunacharsky was not there. Everyone was languishing, waiting, tension was growing. Gukovsky sat on the steps of the Pushkin House and said: the authorities are late, well, well, let's wait. And then there was a discussion - deep, brilliant. And the atmosphere is light. Largely because of the way the famous scientist sat on the steps and cheerfully joked with the young people around him.”
Outwardly, as if “engaged” by official science, never openly protesting against its ideologization, Grigory Aleksandrovich Gukovsky remained true to himself: freedom, open emotionality, brightness of nature, talent as a research scientist, phenomenal abilities as an educator.
Gukovsky's students, reading books on 18th-century literature, still hear his unique intonations. He had a sonorous baritone voice and recited poetry beautifully. And he spoke about each writer, poet with that inner penetration in which even the style of the story is related to the style of the work being analyzed. And most importantly, each lecture was creative: it seemed that those present were directly observing the process of the birth of scientific ideas.
People who knew how Grigory Alexandrovich worked understood that he carefully prepared for his lectures, even wrote them, but never repeated the same thing. He charged from the audience, improvised; many thoughts, indeed, came to him during his lectures, so they are richer and more significant than scientific works.
Lidia Mikhailovna Lotman: “We had excellent lecturers, but Gukovsky was beyond competition. He had a wonderful voice, he read poetry very well, but the main thing is that the 18th century was completely alive for him. He had already been criticized as a formalist, got carried away sociological approach to literature and, as a talented person, although he paid tribute to vulgar sociologism, in general he took the most vivid of it - the feeling of life, literature as a process. He was closely associated with modern literature, loved the Acmeists. But at the same time, he lived the era that he taught. Gukovsky took very personally, for example, the struggle between Lomonosov and Sumarokov. For him it was a struggle all the more acute because both participants were brilliantly gifted, and both were intolerant of other people’s points of view.”
Abram Akimovich Gozenpud: “He was generous and prickly. The character was not particularly gentle. I couldn't stand mediocrity. But in this rationalistic man, one of the properties hidden under irony was the lyrical principle. High intelligence and restraint, to which the era had taught, did not allow lyricism to manifest itself clearly. But now I remember an amazingly insightful public lecture about love lyrics Zhukovsky, which Grigory Aleksandrovich read in Kyiv at the House of Scientists. Without any prettiness, he quoted Zhukovsky’s poems and letters from memory, and at times one got the feeling that this was not our contemporary, not Gukovsky, but Zhukovsky himself was addressing Masha Protasova.”
Vladislav Evgenievich Kholshevnikov: “In the first half of the thirties there was a dispute about the literature of the 18th century. The speaker was literary critic D.P. Mirsky. Before this, in one of the articles, Mirsky confused two namesakes, so Gukovsky simply seethed with indignation, as if he had been personally insulted: in the 18th century there was so little educated people“How can you not know them all by name and patronymic?”
Lidia Mikhailovna Lotman: “When P. N. Berkov spoke about the 18th century, the impression was created that people then were smart, educated, they were engaged in linguistics, formulated theoretical postulates. When Gukovsky spoke, it turned out that these were passionate people, they read poetry, argued, even intrigued against each other, but were vitally interested in the development of culture.”
The brightness of Gukovsky’s personality, mastery of all types of oral and written speech, enormous erudition (he was, of course, one of the deepest experts in Russian literature, but he also knew French very well and could quote Marcel Proust in French for entire pages), the writer’s ability to immerse the listener in time , about which he spoke” - all this could not but affect everyone whom fate brought together with Grigory Alexandrovich. For all his prickliness, he surprisingly generously gave his ideas to graduate students who were constantly at his home: he nurtured them, encouraged their desire for research. Once at a university department it was discussed that there was still no good book about Baratynsky. “Yes,” Gukovsky supported, “but the other day I was listening to one boy, maybe he’ll write.” The boy in question was Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman, then a first-year student.
When the newly authorized works of G. A. Gukovsky came to us, humanities students of the 60s, we greedily pounced on them, but soon lost interest. Now I understand that we were looking for opposition to official science in them, just as in any production of the classics: a projection on our present day.
Now I want to turn to Gukovsky’s books again. I'm not even talking about the literature of the 18th century, here the scientist not only introduced a number of new names and discovered entire unexplored layers, he and Pavel Naumovich Berkov created a holistic concept for the development of Russian literature of this century, to which subsequent researchers could add little. Gukovsky appears surprisingly whole both in his work and in life. The same ideas about the world, the same value orientations in everything.
Natalya Dolinina, in her memoirs about her father, spoke with amazing humor about the conflicts that happened in the family:
“We were both quick-tempered and knew how to say things to each other that would have caused a scandal for a week in another family. Because of any trifle, he could start a cry about the honor of the family - in the same voice with which he lectured to hundreds of people without a microphone. I, biting the bit, squealed retaliatory insults - no one could hear them in the thunder of his voice.”*

* Natalya Dolinina. Father. - “Aurora”, 1974, No. 9.

Family honor, human dignity - main words, which the daughter heard from her father. Here is the beginning of Gukovsky’s article “Dramatic Art in Russia XVIII century":
« Folk songs with round dance games, folk rituals, wedding or associated with dates of the agricultural calendar, are full of drama, they express in mythological embodiment both the moral and everyday ideas of the people, and their ideals of the fight against nature, with its dark forces, and their ideals of free human dignity”*. Let’s leave the struggle with nature to the author’s share of time and conscience, but free human dignity is the thought that runs through the entire article..

* Gukovsky G. A. Dramatic art in Russia of the 18th century. - In collection. Classics of Russian drama. L.-M., “Iskusstvo”, 1940, p. 7.

It cannot be said that Grigory Aleksandrovich did not see what was happening around him, but he tried to distance himself, he believed that he could not break the wall with his forehead. Lydia Yakovlevna Ginzburg recalled how in the summer of 1938 the Zhirmunskys, Gukovskys and she and her husband lived in a village in the Poltava region. There was still a memory of the famine; people were being exterminated in Leningrad. Here, resting, all these thinking people, deep people We had a pleasant time, went on boats, landed on uninhabited islands. Life went its own way. But when it came to close people, Gukovsky intervened bravely.
Lidia Mikhailovna Lotman: “In 1937, Pavel Naumovich Berkov was arrested. A representative of the NKVD came to our institute and began to say that Berkov had been exposed, that he was a spy, that he had already admitted that he was not Berkov, but BERKOV. And then Grigory Aleksandrovich Gukovsky, in front of a huge crowd of students, said that he was friends with Pavel Naumovich Berkov. Pavel Naumovich was released a year later. And for Grigory Alexandrovich himself, the intercession did not have the usual consequences.”
The thirties passed more or less well for Gukovsky himself. He was arrested for the first time in 1941 for “defeatist sentiments,” although he was released a few months later.
Gukovsky survived the blockade in Leningrad, and in March 1942 he and the university were evacuated to Saratov. He returned in 1948, and in 1949 thunder struck, called the struggle against cosmopolitanism.
It is interesting that Grigory Alexandrovich, who has been involved in Russian culture all his life, talks about his Jewish roots I almost forgot. And I didn’t think much about these problems. Thus, he believed that anti-Semitism was brought to us by Hitler. And when this provoked vile campaign turned against him, he was shocked.
A detailed, documentary story about how the persecution of “cosmopolitans” was organized at the philological department of Leningrad University is contained in the article by Konstantin Azadovsky and Boris Egorov “On sycophancy and cosmopolitanism, 1948-1949,” Zvezda magazine, 1989, No. 6.
Here I would like to once again recall the initiators and perpetrators of the beating of world-famous scientists: B. M. Eikhenbaum, V. M. Zhirmunsky, M. K. Azadovsky, G. A. Gukovsky. Among the most zealous, we must name the then dean of the philological department G.P. Berdnikov, the future academician Berdnikov, who subsequently successfully survived all the vicissitudes national history; Secretary of the Faculty Party Organization N.P. Lebedev (later he became an alcoholic and died). His co-author, Fyodor Abramov, is said to knowledgeable people, signed the vileness that was not written by him. In a material recently published in Ogonyok, F. Abramov told the story of Lebedev, introducing him under a pseudonym. And although the writer kept silent about his role in the persecution of cosmopolitans, it is clear that his own behavior at that time did not give him peace.
The meeting, at which sycophants, cosmopolitans and anti-patriots were branded - Eikhenbaum, Zhirmunsky, Azadovsky, Gukovsky - lasted two days with a large crowd of people in the university assembly hall. Eikhenbaum and Azadovsky were sick; Gukovsky had a heart attack after the first day. Zhirmunsky alone survived both days.
V. E. Kholshevnikov: “I still remember how Zhirmunsky sat motionless on the side of the presidium, Gukovsky’s tragic voice is still in my ears. He was criticized for his cosmopolitanism and anti-patriotism, but he was the first to say that the 18th century of Russian literature was not false classicism, but simply classicism. And in a tragic voice, Gukovsky, in response to the accusations, said that he loved Russian literature, that he was brought up on it.”
Nina Aleksandrovna Zhirmunskaya: “Gukovsky went through it physically very hard. Immediately a heart attack. They were all fired from the university. There were arrests. Every day we learned about someone.
In the summer, on the same day, both Gukovsky brothers were arrested - Matvey in Sochi, and Grigory in Riga. Their wives were expelled from Leningrad in one night.”
Grigory Aleksandroich Gukovsky died in Lefortovo prison in April 1950, as his relatives were later told, “from a heart attack, because he did not want to use medical help.” We can now imagine what this could mean. Since he died before the trial, there was no official rehabilitation, which made subsequent publications very difficult. So the posthumous fate of this outstanding scientist, who created a school in Russian philology, as it was customary to write until recently, turned out to be difficult.

Elena Frolovava