The concept of cultural and literary tradition. The concept of literary tradition
Zakharchenko M.V.
A fundamental quality of human existence is the ability to create and inherit cultural works. Tradition in the broad sense, as the inheritance of culture, thus acts as a universal characteristic of the human way of being.
The mode of inheritance, however, is a historically variable phenomenon. If a number of authors, including the authors of encyclopedic articles, tend to limit the concept of “tradition” to the patterns of inheritance in tribal societies, noting the decrease in the importance of tradition as the methods of cultural transmission characteristic of civilization are included (Kairov, Hoffman), then others apply this concept to processes of inheritance in culture throughout human history (Kostyuk, Radin, Goody and Watt, Lotman, Shatsky), focusing on understanding the nature of changes in methods of inheritance.
We develop the concept of cultural-historical tradition with the second point of view in mind. This typological concept reflects the patterns of inheritance in modern society, which has civilizational methods of transmitting culture - writing, the state, institutions of science and education. This problem becomes central in the general work of Jerzy Szatski. He undertakes a systematic synthesis of the theoretical discussion on the problem of the concept of tradition that took place in Polish literature in the 60s, also drawing on Anglo-American literature. The work is interesting primarily because the author conducts a consistent categorical analysis of the theoretical constructs proposed by various authors, and secondly, he creates his own theoretical construct, which we accept as the initial scheme, forming the typological concept of cultural and historical tradition.
We define the task of this chapter as follows: (1): to highlight Shatsky’s categorical scheme, supplement and interpret it as a scheme of the typological concept of cultural and historical tradition; (2): determine the scope and boundaries of its applicability.
The phenomenon of inheritance in modern times
In modernity, tradition acts both as a fact of social existence and as a fact of social consciousness. Because of this, it is necessary to distinguish between two closely related, but different subjects of theoretical understanding - tradition as a cultural-historical fact, and traditionalism as a value attitude towards tradition, which is also a cultural-historical phenomenon of an ideological nature.
The processes of inheritance in a modern society are distinguished by the following features: The creation, perception and interpretation of a written text, which breaks the monolithic unity of the “past” and creates plurality in its perception, the ability to “choose the past.
Social stratification in society. In such a society it is difficult to talk about any one tradition of the entire society. In a socially differentiated society, the same individual can belong to different social groups and be connected in different ways with different group pasts and with different traditions. Maurice Halbwachs believed that the mechanism of preserving the past in memory is that a person constantly reconstructs it anew, based on the experience of the social group to which he belongs.
The multiplicity of traditions simultaneously existing in society, the mobility and variability of elements of social heritage, the absence of a rigid structure of the whole. Elements of different traditions in the activities of subjects are brought into various combinations. Every element of tradition, inherited even from the distant past, is included in new systemic connections and, even being unchanged in itself, carries within itself not only traces of its origin, but also its movement through time until the present day.
Reducing the lifespan of individual traditions, multiple lines of succession restored from the future to the past, freedom of choice and evaluation of heritage elements in the action of transmission. Each social group is heavily influenced by systems of ideas created at different periods of national history. For both the individual and the groups that make up society, the past means a lot of completely different things.
Summarizing these features, Shatsky formulates the main characteristic of the patterns of inheritance in modern society: mediation by the consciousness and activity of social groups as subjects of cultural action.
He proposes to distinguish among all interpretations of tradition existing in the literature three perspectives on tradition: as an activity in which the transfer of social inheritance is realized; as an object that constitutes the content of the transmitted public heritage; as a subject who accepts the past as a value, the past as such or its specific formations and actively affirms these values in historical praxis.
The basis for the development of the concept of cultural-historical tradition in modern times is the subject.
We distinguish two types of subjectivity: an agent of radical renewal (the subject of design) and an agent of conservation and transmission (the subject of tradition). Subject of design: refers to the past as conditions of activity, that is, to such a set of existing things that can be changed through activity. The act of liberation from the “nightmare of tradition” is to regard conditions as “something inorganic” (Marx). This “act of freedom” shapes the position of the subject of activity in history. Understanding the conditions of our life and activity as the fruit of the cultural work of previous generations, “we treat them as something inorganic,” that is, we separate them from ourselves, transform them into material that is susceptible to external design. Subject of tradition: considers the results of the activities of past generations as values. Values are the practical ideal of the subject. He acts based on values. At the same time, values are also the conditions for the formation of subjectivity, the conditions for the reproduction of a subject of a certain type.
A large number of authors connect tradition with a value-based attitude to heritage. “Tradition... is not the institution itself, but the belief in its value” (M. Radin). R. Zimand speaks of “islands of tradition on the river of heritage.” The concept of tradition does not refer to the entire heritage, but to selected parts of it. “the principle of highlighting tradition is a principle that always comes from the world of values.” The totality of heritage is a multitude of facts. Tradition exists only where the reality of the subject and his position in relation to these facts are taken into account. At the same time, the consideration of tradition as something simply “given” is overcome. A complex problem of continuity and transformation, the instability of the scale of values, and selection appears. “It is simply impossible to inherit a tradition; you can master it only by making a great effort” (T. Eliot).
Subject and object of tradition
We refer the typological concept of cultural-historical tradition to a person’s way of acting in relation to heritage. Tradition itself is a set of heritage facts that are valuable to the subject. This is precisely the method of inheritance in modern times, declared by supporters of “traditionalism,” Shatsky argues convincingly. The totality of heritage is a multitude of facts. Tradition exists only where the reality of the subject and his position in relation to these facts are taken into account. Shatsky analyzes the method of inheritance in the cultural-historical tradition through the universal categorical scheme of the New Time: “subject-object-relation.”
Subject of cultural and historical tradition
The subject of a cultural-historical tradition is “the one who evaluates the past,” the one in whose consciousness some aspects, relationships, elements of the past receive axiological content. We are talking, first of all, about a collective subject, about a group, although it can also be about an individual subject, about an individual person. We will focus on three characteristic moments of subjectivity that creates a cultural-historical tradition: the value position of the subject, the remoteness of origin as a value, reflexivity and constructivism of the subject of the tradition.
Value position of the subject
In the totality of heritage, one can distinguish between elements that have become a kind of “fossils of history” and living elements that continue to influence the subject. Some of these living elements of heritage, while actually determining the behavior of the subject, do not fall into his field of vision, while others are subject to reflection and are the subject of attitude. The subject begins to relate to the object of tradition, endows the elements of the heritage with axiological content, develops its own evaluation scale, hierarchy of values, accepts some elements and rejects others. Stanislav Ossovsky points to the "desire for inheritance" exhibited by group members in relation to certain elements of heritage. He draws attention to the fact that in the totality of the inherited there are many elements to which no value is attributed, as well as elements that, although assessed negatively, are nevertheless transferred from generation to generation regardless of the efforts of educators and even in spite of them. Such elements are not included in the content of tradition. Bogdan Sukhodolsky distinguishes between “living tradition” and “unforgotten tradition.” “We speak of an unforgotten tradition when, thanks to historical research, we know enough important things about it to judge whether it is worth keeping in memory or whether it is even suitable for self-praise and approval by others. We speak of a living tradition when the creations of the past seem truly modern to us when we know how to experience them as if they belonged to our era." In our opinion, both sides of the distinction highlighted by Sukhodolsky are part of the cultural-historical tradition; he points to the different quality of its elements.
Value is nothing more than the rationalization of subjective meaning. Something is recognized as valuable - it means that this something has meaning for the subject. By affirming something as a value, the subject creates objective conditions for the existence of this meaning.
Max Weber, defining a typology of social behavior, identified goal-rational and value-rational types as two independent and irreducible to each other. In the value-rational type, value is not subject to rational analysis. It simply exists and the rationality of means and conditions is built around it. If love for one's neighbor is recognized as a value, no rational explanations are required to reveal the pragmatics of this value, such as those resorted to by the rationalists of the 17th century. By creating models for exiting the “state of nature,” they turned timeless values, hallowed by antiquity in European culture, into a rational norm.
In modern society, issues of “revival of traditions” occupy a large place. In today's Russia this phenomenon is very noticeable and carries a strong ideological load. The value of the “revival of traditions” is opposed to both the “totalitarian past” and globalist projects for the renewal of the world.
The action of “reviving tradition” is nothing more than endowing a number of heritage elements with value. The meaning of tradition lies in the promotion of specific values and patterns of action. The importance of a particular tradition is determined through a cumulative assessment of the values accumulated in it, which also perform (and even primarily) an educational function. When they talk about the “revival of tradition,” the degree of preservation of those elements of the heritage, the significance of which is highly assessed, turns out to be unimportant. Tradition allows one to inherit “through generations,” restoring what was effective in the generation of grandfathers and existed latently or completely ceased to exist in the generation of fathers. Traditional values have the character of a practical ideal, a model in accordance with which the subject forms himself and, in accordance with which, acts in the world. A value attitude presupposes a choice from a set of objectively possible ones and always exists as a system of interrelated values. Through the value system, the subject sees the field of his practical activity in the object: what is important to him and what is not, where he will direct his efforts and what he will leave in vain.
Shatsky points to the curious phenomenon of “negative tradition.” A number of heritage elements are endowed with negative axiological content. The subject pushes away from these elements, does not allow them into the circle of his experience, directs his efforts to prevent their reproduction in history.
There is, however, some paradox in the formal concept of “traditional values”. The formal concept of traditional values is that they must be inherited and passed on from generation to generation. On the one hand, the subject of each new generation is free to choose values. On the other hand, traditional values are inherited, that is, a generation of children must choose the same values that guided their fathers. Choice seems to be imposed, freedom of choice is limited or completely abolished, and with it the very idea of a value relationship rooted in unconditional subjective freedom. Either we turn a blind eye to our own deceit, declaring “the values of our fathers” something that we know in advance that it is the fruit of our practical reason. The paradox is resolved in a meaningful definition of the concept of traditional values. In the value system of a subject of tradition, there is always the theme of generations, the question of their interrelation and continuity. The subject of tradition concentrates his attention on this side of objective reality, placing it, if not in the center, then in one of the first places in the hierarchy of values. It is important for him to “continue the work of his fathers” and it is important to “pass on” and “bequeath” his business and his experience to his children. The topic of education is extremely important to him. The most obviously “traditional” in this sense are such values as family, children, education, Fatherland, faith, people, ancestors, father's house, native land, native language, way of life, family and folk legends. However, a subject of tradition can interpret these values in his own way, include them in a broader system, and combine them with what at first glance is incompatible with them: with the ideals of personal independence, freedom, corporate solidarity, moral correctness, etc. Values such as: freedom, independence, personal dignity - of course, can be called traditional for a number of cultural and historical traditions. The list of traditional values cannot be closed, since they are created in the process of the activity of the subject, the law of which is freedom. However, the form of this activity has one universal characteristic: it includes the full cycle of cultural creativity - inheritance from ancestors, testing and multiplication, and possibly more complete transmission to descendants.
Recency of origin as a value
Among the values affirmed by the subject of tradition, there is one that is invariably present: the factor of time, the remoteness of origin. For Shatsky this is a completely irrational value. He is inclined to see here “one thing instead of the other,” a kind of false consciousness, an artificial connection between what has real value (the substantive side of tradition) and what has no real value (the factor of prescription). He refuses to consider prescription as an autonomous and unconditional value. This position is characteristic only of “primitive traditionalism.” In many other cases, prescription is included in the composition of other values, either as one of the values, or as an obligatory aspect of any other value. The factor of prescription performs a sacralizing function in some way and in this form is an archaism, functionally necessary, however, for a certain type of value consciousness. He talks about “the temptation to view tradition as a manifestation of false consciousness, and disputes about tradition as camouflaged disputes about certain modern values, which, with ordinary rational thinking, could be expressed in a language other than the language of heritage or tradition.” However, one circumstance, truly inexplicable by means of “ordinary rationality,” stops him: the genuine belief that time sanctifies ideas and institutions. Prescription is recognized as an independent value; it is ubiquitous even in Europe, the main locomotive of world innovations. The thesis is widely accepted that even the most forward-looking projects must have a foundation in the past. Trying to find rational grounds on which prescription can be recognized as a value, he points to two ways of interpreting prescription: as historical experience and as an indication of the timeless nature of values to which prescription is attributed. Wanting to find rational grounds for a positive assessment of the factor of limitation, we can find an unexpected ally in Hegel. Hegel certainly agrees with the rationalists in refusing to accept “antiquity” as an argument. He speaks ironically of those who are ready to see wisdom in the judgments of the ancients on the grounds that they are ancient. But his characterizations of “abstract engineers of the future” who deny historical experience to reason are much more unpleasant. Distinguishing between reason and reason, Hegel speaks sharply about the “one-sided, abstract” rationalism of reason. Reason absolutizes its schemes. The mind is able to see their genesis, including their genesis in history. Hegel reveals the action of reason in history. History is evidence of the spirit and mind. Historical experience is reasonable insofar as reason has historical experience. Elements of heritage that are stable over time are endowed with value insofar as self-knowledge of the spirit and the reliability of its paths in history make sense for us.
We will find another basis for rationalizing the “prescription factor” in the idea of a “system of common life” with ancestors. The system of common life is born in the experience of love, says Gumilyov. “Love for ancestors” is not a rhetorical figure at all, it is a real and very strong experience, which Pushkin so soulfully expressed:
Two feelings are wonderfully close to us, in them the heart finds food:
Love for the native ashes, love for the coffins of our fathers.
Based on them from time immemorial, by the will of God himself,
A person’s independence is the key to his greatness.
These meanings awaken in a person the consciousness of moral obligations in relation to the clan, the people, the Motherland, encourage him to seek the truth about the past and “continue the work of the fathers,” endowing the continuity of the common cause from generation to generation with value content.
The factor of prescription plays the role of a criterion that tests the stability of a tradition and certifies its value system as traditional. The more fully traditional values are realized, the longer and stronger the tradition. Not every value system is capable of sustainable reproduction over time. A decisive test of the sustainability of a tradition occurs at the point of transmission to the next generation. In everyday speech, “traditions” refer to the simple repetition of an event from year to year: annual trips, annual meetings. Such “traditions” are fleeting, easy to arise and easy to die out. Strictly speaking, these are not quite traditions: any institution can be called a true tradition only if it has been maintained for at least one cycle of generational change. In this case, there is a “transfer” of the experience of organizing a common life through the identification of experience and its “carriers”, which is impossible without the experience receiving some “form”, being expressed symbolically, acquiring the character of a generalizing system in which it is possible to correlate many individual experiences and thereby accumulating the experience of personal existence in the system of common life.
Reflexivity and constructivism of the subject of tradition
Tradition is never “given” – tradition is always “created”. There is a kind of illusionism in perceiving tradition as something that has always been. In fact, there is a constant process of revaluation and redefinition of elements of heritage, in which some elements are relegated to the shadows, others come to the fore. “Tradition is not something waiting somewhere out there, resting on someone’s shoulders. Rather, it is chosen, created, modeled in accordance with the current needs and aspirations of a given historical situation.”
Tradition is always evaluation and selection, and therefore the subject of tradition treats the heritage as a material subject to re-formulation. This is not always noticeable when it comes to maintaining the activities of old institutions in new conditions, but it is noticeably good when we are clearly talking about “creating new traditions” - a phenomenon well known in the era of “developed socialism”. The project of forming a “new historical community - the Soviet people” - involved the creation of many traditions designed to express the self-awareness of the new community and contribute to its cohesion. However, even where the obvious task is to preserve the old, the phenomenon of construction is fully represented. Shatsky often expresses himself in such a spirit that the phenomenon of “revival of tradition” is essentially no different from the phenomenon of “creation of tradition.” Analyzing a wide range of materials related to conservatism and traditionalism, he comes to the conclusion that the classical view of the low reflexivity of tradition is unjustified. Many authors continue to adhere to this classical point of view, according to which, to constitute a tradition, reflection is either not needed at all, or the level at which the judgment of prescription is formed is sufficient: “this is valuable because it has always been done this way (for a long time).” Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied the experience of the transition of Africans from a traditional way of life to its civilizational organization and back, highlights the specific phenomenon of “secondary” traditionalism, which arises in the situation of a “return” to the traditional way of those Africans who have tasted the experience of life in civilization. Such a return to tradition requires high reflexivity, and rather a rejection of the inertia of acquired experience rather than adherence to the familiar and “inherited”. The opposition “tradition-modern” with a unidirectional movement from tradition to modernity is being replaced by a more complex configuration. It is proposed to use modern means to preserve and strengthen traditional values in new conditions. It is obvious that solving even just setting such problems requires a fairly high level of reflection. The example of modern traditionalism shows that in order to protect what has been sacred for a long time, complex worldview systems are created that use the methods of modern philosophy, historiosophy, and historiography.
Each new generation, each social group has its own attitude towards heritage, makes other elements of it the object of evaluation, changes the negative and positive in what is being evaluated. The cultural-historical subject constructs not only a tradition with which he identifies himself, but also a “negative tradition” from which he repels, the values of which are assessed negatively. There is no tradition without a subject, and the actions of real opponents are interpreted through a “negative tradition.” For example, “autocracy” and, more broadly, “state” acted as a “negative tradition” for the Russian intelligentsia.
Shatsky proposes to distinguish between conservation and restoration in tradition. Conservation focuses on the sustainable reproduction of existing forms and patterns of life that have real carriers in the form of certain social groups. Restoration proposes to restore forms and samples of a more or less distant past, and the restorer may not even ask the question of how wide the circle of real bearers of these forms is today, who is the subject who is ready to recreate them as forms of his life, and whether he exists as a subject at all. Let us clarify our formulation “to be as a subject.” The subject is a logical category in which a special type of self-organization of a person as a historical individual is expressed. Subjectivity presupposes a high degree of activity; it is based on an “act of freedom”, which turns a person into the subject of everything that he does, thinks and says, in contrast to another type of individuality, where a person is often ready to renounce responsibility for actions and not recognize them “their own”, referring to circumstances, habits, influence of other forces. Endowing some elements of the past with value content must be supported by the active position of the subject, ready to affirm these elements as a form of his own life; then he is a subject of tradition, and restoration can take place as a cultural and historical fact. Otherwise, there is a picture of beautiful dreams, reflections on a possible tradition, but not its reality. Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish between values, signs and customs that are truly inherited and those that are not at all inherited, but reconstructed on the basis of the value ideas of the subject of tradition.
Let us summarize what has been said about the subject of a cultural-historical tradition: the form-forming relationship between tradition and the subject is mutually reflexive. The subject forms a tradition, tradition creates the conditions for maintaining a certain quality of subjectivity, the measure and nature of his activity in relation to heritage depends on this quality. This is always a value-based relationship. What the subject relates to when making a value choice is heritage as an object. The problem of objectification of heritage is an independent and very difficult problem.
Object of inheritance in tradition
We can consider the same real process - historical inheritance - in different categorical schemes. We can analyze it as an objective process. Shatsky proposes to compare the categorical scheme “condition-means-goals/values” with the conceptual scheme “heritage-transmission (transmission)-tradition”. Heritage is compared with the category of conditions in which we have to act. Transmission - with the category of means by which conditions were formed and are being formed; Tradition - with the problem of goals and values, by the standards of which we (the subject) shape the world. This scheme allows us to analyze the degree of conditioning of the subject and the degree of his freedom, manifested in activity. This measure depends on the means at the disposal of the subject, and on its goals/values, and on the quality of conditions.
Here, however, we are not interested in the degree of conditioning of the subject, but in the essence of the process of inheritance, its historical individuality: “what” and “who” of tradition, what is inherited and who inherits. To answer these questions, a universal “subject-object-relationship” scheme is proposed. The “who” inherits – the subject who, in Shatsky’s energetic expression, “imposes his hierarchy of values on the world around him.” In one of the first places in this hierarchy, the subject of tradition places “recency of origin,” an irrational value, but in principle rationalizable. The subject of tradition affirms his values in activities that are quite reflexive and constructive. Is “what” inherited? The answer to this question constitutes the object of tradition, to which the subject actively relates and by which he is to some extent conditioned.
Interpretation based on the totality of elements
The object in tradition is “that which is to be transmitted.” When setting such a definition, it is easy to be inclined to identify the entire culture with tradition. In addition to direct identifications: “culture is heritage,” there are approaches in which the concept of culture is not identical to the concept of heritage, but heritage is considered as the basis of culture and its most important component (K. Lorenz, S. Charnovsky).
Making an attempt to present the “public heritage” as a systematic whole, Shatsky comes to the conclusion that the theoretical aspect analysis has not been done. Concepts whose main purpose would be to systematically cover everything that the modern generation receives from previous generations practically do not exist. Often the mention of “heritage” is not the result of a rigorous theoretical analysis, but a sign of the researcher’s surrender. Unable to explain the origin and function of certain elements of culture, the researcher declares it a “relic” or “tradition,” without at all, we note, clarifying the meaning of the term “tradition.” We are dealing with a rather arbitrary set of enumerations of the “inherited”, where values, ideas, patterns of behavior, etc. are placed in one row, without further logical analysis, in what relationship are the listed elements to one another, how complete is the list, are they really " passed on" by previous generations, and not developed by new ones, based on the conditions of entry into the cultural heritage.
K. Dobrovolsky integrates the idea of the total social heritage into the idea of “historical soil”. Shatsky ironically calls the method of ordering he proposed “the poetics of the catalogue”: a common name covers many heterogeneous, practically incommensurable facts. The “catalog” contains mines, factories, beliefs, technical skills, customs - many objects of unequal status, not brought into any systematic connection. An attempt to correct the “catalog logic” is being made by Art. Osovsky, proposing to distinguish between the concepts of “heritage” and “correlate of heritage”. With the concept of “heritage” he covers only psychophysiological content, including all material forms in the concept of “heritage correlate”. “We recognize as the cultural heritage of a social group the specific types of reactions of muscles, feelings and thoughts on the basis of which the inclinations of the group members are formed.” No objects of the external world are included in the heritage. A set of such fruits of human activity as works of art, science, technology, settlements, institutions - should be considered correlates of social heritage." Such distinctions are quite common in cultural studies. Thus, Winston suggests "considering culture as the sum of available goods and established patterns of behavior that constituted the heritage of the group", establishing the distinction between material heritage and heritage in the form of behavioral patterns. Osovsky's definition - "the reaction of muscles, feelings and thoughts on the basis of which inclinations are formed" - can be brought closer to the concept of "stereotype of behavior", in which L.N. Gumilyov saw his own characteristic of an ethnos, steadily reproduced from generation to generation. Osovsky's distinction leads us to interpret the object of tradition in a behavioral key. The subject of the value attitude of the subject of tradition, and thereby the object of tradition, is the ways of life and actions of people. Material works are interesting to him in that the extent to which they “correlate” with certain life-building strategies, indicate them or provide them.
Life-building method as an object of tradition
Analyzing many definitions of tradition contained in encyclopedias, reference books, and research literature, Shatsky comes to the conclusion that the interpretation of tradition is widespread in terms of the stable certainty of human behavior. In this series of definitions, tradition is identified with “a set of patterns of behavior.” Shatsky's know-how regarding definitions of this kind is that he limits their meaning only to the object of tradition. The object of tradition is the patterns of life and behavior developed in history. The full concept of tradition also includes the idea of the subject and his value relationship to these patterns.
However, in our opinion, it is advisable to make another categorical distinction. Let us differentiate between a behavioral response and a method of regulating behavior. Human behavioral reactions are always regulated by the person himself; this is what distinguishes human behavior from animal behavior. The regulation of human behavior is partly self-regulation, partly social regulation. Methods of regulating behavior, the distribution of regulatory functions between self-regulation and social regulation are historically different. When we talk about “patterns of behavior,” we obviously mean both the behavioral response itself and the way behavior is regulated. The “stereotypical reaction of muscles, feelings and thoughts” as a behavioral reaction can be regulated by tastes, norms of behavior, ideology, custom, and ritual. All this - norms, tastes, and customs - are ways of regulating behavior. By including traditions in the object, both behavioral reactions and methods of regulating behavior, we get a complex multi-component object. Let's define it as a way of life or a way of living (life-building). The way of life includes two types of elements:
(1) a set of behavioral reactions of a certain quality (stereotypes of behavior), (2) a set of ways to regulate behavior.
These elements are systematically interrelated. When analyzing a particular cultural-historical tradition, we must identify this systematic relationship, the nature of which is largely determined each time by the activity of the subject of the tradition. The constructive activity of a subject of tradition can manifest itself, for example, in the fact that, trying to preserve patterns of behavior that are valuable from his point of view, he can change the methods of regulating behavior, achieving the same behavioral reactions in new historical conditions. Or, conversely, recognizing the value of some method of regulation (custom, ritual, ideology), he can accept changes in behavioral reactions that are inevitable in new conditions, while maintaining the previous methods of regulation.
To summarize, we define a cultural-historical tradition as a way of life that is positively assessed by its subject, reproduced over a number of generations to the extent of the activity of the subject of the tradition. Cultural-historical traditions are diverse to the extent of the diversity of cultural-historical subjects who defend their way of existence and lay claim to the conditions for the implementation of a method of life-building that seems valuable to them.
Bibliography
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Traditions and innovation (Latin tradition - transfer) are the transfer of artistic experience from one generation of artists to another. Continuing traditions means creatively assimilating the experience of predecessors and moving on. Each new step in art is always based on acquired aesthetic experience, even when it is not perceived, which is typical of avant-garde artists. “Pure innovation, like pure tradition,” notes Yu. Kuznetsov, “does not exist, however, the absolutization of the first of them can lead to a game for the sake of a game like the literary practices of postmodernism or to passeism, characteristic of literary activity. MUR, with a separate for his concept of "Great Literature" On the other hand, the absolutization of traditionalism, focusing only on the canon can harm the development of literature, giving rise to epigonism. Traditional in literature is themes, motifs, images, genre, compositional features. Innovation lies in the discovery of new themes, genre forms, types, means of displaying artistic reality. The innovative writer relies on the village of Vitovo and the national experience of oral and written creativity, using eternal plots, images, allusion, reminiscence, rehash, translation, montage, collage, montage, collage, etc.
Tradition and innovation should not be perceived as a binary opposition; they are two interrelated aspects of the development of fiction. F. Nietzsche in the poem “Thus Spoke. Zarathustra” called to “break the tablets”, to leave the “country of the fathers” (to move away from traditions). Such a denial of traditions is fraught with the danger of oblivion of predecessor writers; it is unjustified and harmful, not justified and disgraceful.
The first model of the relationship between tradition and innovation is folklore and fiction. On artistic creativity of a written nature in the first centuries, the influence of folklore was significant, especially noticeable. The ancient literatures (Egypt, Mesopotamia) were dominated by tradition. The innovative elements were unconscious, aesthetically insignificant. They are noticeable in classical art. Ancient. Greece, when new ones are approved. Henri (tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, scientific and philosophical treatises).
The Middle Ages period is characterized by the predominance of tradition, which was based on Christian values. In the Middle Ages, new genres appeared (heroic epic, courtly lyrics, chivalric romance)
Literature was a complex synthesis of tradition and innovation. Renaissance and classicism of the 17th-18th centuries. This is a period of aesthetically conscious return to the traditions of ancient art. Writers, artists, and artists use ancient and medieval subjects and images. To the image. Andromache appeals. J. Racine and. L. Katenin, to history. Don. Juana. Tirso de. Molina and. ZhB. Moliere. Fausta -. K. Marlowe and. JV. Get. J.V. Goethe.
Innovation begins to dominate in the literature of the second half of the 18th century, when sentimentalism takes hold. Sentimentalists focused on the private life of a person, and romantics of the early 19th century. STOLITTA declare originality to be an important feature of literature. Innovation reaches its apogee in the literature of modernism. The desire to return to tradition is noticeable in the works of neo-romantics, neo-classicists and post-modernists.
The complex relationship between tradition and innovation is manifested in the development of literary trends and styles. In each new direction, the previous one is denied and elements of the earlier one are used. Yes, we are the plaintiff. Renaissance and classicism turned to antiquity; the Baroque returns to a certain extent to medieval spiritualism; sentimentalists reject the rationalism and normativity of classicism and return to the literature of the Middle Ages; realism of the 19th century uses certain provisions of the poetics of romanticism and the rationalistic constructions of the Enlightenment; modernists reject the life-likeness of Renaissance art and turn to the conventions of medieval art. The futurists, rejecting the standards of realism, modified the legacy of the Barococo.
Traditions can be embodied in the form of illusions, translation, reminiscence, processing, adaptation, imitation, influence, stylization, collage, epigonism, montage, etc.
In the development of literature, stylistic traditions perform an important function: the normativity of the classicist style, the brightness of the romantic, the sophistication and sophistication of the baroque style, the grace and fragmentation of the impressionistic style, the contrast and sharpness of expressionistic styles.
Literature constantly alternates between tradition and innovation. When there are significant shifts in artistic systems, which are accompanied by discussions during the transition from one literary period to another, the relationship between tradition and innovation becomes tense. This is characteristic of early modernism, when there was a reorientation from Aristotelian mimesis to Platonic one. At this stage of literary development, representatives of avant-garde movements sharply oppose classical literature. The debate between traditionalists and innovators continues constantly. At the beginning of the 20th century, it flared up between the modernists (M. Vorona, Lesya Ukrainskaya, O. Kobylyanskaya, I. Franko, M. Yevshan) and the populists (I. Nechuy-Levitsky, S. Efremov). In the 90s of the 20th century, there was a discussion between writers of the older generation and members of the literary groups “Boo-Ba-Boo”, “New Literature”, “New Degeneration”, “Creative Association 500”, articles are evidence of this. Yu. Mushetika "Wheel" ("Literary Ukraine" - 1994 -. M 45), whom the "Wheel" ("Literary Ukraine" - 1995 -. M 35) ran over. V.. P"yanova "Who was hit by the "Wheel" ("Literary Ukraine". - 1995. - Part 3).
The “Lexicon of General and Comparative Literary Studies” notes that traditions have a “collective-group character and a clearly defined national identity,” innovation is a category of supernation of the onal, cosmopolitan and is embodied at the personal level. Secondly, an important role in the innovative processes in art and literature of the late XIX-XX centuries is played by general civilizational progress, an avalanche-like growing flow of information, achievements in philosophy, science, technology (in particular, the invention of photography contributed to the transformation of fine arts), new media transport and communications inspired the futurists, cinematic means influenced literature."1 Accordingly, in the literature of the 20th century, different directions and trends quickly replaced each other: futurism, expressionism, surrealism, absurd drama, postmodernism. Multifunctional genres appeared (intellectual drama, lyrical prose , philosophical lyrics), mobile genres (novel, short story, short story) have gained popularity. New artistic approaches have been established in poetics: stream of consciousness, montage, collage, subtext, virtuality, logic, absurdity, logic to absurdity.
Still, most of the artistic discoveries are based on the understanding of traditions; the harmony of traditions and innovation is the key to the successful development of literature
Literature
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Belaya Natalya Vladislavovna 2007UDK 82.0 BBK 83 B 43
N.V. White
Tradition and innovation as the most important components of literary creativity
(Reviewed)
Annotation:
The article presents the theoretical aspect of the most important literary concepts “tradition” and “innovation”, necessary for an in-depth study of individual scientific problems. The scientific principles of the works of M. Bakhtin, R. Apresyan, A. Guseinov, V. Kozhevnikov, L. Nikolaev are used as the main ones.
Keywords:
Traditions, innovation, literary process, genesis, culture, continuity, evolution, past, present.
M. Bakhtin, challenging certain generally accepted principles in literary criticism, used the phrases “small historical time” and “large historical time”, meaning by the first the modernity of the writer, by the second - the experience of previous eras. “Modernity,” he wrote, “retains all its enormous and in many respects decisive importance. Scientific analysis can only proceed from it and... must be checked against it all the time, but,” Bakhtin continued, “it is impossible to suppress it (a literary work) in this era: its fullness is revealed only in great time.” The thought about the genesis of literary creativity in the scientist’s judgments becomes key: “. the work has its roots in the distant past. Great works of literature are prepared over centuries, but in the era of their creation only the ripe fruits of a long and complex ripening process are harvested.” As a result, the activity of a writer, according to Bakhtin, is determined only by long-existing cultural trends.
It is absolutely obvious that tradition and innovation are concepts that characterize continuity and renewal in the literary process, as well as the relationship between what is inherited and what is created. Today, there are several scientific interpretations of these concepts. The literary encyclopedia gives the following definition: “Tradition is the concept
tie characterizing cultural memory and continuity. By connecting the values of the historical past with the present, passing on cultural heritage from generation to generation, tradition carries out selective and proactive mastery of heritage in the name of enriching it and solving newly emerging problems (including artistic ones).
In functional terms, tradition acts as an intermediary between the past and the present, a mechanism for storing and transmitting samples, techniques and skills of activity, which themselves are included in people’s lives and do not need any special justification or recognition.
All this is carried out through repeated repetition of traditional connections and relationships, ceremonies and rituals, moral principles and norms, symbols and meanings."
Tradition is a type of historical consciousness where the past claims to be a prototype of the present and even one of the sources of the perfection of the future.
In literature, the concept of tradition has long been the subject of discussion among philosophers, cultural scientists, sociologists, ethnographers, etc. Traditions (both general cultural and literary) invariably influence the work of writers, constituting an essential and almost dominant aspect of its genesis. At
In this case, individual facets of the fund of continuity are refracted in the works themselves, directly or indirectly. These are, firstly, verbal and artistic means that were used before, as well as fragments of previous texts; secondly, worldviews, concepts, ideas that already exist both in non-fictional reality and in literature; thirdly, these are life analogues of verbal and artistic forms. Thus, the narrative form of epic genres is generated and stimulated by the narration of what happened earlier in people’s real lives. For example, a picaresque novel is the generation and artistic refraction of adventurism as a special kind of life behavior.
Carrying out the connection of times, tradition is a selective and initiative-creative inheritance of the experience of previous generations in the name of solving modern artistic problems, therefore it is naturally accompanied by the renewal of literature, i.e. innovation, which involves completing the construction of values that constitute the property of society, the people, and humanity. In literature, innovation comes forward." as a creative re-arrangement and completion of what was taken from predecessors, as the emergence in the literary process of an unprecedented new thing of world-historical significance.” For example, the mastery by sentimentalists of a person’s private life, that is, the rejection of some traditions and the turning to others, ultimately means the creation of a new tradition. Innovation requires great talent, creative courage and a deep sense of the demands of the times. Innovation is based on the development of life itself: a moment comes when reality itself stimulates the artist to search for new forms, because the old ones are no longer sufficient to reflect a new stage in the history of the people.
All the great artists of the world (Dante - in Italy, Shakespeare - in England, Cervantes - in Spain, A. Pushkin - in Russia, T. Shevchenko - in Ukraine) managed to see the world around us in a new way, to discover conflicts in life that were never before writers did not notice or could not comprehend, discover in life such heroes who had not been portrayed before. And in order to reproduce this, they created
new genres and types of novels, stories, lyrical works. However, innovation in a broad sense is inseparable from tradition.
Tradition manifests itself as influences (ideological and creative), borrowings, as well as in following canons (in folklore, ancient and medieval literature).
Two types of traditions are rightfully distinguished. Firstly, it is a reliance on past experience in the form of its repetition and variation (here the words “traditionality” and “traditionalism” are usually used). These kinds of traditions are strictly regulated and take the form of rituals, etiquette, and ceremonies that are strictly observed. Traditionalism was widespread in literary creativity for many centuries, until the middle of the 18th century, which was especially clearly manifested in the predominance of canonical genre forms. Later, it lost its meaning and began to be perceived as an obstacle in the development of art, and in connection with this, a different meaning of the term “tradition” appeared. This word has come to be understood as the proactive and creative inheritance of cultural experience, which involves the completion of the values that constitute the property of society, the people, and humanity, as mentioned above.
In literary studies, R.G. Apresyan and A.A. Guseinova consider the concept of “tradition” two-sidedly, pointing out that tradition looks like an absolutization and conservation of the past, a symbol of immutability, “a refuge of conservatism.” This characteristic is quite justified, because Tradition is characterized by adherence to the past. On the other hand, they believe that “. tradition acts as a necessary condition for the preservation, continuity and sustainability of existence. the beginning of the formation of the identity of a person, a social group and an entire society."
Tradition can enter literary creativity spontaneously, regardless of the author’s intentions. As traditions, writers assimilate themes of past literature that are socially and historically conditioned (“little man,” “extra man” in Russian literature of the 19th century) or that have universality (love, death, faith, suffering, duty, glory, peace and war, etc.) . p.), as well as moral and philosophical problems and motives of com-
components of form (type of versification, poetic meters).
Possessing historical stability, tradition is, at the same time, subject to functional changes: each era selects from the past culture what is valuable and vital for it. At the same time, the sphere of continuity in each national culture changes over time: so in the second half of the twentieth century. it expanded noticeably (interest in the Middle Ages, as well as in national art, increased).
At different stages of the world literary process, tradition and innovation are related in different ways. The renewal of folklore, ancient and medieval literature occurred very slowly and was not recorded in the consciousness of individual generations. Tradition acted in these cases as traditionality: there was not only a rethinking of previous experience, but strict adherence to it. According to D.S. Likhacheva: “The writer strives to subordinate to literary canons everything he writes about, but borrows these etiquette norms from different areas.. .”
Beginning with the Renaissance, the literary process in European countries acquired greater dynamism over time; imitation of masterpieces was losing its former meaning, and past art acted as a guide for original solutions to modern artistic problems. In the phenomena of past culture, writers of the 19th-20th centuries. they consciously separated the enduringly valuable and vital from what had become archaic (ideological, moral, artistic) and what was not consistent with the spiritual and ethical principles of modernity.
The study of tradition in literature reveals a number of patterns in the development of literature of a particular period. For example, for avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. (primarily for futurism) tradition was perceived as a “brake” of development. Innovation pony
Something here is one-sided: as a confrontation with tradition and a sharp demarcation from the classics.
The leading literary trends of our time are characterized by broad reliance on traditions (not only literary and cultural-artistic, but also practical ones) while simultaneously updating past experience. What is important here is the involvement of writers in the tradition of folk culture (folklore).
The harmony of tradition and innovation is the most important condition for fruitful and large-scale literary creativity. Innovation in itself, as a cult, as “creativity out of nothing,” as experimentation, is unproductive for literature and art, therefore the relationship between tradition and innovation is now the subject of serious differences and ideological confrontations, which are of the greatest importance in literary criticism. In this situation, the words of the outstanding philosopher J. Huizinga are relevant: “The vain and tireless pursuit of something absolutely new and the rejection of the old from the threshold just because it is old is an attitude typical only of immature and jaded minds. A healthy spirit is not afraid to take on the road a weighty load of values of the past” [b; 257].
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The term “literary tradition” is used in literature when we are talking about a continuity that unites successive literary phenomena.
The concept of literary tradition
In its meaning, the concept of literary tradition is identical to the concept of borrowing, influence and imitation. The constituent elements of a literary tradition can be the following components of poetics: stylistics, composition, rhythm and theme. These components are often transmitted by literary tradition not separately, but in combination with each other.
The area of literary tradition is also quite wide: it can be both international creativity and the creativity of one people. For example, Gogol created a literary tradition in Russia, which over time spread far beyond its borders. The literary tradition does not differ in intensity, so we see that Pushkin’s traditions at different times either intensify in literature or disappear almost completely.
At first glance, an extinct tradition can not only be revived, but also take its place as the dominant one in the literary process, thanks to the influence of suitable historical conditions.
In the literary process there is the concept of parodying a literary tradition. A striking example of this is Dostoevsky’s work “The Village of Stepanchikovo”, in which the author parades Gogol’s style and his ideology.
Eternal themes in literature
Traditional problems. Literary works, in their absolute majority, have stable eternal themes, the peculiarity of which is that they are practically inexhaustible, since they will always be relevant in any society. No matter how many options there are for revealing them, there is still something left unsaid every time, as well as something that lends itself to a completely different interpretation in new historical conditions.
Getting acquainted with various literary works, we are amazed at how the same topic is seen by different writers. By and large, many literary works that have come down to us describe the same plot, but divided and corrected over the centuries.
The eternal themes of literature can be divided into the following categories:
1. Ontological- themes of unidentified eternal phenomena: space, light, darkness.
2. Anthropological topics:
- the concept of being - sin, involvement, pride, human life, death.
- epoch-making events - wars, revolutions, peace, civic activities.
- the sphere of social instincts - love, friendship, family, zeal for power, social transformation of a person.
Discussions about eternal problems are also very characteristic of the literary process. The main eternal problem that is discussed in literary works is the issues and problems of morality of man and society. Along with the description of this problem, the literature also indicates ways to solve it - for society this is a revolution or reform, for a person - moral improvement.
Another traditional eternal problem is the question of society’s rejection of an individual, the so-called lone hero. A special place in the literary process is occupied by the clarification of universal human problems - the search for the meaning of life, understanding of good and evil, internal torment, etc.
