The concept of romanticism. Lecture: Romanticism as a literary movement

WORLD ART CULTURE: Concept, content and morphology of a multimedia complex for secondary schools. – St. Petersburg: Asterion, 2004. – 279 p.

	Age of Romanticism
	General characteristics (V.E. Cherva)
	Main monuments (V.E. Cherva, M.N. Shemetova)
	An example of a monument's characteristics (V.E. Cherva)
	Biography of a creative person (V.E. Cherva)
	Bibliography (V.E. Cherva)
	Sample questions for a control test (V.E. Cherva, Yu.V. Lobanova)

5.4. Age of Romanticism

5.4.1. general characteristics

Romanticism - ideological and art movement in European culture of the late XVIII - 1st half of the 19th century V. This is the era of bourgeois revolutions, political and economic upheavals in Europe, characterized by criticality in relation to contemporary reality and at the same time to the social and political principles of the past of the 18th century that it rejected. (Era of Enlightenment). Romanticism as a special type of worldview has become one of the most complex and internally contradictory phenomena in the history of culture. Disappointment in the ideals of the Enlightenment and the results of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789 predetermined a pessimistic view of social development; the mentality of “world sorrow” was combined in Romanticism with the desire for harmony in the world order. Rejecting the rationalism and mechanism of the Enlightenment, the romantics, nevertheless, retained the fundamental concepts of the previous era: “natural man”, a view of nature as a great good principle, the desire for justice and equality.

In artistic culture, the collapse of hopes for freedom, universal peace and social well-being determined the main motive of that period, which was of fundamental importance for the aesthetics of Romanticism - “the collapse of illusions.” Another important motive of artistic activity, generated by the discord between the ideal and reality, the inability to achieve ideals, is “two worlds,” i.e. escape from reality into the illusory world of mysticism, idealized antiquity or distant, exotic countries for Europe. Thus, among the romantics, world harmony was disrupted. The world fell apart into categories opposed to each other: earthly life and eternal life, God and the devil, hero and crowd, present time and distant past, beautiful and ugly, ideal and everyday life.

In connection with the new worldview in the era of Romanticism, the understanding of the individual and the relationship between the importance of the individual and society for culture gradually changed. Unlike classicism, which emphasized the natural similarity all people, i.e. the priority of the general, romanticism placed the individual at the forefront otherness. Hence the understanding of the romantic personality as lonely, misunderstood, rebellious (actively or passively) against everyone and everything, filled with pride, challenging God, society, and the crowd.

In artistic culture, romanticism became a reaction to the rationalistic aesthetics of classicism. However, we cannot say that romanticism in art completely rejects what was achieved in classicism: romanticism leaves the stylistic foundations of classicism, rethinking the language of artistic forms, as well as the ideological orientation of art. Despite the apparent “polarity” of the views of classicism and romanticism on man and his place in the world, the idea of personality of the late 18th – early 19th centuries. involves a combination of the rationalistic ideal of a man of the Enlightenment with the obligatory reduction of everything private, subjective to the general, transpersonal and a certain romantic “patina”. This idea received its most vivid expression in lyric poetry - the most subjective type of literature, which became the exponent of romantic tendencies in art.

Romanticism as a style in art appeared first in literature, and then in other forms of art. Even the very concept of “romanticism” came from literature and was derived from the epithet “romantic” (first introduced as a literary term by Novalis). Until the 18th century this epithet pointed to some features of literary works written in Romance languages, in particular, entertainment, many adventures and events. At the end of the 18th century. “Romantic” began to be understood more broadly: not only as adventurous, entertaining, but also as ancient, original folk, distant, naive, fantastic, spiritually sublime, ghostly, as well as amazing, frightening. That is why romantics often idealized the past and tried to breathe new life into myths and biblical stories. Fiction becomes a contrast to reality.

In addition to literature (especially lyric poetry), another form of art in which romantic tendencies were fully embodied was music. Individualism, which took root in sentimentalism, reached unprecedented proportions in the romantic era. As a result, the status of the individual, the artist-creator, has sharply increased. Personal fate, personal drama acquired a universal resonance, therefore, in the era of Romanticism, works with confessional motives became especially popular. Music in any of its manifestations is “confession of the soul.” It is no coincidence that I.I. Sollertinsky called the music “a sounding autobiography,” “a kind of symphonic, vocal-song, piano diary.”

Unlike literary romanticism, which appeared at the end of the 18th century, musical romanticism manifested itself only in the second decade of the 19th century. It is significant that the term “romantic music” belongs to E.T.A. Hoffmann, a writer and composer, whose very work symbolized the union of literature and music, which was very important for romantic aesthetics. If in the Renaissance the main form of art was painting, and the main ideas of the Enlightenment were reflected in the theater, then romantic aesthetics put literature and music in first place. Moreover, the romantics themselves did not come to a consensus as to which of these types of art occupied a higher position in the “hierarchy” of the arts, and the idea of the union of literature and music put such “synthetic” genres as opera, program music, romance in first place -song. In the field of instrumental music, less susceptible to the ideas of romanticism, the piano miniature became the most important, capable of creating a quick sketch of a mood, landscape, or characteristic image. The main thing in painting romantic genre can be considered a portrait in which the main thing was to identify bright characters, the tension of spiritual life, the fleeting movement of human feelings, as well as a self-portrait, which was almost never seen in the 18th century. Many features inherent in romantic painting were continued in later stylistic movements, for example, mysticism and complex allegorism - in symbolism, increased emotionality and impulsiveness – in expressionism.

Characterizing Western European romanticism, Ivanov-Razumnik divided it into three varieties: German, English and French, characterizing them respectively as logical, or romanticism of thought, ethical, or romanticism of will, and aesthetic, or romanticism of feeling.

Germany At that time, it was a fragmented country that did not have the opportunity to take an active part in the colonization of the East; it did not have enough resources to fight wars in Europe without anyone’s help. However, it is in Germany that many philosophical schools and teachings take shape - it is not capable of active and decisive action, but has powerful ideological potential. German romanticism is characterized by melancholy, contemplation, and mystical-pantheistic moods. German romanticism turns to myths, legends, traditions and tales of its people, which is reflected in literature, music, and painting of this period. E.T.A. Hoffmann writes fairy tales using many motifs from German folklore; his opera “Ondine” also refers to folk legends. R. Wagner's work is almost entirely rooted in German mythology, heroic epics (Lohengrin, Parsifal, The Ring of the Nibelung, etc.) and the legendary past of his country (The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, etc. .). K.M. Weber (opera “Free Shooter”) also turns to the traditions of his people.

By the beginning of the 19th century. Austria was a huge empire that included Hungary, the Czech Republic, northern Italy, and southeastern Bavaria, so its national composition was diverse: Czechs and Hungarians, Slovaks and Croats, Romanians and Ukrainians, Poles and Italians, with Austrians and Germans themselves making up one third of the population. Traditions, customs, folklore and artistic creativity of each of these peoples influenced the formation of specific features of Austrian culture. However, all these peoples were united by the Habsburg dynasty. Unlike Germany, in which peoples with developed national culture did not have a single state and therefore sought to create a national state as a guarantee of preserving their culture, the peoples of the Austrian Empire lived within the framework of a single state, which was formed long before the industrial revolution according to the dynastic principle and was not identified with any of the peoples under its rule. Due to German was native to the members of the ruling dynasty, he was considered by them as official language country and the most preferred means of interethnic communication of its inhabitants. Perhaps this is why many of the features inherent in the artistic culture of Germany were also characteristic of Austria. For example, the attitude towards nature as a refuge from the ills of civilization, consolation, healing of a restless person is clearly reflected in the works of F. Schubert (for example, the vocal cycle “The Beautiful Miller's Wife”), in whose work the emotional experiences of the individual are closely connected with images of nature.

Unlike Germany, England At that time, it was an advanced country with rich political and economic traditions and a form of government that all of Europe looked up to, considering it the most successful (parliamentary monarchy). However, as the history of art shows, England of the romantic period did not create any interesting music, and the achievements of romanticism were translated into two types of art: literature and painting. The main themes of English romanticism were reflections on the romantic personality, the hero of his time, as well as what moral qualities this hero should have (for example, in the works of J. G. Byron “Childe Harold”, “Don Juan” and in “Endymion” J. Keats). In English romantic painting, the landscape prevailed as a reflection of the spiritual purity and great possibilities of the “natural man” (for example, the landscapes of J. Constable).

French Romanticism was a vivid reflection of the events of 1789, i.e. Great French Revolution. That is why, of all the regional variants of romanticism, French is the most effective and active, the most emotionally rich. He has given many names in various art forms. Thus, in literature, one of the most prominent romantics, who was the first to formulate the main characteristics of French romanticism (preface to the drama “Cromwell”), was V. Hugo, another was A. de Musset, famous for his confessional work “Confession of a Son of the Century.” In music, G. Berlioz became a great innovator, one of the first to create the genre program symphony(“Fantastic Symphony”) and reformed the means of musical expression. French artists also reform artistic and expressive means: they dynamize the composition, combining forms with rapid movement, use bright, rich colors based on contrasts of light and shadow, warm and cold tones.

American Romanticism, for many reasons, did not present a single picture. Lack of deep national roots, geographical remoteness from European countries, the mosaic nature of the culture created on the new continent, as well as concern for establishing independence from Europe, predetermined its own path of American romanticism. First of all, this is an attempt to find the roots of one’s culture in the depths of the culture of the aborigines - the Indians. That is why many artists, in particular literature, turn to the idealization of the life of Indians, their image (F. Cooper, G. Longfellow). Others are interested in the nature of this fertile land, which means that landscape becomes one of the most common romantic genres.

It is well known that Russian romanticism was significantly different from Western European. Russia turn of the 18th–19th centuries. in its economic development it had not yet “caught up” with Europe, had not experienced its bourgeois revolution, therefore the tragedy and hopelessness of “world sorrow”, the “retreat” into the idealized Middle Ages, characteristic of German, French and English romanticism, were alien to Russian culture. Speaking about Western European traditions in Russian romanticism, we note that the sentiments characteristic of Europe at the end of the 18th century became relevant in Russia in connection with two events in Russian history - the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Decembrist uprising. The Patriotic War contributed to the growth of national self-awareness, and the Decembrist uprising was a kind of resolution to a revolutionary situation similar to Western Europe. That is why early Russian romanticism, which flourished in the second decade of the 19th century, in contrast to Western European, was “more optimistic, active, offensive” (G. Gukovsky). Russian culture was experiencing a time of revolutionary upsurge in all spheres of culture. Another significant difference between Western European and Russian romanticism was that the main driving social force in Europe was the third estate, while in Russia it was the nobles - which is why Russian romanticism is often called “noble.” Indeed, the most significant phenomena in the field of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century. took place among the nobility. Even the struggle for the abolition of serfdom was carried out mainly by the nobles.

At this time in public consciousness In Russia, the cultural opposition between St. Petersburg and Moscow has intensified. Let us remember that back in the 18th century. Moscow contrasted the reactionary classicist St. Petersburg with the advanced sentimentalism of that time. At the beginning of the 19th century. It was in Moscow that the first shoots of romanticism appeared. More patriarchal Moscow turned mainly to the passive direction of Romanticism, the main idea of which was a retreat into idealism, while St. Petersburg culture reflected its active revolutionary-educational, collective beginning. The culture of Pushkin's Petersburg remained essentially oriented towards the achievements of the Western European Enlightenment, i.e. to some speculative maxims regarding the transformation of society, while Moscow sentimentalism grew into romanticism, putting the creative personality in first place.

Romanticism became the last pan-European style in art. However, along with the general features, it should be noted that each country created its own unique, original romantic flavor. This is due to the fact that within the framework of Romanticism, which initiated the rapid growth of national self-awareness, a huge number of national art schools are being created, each of which has its own unique ideas, subjects, favorite genres, as well as a special national style.

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Municipal Educational Institution Secondary School No. 5

Romanticism

Performed):

Zhukova Irina

Dobryanka, 2004.

Introduction

1. The origins of romanticism

2. Romanticism as a movement in literature

3. The emergence of romanticism in Russia

4. Romantic traditions in the works of writers

4.1 The poem “Gypsies” as a romantic work by A. S. Pushkin

4.2 “Mtsyri” - a romantic poem by M. Yu. Lermontov.. 15

4.3 “Scarlet Sails” - romantic story A. S. Green.. 19

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

romanticism literature Pushkin Lermontov

The words “romance” and “romantic” are known to everyone. We say: “the romance of distant travels”, “a romantic mood”, “to be a romantic at heart”... With these words we want to express the attractiveness of travel, the unusualness of a person, the mystery and sublimity of his soul. In these words one hears something desirable and alluring, dreamy and unrealizable, unusual and beautiful.

My work is devoted to the analysis of a special trend in literature - romanticism.

The romantic writer is dissatisfied with the everyday, gray life that surrounds each of us, because this life is boring, full of injustice, evil, ugliness... There is nothing extraordinary or heroic in it. And then the author creates his own world, colorful, beautiful, permeated with the sun and the smell of the sea, inhabited by strong, noble, beautiful people. Justice prevails in this world, and the fate of a person is in his own hands. You just need to believe and fight for your dream.

A romantic writer may be attracted to distant, exotic countries and peoples, with their customs, way of life, concepts of honor and duty. The Caucasus was especially attractive to Russian romantics. Romantics love mountains and the sea - after all, they are sublime, majestic, rebellious, and people must match them.

And if you ask a romantic hero what is more valuable to him than life, he will answer without hesitation: freedom! This word is written on the banner of romanticism. For the sake of freedom, the romantic hero is capable of anything, and even crime will not stop him - if he feels inner rightness.

Romantic hero- a complete personality. An ordinary person has a little bit of everything mixed in: good and evil, courage and cowardice, nobility and meanness... A romantic hero is not like that. One can always identify a leading, all-subordinating character trait in him.

The romantic hero has a sense of the value and independence of the human personality, its inner freedom. Formerly a man listened to the voice of tradition, to the voice of someone older in age, in rank, in position. These voices told him how to live, how to behave in this or that case. And now the main adviser for a person has become the voice of his soul, his conscience. The romantic hero is internally free, independent of other people’s opinions, he is able to express his disagreement with a boring and monotonous life.

The theme of romanticism in literature is still relevant today.

1. The origins of romanticism

The formation of European romanticism is usually attributed to the end of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century. This is where his ancestry comes from. This approach has its own legitimacy. At this time, romantic art most fully revealed its essence and formed as a literary movement. However, writers of a romantic worldview, i.e. those who are aware of the incompatibility of the ideal and their contemporary society were creating long before the 19th century. Hegel, in his lectures on aesthetics, talks about the romanticism of the Middle Ages, when real social relations, due to their prosaicity and lack of spirituality, forced writers living by spiritual interests to go into religious mysticism in search of an ideal. Hegel's point of view was largely shared by Belinsky, who further expanded the historical boundaries of romanticism. The critic found romantic traits in Euripides and in the lyrics of Tibullus, considered Plato the herald of romantic aesthetic ideas. At the same time, the critic noted the variability of romantic views on art, their conditionality by certain socio-historical circumstances.

Romanticism in its origins is an anti-feudal phenomenon. It was formed as a movement during a period of acute crisis of the feudal system, during the years of the Great French Revolution, and represents a reaction to a social order in which a person was assessed primarily by his title and wealth, and not by his spiritual capabilities. Romantics protest against the humiliation of humanity in man, they fight for elevation and emancipation of the individual.

The Great French Bourgeois Revolution, which shook the foundations of the old society to the core, changed the psychology of not only the state, but also the “private person.” Participating in class battles, in the national liberation struggle, masses made history. Politics became their daily business. The changed life, the new ideological and aesthetic needs of the revolutionary era required new forms for their depiction. The life of revolutionary and post-revolutionary Europe was difficult to fit into a framework everyday novel or domestic drama. The romantics who replaced the realists are looking for new genre structures and transforming the old ones.

2. Romanticism as a movement in literature

Romanticism is, first of all, a special worldview based on the conviction of the superiority of “spirit” over “matter.” The creative principle, according to the romantics, is possessed by everything truly spiritual, which they identified with the truly human. And, on the contrary, everything material, in their opinion, coming to the fore, disfigures the true nature of man, does not allow his essence to manifest itself, in the conditions of bourgeois reality, it divides people, becomes a source of hostility between them, and leads to tragic situations. Positive hero in romanticism, as a rule, his level of consciousness rises above the world of self-interest around him, is incompatible with it, he sees the purpose of life not in making a career, not in accumulating wealth, but in service high ideals humanity - humanity, freedom, brotherhood. Negative romantic characters, in contrast to positive ones, are in harmony with society; their negativity lies primarily in the fact that they live according to the laws of the bourgeois environment around them. Consequently (and this is very important), romanticism is not only a striving for the ideal and poeticization of everything spiritually beautiful, it is at the same time an exposure of the ugly in its specific socio-historical form. Moreover, criticism of lack of spirituality was given to romantic art from the very beginning; it follows from the very essence of the romantic attitude towards public life. Of course, not all writers and not all genres manifest it with the required breadth and intensity. But critical pathos is evident not only in the dramas of Lermontov or in the “secular stories” of V. Odoevsky, it is also palpable in the elegies of Zhukovsky, revealing the sorrows and sorrows of a spiritually rich personality in the conditions of feudal Russia.

The romantic worldview, due to its dualism (the openness of “spirit” and “mother”), determines the depiction of life in sharp contrasts. The presence of contrast is one of the characteristic features of the romantic type of creativity and, therefore, style. The spiritual and material in the works of the romantics are sharply opposed to each other. A positive romantic hero is usually depicted as a lonely creature, moreover, doomed to suffer in his contemporary society (Giaour, Corsair in Byron, Chernets in Kozlov, Voinarovsky in Ryleev, Mtsyri in Lermontov and others). In depicting the ugly, the romantics often achieve such everyday concreteness that it is difficult to distinguish their work from the realistic. On the basis of a romantic worldview, it is possible to create not only individual images, but also entire works that are realistic in the type of creativity.

Romanticism is merciless towards those who, fighting for their own aggrandizement, thinking about enrichment or languishing with a thirst for pleasure, transgress universal moral laws in the name of this, trampling on universal human values (humanity, love of freedom and others).

In romantic literature there are many images of heroes infected with individualism (Manfred, Lara by Byron, Pechorin, Demon by Lermontov and others), but they look like deeply tragic creatures, suffering from loneliness, yearning to merge with the world of ordinary people. Revealing the tragedy of individualistic man, romanticism showed the essence of true heroism, manifesting itself in selfless service to the ideals of humanity. Personality in romantic aesthetics is not valuable in itself. Its value increases as the benefit it brings to the people increases. The affirmation of a person in romanticism consists, first of all, in liberating him from individualism, from the harmful effects of private property psychology.

At the center of romantic art is the human personality, its spiritual world, its ideals, anxieties and sorrows in the conditions of the bourgeois system of life, the thirst for freedom and independence. The romantic hero suffers from alienation, from the inability to change his situation. That's why popular genres romantic literature that most fully reflect the essence of the romantic worldview are tragedies, dramatic, lyrical-epic and lyric poem, short story, elegy. Romanticism revealed the incompatibility of everything truly human with the private property principle of life, and this is its great historical significance. He introduced into literature a man-fighter who, despite his doom, acts freely, because he realizes that struggle is necessary to achieve a goal.

Romantics are characterized by breadth and scale of artistic thinking. To embody ideas of universal human significance, they use Christian legends, biblical tales, ancient mythology, folk legends. Poets of the romantic movement resort to fantasy, symbolism and other conventional techniques of artistic depiction, which gives them the opportunity to show reality in such a wide spread that was completely unthinkable in realistic art. It is unlikely, for example, that it is possible to convey the entire content of Lermontov’s “Demon”, adhering to the principle realistic typification. The poet embraces the entire universe with his gaze, sketches cosmic landscapes, in the reproduction of which realistic concreteness, familiar in the conditions of earthly reality, would be inappropriate:

On the air ocean

Without a rudder and without sails

Silently floating in the fog

Choirs of slender luminaries.

The character of the poem was more consistent with in this case not accuracy, but, on the contrary, the uncertainty of the drawing, which to a greater extent conveys not a person’s ideas about the universe, but his feelings. In the same way, “grounding” and concretizing the image of the Demon would lead to a certain decrease in the understanding of him as a titanic being, endowed with superhuman power.

Interest in the conventional techniques of artistic representation is explained by the fact that romantics often pose philosophical and worldview questions for resolution, although, as already noted, they do not shy away from depicting the everyday, the prosaic, everything that is incompatible with the spiritual, human. In romantic literature (in a dramatic poem), the conflict is usually built on a collision not of characters, but of ideas, entire worldview concepts (“Manfred”, “Cain” by Byron, “Prometheus Unbound” by Shelley), which, naturally, took art beyond the limits of realistic concreteness.

The intellectuality of the romantic hero and his penchant for reflection are largely explained by the fact that he acts in different conditions than the characters in an educational novel or a “philistine” drama of the 18th century. The latter acted in the closed sphere of everyday relations, the theme of love occupied one of the central places. The romantics brought art to the wide expanses of history. They saw that the fate of people, the nature of their consciousness is determined not so much by social environment, what is the era as a whole, the political, social, spiritual processes occurring in it, which most decisively influence the future of all humanity. Thus, the idea of the self-worth of the individual, its dependence on itself, its will, collapsed, and its conditionality was revealed by the complex world of socio-historical circumstances.

Romanticism as a certain worldview and type of creativity should not be confused with romance, i.e. a dream of a wonderful goal, with aspiration towards an ideal and a passionate desire to see it realized. Romance, depending on a person’s views, can be either revolutionary, calling forward, or conservative, poeticizing the past. It can grow on a realistic basis and be utopian in nature.

Based on the assumption of the variability of history and human concepts, the romantics opposed the imitation of antiquity and defended the principles original art, based on a truthful reproduction of one’s national life, its way of life, morals, beliefs, etc.

Russian romantics defend the idea of “local color,” which involves depicting life in national-historical originality. This was the beginning of the penetration of national-historical specificity into art, which ultimately led to the victory of the realistic method in Russian literature.

3. The emergence of romanticism in Russia

In the 19th century, Russia was somewhat culturally isolated. Romanticism arose seven years later than in Europe. We can talk about his some imitation. In Russian culture there was no opposition between man and the world and God. Zhukovsky appears, who remakes German ballads in the Russian way: “Svetlana” and “Lyudmila”. Byron's version of romanticism was lived and felt in his work first by Pushkin, then by Lermontov.

Russian romanticism, starting with Zhukovsky, blossomed in the works of many other writers: K. Batyushkov, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, E. Baratynsky, F. Tyutchev, V. Odoevsky, V. Garshin, A. Kuprin, A. Blok, A. Green, K. Paustovsky and many others.

4. Romantic traditions in the works of writers

In my work I will focus on the analysis of the romantic works of writers A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov and A. S. Green.

4.1 The poem “Gypsies” as a romantic work by A. S. Pushkin

Along with the best examples of romantic lyrics, the most important creative achievement Pushkin’s romance became the poems created during the years of southern exile “ Prisoner of the Caucasus"(1821), "The Robber Brothers" (1822), " Bakhchisarai fountain"(1823) and the poem "Gypsies" completed in Mikhailovsky (1824). They most fully and vividly embodied the image of an individualist hero, disappointed and lonely, dissatisfied with life and striving for freedom.

Both the character of the demonic rebel and the genre of the romantic poem itself took shape in Pushkin’s work under the undoubted influence of Byron, who, according to Vyazemsky, “set to music the song of a generation,” Byron, the author of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and a cycle of so-called “oriental” poems. Following the path paved by Byron, Pushkin created an original, Russian version of the Byronic poem, which had a huge impact on Russian literature.

Following Byron, Pushkin chooses extraordinary people as heroes of his works. They are characterized by proud and strong personalities, marked by spiritual superiority over others and at odds with society. The romantic poet does not tell the reader about the hero’s past, about the conditions and circumstances of his life, and does not show how his character developed. Only in the most general terms, deliberately vague and unclear, does he speak about the reasons for his disappointment and enmity with society. It thickens an atmosphere of mystery and enigma around him.

The action of a romantic poem most often unfolds not in the environment to which the hero belongs by birth and upbringing, but in a special, exceptional setting, against the backdrop of majestic nature: the sea, mountains, waterfalls, storms - among semi-wild peoples, untouched European civilization. And this further emphasizes the unusualness of the hero, the exclusivity of his personality.

Lonely and alien to those around him, the hero of a romantic poem is akin only to the author, and sometimes even acts as his double. In a note about Byron, Pushkin wrote: “He created himself a second time, now under the turban of a renegade, now in the cloak of a corsair, now as a giaur...”. This characteristic is partially applicable to Pushkin himself: the images of the Prisoner and Aleko are largely autobiographical. They are like masks, from under which the author’s features are visible (the similarity is emphasized, in particular, by the consonance of names: Aleko - Alexander). The narration about the fate of the hero is therefore colored by deep personal feelings, and the story about his experiences imperceptibly turns into the lyrical confession of the author.

Despite the undoubted commonality of the romantic poems of Pushkin and Byron, Pushkin’s poem is deeply original, creatively independent, and in many ways polemical in relation to Byron. As in the lyrics, sharp features Byronic romanticism in Pushkin is softened, expressed less consistently and clearly, and largely transformed.

Much more significant in works are descriptions of nature, depictions of everyday life and customs, and finally, the function of other characters. Their opinions, their views on life coexist equally in the poem with the position of the main character.

The poem “Gypsies” written by Pushkin in 1824 reflects the severe crisis of the romantic worldview that the poet was experiencing at that time (1823 - 1824). He became disillusioned with all his romantic ideals: freedom, the high purpose of poetry, romantic eternal love.

From criticism of the “high society” the poet moves on to a direct denunciation of European civilization - the entire “urban” culture. She appears in "Gypsies" as a crowd of the gravest moral vices, the world of money-grubbing and slavery, as a kingdom of boredom and tedious monotony of life.

If only you knew

When would you imagine

The captivity of stuffy cities!

There are people in heaps behind the fence,

They don’t breathe the morning cool,

Not the spring smell of meadows;

They are ashamed of love, thoughts are driven away,

They trade according to their will,

They bow their heads before idols

And they ask for money and chains, -

in these terms Aleko tells Zemfira “about the fact that he left forever.”

Aleko enters into a sharp and irreconcilable conflict with the outside world (“he is persecuted by the law,” Zemfira tells his father), he breaks all ties with him and does not think about returning back, and his arrival in the gypsy camp is a real rebellion against society.

In “Gypsies,” finally, the patriarchal “natural” way of life and the world of civilization confront each other much more definitely and sharply. They appear as the embodiment of freedom and slavery, bright, sincere feelings and “dead bliss”, unpretentious poverty and idle luxury. In a gypsy camp

Everything is meager, wild, everything is discordant;

But everything is so alive and restless,

So alien to our dead negligence,

So alien to this idle life,

Like a monotonous slave song.

The “natural” environment in “Gypsies” is depicted - for the first time in southern poems - as an element of freedom. It is no coincidence that the “predatory” and warlike Circassians are replaced here by free, but “peaceful” gypsies, who are “timid and kind in soul.” After all, even for the terrible double murder, Aleko only paid with expulsion from the camp. But freedom itself is now recognized as a painful problem, as a complex moral and psychological category. In “Gypsies,” Pushkin expressed a new idea about the character of an individualist hero, about personal freedom in general.

Aleko, having come to the “sons of nature,” receives complete external freedom: “he is free just like them.” Aleko is ready to merge with the gypsies, live their lives, obey their customs. “He loves their canopy lodgings, / And the rapture of eternal laziness, / And their poor, sonorous language.” He eats “unharvested millet” with them, leads a bear around the villages, finds happiness in Zemfira’s love. The poet seems to remove all the obstacles on the hero’s path to a new world for him.

Nevertheless, Aleko is not given the opportunity to enjoy happiness and experience the taste of true freedom. The characteristic features of a romantic individualist still live in him: pride, self-will, a sense of superiority over other people. Even peaceful life in a gypsy camp cannot make him forget about the storms he experienced, about fame and luxury, about the temptations of European civilization:

Its sometimes magical glory

A distant star beckoned,

Unexpected luxury and fun

People came to him sometimes;

Over a lonely head

And the thunder often rumbled...

The main thing is that Aleko is unable to overcome the rebellious passions raging “in his tormented chest.” And it is no coincidence that the author warns the reader about the approach of an inevitable catastrophe - a new explosion of passions (“They will wake up: wait”).

The inevitability of a tragic outcome is thus rooted in the very nature of the hero, poisoned by European civilization and its entire spirit. It would seem that he has completely merged with the free gypsy community, but he still remains internally alien to it. It seemed that very little was required of him: so that, as true gypsy, he “didn’t know a reliable nest and wasn’t used to anything.” But Aleko cannot “get used to it”, cannot live without Zemfira and her love. It seems natural to him even to demand constancy and fidelity from her, to consider that she belongs entirely to him:

Don't change, my gentle friend!

And I... one of my desires

Sharing love, leisure with you,

And voluntary exile.

“You are more precious to him than the world,” the Old Gypsy explains to his daughter the reason and meaning of Aleko’s insane jealousy.

It is this all-consuming passion, the rejection of any other view of life and love that makes Aleko internally unfree. This is where the contradiction between “his freedom and their will” manifests itself most clearly. Not being free himself, he inevitably becomes a tyrant and despot in relation to others. The hero's tragedy is thereby given a sharp ideological meaning. The point, then, is not simply that Aleko cannot cope with his passions. He cannot overcome the narrow, limited idea of freedom that is characteristic of him as a man of civilization. He brings into the patriarchal environment the views, norms and prejudices of the “enlightenment” - the world he left behind. Therefore, he considers himself entitled to take revenge on Zemfira for her free love for To a young gypsy, severely punish them both. Back side his freedom-loving aspirations inevitably turn out to be selfishness and arbitrariness.

This is best demonstrated by Aleko’s dispute with the Old Gypsy - a dispute in which a complete mutual misunderstanding is revealed: after all, the gypsies have neither law nor property (“We are wild, we have no laws,” the Old Gypsy will say in the finale), they have no and concepts of law.

Wanting to console Aleko, the old man tells him “a story about himself” - about the betrayal of his beloved wife Mariula to Zemfira’s mother. Convinced that love is alien to any coercion or violence, he will calmly and firmly overcome his misfortune. In what happened, he even sees a fatal inevitability - a manifestation of the eternal law of life: “Joy is given to everyone in succession; / What happened will not happen again.” It is this wise calm, uncomplaining humility in the face of a higher power that Aleko cannot understand or accept:

Why didn't you hurry?

Immediately after the ungrateful

And to predators and to her, the insidious one,

Didn't you plunge a dagger into your heart?

..............................................

I'm not like that. No, I'm not arguing

I will not give up my rights,

Or at least I’ll enjoy vengeance.

Particularly noteworthy is Aleko’s reasoning that in order to protect his “rights” he is able to destroy even a sleeping enemy, push him into the “abyss of the sea” and enjoy the sound of his fall.

But revenge, violence and freedom, the Old Gypsy thinks, are incompatible. For true freedom presupposes, first of all, respect for another person, for his personality, his feelings. At the end of the poem, he not only accuses Aleko of selfishness (“You only want freedom for yourself”), but also emphasizes the incompatibility of his beliefs and moral principles with truly free morality gypsy camp(“You were not born for the wild share”).

For a romantic hero, the loss of his beloved “is tantamount to the collapse of the “world.” Therefore, the murder he committed expresses not only his disappointment in wild freedom, but also a rebellion against the world order. Fleeing from the law pursuing him, he cannot imagine a way of life that would not be regulated by law and justice. Love for him is not a “whim of the heart,” as for Zemfira and the Old Gypsy, but marriage. For Aleko “renounced only the external, superficial forms of culture, and not its internal foundations.”

One can obviously speak of a dual, critical and at the same time sympathetic attitude of the author towards his hero, for the poet had liberating aspirations and hopes associated with the character of the individualist hero. By deromanticizing Aleko, Pushkin does not expose him at all, but reveals the tragedy of his desire for freedom, which inevitably turns into internal lack of freedom, fraught with the danger of egoistic tyranny.

For a positive assessment of gypsy freedom, it is enough that it is morally higher, purer than a civilized society. Another thing is that as the plot develops, it becomes clear that the world of the gypsy camp, with which Aleko so inevitably comes into conflict, is also not cloudless, not idyllic. Just as “fatal passions” lurk in the hero’s soul under the cover of external carelessness, so the life of the gypsies is deceptive in appearance. At first, it seems akin to the existence of a “migratory bird” that knows “neither care nor labor.” “Frisky will”, “the rapture of eternal laziness”, “peace”, “carelessness” - this is how the poet characterizes the free gypsy life.

However, in the second half of the poem the picture changes dramatically. “Peaceful,” kind, carefree “sons of nature” also, it turns out, are not free from passions. The signal heralding these changes is Zemfira’s song, full of fire and passion, which is not by chance placed in the very center of the work, in its compositional focus. This song is imbued not only with the rapture of love, it sounds like an evil mockery of a hateful husband, full of hatred and contempt for him.

Having arisen so suddenly, the theme of passion rapidly grows and receives a truly catastrophic development. One after another, there are scenes of Zemfira's stormy and passionate date with the Young Gypsy, Aleko's insane jealousy and the second date - with its tragic and bloody denouement.

The scene of Aleko's nightmare is noteworthy. The hero remembers his former love (he “pronounces a different name”), which was also probably resolved by a cruel drama (possibly the murder of his beloved). Passions, hitherto tamed, peacefully dormant “in his tormented chest,” instantly awaken and flare up with a hot flame. This mistake of passions, their tragic collision, constitutes the climax of the poem. It is no coincidence that in the second half of the work the dramatic form becomes predominant. This is where almost all of the dramatized episodes of Gypsy are centered.

The original idyll of gypsy freedom collapses under the pressure of a violent play of passions. Passions are recognized in the poem as a universal law of life. They live everywhere: “in the captivity of stuffy cities,” and in the chest of a disappointed hero, and in a free gypsy community. It is impossible to hide from them, there is no point in running. Hence the hopeless conclusion in the epilogue: “And everywhere are fatal passions, / And there is no protection from fate.” These words accurately and clearly express the ideological result of the work (and partly of the entire southern cycle of poems).

And this is natural: where passions live, there must also be their victims - people suffering, chilled, disappointed. Freedom in itself does not guarantee happiness. Escape from civilization is pointless and futile.

The material that Pushkin first artistically introduced into Russian literature is inexhaustible: characteristic images the poet's peers, the European enlightened and suffering youth of the 19th century, the world of the humiliated and insulted, the elements peasant life and the national historical world; great socio-historical conflicts and the world of experiences of a solitary human soul, engulfed in an all-consuming idea that has become its destiny, etc. And each of these areas was in further development literature of its great artists - the wonderful successors of Pushkin - Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Goncharov, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy.

4.2 “Mtsyri” - a romantic poem by M. Yu. Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov began writing poetry early: he was only 13-14 years old. He studied with his predecessors - Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin.

In general, Lermontov’s lyrics are imbued with sorrow and seem to sound like a complaint about life. But a real poet speaks in poetry not about his personal “I”, but about a man of his time, about the reality around him. Lermontov speaks about his time - about the dark and difficult era of the 30s of the 19th century.

All the poet’s work is imbued with this heroic spirit of action and struggle. It recalls the time when the mighty words of the poet ignited a fighter for battle and sounded “like a bell on a veche tower in the days of national celebrations and troubles” (“Poet”). He uses as an example the merchant Kalashnikov, boldly defending his honor, or a young monk fleeing from a monastery to experience the “bliss of freedom” (“Mtsyri”). In the mouth of a veteran soldier, recalling the Battle of Borodino, he puts words addressed to his contemporaries, who insisted on reconciliation with reality: “Yes, there were people in our time, not like the current tribe: heroes - not you!” (“Borodino”).

Lermontov's favorite hero is a hero of active action. Lermontov's knowledge of the world, his prophecies and predictions always had as their subject the practical aspiration of man and served it. No matter how gloomy the poet’s forecasts were, no matter how bleak his forebodings and predictions were, they never paralyzed his will to fight, but only forced him to seek the law of action with new persistence.

At the same time, no matter what tests Lermontov’s dreams are subjected to when colliding with the world of reality, no matter how the surrounding prose of life contradicts them, no matter how the poet regrets unfulfilled hopes and destroyed ideals, he still heroic fearlessness went on a feat of knowledge. And nothing could turn him away from a harsh and merciless assessment of himself, his ideals, desires and hopes.

Cognition and action are the two principles that Lermontov reunited in the single “I” of his hero. The circumstances of the time limited the range of his poetic possibilities: he showed himself mainly as a poet of a proud personality, defending himself and his human pride.

In Lermontov’s poetry, the public echoes the deeply intimate and personal: family drama, “the terrible fate of father and son,” which brought the poet a chain of hopeless suffering, is aggravated by pain unrequited love, and the tragedy of love is revealed as the tragedy of the entire poetic perception of the world. His pain revealed to him the pain of others; through suffering, he discovered his human kinship with others, starting from the serf peasant of the village of Tarkhany and ending with the great poet of England Byron.

The topic of the poet and poetry particularly excited Lermontov and attracted his attention for many years. For him this topic was connected with all the great questions of the time, it was integral part Total historical development humanity. The poet and the people, poetry and revolution, poetry in the fight against bourgeois society and serfdom - these are the aspects of this problem for Lermontov.

Lermontov was in love with the Caucasus from early childhood. The majesty of the mountains, the crystal purity and at the same time dangerous power of the rivers, the bright unusual greenery and people, freedom-loving and proud, shook the imagination of a big-eyed and impressionable child. Perhaps this is why, even in his youth, Lermontov was so attracted to the image of a rebel, on the verge of death, making an angry protest speech (the poem “Confession”, 1830, the action takes place in Spain) before the elder monk. Or maybe it was a premonition of his own death and a subconscious protest against the monastic prohibition to rejoice in everything that is given by God in this life. This acute desire to experience ordinary human, earthly happiness is heard in the dying confession of young Mtsyri, the hero of one of Lermontov’s most remarkable poems about the Caucasus (1839 - the poet himself had very little time left).

“Mtsyri” is a romantic poem by M. Yu. Lermontov. The plot of this work, its idea, conflict and composition are closely related to the image of the main character, with his aspirations and experiences. Lermontov is looking for his ideal fighter hero and finds him in the image of Mtsyri, in whom he embodies the best features advanced people of its time.

The uniqueness of Mtsyri's personality as a romantic hero is also emphasized by the unusual circumstances of his life. From childhood, fate doomed him to a dull monastic existence, which was completely alien to his ardent, fiery nature. Captivity could not kill his desire for freedom; on the contrary, it even more fueled his desire to “go to his native country” at any cost.

The author pays main attention to the world of Mtsyri’s internal experiences, and not to the circumstances of his external life. The author briefly and epically calmly talks about them in the short second chapter. And the entire poem is a monologue by Mtsyri, his confession to the monk. This means that such a composition of the poem, characteristic of romantic works, imbues it with a lyrical element that prevails over the epic. It is not the author who describes Mtsyri’s feelings and experiences, but the hero himself who talks about it. The events that happen to him are shown through his subjective perception. The composition of the monologue is also subordinated to the task of gradually revealing his inner world. First, the hero talks about his secret thoughts and dreams, hidden from outsiders. “A child at heart, a monk by destiny,” he was possessed by a “fiery passion” for freedom, a thirst for life. And the hero, as an exceptional, rebellious personality, challenges fate. This means that Mtsyri’s character, his thoughts and actions determine the plot of the poem.

Having escaped during a thunderstorm, Mtsyri for the first time sees the world that was hidden from him by the monastery walls. That’s why he peers so intently at every picture that opens to him, listens to the polyphonic world of sounds. Mtsyri is blinded by the beauty and splendor of the Caucasus. He retains in his memory “lush fields, hills covered with a crown of trees growing all around,” “mountain ranges as bizarre as dreams.” These pictures evoke in the hero vague memories of his native country, which he was deprived of as a child.

The landscape in the poem not only constitutes a romantic background that surrounds the hero. It helps to reveal his character, that is, it becomes one of the ways to create romantic image. Since nature in the poem is given in Mtsyri’s perception, his character can be judged by what exactly attracts the hero to it, how he talks about it. The diversity and richness of the landscape described by Mtsyri emphasize the monotony of the monastery environment. The young man is attracted by the power and scope of Caucasian nature; he is not afraid of the dangers lurking in it. For example, he enjoys the splendor of the vast blue vault in the early morning, and then endures the withering heat of the mountains.

Thus, we see that Mtsyri perceives nature in all its integrity, and this speaks of the spiritual breadth of his nature. Describing nature, Mtsyri first of all draws attention to its greatness and grandeur, and this leads him to the conclusion about the perfection and harmony of the world. The romanticism of the landscape is enhanced by how figuratively and emotionally Mtsyri speaks about it. His speech often uses colorful epithets (“angry shaft”, “burning abyss”, “sleepy flowers”). The emotionality of the images of nature is also enhanced by the unusual comparisons found in Mtsyri’s story. In the young man's story about nature, one can feel love and sympathy for all living things: singing birds, a jackal crying like a child. Even the snake slithers, “playing and basking.” The culmination of Mtsyri's three-day wanderings is his fight with the leopard, in which his fearlessness, thirst for fight, contempt for death, and humane attitude towards the defeated enemy were revealed with particular force. The battle with the leopard is depicted in the spirit of the romantic tradition. The leopard is described very conditionally as bright image a predator in general. This “eternal guest of the desert” is endowed with a “bloody gaze” and a “mad leap.” The victory of a weak youth over a mighty beast is romantic. It symbolizes the power of a person, his spirit, the ability to overcome all obstacles encountered on his way. The dangers that Mtsyri faces are romantic symbols of the evil that accompanies a person throughout his life. But here they are extremely concentrated, since the real life of Mtsyri is compressed to three days. And in his dying hour, realizing the tragic hopelessness of his situation, the hero did not exchange it for “paradise and eternity.” Through all my short life Mtsyri carried a powerful passion for freedom, for struggle.

In Lermontov's lyrics, issues of social behavior merge with a deep analysis of the human soul, taken in the fullness of its life feelings and aspirations. The result is a complete image lyrical hero- tragic, but full of strength, courage, pride and nobility. Before Lermontov, there was no such organic fusion of man and citizen in Russian poetry, just as there was no deep reflection on issues of life and behavior.

4.3 “Scarlet Sails” - a romantic story by A. S. Green

The romantic story “Scarlet Sails” by Alexander Stepanovich Green personifies a wonderful youthful dream that will certainly come true if you believe and wait.

The writer himself lived hard life. It is almost incomprehensible how this gloomy man, untainted, carried through his painful existence the gift of a powerful imagination, purity of feelings and a shy smile. The difficulties he experienced robbed the writer of his love for reality: it was too terrible and hopeless. He always tried to get away from her, believing that it was better to live with elusive dreams than with the “trash and rubbish” of every day.

Having started writing, Green created in his work heroes with strong and independent characters, cheerful and courageous, who inhabited beautiful land, full of blooming gardens, lush meadows and endless sea. This fictitious “lucky land”, not marked on any geographical map, should be the one " a piece of paradise", where everyone living is happy, there is no hunger and disease, wars and misfortunes, and its inhabitants are engaged in constructive work and creativity.

Russian life for the writer was limited to the philistine Vyatka, a dirty trade school, shelters, backbreaking labor, prison and chronic hunger. But somewhere beyond the gray horizon sparkled countries created from light, sea winds and flowering herbs. People, brown from the sun, lived there - gold miners, hunters, artists, cheerful vagabonds, selfless women, cheerful and gentle, like children, but above all - sailors.

Green loved not so much the sea as the sea coasts he imagined, where everything that he considered the most attractive in the world was connected: archipelagos of legendary islands, sand dunes overgrown with flowers, foamy sea distances, warm lagoons sparkling with bronze from the abundance of fish, ancient forests, the smell of lush thickets mixed with the smell of salty breezes, and, finally, cozy seaside towns.

Almost every story by Green contains descriptions of these non-existent cities - Lissa, Zurbagan, Gel-Gyu and Gerton. The writer put into the appearance of these fictional cities the features of all the Black Sea ports he had seen.

All the writer’s stories are full of dreams of a “dazzling incident” and joy, but most of all his story “Scarlet Sails”. It is characteristic that Green thought about and began writing this captivating and fabulous book in Petrograd in 1920, when, after typhus, he wandered around the icy city, looking for a new place to stay every night with random, semi-familiar people.

In the romantic story “Scarlet Sails” Green develops his long-standing idea that people need faith in a fairy tale, it excites hearts, does not allow them to calm down, makes them passionately desire such a thing. romantic life. But miracles do not come by themselves; every person must cultivate a sense of beauty, the ability to perceive the surrounding beauty, and actively intervene in life. The writer was convinced that if you take away a person’s ability to dream, then the most important need that gives rise to culture, art and the desire to fight for a wonderful future will disappear.

From the very beginning of the story, the reader finds himself in extraordinary world, created by the imagination of the writer. The harsh region and gloomy people make Longren, who has lost his beloved and loving wife, suffer. But a strong-willed man, he finds the strength to resist others and even raise his daughter as a bright and bright creature. Rejected by her peers, Assol perfectly understands nature, which accepts the girl into its arms. This world enriches the heroine’s soul, making her a wonderful creation, the ideal to which we should strive. “Assol penetrated the tall, dew-sprinkling meadow grass; holding her hand palm down over her panicles, she walked, smiling at the flowing touch. Looking into the special faces of flowers, into the tangle of stems, she discerned almost human hints there - postures, efforts, movements, features and glances...”

Assol's father made a living by making and selling toys. The world of toys in which Assol lived naturally shaped her character. And in life she had to face gossip and evil. It was quite natural that the real world scared her. Running away from him, trying to keep a sense of beauty in her heart, she believed in the beautiful fairy tale about scarlet sails that was told to her kind person. This kind but unhappy man undoubtedly wished her well, but his fairy tale turned out to be suffering for her. Assol believed in the fairy tale and made it part of her soul. The girl was ready for a miracle - and a miracle found her. And yet, it was the fairy tale that helped her not to sink into the swamp of philistine life.

There, in this swamp, lived people for whom dreams were inaccessible. They were ready to mock any person who lived, thought, and felt differently from the way they lived, thought, and felt. Therefore, Assol, with her wonderful inner world, with her a magical dream, they considered the village fool. It seems to me that these people were deeply unhappy. They thought and felt limitedly, their very desires were limited, but subconsciously they suffered from the thought that they were missing something.

This “something” was not food, shelter, although for many even this was not what they would like, no, it was a person’s spiritual need to at least occasionally see the beautiful, to come into contact with the beautiful. It seems to me that this need in a person cannot be eradicated by anything.

And it is not their crime, but their misfortune that they have become so coarse in soul that they have not learned to see beauty in thoughts and feelings. They saw only a dirty world and lived in this reality. Assol lived in another, fictional world, incomprehensible and therefore not accepted by the average person. Dream and reality collided. This contradiction ruined Assol.

This is a very life fact, probably experienced by the writer himself. Very often, people who do not understand another person, perhaps even a great and beautiful one, consider him a fool. It's easier for them this way.

Green shows how, through intricate paths, two people, created for each other, move towards a meeting. Gray lives in a completely different world. Wealth, luxury, power are given to him by birthright. And in the soul there lives a dream not about jewelry and feasts, but about the sea and sails. In defiance of his family, he becomes a sailor, sails around the world, and one day an accident brings him to the tavern of the village where Assol lives. Like a crude joke, they tell Gray the story of a madwoman who is waiting for the prince on a ship with scarlet sails.

Seeing Assol, he fell in love with her, appreciating the beauty and spiritual qualities of the girl. “He felt like a blow - a simultaneous blow to his heart and head. Along the road, facing him, was that same Ship Assol... The amazing features of her face, reminiscent of the secret of indelibly exciting, although simple words, appeared before him now in the light of her gaze.” Love helped Gray understand Assol’s soul and make the only possible decision - to replace his galliot “Secret” with scarlet sails. Now for Assol he becomes fairy-tale hero, whom she had been waiting for so long and to whom she unconditionally gave her “golden” heart.

The writer rewards the heroine with love for her beautiful soul, kind and faithful heart. But Gray is also happy with this meeting. The love of such an extraordinary girl as Assol is a rare success.

It was as if two strings sounded together... Soon the morning will come when the ship approaches the shore, and Assol shouts: “I’m here! Here I am!" - and starts running straight through the water.

The romantic story “Scarlet Sails” is beautiful for its optimism, faith in a dream, and the victory of a dream over the philistine world. It is beautiful because it inspires hope that there are people in the world who are able to hear and understand each other. Assol, accustomed only to ridicule, nevertheless escaped from this terrible world and sailed to the ship, proving to everyone that any dream can come true if you really believe in it, do not betray it, do not doubt it.

Green was not only a magnificent landscape painter and master of plot, but also a subtle psychologist. He wrote about self-sacrifice, courage - the heroic traits inherent in the most ordinary people. He wrote about his love for work, for his profession, about the lack of knowledge and the power of nature. Finally, very few writers wrote so purely, carefully and emotionally about love for a woman, as Greene did.

The writer believed in man and believed that everything beautiful on earth depends on the will of strong, honest-hearted people (“Scarlet Sails”, 1923; “Heart of the Desert”, 1923; “Running on the Waves”, 1928; “ gold chain", "The Road to Nowhere", 1929, etc.).

Greene said that “the whole earth, with everything that is on it, is given to us for life wherever it is.” A fairy tale is needed not only for children, but also for adults. It causes excitement - the source of high human passions. She does not allow you to calm down and always shows new, sparkling distances, a different life, she worries and makes you passionately desire this life. This is its value, and this is the value of the clear and powerful charm of Greene's stories.

What unites the works of Green, Lermontov and Pushkin that I reviewed? Russian romantics believed that the subject of the image should only be life, taken in its poetic moments, primarily the feelings and passions of a person.

Only creativity that grows on a national basis can, according to the theorists of Russian romanticism, be inspired and not rational. The imitator, in their opinion, is devoid of inspiration.

The historical significance of Russian romantic aesthetics lies in the struggle against metaphysical views on aesthetic categories, in the defense of historicism, dialectical views on art, in calls for the concrete reproduction of life in all its connections and contradictions. Its main provisions played a major constructive role in the formation of the theory of critical realism.

Conclusion

Having examined romanticism as an artistic movement in my work, I came to the conclusion that the peculiarity of every work of art and literature is that it does not die with its creator and its era, but continues to live later, and in the process of this later life historically naturally enters into new relationships with history. And these relationships can illuminate the work for contemporaries with a new light, can enrich it with new, previously unnoticed semantic facets, bring from its depth to the surface such important, but not yet recognized by previous generations, moments of psychological and moral content, the meaning of which for the first time could be realized. - truly appreciated only in the conditions of a subsequent, more mature era.

Bibliography

1. A. G. Kutuzov “Textbook-reader. In the world of literature. 8th grade", Moscow, 2002. Articles "Romantic traditions in literature" (pp. 216 - 218), "Romantic hero" (pp. 218 - 219), "When and why romanticism appeared" (pp. 219 - 220).

2. R. Gaim “Romantic School”, Moscow, 1891.

3. “Russian Romanticism”, Leningrad, 1978.

4. N. G. Bykova “Literature. Schoolchildren's Handbook", Moscow, 1995.

5. O. E. Orlova “700 best school essays", Moscow, 2003.

6. A. M. Gurevich “Romanticism of Pushkin”, Moscow, 1993.

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Russian romanticism

Revolutionaries of romanticism of the first half of the 19th century. direct “their face” to the future, strive to embody the ideas of struggle, equality and universal happiness of people. A prominent representative of revolutionary romanticism was K.F. Ryleev, in whose works the image of a strong man was formed. His human hero is zealously ready to defend the fiery ideas of patriotism and the desire for freedom of his fatherland. Ryleev was obsessed with the idea of “equality and free thinking.” It was these motives that became the fundamental tendencies of his poetry, which is clearly visible in the thought “The Death of Ermak.”

Conservatives of romanticism drew the plots of their masterpieces mainly from the past, as they took legends and epic trends as a literary basis, or they were consigned to oblivion the afterlife. Such images carried the reader into the land of imagination, dreams and reverie. A prominent representative of conservative romanticism was V.A. Zhukovsky. The basis of his works was sentimentalism, where sensuality prevailed over reason, and the hero knew how to empathize and sensitively respond to what was happening around him. His first work was the elegy “Rural Cemetery”, which was filled landscape descriptions and philosophical reasoning.

Romantic in literary works great attention devotes himself to the stormy elements and philosophical discussions about human existence. Where circumstances do not influence the evolution of character, and spiritual culture gives birth to a special, new type of person in life.

The great representatives of romanticism were: E.A. Baratynsky, V.A. Zhukovsky, K.F. Ryleev, F.I. Tyutchev, V.K. Kuchelbecker, V.F. Odoevsky, I.I. Kozlov.

a period in the history of literature of the late 18th - first half of the 19th century, as well as a movement in art and literature that arose in Europe and America at that time with common artistic ideas and a literary style, distinguished by a certain set of themes, images and techniques. Romantic works are characterized by a rejection of rationalism and rigid literary rules characteristic of classicism, the literary movement from which romanticism was based. Romanticism contrasts the strict rules of classicism with the freedom of the writer-creator. The individuality of the author, his unique inner world are the highest values for romantics. The worldview of the romantics is characterized by the so-called dual world - the opposition of an ideal to a meaningless, boring or vulgar reality. The ideal beginning in romanticism can be either a creation of the imagination, an artist’s dream, or the distant past, or the way of life of “natural” peoples and people, free from the chains of civilization, or other world. Melancholy, sadness, inescapable grief, despair are the moods that distinguish romantic literature.

The word "romantic" existed in European languages long before the era of romanticism. It meant, firstly, belonging to the genre of the novel, and secondly, belonging to the literatures that emerged in the Middle Ages in the Romance languages - Italian, French, Spanish. Thirdly, what was especially expressive and exciting (sublime and picturesque) in life and literature was called romantic. The word “romantic” as a characteristic of medieval poetry, which was in many ways unlike ancient poetry, spread after the publication in England of T. Wharton’s treatise “On the Origin of Romantic Poetry in Europe” (1774). Definition new era in European literature and the new ideal of beauty, the word “romantic” appeared in aesthetic treatises and literary critical articles of the late 1790s. German writers and thinkers belonging to the so-called. "Jena school" (named after the city of Jena). Works by the brothers F. and A. Schlegel, Novalis (the poetic cycle “Hymns for the Night,” 1800; the novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” 1802), L. Tieck (the comedy “Puss in Boots,” 1797; the novel “The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald” , 1798) expressed such features of romanticism as an orientation toward folk poetry and medieval literature, installation on the connection between literature and philosophy and religion. They own the concept of “romantic irony,” meaning irony caused by the discrepancy between a sublime ideal and reality: romantic irony is outwardly aimed at an abstract ideal, but in essence its subject is ordinary, dull or vicious reality. In the works of the late romantics: the prose writer E. T. A. Hoffman (the cycle of fantastic short stories and fairy tales “Serapion’s Brothers”, 1819–21; the novel “The Everyday Views of the Cat Moore...”, 1819–21, not completed), the poet and prose writer G. Heine (poetic “Book of Songs”, 1827; poem “Germany, winter's tale", 1844; prose “Travel Pictures”, 1829–30) - the dominant motif is the gap between dreams and everyday reality, grotesque techniques are abundantly used, including for satirical purposes.

In English literature, romanticism was expressed primarily in the works of the so-called poets. “Lake School” by W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, R. Southey, in the poetry of P. B. Shelley and J. Keats. Like German, English romanticism cultivates national antiquity, but it is less philosophical and religious. In Europe, the most famous of the English romantics was J. G. Byron, who created examples of the genre of romantic poems (“The Giaour,” 1813; “The Bride of Abydos,” 1813; “Lara,” 1814). The poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–21) enjoyed particular success. Byron created sublime images of individualistic heroes challenging the world; his poetry has strong atheistic motives and criticism of modern civilization. In prose, the English romantic W. Scott created the genre historical novel, and C.R. Methurin - the adventure-fantasy novel “Melmoth the Wanderer” (1820). The term “romanticism” as a designation for a new literary period began to be used in England quite late, in the 1840s.

French romanticism clearly manifested itself in the genre of the novel dedicated to selfishness and the “disease of the century” - disappointment: “Adolphe” (1815) by B. Constant, the novels of Stendhal, “Confession of a Son of the Century” (1836) by A. de Musset. French romantics turn to the exotic material of the life of the social bottom, like, for example, the early O. de Balzac, like J. Janin in the novel “The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman” (1829). The prose of Balzac, V. Hugo, J. Janin, dedicated to the depiction of strong passions, full of bright contrasts and spectacular images, was called “violent literature.” In French drama Romanticism was established in a fierce struggle with classicism (the dramas of V. Hugo).

In US literature, romanticism is represented in prose: novels from the history of North America by J. F. Cooper, novels and short stories by W. Irving, fantasy and detective stories by E. A. Poe.

In Russia, the first romantic works were lyric poems and ballads by V. A. Zhukovsky, inspired by Western European romanticism. The influence of J. G. Byron is noticeable in the works of A. S. Pushkin, especially in the works of the first half. 1820s (Russian version of the Byronic romantic poem). Romantic traits characteristic of the lyrics and poems of E. A. Baratynsky and other poets. The prose of Russian romanticism is dominated by the so-called. secular, fantastic, philosophical and historical stories (A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, V. F. Odoevsky, N. V. Gogol, etc.). Romantic motives of loneliness are presented in the works of M. Yu. Lermontov. Romantic symbolism of dissonance, discord between man and the natural world, existence as an unstable combination of two principles: harmony and chaos - the motives of F. I. Tyutchev’s poetry.

The term “romanticism” is also used to designate an artistic method that includes works created after the end of romanticism as a literary period. Thus, researchers attribute many works of literature of the 20th century to romanticism, for example, the prose of A. Green and K. G. Paustovsky. A literary movement such as symbolism is sometimes considered as a variant of romanticism.

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ROMANTICISM

1. A movement in literature and art of the first quarter of the 19th century, which fought against the canons of classicism of the 18th century, highlighted the cult of personality and feelings, and used historical and folk poetic themes in its work (lit.).

2. A state of mind characterized by the predominance of dreamy contemplation and feeling over reason, the idealization of reality (book). “Romanticism is nothing more than the inner world of a person’s soul, the innermost life of his heart.” Belinsky .

Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary. D.N. Ushakov. 1935-1940.

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Books

Romanticism, Norbert Wolf. An ongoing series produced jointly with the German publishing house Taschen. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. in the environment German philosophers, writers and artists began to spread a new view of...