Tradition in literature. Traditions of spiritual genres of Russian literature in the works of V.N.

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 multiplicity 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, one and 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 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 “catalogue” 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 patterns of behavior. 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

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.portal-slovo.ru/

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General idea of ​​the literary process. Tradition and innovation

The final chapter of our book, devoted to the literary process, is perhaps the most difficult from a methodological point of view. The fact is that in order to adequately understand the laws of the literary process, it is necessary to at least in general imagine the body of literary works of different eras and cultures. Then the logic of the formation of genres, the projection of some cultures onto other eras, and the patterns of stylistic development begin to emerge. But a novice philologist, of course, almost never has such a historical and literary base, so there is always a danger of turning the conversation into pure scholasticism: a student can honestly “memorize” some information, but the real, living content of theoretical positions is not yet available to him. It is difficult, for example, to talk about the features of the Baroque style if most readers do not know a single poet of this era.

On the other hand, it is also unrealistic to clarify each position in detail with many examples, each time plunging into the history of literature - this would require the use of enormous material that goes beyond the scope of our manual and which the student physically cannot cope with. Therefore, finding a balance between what is necessary and what is sufficient is very difficult.

Understanding all these objective difficulties, we will be forced to greatly schematize the presentation, focusing only on the most important aspects. There is simply no other way, in any case, the author does not know of a single manual where different facets of literary the process would be covered quite fully and accessible for a novice philologist. There are many excellent studies devoted to different aspects of the literary process, but to bring together together there is a huge and contradictory material, making it accessible to a junior student, and even within the confines of one chapter, is a completely unrealistic task.

Therefore, the proposed chapter is only an introduction to the problem, which briefly outlines the main issues related to the study of the literary process.

The literary process is a complex concept. The term itself appeared relatively recently, already in the 20th century, and gained popularity even later, only starting in the 50s and 60s. Before this, attention was paid to some individual aspects of literary relationships, but the literary process was not comprehended in its entirety. In the full sense of the word, it has not been comprehended even today; only the main components of the literary process have been identified, and possible research methodologies have been outlined. Summarizing various views, we can say that understanding the literary process involves solving several scientific problems:

1. It is necessary to establish connections between literature and the socio-historical process. Literature, of course, is connected with history, with the life of society, it reflects it to some extent, but it is neither a copy nor a mirror. At some moments, at the level of images and themes, there is a rapprochement with historical reality, at others, on the contrary, literature moves away from it. Understanding the logic of this “attraction-repulsion” and finding transitional links connecting historical and literary processes is an extremely complex task and hardly has a final solution. As such a transitional link “from life to literature,” either religious-symbolic forms or social stereotypes (or, in the terminology of A. A. Shakhov, “social types”), which are formed in society in a certain period and embodied in art, were considered; then the socio-psychological atmosphere in society (in the terminology of Yu. B. Kuzmenko - “social emotions”); then the structure of the aesthetic ideal, reflecting both ideas about a person and aesthetic traditions (for example, this approach is typical for the works of N. A. Yastrebova), etc. There were a lot of concepts, but the mechanism for transforming historical reality into works of art remains a mystery . At the same time, attempts to find this transition link stimulate the emergence of interesting research, unexpected and original concepts in both domestic and foreign aesthetics. Let's say, it is the search for these links, at the same time concrete historical and “transhistorical” (in the terminology P. Bourdieu), then are of the same type for any moment in history, gives rise to the concept of “new historicism” - one of the most popular methodologies in modern Western European science. According to the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, the author of this concept, it is useless to “impose” any general laws on history based on today’s coordinate system. You need to start from the “historicity of the object”, that is, every time you need to enter into the historical contextof this work. And only by comparing the set with such In the image of the data obtained, including the historicity of the researcher himself, we can notice elements of commonality and “overcome” history. P. Bourdieu’s concept is popular today, but all questions it, Of course it doesn't take off. The search for an adequate methodology continues, and definitive answers are hardly possible.

2. In addition to “external” connections, that is, connections with history, psychology, etc., literature also has a system of internal connections, that is, constantly relates itself to its own history. Not a single writer of any era ever begins to write “from scratch”; he always consciously or unconsciously takes into account the experience of his predecessors. He writes in a certain genre, in which centuries-old literary experience has been accumulated (it is no coincidence that M. M. Bakhtin called the genre “memory of literature”), he looks for the type of literature that is closest to himself (epic, lyric, drama) and inevitably takes into account the laws adopted for this type . Finally, he absorbs many of the author’s traditions, correlating his work with one of his predecessors. All this adds up internal laws development of the literary process, which do not directly correlate with the socio-historical situation. For example, the genre of an elegiac poem, permeated with sadness and sometimes tragedy, can manifest itself in different sociohistorical situations, but will always correlate itself with the genre of elegy - regardless of the desire and will of the author.

That's why the concept of “literary process” includes the formation of generic, genre and stylistic traditions.

3. Literary process can be viewed from another point of view: how the process of formation, development and change of artistic styles. Here a number of questions arise: how and why styles arise, what influence they have on the further development of culture, how an individual style is formed and how important it is for the development of the literary process, what are the stylistic dominants of a certain era, etc.

It is clear that we will receive any comprehensive understanding of the literary process only if we take into account all these issues, if these issues themselves are understood systematically and interconnected. At the early stages of mastering the science of philology, these relationships are not yet felt, so further conversation will be conducted more in an analytical than in a synthetic manner; first you need to understand the different components of the literary process, and only then, having more experience, establish connections between these components.

Tradition and innovation - the most important components of the literary process. There is not a single great work of literature that is not connected by thousands of threads with the context of world culture, but in the same way it is impossible to imagine a significant aesthetic phenomenon that has not enriched world literature with something of its own. Therefore, tradition and innovation are flip sides of the same coin: true tradition always presupposes innovation, and innovation is possible only against the backdrop of tradition.

One of the most famous philologists of the 20th century, M. M. Bakhtin, who constantly returned to this issue, wrote this: “Every truly significant step forward is accompanied by a return to the beginning (“originality”), or more precisely, to a renewal of the beginning. Only memory can move forward, not oblivion. The memory returns to the beginning and updates it. Of course, the terms “forward” and “backward” themselves lose their closed absoluteness in this understanding; rather, through their interaction they reveal the living paradoxical nature of movement.”

In another work, Bakhtin creates a wonderful metaphor: “Great works of literature take centuries to prepare, but in the era of their creation only the ripe fruits of a long and complex ripening process are harvested. Trying to understand and explain a work only from the conditions of its era, only from the conditions of the immediate future, we will never penetrate into its semantic depths.” Developing this idea, the author continues: “The semantic treasures that Shakespeare put into his works were created and collected over centuries and even millennia: they were hidden in the language, and not only in the literary one, but also in such layers of the popular language that had not yet entered before Shakespeare in literature, in diverse genres and forms of speech communication, in the forms of powerful folk culture ».

Hence one of Bakhtin’s central ideas, which is directly related to the problem of tradition and innovation, is the idea of ​​world culture as dialogical space, in which different works and even different eras constantly echo, complement and reveal each other. Ancient authors predetermine modern culture, but the modern era also makes it possible to discover in the brilliant creations of antiquity those meanings that were not visible or recognized in those days. Thus, any new work is dependent on tradition, but paradoxically, the works of bygone eras depend on modern culture. The modern reader is “born” by Shakespeare, but Shakespeare also reveals to him such semantic depths that neither the contemporaries of the brilliant playwright, nor he himself could feel. Thus, time in the space of culture loses the “linearity” so familiar to us (from past to future), it turns into living movement in both directions.

V.V. Musatov considered the problem of tradition with slightly different emphases. In his opinion, any artist strives to create an “individual hypothesis of existence,” so every time he correlates the experience of his predecessors with his era and his destiny. Therefore, tradition is not just “copying” techniques, it is always a complex psychological act when someone else’s world is “tested” by one’s own experience.

So, “tradition” is a very comprehensive concept, fundamental for an adequate perception of the literary process.

So far we have talked about the philosophical, general aesthetic meaning of the term “tradition”. At a more specific level, several “problem points” can be identified related to tradition and innovation.

Firstly, it is not always easy to separate concepts “tradition”, “canon”, “imitation”, “stylization”,"imitation" etc. If today we associate with “epigonism” “empty imitation”, which does not enrich culture in any way (this word itself has negative connotation), then, for example, with imitation and canon everything is more complicated. Not all imitation is epigonism; an open orientation towards some model can lead to significant aesthetic results. For example, in Russian lyric poetry the word “imitation” is allowed as a kind of genre qualifier: “In imitation of the Koran,” “In imitation of Byron,” etc. We encounter the same thing in numerous poems beginning with “From ...”: “From Heine”, “From Goethe”, etc. Interesting cases are possible here. For example, the famous program poem by A. S. Pushkin “From Pindemonti,” at first glance, openly refers to the work of the Italian poet, but in reality this is a hoax; I. Pindemonti never had such a poem. The question arises: why does Pushkin refer us specifically to this name; Is this an accident, a “trick” to deceive censorship, or did the poet still feel some kind of internal resonance between his lines and the poetry of this author? There is no consensus among scientists on this issue. But in any case, it is in this poem that Pushkin formulates his poetic credo:

Other, better rights are dear to me;

I need a different, better freedom:

Depend on the king, depend on the people -

Do we care? God be with them.

Nobody

Don't give a report...

In other cases, a direct focus on a well-known text can lead to the creation of a genuine author's masterpiece. Thus, Pushkin’s “little tragedy” “A Feast in the Time of Plague” is, as you know, the author’s translation of one act from J. Wilson’s play “City of the Plague” (1816). In general, Pushkin follows Wilson’s text, but adds two songs “on his own”: Mary’s song and the famous “Hymn to the Plague”:

Everything, everything that threatens death,

Hides for the mortal heart

Inexplicable pleasures -

Immortality, perhaps, is a guarantee!

And happy is the one who is in the midst of excitement

I could acquire and know them.

So, praise be to you, Plague,

We are not afraid of the darkness of the grave,

We will not be confused by your calling!

We drink glasses together

And the rose maidens drink the breath, -

Perhaps... full of Plague!

These insertions radically change the whole picture; from John Wilson’s not-so-famous play, Pushkin gives birth to a masterpiece.

However, in many cases, a work written “in imitation” does not have much artistic value and indicates the helplessness and insufficient talent of the author. Ultimately, as always in creativity, it’s all about talent.

It is even more difficult to “separate” tradition and canon. The canon is the norms accepted in a given culture and strictly observed.. The canon imposes rather strict restrictions on the author's freedom of expression, thus being a “binding tradition.” Archaic forms of culture, for example, many genres of folklore, were so associated with the canon that they left almost no room for authorial “liberties.” In this sense, we can talk about the “authorship” of folklore texts only metaphorically; in folklore there is a “collective author”. Ancient consciousness did not draw a line between “what is known to me” and “born by me” (in other words, between what I I know some text and the fact that I created), therefore any text was easily assigned to those who knew it. Gradually, the boundaries of “us and foe” became stronger, and in many cultures, for example, in medieval eastern poetry or in Russian icon painting, the canon began to be perceived as an “external” condition obligatory for the author. But within the canon the author’s vision of the world was already evident. That is why, for example, the Russian icon is so diverse while strictly observing the Orthodox canon.

In modern secular culture, the canon does not play such a role, although, naturally, any artist experiences some restrictions imposed by the established tradition. However, these restrictions are no longer rigid, and cultural traditions are so diverse that they provide the author with almost limitless possibilities.

SecondlyWhen talking about tradition, we must remember that it manifests itself at different levels. Let's look at this in a little more detail.

Tradition of the theme assumes that the author, when determining the thematic spectrum of his work, constantly correlates his decision with those that have already been found by culture. Let's say, the theme of Christ's truth, confirmed by his suffering and death, finds thousands of artistic solutions that take each other into account and polemicize with each other. It is enough to recall M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” to feel that the author simultaneously continues and violates (or develops) the established tradition. It is no coincidence that many supporters of the Orthodox canon do not accept Bulgakov’s novel, considering it “the gospel of Satan.”

Tradition of image (character). The tradition of the image or its variant, the tradition of character, involves taking into account decisions already accumulated by culture regarding a particular character. Sometimes it manifests itself directly, most often in this case some well-known image becomes emblematic and highlights the character of the hero. Thus, N.S. Leskov, defining his heroine Katerina Lvovna as “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” immediately creates a Shakespearean background against which the heroine looks different: more tragic and larger-scale.

In other cases, echoes are visible at the level of the heroes’ psychology, their actions, and relationships. At one time, A.D. Sinyavsky, somewhat crudely, characterized the relationship between a man and a woman in classical Russian literature: “A woman was a touchstone for a man in literature. Through his relationship with her, he discovered his weakness and, compromised by her strength and beauty, climbed off the stage on which he was going to act out something heroic, and went, bent over, into oblivion with the shameful nickname of an unnecessary, worthless, superfluous person.”

Sinyavsky is too straightforward, but the structure of the relationship is captured quite accurately. And it is not difficult to see that this structure was proposed to Russian culture by A. S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”, other authors (I. S. Turgenev, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N.Tolstoy) one way or another already followed the Pushkin tradition.

Tradition of the genre – one of the most powerful in world culture. Genre represents forms of author’s self-expression found and adopted by literature. The genre fixes the features of the narrative, and - in many cases - the theme, and the types of pathos, and the features of conflicts, etc. Therefore, the chosen genre is always to some extent binding. Let's say, a poet writing an ode inevitably finds himself in the depths of the thousand-year-old tradition of this genre. Although there is a huge distance between the odes of M.V. Lomonosov and, for example, “Ode to the Revolution” by V. Mayakovsky, many common features dictated by the tradition of the genre are striking.

National tradition associated with the system of values ​​​​accepted in a particular culture: ethical, aesthetic, historical, etc. As a rule, the artist absorbs world culture through the national, the reverse way practically impossible. The Russian writer is open to world cultural experience, but this experience is refracted through the cultural experience of the nation. This was well reflected by M. Yu. Lermontov in his youthful poem:

No, I'm not Byron, I'm different

A still unknown chosen one,

How he is a wanderer persecuted by the world,

But only with a Russian soul.

The poet declares his openness to the world of Byron, his closeness to the brilliant English bard, but Byron is refracted through the “Russian soul.” As a result, we have not one of Byron's countless imitators, but a great Russian poet who has gained worldwide fame.

A poet who grows from the depths of national culture can become a world poet. But, if you imagine some abstract “world poet,” he will not be able to become a national poet. The now popular expression “man of the world” should not be absolutized. People of the world are not born, but become.

Tradition of artistic techniques combines lexical, syntactic, rhythmic, plot-compositional, etc. techniques for constructing a text. In many cases, the tradition of techniques catches the eye, for example, a poet who writes with a “ladder” will immediately be in line with Mayakovsky’s tradition. In other cases, it is less recognizable, but any work in one way or another uses already found artistic techniques. Like any tradition, the tradition of techniques is enriched by new finds, becoming more complex and multifaceted.

Style tradition in a sense, it synthesizes all the possibilities outlined above. Style consists precisely of figurative-thematic, genre, etc. unity. Here we can talk about the author’s traditions (for example, Pushkin’s or Nekrasov’s) or about the tradition of certain movements or even eras (for example, the traditions of antiquity in the culture of classicism, the romantic tradition in modern poetry, etc.).. 6, No. 16, Jun., 1927.

Sinyavsky A. (Abram Tertz) What is socialist realism // http://antology.igrunov.ru/authors/synyavsky/1059651903.html

This is how he defines tradition in literature: “Tradition in literature is something that the writer does not create himself, but finds ready-made, invented by others: this is the closest spiritual environment in which literary activity takes place, an environment that leaves a stamp on individual acts of creativity. The most original writer does not create everything himself: some aspects of his work are original in relation to given ideas and forms, but others are inherited by tradition” (Kareev N.I. Literary tradition in the West. Voronezh. 1886. P.47)

Kareev emphasizes the interaction of creativity and tradition in the literary tradition. He writes the following: “...the basis of literary evolution is the interaction of creativity and tradition, and this is not the exclusive ability of one literary evolution, but the essence of each. Take any kind of activity, everywhere you will see that, in addition to the pragmatism of cause and effect, well-known well-trodden paths play a role in it, which we reduce to the concept of culture: the political activity of the people is determined by the state system, the scientific activity of society is determined by the stock of existing knowledge and an arsenal of developed methods" (Kareev N.I. Literary tradition in the West. Voronezh. 1886. P.45)

A) literary language(literary language as opposed to colloquial, style, versification, etc., etc.),

V) form of literary works(construction of a work, external techniques, etc.),

d) their ideas( those.

He notes that: “Literary language has the greatest stability, ideas have the least stability: the first depends exclusively on one and, moreover, slowly occurring linguistic process, the second are under the constant and very complex influence of the entire course of life. In the content of literary works, traditionalism is expressed either in the form of reworking old plots (for example, the Carolingian epic at the beginning), or in the depiction of only known objects (for example, a chivalric romance), or in the preference for a well-known specific image that already existed in literature (for example . Roland) or a more abstract character and type (ascetic, knight, miser, hypocrite, etc.), etc. - and in general, the course of life has a greater influence on the content of literary works than on their form, which in in turn, it can be either a monotonous template, or a wider frame, less restrictive of freedom of creativity than any template” (Kareev N.I. Literary tradition in the West. Voronezh. 1886. P.330-331)

He further states that: “Literary traditions have earlier or later beginnings and are often interrupted, sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly, sometimes without a trace, sometimes with the stopping of some relic in other traditions. The emergence and cessation of traditions depends on general historical conditions" (Kareev N.I. Literary tradition in the West. Voronezh.

Kareev emphasizes that the literary tradition does not remain unchanged, it is gradually modernized. The literary tradition of one people is often influenced by the literary traditions of another, the process of displacement of one literary tradition by another occurs, or their interpenetration and interaction occurs. During the period of early literary eras, Kareev argues, the power of tradition prevails over creativity, but with development there is an intensification of personal creative moments, literary creativity acquires not an unconscious-collective character, but a personal-conscious one.

About the cultural and social spheres: “..all these spheres are not only contained in the whole of social life, like in a wheel of its parts - the hub, spokes and rim, and not each moves separately, although all at once, but are in organic interaction and movements with their influence, some influence the movements of others: changes in economic life are reflected in politics, and in law, and in technology, and in customs and mores; political upheavals affect law, economic life, philosophy, art, literature, law, etc. etc." (Kareev N.I. Literary tradition in the West. Voronezh. 1886. P.73-74)

“The general course of literary evolution is the weakening of traditionalism through a) the development of creativity and c) the interaction of traditions due, firstly, to international influences, which increase * with the general development of life, and secondly, due to the large accumulation of literary material over time , giving a larger number of samples. The role of international influences is also played by cases of return to forgotten traditions of former times (for example, the influence of the classics on European literature from the Renaissance or medieval poetry on neo-romanticism of the 19th century" (Kareev N.I. Literary tradition in the West. Voronezh. 1886. P.333)

Introduction

St. Petersburg is an unusual city. And the exact date of its birth (1703), and the place where it was founded (Finnish swamps are not a traditional place for building Russian cities; all ancient capitals - Kiev, Pereyaslavl, Moscow - stand on the high banks of the river, on the hills), and the goals pursued by Peter the Great, in the midst of the war with the Swedes, establishing a new capital on the border of the empire, and, finally, the city owes its further unusual fate to the very name of its sovereign founder.

The city, created contrary to the laws of nature, in defiance of the elements, was perceived as a miraculous, supernatural phenomenon, and it was created by a man to whom the standards of ordinary human existence are not applicable - Peter the Great. “Grad Petrov” struck the imagination, first of all, with the fabulous speed and orderliness of its creation. Compared to other European capitals that grew gradually and spontaneously, St. Petersburg was perceived as a “deliberate”, “fictional” city, “pulled” (Merezhkovsky) out of the ground. To contemporaries and heirs of Petrova’s fame, Petersburg appeared as the embodiment of a daring challenge thrown in several directions at once:

Petersburg was built on the border as a challenge to Russia's enemies;

The city became the new capital of the Russian Empire: in contrast to the old one - Moscow; built almost on the border, St. Petersburg was a challenge to the natural flow of history, because was founded far from the economic and cultural center of the country;

And finally, the city on the banks of the Neva became a challenge to the elements of nature.

That is why, from the very cradle, St. Petersburg history was intertwined with St. Petersburg mythology, in which the main place belonged not only to the city itself, but also to its founder. The mythology of the city developed in two main directions. Petersburg was perceived as a kind of living creature that was brought to life by supernatural forces. But were these forces good or evil?

On the one hand, it was believed that these forces were of a divine nature, since only a deity could create a city contrary to the laws of nature. Ideas about the glory of the Fatherland were associated with St. Petersburg; and then, after the death of Peter, tradition deified the founder of the northern capital, giving him supernatural features. After all, a mere mortal would not be able to fight with nature and defeat it. One of the legends about the founding of St. Petersburg belongs to Odoevsky:

“They began to build a city, but when they lay a stone, the swamp will be sucked away; A lot of porridge has already been piled up, rock on rock, log on log, but the swamp takes everything into itself and at the top of the earth only swamp remains. Meanwhile, Tsar Peter built a ship and looked around: he saw that his city was gone. “You don’t know how to do anything,” he said to his people, and with that word he began to lift rock after rock and forge it in the air. So he built a whole city and lowered it to the ground.” It is characteristic that this legend, although it belongs to the literary tradition, is told as a folk legend, an epic, although among the peasant common people the appearance of St. Petersburg and its founder was perceived in a completely different way.

The second line in the depiction of St. Petersburg is traditionally associated with folk tales. But this is only part of the legends that were more widespread among the Old Believers, because in the popular consciousness the image of Peter the Great was quite contradictory, and his city was seen differently. But in the Old Believer oral tradition, St. Petersburg - a city that undermines the traditional order of life sanctified by religious consciousness - was the embodiment of the “kingdom of the Antichrist.” His appearance on Russian soil signaled the proximity of the end of the world. The same anti-God, anti-people evil forces that gave birth to the monstrous city will overthrow it into primordial chaos.

And as soon as this non-Russian city - generated by the will of Peter - the Antichrist - disappears, true faith and righteous life will return to Rus'.

In 1845, Belinsky wrote: “People are used to thinking about St. Petersburg as a city built not even on a swamp, but almost on air. Many seriously claim that this is a city without a historical shrine, without legends, without connections with its native country, a city built on stilts and calculations.” In some ways, it seems natural, although a little unusual, for the expression of popular opinion by a representative of a heterogeneous democracy. Although, on the other hand, by this time (mid-19th century) St. Petersburg, even in the literary tradition, began to be perceived as an unnatural, undivine city.

Petersburg is often compared to Rome. But if in literature the “city of Petrov” is “eternal Rome”, an immortal city, then in folk mythology it is “doomed Rome” - Constantinople. However, no matter how one looked at St. Petersburg: as a city that demonstrated the victory of reason over the elements or as a perversion of the natural order, the correct course of events - a city founded at the mouth of a river, on the seashore, by both traditions - was perceived as opposition natural, i.e. ideal artificial city.

Petersburg, as a great city, turned out to be not the result of a complete victory of culture over the elements of nature, but a place where the dual power of nature and culture reigns from year to year, from century to century. In the St. Petersburg myth, it is this struggle that becomes the main indicator of the border existence of the city / Petersburg is as if between a rock and a hard place - between an element that has not been completely defeated and a barrier created by human hands - stone embankments, dams. St. Petersburg is at the edge of the abyss, on the verge of “this” and “otherworldly” worlds, the illusory and fantastic nature of phenomena reigns in it.

But what would be a miracle in another city is a pattern here in St. Petersburg.

It must be said that the image of St. Petersburg - a ghostly, phantasmagoric city - did not develop in the Russian literary tradition from the moment the city was founded. The entire XVIII century. Russian Piites praised Northern Palmyra and its great founder. St. Petersburg was the embodiment of harmony, a young city, whose greatness will be fully revealed only in the future, but which is beautiful today. This tradition was started by Sumarokov:

"Erected by his hand

From Neptune's ferocity

City, refuge of peace.

Safe from stormy disasters,

Where over clear water.

Alexandrov holds the temple above the clear Neva.”

("Ode to the Victory of Peter I")

Peter the Great, the tamer of the elements, was also the ruler of the world.

The same tradition of praising the beautiful new capital and the works of Peter the Great was continued by Lomonosov and Derzhavin. Northern Palmyra was not a legend; there was no struggle between the city and the elements. On the contrary, the beauty of St. Petersburg lies in the harmonious combination of nature and art.

Beginning of the 19th century did not bring significant changes to this tradition. Thus, in 1818 Vyazemsky wrote:

“I see the wonderful, majestic city of Petrov,

According to the king's mania, erected from blat,

The hereditary monument of his mighty glory,

His descendants decorated it a hundred times.

Art here has been at war with nature everywhere.

And it marked its triumph everywhere.

The power of the mind subdued the rebellion of the elements,

Whose commanding voice, in spite of nature,

Moved and dragged out of the wild desert

Masses of eternal rocks to spread out strongholds

Along the banks of your northern rivers there are heads,

Magnificent and bright Neva...

The sovereign work of Peter and the mind of Catherine

The slow work of centuries has been accomplished in one single century.”

The first who grasped the motive of the struggle between nature and human creativity, which continues in St. Petersburg to this day, was Batyushkov, but even he remained unknown to the tragic power and depth of this struggle, because the poet was fascinated by the life of the city, which arose from a harmonious combination of nature and human genius.

There was, perhaps, no writer in Russian literature who would not say anything about St. Petersburg. Therefore, it is hardly possible to cover everything associated with this city in one work.

In the development of the “St. Petersburg theme” in the literature of the 19th - early 20th centuries. we can highlight the main milestones: the St. Petersburg cycle of A.S. Pushkin, “Petersburg Tales” by N.V. Gogol, St. Petersburg in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, and, as the completion of the St. Petersburg theme, A. Bely’s novel “Petersburg,” where all previous works about the “city of Petrov” were reflected in a refracted light and rethought form.

Even in the works of these writers, St. Petersburg appears as a multicolored city, illuminated from different sides. In this work, the task was to consider the literary tradition, in which St. Petersburg appears as a city, as if located on the border of two worlds - the real and the fantastic - a ghostly, extraordinary city.

A.S. Pushkin was the first to create the image of a phantasmagoric city in The Queen of Spades and The Bronze Horseman, moving away from the tradition of the 18th century. - praise of the “city of Petrov” and its sovereign founder. This Petersburg and the place it occupies in Pushkin’s work are examined in most detail in Khodasevich’s article “Pushkin’s Petersburg Stories” and A. Bely’s work “Rhythm as Dialectics.”

Much has also been written about Gogol’s “Petersburg Tales”. But it is the fantastic, and not the social, side of events that is considered in the book by O.G. Dilaktorskaya “The Fantastic in Gogol’s Petersburg Tales.” Gubarev also paid great attention to this issue in his work “Gogol’s Petersburg Tales.”

F.M. Dostoevsky is often rightly called “the creator of the image of St. Petersburg,” but this is Petersburg “underground,” a city of poverty and misery, although another city occasionally appears in Dostoevsky’s works - a “magic dream,” a ghostly fairy tale, a dream. We see this kind of Petersburg in the story “A Weak Heart” (which almost literally repeats “Petersburg Dreams in Poems and Prose”) and in the novel “Teenager”. The most interesting discussion of Dostoevsky's ghostly city and its connection with the Gogol tradition can be found in A. Bely's work “Gogol's Mastery.”

The “Silver Age” of Russian literature gave many wonderful works about the “city of Peter”, continuing the “St. Petersburg theme” in literature, but, perhaps, no one better than A. Bely combined and rethought everything that was written about St. Petersburg - the ghost city. In A. Bely’s “Petersburg” you can also meet the heroes of A.S. Pushkin (of course, changed over the century), and with Gogol’s characters, and the very image of the city is often inspired by the writer Dostoevsky. All these plot interweavings, internal quotes and borrowings are analyzed in detail in D. Dolgopolov’s work “A. Bely and his novel "Petersburg".

It was Bely and his novel that ended the line of a ghostly, fantastic city in literature, where the supernatural events occurring in it are most real.

Many works are devoted to the problem of literary St. Petersburg. One of the most interesting, showing the change in the attitude of writers towards St. Petersburg in the 19th century, is the work of N.P. Antsiferov “The Soul of St. Petersburg. Petersburg by Dostoevsky. True story and myth of St. Petersburg." In 1384, the University of Tartu published a collection of articles dedicated to St. Petersburg and the “Petersburg theme” in literature, where articles by V.L. deserve special attention. Toporova, V.M. Lotman, R.D. Timenchik and others.

Most of the above-mentioned works and articles are devoted to literary analysis of works of art about St. Petersburg. The aesthetic aspect is affected to a lesser extent. Therefore, in this work an attempt is made to characterize the fantastic Petersburg of Pushkin and Gogol, the ghostly Petersburg of Dostoevsky and the symbolic city of A. Bely from the point of view of their symbolic meaning. The Russian literary tradition contains rich material for understanding the aesthetic phenomenon of St. Petersburg.

Fantastic Petersburg of Pushkin and Gogol

A.S. Pushkin created his own unique image of St. Petersburg, which, on the one hand, is the result of the work of writers of the entire previous century, and, on the other hand, a prophecy about the future fate of the city. Pushkin, in a number of his works, gave rise to the literary myth of St. Petersburg; These works are rather conventionally combined into a cycle of “Petersburg stories”.

Pushkin was the first to see two Petersburgs: the first is the city of white nights from Eugene Onegin:

“...in the summer sometimes,

When it's clear and light

Night sky over the Neva

And the waters are cheerful glass

Doesn’t reflect Diana’s face...”;

newborn “city of Petrov” from “Arap Peter the Great”: “... a newborn capital, which rose from the swamp by the mania of the autocratic hand. Exposed dams, canals without embankment, wooden bridges everywhere showed the recent victory of human will over the resistance of the elements. The houses seemed hastily built. In the whole city there was nothing magnificent except the Neva, not yet decorated with a granite frame, but already covered with military and merchant ships”; a beautiful city that emerged from the swamps by the will of Peter the Great and transformed by his heirs:

“The city is lush, the city is pale,

Spirit of bondage, slender appearance.

The vault of heaven is green and pale,

Boredom, cold and granite."

Petersburg is just as coldly beautiful in the introduction to The Bronze Horseman. All these descriptions of the northern capital are different, but they have one thing in common: they show the beautiful and majestic Petersburg, a symbol of man’s victory over the elements, standing on the banks of the Neva, dressed in granite, beautiful not by nature, but humanized by its beauty; Its wide streets and straight, arrow-like avenues are bright on white nights, but this stone beauty is cold, a person feels like a stranger in it, it delights the eyes, but does not warm souls and hearts.

But there is another St. Petersburg - the city of Kolomna and Vasilievsky Island, almost a suburb, with small houses and cozy gardens, a city where only the hero of Pushkin’s St. Petersburg stories can exist - a small man yearning for peace and quiet. The brilliance of Peter’s creation, which brought to the city, along with the tamed elements, the possibility of its rebellion, the unreliability, fragility of existence, a certain fantastic unusualness of existence on the verge of nature and culture, is alien to him and does not need him. “Let the souls freeze from the cold and the bodies of its inhabitants become numb - the city lives its own super-personal life, develops towards achieving its great and mysterious goals.”

It is precisely the confrontation between the little man and his desire to find his quiet, native corner in the coldly beautiful capital, and the majestic, fantastic city (on whose side it sometimes becomes clear that the evil spirits - they say it was she who helped Peter build the highlander in the swamps) and dedicated to Pushkin's St. Petersburg stories. From the point of view of V. Khodasevich, these stories “can be connected with each other not only by the fortune-telling and foggy features of the St. Petersburg air,” but mainly by a completely specific theme, interpreted differently, but clearly expressed in the final words of “The Secluded House on Vasilievsky” : “Where does the devil get this desire to interfere in worldly affairs?”

Based on the assumption that the main theme in the St. Petersburg stories is the struggle of man against supernatural evil forces, Khodasevich presents the structure of the St. Petersburg stories as follows:

“Secluded house on Vasilyevsky”

“House in Kolomna” “Bronze Horseman” “Queen of Spades”

Initiative of the dark forces Initiative of the dark forces Human initiative

(Comic resolution) (Comic resolution) (Tragic resolution)

It seems to me that, despite the grain, the peculiarities of a person’s relationship with dark forces and the interweaving of plot moves and motives wandering from one story to another (for example, Evgeniy’s bride, like the main character of “The House in Kolomna”, is called Parasha; and the groom Vera "A Secluded House on Vasilyevsky" and the hero of "The Bronze Horseman" are petty officials; the descriptions of small houses and their inhabitants on Vasilievsky and Kolomna are also similar, etc.), Khodasevich is not entirely right in defining the main theme of the St. Petersburg stories. The main theme and main character of these stories is St. Petersburg, an unusual and fantastic city: but everything unreal that happens in it should be attributed not to the works of Satan, but to the very nature of this city. That special “St. Petersburg air,” the influence of which on the unity of St. Petersburg stories is not taken into account by Khodasevich, is the main thing that determines the course of events in these stories, perhaps the main thing that was the reason for Pushkin’s creation of such dissimilar works, nevertheless, united in one cycle.

The most vivid image of a border city belonging to two worlds appeared in “The Bronze Horseman,” although, reading the introduction to the poem, we might think that Pushkin here only continues the tradition of the 18th-century Piites, chanting “the city of Petrov”:

“...A hundred years have passed, and the young city,

There is beauty and wonder in the midnight lands,

From the darkness of the forests, from the swamps of blat,

He ascended magnificently, proudly...

Along busy shores

Slender communities crowd together

Palaces and towers; ships

A crowd from all over the world

They strive for rich marinas;

The Neva is dressed in granite;

Bridges hung over the waters;

Dark green gardens

Islands covered it...

I love you, Petra's creation!

I love your strict, slender appearance,

Neva sovereign current,

Its coastal granite,

Your fences have a cast iron pattern,

of your thoughtful nights

Transparent twilight, moonless shine...

And the sleeping communities are clear

Deserted streets and light

Admiralty needle,

And, not letting the darkness of the night

To golden skies

Osha dawn, replacing another

He’s in a hurry, giving the night half an hour...”

This ode to Pushkin continues the tradition of poets of the 18th century. - the tradition of praise and deification of Peter and the city he created. But Pushkin does not strive to describe the splendor of the capital, but to show a different, fantastic city where extraordinary events can occur - a dead countess appears to Hermann, Eugene is pursued by the Bronze Horseman. When we read about these seemingly incredible incidents that contradict our realistic mindset, we cannot understand whether it is a dream, a crazy vision, or perhaps reality. After all, a city founded on swamps cannot be created by an ordinary person, but only by the wondrous genius of a superman, his “fatal will.” And the founder, conveying his supernaturalism to the city, could not leave it forever - in the image of the Bronze Horseman (the symbol of St. Petersburg) he remained in the city to keep an eye on what was happening in it, to pacify the rebellious elements that from time to time try to take over the city created against the will and laws of nature.

The flood of 1824, described by Pushkin in The Bronze Horseman, was terrible. Most of St. Petersburg was destroyed, many buildings were damaged, especially on the outskirts. Many people died. Here is what Griboedov, who was in St. Petersburg at that time, wrote about the flood: “Everything on this side of the Fontanka up to Liteinaya and Vladimirskaya was flooded. Nevsky Prospekt was turned into a rough strait; the embankments of the various canals disappeared, and all the canals merged into one. Centenary trees in the Summer Garden lay in ridges, uprooted, with their roots up... The Kashin and Potseluev bridges were moved from their places. The Khrapovitsky (bridge) was torn away from the bridge fortifications; the Bertov Bridge, incapable of passage, also disappeared. The view was of Vasilyevsky Island. Here, in the neighborhood, several hundred houses no longer existed: one, and that was an ugly pile in which the foundation and roof were all mixed up.” (As this description of the destroyed house reminds us of what poor Eugene saw at the site of his bride’s house, having difficulty getting there as soon as the water began to subside).

The flood lasted two days, turning streets into canals, squares into islands or lakes, and on the islands themselves the water swept away everything that had been created by human hands. “Many fences were knocked down; Roofs were blown off some houses; there were barges, gallots and boats in the square; the streets were cluttered with firewood, logs and various rubbish - in a word, there were pictures of open destruction everywhere.” (Karatygin).

Such were the consequences of the flood, which deprived poor Eugene of his only joy - his beloved girl. Of course, many people died in these two days, and grief came to more than one person, but Pushkin chose as his hero the most ordinary official, about whom we know, strictly speaking, only his name, but all other moments of his life (service, origin)‚ if they are mentioned, then in passing; We don’t even know his last name. And this little man was destined to awaken the Bronze Horseman - the guardian spirit, eh. maybe the evil genius of St. Petersburg. And the elements pushed them together.

The image of water, the element, occupies a very large place in The Bronze Horseman, and it is important not only in itself, as the destructive force of the rebellious Neva, but also as a connecting thread between Peter the Great and Eugene. The flood is described as if from two sides; it “doubles” in the eyes of the reader. For Evgeny, a rebellious element is something terrible that a person cannot even imagine coping with. Peter the Great built a city on the banks of the Neva, thinking that human genius would defeat nature, but, having transformed from a superman, a brilliant emperor and warrior into the Bronze Horseman, he was able to bewitch the rebellious water, the king over the villainess - the elements. The city itself is unshakable, the fate of the flood overtakes only the “poor boats” of downpours of ordinary people who float along the flooded capital along with the coffins. And the powerless Tsar Alexander the First turns into only a shadow, an illusion, and the true ruler of the city remains not even Peter, but his all-powerful incarnation - the Bronze Horseman.

There is a folk legend about the Bronze Horseman himself, in which the monument is perceived as a living, only petrified king on a horse for the time being: “When there was a war with the Swedes, Peter rode on this horse. Once the Swedes caught our general and began to skin him alive. They reported this to the tsar, but he was hot-tempered, immediately galloped off on a horse, and forgot that the general was being skinned on the other side of the river, he needed to jump over the Neva. So that he could jump more dexterously, he directed his horse towards this stone, which was now under the horse, and from the stone he thought to wave across the Neva, and would have waved, but God saved him. As soon as the horse wanted to fly off the stone, a large snake suddenly appeared on the stone, as if it was waiting, wrapped itself around the horse’s hind legs in one second, squeezed its legs as if with pincers, stung the horse - and the horse did not move, and remained on its hind legs.”

There is also a legend that when the horse jumps from the mountain, then, together with the Antichrist Tsar, the entire unclean, non-Russian city will fall into the abyss.

But the years passed, and the Bronze Horseman ceased to be the embodiment of Peter the Great, but became an “idol on a bronze horse,” self-valuable and autocratic. The world in which he reigns is a superhuman world; a world where the Petrovo affair turns into petrified autocracy, and Eugene’s belief that the one who created this city must protect its inhabitants collapses and leads the defenseless official to madness. It is precisely the hope in the omnipotence of the sovereign (one of whom cannot, and the other does not want to cope with the elements), as it turns out, imaginary, that destroys a person. Evgeniy, who has lost faith in the inviolability of the city of Petrov, no longer has either a goal in life or the possibility of future happiness. He is already crushed by the grief that has befallen him, along with the elements. But there must be a culprit for this - and who is he if not the one

“...by whose will the fatal

Was the city founded under the sea?

And isn’t he the “lord of fate” that Eugene turns his silent reproaches to him? After all, even in a moment of insane courage, Evgeny does not dare to express to the Bronze Horseman all the pain that has accumulated in his soul, to blame him for all his suffering. He just decides to throw a vague reproach to the king: “Too bad for you...” and immediately rushes to run.

Peter (or, more precisely, the Bronze Horseman) is present in the poem as a direct (and therefore difficult to comprehend) embodiment of limitless power, rising above human capabilities, interests, feelings, above ordinary human concepts of good and evil. Both the Bronze Horseman and St. Petersburg - as his creation - put pressure on people’s lives, but, at the same time, they delight them: in both cases, they force them to bow and subjugate them to their will. The Bronze Horseman is not Peter, but a symbol of the perversion of the meaning of the concept of “Peter’s work.” And St. Petersburg, a city whose history is inseparable from the history of the life and work of Peter the Great, more obviously than any other phenomenon in Russian history, appears to Pushkin’s poetic consciousness as an arena of the collision of several great truths, which, with their contradictions and struggle, determine the historical movement. It was precisely the ambiguity of Pushkin’s assessment of the activities of Peter the Great and his creation of St. Petersburg that gave rise to a multiplicity of interpretations of the poem. A. Bely, for example, perceived the “Bronze Horseman” as “a monument dragged from one meaning to another and attached first to one king, then to another, or erected first by one reign, then by another.”

Belinsky considered Peter in “The Bronze Horseman” to be a representative of the collective will, as opposed to the personal, individual principle - Eugene. Merezhkovsky, on the contrary, believed that it was Peter who was the expression of the personal principle of heroism (the deification of one’s Self), and Evgeny was the exponent of the impersonal, collective will (the renunciation of one’s Self in God).

As long as the Bronze Horseman stands on a huge stone in the middle of the city he created, this city will stand, despite the attempts of the elements to return the place that once belonged to them.

In The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin reproduces, with the help of stylizations and references, many points of view - individual and collective - on St. Petersburg. It is the enormity of the theme of St. Petersburg and Peter the Great that forces Pushkin to turn to such “stereoscopic” lighting; and the poet’s very opinion about the historical era that St. Petersburg began, and about Peter’s transformations, was not unambiguous, and therefore so many different styles were brought together in one work, and so many different points of view.

It is difficult to determine the role of the city itself in the poem, however, it is in Pushkin that we first find the opposition of two oppositely structured cities, practically not communicating with each other: the center - the outskirts; “palace” part of St. Petersburg - Kolomna, Vasilyevsky Island. Pushkin created his poem as if on the border of two traditions in literature - the glorification of the “city of Petrov” was becoming a thing of the past, images of peripheral, “not ceremonial” St. Petersburg appeared in literature. After Pushkin, the depiction of the outskirts of St. Petersburg and the life not of great people, but of an ordinary, “little man” lost in the cold spaces of the northern capital, became the dominant trend in literature.

UDK 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].

wild dictionary. - M., 2001.

encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987.

4. Koioieiko B I Culturology. - M., 200Z.

5. Poetics of Old Russian literature. - M., 1979.