Romanticism of Victor Hugo. Socionics and other typologies Coursework on foreign history

This is historical romanticism, but this is only the dominant feature; there is also a mystical and mythological component, as in English and German romanticism.

The peculiarities of the regions of France are especially affected here. Rejection of the values ​​of the Enlightenment and French. Revolutions are an important trend in Fr. Romanticism. The need of the romantics to understand how their people got to this point, to the disastrous situation that existed at the beginning of the 19th century. A plot from the history of France, or related to it. An attempt to understand the historical process that led France to this point, as well as its historical homeland in the Middle Ages.

Hugo is, in a sense, the founding father of romanticism. "Notre Dame Cathedral" Hugo began as a playwright, not a romanticist. The cathedral itself was in a deplorable state at that moment; after the novel, they began to restore it.

Victor Hugo is the only one in Europe who remained faithful to the romantic movement until the end of his life, while in general the romantic movement in French literature dried up already in the 40-50s of the 19th century, and in German literature in the 20s. He is one of many who did not curse the French Revolution, the ideas of the revolution in general, who retained faith and optimism in the possibility of rational development and creative potential of man and humanity, and it was thanks to Victor Hugo that French romanticism was perceived as the most socially oriented, saturated with social ideas: sympathy for poor and disadvantaged, the demand for social justice, while English romanticism, at least in the works of Byron and Shelley, made the greatness of the human spirit its main pathos and saw the creative power of struggle in the personal impulse of a person rather than in social composition. German romanticism was more occupied with metaphysics and spiritualism, grotesque fantasy, plunged into the sphere of the supersensible.

Dumas has pseudo-historicism, he changed the history of France in his novels. There were no musketeers like Dumas. Mystical, magical persons appear periodically - Nostradamus, astrologer, magician.

Alfred de Vigny - "Saint Mar", another of Richelieu's demonic images, suppressing the noble king.

VIGNY Alfred, de, count (, 1799-1863) - the largest representative of French aristocratic, conservative romanticism. Comes from an old noble family that actively fought against the revolution; some members of his family died in the guillotine. He entered life with the consciousness of the doom of his class.
In his critical articles, Vigny relied on the tradition of Shakespeare and Byron instead of the tradition of the classics, Corneille and Racine. V. asserted his own special line of conservative romanticism, but still continued the classics with many elements of his work. Beginning in 1826, he moved on to romance and drama. The most famous was the novel “Saint-Mars” (1826), in which Vigny proposed his own model of the genre of the historical novel, different from the novels of V. Scott, V. Hugo, A. Dumas and G. Flaubert. Like Scott, Vigny builds the novel Saint-Mars around the image of an individual person drawn into the maelstrom of historical events, but his main characters (Saint-Mars, Richelieu, Louis XIII) are not fictional characters, but real historical figures. In this novel, Vigny sets out his understanding of the problem of “man and history” (one of the central ones among the romantics) - “any touch with history is detrimental to the individual,” because it plunges him into the abyss of insoluble conflicts and leads to death. Saint-Mars also differs from other historical novels in the absence of right sides in the conflict; there is only a game of ambition: state-political (Richelieu) and personal (Saint-Mars). In the novel, everything is built around the confrontation between these two pivotal figures, who are presented as opponents of equal importance in history. Vigny introduced extensive historical material and many biblical and mythological characters into literary circulation. The pessimism of Vigny’s worldview was incomprehensible to his contemporaries, which forced the writer to leave the literary field and engage in political activity.

Noisy success befell V. after the publication of his last novel “Stello” (1832), the last drama “Chatterton” (written in 1833, staged for the first time in 1835) and the memoir book Slavery and the Greatness of Military Life, 1835).
In “Stello” V. raised the problem of the historical fate of the poet, in “Chatterton” - his modern situation. “Stello” is the grief of the poet’s loneliness and doom. Poets are “the greatest and most unfortunate people. They form an almost unbroken chain of glorious exiles, brave, persecuted thinkers driven to madness by poverty.” “The poet’s name is blessed, his life is cursed. What is called the mark of being chosen makes it almost impossible to live.” Poets are “a race always cursed by all governments: monarchs are afraid and therefore persecute the poet, the constitutional government kills him with contempt (the English poet Chatterton, driven to suicide by insults and poverty), the republic destroys them (André Chénier).” “Oh,” exclaims V., “the nameless multitude, you have been an enemy of names since birth, your only passion is equality; and as long as you exist, you will be driven by the ceaseless ostracism of names.”
V. reveals the fate of the poet understood in this way in the drama “Chatterton,” dedicated to the suicide of the English poet Chatterton. In every Frenchman, according to V., there lives a vaudeville artist. With “Chatterton,” V. sought to replace vaudeville with the “drama of thought.” His Chatterton, of course, is very far from the English poet of the same name. It can hardly even be called a prototype. The prototype for V. was rather the young Werther Goethe. V. himself stated that Chatterton was “just a person’s name” for him. This name is a "romantic symbol" of the lonely, doomed son of the "malign fairy called poetry." Chatterton commits suicide because, according to the doctor, he is sick with “a moral and almost incurable disease that affects young souls who are in love with justice and beauty and encounter untruths and ugliness in life at every step. This disease is hatred of life and love of death. This is the stubbornness of a suicide." The drama caused a heated debate, including protest speeches in parliament. They said that she, like “Werther” in her time, became the cause of increased suicides among young people. They blamed V. for promoting suicide. V. answered: “Suicide is a religious and social crime, so says duty and reason. But despair is not an idea. And isn’t it stronger than reason and duty?”
After the drama “Chatterton,” V. wrote his memoir “Slavery and the Greatness of Military Life,” where he revealed one of the reasons for his despair. “The army, once the source of pride and strength of the dying aristocracy, has lost its greatness. She is now only an instrument of slavery. The army was once a large family, imbued with a sense of duty and honor, the stoicism of unquestioning obedience in the name of duty and honor.” Now she is “a gendarmerie, a big machine that kills and suffers.” “The soldier is victim and executioner, a blind and dumb gladiator, unhappy and cruel, who, beating this or that cockade today, asks himself whether he will put it on his hat tomorrow.”
Here is the despair of an aristocrat, crushed to dust by the army of the revolution and seeing in the army a mute, submissive, enslaved and alien force.
“Slavery and the Greatness of Military Life” is the last book published during V.’s lifetime. In 1842 he was elected to the Academy, in 1848 he nominated himself for the Constituent Assembly, but failed. He was no longer at the center of literary life after the production of Chatterton and the publication of his last book. From 1836-1837, V. lived in solitude on his estate until his death, from where he only occasionally left.

V., along with Hugo, was one of the creators of French romanticism. V.'s romanticism is conservative: it is determined by the powerlessness of a dying class. The Restoration of 1814 returned the throne to the Bourbons, but it did not return the aristocracy to its former wealth and power. The “old order”, feudalism died. It was during the era of restoration that French industry developed so much that it stimulated the final transfer of power from the landed aristocracy to the industrial and financial bourgeoisie, the creation of the July bourgeois monarchy.
And if in the first years of the restoration it still seemed that a return to the past was possible, that the “Genius of Christianity” would triumph, in other words, the feudal-aristocratic greatness that had gone into the past would return, then soon, even before 1830, and even more so after the establishment of the bourgeois monarchy, it became It is quite obvious that there is no return to the past: the aristocracy is dying. V. is present in the agony of the class. He declares with tragic stoicism: “It is not meant to be anymore. We are dying. From now on, only one thing is important: to die with dignity.” All that remains is to respond with “contemptuous silence” to the “eternal silence of the deity” (“Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane”, or to follow the wise stoicism of the hunted wolf.

Three main motives: the motive of a proud, lonely, despairing individual who leaves the world, full of contempt for its “nameless multitude”, the motive of fighting against God, the motive of submission to the will of the creator - merge with the motive of endless devotion, fidelity and love - these basic virtues of feudal knight, which have now become an expression of readiness to bear one’s cross. Before the revolution of 1830, while the paths of conservative and radical romanticism had not yet diverged (they were then united by a common dissatisfaction with the existing), V. was placed next to Hugo, critics considered V. a brilliant poet and the greatest master of verse. After the revolution of 1830, a sobering up occurred, and the shortcomings of V.’s work became more and more clearly visible to subsequent generations: imitativeness, his rhetoric, the schematism of language. characters.

Prosper Merimee is another French romanticist: “Bartholomew’s Night”, creator of the legend of Carmen. “Venus of Il” by Prosper Merimee is a mystical work - the statue strangled a young man because he decided to marry someone else.

The cult of ruins is associated with French romanticism, as a reminder of the great past of mankind, and as a contrast to the emptiness of the present. Ruins are a reason for sadness, but pleasant, world melancholy, this is a meditative way for romantics to realize themselves as a lost wanderer. This led to the creation of gardens that imitated the natural landscape along with ruins.

4. GERMAN ROMANTICISM. HOFFMAN.
The Germans, like no one else, sought to mythologize, to turn the surrounding world and existence into a myth. It is a big misconception to consider it dumb. romantics and kind storytellers.
They went back to basics. The discovery of the concept of “Indo-Europeans” belongs to them. They study Sanskrit, ancient texts (such as the Elder Eda), and study the ancient myths of various peoples. Germ. Romanticism is based on philology - “language makes us.” Key works - Jacob Grim "German Mythology" (translated into English, not into Russian) - a huge amount of material - Eda, the deeds of the Danes, German folklore, materials about magic, etc. It is still used by modern researchers of German mythology. Without this work there would be no German romanticism, and also, in fact, Russian romanticism. They opened up a completely new world for Europeans, a bright and fabulous world.
Women played a huge role in HP. They were the first to evaluate the works (of husbands, brothers) and were original tuning forks. German Romantics created the most romantic language (fuzzy, unclear, foggy). With the exception of Hoffmann, everything was clear and understandable with him. At the same time, his fellow writers strongly condemned him, despite his wild popularity among the reader, believing that he wrote to please the masses, “the taste of cattle.”
Another invention of HP is “world melancholy,” the hero’s dissatisfaction, life waiting for something, causeless blues.
Attitude to nature - nature is a manifestation of the highest freedom, the desire for the same freedom (the flight of a bird). At the same time, the view of nature is very pessimistic in the sense that man has completely broken away from it, destroyed the connection with it, the ability to “negotiate” and communicate with it. A striking example (in painting) was given by Caspar David Friedrich. For him, a person is cut off from his roots. Meeting a person is like meeting fate. Man is almost never depicted anywhere. rooted in nature, the person is close to the viewer, near the frame, almost always with his back to him. Death, dying of nature due to human activity. The loneliness of man and the loneliness of nature. Extreme pessimism. (The painting of the Crucifixion is a mountain landscape and there is no human presence other than a cross with a crucified man on one of the peaks). Feeling abandoned. Conflict with the universe is HP's calling card. The cult of chaos - chaos is the primary state of the universe, unspoiled, anything can be born from chaos.
Hoffman seems to depict the ordinary people around him, banal, primitive, but as soon as you look at them you understand that the faces of the heroes are masks, and the world around them turns into a fairy tale (and a rather evil one at that). The first impression of G is everyday life, but the further you go, the more the process turns into a wild, fairy-tale phantasmagoria. Absolutely all things turn out to be animated, have character, magical properties, etc. The entire space around the heroes is permeated with magic and mystical properties. The strength of G is that it “comes from everyday life”, resulting in an absolutely fabulous mythical world. The presence of several worlds (two worlds, three worlds).
A huge number of secret societies (second wind of the Freemasons), pagan, etc. Poeticization of everyday moments - card games, Tarot cards. Total mythologization.

The collapse of the Napoleonic Empire initially gave French writers the illusion of relative calm after the turbulent events of recent decades, as if it opened up the opportunity for them to concentrate, comprehend the experience of the recent past - both historical and literary - and, through common efforts, develop new principles of artistic creativity. A new literary generation entered the scene in the 20s, uniting in circles (the circle of E. Deschamps, the "Society of Well-Intentioned Literature", the Nodier circle, Hugo's "Cenacle"), grouping around periodicals ("Literary Conservative", "French Muse" , "Globe"). For this generation, the immediate literary school was already the works of Chateaubriand and Stael, and the romantic ideas of the previous era, refined and developed, are now becoming more and more widespread.

Of course, the illusory nature of the initial calm was revealed very quickly, just as the two-faced nature of the Restoration itself was soon realized. Behind the external façade of peace and order erected by the official ideology of the Holy Alliance, a more penetrating gaze discovered a formidable chain of other, counter-directional events and patterns: the thirst for revenge among the aristocracy that had returned to the levers of power and the thirst for preserving the acquired privileges among the bourgeoisie, the roar of national liberation movements on the outskirts the Holy Allied Entente, the hail of ordinances of Charles X - everything that led to a new revolutionary explosion.

However, on the surface, the illusion of stabilization and the establishment of “order” was initially effective. It stimulated, in particular, the development of those ideological complexes that were on the defensive lines during the period of revolution and empire. As if their hour has struck, they are unfurling their banners and striving for self-affirmation of the idea of ​​legitimist traditionalism and Christian religiosity. If democratic-oppositional thought from the very first days began an energetic struggle against the Restoration regime (Courier's pamphlets, Beranger's songs, Stendhal's aesthetic works, propaganda of the ideas of anti-monarchism and liberalism in the Delecluse circle, the theories of utopian socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier), then romanticism initially puts itself in opposition not to specific social reality, but - in an orthodox-romantic abstract spirit - to being in general. As if now feeling greater security against the vicissitudes of a purely political fate, the romantic personality puts into the background the litigation with the “century” and goes deeper into understanding his ontological status, relationships with the universe, the creator and fate, accordingly moving for a while from the novel, with its social and the current atmosphere in the lyrics. This is evidenced not only by the flourishing of lyrical genres, but also by their characteristic designations: from Lamartine’s lyrical-philosophical “reflections” (méditations) and Vigny’s “élevations” to intimate-lyrical “consolations” (consolations) in Saint- Beauvais and "cries" (pleurs) by Marcelina Debord-Valmore.

In line with this tendency to move away from the “century”, the “complex of the past” is also activated - initially serene and, as it were, now legalized restorationist interest in those of its cultural layers that were previously neglected (“Poetic Gaul” by Marchangy, 1813-1817; “History of French poetry of the XII-XIII centuries" Flamericura, 1815, etc.).

The attempt of romanticism to be constituted in its independence from the “age”, from topicality was reinforced by the active assimilation of the experience of the “northern” romantics. After the fall of Napoleon, who patronized classicism and in his spirit propagated his “Empire style,” they also received freedom in France: “Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature” by A. V. Schlegel were translated, works by Byron, Scott, Hoffmann, and Tieck were published; The French become acquainted with the ideas of modern German philosophy, with the works of Thomas Moore and the poets of the Lake School. These translations and publications are carried out primarily by the efforts of the romantics and their like-minded philosophers - Nodier, Nerval, Barante, Guizot, Quinet, Cousin. French literature receives from the “northerners” additional incentives, as it were, encouraging it to demonstrate new, and above all “transtemporal,” facets of romantic consciousness. It was at this time that the theme of the sovereignty of the poetic personality, the cult of genius, endowed not just with special spirituality, but also with messianic traits, was established in French romanticism; these latter are clearly visible in the artistic position of Vigny and Hugo and receive extensive justification in Ballanche’s lyrical and philosophical poem “Orpheus” (1829). For the first time, fantasy enters the poetics of French romanticism - primarily in Nodier (Smarra and the Demons of the Night, 1821; Trilby, 1822, etc.), and this is in an openly German, Hoffmannian way - even where, as in "Trilby", the formal outline of the plot is made up of Scottish-Scottish motifs. The theoretical argumentation of the anti-bourgeois nature of romantic art is often sharpened in a consistently irrationalistic spirit, as in Lamartine’s arguments about the “worldwide conspiracy of mathematicians against thought and poetry”, about the power of “numbers” over the century and people.

The history of romanticism in France in these years is, first of all, the history of its attempts to achieve internal integrity and external independence. The hope for integrity inspired him at first with the consciousness of the emerging brotherhood of like-minded people, the proud feeling of the unity of “young France”, the victorious fanfare of circles and manifestos, as in the Jena era of German romanticism; The “ecstasy in battle” at the premiere of Hugo’s play “Hernani” in February 1830 was the culmination and brightest outburst of this hope. But if epigone classicism was finally buried under the rubble as a result of romantic storms, if the literary full rights of romanticism were irrevocably affirmed, then this victory did not resolve romanticism’s own problems and did not lead it to internal integrity. Moreover, now, “in freedom,” the problems became even more obvious.

The desire to establish a sovereign kingdom of the spirit in contrast to the prose and topic of the day, to expand the conflict “individual and the modern world” to the conflict “individual and the world in general” from the very beginning was neutralized not only by the influence of the aggravating social contradictions of the Restoration era, but also by counteractions in the very internal structure of the romantic consciousness , for whom the eternal tension between the poles is his generic sign, his destiny. Its very original maximalist postulates exclude the integrity, harmony and detachment of the “classical” model.

Perhaps this was most clearly revealed in such a relatively specific example as the comprehension of the “Byronic” problem. Having reached France, Byronism, as everywhere else along its path, deeply impressed minds. But in that short-term hope for a respite that dawned on the romantic “sons of the century” with the end of the Napoleonic empire, Byronic rebellion frightened them; in a certain sense, it was true that she was also “detached”, gravitating towards the cosmic spheres, but the very spirit of rebellion and negation was still perceived as too close to topicality. This is how a polemic with Byronism arose (as well as, for the same reasons, with the specifically national complex of romantic “fury”). But it is significant that Nodier, for example, in the interval between “anti-Byron” speeches, publishes his completely Byronic “robber” novel “Jean Sbogar” (1818); Lamartine, in the poem “Man” (1820), addressed to Byron, combines passionate refutations with equally passionate expressions of piety, and after Byron’s death he composed a hymn to him and his feat in the name of freedom. Serene integrity does not take root in the sphere of romantic consciousness - it returns again and again to disturbing modernity.

Such is the transformation of the image of the romantic genius in this era. Having turned his gaze away from the world, he tried both the position of extreme humility, dissolution in God (early Lamartine), and, on the contrary, the position of radical doubt in the goodness of the Creator, rebellion against theodicy ("Moses" and "Jephthah's Daughter" by Vigny), to then come , in the 30s, to the idea of ​​the poet’s social mission, realized in all its tragic complexity.

This, finally, is the fate of the historical theme - one of the main lines of French romanticism, opening in the 20s. Historiography and philosophy of history during the Restoration era sought, first of all, to comprehend the lessons of recent socio-political upheavals. The thirst for stability was expressed in the fact that liberal historians (Thiers, Minier, Guizot), while condemning the “excesses” of the revolution, at the same time seemed to remove the recent intensity of passions, looking for positive meaning in its events and lessons. In this atmosphere, consistently and radically restoration and counter-revolutionary ideas (for example, in the treatises of Joseph de Maistre of this time) turned out, strange as it may seem at first for the Restoration era, to be unpopular, defiantly extreme and “archaic”; It is known how resolutely Vigny objected to de Maistre’s positions. On the contrary, the French now find a sympathetic response to the balanced Hegelian idea of ​​the ultimate correctness of the “world spirit” and the reasonableness of its institutions, the idea of ​​the progress of human history, conceptualized in the works of the above-mentioned historiographers, and in Cousin’s lectures on the history of philosophy, and in Ballanche’s “Social Palingenesis” . The philosophy of history in France during this period is drawn towards optimism, eager to find encouraging features in the history of mankind.

But, refracted in literature in specific human destinies, verified not only by the broad scale of the era, humanity and the “world spirit”, but also by the scale of individual lot, the problematic of historical good and evil loses its uniqueness and acquires enormous tragic tension, turning into truly explosive conflicts of personality and history, progress and reaction, political action and morality. Behind the anti-monarchical and anti-despotic orientation of romantic works about the past, there is also a more general concern for the fate of the individual and humanity, inspired, of course, by reflections on modern trends in social development. Thus, Vigny, in his historical works, acutely raises the theme of the “price of progress,” the theme of the moral cost of a historical act. The early Dumas, still carried by the wave of genuine “serious” historicism, who had not yet gone to seek rest in the poetics of historical adventure, also conceptualized history as a tragedy: such is the theme of inhuman immorality and ingratitude of the powerful in his dramas “The Court of Henry III” (1829), “ Nel Tower" (1832); This is the picture of feudal civil strife in his first historical novel “Isabella of Bavaria” (1836) - a still “Scottian” problematic novel, with its panorama of popular and national disasters, with the author’s meaningful reasoning that “one must have a firm tread in order to without fear, descend into the depths of history." Ballanche, along with the majestic optimistic horizons of "Orpheus" and "Social Palingenesis", also sketches the apocalyptic gloomy "Vision of Gebal" (1831).

It was not nostalgic consolation that brought with it an interest in history, but a feeling of the individual’s irreversible involvement in the social process - a feeling that intensified with great speed as the sharp social contradictions of the Restoration era were discovered. Already in 1826, Lamartine admitted that his head was “more occupied with politics than with poetry,” just eight years after the elegy “Solitude” with its decisive formula: “What else has the earth and me in common?” (Translated by B Livshits).

French romanticism in this - formally victorious - era actually reveals on all fronts new and new contradictions of its very consciousness, its fundamental "inharmony", and it is no coincidence that in one of the main romantic manifestos of this time - Hugo's preface to the drama "Cromwell" (1827) - the essence of modern art is embodied in the concept of drama, and the principles of contrast and grotesque are declared to be the central pillars of the artistic system of romanticism. In terms of genre, this found its direct expression in the rapid development of romantic drama in France, undoubtedly stimulated by the July Revolution. At the turn of the 20-30s, one after another, theatrical premieres exploded like bombs, and clashes of purely romantically exaggerated “fatal” passions in these dramas constantly acquired sharp anti-monarchist and anti-bourgeois accents. The flourishing of this genre is associated primarily with the names of Hugo, Vigny and Musset, but at the initial stage Dumas also occupied a prominent place in this series (his already mentioned historical dramas, the drama on a modern plot “Anthony”, 1831). Elements of “turbulent” romantic poetics even penetrate into the pseudo-classical tragedy of Casimir Delavigne, popular among the general public at that time (Marino Faliero, 1829; Louis XI, 1832; The Family of Luther's Times, 1836).

The first artistic triumphs of romanticism within this era are associated with the name of Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869). His collection of poems, Poetic Reflections (1820), became not only one of the pinnacles of French romantic literature, but also the first manifestation of French romanticism in lyric poetry. The subjective basis of romanticism here approached one of its purest expressions. Everything in these poems - the focus on the inner world of the poetic soul, the demonstrative detachment of manner and gesture, the prayerful ecstasy of tone - was a contrast to both social topicality and the tradition of pathetic rhetoric that prevailed in French poetry of the past. The feeling of contrast and novelty was so great, the impression of the absolute intimacy of these elegiac outpourings was so irresistible that at first the deep connection of Lamartine's poetry with tradition went unnoticed: the conspicuous spontaneity of the lyrical impulse here is in fact methodically reproduced again and again, becoming the result of not only " a cry from the soul,” but also a completely calculated “technical” device to match the skillful periphrasticism of classic poetry. The persistent sincerity of the tone does not actually exclude traditionally eloquent floridity, but only switches it to other, more intimate spheres (something that later, apparently, forced Pushkin to define Lamartine as a poet “mellifluous, but monotonous”).

The impression of detachment was created primarily due to the very themes of these poems. Lamartine's lyrical hero is not just an anchorite secluded from the world and its passions - his thoughts are also constantly directed upward, towards God. But the very tone and meaning of his communication with the supreme being are full of deep and unrelenting drama, which ultimately makes detachment impossible. Lamartine chooses for himself a position of demonstrative religiosity, extreme humility and pietism.

In many ways, of course, this is a continuation of Chateaubriand’s problematics through lyrical means. But if Chateaubriand saw himself forced to prove at length the advantages of religion, then Lamartine speaks directly, without intermediaries, to God, whose existence is not in question for him. What is increasingly being questioned is whether God - initially believed to be all-good and resolving all earthly doubts - is capable of overshadowing and replacing with himself the world in the soul of the poet who completely entrusts himself to him.

If we restore the chronological order of the creation of individual poems in the first collection, it will reveal a fairly traditional picture of the emergence of religious pietism as one of the utopias characteristic of the romantic consciousness. The very first poems on this topic were inspired by a deep personal experience - the untimely death of a beloved woman. As earlier with Novalis, Lamartine has a desire to rethink death, to see in it a transition to another, better world (“Immortality”), to find solace in the awareness of the frailty of this world (“Lake”). The fact that it is the poet and precisely the romantic poet who suffers here is clearly read in the poem “Glory” (“The layman on earth is given all the blessings of the world, but the lyre is given to us!”). Psychologically, the blasphemous murmur and attacks of doubt about the goodness of the creator, who did not want to give man absolute bliss, are quite understandable in this situation: “My mind is confused - you could, there is no doubt about that - but you didn’t want to” (“Despair”). This is how the image of a “cruel God” arises, in relation to whom man is given the “fatal right to curse” (“Faith”).

The situation turns out to be much more tense than even that of Chateaubriand; there, the tragedy of the destinies of the heroes (in “Atala”, in “Rene”) was not so directly correlated with the divine will and was not so openly blamed on it.

It was this series of “desperate” reflections that was followed by the most repentant reflections, the most reckless in the renunciation of pride and rebellion - “Man”, “Providence for man”, “Prayer”, “God”, etc. Taken together, they are capable of deed to create the impression of monotonous piety. But, taken individually, many of the poems in this series are striking, to use Lamartine’s own words, with the “energy of passion” in affirming the idea of ​​religious humility. This especially applies to the poem “Man,” and it is no coincidence that it is built on a polemic with Byron: before us is a confession of faith not only religious, but also literary. Lamartine develops his version of a romantic utopia.

The rebellious Byronic “wild harmony” is contrasted here with a diametrically opposite position - “the ecstasy of self-abasement and self-destruction” (N.P. Kozlova): a person must idolize his “divine slavery”, not blame the creator, but cover his yoke with kisses, etc. Herself the demonstrative blindness of this self-abasement already makes it deliberately forced: the fact that the poet completely entrusts himself to the creator is, as it were, intended to give him all the more “the right to grumble.” He bitterly admits that the rebellious mind is powerless against fate: that, in fact, it is not for him, Lamartine, to teach Byron, for his mind is “full of darkness”; that such is the fate of man - in the limitations of his nature and in the infinity of his aspirations; These very aspirations, this very thirst for the absolute is the cause of his suffering: “He is a god who fell to the dust, but did not forget heaven.”

This system of evidence gives rise to a completely different image of a person - an image that is purely romantically suffering and majestic: “... even if he is weak and a sire, he is great in secret.” Lamartine, even on this roundabout path - as if by contradiction - seeks to affirm the greatness of a person whose homeland is, after all, heaven (also a favorite romantic motif). The main tone of the poem is an intense harmony of ideological dissonances to the point of breaking. Hidden in the garb of religious pietism is a completely secular stoicism of chosenness, which has its own pride, not Byron’s, but also aspiring to maximalism.

Lamartine's evolution from the first "Meditations" to the "New Meditations" (1823) and "Poetic and Religious Consonances" (1830) is marked primarily by the variation of this dualism, affirmed in the very title of the last collection. The fanatical pathos of the convert is gradually muted; the counterbalance to romantic grief about the imperfection of the world is admiration for the harmony of nature and space. If in “Reflections” the poet’s attitude towards nature fluctuated between sentimental tenderness and awe at its indifference to human suffering, now nature appears more and more clearly as an ideal example of harmonious patterns, and if the poet cognizes the divine verb, it is through it: “Stars the face lit up, the face of the stars darkened - I will listen to them, Lord! I know their language "("Hymn for the Night"). In the poetic system of Consonances, the posture of orthodox religiosity gives way to a worldview very close to pantheistic (although Lamartine himself objected to such a qualification, not wanting to be suspected of any kind of “materialism”). The tendency towards the secularization of the poet’s consciousness is also manifested in the poem “Childe Harold’s Last Pilgrimage” (1825), anticipating Lamartine’s turn in the 30s to social reformist issues (“Josselin”, “The Fall of an Angel”, later prose).

A person who has risen above the topic of the day to clarify relations with the creator and his world order - Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) begins his work with this problem. In his first collection of poetry in 1822, republished in 1826 under the title “Poems on Ancient and Modern Subjects,” the romantic hero is objectified, unlike Lamartine’s; but behind the external objectification and epicness, the lyrical “I” clearly emerges, no less vulnerable and confused than Lamartine’s, only not prone to direct self-outpouring. The outpourings in Vigny's early poetry are entrusted to a mythical or historical hero - such are Moses and the Trappist in the poems of the same name, which most clearly indicate Vigny's initial positions.

Vigny's tragedy is entirely modern, even if it is dressed in outdated clothes. Vigny's hero is a true romantic, he is great spiritually, he is elevated above ordinary people, but being chosen oppresses him, because it becomes the cause of fatal loneliness ("Moses"); he is also abandoned by God, like the same Moses, vainly questioning the indifferent and silent creator, or like the “sister of angels” Eloa in the poem of the same name; the will of God shocks him with its cruelty, “bloodthirstiness,” as in “Jephthah’s Daughter,” and he internally tensed in a thirst for rebellion (in his diary, Vigny even weighs the possibility that the Day of Judgment will be a judgment not of God over people, but of people over God ).

This cosmic sorrow is complemented by purely earthly suffering - where Vigny’s hero finds himself in public history, as in the poem “The Trappist,” which tells about the heroic and aimless death of people for the king who betrayed them. The theme of the proud suffering of a great and lonely man - certainly akin to Byron's - will remain in Vigny's work until the very end.

In Vigny's early poetry, his characteristic ethics of silently stoic overcoming suffering already takes on clear outlines. If Lamartine, doubting the Creator's favor towards man, all the more frantically assured himself of the opposite, then Vigny proceeds from the impenetrable indifference of God as an immutable fact. Under these conditions, the only worthy position for an individual is stoicism: “Accept absence with contemptuous consciousness, and respond with silence to the eternal silence of the deity” (Translated by V. Bryusov). So says the classic formula from Vigny’s later poem “The Garden of Gethsemane,” but the theme of “silence” itself is Vigny’s original, vital theme, it is one of the foundations of his entire philosophy. The poem “Moses” that opens his first collection ends with a laconic mention of the new, next chosen one of God who replaced Moses - Joshua, “thoughtful and pale” in anticipation of all the hardships of the chosen lot. The people respond with deaf silence to the triumph of Richelieu in the novel "Saint-Mars". Among the later poems, “The Death of the Wolf” is based on this cross-cutting motif: “And know: everything is vanity, only silence is beautiful” (translated by Yu. Korneev).

Vigny's poetic position is largely related to these philosophical premises. Its basis is the romantic symbolization of a traditional plot motif or a specific event, especially clearly in contrast with the dense, visible and tangible matter of real circumstances “surrounding” the idea. Sometimes the plastic embodiment of a situation completely exhausts the artistic idea of ​​the entire poem (for example, “The Bathing of the Roman Woman”), anticipating the poetics of the Parnassians. But in the best poems of Vigny, against an outwardly objectified background, an action develops that is extremely sparse in terms of events, but filled with the deepest internal drama, and it receives its resolution in an expressive denouement that transfers everything into a subjective, deeply lyrical plane. From epic through drama to lyrical symbolization - this is Vigny’s poetic canon in his best poems ("Moses", "Death of the Wolf", "Garden of Gethsemane"), thereby gravitating towards a kind of transtemporal universal synthesis. This transtemporality is conscious. All the storms of the romantic era are led by Vigny - in the “Garden of Gethsemane” he speaks of “a riot of vague passions raging between lethargy and convulsions,” and although “according to the plot” this refers to the whole of human fate, the reminiscence from Chateaubriand (“vague passions”) addresses us primarily to the romantic era. But Vigny wants to see these passions “bridled” - both by the ethics of “silence” and by the poetics of disciplined form. Vigny's romanticism is the most austere among the artistic worlds of the French romantics.

Of course, we are talking about the prevailing trend, and not about the absolute canon. Romanticism as a worldview is too fundamentally focused on understanding the most cardinal contradictions of existence to become the art of peace and detachment, even tragic-stoic. Likewise, in Vigny’s work, the subjective lyrical element often, especially since the 30s, breaks out of control, from the epic frame - in the poem “Paris” (1831), in the novel “Stello” (1832), in many poems of his final poetic the cycle "Fates", published posthumously in 1864 ("The Shepherd's Hut", "Bottle in the Sea", "Pure Spirit").

From the problem of “man and the universe,” “man and the creator,” Vigny moves on to the problem of “man and history.” Actually, the idea of ​​history was already assumed in the concept of the first collection, and the historical (and not just the mythological) past was the immediate theme of many poems (“Prison”, “Snow”, “Horn”). Already there, “earthly” history appeared as a particular version of the universal, cosmic tragedy of the human lot; in connection with the poem "Prison" Vigny in his diary expressed this in the metaphorical image of a crowd of people who, waking up from a deep sleep, find themselves imprisoned in a prison.

Thus, the general concept of history in the early Vigny, in contrast to the “historiographers,” is pessimistic. His historical novel Saint-Mars (1826) in this sense is internally polemical in relation to the Scottian tradition. Like Scott, Vigny builds his novel around the image of an individual who finds himself drawn into the maelstrom of historical events. But in Scott's novels, history, as a rule, developed along the path of progress towards the ultimate good of the individual, the nation and mankind. In Vigny’s concept, any touch with history is detrimental to the individual, because it plunges him into the abyss of insoluble moral conflicts and leads to death. The idea of ​​the “private man,” which had been looming on the horizon of French literature since the first post-revolutionary years, here becomes constitutive in a problematic epic work.

It is no coincidence that the concept of history for Vigny is almost identical to the concept of politics; This aspect - still private for history - turns out to be dominant in Vigny, and politics itself is reduced to politicking, a chain of intrigue. Such a fundamental disbelief in the ethical meaning of history makes Vigny’s historicism, in contrast to Scott’s, much more romantically subjective. In the historical conflict depicted in Saint-Mars, there are no right sides; there is a game of ambition, state-political (Richelieu, Louis) or personal (Saint-Mars). The romantically ideal Saint-Mars also turns out to be guilty from the moment he enters the field of political struggle, for thereby betraying the original purity of his soul.

This issue is even more acute in the drama “The Wife of Marshal d’Ancre” (1831). In Saint-Mars, the hero still had on his side his immeasurable moral superiority over Richelieu, expressed, in particular, in his uncompromising final recognition of his own moral guilt. In all the romantic drama of France (Hugo, Dumas), as a rule, the principles of good and evil, embodied in the corresponding main characters, collided. In "Marshal d'Ancre's Wife" two equally immoral court parties clash in the struggle for a place at the throne - "the favorite overthrew the favorite." And if the image of Madame d'Ancre is nevertheless illuminated with a tragic aura and, of course, claims to be the reader's sympathy, then this effect of the drama is due primarily to the fact that the heroine, seeing the light at a fatal moment for her, rejects any authority of the “favorite” court above her. Yes, she is no better than her executioners, she also “fell” in due time, betraying her “simple-minded” youth and becoming a power-hungry favorite, but it is not for them to judge her. It is at this moment that she acquires in Vigny the status of a tragic heroine, a kind of sacrificial greatness, and in the vicinity of the touching slave of love and honor Saint-Mars rises to the supra-historical, supra-temporal series as a symbol of individual fate, crushed by the inexorable fatal “wheel of history.”

At the same time, the moral aspect, inextricably linked with this problematic, imparts a different kind of depth and acuity to Vigny’s historical concept. Progress in history is unacceptable to Vigny, not in itself, but primarily because of the price that such “instruments” of progress as Richelieu offer for it. In the scene of Richelieu's prayer in Saint-Mars, the bloody cardinal claims that God at his trial separates "Armand de Richelieu" from the "minister": it was the minister who, for the good of the state, committed atrocities that were regretted by a man named Armand de Richelieu. I regretted it, but I couldn’t do it any other way. Vigny rebels against the cardinal's double-entry bookkeeping. Extreme moral rigorism prohibits him from soberly weighing the historical merits of absolutism as a principle of centralized power - a position that is also romantically subjective. But it is significant that the aristocrat Vigny, by the inertia of “heredity” still believing at this time that his noble origin binds him with a duty of loyalty, creates a work that objectively runs counter to the official monarchical ideology of the Restoration. Here, the image of the weak-willed and deceitful Louis, the same crowned traitor as the king in “Trappist,” acquires special significance.

To clarify Vigny’s final attitude to the idea of ​​historical progress, it is also extremely important to realize that in his protest against the cruelty of the cardinal and the unprincipledness of the monarch, Vigny, overcoming his romantically doomed loneliness, appeals to the people as an ally. At the moment of his triumph, Richelieu looks over the servilely bowed heads of the courtiers at the darkening masses of people in the square and waits, longs for the welcoming roar from there as the last sanction. But no sanction is given, the people are silent. Mirabeau once said: “The silence of the people is a lesson to the king.” So it is with Vigna - the last word in history has not yet been spoken. The victories of kings, ministers, and favorites are not victories of the people; this idea runs through the entire drama “Marshal d’Ancre’s Wife” - in the storyline associated with the locksmith Picard and his militia; the idea of ​​the people as the highest judge is latently present in “Stello” (in the image of the gunner Blair), and in the military stories of the series “Captivity and the Greatness of the Soldier” (1835), and in the later poem “Wanda”.

This idea is fundamental for Vigna. There are, of course, also features of the romantic image of the “patriarchal”, “healthy”, “peasant” people, contrasted with the urban “mob” (“Saint-Mars”). But already in “The Marshal d’Ancre’s Wife” the opposition is significantly expanded in Picard’s parable about the wine barrel: it has sediment at the bottom (“mob”), there is foam at the top (aristocracy), but in the middle there is “good wine”, which there are people. It is with this that Vigny’s idea of ​​progress in history is associated. “Man passes, but the people are reborn,” says Corneille in Saint-Mars. “In many of its pages, and perhaps not the worst, history is a novel whose author is the people,” says Vigny himself in the 1829 preface to Saint-Mars.

These sentiments were greatly stimulated by the events of the July Revolution, during which Vigny finally said goodbye to his previous illusions regarding the duty of serving the king; Soon after the revolution, he wrote in his diary: “The people have proven that they do not agree to continue to endure the oppression of the clergy and aristocracy. Woe to those who do not understand their will!” At the same time, Vigny’s class idea of ​​the people expanded: his field of vision also included the working class, the oppressed urban people - in “The Workers’ Song” (1829), in the drama “Chatterton” (1835).

A special place in the history of French romanticism during the Restoration era is occupied by the early work of Victor Hugo (1802-1885). First of all, by the end of the 20s, Hugo's name and activities became a symbol of the triumph of the romantic movement in France. His preface to the drama "Cromwell" was perceived as one of the main manifestos of romanticism, his "Cenacle" united the most promising young adherents of the new movement (Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Musset, Dumas), the presentation of his drama "Hernani" entered the literary annals as the final victory of romanticism. A huge creative gift, combined with truly inexhaustible energy, immediately allowed Hugo to fill modern French literature with the buzz of his name. He began almost simultaneously with all genres: the collection of his first odes (1822), then replenished with ballads, went through four editions until 1828; prefaces to poetry collections and the drama "Cromwell", literary critical articles in the magazine "Conservateur littéraire" ("Literary Conservative") founded by him in 1819 and other publications made him one of the most famous theorists of the new literary movement; with the novels “Gan Icelander” (1823) and “Byug-Zhargal” (1826) he entered the field of prose; Since 1827, when “Cromwell” appeared, he has turned to drama.

Meanwhile, Hugo’s literary work itself, and in particular at this early stage, is fundamentally far from being as orthodox-romantic as it appeared in the general romantic environment of that time. The classicist tradition in Hugo's poetic thinking is much more active than that of his other romantic contemporaries; fluctuations between classicism and romanticism in his theoretical statements of the first half of the 20s are another confirmation of this. But the matter is not simply a matter of fluctuations in theoretical thought that is just being determined. From the very beginning, the artistic experience of the great literature of the “golden age” dominated Hugo’s consciousness and was in tune with his poetic nature. Understanding, like his contemporaries, the impossibility of preserving this tradition in changed conditions, Hugo willingly opened up to new trends and, convincingly defending their legitimacy, followed them himself. But his traditional complexes - both ideological and purely formal - are strong and organic. First of all, this is the rationalistic foundation of poetic inspiration itself. Even where Hugo outwardly follows the most turbulent trends of the romantic age, he chains them in the armor of rationalistic logic. In the preface to Cromwell, he defends the right to depict contrasts in literature - contrasts conceived as a symbol of the most radical contradictions of existence, its original duality and fragmentation. But how clearly constructed and organized - at different levels - these contrasts appear in Hugo’s artistic system itself, starting with his “furious” novels “Gan the Icelander” and “Byug-Jargal” and ending with the late novel “The Ninety-third Year”. Hugo's romanticism is primarily rationalistic, this distinguishes it from other contemporary romantic systems.

This is connected - in a broader sense - with Hugo’s very worldview, with his idea of ​​the artist’s place in the world. Like all romantics, Hugo is convinced of the messianic role of the artist-creator. Like them, he sees the imperfection of the real world around him. But the maximalist romantic rebellion against the foundations of the world order does not attract Hugo; the idea of ​​an individual’s fatal confrontation with the world is not organic for him; the insolubility of a consistently romantic “double world” is, in general, alien to him. Hugo often shows human tragedies, but it is not without reason that he surrounds them with a series of fatal accidents and coincidences. These accidents are only apparently fatal. Behind them is the conviction of the great non-randomness of the good general law of progress and improvement. Hugo knows at every moment where in the specific development of humanity and society a miscalculation was made that caused the tragedy, and how it can be corrected. Already in his critical speeches of the early 20s, he talks about the writer’s duty “to express some useful truth in an entertaining work” (“On Walter Scott”, 1823), that the writer’s works should “be useful” and “serve as a lesson for society of the future" (preface to the 1823 edition). Hugo remained faithful to these convictions to the end, and they directly connect his work with the Enlightenment tradition, although at first he rejected the “philosophers” in the same critical articles under the influence of his early monarchism.

The very comprehensiveness of Hugo's work, the desire to rise above the literary disputes of the moment and combine openness to new trends with fidelity to tradition - all this is connected with the desire to base his romanticism not on world denial, but on world acceptance. In the preface to “Cromwell,” Hugo thoroughly proved the dramatic nature of the art of the new era, and declared epic to be the property of ancient times; and his own work is wildly dramatic in all genres, including lyrical ones. But above this drama rises a purely epic incentive to embrace everything - both the century and the world; in this sense, Hugo’s general movement towards an epic novel (starting with Notre Dame) and towards lyric-epic cycles (Retribution, Legend of the Ages, The Terrible Year) is natural. Hugo's romanticism is epic in its tendency.

This was already revealed in Hugo's early odes and ballads. The tradition of classic epic is especially felt in the odes. Respect for authority is reinforced by the royalist position of the young poet: he rejoices at the advent of “order”, speaks of the revolutionary “saturnalia of anarchism and atheism” with such conviction that he himself experienced them, glorifies the Vendee rebels as martyrs of monarchical and religious ideas (“Quiberon”, “Virgins” Vendée"). This royalism, however, is in fact only a youthful pose, a tribute to the times. It has the same aesthetic character as Chateaubriand's Christianity; Hugo declared in 1822 that “the history of people only reveals itself in all its poetry when it is judged from the heights of monarchical ideas and religious beliefs.”

Hugo will very soon move away from the extremes of royalism, as well as from classicist unities. But in Hugo’s very turn to romanticism and his, so to speak, handling of it, the dream of some higher art that would combine the merits of the new and the old clearly emerges. Valuing the traditions of the past, Hugo at the same time resolutely separates himself from the enemies of romanticism. For him, the right of romanticism to exist is as indisputable as the greatness of Corneille or Boileau. The fierce battles between literary conservatives and innovators confuse him from the very beginning - he does not strive for a loud break; art can be both classical and romantic, as long as it is “true”. Therefore, he admires new art - Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Scott; he takes pleasure in noting in an article about Lamartine in 1820 that Andre Chénier is a romantic among the classics, and Lamartine is a classic among romantics. At the same time, Hugo accepts romanticism in its entirety: well aware of the differences in the ideological positions of Chateaubriand and Byron and even regretting at this “royalist” stage, like Lamartine, about Byron’s fight against God, he nevertheless admires both, emphasizing that they “came out of one cradle" ("About Lord Byron", 1824).

As a result, this classically trained poet begins to energetically test the possibilities of romantic poetics. Pathetic odes are cleared of the most odious stylistic cliches of classicism. Ballads are added to the odes, often on medieval themes, with fantastic motifs drawn from ancient legends and folk beliefs ("Sylph", "Fairy"). In this regard, the idea that is vital to romanticism about the homelessness of fantasy in the earthly prosaic world also emerges ("To Trilby"). The novels "Byug-Jargal" and "Gan Icelander" demonstrate "Gothic" and romantic fury in the most extreme forms; the poetics of "local color" plays a significant role in them. Romantic exoticism reigns in the collection of poems "Oriental Motifs" (1829). The poet is increasingly shaking the formal framework of classic verse, enthusiastically experimenting with rhythm and stanza, trying to convey the movement of thoughts and events through the rhythm itself (“Heavenly Fire”, “Djinns”). By the way, it is precisely this “liberation” of verse that is one of the most fruitful poetic innovations of early Hugo: many of his poems are freer and more relaxed than those of Lamartine and Vigny, and precede the rhythmic richness of French lyricism at the following stages (Musset, Gautier, the mature lyrics of Hugo himself ).

Finally, Hugo’s preferred interest in history was also in the general mainstream of the romantic movement. And it is in this area that the foundations of the writer’s worldview and his attitude to the problem of “man and the world”, “man and history” are formed.

Like the French historiographers of this time, Hugo has a predominant optimistic view of history as a process of forward movement of humanity. Even sometimes expressing horror at the inexorable march of history, Hugo immediately relieves the severity of the problem, recalling that “chaos was needed in order to build a harmonious world,” and reinforces this hope by pointing to the messianic role of the poet, telling the people about this great dialectic of history: “He whirling in a whirlwind, like a storm, alien to peace, standing on the whirlwind with its foot, supporting the firmament with its hand" ("Completion", 1828, trans. V. Levik).

The writer’s consciousness includes the idea of ​​the people as the real force of history. In "Byug-Zhargal" this is still a rebellious element, inspiring fear and awe, but Hugo also notes that the rebellion is caused by oppression, that cruelty is a response to cruelty; This sounds even more clearly in “Han the Icelander” when depicting the rebel miners. In "Eastern Motives" many poems are dedicated to the heroic struggle of the Greek people against Turkish rule.

The theme of history and the theme of the people are most widely intertwined with each other in the novel “Notre Dame Cathedral” (1831). Of course, the first theme dominates here - the theme of historical progress. This progress leads not only to the replacement of the symbolic “stone” language of architecture, embodied in the cathedral, and the dead language of scholasticism, embodied in the sterile and soul-drying scholarship of Claude Frollo, with the language of the printed letter, the book, broad and systematic enlightenment; it also leads to the awakening of a more humane morality, personified in the images of the “outcasts” - Esmeralda and Quasimodo. The people here also appear as a spontaneous public mass - either neutral (in the opening scene) or frightening with their “lawlessness” (Gringoire in the Truants). In any case, Hugo portrays the masses using the example of an outcast and desperate brethren of beggars. However, in the still blind activity, ideas of justice also make their way; its very “lawlessness” is a kind of parody of public lawlessness, a collective mockery of official justice (this is how the scene of the official trial of Quasimodo and the scene of the trial of the Truants over Gringoire are read in the general context of the novel). And in the scene of the storming of the cathedral, this elemental force is already driven by the moral incentive of restoring justice.

Hugo's path in the 20s is the path of realizing that the world, history and man are indeed full of the deepest contradictions; that history is not only “poetic” but also tragic; that hopes for the monarchy and its “order” are as ephemeral as hopes for classical harmony; that romantic art, with its acute sense of the fragmentation of existence, is indeed more modern. But the very idea of ​​order and harmony is dear to Hugo - how strong is his faith in the transformative mission of the poet, both romantic and educational. And Hugo makes an attempt to organize harmony in art and in the world by romantic means. He takes up, first of all, the idea of ​​dramatic contrast, the grotesque (preface to “Cromwell”), fully armed with the confidence that art only needs to master this explosive material, since it has acquired such urgency, and turn it to the common good.

Hence the exaggerated and eccentric nature of the contrasts in Hugo’s early work. World social and moral evil appears to him as an exceptional, exotic phenomenon - it is not without reason that it is transferred to geographically and historically distant spheres. The problem of human suffering is entrusted to the poetics of inhuman passions (Habibra in "Byug-Jargal", Claude Frollo and Ursula in "Cathedral") or the poetics of grotesque contrast (Quasimodo in "Cathedral", Triboulet in the drama "The King Amuses himself"), further strengthened by a constant plot device fatal coincidence or tragic misunderstanding.

All this is connected with the breakdown of Hugo’s socio-political views during this period. Democratism and republicanism, now associated with the holistic image of Hugo the writer, were only just emerging in perspective for him in the 20s, and he approached them from directly opposite principles (albeit youthfully naive, as he himself later qualified them). Therefore, now for him the problem of the people also appears predominantly aesthetically exaggerated: they are not just “poor”, “orphans”, “outcasts”, they are certainly an asocial environment, pariahs, renegades (truans in “The Cathedral”, noble outcasts in dramas). This is still a people seen from the outside, from above - like Paris in "The Cathedral", from a bird's eye view. Only from the 30s would Hugo's idea of ​​the people acquire an increasingly concrete social character.

/ 4
Worst Best

Description of the mirror relationship between Dumas and Hugo from Vera Stratievskaya

Dumas - Hugo

In this dyad, two dynamic values ​​“compete”: the aspect of ethics of emotions - Hugo’s program and the aspect of sensory sensations - Dumas’ program.

Despite some similarities in views and opinions, each of the partners attributes paramount importance to its program aspect.

EGO level, channel 1 - 2.
Hugo is irritated by Dumas' ethical manipulativeness, his diplomacy, ethical agility, resourcefulness, and conformism. And on the other hand, just like Hugo, Dumas requires increased attention, sincerity, and empathy, especially during the period of his physical overload, illness and malaise. There is a lot of talk and debate about sensitivity and sincerity in this dyad, but each of the partners perceives the manifestation of sincerity through their own programmatic aspects. If Hugo can simply complain that Dumas does not have the patience to listen to him, or that Dumas is often offended by him, or does not understand, then Dumas expresses his complaints through the sensory aspect of sensations: he complains about the lack of help, guardianship, care in relation to to himself: “After all, he sees that I come tired, I’m falling off my feet - no, not to help, at least to clean up after myself.” It also requires sensitivity. It really seems like I’m courting him... but where will he find another wife like that?”

Dumas's sensitivity is manifested in his sensory care for his partner. (Care is primary, sincerity is secondary). Hugo, on the contrary, cares about whom he loves more. Unlike Dumas, Hugo may have guests of “first, second or even third class”, (“first, second and third freshness” - what the desired guest did not eat is fed to a random visitor, “so that the goodness does not go to waste”). This is the kind of “guardianship” that Dumas does not approve of, especially if the “casual visitor” is someone close to him, and the “welcome guest” is Hugo’s friend. Dumas may be shocked by Hugo’s reservations like: “I saved fresh bread for the table, while you finish the stale one.” Or Dumas may be offended by Hugo’s attempts to feed him some kind of “production waste”: “Several pies with cabbage were burnt, so she put them on a plate for me and treats me. But I can see what they have on the baking sheet. Okay, I cut off the burnt crust and eat it. So she pokes her finger at this crust at me: “Why don’t you finish eating this?” Now I’m exploding, do I have a stomach or a garbage dump?!”

On the basis of such sensory and ethical “misunderstandings” there are a lot of disagreements in this dyad, since these are all important aspects for both partners.

SUPEREGO level, channel 3 - 4.
There will also be a lot of disagreement on practical issues. Dumas will be irritated by Hugo's pettiness and pettiness. Hugo will make the same claims against Dumas, and in addition will reproach him for wastefulness and inability to spend money on what is needed. The partners will constantly conflict over this issue, they will constantly accuse each other of impracticality and extravagance, and not one of them will agree to moderate their needs and will not allow them to save on it: “You have ten pairs of shoes, why should I?” be smaller?!”

There will be constant arguments in the house about who takes on more workload, who works more and gets more tired. “I work two jobs, and also cut hair, and trim, and I still have to do everything around the house?!”

As often happens with two sensory people, constant disputes about the distribution of responsibilities lead to the fact that everything is pushed onto the partner and no one wants to have a hand in anything at all. (“What, do I need more than everyone else? Can I work on me?”) And here Hugo’s normative operational logic “conflicts” with a similar aspect of Dumas, who is in the position of mobilization function, in the so-called “fear zone.” (For all his efficiency, Dumas is very afraid of overwork, afraid of seeming like an impractical “incompetent”).

The aspect of intuition of time, which is problematic for both partners, will also cause them a lot of trouble. Hugo, with his constant feverish haste, will be irritated by Dumas’s ability to steal other people’s time: “Here he sits and here he sits and talks, doesn’t see what time it is, doesn’t think that others have to get up for work tomorrow...”

Conversely, the slow Dumas with his normative intuition of time will be irritated by Hugo’s vanity and alarmism, his chronic impatience and ability to provoke everyone to premature actions. All this useless fuss will tire Dumas and cause him a feeling of psychological discomfort. Dumas will want to distance himself from Hugo, which will cause even greater panic.

SUPERID level, channel 5 - 6.
Each of the partners, tired of the chaotic bustle or inappropriate behavior of their “mirror”, will want to see at least some logic, at least some order in his actions, but he will not see anything like that there. Therefore, each of them will make claims to their partner regarding the confusion and inconsistency of his behavior. “Well, tell me, why is she playing the fool?” - Dumas says about Hugo. - “He agrees, agrees with me in everything, says: “I will only listen to you from now on!” But nothing changes!..”

The problem is that here each partner has to be more reasonable than the other, which is equally difficult for both of them. Noticing that Hugo is inspired by logical arguments (promises to obey him in everything), Dumas subconsciously tries to give him information very clearly, intelligibly, laid out on shelves. Considering his partner stupider than himself, Dumas tries to be smarter and more prudent against his background. Hugo’s aspect of the logic of relationships is at the “point of absolute weakness,” so he does not hide his shortcomings in this aspect, he is ready to admit anyone is smarter than himself, especially if it helps him improve relations with his partner. (Hugo's logical manipulation). Dumas, although he does not consider himself a sufficiently reasonable person, still understands that it is he who must set some logical order in his partner’s reasoning, and the awareness of this greatly activates him. (One of the two must be smarter!)

Something similar happens with another aspect, which is located in both “mirrors” at the superid level - with the aspect of intuition of possibilities. Here Hugo feels more relaxed and tries to activate Dumas, who feels weak and inhibited in this area. And although neither partner considers himself a worthless mediocrity, neither of them can sufficiently assess their abilities or see any exceptional opportunities for themselves - for this, each of them needs the help of an intuitive.

ID level, channel 7 - 8.
As in any dyad consisting of two ethics, clarification of relations here is commonplace; not a single day can go by without it. Moreover, when Hugo starts this ethical “showdown,” his observant, principled ethics of relationships comes into conflict with the demonstrative and diplomatic ethics of Dumas. Hugo “exacerbates” the relationship, trying to dot the i’s, Dumas tries to smooth out the conflict, trying to avoid a direct answer, tries to shift the conversation to the sensory aspect of sensations, to some of his specific good deeds.

However, Hugo does not consider himself the instigator of the conflict; he is starting this clarification in order to improve relations. “Don’t be offended by me, you should be offended by me!” - he assures Dumas. - “I don’t demand anything like that from you, I wish you well!” Dumas also wishes Hugo well, and therefore reminds him of where exactly his goodness is manifested. So they switch from the ethical aspect to the sensory one, and as a result, everyone remains with their own opinion.

Similar clashes occur in the aspect of volitional sensory. Dumas' observant, strong-willed sensory system is trying to slow down and regulate Hugo's demonstrative assertiveness. Dumas does not allow anyone to put pressure on him, and Hugo does not understand the motives for this opposition, they do not understand what exactly he is accused of, and what he said. What for Hugo is a free and natural manifestation of his initiative, Dumas perceives as suppression of his personality, as an infringement of his personal rights and freedoms. And having come to this opinion, Dumas begins to experience psychological discomfort himself and begins to create sensory discomfort for his partner (begins to “phon”). Hugo, sensitively perceiving this discomfort, perceives it as a personal insult, bursts into another emotional upheaval, which Dumas takes into account his diplomatic ethics, and, once again reminding him of his kind attitude towards his partner, tries to smooth out this conflict. If this fails, he will emotionally discharge himself on his partner, so that next time he will be discouraged from making a scandal.

Communication between Hugo and Dumas from the outside looks like alternating outbursts of anger - sort of little hysterics - scandals, alternating with peaceful discussion of culinary recipes and mutual reminders of who did what to whom, how much good they did and how they repaid him for it.

Historical upheavals on a pan-European scale, which occurred before the eyes of one generation, naturally attracted the attention of French romantics to history and prompted historical generalizations and comparisons with modernity. The past was searched for the key to today. During the Restoration period there was a rapid flowering of all historical genres. More than a hundred historical novels appear, historical dramas are published one after another, images of the past and reflections on historical themes penetrate into poetry, painting (The Death of Sardanapalus by E. Delacroix, 1827), and music (operas by Rossini and Meyerbeer). A number of learned historians speak (Augustin Thierry, Francois Guizot, etc.) who put forward in their works the idea of ​​​​the continuous development of mankind.

Unlike the Enlightenment, historians of the Restoration did not rely on fixed concepts of good and evil, but on the idea of ​​historical regularity. The historical process for them has a moral meaning, consisting in the gradual improvement of man and society. In the eyes of these bourgeois thinkers, historical regularity justified the victory of the bourgeois system over the feudal system and, during the years of the ghostly return of the old order, inspired them with historical optimism. They understood history as a state of struggle and had already arrived at the concept of social classes. Historians of the Restoration were at the same time literary theorists and took part in the development of romantic aesthetics.

The work of Walter Scott, which became known here in 1816, had a decisive influence on historical thought in France. The main discovery of the English novelist was to establish the dependence of man on the socio-historical environment that gave birth to him and the surrounding one. According to Belinsky, “Walter Scott, with his novels, solved the problem of connecting historical life with the private.” This turned out to be extremely fruitful for French literature, as it opened up ways to combine artistic fiction with the truth of history. In the center of the works of French romantics, fictional characters usually stand next to historical figures, on whom the main interest is concentrated, and along with genuine historical events, the events of the life of fictional characters are depicted, which, however, is always connected with national life. What was new compared to Walter Scott was that in the historical novels of the French romantics, romantic love passion played a significant role.

From Walter Scott, the French romantics adopted the concept of an era as a kind of socio-political and cultural unity that solves a specific historical problem and has its own local flavor, which is expressed in morals, peculiarities of life, tools, clothing, customs and concepts. This was reflected in the romantics’ attraction to the exotic, to the picturesque, bright passions and unusual characters for which they yearned in the atmosphere of bourgeois everyday life. The plastic resurrection of the past, the recreation of local color became a characteristic feature of the French historical novel of the 1820s and the romantic drama that emerged in the middle of this decade, predominantly historical in form. Soon the struggle of the romantics began in the theater - the main stronghold of classicism - for a new romantic repertoire, for a free dramatic form, for historical costumes and scenery, for a more natural acting performance, the abolition of class divisions of genres, three unities and other conventions of the old theater. In this struggle, besides Walter Scott, the romantics relied on Shakespeare.

In the historical works of the romantics, the era was presented not in static conditions, but in struggle, movement; they sought to understand the essence of historical conflicts - the reasons for this movement. Recent turbulent events made it absolutely clear to them that the active force of history is the masses of the people; history, in their understanding, is the life of the people, and not of individual outstanding figures. Folk characters and mass folk scenes are present in almost every historical novel, and in dramas the presence of the people, even behind the scenes, often determines the outcome (as in V. Hugo’s drama “Mary Tudor”, 1833).

The first significant historical novel of French romanticism, Saint-Mars (1826), was written by Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863). Coming from an old noble family, Alfred de Vigny spent his youth in military service, but retired early and devoted himself to writing, working on historical storytelling, for the theater (the drama Chatterton, 1835), and as a poet. After attempts to achieve a prominent position in the literary, artistic and political circles of Paris were unsuccessful, Vigny spent the rest of his days in seclusion, confiding his thoughts in the “Diary of a Poet,” published after his death.

“Saint-Mars” clearly expressed Vigny’s hatred and contempt for the new bourgeois order, and on the other hand, an understanding of the irrevocable doom of the feudal past, with which he tried to connect his ideal.

The novel takes place in France in the 17th century. Vigny paints a colorful picture of the era: the province and Paris, a noble castle, city streets, the public execution of a priest “possessed by the devil” and the ritual of the queen’s morning toilet... There are many historical figures in the novel - King Louis XIII, Queen Anne of Austria, Cardinal Richelieu and his agent Capuchin Joseph, the French playwright Corneille and the English poet Milton, members of the royal house and military leaders; their appearance, manners, and clothing are described in detail based on carefully studied historical documents.

But Vigna's task is not to recreate local color (although this is done with impressive artistic expressiveness), but above all to instill in the reader his understanding of history. In the introduction, Vigny establishes the distinction between factual truth and historical truth; For the sake of the latter, the artist has the right to freely handle facts and admit inaccuracies and anachronisms. But Vigny interprets the historical truth in a subjectively romantic way. Based on the material of the past, he seeks to resolve the burning issue that worries him about the fate of the nobility. The decline of the nobility means for him the decline of society. And he turns to the origins of this process, which, in his opinion, took place during the period of the victory of the absolute monarchy in France. The creator of absolutism, Cardinal Richelieu, who destroyed feudal liberties and brought the clan nobility to obedience, is portrayed in the novel as unconditionally negative. It is the cardinal who the writer holds responsible for the fact that “a monarchy without foundations, as Richelieu made it,” collapsed during the revolution. It is no coincidence that at the end of the novel there is a conversation about Cromwell, who “will go further than Richelieu went.”

In the history of French romanticism, Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870) is a colorful figure. For many years there was a tradition of viewing Dumas as a second-rate writer; however, his works had phenomenal success among his contemporaries; many generations of French, and not only French, schoolchildren first became acquainted with the history of France from the novels of Dumas; Dumas's novels were loved by major literary figures from different countries and times. To this day, these novels are read with enthusiasm in all corners of the earth.

Alexandre Dumas was the son of a Republican general and an innkeeper's daughter, in whose veins black blood flowed. In his youth he was a minor clerk for some time and appeared in Paris at the height of the romantic battles against classicism. In literature, he acted as a zealous participant in Victor Hugo's circle. Success for the young Dumas was brought by the historical drama “Henry III and His Court” (1829), one of the first romantic dramas that laid the foundation for the victories of a new direction in the theater; it was followed by “Anthony” (1831), “Nelskaya Tower” (1832) and many others. From the mid-1830s, historical novels by Dumas began to appear one after another, created by him in huge numbers and glorifying his name. The best of them date back to the 1840s: The Three Musketeers (1844), Twenty Years After (1845), Queen Margot (1845), The Count of Monte Cristo (1845-1846).

Dumas's work is associated with the element of democratic, grassroots genres of romanticism - with boulevard melodrama and newspaper social adventure feuilleton novel; many of his works, including “The Count of Monte Cristo,” originally appeared in newspapers, where they were published in the form of separate feuilletons with a continuation. Dumas is close to the aesthetics of the feuilleton novel: simplicity, even simplification of characters, stormy, exaggerated passions, melodramatic effects, a fascinating plot, unambiguous author's assessments, the general availability of artistic means. Dumas's historical novels were created in the years when Romanticism was already coming to an end; he used romantic artistic techniques, which had become commonplace, largely for the purpose of entertainment and managed to make the historical genre of romanticism accessible to the widest circles of readers.

Like other French authors, relying on Walter Scott, Dumas does not at all pretend to the depth of penetration into history. Dumas's novels are, first of all, adventurous; in history he is attracted by bright, dramatic anecdotes, which he looked for in memoirs and documents and colored according to the will of his imagination, creating the basis for the dizzying adventures of his heroes. At the same time, he skillfully reproduced the motley historical background and local color of the era, but did not set himself the task of revealing its essential conflicts.

Important historical events: wars, political revolutions are usually explained by Dumas by personal motives: minor weaknesses, the whims of rulers, court intrigues, selfish passions. Thus, in “The Three Musketeers” the conflict is based on the personal enmity of Richelieu and the Duke of Buckingham, on the rivalry between the cardinal and King Louis XIII; the struggle between absolutism and feudal lords, which occupied the main place in Vigny's Saint-Mars, remains aside here. History is ruled by chance: peace or war with England depends on whether D’Artagnan manages to bring the queen’s diamond pendants on time. Dumas's fictional characters are not only involved in historical events, but also actively intervene in them and even direct them at will. D'Artagnan and Athos help Charles II become king of England; King Louis XIV, due to Aramis's intrigue, was almost replaced by his brother, a prisoner of the Bastille. In a word, in Dumas's historical novel the laws of melodrama prevail. However, it should be noted that the general assessment of the course Dumas's events do not contradict historical truth. He is always on the side of progressive forces, always on the side of the people against their tyrants; this is reflected in the writer's democracy and his republican convictions.

The charm of Dumas's historical novels lies primarily in his ability to bring the past closer to his readers; His history appears colorful, elegant, excitingly interesting, historical characters appear as if alive on his pages, removed from pedestals, cleared of the patina of time, shown as ordinary people, with feelings, quirks, weaknesses that are understandable to everyone, and with psychologically justified actions. An excellent storyteller, Dumas masterfully builds a fascinating plot, rapidly developing action, skillfully confuses and then unravels all the knots, develops colorful descriptions, and creates brilliant, witty dialogues. The positive heroes of his best novels are not inferior in brightness to historical characters, and sometimes surpass them in the prominence of their characters and fullness of life. Such are the Gascon D'Artagnan and his friends, with their energy, courage, ingenuity, and active attitude to the world. The romance of their adventures is based on the fact that they are fighting on the side of the weak and offended, against evil and treachery. Dumas' novels have a humanistic beginning, they feel a connection with people's life, and this is the key to their longevity.

Aesthetics of V. Hugo. Preface to the drama “Cromwell” as a manifesto of French romanticism.

The true manifesto of French romanticism was the “Preface to Cromwell” (1827). Classicism occupied a particularly strong position in the theater. And although romantic dramas already existed, none of them were staged. Hugo decided to turn to the experience of Shakespeare (understood in a romantic spirit). He created the work not in the genre of tragedy, but in the genre of romantic historical drama. The drama "Cromwell" told the story of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century. Its leader, Cromwell, was shown to be a strong personality. But, unlike the solid heroes of classicism, Cromwell experiences a moral contradiction: having overthrown the king, he is ready to change the revolution and become a monarch. The drama was innovative, but not dramatic enough. However, the “Preface” to it played a huge role in the victory of romanticism.

In the “Preface to Cromwell,” Hugo sets out his ideas about the history of society and literature. Humanity has gone through three eras in its development, the poet believes.

In the primitive era, people, admiring nature as the creation of God, composed hymns and odes in its honor. Therefore, literature begins with lyrics, the pinnacle of which is the Bible.

In the ancient (ancient) era, events (wars, the emergence and destruction of states) create history, which is reflected in epic poetry. Its peak is Homer. Hugo notes that the ancient Greek theater is also epic, “tragedy only repeats the epic.”

The third era (after youth and maturity, then the era of old age of humanity) begins with the establishment of Christianity. It showed man that he has two lives: “one is transitory, the other is immortal; one is earthly, the other is heavenly.” Christianity discovered two fighting principles in man - the angel and the beast. In literature, modern times are reflected in drama with its conflict and contrasts. The pinnacle of modern literature is Shakespeare.

The scheme for the development of history proposed by Hugo now seems naive and erroneous. But its significance in the fight against classicism was very great. It destroyed the basis of the aesthetics of classicism - the idea of ​​the immutability of the aesthetic ideal and the artistic forms expressing it. Thanks to this scheme, Hugo was able to prove that the emergence of romanticism was natural. Moreover, from the point of view of the romantic, classicism, even at the time of its heyday, had no right to exist. In fact, classical tragedy was guided by ancient dramas, which, according to Hugo, were epic works, and modern times require drama.

Hugo believes that “the peculiarity of drama is reality.” Therefore, contrary to the assertion of the classicists that only “pleasant” nature should be depicted, Hugo points out: “... Everything that is in nature is also in art.” He calls for destroying the boundaries between genres, combining the comic and the tragic, the sublime and the low, abandoning the unity of time and the unity of place, since these unities, giving only external plausibility to the drama, force the writer to retreat from a truthful depiction of reality. Shakespeare gives a great example of such art, free from conventional rules, in his dramas. However, Hugo believes that imitating Shakespeare will not bring success to a romantic. The writer himself is closer to the national tradition, especially Moliere.

The call to imitate nature does not lead Hugo to realism. It is characterized by the affirmation of the romantic principles of typification. Comparing drama to a mirror, Hugo writes: “... Drama must be a concentrating mirror.” If the classicists typified one human passion, then Hugo strives in each image to collide two such passions, one of which will reveal the ideal, the sublime in a person, and the other - the base.

Grotesque. The theory of the sublime was developed by the classicists. Hugo develops a theory of the grotesque as a means of contrast inherent in new literature and the opposite of the sublime. Grotesque is a concentrated expression, on the one hand, of the ugly, terrible, and on the other hand, of the comic and buffoonish. The grotesque is as diverse as life itself. “Beauty has only one form; the ugly has a thousand of them...” The grotesque especially sets off the beautiful, this is its main purpose in a romantic work.

The ideas contained in the “Preface to Cromwell” became the basis of the aesthetics of the French romantics in the late 20s and 30s of the 19th century.

36. Romantic drama by V. Hugo (“Marion Delorme” or “Ruy Blas”)

In 1829, Hugo wrote the drama “Marion de Lorme” (“Marion de Lorme”, 1831), in which for the first time he embodied the principles of the “Preface to Cromwell” in a highly artistic form.

Hugo did not take the plot from antiquity, but found it in national history. He created a historical “color” by accurately indicating the time of action (1638) and by involving historical figures in the plot (Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu, the heroine herself Marion Delorme, etc.). The desire to create “local color” was combined in the drama with the destruction of the unity of place (the action takes place in Blois, then in Chambord, then in other places). The unity of time is also destroyed, but the unity of action is preserved.

A number of features bring the drama closer to classic tragedy. The division of heroes into positive (Marion, her beloved Didier) and negative (Richelieu, his spy Judge Lafemas) remains. However, firstly, among the positive heroes there are no ideal ones. Each of them made big moral mistakes in life. The ideality of these heroes is preserved only as a trend. Secondly, in classicism the positive heroes were kings and nobles; in Hugo, on the contrary, Marion Delorme was a former courtesan who served as a source of joy for noble libertines. Didier is an orphan, he does not know who his parents are. Noble people are less capable of idealism. Thus, the Marquis de Saverny, Didier's rival in love, is capable of meanness and only acts nobly at the most critical moment. But in a society of despotism, nobility is doomed to destruction, but cruelty and immorality flourish. It is these features that are endowed with noble persons - Cardinal Richelieu and even the king.

Hugo, following the classicists, believed that drama should be written in verse. However, the poet made changes to the Alexandrian verse in which he wrote “Marion Delorme” (they concerned the place of pauses, rhymes, etc.). The classic coldness of the style was replaced by the emotional language of the characters.

Hugo wrote his best drama “Ruy Bias” in 1818. E. Zola said about this play: “The most cynical, harsh of all Hugo’s dramas.” In the preface to the drama, Hugo explores the problem of the spectator. Women in the theater seek pleasure for the heart, value passions, and strive for tragedy. Thinkers, looking for food for the mind, find it in the characters of heroes, in comedy. The crowd is looking for eye candy. She is attracted to action on stage, so she loves melodrama. In Ruy Blasy, Hugo decided to combine the features of tragedy, comedy and melodrama so that his play would be admired by the entire audience.

The plot is based on exceptional events: the footman Ruy Blaz fell in love with the Spanish queen. An unexpected turn of fate allowed Ruy Blaz, under the name of the noble nobleman Don Cesar de Bazan, to acquire the favor of the queen and become a minister. In this situation, the romantic exclusivity of Ruy Blaz's personality is revealed. The footman turned out to be an outstanding statesman. His decisions amaze with their wisdom and humanity. But the rise of Ruy Blaz was only part of the intrigue of Don Salust de Bazan, who was offended by the queen. The intrigue against the queen failed, but she learned the truth about the origins of Ruy Blaz and despised him. Rui Blaz is poisoned.

Historical upheavals on a pan-European scale, which occurred before the eyes of one generation, naturally attracted the attention of French romantics to history and prompted historical generalizations and comparisons with modernity. The past was searched for the key to today. During the Restoration period there was a rapid flowering of all historical genres. More than a hundred historical novels appear, historical dramas are published one after another, images of the past and reflections on historical themes penetrate into poetry, painting (The Death of Sardanapalus by E. Delacroix, 1827), and music (operas by Rossini and Meyerbeer). A number of learned historians speak (Augustin Thierry, Francois Guizot, etc.) who put forward in their works the idea of ​​​​the continuous development of mankind.

Unlike the Enlightenment, historians of the Restoration did not rely on fixed concepts of good and evil, but on the idea of ​​historical regularity. The historical process for them has a moral meaning, consisting in the gradual improvement of man and society. In the eyes of these bourgeois thinkers, historical regularity justified the victory of the bourgeois system over the feudal system and, during the years of the ghostly return of the old order, inspired them with historical optimism. They understood history as a state of struggle and had already arrived at the concept of social classes. Historians of the Restoration were at the same time literary theorists and took part in the development of romantic aesthetics.

The work of Walter Scott, which became known here in 1816, had a decisive influence on historical thought in France. The main discovery of the English novelist was to establish the dependence of man on the socio-historical environment that gave birth to him and the surrounding one. According to Belinsky, “Walter Scott, with his novels, solved the problem of connecting historical life with the private.” This turned out to be extremely fruitful for French literature, as it opened up ways to combine artistic fiction with the truth of history. In the center of the works of French romantics, fictional characters usually stand next to historical figures, on whom the main interest is concentrated, and along with genuine historical events, the events of the life of fictional characters are depicted, which, however, is always connected with national life. What was new compared to Walter Scott was that in the historical novels of the French romantics, romantic love passion played a significant role.

From Walter Scott, the French romantics adopted the concept of an era as a kind of socio-political and cultural unity that solves a specific historical problem and has its own local flavor, which is expressed in morals, peculiarities of life, tools, clothing, customs and concepts. This was reflected in the romantics’ attraction to the exotic, to the picturesque, bright passions and unusual characters for which they yearned in the atmosphere of bourgeois everyday life. The plastic resurrection of the past, the recreation of local color became a characteristic feature of the French historical novel of the 1820s and the romantic drama that emerged in the middle of this decade, predominantly historical in form. Soon the struggle of the romantics began in the theater - the main stronghold of classicism - for a new romantic repertoire, for a free dramatic form, for historical costumes and scenery, for a more natural acting performance, the abolition of class divisions of genres, three unities and other conventions of the old theater. In this struggle, besides Walter Scott, the romantics relied on Shakespeare.

In the historical works of the romantics, the era was presented not in static conditions, but in struggle, movement; they sought to understand the essence of historical conflicts - the reasons for this movement. Recent turbulent events made it absolutely clear to them that the active force of history is the masses of the people; history, in their understanding, is the life of the people, and not of individual outstanding figures. Folk characters and mass folk scenes are present in almost every historical novel, and in dramas the presence of the people, even behind the scenes, often determines the outcome (as in V. Hugo’s drama “Mary Tudor”, 1833).

The first significant historical novel of French romanticism, Saint-Mars (1826), was written by Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863). Coming from an old noble family, Alfred de Vigny spent his youth in military service, but retired early and devoted himself to writing, working on historical storytelling, for the theater (the drama Chatterton, 1835), and as a poet. After attempts to achieve a prominent position in the literary, artistic and political circles of Paris were unsuccessful, Vigny spent the rest of his days in seclusion, confiding his thoughts in the “Diary of a Poet,” published after his death.

“Saint-Mars” clearly expressed Vigny’s hatred and contempt for the new bourgeois order, and on the other hand, an understanding of the irrevocable doom of the feudal past, with which he tried to connect his ideal.

The novel takes place in France in the 17th century. Vigny paints a colorful picture of the era: the province and Paris, a noble castle, city streets, the public execution of a priest “possessed by the devil” and the ritual of the queen’s morning toilet... There are many historical figures in the novel - King Louis XIII, Queen Anne of Austria, Cardinal Richelieu and his the Capuchin agent Joseph, the French playwright Corneille and the English poet Milton, members of the royal house and military leaders; their appearance, manners, and clothing are described in detail based on carefully studied historical documents.

But Vigna's task is not to recreate local color (although this is done with impressive artistic expressiveness), but above all to instill in the reader his understanding of history. In the introduction, Vigny establishes the distinction between factual truth and historical truth; For the sake of the latter, the artist has the right to freely handle facts and admit inaccuracies and anachronisms. But Vigny interprets the historical truth in a subjectively romantic way. Based on the material of the past, he seeks to resolve the burning issue that worries him about the fate of the nobility. The decline of the nobility means for him the decline of society. And he turns to the origins of this process, which, in his opinion, took place during the period of the victory of the absolute monarchy in France. The creator of absolutism, Cardinal Richelieu, who destroyed feudal liberties and brought the clan nobility to obedience, is portrayed in the novel as unconditionally negative. It is the cardinal who the writer holds responsible for the fact that “a monarchy without foundations, as Richelieu made it,” collapsed during the revolution. It is no coincidence that at the end of the novel there is a conversation about Cromwell, who “will go further than Richelieu went.”

In the history of French romanticism, Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870) is a colorful figure. For many years there was a tradition of viewing Dumas as a second-rate writer; however, his works had phenomenal success among his contemporaries; many generations of French, and not only French, schoolchildren first became acquainted with the history of France from the novels of Dumas; Dumas's novels were loved by major literary figures from different countries and times. To this day, these novels are read with enthusiasm in all corners of the earth.

Alexandre Dumas was the son of a Republican general and an innkeeper's daughter, in whose veins black blood flowed. In his youth he was a minor clerk for some time and appeared in Paris at the height of the romantic battles against classicism. In literature, he acted as a zealous participant in Victor Hugo's circle. Success for the young Dumas was brought by the historical drama “Henry III and His Court” (1829), one of the first romantic dramas that laid the foundation for the victories of a new direction in the theater; it was followed by “Anthony” (1831), “Nelskaya Tower” (1832) and many others. From the mid-1830s, historical novels by Dumas began to appear one after another, created by him in huge numbers and glorifying his name. The best of them date back to the 1840s: The Three Musketeers (1844), Twenty Years After (1845), Queen Margot (1845), The Count of Monte Cristo (1845-1846).

Dumas's work is associated with the element of democratic, grassroots genres of romanticism - with boulevard melodrama and newspaper social adventure feuilleton novel; many of his works, including “The Count of Monte Cristo,” originally appeared in newspapers, where they were published in the form of separate feuilletons with a continuation. Dumas is close to the aesthetics of the feuilleton novel: simplicity, even simplification of characters, stormy, exaggerated passions, melodramatic effects, a fascinating plot, unambiguous author's assessments, the general availability of artistic means. Dumas's historical novels were created in the years when Romanticism was already coming to an end; he used romantic artistic techniques, which had become commonplace, largely for the purpose of entertainment and managed to make the historical genre of romanticism accessible to the widest circles of readers.

Like other French authors, relying on Walter Scott, Dumas does not at all pretend to the depth of penetration into history. Dumas's novels are, first of all, adventurous; in history he is attracted by bright, dramatic anecdotes, which he looked for in memoirs and documents and colored according to the will of his imagination, creating the basis for the dizzying adventures of his heroes. At the same time, he skillfully reproduced the motley historical background and local color of the era, but did not set himself the task of revealing its essential conflicts.

Important historical events: wars, political revolutions are usually explained by Dumas by personal motives: minor weaknesses, the whims of rulers, court intrigues, selfish passions. Thus, in “The Three Musketeers” the conflict is based on the personal enmity of Richelieu and the Duke of Buckingham, on the rivalry between the cardinal and King Louis XIII; the struggle between absolutism and feudal lords, which occupied the main place in Vigny's Saint-Mars, remains aside here. History is ruled by chance: peace or war with England depends on whether D’Artagnan manages to bring the queen’s diamond pendants on time. Dumas's fictional characters are not only involved in historical events, but also actively intervene in them and even direct them at will. D'Artagnan and Athos help Charles II become king of England; King Louis XIV, due to Aramis's intrigue, was almost replaced by his brother, a prisoner of the Bastille. In a word, in Dumas's historical novel the laws of melodrama prevail. However, it should be noted that the general assessment of the course Dumas's events do not contradict historical truth. He is always on the side of progressive forces, always on the side of the people against their tyrants; this is reflected in the writer's democracy and his republican convictions.

The charm of Dumas's historical novels lies primarily in his ability to bring the past closer to his readers; His history appears colorful, elegant, excitingly interesting, historical characters appear as if alive on his pages, removed from pedestals, cleared of the patina of time, shown as ordinary people, with feelings, quirks, weaknesses that are understandable to everyone, and with psychologically justified actions. An excellent storyteller, Dumas masterfully builds a fascinating plot, rapidly developing action, skillfully confuses and then unravels all the knots, develops colorful descriptions, and creates brilliant, witty dialogues. The positive heroes of his best novels are not inferior in brightness to historical characters, and sometimes surpass them in the prominence of their characters and fullness of life. Such are the Gascon D'Artagnan and his friends, with their energy, courage, ingenuity, and active attitude to the world. The romance of their adventures is based on the fact that they are fighting on the side of the weak and offended, against evil and treachery. Dumas' novels have a humanistic beginning, they feel a connection with people's life, and this is the key to their longevity.