Romantic hero as a literary type. Characteristics of a Romantic Hero Romantic Hero

ROMANTICISM

In modern literary science, romanticism is viewed mainly from two points of view: as a certain artistic method, based on the creative transformation of reality in art, and how literary direction, historically natural and limited in time. A more general concept is romantic method. We will stop there.

As we have already said, the artistic method presupposes a certain way of comprehending the world in art, that is, the basic principles of selection, depiction and evaluation of the phenomena of reality. The originality of the romantic method as a whole can be defined as artistic maximalism, which, being the basis of the romantic worldview, is found at all levels of the work - from the problematic and system of images to style.

In the romantic picture of the world, the material is always subordinate to the spiritual. The struggle of these opposites can take on different guises: divine and devilish, sublime and base, true and false, free and dependent, natural and random, etc.

Romantic ideal, in contrast to the ideal of the classicists, concrete and accessible for implementation, absolute and therefore already in eternal contradiction with transitory reality. The artistic worldview of the romantic is thus built on the contrast, collision and fusion of mutually exclusive concepts. The world is perfect as a plan - the world is imperfect as an embodiment. Is it possible to reconcile the irreconcilable?

This is how it arises two worlds, a conventional model of a romantic world in which reality is far from ideal and the dream seems impossible. Often the connecting link between these worlds becomes the inner world of a romantic, in which lives the desire from the dull “HERE” to the beautiful “THERE”. When their conflict is insoluble, the motive of escape sounds: escape from imperfect reality into another being is thought of as salvation. This is exactly what happens, for example, in the finale of K. Aksakov’s story “Walter Eisenberg”: the hero, by the miraculous power of his art, finds himself in a dream world created by his brush; thus, the death of the artist is perceived not as a departure, but as a transition to another reality. When it is possible to connect reality with the ideal, the idea of ​​transformation appears: spiritualization of the material world through imagination, creativity or struggle. The belief in the possibility of a miracle still lives on in the 20th century: in A. Green’s story “Scarlet Sails”, in A. de Saint-Exupery’s philosophical fairy tale “The Little Prince”.

Romantic duality as a principle operates not only at the level of the macrocosm, but also at the level of the microcosm - the human personality as an integral part of the Universe and as the point of intersection of the ideal and the everyday. Motives of duality, tragic fragmentation of consciousness, images of doubles very common in romantic literature: “The Amazing Story of Peter Schlemil” by A. Chamisso, “The Elixir of Satan” by Hoffmann, “The Double” by Dostoevsky.

In connection with dual worlds, fantasy occupies a special position as a worldview and aesthetic category, and its understanding should not always be reduced to the modern understanding of fantasy as “incredible” or “impossible.” Actually, romantic fiction often means not the violation of the laws of the universe, but their discovery and, ultimately, fulfillment. It’s just that these laws are of a spiritual nature, and reality in the romantic world is not limited by materiality. It is fantasy in many works that becomes a universal way of comprehending reality in art through the transformation of its external forms with the help of images and situations that have no analogues in the material world and are endowed with symbolic meaning.

Fantasy, or miracle, in romantic works (and not only) can perform various functions. In addition to knowledge of the spiritual foundations of existence, the so-called philosophical fiction, with the help of a miracle, reveals the inner world of the hero (psychological fiction), recreates the people's worldview (folklore fiction), predicts the future (utopia and dystopia), and plays with the reader (entertaining fiction). Separately, we should dwell on the satirical exposure of the vicious sides of reality - an exposure in which fiction often plays an important role, presenting real social and human shortcomings in an allegorical light.

Romantic satire is born from the rejection of lack of spirituality. Reality is assessed by a romantic person from the standpoint of the ideal, and the stronger the contrast between what exists and what should be, the more active is the confrontation between man and the world, which has lost its connection with a higher principle. The objects of romantic satire are varied: from social injustice and the bourgeois value system to specific human vices: love and friendship turn out to be corrupt, faith is lost, compassion is superfluous.

In particular, secular society is a parody of normal human relationships; Hypocrisy, envy, and malice reign in it. In the romantic consciousness, the concept of “light” (aristocratic society) often turns into its opposite - darkness, mob, secular - which means unspiritual. It is generally not typical for romantics to use Aesopian language; he does not seek to hide or muffle his caustic laughter. Satire in romantic works often appears as an invective(the object of satire turns out to be so dangerous for the existence of the ideal, and its activity is so dramatic and even tragic in its consequences that its interpretation no longer causes laughter; at the same time, the connection between satire and the comic is broken, so a denying pathos arises that is not associated with ridicule), directly expressing the author's position:“This is a nest of heartfelt depravity, ignorance, dementia, baseness! Arrogance kneels there before an insolent occasion, kissing the dusty hem of his clothes, and crushes his modest dignity with his heel... Petty ambition is the subject of morning concern and night vigil, unscrupulous flattery rules words, vile self-interest rules actions. Not a single lofty thought will sparkle in this suffocating darkness, not a single warm feeling will warm up this icy mountain” (Pogodin. “Adele”).

Romantic irony just like satire, directly associated with two worlds. Romantic consciousness strives for a beautiful world, and existence is determined by the laws of the real world. Life without faith in a dream is meaningless for a romantic hero, but a dream is unrealizable in the conditions of earthly reality, and therefore faith in a dream is also meaningless. Awareness of this tragic contradiction results in the romanticist’s bitter smile not only at the imperfections of the world, but also at himself. This grin can be heard in the works of the German romantic Hoffmann, where the sublime hero often finds himself in comical situations, and a happy ending - victory over evil and the acquisition of an ideal - can turn into completely earthly, bourgeois well-being. For example, in the fairy tale “Little Tsakhes”, romantic lovers, after a happy reunion, receive as a gift a wonderful estate where “excellent cabbage” grows, where food in pots never burns and porcelain dishes do not break. And in the fairy tale “The Golden Pot” (Hoffmann), the very name ironically brings down the famous romantic symbol of an unattainable dream - the “blue flower” from Novalis’s novel.

Events that make up romantic plot, as a rule, bright and unusual; they are a kind of peaks on which the narrative is built (entertainment in the era of romanticism becomes one of the most important artistic criteria). At the event level, the author’s absolute freedom in constructing the plot is clearly visible, and this construction can cause in the reader a feeling of incompleteness, fragmentation, and an invitation to independently fill in the “blank spots.” The external motivation for the extraordinary nature of what happens in romantic works can be special places and times of action (exotic countries, the distant past or future), folk superstitions and legends. The depiction of “exceptional circumstances” is aimed primarily at revealing the “exceptional personality” acting in these circumstances. Character as the engine of the plot and the plot as a way of realizing character are closely connected, therefore each eventful moment is a kind of external expression of the struggle between good and evil taking place in the soul of the romantic hero.

One of the achievements of romanticism was the discovery of the value and inexhaustible complexity of the human personality. Man is perceived by the romantics in a tragic contradiction - as the crown of creation, “the proud ruler of fate” and as a weak-willed toy in the hands of forces unknown to him, and sometimes of his own passions. Individual freedom presupposes responsibility: having made the wrong choice, you need to be prepared for the inevitable consequences.

The image of the hero is often inseparable from the lyrical element of the author’s “I”, turning out to be either consonant with him or alien. Anyway author-narrator takes an active position in a romantic work; narration tends towards subjectivity, which can also manifest itself at the compositional level - in the use of the “story within a story” technique. The exceptionality of the romantic hero is assessed from a moral standpoint. And this exclusivity can be both evidence of his greatness and a sign of his inferiority.

"Weirdness" of the character is emphasized by the author, first of all, with the help portrait: spiritual beauty, sickly pallor, expressive gaze - these signs have long become stable. Very often, when describing the hero’s appearance, the author uses comparisons and reminiscences, as if citing already known examples. Here is a typical example of such an associative portrait (N. Polevoy “The Bliss of Madness”): “I don’t know how to describe Adelheid: she was likened to Beethoven’s wild symphony and the Valkyrie maidens about whom the Scandinavian skalds sang... the face... was thoughtfully charming, like a face Madonnas of Albrecht Durer... Adelheide seemed to be the spirit of that poetry that inspired Schiller when he described his Thecla, and Goethe when he depicted his Mignon.”

Behavior of a romantic hero also evidence of his exclusivity (and sometimes exclusion from society); often it does not fit into generally accepted norms and violates the conventional rules of the game by which all other characters live.

Antithesis- a favorite structural device of romanticism, which is especially obvious in the confrontation between the hero and the crowd (and more broadly, the hero and the world). This external conflict can take different forms, depending on the type of romantic personality created by the author.

TYPES OF ROMANTIC HEROES

The hero is a naive eccentric, believing in the possibility of realizing ideals is often comical and absurd in the eyes of sane people. However, he differs from them in his moral integrity, childish desire for truth, ability to love and inability to adapt, that is, to lie. Such, for example, is the student Anselm from Hoffmann’s fairy tale “The Golden Pot” - it was he, childishly funny and awkward, who was given the gift of not only discovering the existence of an ideal world, but also living in it and being happy. The heroine of A. Green’s story “Scarlet Sails” Assol, who knew how to believe in a miracle and wait for it to appear, despite bullying and ridicule, was also awarded the happiness of a dream come true.

The hero is a tragic loner and a dreamer, rejected by society and aware of his alienness to the world, is capable of open conflict with others. They seem to him limited and vulgar, living exclusively by material interests and therefore personifying some kind of world evil, powerful and destructive to the spiritual aspirations of the romantic. Often this type of hero is combined with the theme of “high madness” associated with the motive of chosenness (Rybarenko from “The Ghoul” by A. Tolstoy, The Dreamer from “White Nights” by Dostoevsky). The opposition “individual – society” acquires its most acute character in the romantic image of a tramp hero or robber, taking revenge on the world for his desecrated ideals (“Les Miserables” by Hugo, “The Corsair” by Byron).

The hero is a disappointed, “superfluous” person, who did not have the opportunity and no longer wanted to realize his talents for the benefit of society, lost his previous dreams and faith in people. He turned into an observer and analyst, passing judgment on an imperfect reality, but without trying to change it or change himself (Lermontov's Pechorin). The thin line between pride and egoism, awareness of one’s own exclusivity and disdain for people can explain why so often in romanticism the cult of the lonely hero is combined with his debunking: Aleko in Pushkin’s poem “Gypsies”, Lara in Gorky’s story “Old Woman Izergil” are punished with loneliness precisely for your inhuman pride.

The hero is a demonic personality, challenging not only society, but also the Creator, is doomed to a tragic discord with reality and oneself. His protest and despair are organically connected, since the Beauty, Goodness and Truth that he rejects have power over his soul. A hero who is inclined to choose demonism as a moral position thereby abandons the idea of ​​good, since evil does not give birth to good, but only evil. But this is “high evil”, since it is dictated by a thirst for good. The rebellion and cruelty of the nature of such a hero become a source of suffering for those around him and do not bring joy to him. Acting as the “vicar” of the devil, the tempter and the punisher, he himself is sometimes humanly vulnerable, because he is passionate. It is no coincidence that it became widespread in romantic literature motif of the “devil in love.” Echoes of this motif are heard in Lermontov’s “Demon”.

Hero - patriot and citizen, ready to give his life for the good of the Fatherland, most often does not meet with the understanding and approval of his contemporaries. In this image, traditional pride for the romantics is paradoxically combined with the ideal of selflessness - the voluntary atonement of collective sin by a lone hero. The theme of sacrifice as a feat is especially characteristic of the “civil romanticism” of the Decembrists (the character in Ryleev’s poem “Nalivaiko” consciously chooses his path of suffering):

I know that death awaits

The one who rises first

On the oppressors of the people.

Fate has already doomed me,

But where, tell me, when was it

Freedom redeemed without sacrifice?

We find something similar in Ryleev’s Duma “Ivan Susanin”, and so is Gorky’s Danko. This type is also common in Lermontov’s works.

Another common type of hero can be called autobiographical, since he represents understanding the tragic fate of a man of art, who is forced to live, as it were, on the border of two worlds: the sublime world of creativity and the everyday world. The German romantic Hoffmann built his novel “The worldly views of the cat Moore, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, which accidentally survived in waste paper sheets,” precisely on the principle of combining opposites. The depiction of the philistine consciousness in this novel is intended to highlight the greatness of the inner world of the romantic composer Johann Kreisler. In E. Poe’s short story “The Oval Portrait,” the painter, with the miraculous power of his art, takes away the life of the woman whose portrait he is painting—takes it away in order to give an eternal one in return.

In other words, art for romantics is not imitation and reflection, but an approach to the true reality that lies beyond the visible. In this sense, it opposes the rational way of knowing the world.

In romantic works, the landscape carries a large semantic load. Storm and thunderstorm set in motion romantic landscape, emphasizing the internal conflict of the universe. This corresponds to the passionate nature of the romantic hero:

...Oh, I'm like a brother

I would be glad to embrace the storm!

I watched with the eyes of a cloud,

I caught lightning with my hand... (“Mtsyri”)

Romanticism opposes the classicist cult of reason, believing that “there is much in the world, friend Horatio, that our sages never dreamed of.” Feelings (sentimentalism) are replaced by passion - not so much human as superhuman, uncontrollable and spontaneous. It elevates the hero above the ordinary and connects him with the universe; it reveals to the reader the motives of his actions, and often becomes a justification for his crimes:

No one is made entirely of evil,

And a good passion lived in Conrad...

However, if Byron’s Corsair is capable of deep feeling despite the criminality of his nature, then Claude Frollo from “Notre Dame Cathedral” by V. Hugo becomes a criminal because of an insane passion that destroys the hero. Such an ambivalent understanding of passion - in a secular (strong feeling) and spiritual (suffering, torment) context is characteristic of romanticism, and if the first meaning presupposes the cult of love as the discovery of the Divine in man, then the second is directly related to the devilish temptation and spiritual fall. For example, the main character of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky’s story “Terrible Fortune-Telling,” with the help of a wonderful dream-warning, is given the opportunity to realize the crime and fatality of his passion for a married woman: “This fortune-telling opened my eyes, blinded by passion; a deceived husband, a seduced wife, a torn, disgraced marriage and, who knows, maybe bloody revenge on me or from me - these are the consequences of my crazy love!!!”

Romantic psychologism based on the desire to show the internal pattern of the hero’s words and deeds, which at first glance are inexplicable and strange. Their conditioning is revealed not so much through the social conditions of character formation (as it will be in realism), but through the clash of the forces of good and evil, the battlefield of which is the human heart. Romantics see in the human soul a combination of two poles - “angel” and “beast”.

Thus, in the romantic concept of the world, man is included in the “vertical context” of existence as the most important and integral part. His position in this world depends on his personal choice. Hence the greatest responsibility of the individual not only for actions, but also for words and thoughts. The theme of crime and punishment in the romantic version has acquired particular urgency: “Nothing in the world is forgotten or disappears”; Descendants will pay for the sins of their ancestors, and unredeemed guilt will become a family curse for them, which will determine the tragic fate of the heroes (“Terrible Revenge” by Gogol, “The Ghoul” by Tolstoy).

Thus, we have outlined some essential typological features of romanticism as an artistic method.

Which era in the history of art is closest to modern man? The Middle Ages, the Renaissance - for a narrow circle of the elite, Baroque - is also a bit far away, classicism is perfect - but somehow too perfect, in life there is no such clear division into “three calms”... It’s better to keep quiet about modern times and modernity - this art only scares children (maybe it is true to the limit - but we are fed up with the “harsh truth of life” in reality). And if we choose an era, the art of which, on the one hand, is close and understandable, finds a living response in our soul, on the other hand, gives us refuge from everyday hardships, although it speaks of suffering - this is, perhaps, the 19th century, which has gone down in history like the era of romanticism. The art of this time gave rise to a special type of hero, called romantic.

The term “romantic hero” may immediately evoke the idea of ​​a lover, echoing such stable combinations as “romantic relationship”, “romantic story” - but this idea does not entirely correspond to reality. A romantic hero can be in love, but not necessarily (there are characters who correspond to this definition who were not in love - for example, Lermontov's Mtsyri has only a fleeting feeling for a graceful girl passing by, which does not become decisive in the fate of the hero) - and this is not the main thing in it... and what is the main thing?

To understand this, let us remember what romanticism was all about. It was generated by disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution: the new world, which arose on the ruins of the old, was far from the “kingdom of reason” predicted by the enlighteners - instead, the “power of the money bag” was established in the world, a world where everything is for sale. A creative personality who has retained the ability for living human feeling has no place in such a world, therefore a romantic hero is always a person who is not accepted by society and who has come into conflict with it. Such, for example, is Johannes Kreisler, the hero of several works by E.T.A. Hoffmann (it is no coincidence that at the very beginning of the presentation of the “biography” of the hero, the author mentions that Kreisler was dismissed from the post of bandmaster, refusing to write an opera based on the poems of the court poet). “Johannes rushed here and there, as if on an eternally stormy sea, carried away by his visions and dreams, and, apparently, searched in vain for that pier where he could finally find peace and clarity.”

However, the romantic hero is not destined to “find calm and clarity” - he is a stranger everywhere, he is an extra person... remember who this is said about? That's right, Evgeny Onegin also belongs to the type of romantic hero, or more precisely, to one of its variants - “disappointed”. Such a hero is also called “Byronic”, since one of his first examples is Byron’s Childe Harold. Other examples of a disappointed hero are “Melmoth the Wanderer” by Charles Maturin, partly Edmond Dantes (“The Count of Monte Cristo”), as well as “The Vampire” by J. Polidori (dear fans of “Twilight”, “Dracula” and other similar creations, please know , that all this subject, dear to you, goes back precisely to the romantic story by J. Polidori!). Such a character is always dissatisfied with his environment, because he rises above him, being more educated and intelligent. For his loneliness, he takes revenge on the world of philistines (narrow-minded ordinary people) with contempt for social institutions and conventions - sometimes bringing this contempt to the point of demonstrativeness (for example, Lord Rothven in the mentioned story by J. Polidori never gives alms to people driven to poverty by misfortunes, but never refuses in a request for material assistance to those who need money to satisfy vicious desires).

Another type of romantic hero is the rebel. He also opposes himself to the world, but enters into open conflict with it, he - in the words of M. Lermontov - “asks for a storm.” A wonderful example of such a hero is Lermontov’s Demon.

The tragedy of the romantic hero is not so much in being rejected by society (in fact, he even strives for this), but in the fact that his efforts always turn out to be directed “to nowhere.” The existing world does not satisfy him - but there is no other world, and nothing fundamentally new can be created by simply overthrowing secular conventions. Therefore, the romantic hero is doomed either to die in a collision with a cruel world (Hoffmann’s Nathaniel), or to remain a “barren flower” who does not make anyone happy or even destroys the lives of those around him (Onegin, Pechorin).

That is why, over time, disappointment in the romantic hero became inevitable - in fact, we see it in “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin, where the poet openly ironizes about romanticism. Actually, not only Onegin can be considered a romantic hero here, but also Lensky, who also seeks an ideal and dies in a collision with the cruelty of a world that is very far from romantic ideals... but Lensky already resembles a parody of a romantic hero: his “ideal” is narrow-minded and frivolous a district young lady, outwardly reminiscent of a stereotypical image from novels, and the reader, in essence, is inclined to agree with the author, who prophesies a completely “philistine” future for the hero, if he remains alive... M. Lermontov is no less merciless towards his Zoraim, the hero of the poem “Angel of Death” :

“He looked for perfection in people,

And he himself was no better than them.”

Perhaps, we find the finally degraded type of romantic hero in the opera “Peter Grimes” by the English composer B. Britten (1913-1976): the main character here is also opposed to the world of ordinary people in which he lives, is also in eternal conflict with the inhabitants of his hometown and in the end In the end he dies - but he is no different from his nearby neighbors, his ultimate dream is to earn more money to open a shop... such is the harsh sentence passed on the romantic hero of the 20th century! No matter how you rebel against society, you will still remain a part of it, you will still carry its “cast” within you, but you will not run away from yourself. This is probably fair, but...

I once conducted a survey on a website for women and girls: “Which opera character would you marry?” Lensky took the lead by a huge margin - this is perhaps the romantic hero closest to us, so close that we are ready not to notice the author’s irony towards him. Apparently, to this day, the image of the romantic hero - eternally lonely and rejected, misunderstood by the “world of well-fed faces” and always striving for an unattainable ideal - retains its attractiveness.

Romantic hero- one of the artistic images of romanticism literature. A romantic is an exceptional and often mysterious person who usually lives in exceptional circumstances. The collision of external events is transferred to the inner world of the hero, in whose soul there is a struggle of contradictions. As a result of this reproduction of character, romanticism extremely highly raised the value of the individual, inexhaustible in its spiritual depths, revealing its unique inner world. Man in romantic works is also embodied through contrast, antithesis: on the one hand, he is understood as the crown of creation, and on the other, as a weak-willed toy in the hands of fate, forces unknown and beyond his control, playing with his feelings. Therefore, he often turns into a victim of his own passions. Also usually the hero of a small lyric-epic work. The romantic hero is lonely. Either he himself is running away from a familiar, comfortable world for others, which seems to him like a prison. Or he is an exile, a criminal. He is driven on a dangerous path by a reluctance to be like everyone else, a thirst for a storm, and a desire to measure his strength. For the Romantic hero, freedom is more valuable than life. To achieve this, he is capable of anything if he feels inner rightness.

A romantic hero is an integral personality; one can always identify a leading character trait in him.

Write a review about the article "Romantic hero"

Excerpt characterizing the Romantic hero

The great French bourgeois revolution and the half-century agitation of the Enlightenment that underlay it gave rise to unprecedented enthusiasm in the intellectual environment of Europe, the desire to remake and recreate everything, to lead humanity to the “golden age” of history, to achieve the abolition of all class boundaries and privileges - that is, “Freedom, equality and fraternity." It is no coincidence that almost all romantics are fanatics of freedom, only each of them understood freedom in their own way: it could be civil, social freedoms, which were demanded, for example, by Constant, Byron and Shelley, but most often it is creative, spiritual freedom, personal freedom, individual freedom.

Romantic poets proclaimed personality, individuality as the basis of history. In their aesthetics, man is not alone from(a representative of a collective, society, class, not an abstract person, as was customary among the enlighteners up to Fichte); he is unique, strange, alone - he is both the creator and the goal of history.

Following the classicists, the romantics turn to the main conflict of history: society - man (the famous classicist opposition “duty - feeling”). But the romantics reverse positions, turning them in favor of the individual, at least from the point of view of today's liberal way of thinking on its head:

man - society

therefore, “I” – “they”.

Romantic individualism gives rise to the main motives of romantic plotting: rebellion, escape from reality into nature (literally, escape from civilization), into creativity (into a poetic imaginary world or into religion, into mysticism), into melancholy (themes of sleep, dreams, the motif of a lost lover, themes of death and unity after death), into the historical past and national folklore. Hence the favorite genres of romantic literature: civic and journalistic lyrics; descriptive poetry, poems of wanderings (East and South-East Europe), pictures of harsh and lush nature as a reason for philosophizing about the universe and the place of man in it; confessional lyrics and confessional novel; “black” or gothic novel; drama of fate; fantastic novella with elements of horror; ballad and historical novel.

The magnificent romantic historiography of Guizot, Thierry, Michelet rises on the crest of this overwhelming interest in the individual and his role in the historical process. The creator of history here becomes a specific person - a king, an emperor, a conspirator, a leader of an uprising, a politician, and at the same time, as Walter Scott's novel shows, the people. The historicism of thinking characteristic of romantic consciousness is also a product of the Great French Bourgeois Revolution, as a global revolution in all spheres of life of Europeans. During the revolutionary period, history, which had previously changed almost imperceptibly, like stalagmites and stalactites growing in the depths of caves, rushed at a gallop, drawing millions of people into the sphere of its action, clearly demonstrating the connection of man with the movement of time, with the environment, with the national environment.

Romantics exalt the individual and put him on a pedestal. A romantic hero is always an exceptional person, unlike the people around him; he is proud of his exclusivity, although it becomes the cause of his misfortunes, his strangeness. The romantic hero challenges the world around him; he is in conflict not with individual people, not with socio-historical circumstances, but with the world as a whole, with the entire universe. Romantics therefore focus on depicting the spiritual, psychological life of the heroes, and the inner world of the romantic hero consists entirely of contradictions. Romantic consciousness, in rebellion against everyday life, rushes to extremes: some heroes of romantic works strive for spiritual heights, becoming like the creator himself in their search for perfection, others in despair indulge in evil, not knowing the extent of the depth of moral decline. Some romantics look for an ideal in the past, especially in the Middle Ages, when direct religious feeling was still alive, others - in the utopias of the future. One way or another, the starting point of romantic consciousness is the rejection of dull bourgeois modernity, the affirmation of the place of art not just as entertainment, relaxation after a hard day dedicated to making money, but as an urgent spiritual need of man and society. The protest of the romantics against the self-interest of the “Iron Age”. That is why the favorite hero of romantic literature is the artist in the broad sense of the word - writer, poet, painter and especially musician, because the romantics considered music, which directly affects the soul, to be the highest of the arts. Romanticism gave rise to new ideas about the tasks and forms of existence of literature, which we generally adhere to to this day. In terms of content, art henceforth becomes a rebellion against alienation and the transformation of a person, great in his calling, into a private individual. For the romantics, art became the prototype of creative work and pleasure, and the artist and the image of the romantic hero became the prototype of that integral, harmonious person who has no limit either on earth or in space. Romantic “escape from reality,” escape into the world of dreams, the world of the ideal, is the return to man of the consciousness of that true fullness of being, that calling that was taken from him by bourgeois society.

Romanticism used, seriously transforming it, the sentimentalist image of personality. But it is not sentimental sensitivity, but passion that is the basis of the romantic personality: the soul of the romantic does not vibrate in response to all the calls of reality, but only responds with a few strong sounds. Passion can be combined with icy indifference; a romantic’s mind is often “chilled.” Goethe emphasized passion as a defining feature of the new man: “A will that surpasses the strength of the individual is a product of the new age.” All-consuming passions that lead to obsession need freedom to manifest themselves.

The romantic hero chooses freedom in a wide range of meanings: from socio-political freedom to artistic freedom. Civil freedom was sung by revolutionary writers, liberals, and participants in liberation movements in Europe and America. And writers who adhered to conservative social views had their own apology for freedom, or rather, an apology for their freedom: they developed the idea of ​​​​this freedom in the metaphysical plane (later these thoughts were picked up by existential philosophy) and in the social plane (in the future these constructions led to the development of the doctrine of the so-called Christian democracy).

Among the different faces of romantic freedom, there is freedom from mechanical predetermination and the immutability of a social role (Hoffmann’s favorite theme), and, finally, liberation from the mortal predestination of man, the struggle against which turns into a cosmic, God-fighting rebellion (this theme is embodied by Byron and Espronceda). Boundless freedom is the secret of the alienated, Byronic hero: it is never known exactly what extricated him from among people, what restrictions of freedom he could not bear.

But the most important, truly constitutive feature of a romantic personality, its most painful passion is imagination. Living in imagination is more familiar to her than living in reality; and the one who cannot do this, in whom the imagination sleeps, will never escape from the empirical kingdom of vulgarity. This belief cannot be reduced to a popular literary motif; it is one of the cardinal features of the spiritual culture of the era. Alexander Humboldt, whose activities and writings undoubtedly influenced the worldview of his contemporaries and who himself was in the full sense of the word “a man of the era,” commented on Columbus’s letter: “It is of extraordinary psychological interest and shows with renewed vigor that the poet’s creative imagination was characteristic of the brave navigator who discovered the New World, as, indeed, of all major human personalities.”

Imagination in the spiritual structure of a romantic personality is not equivalent to a dream. The epithet “creative,” which echoes Fichte’s doctrine of the “productive imagination,” does not necessarily refer only to art (this is obvious from Humboldt’s statement). The word “creative” gives the imagination an active, goal-setting, volitional character. The romantic personality is characterized by imagination, mixed with will, and therefore a crisis of imagination, “rage at the sight of the discrepancy between his capabilities and plans,” according to Byron’s definition, painfully experienced by a series of romantic characters, starting with Senancourt’s Oberman. This is a crisis in the life-building program of romanticism.

There remains a lot of evidence of such a life-building program - confessionals, memoirs, pamphlets, even legal ones (see L. Megron). Attempts to implement it were varied - from decisive and sometimes heroic actions in life to eccentric everyday and literary behavior, the creation of a stylized spiritual self-portrait in letters and other documents. Several generations of young people who grew up in an atmosphere of romanticism “were engaged in modeling their historical character in the most extreme form, in the form of romantic life-creativity - the deliberate construction of artistic images and aesthetically organized plots in life” (L. Ginzburg). The very idea of ​​life-building was suggested by the historical process: after all, it seemed that history was created by the energy and human greatness of people like Napoleon or Bolivar - two archetypes of a romantic character. Many other real personalities of the era (Riego, Ypsilanti, Byron) also served as models of romantic life.