What does realism mean? Realism in literature

What is realism?
Metaphysics of Russian prose.

There would seem to be nothing unexpected in the concept of the realistic spirit. It is possible to say that the realistic spirit exists in literature insofar as realism exists with its artistic techniques and aesthetics. This realism, understood as a school or method, has existed in artistic practice for more than a hundred years, and literary theory, starting with Belinsky, has made such realism the foundation for its constructions in an effort to “explain the phenomena of the spirit with the laws of the spirit.” The creator of “real poetry” appears to be either Pushkin, who overcame the elegiac style in “Eugene Onegin,” or Gogol, who brought it to “ Dead souls"a typical image, but posing even such a question, about the first principles, has long lost its meaning, because realism lies in theoretical boundaries and everything creative work by rethinking realistic experience within these theoretical boundaries is deprived of historical perspective. The dogma of realism set and continues to set the countdown for literature. This dogma was very clearly expressed in Zamyatin’s famous formula that Russian literature has only its past left; the past, which reaches perfection as if on its own and grows in this pure motionless perfection of the vastness of the living people's soul, the people's life experience. But is there “realism” in something that breathes the spirit of truth?
The fundamental question of realism is the question of the authenticity of what is depicted. To be more precise, it is not even a question, but a requirement, if expressed in the language of “method”. The depiction of reality in its real forms is artistic principle , created from the requirement of reliability. However, Russian prose is much more complex in its structure, in its principles. It contains a requirement for truth, authenticity, and not reliability. There is a plan, a main thought about life, but there is no fiction, an inventing of life, which is masked by the verisimilitude of what is depicted. Behind the prose there is always some event, its own “history of the Pugachev rebellion.” Therefore, "The Captain's Daughter" is almost a story, captivating with the power of the events taking place, but in no way enticing or entertaining with a pleasant, believable narrative. And the brilliant Pustozersky prose is historical evidence, confirmed by the blood of those testifying. The hagiographic miracles described by Avvakum or Epiphanius are not reliable, but they are genuine; these visions and insights are made so by the power of faith of the Pustozersky sufferers - not the chroniclers of the schism, but the most piercing gift of writers. There was no “realism” because Russian art never depicted reality itself. However, there is Pushkin’s “metaphysics”, Dostoevsky’s “real”, Tolstoy’s “spirit of truth”, Platonov’s “substance of existence” - there is a certain released energetic force! Our history is humanized by the energy of resistance, on the scales its soul weighs much heavier than reason, and the ability to sacrifice oneself - a powerful property of this people's soul - means more than historical expediency, and can explode history, giving its measured course its sacrificial irrational impulse. This stems from Russian life itself, from its “internal existential dialectic,” as Berdyaev defined it, according to which Karamazov’s rejection of the world of God and God is equivalent to the rejection of the historical world, its expediency. However, to Chaadaev’s judgment (almost postmodernist in spirit) that Russia has no history, that it belongs to an unorganized historical circle of cultural phenomena, Osip Mandelstam objected: what about the Russian language? He wrote in the article “On the Nature of the Word”: “The life of language in Russian historical reality outweighed all other facts by the fullness of being, which represents only an unattainable limit for all other phenomena of Russian life.” And here is the conclusion: such a highly organized language as Russian embodies history itself. This is how the final round of this internal Russian dialectic takes place... It seems that there is no history, that only small isolated parts of existence fit within its concepts and limits, but we find it with all the fullness of this existence in language, which is therefore so organic and organized that only in it is our elemental historical experience. The Russian language has the property of living material. The subject of depiction in Russian prose was not reality, but reality - this is what includes not only the real world, but also the spiritual world - the world of our passions, feelings, faith. The subject, but also the principle - “the word is resolved in the event,” as Mandelstam defined.
Every event has a real and eternal causality, that is, the struggle between good and evil, relativity to the powers above and fate. For the Russian artist, super-real causality is always combined with real causality. The temporary is a manifestation of the eternal. The temporary is revealed through an event, but the eternal cannot be revealed like that. The Eternal is depicted as a certain event, or a symbol is extracted - a parable, which itself strives to become history, and this is how Russian prose is born. So, according to Andrei Platonov, which is also true for all Russian literature, the goal of art is “to find an objective state for the world, where the world itself would find itself and come into balance and where people would find it family. More precisely, art is the creativity of a perfect organization out of chaos."
The realistic spirit is more historical than the realistic form. It appeared, rising like a mountain, and collapsed. For the realism that we have invented, these two steps contain his entire life - from birth to death. However, is this the birth and death of the spirit? If a people is born on the earth's expanse and literature appears among them, then from birth it has its own destiny, a fateful spirit, which allows us to say: living literature. The power of this spirit is great. He emerges from oblivion, performing not even an explosion, but a genuine miracle full of mystery. On its pull, literature begins its movement and continues through all the time allotted to it, acquiring its history.
The nineteenth century is remarkable in that it was the century of self-awareness of this spirit, and therefore such an explosion, therefore such a great acting person literature. It's like a hero who plays with his prowess. With the muscles of the created form, Tolstoy plays with freedom, and Gogol comprehends beauty. Pushkin - purity, breadth, space. Perfection is Turgenev. Depth - Dostoevsky. Subsequently, the form is destroyed. Life, loaded with history, is depicted in language condensed into an image - Babel; before metaphor - Olesha, Zamyatin; to the -Platonov symbol. There is a poetic distortion of the realistic style. This is the same realism, but only deepened by poetic sound, “deep drilling,” as Viktor Shklovsky put it in relation to Olesha’s works. And at the next step, which Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov took, a reverse need arose to strengthen both style and form, and an even greater entry into history gave a completely different depiction. But formation, as well as the destruction of form, is a “formal prerequisite for art” (O. Mandelstam’s definition), a kind of creative energy. From the energy of the decay of the canonical form, the “Life” of Avvakum is born. Sholokhov writes " Quiet Don"on the energy of creation, and Platonov erects the epic "Chevengur" on the energy of the collapse of the old form of the novel.
If Tolstoy immersed himself in history, having complete freedom for fiction, then using the material of the Patriotic War he mastered not historical reality, but a distant idea of ​​it. The newest writers did not have such freedom, but they also strived to create in form whole works, proceeded from the integrity of Russian classics. However, this in no way speaks of their inferiority as artists. The golden mean here is in the definition given by Igor Vinogradov of the same feature, but noted by Solzhenitsyn: “Old forms are filled and transformed with the energy of a new experience, the authenticity (the power of experience) of which is certified by the mission of the artist who undertook to express this experience.” Solzhenitsyn, putting life material that was essentially transcendental in its essence into the old novel form, involuntarily moved away from it and made it more real, and when he began research, he had already alienated his experience from it. This is impossible for Shalamov. For him literary work is nothing more than a hard-won document, and it opposes anything that might detract from its authenticity. Plots? The simplest ones. Form? To be the way it turns out. He is against literary editing, believing that the first draft manuscript is the most sincere, the most authentic. He explores life material only within the limits of his personal human experience, gaining an understanding that objective existence expresses the inauthentic existence of a person. Dovlatov did not follow Shalamov, for example, and was not at all like him in his originality. But here’s what he wrote (“Letter to the Publisher”): “The camp topic has been exhausted. The reader is tired of endless prison memoirs. After Solzhenitsyn, the topic should be closed... These considerations do not stand up to criticism. Of course, I am not Solzhenitsyn. Does this deprive me of the right to exist?.. The fact is that my manuscript is not a finished work. It is a kind of diary, chaotic notes, a set of unorganized materials. It seemed to me that in this disorder one can trace lyrical hero. Some unity of place and time was observed. In general, the only banal idea is declared - that the world is absurd..."
The “banal idea” turned out to be not so simple: the world became meaningless precisely at that cruel turn when it was impossible to understand or justify the evil committed in it. Therefore, it makes no sense to repent of the evil done, except to get used to it, as if turning the order of things upside down. Criticism of oneself does not mean repentance or confession: through the lips of a drunkard, a camp inmate, a guard, through the lips of living and infinitely sinful people, a terrible judgment is being carried out on the world itself. This is what Venedikt Erofeev already called “counter-irony,” explaining its artistic essence in the preface to the first edition of his immortal poem: “Okay, let’s keep it secret together: this is it, the former Russian irony, skewed into all-Russian, so to speak, absurdity, or better yet, order."
But counter-irony (which is, in essence, Chekhov’s “irony of reversal”) is a metaphysical rebellion, a rebellion of truth. A tragedy, not an ironic farce. Venedikt Erofeev, whose works in modern times were attributed to postmodernism, that is, to renovationism, primarily piercingly popular. His language is popular, the image of his superstitions, from which flow his passionate mystical insights and visions, which bring “Cockerels” closer to “Dead Souls” and truly transform prose work into the poem. Superstition, sensual archaism, abusive vernacular - all this together gives birth to folklore intonation and rediscovers and returns folk lyricism. It is he who sounds in “Cockerels” - he screams with all his natural strength, like an infant’s cry in the twilight of human existence. The very structure of "Petushki", as well as "Vasily Rozanov", is infinitely far from the artistic ideas of the modernist sense. Such works are written in blood, not ink, and embody not speculative literary theories, but life itself.
The embodiment of life and spiritual energies in art form forms the metaphysics of Russian prose. But the principle of the reality of a word cannot be single, immovable, just as historical reality is replaced by layers. Therefore, it is more correct to talk about the principles of construction artistic space Russian prose and the self-expression of the realistic spirit in time. In turn, this space itself breaks down into phenomena of one or another artistry, that is, into artistic phenomena and traditions that are created through the accumulation of nameless collective experience, but are separated by the originality of the artists. The apparent heap of such a division of literature and its complexity is in fact much lighter and clearer than that “methodological” staircase that led from nowhere to nowhere, cluttering up something most valuable, namely, the metaphysics of Russian prose. The richness of realism lies in the manifestations of its spirit, and not in schools. Schools and directions are born on empty space when there is a break from national tradition. Throughout Russian literature, throughout its history, related works are scattered, but there were no schools for writing them. The realistic spirit is embodied in tradition, and therefore there is no need for its formal instillation, for formal continuity. All our schools, starting with the romantics, have always included not poets of a general trend, but self-sufficient creators. These were not schools, but circles in which vital issues were discussed. artistic issues. Here are the Oberiuts - it would seem like a school. But in fact they are from tradition: epigrams by Pushkin, Konstantin Tolstoy, poems by “Captain Lebyadkin”. After the Oberiuts, Nikolai Glazkov wrote, after him Blessed Oleg Grigoriev was close to this tradition. And here is what Yuri Tynyanov wrote about the literary struggle between supposedly classicism and romanticism, even if it took place at the beginning of the last century: “These concepts in Russian literature of the 20s were significantly complicated by the fact that they were brought from outside and were only applied to certain literary phenomena.” The tradition continues with original phenomena in terms of form. The school arises in order to transform some experimental, but also devoid of originality, phenomenon into a tradition - to instill and continue in a purely formal way, to hide the “artistically flawed” in the “artistically nameless”. At the same time, experimentation should be distinguished from innovation. Innovation is a rebellion of originality, an attempt precisely to break away from tradition, while the break itself (loss of national essence) does not occur, because only what is original turns into national.
In the metaphysics of Russian prose there is what can be defined as three factors of the creative complexity of its development. This complexity seems to be overturned from the simplicity and superficiality of the past literary ideology of the “realistic method”, which does not recognize the complexity of Russian spiritual development and Russian spirituality as such. This complexity is the state of enlightenment, that is, the fragmentation of existence and the lost connection with culture. The discovery made by Mandelstam about language as embodied history was also the discovery of a principle, a mechanism of action of language. Language becomes “a tool for restoring cultural connections.” This principle was understood as the “principle of the nationality of language” (definition by B. Tomashevsky), as “generalization of archetypal linguistic thinking” (definition by E. Tolstoy-Segal). The main thing in this understanding is that the most common layers of language, which are, as it were, still in the public domain, become the connecting ones. Around this common property, a struggle flares up in every literary era.
The struggle for language (the language of knowledge - a universal language or “metaphysical” according to Pushkin’s definition) is perceived as a struggle of literary movements (archaists - innovators, traditionalists - renovationists), and the struggle of literary movements is perceived as an ideological struggle (piety - heresy, Slavophiles - Westerners, fellow travelers -proletarians, patriots - democrats). But there is no struggle between schools or trends, say, classicism or romanticism, realism or postmodernism, but there is a struggle for life and literary space artistic generalizations and figures of speech - literary styles. It is worth recognizing the presence of styles - romantic, realistic, sentimental, postmodern and others - as the presence of worldviews. In essence, these are spiritual, not artistic states, and their energy feeds creativity, already containing the energy of new ones. life experiences, these “pessimistic inclinations of Russian history,” and the energy of the spiritual mission undertaken.
The struggle creates a dynamic space, in the sense that it has its own metaphysics, that inside it there is a tireless Brownian movement of all the atoms of literature. But ideology, the ideological approach, the transformation of this living artistic space into the field of ideology - literary theory - have always been deadening and deadening. From this complexity of development it is precisely impossible to derive laws, to make a law of some kind of simplicity. Even when everything is calm on the surface, in another century a storm flares up again, the element of struggle spills out, the tension of this peace and the laws that were inspired explodes. There is a problem of storytelling, born not from the requirement of verisimilitude and authenticity (the self-development of “realism”), but from the metaphysics of the acquisition of language as history - the epic universality of style. Presenters literary forms become a thing of the past in the fires of the Russian apocalypse, when not the end of the world comes, but the end of history. Literature is buried in the ruins of plot cliches, the ashes of speech. The literary world is running wild and writhing in convulsions of fiction, all invented, like a ghost, but beyond the grave and languagelessly silent about life, about man. And if there is realism, then this is our faith. By the power of faith, the unreal, the transcendental turns into the real and close, and tongue-tiedness then turns into perfection, sincerity into mastery; and, on the contrary, skill and perfection without this life-giving faith turn the word into an empty, dead sound, into dust.

Realism Realism

(from Late Latin realis - material, real) in art, a truthful, objective reflection of reality using specific means inherent in one or another type of artistic creativity. In the course of the development of art, realism acquires specific historical forms and creative methods (for example, educational realism, critical realism, socialist realism). These methods, interconnected by continuity, have their own characteristic features. The manifestations of realistic tendencies are different in different types and genres of art.

In aesthetics, there is no definitively established definition of both the chronological boundaries of realism and the scope and content of this concept. In the variety of developed points of view, two main concepts can be outlined. According to one of them, realism is one of the main features artistic knowledge, the main trend in the progressive development of the artistic culture of mankind, in which the deep essence of art is revealed as a way of spiritual and practical development of reality. The measure of penetration into life, artistic knowledge of its important aspects and qualities, and, first of all, social reality, determines the measure of realism of a particular artistic phenomenon. In each new historical period, realism takes on a new look, sometimes revealing itself in a more or less clearly expressed tendency, sometimes crystallizing into a complete method that determines the characteristics of the artistic culture of its time.

Representatives of another point of view on realism limit its history to a certain chronological framework, seeing in it a historically and typologically specific form of artistic consciousness. In this case, the beginning of realism dates back to either the Renaissance or the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment. The most complete disclosure of the features of realism is seen in critical realism XIX century, its next stage is in the 20th century. socialist realism, which interprets life phenomena from the perspective of the Marxist-Leninist worldview. A characteristic feature of realism in this case is considered to be the method of generalization, typification of life material, formulated by F. Engels in relation to the realistic novel: “... typical characters in typical circumstances..." (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, 2nd ed., vol. 37, p. 35). Realism in this understanding explores the personality of a person in indissoluble unity with his contemporary social environment and social relations. Such the interpretation of the concept of realism was developed mainly on the material of the history of literature, while the first - mainly on the material of the plastic arts ( cm. Plastic arts).

Whatever point of view one adheres to and no matter how one connects them with each other, there is no doubt that realistic art has an extraordinary variety of ways of cognition, generalization, and artistic interpretation of reality, manifested in the nature of stylistic forms and techniques. The realism of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, A. Durer and Rembrandt, J. L. David and O. Daumier, I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov and V. A. Serov, etc. differ significantly from each other and indicate the broadest creative possibilities objective exploration of the historically changing world through the means of art. Moreover, any realistic method is characterized by a consistent focus on understanding and revealing the contradictions of reality, which, within given, historically determined limits, turns out to be accessible to truthful disclosure. Realism is characterized by conviction in the knowability of beings, features of the objective real world by means of art.

Forms and techniques for reflecting reality in realistic art are different in different types and genres. Deep penetration into the essence of life phenomena, which is inherent in realistic tendencies and constitutes a defining feature of any realistic method, is expressed in different ways in a novel, lyric poem, historical picture, landscape, etc. Not every outwardly reliable image of reality is realistic. The empirical reliability of an artistic image takes on meaning only in unity with a truthful reflection of the existing aspects of the real world. This is the difference between realism and naturalism, which creates only visible, external, and not true essential truthfulness of images. At the same time, in order to identify certain facets of the deep content of life, sometimes sharp hyperbolization, sharpening, grotesque exaggeration of the “forms of life itself” are required, and sometimes a conditionally metaphorical form of artistic thinking. A variety of conventional, and sometimes abstract, techniques and images have repeatedly been a means of accurate and sharp figurative and expressive disclosure of life’s truth (the works of F. Rabelais, F. Goya, E. Delacroix, N.V. Gogol, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin , V.V. Mayakovsky, B. Brecht and many others), especially when the essence of a particular social phenomenon or idea was not adequately expressed in any really specific facts or objects. We should not forget about the specific conventions inherent in each of the arts in the reproduction of reality, determined by the nature of technical means that are not completely materially adequate to the forms of life itself (canvas, paint, etc. in painting, stone, wood in sculpture, etc.). P.).

Artistic truth includes two sides, inextricably linked with each other: an objective reflection of the essential aspects of life and the truth of aesthetic assessment, that is, the correspondence of the inherent this work art social and aesthetic ideal to the objective possibilities of progressive development hidden in reality. This is what can be called the truth of the ideal or aesthetic appreciation. Realistic art achieves its most profound and artistic-harmonious results when both of these sides of aesthetic truths are in organic unity (for example, in the portraits of Titian and Rembrandt, the historical painting of D. Velazquez, the poetry of A. S. Pushkin, the novels of L. N. Tolstoy and etc.). A realist artist in his works is not just a chronicler of life, but carries out “poetic justice” in relation to it (see F. Engels, ibid., vol. 36, p. 67), that is, he endures, as N. G. said Chernyshevsky, his verdict. Here lies the basis of the “tendentiousness” of realism. Where artistic trend does not follow “from the situation and action...” (ibid., p. 333), but is introduced into the work from the outside, didacticism or external declarativeness that is alien to realism arises. Closely related to the problem of the ideal in realistic art is the hotly debated question of the relationship between realism and romanticism. Without denying the existence of a special romantic artistic method, it should be emphasized that the features of romanticism are by no means something opposite to realism, but often become an integral quality realistic work. It should also be noted that sometimes realistic tendencies and features are not alien to romanticism.

No matter how wide and varied the possibilities and options for realistic methods in art are, they are by no means limitless. Where artistic creativity is divorced from reality, goes into a kind of aesthetic agnosticism, gives in to extreme subjectivism, as, for example, in modern modernism, there is no longer any place for realism. Attempts by revisionist aesthetics (R. Garaudy, E. Fischer) to affirm the idea of ​​“realism without shores” are intended to obscure the fundamental opposition between realism and formalist art. The struggle of ideologies in the sphere of artistic creativity is expressed in the modern era in the confrontation between realism and modernism, realism and “mass art”, most often militantly bourgeois in content, but imitating, for the sake of accessibility, individual realistic elements in an anti-artistic form. Revisionism in modern aesthetics ignores the criterion of truth in artistic creativity in its definitions of realism, thereby removing any possibility of its objective definition.

But modern realism, just like realism in the art of past eras, does not always appear in its “pure” form. Realistic tendencies often make their way in the fight against tendencies that slow down or limit the development of realism as a holistic method. For example, the truth of life is often intertwined with religious spiritualism and mysticism in Gothic works. Artistic phenomena are often observed in which both realistic and non-realistic features simultaneously exist (for example, the tendencies of symbolism in the works of M. A. Vrubel and A. A. Blok), which are in indissoluble unity. Thus, in Mayakovsky’s early works, a deeply truthful protest against the bourgeois philistine world is organically connected with the stylistics of futurism. In a number of cases, a contradiction may arise between the subjectivism of artistic manner and the truthfulness of the social and aesthetic ideal of the artist, which is characteristic of a number of modern progressive artists of the capitalist world (P. Picasso). Often this contradiction is resolved by the victory of the realistic principle in their work (for example, the overcoming of surrealism by P. Eluard and L. Aragon, expressionism by R. Guttuso and many others).

Realistic art can be “smarter” than its creator: a truthful disclosure of reality determined by the depth and strength of the artist’s talent leads to the victory of realism over the social illusions and political conservatism of the author, as, in particular, F. Engels showed in the example of O. Balzac (see there same, vol. 37, p. 37) and V.I. Lenin using the example of L.N. Tolstoy. The art of this or that artist is often deeper, more truthful, richer than his socio-political and philosophical views, marked by complex contradictions (for example, I. S. Turgenev, F. M. Dostoevsky). However, it does not at all follow from this that artistic creativity is independent of the author’s worldview. In most cases, realism is associated with advanced social movements and arises as an artistic expression of progressive social trends. He is often characterized by open bias in the expression of social ideas, which is clearly visible in the highest manifestations of critical realism of the 19th century. and especially in socialist realism, the specificity of which requires conscious partisanship.

The social basis of realism is historically changeable, but the rise of realism, as a rule, coincides with periods of broad connections between art and the masses. Since realism has access to a diversified coverage of the life of the people and important social issues, it is highly characterized by the quality of nationality ( cm. People's art). Since any historical form of realism is always addressed to certain aspects of reality, it is sensitive to certain facets of ideology and social psychology of its era, it inevitably turns out to be historically limited and specifically one-sided. Thus, the art of the High Renaissance is “blind” to social antagonisms and, on the contrary, reflects the largely utopian dreams of social and human harmony characteristic of the time. And the literature of critical realism of the 19th century, which objectively penetrated into the life of bourgeois society and provided vivid examples artistic research social contradictions and antagonisms, the complex dialectic of human characters, sometimes did not see a real way out of life’s contradictions. Thus, the task of analyzing realistic art is not to mechanically separate it from some abstract “anti-realism”. It requires a dialectical revelation of its internal content, in which both the gains of realism in the knowledge of reality and its historically conditioned artistic limitations are inextricably intertwined.

In fine art, the specificity of artistic means makes it possible to create a picture of really visible forms objective world, realism in in a broad sense has long been an objective artistic property inherent in this type of art. However, realism in various historical eras acquires specific historical specific features, determined by the level of development of social and artistic consciousness, and sometimes clothed in various stylistic forms ( cm. Primitive art, Ancient art, Renaissance, etc.). In a narrower sense, the term "realism" (which first appeared in the aesthetic thought of France in mid-19th century c.) in the area visual arts applied to artistic phenomena that arose mainly in the 17th-18th centuries. and reached full disclosure in the critical realism of the 19th century. In this sense, a distinctive feature of realism is the appeal of art to a direct depiction of the everyday life of people, devoid of any religious or mythological plot motivation. Its development is largely due to an increase in the level public consciousness, the establishment of materialism in philosophy, the development of industry, technology, natural sciences and social disciplines. First developed in the art of bourgeois Holland in the 17th century. this form of realism was developed during the Enlightenment in the work of artists associated with the “third estate” (J. B. S. Chardin, J. A. Houdon in France, W. Hogarth in Great Britain, etc.). At the same time, realism in the art of the 18th-19th centuries. often manifests itself in realistic tendencies inherent in other artistic movements. Interest in modern social events, in a person with his characteristic social and individual characteristics manifested in the art of classicism (J. L. David in France). A special place in the development of the realistic method is occupied by the work of F. Goya, paving new paths for merciless analysis and exposure of social contradictions. Goya became one of the founders of openly denouncing art of the 19th century V. At the end of the XVIII - first thirds of the XIX centuries, during the period of romanticism, the development of fine art was marked everywhere by the strengthening of realistic tendencies in portraiture, everyday genre, landscape. In France, T. Gericault and E. Delacroix directly turned to nature, to living reality in all its boiling dramatic conflicts. The work of O. Daumier is permeated with an acute social-critical and realistic principle, replacing the spontaneous anti-bourgeois protest of the romantics with an analytical study of social antagonisms. J. Constable in Great Britain, C. Corot and the painters of the Barbizon school in France, etc., directly observing and comprehending nature in its diverse and changeable ordinary states, largely determined further development realistic landscape in many European countries. In Russia in the first half of the 19th century. tendencies of realism are inherent in the portraits of K. P. Bryullov, O. A. Kiprensky and V. A. Tropinin, paintings on the themes peasant life A. G. Venetsianov, landscapes by S. F. Shchedrin. Conscious adherence to the principles of realism, culminating in overcoming the academy, the system ( cm. Academicism), inherent in the work of A. A. Ivanov, who combined a close study of nature with a penchant for deep socio-philosophical generalizations. Genre scenes by P. A. Fedotov tell about the life of " little man"in the conditions of feudal Russia. The sometimes accusatory pathos characteristic of them determines Fedotov’s place as the founder of Russian democratic realism. Since the 1840s, the process of the formation of realism, which was democratic in orientation, went on everywhere. In Germany and Austria, it was anticipated by the works of Biedermeier masters, who poeticized the everyday way of life ordinary people. Its origins, largely associated with the revolutionary and national liberation movement, can be seen in the works of many representatives of romanticism (P. Michalowski in Poland, I. Manes in the Czech Republic, etc.). By the second half of the 19th century, democratic realism reached maturity , having developed in all the diversity of national and stylistic options. All of them, however, have common features: specific authenticity in the reproduction of reality, affirmation of aesthetic value folk life, open democratic social orientation artistic ideal. The largest representative of democratic realism in the mid-19th century. was G. Courbet, who defiantly called his program exhibition of 1855 “Pavilion of Realism.” To varying degrees and in a variety of artistic manners, it appeared in the works of J. F. Millet, E. Manet and O. Rodin in France, C. Meunier in Belgium, A. Menzel and V. Leibl in Germany, M. Munkacsi in Hungary, K. Purkin in the Czech Republic, W. Homer and T. Akins in the USA, etc. The most important achievements in the realistic rendering of living nature, the affirmation of the artistic value of dynamic everyday life modern city characteristic of the work of the French impressionists (C. Monet, O. Renoir, E. Degas, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley). Approval of realism in Russian art second half of the 19th century V. inextricably linked with the rise of democratic social thought. A close study of nature, a deep interest in the life and fate of the people are combined here with denunciation of the bourgeois-serf system. A brilliant galaxy of realist masters of the last third of the 19th century. united into a group of Itinerants (V.G. Perov, I.N. Kramskoy, I.E. Repin, V.I. Surikov, N.N. Ge, I.I. Shishkin, A.K. Savrasov, I.I. . Levitan and others), who finally established the position of realism in everyday life and historical genres, portrait and landscape. IN late XIX- early 20th century traditions of critical realism developed in creativity outstanding masters who maintained connections with the democratic movement (T. Steinlen in France, M. Liebermann, K. Kollwitz in Germany, J. Israels in the Netherlands, F. Brangwyn in Great Britain, etc.). At the beginning of the 20th century. the traditions of realism were especially stable in Russia (the works of V. A. Serov, K. A. Korovin, S. V. Ivanov, N. A. Kasatkin, etc.). In Soviet art, these traditions became one of the sources of formation socialist realism(see articles on art Soviet republics and about the masters of Soviet art).

Realistic trends in the art of the 20th century. characterized by the search for new connections with reality, new figurative solutions and means artistic expression, as evidenced by the art of such various masters as F. Maserel in Belgium, D. Rivera and D. Siqueiros in Mexico, R. Kent, A. Refregier in the USA, A. Fougeron and B. Taslitsky in France, R. Guttuso, J. Manzu in Italy, V. Dimitrov-Maistora, S. Venev in Bulgaria, etc.). Realistic art, which acquired throughout the 20th century. bright national traits and the diversity of forms, as a rule, develops in the process of struggling with modernist tendencies. Literature: A. N. Jesuitov, Questions of realism in the aesthetics of K. Marx and F. Engels, L.-M., 1963; A. Lavretsky, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov in the struggle for realism, 2nd ed., M., 1968; Realism and artistic quests of the 20th century. Sat. Art., M., 1969; B. Suchkov, Historical destinies of realism. Reflections on the creative method, 3rd ed., M., 1973; T. Motyleva, The Property of Modern Realism, M., 1973; V. V. Vanslov, On realism socialist era, M., 1982.

(Source: Popular art encyclopedia." Ed. Polevoy V.M.; M.: Publishing house "Soviet Encyclopedia", 1986.)

In art (from the Latin realis - real, material), in a broad sense - the ability of art to truthfully, unvarnishedly depict a person and the world around him in life-like, recognizable images, without passively and dispassionately copying nature (unlike naturalism), but selecting the main thing in it and trying to convey in visible forms the essential qualities of objects and phenomena. In this sense, art can be called realistic Rembrandt, D. Velazquez and many other masters.

In a narrower sense, realism is one of the fundamental artistic movements of sir. and second floor. 19th century in Europe and America, which declared the purpose of art to be observation and an objective depiction of the surrounding reality, the expression of the “truth of life.” The term was introduced by the French literary critic Chanfleury in the 1850s Realists asserted their principles in the fight against both academicism, so with the later romanticism, degenerated to the middle. 19th century into a set of common stamps.

Realism appeared initially in France, in the works of G. Courbet, who set himself the task of creating a heroic monumental painting on a modern subject. Realism 19th century was not limited to the work of artists from life and on plein air, although this became a mass practice, it was distinguished primarily by its social orientation, the desire to expose the negative phenomena of modernity, therefore the term is often used in relation to it critical realism(J.F. Millet in France, C. Meunier in Belgium, A. Menzel, V. Leibl in Germany, Itinerants in Russia). Apparent simplicity, accessibility figurative language realists of the 19th century often encouraged critics and the public to perceive their art as an illustration and propaganda of certain (including political) ideas, which is fundamentally contrary to the essence of this multifaceted artistic movement.

In the 20th century many masters abandoned imitation of the forms of reality, which culminated in the emergence of abstract art. The term “realism”, having lost its aesthetic definition, began to be used to designate the most different directions, adhering to identifiable forms of visible reality ( surrealism, socialist realism etc.), as a result of which the concept of realism lost its aesthetic certainty.

in literature and art - a truthful, objective reflection of reality using specific means inherent in a particular type of artistic creativity. In Russia - an artistic method characteristic of the creativity of: writers - A. S. Pushkin, Ya. V. Gogol, Ya. A. Nekrasov, L. Ya. Tolstoy, A. Ya. Ostrovsky, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. P Chekhov, A. M. Gorky, etc.; composers - M. P. Mussorgsky, A. P. Borodin, P. I. Tchaikovsky and partly Ya. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, artists - A. G. Venetsianov, P. A. Fedotov, I. E. Repin, V. A. Serov and the Wanderers, sculptor A. S. Golubkina; in the theater - M. S. Shchepkina, M. Ya. Ermolova, K. S. Stanislavsky.

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REALISM

late lat. realis - material, real), an artistic method, the creative principle of which is the depiction of life through typification and the creation of images that correspond to the essence of life itself. Literature for realism is a means of understanding man and the world, therefore it strives for a wide coverage of life, coverage of all its sides without restrictions; the focus is on the interaction of a person and the social environment, the influence of social conditions on the formation of personality.

The category “realism” in a broad sense defines the relationship of literature to reality in general, regardless of which movement or direction in literature the given author belongs to. Any work reflects reality to one degree or another, but in some periods of the development of literature there was an emphasis on artistic convention; for example, classicism demanded the “unity of place” of the drama (the action should take place in one place), which made the work far from the truth of life. But the requirement of life-likeness does not mean a rejection of the means of artistic convention. The art of a writer lies in the ability to concentrate reality, drawing heroes who, perhaps, did not actually exist, but in which real people like them were embodied.

Realism in the narrow sense emerged as a movement in the 19th century. It is necessary to distinguish realism as a method from realism as a direction: we can talk about the realism of Homer, W. Shakespeare, etc. as a manner of reflecting reality in their works.

The question of the emergence of realism is solved by researchers in different ways: its roots are seen in ancient literature, in the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras. According to the most common view, realism arose in the 1830s. Its immediate predecessor is considered to be romanticism, the main feature of which is the depiction of exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances with special attention to a complex and contradictory personality with strong passions, misunderstood by the society around her - the so-called romantic hero. This was a step forward compared to the conventions of depicting people in classicism and sentimentalism - movements that preceded romanticism. Realism did not deny, but developed the achievements of romanticism. Between romanticism and realism in the first half of the 19th century. it is difficult to draw a clear line: the works use both romantic and realistic depiction techniques: “ Shagreen leather» O. de Balzac, novels by Stendhal, V. Hugo and Charles Dickens, “A Hero of Our Time” by M. Yu. Lermontov. But unlike romanticism, the main artistic orientation of realism is typification, the depiction of “typical characters in typical circumstances” (F. Engels). This attitude assumes that the hero concentrates in himself the properties of the era and the social group to which he belongs. For example, the title character of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is bright representative a dying nobility, whose characteristic features are laziness, inability to take decisive action, and fear of everything new.

Soon realism breaks with romantic tradition, which is embodied in the works of G. Flaubert and W. Thackeray. In Russian literature, this stage is associated with the names of A. S. Pushkin, I. A. Goncharov, I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, A. N. Ostrovsky, etc. This stage is usually called critical realism - after M . Gorky (we should not forget that Gorky, for political reasons, wanted to emphasize the accusatory orientation of the literature of the past in contrast to the affirming trends socialist literature). The main feature of critical realism is the depiction of the negative phenomena of Russian life, seeing the beginning of this tradition in “Dead Souls” and “The Inspector General” by N.V. Gogol, in the works of the natural school. The authors solve their problem in different ways. There is no positive hero in Gogol’s works: the author shows a “team city” (“The Inspector General”), a “team country” (“Dead Souls”), combining all the vices of Russian life. Thus, in “Dead Souls” each hero embodies some negative trait: Manilov – daydreaming and the impossibility of making dreams come true; Sobakevich - ponderousness and slowness, etc. However, the negative pathos in most works is not without an affirmative beginning. So Emma, ​​the heroine of G. Flaubert’s novel “Madame Bovary” with her subtle mental organization, rich inner world and the ability to feel vividly and vividly, is contrasted with Mr. Bovary - a man who thinks in patterns. Another important feature of critical realism is attention to social environment, which shaped the character's character. For example, in the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'” the behavior of the peasants, their positive and negative traits(patience, kindness, generosity, on the one hand, and servility, cruelty, stupidity, on the other) are explained by the conditions of their life and especially by the social upheavals of the period of the serfdom reform of 1861. Fidelity to reality was already put forward by V.G. Belinsky in developing the theory of the natural school. N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, A. F. Pisemsky and others also highlighted the criterion of the social usefulness of a work, its influence on minds and the possible consequences of reading it (it is worth recalling the phenomenal success of Chernyshevsky’s rather weak novel “What is to be done?” , who answered many questions from his contemporaries).

The mature stage of the development of realism is associated with the work of writers of the second half of the 19th century, primarily F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy. IN European literature At this time, the period of modernism began and the principles of realism were used mainly in naturalism. Russian realism enriched world literature principles of the socio-psychological novel. The discovery of F. M. Dostoevsky is recognized as polyphony - the ability to combine different points of view in a work, without making any of them dominant. The combination of the voices of the characters and the author, their interweaving, contradictions and agreements brings the architectonics of the work closer to reality, where there is no single opinion and one, the last truth. The fundamental tendency of L. N. Tolstoy’s creativity is the depiction of the development of the human personality, the “dialectics of the soul” (N. G. Chernyshevsky) combined with the epic breadth of the depiction of life. Thus, the change in the personality of one of the main characters of “War and Peace” Pierre Bezukhov occurs against the backdrop of changes in the life of the entire country, and one of the turning points in his worldview is the Battle of Borodino, crucial moment in the history of the Patriotic War of 1812

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. realism is in crisis. It is also noticeable in the dramaturgy of A.P. Chekhov, the main tendency of which is to show key points in people’s lives, and changes in their lives in the most ordinary moments, no different from others, is the so-called “undercurrent” (in European drama these tendencies were manifested in the plays of A. Strindberg, G. Ibsen, M. Maeterlinck). The predominant trend in the literature of the early 20th century. symbolism becomes (V. Ya. Bryusov, A. Bely, A. A. Blok). After the revolution of 1917, integrating into the general concept of building a new state, numerous associations of writers arose whose task was to mechanically transfer the categories of Marxism into literature. This led to the recognition of new important stage in the development of realism in the 20th century. (primarily in Soviet literature) socialist realism, which was intended to depict the development of man and society, meaningful in the spirit of socialist ideology. The ideals of socialism assumed steady progress, determining the value of a person by the benefit he brings to society, and a focus on the equality of all people. The term "socialist realism" was fixed on the 1st All-Union Congress Soviet writers in 1934. The novels “Mother” by M. Gorky and “How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. A. Ostrovsky were called examples of socialist realism; its features were identified in the works of M. A. Sholokhov, A. N. Tolstoy, and in satire V. V. Mayakovsky, I. Ilf and E. Petrov, J. Hasek. The main motive of the works of socialist realism was considered to be the development of the personality of a human fighter, his self-improvement and overcoming difficulties. In the 1930s–40s. socialist realism finally acquired dogmatic features: a tendency appeared to embellish reality, the conflict of “good with best” was recognized as the main one, psychologically unreliable, “artificial” characters began to appear. The development of realism (regardless of socialist ideology) was given by the Great Patriotic War(A. T. Tvardovsky, K. M. Simonov, V. S. Grossman, B. L. Vasiliev). Since the 1960s literature in the USSR began to move away from socialist realism, although many writers adhered to the principles classical realism.

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Realism in literature is a direction whose main feature is true picture reality and its typical features without any distortion or exaggeration. This originated in the 19th century, and its adherents sharply opposed sophisticated forms of poetry and the use of various mystical concepts in works.

Signs directions

Realism in 19th-century literature can be distinguished by clear characteristics. The main one is the artistic depiction of reality in images familiar to the average person, which he regularly encounters in real life. Reality in the works is considered as a means of man’s knowledge of the world around him and himself, and the image of each literary character is worked out in such a way that the reader can recognize himself, a relative, colleague or acquaintance in it.

In the novels and stories of realists, art remains life-affirming, even if the plot is characterized by tragic conflict. Another sign of this genre is the desire of writers to consider the surrounding reality in its development, and each writer tries to discover the emergence of new psychological, social and social relations.

Features of this literary movement

Realism in literature, which replaced romanticism, has the characteristics of art, truth seeker and the one who finds it, striving to transform reality.

In the works of realist writers, discoveries were made after much thought and dreaming, after analyzing subjective worldviews. This feature, which can be distinguished by the author’s perception of time, determined features realistic literature of the early twentieth century from traditional Russian classics.

Realism inXIX century

Such representatives of realism in literature as Balzac and Stendhal, Thackeray and Dickens, George Sand and Victor Hugo, in their works most clearly reveal the themes of good and evil, and avoid abstract concepts and show the real life of their contemporaries. These writers make it clear to readers that evil lies in the lifestyle of bourgeois society, capitalist reality, and people’s dependence on various material values. For example, in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son, the owner of the company was heartless and callous not by nature. It’s just that he developed such character traits due to the presence big money and the ambition of the owner, for whom profit becomes the main achievement in life.

Realism in literature is devoid of humor and sarcasm, and the images of the characters are no longer the ideal of the writer himself and do not embody his cherished dreams. From the works of the 19th century, the hero practically disappears, in whose image the author’s ideas are visible. This situation is especially clearly visible in the works of Gogol and Chekhov.

However, this literary trend is most clearly manifested in the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who describe the world as they see it. This was expressed in the image of characters with their own strengths and weaknesses, the description of mental torment, a reminder to readers of the harsh reality that cannot be changed by one person.

As a rule, realism in literature also affected the fate of representatives of the Russian nobility, as can be judged from the works of I. A. Goncharov. Thus, the characters of the heroes in his works remain contradictory. Oblomov is a sincere and gentle person, but due to his passivity he is not capable of better things. Another character in Russian literature has similar qualities - the weak-willed but gifted Boris Raisky. Goncharov managed to create the image of an “anti-hero” typical of XIX century, which was noticed by critics. As a result, the concept of “Oblomovism” appeared, referring to all passive characters whose main features were laziness and lack of will.

the term is used in two senses: in one case, realism is opposed to nominalism - as a position that allows the existence of the general in the form of “realities”; in another, it opposes instrumentalism and phenomenologism, i.e. realism in this case is a position that correlates scientific theories with objective reality.

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REALISM

from late lat. realis - material, real) - a philosophical direction that recognizes a reality lying outside consciousness, which is interpreted either as the existence of ideal objects (Plato, medieval scholasticism), or as an object of knowledge, independent of the subject, cognitive process and experience (philosophical realism of the 20th century) . The problem of universals historically goes back to Plato’s teaching about self-sufficient entities that organize the world - “ideas”, which, being outside specific things, constitute a special ideal world. Aristotle, unlike Plato, believed that the general exists in unbreakable connection with the individual, being its form.

Realism in medieval philosophy is one of the main options, along with nominalism and conceptualism, for resolving the dispute about universals that clarify the ontological status general concepts, i.e. the question of their real (objective) existence. Unlike nominalism, for which only a single thing is real, and a universal is a generalization in a concept based on the real similarity of objects, realism believes that universals exist really and independently of consciousness (universalia sunt realia).

In the richly nuanced doctrine of realism, two of its forks are usually distinguished: extreme realism, which considers universals to exist independently of things, and moderate realism, which believes that they are real, but exist in individual things. Realism in its extreme expression, due to pantheistic tendencies, came into conflict with the church, so moderate realism dominated in the Middle Ages. Platonism was reworked in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Neoplatonism and patristics (the largest representative of the latter, Augustine, interpreted “ideas” as the thoughts of the creator and as examples of the creation of the world). John Scotus Eriugena (9th century) believed that the general is entirely present in the individual (individual things) and precedes him in the divine mind; the thing itself in its corporeality is the result of clothing the essence with accidents (random properties) and is the sum of intelligible qualities. In the 11th century extreme realism arises as an opposition to the nominalism of I. Roscellini, expressed in the doctrine of his student William of Champeaux, who claims that universals as the “first substance” reside in things as their essence. Anselm of Canterbury (11th century) and Adelard of Bath (12th century) developed their teachings in line with realism. Anselm recognizes the ideal existence of universals in the divine mind, but does not recognize their existence along with things and outside the human or divine mind.

But the realism of Albert the Great and his student Thomas Aquinas (13th century) turned out to be the most stable and acceptable for the church. Universals, according to Thomas, exist in three ways: “before things” in the divine mind - as their “ideas”, eternal prototypes; “in things” - As their essences, substantial forms; “after things” in the human mind - as concepts, the result of abstraction. In Thomism, universals are identified with the Aristotelian form, and matter serves as the principle of individuation, that is, the division of the universal into the particular. Moderate realism, seriously shaken by the nominalist Ockham, continues to exist in the 14th century; The last significant doctrine of moderate realism appears in the 16th century. at Suarez. Medieval realism tried to comprehend the problem of the general and the individual, the nature of abstractions. Realism in modern philosophy - totality philosophical teachings and schools, the common feature of which is the recognition of the reality of the subject of knowledge, that is, its independence from consciousness and cognitive acts. Recognition of the objectivity of the subject of knowledge in epistemology is associated with modern realism with a metaphysical opposition between subject and object, both epistemologically and ontologically. Three options for understanding cognition are being developed: direct cognition, implying the fundamental homogeneity of subject and object in ontological terms (neorealism, or “direct realism”); indirect, associated with their fundamental heterogeneity and requiring a “mediator” who transfers information from the object to the subject (critical realism); the third is an “ontological” solution that recognizes subject and object as equal sides of a single being (critical ontology).

REALISM

lat. realis - real, material) - a direction of thought based on the presumption of endowing a particular phenomenon with an ontological status of a sphere of existence independent of human consciousness. Depending on what exactly is endowed with such status, R. is differentiated into: 1) - spontaneous R., characteristic of archaic cultures and based on the ontologization of human ideas about the world, within which the subject of objectification is the direct content of experience; 2) - conceptual R., taking shape in the context of a mature cultural tradition and - in contrast to spontaneous R. - based on a reflexively conscious distancing of the object and thoughts about it. Conceptual R. includes: (a) - R. as a philosophical direction, represented by the ontologization of general concepts (medieval R.), the subject of knowledge (neorealism and critical R. in the philosophy of the 20th century), social relations; (b) - R. as an artistic method based on the presumption of objective existence of reality constructed in the process of artistic creativity. As a philosophical direction, R. is objectively presented already in the concept of the “world of eidos” by Plato; as a self-aware direction is constituted within the framework of medieval scholasticism in the struggle against nominalism on the problem of universals. If nominalism treats the latter as names (nomina) of really existing individual objects, then R., on the contrary, is based on the presumption of the objective reality of universals (universalia sunt realia). Beginning with Augustine, R. synthetically combines in its content the installations of Platonism with Christian creationism ("genera" and "species" as ideal images of future objects in the consciousness of the Creator - in Augustine; the pre-existence of things as archetypes (arhetipum) in the conversation of God with himself itself - in Anselm of Canterbury; the self (haecceitas) of a thing, which precedes its existence and is actualized in the free will of God - in John Duns Scotus, etc.). Extreme R., based on the interpretation of universals as existing outside and before individual objects and intellect, is differentiated into an early one, modeling the existence of the general in the consciousness of God as an essence that precedes individual existence - the latter is thought of in this case as the result of the embodiment of the essence, i.e. investing it with non-attributive accidents, including corporeality (John Scotus Eriugena), and the later, thinking of essences as primary substances represented in individual objects (Guillaume of Chartres). Since within the framework of this version R. it is objectively possible to shift the interpretation of the creation dogma towards impersonal emanation (a single being with from the “species”, “species” - from the “genus”, “genus” - from general principle ), to the extent that not a radical, but a moderate version of R. was adopted as the official doctrine of the Orthodox Church (Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Suarez, etc.). The detailed model of moderate R. is formed within the framework of Thomism on the basis of the transition from Platonism to Aristotelism and the synthesis of the European scholastic tradition with the Arabic (Averroism). According to Thomas Aquinas, the trinity of being of universals can be represented as: being before things" (ante res), i.e. being in the Divine consciousness as prototypes of things; "being in things" (in rebus), i.e. their being in individual objects as their essences (substantial forms); “being after things” (post res), i.e. their existence as abstractions in human consciousness, comprehending the structure of the divine world order. In modern philosophy, along with its development within the framework of neo-Thomism , R. is constituted as a direction in epistemology, based on the presumption of the objective pre-experimental existence of the object of knowledge (which in the situation of the 20th century, especially after the developments of the Copenhagen school, becomes far from obvious and non-trivial). Cognitive realism is differentiated into: (I) - neorealism ( R. Perry, W. Marvin, E. Holt, W. Montague, W. Pitkin, E. Spaulding, etc.), founded on the so-called “presentational epistemology,” critically directed against the identification of reality and experience (individual in pragmatism and impersonal absolute in neo-Hegelianism) and postulates the existence of an object independent of consciousness, which can be realized both in existence (being in the space-time continuum) and in subsistence (the existence of an ideal object outside space and time). The possibility of cognition, understood as overcoming subject-object dualism (“epistemological monism”), achieved through the “presentation” of an object in subjective consciousness, is based on the direct “grasping” of reality by consciousness (“immediate R.”); (II) - critical R. (A. Riehl, O. Külpe, E. Becher, A. Wenzl, A. Seth, D. Hicks, etc.), based on the so-called “representational epistemology”, introducing between object and subject the mediating link is “data”, interpreted either as constant logical entities (Santayana, D. Drake, A. Rogers, G. O. Strong), or as mental formations (Sellars, J. Pratt, A. Lovejoy), or as the “spiritual nature” of being (D. Wilde, M. Chapman, R. Parker, P. Weiss, W. Hartshorn, W. Sheldon). Both the latter direction and the “temporalistic R.” Lovejoy is formed into a kind of synthetic model, focused on including elements of classical idealism and neorealism in its content.

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