Comic and tragic in works of world art. tragic and comic

Abstract on the topic Tragic, its manifestation in art and in life free download

Section: Ethics
Type of work: essay

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..3

1. Tragedy - irreparable loss and affirmation of immortality………………..4

2. General philosophical aspects of the tragic……………….……………………...5

3. Tragic in art …………………………………………………………….7

4. Tragic in life………………………………………………………………..12

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….16

References……………………………………………………………………18

INTRODUCTION

Aesthetically evaluating phenomena, a person determines the measure of his dominance over the world. This measure depends on the level and nature of the development of society, its production. The latter reveals one or another meaning for a person of the natural properties of objects, determines their aesthetic properties. This explains that the aesthetic manifests itself in different forms: beautiful, ugly, sublime, base, tragic, comic, etc.

The expansion of human social practice entails an expansion of the range of aesthetic properties and aesthetically evaluated phenomena.

There is no era in the history of mankind that would not be full of tragic events. Man is mortal, and every person living a conscious life cannot, in one way or another, comprehend his attitude to death and immortality. Finally, great art in its philosophical reflections on the world always inwardly gravitates toward the tragic theme. Through the entire history of world art passes as one of the general theme of the tragic. In other words, the history of society, and the history of art, and the life of the individual, in one way or another, come into contact with the problem of the tragic. All this determines its importance for aesthetics.

1. TRAGEDY - IRREVERSIBLE LOSS AND STATEMENT OF IMMORTALITY

The 20th century is the century of the greatest social upheavals, crises, turbulent changes, creating the most difficult, most tense situations in one or another point on the globe. Therefore, the theoretical analysis of the problem of the tragic for us is introspection and understanding of the world in which we live.

In the art of different peoples, tragic death turns into resurrection, and sorrow turns into joy. For example, ancient Indian aesthetics expressed this pattern through the concept of "samsara", which means the cycle of life and death, the reincarnation of a deceased person into another living being, depending on the nature of the life he lived. The reincarnation of souls among the ancient Indians was associated with the idea of aesthetic improvement, the ascent to more beautiful. In the Vedas, the oldest monument of Indian literature, the beauty of the afterlife and the joy of going into it were affirmed.

Since ancient times, human consciousness could not come to terms with non-existence. As soon as people began to think about death, they affirmed immortality, and in non-existence, people set aside a place for evil and accompanied it there with laughter.

Paradoxically, it is not tragedy that speaks of death, but satire. Satire proves the mortality of living and even triumphant evil. And tragedy affirms immortality, reveals the good and beautiful principles in a person who triumph, win, despite the death of the hero.

Tragedy is a mournful song about an irreparable loss, a joyful hymn to the immortality of man. It is this deep nature of the tragic that manifests itself when the feeling of sorrow is resolved by joy (“I am happy”), death by immortality.

2. GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE TRAGIC

The person leaves life irrevocably. Death is the transformation of the living into the inanimate. However, the dead remains alive: culture preserves everything that has passed, it is the extra-genetic memory of mankind. G. Heine said that under each tombstone is the history of the whole world, which cannot leave without a trace.

Comprehending the death of a unique individuality as an irreparable collapse of the whole world, tragedy at the same time affirms the strength, the infinity of the universe, despite the departure of a finite being from it. And in this very finite being, tragedy finds immortal traits that make the personality related to the universe, the finite to the infinite. Tragedy is a philosophical art that poses and solves the highest metaphysical problems of life and death, realizing the meaning of being, analyzing the global problems of its stability, eternity, infinity, despite the constant variability.

In tragedy, as Hegel believed, death is not only annihilation. It also means the preservation in a transfigured form of that which in this form must perish. Hegel contrasts the being suppressed by the instinct of self-preservation with the idea of liberation from the "slave consciousness", the ability to sacrifice one's life for the sake of higher goals. The ability to comprehend the idea of infinite development for Hegel is the most important characteristic of human consciousness.

K. Marx already in his early works criticizes the idea of Plutarch's individual immortality, putting forward the idea of human social immortality as opposed to it. For Marx, people who are afraid that after their death the fruits of their deeds will go not to them, but to humanity, are untenable. The products of human activity are the best continuation of human life, while hopes for individual immortality are illusory.

In understanding the tragic situations in the world artistic culture, two extreme positions have emerged: existentialist and Buddhist.

Existentialism made death the central problem of philosophy and art. The German philosopher K. Jaspers emphasizes that knowledge about a person is tragic knowledge. In the book “On the Tragic”, he notes that the tragic begins where a person takes all his possibilities to the extreme, knowing that he will perish. It is like self - realization of the individual at the cost of his own life . “Therefore, in tragic knowledge, it is essential what a person suffers from and because of what he perishes, what he takes upon himself, in the face of what reality and in what form he betrays his being.” Jaspers proceeds from the fact that the tragic hero in himself carries both his happiness and his death.

The tragic hero is the bearer of something beyond the scope of individual existence, the bearer of power, principle, character, demon. Tragedy shows a person in his greatness, free from good and evil, writes Jaspers, substantiating this position by referring to Plato's idea that neither good nor evil arise from a petty character, and a great nature is capable of both great evil and great good.

Tragism exists where forces collide, each of which believes itself to be true. On this basis, Jaspers believes that truth is not one, that it is split, and tragedy reveals this.

Thus, existentialists absolutize the self-worth of the individual and emphasize its exclusion from society, which leads their concept to a paradox: the death of the individual ceases to be a social problem. A person left alone with the universe, not feeling humanity around him, embraces the horror of the inevitable finiteness of being. She is cut off from people and in fact turns out to be absurd, and her life is devoid of meaning and value.

For Buddhism, a person, dying, turns into another being, he equates death to life (a person, dying, continues to live, therefore death does not change anything). In both cases, virtually every tragedy is removed.

The death of a person acquires a tragic sound only where a person, having self-worth, lives in the name of people, their interests become the content of his life. In this case, on the one hand, there is a unique individual identity and value of the individual, and on the other hand, the dying hero finds continuation in the life of society. Therefore, the death of such a hero is tragic and gives rise to a feeling of irretrievable loss of human individuality (and hence grief), and at the same time, the idea of continuing the life of the individual in humanity (and hence the motive of joy) arises.

The source of the tragic is specific social contradictions - collisions between a socially necessary, urgent requirement and the temporary practical impossibility of its implementation. The inevitable lack of knowledge, ignorance often become the source of the greatest tragedies. The tragic is the sphere of comprehension of world-historical contradictions, the search for a way out for humanity. This category reflects not just the misfortune of a person caused by private malfunctions, but the disasters of mankind, some fundamental imperfections of being that affect the fate of the individual.

3. TRAGIC IN ART

Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

Thus, for example, Greek tragedy is characterized by an open course of action. The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although both the actors and the audience were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. The audience was well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based on the logic of action. The meaning of the tragedy was in the nature of the behavior of the hero. The death and misfortunes of the tragic hero are known for sure. And this is the naivete, freshness and beauty of ancient Greek art. Such a course of action played a great artistic role, intensifying the tragic emotion of the viewer.

The hero of ancient tragedy is not able to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, acts, and only through his freedom, through his actions, what must happen is realized. Such, for example, is Oedipus in Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King. By his own will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the misfortunes that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And when it turns out that the “investigation” threatens to turn against the main “investigator” and that the culprit of the misfortune of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father by the will of fate and married his mother, he does not stop the “investigation”, but brings it to the end. Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy by Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the order of Creon, who, under pain of death, forbids the burial of her brother, who fought against Thebes. The law of tribal relations, expressed in the need to bury the body of a brother, no matter what the cost, acts equally in relation to both sisters, but Antigone becomes a tragic hero because she fulfills this necessity in her free actions.

Greek tragedy is heroic.

The goal of ancient tragedy is catharsis. The feelings depicted in the tragedy purify the viewer's feelings.

In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyrdom. Its purpose is comfort. In the medieval theater, the passive principle was emphasized in the actor's interpretation of the image of Christ. Sometimes the actor “got used” to the image of the crucified so much that he himself was not far from death.

Medieval tragedy is alien to the concept of catharsis. This is not a tragedy of purification, but a tragedy of consolation. It is characterized by logic: you feel bad, but they (the heroes, or rather, the martyrs of the tragedy) are better than you, and they are worse off than you, so take comfort in your sufferings by the fact that there are worse sufferings, and torments are harder for people, even less, than you deserve it. The consolation of the earth (you are not the only one who suffers) is enhanced by the consolation of the other world (there you will not suffer, and you will be rewarded according to your deserts).

If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in medieval tragedy an important place is occupied by the supernatural nature of what is happening.

At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. Dante has no doubts about the need for eternal torment by Francesca and Paolo, who with their love violated the moral foundations of their age and the monolith of the existing world order, shattered, transgressed the prohibitions of earth and sky. And at the same time, there is no supernatural, magic in the Divine Comedy. For Dante and his readers, the geography of hell is absolutely real and the infernal whirlwind carrying lovers is real. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal, which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.

Medieval man explained the world by God. The man of modern times sought to show that the world is the cause of itself. In philosophy, this was expressed in Spinoza's classic thesis of nature as the cause of itself. In art, this principle was embodied and expressed by Shakespeare half a century earlier. For him, the whole world, including the sphere of human passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, he himself is at the heart of it.

Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. Action is born from the characters themselves. Fatal words: “His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montecchi, the son of your enemy” - did not change Juliet's relationship to her lover. The only measure and driving force of her actions is herself, her character, her love for Romeo.

The Renaissance in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, for the first time exposing the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy during this period revealed the state of the world, affirmed the activity of man and his freedom of will. At the same time, the tragedy of the unregulated personality arose. The only regulation for a person was the first and last commandment of the Thelema monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargartua and Pantagruel"). However, having freed himself from medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And just as free and unregulated are the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius).

The hopes of the humanists that a person, having got rid of medieval restrictions, would reasonably and in the name of good dispose of his freedom, turned out to be illusory. The utopia of an unregulated personality actually turned into its absolute regulation. France in the 17th century this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in an absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in Descartes's teaching about the method that introduces human thought into the mainstream of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is being replaced by the tragedy of real absolute normative conditioning of the individual.

In the art of romanticism (H. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of the spirit. Disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and the disbelief in social progress caused by it give rise to world sorrow, characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism is aware that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of bringing evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle with it are affirmed. The embodiment of such universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. But evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero, by his struggle, creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns.

The same feature is inherent in the operatic and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas "Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina" ingeniously embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, animated by a single idea of the struggle against slavery, violence, and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of the conscience of Tsar Boris. For all his good intentions, Boris remains a stranger to the people and secretly fears the people, who see it in him as the cause of their misfortunes. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying the tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematics, mournful intonations, gloomy tonality and dark timbres of orchestration.

Type of work: essay

Levandovsky, A.A., Shchetinov, Yu.A. Russian history. XX - the beginning of the XXI century. - 2003. - p.21-24
Orlov, A.S., Georgiev, V.A., Polunov, A.Yu., Tereshchenko, Yu.Ya. Fundamentals of the course of the history of Russia. - 1997. - p.373-377, 396-404
Chudakova, N.V., Gromov, A.V. I know the world. Story. - 1998. - p. 430-431
Romanovs. Dynasty in novels. Nicholas II. - 1995. - p.5-7
Mosolov, A.A. At the court of the last Russian emperor. - 1993. - p.109

The tragedy of personality, family, people in the poem by A. A. Akhmatova Requiem

Type of work: composition

1937 A terrible page in our history. The names come to mind: O. Mandelstam, V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn... Dozens, thousands of names. And behind them are crippled destinies, hopeless grief, fear, despair, oblivion. But human memory is strangely arranged. She keeps the most intimate, dear. And terrible...
\"White clothes\" V. Dudintseva, \"Children of the Arbat\" A. Rybakov,\"By right of memory\" A. Tvardovsky, \"The problem of bread\" V. Podmogilny,\"The Gulag Archipelago\" A. Solzhenitsyn - these and others p We angered God, we sinned:
Lord yourself a regicide
We named.
A. S. Pushkin, \"Boris Godunov\"
Pushkin conceived\"Boris Godunov \" as a historical and political tragedy. Drama\"Boris Godunov\" opposed the romantic tradition. Like a political tragedy, it addressed contemporary issues: the role of the people in history and the nature of tyrannical power.
If in \"Eugene Onegin\" a slender composition is a tread

The people in the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin Boris Godunov

Type of work: composition

The tragedy "Boris Godunov" was written by Pushkin in 1825. Pushkin was always worried about the causes of the collapse of the revolutionary and people's liberation movements (in Spain, Italy, Greece). His attention was drawn to such historical figures as Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev. In 1824, Pushkin was greatly interested in the events of the late 16th - early 17th centuries, when the Russian state was ruled by Boris Godunov, and later by False Dmitry. Studying this material, Pushkin decided to write a

Tragic is a philosophical category in art that characterizes the occurrence of suffering and experiences of the heroes of works as a result of their free will or destiny. The viewer empathized and sympathized with the hero of the tragedy. In a general sense, the tragic is characterized by the struggle of the moral ideal with objective reality. Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although both the actors and the audience were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. The meaning of the tragedy was in the nature of the behavior of the hero. The death and misfortunes of the tragic hero are known for sure. The hero of ancient tragedy is not able to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, acts, and only through his freedom, through his actions, what must happen is realized. Such, for example, is Oedipus in Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King. Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy by Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the order of Creon, who, under pain of death, forbids the burial of her brother, who fought against Thebes. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. The Renaissance in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, for the first time exposing the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy during this period revealed the state of the world, affirmed the activity of man and his freedom of will. In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become humane, come into harmony with the individual. The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life.

Tragic art reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that the immortality of man is realized in the immortality of the people. An important theme of the tragedy is "man and history". The character of the tragic hero is adjusted by the very course of history, by its laws. The theme of the individual's responsibility to history is deeply disclosed in The Quiet Don by M. A. Sholokhov. The character of his hero is contradictory: he is either shallow, or deepened by internal torments, or tempered by severe trials. His fate is tragic. In music, a new type of tragic symphonism was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in the symphonies of P. I. Tchaikovsky fate always invades the life of a person from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, then in Shostakovich such a confrontation arises only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil that interrupts the calm course of life (the theme of invasion in the first part of the Seventh symphonies).

Tragic in art. Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

The audience was well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based on the logic of action. The meaning of the tragedy was in the nature of the behavior of the hero. The death and misfortunes of the tragic hero are known for sure. And this is the naivete, freshness and beauty of ancient Greek art. Such a course of action played a great artistic role, intensifying the tragic emotion of the viewer.

Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy by Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the order of Creon, who, under pain of death, forbids the burial of her brother, who fought against Thebes. The law of tribal relations, expressed in the need to bury the body of a brother, no matter what the cost, acts equally in relation to both sisters, but Antigone becomes a tragic hero because she fulfills this necessity in her free actions.

Greek tragedy is heroic. The goal of ancient tragedy is catharsis. The feelings depicted in the tragedy purify the viewer's feelings. In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyrdom. Its purpose is comfort. In the medieval theater, the passive principle was emphasized in the actor's interpretation of the image of Christ. Sometimes the actor “got used” to the image of the crucified so much that he himself was not far from death.

For Dante and his readers, the geography of hell is absolutely real and the infernal whirlwind carrying lovers is real. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal, which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance. Medieval man explained the world by God. The man of modern times sought to show that the world is the cause of itself. In philosophy, this was expressed in Spinoza's classic thesis of nature as the cause of itself. In art, this principle was embodied and expressed by Shakespeare half a century earlier.

For him, the whole world, including the sphere of human passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, he himself is at the heart of it. Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. Action is born from the characters themselves. Fatal words: “His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montecchi, the son of your enemy” - did not change Juliet's relationship to her lover.

The only measure and driving force of her actions is herself, her character, her love for Romeo. The Renaissance in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, for the first time exposing the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy during this period revealed the state of the world, affirmed the activity of man and his freedom of will. At the same time, the tragedy of the unregulated personality arose. The only regulation for a person was the first and last commandment of the Thelema monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargartua and Pantagruel"). However, having freed himself from medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor.

Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And just as free and unregulated are the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius). The hopes of the humanists that a person, having got rid of medieval restrictions, would reasonably and in the name of good dispose of his freedom, turned out to be illusory.

The utopia of an unregulated personality actually turned into its absolute regulation. France in the 17th century this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in an absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in Descartes's teaching about the method that introduces human thought into the mainstream of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is being replaced by the tragedy of real absolute normative conditioning of the individual. In the art of romanticism (H. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of the spirit. Disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and the disbelief in social progress caused by it give rise to world sorrow, characteristic of romanticism.

Romanticism is aware that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of bringing evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle with it are affirmed. The embodiment of such universal evil is Lucifer.

Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. But evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero, by his struggle, creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns. The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between the individual and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by A. S. Pushkin.

Godunov wants to use power for the benefit of the people. But on the way to power, he does evil - he kills the innocent Tsarevich Dimitri. And between Boris and the people lay an abyss of estrangement, and then of anger. Pushkin shows that it is impossible to fight for the people without the people. The fate of man is the fate of the people; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. This issue is the birth of a new era. The same feature is inherent in the operatic and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky.

His operas "Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina" ingeniously embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, animated by a single idea of the struggle against slavery, violence, and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of the conscience of Tsar Boris. For all his good intentions, Boris remains a stranger to the people and secretly fears the people, who see it in him as the cause of their misfortunes. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying the tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematics, mournful intonations, gloomy tonality and dark timbres of orchestration. Of great importance for the development of the philosophical principle in tragic musical works was the development of the theme of rock in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

This theme was further developed in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Sixth, and especially Fifth Symphonies. The tragic in Tchaikovsky's symphonies expresses the contradiction between human aspirations and life's obstacles, between the infinity of creative impulses and the finiteness of the being of the individual. In the critical realism of the XIX century. (Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others) the non-tragic character becomes the hero of tragic situations.

In life, the tragedy has become an "ordinary story", and its hero - an alienated person. And therefore, in art, tragedy as a genre disappears, but as an element it penetrates into all kinds and genres of art, capturing the intolerance of discord between man and society. In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become humane, come into harmony with the individual.

The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life - such is the concept of the tragic and the pathos of developing this topic in the critical realism of the 20th century. (E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, L. Frank, G. Böll, F. Fellini, M. Antonioni, J. Gershwin and others). Tragic art reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that the immortality of man is realized in the immortality of the people.

An important theme of the tragedy is “man and history”. The world-historical context of human actions turns him into a conscious or involuntary participant in the historical process. This makes the hero responsible for choosing the path, for the correct solution of life issues and understanding of its meaning. The character of the tragic hero is adjusted by the very course of history, by its laws. The theme of the individual's responsibility to history is deeply disclosed in The Quiet Don by M. A. Sholokhov.

The character of his hero is contradictory: he is either shallow, or deepened by internal torments, or tempered by severe trials. His fate is tragic. In music, a new type of tragic symphonism was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in the symphonies of P. I. Tchaikovsky fate always invades the life of a person from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, then in Shostakovich such a confrontation arises only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil, interrupting the calm course of life (the theme of invasion in the first part of the Seventh symphonies). 4.

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tragic

One of the traditionally (at least in the 19th-20th centuries) categories related to aesthetics is tragic. Tragic as an aesthetic category refers only to art, unlike other aesthetic categories - the beautiful, the sublime, the comic, which have their own subject matter both in art and in life.

The tragic in life has nothing to do with aesthetics, because when contemplating it, and even more so when participating in a tragic collision, normal people do not experience an aesthetic event, no one receives aesthetic pleasure, no aesthetic catharsis occurs. In particular, the tragedy of the inhabitants of the barbarously destroyed Guernica has nothing to do with aesthetics, and Picasso's painting "Guernica" carries a powerful charge of the tragic in the field of aesthetic perception.

The aesthetic experience that interests us here, which in modern times has received the name of "tragic", was realized in the most complete and concentrated form in ancient Greek tragedy- one of the highest forms of art in general, and at the same time the first attempts were made to comprehend and theoretically consolidate it.

The essence of the tragic aesthetic phenomenon lies in image unexpected suffering and death of the hero, which happened not because of an accident, but as an inevitable consequence of his (as a rule, initially unconscious) misdeeds or guilt. The hero of the tragedy, as a rule, makes attempts to fight the fatal inevitability, rebels against Fate and dies or suffers torment and suffering, demonstrating by this an act or state of his inner freedom in relation to the forces and capabilities of the elements that outwardly exceed him. The Aristotelian definition of tragedy is extremely concise and capacious in meaning: "So, tragedy is an imitation of an important and finished action, having a certain volume,<подражание>with the help of speech, in each of its parts differently decorated; by means of action, not story, which, by means of compassion and fear, purifies (catharsis) such affects"This is the tragic catharsis, characteristic only for this type of dramatic art.

F. Schiller in the article "On Tragic Art" explains the conditions under which "tragic emotions", a sense of the tragic, can arise. “Firstly, the object of our compassion must be related to us in the full sense of the word, and the action that is to evoke sympathy must be moral, i.e. free. Secondly, suffering, its sources and degrees, must be fully communicated to us in the form of a series of interconnected events, i.e., thirdly, it is sensually reproduced, not described in the narrative, but directly presented to us in the form of action. All these conditions art unites and realizes in tragedy.

F. Schelling in his "Philosophy of Art" explores tragedy in a special section, based on the ideas of Aristotle and using the tragedy of the ancient classics as a model. For him, the tragic manifests itself in the struggle between freedom and necessity. At the moment of resolution of the tragic situation, "at the moment of its higher suffering he (tragic hero ) passes to the highest liberation and to the highest passionlessness. "The spectator reaches the state of catharsis, about which Aristotle wrote.

Hegel sees the essence of tragedy in the moral sphere, in the conflict between moral force, interpreted by him as "divine in his worldly reality" as substantial, governing human actions, and the "acting characters" themselves. In particular, in tragedy, a person is not afraid of an external overwhelming power, “but a moral force, which is the definition of his own free mind and at the same time something eternal and indestructible, so that, turning against it, a person restores it against himself.”

In the twentieth century the tragic for the most part goes beyond the real aesthetic experience, merges with the tragedy of life, i.e. becomes simply a statement in the works of art of the tragedy of life, as if repeating it, not conducive to restoration harmony a person with the Universe, to which the whole sphere of aesthetic experience, aesthetic activity, art in its artistic and aesthetic sense is oriented. Modern non-classical aesthetics, having advanced almost to the level of categories such concepts as absurdity, chaos, cruelty, sadism, violence and the like, practically does not know either the category or the phenomenon tragic.

Comic - this is a category of classical aesthetics, although it is traditionally paired with the category of the tragic, in principle it is neither its antipode nor any modification. They are related only by the fact that historically they originate from two ancient genres of dramatic art: tragedy and comedy.

The phenomenon of the comic is one of the oldest in the history of culture. It involves the excitation of the laughter reaction of a person, laughter however, it is not limited to him alone. At the same time, we are talking about a special laughter caused by an intellectual and semantic game. Jokes, witticisms, ridicule of human shortcomings, absurd situations, harmless deceptions have accompanied a person's life since ancient times, easing its hardships and hardships, helping to relieve mental stress. And in the case when the funny gave the laughing pleasure, joy, we can talk about the aesthetic phenomenon of the comic.

Already the Homeric epic is permeated with elements of the comic. At the same time, first of all, the life of the gods, the inhabitants of Olympus, is described with humor. Moreover, Homer presents her as permeated with comedy, humor, cunning, harmless tricks, "Homeric" laughter. The ideal life (the life of the celestials) according to Homer is a life of fun, fueled by endless jokes, intrigues and divine pranks. Unlike her, the life of people (the heroes of his epic poems) is fraught with difficulties, dangers, death, and here, as a rule, there is no time for jokes and humor.

One of the followers of Aristotle, who lived in the 1st century. BC. a, defines comedy by analogy with the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, i.e. and connects it with catharsis:“Comedy is the imitation of a funny and insignificant action, having a certain volume, with the help of decorated speech, and various types of decorations are especially given in different parts of the play; imitation through characters, not a story; through pleasure and laughter, which purifies such passions. Her mother is laughter." Cleansing with laughter, removing mental, emotional, intellectual, moral tensions in aesthetic catharsis is indeed one of the essential functions of the comic, and antiquity clearly grasped this function.

Christianity as a whole had a negative attitude towards the comic genres of art and with caution towards laughter and the ridiculous in everyday life. However, the comic remains, develops, and often flourishes exclusively in the grassroots non-professional folk culture.

Only in the Age of Enlightenment did art theorists and philosophers regain an interest in the comic genres of art, in funny and laughter, as effective methods of influencing people's shortcomings, their stupidity and countless mistakes, immoral deeds, false judgments, etc. The greatest comedian of the 17th century. Molière was convinced that the task of comedy was to "correct people by amusing them."

Kant deduces, without consciously striving for it, one of the essential principles of the comic - unexpected discharge of the artificially created tension of expectation (something significant) into nothing through a special gaming reception.

N. Chernyshevsky, reinterpreting Hegel, saw the essence of the comic in the inner emptiness and insignificance, hiding behind appearance, which has a claim to richness and significance. Russian literature of the 19th century. gave him rich food for such a conclusion. Especially the work of Gogol. What are the characters of The Inspector General worth, with the utmost completeness confirming this position of Chernyshevsky.

Thus, it can be stated that the category comic in aesthetics is a specific sphere of aesthetic experience, in which, on an intellectual-playing basis, a benevolent denial, exposure, condemnation of a certain fragment of everyday reality (character, behavior, claims, actions, etc.) is carried out, which claims to be something higher, significant, ideal than it allows its nature, from the standpoint of this ideal (moral, aesthetic, religious, social, etc.).

From this it is clear that the comic is most fully realized in those types and genres of art where a more or less isomorphic pictorial and descriptive presentation of everyday life is possible. It is in literature, dramaturgy, theater, realistic fine arts (especially in graphics), in cinema. Architecture is by nature alien to the comic. There are comic forms in music, but they tend to be closely correlated with the corresponding comic verbal texts.

Tragic in art

Each epoch brings its own features into the tragic and most clearly emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

The tragic hero is the bearer of something beyond the scope of individual existence, the bearer of power, principle, character, some kind of demonic force. The heroes of ancient tragedy are often given knowledge of the future. Prophecies, predictions, prophetic dreams, prophetic words of gods and oracles - all this organically enters the world of tragedy. The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although both the actors and the audience were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. And the audience themselves were well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of the Greek tragedy was firmly based not so much on the unexpected twists of the plot, but on the logic of the action. The whole meaning of the tragedy was not in the necessary and fatal denouement, but in the character of the hero's behavior. What matters here is what happens, and especially how it happens. The springs of the plot and the result of the action are exposed.

The hero of ancient tragedy acts in line with necessity. He is unable to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, and it is through his activity that the plot is realized. It is not necessity that draws the ancient hero to a denouement, but he himself fulfills his tragic fate by his actions. Such is Oedipus in Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King. By his own will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the disasters that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And the "investigation" turns against the main "investigator": it turns out that the culprit of the misfortunes of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father and married his mother. However, even coming close to this truth, Oedipus does not stop the "investigation", but brings it to the end. The hero of ancient tragedy acts freely even when he understands the inevitability of his death. He is not a doomed being, but a hero who independently acts in accordance with the will of the gods, in accordance with the need.

Greek tragedy heroic. In Aeschylus, Prometheus performs a feat in the name of selfless service to man and pays for the transfer of fire to people. The choir sings, exalting the heroic principle in Prometheus:

You are brave with your heart, you will never give in to cruel misfortunes * .

* (Greek tragedy. M., 1956, p. 61.)

In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyrdom. Here tragedy reveals the supernatural, its purpose is consolation. Unlike Prometheus, the tragedy of Christ is illuminated by the light of martyrdom. In medieval Christian tragedy, the martyr's, suffering beginning was emphasized in every possible way * . Its central characters are martyrs**. This is not a tragedy of purification, but a tragedy of consolation; the concept of catharsis is alien to it. And it is no coincidence that the tale of Tristan and Iseult ends with an appeal to all who are unhappy in their passion: "Let them find comfort here in inconstancy and injustice, in annoyances and hardships, in all the sufferings of love."

* (See: Reader on the history of the Western European theater. M., 1953, v. 1, p. 109.)

** (See: Lessing G. E. Selected works. M., 1953, p. 517 - 518.)

The medieval tragedy of consolation is characterized by logic: you will be consoled, because there are sufferings that are worse, and torments are harder for people who deserve it even less than you. This is the will of God. A promise lived in the subtext of the tragedy: later, in the next world. Earthly consolation (you are not alone in suffering) is multiplied by otherworldly consolation (there you will not suffer and you will be rewarded according to your deserts).

If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in medieval tragedy an important place is occupied by the supernatural, the miraculousness of what is happening.

At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. On his interpretation of the tragic lie the deep shadows of the Middle Ages, and at the same time shine the sunny reflections of the hopes of modern times. Dante still has a strong medieval motif of martyrdom: Francesca and Paolo are doomed to eternal torment, having violated the moral foundations of their age with their love, shaking the monolith of the existing world order, transgressing the prohibitions of earth and heaven. And at the same time, the Divine Comedy lacks the second pillar of the aesthetic system of medieval tragedy - the supernatural, magic. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal (the geography of hell and the infernal whirlwind carrying lovers are real), which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.

The tragic sympathy of Dante Francesca and Paolo is much more frank than that of the nameless author of the legend of Tristan and Isolde - to his heroes. For the latter, this sympathy is contradictory, it is often either replaced by moral condemnation, or explained by reasons of a magical nature (sympathy for people who have drunk a magic potion). Dante, on the other hand, directly, openly, proceeding from the promptings of his heart, sympathizes with Paolo and Francesca, although he considers their doom to eternal torment immutable. The touching martyr (and not heroic) character of their tragedy is beautifully conveyed in the following lines:

The Spirit spoke, tormented by a terrible oppression, Another sobbed, and the torment of their hearts My forehead covered with mortal sweat; And I fell like a dead man falls.

* (Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Hell. M., 1961, p. 48.)

Medieval man gave the world a divine explanation. The man of modern times is looking for the cause of the world and its tragedies in this world itself. In philosophy, this was expressed in Spinoza's classic thesis of nature as causa sui (the cause of itself). Even earlier, this principle was reflected in art. The world, including the sphere of human relations, passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation; it is not based on evil fate, not God, not magic or evil spells. To show the world as it is, to explain everything by internal causes, to deduce everything from its own material nature - such is the motto of modern realism, most fully embodied in Shakespeare's tragedies.

Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. Their actions are generated by their characters. Fatal words: "His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montecchi, the son of your enemy" - did not change Juliet's relationship to her lover. It is not bound by any external regulatory principles. The only measure and driving force of her actions is herself, her love for Romeo.

Art during the Renaissance exposed the social nature of tragic conflict. Having revealed the state of the world, tragedy affirmed the activity of man and the freedom of his will. It would seem that the essence of Hamlet's tragedy lies in the events that happened to him. But similar misfortunes befell Laertes. Why are they not perceived as a tragedy? Laertes is passive, and Hamlet himself, consciously goes towards unfavorable circumstances. He chooses to fight the "sea of troubles". It is about this choice that the famous monologue is discussed:

To be or not to be, that is the question. Is it worthy To submit to the blows of fate, Or is it necessary to show resistance And in a mortal fight with a whole sea of troubles To end them? Die. forget * .

* (Shakespeare W. Hamlet. M., 1964, p. 111.)

B. Shaw owns a playful aphorism: smart people adapt to the world, fools try to adapt the world to themselves, therefore fools change the world and make history. Actually, this aphorism in a paradoxical form sets out the Hegelian concept of tragic guilt. A prudent person, acting according to common sense, is guided only by the established prejudices of his time. The tragic hero, on the other hand, acts in accordance with the need to fulfill himself, regardless of any circumstances. He acts freely, choosing the direction and goals of his actions. In his activity, his own character lies the cause of his death. The tragic outcome lies in the personality itself. External circumstances can only come into conflict with the character traits of the tragic hero and manifest them, but the reason for his actions is in himself. Therefore, he carries his own death with him. According to Hegel, tragic guilt lies on him.

N. G. Chernyshevsky rightly said that to see the guilty in the dying is a strained and cruel thought, and emphasized that the blame for the death of the hero lies with unfavorable social circumstances that need to be changed. However, one cannot ignore the rational grain of the Hegelian concept of tragic guilt: the character of the tragic hero is active; he resists formidable circumstances, seeks to resolve the most complex questions of life by action.

Hegel spoke of the ability of tragedy to explore the state of the world. In Hamlet, for example, it is defined as follows: "the connection of times has broken up", "the whole world is a prison, and Denmark is the worst of the dungeons", "a century dislocated from the joints." Theoretically, the image of the global flood has a deep meaning. There are times when history overflows its banks. Then, for a long time and slowly, it enters the channel and continues its unhurried, then stormy course for centuries. Happy is the poet who, in the turbulent age of history overflowing its banks, has touched his contemporaries with a pen: he will inevitably touch history; in one way or another, at least some of the essential aspects of the deep historical process will be reflected in his work. In such an era, great art becomes a mirror of history. The Shakespearean tradition is a reflection of the state of the world, global problems - the principle of modern tragedy.

In ancient tragedy, necessity was realized through the free action of the hero. The Middle Ages transformed necessity into the arbitrariness of God. The Renaissance made a revolt against the necessity and against the arbitrariness of God and approved the freedom of the individual, which inevitably turned into its arbitrariness. The Renaissance failed to develop all the forces of society, not in spite of the individual, but through it and all the forces of the individual - for the benefit of society, and not for its evil. The great hopes of the humanists for the creation of a harmonious, universal man were touched with their chilling breath by the approaching era of bourgeois individualism. The tragedy of the collapse of these hopes was felt by such most perspicacious and profound artists as Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare.

The Renaissance gave rise to the tragedy of the unregulated personality. The only regulation for a person at that time was the first and last commandment of the Thelema monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargantua and Pantagruel"). However, having freed himself from the fetters of medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. The coming bourgeois epoch showed its readiness to transform the Rabelaisian thesis "do whatever you want" into the Hobbesian slogan "war of all against all". Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And just as free and unregulated are the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius).

The hopes of the humanists that a person, having got rid of medieval restrictions, would not use his freedom for evil, turned out to be illusory. And then the utopia of an unregulated personality actually turned into its absolute regulation. France in the 17th century this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in an absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in Descartes's teaching about the method that introduces human thought into the mainstream of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is being replaced by the tragedy of real absolute normative conditioning of the individual. The universal beginning in the image of the duty of the individual in relation to the state acts as restrictions on its behavior, and these restrictions conflict with the free will of a person, with his passions, desires, aspirations. This conflict becomes central in the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.

In the art of romanticism (H. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of the spirit. Disappointment in the results of the bourgeois revolution and the lack of faith in social progress caused by it gives rise to world sorrow, characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism is aware that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of bringing evil. The tragedies of Byron ("Cain") affirm the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle against it. The embodiment of such universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. The meaning of his life is in rebellion, in active opposition to eternal evil, in the desire to forcibly change his position in the world. Evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero does not allow the establishment of the undivided domination of evil on earth. By his struggle he creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns.

The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between the individual and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by A. S. Pushkin. Godunov wants to use power for the benefit of the people. But, in an effort to fulfill his intentions, he does evil - he kills the innocent Tsarevich Dimitri. And between the actions of Boris and the aspirations of the people lay an abyss of alienation, and then of anger. Pushkin shows that it is impossible to fight for the people without the people. The powerful, active character of Boris in many of its features resembles the heroes of Shakespeare. However, profound differences are also felt: in Shakespeare, the personality is in the center, in Pushkin's tragedy, human fate is the fate of the people; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. This issue is the birth of a new era. The people act as the protagonist of the tragedy and the supreme judge of the actions of the heroes.

The same feature is inherent in the operatic and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas "Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina" ingeniously embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, animated by a single idea of the struggle against evil, slavery, violence, and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of the conscience of Tsar Boris. With all his good intentions, Boris remains a stranger to the people and secretly fears the people, who see it in him as the cause of their suffering and disasters. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying the tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematicism, mournful intonations, gloomy tonality and dark timbres of orchestration (bassoons in a low register in Boris's monologue "Soul Sorrows...") *.

* (See: Khubov G. Mussorgsky. M., 1969.)

Tchaikovsky addressed the theme of tragic love in his symphonic works ("Francesca da Rimini", "Romeo and Juliet"). Of great importance for the development of the philosophical principle in tragic musical works was the development of the theme of rock in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This theme was further developed in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Sixth, and especially Fifth Symphonies. In "Francesca da Rimini" rock breaks happiness and despair sounds with increasing in music. The motive of despair also appears in the Fourth Symphony, but here the hero finds support in the power of the eternal life of the people. In Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, the awakening of the hero's spiritual powers is revealed. The intense tragedy ends in the finale with the theme of the excruciating sadness of parting with life. The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies of Tchaikovsky express the contradictions between human aspirations and life's obstacles, between the life and death of the individual.

In the critical realism of the XIX century. (Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, etc.) the non-tragic character becomes the hero of tragic situations. In life, tragedy has become an "ordinary story", and its hero - an alienated, "private and partial" (Hegel) person. And therefore, in art, tragedy as a genre disappears, but as an element it penetrates into all kinds and genres of art, capturing the intolerance of discord between man and society.

In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become humane, come into harmony with the individual. The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life - such is the concept of the tragic and the pathos of developing this topic in the critical realism of the 20th century. (E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, L. Frank, G. Beul, F. Fellini, M. Atonioni, J. Gershwin and others).

In the art of socialist realism, the tragic reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that the immortality of the hero is realized in the immortality of the people. The theme "man and history" becomes important. K. Marx, outlining "Aesthetics" by F. T. Fischer, focused on the idea that the true theme of the tragedy is revolution. It is the revolutionary collision that should become the central point of modern tragedy. The motives and grounds for the actions of the heroes of the revolutionary tragedy are not in their personal whims, but in the historical movement that lifts them to the struggle on their crest.

In Soviet art, the revolution is revealed not as a background of events, but as the essence of an era, as a state of the world, while the tragic acts as the highest manifestation of the heroic ("Death of the Squadron" by A. Korneichuk, "The Defeat" by A. Fadeev, "Optimistic Tragedy" by Vs. Vishnevsky, painting by K. Petrov-Vodkin "Death of the Commissar"). The activity of the character of the tragic hero rises in Soviet art to offensiveness. Faced with the formidable state of the world, his struggle and even death, the hero makes a breakthrough to a higher, more perfect state. The personal responsibility of the hero for his free, active action, reflected in the Hegelian category of tragic guilt, in the interpretation of socialist realism rose to historical responsibility.

The theme of the individual's responsibility to history is deeply disclosed in "The Quiet Don" by M. Sholokhov. The world-historical resonance of events, the acceleration of the pace of the progressive movement of society lead to the fact that each person is involved in this movement, becomes a conscious or involuntary participant in the historical process. This makes the hero responsible for choosing the path, for the correct solution of life issues, understanding its meaning. Accidents are inevitable. However, the character of the tragic hero is not verified by a random situation, but by the very course of history, its laws. The character of Sholokhov's hero is contradictory: he either grows smaller, or deepens with internal torments, or is tempered by severe trials. But at the same time, this is why his fate is tragic, and therefore breaks his life, because this is a powerful character. A hurricane tends to the ground and leaves a thin and weak birch tree intact, and a mighty oak, adamantly resisting the storm, turns out to be uprooted.

In music, a new type of tragic symphonism was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in the symphonies of P. I. Tchaikovsky fate invades the life of a person from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, then in Shostakovich such a confrontation arises only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil, interrupting the calm course of human life (the theme of invasion in the first part of the Seventh symphonies). In the Fifth Symphony, where the composer artistically explores the problem of the formation of personality, evil is revealed as the wrong side of the human. The finale of the symphony cheerfully resolves the tragic tension of the first movements. For Shostakovich, genuine tragedy has nothing in common with pessimism: the content of modern tragedy "should be permeated with a positive idea, like, for example, the life-affirming pathos of Shakespeare's tragedies"*.

* (Cit. Quoted from: Mazel L. Symphonies by D. D. Shostakovich. M., 1960, p. 39.)

In the Fourteenth Symphony, Shostakovich tackles the eternal themes of love, life, and death. Both music and poetry are full of deep philosophy and tragedy. The symphony ends with Rilke's verses:

Omnipotent death. She is on guard and happy hour. At the moment of higher life, she suffers in us, waits for us and thirsts - and weeps in us.

Using the image of death as a contrast, the composer seeks to emphasize once again that life is beautiful. He wanted the audience to leave the hall with just such an idea after the performance of the symphony.