3.4. Reading as an essential component of the process of literary education USEFUL QUOTE “Reading a work of art is a complex creative process, which is a fusion of pictures of objective reality, depicted, understood and evaluated by the writer, and

CHAPTER 4 Organization of the process of literary education Key words: organizational form of education, extracurricular activities, classification of lessons, non-traditional lesson, lesson structure, independent activity. USEFUL QUOTE “Organizational form of training -

4.1. Forms of organizing the process of literary education The main forms of organizing the process of literary education of schoolchildren are: lesson; independent activity of students; extracurricular activities. Successful implementation of the literary process

Pushkin's estates and parks in the verses of Russian poets of the late 18th - early 20th centuries Anthology Wonderful estates and parks, where the great Pushkin lived and worked, attract more and more pilgrims every year, seeking not just to see the sights and find out what -

For what and to whom did Kudzhava pray in poems and songs of the late fifties and early sixties? Although many of Okudzhava’s creations were born at a time when the word “God” was avoided as much as possible in works of art, in his writings,

“All of Greece and Rome fed only on literature: in our sense, there were no schools at all! And how they grew. Literature, in fact, is the only school of the people, and it can be the only and sufficient school...” V. Rozanov.

D. S. Likhachev “Russian literature... has always been the conscience of the people. Her place in the public life of the country has always been honorable and influential. She educated people and strove for a just reconstruction of life." D. Likhachev.

Ivan Bunin The Word The tombs, mummies and bones are silent, Only the word is given life: From ancient darkness, in the world graveyard, Only Letters sound. And we have no other property! Know how to protect, at least to the best of your ability, in days of anger and suffering, Our immortal gift - speech.

General characteristics of the era The first question that arises when addressing the topic “Russian literature of the 20th century” is from when to count the 20th century. According to the calendar, from 1900 - 1901. ? But it is obvious that a purely chronological boundary, although significant in itself, gives almost nothing in the sense of delimiting eras. The first milestone of the new century is the revolution of 1905. But the revolution passed, and there was some calm - until the First World War. Akhmatova recalled this time in “Poem Without a Hero”: And along the legendary embankment the not calendar, the real twentieth century was approaching...

At the turn of the eras, the worldview of a person who understood that the previous era was gone forever became different. The socio-economic and general cultural prospects of Russia began to be assessed in a completely different way. The new era was defined by contemporaries as “borderline.” Previous forms of life, work, and socio-political organization became history. The established, previously seemingly unchangeable, system of spiritual values ​​was radically revised. It is not surprising that the edge of the era was symbolized by the word “Crisis”. This “fashionable” word roamed the pages of journalistic and literary-critical articles along with the similar words “revival”, “turning point”, “crossroads”, etc. Innokenty Annensky

Fiction also did not stand aloof from public passions. Her social engagement was clearly manifested in the characteristic titles of her works - “Off the Road”, “At the Turning” by V. Veresaev, “The Decline of the Old Century” by A. Amfiteatrov, “At the Last Line” by M. Artsybashev. On the other hand, most of the creative elite felt their era as a time of unprecedented achievements, where literature was given a significant place in the history of the country. Creativity seemed to fade into the background, giving way to the ideological and social position of the author, his connection and participation in Mikhail Artsebashev

The end of the 19th century revealed the deepest crisis phenomena in the economy of the Russian Empire. The reform of 1861 by no means decided the fate of the peasantry, who dreamed of “land and freedom.” This situation led to the emergence in Russia of a new revolutionary teaching - Marxism, which relied on the growth of industrial production and a new progressive class - the proletariat. In politics, this meant a transition to an organized struggle of the united masses, the result of which was to be the violent overthrow of the state system and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The former methods of populist educators and populist terrorists have finally become a thing of the past. Marxism offered a radically different, scientific method, thoroughly developed theoretically. It is no coincidence that “Capital” and other works of Karl Marx became reference books for many young people who were striving to build an ideal “Kingdom of Justice”.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the idea of ​​a rebel man, a demiurge capable of transforming an era and changing the course of history, is reflected in the philosophy of Marxism. This is most clearly seen in the work of Maxim Gorky and his followers, who persistently highlighted Man with a capital M, the owner of the earth, a fearless revolutionary who challenges not only social injustice, but also the Creator himself. The rebel heroes of the writer's novels, stories and plays ("Foma Gordeev", "Philistines", "Mother") absolutely and irrevocably reject the Christian humanism of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy about suffering and purification by it. Gorky believed that revolutionary activity in the name of reorganizing the world transforms and enriches a person’s inner world. Illustration for M. Gorky's novel "Foma Gordeev" Artists Kukryniksy. 1948 -1949

Another group of cultural figures cultivated the idea of ​​spiritual revolution. The reason for this was the assassination of Alexander II on March 1, 1881 and the defeat of the 1905 revolution. Philosophers and artists called for the internal perfection of man. In the national characteristics of the Russian people, they looked for ways to overcome the crisis of positivism, whose philosophy became widespread at the beginning of the 20th century. In their quest, they sought to find new paths of development that could transform not only Europe, but the whole world. At the same time, an incredible, unusually bright rise of Russian religious and philosophical thought took place. In 1909, a group of philosophers and religious publicists, including N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov and others, published a philosophical and journalistic collection "Milestones", whose role in the intellectual history of Russia in the 20th century is invaluable. “Vekhi” even today seems to us as if sent from the future,” this is exactly what another great thinker and truth-seeker, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, will say about them. “Vekhi” revealed the danger of thoughtless adherence to any theoretical principles, revealing the moral inadmissibility of belief in universal significance social ideals. In turn, they criticized the natural weakness of the revolutionary path, emphasizing its danger for the Russian people. However, the blindness of society turned out to be much worse. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev

The First World War turned out to be a disaster for the country, pushing it towards an inevitable revolution. February 1917 and the ensuing anarchy led to the October Revolution. As a result, Russia acquired a completely different face. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main background of literary development was tragic social contradictions, as well as the dual combination of difficult economic modernization and the revolutionary movement. Changes in science occurred at a rapid pace, philosophical ideas about the world and man changed, and arts close to literature developed rapidly. Scientific and philosophical views at certain stages of cultural history radically influence the creators of words, who sought to reflect the paradoxes of time in their works.

The crisis of historical ideas was expressed in the loss of a universal point of reference, of one or another ideological foundation. It is not for nothing that the great German philosopher and philologist F. Nietzsche uttered his key phrase: “God is dead.” It speaks of the disappearance of a strong ideological support, indicating the onset of an era of relativism, when the crisis of faith in the unity of the world order reaches its culmination. This crisis greatly contributed to the search for Russian philosophical thought, which was experiencing an unprecedented flowering at that time. V. Solovyov, L. Shestov, N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, V. Rozanov and many other philosophers had a strong influence on the development of various spheres of Russian culture. Some of them also showed themselves in literary work. Important in Russian philosophy of that time was the appeal to epistemological and ethical issues. Many thinkers focused their attention on the spiritual world of the individual, interpreting life in categories close to literature such as life and fate, conscience and love, insight and delusion. Together, they led a person to understand the diversity of real, practical and internal, spiritual experience

The picture of artistic movements and trends has changed dramatically. The former smooth transition from one stage to another, when at a certain stage of literature one direction dominated, has faded into oblivion. Now different aesthetic systems existed simultaneously. Realism and modernism, the largest literary movements, developed in parallel with each other. But at the same time, realism was a complex complex of several “realisms.” Modernism was distinguished by extreme internal instability: various movements and groupings were continuously transformed, emerged and disintegrated, united and differentiated. Literature, as it were, “got rid of money.” That is why, in relation to the art of the early 20th century, the classification of phenomena on the basis of “directions and trends” is obviously conditional, non-absolute.

A specific feature of the culture of the turn of the century is the active interaction of various types of art. Theatrical art flourished at this time. The opening of the Art Theater in Moscow in 1898 was an event of great cultural significance. On October 14, 1898, the first performance of A. K. Tolstoy’s play “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” took place on the stage of the Hermitage Theater. In 1902, at the expense of the largest Russian philanthropist S. T. Morozov, the famous Moscow Art Theater building was built (architect F. O. Shekhtel). The origins of the new theater were K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich. Danchenko. In his speech addressed to the troupe at the opening of the theater, Stanislavsky especially emphasized the need to democratize the theater, bringing it closer to life. The true birth of the Art Theater, a truly new theater, took place during the production of Chekhov's "The Seagull" in December 1898, which has since been theater emblem. The modern dramaturgy of Chekhov and Gorky formed the basis of its repertoire in the first years of its existence. The principles of performing arts developed by the Art Theater and being part of the general struggle for new realism had a great influence on the theatrical life of Russia as a whole.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Russian literature became aesthetically multi-layered. Realism at the turn of the century remained a large-scale and influential literary movement. Thus, Tolstoy and Chekhov lived and worked in this era. The brightest talents among the new realists belonged to the writers who united in the Moscow circle "Sreda" in the 1890s, and in the early 1900s who formed the circle of regular authors of the publishing house "Znanie", the actual leader was M. Gorky. Over the years, it included L. Andreev, I. Bunin, V. Veresaev, N. Garin-Mikhailovsky, A. Kuprin, I. Shmelev and other writers. The significant influence of this group of writers was explained by the fact that it most fully inherited the traditions of the Russian literary heritage of the 19th century. The experience of A. Chekhov turned out to be especially important for the next generation of realists. A.P. Chekhov. Yalta. 1903

Themes and heroes of realistic literature The thematic range of works of realists at the turn of the century is undoubtedly wider, in contrast to their predecessors. For most writers at this time, thematic constancy is uncharacteristic. Rapid changes in Russia forced them to approach topics differently, to invade previously reserved layers of topics. The typology of characters has also been noticeably updated in realism. Outwardly, the writers followed tradition: in their works one could find easily recognizable types of the “little man” or the intellectual who experienced a spiritual drama. Characters got rid of sociological averageness and became more diverse in psychological characteristics and attitude. “The diversity of the soul” of the Russian person is a constant motif in I. Bunin’s prose. He was one of the first in realism to use foreign material in his works ("Brothers", "Chang's Dreams", "The Mister from San Francisco"). The same thing became characteristic of M. Gorky, E. Zamyatin and others. The work of A. I. Kuprin (1870 -1938) is unusually wide in its variety of themes and human characters. The heroes of his stories are soldiers, fishermen, spies, loaders, horse thieves, provincial musicians, actors, circus performers, telegraph operators

Genres and stylistic features of realistic prose The genre system and stylistics of realistic prose were significantly updated at the beginning of the 20th century. The most mobile stories and essays occupied the main place in the genre hierarchy at this time. The novel has practically disappeared from the genre repertoire of realism, giving way to the story. Starting with the work of A. Chekhov, the importance of the formal organization of the text has noticeably increased in realistic prose. Some techniques and elements of form received greater independence in the artistic structure of the work. For example, artistic detail was used more variedly. At the same time, the plot increasingly lost its significance as the main compositional device and began to play a subordinate role. In the period from 1890 to 1917, three literary movements especially clearly expressed themselves - symbolism, acmeism and futurism, which formed the basis of modernism as a literary movement

Modernism in the artistic culture of the turn of the century was a complex phenomenon. Within it, several movements can be distinguished, different in their aesthetics and programmatic settings (symbolism, acmeism, futurism, egofuturism, cubism, suprematism, etc.). But in general, according to philosophical and aesthetic principles, modernist art opposed realism, especially the realistic art of the 19th century. However, the art of modernism in its The literary process of the turn of the century in its artistic and moral value was largely determined by the common, for most major artists, desire for our rich cultural heritage and, above all, freedom from aesthetic normativity, overcoming not embodied. contains within itself the silver lining of Russian culture. only literary cliches of the previous era, but also new artistic canons that developed in their immediate literary environment. Literary school (current) and creative individuality are two key categories of the literary process of the early 20th century. To understand the work of a particular author, it is essential to know the immediate aesthetic context - the context of a literary movement or group.

The literary process at the turn of the century was largely determined by the common desire, for most major artists, for freedom from aesthetic normativity, to overcome not only the literary cliches of the previous era, but also the new artistic canons that were emerging in their immediate literary environment. Literary school (current) and creative individuality are two key categories of the literary process of the early 20th century. To understand the work of a particular author, it is essential to know the immediate aesthetic context - the context of a literary movement or group.

Introduction

In Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. During the period of “unheard-of changes” and “unprecedented rebellions”, scientific and technological progress and acute political cataclysms, deep and serious changes took place in art, which determined new and unique paths for its development.

On the one hand, the art of that time was a rejection of old artistic traditions, an attempt to creatively rethink the heritage of the past. Never before has an artist been so free in his creativity - creating a picture of the world, he received a real opportunity to focus on his own taste and preferences.

The culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is multifaceted. Sometimes it seems like a continuous jumble of styles, trends, trends and schools, simultaneously interacting and opposing each other. The experienced shocks, wars, changes in the social structure, the trends of new values ​​and aspirations of the West, the increasing interest of society in the sciences and art - all this greatly influenced the development of the culture of that time. A surge of creative energy, the emergence of new genres, changes and complications in the themes of works became the beginning of a new era, which is called the Silver Age.

This period is still of great interest to both professionals and ordinary art lovers. My goal is to consider in detail, if possible, the literature, fine arts, architecture and theatrical art of that era, since these areas of culture provide the most accurate understanding of the essence of the Silver Age. I would like to consider and classify the main movements, highlight specific genres from them and describe their most striking features. Also, my task is to list the main cultural figures who contributed to the development of a particular type of art.

Literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Symbolism

The era of the Silver Age began with the Symbolists; Symbolism became the first significant modernist movement in Russia. All changes in literature, new schools and movements are partly under his influence, even those created in contradiction to him. There is no unity of concepts in Russian symbolism; it did not have a single school, nor a single style; it was expressed in an abundance of ways of self-expression. What united the Symbolists was a distrust of the ordinary and banal, a desire to express their thoughts through symbols and allegories, be it fine art or literature; the desire to give his creation an even more vague, ambiguous coloring.

Initially, Russian symbolism has the same roots as Western - “a crisis of positive worldview and morality.” The desire to replace morality and logic with aesthetics, the position that “beauty will save the world” became the main principle of the early Russian symbolists, as opposed to the ideology of populism. At the end of the 19th century, the intelligentsia and bohemians, looking with some alarm at a future that did not promise anything good, took symbolism as a breath of fresh air. It became more and more popular, involving more and more talented people, who, each with their own unique view of things, made symbolism so multifaceted. The symbolists became an expression of longing for spiritual freedom, a tragic premonition of future changes, a symbol of trust in proven centuries-old values. A feeling of trouble and instability, fear of change and the unknown united people who were so different in philosophy and attitude to life. Symbolism is an amazing collection of many individuals, characters, intimate experiences and impressions that are stored deep in the soul of a poet, writer or artist. Only a feeling of decline, nostalgic moods, and melancholy unite many faces into one.

At the origins of symbolism in St. Petersburg were Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his wife Zinaida Gippius, in Moscow - Valery Bryusov. The motives of tragic isolation, detachment from the world, and strong-willed self-affirmation of the individual can be traced in the works of Gippius; social orientation, religious and mythological subjects - in Merezhkovsky; the balance of the opposite, the struggle for life and humility before death permeate Bryusov’s work. The poems of Konstantin Balmont, who declared the “search for correspondences” between sound, meaning and color, characteristic of symbolists, are becoming very popular. Balmont's passion for sound writing, colorful adjectives displacing verbs, leads to the creation of almost “meaningless” texts, according to his ill-wishers, but this phenomenon later leads to the emergence of new poetic concepts.

A little later, a movement of younger symbolists developed, creating romantically colored circles in which, exchanging experiences and ideas, they honed their skills. A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov and many others paid great attention to moral and ethical ideals, trying to combine the interests of society with their own.

Literature and art at that time were experiencing a rapid rise, old styles were reborn, new ones appeared, and it was impossible to determine exactly where one ended and the other began, the boundaries were ethereal and foggy, everything was in the air.

The history of symbolism is very tragic, as is the history of many other genres. At first, the symbolism was met more than coldly - the works, unadapted to Russian society, having no relation to the land and people, were incomprehensible to the broad masses, and were practically ridiculed. After a short period of heyday, in defiance of the Symbolists, innovative movements with more down-to-earth and rigid principles began to form. In the last decade before the revolution, symbolism experienced crisis and decline. Some Symbolists did not accept the 1917 revolution and were forced to immigrate from the country. Many continued to write, but symbolism inexorably faded away. Those who remained in the country were faced with a rethinking of previous values. The symbolist had nothing to earn a living in post-revolutionary Russia.

At the beginning of the 20s, several centers of Russian emigration were formed, including in Paris, Prague, Berlin, Harbin, and Sofia. Taking into account the conditions of a particular country, the foundations of the cultural life of the Russian diaspora were formed here. The culture of Russian emigration was based on the traditions of classical culture. These people considered their task to be the preservation and development of Russian culture. Russian newspapers played a significant role in establishing the spiritual life of the emigration; about a hundred of them were published. In countries such as Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, educational institutions of the Russian diaspora were opened. Berlin has good conditions for publishing works by emigrant authors. Among the foreign intelligentsia, various ideological and political movements arose, which reflected the search for ways to revive Russia and its culture; one of these movements was Eurasianism.

The deterioration of the international situation in the 1930s contributed to the resumption of disputes among emigrants about the fate of Russia and the possibility of returning to their homeland. Writer A. Kuprin and poetess M. Tsvetaeva returned to the USSR. But the strengthening totalitarian system forced many to abandon the idea of ​​returning home.

The last decade of the 19th century. opens a new stage in Russian and world culture. Major fundamental natural scientific discoveries, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, sharply shook previous ideas about the structure of the world, formed in the traditions of the European Enlightenment and based on judgments about unambiguous patterns, on the fundamental principle of predictability of natural phenomena. Repeatability and predictability of processes were considered as generic properties of causality in general. On this basis they formed positivist principles of thinking, dominant in world science of the 19th century. These principles also extended to the social sphere: human life was understood as completely determined by external circumstances, by one or another chain of active causes. Although not everything in human life could be satisfactorily explained, it was understood that science would someday achieve universal omniscience and be able to understand and subordinate the entire world to the human mind. New discoveries sharply contradicted ideas about the structural completeness of the world. What previously seemed stable turned into instability and endless mobility. It turned out that any explanation is not universal and requires additions - this is ideological consequence of the principle of complementarity, born in line with theoretical physics. Moreover, the idea of ​​the knowability of the world, which was previously considered an axiom, was called into question.

The complication of ideas about the physical picture of the world was accompanied by reassessment of the principles of understanding history. The previously unshakable model of historical progress, based on the idea of ​​a linear relationship of causes and consequences, was replaced by an understanding of the conventionality and approximate nature of any historiosophical logic. The crisis of historical ideas was expressed primarily in the loss of a universal point of reference, of one or another ideological foundation. A variety of theories of social development have emerged. In particular, it has become widespread Marxism, who relied on the development of industry and the emergence of a new revolutionary class - the proletariat, free from property, united by the conditions of common labor in a team and ready to actively fight for social justice. In the political sphere, this meant a rejection of the enlightenment of the early populists and the terrorism of the later populists and a transition to the organized struggle of the masses - up to the violent overthrow of the system and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat over all other classes.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The idea of ​​a person not only rebellious, but also capable of remaking an era, creating history, in addition to the philosophy of Marxism, is developed in the works of M. Gorky and his followers, who persistently highlighted Man with a capital M, the owner of the earth. Gorky's favorite heroes were the semi-legendary Novgorod merchant Vaska Buslaev and the biblical character Job, who challenged God himself. Gorky believed that revolutionary activity to rebuild the world transforms and enriches a person’s inner world. Thus, the heroine of his novel “Mother” (1907), Pelageya Nilovpa, having become a participant in the revolutionary movement, experiences a maternal feeling of love not only for her son, but also for all oppressed and powerless people.

The rebellious beginning sounded more anarchic in the early poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky, in the poems and poems of V. Khlebnikov, A.N. Kruchenykh, D.D. Burliuk, who contrasted (at least in manifestos and declarations) the ideals of a consumer society with inspired materialistic ideas. industrial utopias.

Another large group of writers, convinced after the tragic events of March 1, 1881 (the murder of the Tsar-Liberator) and especially after the defeat of the 1905 revolution of the futility of violent methods of influencing society, came to the idea of ​​spiritual transformation, albeit slow but consistent improvement of the inner world person. The guiding ideological star for them was Pushkin’s idea of ​​the inner harmony of man. They considered close in spirit the writers of the post-Pushkin era - N.V. Gogol, M.Yu. Lermontov, F.I. Tyutchev, F.M. Dostoevsky, who felt the tragedy of the destruction of world harmony, but yearned for it and foresaw its restoration in the future .

It was these writers who saw in the Pushkin era golden age national culture and taking into account the fundamental changes in the sociocultural context, they sought to develop its traditions, nevertheless realizing the dramatic complexity of such a task. And although the culture of the turn of the century is much more contradictory and internally conflicting than the culture of the first half of the 19th century, the new literary era will later receive (in memoirs, literary criticism and journalism of the Russian emigration of the 1920-1930s) a bright evaluative name - “Silver Age” ". This historical and literary metaphor connects the literature of the beginning of the century with the literature of the 19th century, in the second half of the 20th century. will acquire terminological status and will be extended, in fact, to all literature of the turn of the century: this is how in our time it is customary to call the era of M. Gorky and A. A. Blok, I. I. Bunin and A. A. Akhmatova. Although these writers looked very differently at the world and the place of man in it, there was something that united them: awareness of the crisis, the transition of the era, which was supposed to lead Russian society to new horizons of life.

The pluralism of political and philosophical views shared by different writers led to a radical change in the overall picture of artistic movements and trends. The former smooth gradualism, when, for example, classicism in literature gave way to sentimentalism, which, in turn, was replaced by romanticism; when at each stage of the history of literature one direction occupied a dominant position, such stadiality became a thing of the past. Now At the same time, different aesthetic systems existed.

In parallel and, as a rule, in struggle with each other, realism and modernism, the largest literary movements, developed, while realism was not a stylistically homogeneous formation, but was a complex complex of several “realisms” (each variety requires additional research from the literary historian definitions). Modernism, in turn, was distinguished by extreme internal instability: various movements and groupings were continuously transformed, emerged and disintegrated, united and differentiated. The new situation created the ground for the most unexpected combinations and interactions: stylistically intermediate works appeared, short-lived associations arose that tried to combine the principles of realism and modernism in their artistic practice. That is why, in relation to the art of the early 20th century. the classification of phenomena on the basis of “directions” and “currents” is obviously conditional and non-absolute.

The last decade of the 19th century opens a new stage in Russian and world culture. Over the course of about a quarter of a century - from the early 1890s to October 1917 - literally every aspect of Russian life changed radically - economics, politics, science, technology, culture, art. Compared to the social and, to some extent, literary stagnation of the 1880s, the new stage of historical and cultural development was distinguished by rapid dynamics and extreme drama. In terms of the pace and depth of changes, as well as the catastrophic nature of internal conflicts, Russia at that time was ahead of any other country.

Therefore, the transition from the era of classical Russian literature to the new literary time was accompanied by a far from peaceful nature of general cultural and intraliterary life, an unexpectedly rapid - by the standards of the 19th century - change of aesthetic guidelines, and a radical renewal of literary techniques. Russian poetry developed especially dynamically at this time, again - after the Pushkin era - coming to the forefront of the country's general cultural life. Later, the poetry of this time was called the “poetic renaissance” or “silver age.” Having arisen by analogy with the concept of the “golden age,” which traditionally denoted the Pushkin period of Russian literature, this phrase was initially used to characterize the peak manifestations of poetic culture of the early 20th century - the work of A. Blok, A. Bely, I. Annensky, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam and other brilliant masters of words. However, gradually the term “Silver Age” began to define that part of the entire artistic culture of Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, which was associated with symbolism, Acmeism, “neo-peasant” and partly futuristic literature. Today, many literary scholars have made the definition of “Silver Age” synonymous with the concept of “culture of the turn of the century,” which, of course, is inaccurate, since a number of significant phenomena of the turn of the century (primarily associated with revolutionary theories) can hardly be compared with what was originally called art of the Silver Age.

What was new compared to the 19th century at the turn of the two centuries was, first of all, man’s worldview. The understanding of the exhaustion of the previous era grew stronger, and directly opposite assessments of the socio-economic and general cultural prospects of Russia began to appear. The common denominator of the ideological disputes that flared up in the country towards the end of the 19th century was the definition of the new era as a border era: the old forms of life, work, and political organization of society were irretrievably becoming a thing of the past, and the very system of spiritual values ​​was being decisively revised. Crisis is the key word of the era, roaming the pages of journalistic and literary-critical articles (words similar in meaning to “revival”, “turning point”, “crossroads”, etc. were often used).

Fiction, which traditionally for Russia has not stood aside from public passions, quickly became involved in the discussion of current issues. Her social engagement was manifested in the titles of her works that were characteristic of that era. “Without a Road”, “At the Turning” - V. Veresaev calls his stories; “The Decline of the Old Century” - echoes the title of the chronicle novel by A. Amphitheaters; “At the last line” - M. Artsybashev responds with his novel. Awareness of the crisis of the time, however, did not mean recognition of its futility.

On the contrary, most wordsmiths perceived their era as a time of unprecedented achievements, when the importance of literature in the life of the country increased sharply. That is why so much attention began to be paid not only to creativity itself, but also to the worldview and social position of writers, their connections with the political life of the country.

Despite all the differences in positions and views, there was something in common in the worldview of the writers of the turn of the century, which was brilliantly captured in his time by the outstanding literature connoisseur Professor Semyon Afanasyevich Vengerov in the preface to the three-volume “History of Russian Literature of the 20th Century” (1914) that he conceived. The scientist noted that uniting the social activist M. Gorky and the individualist K. Balmont, the realist I. Bunin, the symbolists V. Bryusov, A. Blok and A. Bely with the expressionist L. Andreev and the naturalist M. Artsybashev, the pessimist-decadent F. Sologub and the optimist A. Kuprin was a challenge to the traditions of everyday life, “aspiration to the heights, to the distance, to the depths, but only away from the hateful plane of gray vegetation.”

Another thing is that writers imagined the ways of developing new literature in different ways. In the 19th century, Russian literature had a high degree of ideological unity. It has developed a fairly clear hierarchy of literary talents: at one stage or another, it is not difficult to identify masters who served as reference points for an entire generation of writers (Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, etc.). But the legacy of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries is not limited to the work of one or two dozen significant literary artists, and the logic of literary development of that time cannot be reduced to a single center or the simplest scheme of successive directions. This heritage is a multi-tiered artistic reality in which individual literary talents, no matter how outstanding they may be, are only part of a grandiose whole.

When starting to study the literature of the turn of the century, one cannot do without a brief overview of the social background and general cultural context of this period (context - the environment, the external environment in which art exists).