Modernist writers of the 20th century are Russian. Modernism in 20th century literature

Modernist trends in the literature of the 20s expressed very significant facets of the worldview of the people of this era - that worldview that was in certain opposition to the prevailing political, social, and philosophical attitudes.

Modernism creates a different concept of man than in realism, designates the coordinates of his character differently and perceives reality differently. It is wrong to see in it only formal devices - non-life-like poetics, alogism of images, “absent mind”, etc. Behind the form lies new content: modernism offers different character motivations, perceives reality as fantastic and illogical. “Nowadays, the only fiction is yesterday’s life on strong whales,” wrote Evgeniy Zamyatin, one of the few writers who managed to literary situation 20s to substantiate the theoretical principles of the new art, which he called “synthetism.” - Today - The Apocalypse can be published as a daily newspaper; tomorrow - we will quite calmly buy a place in a sleeping car to Mars. Einstein tore the very space and time from their anchors. And art that has grown out of this, today’s reality, how can it not be fantastic, like a dream?”

Zamyatin saw the origins of the crisis of realistic art and the emergence of modernism next to it as a new artistic worldview not only in the fantastic nature of everyday life, but also in the new philosophical coordinate system in which the person of the 20th century found himself. “After the geometric-philosophical earthquake produced by Einstein, the old space and time finally perished,” the writer states. “We, read through Schopenhauer, Kant, Einstein, symbolism, know: the world, the thing in itself, reality is not at all what is seen.”

Having rejected the strict cause-and-effect conditionality of realistic aesthetics, the literature of modernism also rejected the fatal dependence of man on the environment, social or historical, affirmed by realism. This, if you like, was one of the attempts to preserve the sovereignty of the human person, its right to freedom from the circumstances of historical time, the aggressiveness of which in the 20th century in relation to privacy person became especially obvious. This need to defend the natural rights of the hero (and, therefore, real person) forced the non-realist artist to turn to the dystopian genre. E. Zamyatin’s novel “We” (1921) is one of the most famous dystopias of the 20th century. It shows what will happen to society if it destroys the personal, individual principle in people and turns them into absolutely interchangeable “numbers”. A community that has subjected its individuals to complete biological identification is depicted in Zamyatin’s novel.

In the literature of the 20s, two main trends are distinguishable: on the one hand, reckless acceptance of social transformations, on the other, doubt about their humanism and expediency. One of the most prominent “doubting” writers in the 20s was B. Pilnyak. In the novel “The Naked Year” (1921-1923), which became a milestone for new literature in the early 20s, Pilnyak pointedly abandoned realistic poetics. As a result, the plot of his work lost its traditional organizing role for realism. Its function in Pilnyak is performed by leitmotifs, and different fragments narratives are held together by associative connections. The reader is presented with a series of such disparate descriptions of reality. The deliberate unstructured nature of the composition is emphasized by the writer even in the titles of the chapters, which seem to be of a draft nature: “Chapter VII (last, untitled),” or “Last triptych (material, in essence).” Scattered pictures of reality, endlessly alternating, are designed to convey an existence that has not yet taken shape - broken by the revolution, but not settled, not having acquired internal logic, and therefore chaotic, absurd and random.

The “brokenness” and fragmentation of the composition of “The Naked Year” is due to the absence in the novel of such a point of view on what is happening that could connect the incompatible for Pilnyak: the leather jackets of the Bolsheviks (a household name for the literature of the 20s) and the revelry of the Russian freemen; China Town and village bathhouse; a heated carriage and a provincial merchant's house. Only the presence of such a compositional point of view, in which the “ideological center” of the work would be expressed, would be able to unite and explain the phenomena scattered by Pilnyak in the epic space of his novel.

Such an ideological center is suggested by the literature of socialist realism. Pilnyak in the 20s could not or did not want to find it. The absence of such an ideological center is, as it were, compensated by the presence in the novel of many points of view on what is happening, which are not possible to reduce and combine. Their abundance emphasizes the destruction big picture world, presented in "The Naked Year". The “Necessary Note” to the “Introduction” directly formulates the desire to connect the reality that is disintegrating before our eyes with several points of view - and the objective impossibility of doing this. “The Whites left in March - and it’s March for the plant. For the city (the city of Ordynin) - July, and for villages and towns - all year. However, to everyone - through his eyes, his instrumentation and his month. The city of Ordynin and the Taezhevsky factories are nearby and a thousand miles away from everywhere. “Donat Ratchin - killed by whites: everything about him.”

The short and seemingly completely meaningless “Necessary Note” expresses the essence of the writer’s concept of the world and man. The world is destroyed and contradictory: spatial relations reveal their inconsistency or, in best case scenario, relativity (the city and factories are nearby and a thousand miles away from everywhere); traditional logic, built on cause-and-effect relationships, is deliberately blown up. The solution is to offer each hero own point view of this crumpled and illogical world: “To each - through his eyes, his instrumentation and his month.” However, disparate points of view are not able to connect fragments of reality into a coherent picture. Many positions incompatible with each other in the artistic world of “The Naked Year” make up an insoluble compositional equation.

Therefore, the novel declares a refusal realistic principles typification, rejection of conditioned patterns. Circumstances are no longer capable of shaping character. They appear as not connected by any logical connection, as disparate fragments of reality.

Therefore, Pilnyak seeks character motivation not in the sphere of the hero’s social and interpersonal connections, but in his very personality. This explains the writer’s attraction to elements of naturalism. The rejection of the eschatological scale of the vision of the world (it was precisely in such a globalist perspective that the revolution was understood in the early 20s) shakes off cultural, moral and other guidelines from a person, exposing “natural principles”, mainly gender. These are physiological instincts in the most obvious and undisguised form: they are practically uncontrollable social status person, culture, upbringing. Such instincts motivate Pilnyak’s behavior both of the hero and of entire masses of people.

And yet, in The Naked Year, Boris Pilnyak outlines at least a hypothetical possibility of synthesizing the fragments of reality split by the revolution. The point of view that provides such a perspective is the position of the Bolsheviks, although it is clearly incomprehensible to the writer. “In the Ordynins’ house, in the executive committee (there were no geraniums on the windows) - people in leather jackets, Bolsheviks, gathered upstairs. These here, in leather jackets, each one is tall, handsome leather, each one is strong, and the curls under the cap are ringed at the back of the head, each one has tightly drawn cheekbones, the folds of the lips, each one has ironed movements. From the loose, clumsy Russian people - selection. You won't get wet in leather jackets. So we know, so we want, so we set it - and that’s it.”

But Pilnyak’s famous “leather jackets” were also only in an abstract way. The collective nature of the portrait, its deliberate, fundamental emphasis on appearance, emphasizing determination as the only dominant character could not make the point “ leather jackets"that ideological center that would hold the narrative together and synthesize disparate pictures of reality. If their point of view became dominant, then the conflict between them and ordinary people (private residents, men and women) would be covered in the same way as in Yu. Libedinsky’s “Week”. The absence of this ideological center in Pilnyak’s novel becomes the fundamental line that separates the aesthetics of socialist realism from modernism.

It is characteristic that admiration and fear of the unbending will of the Bolsheviks will appear not only in “The Naked Year”, but also in “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon” (1927), which played fatal role in the life of a writer. Its plot is based on real story killing the hero Civil War Frunze on the operating table: the operation to remove a long-healed stomach ulcer was performed, according to the rumors that were actively circulating at the time, on Stalin’s orders. Contemporaries easily recognized him in the image of a non-hunched Man, and in the unfortunate army commander Gavrilov they found features of the late Frunze. The powers that be were so frightened by the appearance of this story that the edition of Novy Mir, where it was published, was confiscated, and Voronsky, to whom Pilnyak dedicated his work, publicly refused the dedication.

It can be assumed that in “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon” Pilnyak makes an attempt to go beyond the boundaries of modernist aesthetics. This can be done by placing fragments of reality into a single outline, plot, system of events, that is, creating a kind of semantic center that explains reality. The image of a non-hunched Man appears as such an ideological center in the story. It is he, sitting in his office at night, who confronts living and natural life, “when thousands of people crowded into the cinema, theaters, variety shows, taverns and pubs, when crazy cars ate up street puddles with their lanterns, carving out crowds of bizarre people with these lanterns on the sidewalks.” in the lantern light of people - when in the theaters, confusing time, space and countries, unprecedented Greeks, Assyrians, Russian and Chinese workers, Republicans of America and the USSR, the actors in every way forced the audience to go wild and applaud.

This picture, painted with bright strokes superimposed on each other, is opposed to the world of sober affairs and calculation, the world of a non-hunching Man. Everything in this world is subject to a strict outline: “The milestones of his speech were - the USSR, America, England, - Earth and the USSR, English sterling and Russian pounds of wheat, American heavy industry and Chinese workers. The man spoke loudly and firmly, and his every phrase was a formula.”

Let us note that in the two quotes given, Pilnyak deliberately juxtaposes the impressionistic and “contour” pictures of reality, living life and solid, sober calculation. The last one wins. Trying to introduce into his artistic world some kind of organizing principle, capable of collecting disparate pictures of existence into something holistic, Pilnyak almost fatally from leather jackets, in the affairs and plans of which he saw the prospect of overcoming chaos, comes to the image of a non-hunching Man. This hero, as if rising above the artistic world of the story, imposes a rigid outline on living life, as if immobilizing it, depriving it of internal, albeit chaotic, freedom. This conflict is expressed not only at the level of the plot, in the terrible fate of the commander Gavrilov - Frunze, but also at other levels of poetics: modernist incompleteness collides with the plot-scheme, multi-colored floating strokes - with a gray outline. Having found an organizing ideological center, Pilnyak was horrified by it, did not accept it, pushed it away, remaining in his subsequent works within the framework of modernism. The artistic world of B. Pilnyak, with all its external amorphousness, fragmentation, and randomness, was a reflection of the flow of living life, disrupted by the tragic historical vicissitudes of Russian reality of the 10-20s.

Pilnyak was in principle unable to model reality, to show it not as it is, but as it should be - therefore, the introduction of any ideological center into the compositional structure of the work was in principle impossible. The idea of ​​obligation and normativity, characteristic of socialist realism, an orientation towards a certain ideal that will someday be realized, was interpreted by him in art as false and contrary to artistic truth.

Pilnyak did not organically tolerate lies. “I take newspapers and books, and the first thing that strikes me is lies everywhere, in work, in public life, in family relationships. Everyone lies: the communists, the bourgeois, the workers, and even the enemies of the revolution, the entire Russian nation.” The words spoken by one of the writer’s heroes accurately characterize the position of the author himself, who in the story “Spattered Time” (1924) defined both his place in art and the place of literature in the life of society: “I have had the bitter glory of being a person who goes to trouble. And I also had bitter glory - my duty is to be a Russian writer and to be honest with myself and with Russia.”

Modernism in literature originates on the eve of the First World War and reaches its peak in the twenties simultaneously in all countries Western Europe and in America. Modernism is an international phenomenon, consisting of different schools (Imagism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism, etc.). This is a revolution in literature, the participants of which announced a break not only with the tradition of realistic verisimilitude, but also with the Western cultural and literary tradition in general. Any previous movement in literature defined itself through its relationship to the classical tradition: it was possible to directly proclaim antiquity as a model artistic creativity like the classicists, or prefer the Middle Ages to antiquity, like the romantics, but all cultural eras Before modernism, today they are increasingly called “classical” because they developed in line with the classical heritage of European thought. Modernism is the first cultural and literary era to put an end to this legacy and provide new answers to “eternal” questions. As I wrote English poet S. Spender in 1930: “It seems to me that the modernists are consciously striving to create a completely new literature. This is a consequence of their feeling that our era is in many respects unprecedented and stands outside any conventions of past art and literature."

The generation of the first modernists acutely felt the exhaustion of the forms of realistic storytelling, their aesthetic fatigue. For modernists, the concept of “realism” meant the absence of effort to independently comprehend the world, the mechanical nature of creativity, superficiality, the boredom of vague descriptions - interest in the button on a character’s coat, and not in his state of mind. Modernists place above all else the value of an individual artistic vision of the world; created by them art worlds uniquely different from each other, each bears the stamp of a bright creative individuality.

They happened to live in a period when the values ​​of traditional humanistic culture, - “freedom” meant very different things in Western democracies and in totalitarian states; The carnage of the First World War, in which weapons of mass destruction were used for the first time, revealed the true cost human life For modern world; The humanistic ban on pain and physical and spiritual violence was replaced by the practice of mass executions and concentration camps. Modernism is the art of a dehumanized era (the term of the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset); the attitude towards humanistic values ​​in modernism is ambiguous, but the world of modernists appears in a harsh, cold light. Using the metaphor of J. Conrad, we can say that the hero of the modernist work seemed to be staying overnight in an uncomfortable hotel at the end of the world, with very suspicious owners, in a shabby room, illuminated by the merciless light of a light bulb without a lampshade.

Modernists conceptualize human existence as a short, fragile moment; the subject may or may not be aware of the tragedy, the frailty of our absurd world, and the artist’s job is to show the horror, greatness and beauty contained, despite everything, in the moments of earthly existence. Social issues who played so important role in realism of the 19th century, in modernism it is given indirectly, as an inextricable part of a holistic portrait of a person. The main area of ​​interest of modernists is the depiction of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious in a person, the mechanisms of his perceptions, and the whimsical work of memory. The modernist hero is taken, as a rule, in the entire integrity of his experiences, his subjective existence, although the very scale of his life may be small and insignificant. In modernism, the main line of development of literature of the New Age continues with a constant decline social status hero; the modernist hero is an “everyman,” any and every person. Modernists learned to describe such states of mind people who literature had not noticed before, and did it with such conviction that it seemed to bourgeois critics an insult to morality and a profanation of the art of words. Not only the content - the large role of intimate and sexual issues, the relativity of moral assessments, the emphasized apoliticality - but, first of all, the unusual forms of modernist storytelling caused especially sharp rejection. Today, when most of the masterpieces of modernist literature are included in school and university curricula, it is difficult for us to sense the rebellious, anti-bourgeois character of early modernism, the harshness of the accusations and challenges posed to it.

Three major writers of modernism- Irishman James Joyce (1882-1943), Frenchman Marcel Proust (1871-1922), Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Each of them, in his own direction, reformed the art of speech of the twentieth century, each is considered a great pioneer of modernism. Let's look at James Joyce's novel Ulysses as an example.

The twentieth century, like no other, was marked by the competition of many trends in art. These directions are completely different, they compete with each other, replace each other, and take into account each other’s achievements. The only thing that unites them is opposition to the classical realistic art, attempts to find our own ways of reflecting reality. These directions are united by the conventional term “modernism”. The term “modernism” itself (from “modern” - modern) arose in the romantic aesthetics of A. Schlegel, but then it did not take root. But it came into use a hundred years later, at the end of the 19th century, and began to denote at first strange, unusual aesthetic systems. Today “modernism” is a term with extremely broad meaning, which actually stands in two oppositions: on the one hand, it is “everything that is not realism,” on the other (in recent years) it is what “postmodernism” is not. Thus, the concept of modernism reveals itself negatively - by the method of “by contradiction”. Naturally, with this approach we are not talking about any structural clarity.

There are a huge number of modernist trends; we will focus only on the most significant:

Impressionism (from the French “impression” - impression) - a movement in the art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, which originated in France and then spread throughout the world. Representatives of impressionism sought to capturethe real world in its mobility and variability, to convey your fleeting impressions. The Impressionists themselves called themselves “new realists”; the term appeared later, after 1874, when the now famous work by C. Monet “Sunrise” was demonstrated at the exhibition. Impression". At first, the term “impressionism” had a negative connotation, expressing bewilderment and even disdain of critics, but the artists themselves, “to spite the critics,” accepted it, and over time the negative connotations disappeared.

In painting, impressionism had a huge influence on all subsequent development of art.

In literature, the role of impressionism was more modest; it did not develop as an independent movement. However, the aesthetics of impressionism influenced the work of many authors, including in Russia. Trust in “fleeting things” is marked by many poems by K. Balmont, I. Annensky and others. In addition, impressionism was reflected in the color scheme of many writers, for example, its features are noticeable in the palette of B. Zaitsev.

However, as an integral movement, impressionism did not appear in literature, becoming a characteristic background of symbolism and neorealism.

Symbolism – one of the most powerful directions of modernism, quite diffuse in its attitudes and quests. Symbolism began to take shape in France in the 70s of the 19th century and quickly spread throughout Europe.

By the 90s, symbolism had become a pan-European trend, with the exception of Italy, where, for reasons that are not entirely clear, it did not take root.

In Russia, symbolism began to manifest itself in the late 80s, and emerged as a conscious movement by the mid-90s.

According to the time of formation and the characteristics of the worldview, it is customary to distinguish two main stages in Russian symbolism. Poets who made their debut in the 1890s are called “senior symbolists” (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, etc.).

In the 1900s, a number of new names appeared that significantly changed the face of symbolism: A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov and others. The accepted designation of the “second wave” of symbolism is “young symbolism.” It is important to take into account that the “senior” and “younger” symbolists were separated not so much by age (for example, Vyacheslav Ivanov gravitates towards the “elders” in age), but by the difference in worldviews and the direction of creativity.

The work of the older symbolists fits more closely into the canon of neo-romanticism. Characteristic motives are loneliness, the chosenness of the poet, the imperfection of the world. In the poems of K. Balmont, the influence of impressionist technique is noticeable; the early Bryusov had a lot of technical experiments and verbal exoticism.

The Young Symbolists created a more holistic and original concept, which was based on the merging of life and art, on the idea of ​​improving the world according to aesthetic laws. The mystery of existence cannot be expressed in ordinary words; it is only guessed in the system of symbols intuitively found by the poet. The concept of mystery, the unmanifestation of meanings, became the mainstay of symbolist aesthetics. Poetry, according to Vyach. Ivanov, there is a “secret record of the ineffable.” The social and aesthetic illusion of Young Symbolism was that through the “prophetic word” one can change the world. Therefore, they saw themselves not only as poets, but also demiurges, that is, the creators of the world. The unfulfilled utopia led in the early 1910s to a total crisis of symbolism, to its collapse as whole system, although the “echoes” of symbolist aesthetics can still be heard for a long time.

Regardless of the implementation of social utopia, symbolism has extremely enriched Russian and world poetry. The names of A. Blok, I. Annensky, Vyach. Ivanov, A. Bely and other prominent symbolist poets are the pride of Russian literature.

Acmeism(from the Greek “acme” - “ highest degree, peak, flowering, blooming time") - literary movement, which arose in the early tenths of the 20th century in Russia. Historically, Acmeism was a reaction to the crisis of symbolism. In contrast to the “secret” word of the Symbolists, the Acmeists proclaimed value of material, plastic objectivity of images, precision and sophistication of words.

The formation of Acmeism is closely connected with the activities of the organization “Workshop of Poets”, central figures which were N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky. O. Mandelstam, the early A. Akhmatova, V. Narbut and others also adhered to Acmeism. Later, however, Akhmatova questioned the aesthetic unity of Acmeism and even the legitimacy of the term itself. But one can hardly agree with her on this: the aesthetic unity of the Acmeist poets, at least in the early years, is beyond doubt. And the point is not only in the programmatic articles of N. Gumilyov and O. Mandelstam, where the aesthetic credo of the new movement is formulated, but above all in the practice itself. Acmeism strangely combined a romantic craving for the exotic, for wanderings with sophistication of words, which made it similar to the Baroque culture.

Favorite images of Acmeism - exotic beauty (so, in any period of Gumilyov’s creativity, poems appear about exotic animals: giraffe, jaguar, rhinoceros, kangaroo, etc.), images of culture(in Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Mandelstam), the love theme is dealt with very plastically. Often an object detail becomes a psychological sign(for example, a glove from Gumilyov or Akhmatova).

At first The world appears to the Acmeists as exquisite, but “toy-like,” emphatically unreal. For example, O. Mandelstam’s famous early poem goes like this:

They burn with gold leaf

There are Christmas trees in the forests;

Toy wolves in the bushes

They look with scary eyes.

Oh, my prophetic sadness,

Oh my quiet freedom

And the lifeless sky

Always laughing crystal!

Later, the paths of the Acmeists diverged; little remained of the former unity, although the majority of poets retained loyalty to the ideals of high culture and the cult of poetic mastery to the end. Many major literary artists came out of Acmeism. Russian literature has the right to be proud of the names of Gumilev, Mandelstam and Akhmatova.

Futurism(from Latin “futurus” " - future). If symbolism, as mentioned above, did not take root in Italy, then futurism, on the contrary, is of Italian origin. The “father” of futurism is considered to be the Italian poet and art theorist F. Marinetti, who proposed a shocking and tough theory of new art. In fact, Marinetti was talking about the mechanization of art, about depriving it of spirituality. Art should become akin to a “play on a mechanical piano”, all verbal delights are unnecessary, spirituality is an outdated myth.

Marinetti's ideas exposed the crisis of classical art and were taken up by "rebellious" aesthetic groups in different countries.

In Russia, the first futurists were the artists the Burliuk brothers. David Burliuk founded the futurist colony “Gilea” on his estate. He managed to rally around himself various poets and artists who were unlike anyone else: Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Elena Guro and others.

The first manifestos of Russian futurists were frankly shocking in nature (even the name of the manifesto, “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” speaks for itself), but even with this, the Russian futurists did not initially accept Marinetti’s mechanism, setting themselves other tasks. Marinetti's arrival in Russia caused disappointment among Russian poets and further emphasized the differences.

The futurists aimed to create a new poetics, new system aesthetic values. Masterly play with words, aestheticization household items, the speech of the street - all this excited, shocked, caused resonance. The catchy, visible nature of the image irritated some, delighted others:

Every word,

even a joke

which he spews out with his burning mouth,

thrown out like a naked prostitute

from a burning brothel.

(V. Mayakovsky, “Cloud in Pants”)

Today we can admit that much of the Futurists’ creativity has not stood the test of time and is only of historical interest, but in general, the influence of the Futurists’ experiments on the subsequent development of art (and not only verbal, but also pictorial and musical) turned out to be colossal.

Futurism had within itself several currents, sometimes converging, sometimes conflicting: cubo-futurism, ego-futurism (Igor Severyanin), the “Centrifuge” group (N. Aseev, B. Pasternak).

Although very different from each other, these groups converged on a new understanding of the essence of poetry and a desire for verbal experiments. Russian futurism gave the world several poets of enormous scale: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Velimir Khlebnikov.

Existentialism (from Latin “exsistentia” - existence). Existentialism cannot be called a literary movement in in every sense words are, rather, a philosophical movement, a concept of man, manifested in many works of literature. The origins of this movement can be found in the 19th century in the mystical philosophy of S. Kierkegaard, but existentialism received its real development in the 20th century. Among the most significant existentialist philosophers we can name G. Marcel, K. Jaspers, M. Heidegger, J.-P. Sartre and others. Existentialism is a very diffuse system, having many variations and varieties. However, the general features that allow us to talk about some unity are the following:

1. Recognition of the personal meaning of existence . In other words, the world and man in their primary essence are personal principles. The mistake of the traditional view, according to existentialists, is that human life is viewed as if “from the outside,” objectively, and the uniqueness of human life lies precisely in the fact that it There is and that she my. That is why G. Marcel proposed to consider the relationship between man and the world not according to the “He is the World” scheme, but according to the “I – ​​You” scheme. My attitude towards another person is only a special case of this comprehensive scheme.

M. Heidegger said the same thing somewhat differently. In his opinion, the basic question about man must be changed. We are trying to answer, " What there is a person”, but you need to ask “ Who there is a man." This radically changes the entire coordinate system, since in the usual world we will not see the foundations of each person’s unique “self.”

2. Recognition of the so-called “borderline situation” , when this “self” becomes directly accessible. In ordinary life, this “I” is not directly accessible, but in the face of death, against the background of non-existence, it manifests itself. The concept of a border situation had a huge influence on the literature of the 20th century - both among writers directly associated with the theory of existentialism (A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre), and authors generally far from this theory, for example, on the idea of ​​a border situation almost all the plots of Vasil Bykov's war stories are constructed.

3. Recognition of a person as a project . In other words, the original “I” given to us forces us to make the only possible choice every time. And if a person’s choice turns out to be unworthy, the person begins to crumble, no matter what external reasons he made no excuses.

Existentialism, we repeat, did not develop as a literary movement, but it had a huge influence on modern world culture. In this sense, it can be considered an aesthetic and philosophical direction of the 20th century.

Surrealism(French “surrealisme”, lit. - “super-realism”) - a powerful trend in painting and literature of the 20th century, however, it left the greatest mark in painting, primarily due to its authority famous artist Salvador Dali. Scandalous famous phrase Dali, with all his shockingness, clearly places emphasis on his disagreements with other leaders of the “surrealist is me” movement. Without the figure of Salvador Dali, surrealism probably would not have had such an impact on the culture of the 20th century.

At the same time, the founder of this movement is not Dali or even the artist, but precisely the writer Andre Breton. Surrealism took shape in the 1920s as a left-radical movement, but noticeably different from futurism. Surrealism reflected the social, philosophical, psychological and aesthetic paradoxes of European consciousness. Europe is tired of social tensions, of traditional art forms, of hypocrisy in ethics. This “protest” wave gave birth to surrealism.

The authors of the first declarations and works of surrealism (Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Andre Breton, etc.) set the goal of “liberating” creativity from all conventions. Great importance was attached to unconscious impulses and random images, which, however, were then subjected to careful artistic processing.

Freudianism, which actualized human erotic instincts, had a serious influence on the aesthetics of surrealism.

In the late 20s - 30s, surrealism played a very noticeable role in European culture, but the literary component of this movement gradually weakened. Major writers and poets, in particular Eluard and Aragon, moved away from surrealism. Andre Breton's attempts after the war to revive the movement were unsuccessful, while in painting surrealism provided a much more powerful tradition.

Postmodernism - a powerful literary movement of our time, very diverse, contradictory and fundamentally open to any innovations. The philosophy of postmodernism was formed mainly in the French school aesthetic thought(J. Derrida, R. Barthes, J. Kristeva, etc.), however, today it has spread far beyond the borders of France.

At the same time, many philosophical origins and first works refer to the American tradition, and the term “postmodernism” itself in relation to literature was first used by the American literary critic of Arab origin, Ihab Hasan (1971).

The most important feature of postmodernism is the fundamental rejection of any centricity and any value hierarchy. All texts are fundamentally equal and capable of coming into contact with each other. There is no high and low art, modern and outdated. From the standpoint of culture, they all exist in some “now,” and since the value chain is fundamentally destroyed, no text has any advantages over another.

In the works of postmodernists, almost any text from any era comes into play. The boundary between one’s own and someone else’s word is also destroyed, so interspersed texts are possible famous authors into a new work. This principle is called " centonity principle» (centon is a game genre when a poem is composed of different lines from other authors).

Postmodernism is radically different from all others aesthetic systems. IN different schemes(for example, in the well-known schemes of Ihab Hassan, V. Brainin-Passek, etc.) dozens of distinctive features of postmodernism are noted. This is an attitude towards play, conformism, recognition of the equality of cultures, an attitude towards secondaryness (i.e. postmodernism does not aim to say something new about the world), orientation towards commercial success, recognition of the infinity of the aesthetic (i.e. everything can be art) etc.

Both writers and literary critics have an ambiguous attitude towards postmodernism: from complete acceptance to categorical denial.

In the last decade, people are increasingly talking about the crisis of postmodernism and reminding us of the responsibility and spirituality of culture.

For example, P. Bourdieu considers postmodernism a variant of “radical chic”, spectacular and comfortable at the same time, and calls not to destroy science (and in the context it is clear - art) “in the fireworks of nihilism.”

Many American theorists have also made sharp attacks against postmodern nihilism. In particular, the book “Against Deconstruction” by J. M. Ellis, which contains a critical analysis of postmodernist attitudes, caused a stir.

"Clarissa, or the Story of a Young Lady, containing the most important questions of private life, and showing especially the disasters which may result from the wrong conduct of both parents and children in relation to marriage." Now, however, this scheme is noticeably more complicated. It is customary to talk about pre-symbolism, early symbolism, mystical symbolism, post-symbolism, etc. However, this does not cancel the naturally formed division into older and younger.

XX - EARLY XXI CENTURIES

The development of modernism in literature of the 20th century

Starting from the end of the 19th century, modernism took on a dominant role in the literary process. The main attention in the works of modernist literature of the 20th century. focuses on expressing the deepest essence of a person and eternal problems existence, searching for ways to go beyond the specific and historical, the possibilities of achieving “high all-pervasiveness”, that is, the discovery of universal trends spiritual development humanity.

The characteristic features of modernist literature are, first of all, Special attention to the inner world of the individual; orientation to the eternal laws of existence and art; giving advantage to creative intuition; the perception of literature as the highest knowledge that can penetrate into the most intimate depths of a person’s existence; the desire to acquire eternal ideas that can transform the world according to the laws of beauty; creating a new artistic reality and experimenting with it; search for new formal means, etc.

A modernist work combines the conscious and subconscious, the earthly and the cosmic, which is carried out primarily on a psychological plane. At the center of such a work is a person who is looking for the meaning of existence, listening to his own experiences and becoming like “the naked nerve of the era.”

Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941) is one of the founders of the modernist novel of a new type, the poetics of which had a significant influence on the development of not only this genre, but also the entire literary process of the 20th century. Worldwide fame Joyce received awards as the author of the collection of short stories "Dubliners" (1914), the psychological essay "Giacomo" (1914), the novels "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916), "Ulysses" (1914-1921) and "Finnegans Wake" (1922- 1939).

In his famous novel“Ulysses” (1922) to depict the spiritual life of the individual, the writer used numerous memories, associations, internal monologue, “stream of consciousness”, in which equal elements of the thinking process are intricately intertwined. This work enriched the novel's technique with multi-genres, in-depth intellectualization, equality of forms of subjective language, the use of mythological symbolism, etc. It was thanks to the appearance of this work that the “stream of consciousness” school was formed and became very popular.

“Stream of consciousness” is a way of depicting the human psyche directly, “from the inside,” as a complex and dynamic process. For example, the psychological essay by J. Joyce “Giacomo” is structured as a stream of consciousness of the protagonist, which combines observations, thoughts, memories, as well as excerpts from overheard conversations, quotes from various works, ambiguous symbols, hints, etc. Psychological concentration (the author himself is the literary hero of this work, because Giacomo is the Italian sound of the name James), experience strong feelings give the author an impetus to think about the surrounding reality and the place of creative individuality in it. All these thoughts are presented through perception lyrical hero who does not analyze reality, but feels it with all his soul, with all his heart, consciously and subconsciously.

In the novel Ulysses, Joyce also reproduces inner world a person in all his complexity, unpredictability, interweaving of the logical and illogical, which is difficult to comprehend with the mind, but can be felt, touched by the heart through the perception of various associations, sensory influences, visual and sound images, etc. For this work, the decisive thing is the combination (similar to the technique of film editing) of the objectively existing and the absolutely subjective, associated with the consciousness of the characters. The novel is structured as a chronicle of one day in the life of two heroes, residents of Dublin - Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom - which correlates with Homer's Odyssey. The writer uses several streams of consciousness simultaneously in Ulysses. Such an experiment gives the author the opportunity to reproduce internal human time. consisting of all the experiences of life, and thus create a holistic epic image of the world.

French writer Marcel Proust is also one of the classics of world literary modernism of the 20th century. The seven volumes of his main work, “In Search of Lost Time,” mark the emergence of a qualitatively new type of novel, different from the one that emerged during the 19th century. thanks to the efforts of such literary artists as Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert or Emile Zola. Marcel Proust abandons the main principle in traditional novelism of an objective attitude towards the depiction of environment and characters. Proust's works, on the contrary, are the embodiment of "subjectivism". For him, only one thing matters - the inner “I” of a person, the relaxed, unpredictable life of consciousness, and not on a logical, but on an intuitive level.

This “subjectivism” of Proust’s artistic worldview determines the entire originality of the structure of his novels. First of all, it is worth mentioning the so-called “plotlessness” of Proustian works, in which there is no life stories characters described in chronological order. Instead, the reader is literally engulfed in a chaos of impressions that are simply recorded as they exist in the subconscious. Time for M. Proust and his heroes consists of memory, sensations and experiences.

Proust also reveals the inner world of his heroes in an unconventional way: it is as if there is no single holistic psychology in them, their character and even appearance are very changeable and fluid. This effect is created due to the fact that they are depicted as they appear from within the “I”, for which there is only what it sees in this, this moment time. It also determines the subjective “I” and the meaning of events in personal and public life. The boundary between the significant and the insignificant disappears completely. “Events” give way to small details, which the writer describes slowly, in detail and with consummate skill.

The originality of Proust's cycle "In Search of Lost Time" lies in the fact that it contains large-scale historical and universal plans - there are no plans. This is an epic that fully reveals the life of a separate individual consciousness. This is the internal monologue of the narrator Marcel, who throughout the works, “remembering” what happened to him in the past, relives his life again.

“Memory,” with the help of which Marcel restores the meaning of what he lived (and this means restoring “lost time”), has nothing in common with the traditional chronological experience of past events. Marcel Proust distinguishes two types of memory: intellectual and intuitive. The first is either "remembering" external events that influenced our choice to do something, or reproducing the past based on documents and historical research. Intuitive memory is “use” in things, in people, in space. It, at first glance, is chaotic and inconsistent; it requires a person to be able to analyze and describe subtle shades of feelings.

M. Proust created a subjective epic (as defined by Thomas Mann), which reflected not events, but primarily psychological processes that determine human behavior and, accordingly, the state of society. “The most important reality” for Proust was the personality with its unique moods, thoughts, and feelings. their movement and constant change determined the originality of M. Proust’s “stream of consciousness” novel. The main focus is on the image human consciousness, consisting of a number of associations, impressions, sensations, memories. The author looks at the world through the prism of the human soul, which is for him the object of the image and the angle of view at the same time.

Outstanding Austrian writer of the early 20th century. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) created a surreal, fantastic world in which the absurdity of a monotonous and gray life is especially clearly visible. In his works, a protest breaks out against the circumstances of the life of the loneliest writer who suffers. The “glass wall” that separated the writer from his friends and loneliness created a special philosophy of his life, which became the philosophy of Kafka’s work. The invasion of fantasy in his works is not accompanied by interesting and colorful plot twists; moreover, it is perceived by the characters in an ordinary way, without surprising them.

His works are considered as a certain “code” of human relations, as a unique “model” of life, valid for all forms and types of social existence, and the writer himself is considered as a “singer of alienation”, a myth-maker who forever cemented the eternal features of our world in the works of his imagination . This is the world of disharmony of human existence. The writer sees the origins of this disharmony in the fragmentation of people, in the inability for them to overcome mutual alienation, which turns out to be stronger than anything - for family ties, love, friendship.

In the works of F. Kafka there is no connection between man and the world. The world is hostile to man, evil reigns in it, and its power is limitless. The all-pervasive power of evil separates people; it instills in a person a feeling of empathy, love for one’s neighbor and the desire to help him, to meet him halfway. A person in Kafka's world is a suffering creature, and the origins of her suffering and torment are in herself, in her character. She is not the ruler of nature, the world, she is unprotected, weak, powerless. Evil in the form of fate, fate lies in wait for her everywhere.

The writer confirms his thoughts not so much by the psychology of the characters, because the characters of his heroes are always psychologically poor, but by the situation itself, the position in which they find themselves.

F. Kafka's novella "Reincarnation" (1904) begins simply and terribly - waking up one morning, the main character of the work, traveling salesman Gregor Samsam, discovered that he had turned into a disgusting insect. Gregorov wanted to fall asleep again, so that he could wake up and make sure that it was his imagination. And then he realized with horror that he had overslept the five o’clock train. Zamzam works long and hard, delivering tissue samples around the country, gets tired, doesn’t get enough sleep, and eats poorly and untimely. He endures this work, hoping to pay off his father’s debt in the coming years, and then he can think about his own life.

A faithful servant, disciplined and obliging, Gregor fears the consequences of being late for work, and the transformation that befell him is only an inconvenience. Reality presses on the hero, preventing him from realizing the fantastic nature of his transformation. Gregor is afraid of the wrath of his superiors for being late, he is afraid of appearing to his parents in this form, he is madly looking for a way out of the situation in which he has found himself - this is the essence of his experiences. He cannot realize that all this is vanity of vanities, and his misfortune is irreparable.

Gregor's conflict with the surrounding reality is growing. Those close to him treat his misfortune without compassion or understanding. His father treats him like a disgusting cockroach, using a stick and kicks to drive him into the room, causing numerous injuries. Mother gets scared unusual image son. Only my sister expressed some semblance of pity in the first days, but then she too becomes indifferent. So Gregor, who was the breadwinner and support of the family, turns into a heavy burden for everyone: “We need to get rid of him - this is the only way out... we just need to forget that this is Gregor.”

Gregor tries not to disturb his loved ones, having made the following decision for himself: “... He must for now remain calm and with patience and the greatest prudence, ease the family’s troubles, which he was forced to inflict on them due to his current condition.” However, the “intolerance of the situation” of his loved ones is completely different - now they themselves have to look for a means of subsistence.

Alone, suffering from the wound inflicted by his father, from hunger and remorse, Gregor dies. The fantastic plot used by the author highlights the hero’s conflict with the outside world. Kafka emphasizes that man is a small insect in front of the circumstances of life and cannot resist them. Other people, even relatives, will not help; they are connected to each other only by the need to live and eat together.

The ending of the novel sounds like a contrast to Gregor's sad life. For many months of unbearable existence, the family decided to reward themselves with a country pleasure trip. The people closest to Gregor did not feel guilty that the maid threw out the “dead bug” along with the trash. They are enjoying a warm, sunny spring day, rejoicing at their beautiful daughter, who “has recently blossomed and become a good, beautiful girl.”

The work of a brilliant artist reflects complex world human relations. He does not copy this world, but accumulates its burden within himself, experiences its evil and indifference, inventing a capacious and figurative metaphor to show what kind of person she is. IN in this case the name of this metaphor is “Reincarnation”.

Pain and suffering, bitterness and fear permeate the work of Franz Kafka, and not a drop of optimism or hope. The tragic worldview of the Austrian writer is the worldview of a person at the beginning of the 20th century, a stormy and cruel century. A worldview in which there is no place for the belief that the world can be rebuilt, to provide it with harmony.

Modernism is a new movement that came to Russia from Europe, mainly covering poetry, but some prose writers also work within the framework of modernism. Modernism, trying to separate itself from all previous literary trends, proclaimed the rejection of any literary traditions and the following of models. All writers and poets of the beginning of the century considered themselves modernists, who thought and believed that they were writing in a new way. As a contrast to realism, modernism in literature first of all tried to get away from the principle of a plausible depiction of reality. Hence the desire of modernist writers for fantastic elements and plots, the desire to embellish existing reality, change it, transform it.

Futurism (from Latin futurum - future) is a literary movement that arose in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century as a protest against existing social principles. The work of the Futurists was distinguished by the search for new means of artistic expression, new forms and images.