“Poets of the Silver Age” - Mayakovsky entered the school of painting, sculpture and architecture. V. Ya. Bryusov (1873 – 1924). D. D. Burliuk. Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was born on April 15, 1886. Acmeists. O. E. Mandelstam. From 1900-1907 Mandelstam studied at the Tenishevsky Commercial School. O. E. Mandelstam (1891 – 1938). Acmeism. V. V. Mayakovsky.
“About front-line poets” - From the first days of the war, Kulchitsky was in the army. Simonov gained fame even before the war as a poet and playwright. Sergei Sergeevich Orlov (1921-1977). In 1944, Jalil was executed by Moabit executioners. Surkov’s poem “fire beats in a cramped stove” was written in 1941. Simonov’s poem “Wait for Me,” written during the war, became widely known.
“On Poetry” - Indian Summer has arrived - Days of farewell warmth. Your wonderful sunshine plays with our river. And at dawn the cherry glue hardens in the form of a clot. And all around, azure flowers bloomed in spicy waves... A journey along a poetic path. The idea ended badly - An old rope broke... The face of a birch tree is under a wedding veil and transparent.
“Romanticism in literature” - Lesson - lecture. Lermontov Mikhail Yurievich 1814-1841. Romanticism in Russian literature, late 18th and early 19th centuries. The theme is “humiliated and insulted.” Philosophical tale. The romantic personality is a passionate personality. Historical novel; "Mtsyri". Passion. Walter Scott 1771-1832. The reasons for the emergence of romanticism.
“On Romanticism” - Larra. A.S. Pushkin. The Eternal Jew. Sacrifice yourself to save others. "The Legend of the Eternal Jew." Compositional features of stories. "The Legend of Moses". M. Gorky. Which of the heroes is close to Old Woman Izergil: Danko or Larra? If you do nothing, nothing will happen to you. The basis of the romanticism style is the depiction of the inner world of man.
“Poets about nature” - Alexander Yesenin (father) and Tatyana Titova (mother). BLOK Alexander Alexandrovich (1880, St. Petersburg - 1921, Petrograd) - poet. A.A. Block. Russian writers of the 20th century about their native nature. Creative work. Landscape lyrics. Artistic and expressive means. S.A. Yesenin. The boy's grandmother knew many songs, fairy tales and ditties.
There are a total of 13 presentations in the topic
Romantic hero in Russian literature
Plan
Introduction
Chapter 1. Russian romantic poet Vladimir Lensky
Chapter 2.M.Yu. Lermontov - “Russian Byron”
2.1 Lermontov's poetry
Conclusion
Describing his hero, Pushkin says that Lensky was brought up reading Schiller and Goethe (one can assume that the young poet had good taste if he chose such great teachers) and was a capable poet:
And muses of sublime art,
Lucky, he was not ashamed:
He proudly preserved in his songs
Always high feelings
Gusts of a virgin dream
And the beauty of important simplicity.
He sang love, obedient to love,
And his song was clear,
Like the thoughts of a simple-minded maiden,
Like a baby's dream, like the moon
In the deserts of the serene sky.
Let us note that the concepts of “simplicity” and “clarity” in the poetry of the romantic Lensky do not coincide with the requirement of simplicity and clarity characteristic of the realist Pushkin. For Lensky, they come from ignorance of life, from aspiration to the world of dreams; they are generated by “poetic prejudices of the soul.” Pushkin the realist speaks of simplicity and clarity in poetry, meaning such qualities of realistic literature that are determined by a sober look at life, the desire to understand its patterns and find clear forms of its embodiment in artistic images.
Pushkin points out one feature of the character of Lensky the poet: to express his feelings bookishly and artificially. Here Lensky came to the grave of Olga’s father:
Returned to his penates,
Vladimir Lensky visited
Neighbor's humble monument,
And he dedicated his sigh to the ashes;
And my heart was sad for a long time.
“Poor Yorick,” he said sadly, “
He held me in his arms.
How often did I play as a child?
His Ochakov medal!
He read Olga for me,
He said: Will I wait for the day?
And, full of sincere sadness,
Vladimir immediately drew
His funeral madrigal.
Naturalness and mannerism in the expression of feelings were surprisingly organically combined. On the one hand, Lensky devotes a sigh to the ashes instead of just sighing; and on the other hand, he behaves completely naturally: “And my heart was sad for a long time.” And this is suddenly followed by a quote from Shakespeare (“Poor Yorick...”), which is perceived as another “dedication” of the sigh to Larin. And then again a completely natural memory of the deceased.
Another example. Eve of the duel. Before the fight Olga Lensky. Her simple-minded question: “Why did you disappear so early?” - disarmed the young man and dramatically changed his state of mind.
Jealousy and annoyance disappeared
Before this clarity of sight...
Very natural behavior of a loving and jealous young man, who “was ignorant at heart.” The transition from doubts about Olga’s feelings to hope for her reciprocal feelings gives a new turn to Lensky’s thoughts: he convinces himself that he must protect Olga from the “corrupter” Onegin.
And again thoughtful, sad
Before my dear Olga,
Vladimir has no power
Remind her of yesterday;
He thinks: “I will be her savior.”
I will not tolerate the corrupter
Fire and sighs and praises
He tempted the young heart;
So that the despicable, poisonous worm
Sharpened a lily stalk;
To the two-morning flower
Withered still half-open.”
All this meant, friends:
I'm shooting with a friend.
The situation that led to a quarrel between two friends, as Lensky imagines it, is far from reality. In addition, being alone with his thoughts, the poet does not express them in ordinary words, but resorts to literary cliches (Onegin is a despicable, poisonous worm; Olga is a lily stalk, a two-morning flower), book words: savior, corrupter.
Pushkin also finds other techniques for depicting Lensky’s character. There is a slight irony here: the contrast between the excited state of the young man and Olga’s usual behavior upon meeting (“... as before, Olenka jumped from the porch to meet the poor singer); and a comic resolution of the severity of the situation by introducing a colloquial turn of phrase: “And silently he hung his nose”; and the author’s conclusion: “All this meant, friends: I’m shooting with a friend.” Pushkin translates the content of Lensky's monologue into ordinary, natural spoken language. The author's assessment of everything that is happening as absurdity has been introduced (a duel with a friend).
Lensky anticipates the tragic outcome of the fight for him. As the fateful hour approaches, the melancholy mood intensifies (“A heart full of melancholy sank within him; Saying goodbye to the young maiden, It seemed to be torn”). The first phrase of his elegy:
Where, where have you gone,
Are the golden days of my spring?
- a typically romantic motive of complaint about the early loss of youth.
The above examples indicate that Lensky was immediately conceived as a typical image of the Russian romantic poet at the turn of the 10-20s of the 19th century.
Lensky is depicted in only a few chapters of the novel, so analysis of this image makes it easier to discern that innovative feature of Pushkin’s realism, which is expressed in the ambiguity of the assessments given by the author to his heroes. In these assessments, in relation to the image of Lensky, sympathy, irony, sadness, joke, and sorrow are expressed. Considered separately, these assessments can lead to one-sided conclusions. Taken in conjunction, they help to more correctly understand the meaning of Lensky’s image and to more fully sense its vitality. There is no specificity in the image of the young poet. The further development of Lensky, if he had remained alive, did not exclude the possibility of his transformation into a romantic poet of the Decembrist orientation (he could “be hanged like Ryleev”) under appropriate circumstances.
Chapter 2. M.Yu. Lermontov - “Russian Byron”
2.1 Lermontov's poetry
Lermontov's poetry is inextricably linked with his personality; it is, in the full sense, a poetic autobiography. The main features of Lermontov's nature are an unusually developed self-awareness, efficiency and depth of the moral world, courageous idealism of life aspirations.
All these features were embodied in his works, from the earliest prose and poetic outpourings to mature poems and novels.
Even in his youthful “Tale”, Lermontov glorified will as a perfect, irresistible spiritual energy: “to want means to hate, love, regret, rejoice, live”...
Hence his fiery requests for strong open feelings, indignation at petty and cowardly passions; hence his demonism, which developed amid forced loneliness and contempt for the surrounding society. But demonism is by no means a negative mood: “I need to love,” the poet confessed, and Belinsky guessed this trait after the first serious conversation with Lermontov: “I was pleased to see in his rational, chilled and embittered view of life and people the seeds of deep faith in the dignity of both. That's what I told him; he smiled and said: God willing.”
Lermontov's demonism is the highest level of idealism, the same as the dreams of people of the 18th century about an all-perfect natural man, about freedom and the virtues of the golden age; this is the poetry of Rousseau and Schiller.
Such an ideal is the most daring, irreconcilable denial of reality - and young Lermontov would like to throw off the “educated chain” and be transported to the idyllic kingdom of primitive humanity. Hence the fanatical adoration of nature, the passionate penetration of its beauty and power. And all these features cannot be associated with any external influence; they existed in Lermontov even before he met Byron and merged only into a more powerful and mature harmony when he recognized this truly kindred soul.
In contrast to the disappointment of Chateaubriand's Rene, rooted solely in egoism and self-adoration, Lermontov's disappointment is a militant protest against “baseness and strangeness”, in the name of sincere feeling and courageous thought.
Before us is poetry not of disappointment, but of sadness and anger. All Lermontov's heroes - Demon, Izmail-Bey, Mtsyri, Arseny - are filled with these feelings. The most real of them - Pechorin - embodies the most apparently everyday disappointment; but this is a completely different person than the “Moscow Childe Harold” - Onegin. He has many negative traits: selfishness, pettiness, pride, often heartlessness, but next to them is a sincere attitude towards himself. “If I am the cause of the misfortune of others, then I myself am no less unhappy” - absolutely truthful words from his mouth. More than once he yearns for a failed life; on other soil, in another air, this strong organism would undoubtedly have found a more honorable cause than persecuting the Grushnitskys.
The great and the insignificant coexist side by side in him, and if it were necessary to distinguish between the two, the great would have to be attributed to the individual, and the insignificant to society...
Lermontov's creativity gradually descended from behind the clouds and from the Caucasus mountains. It stopped at creating very real types and became public and national. In Russian literature of the 19th century there is not a single noble motif in which the untimely silenced voice of Lermontov is not heard: her sadness about the pitiful phenomena of Russian life is an echo of the life of a poet who sadly looked at his generation; in her indignation at the slavery of thought and the moral insignificance of her contemporaries, Lermontov’s demonic impulses are heard; her laughter at stupidity and vulgar comedy can already be heard in Pechorin’s destructive sarcasms against Grushnitsky.
2.2 Mtsyri as a romantic hero
The poem “Mtsyri” is the fruit of the active and intense creative work of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. Even in his youth, the poet’s imagination painted the image of a young man, on the threshold of death, delivering an angry, protesting speech to his listener - a senior monk. In the poem “Confession” (1830, the action takes place in Spain), the hero, imprisoned, proclaims the right to love, which is higher than monastic regulations. His fascination with the Caucasus, his desire to depict situations in which the hero’s courageous character can be revealed most fully, led Lermontov, at the height of his talent, to create the poem “Mtsyri” (1840), repeating many poems from the previous stages of work on the same image.
Before "Mtsyri" the poem "The Fugitive" was written. In it, Lermontov develops the theme of punishment for cowardice and betrayal. Brief plot: a traitor to duty, forgetting about his homeland, Harun fled from the battlefield without taking revenge on his enemies for the death of his father and brothers. But neither a friend, nor a lover, nor a mother will accept the fugitive; even everyone will turn away from his corpse, and no one will take him to the cemetery. The poem called for heroism, for the fight for the freedom of the homeland. In the poem “Mtsyri” Lermontov develops the idea of courage and protest inherent in “Confession” and the poem “The Fugitive”. In "Mtsyri" the poet almost completely excluded the love motif that played such a significant role in "Confession" (the love of the hero-monk for a nun). This motive was reflected only in a brief meeting between Mtsyri and a Georgian woman near a mountain stream.
The hero, defeating the involuntary impulse of a young heart, renounces personal happiness in the name of the ideal of freedom. The patriotic idea is combined in the poem with the theme of freedom, as in the works of the Decembrist poets. Lermontov does not share these concepts: love for the fatherland and thirst for will merge into one, but “fiery passion.” The monastery becomes a prison for Mtsyri, the cells seem stuffy to him, the walls seem gloomy and deaf, the monk guards seem cowardly and pitiful, and he himself becomes a slave and a prisoner. His desire to find out whether “we were born into this world for freedom or prison” is due to a passionate impulse for freedom. Short days for escape are his will. Only outside the monastery he lived, and did not vegetate. Only these days he calls bliss.
Mtsyri's freedom-loving patriotism is least of all like a dreamy love for his native beautiful landscapes and expensive graves, although the hero yearns for them too. It is precisely because he truly loves his homeland that he wants to fight for the freedom of his homeland. But at the same time, the poet with undoubted sympathy sings of the warlike dreams of the young man. The poem does not fully reveal the hero’s aspirations, but they are palpable in hints. Mtsyri remembers his father and acquaintances first of all as warriors; It’s no coincidence that he dreams of battles in which he... wins, it is not for nothing that his dreams draw him into the “wonderful world of worries and battles.” He is convinced that he could be “in the land of his fathers, not one of the last daredevils.” Although fate did not allow Mtsyri to experience the rapture of battle, with all his feelings he is a warrior. He was distinguished by his stern restraint even from his childhood. The young man, proud of this, says: “Do you remember, in my childhood I never knew tears.” He gives vent to tears only during his escape, because no one sees them.
The tragic loneliness in the monastery strengthened Mtsyri's will. It is no coincidence that he fled from the monastery on a stormy night: what frightened the fearful monks filled his heart with a feeling of brotherhood with the thunderstorm. Mtsyri's courage and fortitude are most clearly demonstrated in the battle with the leopard. He was not afraid of the grave, because he knew; returning to the monastery is a continuation of previous suffering. The tragic ending indicates that the approach of death does not weaken the spirit of the hero and the power of his freedom-loving patriotism. The old monk's admonitions do not make him repent. Even now he would “trade paradise and eternity” for a few minutes of life among his loved ones (poems that displeased the censorship). It was not his fault if he failed to join the ranks of the fighters for what he considered his sacred duty: the circumstances turned out to be insurmountable, and he “argued with fate” in vain. Defeated, he is not spiritually broken and remains a positive image of our literature, and his masculinity, integrity, heroism were a reproach to the fragmented hearts of fearful and inactive contemporaries from the noble society. The Caucasian landscape is introduced into the poem mainly as a means of revealing the image of the hero.
Despising his surroundings, Mtsyri feels only a kinship with nature. Imprisoned in a monastery, he compares himself to a pale, typical leaf growing between damp slabs. Having broken free, he, along with the sleepy flowers, raises his head when the east turns rich. A child of nature, he falls to the ground and, like a fairy-tale hero, learns the secret of bird songs, the mysteries of their prophetic chirping. He understands the dispute between the stream and the stones, the thought of separated rocks yearning to meet. His gaze is sharpened: he notices the shine of the snake’s scales and the shimmer of silver on the fur of the leopard, he sees the jagged teeth of distant mountains and a pale strip “between the dark sky and earth”, it seems to him that his “diligent gaze” could follow the flight of angels through the transparent blue of the sky . (The verse of the poem also corresponds to the character of the hero). Lermontov's poem continues the traditions of advanced romanticism; Mtsyri, full of fiery passions, gloomy and lonely, revealing his “soul” in a confessional story, is perceived as the hero of romantic poems.
However, Lermontov, who created “Mtsyri” in those years when the realistic novel “A Hero of Our Time” was also being created, introduces features into his work that are not present in his earlier poems. If the past of the heroes of “Confession” and “Boyar Orsha” remains completely unknown, and we do not know the social conditions that shaped their characters, then the lines about Mtsyri’s unhappy childhood and fatherland help to better understand the hero’s experiences and thoughts. The very form of confession, characteristic of romantic poems, is associated with the desire to reveal deeper - to “tell the soul.” This psychologism of the work and the detailing of the hero’s experiences are natural for the poet, who at the same time was creating a socio-psychological novel. The combination of abundant metaphors of a romantic nature in the confession itself (images of fire, ardor) with the realistically accurate and poetically sparse speech of the introduction is expressive. (“Once upon a time a Russian general ... “)
The romantic poem testified to the growth of realistic tendencies in Lermontov’s work. Lermontov entered Russian literature as a successor to the traditions of Pushkin and the Decembrist poets, and at the same time as a new link in the chain of development of national culture. According to Belinsky, he introduced his own “Lermontov element” into national literature. Briefly explaining what should be included in this definition, the critic noted the “original living thought” in his poems as the first characteristic feature of the poet’s creative heritage. Belinsky repeated: “Everything breathes with original and creative thought.”
Conclusion
A romantic hero, no matter who he is - a rebel, a loner, a dreamer or a noble romantic - is always an exceptional person, with indomitable passions, he is always internally strong. This person has a pathetic, appealing speech.
We looked at two romantic heroes: Vladimir Lensky A. Pushkin and Mtsyri M. Lermontov. They are typical romantic heroes of their time.
Romantics are characterized by confusion and confusion in front of the world around them, and the tragedy of the individual’s fate. Romantic poets deny reality; the idea of two worlds was present in all works. In addition, the romantic artist never tried to accurately reproduce reality, because it was more important for him to express his attitude towards it, moreover, to create his own, fictional image of the world, often based on the principle of contrast with the surrounding life, in order to convey through this fiction, through contrast to the reader both his ideal and his rejection of the world he denies.
The Romantics sought to free the individual from superstitions and power, because for them every person is unique and unrepeatable, they opposed vulgarity and evil. They are characterized by the depiction of strong passions, spiritualized, and healing nature, which was also not realistic: the landscape in their works is either very bright, or, on the contrary, thickening the colors, it is devoid of halftones. So they tried to better convey the feelings of the characters. Here are the names of the best romantic writers in the world: Novalis, Jean Paul, Hoffmann, W. Wordsworth, W. Scott, J. Byron, V. Hugo, A. Lamartine, A. Miskevich, E. Poe, G. Melville and our Russian poets - M.Yu. Lermontov, F.I. Tyutchev, A.S. Pushkin.
In our country, romanticism appeared at the beginning of the 11th century. The development of romanticism occurred inseparably from the general movement of European romantic literature, but the work of our romantics has its own specifics, explained by the peculiarities of national history. In Russia, important events that had a huge impact on the entire course of artistic development of our country were the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Decembrist uprising in December 1825.
The restless, rebellious nature of the romantic movement at that time could not have been better suited to the atmosphere of national upsurge, the thirst for renewal and transformation of life that awakened in Russian society, and in particular the romantic poets.
References
1. Belinsky V.G. Articles about Lermontov. - M., 1986. - P.85 - 126.
2. Belskaya L.L. The motive of loneliness in Russian poetry: From Lermontov to Mayakovsky. - M.: Russian speech, 2001. - 163 p. .
3. Blagoy D.D. Lermontov and Pushkin: Life and work of M.Yu. Lermontov. - M., 1941. - P.23-83
4.Russian literature of the 19th century: Large educational reference book. M.: Bustard, 2004. - 692 p.
5. Nightingale N. I am Roman A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". - M.: Education, 2000. - 111 p.
6.Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2006. - 492 p.
7. Shevelev E. Restless genius. - St. Petersburg, 2003. - 183 p.
Solovey N.Ya Roman A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". – M., 2000. – 45 p. Belinsky V.G. Articles about Lermontov. – M., 1986. – P. 85 – 126
Russian literature of the 19th century: Large educational reference book. M.: Bustard, 2004. – P. 325
The basis of romanticism as a literary movement is the idea of the superiority of spirit over matter, the idealization of everything mental: romantic writers believed that the spiritual principle, also called truly human, must necessarily be higher and more worthy than the world around it, than the tangible. The society around the hero is also commonly referred to as this “matter”.
The main conflict of the romantic hero
Thus, the main conflict of romanticism is the so-called. conflict of “personality and society”: the romantic hero, as a rule, is lonely and misunderstood, he considers himself superior to the people around him who do not value him. From the classical image of the romantic hero, two very important archetypes of world literature were later formed, the superman and the superfluous man (often the first image smoothly turns into the second).
Romantic literature does not have clear genre boundaries; in the romantic spirit one can maintain a ballad (Zhukovsky), a poem (Lermontov, Byron) and a novel (Pushkin, Lermontov). The main thing in romanticism is not the form, but the mood.
However, if we remember that romanticism is traditionally divided into two directions: “mystical” German, originating from Schiller, and freedom-loving English, the founder of which was Byron, we can trace its main genre features.
Features of the genres of romantic literature
Mystical romanticism is often characterized by a genre ballads, which allows you to fill the work with various “otherworldly” elements that seem to be on the verge of life and death. It is this genre that Zhukovsky uses: his ballads “Svetlana” and “Lyudmila” are largely dedicated to the dreams of the heroines, in which they imagine death.
Another genre used for both mystical and freedom-loving romanticism poem. The main romantic writer of poems was Byron. In Russia, his traditions were continued by Pushkin’s poems “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “Gypsies,” which are usually called Byronic, and Lermontov’s poems “Mtsyri” and “Demon.” There are many possible assumptions in a poem, which is why this genre is especially convenient.
Pushkin and Lermontov also offer the public a genre novel, maintained in the traditions of freedom-loving romanticism. Their main characters, Onegin and Pechorin, are ideal romantic heroes. .
Both of them are smart and talented, both consider themselves superior to the surrounding society - this is the image of a superman. The goal of such a hero’s life is not the accumulation of material wealth, but serving the high ideals of humanism and developing one’s capabilities.
However, society does not accept them either, they turn out to be unnecessary and misunderstood in the false and deceitful high society, they have nowhere to realize their abilities, thus the tragic romantic hero gradually becomes a “superfluous person.”
Who is a romantic hero and what is he like?
This is an individualist. A superman who has lived through two stages: before colliding with reality, he lives in a “pink” state, he is overcome by the desire for achievement, to change the world; after colliding with reality, he continues to consider this world both vulgar and boring, but he does not become a skeptic or a pessimist. With a clear understanding that nothing can be changed, the desire for achievement degenerates into a desire for danger.
The Romantics could attach eternal lasting value to every little thing, every concrete fact, every single thing. Joseph de Maistre calls this “the paths of Providence,” Germaine de Stael calls it “the fruitful womb of the immortal universe.” Chateaubriand in The Genius of Christianity, in a book dedicated to history, directly points to God as the beginning of historical time. Society appears as an unshakable connection, “a thread of life that connects us with our ancestors and which we must extend to our descendants.” Only a person’s heart, and not his mind, can understand and hear the voice of the Creator, through the beauty of nature, through deep feelings. Nature is divine, a source of harmony and creativity, and its metaphors are often carried into the political lexicon by romantics. For romantics, a tree becomes a symbol of clan, spontaneous development, perception of the juices of the native land, a symbol of national unity. The more innocent and sensitive a person’s nature, the easier he hears the voice of God. A child, a woman, a noble youth more often than others perceives the immortality of the soul and the value of eternal life. The thirst for bliss among the romantics is not limited to the idealistic desire for the Kingdom of God after death.
In addition to mystical love for God, a person needs real, earthly love. Unable to possess the object of his passion, the romantic hero became an eternal martyr, doomed to wait for a meeting with his beloved in the afterlife, “for great love is worthy of immortality when it costs a person his life.”
The problem of personality development and education occupies a special place in the work of romantics. Childhood is devoid of laws; its instantaneous impulses violate public morality, obeying its own rules of children's play. In an adult, similar reactions lead to death, to the condemnation of the soul. In search of the heavenly kingdom, a person must comprehend the laws of duty and morality, only then can he hope for eternal life. Since duty is dictated to romantics by their desire to gain eternal life, the fulfillment of duty gives personal happiness in its deepest and most powerful manifestation. To the moral duty is added the duty of deep feelings and sublime interests. Without mixing the merits of different sexes, romantics advocate the equality of spiritual development of men and women. In the same way, civic duty is dictated by love for God and his institutions. Personal aspiration finds its completion in a common cause, in the aspiration of the whole nation, all humanity, the whole world.
Every culture has had its own romantic hero, but Byron gave the typical representation of the romantic hero in his work "Charold Harold". He put on the mask of his hero (suggests that there is no distance between the hero and the author) and managed to correspond to the romantic canon.
All romantic works are distinguished by characteristic features:
Firstly, in every romantic work there is no distance between the hero and the author.
Secondly, the author does not judge the hero, but even if something bad is said about him, the plot is structured in such a way that the hero is not to blame. The plot in a romantic work is usually romantic. Romantics also build a special relationship with nature; they like storms, thunderstorms, and disasters.
The moral pathos of the romantics was associated, first of all, with the affirmation of the value of the individual, which was embodied in the images of romantic heroes. The first, most striking type is the loner hero, the outcast hero, who is usually called the Byronic hero. The opposition of the poet to the crowd, the hero to the mob, the individual to a society that does not understand and persecutes him is a characteristic feature of romantic literature.
About such a hero E. Kozhina wrote: “A man of the romantic generation, a witness to bloodshed, cruelty, the tragic destinies of people and entire nations, striving for the bright and heroic, but paralyzed in advance by the pitiful reality, out of hatred for the bourgeoisie, elevating the knights of the Middle Ages to a pedestal and even more acutely aware in front of their monolithic figures is his own duality, inferiority and instability, a man who is proud of his “I”, because only it sets him apart from the philistines, and at the same time is burdened by him, a man who combines protest, and powerlessness, and naive illusions, and pessimism, and unspent energy, and passionate lyricism - this man is present in all the romantic paintings of the 1820s.”
The dizzying change of events inspired, gave rise to hopes for change, awakened dreams, but sometimes led to despair. The slogans of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity proclaimed by the revolution opened up scope for the human spirit. However, it soon became clear that these principles were not feasible. Having generated unprecedented hopes, the revolution did not live up to them. It was discovered early that the resulting freedom was not only good. It also manifested itself in cruel and predatory individualism. The post-revolutionary order was less like the kingdom of reason that the thinkers and writers of the Enlightenment dreamed of. The cataclysms of the era influenced the mindset of the entire romantic generation. The mood of romantics constantly fluctuates between delight and despair, inspiration and disappointment, fiery enthusiasm and truly world-wide sorrow. The feeling of absolute and boundless personal freedom is adjacent to the awareness of its tragic insecurity.
S. Frank wrote that “the 19th century opens with a feeling of “world sorrow.” In the worldview of Byron, Leopardi, Alfred Musset - here in Russia in Lermontov, Baratynsky, Tyutchev - in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, in the tragic music of Beethoven, in the terrible fantasy of Hoffmann, in the sad irony of Heine - a new consciousness of the orphanhood of man in the world, of tragic impossibility is heard his hopes, the hopeless contradiction between the intimate needs and hopes of the human heart and the cosmic and social conditions of human existence.”
Indeed, doesn’t Schopenhauer himself speak about the pessimism of his views, whose teaching is painted in gloomy tones, and who constantly says that the world is filled with evil, meaninglessness, misfortune, that life is suffering: “If the immediate and immediate goal of our life is not there is suffering, then our existence represents the most stupid and inexpedient phenomenon. For it is absurd to admit that the endless suffering flowing from the essential needs of life, with which the world is filled, was aimless and purely accidental. Although each individual misfortune seems to be an exception, misfortune in general is the rule.”
The life of the human spirit among the romantics is contrasted with the baseness of material existence. From the feeling of his ill-being, the cult of a unique individual personality was born. She was perceived as the only support and as the only point of reference for life values. Human individuality was thought of as an absolutely valuable principle, torn out from the surrounding world and in many ways opposed to it.
The hero of romantic literature becomes a person who has broken away from old ties, asserting his absolute dissimilarity from all others. For this reason alone, she is exceptional. Romantic artists, as a rule, avoided depicting ordinary and ordinary people. The main characters in their artistic work are lonely dreamers, brilliant artists, prophets, individuals endowed with deep passions and titanic power of feelings. They may be villains, but never mediocre. Most often they are endowed with a rebellious consciousness.
The gradations of disagreement with the world order among such heroes can be different: from the rebellious restlessness of Rene in Chateaubriand’s novel of the same name to the total disappointment in people, reason and the world order, characteristic of many of Byron’s heroes. The romantic hero is always in a state of some kind of spiritual limit. His senses are heightened. The contours of the personality are determined by the passion of nature, the insatiable desires and aspirations. The romantic personality is exceptional due to its original nature and is therefore completely individual.
The exclusive intrinsic value of individuality did not even allow the thought of its dependence on surrounding circumstances. The starting point of a romantic conflict is the individual’s desire for complete independence, the assertion of the primacy of free will over necessity. The discovery of the intrinsic value of the individual was an artistic achievement of romanticism. But it led to the aestheticization of individuality. The very originality of the individual was already becoming a subject of aesthetic admiration. Breaking free from his surroundings, the romantic hero could sometimes manifest himself in violating prohibitions, in individualism and selfishness, or even simply in crimes (Manfred, Corsair or Cain in Byron). The ethical and aesthetic in assessing a person might not coincide. In this, the romantics differed greatly from the enlighteners, who, on the contrary, completely merged the ethical and aesthetic principles in their assessment of the hero.
The enlighteners of the 18th century created many positive heroes who were carriers of high moral values and, in their opinion, embodied reason and natural norms. Thus, D. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver became symbols of the new, “natural,” rational hero. Of course, the true hero of the Enlightenment is Goethe's Faust.
A romantic hero is not just a positive hero, he is not even always positive; a romantic hero is a hero who reflects the poet’s longing for an ideal. After all, the question of whether the Demon in Lermontov or Conrad in Byron’s “Corsair” is positive or negative does not arise at all - they are majestic, containing in their appearance, in their deeds, indomitable strength of spirit. A romantic hero, as V. G. Belinsky wrote, is “a person who relies on himself,” a person who opposes himself to the entire world around him.
An example of a romantic hero is Julien Sorel from Stendhal's novel The Red and the Black. The personal fate of Julien Sorel was closely dependent on this change in historical weather. From the past he borrows his internal code of honor, the present condemns him to dishonor. According to his inclinations as a “man of 1993”, a fan of revolutionaries and Napoleon, he was “too late to be born”. The time has passed when positions were won through personal valor, courage, and intelligence. Nowadays, for the “hunt for happiness,” the plebeian is offered the only help that is in use among the children of timelessness: calculating and hypocritical piety. The color of luck has changed, as when turning a roulette wheel: today, in order to win, you need to bet not on red, but on black. And the young man, obsessed with the dream of glory, is faced with a choice: either to disappear into obscurity, or to try to assert himself by adapting to his age, putting on a “uniform of the times” - a cassock. He turns away from his friends and serves those whom he despises in his soul; an atheist, he pretends to be a saint; a fan of the Jacobins - trying to penetrate the circle of aristocrats; being endowed with a sharp mind, he agrees with fools. Realizing that “everyone is for himself in this desert of selfishness called life,” he rushed into battle in the hope of winning with the weapons forced upon him.
And yet, Sorel, having taken the path of adaptation, did not completely become an opportunist; Having chosen the methods of winning happiness accepted by everyone around him, he did not fully share their morality. And the point here is not simply that a gifted young man is immeasurably smarter than the mediocrities in whose service he is. His hypocrisy itself is not humiliated submission, but a kind of challenge to society, accompanied by a refusal to recognize the right of the “masters of life” to respect and their claims to set moral principles for their subordinates. The top are the enemy, vile, insidious, vindictive. Taking advantage of their favor, Sorel, however, does not know that he owes his conscience to them, since, even while treating a capable young man kindly, they see him not as a person, but as an efficient servant.
An ardent heart, energy, sincerity, courage and strength of character, a morally healthy attitude towards the world and people, a constant need for action, for work, for the fruitful work of the intellect, humane responsiveness to people, respect for ordinary workers, love for nature, beauty in life and art, all this distinguished Julien’s nature, and he had to suppress all this in himself, trying to adapt to the animal laws of the world around him. This attempt was unsuccessful: “Julien retreated before the judgment of his conscience, he could not overcome his craving for justice.”
Prometheus became one of the favorite symbols of romanticism, embodying courage, heroism, self-sacrifice, unbending will and intransigence. An example of a work based on the myth of Prometheus is the poem by P.B. Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound", which is one of the poet's most significant works. Shelley changed the outcome of the mythological plot, in which, as is known, Prometheus nevertheless reconciled with Zeus. The poet himself wrote: “I was against such a pitiful outcome as the reconciliation of a fighter for humanity with his oppressor.” Shelley creates from the image of Prometheus an ideal hero, punished by the gods for violating their will and helping people. In Shelley's poem, the torment of Prometheus is rewarded with the triumph of his liberation. The fantastic creature Demogorgon, appearing in the third part of the poem, overthrows Zeus, proclaiming: “There is no return for the tyranny of heaven, and there is no successor for you.”
Female images of romanticism are also contradictory, but extraordinary. Many authors of the Romantic era returned to the story of Medea. The Austrian writer of the era of romanticism F. Grillparzer wrote the trilogy “The Golden Fleece”, which reflected the “tragedy of fate” characteristic of German romanticism. “The Golden Fleece” is often called the most complete dramatic version of the “biography” of the ancient Greek heroine. In the first part - the one-act drama "The Guest" we see Medea as a very young girl, forced to endure her tyrant father. She prevents the murder of Phrixus, their guest, who fled to Colchis on a golden ram. It was he who sacrificed the golden fleece ram to Zeus in gratitude for saving him from death and hung the golden fleece in the sacred grove of Ares. The seekers of the Golden Fleece appear before us in the four-act play “The Argonauts.” In it, Medea desperately but unsuccessfully tries to fight her feelings for Jason, against her will, becoming his accomplice. In the third part, the five-act tragedy “Medea,” the story reaches its climax. Medea, brought by Jason to Corinth, appears to others as a stranger from barbarian lands, a sorceress and sorceress. In the works of romantics, it is quite common to see the phenomenon that foreignness lies at the heart of many insoluble conflicts. Returning to his homeland in Corinth, Jason is ashamed of his girlfriend, but still refuses to fulfill Creon’s demand and drive her away. And only having fallen in love with his daughter, Jason himself began to hate Medea.
The main tragic theme of Grillparzer's Medea is her loneliness, because even her own children are ashamed and avoid her. Medea is not destined to get rid of this punishment even in Delphi, where she fled after the murder of Creusa and her sons. Grillparzer did not at all seek to justify his heroine, but it was important for him to discover the motives for her actions. Grillparzer's Medea, the daughter of a distant barbarian country, has not accepted the fate prepared for her, she rebels against someone else's way of life, and this greatly attracted romantics.
The image of Medea, striking in its inconsistency, is seen by many in a transformed form in the heroines of Stendhal and Barbet d'Aurevilly. Both writers portray the deadly Medea in different ideological contexts, but invariably endow her with a sense of alienation, which turns out to be detrimental to the integrity of the individual and, therefore, entails itself death.
Many literary scholars correlate the image of Medea with the image of the heroine of the novel “Bewitched” by Barbet d’Aurevilly, Jeanne-Madeleine de Feardan, as well as with the image of the famous heroine of Stendhal’s novel “The Red and the Black” Matilda. Here we see three main components of the famous myth: unexpected, stormy the birth of passion, magical actions with either good or harmful intentions, the revenge of an abandoned witch - a rejected woman.
These are just some examples of romantic heroes and heroines.
The revolution proclaimed individual freedom, opening up “unexplored new roads” before it, but this same revolution gave birth to the bourgeois order, the spirit of acquisition and selfishness. These two sides of personality (the pathos of freedom and individualism) manifest themselves very complexly in the romantic concept of the world and man. V. G. Belinsky found a wonderful formula when speaking about Byron (and his hero): “this is a human personality, indignant against the general and, in his proud rebellion, leaning on himself.”
However, in the depths of romanticism, another type of personality is formed. This is, first of all, the personality of an artist - a poet, musician, painter, also elevated above the crowd of ordinary people, officials, property owners, and secular loafers. Here we are no longer talking about the claims of an exceptional individual, but about the rights of a true artist to judge the world and people.
The romantic image of the artist (for example, among German writers) is not always adequate to Byron’s hero. Moreover, Byron's individualist hero is contrasted with a universal personality that strives for the highest harmony (as if absorbing all the diversity of the world). The universality of such a personality is the antithesis of any limitation of a person, whether associated with narrow mercantile interests, or with a thirst for profit that destroys personality, etc.
Romantics did not always correctly assess the social consequences of revolutions. But they were acutely aware of the anti-aesthetic nature of society, which threatens the very existence of art, in which “heartless purity” reigns. The romantic artist, unlike some writers of the second half of the 19th century, did not at all seek to hide from the world in an “ivory tower.” But he felt tragically lonely, suffocating from this loneliness.
Thus, in romanticism two antagonistic concepts of personality can be distinguished: individualistic and universalistic. Their fate in the subsequent development of world culture was ambiguous. The rebellion of Byron's individualist hero was beautiful and captivated his contemporaries, but at the same time its futility was quickly revealed. History has harshly condemned the claims of an individual to create his own court. On the other hand, the idea of universality reflected a longing for the ideal of a comprehensively developed person, free from the limitations of bourgeois society.