It was “collectivist” themes that became a priority in the verbal art of the 30s: collectivization, industrialization, the struggle of a revolutionary hero against class enemies, socialist construction, the leading role of the Communist Party in society, etc.
However, this does not mean at all that in the works that were “party” in spirit, there were no notes of writerly anxiety about the moral health of society, and the traditional questions of Russian literature about the fate of the “little man” were not heard. Let's give just one example.
In 1932, V. Kataev created a typically “collectivist” industrial novel “Time, Forward!” about how the world record for mixing concrete was broken during the construction of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. In one of the episodes a woman is described carrying boards.
“Here, for example, is one.
In a pink woolen scarf, in a gathered country skirt. She can barely walk, stepping heavily on her heels, staggering under the weight of the boards bending like springs on her shoulder. She tries to keep up with others, but constantly loses step; she stumbles, she is afraid to fall behind, she quickly wipes her face with the end of her handkerchief as she walks.
Her belly is especially high and ugly. It's clear that she's on last days. Maybe she has hours left.
Why is she here? What is she thinking? What does it have to do with everything around it?
Unknown."
Not a word is said about this woman in the novel. But the image has been created, the questions have been posed. And the reader knows how to think... Why does this woman work together with everyone else? For what reasons did people accept her into the team?
The example given is no exception. In most significant works of “official” Soviet literature of the 30s, one can find equally stunningly truthful episodes. Such examples convince us that today’s attempts to present the pre-war period in literature as an “era of silent books” are not entirely valid.
In the literature of the 30s there was a variety of artistic systems. Along with the development of socialist realism, the development of traditional realism was obvious. It manifested itself in the works of emigrant writers, in the works of writers M. Bulgakov, M. Zoshchenko, and others who lived in the country. Obvious features of romanticism are noticeable in the work of A. Green. A. Fadeev and A. Platonov were no strangers to romanticism. In the literature of the early 30s, the OBERIU direction appeared (D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, K. Vaginov, N. Zabolotsky, etc.), close to Dadaism, surrealism, theater of the absurd, and stream of consciousness literature.
The literature of the 30s is characterized by active interaction between different types of literature. For example, the biblical epic manifested itself in the lyrics of A. Akhmatova; M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” has many of its features in common with dramatic works - primarily with I. V. Goethe’s tragedy “Faust”.
During the specified period literary development The traditional system of genres is being transformed. New types of novels are emerging (primarily the so-called “industrial novel”). The plot outline of a novel often consists of a series of essays.
Writers of the 30s were very diverse in the compositional solutions they used. “Production” novels most often depict a panorama of the labor process, linking the development of the plot with the stages of construction. The composition of a philosophical novel (V. Nabokov performed in this genre variety) is connected, rather, not with external action, but with the struggle in the soul of the character. In “The Master and Margarita” M. Bulgakov presents a “novel within a novel”, and neither of the two plots can be considered leading.
Writers A. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov
The 20th century began rapidly for Russia. In a short period of time, the country experienced the Russian-Japanese War (1904-1905), the first bourgeois-democratic revolution (1905-1907) and the subsequent years of reaction, the first imperialist war (1914-1918), the February revolution of 1917, which then outgrew in the October Socialist Revolution.
One can have different attitudes towards the significant date of October 1917, but no matter how one evaluates it, from that time a new era began.
During 1918-1919 The Soviet government carried out work to socialize private property: the approval of the State Publishing House, the nationalization of the Tretyakov Gallery, theaters, and the photo and film industry. Much attention focused on improving literacy, a law was passed on compulsory literacy training for the entire population of the republic from 8 to 50 years old, and education was declared free.
However, the overthrown government did not want to accept its defeat. She responded to violence with violence. A bloody civil war began.
The merciless war, which claimed numerous lives of compatriots, had a detrimental effect on literature and art. The production of newspapers and books decreased sharply. Here are comparative figures: in 1913, 34.5 thousand publications were published in the country, and in 1920 -3260, that is, it decreased by more than 10 times. There was a shortage of paper in the country. Writers had to speak to literature lovers in cafes and restaurants. The literary process of this period was distinguished by great complexity and contradictory views of writers on the tasks of art, a variety of movements and groups. The tone was set at this time by the writers of Proletkult, who united back in October 1917 at a conference of proletarian writers in Petrograd.
In the first post-revolutionary years, a group of futurists who welcomed Soviet power was still a resounding success. True, V. Mayakovsky, V. Kamensky, V. Khlebnikov, and II Aseev had to abandon some of their previous positions. Since 1923, their group began to be called “LEF” (“Left Front of Art”).
Among the most significant literary groups, one should also highlight the Moscow Association of Proletarian Writers (1923, MAPP), the All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers (1921, VOKP), "Serapion's Brothers" (1921), the Constructivist Literary Center (1924, LCC), "Pereval" (1924 ), Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (1925, RAPP). The largest was RAPP, and then VOAPP (All-Union Association of Proletarian Writers' Associations). This included many writers who stood at the origins new literature: A. Serafimovich, A. Fadeev, D. Furmanov, F. Panferov, A. Afinogenov, V. Stavsky. In 1930, V. Mayakovsky joined the organization.
Immediately after the end of the civil war and the adoption of the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921), a new stage of life in the Soviet country began. Private publishing was again allowed. As a result, the emergence of new literary magazines: “Print and Revolution”, “Krasnaya Nov” (1921), “Young Guard”, “Siberian Lights” (1922), “Krasnaya Niva”, “Spotlight”, “On Duty”, “ Lef" (1923), "October", "Star" (1924), " New world"(1925). Another literary group was formed - the Imagists (1919-1927). In terms of experimentation, it was not inferior to the Futurists. There were not many permanent members of the group: S. Yesenin, V. Shershenevich, A. Mariengof, A. Kusikov , R. Ivnev, but other writers also participated in their publishing houses “Imaginists”, “Chikhi-Pikhi” and in the magazine “Hotel for Travelers in the Beautiful”.
The poetry of the Imagists has much in common with the poetry of the Futurists. The only difference was that the Imagists contrasted the passion for words with the passion for metaphor.
The 20s were a time when thousands of cultural figures were forced to leave the country. Among them are musicians, ballet masters, architects, sculptors, directors, actors, singers, painters, philosophers, scientists, who were the pride of national culture. Many major writers ended up abroad: I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, L. Andreev, K. Balmont, B. Zaitsev, A. Remizov, I. Shmelev, I. Severyanin, Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, A. Averchenko , Sasha Cherny, Teffi, E. Zamyatin and others. Domestic literature seemed to split into two parts: Soviet and Russian abroad.
The following remained in Soviet Russia: M. Gorky, A. Blok, S. Yesenin, V. Bryusov, V. Mayakovsky, V. Veresaev, A. Bely, A. Akhmatova, S. Sergeev-Tsensky, M. Prishvin, V. Khlebnikov , A. Malyshkin, D. Bedny, A. Serafimovich, K. Chukovsky, K. Paustovsky and others. Although their attitude towards Soviet power was contradictory and complex, many of the new trends were not accepted, but in the end the final choice was made by them , and they became the founders of new literature.
By the end of the 1930s, the country's economic power in all sectors of the national economy had noticeably strengthened, and its international authority had grown. In just 10-15 years, heavy industry, mechanical engineering, chemical production, and the defense industry were created almost anew, and the famous GOELRO plan was implemented. The concrete expression of these achievements was sung in poetry and songs by Magnitka and Dneproges, Uralmash and the Khibiny plant, Kuzbass and automobile factories in Moscow and Gorky, tractor factories in Stalingrad, Chelyabinsk and Kharkov, as well as Rostselmash, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Turksib, Bolshoi Fergana rope, dozens of research institutes, underground metro roads in the capital, high-rise buildings, higher educational establishments... It was rightly sung then: “The works of centuries are done in years.” The Soviet state came out on top in Europe and second in the world in terms of industrial output. The country of carts, the country of bast shoes, became a powerful industrial power. Millions of people, sincerely believing in a bright future, were actively involved in the work of implementing socialist transformations.
The village also underwent a great reconstruction. However, in the collectivization of agriculture, serious mistakes were made, which were expressed in forceful methods of organizing collective farms. The idea of collectivization, which was good in itself and was carried out in practice using far from humane methods, caused discontent among the working peasantry.
Strict centralization and command methods of government, which bore fruit in the early days of industrialization, led to the emergence of an administrative-command system of party-state leadership of the country, which ultimately led to the emergence of a cult of personality and a violation of the rule of law. Many thousands of both party and non-party Soviet people were subjected to massive repression.
The appearance of the country changed, and the creative searches of writers also changed. In August 1934, the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers took place. The main report was made by M. Gorky, who highlighted the state of affairs in the country and outlined the prospects for the development of literature. Writers from 52 nationalities took part in the congress. Those gathered adopted the Charter of their Union, on the basis of which 2,500 people were accepted into members of the writers' organization.
Related materials:
Despite the totalitarian state control over all spheres of cultural development of society, the art of the USSR in the 30s of the 20th century did not lag behind the world trends of that time. The introduction of technological progress, as well as new trends from the West, contributed to the flourishing of literature, music, theater and cinema.
A distinctive feature of the Soviet literary process of this period was the confrontation of writers into two opposing groups: some writers supported Stalin’s policies and glorified the world socialist revolution, others resisted the authoritarian regime in every possible way and condemned the inhumane policies of the leader.
Russian literature of the 30s experienced its second heyday, and entered the history of world literature as a period Silver Age. At this time, unsurpassed masters of words were creating: A. Akhmatova, K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Mayakovsky.
Russian prose also showed its literary power: the works of I. Bunin, V. Nabokov, M. Bulgakov, A. Kuprin, I. Ilf and E. Petrov have firmly entered the guild of world literary treasures. Literature during this period reflected the full reality of state and public life.
The works highlighted the issues that worried the public at that unpredictable time. Many Russian writers were forced to flee from totalitarian persecution by the authorities to other states, however, they did not interrupt their writing activities abroad.
In the 30s, the Soviet theater experienced a period of decline. First of all, theater was seen as the main instrument of ideological propaganda. Over time, Chekhov's immortal productions were replaced by pseudo-realistic performances glorifying the leader and the Communist Party.
Outstanding actors who tried in every possible way to preserve the originality of the Russian theater were subjected to severe repression by the father of the Soviet people, among them V. Kachalov, N. Cherkasov, I. Moskvin, M. Ermolova. The same fate befell the most talented director V. Meyerhold, who created his own theater school, which was worthy competition for the progressive West.
With the development of radio, the age of pop music began in the USSR. Songs that were broadcast on the radio and recorded on records became available to a wide audience of listeners. Mass song in the Soviet Union was represented by the works of D. Shostakovich, I. Dunaevsky, I. Yuryev, V. Kozin.
The Soviet government completely rejected the jazz direction, which was popular in Europe and the USA (so in the USSR the work of L. Utesov, the first Russian jazz performer, was ignored). Instead, musical works that glorified the socialist system and inspired the nation to work and exploits in the name of the great revolution were welcomed.
Film art in the USSR
The masters of Soviet cinema of this period were able to achieve significant heights in the development of this art form. D. Vetrov, G. Alexandrov, and A. Dovzhenko made a huge contribution to the development of cinema. Unsurpassed actresses - Lyubov Orlova, Rina Zelenaya, Faina Ranevskaya - became the symbol of Soviet cinema.
Many films, as well as other works of art, served the propaganda purposes of the Bolsheviks. But still, thanks to the skill of acting, the introduction of sound, high-quality scenery Soviet movies and in our time they evoke genuine admiration from their contemporaries. Such films as “Jolly Fellows”, “Spring”, “Foundling” and “Earth” became a real treasure of Soviet cinema.
In the literature of the thirties there were significant changes associated with the general historical process. The leading genre of the 30s was the novel. Literary scholars, writers, and critics have established the artistic method in literature. They gave it a precise definition: socialist realism. The goals and objectives of literature were determined by the Congress of Writers. M. Gorky made a report and identified the main theme of literature - labor.
Literature helped show achievements and educated a new generation. The main educational moment was construction sites. The character of a person was manifested in the team and work. A unique chronicle of this time consists of the works of M. Shaginyan “Hydrocentral”, I. Ehrenburg “The Second Day”, L. Leonov “Sot”, M. Sholokhov “Virgin Soil Upturned”, F. Panferov “Whetstones”. The historical genre developed (“Peter I” by A. Tolstoy, “Tsushima” by Novikov - Priboy, “Emelyan Pugachev” by Shishkov).
The problem of educating people was acute. She found her solution in the works: “People from the Outback” by Malyshkin, “Pedagogical Poem” by Makarenko.
In the form of a small genre, the art of observing life and the skills of concise and precise writing were especially successfully honed. Thus, the story and essay became not only an effective means of learning something new in fast-moving modernity, and at the same time the first attempt to generalize its leading trends, but also a laboratory of artistic and journalistic skill.
The abundance and efficiency of small genres made it possible to widely cover all aspects of life. The moral and philosophical content of the short story, the social and journalistic movement of thought in the essay, the sociological generalizations in the feuilleton - this is what marked the small types of prose of the 30s.
The outstanding short story writer of the 30s, A. Platonov, was primarily an artist-philosopher, who focused on themes of moral and humanistic sound. Hence his attraction to the genre of parable stories. The eventual moment in such a story is sharply weakened, as is the geographical flavor. The artist's attention is focused on the spiritual evolution of the character, depicted with subtle psychological mastery(“Fro”, “Immortality”, “In the Beautiful and furious world") Platonov takes man in the broadest philosophical and ethical terms. In an effort to comprehend the most general laws that govern him, the novelist does not ignore the conditions of the environment. The whole point is that his task is not to describe labor processes, but to comprehend the moral and philosophical side of man.
Small genres in the field of satire and humor are experiencing an evolution characteristic of the era of the 30s. M. Zoshchenko is most concerned about the problems of ethics, the formation of a culture of feelings and relationships. In the early 1930s, Zoshchenko created another type of hero - a man who has “lost his human form”, a “righteous man” (“The Goat”, “Terrible Night”). These heroes do not accept the morality of the environment, they have different ethical standards, they would like to live according to high morality. But their rebellion ends in failure. However, unlike the rebellion of the “victim” in Chaplin, which is always covered in compassion, the rebellion of Zoshchenko’s hero is devoid of tragedy: the individual is faced with the need for spiritual resistance to the morals and ideas of his environment, and the strict demands of the writer do not forgive her for compromise and capitulation. The appeal to the type of righteous heroes betrayed the eternal uncertainty of the Russian satirist in the self-sufficiency of art and was a kind of attempt to continue Gogol’s search positive hero, "living soul". However, one cannot help but notice: in the “sentimental stories” the writer’s artistic world has become bipolar; the harmony of meaning and image was disrupted, philosophical reflections revealed a preaching intention, the pictorial fabric became less dense. The word fused with the author's mask dominated; in style it was similar to stories; Meanwhile, the character (type) stylistically motivating the narrative has changed: he is an intellectual of average grade. The old mask turned out to be attached to the writer.
Zoshchenko's ideological and artistic restructuring is indicative in the sense that it is similar to a number of similar processes that took place in the works of his contemporaries. In particular, the same tendencies can be found in Ilf and Petrov - short story writers and feuilletonists. Along with satirical stories and feuilletons, their works are published, in a lyrical and humorous vein (“M.”, “Wonderful Guests,” “Tonya”). Starting from the second half of the 30s, stories appeared with a more radically updated plot and compositional design. The essence of this change was the introduction of a positive hero into the traditional form of a satirical story.
In the 1930s, the leading genre became the novel, represented by the epic novel, the socio-philosophical novel, the journalistic novel, and the psychological novel.
In the 1930s, it became increasingly common new type plot. The era is revealed through the history of any business at a plant, power plant, collective farm, etc. And that’s why fate attracts the author’s attention large number people, and none of the heroes anymore occupies a central position.
In “Hydrocentral” by M. Shaginyan, the “idea of planning” of economic management not only became the leading thematic center of the book, but also subordinated the main components of its structure. The plot in the novel corresponds to the stages of construction of a hydroelectric power station. The fates of the heroes associated with the construction of Mezinges are analyzed in detail in relation to the construction (the images of Arno Arevyan, Glavinge, teacher Malkhazyan).
In “Soti” by L. Leonov, the silence of silent nature is destroyed, the ancient monastery, from where sand and gravel was taken for construction, was eroded inside and out. The construction of a paper mill in Soti is presented as part of the systematic reconstruction of the country.
F. Gladkov’s new novel “Energy” depicts labor processes in incomparably more detail. F. Gladkov, when recreating pictures of industrial labor, uses new techniques and develops old ones that were in the outlines in “Cement” (extensive industrial landscapes created by the panning technique).
I. Ehrenburg’s novel “The Second Day” organically falls into the mainstream of the search for new forms of the major prose genre in order to reflect the new reality. This work is perceived as a lyrical and journalistic report, written directly in the midst of big affairs and events. The heroes of this novel (foreman Kolka Rzhanov, Vaska Smolin, Shor) oppose Volodya Safonov, who has chosen the side of the observer.
The principle of contrast is actually an important point in any work of art. In Ehrenburg's prose he found an original expression. This principle not only helped the writer to more fully show the diversity of life. He needed it to influence the reader. Amaze him with the free play of associations of witty paradoxes, the basis of which was contrast.
The affirmation of labor as creativity, the sublime depiction of production processes - all this changed the nature of conflicts and led to the formation of new types of novels. In the 30s, among the works, the type of social and philosophical novel (“Sot”), journalistic (“The Second Day”), and socio-psychological (“Energy”) stood out.
The poeticization of labor, combined with a passionate feeling of love for the native land, found its classic expression in the book of the Ural writer P. Bazhov “The Malachite Box”. This is not a novel or a story. But the book of fairy tales, held together by the fate of the same characters, gives a rare plot-compositional coherence and genre unity to the integrity of the author’s ideological and moral view.
In those years, there was also a line of socio-psychological (lyrical) novel, represented by “The Last of Udege” by A. Fadeev and the works of K. Paustovsky and M. Prishvin.
The novel “The Last of Udege” had not only educational value, like that of everyday ethnographers, but also, above all, artistic and aesthetic value. The action of “The Last of the Udege” takes place in the spring of 1919 in Vladivostok and in the areas of Suchan, Olga, and taiga villages covered by the partisan movement. But numerous retrospectives introduce readers to the panorama of the historical and political life of Primorye long before the “here and now” - on the eve of the First World War and February 1917. The narrative, especially from the second part, is epic in nature. All aspects of the novel's content are artistically significant, revealing the life of a wide variety of social circles. The reader finds himself in the rich house of the Gimmers, meets the democratically minded doctor Kostenetsky, his children - Seryozha and Elena (having lost her mother, she, the niece of Gimmer's wife, is brought up in his house). Fadeev clearly understood the truth of the revolution, so he brought his intellectual heroes to the Bolsheviks, which he also contributed to personal experience writer. He is with youth felt like a soldier of a party that is “always right,” and this belief is captured in the images of the heroes of the Revolution. In the images of the chairman of the partisan revolutionary committee Pyotr Surkov, his deputy Martemyanov, the representative of the underground regional party committee Alexei Churkin (Alyosha Malenky), the commissar of the partisan detachment Senya Kudryavy (the image is polemical in relation to Levinson), the commander Gladkikh showed that versatility of characters that allows you to see in the hero not functions of an opera, but of a person. Fadeev’s unconditional artistic discovery was the image of Elena; it should be noted the depth psychological analysis the emotional experiences of a teenage girl, her almost life-threatening attempt to get to know the world of the bottom, the search for social self-determination, the outbreak of feelings for Langovoy and disappointment in him. “With exhausted eyes and hands,” Fadeev writes about his heroine, “she caught this last warm breath of happiness, and happiness, like a dim evening star in the window, kept going away from her.” Almost a year of her life after the break with Langov “was imprinted in Lena’s memory as the most difficult and terrible period of her life.” “Her extreme, merciless loneliness in the world” pushes Lena to escape to her father, in Suchan, occupied by the Reds, with the help of Langovoy, who is devoted to her. Only there does calmness and confidence return to her, fueled by closeness to folk life(in the section devoted to “Destruction,” we have already discussed her perception of the people who gathered in the waiting room of her father, the doctor Kostenetsky). When she begins to work as a sister among women preparing to meet wounded sons, husbands, brothers, she was shocked by a quiet, soulful song:
You women pray for our sons.
“The women all sang, and it seemed to Lena that there was truth, and beauty, and happiness in the world.” She felt it in the people she met and now “in the hearts and voices of these women, singing about their murdered and fighting sons. More than ever before, Lena felt in her soul the possibility of truth, love and happiness, although she did not know how she could find them.”
In the supposed decision of the fate of the main romantic characters - Elena and Langovoy - in the interpretation of the difficult relationship between Vladimir Grigorievich and Martemyanov, the author’s humanistic pathos was fully revealed. Of course, in the humanistic aspect, the author also depicted the images of underground fighters and partisans, “ordinary” people losing loved ones in the terrible meat grinder of war (the scene of the death and funeral of Dmitry Ilyin); The author's passionate denial of cruelty colors the descriptions of the death throes of Ptashka-Ignat Sayenko, who was tortured to death in a White Guard dungeon. Contrary to the theory of “socialist humanism,” Fadeev’s humanistic pathos also extended to heroes of the opposite ideological camp. The same events in the life of the Udege are covered by Fadeev from different angles, giving the narrative a certain polyphony, and the narrator does not directly announce himself. This polyphony emerges especially clearly because the author took three “sources” of illumination of life, which in their totality creates a full-fledged idea of reality.
First of all, this is the perception of Sarla - the son of a tribe standing at a prehistoric stage of development; his thinking, despite the changes that have occurred in consciousness, bears the imprint of mythology. The second stylistic layer in the work is associated with the image of the experienced and rough Russian worker Martemyanov, who understood the soul, ingenuous and trusting, of the Udege people. Finally, the role of Udege Sergei Kostenetsky, an intelligent young man with a romantic perception of reality and a search for the meaning of life, is significant in revealing the world. Leading artistic principle the author of "The Last of the Udege" - revealing the pathos of the novel through an analysis of the psychological states of its characters. Russian Soviet literature adopted Tolstoy's principle of a multifaceted and psychologically convincing image of a person of a different nationality, and "The Last of the Udege" was a significant step in this direction, continuing Tolstoy's traditions (Fadeev especially appreciated "Hadji Murad").
The writer recreated the originality of thinking and feelings of a person who was at an almost primitive stage of development, as well as the feelings of a European who found himself in a primitive patriarchal world. The writer did a lot of work on studying the life of the Udege, accumulating material under the following headings: appearance features, clothing, social structure and family; beliefs, religious views and rituals; explanation of the words of the Udege tribe. The manuscripts of the novel show that Fadeev sought maximum accuracy of ethnographic coloring, although in some cases, by his own admission and the observations of readers, he deliberately deviated from it. He focused not so much on an accurate picture of the life of this particular people - the Udege, but rather on a generalized artistic depiction of the life and internal appearance of a person of the tribal system in the Far Eastern region: "... I considered myself entitled to also use materials about the life of other peoples when depicting the Udege people “- said Fadeev, who initially intended to give the novel the title “The Last of the Basins.”
In Fadeev’s plan, the theme of udege from the very beginning was an integral part of the theme of revolutionary transformation Far East, but his declarations remained unrealized: apparently, the instinct of the artist, who dreamed of “closing the day before yesterday and the tomorrow of humanity,” forced him to delve deeper into the description of the patriarchal world of the Udege. This fundamentally distinguishes his work from numerous ephemera of the 1930s, the authors of which were in a hurry to talk about the socialist transformation of the national outskirts. The concretization of the modern aspect of the plan was outlined by Fadeev only in 1932, when he decided to add an epilogue telling about the socialist novelty to the six planned parts of the novel (only three were written). However, in 1948 he abandoned this plan, chronologically limiting the concept of the novel to the events of the Civil War.
Significant works about the transformation of nature and the life of the national outskirts were the essay stories by K. Paustovsky “Kara-Bugaz”, “Colchis”, “Black Sea”. They showed a unique talent as a landscape writer.
The story "Kara-Bugaz" - about the development of deposits of Glauber's salt in the bay of the Caspian Sea - romance is transformed into a struggle with the desert: a person, conquering the earth, strives to outgrow himself. The writer combines in the story an artistic and visual element with plot action, scientific and popularization goals with artistic comprehension different human destinies colliding in the struggle to revive a barren, parched land, history and modernity, fiction and document, for the first time achieving multifaceted storytelling.
For Paustovsky, the desert is the personification of the destructive principles of existence, a symbol of entropy. For the first time, the writer touches with such certainty on environmental issues, one of the main ones in his work. The writer is increasingly attracted to everyday life in its simplest manifestations.
Social optimism predetermined the pathos of M. Prishvin’s works created during these years. It is the ideological, philosophical and ethical quest of the protagonist Kurymushka-Alpatov that is at the center of Prishvin’s autobiographical novel “Kashcheev’s Chain,” work on which began in 1922 and continued until the end of his life. Specific images here also carry a second mythological, fairy-tale plan (Adam, Marya Morevna, etc.). Man, according to the author, must break Kashcheev’s chain of evil and death, alienation and misunderstanding, free himself from the fetters that fetter life and consciousness. Boring everyday life needs to be turned into a daily celebration of vitality and harmony, into constant creativity. The writer contrasts the romantic rejection of the world with wise agreement with it, intense life-affirming work of thought and feeling, and the creation of joy. In the story “Zhen-Shen,” which also has autobiographical overtones, nature is recognized as a part of social existence. Chronological framework the stories are conventional. Her lyrical hero, unable to withstand the horrors of war, goes into the Manchurian forests. The plot of the story develops as if on two levels - concrete and symbolic. The first is dedicated to the hero’s wanderings in the Manchurian taiga, his meeting with the Chinese Louvain, their joint activities to create a deer nursery. The second one symbolically talks about the search for the meaning of life. The symbolic plane grows out of the real - with the help of various comparisons, allegories, and reinterpretations. A socio-philosophical interpretation of the meaning of life appears in descriptions of the activities of Louvain, a ginseng seeker. Delicate and mysterious in the eyes of people, the relict plant becomes a symbol of human self-determination in life.
The romantic concept of man and nature in Prishvin’s work enriched the romantic movement of literature in its own way. In the cycle of romantic miniatures “Phacelia”, analogies from human life and nature help to express the outburst of human vitality, the longing for lost happiness that separated the hero from the world (“River under the clouds”), and the awareness of the outcome of a life lived (“Forest Stream”, “Rivers of Flowers”), and the unexpected return of youth (“Late Spring”). Phacelia (melliferous grass) becomes a symbol of love and joy of life. “Phacelia” testified to Prishvin’s refusal to depict external plot action. Movement in a work is the movement of thoughts and feelings and the narrator.
In the 30s he worked on a major work - the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov. It's multifaceted philosophical novel. It brought together several creative trends characteristic of Bulgakov’s works of the 20s. The central place in the novel is occupied by the drama of a master artist who came into conflict with his time.
The novel was originally conceived as an apocryphal “gospel of the devil,” and the future title characters were absent from the first editions of the text. Over the years, the original plan became more complex and transformed, incorporating the fate of the writer himself. Later, the woman who became his third wife entered the novel - Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya. (Their acquaintance took place in 1929, the marriage was formalized in the fall of 1932.) A lonely writer (Master) and his faithful girlfriend (Margarita) will become no less important than the central characters in the world history of mankind.
The story of Satan's presence in Moscow in the 1930s echoes the legend of the appearance of Jesus two millennia ago. Just as they once did not recognize God, Muscovites do not recognize the devil, although Woland does not hide his well-known signs. Moreover, Woland meets seemingly enlightened heroes: the writer, editor of the anti-religious magazine Berlioz and the poet, author of the poem about Christ Ivan Bezrodny.
The events took place in front of many people and, nevertheless, remained not understood. And only the Master, in the novel he created, is given the opportunity to restore the meaningfulness and unity of the flow of history. With the creative gift of experience, the Master “guesses” the truth in the past. The accuracy of the penetration into historical reality, witnessed by Woland, thereby confirms the accuracy and adequacy of the Master’s description of the present. Following Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", Bulgakov's novel can be called, by well-known definition, an encyclopedia of Soviet life. Life and customs new Russia, human types and characteristic actions, clothing and food, methods of communication and occupations of people - all this is unfolded before the reader with deadly irony and at the same time piercing lyricism in the panorama of several May days. Bulgakov builds The Master and Margarita as a “novel within a novel.” Its action takes place in two times: in Moscow in the 1930s, where Satan appears to arrange the traditional spring full moon ball, and in the ancient city of Yershalaim, in which the trial of the “wandering philosopher” Yeshua takes place by the Roman procurator Pilate. What connects both plots is the modern and historical author of the novel about Pontius Pilate, the Master. The novel revealed the writer’s deep interest in issues of faith, religious or atheistic worldview. Connected by origin with a family of clergy, although in its “scientific” book version (Mikhail’s father is not a “father”, but a learned cleric), throughout his life Bulgakov seriously reflected on the problem of attitude towards religion, which in the thirties became closed to public discussion. In The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov brings to the fore the creative personality in the tragic 20th century, affirming, following Pushkin, the independence of man, his historical responsibility.
Throughout the 1930s, the range of topics developed by masters of historical fiction expanded significantly. This enrichment of topics occurs not only due to a chronologically greater coverage of various topics and moments in history. What is significant and important is that the very approach of literature to historical reality is changing, gradually becoming more mature, in-depth and versatile. IN artistic lighting new aspects of the past emerge. The creative aspirations of the novelists of the 20s were almost entirely confined to one main theme - the depiction of the struggle of various social groups. Now in the historical novel, in addition to this previous line, a new, fruitful and important ideological and thematic line is emerging: writers are increasingly turning to heroic story people's struggle for their independence, take up the coverage of the formation the most important stages national statehood, their books embody themes military glory, history of national culture.
In many ways, literature now solves the problem of a positive hero in a historical novel in a new way. The pathos of denial of the old world, which was, is imbued historical novel 20s, determined the predominance of a critical tendency in relation to the past. Along with overcoming such one-sidedness, new heroes enter the historical novel: outstanding statesmen, generals, scientists and artists.
The 30s were the time of summing up significant socio-historical, philosophical and ethical results in prose. It is no coincidence that all the major epics that began in the 20s (“Quiet Don”, “The Life of Klim Samgin”, “Walking Through Torment”) were completed during this period.
Literary process of the 20s. Problem-thematic and genre diversity of prose. Forms of Russian poetry. Development in dramaturgy of the genre of heroic-romantic play. The emergence of new genres, themes of novels, and techniques of versification in the literature of the 30s.
Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below
Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.
Posted on http://www.allbest.ru/
Posted on http://www.allbest.ru/
MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
KARAKALPAK STATE
UNIVERSITY NAMED AFTER BERDAKH
DEPARTMENT OF RUSSIAN PHILOLOGY
Lecture course
on “HISTORY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE XX century (20-30s)”
Compiled by: Tleubergenova G.U.
NUKUS - 2006
Lecture 1. General characteristics of the literary process of the 20s
The Great October Revolution called literature into the ranks of its active fighters. In connection with this, the leading genre at the beginning of the period was journalism. She put forward questions that remained relevant throughout the history of the development of Russian literature of the twentieth century. These are the relationship between revolution and humanity, politics and morality, the problem of the crisis of traditional humanism and the birth of the “new man”, the problem of technical civilization and the future, the fate of culture in the era of democratization, the problem of national character, the problem of limiting and suppressing personality in new conditions, etc. After the 1917 revolution, many different literary groups appeared throughout the country. Many of them appeared and disappeared without even leaving any noticeable trace behind. In Moscow alone in 1920, there were more than 30 literary groups and associations.
Often the people in these groups were far from art. So, for example, there was a group called “Nothing”, which proclaimed: “Our goal: the thinning of a poet’s work in the name of nothing.” The Petrograd House of Arts (1919-1923) played a major role in literary life. Literary studios worked there - Zamyatin, Gumilyov, Chukovsky, and 2 almanacs of the same name were published. Along with the House of Writers and the House of Scientists, it was a “ship”, an “ark” that saved the St. Petersburg intelligentsia during the years of revolutionary devastation - the role of Noah was assigned to Gorky. (It’s not for nothing that O. Forsh’s novel about life in the House of Arts was called “Crazy Ship”). It is necessary to note the oldest Society of Lovers of Russian Literature (1811-1930), among whose chairmen and members were almost all famous Russian writers. In the twentieth century, the names of L. Tolstoy, V. Solovyov, V. Korolenko, V. Veresaev, M. Gorky, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, V. Bryusov, A. Bely, Vyach are associated with him. Ivanova, M. Voloshina, B. Zaitsev, A. Kuprina, N. Berdyaeva. In 1930 This unique society, which actively promoted literary classics, shared the fate of all other associations and groups.
The exodus of a large part of Russian writers abroad also contributed to the emergence of various kinds of associations, especially since in the 1920s there was a kind of competition between the two branches of literature. In Paris in 1920, the magazine “Coming Russia” was published. (1920), associated with the names of M. Aldanov, A. Tolstoy. The life of “Modern Notes” (1920-1940) was a long one, a journal of the Socialist Revolutionary movement, where the older generation of emigrants published, Merezhkovsky and Gippius created the literary and philosophical society “Green” in Paris. Lamp" (1926), G. Ivanov became its president. The decline of the association was facilitated by the appearance of the new magazine "Numbers" (1930-1934). "Under the weight of "Numbers" the "Lamp" is slowly and clearly going out," Z. Gippius complained. Russian literary centers have developed in other major cities Europe.
In Berlin in the early 20s. there was the House of Arts, the Writers' Club, founded by N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, F. Stepun and M. Osorgin, who were expelled from Russia. Gorky published the magazine "Conversation" in Berlin (1923-1925), where A. Bely, V. Khodasevich, N. Berberova and others were published. The literary almanac "Grani" (1922-1923) was also published there. “Russian Berlin” is the topic of numerous studies and research by foreign Slavists. In Prague, for example, the magazines “The Will of Russia” (1922-1932) and “In Our Own Ways” (1924-1926) were published. The "geography" of the publication of the magazine "Russian Thought" is interesting - in Sofia (1921-1922), in Prague (1922-1924), in Paris (1927). A general description of the magazines is given by Gleb Struve. In the book "Russian Literature in Exile" he calls writers' associations literary nests, emphasizing their influence on the development of literary talents.
The stormy socio-political struggle could not help but have an influence on the literary process of those years. Such concepts as “proletarian writer”, “peasant writer”, “bourgeois writer”, “fellow traveler” arise and become widespread. Writers are beginning to be judged not by their importance and not by their artistic value their works, but by social origin, political convictions, and the ideological orientation of their work.
At the end of the 20s, there was an increase in negative phenomena: the party leadership and the state began to actively interfere in literary life, there was a tendency towards a one-variant development of literature, and the persecution of outstanding writers began (E. Zamyatin, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, A. Akhmatova) .
Thus, the main features of this period were the impact of the events of the revolution and civil war on literary creativity, the fight against classical trends, the arrival of new authors in literature, the formation of emigrant literature, the tendency towards multivariate development of literature at the beginning of the period and the increase in negative trends at the end.
Lecture 2. Prose of the 20s
The prose of the 1920s is characterized by a direct appeal to the reproduction of historical events and a widespread introduction of the diverse realities of the era. In artistic and stylistic terms, in the works of this period there is an activation of conventional, expressive forms, a revival of the traditions of populist literature: neglect of artistry, immersion in everyday life, lack of plot, abuse of dialectisms and vernacular.
The two most significant trends in prose of the 1920s were skaz and ornamental prose. A tale is a form of organization of a literary text that is focused on a different type of thinking. The character of the hero is manifested, first of all, in his manner of speaking.
Ornamental prose is a stylistic phenomenon. Which is associated with the organization of a prose text according to the laws of poetry: the plot as a way of organizing the narrative fades into the background, highest value acquire repetitions of images, leitmotifs, rhythm, metaphors, associations. The word becomes valuable in itself and acquires many shades of meaning.
A significant part of the novels and stories published during the Civil War and shortly after its end were written by modernist writers.
In 1921, F. Sologub’s novel “The Snake Charmer” was published. The action of the novel took place in a workers' village. The story of the spiritual degradation of a factory owner's family was told. Nearby, as the personification of the healthy principles of society, were depicted workers seeking justice. One of the characters in the novel, an experienced revolutionary, talked about the class enemies of the proletariat quite in the spirit of a popular ditty from the times of the revolution: “They don’t produce anything themselves, but gorge themselves on hazel grouse and pineapples...”. The conflict between the manufacturer and the workers was successfully resolved with the help of the witchcraft spells of the worker Vera Karpunina. In constructed collisions there is no room for life conflicts; they are communicated in tongue twisters. The main place in the novel is occupied by the affirmation of the idea of the primacy of dreams over life. Life is compared to a great desert and a dark forest. Life is dominated by “sweetness and the power of charms,” “leading to death, but this is also the fulfillment of a dream.”
A special version of the synthesis of realism and modernism appears in the work of A. Remizov, who viewed life as fate, the kingdom of the devil, who affirmed the meaninglessness of human existence. The writer was characterized by pessimistic ideas about the fate of man and humanity. In his works, he preached the idea of the fatal repetition of human existence, its pulsations from fear to hope and from hope to fear of life. His works are characterized by a tendency toward stylization. Appeal to the motives of oral folk art, to legendary and fairy-tale plots (“Posolon”, “Limonar”, “Bova Korolevich”, “Tristan and Isolda”, etc.)
In “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land,” Remizov depicts the revolution as a “monkey boom,” as the death of the congenial Old Testament “Holy Rus'.” The world of revolution is also depicted as disastrous and bringing misfortune in “Whirlwind Rus'.”
The revival of ancient Russian literature, the enrichment of the writer's vocabulary, the transfer of metaphor to prose, the search for new lexical and syntactic possibilities of the Russian literary language - all this had a noticeable impact on the ornamental prose of the 20s.
The influence of A. Remizov is also felt in B. Pilnyak’s novel “The Naked Year”, complex in its architectonics and content - the first major attempt to master the material of our time. In the novel, Pilnyak turns to district life, shaken up by the revolution. Here two truths collide - the patriarchal, centuries-old silence of the Russian province and the element of the people, sweeping away the established order. The author experiments with artistic means, uses editing, shifting, mosaic, symbolism, etc. There is no single plot in the novel - there is a flow, a vortex, reality torn to shreds. Critics noted that Pilnyak interprets the revolution as a rebellion, as an element that has broken free and is not controlled by anyone. The image of a blizzard is key in his prose (here the writer inherits A. Blok’s “The Twelve”).
He accepts revolution as inevitable and a historical pattern. Blood, violence, sacrifices, devastation and decay - for him this is an inevitable reality, a breakthrough of the long-restrained organic force of life, the triumph of instincts. Revolution for Pilnyak is a phenomenon, first of all, aesthetic (in the inseparable merging of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death). The writer rejoices at the disintegration, grotesquely depicting the passing noble world, he expects that from the fiery, whirlwind, blizzard font, another, new and at the same time rooted, original Rus', destroyed by Peter I, will be born. He welcomes it, sympathetically following the action “ leather jackets" (Bolsheviks), which he considers "a sign of the times."
In the pessimistic interpretation of the “new” Soviet man, he aligned himself with Remizov and E. Zamyatin. Zamyatin’s dystopian novel “We” was written in 1920 and laid the foundation for a whole series of dystopias in world literature (“Oh, a brave new world!” O. Huxley, “1984” by J. Orwell, etc.). Zamyatin tried to print it in his homeland, but to no avail. Nevertheless, they knew about the novel and mentioned it in critical articles, since the writer repeatedly organized public readings of it. Yu.N. Tynyanov, in his famous article “Literary Today,” assessed the novel as a success, and saw the source of Zamyatin’s fiction in his style, the principle of which, according to the critic, is “an economical image instead of a thing,” “instead of three dimensions, two.” There were also negative reviews (due to the political background of the novel). The novel, written under the fresh impressions of the “strict” era of war communism with its emergency measures, was one of the first artistic experiments in social diagnostics, which revealed alarming trends in the then political reality and public mentality that would develop in Stalin’s domestic politics.
At the same time, it was a work about the future, which was widely dreamed of in those years, bringing the present and unique human life to its altar. The novel depicts a perfect State, headed by a certain Benefactor, a kind of patriarch endowed with unlimited power. In this state of transparent walls, pink coupons for love, mechanical music and “saddled elements” of poetry, in this society of “reasonable mechanicalness” and “mathematically perfect life”, an impersonal person is nothing more than a cog in an exemplary well-oiled mechanism. There are no names, but numbers, here order and regulations are paramount, and deviation from generally accepted rules and the sanctioned way of thinking threatens the violator with the Benefactor's Machine (something like a modernized guillotine).
The prose of the 20s is also characterized by a tense plot and acute social conflict. The novel, story, short story, essay in the form in which these genres developed in previous years are rare in the 20s. At this time, that unprecedented mixture of genres had already begun, which clearly manifested itself in subsequent stages of the development of Russian literature.
The prose of the 1920s is characterized by problem-thematic and genre diversity.
In heroic-romantic stories (“The Fall of Dair” by A. Malyshkin, “Partisan Stories” by Vs. Ivanov, “Iron Stream” by A. Serafimovich), a conditionally generalized poetic image people's life. “The Fall of Dair” by A. Malyshkin was published in 1923. In the story, the old world was contrasted with the new, revolutionary one. Here we talk about the historical storming of Perekop by the revolutionary Multitudes. Serafimovich’s “Iron Stream” is a tragic, deeply conflicted epic. There are no unchanging, internally static human populations in which a person completely renounces his “I”: Serafimovich’s people in the novel have, as it were, an internal “autobiography” and undergo profound changes. The writer describes the facts that took place in 1918 in Kuban, when Cossacks and “outcasts” - i.e., fought to the death over land. non-residents, doomed to be farm laborers, hired workers, led by Kozhukh. Serafimovich conveys an idea that is still important today: in a civil war, the winner is often not the one who is more conscientious, softer, more sympathetic, but the one who is fanatical, “narrow”, like a saber blade, who is more insensitive to suffering, who is more committed to abstract doctrine.
The theme of the civil war was “Week” by Y. Libedinsky, “October” by A. Yakovlev, “Chapaev” and “Mutiny” by D. Furmanov, “Armored Train 14-69” Sun. Ivanov, “Destruction” by A. Fadeev. In these works, the description of the civil war was of a heroic-revolutionary nature.
One of the leading prose stories of the 20s were stories about the tragic destinies of peasant civilization, about the problem of the poetic origins of folk life (“Chertukhinsky Balakir” by S. Klychkov, “Andron the Neputevy”, “Geese-Swans” by A. Neverov, “Humus”, “Virineya” by L. Seifullina) In the depiction of the village, opposing views on the fate of the peasantry collided.
On the pages of the works a dispute ensued about the peasant, about accelerated and natural development. The time that disrupted the lives of the peasants was portrayed in its historical specificity and realistically.
Acute social conflicts and the significant changes taking place in the souls of the peasants formed the basis of works on rural themes.
The 20s were the heyday of satire. Its thematic range was very wide: from denouncing the external enemies of the state to ridiculing bureaucracy in Soviet institutions, arrogance, vulgarity, and philistinism. A group of satirical writers worked in the early 20s in the editorial office of the Gudok newspaper. Feuilletons by M. Bulgakov and Y. Olesha were published on its pages, and I. Ilf and E. Petrov began their journey. Their novels “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” gained wide popularity and continue to enjoy success today. The history of the search for hidden treasures gave the authors the opportunity to display a whole gallery of satirical types on the pages of their works.
In the 20s, the stories of M. Zoshchenko were very popular. The narration in Zoshchenko’s work is most often led by a narrator - a self-satisfied commoner. The parody principle predominates in his work, and comic effect is achieved by the author's deep irony towards the narrator and characters. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Zoshchenko published “sentimental stories.” Their origins were the story “The Goat” (1922). Then the stories “Apollo and Tamara” (1923), “People” (1924), “Wisdom” (1924), “Terrible Night” (1925), “What the Nightingale Sang” (1925), “A Merry Adventure” (1926) appeared ) and “The Lilac is Blooming” (1929). In the preface to them, Zoshchenko for the first time openly sarcastically spoke about the “planetary tasks”, heroic pathos and “high ideology” that are expected of him. In a deliberately simple form, he posed the question: where does the death of the human in a person begin, what predetermines it, and what can prevent it. This question appeared in the form of a reflective intonation. The heroes of the “sentimental stories” continued to debunk the supposedly passive consciousness. Evolution of Bylinkin (“What the Nightingale Sang About”), who at the beginning walked in the new city “timidly, looking around and dragging his feet,” and, having received “a strong social position, public service and a salary of the seventh category plus for the workload,” turned into a despot and boor, convinced that the moral passivity of the Zoshchensky hero was still illusory. His activity revealed itself in the degeneration of his mental structure: the features of aggressiveness clearly appeared in it. “I really like,” Gorky wrote in 1926, “that the hero of Zoshchenko’s story “What the Nightingale Sang” - former hero“The Overcoat,” at least a close relative of Akaki, arouses my hatred thanks to the clever irony of the author.”
In the 20s, one of the leading themes was labor, which was embodied in the so-called industrial novel (“Cement” by F. Gladkov, “Blast Furnace” by N. Lyashko, “Time, Forward” by V. Kataev). Works of this type are characterized by a one-sided interpretation of man, the predominance of industrial conflict over artistic conflict, and the formalization of its plot and compositional basis is a sign of its aesthetic inferiority.
At this time, there was interest and the genre of the epic novel was being revived: the first books were published: “The Life of Klim Samgin” by M. Gorky, “The Last of Udege” by A. Fadeeev, “The Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov, “Russia Washed in Blood” by A. Vesely, The second book “Walking through Torment” by A. Tolstoy is published. In these novels, the spatial and temporal framework and the scale of the image of the individual are expanded, and a generalized image of the people appears.
The paths and fates of the intelligentsia during the civil war were no less complex in the prose of the 1920s (the novels “At a Dead End” by V. Veresaev, “Change” by M. Shaginyan, “Cities and Years” by K. Fedin, “ White Guard"M. Bulgakov, "Sisters" by A. Tolstoy). In these works, the authors sought to comprehend the era of the breakdown of traditional norms and forms of life and its dramatic reflection in the consciousness and destinies of people. The focus of their attention is on a person who is alien to the passing world, but at the same time has not found himself in the new reality.
Thus, the events of the revolution and civil war with their irreconcilable ideological and political contradictions, drastic changes in the destinies of people determined the thematic and artistic originality prose of the 20s, as well as her search for new forms and means of depicting reality.
Lecture 3. Poetry of the 20s
In terms of the abundance of talent, richness and diversity of content and forms, Russian poetry of the 20s is the brightest phenomenon in the literature of the 20th century.
Poetry of the early 20s was predominantly lyrical. Rapid and global changes required direct poetic expression. Epic works, which are associated with significant generalizations, were developed later.
The defining stylistic feature of both epic. Likewise, lyric poetry has its heroic-romantic coloring.
Civil lyric poetry sounded with unprecedented force, and the most effective genres addressed directly to the masses were developed: march, song, poetic appeal, message. Poets, reviving old forms, modify them, giving them a new direction (“Ode to the Revolution” by V. Mayakovsky, “May Day Hymn” by V. Kirillov, “Cantata” by S. Yesenin), attempts are made to create new genres: “orders” for the army of arts V. Mayakovsky, “calls” of the Proletcultists, monologues in rhythmic prose by A. Gastev. “Barricade” sounds predominated in poetry. The traditions of the lyrics of love, nature, and philosophical reflections receded into the background.
A prominent place among the works of this period is occupied by A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”. Small in volume, it consists of 12 chapters, each of which has its own motive and its own rhythmic and intonation structure. The characteristic features of the poem are sharp contrast, the use of symbolic images (the wind, twelve Red Army soldiers, Christ with a “bloody flag”), and the idea of the revolution as a rampant element. This is how the author himself speaks about the poem: “the poem was written in that exceptional and always short time when a passing revolutionary cyclone produces a storm in all seas - nature, life, art; in the sea of human life there is also such a small backwater, like the Marquis's puddle, which is called politics; the seas of nature, life and art raged, the spray rose like a rainbow above us. I looked at the rainbow when I wrote "The Twelve"; That’s why a drop of politics remains in the poem.” Immediately after “The Twelve,” Blok writes “Scythians.” In this poem, closely related to the poem, he expresses his ideas about justice and brotherhood of peoples, about the development of world history as a confrontation between two races - Mongolian and European.
Romantic tendencies in poetry were most fully reflected in the poetry of V. Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky “entered the revolution as if he were entering his own home. He went straight and began to open the windows in his house,” V. Shklovsky correctly noted. The concepts: “Mayakovsky” and “poet of the revolution” have become synonymous. This comparison has also penetrated abroad, where Mayakovsky is perceived as a kind of “poetic equivalent” of October. Mayakovsky, unlike many, saw two faces in the revolution: not only greatness, but also lowland features, not only its human (“childish”) side, but also cruelty (“opened veins”). And, being a dialectician, he could also imagine a “heap of ruins” instead of “socialism built in battles.” And this was expressed back in 1918 in the famous “Ode to the Revolution”:
Oh, bestial! Oh, children's! Oh, cheap! Oh, great one! What other name did you have? How else will you turn around, two-faced? A slender building, a pile of ruins?
A romantic perception of the revolution was also characteristic of the poetry of Proletkult. Celebration of the energy of the masses, collectivism, glorification of industrial labor, the use of symbolic images of “machine”, “factory”, “iron” was characteristic of the poetry of V. Aleksandrovsky, A. Gastev, V. Kirillov, N. Poletaev.
The art of peasant poets occupied a large place in the poetry of the 20s. The most famous of them were S. Yesenin, N. Klyuev, S. Klychkov, A. Shiryaevets, P. Oreshin. They started their literary activity in the 900s and at the same time they were called new peasants. The spirit of democracy, imagery associated primarily with peasant life, and the song-folk style of their poems were especially noticeable against the backdrop of many poetic creations of those years. They presented the concept of revolution with a peasant slant. For example, the works of S. Yesenin were characterized by romantic elation, exaggeration of images, biblical symbolism, and the use of Church Slavonicisms. With enthusiasm, having met the revolution, he writes several short poems (“Dove of Jordan”, “Inonia”, “Heavenly Drummer”, all 1918, etc.), imbued with a joyful anticipation of the “transformation” of life. They combine godless sentiments with biblical imagery to indicate the scale and significance of the events taking place.
Yesenin, glorifying the new reality and its heroes, tried to correspond to the times (“Cantata”, 1919). In later years, he wrote “Song of the Great March,” 1924, “Captain of the Earth,” 1925, etc. Reflecting on “where the fate of events is taking us,” the poet turns to history (dramatic poem “Pugachev,” 1921).
N. Klyuev continued his search for the ideal of patriarchal Rus'. The expectation of its resurrection permeates the content and figurative form of many of his poems, in which modernity is combined with the archaic (“Pesnoslov”), Klyuev speaks out against the aggression of the “singers of iron” (“Fourth Rome”), images of defenseless nature and ideas of universal brotherhood appear in his poems .
At the beginning of the period, many poems appeared by famous poets, representatives of poetic schools of the pre-revolutionary period.
Andrei Bely, in the poem “Christ is Risen” and in the poems in the collection “Ashes,” glorified the “fiery element” of the revolution and expressed his readiness to sacrifice himself to it. But revolution for him is a rebellious element and a catastrophe that gives rise to a crisis of spirit. The poet builds his poetic concept of the past (the poem “First Date”), according to which the old patriarchal Rus', which embodied all the best qualities, must be resurrected through a revolution of the spirit.
M. Voloshin did not remain aloof from social upheavals. The October Revolution and the Civil War find him in Koktebel, where he does everything “to prevent his brothers / from destroying themselves and exterminating each other.” Accepting the revolution as a historical inevitability, Voloshin saw his duty in helping the persecuted, regardless of “color” - “both the red leader and the white officer” sought (and found!) “shelter, protection and advice” in his house. In the post-revolutionary years, Voloshin’s poetic palette changed dramatically: philosophical meditations and impressionistic sketches were replaced by passionate journalistic reflections on the fate of Russia and its chosenness (the image of the “burning bush”), paintings and characters from Russian history - the collection “Deaf and Mute Demons” (1919), book of poems “The Burning Bush”, including the poem “Russia”. The poet turns to the history of the material culture of mankind in the cycle “In the Ways of Cain.”
During this period, V. Bryusov published two collections, “Last Dreams” and “On Days Like These.” The collection “On Days Like These” is a new and important milestone in Bryusov’s ideological and creative development. In the poems of this collection, the main motives are creation, “meeting of times,” “friendship of peoples.” He uses heroic associations that go back centuries, to the archaic. In the 20s, the collections “Mig”, “Dali”, “Mea” (Hurry) were published. The poems included in these collections are evidence of the widest range of social, cultural and scientific interests of Bryusov.
Tragic motives sounded in the lyrics of M. Tsvetaeva (collection “Versts” and “Swan Camp”). During these years, the main lyrical cycles were finally formed: “Poems about Moscow”, “Poems to Blok”, “Insomnia”. The main themes of her work are the theme of the Poet and Russia, the theme of separation and loss. The appearance of folk and song motifs in her poems is connected with this.
An increase in tragic pathos was also characteristic of A. Akhmatova’s poetry. Her lyrical concept of modernity, the theme of humanism is embodied in the collections “Plantain” and “Anno Domini”. But for the first time, patriotic motifs appeared in her work (“I had a voice. He called comfortably.”) In the second half of the 20s, Akhmatova moved away from active poetic creativity and turned to Pushkin’s theme, publishing articles, comments, and notes on his works.
Heroic romance colors the poems of E. Bagritsky in the 20s. Bagritsky’s poems about “conquerors of the roads” and “cheerful beggars,” relaying the poetics of the “southern Acmeists,” were distinguished by their figurative brightness, fresh intonation, and non-trivial rhythm, and quickly brought him to the forefront of poets of revolutionary romanticism. In the early 1920s. Bagritsky actively used the material of the ballads of R. Burns, W. Scott, T. Goode, A. Rimbaud, but already in his first poetic book “Southwest” conventionally romantic characters in “masquerade costumes” drawn from England and Flanders coexist with the hero of the poem “Duma about Opanas” - a wonderful lyrical epic that absorbed the style of “Haidamaks” by T. Shevchenko and “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”. Lament for Opanas is the tragic insight of the poet, who discovered that there is no “third way” in a fratricidal fight, where it is so easy for the executioner and the victim to change places.
The poet truthfully showed the whole tragedy of the civil war; he emphasized that it is almost impossible to get away from it and take a neutral position.
The beginning of the creative path of such poets as M. Isakovsky, A. Surkov, A. Prokofiev, V. Lugovskoy dates back to the 20s.
The main motive of the poems of Lugovsky and Surkov of the 20s is the heroism of the civil war. But if in their pathos early works Although they have a lot in common, the approach to the topic and style are different. Lugovsky’s poems, included in his first collections “Flashes” and “Muscle,” were characterized by romantic elation and generality, increased expressiveness and metaphor, and sharp rhythmic shifts. Surkov's lyrics of this period are emphatically simple, full of realistic details.
The works of Isakovsky and Prokofiev brought together a lyrically penetrating image native nature, song intonations and the fact that the focus of both poets is the Russian village.
Lecture 4. Dramaturgy of the 20s
The leading genre in the drama of the 20s was the heroic-romantic play. “Storm” by V. Bill-Belotserkovsky, “Yarovaya Love” by K. Trenev, “Fracture” by B. Lavrenev - these plays are united by epic breadth, the desire to reflect the mood of the masses as a whole. These works are based on a deep socio-political conflict, the theme of the “break” of the old and the birth of a new world. Compositionally, these plays are characterized by a wide coverage of what is happening over time, the presence of many side lines not related to the main plot, free transfer of action from one places to another.
So, for example, in the play “Storm” by V. Bill-Belotserkovsky there is a lot crowd scenes. It includes Red Army soldiers, security officers, a sailor, an editor, a lecturer, a military commissar, Komsomol members, a secretary, a military instructor, and a supply manager. There are many other persons who have neither names nor positions. Neither human relationships, but history is the main source of plot development in the play. The main thing in it is the depiction of a historical battle. This is due to the lack of purposefully developing intrigue, the fragmentation and independence of individual scenes. The central character of the play is the Chairman of Ukom, a person who is more symbolic than real. But he actively intervenes in life: he organizes the fight against typhus, exposes the rogue from the center, punishes Savandeev for his irresponsible attitude towards women, etc. Thus, “Storm” was openly propaganda in nature. But in those years, the significance of such plays and the power of their impact were stronger than plays of a deeply psychological nature.
In the dramaturgy of the 20s, Boris Andreevich Lavrenev’s play “The Fault” occupies a prominent place. Its plot was based on historical events October 1917. However, the play is not a chronicle; it contains great place are occupied by social and everyday conflicts. In “Razlom” there are no battle scenes typical of the heroic-romantic genre: events on the cruiser “Zarya” are interspersed with everyday scenes in the Bersenevs' apartment. The social and everyday are inseparable from one another, but the class principle predominates: Tatyana Berseneva and her husband, Lieutenant Stube, are at different poles of the social worldview, and this is reflected in their personal relationships, leading to a final break. The personal relationships of the characters do not play a leading role in the plot: the chairman of the ship committee of the cruiser "Zarya" Godun is in love with Tatyana Berseneva, but Tatyana's sympathy for Godun is largely due to the similarity of ideological positions.
“The Rift” is a combination of two genres: it is a socio-psychological drama with an in-depth development of a limited circle of characters, with a distinct everyday flavor, and a heroic-romantic play that characterizes the mood of the people as a whole, mass psychology.
The tragedy of the civil war is also conveyed in K. Trenev’s play “Yarovaya Love”. In the center is the image of Lyubov Yarovaya and her husband. Which ended up on opposite sides of the barricades. The characters in it are portrayed authentically and believably and differ markedly from the unambiguous characteristics of the heroes in many plays of those years. Trenev managed to step over the schematic, exaggerated, primitive ideas.
A special place in the drama of the 20s is occupied by M. Bulgakov’s play “Days of the Trubins” - one of the best plays about the civil war, about the fate of people in a turning point. Bulgakov's play "Days of the Turbins", written in the footsteps of the "White Guard", becomes the "second "Seagull" of the Art Theater. Lunacharsky called it “the first political play Soviet theater" The premiere, which took place on October 5, 1926, made Bulgakov famous. The story told by the playwright shocked the audience with its life-like truth of the disastrous events that many of them had recently experienced. The images of white officers that Bulgakov fearlessly brought onto the stage of the best theater in the country, against the backdrop of a new audience, a new way of life, acquired an expanded meaning for the intelligentsia, no matter whether military or civilian. The performance, met with hostility by official criticism, was soon filmed, but was restored in 1932
The action of the drama fits within the Turbins’ house, where “the revolution bursts in like a terrible whirlwind.”
Alexey and Nikolay Turbins, Elena, Lariosik, Myshlaevsky are kind and noble people. They cannot understand the complex elements of events, understand their place in them, or determine their civic duty to their homeland. All this gives rise to an alarming, internally tense atmosphere in the Turbins’ house. They are worried about the destruction of the old familiar way of life. That is why the very image of the house, the stove, which brings warmth and comfort, in contrast to the surrounding world, plays such a large role in the play.
In the 1920s, a number of comedy theaters were created. In the field of comedy, M. Gorky and L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy and V. Mayakovsky honed their satirical skills. It was bureaucrats, careerists, and hypocrites who fell in the satirical sights.
The subject of merciless exposure was philistinism. The well-known comedies of those years “Mandate” and “Suicide” by N. Erdman, “Air Pie” by B. Romashov, “Zoykina’s Apartment” and “Ivan Vasilyevich” by M. Bulgakov, “Embezzlers” and “Squaring the Circle” by V. Kataev were dedicated to exactly this topic.
Almost simultaneously with “Days of the Turbins,” Bulgakov wrote the tragic farce “Zoyka’s Apartment” (1926). The plot of the play was very relevant for those years. Enterprising Zoyka Peltz is trying to save money to buy foreign visas for herself and her lover by organizing an underground brothel in own apartment. The play captures the abrupt breakdown of social reality, expressed in a change in linguistic forms. Count Obolyaninov refuses to understand what a “former count” is: “Where did I go? Here I am, standing in front of you.” With demonstrative simplicity, he does not accept not so much “new words” as new values. The brilliant chameleonism of the charming rogue Ametistov, the administrator in Zoykin’s “atelier”, forms a striking contrast to the count, who does not know how to adapt to circumstances. In the counterpoint of two central images, Amethystov and Count Obolyaninov, the deep theme of the play emerges: the theme of historical memory, the impossibility of forgetting the past.
A special place in the drama of the 20s belongs to Mayakovsky’s comedies “The Bedbug” and “Bathhouse”; they are a satire (with dystopian elements) on an embourgeois society that has forgotten about the revolutionary values for which it was created. The internal conflict with the surrounding reality of the coming “bronze” Soviet age, undoubtedly, was among the most important incentives that pushed the poet to the last rebellion against the laws of the world order - suicide.
Lecture 5. General characteristics of the literature of the 30s
In the 1930s, there was an increase in negative phenomena in the literary process. The persecution of outstanding writers begins (E. Zamyatin, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, O. Mandelstam). S. Yesenin and V. Mayakovsky commit suicide.
In the early 30s, a change in the forms of literary life took place: after the publication of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, RAPP and other literary associations announced their dissolution.
In 1934, the First Congress of Soviet Writers took place, which declared socialist realism to be the only possible creative method. In general, the policy of unification began cultural life, there is a sharp reduction in printed publications.
IN thematically Novels about industrialization and the first five-year plans are becoming the leading ones, and large epic canvases are being created. And in general the theme of labor becomes the leading one.
Fiction began to master the problems associated with the invasion of science and technology into daily life person. New spheres of human life, new conflicts, new characters, modifications of traditional literary material led to the emergence of new heroes, the emergence of new genres, new methods of versification, and searches in the field of composition and language.
A distinctive feature of the poetry of the 30s is the rapid development of the song genre. During these years, the famous “Katyusha” (M. Isakovsky), “Wide is my native country...” (V. Lebedev-Kumach), “Kakhovka” (M. Svetlov) and many others were written.
At the turn of the 20s and 30s, interesting trends emerged in the literary process. Criticism, which recently welcomed the “cosmic” poems of the Proletcultists, admired “The Fall of Dair” by A. Malyshkin, “The Wind” by B. Lavrenev, changed its orientation. The head of the sociological school, V. Fritsche, began a campaign against romanticism as an idealistic art. An article by A. Fadeev “Down with Schiller!” appeared, directed against the romantic principle in literature.
Of course, this was the need of the hour. The country was turning into a huge construction site, and the reader expected an immediate response from literature to the events taking place.
But there were also voices in defense of romance. Thus, the Izvestia newspaper publishes Gorky’s article “More on Literacy,” where the writer defends children’s authors from the children’s book commission at the People’s Commissariat for Education, which rejects works finding elements of fantasy and romance in them. The magazine “Print and Revolution” publishes an article by philosopher V. Asmus “In Defense of Fiction.”
And, nevertheless, the lyric-romantic beginning in the literature of the 30s, in comparison with the previous time, turns out to be relegated to the background. Even in poetry, which is always inclined to lyrical-romantic perception and depiction of reality, epic genres triumphed in these years (A. Tvardovsky, D. Kedrin, I. Selvinsky).
Lecture 6. Prose of the 30s
Significant changes took place in the literature of the thirties associated with the general historical process. The leading genre of the 30s was the novel. Literary scholars, writers, and critics have established the artistic method in literature. They gave it a precise definition: socialist realism. The goals and objectives of literature were determined by the Congress of Writers. M. Gorky made a report and identified the main theme of literature - labor.
Literature helped show achievements and educated a new generation. The main educational moment was construction sites. The character of a person was manifested in the team and work. A unique chronicle of this time consists of the works of M. Shaginyan “Hydrocentral”, I. Ehrenburg “The Second Day”, L. Leonov “Sot”, M. Sholokhov “Virgin Soil Upturned”, F. Panferov “Whetstones”. The historical genre developed (“Peter I” by A. Tolstoy, “Tsushima” by Novikov - Priboy, “Emelyan Pugachev” by Shishkov).
The problem of educating people was acute. She found her solution in the works: “People from the Outback” by Malyshkin, “Pedagogical Poem” by Makarenko.
In the form of a small genre, the art of observing life and the skills of concise and precise writing were especially successfully honed. Thus, the story and essay became not only an effective means of learning something new in fast-moving modernity, and at the same time the first attempt to generalize its leading trends, but also a laboratory of artistic and journalistic skill.
The abundance and efficiency of small genres made it possible to widely cover all aspects of life. The moral and philosophical content of the short story, the social and journalistic movement of thought in the essay, the sociological generalizations in the feuilleton - this is what marked the small types of prose of the 30s.
The outstanding short story writer of the 30s, A. Platonov, was primarily an artist-philosopher, who focused on themes of moral and humanistic sound. Hence his attraction to the genre of parable stories. The eventual moment in such a story is sharply weakened, as is the geographical flavor. The artist’s attention is focused on the spiritual evolution of the character, depicted with subtle psychological skill (“Fro”, “Immortality”, “In a Beautiful and Furious World”) Platonov takes man in the broadest philosophical and ethical terms. In an effort to comprehend the most general laws that govern him, the novelist does not ignore the conditions of the environment. The whole point is that his task is not to describe labor processes, but to comprehend the moral and philosophical side of man.
Small genres in the field of satire and humor are experiencing an evolution characteristic of the era of the 30s. M. Zoshchenko is most concerned about the problems of ethics, the formation of a culture of feelings and relationships. In the early 1930s, Zoshchenko created another type of hero - a man who has “lost his human form”, a “righteous man” (“The Goat”, “Terrible Night”). These heroes do not accept the morality of the environment, they have different ethical standards, they would like to live according to high morality. But their rebellion ends in failure. However, unlike the rebellion of the “victim” in Chaplin, which is always covered in compassion, the rebellion of Zoshchenko’s hero is devoid of tragedy: the individual is faced with the need for spiritual resistance to the morals and ideas of his environment, and the strict demands of the writer do not forgive her for compromise and capitulation. The appeal to the type of righteous heroes betrayed the eternal uncertainty of the Russian satirist in the self-sufficiency of art and was a kind of attempt to continue Gogol’s search for a positive hero, a “living soul.” However, one cannot help but notice: in the “sentimental stories” the writer’s artistic world has become bipolar; the harmony of meaning and image was disrupted, philosophical reflections revealed a preaching intention, the pictorial fabric became less dense. The word fused with the author's mask dominated; in style it was similar to stories; Meanwhile, the character (type) stylistically motivating the narrative has changed: he is an intellectual of average grade. The old mask turned out to be attached to the writer.
Zoshchenko's ideological and artistic restructuring is indicative in the sense that it is similar to a number of similar processes that took place in the works of his contemporaries. In particular, the same tendencies can be found in Ilf and Petrov - short story writers and feuilletonists. Along with satirical stories and feuilletons, their works are published, in a lyrical and humorous vein (“M.”, “Wonderful Guests,” “Tonya”). Starting from the second half of the 30s, stories appeared with a more radically updated plot and compositional design. The essence of this change was the introduction of a positive hero into the traditional form of a satirical story.
In the 1930s, the leading genre became the novel, represented by the epic novel, the socio-philosophical novel, the journalistic novel, and the psychological novel.
In the 1930s, a new type of plot became increasingly widespread. The era is revealed through the history of any business at a plant, power plant, collective farm, etc. And therefore, the author’s attention is drawn to the fates of a large number of people, and none of the heroes no longer occupies a central position.
In “Hydrocentral” by M. Shaginyan, the “idea of planning” of economic management not only became the leading thematic center of the book, but also subordinated the main components of its structure. The plot in the novel corresponds to the stages of construction of a hydroelectric power station. The fates of the heroes associated with the construction of Mezinges are analyzed in detail in relation to the construction (the images of Arno Arevyan, Glavinge, teacher Malkhazyan).
In “Soti” by L. Leonov, the silence of silent nature is destroyed, the ancient monastery, from where sand and gravel was taken for construction, was eroded inside and out. The construction of a paper mill in Soti is presented as part of the systematic reconstruction of the country.
F. Gladkov’s new novel “Energy” depicts labor processes in incomparably more detail. F. Gladkov, when recreating pictures of industrial labor, uses new techniques and develops old ones that were in the outlines in “Cement” (extensive industrial landscapes created by the panning technique).
I. Ehrenburg’s novel “The Second Day” organically falls into the mainstream of the search for new forms of the major prose genre in order to reflect the new reality. This work is perceived as a lyrical and journalistic report, written directly in the midst of big affairs and events. The heroes of this novel (foreman Kolka Rzhanov, Vaska Smolin, Shor) oppose Volodya Safonov, who has chosen the side of the observer.
The principle of contrast is actually an important point in any work of art. In Ehrenburg's prose he found an original expression. This principle not only helped the writer to more fully show the diversity of life. He needed it to influence the reader. Amaze him with the free play of associations of witty paradoxes, the basis of which was contrast.
The affirmation of labor as creativity, the sublime depiction of production processes - all this changed the nature of conflicts and led to the formation of new types of novels. In the 30s, among the works, the type of social and philosophical novel (“Sot”), journalistic (“The Second Day”), and socio-psychological (“Energy”) stood out.
The poeticization of labor, combined with a passionate feeling of love for the native land, found its classic expression in the book of the Ural writer P. Bazhov “The Malachite Box”. This is not a novel or a story. But the book of fairy tales, held together by the fate of the same characters, gives a rare plot-compositional coherence and genre unity to the integrity of the author’s ideological and moral view.
In those years, there was also a line of socio-psychological (lyrical) novel, represented by “The Last of Udege” by A. Fadeev and the works of K. Paustovsky and M. Prishvin.
The novel “The Last of Udege” had not only educational value, like that of everyday ethnographers, but also, above all, artistic and aesthetic value. The action of “The Last of the Udege” takes place in the spring of 1919 in Vladivostok and in the areas of Suchan, Olga, and taiga villages covered by the partisan movement. But numerous retrospectives introduce readers to the panorama of the historical and political life of Primorye long before the “here and now” - on the eve of the First World War and February 1917. The narrative, especially from the second part, is epic in nature. All aspects of the novel's content are artistically significant, revealing the life of a wide variety of social circles. The reader finds himself in the rich house of the Gimmers, meets the democratically minded doctor Kostenetsky, his children - Seryozha and Elena (having lost her mother, she, the niece of Gimmer's wife, is brought up in his house). Fadeev clearly understood the truth of the revolution, so he brought his intellectual heroes to the Bolsheviks, which was facilitated by the writer’s personal experience. From a young age, he felt like a soldier of a party that was “always right,” and this belief was captured in the images of the heroes of the Revolution. In the images of the chairman of the partisan revolutionary committee Pyotr Surkov, his deputy Martemyanov, the representative of the underground regional party committee Alexei Churkin (Alyosha Malenky), the commissar of the partisan detachment Senya Kudryavy (the image is polemical in relation to Levinson), the commander Gladkikh showed that versatility of characters that allows you to see in the hero not functions of an opera, but of a person. Fadeev’s undoubted artistic discovery was the image of Elena; it should be noted the depth of the psychological analysis of the emotional experiences of a teenage girl, her almost life-threatening attempt to get to know the world of the bottom, the search for social self-determination, the outbreak of feelings for Langovoy and disappointment in him. “With exhausted eyes and hands,” Fadeev writes about his heroine, “she caught this last warm breath of happiness, and happiness, like a dim evening star in the window, kept going away from her.” Almost a year of her life after the break with Langov “was imprinted in Lena’s memory as the most difficult and terrible period of her life.” “Her extreme, merciless loneliness in the world” pushes Lena to escape to her father, in Suchan, occupied by the Reds, with the help of Langovoy, who is devoted to her. Only there does calmness and confidence return to her, fueled by proximity to people’s life (in the section dedicated to “Destruction”, we already discussed her perception of the people who gathered in the waiting room of her father, the doctor Kostenetsky). When she begins to work as a sister among women preparing to meet wounded sons, husbands, brothers, she was shocked by a quiet, soulful song:
You women pray for our sons.
“The women all sang, and it seemed to Lena that there was truth, and beauty, and happiness in the world.” She felt it in the people she met and now “in the hearts and voices of these women, singing about their murdered and fighting sons. More than ever before, Lena felt in her soul the possibility of truth, love and happiness, although she did not know how she could find them.”
In the supposed decision of the fate of the main romantic characters - Elena and Langovoy - in the interpretation of the difficult relationship between Vladimir Grigorievich and Martemyanov, the author’s humanistic pathos was fully revealed. Of course, in the humanistic aspect, the author also depicted the images of underground fighters and partisans, “ordinary” people losing loved ones in the terrible meat grinder of war (the scene of the death and funeral of Dmitry Ilyin); The author's passionate denial of cruelty colors the descriptions of the death throes of Ptashka-Ignat Sayenko, who was tortured to death in a White Guard dungeon. Contrary to the theory of “socialist humanism,” Fadeev’s humanistic pathos also extended to heroes of the opposite ideological camp. The same events in the life of the Udege are covered by Fadeev from different angles, giving the narrative a certain polyphony, and the narrator does not directly announce himself. This polyphony emerges especially clearly because the author took three “sources” of illumination of life, which in their totality creates a full-fledged idea of reality.
First of all, this is the perception of Sarla - the son of a tribe standing at a prehistoric stage of development; his thinking, despite the changes that have occurred in consciousness, bears the imprint of mythology. The second stylistic layer in the work is associated with the image of the experienced and rough Russian worker Martemyanov, who understood the soul, ingenuous and trusting, of the Udege people. Finally, the role of Udege Sergei Kostenetsky, an intelligent young man with a romantic perception of reality and a search for the meaning of life, is significant in revealing the world. The leading artistic principle of the author of "The Last of the Udege" is the revelation of the pathos of the novel through the analysis of the psychological states of its characters. Russian Soviet literature adopted Tolstoy's principle of a multifaceted and psychologically convincing image of a person of a different nationality, and "The Last of the Udege" was a significant step in this direction, continuing Tolstoy's traditions (Fadeev especially appreciated "Hadji Murad").
The writer recreated the originality of thinking and feelings of a person who was at an almost primitive stage of development, as well as the feelings of a European who found himself in a primitive patriarchal world. The writer did a lot of work on studying the life of the Udege, accumulating material under the following headings: appearance features, clothing, social structure and family; beliefs, religious views and rituals; explanation of the words of the Udege tribe. The manuscripts of the novel show that Fadeev sought maximum accuracy of ethnographic coloring, although in some cases, by his own admission and the observations of readers, he deliberately deviated from it. He focused not so much on an accurate picture of the life of this particular people - the Udege, but rather on a generalized artistic depiction of the life and internal appearance of a person of the tribal system in the Far Eastern region: "... I considered myself entitled to also use materials about the life of other peoples when depicting the Udege people “- said Fadeev, who initially intended to give the novel the title “The Last of the Basins.”
...Similar documents
Disclosure and study of the specifics of the functioning of the wedding plot in Russian dramaturgy XIX century. The evolution of the groom’s motif in 19th-century literature using the example of N.V.’s comedy. Gogol's "Marriage" and the satirical play by A.N. Ostrovsky "The Marriage of Balzaminov".
thesis, added 12/03/2013
The main features of Russian poetry of the Silver Age. Symbolism in Russian artistic culture and literature. The rise of the humanities, literature, and theater arts at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The significance of the Silver Age for Russian culture.
presentation, added 02/26/2011
The main problems of studying the history of Russian literature of the twentieth century. Literature of the 20th century as returned literature. The problem of socialist realism. Literature of the first years of October. Main trends in romantic poetry. Schools and generations. Komsomol poets.
course of lectures, added 09/06/2008
Understanding the image of Hamlet in Russian culture of the 18th-19th centuries. Character traits in the interpretation of the image of Hamlet in Russian literature and drama of the 20th century. Transformations of the image of Hamlet in the poetic worldview of A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, B. Pasternak.
thesis, added 08/20/2014
Familiarization with the literary monuments of Ancient Rus', research of genres and an arsenal of artistic techniques. The problem of authorship and anonymity of the works “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, “The Tale of the Battle of Mamaev”, “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”.
abstract, added 12/14/2011
The evolution of lives and features of the formation of the hagiographic genre on Russian soil. Life as a genre of literature of the 18th century. Directions in the evolution of the hagiographic genre. Peculiarities female images in literature of the 17th century. Ulyaniya Lazarevskaya is like a saint.
course work, added 12/14/2006
Development of Russian literature of the 19th century. The main directions of sentimentalism. Romanticism in Russian literature of 1810-1820. The political orientation of public interests towards a patriotic spirit, the idea of the religious revival of the country and people.
course work, added 02/13/2015
Innovation and traditions of Russian poetry of the early twentieth century, a thorough transformation of the traditional genres of ode, romance, elegy and the development of non-traditional genres: fragment, miniature, lyrical short story. Features of the creativity of Yesenin, Blok, Mayakovsky.
presentation, added 09/15/2014
The dominant concepts and motives in Russian classical literature. Parallel between the values of Russian literature and Russian mentality. Family as one of the main values. Morality glorified in Russian literature and life as it should be.
abstract, added 06/21/2015
Biography and creative path of Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov. Elegy as a new genre romantic literature. The significance of Batyushkov’s poetry in the history of Russian literature. Literary tastes, distinctive features of prose, purity, brilliance and imagery of language.