Confession as a literary genre. Confessional genre in Russian literature. Russian writers and literary confession

04.07.2020

The Confessions was written by Augustine around 397–398. AD at the time when he was Bishop of Hypon (395 - 430). The Confession contains thirteen books, and this work is rightfully the first literary autobiographical work. "Confessions" contains a narrative about the spiritual search of St. Augustine. The first printed translation of the Confession into Russian was made by Hieromonk Agapit in 1787. Also known is the translation of Professor M. E. Sergienko, which was prepared in besieged Leningrad, and published in 1975. Translations by D. A. Podgursky (Kiev Theological Academy, 1880) and L. Kharitonov (2008) are also known.

What is the meaning of the word confession?
Confession – For Christians: confession of one’s sins to a priest who absolves sins on behalf of the church and God, church repentance. Be at confession. 2. transfer A frank confession of something, a story about one’s innermost thoughts and views (book). (Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary)

Augustine can be called a philosopher - a seeker, seeking the truth, and first of all for himself. (Matveev P. E. Lectures on IPF. Philosophical and theological teachings of Augustine the Blessed) In the “Confession” only part is touched upon life path the author (33 years out of 40 lived at the time of writing), and Augustine also talks about the death of his beloved mother, Monica. This pious woman, who throughout her life with amazing care, energy and self-sacrifice tried to instill in her son her ideas of bliss, died soon after Augustine’s perfect conversion. Therefore, speaking about his transition to the true faith, Aurelius Augustine devotes a number of charming chapters of his work to the biography of his mother. He praises the character of his mother, describes her tireless care for her son and his grief over her loss. In addition, Augustine criticizes Neoplatonism, Manichaeism (the religious doctrine of late antiquity, founded by the prophet Mani, based on Christian-Gnostic ideas with the borrowing of Zoroastrian elements.) and astrology. And also, in the last 4 books, Augustine discusses the sacrament of communion, the interpretation of the Book of Genesis, the doctrine of the Trinity and the nature of memory, time, and language.
For example, about time, he wrote like this: “And, however, we say “a long time”, “a short time” and we say this only about the past and the future. We speak of a period of, for example, a hundred years, both in the past and in the future, as “a long time”; " for a short time “Let’s say, presumably, for the past and future the interval of ten days. But how can something that does not exist be long or short? The past is no more, the future is not yet. Let’s not just talk about the past “for a long time,” but let’s say “it was a long time,” and about the future: “it will be a long time.” My God, my Light, will not Your truth laugh at man here too? Did the long past become long when it had already passed, or before, when it was still present? It could be long when there was something that could be long; but the past no longer exists - how long can something that does not exist exist be? Let us not, therefore, say: “the past was long”; We won’t find anything that was long: the past has passed and is no more. Let's put it this way: “this present time was long,” being present, it was long. It had not yet passed, had not disappeared, and therefore it was something that could be long; when it passed, it immediately ceased to be long, because it ceased to exist at all." Then he talks about the future. “How do You, who rule the world created by You, explain the future to souls? And You explained it to Your prophets. How do you explain the future? You for whom there is no future? or rather, do you explain the future through the present? For what does not exist cannot be explained in any way. My eyes are not so sharp to see how You act, this is beyond my strength, I cannot comprehend it myself, but I can with Your help when You give it, the sweet light of my inner gaze.” And concluding this book, he concludes that: “There is no past, the future has not come. There is only the present." He says that the past, present and future are used incorrectly, and suggests: “... It would be more correct, perhaps, to say this: there are three times - the present of the past, the present of the present and the present of the future. These three times exist in our soul and I don’t see them anywhere else: the present of the past is memory; the present of the present is its direct contemplation; the present of the future is its expectation. If I am allowed to say this, then I agree that there are three times; I admit that there are three of them. Let them even say, as is customary, although this is not correct, that there are three tenses: past, present and future: let them say. This is not my concern now, I don’t argue with it and don’t object; Let only people understand what they are saying and know that there is neither a future nor a past. Words are rarely used in their proper sense; in most cases we express ourselves imprecisely, but we are understood.” (Aurelius Augustine “Confessions” Book 11; XV, 18
Right there. XIX, 25)

In the essay, Augustine turns to God. Asks him questions. He asks him for forgiveness for all the sins he committed in his youth. For example, in Chapter IV, the author talks about how he and the guys stole pears at midnight. This is what he writes: “We took away a huge load from there not for food for ourselves (even if we ate something); and we were ready to throw it away even to the pigs, just to commit an act that was pleasant because it was forbidden.” And he further explained: “The cause of my depravity was only my depravity. She was nasty, and I loved her; I loved destruction; I loved my fall; not what caused me to fall; I loved my very fall, a vile soul, sliding from Your fortress into destruction, seeking what I wanted not through vice, but seeking vice itself.”

We know that this is the first autobiography in Europe. And it is written in the form of a confession. In a sense, St. Augustine became the founder of a new genre in literature. A genre in which there is a first-person narrative, with a phenomenal description of one’s psychological state at one point or another in one’s life. When reading “Confession”, the presence of the author is felt. How is the presence of the author felt? Most likely it’s a matter of the author’s sincerity. In his presentation of thoughts. It's as if he's talking to you, and at the same time to God. He repents before God and tells readers about his life. At the beginning about the complex and vicious, and after the acquisition of the Truth - the most simple and bright, virtuous.

Bertrand Russell writes that the Confession had its imitators, among whom the most famous were Rousseau and Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. (Ibid. XX, 26
Aurelius Augustine. Confession. Book 2, IV, 9.
Right there.
B. Russell. History of Foreign Philosophy. Book two. Part 1. Church Fathers. Chapter III. With. 418)

For comparison, three aspects need to be highlighted:
1) The era in which the author lived.
2) The habitat that influenced the author.
3) The author’s worldview.

As we know, Augustine the Blessed lived at the junction of the Ancient and Medieval eras. By the time the Confessions were written, Christianity was widespread, especially legalized by Constantine the Great in 313 even before the author’s birth. During this era, paganism began to lose its followers, and more and more more people accepted the Christian faith. Christianity was a consolation for people, mainly slaves. Temples were built. The persecution stopped. This time was beneficial for the writing of this work, as well as for Augustine himself.

Jean - Jacques Rousseau - philosopher, writer, botanist, composer, autobiographer was born in Geneva in 1712 on June 28, died in 1778 on June 2 in the city of Erminonville. The 18th century is famous in history as the era of revolutions. “Revolution on the tables”, “Revolution in the heads”, “Revolution in the hearts”, “Revolution in manners”. Rousseau lived during these revolutions. Also, the 18th century is called the Age of Enlightenment. European thinkers are breaking with theology and delimiting the sphere of philosophy proper from natural science. Thus, Rousseau writes “Confession” in the spirit of revolution; his confession is a kind of rebellion against excessive piety. And also Rousseau’s “Confession” is a reproach to those who “made” it (see biography). You can also say that he is critical of himself. This is said in the preface: “I showed myself as I really was: despicable and low when I was, kind, noble, exalted when I was. I laid bare my entire soul and showed it as you saw it yourself, Omnipotent. Gather around me an innumerable crowd of people like me: let them listen to my confession, let them blush for my baseness, let them lament my misfortunes. Let each of them, at the foot of your throne, in turn open his heart with the same sincerity, and then let at least one of them, if he dares, tell you: “I was better than this man.” (Jean - Jacques Rousseau. Confession. Translation by D. A. Gorbov and M. Ya. Rozanov. http://www.litmir.me/)

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a great Russian writer, philosopher, publicist, corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Born in Yasnaya Polyana on September 9, 1828 - died on November 20, 1910. IN Russian Empire At this time, the December uprising took place; several warriors, including the Crimean one, in which Lev Nikolaevich participated, later Alexander II freed the peasants. It was a difficult time for Russia. Circles of dissent appeared, which for the most part considered tsarism to be a stale old idea. 2/2 XIX - the era of rethinking the established traditions of the Russian bourgeoisie. In his “Confession” Tolstoy talks about his path of searching for Truth. A reassessment of values took place in his life. In his essay, he criticizes the Christian religion and its dogmas, but at the same time does not deny God and the teachings of Christ. Also, the search for Truth runs through the writer’s entire life, and in the end he understands that the meaning of life is simplicity. This is the Truth. “And I loved these people. The more I delved into their lives of living people and the lives of the same dead people about whom I read and heard, the more I loved them, and the easier it became for me to live. I lived like this for two years, and a revolution happened to me, which had been preparing for a long time in me and the makings of which had always been in me. What happened to me was that the life of our circle - the rich, the scientists - not only became disgusting to me, but lost all meaning. All our actions, reasoning, science, arts - all this appeared to me as pampering. I realized that I can’t look for meaning in this. The actions of the working people, creating life, seemed to me to be one real thing. And I realized that the meaning attached to this life is the truth, and I accepted that he himself became empty-handed and became an ordinary Russian working man. At the end of his life, Lev Nikolaevich renounced his estate and copyright rights in favor of his daughter Alexandra.

Concluding the analysis of these three works, I would like to say that they have similarities, as well as differences. The main difference is the era in which these authors lived. The other is the worldview that comes from the era. This can be seen in the writings. The similarity is that one can feel the presence of the author, his sincerity. And so on.

In general, I want to say that the work of Augustine the Blessed influenced world literature, opening a new genre. “Confession” was one of the most beloved and read works in the Middle Ages, and even today.

N.N. Kazansky

Confession is usually seen as special kind autobiography (1), which presents a retrospective of one's life. Autobiography in in a broad sense a word that includes any type of memory can represent both a literary fact and an everyday fact (from a service record to oral stories (2)). In memoirs, however, there is no what we primarily associate with the genre of confession - sincerity of assessments of one’s own actions, in other words, confession is not a story about the days lived, the secrets in which the author was involved, but also an assessment of one’s actions and actions committed in the past, taking into account the fact that this assessment is given in the face of Eternity.

Before we consider in more detail the problem of the relationship between confession and autobiography, let us ask ourselves the question of how confession was understood by the contemporaries of St. Augustine and subsequent generations (3).

This latter continues to be used and interpreted in philosophical literature (8), but at the same time diary entries, especially capable of shocking with their frankness, are called confession. Indicative in this regard is the assessment that M.A. Kuzmin gave to his diary in a letter to G.V. Chicherin dated July 18, 1906: “I have been keeping a diary since September, and Somov, V.Iv<анов>and Nouvel, to whom I read it, is considered not only my best work, but generally some kind of world “torch” like the Confessions of Rousseau and Augustine. Only my diary is purely real, petty and personal” (9).

The very comparison of the confessions of Augustine, Rousseau and Leo Tolstoy, which underlies N.I. Conrad’s long-standing plan to present confession as a literary genre, is based largely on this, traditional for the 19th-20th centuries. "blurred" understanding of the word confession. For European literature, starting from the 18th century, confession is perceived, despite the indicated vagueness of the concept, as an independent genre, dating back to the “Confession” of Bl. Augustine.

Speaking about the works of the “confessional” genre, it is necessary to trace its formation, since, as M.I. successfully formulated it. Steblin-Kamensky, “the formation of a genre is the history of the genre” (10). In the case of the confession genre, the situation is more complicated, since the genre itself arises at the intersection of traditions associated with everyday life: confession of faith, repentance and church confession can be considered as the basis of a measured lifestyle befitting a true Christian. Another, but also everyday basis of the genre remains autobiography, which also had its own literary history, and development within a lifestyle that required official career records. On the contrary, the entire subsequent history of the confession genre can be perceived as “secularization,” but one difference from autobiography, having once appeared, will never disappear - the description of the inner world, and not the external outline of life, will remain a sign of the genre to this day.

The height that Bl. reached in “Confession”. Augustine, in the future no one will even try to achieve: what can be called the theme “I, my inner world and the cosmos”, “time as an absolute and the time in which I live” - all this as a sign of confession will not appear anywhere else - a philosophical view of life and the cosmos, understanding what God is, and bringing one’s inner world into harmony with his will. However, this last aspect will be indirectly reflected in Rousseau’s “Confession” in connection with the idea of “natural naturalness” and in L. Tolstoy, for whom the same idea of “natural” turns out to be fundamental. At the same time, the correlation of one’s inner world with God, the Universe and the Cosmos remains unchanged, but later a different view of the author on the foundations of being (God vs. Nature) is possible. And the first step in this direction was taken by Augustine, who can rightfully be called the creator of a new literary genre.

Let us dwell in more detail on the question of how this new genre was created. Augustine himself defines his genre in a very unique way, mentioning confession as a sacrifice (XII.24.33): “I sacrificed this confession to You.” This understanding of confession as a sacrifice to God helps define the text functionally, but does little to define the genre. In addition, there is the definition of “confession of faith” (XIII.12.13) and “profession of faith” (XIII.24.36) (11). The title of the work is easier to translate into Western European languages, although sometimes ambiguity arises here, since the same word conveys what is denoted in Russian by the word “repentance” (cf. the translation of the title of the film “Repentance” by Tengiz Abuladze into English as “Confessions”) . It is quite obvious that Bl. Augustine does not set out a creed, and what we find does not fit the concept of repentance. Confession absorbs the inner spiritual path with the inevitable inclusion of some external circumstances of life, including repentance for them, but also the determination of one’s place in the Universe, in time and in eternity, and it is the view from the timeless that gives Augustine a solid basis for evaluating his actions, his own and other people’s searches truth in an absolute, not a momentary dimension.

The literary genre of “Confession” is certainly associated with several sources, the most ancient of which is the genre of autobiography.

Autobiography is found already in texts of the 2nd millennium BC. One of the oldest texts in this genre is the autobiography of Hattusilis III (1283-1260 BC), a Hittite king of the Middle Kingdom. The narrative is told in the first person, with a kind of service record and a story about how Hattusilis III achieved power. It is characteristic that the future king is not completely free in all his actions - in a number of episodes he acts on the instructions of the goddess Ishtar (12).

Hattusilis is focused on his external destiny and the support he receives from the goddess Ishtar. Autobiographical remarks of this kind are also present in ancient culture, where the first indications of the autobiographical genre begin already in the Odyssey with the hero’s story about himself, and these stories correspond to the usual canons of autobiography (13). The use of the autobiographical genre continued in the 1st millennium BC. in the East. The Behistun inscription of the Persian king Darius I (521-486 BC) is indicative in this regard (14).

Of the autobiographical genres, perhaps the edicts of the Indian king Ashoka (mid-3rd century BC) are a little closer to understanding confession, especially those parts where the king describes his conversion to Buddhism and observance of the dharma (Rock Edict XIII).

Two circumstances make this text similar to the genre of confession: repentance for what was done before turning to the dharma and the conversion itself, as well as comprehension of the events of human life in moral categories. However, this text only briefly reveals to us the inner world of Ashoka, then moving on to discuss practical advice, aimed at creating a new society, and a new policy, which the tsar bequeaths to his children and grandchildren. Otherwise, the text remains autobiographical and focused on external events of life, among which is the king’s appeal to dharma.

The most extensive autobiographical text belongs to Emperor Augustus. This is the so-called Monumentum Ancyranum - an inscription discovered in 1555 in Ankara, which is a copy of a text installed in Rome and listing the main state and construction deeds of Augustus. He concludes his autobiography by indicating that he wrote it in the 76th year of his life, and gives a summary of how many times he was consul, which countries he defeated, to what extent he expanded the Roman state, how many people he allocated with land, what buildings he carried out in Rome . In this official text there is no place for feelings and reflections - Gaius and Lucius, early deceased sons, are only briefly mentioned (Monum. Ancyr. XIV. 1). This text is typical in many ways: throughout ancient times we find the biographical and autobiographical genres closely intertwined.

A certain role in the formation of the genre of biography was played by pamphlets, not so much accusatory pamphlets, of course, as acquittals, a kind of apology that could be written both in the third person (cf. the apologies of Socrates, written by Xenophon and Plato), and in the first person, since the lawyer was not relied upon in a Greek court, and the best Greek orators wrote acquittal speeches on behalf of their client, creating a kind of autobiography based on his biography. The autobiographical genre moves from Greece to Rome, and autobiography becomes a fairly powerful tool of propaganda, as we could see in the example of the autobiography of Emperor Augustus. Monuments of victories and construction activities of this kind can be found in the East throughout the 1st millennium BC. (cf. Behistun inscription of King Darius, which outlines Darius’ path to royal power, and his military victories, and state transformations, and construction activities; cf. also the texts of the Urartian king Rusa). All of these texts serve to justify government policy or the actions of a statesman. The assessment of some practical steps is subject to discussion, and both a direct order of the deity and adherence to high moral principles can be cited as an explanation.

Of course, not all autobiographies, and especially the invective of ancient times, had a chance to reach us in any complete form, but we have at our disposal texts of comparative biographies of Plutarch, who used any biographical information as material, ranging from the most malicious accusations and ending with self-justification (16). All of the listed genres pursued the “external” and completely practical goal of succeeding in society or establishing the principles of the program pursued by a politician. For many centuries, the genre of autobiography has been understood as a combination of external manifestations of human activity with the help of motivations, in which, if desired, one can see individual features of the hero’s inner world. These motivations are in no way an end in themselves of description or the result of introspection. Moreover, they may depend on rhetorical exercises, especially in Roman times, when rhetoric developed rapidly and took leading positions in traditional education.

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1 CuddonJ.A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 3rd ed. Oxford, 1991. In Russian literary criticism, the genre of confession is not considered as an independent genre: the “Short Literary Encyclopedia” (editor-in-chief A.A. Surkov. M., 1966. T. 3. P. 226) does not indicate it, although in the first edition ( Literary encyclopedia/ Ch. ed. A.V. Lunacharsky. M., 1934. T. 7. P. 133) in the article by N. Belchikov “ Memoir literature“confession was mentioned: “An autobiography dedicated to any, especially turning point, events in the life of a writer is often also called a confession (cf., for example, “Confession” of L. Tolstoy, written by him after the creative turning point in 1882, or dying “ The author's confession" by Gogol). This term, however, is not completely defined, and, for example, Rousseau’s “Confessions” are more likely memories”; “The Reader's Encyclopedia” under the general editorship of F.A. Eremeev (Vol. 2. Ekaterinburg, 2002. P. 354) is limited to indicating confession as one of the seven sacraments.

2 The study is devoted to the problem of the relationship between oral and written forms of autobiography: Briper], Weisser S. The Invention of Self: Autobiography and Its Forms // Literacy and Orality / Ed. D. R. Olson, N. Torrens. Cambridge, 1991, pp. 129-148.

3 On the role of Augustine in the general history of autobiography, see the following works: Misch G. Geschichte der Autobiographie. Leipzig; Berlin, 1907. Bd. 1-2; Cox P. Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holly Man. Berkeley, 1983, pp. 45-65. As one of the most revered church fathers, Augustine was studied and included in the indispensable reading circle of any educated Catholic. B. Stock (Stock V. Augustinus the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge (Mass., 1996. P. 2 ff.) traces the history of confession, including Petrarch, Montaigne, Pascal and all the way to Rousseau. From the works devoted to Tolstoy’s confession, see the foreword by Archpriest A. Men in the book: Tolstoy L.N. Confession. L., 1991, as well as the article by G.Ya. Galagan “Confession” of L.N. Tolstoy: the concept of life understanding” (English version published in: Tolstoy Studies Journal. Toronto, 2003. Vol. 15).

4 In addition to those indicated in the “Reader's Encyclopedia” under the general editorship of F.A. Eremeev (Ekaterinburg, 2002. T. 2. P. 354-356) the works of T. Storm, T. D. Quincy, J. Gower, I. Nievo, Ch. Livera, Ezh. Elliot, W. Styron, A. de Musset, I. Roth, see, for example: Grushin B.A., Chikin V.V. Confession of a generation (review of responses to the questionnaire from the Institute of General Opinion “ Komsomolskaya Pravda"). M., 1962. Even more revealing is “Confession of a Woman’s Heart, or the History of Russia” XIX century in diaries, notes, letters and poems of contemporaries" (compiled and introductory article by Z.F. Dragunkina. M., 2000). The title is absolutely remarkable in this regard: “Confession of the Heart: Civil Poems of Contemporary Bulgarian Poets” (compiled by E. Andreeva, foreword by O. Shestinsky. M., 1988). Also interesting are the notes of professionals, designated as “Confession”: Fridolin S.P. Confession of an agronomist. M., 1925.

5 This kind of “confession” includes both the actual confessions of criminals (cf.: Confessions et jugements de criminels au parlement de Paris (1319-1350) / Publ. par M.Langlois et Y.Lanhers. P., 1971), and “confessions” of people who simply put themselves in a position of sharp opposition to the authorities (cf., for example: Confessions of an anarchist by W. S. N. L., 1911).

6 Confession generale de l'appoe 1786. P., 1786. A different type of confession is presented in: Confessions du compte de C... avec l'histoire de ses voyages en Russie, Turquie, Italie et dans les pyramides d'Egypte. Caire, 1787.

7 In addition to the literature indicated in the note. 36, see: Confession of a sectarian / Under. ed. V. Chertkova. B. m., 1904; Confession et repentire de Mme de Poligniac, ou la nouvelle Madeleine convertie, avec la reponse suivie de son testament. P., 1789; Chikin V.V. Confession. M., 1987. Wed. also: Confession to people / Comp. A.A. Kruglov, D.M. Matyas. Minsk, 1978.

8 Bukharina N.A. Confession as a form of self-awareness of a philosopher: Author's abstract. diss. Ph.D. Sci. M., 1997.

9 First published: Perkhin V.V. Sixteen letters from M.A. Kuzmin to G.V. Chicherin (1905-1907) // Russian literature. 1999. No. 1. P. 216. Quoted with corrections of inaccuracies according to the edition: Kuzmin M.A. Diary, 1905-1907 / Preface, prepared by. text and comment. N.A. Bogomolova and S.V. Shumikhina. St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 441.

10 Steblin-Kamensky M.I. Notes on the formation of literature (to the history of fiction) // Problems of comparative philology. Sat. Art. to the 70th anniversary of V.M. Zhirmunsky. M.; L., 1964. S. 401-407.

11 Trace the influence of the ideas of St. Augustine in Russian literature of the 20th century. tried Andrzej Dudik (Dudik A. The ideas of Blessed Augustine in the poetic perception of Vyach. Ivanov // Europa Orientalis. 2002. T. 21, 1. P. 353-365), who compared, in my opinion, completely unreasonably, the work of Vyach. Ivanov’s “Palinode” from St. Augustine’s “Retractationes”, moreover, by the very name Vyach. Ivanov certainly refers to the “Palinode” of Stesichorus (VII-VI centuries BC).

12 Autobiography of Hattusilis III, trans. Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, cit. from the book: The moon fell from the sky. Ancient literature of Asia Minor. M., 1977.

13 Misch G. Geschichte der Autobiographic. Bd. 1. Das Altertum. Leipzig; Berlin, 1907. Recently, attempts have been made to connect some features of the work of Bl. Augustine with the cultural situation in Africa (see: Vyach Ivanov. Vs. Blessed Augustine and the Phoenician-Punic linguistic and cultural tradition in North-West Africa // Third international conference “Language and Culture”. Plenary reports. P. 33- 34).

14 I am Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king in Persia, the king of countries, the son of Vishtaspa (Histaspa), the grandson of Arshama, the Achaemenid. Darius the king says: “My father is Vishtaspa, Vishtaspa’s father is Arshama, Arshama’s father is Ariaramna, Ariaramna’s father is Chitpit, Chiitisha’s father is Achaemen. That's why we are called Achaemenids. From time immemorial we are respected, from time immemorial our family was royal. Eight [people] from my family were kings before me. I'm ninth. Nine of us were successively kings. By the will of Ahura Mazda I am a king. Ahura Mazda gave me the kingdom.

The following countries fell to me, and by the will of Ahura Mazda I became king over them: Persia, Elam, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, [countries by the sea], Lydia, Ionia, Media, Armenia, Cappadocia, Parthia, Drangiana, Areya, Khorezm , Bactria, Sogdiana, Gaidara, Saka, Sattagidia, Arachosia, Maka: a total of 23 countries.

I got these countries. By the will of Ahura Mazda [they] became subject to me and brought me tribute. Everything I ordered them, whether at night or during the day, they carried out. In these countries, I favored [every] person who was the best, [everyone] who was hostile, I severely punished. By the will of Ahura Mazda, these countries followed my laws. [Everything] that I ordered them, they did. Ahura Mazda gave me this kingdom. Ahura Mazda helped me so that I could master this kingdom. By the will of Ahura Mazda I own this kingdom.”

Darius the King says: “This is what I did after I became king.”

Translation from ancient Persian by V.I. Abaev: Literature ancient East. Iran, India, China (texts). M., 1984. S. 41-44.

15 Averintsev S.S. Plutarch and his biographies. M., 1973. pp. 119-129, where the author writes about hypomnematic biography with its categorized structure and the influence of rhetoric on the genre.

In France, as in England, romanticism was not a single movement: in itself early XIX century, reactionary romantics came forward, declaring a campaign against the revolution and the enlighteners; Somewhat later, before the July Revolution, representatives of progressive romanticism entered the literary struggle, and in those years dealt a crushing blow to the reactionary art of the Restoration era.

Historical events in France these years were very turbulent and tense. The first French bourgeois revolution had just ended. The new socio-political system had basically already taken shape, but the fierce resistance of the enemies of the revolution was far from being broken.

The struggle between the progressive and conservative forces of French society was clearly reflected in the literary life of the country. In the very first years of the 19th century, a number of publicists, philosophers, and writers began their activities in France, whose task was to overthrow the ideas of the revolution and the Enlightenment. These philosophers and writers consistently rejected all the ideas of the Enlightenment. They considered reason to be the source of all evil, proposed to restore the rights of faith, religion, and the church, rejected the ideas of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience, for which the enlighteners fought, and demanded the restoration of a single Catholic Church with its head, the pope. Finally, they rejected the principle of democracy, calling for the return of the feudal monarchy.

Chateaubriand (1768-1848). A number of writers joined the philosophers and reactionary publicists of French romanticism. One of the most typical representatives of reactionary romanticism in France is F. R. Chateaubriand.

Before the French Revolution, Chateaubriand, the scion of a noble noble family, came to the court of Louis XVI. Outraged by the laxity of morals that reigned there, Chateaubriand expresses the idea of the need to take measures that would improve the existing state of affairs. But the outbreak of the revolutionary events of 1789 very quickly threw him far to the right flank. The revolution horrifies him, and he immediately becomes its enemy, emigrates from France and joins the army of Prince Condé, which fought against the revolution. But this army was defeated, and at the end of the 90s Chateaubriand ended up in London, where he wrote his first work, “Essay on Revolutions.” It reflected his pessimism, all his confusion in front of the events taking place. “An Essay on Revolutions” raises the question of what a revolution is and whether it is necessary. The author answers this question in the negative; he argues that the revolution does not change anything in the world and does not improve the human condition. The entire history of mankind is a history of disasters, Chateaubriand believes, and revolution only leads to the fact that some despots are replaced by others, even worse. Rousseau's ideas may be good in themselves, but they are not feasible, and if feasible, then only in the very distant future. There is only one thing left for a person: self-will, anarchic personal freedom.

Once in America, Chateaubriand studies the life of American savages and tries to write a work about them, which he called “Natchez” (the name of the tribe of American savages), but nothing harmonious and complete came out of “Natchez”; these were individual notes, fragments, descriptions of travel, very chaotic, long (more than two thousand pages) and unsystematic; they didn't come out. Chateaubriand later processed individual parts of this work, creating “The Spirit of Christianity” (1802) - great job in five parts. Its goal, as the name itself shows, is to reveal the essence of Christianity, to restore the religion shaken by the revolution.

The evidence presented in this work for the existence of God and the harm of atheism is very naive and unconvincing. Happy man According to the author, he does not want his life to end on earth, for he will want his happiness to continue after death. Consequently, atheism is alien to him. A beautiful woman will want her beauty to last forever. This means that she will not be a supporter of atheism, which claims that everything ends here on earth.

This kind of reasoning constitutes the content of the first, theological part of The Spirit of Christianity. The remaining four parts are devoted to the rehabilitation of Christianity from an aesthetic perspective. Chateaubriand tries to prove that Christianity is the source of poetry, the source of inspiration for poets and artists; it provided and continues to provide material for art. Greatest Artists world, for example the Renaissance, took plots and images from the gospel and the Bible. Such provisions are Chateaubriand’s argument in defense of Christianity.

“The Spirit of Christianity” became an extremely popular work, a banner around which everyone who called back, who needed a theoretical justification for the fight against the ideas of the revolution, united.

In “The Spirit of Christianity,” Chateaubriand included two literary passages, two stories, one of which is a continuation of the other: “Atala” and “Rene.” In them the action takes place in America, among American savages. The heroes who unite these two stories are the old savage Chactas and the young Frenchman Rene. The old blind Chactas tells Rene about his youth. Having visited Europe, he returned to his homeland again, where he was captured; he was facing execution; He was saved by the white girl Atala, with whom he fled into the forests. Atala and Shaktas fell in love, but their happiness did not last long; Atala committed suicide: her mother once took a vow of celibacy for her, Atala did not want to break it and chose to die.

In the second story, Rene appears as the narrator; he hands over to Shaktas tragic story the love of his sister, the only person close to him, for him. The sister, having fallen in love with her brother with illicit love, goes to the monastery. Rene leaves Europe. Like all romantic heroes, he prefers to live among uncivilized, wild tribes, because in civilized countries he sees only corruption, suffering, and selfishness.

Rene is a typical hero of reactionary romanticism with his pessimism and “worldly sorrow.” Life seems meaningless to him. Rene's drama is not only in the events of his personal life; it is deeper and wider. This is the drama of a man belonging to the old world, for whom the revolution has closed all prospects. Chateaubriand's call to get as far away from the world as possible and to despise its vanity was essentially very hypocritical and false. In reality, Chateaubriand’s hero does not break with the world at all, as the author tries to show. Under the motives of “world sorrow” he hid hatred of the revolution and a desire to return the past.

Chateaubriand's hero is a man who believes that he is destined for a special place in life, that all his sufferings and feelings have some special, higher meaning. Hence the extreme pomposity and pomposity of the style of Chateaubriand’s works. His language is unusually complicated, mannered, artificial. Chateaubriand's work was sharply criticized by Marx. This is what he wrote in one of his letters to Engels (November 30, 1873): “... I read Sainte-Beuve’s book about Chateaubriand, a writer who has always disgusted me. If this man became so famous in France, it is only because he is in all respects the most classic embodiment of French vanity, and vanity, moreover, not in the light, frivolous attire of the 18th century, but dressed in romantic clothes and putting on airs with newly minted expressions; false depth, Byzantine exaggeration, flirtation with feelings, motley play of colors, excessive imagery, theatricality, pomposity - in a word - a deceitful mixture that has never been seen before either in form or in content.”

French romanticism, which arose in the birthplace of the bourgeois revolution of the late 18th century, was naturally more clearly associated with the political struggle of the era than the romantic movements of other countries. The figures of French romanticism showed different political sympathies and joined either the camp of the outgoing nobility or the progressive ideas of their time, but all of them did not accept the new bourgeois society and were sensitive to its full-fledged hostility human personality and contrasted it with spiritless commercialism with the ideal of beauty and freedom of spirit, for which there was no place in reality.

French romanticism developed in the first thirty years of the 19th century. Its first stage coincided with the period of the Consulate and the First Empire (approximately 1801-1815); At this time, romantic aesthetics was just taking shape, the first writers of a new direction appeared: Chateaubriand, Germaine de Stael, Benjamin Constant.

The second stage began during the Restoration period (1815-1830), when the Napoleonic empire collapsed and the kings of the Bourbon dynasty, relatives of Louis XVI, overthrown by the revolution, returned to France in the train of foreign interventionists. During this period, the romantic school finally took shape, the main aesthetic manifestos of romanticism appeared and there was a rapid flowering of romantic literature of all genres: lyric poetry, historical novel, drama, major romantic writers such as Lamartine, Nerval, Vigny, Hugo appeared.

The third stage falls on the years of the July Monarchy (1830-1848), when the dominance of the financial bourgeoisie was finally established, the first republican uprisings and the first demonstrations of workers in Lyon and Paris took place, and the ideas of utopian socialism spread. At this time, new ones arise before the romantics: Victor Hugo, George Sand. social issues, as before the great realists, Stendhal and Balzac, who worked in the same years, and along with romantic poetry, a new genre of romantic, social novel arises.

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Chateaubriand.

Section 15. Romanticism in France. - Chateaubriand.

French romanticism originated among aristocratic emigrants who were hostile to revolutionary ideas. This is a natural “first reaction to French revolution and the associated Enlightenment...” The first romantics poeticized the feudal past, expressing their rejection of the new kingdom of bourgeois prose, which was taking shape before their eyes. But at the same time, they painfully felt the relentless march of history and understood the illusory nature of their dreams turned to the past. Hence the pessimistic coloring of their work.

The largest figure of the first stage of French romanticism was Viscount François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), whom Pushkin called “the first of the modern French writers, teacher of the entire writing generation."

A Breton nobleman, thrown out of his family nest by a revolutionary storm, Chateaubriand became an emigrant, visited America, fought in the ranks of the royalist troops against the French Republic, and lived in London. Returning to his homeland, during the years of the Consulate and the Empire he published a number of works hostile to the ideas of the revolution and glorifying the Catholic religion. During the Restoration he moved away from literature and took up political activity; he was the initiator of the suppression of the Spanish Revolution in 1823.

Chateaubriand’s treatise “The Genius of Christianity” (1802) played a certain role in the development of the aesthetics of French romanticism, where he tried to prove that the Christian religion enriched art by opening up for it a new dramatism - the struggle of spirit and flesh. Chateaubriand divides art into pre-Christian and Christian, thereby implying that art develops and changes along with human history.

Chateaubriand's literary fame rests on two short stories“Atala” (1801) and “Rene” (separate edition, 1805), which he initially thought of as chapters of a prose epic about the life of American Indians, but then used as illustrations for “The Genius of Christianity” (for the section “On the Fragility of Passions”) .

Confessional novel.

Section 15. Romanticism in France. - Confessional novel.

The name of Chateaubriand is associated with the emergence of a new literary genre - the romantic confessional novel, which is a lyrical monologue - the confession of the hero. In such a work it is only conventionally depicted external world, all attention is focused on revealing the inner life of the central character, complex and contradictory, on his scrupulous self-analysis. A lot of personal stuff was invested in the confessional novels, the author at times merged with the hero, contemporaries guessed elements of autobiography behind the fictional plot, and elements of autobiography behind the characters. real people(even the term “romance with a key” arose).

But for all the subjectivity characteristic of romanticism, confessional novels contained a broad generalization: they reflected the state of minds and hearts generated by an era of social upheaval, a state that the romantics defined as “the disease of the century” and which was nothing more than individualism. Chateaubriand was the first to introduce into literature a hero afflicted by this illness - removed from great life a lonely, restless society, consumed by disappointment and boredom, at war with the whole world.

Section 15. Romanticism in France. - “Atala.”

In the story “Atala,” this new hero appears in the guise of the Indian Shaktas, who tells the missionary Suel the sad story of his love for the beautiful daughter of the leader of a hostile tribe, Indian Atala, who saved him from death. Lovers wander in tropical forests; in the end, Atala, a Christian, for whom her mother took a vow of celibacy, takes her own life, as she is unable to resist her carnal passion for Shaktas.

Having endowed the heroes of “Atala” with the feelings of his contemporaries, Chateaubriand seemed to be polemicizing with Rousseau: it turns out that there is no harmony even among untouched nature, “natural man” is also subject to sinful passions and must seek refuge in the Christian religion. But this morality sounds false in the story, because it contradicts the author’s admiration for the characters and the rapture with which he depicts the beauty of the earthly world.

The first readers of Atala were greatly impressed by the colorful descriptions of American forests and prairies, full of theatrical effects, and the life of unknown peoples. Chateaubriand introduced a completely new material into French literature - exoticism, which would later occupy a significant place in the art of romanticism. Contemporaries were also struck by Chateaubriand’s flowery, florid style, his artificial elevation, exaggerated imagery, about which K. Marx spoke sharply; Resolutely rejecting Chateaubriand as a politician and writer, Marx called his works a “false mishmash.”

Section 15. Romanticism in France. - "Rene."

In Chateaubriand's second story, "Rene", the disappointed hero appears without any makeup (he bears the author's name); he also tells his story himself, sitting under a tree against the backdrop of an exotic landscape, to the aged blind Shaktas and the missionary Suel.

Younger son An old noble family, left without funds after the death of his father, the young man Rene threw himself “into the stormy ocean of the world” and became convinced of the instability and frailty of human existence. He goes through life as a lonely sufferer, having lost all taste for it, full of unclear impulses and unfinished desires, secretly proud of his fatal restlessness, which elevates him above ordinary people.

In "Rene" the idea is also conveyed that man is a victim of uncontrollable passions. An example of this is the unnatural passion for the hero of his sister Amelie, whom Rene considered his only friend. Fleeing from herself, Amelie takes monastic vows in a monastery, and Rene, having discovered her terrible secret, flees from a vicious society into the forests of America, seeking oblivion among the simple-hearted Indians. But in vain: he brings with him all the contradictions of his soul and remains just as suffering and lonely “a savage among savages.” In the finale, Father Suel severely reproaches Rene for his pride, saying: “Happiness can only be found on the beaten path,” however, this time the author’s admiration for an exceptional personality contradicts this imposed morality. The whole story is permeated with a keen sense of the irreversible movement of history; the past cannot be returned, “history has taken just one step, and the face of the earth has changed beyond recognition,” and in the emerging new world there is no place for Rene.

The enormous success of "René", which became the prototype of a whole galaxy of melancholy heroes of romanticism, struck by the "disease of the century", was based, of course, not on the author's noble sympathies, but on the fact that Chateaubriand picked up the mood hanging in the air and captured a new life phenomenon: the drama of individualism, discord between a spiritually rich individual and a possessive society. Under the charm of Chateaubriand were dozens of his younger contemporaries, right up to the young Balzac. The young man Hugo wrote in his diary: “I want to be Chateaubriand - or nothing!”

The central novel in Chateaubriand’s work is “Apology for Christianity.” “Atala” and “Rene”, according to the author’s plan, were illustrations for the “Apology”.

"Atala" is a novel about "the love of two lovers walking through deserted places and talking to each other." The novel uses new methods of expressiveness - the author conveys the feelings of the characters through descriptions of nature - sometimes indifferently majestic, sometimes formidable and deadly.

In parallel, in this novel, the author polemicizes with the theory of “natural man” by Rousseau: Chateaubriand’s heroes, the savages of North America, are “in nature” ferocious and cruel and turn into peaceful villagers only when faced with Christian civilization.

In “René, or the Consequences of the Passions”, for the first time in French literature, the image of the hero-sufferer, the French Werther, was depicted. “A young man, full of passions, sitting by the crater of a volcano and mourning the mortals whose habitations he can scarcely discern, ... this picture gives you an image of his character and his life; just as during my life I had before my eyes a creature that was immense and at the same time not perceptible, but next to me a yawning abyss..."

Chateaubriand's influence on French literature is enormous; it embraces content and form with equal force, determining the further literary movement in its most diverse manifestations. Romanticism in almost all its elements - from the disillusioned hero to the love of nature, from historical paintings to the vividness of language - is rooted in it; Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo were prepared by him.

In Russia, Chateaubriand’s work was popular at the beginning of the 19th century; he was highly valued by K. N. Batyushkov and A. S. Pushkin.

Romantic art is characterized by: aversion to bourgeois reality, a decisive rejection of the rationalistic principles of bourgeois enlightenment and classicism, distrust of the cult of reason, which was characteristic of the enlighteners and writers of the new classicism.

The moral and aesthetic pathos of romanticism is associated primarily with the affirmation of the dignity of the human personality, the intrinsic value of its spiritual and creative life. This found expression in the images of heroes of romantic art, which is characterized by the depiction of extraordinary characters and strong passions, and a desire for boundless freedom. The revolution proclaimed individual freedom, but the same revolution gave rise to the spirit of acquisitiveness and selfishness. These two sides of personality (the pathos of freedom and individualism) manifested themselves very complexly in the romantic concept of the world and man.

The romantics denied the need and possibility of an objective reflection of reality. Therefore, they proclaimed the subjective arbitrariness of the creative imagination to be the basis of art. The plots for romantic works were chosen to include exceptional events and extraordinary settings in which the characters acted.

Originating in Germany, where the foundations of the romantic worldview and romantic aesthetics were laid, romanticism is rapidly spreading throughout Europe. It covered all spheres of spiritual culture: literature, music, theater, humanities, plastic arts. In the first half of the nineteenth century. In Europe there was a romantic philosophy: Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775-1854), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). But at the same time, romanticism was no longer a universal style, which was classicism, and did not significantly affect architecture, influencing mainly landscape gardening art and architecture of small forms.

Romanticism in literature.

In France in the first third of the nineteenth century. Romanticism was the founding movement of literature. At an early stage of its development, the central figure was François René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848). He represented the Conservative wing.

Western European culture of the 19th century. this direction. Everything he wrote is a polemic against the ideas of the Enlightenment and revolution. The treatise “for Christianity glorifies the beauty of religion” and substantiates the idea that Catholicism should serve as the basis and content of art. Man's salvation, according to Chateaubriand, lies only in turning to religion. Chateaubriand wrote in a pompous, flowery, falsely thoughtful style.

Confession CONFESSION , a type of lyric. self-expression, cultivated by L. as lit. genre, but maintaining a connection with its original. meaning: she is one of the seven Christs. sacraments, which also include baptism, communion, confirmation, marriage, etc. I. demanded from a person complete sincerity, the desire to get rid of sins, and repentance. Having penetrated into the artist. literary ru, I. acquired didactic. shade, becoming a kind of act of public repentance (for example, in J. J. Rousseau, N. V. Gogol, L. N. Tolstoy). But at the same time, I. was also a means of moral self-affirmation of the individual. As a genre of lyric poetry, poetry was developed by the romantics, but is generally comparable to the lyric form. statements from the first person, known even before the appearance of I. as Christ. sacraments. In the previous L. rus. poetic tradition elements lyrical. I. appear in N. M. Karamzin and V. A. Zhukovsky, and intensify in the work of E. A. Baratynsky. Among the Decembrists, I. served to express political ideas. and philosopher the poet’s convictions through the mouth of the confessing hero (“Confession of Nalivaika” by K. F. Ryleev). The desire for I. is characteristic of the lyrics of A. S. Pushkin in the 30s. (“When the noisy day ceases for a mortal...”). I. is akin to a diary, but unlike it, it is not attached to a k.-l. place and time. To Lermont. I. often retain the form of repentance [“Prayer” (“Don’t blame me, omnipotent”)] and the figure of the attentive I. (poems “Giulio”, “Mtsyri”, “Confession”, verse “Repentance”). But this is only a form of the confessor’s appeal to the one who judges his sins. In this form Lermont. the hero, instead of begging for forgiveness of sins, on the contrary, defends the value of what he has done in life, not wanting to repent of what he has done. In L., two types of I. are distinguished. Firstly, this is I., addressed by the speaker to another person or to “the whole world.” For example, “Mtsyri”, “Repentance”, “K*” (“I will not humiliate myself before you”). Here is the desire for repentance, salvation of the soul and the utmost frankness of the canon. I. are supplanted by the opposite: “I don’t want to shed tears before heaven / For salvation / Or to wash a sinful soul with miraculous calm...” (“Repentance”). The confessor, instead of telling about himself, erects a wall of mystery between himself and the listener, and he refuses to reveal this secret to anyone: “For life, for peace, for eternity to you / I will not sell this secret!” (poem “Confession”). By pitting himself against the whole world, the hero thereby refuses help. I. turns into a challenge to the interlocutor. This self-awareness of the hero is also stimulated by the fact that he doubts the ability of words to adequately convey his feelings and thoughts: “. ..my affairs / It’s a little useful for you to know - / Can I tell my soul?” (“Mtsyri”). Confession as the remission of sins by someone else is devalued, and the person confessing places the remission of sins on himself. Secondly, L. has a monologue. I. - I. “for myself.” In verse. “I don’t want the world to know” L., as it were, explains to himself the reasons why the hero leaves his secret to himself: for him “the only judge is God and conscience.” But God in L.’s poetry cannot become the supreme “purifier” from sin: the person confessing is not given the fullness of faith necessary for complete justice. Faith constantly struggles with reason, with experience: “But cold experience, which is warm, contradicts every moment...” (verse "Confession") I. becomes the place where faith and experience collide (see Religious motives). The peculiar poles of L.’s confessional lyrics are “Prayer” (“In a difficult moment of life”) and “Gratitude.” In the first verse. the fullness of faith sought by the poet is expressed, in the second - sarcastic. a challenge to God (see God-fighting motives). The contradiction between these poles is fundamental. theme of I. in L. The poet cannot accept forgiveness and internal. excuses from any other person. Therefore, his I. is, first of all, a person’s report to himself (hence the reluctance to reveal, to entrust the secret to someone else). Analyzing himself, Lermont. the hero is convinced that such a contradiction is peculiar only to him and only to him it serves as a source of spiritual strength: “And what would be poison to others / Lives him, feeds him / With its caustic fire” (verse “Confession”). As a result of this, a person either consciously fences himself off from the world, dooming himself to loneliness, or, as in a verse. “Do not blame me, Omnipotent,” renounces the “narrow path of salvation” in the name of love for earthly passions. And the contradiction between rejection from the world and attraction to the “rebellious excitements of life” is for Lermont. I. the main genre-forming moment. Genre I. in Lermont. interpretation will later appear in F. M. Dostoevsky, in whose work he became the subject of in-depth analysis (“Demons”, “The Brothers Karamazov”).

A. M. Peskov, V. N. Turbin Lermontov Encyclopedia / USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute of Russian lit. (Pushkin. House); Scientific-ed. Council of the publishing house "Sov. Encycl."; Ch. ed. Manuilov V. A., Editorial Board: Andronikov I. L., Bazanov V. G., Bushmin A. S., Vatsuro V. E., Zhdanov V. V., Khrapchenko M. B. - M.: Sov. Encycl., 1981

Synonyms:

See what “Confession” is in other dictionaries:

confession- confession, and... Russian spelling dictionary

- (Confessiones) (c. 397–401) in 13 books. - Augustine’s work summarizing the dramatic vicissitudes of his spiritual development. The title (“confessio” – “confession of faith” and “confession of sins”) compositionally unites the book. I–IX (psychological… … Philosophical Encyclopedia

CONFESSION, a sacrament of the church, the disclosure by believers of their sins to the priest and receiving from him forgiveness (remission of sins) in the name of Jesus Christ. Confession was at first public, then it became secret and mandatory. In Catholicism, secret confession... ... Modern encyclopedia

Confession- CONFESSION, a sacrament of the church, the disclosure by believers of their sins to the priest and receiving forgiveness from him (“absolution of sins”) in the name of Jesus Christ. Confession was at first public, then it became secret and mandatory. In Catholicism, secret confession... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

- - religious and philosophical treatise by L.N. Tolstoy, written in 1879–81. In Russia, publication was prohibited by spiritual censorship. First published in the journal "Common Cause" in Geneva in 1881–84, last edition: Confession; What is my faith? L., 1991. In... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

CONFESSION, confession, women. 1. In the Christian church, repentance of your sins before the priest; rite of absolution by the priest after questioning the penitent (church). During confession. Be at confession. 2. Sincere and complete confession of something... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

Sacrament, recognition, demands, consciousness, repentance Dictionary of Russian synonyms. confession see confession Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical guide. M.: Russian language. Z. E. Alexandrova ... Synonym dictionary

- “CONFESSION”, youthful verse. L. (1831); combines the features of “confessional” lyrics and an oratorical monologue (see Confession). Expressing disappointment in the world and people, in one’s own. romantic illusions of the author and at the same time preserving the seeds... ... Lermontov Encyclopedia

CONFESSION AS A LITERARY GENRE

Kazansky N. Confession as a literary genre // Bulletin of history, literature, art / RAS, Department of History and Philology. sciences; Ch. ed. G. M. Bongard-Levin. - M.: Sobranie, 2009. - T. 6. - P. 73-90. - Bibliography: p. 85-90 (45 titles).

Typically, confession is considered as a special type of autobiography (1), which presents a retrospective of one’s own life. Autobiography in the broad sense of the word, including any type of memory, can be both a literary fact and an everyday fact (from a service record to oral stories (2)). In memoirs, however, there is no what we primarily associate with the genre of confession - sincerity of assessments of one’s own actions, in other words, confession is not a story about the days lived, the secrets in which the author was involved, but also an assessment of one’s actions and actions committed in the past, taking into account the fact that this assessment is given in the face of Eternity.

The word confession throughout the 19th-20th centuries. significantly expanded and lost its original meaning: it became possible to combine under the word confession diaries, notes, letters and poems of completely different people who lived at the same time (4). Another meaning is the meaning of recognition, which is widespread in both legal texts (5) and notes (6). The meaning of “confession” can quite clearly lead away from the original meaning of the word confession: for example, “Confession of a bloody dog. Social Democrat Noske about his betrayals” (Pg.: Priboy, 1924) in no way implies church repentance, although throughout that same XX century Confession also retained the old meaning of the “confessional word” (7). This latter continues to be used and interpreted in philosophical literature (8), but at the same time diary entries, especially capable of shocking with their frankness, are called confession. Indicative in this regard is the assessment that M.A. Kuzmin gave to his diary in a letter to G.V. Chicherin dated July 18, 1906: “I have been keeping a diary since September, and Somov, V.Iv<анов>and Nouvel, to whom I read it, is considered not only my best work, but generally some kind of world “torch” like the Confessions of Rousseau and Augustine. Only my diary is purely real, petty and personal" (9).

Speaking about works of the “confessional” genre, it is necessary to trace its formation, since, as M.I. successfully formulated it. Steblin-Kamensky, “the formation of a genre is the history of the genre” (10). In the case of the genre of confession, the situation is more complicated, since the genre itself arises at the intersection of traditions associated with everyday life: confession of faith, repentance and church confession can be considered as the basis of a measured lifestyle befitting a true Christian. Another, but also everyday basis of the genre remains autobiography, which had both its own literary history and development within the framework of a way of life that required official records of an official career. On the contrary, the entire subsequent history of the confession genre can be perceived as “secularization,” but one difference from autobiography, having once appeared, will never disappear - the description of the inner world, and not the external outline of life, will remain a feature of the genre to this day. The height that Bl. reached in “Confession”. Augustine, in the future no one will even try to achieve: what can be called the theme “I, my inner world and the cosmos”, “time as an absolute and the time in which I live” - all this as a sign of confession will not appear anywhere else - a philosophical view of life and the cosmos, understanding what God is, and bringing one’s inner world into harmony with his will. However, this last aspect will be indirectly reflected in Rousseau’s “Confession” in connection with the idea of “natural naturalness” and in L. Tolstoy, for whom the same idea of “natural” turns out to be fundamental. At the same time, the correlation of one’s inner world with God, the Universe and the Cosmos remains unchanged, but later a different view of the author on the foundations of being (God vs. Nature) is possible. And the first step in this direction was taken by Augustine, who can rightfully be called the creator of a new literary genre.

Let us dwell in more detail on the question of how this new genre was created. Augustine himself defines his genre in a very unique way, mentioning confession as a sacrifice (XII.24.33): “I sacrificed this confession to You.” This understanding of confession as a sacrifice to God helps define the text functionally, but does little to define the genre. In addition, there is the definition of “confession of faith” (XIII.12.13) and “confession of faith” (XIII.24.36) (11). The title of the work is easier to translate into Western European languages, although sometimes ambiguity arises here, since the same word conveys what in Russian is designated by the word “repentance” (cf. the translation of the title of the film “Repentance” by Tengiz Abuladze into English as “Confessions”) . It is quite obvious that Bl. Augustine does not set out a creed, and what we find does not fit the concept of repentance. Confession absorbs the internal spiritual path with the inevitable inclusion of some external circumstances of life, including repentance for them, but also the determination of one’s place in the Universe, in time and in eternity, and it is the view from the timeless that gives Augustine a solid basis to appreciate their actions, their own and others’ searches for truth in an absolute, not a momentary, dimension.

The literary genre of "Confession" is certainly associated with several sources, the most ancient of which is the genre of autobiography.

Of the autobiographical genres, perhaps a little closer to understanding confession are the edicts of the Indian king Ashoka (mid-3rd century BC), especially those parts where the king describes his conversion to Buddhism and observance of the dharma (Rock Edict XIII) ( 15).

Two circumstances make this text similar to the genre of confession: repentance for what was done before turning to the dharma and the conversion itself, as well as comprehension of the events of human life in moral categories. However, this text only briefly reveals to us the inner world of Ashoka, then moving on to a discussion of practical advice aimed at creating a new society, and the new policy that the king bequeaths to his children and grandchildren. Otherwise, the text remains autobiographical and focused on external events of life, among which is the king’s appeal to dharma.

All this centuries-old experience of tradition, which in general can be called a written tradition, in early Christianity collided with a new, just becoming oral genre. Church confession includes a confession of faith and acceptance of the sacrament of repentance, but does not imply a full autobiography, limiting itself, as a rule, to much more short period time than the entire human life. At the same time, confession is devoid of any features characteristic of hagiographic literature; Moreover, it can be noted that an autobiographical life would be obvious nonsense. In the Gospel we will hardly find a mention of confession as such; we will talk about the confession of a new Christian faith with a new principle of confession: “confess to one another.” Of course, this genre of confession existed only as an oral genre, although individual passages of the apostolic epistles can be quite easily correlated with confession as a genre of oral literature. However, these are teaching letters in which the theme of catechesis (conversion to Christianity) and instruction in faith occupy a dominant place, preventing the authors from dwelling too much on their experiences and assessing their moral formation and development.

Inner life as the purpose of description can appear in the form of scattered notes and reflections, for example, such as we find in the reflections of Marcus Aurelius. The orderliness of his notes requires some autobiography, which explains the beginning of his notes, addressed to himself, with the classification of the natural traits of his character and their correlation with the moral virtues of the elders in the family. The history of the inner life of man, the history of the soul and spirit, is not arranged in any chronological sequence by Marcus Aurelius (17). Reflections on “eternal” questions do not allow, or do not always allow, him to delve into the history of how these issues were resolved at different periods of life and how they should be resolved now. The history of internal spiritual growth, described by the person himself, requires a chronological framework, which reflections themselves are not able to set - they have to be taken from external events of human life. These external events set the outline of the narrative, but also have explanatory power: a chance meeting unexpectedly turns into internal spiritual growth, and the mention of it allows us to introduce a chronological milestone into the narrative and at the same time explain the origins and meaning of what happened.

Christianity, of course, knew both polemics and disputes during church councils, which in many ways continued those lower genres of Roman literature that have come down to us mostly in the form of indirect references. Nevertheless, it is in Christianity that the genre of confession appears in the way that it enters subsequent European culture. This is not just a combination of traditional written genres and oral genres included in the established sacraments of church rites. We are talking about the emergence of a completely new genre that did not initially have a practical goal, similar to the one that was set for the justification or accusation of a political opponent. That is why the frequent mention that accusations in the Manichaean past served as an impetus for writing the “Confession” (18) is hardly related to inner meaning works of bl. Augustine.

As one might notice, defining the genre of confession turns out to be an extremely difficult task, even in relation to our contemporary literature, due to the organic combination of literary significant elements (autobiography, notes, diary, creed), the interweaving of which creates a whole and new thing recognizable to the reader - confession. Probably the most accurate definition of our modern understanding of confession within the framework of modern literature we will find in the poems of Boris Pasternak, who invited the reader to see the multi-layered and multi-directional nature of spiritual quests predetermined by the genre, placing the following lines at the beginning of his poetic autobiography (19):

Everything will be here: what I have experienced, And what I still live with, My aspirations and foundations, And what I have seen in reality.

This list lacks only theological problems, but even without them, there is no word in any of the world’s languages that would be able to designate the inner world of man in his relationship to God, taken in development and philosophically comprehended step by step (20). Speaking of Augustine as a discoverer of the inner world of man has become common in recent years (21). The problems that arise here are related to determining how Augustine managed to accommodate God in the soul without affirming the divinity of the soul (22). Understanding through the metaphor of inner vision and the ability to turn one's gaze inward (23) one's inner world and the need to purify one's mental gaze in order to receive grace, Augustine insists on diverting one's gaze from external things. When comprehending his inner world, Augustine operates with signs, which allowed a number of researchers to consider him a “semiotician of the Platonic sense.” Indeed, the contribution of St. Augustine to the doctrine of the sign is difficult to overestimate.

In any analysis that Augustine undertakes, grace plays an important role in comprehension, which is a divine gift associated initially with reason, not faith, but at the same time it is grace that helps to understand the internal attitude to self-awareness. The intellectual vision itself in relation to understanding and to the Christian faith in Augustine is not at all as simple as modern supporters of Catholicism, Protestantism or Orthodoxy try to define it based on popular ideas (liberal or authoritarian preferences) (24).

In any case, St. Augustine's Confessions was the first work to explore the inner state of human thought and the relationship between grace and free will, themes that formed the basis of Christian philosophy and theology (25). A subtle and observant psychologist, Augustine was able to show the development of the human soul, drawing attention to a number of fundamental human culture moments. Among other things, he mentioned in passing the “tickling of the heart,” which is fundamentally important for modern understanding of the theory of the comic, which is enthusiastically commented on in the latest monograph on the theory of the funny (26).

For Augustine, the desire to speak of himself as a repentant sinner is quite obvious, i.e. “Confession,” at least in the first books, represents a “sacrifice of repentance,” and conversion to Christianity itself is understood as an act of divine grace (IX.8.17). The latter requires a special story about God as the Creator of every gift, including the gift of joining the Christian faith. Within the framework of this construction, the internal logic of the plot of “Confession” by Bl. is understood. Augustine, which can be described as a movement from external to internal and from lower to higher, completely in terms of the development of the Spirit according to Hegel. Thus, according to B. Stock, there is a certain subordination of autobiography to general theological considerations. In 1888, A. Harnack (27) suggested that the historical truth in Augustine’s Confessions is subordinated to theology to such an extent that it is not possible to rely on the Confessions as autobiographical work. Without going to such extremes, we can agree with the conclusion of B. Stock, who reasonably noted that Augustine understood perfectly well that autobiography is not a revision of events; this is a revision of one’s attitude towards them (28).

IN ancient times for a literary work, genre affiliation was often more important than authorship (29). In the case of “Confession,” which tells about the inner world of a person, the authorship, of course, had to break the established genre canons. Moreover, Augustine's Confessions should not be seen as an attempt to create a text of a certain genre. Augustine moved from life and from his memories to the text, so that the original plan may have been purely ethical and embodied in a literary work only thanks to ethics (30). A significant role in the formation of Augustine, as shown by the same Stock, was played by reading, which accompanied him at all stages of his life. Augustine turns comprehension of the events of his life into a kind of spiritual exercise (31).

It should be said that the perception of past days as books being re-read is also characteristic of the culture of modern times, cf. from Pushkin:

And reading my life with disgust, I tremble and curse, And I complain bitterly, and I shed bitter tears, But I don’t wash away the sad lines.

Augustine's life is presented by him as worthy in many respects of "bitter complaints", but at the same time it is shown by him as a movement, as a return from the external (foris) to the internal (intus) (32), from darkness to light, from multiplicity to unity, from death to life (33). This internal development is shown in turning points for Augustine’s biography, each of which is captured as a vivid picture, and in the connection of these moments with each other there is the idea of theocentricity, i.e. It is not man who is the center of his existence, but God. Augustine's conversion to Christianity is a return to himself and surrendering himself to the will of God. As noted above, “Confession” turned out to be the only work of its kind, possessing its own new, previously unknown genre specificity.

The author of a recent generalizing encyclopedic article on Augustine's Confessions, Erich Feldmann (34), identifies the following as the main issues related to the study of this text: 1) perspectives in the history of study; 2) history of the text and title; 3) division of the “Confession” into topics; 4) the unity of “Confession” as a research problem; 5) the biographical and intellectual situation in which Augustine was at the time of completion of the Confessions; 6) the theological structure and originality of the Confession; 7) the theological and propaedeutic nature of the “Confession” and its addressees; 8) the art form of "Confession"; 9) dating.

Of particular importance is the question of the dating of the “Confession”, and we can speak with sufficient confidence about the beginning of work on the “Confession” after May 4, 395 and before August 28, 397. This dating has recently been subjected to a fairly serious revision by P.M. Omber (35), who proposed 403 as the date for writing books X-XIII. It should be noted that all this time (already in the 90s) Augustine continued to work on commentaries (enarrationes) to the Psalms. However, it is clear that Augustine made changes to his text in subsequent years, and the last change can be dated to 407.

Above we have already tried to show that confession as a literary genre originates from Augustine. Before moving on to further consideration, let us recall that confession as such is an integral part of the sacrament of repentance, a sacrament established by Jesus Christ himself (36). The sacrament of repentance has been preserved to this day in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions. Visible side This sacrament represents confession and permission from sins received through the priest. IN early centuries In Christianity, the sacrament of confession formed an important part of the life of the Christian community, and it should be borne in mind that at that time confession was public. Repentance and confession are often used as synonyms, not only in church texts when it comes to the sacrament of repentance, but also in modern secular texts: above we mentioned that the title of the famous film “Repentance” is translated into English as “Confessions”. The concept of confession combines both repentance and a declaration of the principles that a person professes.

This second meaning is probably more correct, since the concept of confession arises in the depths of the Christian tradition, but the word denoting it goes back to the so-called Greek translation of the Bible by the LXX interpreters. It is possible that the Russian verb “to confess” in the first part is an Old Slavonic tracing paper from the ancient Greek exomologeo. Typically, etymological dictionaries note that confession is formed from the prefixed verb povedati “to tell” (37). Already for the Old Slavonic confession several meanings are proposed: 1) “glorification, glory, greatness”, 2) “open recognition”, 3) “teaching of the faith, openly recognized”, 4) “testimony or martyrdom”. V.I. Dahl’s dictionary gives two meanings for the word confession: 1) “the sacrament of repentance”, 2) “sincere and complete consciousness, an explanation of one’s convictions, thoughts and deeds.” Clarification of these accompanying meanings of the word confession is fundamentally important, since understanding of the intention of the work of Bl. largely depends on them. Augustine, the origins of the creative impulse, as well as the understanding of the literary genre that he first established.

The novelty of the literary genre of confession is not in confession as such, which already existed in the Christian community, was part of Christian life and therefore, from the very early stages of Christianity, belonged to “everyday life.” The division of everyday and literary fact goes back to Yu.N. Tynyanov, who proposed such a division based on the material of letters. An “everyday” letter may contain lines of amazing strength and sincerity, but if it is not intended for publication, it should be considered as an everyday fact. Augustine's "Confession" is very different both from what we assume for confession, which has entered Christian life, and from the modern understanding of confession as a literary genre of modern times. Let us note several features of Augustine's Confessions. The first is an appeal to God, which is repeated regularly. The second feature is not only a focus on understanding one’s own life, but also consideration of such philosophical categories as time. Three whole books of the Confessions are devoted to this problem, theological and philosophical (38).

It seems that both of these features can receive an explanation that greatly changes our understanding of the concept of the Confession and its implementation. As shown by recent studies devoted to the chronology of the work of Bl. Augustine, in parallel with writing the Confessions, continued to compose commentaries on the Psalter. This side of Augustine’s activity has not been sufficiently studied, but it is known that he read his “Enarrationes in Psalmos” in Carthage to a wide audience (39), and before that he wrote the poetic work “Psalmus contra patrem Donati” (393-394). The Psalter was playing special role in the life of Augustine until his last days. Dying during the siege of Hippo in 430, he asked that seven penitential psalms be hung next to his bed (Possidius. Vita Aug. 31). It is characteristic that both the exegetical interpretations and the psalm belonging to Augustine were read aloud and intended for oral perception. Augustine himself mentions reading the Psalter aloud with his mother, Monica (Conf. IX.4). There is also direct evidence from Augustine that the first 9 books of the Confessions were also read aloud (Conf. X.4 “confessiones ... cum leguntur et audiuntur”). In Russian, only one study is devoted to Augustine’s interpretation of the psalms (40), showing Augustine’s adherence to the Latin text of the psalms, which blindly repeats the inaccuracies of the Greek understanding of the Hebrew text.

Usually, when talking about the word confessiones, they start from the etymological meaning, which is really necessary, and this is what we tried to show when talking about the Russian name “Confession”. For the Latin confessiones, the connection with the verb confiteor, confessus sum, confiteri (going back to fari “to speak”) is quite obvious. In the Latin language of classical times, the prefix verb means “to recognize, acknowledge (errors)” (41), “to clearly show, to reveal,” “to confess, to praise and confess” (42). The distribution of these words throughout the Vulgate text appears fairly even, with the exception of the book of Psalms. Statistics obtained using the PHI-5.3 Latin Thesaurus showed that almost a third of the uses are in the Psalter (confessio occurs 30 times in total, of which 9 times in psalms translated from Greek, and 4 times in psalms translated from Hebrew; confit - occurs 228 times in total, of which 71 times in psalms translated from Greek, and 66 times in psalms translated from Hebrew). Even more significant is the use of the stem exomologe- in the Septuagint, which occurs only 98 times, of which 60 uses occur in the Psalter. These data, like any statistics, would not be indicative if not for several circumstances that change the matter: bl. Augustine in his Confessions addresses God directly and directly, as King David did before him in the Psalms. The openness of the soul to God, the glorification of God in his ways and the comprehension of these paths do not find parallels in ancient culture. For Augustine, the question formulated by the author of one of Homer’s hymns is simply impossible: “What can I say about you, who is all-glorified in good songs.”

Augustine sees in himself, within himself, in private episodes of his life, reflections of God's providence and builds a picture of the earthly path he has traveled, based on introspection, composing a hymn to God leading him. At the same time as comprehending the circumstances and vicissitudes of his life, Augustine tries to comprehend the greatness of the universe and the God who created it. Much has been written about the reflection of the genre of autobiography in Augustine’s confession, and much has been done to understand the contribution of Roman writers to the particular rhetoric and poetics of St. Augustine (43). Less attention has been paid to how St. Augustine was influenced by different parts of the Holy Scriptures over the years, although here too research has led to the important observation that after the Confessions and before the so-called “late works” of Blessed. Augustine avoids quoting pagan writers. S.S. Averintsev, contrasting ancient Greek and Old Testament culture (44), specially emphasized the inner openness of the Old Testament man before God - this is exactly what we find in Bl. Augustine. From the point of view of the overall composition, one can observe the uniqueness of the plan, in which autobiography played only a subordinate role, leading the reader to reflect on time as a category of earthly life and the timelessness of the divine principle. Thus, the last books turn out to be only a natural continuation of the first ten books of the Confession. At the same time, it is the Psalter that makes it possible to discover the intention of the bl. Augustine as holistic and maintaining unity throughout the work.

There is one more circumstance indicating the influence of the Psalter on the Confession. We are talking about the word pulchritudo, which occurs together with the word confessio in Psalm 95.6: “confessio et pulchritudo in conspectu eius” - “Glory and majesty are before Him” (45). It is not difficult to see that in Russian perception confessio et pulchritudo as “Glory and Greatness” does not mean “Confession and Beauty” and thus poorly correlates with the understanding of the bl. Augustine, in whom a significant part of the text of “Confessiones” is occupied by discussions about beauty - pulchritudo (46). It is extremely important that, as I. Kreutzer puts it, “Die pulchritudo ist diaphane Epiphanie” (47), the beauty (pulchrum) that surrounds us in its various manifestations is only a reflection of that “highest beauty” (summum pulchrum), which is pulchritudo . This Beauty is closely connected with time, entering, as the same Kreutzer showed, into the semantic series “memory-eternity-time-beauty”. Thus, "Confession" Bl. Augustine, as a necessary component, initially contains a theological understanding, which will no longer appear in the subsequent history of the genre and will remain outside of comprehension within the entire literary genre of confession in modern times.

It is the comparison with the Psalter that makes it possible to both confirm and correct Courcelle’s conclusion, according to which “Augustine’s main idea is not historical, but theological. The narrative itself is theocentric: to show the intervention of God throughout the secondary circumstances that determined Augustine’s wanderings” (48). A number of researchers define confession as a mixture of different literary genres, emphasizing that before us is an autobiographical story (but in no way an intimate diary or memory), confession of sins, the action of God's mercy, philosophical treatises on memory and time, exegetical excursions, while the general idea is reduced to a theodicy (apologie de Dieu), and the general plan is recognized as unclear (49). In 1918, Alfarik, and later P. Courcelle (50), specifically emphasized that the confession, from the point of view of St. Augustine, had no significance as a literary text (cf. De vera relig. 34.63). In this perception, “Confession” turns out to be more of a presentation of new ideas, to which both autobiographical and literary narration is subordinated. B. Stock's attempt to divide the narrative into narrative and analytical does not help matters much either. Such attempts to separate the text into its components do not seem justified or productive. It is justified to point to previous traditions, the synthesis of which gave birth to a new literary genre, previously unknown in world culture.

It is no coincidence that many researchers have noted that the events described in the Confessions are perceived by Augustine as pre-ordained. The problem of teleology is extremely important for understanding bl. Augustine of free will. Since in subsequent theological polemics Augustine was perceived almost as an opponent of free will, it makes sense to immediately mention that for him and in his reflections in one work there are simultaneously two perspectives and two points of view - human and divine, especially clearly opposed in his characteristic perception of time. Moreover, only from the point of view of eternity in human life there is no place for the unexpected and accidental. On the contrary, from a human point of view, a temporal action only develops sequentially over time, but is unpredictable and does not have any recognizable features of divine providence over individual time periods. It should be noted, however, that free will in the understanding of Augustine, who polemicized with the Manichaeans, was very different from the understanding of free will in the same Augustine during the period of polemics with Pelagianism. In these latter works, Augustine defends God's mercy to such an extent that at times he does not know how to justify free will. In the Confession, free will is presented as a completely distinct part of human behavior: a person is free in his actions, but his conversion to Christianity is impossible on his own; on the contrary, this is primarily the merit and mercy of God, so the more a person is embraced by His will, the more free he is in his actions.

1 CuddonJ.A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 3rd ed. Oxford, 1991. In Russian literary criticism, the confession genre is not considered as an independent genre: the “Short Literary Encyclopedia” (editor-in-chief A.A. Surkov. M., 1966. T. 3. P. 226) does not indicate it, although in the first publication (Literary Encyclopedia / Chief editor A.V. Lunacharsky. M., 1934. T. 7. P. 133) in N. Belchikov’s article “Memoir Literature” the confession was mentioned: “An autobiography dedicated to any, especially turning points , events in the life of a writer, is often also called confession (cf., for example, “Confession” of L. Tolstoy, written by him after a creative turning point in 1882, or the dying “Author’s Confession” of Gogol, this term, however, is not entirely defined). , and, for example, Rousseau’s “Confessions” are more like memories”; "The Reader's Encyclopedia" under the general editorship of F.A. Eremeev (Vol. 2. Ekaterinburg, 2002. P. 354) is limited to indicating confession as one of the seven sacraments.

3 On the role of Augustine in the general history of autobiography, see the following works: Misch G. Geschichte der Autobiographie. Leipzig; Berlin, 1907. Bd. 1-2; Cox P. Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holly Man. Berkeley, 1983, pp. 45-65. As one of the most revered church fathers, Augustine was studied and included in the indispensable reading circle of any educated Catholic. B. Stock (Stock B. Augustinus the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge (Mass.), 1996. P. 2 ff.) traces the history of confession, including Petrarch, Montaigne, Pascal and up to Rousseau. From the works devoted to Tolstoy’s confession, see the foreword by Archpriest A. Men in the book: Tolstoy L.N. Confession. L., 1991, as well as the article by G.Ya. Galagan “Confession” of L.N. Tolstoy: the concept of life understanding” (English version published in: Tolstoy Studies Journal. Toronto, 2003. Vol. 15).

4 In addition to those indicated in the "Reader's Encyclopedia" under the general editorship of F.A. Eremeev (Ekaterinburg, 2002. T. 2. P. 354-356) the works of T. Storm, T. D. Quincy, J. Gower, I. Nievo, Ch. Livera, Ezh. Elliot, W. Styron, A. de Musset, I. Roth, see, for example: Grushin B.A., Chikin V.V. Confession of a generation (review of responses to the questionnaire from the Institute of General Opinion of Komsomolskaya Pravda). M., 1962. Even more indicative is “Confession of a woman’s heart, or the History of Russia of the 19th century in diaries, notes, letters and poems of contemporaries” (composition and introductory article by Z.F. Dragunkina. M., 2000). The title is absolutely remarkable in this regard: “Confession of the Heart: Civil Poems of Contemporary Bulgarian Poets” (compiled by E. Andreeva, foreword by O. Shestinsky. M., 1988). Also interesting are the notes of professionals, designated as “Confession”: Fridolin S.P. Confession of an agronomist. M., 1925.

5 This kind of “confessions” includes both the actual confessions of criminals (cf.: Confessions et jugements de criminels au parlement de Paris (1319-1350) / Publ. par M.Langlois et Y.Lanhers. P., 1971), and “confessions” of people who simply put themselves in a position of sharp opposition to the authorities (cf., for example: Confessions of an anarchist by W. S. N. L., 1911).

6 Confession generale de l"appe 1786. P., 1786. A different type of confession is presented in: Confessions du compte de С... avec l"histoire de ses voyages en Russie, Turquie, Italie et dans les pyramides d"Egypte. Caire , 1787.

8 Bukharina N.A. Confession as a form of self-awareness of a philosopher: Author's abstract. diss. Ph.D. Sci. M., 1997.

11 Trace the influence of the ideas of St. Augustine in Russian literature of the 20th century. tried Andrzej Dudik (Dudik A. The ideas of Blessed Augustine in the poetic perception of Vyach. Ivanov // Europa Orientalis. 2002. T. 21, 1. P. 353-365), who compared, in my opinion, completely unreasonably, the work of Vyach. Ivanov's "Palinode" from the "Retractationes" of St. Augustine, moreover, by the very name Vyach. Ivanov certainly refers to the “Palinode” of Stesichorus (VII-VI centuries BC).

12 I was a prince, and I became the head of the courtiers - meshedi. I was the head of the Meshedi courtiers, and I became the king of Hakpiss. I was the king of Hakpiss and I became the Great King. Ishtar, my mistress, delivered my envious people, enemies and opponents into my hands in court. Some of them died, struck down by weapons, some died on the day appointed for them, but I ended them all. And Ishtar, my mistress, gave me royal power over the country of Hatti, and I became the Great King. She took me as a prince, and Ishtar, my mistress, allowed me to reign. And those who were well disposed towards the kings who ruled before me began to treat me well. And they began to send me ambassadors and send me gifts. But the gifts that they send to me, they did not send either to my fathers or to my grandfathers. Those kings who were supposed to honor me, honored me. I conquered those countries that were hostile to me. I annexed edge after edge to the lands of Hatti. Those who were at enmity with my fathers and grandfathers made peace with me. And because Ishtar, my mistress, favored me, I am from N.N. Kazansky. Confession, as a literary genre of respect for one's brother, did nothing wrong. I took my brother's son and made him king in that very place, in Dattas, which was the domain of my brother, Muwa-tallis. Ishtar, my lady, you took me as a small child, and you made me reign on the throne of the country of Hatti.

Autobiography of Hattusilis III, trans. Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, cit. from the book: The moon fell from the sky. Ancient literature of Asia Minor. M., 1977.

13 Misch G. Geschichte der Autobiographic. Bd. 1. Das Altertum. Leipzig; Berlin, 1907. Recently, attempts have been made to connect some features of the work of Bl. Augustine with the cultural situation in Africa (see: Vyach Ivanov. Vs. Blessed Augustine and the Phoenician-Punic linguistic and cultural tradition in North-West Africa // Third international conference "Language and Culture". Plenary reports. P. 33- 34).

14 I am Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king in Persia, the king of countries, the son of Vishtaspa (Histaspa), the grandson of Arshama, the Achaemenid. Darius the king says: “My father is Vish-taspa, Vishtaspa’s father is Arshama, Arshama’s father is Ariaramna, Ariaramna’s father is Chitpit, Chiitisha’s father is Achaemen. That’s why we are called Achaemenids. From time immemorial we are honored, from time immemorial our family was royal. Eight [people] from my family were kings before me. I am the ninth. By the will of Ahura Mazda, I am the king.

Darius the King says: “This is what I did after I became king.”

Translation from ancient Persian by V.I. Abaev: Literature of the Ancient East. Iran, India, China (texts). M., 1984. S. 41-44.

15 In the eighth year of the reign of Piyadassi, pleasing to the gods [i.e. Ashoka] conquered Kalinga. One hundred and fifty thousand people were driven away from there, one hundred thousand were killed, and even more so, they died. After the capture of Kalinga, the One Pleasant to the Gods felt a greater inclination towards dharma, love for dharma, and praise of dharma. The one pleasing to the gods mourns that he conquered the Kalingians. The one pleasing to the gods is tormented by painful and difficult thoughts that when the undefeated are defeated, there are murders, deaths and captivity of people. Even more difficult are the thoughts of the One Pleasant to the Gods that in those parts live brahmins, hermits, and various communities, lay people who honor rulers, parents, elders, behave with dignity and are devoted to friends, acquaintances, helpers, relatives, servants, mercenaries , - all of them are also wounded, killed or deprived of loved ones. Even if one of them does not suffer himself, it is painful for him to see the misfortunes of friends, acquaintances, helpers, and relatives. There are no countries, except the Greeks, where there would be no Brahmins and hermits, and there are no countries where people do not adhere to one faith or another. Therefore, the murder, death or captivity of even a hundredth or a thousandth of the people who died in Kalita is now painful for the One Pleasant to the Gods.

Now the God-Pleasing One thinks that even those who do wrong should be forgiven if possible. Even the savages living in the lands of the Pleasant of the Gods should be admonished and admonished. They are told that they are being admonished and not killed because of the compassion of the One pleasing to the gods. Indeed, the One who is pleasing to the gods wishes all living things security, restraint, justice, even in the face of wrongdoing. The one who is pleasing to the gods considers the victory of dharma the greatest victory. And it was won here, everywhere around six hundred yojanas - where the Greek king Antiochus is, and further beyond Antiochus, where there are four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas and Alexander; in the south - where the Cholas, Pandyas and Tambapamnas (Taprobans) are. Also here, in the lands of the king, among the Greeks, Kambojas, Nabhaks, Nabhpamkits, Bhojas, Pitiniks, Andhras and Palids - everywhere they follow the instructions of the One pleasing to the gods about dharma.

Even where the messengers of the One Pleasant to the Gods have not visited, having heard about the rules of dharma, the provisions of the dharma and the instructions in the dharma that the One Pleasant to the gods gave, they observe them and will observe them. This victory has been won everywhere, and this victory gives great joy, the joy that only the victory of dharma gives. But even this joy does not mean much. The one pleasing to the gods considers the result that will be in another world important.

This edict was written with the aim that my sons and grandsons should not wage new wars, and if there are wars, then that leniency and little harm should be observed, and it is better that they strive only for the victory of dharma, since this gives results in this world and in another world. Let their actions be directed towards what produces results in this world and in the next world.

Translation by E.R. Kryuchkova. Wed. See also: Reader on the history of the ancient East. M., 1963. P. 416 et seq. (translated by G.M. Bongard-Levin); Reader on the history of the ancient East. M., 1980. Part 2. P. 112 and ed. (translated by V.V. Vertogradova).

16 Averintsev S.S. Plutarch and his biographies. M., 1973. pp. 119-129, where the author writes about hypomnematic biography with its categorized structure and the influence of rhetoric on the genre.

17 Unt Ya. “Reflections” as a literary and philosophical monument // Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Reflections / Ed. prepared A.I.Dovatur, A.K.Gavrilov, Ya.Unt. L., 1985. P. 94-115. Here, see the literature on the diatribe as one of the sources of the genre.

18 See, for example: Durov V.S. Latin Christian literature III-V centuries. St. Petersburg, 2003. pp. 137-138.

19 Pasternak B. Waves // Aka. Poems. L., 1933. P. 377.

20 "Augustine's commitment to describing the inner state of man continues to attract philosophers and psychologists, as well as the study of rhetoric not only as an end in itself, but rather within the framework of liturgics, literature and theology. The Confessions was the first work in which the inner states were explored the human soul, the relationship of grace and free will - themes that form the basis of Western philosophy and theology" (Van Fleteren F. Confessiones // Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia / Gen. ed. A.D. Fitzgerald. Grand Rapids (Mi.); Cambridge , 1999. P. 227).

21 See for example: Saga Ph. Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self. The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford, 2000.

22 Ibid. P. 140.

23 Ibid. P. 142.

24 With this remark he concludes his interesting book F. Carey.

25 Van Fleteren F. Op. cit. P. 227. Wed. also: Stolyarov A.A. Free will as a problem of European moral consciousness. Essays on history: from Homer to Luther. M., 1999. P. 104 pp., especially “The Legacy of Augustine” (p. 193-198).

26 Kozintsev A.G. Laughter: origins and functions. St. Petersburg, 2002.

27 Harnack A. von. Augustins Confessionen. Ein Vortrag. Giessen, 1888.

28 Stock B. Op. cit. P. 16-17.

29 See: Averintsev S.S. Ancient Greek poetics and world literature// Poetics of ancient Greek literature. M., 1981. P. 4.

30 Stock V. Op. cit. P. 16-17.

31 AbercombieN. Saint Augustine and French Classical Thought. Oxford, 1938; KristellerP.O. Augustine and the Early Renaissance // Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters. Rome, 1956. P. 355-372. N.N. Kazansky. Confession as a literary genre

32 F. Körner suggests that the external (foris) and the internal (intus) represent the coordinate system of Augustinian ontology (Korner F. Das Sein und der Mensch. S. 50, 250).

33 However, the idea that all human life from birth can be considered as a sequence of stages of dying also goes back to this same line of ideas. The last thought was formulated especially clearly by John Donne in his so-called “Last Sermon”, see: DonnJ. Duel with death / Transl., preface, commentary. N.N. Kazansky and A.I. Yankovsky // Zvezda. 1999. No. 9. P. 137-155.

34 Feldmann E. Confessiones // Augustinus-Lexikon / Hrsg. von C. Mayer. Basel, 1986-1994. Bd. 1. Sp. 1134-1193.

35 Hombert P.-M. Nouvelles recherches de chronologica Augustinienne. P., 2000.

36 Almazov A. Secret confession in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Experience of external history. M., 1995. T. 1-3; It's him. The secret of confession. St. Petersburg, 1894; Shostin A. The superiority of Orthodox confession over Catholic // Faith and Reason. 1887; Markov S.M. Why does a person need confession? M., 1978; Uvarov M.S. Architectonics of the confessional word. St. Petersburg, 1998.

37 Shansky N.M., Ivanov V.V., Shanskaya T.V. Brief etymological dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1973. P. 178. It is characteristic that the word confession is absent in both Vasmer’s and Chernykh’s dictionaries. (Vasmer M. Russisches etymologisches Worterbuch. Heidelberg, 1953. Bd. 1; Chernykh P.Ya. Historical and etymological dictionary of the modern Russian language. M., 1993. T. 1).

38 For recent research on this topic, see; Schulte-Klocker U. Das Verhaltnis von Ewigkeit und Zeit als Widerspiegelung der Beziehung zwischen Schopfer und Schopfung. Eine textbegleitende Interpretation der Bucher XI-XIII der "Confessiones" des Augustinus. Bonn, 2000. However, some clarifications are possible, since recently, thanks to the discovery of a Coptic manuscript of the 4th century, apparently dating back to a Greek text, in turn originating in the Aramaic tradition, it is possible to get some idea of how in The Manichaean tradition interpreted time and how original Augustine’s views on this problem were. As A.L. Khosroev showed in the report “The Manichaeans’ idea of time” (readings in memory of A.I. Zaitsev, January 2005), the Manichaeans believed that “before-time” and “after-time” correspond to the absence of time and both of these states opposed to historical time.

39 PontetM. L "exegese de saint Augustin predicateur. P., 1945. P. 73 sq.

40 Stpepantsov S.A. Psalm CXXXX in Augustine's exegesis. Materials for the history of exegesis. M., 2004.

41 K. Mormann (Mohrmann S. Etudes sur le latin des Chretiens. T. 1. P. 30 sq.) specifically notes that the verb confiteri in Christian Latin often replaces confiteri peccata, while the meaning of “confession of faith” remains unchanged.

42 In a special work (Verheijen L.M. Eloquentia Pedisequa. Observations sur le style des Confessions de saint Augustin. Nijmegen, 1949. P. 21) it is proposed to distinguish between two uses of the verb as verbum dicendi and as recordare (confiteri).

43 From works in Russian, see, for example: Novokhatko A.A. On the reflection of the ideas of Sallust in the works of Augustine // Indo-European linguistics and classical philology V (readings in memory of I.M. Tronsky). Proceedings of the conference, held June 18-20, 2001 / Rep. ed. N.N. Kazansky. St. Petersburg, 2001. P. 91 ed.

44 Averintsev S.S. Greek literature and Middle Eastern “literature” (confrontation and meeting of two creative principles) // Typology and relationships of literature of the ancient world / Rep. ed. P.A.Grintser. M., 1974. P. 203-266.90

45 Wed: Ps. PO: “His work is glory and beauty (confessio et magnificentia), and His righteousness endures forever”; Ps. 103.1: “confessionem et decorem induisti” (“You are clothed with glory and majesty”); Ps. 91.2: “bonum est confiteri Domino et psallere nomini tuo Altissime” (“it is good to praise the Lord and sing to Your name, O Most High”).

46 It is curious that even the work specifically devoted to this concept in Augustine's Confessions does not emphasize the connection of pulchritudo with the usage attested in the Psalter. Meanwhile, its author directly compared the opening lines of the “Confession” (1.1.1) with Psalm 46.11: KreuzerJ. Pulchritudo: vom Erkennen Gottes bei Augustin; Bemerkungen zu den Buchern IX, X und XI der Confessiones. Munchen, 1995. S. 240, Anm. 80.

47 Ibid. S. 237.

48 Courcelle P. Antecedents biographiques des Confessions // Revue de Philologie. 1957. P. 27.

49 Neusch M. Augustin. Un chemin de conversion. Une introduction aux Confessions. P., 1986. P. 42-43.