Specificity of scientific and artistic literature. Fiction about scientists and their work

E. V. Shlyuper

The scientific and artistic book is a remarkable phenomenon, occupying an increasingly prominent place in modern book publishing practice.

Of course, works have been published before that seem to combine the features of research work and lively, imaginative storytelling. But nowadays we are no longer talking about single books. Many publishing houses allocate special sections in templates and create separate editions; Large book series, libraries (“Eureka”, “Brigantine”, “Roads to the Beautiful”), and collections, the success of which among readers prompts publishers to make them “continuing publications” (“Prometheus”, “Roads into the Unknown”), have become widely known.

A careful study of books, journal publications, internal publishing materials (author's submissions, editorial opinions, reviews), readers' letters, critical speeches and theoretical works allows us to assert that an independent type of literature has developed and formed before our eyes. It arose as if at the point of contact of three other types of literature: scientific, popular science and fiction.

Scientific and fiction literature was defined as a type because it has a relatively stable system of properties. It carries out its own special social functions, has its own specific subject and its own qualitatively different methods of mastering it, a characteristic “set” of elements and the structure of the text.

The ever closer interaction between scientific and artistic creativity these days occurs through many channels - theoretical and practical. This is manifested in the widespread use of the latest achievements of science and technology by television, cinema, radio, and in the “avalanche-like” growth in the number of stories, plays, poems dedicated to the activities of scientists. For their part, mathematicians and cybernetics turn to the study of examples of poetic mastery. The convergence of science and art is recognized characteristic feature modern social development.

To reflect this trend and contribute in every possible way to its development - this is the main role of the scientific and artistic book, its social function.

Of course, it solves this problem in a certain aspect inherent in it - the aspect of scientific popularization, responding to the spontaneous needs of the process itself.

Since this process is essentially two-way, new aspects are characteristic of each of its sides.

One side of it is the promotion of “big science” to the mass reader.

In our era it is associated with special difficulties in the field of natural sciences. Having penetrated into the world of microcosm, we are dealing with many phenomena, concepts, patterns that are fundamentally impossible to translate into the language of everyday, everyday concepts. Scientific truth, as scientists say, has ceased to be visual, and this will create serious difficulties in explaining it to a wide range of readers.

This is where art comes to the aid of science. Artistic image opens up special ways of “deabstracting” a formula, law, concept. The main thing is its inherent property of highlighting something “of its own” in the most distant and unusual, close to the subjective-emotional experience of each person - makes it possible to psychologically prepare the reader for the perception of “ strange world» modern science. ABOUT significant role This factor is often written by both scientists and journalists when reviewing mass publications devoted to physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics.

Much less attention is paid to the psychological difficulties of popularizing the humanities. It is interesting to note that here the authors face difficulties of the exact opposite nature. In the fields of history, literature, and sociology, everyone considers themselves “experts.” Everyone encounters the phenomena studied by these sciences in everyday life. We perceive works of art, judge the abilities and behavior of others, willingly using words: “beautiful” and “ugly”, “group”, “motivation” and so on. And it is not so easy to show a person the difference between an everyday and a truly scientific concept.

Paradoxically, it is the image that can help overcome the psychological barrier that arises in this case. This time the opposite property of art is manifested: to reveal the new, unexpected, unfamiliar in the familiar, ordinary.

Thus, the features of various sciences separately and the patterns of development of this form of social consciousness as a whole activate the functions of figurative means in the modern process of popularization.

New aspects are also characteristic of the second side of this process - the desire of the mass reader for scientific knowledge.

Having become a “direct productive force,” science has acquired extraordinary importance in the life of society, in the life of every person.

The reader wants not only to understand the essence of the discovery and theory, but also to feel their significance, develop his own attitude towards them, and comprehend the creative process itself.

And here a book can help, allowing science to bring into its sphere the arsenal of art. The “effect of presence,” the illusion of direct cognition, and cognition precisely through a personal relationship to what is depicted, emotional fullness, “appeal” to co-creativity and empathy - all these properties of a scientific and artistic work become simply irreplaceable in this case.

Scientific activity is a very complex phenomenon, including many components. A storm of emotions and passions, suffering and joys, drama and poetry of the “relationships” between the scientist and the phenomena he studies, individual characteristics his work... All these aspects, as a rule, remain “outside the scope” of scientific and popular science books. But they attract the closest attention of the author of a scientific and artistic book. Let us also add the general reader, since his interest in the subject of heuristic activity is rapidly growing.

Another thing is also significant. The political and moral problems of the work of scientists, the possibility of using the results of their discoveries (for the benefit or harm of society) have acquired enormous importance, depending on social order.

It is these aspects of scientific activity - subjective-personal and social-philosophical - that are primarily the subject of scientific and artistic literature.

We see that its subject is somewhat “closed” with the subjects of some sciences (psychology, sociology, heuristics). However, it is by no means identified with them, because here neither man “outside science” nor science itself, “outside man,” can become the main thing, the main one. It is the relationship “science and personality” that is essential, as well as the relationship “science and society”.

Thanks to this qualitative feature, scientific and artistic literature has a wide opportunity to show “that at the center of scientific and technological revolution there is a person, that... scientific and technological revolution is carried out by man and in the name of man.” The relevance and social significance of successfully solving such a problem are undoubted.

How do the features of the social function and subject of the literature we are studying affect the elements and structure of the works? What is their specificity?

First of all, let us note the obvious: the texts of such books (and with equal rights) include scientific elements and artistic elements.

The first are the facts of science, theoretical concepts, and laws. All the most essential “components” of scientific work and various approaches to the object of research are revealed here. This is a description of observations and experiments, a statement of hypotheses, logical reasoning and generalizations.

But the characteristic components of a literary text are just as legitimately introduced - dialogue and monologue, portrait and landscape, plot situations and images of heroes.

Thus, a non-fiction book combines various elements that are usually incompatible in the same text structure. This forces the author of such a work to construct a fundamentally new structure of the text, in which the incompatibility is “removed.”

The structure of a scientific and artistic text combines not only logical-theoretical and figurative-emotional elements, but also logical and figurative types of connections.

The development of a theme in a chain of paintings, episodes, the depiction of general phenomena through concrete sensory details, connected by subjective emotional associations - all these characteristic features poetic structure we find in a scientific and fiction book. Hence, in its construction such properties as metaphoricality at the level of style and plot-ness at the level of composition are manifested.

But the selection and arrangement of these pictures, episodes, and details in this case are subordinated primarily not to an aesthetic task, but to the desire to illuminate the topic in a scientifically reliable and conclusive manner, to introduce the reader to the course of scientific reasoning. Consequently, the ways of connecting individual elements of the text cannot remain only in the figurative-emotional sphere.

Cognitive motives come to the fore and, accordingly, the division between the thesis and the system of evidence is clearly visible at the basis of the division of the text. Each new element, including figurative ones, acts as a link in the chain of justification and clarification of scientific truth, that is, the systematization of the material begins to obey the “law of the plan.”

The basis, the “center of gravity” that concentrates and organizes the presentation, is the development of logical thought.

As a result, emotional impressions and scientific reasoning, image and concept merge in a single dynamic system of scientific and artistic text. Special terms acquire the “ability” to carry out image-building functions, and tropes seem to become links in theoretical reasoning. This process is extremely interesting!

The “New Code” seems to expand the capabilities of the “communication channel”, determining the impact of a scientific and artistic book on almost all areas of the reader’s spiritual world: mind, emotions, will...

However, this only happens if the use of various methodological techniques for combining the logical and figurative is not arbitrary, but strictly motivated, determined by the social purpose and subject of this type of literature, as well as the specific properties of the author's talent.

But, obviously, the point is not so much in the “manner of presentation” adopted by one or another author, but in his ability to imaginatively see and comprehend reality. And not just some of its particular facets, but precisely the main subject of this type of literature - scientific activity.

Some authors, masking the lack of special knowledge, choose a simple path: figuratively, emotionally recreating non-scientific material (“landscape background,” everyday details, the experiences of characters), they dryly and informatively report on open patterns and experiments conducted.

Oddly enough, a similar phenomenon is observed in some works created by specialists. The most inexpressive and pale are the lines and paragraphs devoted directly to science. In such cases, the reason, of course, is not the limited knowledge of the author. On the contrary, scientific material is perfectly familiar to him, familiar. But, apparently, it is precisely this circumstance that creates a special psychological difficulty: it is difficult for him “to move away from deep knowledge of the subject in order to re-experience the admiration for science.”

As a result, many books are published in which landscapes, images of people, travel adventures - in a word, everything that concerns the conditions and circumstances in which the research was carried out, was written by a talented artist, observant and lyrical. But when it comes to the content of the research, instead of impressive, visible, emotional pictures, there is the dry language of a scientific article...”

In such books, artistically written pages alternate with pages containing completely accurate, strictly verified scientific data. However, a truly scientific and artistic work does not result. Firstly, a coherent, unified text structure does not emerge; secondly, the social function of the publication is not adequately fulfilled. By refusing to figuratively reveal the main thing - scientific activity - it is impossible to give the reader a complete and correct idea of ​​either a specific scientist (as a person he manifests himself primarily in the process of scientific creativity), or about a specific study.

Therefore, when speaking about the inclination (and ability) of the author of a scientific and artistic book to figuratively disclose a topic, one should keep in mind not just the ability to operate with concrete sensory examples and figurative means of language. We are talking about a system of thinking, about the fact that the facts of science enter the author’s consciousness already being “aesthetically organized.” “But I don’t have the goal of attracting a ready-made scientific fact and decorate it to push it into the reader. This fact already seems beautiful to me"- writes N.N. Mikhailov (italics mine).

All this often affects the initial concept of the future work and is accordingly reflected in plans, prospectuses, applications, and annotations submitted to the publishing house.

The author’s work on a book, as is known, goes through various stages: the emergence of an idea, the collection and study of the entire complex of information, planning the architectonics of the future work, selecting material directly included in the text, searching for presentation techniques, etc. Of course, all these moments are intertwined: the plan is clarified, specified, data that initially seemed important is discarded, new ones are introduced, compositional plans are changed... But it is important to note something else: at all stages, logical-theoretical and emotional-imaginative means are involved (must be involved!) . If the image is attracted only at the last stage, for “ literary design» - artistic media will always be something external, optional. And the reader will certainly notice that the true artistry of perception is replaced by a set of “revitalizing” tropes, and the unique individuality of impressions and experiences is replaced by a pile of expressive expressions (“wonderful,” “one can’t help but be surprised,” “outstanding achievement,” etc.).

The field of activity of a particular author in itself is by no means a “guarantor” or, conversely, an obstacle to the manifestation of abilities for an imaginative story about scientific phenomena. “Alexei Nikolaevich’s literary talent was manifested... in the imagery and plasticity of statements, in the play with a sense of proportion, sometimes restrained, sometimes deliberately exaggerated, in picturesqueness and stagecraft, in a rich plot,” - this is written about A.N. Krylov, a famous Soviet engineer, researcher and designer.

Factors such as the psychophysical properties of the individual are significant here this person, individual traits of his mental makeup, temperament, manner of communicating with other people. What is needed is a truly imaginative vision of the environment, increased impressionability, emotional responsiveness, and the ability to transform. M. Ilyin once wrote: “The main property of a spring is stubbornness.”

And in order to find such an image, he really had to “feel like a spring,” which is sometimes compressed, sometimes stretched, and which so stubbornly strives to preserve and defend its “immutability”!

Logical-theoretical and figurative means, in essence, should be equivalent and equivalent for the author of a scientific and artistic book (which, of course, does not contradict the quantitative predominance of one or the other in a particular publication). It was these authors that M. Gorky spoke about, noting that they were equally characterized by the gift of a scientist and an artist.

L.N. had a similar gift. Tolstoy, who created 28 stories about physics for young people. As is known, the great writer, having extensive knowledge in many fields of science, anticipated some ideas of mechanics, polarization of light, etc. The main thing is that in terms of his way of thinking, “in terms of objectivity and accuracy of observations, he was very close, according to Academician A.P. Karpinsky, to real great scientists, surpassing them in artistic talent.”

“Duality or duality is inherent... in all workers of so-called scientific and artistic literature,” writes N.N. Mikhailov. Justifiably reproaching psychologists, literary critics, and philosophers for the fact that the nature of the abilities of such authors, the features of their creativity have not yet been studied, he makes a number of very valuable comments: “They have not just knowledge, but rather comprehension. A message together with an impression... A convergence of concept and image, if you like.”

Judgments N.N. Mikhailov are especially interesting because they are largely based on introspection:

“When I later began to publish essays, I think the same duality emerged from them. Commitment to action: to explain - this is how the Alibek glacier behaves. And a craving for the artistic: to admire - that’s how beautiful the Alibek glacier is...

He called the Pamir valleys troughs, the image is correct, but not mine, but scientific: those valleys, smoothed by glaciers that once crawled and melted, are called in geomorphology by the German word “trog”, which means “trough”...

If you know, you can see what is not visible. I wrote about the Bosporus, and sailed there in the spring, in favorable, windless weather. To make the image of the strait more accurate, he said: “In winter, cold winds blew into the funnel of the Bosphorus: the crowns of the Lebanese cedars were combed from the north.” I thought that the wind of the past was visible in the inclined crowns.”

Here the process of formation in the mind of the author of the book is revealed surprisingly accurately and insightfully, precisely what N.N. Mikhailov calls it a “cognitive image” and that is essentially the basis of a scientific and artistic work.

Of course, this process is complex, contradictory and not always completed. creative success(“The two sides of nature, it seems, merged, sometimes chemically, sometimes mechanically, and sometimes argued with each other and destroyed each other”). But he introduces himself as N.N. Mikhailov, remarkable for our days. “I was chasing an informative image from the very beginning (of my literary journey), when the word “informativeness” did not yet exist. Much later, the idea was born to me: these inclinations, perhaps, in some way correspond to modernity, to the aesthetics of our century.”

Of course, not everyone has the gift of seeing the world simultaneously through the eyes of a scientist and an artist. Nevertheless, people with such “synthetic talent” can be found among scientists, writers, and journalists.

And publishing workers have many ways, real opportunities to “discover” this talent and introduce it to millions of readers.

Thus, thanks to the Nauka publishing house, which published V. Larin’s collection “On the Probable... About the Incredible” (1973), one of the largest Soviet physiologists appeared before us in the rather unexpected role of a scientific publicist. Although the book, after the author’s death, collects scattered materials published in different time in various newspapers and magazines, it is perceived as a holistic work, figuratively revealing the possibilities of new sciences - bionics, heuristics, cybernetics, and their role in the life of society.

This fact is also interesting. The publication of a scientific and artistic essay on modern geology “What are you looking for” was accompanied by the editors of the magazine “Yunost” (1974, No. 10) with a sidebar: “For readers of “Yunost” who are familiar with the poems of Ernst Portnyagin, the appearance of the poet’s name in the section may seem unexpected "Science and Technology". And then it is said that the author, an associate professor at Lvov University, a candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences, has been leading research into the deep tectonics of the Tien Shan for many years. “He has a lot to say about modern geology and the people who create it.”

Typical examples are provided, in particular, by one of the most “representative” scientific and artistic publications - 15 volumes of the collection “Paths to the Unknown.” The idea of ​​the publication was formulated 20 years ago in its subtitle: “Writers talk about science.” But from the very beginning, a section “Scientists about science and themselves” appeared.

“What’s interesting is this,” writes the chairman of the public editorial board of the collection, D. Danin, “in the group of authors... there are quite a few “centaurs” - writer-scientists or scientist-writers. This is psychiatrist V. Levi, microbiologist D. Petrov, biologist Dm. Sukharev, chemist A. Rusov, archaeologist G. Fedorov, historian N. Eidelman.”

Note that one of these “centaurs” is Dr. historical sciences G. Fedorov recently gave a review of scientific and fiction books from the publishing house "Children's Literature", and among the most successful he names the works of "physicist and writer" G. Anfnlov, "archaeologist and writer" A. Nikitin, "mathematician and writer" V. Levshin and some others, emphasizing the dual nature of the talent and creative interests of the named authors. To this list one could add the book by G. Fedorov himself, “Day Surface” (1977).

In a word, even in our days Gorky’s statement could not be more relevant: “Only with the direct participation true workers of science and writers of high verbal technology we can undertake publication books dedicated to the artistic popularization of scientific knowledge(italics mine).”

This is exactly how many editors now approach solving this problem. For example, the editor-in-chief of Atomizdat V. Kulyamin writes: “Tracing how interest in this kind of publications is distributed, one is convinced: the main thing is that the book was written by a person of broad views, to a certain extent an encyclopedist, creatively combining scientific and artistic thinking, regardless of whether he or a journalist.”

True, another opinion has been expressed more than once: that such books should mainly be created by scientists.

For example, among the authors of the “Eureka” series of the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, specialists in the relevant fields of knowledge clearly predominate. Editorial staff believe that a writer or journalist is unlikely to be able to give an accurate picture of science, which he is most often familiar with superficially, in an amateurish manner. The scientist reports information “first-hand,” so he manages to show the research process logically, more emotionally, and more reliably “from the inside.”

The editors of Eureka maintain close contacts with scientists, helping many to enter a new field of popularization or master new literary topics. They often go on creative business trips. “We consider the business trip successful,” said Art. editor of the “Eureka” series V. Fedchenko, - if in a year or two the editor’s plan includes at least one manuscript of the author from the city where he traveled. Thus, as a result of editorial trips, the authors of “Eureka” were Doctor of Sciences V. Larichev from Novosibirsk, head. Department of Philosophy of Tomsk Medical Institute V. Sagatovsky, researcher from Minsk L. Kolominsky.”

Still, despite active search authors, purposeful and painstaking work with them; the circle of them in this publishing house is not yet very wide. And this can be easily seen when looking at thematic plans. Apparently, few scientists boldly and willingly take on the creation of scientific and artistic works.

By the way, I would like to cite an interesting observation by T. Wyszomirska, the head of the editorial office of the State Scientific Publishing House of Poland, which published more than 200 books of the widely popular popularization “Library of Problems”.

Teresa Vyshomirskaya admits that among scientists, “writing” books addressed to “non-specialists”, figuratively telling about the world of science, is still considered not a very honorable occupation. But there are two “categories” of authors who “can afford it.” Firstly, famous scientists, for whom the creation of such works is a kind of relaxation (as an example, she names one of the largest specialists in the field of optics, Prof. Arkady Pekaru).

On the other hand, young people who “do not have even greater merit” willingly make their debut in this type of literature, who view this as “an attempt to try their hand at something more than an article or a review...”.

Involving well-known researchers as authors, editors sometimes “involve” “literary editors” as assistants, mainly from the circle of experienced popularizers who are well acquainted with the specifics of this type of publication. Thus, F. Arsky, who himself is the author of the book “In the Land of Myths,” helped I. Zayanchkovsky write the book “Enemies of Our Enemies.”

A form of “open” co-authorship is also used. A good example is the book “Faster than Thought.” It was in connection with its release that Academician I. Artobolevsky remarked: “We are unjustifiably timid in using a fruitful form - the collaboration of a scientist and a journalist. I remember a good popular science book about cybernetics. It was created as a result of the joint efforts of scientist N. Kobrinsky and journalist V. Pekelis.” The book “Equilibrium Profile” was written by biologist V.V. Dezhkin and journalist T.I. Fetisov.

But even on such a path, publishing faces serious obstacles. Each author is “an individual and extraordinary. Try to create a literary alliance out of such people - one will definitely submit to the leadership aspirations of the other. And this leads to the fact that the hand of a leader is visible in the resulting text - either a scientist who does not own a pen, or a journalist who has “leveled” the text to his level of knowledge of the subject.”

The synthetic nature of the subject of a scientific and artistic book, the need for a broad “exit” to the social and philosophical plane, the need to combine big picture disparate elements of scientific research, and sometimes talk about the joint efforts of researchers in various branches of knowledge - all this also creates considerable difficulties. And such difficulties are often easier to overcome for a writer or journalist than for a scientist. “I am almost convinced that no scientist, even the most committed to the popularization of science, would agree to be distracted from his favorite work in order to combine in one material the scientific research of a dozen institutes and laboratories working on different aspects of this problem. The author visited mechanical engineers, forensic doctors, geologists, and astronomers and focused in one essay the most various aspects this interesting area of ​​physics." This is said about V. Orlov’s work “The Hunter and the Pheasant,” dedicated to the successes of spectroscopy. However, the idea expressed here can rightfully be applied to many other scientific and artistic works.

Vivid works created by professional writers were published, for example, by the publishing house “Znanie”, where books by M. Yanovskaya, V. Pekelis and others were published.

A writer usually chooses one or several related branches of science, trying to study them as deeply as possible.

On this path, it is not so much the usual “cognitive” difficulties that await him - understanding, assimilation, etc. Here the problems of creative rethinking and critical evaluation also arise.

Do not get carried away by demonstrating knowledge acquired so recently and with considerable difficulty... It is thoughtful to select what directly “works” for the purpose of the book, and at the same time avoid bias, narrowness, a one-sided approach... It is far from easy to solve such problems.

In the “relationship” between the author, who is not a specialist in this science, and the material, other difficulties arise. He should be especially tactful when describing problems that have not yet received a final solution, talking about hypotheses and ongoing discussions. He must be especially restrained so that with his own judgments and impressions he does not overshadow the main characters of the book - the creators of science.

Infatuation with catchy literary devices, “inserted episodes”, flirtation with unexpected associations, compositional transitions - all these dangers lie in wait, first of all, for authors who have professional writing skills. The fact that they cannot always be avoided is evidenced, in our opinion, by the talented works of G. Bashkirova, for example, her article “Seventy grams of illusions” (collection “Paths to the Unknown”, issue 8) or the book “Alone with Oneself "("Mol. Guard", 1972).

And yet, one thing is certain: publishing houses should more boldly attract writers and journalists as authors of scientific and fiction books, and look for new forms of working with them.

It is useful to recall that the “social order” method is quite applicable to this type of literature.

It is well known what various paths M. Gorky found, trying to include literary artists in the field of scientific thought, to inspire them to create works about “the heroism of scientific work and the tragedy of scientific thinking.” He connected writers with specialists, obtained the necessary materials, suggested topics, new angles for covering them, and discussed creative ideas.

“In 1936, M. Ilyin... in collaboration with E. Segal began working on a story about how man appeared, how he learned to work and think, how he mastered iron and fire, how he achieved power over nature, how he learned and rebuilt the world. The idea for such a book was suggested by A.M. Gorky, he also advised how to start a book.

“Imagine an infinite space,” said Alexey Maksimovich. - Somewhere in the depths of a giant nebula the Sun lights up. Planets are separated from it. On one small planet, matter comes to life and begins to become conscious of itself. A man appears."

The first part of the book “How Man Became a Giant” was published in 1940, the second and third - at the end of 1946. “The authors dedicated it to Alexei Maksimovich.”

Having familiarized himself with the just published collection of works by B. Agapov, among which was the essay “Matter for the Creation of the World,” Gorky advised the author to continue the artistic popularization of remarkable discoveries in the field of chemistry. “In connection with the essay on plastics, Gorky wrote to me: “Therefore, allow me to propose the following topic for your discretion: matter and human energy. You take matter as something continuously fertilized by the energy of people, the labor of their thoughts and imagination. It’s your will to show this relationship from the beginning, from the Stone Age or wherever you like.”

A broad socio-philosophical approach to the material is clearly outlined here - an approach so close to the interests of B. Agapov and the journalistic orientation of his literary talent.

M. Ilyin told how Alexey Maksimovich, discussing the second part of the book “Mountains and People,” recommended expanding the idea, “taking a person in his relation to space...”.

At the same time, he made a lot of efforts to attract scientists and researchers to the creation of scientific and artistic works. “An almanac “Year XVI” is being organized in Moscow. My dream: to gradually attract the best scientific forces to cooperate in it,” he wrote to the director of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine L. N. Fedorov.

And indeed, on the pages of this almanac in the special section “Creative Laboratory” appeared the works of academicians S. F. Oldenburg (“Thoughts on Scientific Creativity”), A. V. Winter (“My happy life"), Professor Ya.G. Dorfman (“Magnet of Science”) and many others.

A similar role " creative laboratory“Under Gorky’s leadership, the magazine “Our Achievements” played for a number of future masters of scientific and artistic literature.

“...They are calling me to work in the editorial office of Our Achievements.” I began to head a new department... I received from Gorky the topic I was striving for: how the country and its map are changing... Suddenly I see: from the works born of a running life, I am putting together something like a book. Gorky published the Year XIX in the Almanac. It was called “The Handwriting of History.” Idea: new history creates new geography and is imprinted with strokes on the map. In a separate publication - “The face of the country is changing.”

It is known that much earlier, back in 1917, M. Gorky turned to prominent cultural figures with a proposal to create scientific and artistic biographical books. “I kindly ask you to write a biography of Beethoven for children. At the same time, I turn to H. Wells with a request to write “The Life of Edison”, Frithiof Nansen will give “The Life of Christopher Columbus”, I - “The Life of Garibaldi”... I warmly ask you, dear Romain Rolland, to write this biography of Beethoven, since I I’m sure that no one will write it better than you!”

A.V. Lunacharsky shared his creative plans creating biographical works about Francis Bacon and Denis Diderot for ZhZL.

M. Gorky also suggested that K. Timiryazev write a book about Charles Darwin.

Let us note that among the supposed authors of the scientific and artistic series conceived by Gorky there are also scientists (known for their ability to figuratively recreate phenomena and facts, to talk about complex things in a simple, lively and entertaining way) and writers (known for their persistent interest in theoretical research).

“If we tried to compile a list of ways Marshak could influence the matter of finding new authors and creating new books, then, perhaps, such a list would take more than one page.

It often happened that Marshak’s influence was direct. Having heard from the prominent theoretical physicist M.P. Bronstein's fascinating story about the discovery of helium, Samuil Yakovlevich convinced the scientist to take up the manuscript. This is how a very good book “Solar Matter” appeared with a preface by Landau.”

It seems that modern book publishers could more consistently and persistently develop these glorious traditions. “Wherever, but in the scientific and artistic genre you cannot rely only on the manuscripts proposed by the authors. An active editorial policy is needed...”

The potential opportunities for more active work with authors of scientific and artistic works are evidenced, in particular, by the article by Bella Dijour, whose books are widely known in our country and have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

“I remember with gratitude,” she writes, “that my first editors took into account the specifics of my interests and capabilities. Here I would like to name two names: Klavdia Vasilyevna Rozhdestvenskaya (at that time she was the editor-in-chief of the Sverdlovsk publishing house) and Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Maksimova (she led the work of the editorial office of scientific and fiction literature in Moscow in Detgiz). I owe them a lot. They helped me find my path in literature...

I unexpectedly received a letter from Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Maksimova, which began with the words: “We learned that you are a chemist-biologist by profession. Would you agree to write for our publishing house?..” Thus the Green Laboratory was born.

B. Dijour shows well the specific difficulties and shortcomings characteristic of reviewer and editorial practice in this area.

She compares the process of creating a scientific and artistic book to the voyage of a ship: “One bank of the river is Science. The other is Art. The skill of a pilot is to ensure that the ship sails exactly in the middle of the river.” Otherwise, either false fictionalization, embellishment, or an overload of dry information occurs. Her “Green Laboratory” is characterized by this second miscalculation, and it arose not without the fault of the publishing house.

The topic of the manuscript - what does a plant eat - required the use of data from various sciences: botany, soil science, plant physiology, etc. Apparently, this is why “the manuscript turned out to have too many scientific consultants and reviewers... Each demanded some additions, changes, clarifications... One in his scientific review suggested replacing the word “smoke” with a more accurate definition, in his opinion, “outgoing gases..."

It is clear that such reviewer wishes indicated a lack of understanding of the specifics of scientific and artistic literature. But under their influence, the young and timid author (“It’s no joke - the first book in the central publishing house!”) made numerous amendments, carefully eliminating “personal, emotional coloring” from the text.

The fact that such facts in publishing practice are by no means “things that have happened for a long time” days gone by", evidenced by the processing that the book “Biological Walks” recently underwent in preparation for re-release. The only difference is that the Nauka publishing house in this case did not have to deal with the author at all: Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A.S. Serebrovsky died 30 years ago.

“This was an author with a pronounced creative individuality, romantic scientist. Search for something new, originality and unexpectedness of solutions, complete absence of fear of breaking with tradition.” All these qualities are clearly reflected in the book, which to this day (1st edition published in 1923) remains one of best works, "with enormous artistic power revealing to the reader the world of the most fascinating problems of biology.”

In the 3rd edition, 15% of the text was shortened by the editor, and these cuts were made without understanding the characteristics of not only individual creative style, but also scientific and artistic literature as a whole.

“First of all, everything that did not bear an obvious and immediate utilitarian load was subject to truncation. Bright epithets, juicy, colorful comparisons, “ lyrical digressions“- all this was blotted out... The fact that such a reduction (which is, in fact, an edit) broke the entire structure of a deeply thought-out and carefully polished text, its musicality, imagery, poetry - it’s scary to say - did not seem to bother the editors at all “- writes with pain and indignation Doctor of Biological Sciences L.V. Bardunov.

He gives numerous examples of such editing. “Spring” is replaced by “spring”, “creatures” by “animals” or “organisms”. The editor replaced “stinks” with the delicate “smells.” The editor probably sensed something mystical in the word “felt”; this word has been replaced by “seemed.” The editor saw the same mysticism, and perhaps even worse, in the word “pray”: instead of it in the third edition it is worth “admiring.” “Relative” was replaced by “relative”, instead of “kicking” there was “inconspicuous”, instead of “listening” - “reacting”, “quiet” was replaced by “modest”, “wonderful” - “amazing”.

These corrections depersonalize the text, deprive it of liveliness, charm, and direct impact on the reader. They indicate a kind of deafness of the editor to the figurative and emotional structure of presentation - the most important property of a scientific and artistic work.

Of course, the other extreme is equally unacceptable - the disdainful attitude of the reviewer and editor to scientific accuracy. This side of the problem requires especially close attention if the author is not an expert in this field, or if the book uses heterogeneous information.

For example, while positively assessing S. Reznik’s book “Mechnikov” (ZhZL, 1973), the reviewer notes that the yen contains a number of scientific inaccuracies typical for a non-specialist (it is not true that the hypothesis about ticks as “reservoirs of plague infection” was confirmed; ciliates belong to protists, not microbes, etc.).

Of course, all such errors could have been eliminated when preparing the manuscript for publication. However, a serious difficulty in the work of the reviewer and editor in this case lies in the fact that the versatility of the work of the great Mechnikov led to the inclusion in the book of material from a wide variety of social and natural sciences. Apparently, it would be necessary to involve a number of specialist consultants. However, the question arises: wouldn’t something similar to the case described above with the “Green Laboratory” by B. Dizhur happen to S. Reznik’s manuscript?

In a scientific or popular science text, the author's individual style is a desirable quality, but not at all mandatory. One can give long lists of good publications, both those that have this quality and those that lack it. Sometimes it is impossible for the reader to grasp the uniqueness of the personality hiding behind the last name on the cover, but he does not feel the need for this.

It's a different matter in a scientific and artistic book. Due to the peculiarities of its social purpose, its subject and methods of “mastering” it, the image of the author appears as important component text structure. After all, one of its fundamental properties is precisely the imprinting (along with objective reality) of subjective moments.

It is through the personality of the writer, through his life experience and attitude, his experiences and impressions, thoughts and memories that in this case the connection is made between the story about science and the perception of the reader, who acts as an “accomplice” and “empathizer” of the research process.

What fundamental changes in the reader’s perception of the text does this circumstance cause?

Firstly, the very “attitude to perception” here is such that the material is assimilated through the prism of the author’s individual attitude towards it.

Secondly, the manifestation of the personal principle begins to influence as an aesthetic category.

Thirdly, the author is perceived by the reader as a participant (or one of them) in the narrative. Moreover, even if he does not appear openly on the proscenium, does not resort to the form of a first-person narrative, comments like: “I believe”, “it seems to me”...

In other words, the author's individuality appears here no longer as one of the properties of the text (and optional), but as a structural-systemic feature, directly and necessarily related to determining the value of this particular work.

All this clearly sounds in many readers’ letters to the publishing house - live and immediate responses.

Let us give examples from the Young Guard archive.

“When you read this book, it seems that you hear the author’s voice, you clearly imagine his feelings and experiences, and therefore you begin to listen,” says one of the letters.

“I received great aesthetic pleasure and moral satisfaction from reading this book,” writes another reader about “The Invisible Contemporary” N. Luchnik and explains this impact of the work primarily by the fact that it “revealed the author’s spiritual generosity, his great love for people "

The author's individuality also acts as an essential evaluation criterion in some printed and in-house reviews.

Thus, in a review of the manuscript of surgeon Yu.A. it is noted that, despite the significance of the information conveyed in it and the variety of fictional techniques, this work does not feel “the wealth of moral and practical experience, the individuality of the scientist’s worldview.” And this does not allow, in the reviewer’s opinion, to accept the manuscript for publication in the scientific and artistic series “Brigantine”.

In the conclusion to another book, on the contrary, it is emphasized that it “clearly reveals the personality of the author with all the originality of his perception and interests.”

The author’s ability to give his assessment of facts and phenomena, his desire to acquaint the reader with his doubts, his special view of things - all this is noted as a “necessary condition” for the publication of a book by the editors of the “Eureka” series5.

Unfortunately, when getting acquainted with publishing materials and critical speeches, it is easy to notice that the individual creative style of the author is not always given due attention; conversation about this often comes down only to the characterization and assessment of individual presentation techniques.

The editor's task is to comprehend the uniqueness of the author's plan, his approach to the topic, determined not only by general factors (purpose, reader's address, material), but also by individual factors - the characteristics of the intellect, the way of thinking, the temperament of a given person, his likes and dislikes. “Who are these authors? What do they like, what do they want? - this question was asked by M. Gorky M.E. Koltsov, when the series “Life of Remarkable People” appeared, conceived precisely as a scientific and artistic one.

Gorky's approach is invariably preserved by the editors of ZhZL to this day. They strive to understand and feel what is dear to a given writer, what prompted him to turn to the topic. For one, what is important first of all is public recognition and the significance of the results of a scientist’s work, another is concerned about the greatness of the moral feat in the name of science, the third is occupied with the dialectics of research thought and the secrets of intuition. It is quite clear that such different approaches to the “phenomenon” itself wonderful person“determine the originality of the plan, selection of material, construction of the book, and style of presentation.

The criterion of author's individuality allows the editor to more specifically and creatively apply other evaluation criteria, for example, to see more clearly what is caused and how organic the appearance of individual compositional elements in the text is - lyrical reflections, philosophical digressions, “life examples.” It allows you to more reasonably and accurately evaluate the figurative and expressive means of language, to notice whether there is genuine originality of thoughts and feelings behind the “colorful” phrases.

Studying the text in the aspect of the author's individuality helps to improve the analysis methodology, in particular, by considering the relationship between content and form in a particular work. And these relationships in scientific and artistic works are especially close. What we usually attribute to external “techniques of entertainment”, “means of enlivening the narrative”, sometimes turns out to be an essential component of the content, expressing the author’s concept. For example, in V. Lvov’s book “Einstein” there is the following paragraph: “He told how one evening he went to bed with a feeling of complete hopelessness of answering the riddle that tormented him. But suddenly the darkness was illuminated, and the answer arose” (p. 68). In this case it is not " literary move”, not an attempt to interest or entertain the reader, but an expression of the author’s view on the role of intuition in the process of scientific thinking, a moment of discovery, which often seems to the researcher himself to be a sudden insight.

Consequently, the editor encounters manifestations of the author’s individuality at all stages of work on the book - from familiarization with the initial plan from the application or prospectus to the stylistic “polishing” of the finished manuscript. And a neglectful attitude towards this problem often disrupts the necessary contact between the author and the editor and interferes with their joint work.

L. Uspensky recalls that in one of his scientific and fiction books, two words “were released by a not very ceremonious editor... I made quite a fuss about this, because the notes of these two words... to my ears changed significantly and unpleasantly rhythmic structure of the paragraph, although in terms of semantics their omission did not produce any changes.”

N.N. Mikhailov writes that, largely at the insistence of the editors, he deliberately eliminated from his first books everything connected with personal perception - thoughts, experiences, impressions, considering this “unnecessary sentimentality”, “soul-searching”. “The editors helped me become entrenched in error. Once after the war, I brought the manuscript of a book about the country, where the author was already looking through - very timidly. The editor blotted it out “through himself” in one fell swoop.”

According to N.N. Mikhailov, these works, which “lacked the author’s personality,” cannot be considered truly scientific and artistic, although they contain both images and narrative dynamics.

By the way, understanding the uniqueness of the author’s style and the ability to “get used to” it is characteristic of our greatest scientists, who also act as editors. “I had to see the originals and proofs after they had been edited by editors. Sometimes it is very significant. But characteristic style the presentation does not change. On the contrary, one can see how scientists are involved in the figurative form-making of the publicist... This is how Kurchatov’s plasma in a magnetic trap, “behaving like a squirrel in a wheel,” and the classic Wechsler circus depicting a synchrophasotron were born,” this is the observation of the editor-in-chief of the journal “Science” and life” by V. Bolkhovitinov seems extremely revealing.

In our country and abroad, recognized masters of Soviet scientific and artistic literature are well known - M. Ilyin, B. Zhitkov, B. Agapov, V. Orlov, I. Andronikov, D. Danin, A. Agranovsky, D. Granin and many others .... And all this, in the apt expression of D. Danin, “the names are not interchangeable!” Each of them not only translates scientific data into a generally understandable language, but also tells a story about “the fullness of one’s own soul,” revealing “not the pragmatics, but the poetry of science.”

Characteristic in this regard is “reader mail of one book” - “Four-Winged Corsairs” by I. Khalifman. We present here only three reviews.

“You are, so to speak, my “godfather” in the field of insect sociology. I am sure that your books have had a great influence (and will continue to do so for a long time) on many others,” writes V. Kipyatkov, an entomologist from Leningrad.

“I read your book with true pleasure, I learned a lot of new things - I read it, and every now and then I was amazed, touched and admired. The book is marked "non-fiction". I think she is very faithful,” notes the poet K. Vanshenkin.

And Lev Ozerov adds that I. Khalifman’s book “remains in the heart and mind, prompting reflection about Nature, about scientific research, about people of science. For you, all this is interdependent and sounds like a poem.”

What can be said about the “addressability” of a scientific and fiction book? Who acts as its real and potential reader?

When exploring this problem, it is necessary first of all to abandon the prevailing opinion (it appears very clearly in the template annotations!) that any such book is addressed to the “mass reader” simply because special information is given here in an “entertaining and accessible form.” It is necessary to be based on the specifics of the social purpose, the characteristics of the subject of this literature, its characteristic methods of organizing the text, and methods of presenting the material.

Indeed, the “reader range” of most scientific and artistic works is very wide - both in age and educational aspects.

Moreover, one cannot help but notice that the first has a tendency to further expand these days.

On the one hand, the inclusion of complex theoretical material in the program primary classes should undoubtedly cause a qualitative shift in the educational book addressed to preschoolers and primary schoolchildren. “They also want to know about the structure of a spaceship rushing to Mars, and about operations on a living heart, and about the writing of a disappeared people, solved by a thinking machine, and about growth hormones. That is why science and fiction books for children have acquired such importance these days.” The publishing houses "Malysh" and "Children's Literature" are facing new challenges in this area. In "Children's Literature", by the way, the scientific and artistic editorial office is still the largest, it is no coincidence that it is called a “publishing house within a publishing house”! A special scientific and artistic editorial office has also been created at the Malysh publishing house.

On the other hand, growth average duration life leads to an increase in the number of “very elderly” people. Namely, this contingent of readers is especially interested in the social and philosophical problems of science, the psychology of creativity, that is, one of the essential aspects of the subject of scientific and artistic literature.

What has been said, of course, does not mean that when releasing this or that book, the publishing house is simultaneously addressing “the old and the young.” On the contrary, there is a clearly expressed age gradation of the works we are considering. And when preparing a manuscript for publication, the editor must be aware of the fact that it is precisely in the age characteristics of the future audience that corresponds both to the general properties of the scientific and artistic text, and specifically to the content and form of this publication.

The Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, for example, considered it expedient to clarify the age gradation of published literature by organizing a special “Coeval” department, designed for teenagers. The division also affected scientific and artistic works. It is “Coeval” that publishes the already mentioned collections and series “Eureka”, “Brigantine”, “Literature and You” and others.

The desire for independence, hostility to any teachings, didactics, cognitive activity and emotional responsiveness - all these properties of a teenager, according to the editors, are best met by a scientific and fiction book.

At the same time, a modern eighth or tenth grader has a large supply of information in various natural science fields, and this allows him to have a conversation with him “on an equal footing”, without avoiding special concepts, formulas, etc.

“Secondary education,” we wrote in the questionnaires, implying a standard set of knowledge. Nowadays the scientific and technological revolution is running so fast that a date should be added to the qualification “average”: “average - 47” is something different than “average - 74”. This remark by V. Orlov brings us to a very interesting phenomenon. In the type of literature under study, a kind of inverse relationship is sometimes observed between two “parameters” of the single book category “reader’s address” - the reader’s age and his preparation. In general, among the books we are considering, publications intended for children occupy a particularly significant place. A study conducted in four thousand urban and rural school libraries showed that the greatest demand among children is not stories about spies or adventure stories, but so-called educational books, most of which are scientific and artistic.

When addressing children, we obviously must first of all take into account the sensory-concrete nature of their thinking, the liveliness and spontaneity, and the synthetic nature of perception. Since a child has a very limited supply of empirical and scientific knowledge, to implement the basic principle of popularization (to the unknown through the known), the “path through the image” takes on special significance. All these reasons prompted M. Gorky to repeatedly emphasize that a children's educational book “must speak the language of images, must be artistic.”

However, one cannot help but notice that in some publications it is precisely the calculation of the peculiarities of child psychology that leads to characteristic errors: an excess of figurative elements, random in relation to scientific material, performing purely “entertaining” functions. The text is cluttered with overly talkative characters and adventure situations. The authors of some books, having first paid “obligatory tribute” to imagery, then “slide” either into dry information or into edifying declamation, which is poorly perceived by a child.

In books addressed to children that cover new branches of knowledge, especially ones that have been actively developing in recent years, it is extremely important to correctly calculate the optimal “level of accessibility.” Not creating “exorbitant inhibition”, but also not underestimating the child’s cognitive capabilities, not being afraid to put him in a problematic situation of “intellectual difficulty” - this is what is especially valuable.

This approach is characteristic, for example, of the works of Yu. Dmitriev, in particular, his “Big Book of the Forest” (“Children’s Literature”, 1975) or the essays “Hello, Squirrel! How are you doing, crocodile? ("Children's Literature", 1970). In the first of them, the child is introduced into the complex world of bionics, the second is specifically devoted to very little studied phenomena - the language of animals. And criticism rightly noted that Yu. Dmitriev’s works are designed to develop a sustainable interest in science and skills of focused attention.

It is gratifying that, meeting the demands of reality, publishing houses are expanding the “thematic boundaries” of children’s books, revising the usual ideas about what is “necessary and accessible” to a young reader. An example is the “Little Encyclopedia about Big Cybernetics” by V. Pekelis, which reveals the concepts of an algorithm and the binary number system, talks about recently emerging sciences - bionics, mathematical linguistics. Or G. Elizavetin’s book “Money,” which introduces the student to a seemingly distant world of economic knowledge. Or the work of B. Ehrengross “The Amazing Science of Aesthetics.”

However, it should be noted that it is in such works that the danger of falling into simplification, vulgarization, and popularization becomes especially real. Such miscalculations are noted, in particular, in the review of the book by B. Ehrengross.

Regarding the educational background of the reader, the following should be noted. Of course, in the literature we are considering, this factor has a significant impact on the selection and presentation of material. Let us compare, for example, in this regard, three scientific and artistic books that are similar in topic: F.G. Lev “What is everything made of” (for younger schoolchildren), E.A. Sedov “Interesting about electronics” (for graduating students high school), IN AND. Rydnnk “Atoms talk to people” (for a reader with some special training).

F.G. Lev devotes an entire chapter to explaining the term “atom”, E.A. Sedov does not consider it necessary to do this at all, but freely uses the term when explaining (quite detailed) the properties of the electron. A V.I. Rydnik, relying on the fact that these properties are already familiar to the reader, uses his knowledge to introduce and explain the complex concept of “spin”.

And yet the reader’s stock of knowledge, the socio-cultural “matrix” do not have a scientific impact fiction direct and immediate impact on interest in the book. For a specialist, most of the information contained in the text may be familiar. But the work itself attracts his attention due to the fact that it figuratively and emotionally captures the experiences of researchers and provides an aesthetically affecting image of the cognizable.

It can, therefore, be argued that the interaction of a scientific and artistic text with a diverse audience, united under the heading “mass reader”, is a complex, “multi-layered” process. In such a text, there are, as it were, different “layers” that are in a dynamic relationship with the requests and capabilities of the perceiver. This or that “layer” for a given group of readers (or for a given specific reader) may turn out to be “redundant” (the information was previously known) or perceived as “extraneous noise” (the information is too complex and “exorbitant inhibition” occurs). However, thanks to the successful influence of other “layers” of the text, the process of communicating with the book as a whole does not lose its value.

Therefore, if popular literature is most often aimed at a reader with a certain level of training (schoolchildren, “humanists”, readers who want to join the achievements of natural science, specialists in related professions, etc.), then a scientific and artistic book is deprived of such a specific address. It often attracts both the layman and the scientist at the same time.

L.D. Landau, for example, called M. Bronstein’s book “Solar Matter” (about the discovery of helium) an extraordinary event and argued that, intended for children, it would captivate any professional physicist.

The publishing practice of recent years gives us many similar facts.

What can be said about scientific and artistic literature? It seems that in this aspect, too, it largely (but not completely!) “inherits” the features of these two types of literature, synthesizing them in a unique way. This circumstance significantly affects the evaluation criteria. In particular, a very specific criterion is being formed for the need to include individual details in the text (“right to exist”).

For example, the author says that the scientist talks about his discovery with a friend “in the evening, after dinner, when they settled down by candlelight in comfortable office chairs.” The reviewer considers these “unnecessary, distracting details”: does it matter whether he was sitting in a comfortable chair or on a chair?

Indeed, such strokes would seem unnecessary in a scientific or popular science text - they do not carry “useful information”, do not convey the necessary knowledge and do not help present it more accessible. Their function would be purely entertaining (“to give rest to the reader...”).

And in a scientific and artistic text? Here, in our opinion, the situation is changing. Details of the situation and behavior (of course, if they are not stereotyped and skillfully recreated figuratively) do not distract or scatter the reader’s attention, but, on the contrary, make his communication with the book more effective. Because they perform the most important function in the process of perceiving such a text: they create the “illusion of presence”, help a person to see what is happening and, therefore, feel like a living, interested witness, a direct participant.

The “accuracy” of the selection of such details depends on tact, a sense of proportion, imaginative thinking, visual skill, i.e. artistic gift of the author.

An interesting example of how the readership of a scientific and artistic publication unexpectedly expands is given in the collection “Artistic Perception.” Studying the reading range of the peoples living in the Far North of our country, sociologists were convinced that special success local residents use... "Children's Encyclopedia". “It provides a popular explanation for those familiar objects and phenomena of life that are completely unfamiliar to the indigenous population of the Far North.”

“Ways of communication” between the reader and various types literatures, as is known, are qualitatively different.

A person picks up a work of art, wanting not only to learn about something, but also to experience, feel, and see something. For him, the effect of a personal experience is infinitely important - a living, momentary, direct experience happening “before his eyes” (even if the story is told about events a thousand years ago).

The attitude towards perception will be fundamentally different scientific text. The reader always remembers: someone “before him” and “independently of him” studied the phenomenon, established a fact, formulated a pattern and prepared a message. He wants to perceive this message as objectively, accurately and unambiguously as possible, with as little time and effort as possible. “I didn’t know before, but now I know”, “I managed to understand and assimilate” - this is in this case the main effect that gives rise to a feeling of satisfaction from communicating with a book.

In recent years, a number of sociological studies have been conducted that reveal the motives for reading works of fiction.

Among them there are general, so to speak, “utilitarian” ones, which also apply to other types of literature (awareness of the benefits of reading, the desire for self-development, the need for knowledge, etc.). But a significant part of them does not play a noticeable role in the perception of “non-fiction” texts or cannot be applied to them at all. These are, in particular, the following motives: the need for aesthetic experiences (caused both by the object of description and by the qualities of the text itself); the need to activate the emotional sphere; the desire to activate the imagination, direct living perception, subjective associations, etc.

All these motives are very significant when a person turns to a scientific and artistic book.

Another interesting point is connected with the specific perception of the literature we are studying.

When releasing a specific work, both the publishing house and the author focus on a certain “collective” reader. Individual psychological differences between people are essentially not taken into account.

However, the book is intended for the perception of “isolated individuals.” And certain contradictions inevitably arise between the mass orientation of the publication and the process of individual perception. It seems that a scientific-fiction text to some extent removes this contradiction, giving each person different information to the extent of his understanding, his ability to empathize and co-create.

It is known that it is precisely this property that makes a true work of art addressed simultaneously to all of humanity and to an individual. A scientific-fiction book partially accepts such “appeal” as a gift of art noble cause popularization.

Let's add one more note to what has been said.

The actual scientific and actual artistic means of mastering reality together occupy “only rather narrow extreme bands” in the spectrum of human activity, the main part of which is occupied by “everyday used methods of communication and cognition.”

Therefore, a literary work, in which the conceptual and figurative, rational and emotional are intertwined, brings the subject closer to the reader, imitating the process of his “everyday thinking.” And this can also be seen as one of the reasons for the effectiveness of the impact of a scientific and fiction book on the reader and the massiveness of its audience.

All of the above allows us to assert that the features of the creation of a scientific and artistic work by the author and the features of its perception by the reader reflect the strengthening of connections characteristic of our time:

1. various forms of thinking - abstract-logical and concrete-figurative - in the process of each person’s comprehension of the surrounding reality;
2. various forms of social consciousness - science and art - in the process of development of society.

As a result, a scientific and artistic book acts as a way of demonstrating (for the author) and forming (for the reader) the properties of an integral, harmoniously developed personality. That is why it occupies an increasingly prominent place in the plans of Soviet publishing houses, contributing to the implementation of the educational tasks set for them by the Communist Party.

“That is why “Capital” had such a gigantic success, that this book of the “German economist” showed the reader the entire capitalist social formation as living - with its household parties, with the actual social manifestation of the class antagonism inherent in production relations,” writes Lenin in the book “What are Friends of the People.”

How alive! Anyone who reread the works of Marx could not help but be struck by their artistic integrity, their imagery, their structure, which does credit to any work of so-called fiction. The architectonics of Capital are grandiose, where in the first volume we are in a factory, in the second in the office of capitalism, and in the third we cover the entire process of capitalist production. The dramatization of events is extremely dramatic, expressed in vivid, figurative language: “In place of an individual machine, a mechanical monster appears here, whose body occupies entire factory buildings and whose demonic power, at first almost disguised, breaks through the solemnly measured movement of its gigantic members in the feverishly frenzied dance of its countless workers organs in the proper sense of the word" (Vol. I, Chapter XIII). The irony is deadly: “the market is the true Eden of innate human rights. Here only freedom, equality, property and Bentham reign!”

“...Newborn capital exudes blood and dirt from all its pores, from head to toe” (Vol. I, Chapter 24). These are quotes from the first volume of Capital.

Let's open at random "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" - brilliant historical research and a revolutionary pamphlet, designed extremely artistically. “The evil spell of Tsiruen was not needed to turn the artistically beautiful bourgeois republic into an ugly monster. This republic has lost nothing but decent visibility. Modern France was a ready-made parliamentary republic. One prick with a bayonet was enough for the bubble to burst, and the monster appeared before the eyes” (chap. 7). Or a phrase about the Napoleonic idea of ​​Louis Bonaparte - the dominance of priests as an instrument of government and the anti-religion of impoverished peasants: “The sky was not a bad addition to the newly acquired piece of land, especially since it makes the weather; but heaven becomes an outrage as soon as it is imposed like a gamen for a parcel,” etc.

Marx always resolved scientific ideas with the help of artistic influence. A great connoisseur and lover of the best examples of fiction, Marx mobilized his artistic skill to better design his economic, philosophical and historical works. The same applies to other great scientists. Engels's language is simple and artistic. What is Darwin's Voyage Around the World on the Beagle - a series of artistic essays or a scientific work? Everything, starting from the first phrase, represents artistic fabric and at the same time is an example of scientific creativity. Works of Timiryazev, acad. I. Pavlova - these are our contemporaries - testify that the combination of artistry with a truly scientific presentation is not only quite possible, but gives scientific work a special power, which lies in the emotional increase in the effectiveness of the work.

The matter is not limited to the simple use of artistic means by the greatest scientists. History knows examples of the development of scientific problems through art.

The Roman horseman Lucretius Carus, who died in 51 BC, in his poem “On the Nature of Things” sets out the teachings of Epicurus, as Marx put it, “the radical enlightener of ancient times.” The poem interprets the physics of Epicurus, develops the theory of atoms, the theory of the structure of the world. To develop philosophical questions, purely scientific questions, the form of a work of art was chosen and the means of art were used. And this is not just the popularization of science through poetry. The rhythm and imagery of the poem do not hinder, but promote the development of thought. Art and poetic creativity here are inseparable from scientific thinking. Lomonosov wrote the poem “On the Benefits of Glass,” which had great educational value for its time.

The circle of readers of so-called fiction is always much wider than the circle of readers of special technical issues. The cooperation of artistic expression and science mutually enriches each other, not to mention the enormous cultural and educational significance of the works born from this unity. Attempts to create this union have been made at all times. The poets of the first class society (slave-owning) Geznod, Empedocles, Ovid, Virgil and /84/ poets of the feudal formation of the Middle Ages - Dante, Jean de Maeng - interpreted the scientific issues of their era in artistic creativity. Growing capitalism, whose youth went into battle with feudalism under the banner of science, gave birth to Swift, Goethe, later Lecomte de Lisle, Victor Hugo, then Jules Verne, Rene Gil, Verhaeren, Flammarion. Wells in England and Valery Bryusov in Russia complete this list. But the “junction” between science and artistic and literary creativity is also achieved in other ways. It can be said without exaggeration that every great writer is also a scientific researcher.

Pushkin had a library of 3,000 volumes (the largest at that time) with a significant percentage of books of scientific content. There is a well-known note by Pushkin that “one must be on par with the century” - to stand at the heights of scientific knowledge of our time.

Dostoevsky's works are of unconditional interest for a psychiatrist. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is a unique theory of military art.

The influence of the work of Goethe - a great naturalist, a great scientist of his time - on the scientific works of his contemporaries is well known. Engels writes in his famous letter to Margaret Harknes that from “ Human Comedy From Balzac, he, Engels, “even learned more about the meaning of economic details... than from the books of all professional historians, economists, and statisticians of this period taken together.”

The history of literature knows examples of absolutely exceptional scientific conjectures of people of great artistic emotion. Oridius and Virgil also spoke about liquid air, the reality of our days. Examples are closer: the same Honoré Balzac in one of his novels predicted the discovery of the endocrine glands several decades in advance. Strindberg, in his novel Captain Kohl, pointed out the possibility of extracting nitrogen from the air. Here I am deliberately not talking about scientific foresight in the works of Jules Verne - we will talk about it below. But I would like to mention the greatest genius of science and art, the greatest scientist, the first engineer of his time, musician, brilliant artist - Leonardo da Vinci. The huge clot of artistic emotion embedded in this man made it possible to obtain a number of profound predictions Sciences.

The so-called inspiration is present in all creative work. M. Gorky in his article “Conversations on Craft” quotes Laplace as saying: “Impatiently striving to know the cause of phenomena, a scientist, gifted with a vivid imagination, often finds this cause before observations give him reason to see it.” “The work of a writer is similar to the work of a scientist,” adds Gorky. Artistic emotion and its role in scientific work - the specifics of “inspiration” here and there - this issue has not yet been developed by psychologists.

***

If you imagine the types of scientific novel (story, short story, poem) - a work of art that develops problems science as topics, and not the background (scientific and technical), for social biography hero, then we can outline the following types: historical, geographical, industrial and fantasy novel.

Authors of historical novels - much more than authors of any other genre - are connected with the scientific basis of the subject of their work. Each author has his own historical concept of the events depicted. In this sense, Alexei Tolstoy’s work on the theme of Peter I, a theme to which he is known to return for many years, is extremely characteristic. And if in the first story, published before the revolution, “The Day of Peter I,” Peter is interpreted in terms of an individual moving history in isolation from the masses, then in the romance that Tolstoy wrote in our days, the historical pattern and driving class forces of that era are artistically shown. There is no need to talk about the unconditional educational value of historical novels.

In general, the writer always willingly took on historical topics (Shakespeare’s chronicles alone are worth it) - just as the chronicler introduced a share of artistic fiction into the recording of events. This is explained by the contiguity of two types of ideologies - literature and history. The specificity of history as a science is that it is an ideology, just like literature. That is why, recognizing the great positive significance of the works of Jules Verne, we resolutely reject historical novels such as Mordovtsev, Solovyov, etc. On the other hand, it should be noted the negativity of “artistic” works of this type, such as the “historical” novels of Anatoly Vinogradov - clear evidence what happens when the author treats the concept of a thing, facts, and the calendar too freely.

A significant portion of what has been said can also be attributed to geographical novels. Some of the novels by Mine Reid and the same Jules Verne certainly required a lot of special preparation by the author, and their educational value is undoubted. On the other hand, such a geographical study as “Man and Earth” by the famous French scientist Elisée Reclus contains many elements of artistic emotion. There is no need to talk /85/ about the artistic entertainment and educational benefits of descriptions of all kinds of travel.

The mentioned types of scientific novels, of course, do not exhaust all the possibilities for artistic interpretation of the ideas of science and technology. Any scientific discipline and any scientific problem can be a topic for a writer's development.

Science fiction has a special place. Not only young people were captivated by the book “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Military specialists and naval engineers were engrossed in the exploits of Captain Nemo, and after several decades the Nautiluses became a reality. An aerostat or an airplane is the theme of “Airship.” The scientific foresight of victory and the possibilities of developing heavier-than-air vehicles is the merit of Jules Verne, not only the merit of a historical and literary order. Jules Verne, an expert on all scientific and technical achievements of his time, a talented visionary, organized young people to study technical issues. The books of Jules Verne are still a great driving force directing the interests of readers to effective work in science and technology.

The science fiction novel is the most established and widespread type of science novel. The poet Cyrano de Bergerac, a scientist and explorer, one of the most educated people of the 17th century, wrote about flying to the moon using rockets. The artistic works of the scientist Flammarion are well known. The science fiction novel also includes novels of, so to speak, social fiction such as “Utopia” by Thomas More, which inspired many revolutionaries, and such as Bellamy’s “In a Hundred Years.”

The greatest exponent of the science fiction novel is our recent guest H.G. Wells. Someone estimated that Wells touched on over 1,600 scientific problems in his artistic works. And he, like Jules Verne, is a man of great culture and deep knowledge of scientific issues. In the story “In the Deep Sea,” Wells describes a diving device for diving into the ocean to a depth of 5 miles. Modern technology is similar to Wells's vision. The moving sidewalks in the novel “When the Sleeper Awake” (this novel, by the way, is an experiment in combining social and scientific-technical fiction) are known to many.

It should be noted, however, that the works of Jules Verne are closer to us than the works of Wells. Jules Verne is a representative of the still healthy bourgeois class; the word “science” is still written in large letters on its banners. By the time of Wells, the time of decaying capitalism, when thousands of inventions cannot achieve patents due to sales crises, when killing machines are invented, when the terrible slogan is in use - “a moratorium on inventions!”, by this time the science fiction novel of the capitalist world is losing its scientific clarity. Already in “The Struggle of the Worlds”, the Martians conquering the earth fight with a heat ray - a device of a very vague design.

Modern Western science fiction novels are very characteristic of the era dominated by the philosophy of Spengler, who agitates against technology (“Man and Technology”). Pierre MacOrlan in 2000 divides humanity into two groups: scientists and robots - mechanical people. The new world is beautiful, but six-armed iron robots disperse gatherings of scientists. In Jean Painlevé, the author of Cupsill Courant, robots destroy people.

In Aldous Huxley's novel The Magnificent new world“The idea of ​​“science for the few” is preached. The world is ruled by scientists (compare with the ideas of technocracy in the USA), and the golden age, dating back to the “Ford era,” is created at the cost of people losing their ability to have emotional life and abandoning art. Huxley, a scientist (nephew of the famous Julian Huxley), artistically developed in the novel a number of scientific problems in terms of the latest achievements of science. But the picture of the world is given in such a way that a person of our era, finding himself in a “magnificent new world,” commits suicide. The artist of the West is afraid of the triumph of science, he imagines science only in the hands of the bourgeois, and gloomy pictures of the future are drawn to the science fiction writer. A new social system, which will take science and develop it in a way that the best science fiction novelists of the bourgeoisie never dreamed of, will force technology to serve people - something some Western artists do not see or do not want to see. Such a science fiction novel may scare the reader away from science rather than bring it closer to it.

But if the scientific imagination of Western artists is constrained by their social blindness, then what immense prospects for scientific foresight open up in the country of victorious young science - in the USSR! Let us recall the words of Engels that with the victory of the proletariat begins true story humanity as opposed to the prehistory of time associated with class struggle. Our greatest scientific future waiting for his descriptions. The country greedily absorbs all the scientific discoveries of the world and implements them. Splitting of the atom, blood transfusion of corpses, work on determining the sex of the embryo, the work of Michurin, Ioffe, Pavlov - hundreds and thousands of interesting problems are waiting for their artistic embodiment.

But the engineers of the Sevkabel plant write to our writers (Lit. Len-d, 26/VII 1934): “We have /86/ a request to Soviet writers directly related to our specialty. There is no science fiction novel at all in Soviet literature. Bogdanov's novels, Belyaev's very boring and gray novels - that's all. There was, however, also “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin” (A. Tolstoy), but it cannot be called a science fiction novel. Rather simply fantastic. The trouble with Belyaev’s novels, for example, is that he proceeds not from the real achievements of modern technology, continuing its possibilities into the future, but from some completely fictitious concepts. Meanwhile we It’s not just technical fiction that’s needed, but, so to speak, a promising novel that would reveal the possibilities of technology development under the conditions of a planned socialist economy. We need a Soviet Jules Verne or Wells.”

However, Belyaev’s novels, with all their technical and scientific imperfections, were read to the gills by our youth. There is such a great need for this genre. The demand for science fiction novels is huge. This was persistently emphasized by the Congress of Writers in the speeches of pioneers and adult readers and, finally, the writers themselves. Unfortunately, Alexei Tolstoy’s novels “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” and “Aelita” gained wide readership. Both novels are anti-scientific. A. Tolstoy's education (he is a process engineer) did not serve the writer as well as one might have hoped for. Regarding the helplessness of these novels in terms of science fiction a lot has been written. I will only note the confession of A. Tolstoy himself (“Struggle for Technology”, No. 17-18): “In “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin” I wrote about a cannonball launched into the ground to a depth of 25 km. And only now, reworking my Garin, I found this error. After all, the core, falling 25 km, will be completely flattened.” The engineer Los' description of the apparatus for the flight to Mars was more than vague. Such negligence is unacceptable for the author of a science fiction novel. But if the education of an engineer did not benefit A. Tolstoy in his work on science fiction, then the novel by engineer V. Nikolsky “After a Thousand Years” is of unconditional interest: hydrogen smelting, transparent iron, a metallurgical plant without blast furnaces - a number of valuable technical problems. Let us also mention A. A. Bogdanov - mathematician, political economist, philosopher, director of the Institute of Blood Transfusion, a man who dreamed of creating a “unified science”, and the author of everything famous novels"Engineer Manny" and "Red Star". And here, the combination of deep scientific knowledge and renowned artistic talent brought positive results.

Science fiction certainly deserves the utmost attention from writers, engineers, and scientists. The prospects for this genre are enormous. Eng. M. Ilyin, a writer who gained worldwide fame with his “Tale of a Great Plan,” writes: “We are bad with science fiction books. What do the authors of such a book do? They arbitrarily, in all sorts of ways, combine already known facts... The Earth of 2000 is like an exhibition of the latest inventions. This is not how a science fiction book should be! True science fiction should not be based on arbitrary combinations of the known, but on deducing the necessary consequences from new conditions.”

"The true science fiction novel is an outpost of science into the unknown."

Let's return to Lucretius Carus and Lomonosov. Both “On the Nature of Things” and “On the Use of Glass” are formally poems, that is, poetic works. Therefore, there is an opportunity to develop scientific questions in the most constrained form of poetic creativity - in verse. Poetry, the form of the purest artistic emotion in the realm of words, can carry a cognitive load. The very specificity of verse - rhythm, sound organization - has, in comparison with artistic prose greater power of direct emotional impact on the reader. The use of scientific themes in this form promises, on the one hand, a great channel for promoting the ideas of science and technology, and on the other hand, it represents a very interesting field of activity for the poet.

In the preface to the collection of poems “Dali” (M., 1922), Bryusov wrote: “The poems collected in this collection can be reproached that they too often contain words that are not known to everyone: terms from mathematics, astronomy, biology, history and other sciences, as well as hints at various scientific theories and historical events.

The author, of course, must acknowledge this fact, but cannot agree that all this should be forbidden for poetry. He thinks that a poet should, if possible, stand at the level of modern scientific knowledge and have the right to dream of a reader with the same worldview. It would be unfair if poetry had to forever be limited, on the one hand, to motifs about love and nature, and on the other, to civic themes. Everything that interests and excites modern man, has the right to be reflected in poetry."

The meaning is where the integral snakes
Between numbers and letters, between d and f. /87/

In the next collection “Mea” (1924), Bryusov places among the scientific poems the famous poem “The World of the Electron”:

Perhaps these electrons -
Worlds with five continents.
Arts, knowledge, wars, thrones
And the memory of forty centuries.
Every atom can still be
A universe with a hundred planets.
Everything that is here, in a compressed volume, is there
But also what is not here.

Bryusov composes a special note for the collection “Mea”, which has cultural and educational significance. Bryusov will forever remain the merit of the man who paved the way for a new theme of poetry.

From Soviet poets Vl. has been working hard and hard in the field of scientific poetry for a long time. Narbut and Zenkevich. Narbut’s poems “Malaria”, “Ball Train” and even “Microscope” are interesting both educationally and genre-wise, although they suffer from some mechanism. The poets Selvinsky and Antokolsky in a number of poems approach scientific poetry. The experience of Selvinsky’s poem “How a Light Bulb is Made” - a poem undeservedly little appreciated by our critics - is very interesting. Nowhere does poetry lag so far behind as on one of the main fronts of our reality - on the front of science and technology. More than 100 years ago, the poet Oznobishin wrote a poem about his contemporary, the famous naturalist Cuvier. Has the life and work of such world-famous scientists as Joffe, Bach, Michurin become the property of poetry? No.

The technical and scientific illiteracy of our poets is even greater than that of prose writers. Take any work of our poets - their educational value in terms of scientific and technical issues is negligible, if not completely absent. Poets write about the plant in the most general terms. They write about the earth as they wrote hundreds of years ago. I take this opportunity to recall the correct idea of ​​Marietta Shaginyan that “the writer (and poet), when describing nature, does not take into account the development of agriculture, and the “popularization” of, for example, virgin forests is a reactionary display of the thing. It’s simply amazing that not a single poet (or writer) has been artistically ignited by such a question as the collision of classical physics with new discoveries, the collision of Newton and Einstein.” Both the poet and the writer, at best, think like Zinger and Kraevich. And for poets, like thousands of years ago, the sun continues to rise in the east and set in the west. Here Copernicus still has not broken Ptolemy.

In the article “On the Poet’s Library,” M. Gorky quotes the following poems:

According to Capital
(In the first volume, in the fifth chapter)
A new home appears first
In the human head
Although of dwarf size,
But in finished form already
It will be born in the brains of engineers
And on a tracing paper drawing of them.

And then the author poetically develops Marx’s thought about the preliminary, ideal representation of the result of labor in a person who changes the form of what is given by nature, fulfilling a conscious goal - about work as a purposeful activity (the famous example of an architect and a bee is taken by the author in the epigraph of the poem):

Well, and you, to the tunes of harmonics
He came from the village with a saw,
Who will you be, comrade seasonal worker,
Architect or bee?

The poem is large in size. Gorky writes: “I read these poems several times to various people, the listeners greeted the poems with indifferent silence or superficial criticism of their technical weakness... But no one noted the fact that one of the most valuable ideas of the founder of true revolutionary philosophy became the property of poetry.” By the way, the question about the architect and the bee also applies to our writers and poets. “Science, its discoveries and conquests, its workers and heroes - all this should be the property of poetry. This scientific area of ​​human activity may be more worthy of admiration, amazement, and pathos than any other.” - These words of Maxim Gorky have not yet found a sufficient creative response.

The development of scientific themes in poetry promises an undoubted formal renewal of verse, and brings with it a change in the methods of verbal transmission of verse. It is difficult now to discern the type of reader of scientific poetry. In any case, this is not a reader of the “Mkhatovsky” type and not a chanting reciter-poet.

***

The question of the union of artistic expression and science, the union of art and science, is not limited to science as the theme of the work.

The question is that every work of art of socialist realism must carry a cognitive load. And if science and technology are taken as the background for the social biography of the heroes, then in this case, the accuracy of the description of production, place and working conditions should be included in the artistic minimum required of the writer. /88/

Growing technology leads to the growth of scientific, engineering and technical workers, who are becoming the main group of the intelligentsia of our country. This, firstly, creates a particularly demanding cadre of readers of fiction in certain matters, and secondly, obliges writers to show heroes of production, technology and science. Meanwhile, technical illiteracy of writers is so widespread that it is not even considered a sin. For the most part, the writer simply avoids touching on issues of science and technology.

It is interesting that if we were to conduct a questionnaire on the value famous book All in. Ivanov’s “Armored Train 14-69”, grouping reviewers by profession, then “Armored Train” would probably be least popular among railway workers. Writer D. Sverchkov informed the author of the article that when he worked as director of the House of Equipment of the NKPS, the feedback from railway workers about Ivanov’s book was almost standard - “The book is good, but only... the author does not know at all railway" In a civil war, battle lines - a combat unit - an armored train would never stop in front of a corpse on the rails. But this is the climax of the story. In addition, the locomotive of an armored train is placed not at the beginning, but in the middle of the train, and the driver could not see the corpse.

An oversight or negligence by the author regarding the material reduces the artistic value of the thing. Reader Volkov formulated this correctly (“ Literary newspaper"dated October 5, 1933), indicating that "the plot is the property of the author, but natural, historical and everyday features must be presented truthfully, otherwise the work loses its value."

Another type of “approach”, or rather, bypassing the technical and scientific side of the issue, extremely widespread, is demonstrated by Leonid Leonov in the novel “Skutarevsky”. Its shortcomings were well formulated by Katanyan (“Literaturnaya Gazeta” dated September 5, 1934): “The science, methodology and technology of Soviet scientific work are “classified” by our authors to such an extent that Soviet scientists appear before readers almost like medieval alchemists: somewhere like this They boil something like this, pump it up, mix it, use some capacitors and rectifiers, suffer, worry, and then suddenly it turns out that the trick was brilliant “failure” or “success”.

As an example of an extremely conscientious attitude to the material, I will cite Gladkov’s “Energy”, about which the chief engineer of GUMP Tochinsky (“Literaturnaya Gazeta” dated July 14, 1934) says: “The technical material that the writer introduced into the novel is presented basically correctly and vividly , and this is a significant and rare success. But “Energy” was the result of Gladkov’s five years at Dneprostroy and careful study of technological processes on site. “I systematically took advantage,” Gladkov reports, “of the consultation of the most prominent and talented engineers and studied the literature on metallurgy, hydraulic engineering, etc.”

Complaints about amateurism in matters of science and technology are heard from most writers. But this is not the writers’ problem, but their fault. Reluctance to work on material that requires long and deep study, for some reason a view of the scientific and technical side of a work of art as a matter of fifth and tenth importance, and finally a view of the development of scientific topics as an unwinnable and unnoticeable matter - all this is associated with outrageous disregard for this genre (scientific topics) of our publishing organizations - leads to the strange situation when sharp demand works of art on scientific subjects are met with only a declarative, but by no means a creative response from the majority of our writers. Not a single writer will object to the fact that it is necessary, the priority is to show the hero of the second five-year plan - the five-year plan for mastering technology - the drummer, the technician, the engineer. But we must firmly understand that teaching and showing people technology without studying and mastering knowledge about the technology itself is completely impossible.

The novel, firstly, loses its educational value, and secondly, the writer is deprived of the opportunity to show the hero in the most full-blooded way. In addition, the influence of labor on the remaking of a person is in itself differentiated, and metallurgy, say, introduces different features into a person’s character than mechanical engineering. The influence of profession on a person’s character and behavior is known. But to detail this question in relation to, say, an industry - who else but the writer should notice this? Here the writer could contact a psychotechnician. I don’t know whether our writers have already become familiar with the fact that the city of Vitebsk is becoming a city of continuous technical literacy. But this is a new, higher level of mass culture. What demands will these readers place on the writer?

***

It is not only literature itself that lags behind life, from our reality, in its content (in the presentation of heroes, etc.). Tool for creating fiction - language, lexicon, dictionary of literature, image system- too outdated. This is especially noticeable in our poetic practice. Take a look at the arsenal of our /89/ lyrics: five-petalled lilac, the moon and stars, the image of which would do honor only to a Stone Age man. I do not want to be understood that there should be some kind of poetic “taboo” imposed on the stars. I only want to point out that poets stubbornly refuse to get acquainted with cosmography and astronomy. The moon can be compared with the face of a beloved girl, as is customary with most poets, and with the seal on a mandate, as Lugovskoy does - in both cases the benefit for the reader is very dubious.

In general, the coordination of images and metaphors is one of the most important and responsible tasks for a poet. Jean Giraudoux correctly noted that in general one can compare anything with anything. There will always be moments for comparison. This means that the point is not in a vivid comparison, but in making the whole complex of comparisons most responsive to the needs of the reader of today and tomorrow. This need is connected with cultural issues, issues of promoting the ideas of science and technology. The literary vocabulary used is such that it can only serve as a brake on the development of human consciousness.

The most important task of the second five-year plan is to destroy the roots of capitalism in the economy and consciousness people - requires from workers of fiction such attention to issues of words, to issues of metaphor, which no era has ever required from a writer. The system of images used by many of our modern poets is reactionary. Here we are faced with the issue of ideological survivals in the language of modern poets and writers - with the phenomenon of so-called animism and anthropomorphism. The “sobbing” wind, the “crying” sea - all this is still viewed as a sign of the artistry of the work, although it is rather anti-artistic and anti-scientific. The struggle for the purity of language, raised by M. Gorky, must be connected with the struggle for the accuracy of language. Communication with science will undoubtedly play a huge role in this regard. Science will enrich the language.

From what has been said it is quite clear what paths, what prospects in the sense of developing the culture of the masses and in the sense of mutual benefit are promised by the union of artistic expression and science. First of all, the cultural horizon of the reader, the cultural horizon of the masses, expands enormously. Prof. points out correctly. Lapirov-Skoblo that “a fiction book, more than any student, can infect a love of science and technology, become a conductor of the greatest scientific ideas, discoveries and inventions.” Through art, through works of art, the mass reader becomes acquainted and connected with the most important problems of science and technology. In fiction, science and technology acquire a powerful lever for preparing the broad masses to accept science. “In our literature there should not be a sharp distinction between fiction and popular science literature,” says Maxim Gorky. Cognitive value novel, story, short story, poem increases many times. And more: the writer’s imagination, his artistic emotion, based on a deep study of scientific and technical problems, can serve as a significant factor in the movement of science forward and higher. Jules Verne is evidence of this.

Joint work will enrich the language of scientific works, give them emotional charge, expand the contingent of consumers of scientific creativity, and make the latter accessible to the public. Until now, with regard to the language of scientific works, there has been observed (with a few exceptions) a certain disregard for issues of verbal dress, a neglect that makes us recall the Laputans from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or the theologians of Erasmus of Rotterdam: “They consider their inarticulate muttering a sign of profundity, inaccessible to the understanding of the crowd. The laws of grammar seem to them incompatible with the virtues of sacred science" (Praise of Stupidity). Thought will be dressed in beautiful clothes, and the perception of scientific work will be much stronger than when “the sonorous titles of majestic doctors, sophisticated doctors, most sophisticated doctors, seraphic doctors, saint doctors and indisputable doctors are heard in the ears of the listeners. Then follow large and small syllogisms, conclusions, corollaries, suppositions and other scholastic rubbish.” And Abbe Jerome Coignard in Anatole France will not say that “the most learned among us differ from the ignorant only by the ability they have acquired to amuse themselves with complex and intricate reasoning.”

Writers must help scientists get into fiction. Literature will be enriched by the creation of popular science books, which are so necessary for the mass reader. This is exactly what Gorky dreams of when he writes that “not everyone in our country still understands why a small stone or a piece of wood thrown into the air falls to the ground, and huge airplanes can fly like a bird... We need to organize close and friendly cooperation between literature and science."

Science, in turn, enriches the language, brings new forms of works, new heroes. Finally, communication with science and technology expands the cultural horizon of the writer himself. Communication is not a simple acquaintance with the achievements of various branches of science. Communication - in the study of methodology, ways of development, prospects of science, inclusion in its life. In addition, the very approach of people of science to the study of material, the very /90/ principles of scientific work, so to speak, are a great school for a writer. It is enough to remember how Balzac worked.

As a writer, you have to read everything. But in the development of scientific topics it is necessary to limit, deepen due to width, universality, which brings with it amateurism. The writer must remember that there is no “just a scientific researcher, but there are mathematicians, mechanics, physicists, chemists, biologists, physicians, sociologists, historians, linguists, etc.” (Academician V. Komarov). And in this regard and in the promotion of science and technology, close cooperation between scientists and writers is necessary. The “coupled ride” between the writer and the scientist, which Gorky spoke about at the writers’ congress, is the most important form of cooperation. A writer working on a scientific topic follows the progress of the work, he makes guesses, he submits his work to the scientists for judgment. A scientist argues with a writer - what other compliment does a writer need? Imagine the job team writers and scientists (with specialization and “attachment” of a writer to a certain branch of science) over big book about the future of our country, about the future of the world. Each writer and scientist brings his own imagination and knowledge, building his part of the overall monumental building. What grandiose architecture! What a fascinating and cultural work of art. What planning in the creation of scientific and artistic works designed to shape the scientific worldview of the reader! The writer must be given wide access to laboratories, museums, and archives, providing him with constant instruction from specialists. This is especially important for a young writer who does not yet have a name that can open the door for him to collaborate with figures in science and technology.

The importance of the organizational moment here is clear. Organization of ongoing consultation of scientific workers for the writer. Organization of public readings of scientific and artistic works. A valuable proposal was put forward at a meeting of scientists and writers in the editorial office of the magazine “October” by prof. Levin and Associate Professor Apirin about creating a team of writers and scientists to review fiction on scientific topics published in recent years. The results of this survey will undoubtedly be very instructive. This work should also be connected with watching how writers show our scientists and technicians. I remember the writer Lidin’s essay about Acad. I. P. Pavlov. Lidin began with a message about Pavlov's repeatedly expressed skepticism regarding the ability of a writer - an emotional nature par excellence - to understand the work of a scientist - par excellence a thinker. Unfortunately, neither Lidin himself nor other writers did anything to deprive this skepticism of its foundations.

The organization of reading conferences on scientific and fiction literature, convened jointly by writers and scientists, is also one of the forms collaboration. We have never organized reader response to issues of science and technology in works of fiction. Organization of meetings, conversations between scientists and artists, and finally public performances - evenings of scientific and artistic literature carried out by writers and scientists. Evenings of scientific and artistic literature in scientific and technical institutions, universities, universities of culture.

Science and art in our country are not an end in themselves and not only a means of knowledge, but a means of changing, remaking the world. The task of Soviet fiction is to remake man, i.e. reader remake. This is achieved by showing the transformation of people, people who carry within themselves a new, socialist quality of personality - and by reflecting the disgustingness of the capitalist system, this is also achieved by showing the achievements of science and technology in their dynamics, in their prospects in the conditions of a socialist economy. Here is the writer’s right to develop scientific topics. The focus remains on the person. A person who masters the heights of science and technology, the study and demonstration of his psyche, the search for plot springs in the very solution of a scientific and technical problem - such a person has not yet been shown in our literature. All this work can be carried out only with a close union of artistic expression, science and technology.

***

The rapprochement of science and art is not limited to one area of ​​artistic expression. Already now the question of the relationship between science and cinema can practically be raised. There are historical, geographical, and production-technical films here.

Science fiction about cinema is also not new. Now the film “Space Flight” is being prepared - the basis of this film is the work of Tsiolkovsky. The potential of cinema is extremely great both in promoting the ideas of science and technology, and in the interaction of the specifics of science and cinema. The issue of creating a scientific and artistic theater can be resolved very interestingly. /91/

All rights to distribute and use the works of Varlam Shalamov belong to A.L.. Use of materials is possible only with the consent of the editors of ed@site. The site was created in 2008-2009. funded by the Russian Humanitarian Foundation grant No. 08-03-12112v.

But to think about the beauty and imperfection of knowledge, about the courage of scientific research, about the love of truth and responsibility for one’s discoveries, and in general about the limits of the power of scientists - fiction from our small selection will help with this.

1. Alan Lightman. "Einstein's Dreams"

Alan Lightman is a physicist and professor at MIT, both in the natural sciences and the humanities. Alan Lightman, possessing a talent for writing, made the inner workings of theoretical physics much clearer to those for whom literary language is closer to the language of formulas.

And if you want to comprehend the theory of relativity, at least figuratively, “Einstein’s Dreams” is for you. This is a collage of sketches in which the main variable is time.

The young scientist Einstein dreams, in each dream it is different: cyclical, going backwards, motionless, unconscious, alternative. And depending on the prevailing time, the plots of bizarre dreams develop.

Who will then say that scientific and artistic perception world - things that are incompatible?

Who has it better in this world of intermittent time? To those who have seen the future and lived only one life? Or for those who have not seen the future and are delaying starting life? Or, finally, to those who turned their backs on the future and lived two lives?

2. Apostolos Doxiadis. "Uncle Petros and the Goldbach Problem"

“In mathematics, as in art - and in sports, by the way - if you are not the best, then you are no good at all.” The hero of Doxiadis's book, Petros Papachristos, devotes his entire life to great problem worthy of a great mathematician: Goldbach's problem. Any even number, starting with 4, can be represented as the sum of two prime numbers. Anyone who is not lazy can verify this empirically, but no one has been able to prove it mathematically since the mid-18th century.

The character of Uncle Petros combines a thirst for discovery, vanity, sincere devotion to science and indifference to worldly success (“Every family has a black sheep,” the narrator says about him at the very beginning of the book). But the novel is not even about the uncle, it is about mathematics. The one that is like art.

Perhaps the book will make you take out your old notes on higher mathematics to remember the taste of the joy of intellectual overcoming, or regret that you never had such notes.

Real mathematics has nothing to do with the applications or calculations they teach you in school. It studies abstract intellectual constructs that -at least while the mathematician is busy with them- have nothing to do with the physical, tangible world.

3. Paul de Cruy. "Microbe Hunters"

The history of microbiology is as tense and dramatic as Hollywood films. Pathogenic microbes are not “Aliens”, “Predators” and other fantastic enemies of humanity. They are here, nearby, and the hunt for them does not always have a happy ending.

Paul de Cruy's book was published in 1926. Strictly speaking, it is not artistic: no fiction, only facts. In the light style of an adventure novel, she talks about the most striking discoveries in microbiology from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th. And although scientists have come a long way since the writing of “Microbe Hunters” (after all, even the first antibiotic, penicillin, was discovered in 1928), this book gives a very vivid idea of ​​what scientific research, experiment, discovery is.

Victory over diphtheria, curbing syphilis, saving humanity from yellow fever - these are just a few of the fascinating stories that read like a detective story.

Truth is the greatest windfall. You should never pursue her too passionately, because she responds more often and more willingly to cold indifference. She often slips away, being almost caught, and at the same time comes herself to surrender to patient waiting.

4. Boris Bondarenko. "Pyramid"

If you love the film “9 Days of One Year,” then you should like the novel by Boris Bondarenko. This story about young Soviet nuclear physicists, seasoned with a fair amount of humor and subtle everyday observations, begins from their student days and continues in the laboratories of the research institute. The main thing here is the atmosphere of scientific research, when your eyes are burning, the sea is knee-deep, and a great discovery is about to happen, you just need to sacrifice another half of your life on the altar of science. And somewhere nearby there is family, work colleagues and even spiteful critics. Phrases are pouring out of the pages, ready to become the epigraph to any essay about science...

The author himself, it must be said, at the time of writing the book, was almost the same age as his main characters - young scientists - and also graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. Some time after graduating from university, he worked at one of the institutes in the science city of Obninsk. This city is very similar to Dolinsk, in which the author places the action.

The characters in the book are fictional, but the scientific context in which they exist is documentary. Therefore, you will meet many names of real scientists and learn a little more about particle physics.

Cognition is not a straight line or even a curve! This is a monstrously branched tree with an infinite number of branches and twigs, and somewhere there, at the top,” Olf extended his hand to the sky with a powerful gesture, “that very precious apple that we need to pick!”

5. Bertolt Brecht. "Life of Galileo"

Rumor attributed the phrase “And yet it turns!” to Galileo, but there is no documentary evidence that the scientist uttered it. “For centuries, people throughout Europe, while preserving the legend of Galileo, did him the honor of not believing in his abdication,” writes the great 20th-century playwright Bertolt Brecht in one of the prefaces to his play “The Life of Galileo.”

Is the scientist to blame for publicly renouncing his views under pain of torture? Did he betray science or cheat in order to continue his research?

In the historical episode, Brecht sees the eternal conflict between science and power, which in the 20th century is also “illuminated” by the explosion of the atomic bomb.

“Galileo’s crime can be considered the ‘original sin’ of the natural sciences,” says Brecht. Is it possible to trace the path from this act to modern conflicts and compromises? The reader is free to reflect on this based on the material of the play... and history.

He who does not know the truth is only stupid. But whoever knows it and calls it a lie is a criminal.

6. Vladimir Dudintsev. "White Clothes"

Nuclear physicists were held in high esteem in the Soviet Union, but geneticists were in disgrace. The novel begins in 1948, when genetics was called “a metaphysical direction in biology” by the “people's academician” Lysenko. Now everyone had to support Michurin’s agrobiology (which, we note, was later recognized as pseudoscience: after all, real history is full of parables and metaphors even without literature).

Are the Party's instructions being followed correctly? The hero of the novel, Fyodor Dezhkin, who is sent to the agricultural institute of one small city, must figure this out. And in the city there is an “underground circle” of students and scientists who secretly continue to develop the scientific knowledge that they consider true...

The novel is full of complex characters, philosophical discussions and endless pain for science in a time when white cannot be called white. It was completed after Stalin’s death, published for the first time in the 1980s, and in 2013 was included in the list of 100 books on the history, culture and literature of the peoples of the Russian Federation recommended by the Ministry of Education for independent reading by schoolchildren.

The main cause of all the ills of humanity is the unfounded confidence in one hundred percent rightness.

7. Sinclair Lewis. "Arrowsmith"

The relationship between science and government is always difficult, no matter what political system, and even if we are talking about the power of money! The hero of this novel is Martin Arrowsmith, a bacteriologist with a standard set of problems “Scientist and real life" He knows how to work hard, but often finds himself helpless in front of everyday problems, squabbles between colleagues and accounts. What he is strong in is his pure love to science, for which selfish short-term interests are too base.

The writer paints a vivid picture of American life in the 1920s, in which there is no smell of money and intrigue rules the roost. But Arrowsmith manages to achieve success without betraying his beliefs or selling his good name.

In 1930, Lewis received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his powerful and expressive art of storytelling and for his rare ability to create new types and characters with satire and humor." So, as you can guess, the story about Arrowsmith should be full of humor and satire. And with the scientific component of the book, the author was helped by the famous microbiologist Paul de Cruy, who then, inspired literary work, wrote the already mentioned “Microbe Hunters”.

He was overcome by disgust at the loud, obscene creature called Success, which demands from a person that he leave quiet work and give himself up to be torn to pieces by blind admirers who will strangle him with flattery, and by blind enemies who will throw dirt at him.

8. Kurt Vonnegut. "Cat's Cradle"

A conversation about fiction centered on scientists and science is impossible without science fiction. The next three books are from this category.

Two global questions that often define the plot within the genre: where are the limits of human knowledge and can the achievements of science destroy humanity?

Kurt Vonnegut is interested in the second question. And the writer is confident that humanity is quite capable of suicide (as follows from Vonnegut’s biography, he saw evidence of this with his own eyes at the front of World War II).

The plot of the book is built around the most dangerous substance “ice-nine”, invented by one brilliant scientist. This scientist was not at all interested in how his discoveries would affect the fate of humanity, and his “portfolio” already included work on an atomic bomb. And now his heirs distributed ice-nine to the mighty of this world for a good reward. The hero-narrator follows the trail of a dangerous substance, along the way becoming acquainted with a new religion and new utopias.

All the problems of humanity in the twentieth century (at least until 1963) fit compactly into two hundred pages of the novel. And, of course, there is neither a cat nor a cradle in it. Only obvious anxiety from the endless intricacy of the thread, which is manipulated by someone's hands.

Can man of sense, taking into account the experience of past centuries, to have even the slightest hope for a bright future for humanity?

9. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. "A Billion Years Before the End of the World"

In this story, humanity is threatened not by its own depravity, but by unknown forces: competitors? unearthly civilizations? Or maybe the Universe itself?

Several scientists from different fields of science are approaching, each in their own way, major discoveries that could lead to a real scientific revolution. But mysterious and dangerous events begin to happen to each of them, which do not contribute to their work in any way: conflicts, explosions and even death. Someone clearly does not want man to approach the deep secrets of nature. Will danger stop scientists in their quest?

“A manuscript found under strange circumstances” (this is the subtitle of the story) does not try to be understandable to the reader. The reader is left alone with all questions.

10. Robert Stevenson. "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

What about humanity’s understanding of its own mind? With an understanding of personality psychology?

The story by Robert Louis Stevenson was written in 1886. The good, respectable Doctor Jekyll and his antipode - or double? - scary Mr. Hyde inspired many directors of plays, and then films, to show their thriller story.

The ideas of psychoanalysis were formulated only a decade later, but Stevenson's character is "ahead of his time" in revealing that the human personality is a complex structure, with "good" and "evil" manifestations. As a result of an unsuccessful experiment, the evil component of the doctor’s personality takes precedence over the decent and socially acceptable one.

In the 21st century, scientists have gotten much better at breaking down the human personality, but again and again we doubt: do we have control over ourselves?

In conclusion, I would like to recommend one more book, so that everything does not seem too hopeless. This is Daniel Keyes's story "Flowers for Algernon", in which science is the main driver of the plot, but not the main character. Crowds of readers cried over the story of mentally retarded Charlie, who, thanks to a successful experiment, became a brilliant scientist, and admitted in comments on Internet forums that they began to treat people better. In my opinion, a good effect.

We can talk about man and the world in the categories of exact and natural sciences, in the language of psychology, or in complex philosophical concepts. You can revel in the fear of the unknowability of life or proudly affirm the idea of ​​rational evidence of what is happening and behavior based on genuine knowledge. Writers confront characters with the inevitable necessity of action, force them to be guided by social motives or irrational impulses, force them to become victims of their own illusions. Literature reveals the necessary and unconditional conditions of human existence, correlates them with the mental social experience of the reader, projects the reader's aspirations in the form of a certain model of the realized past or expected future, formulates them in the context of the chosen artistic method and genre.

A scientific experiment is based on the facts within which it is conducted. The activity of a scientist often excludes everything that can be considered subjective and arbitrary. The undoubted purpose of the experiment is to achieve objective scientific truth. However, often the subjective path of knowledge leads to it, intuition, which, with a successful combination of circumstances and results, will become an axiom and become an observation model and paradigm for followers, because science tends to ignore all particular situations. It is on this basis that it is based.

The world that opened up as a result of scientific activity and the world that became the result of literary creativity are marked by differences. For the author of a work of art, unlike a scientist, there are no “random” facts. Reality is so contradictory that it is difficult to guess which element of it should be preferred and which should be ignored. Reality in all its diversity, or, on the contrary, truncated to fragments, is transferred to the book and resides in it in an unbalanced unity.

The diverse facts presented in the text create the illusion of a holistically reproduced world. The boundaries of artistically meaningful reality are no less arbitrary than the source material. The means of artistic expression used are marked by the author’s subjective objectives. However, the work cannot be reduced to a random and intuitive expression of the writer's intentions. Any artistic innovation or phenomenon of creative arbitrariness in the selection of material and its artistic development is determined by the psychology of the artist, his tastes, passions, ideological position, moral preferences of the writer, who interprets the world in accordance with the amount of knowledge and from certain philosophical and aesthetic positions. In addition, a literary work develops according to the laws of genre and style. The creative basis for the author is the style, method, and poetics common in a particular era, which define the boundaries of the corresponding tradition.

With all the randomness of the writer’s selection of material, the conventions and subjectivity of creativity - the spontaneity of preference for certain facts, the arbitrariness of the commentary, the paradoxical nature of the time sequence, etc. - his ultimate goal is to offer the reader an image of reality in which the “random” will become an impulse for understanding the probabilistic the nature of private phenomena and human existence.

As a result of artistic generalization, the effect of verisimilitude and recognition by the reader of the world created by the author is achieved. Artistic creativity does not exclude, and often even implies, provocative forms of depicting reality. The intermittent and at first glance chaotic reality of events and sensations for each person takes on a logical picture in the book. The reader perceives the image of reality created by the author’s artistic consciousness as one of the hypothetical options for the realization of the world, which should be avoided or should be transferred to the reality of one’s own existence.

The existence of the heroes, marked with the stamp of uniqueness, becomes the basis of the reader’s “reliable” ideas about life. In this sense, literature can be called a projective model of the reader’s existence and can be partly correlated with the results of a scientific experiment: experience literary heroes becomes a reference model or a false philosophical premise for the reader’s life project. A person correlates the knowledge obtained from a book with his own existence, experiences it, comprehends it, and adjusts the surrounding reality accordingly. artistic world. Literature becomes a source of reader intuition and subjective assessments that generalize reality.

Of course, the interpretation of any experience mainly depends on the knowledge accumulated by a person. The process of influence of literature on a person can be meaningful and unconscious; the author in the work reveals the diverse connections of the reader with the world around him.

A person makes daily decisions that are determined by the experience gained from the events that have taken place. Nevertheless, any cognitive act is partly the result of the projection of literary situations onto reality. Behavior is guided by intuition, which is based on the synthesis of subjective knowledge ( life experience) with objective knowledge of the situations proposed by the literature. The world presented in the book is contradictory, but the logical boundaries of the presentation - composition, genre, style, completed images, author's reasoning, movement and resolution of the conflict - act as a guarantee of a certain world order. Each work, therefore, bears the stamp of orderliness and relative stability, which encourages the reader to correlate his life with the world artistically created by the writer. Hence the exceptional importance of literature as an institution that offers procedural reality in the form of realized and completed models that determine a person’s place not only in the physical, social, but also in the spiritual world.

The influence of science on literature should not be exaggerated. And yet, there are cases when scientific discoveries prepared certain original artistic solutions. Poets of Baroque, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment, admiring the omnipotence of science, introduce images of measuring instruments into their works. M.V. Lomonosov composes “Letter on the benefits of glass.” O. de Balzac bases the idea of ​​the “Human Comedy” on natural science theories. O. Comte's positivism - the rejection of metaphysical claims to reveal causes and essences - largely shaped the aesthetics of naturalism. The ideas of N. Lobachevsky influenced the philosophical concept of the lyrics of the “lyric poet” D. Venevitinov. Scientific ideas became the starting point for the artistic experiments of L. Carroll, the fantastic projects of H. Wells, and the poetic searches of V. Khlebnikov. The model of the universe based on the biosphere concept of V. Vernadsky influenced the artistic quest of Russian writers.

Structural linguistics largely determined the prospects for humanitarian research and literary practice in the 20th century. The 60s of the 20th century in our country were marked by a dispute between “physicists” and “lyricists”.

There are no less numerous examples of scientists recognizing the grandeur of the creative genius of writers. L. Boltzmann spoke about the richness of the spiritual content of the equations of the theory of J. C. Maxwell in the words of J. V. Goethe from the poem “Faust”: “Didn’t God inscribe these signs? They reveal the nature of strength and fill our hearts with bliss.”

References to authoritative thoughts are certainly not proof, but A. Einstein’s words that Dostoevsky gives him more than Gauss have become widely known. The meaning of recognition is obvious: creativity genius artist can liberate the creative consciousness of a scientist and give impetus to his scientific imagination. Any scientific discovery or work of art is a revision of established ideas and often a rejection of established stereotypes.

Avant-garde writers of the 20th century classify the previously dominant understanding of poetry as an expression of thoughts and feelings or a generalization of spiritual experience as anachronisms. It is argued that poetic thought and feeling cannot penetrate the depths of the spiritual world of our time. The immediate semantic load of the work becomes unnecessary and meaningless.

Experiments with abstractions and the use of scientific research methods in poetry destroy the conceptual and emotional basis literary work, bring to life associative writing, which is created through complex integral systems of poetic images and multi-stage allusions.

Studying the problem of man in his connections with reality, urban poets survey city highways and communications that connect and contrast individual social groups chaotic crowds. In many ways, such motives and moods are caused by the dynamism of the scientific and technological revolution, which, on the one hand, inspired the idea of ​​grandiose changes in human life, and on the other, frightened with unknown prospects.

Introduction to literary criticism (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin, etc.) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005

Specifics of popular science (scientific and educational) literature

Scientific educational (popular) literature is works about science and its creators, not intended for specialists in this field of knowledge. It includes works about the foundations and individual problems of fundamental and applied sciences, biographies of scientists, descriptions of travel, etc., written in various genres. The problems of science and technology are considered in them from a historical perspective, in their interrelation and development.

The first popular work about science in Europe was written in poetic form. About the nature of things » Lucretia Cara And " Letter on the benefits of glass » M. Lomonosov. From the conversations arose « History of the candle » M. Faraday And " Plant life » K. Timiryazeva. Known popular works, written in the form of a nature calendar, sketches, essays, “intellectual adventures.”

Works of science fiction also contribute to the popularization of scientific knowledge.

Scientific fiction is a special kind of literature that tells about science, scientific research, the “drama of ideas” in science and the fate of its real creators. The NHL is born at the intersection of fiction, documentary-journalistic and popular science literature Developing into an independent species, NHL maintains a close relationship with all three types of literature. Unlike NPL, whose attention is focused on cognitive and educational tasks, NHL turns primarily to the human side of science, to the spiritual appearance of its creators, to the psychology of scientific creativity, to philosophical origins and the consequences of scientific discoveries. The NHL can be classified as fictional biographies of scientists and historical figures, works about nature, in which scientific information presented in a figurative form. NHL has not only intellectual and cognitive value, but also aesthetic value; is designed to combine “general interest” with scientific reliability in revealing problems, the imagery of the narrative with the documentary accuracy of life material. NHL originated in the 20th century, but some genres of didactic literature can be considered its early examples: “ Works and days » Hesiod, a series of biographies and autobiographies of 19th century scientists. The scientific and artistic works of B. Zhitkov, V. Bianki, K. Paustovsky, and M. Prishvin became widespread in Russia.

NPL and NHL are similar primarily in that these works are based on an exact scientific fact, i.e. information. NPL presents it in a form accessible to the reader, trying to arouse his interest in the reported facts. NHL is distinguished by greater expression of the author’s personality and greater artistry, i.e., imagery.