Intellectual novel— in a special, genre-terminological meaning, the concept was used by V.D. Dneprov to indicate the originality of T. Mann’s works. This writer of the 20th century. clearly inherits Dostoevsky and at the same time expresses the specifics of the new era. He, according to Dneprov, “...finds so many facets and shades of the concept, so clearly reveals movement in it, so humanizes it, extends such a mass of connections from it to the image, enriching it with new features and forming a single artistic whole with it. The image is penetrated by the most diverse relationships of the author's thought and acquires a conceptual aura. A new kind of narration is emerging, which could be called “discourse narration.” In his later work, Dneprov rightly points out that “Dostoevsky already found the relationship between image and concept that lies at the basis of the intellectual novel, and thereby created its prototype. He... immersed philosophical ideas so deeply in the development of reality and the development of man that they became a necessary part of reality and a necessary part of man..." ( Dneprov V.D. Ideas, passions, actions: From the artistic image of Dostoevsky. L., 1978. P. 324).
The complex artistic dialectic in Dostoevsky's novels excludes strict delimitation and the establishment of hierarchical relationships between the phenomena of intellectual life and mental abilities - feeling, will, intuition, etc. One cannot say about his artistic world, as it is said about T. Mann’s novel, that here “the concept continuously catches up with the fantasy” ( Dneprov V.D. Decree. op. P. 400). And therefore, for Dostoevsky’s novels, the framework of an intellectual novel in the genre-terminological sense turns out to be too narrow (as well as the framework, etc.).
At the same time, the indicator of “intellectualism” for characterizing various aspects and patterns of Dostoevsky’s artistic world remains objective and constructive. And therefore it is legitimate to talk about Dostoevsky’s intellectual novel in the broad sense of this terminological designation. In his rough notes for 1881, Dostoevsky highlighted in italics, like a cry from the soul: “ Not enough mind!!! We have little intelligence. Cultural" (27; 59 - Dostoevsky's italics. - Note ed.). His own creativity initially made up for this general intellectual deficit of the era in the artistic sphere - along the most diverse lines of quest.
It has been noted that “the initial merit of introducing an intellectual hero into Russian literature - a person guided ... by a certain way of thinking or even a program - belongs to Herzen and Turgenev” ( Shchennikov G.K. Dostoevsky and Russian realism. Sverdlovsk, 1987. P. 10). It is also true that at the same time Dostoevsky updates his own typology of characters in the same direction - the main character appears, in comparison with the previous “little man”, “more intellectually independent, more active in the philosophical dialogue of the era” ( Nazirov R.G. Creative principles of F.M. Dostoevsky. Saratov, 1982. P. 40). Later, in the 1860s, the foreground in Dostoevsky’s novels was firmly occupied by heroic ideologists, who in many respects have since determined the originality of his typology. The same trend can be observed further.
At first (in, partly in) ideological heroes, according to the observation of G.S. Pomerants, clearly “superior to those around them in their intelligence and play the role of the intellectual center of the novel” (p. 111). For subsequent works, the impression is natural that the author “... everywhere, even in Lebedev or Smerdyakov, finds his own damned questions... The environment itself moves all the time, thinks and suffers itself...” (Ibid. P. 55) . The intellectualization of Dostoevsky's novel along other lines of his creative quest also proceeds in accordance with the trends of the time. “...The twentieth anniversary - the 1860s-70s - is considered by researchers to be a special period in the development of Russian realism. The general direction of these changes is the affirmation of the author’s idea as a complete explanation of the laws of life...” ( Shchennikov G.K. Dostoevsky and Russian realism. Sverdlovsk, 1987. P. 178). Starting with “Notes from the Underground,” which are rightfully considered ideological and artistic “prolegomena” to the novels, in Dostoevsky the principle of testing ideas begins to play a decisive, plot-forming role - both the author’s ideas in an equal dialogue with the ideas of the heroes, and these latter through their implementation in the behavior and destinies of people. This gives reason to see in Dostoevsky’s work the features of either a “tragedy novel” (Vyach. Ivanov), or a “philosophical dialogue expanded into an epic of adventure” with the personalization of individual opinions (L. Grossman), or a “novel about an idea” or “” ( B. Engelhardt).
Another important aspect of understanding the “intellectual” nature of Dostoevsky’s novels was highlighted by R.G. Nazirov: they are “ideological not only because the heroes discuss and try to practically solve “damned problems”, but also because the very life of ideas in novels for its perception requires an unusual, new mental effort from readers - the form is more intellectual than it was before » ( Nazirov R.G. Creative principles of F.M. Dostoevsky. Saratov, 1982. P. 100). This same sign of an intellectual novel was pointed out by V.D. Dneprov: “The closeness of poetry with philosophy gives rise to duality in the perception of Dostoevsky’s works - a passionate and at the same time intellectual perception. The soul is burning and the mind is burning" ( Dneprov V.D. Ideas, passions, actions: From the artistic image of Dostoevsky. L., 1978. P. 73).
Institute of Journalism and Literary Creativity
Essay
Subject: “Foreign Literature of the 20th Century”
Topic: “Death in Venice” by Thomas Mann
Completed by: Ermakov A.A.
Checked by: Zharinov E.V.
Moscow city. 2014
2. The concept of “Intellectual novel” …………………………………………….. 4
3. The history of the creation of the short story “Death in Venice” …………………………………5
4. Composition and plot of the work……………………………………………6
5. Images of heroes……………………………………………………………………….7
6. Internal conflict of the main character…………………………………………….8
7. List of references………..…………………………………………………………… 12
Paul Thomas Mann was born on June 6, 1875 in Lübeck. He was the second child of Thomas Johan Heinrich Mann, a local grain merchant and shipping company owner with ancient Hanseatic traditions. His mother, who came from a Creole, Brazilian-Portuguese family, was a musically gifted person. She played a large role in raising Thomas and the other four children.
While still studying at the gymnasium, Thomas became the creator and author of the literary, artistic and philosophical magazine “Spring Thunderstorm”.
In 1891, his father died. Two years later, the family sold the company and left Lübeck. Together with his mother and sisters, Thomas moved to Munich, where he began working as a clerk in an insurance agency. In 1895–1896 he studied at the Higher Technical School.
In 1896, he went with his older brother Heinrich, who was then trying his hand at painting, to Italy. There Thomas began writing stories, which he sent to German publishers. Among them was S. Fisher, who proposed combining these stories into a small collection. Thanks to Fischer, Thomas's first collection of stories, Little Mister Friedemann, was published in 1898.
Returning to Munich that same year, Thomas worked as editor of the humor magazine Simplicissimus. Here he became close to the circle of the German poet S. George. But pretty soon he realized that he was not on the same path with the members of the circle, who proclaimed themselves heirs of German culture and professed the ideas of decadence.
In 1899, Mann was called up for a year of military service. And in 1901, S. Fisher’s publishing house published his novel “Buddenbrooks,” which belongs to the “family novel” genre. He brought Mann worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but, most importantly, the love and gratitude of millions of people.
The concept of "Intellectual novel"
The term "intellectual novel" was first coined by Thomas Mann. In 1924, the year the novel “The Magic Mountain” was published, the writer noted in the article “On the Teachings of Spengler” that the “historical and world turning point” of 1914-1923. with extraordinary force intensified in the minds of his contemporaries the need to comprehend the era, and this was refracted in a certain way in artistic creativity. “This process,” wrote T. Mann, “blurs the boundaries between science and art, infuses living, pulsating blood into abstract thought, spiritualizes the plastic image and creates that type of book that... can be called an “intellectual novel.” T. Mann also classified the works of Fr. as “intellectual novels”. Nietzsche. It was the “intellectual novel” that became the genre that for the first time realized one of the characteristic new features of realism of the 20th century - the acute need for interpretation of life, its comprehension, interpretation, which exceeded the need for “telling”, the embodiment of life in artistic images. In world literature he is represented not only by the Germans - T. Mann, G. Hesse, A. Döblin, but also by the Austrians R. Musil and G. Broch, the Russian M. Bulgakov, the Czech K. Capek, the Americans W. Faulkner and T. Wolfe , and many others. But T. Mann stood at its origins.
A characteristic phenomenon of the time was the modification of the historical novel: the past became a convenient springboard for clarifying the social and political springs of modernity (Feuchtwanger). The present was permeated with the light of another reality, different and yet somehow similar to the first.
Multi-layeredness, multi-composition, the presence of layers of reality far removed from each other in a single artistic whole became one of the most common principles in the construction of novels of the 20th century.
T. Mann's novels are intellectual not only because there is a lot of reasoning and philosophizing. They are “philosophical” by their very construction - by the obligatory presence in them of different “floors” of being, constantly correlated with each other, assessed and measured by each other. The work of combining these layers into a single whole constitutes the artistic tension of these novels. Researchers have repeatedly written about the special interpretation of time in the twentieth-century novel. What was special was seen in free breaks in action, in movements into the past and future, in arbitrary slowing down or speeding up the narrative in accordance with the subjective feeling of the hero.
The history of the creation of the short story “Death in Venice”
When Thomas Mann began writing his most famous story, Death in Venice, he had health problems and his creative growth slowed down.
He was convinced that he should distinguish himself with a new work that would be attractive to the tastes of the time. In 1911, while vacationing with his wife in Venice, the 35-year-old writer was fascinated by the beauty of a Polish boy, Baron Wladyslaw Moes. Mann never spoke to the boy, but described him under the name Taggio in the story "Death in Venice." The writer was already planning a story about an indecent love affair of an elderly writer, intending to use as a theme the 80-year-old Goethe's real-life infatuation with a teenager. But his own vivid experiences while on vacation in Brijuni and Venice in May and June 1911 directed his thoughts in a different direction and produced a masterpiece. Painfully autobiographical “Death in Venice” with Mann’s own reflections on the life of creative individuals.
When ten years later Baron Moes, who in adolescence became the prototype of the boy, read the story, he was surprised at how accurately the author of the story described his summer linen suit. Pan Vladislav remembered well the “old gentleman” who looked at him wherever he went, as well as his intense look when they went up in the elevator: the boy even told his governess that this gentleman liked him.
This story was written between July 1911 and July 1912, and was first published in two issues of the Berlin magazine "New Review" (Die Neue Rundschau), the printed organ of S. Fischer (Mann's publisher): for October and November 1912. Later in 1912, it was printed in a small edition in expensive design by Hans von Weber's Hyperionverlag in Munich. Its first widely sold publication in book format was made by the same S. Fischer in Berlin in 1913.
The best philosophical books. Smart books. An intellectual novel.Books are not for everyone...
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📖 “The Idiot” is one of the most famous and most humanistic works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.“The main idea...” wrote F. M. Dostoevsky about his novel “The Idiot,” “to portray a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult than this in the world...”"Idiot". A novel in which Dostoevsky’s creative principles are fully embodied, and his amazing mastery of plot reaches true flourishing. The bright and almost painfully talented story of the unfortunate Prince Myshkin, the frantic Parfen Rogozhin and the desperate Nastasya Filippovna, filmed and staged many times, still fascinates the reader.
📖 “The Brothers Karamazov” is one of the few successful attempts in world literature to combine the fascination of storytelling with the depths of philosophical thought. The philosophy and psychology of “crime and punishment”, the dilemma of “socialization of Christianity”, the eternal struggle between “God” and “devilish” in the souls of people - these are the main ideas of this brilliant work. The novel touches on deep questions about God, freedom, and morality. This is Dostoevsky's last novel, it concentrates all the artistic power of the writer and the depth of the insights of the religious thinker.
📖 A chamber novel about repentance, regret and lost love. 46-year-old Florent-Claude Labrouste suffers another collapse in his relationship with his mistress. Frustrated and lonely, he tries to treat his depression with a drug that increases serotonin levels in the blood, but it comes at a high price. And the only thing that still gives meaning to Labrouste’s joyless existence is the insane hope of returning the woman he loved and lost.
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“What kind of a bitch life is this...”This is a book about how we live the lives of our parents, trying to correct their mistakes or fulfill hidden purposes. It is a cry of pain that lives in the soul of everyone who does not have the courage to live their own life. And when, at the end of your life, you realize that you are about to lose your mind, you want to once again rewatch all the events of your life, no matter what they were. To experience and realize with bitterness that everything could have turned out differently. After all, as you know, this is the biggest regret in one’s declining years.Fear of being brave, fear of following your true desires. It is he who is the cause of all our troubles. You can read this book to confirm this once again.
📖 The novel by the outstanding Catalan writer Jaume Cabret “The Shadow of the Eunuch” is a funny and sad story of a sentimental and amorous art lover, a scion of the ancient Gensan family, who, in search of the Path, Truth and Life, devoted his student years to the armed struggle for justice. "Shadow of the Eunuch" is a novel riddled with literary and musical allusions. Like Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, the structure of which he mirrors, the book is a kind of “double requiem.” It is dedicated to the "memory of the angel", Teresa, and sounds like a requiem for the main character, Miquel Genzana, for himself. The story sounds like a dying confession. The hero found himself in the house where he spent his childhood (by a cruel twist of fate, the family nest turned into a fashionable restaurant). Like Berg's concerto, the novel follows the fates of all the loved and lost beings associated with the house of Gensan.
📖 Robert Langdon arrives at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao at the invitation of friend and former student Edmond Kirsch. A billionaire and computer guru, he is known for his amazing discoveries and predictions. And this evening, Kirsch is going to “change all modern scientific understanding of the world” by answering two main questions that have troubled humanity throughout history: Where do we come from? What awaits us? However, before Edmond can make a statement, the luxurious reception turns into chaos.
📖 The main character of the book is Gabriel Wells. He is busy writing books. Or rather, I was doing it. That night he was killed. And now he is busy, in the guise of a wandering spirit, trying to find out who did this to him.
📖 Agneta Pleyel is a well-known figure in the cultural life of Scandinavia: author of plays and novels, poet, laureate of literary awards, professor of drama, literary critic, journalist. Her books have been translated into 20 languages. The main character of the story “Surviving Winter in Stockholm” (1997) is going through a painful divorce from her husband and, in order to better understand and survive what is happening, begins to keep a diary. Since the heroine is a literary critic, ideas from world culture are organically woven into her everyday life and thoughts about life. Records about the problems that concern the heroine, about her relationships with men, memories are filled with echoes of psychoanalysis and obvious or hidden allusions.
American colleagues explained to me that the low level of general culture and school education in their country is a deliberate achievement for economic purposes. The fact is that, after reading books, an educated person becomes a worse buyer: he buys less washing machines and cars, and begins to prefer Mozart or Van Gogh, Shakespeare or theorems to them. The economy of a consumer society suffers from this and, above all, the income of the owners of life - so they strive to prevent culture and education (which, in addition, prevent them from manipulating the population as a herd devoid of intelligence). IN AND. Arnold, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. (From the article “New Obscurantism and Russian Enlightenment”)
The “intellectual novel” united various writers and different trends in world literature of the twentieth century: T. Mann and G. Hesse, R. Musil and G. Broch, M. Bulgakov and K. Capek, W. Faulkner and T. Zulf and many others . But the main unifying feature of the “intellectual novel” is the acute need of twentieth-century literature to interpret life, to blur the lines between philosophy and art.
T. Mann is rightfully considered the creator of the “intellectual novel.” In 1924, the year of publication of “The Magic Mountain,” he wrote in the article “On the Teachings of Spengler”: “The historical and world crisis of 1914-1923 with extraordinary force aggravated in the minds of contemporaries the need to comprehend the era, which was refracted in artistic creativity. This process erases the boundaries between science and art, infuses living, pulsating blood into abstract thought, spiritualizes the plastic image and creates the type of book that can be called an “intellectual novel.” T. Mann classified the works of F. Nietzsche as “intellectual novels.”
The “intellectual novel” is characterized by a special understanding and functional use of myth. The myth acquired historical features and was perceived as a product of prehistoric times, illuminating recurring patterns in the general life of mankind. The appeal to myth in the novels of T. Mann and G. Hesse widely expanded the time frame of the work and provided the opportunity for countless analogies and parallels that cast light on modernity and explain it.
But despite the general trend - the increased need to interpret life, the blurring of the lines between philosophy and art, the “intellectual novel” is a heterogeneous phenomenon. The variety of forms of the “intellectual novel” is revealed through the example of the works of T. Mann, G. Hesse and R. Musil.
The German “intellectual novel” is characterized by a well-thought-out concept of a cosmic device. T. Mann wrote: “The pleasure that can be found in a metaphysical system, the pleasure that is delivered by the spiritual organization of the world in a logically closed, harmonious, self-sufficient logical structure, is always predominantly of an aesthetic nature.” This worldview is due to the influence of Neoplatonic philosophy, in particular, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who argued that reality, i.e. the world of historical time is only a reflection of the essence of ideas. Schopenhauer called reality "maya", using a term from Buddhist philosophy, i.e. ghost, mirage. The essence of the world is distilled spirituality. Hence the Schopenhauerian dual world: the world of the valley (the world of shadows) and the world of the mountain (the world of truth).
The basic laws of constructing the German “intellectual novel” are based on the use of Schopenhauer's dual worlds. In "The Magic Mountain", in "Steppenwolf", in "The Glass Bead Game". Reality is multi-layered: this is the world of the valley - the world of historical time and the world of the mountain - the world of true essence. Such a construction implied the limitation of the narrative from everyday, socio-historical realities, which determined another feature of the German “intellectual novel” - its hermeticity.
The tightness of the “intellectual novel” of T. Mann and G. Hesse gives rise to a special relationship between historical time and personal time, distilled from socio-historical storms. This genuine time exists in the rarefied mountain air of the Berghof sanatorium (The Magic Mountain), in the Magic Theater (Steppenwolf), in the harsh isolation of Castalia (The Glass Bead Game).
About historical time, G. Hesse wrote: “Reality is something with which under no circumstances should one be satisfied and which should not be deified, for it is an accident, i.e. the garbage of life."
R. Musil's "intellectual novel" "Man without Properties" differs from the hermetic form of the novels of T. Mann and G. Hesse. The work of the Austrian writer contains the accuracy of historical characteristics and specific signs of real time. Viewing the modern novel as a “subjective formula for life,” Musil uses the historical panorama of events as the backdrop against which the battles of consciousness are played out. “A Man Without Qualities” is a fusion of objective and subjective narrative elements. In contrast to the complete, closed concept of the universe in the novels of T. Mann and G. Hesse, R. Musil's novel is conditioned by the concept of endless modification and relativity of concepts.
We offer a choice of five romance novels that will definitely appeal to fans of intellectual literature. These are subtle, heartfelt romance novels about strong feelings for smart girls.
In 1942, young Maggie, Kat and Lulu learn to live in difficult conditions - there is a war, and they perceive every new day as a gift from above. When Peter appears in their lives, he becomes a reliable support for them: for little Lulu - a brother, for the beautiful Catherine - a protector, and for the thoughtful Maggie - a lover. But it seems that Peter is hiding something, and not everything is so rosy in their relationship. However, this story has an even more mysterious continuation today...
Failed poet Toby Dobbs owns a huge mansion, which he turned into a kind of hostel. All its residents are very different, but they have one thing in common - within these walls they are waiting out difficult times. And then a series of unexpected events forces Toby to sell the house. To free it from its inhabitants, Toby undertakes to solve the problems of his friends. Leah, the girl who lives across the street, volunteers to help him with this venture, but their plan is not so easy to translate into reality.
Seven in the morning, train from Brighton to London. Everything is as usual, people are furtively watching each other, another working day is ahead. But in an instant, something changes... And the fate of Anna, Lowe and Karen will never be the same. One moment, one extraordinary morning on the train... Who would have thought that the story that happened then would become for them the starting point of a new life that they could not even dream of?
Thin and intricately intertwined threads connect close people with each other. Both the actions and even the feelings of one of the relatives resonate in the life of the other in the most unexpected way. Especially if the feelings are strong: love, attraction, anger... A mutual echo of strong feelings passes through the Ivlev family - Tamara, her husband, their adult daughter-doctor Marina. Each of them seems to have their own struggles and aspirations. This is natural, because at thirty and at fifty you look at life completely differently. But the time comes when the choice made by the mother affects the life of her daughter in an almost mystical way...
The Second World War has ended. Leningrad teenager Grisha Naryshkin, abducted to Germany, becomes Herbert Fishbein, a New Yorker and husband of Evelyn Tage, determined, sincere and beautiful. But marriage, as Hippocrates argued, is a reverse fever: it begins with heat and ends with cold. At a Moscow festival in 1957, Herbert Fishbein meets a woman with the biblical name Eve...