What is the “lost generation”?

The Lost Generation is a concept that arose during the period between two wars (World War I and World War II).

This is what they call in the West young front-line soldiers who fought between 1914 and 1918, regardless of the country for which they fought, and returned home morally or physically crippled. They are also called “unaccounted casualties of war.” Returning from the front, these people could not live again normal life. After experiencing the horrors of war, everything else seemed petty and unworthy of attention to them.

The meaning of the concept of “lost generation” in the novels of E.M. Remarque

The term "Lost Generation" originates between the two world wars. It becomes the leitmotif of the work of many writers of that time, but is most powerfully manifested in the work of the famous German anti-fascist writer Erich Maria Remarque. The term, by the way, is attributed to the American writer Gertrude Stein, whom Remarque described in several of his novels.

• - That's who you are! And all of you are like that! said Miss Stein. - All young people who were in the war. You are a lost generation.
• -- Ernest Hemingway. "A holiday that is always with you"

“We wanted to fight against everything, everything that determined our past - against lies and selfishness, self-interest and heartlessness; we became embittered and did not trust anyone except our closest comrade, did not believe in anything except such forces as the sky, tobacco, trees, bread and earth that had never deceived us; but what came of it? Everything collapsed, was falsified and forgotten. And for those who did not know how to forget, all that was left was powerlessness, despair, indifference and vodka. The time for great human and courageous dreams has passed. The businessmen celebrated. Corruption. Poverty".

With these words of one of his heroes E.M. Remarque expressed the essence of the worldview of his peers - people of the “lost generation” - those who went straight from school to the trenches of the First World War. Then, childishly, they clearly and unconditionally believed everything they were taught, heard, read about progress, civilization, humanism; they believed the sonorous phrases of conservative or liberal, nationalist or social-democratic slogans and programs, everything that was explained to them in their parents’ home, from pulpits, from the pages of newspapers...

In Remarque's novels, behind the simple, even voice of an impartial describer, there is such an intensity of despair and pain for these people that some defined his style as a mournful mourning for those killed in the war, even if the characters in his books did not die from bullets. Each of his works is a novel-requiem for an entire generation that was not formed because of the war, which, like houses of cards, scattered their ideals and failed values, which they seemed to have been taught in childhood, but were not given the opportunity to use. The war with the utmost frankness exposed the cynical lies of imaginary authorities and pillars of state, turned the generally accepted morality inside out and plunged prematurely aged youth into the abyss of disbelief and loneliness, from which there is no chance of returning. But these young men are the main characters of the writer, tragically young and in many ways not yet becoming men.

War and heavy post-war years destroyed not only agriculture, industry, but also the moral ideas of people. The concepts of “good” and “bad” have become confused, moral principles have become devalued.

Some young Germans supported the revolutionary struggle, but most were simply confused. They had compassion, they sympathized, they feared and they hated, and almost all of them did not know what to do next.

It was especially difficult for former soldiers who fought honestly, risking their lives every day to maintain neutrality. They lost confidence in everything that surrounded them; they no longer knew what to fight for next.

Now they walked through life with an empty soul and a hardened heart. The only values ​​to which they remained true were soldier solidarity and male friendship.

"No change on the Western Front."

Having published the novel All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929, Remarque laid the foundation for all his subsequent work. Here he described with complete accuracy the seamy side of the war, with all its dirt, cruelty and complete lack of romantic gloss, and daily life young front-line soldiers surrounded by horror, blood and fear of death. They have not yet become the “lost generation,” but very soon they will, and Remarque, with all his piercing objectivity and imaginary detachment, tells us exactly how this will happen.

In the preface, the author says: “This book is neither an accusation nor a confession. This is just an attempt to talk about the generation that was destroyed by the first world war, about those who became its victims, even if they escaped the shells.”

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel about the First World War. It claimed millions of lives, mutilated the lives and bodies of even more people, and ended the existence of such powerful powers as the Russian, Ottoman, German and Austro-Hungarian empires. The entire experience of Europe, created over many hundreds of years, was destroyed. Life needed to be rebuilt. The consciousness of people was infected with the horror of war.

In the work “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Remarque describes everything that he himself experienced. The writer served as a sapper during the First World War. During the battle, his comrade Christian Kranzbüchler was wounded by a shell. Remarque saves his life. In the novel, Christian receives the name Franz Kemerich. On the pages of the book, he dies in the hospital. There is no more romance and solemnity of parades. Everything was filled with bloody red war. Remarque is wounded. Hospital. End of the war. But the scar on the heart, mind and soul remains for life.

The meaninglessness of trench existence ends with the equally meaningless death of Paul Bäumer. The result of the novel is its title. When the hero of the novel dies, the standard report is broadcast on the radio: “All quiet on the Western Front.” The anti-militaristic pathos of the novel as a whole was so obvious and convincing that the fascists burned Remarque’s book in 1930.

"Return".

In the early thirties, Remarque published his next novel, “The Return,” dedicated to the first post-war months. In it in yet to a greater extent hopeless despair appeared, the hopeless melancholy of people who did not know, did not see a way to escape from the inhuman, senselessly cruel reality; At the same time, it revealed Remarque’s aversion to all politics, including revolutionary ones.

In the novel “The Return,” Remarque talks about the fate of the “lost generation” after the end of the war. The main character of the novel, Ernst Brickholz, continues the line of Paul Bäumer, the main character of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel “Return” tells how former front-line soldiers “get accustomed.” And in many ways similar to the author, the hero-narrator Erns Birkholz and his front-line friends, who returned home after the war, are dropout schoolchildren who became soldiers. But although the volleys of weapons have already been fired, in the souls of many of them the war continues its devastating work, and they rush to seek shelter when they hear the screech of a tram, or while walking in open areas.

“We no longer see nature, for us there is only terrain suitable for attack or defense, an old mill on a hill is not a mill, but a stronghold, a forest is not a forest, but artillery cover. Everywhere, everywhere this is an obsession...”

But this is not the worst thing. It's scary that they can't get settled in life or find a means of subsistence. Some still need to finish their studies at school, and those who worked before the war have their places filled, and others cannot be found.

The reader is greatly impressed by the demonstration of war invalids who ask on their posters: “Where is the gratitude of the fatherland?” and “Disabled war veterans are starving!” They are walking one-armed, blind, one-eyed, wounded in the head, crippled with amputated legs, trembling shell-shocked; they wheel disabled people in wheelchairs, who from now on can only live in a chair, on wheels. Nobody cares about them. Ernest Birkholz and his friends take part in a workers' demonstration opposed by Reichswehr troops; They witness how the former commander of their company kills his former soldier - their friend. The novel "Return" reveals the story of the collapse of front-line comradeship.

For Remarque's heroes, friendship has a certain extra-social, philosophical meaning. This is the only anchor of salvation for the heroes, and they continue to keep it after the war. The collapse of “front-line friendship” in the novel is shown as a tragedy. The Return, like All Quiet on the Western Front, is an anti-war work, and both are warning novels. Less than two years after the publication of "Return" in Germany, an event occurred that became not only a national, but also a global catastrophe: Hitler came to power. Both of Remarque's anti-war novels were blacklisted as books banned in Nazi Germany and thrown on May 10, 1933, along with many other outstanding works of German and world literature objectionable to the Nazis, into a huge bonfire lit in the heart of Berlin.

"Three Comrades"

In “Three Comrades” - the last of the novels written before the Second World War - he talks about the fate of his peers during the global economic crisis of 1929-1933.

In the novel “Three Comrades,” Remarque again, with even greater conviction, predicts complete hopelessness and the absence of any future for the lost generation. They suffered from one war, and the next one will simply swallow them up. Here he also gives a complete description of the characters of the members of the “lost generation”. Remarque shows them as tough and decisive people, not taking anyone’s word for anything, recognizing only the concrete help of their own comrades, ironic and cautious in their relationships with women. Sensuality comes before their real feelings.

In this novel he still retains his originally chosen position. Still wants to be only an artist-chronicler. Don't judge anyone. Do not participate in the struggle of social forces, look from the outside and honestly and impartially capture images of people and events. In “Three Comrades” this is especially felt. Describing Berlin during the years of intense political battles, on the eve of Hitler's coup, the author diligently avoids showing any political sympathies or antipathies. He does not even name the parties whose meetings his heroes attend, although he gives vivid sketches of some episodes; he does not indicate who exactly the “guys in high boots” were who killed the sloth. It is quite obvious that these were Hitler’s stormtroopers, but the writer seems to be deliberately emphasizing his self-removal from the political issues of the day. And for him, the revenge of his friends for Lenz is not reprisal against political enemies, but simply personal retribution that overtakes a specific, direct killer.

Remarque's heroes find short-lived, illusory consolation in friendship and love, without giving up alcohol, which, by the way, has also become one of the indispensable heroes of the writer's novels. Surely they know how to drink in his novels. Drinking, which provides temporary calm, has replaced the cultural leisure of heroes who are not interested in art, music and literature. Love, friendship and drinking turned for them into a unique form of protection from the outside world, which accepted war as a way to solve political problems and subordinated the entire official culture and ideology to the cult of propaganda of militarism and violence.

Three front-line friends are trying to jointly cope with the hardships of life during the economic crisis. Although ten years have passed since the last shots were fired, life is still saturated with the memory of the war, the consequences of which were felt at every step. It is not for nothing that they, these memories, and the author himself led to the creation of this famous anti-war novel.

The memory of front-line life is firmly embedded in the current existence of the three main characters of the novel, Robert Lokamp, ​​Otto Kester and Gottfried Lenz, and, as it were, continues in it. This is felt at every step - not only in the big, but also in the small, in the countless details of their life, their behavior, their conversations. Smoking asphalt cauldrons remind them of camp field kitchens, car headlights remind them of a spotlight clinging to an airplane during its night flight, and the rooms of one of the patients of a tuberculosis sanatorium resemble a front-line dugout. On the contrary, this novel by Remarque is about peaceful life is the same anti-war work as the previous two. “Too much blood has been shed on this land! "says Lokamp.

But thoughts about war relate not only to the past: they also give rise to fear of the future, and Robert, looking at the baby from the orphanage, bitterly ironizes: “I would like to know what kind of war it will be for which he will be in time.” Remarque put these words into the mouth of the hero-storyteller a year before the start of the Second World War. “Three Comrades” is a novel with a broad social background; it is densely “populated” with episodic and semi-episodic characters representing various circles and strata of the German people.

The novel ends very sadly. Pat dies, Robert is left alone, his only support is his selfless friendship with Otto Koester, gained in the trenches. The future of the heroes seems completely hopeless. Remarque's main novels are internally interconnected.

This is like a continuing chronicle of a single human destiny in a tragic era, the chronicle is largely autobiographical. Like his heroes, Remarque went through the meat grinder of the 1st World War, and this experience for the rest of his life determined their common hatred of militarism, cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state structure, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres.

And World War II). It became the leitmotif of the works of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Henri Barbusse, Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson , Thomas Wolfe, Nathaniel West, John O'Hara The lost generation are young people called to the front at the age of 18, often not yet finishing school, who began to kill early after the war, such people often could not adapt to peaceful life, became drunkards, committed suicide, and some went crazy.

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The Lost Generation - Finding Yourself.

Problems of education: How to find the “lost” generation

Lecture “Lost Generation” and literature

Subtitles

History of the term

When we returned from Canada and settled on the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and Miss Stein and I were still good friends, she uttered her phrase about the lost generation. The old Model T Ford that Miss Stein drove in those years had something wrong with the ignition, and the young mechanic, who had been at the front for the last year of the war and was now working in the garage, had not been able to fix it, or maybe Maybe he just didn’t want to fix her Ford out of turn. Be that as it may, he was not sérieux enough, and after Miss Stein's complaint, the owner severely reprimanded him. The owner told him: “You are all génération perdue!” - That's who you are! And all of you are like that! - said Miss Stein. - All young people who were in the war. You are a lost generation.

This is what they call in the West young front-line soldiers who fought between 1914 and 1918, regardless of the country for which they fought, and returned home morally or physically crippled. They are also called “unaccounted casualties of war.” After returning from the front, these people could not live a normal life again. After experiencing the horrors of war, everything else seemed petty and unworthy of attention to them.

In 1930-31, Remarque wrote the novel “The Return” (“Der Weg zurück”), in which he talks about the return to their homeland after the First World War of young soldiers who can no longer live normally, and, acutely feeling all the meaninglessness, cruelty, filth of life, Still trying to live somehow. The epigraph to the novel is the following lines:

Soldiers returned to their homeland
They want to find a way to a new life.

In the novel “Three Comrades” he predicts a sad fate for the lost generation. Remarque describes the situation in which these people found themselves. When they returned, many of them found craters instead of their previous homes; most lost their relatives and friends. In post-war Germany there is devastation, poverty, unemployment, instability, and a nervous atmosphere.

Remarque also characterizes the representatives of the “lost generation” themselves. These people are tough, decisive, accept only concrete help, and are ironic with women. Their sensuality comes before their feelings.

1. To the concept of “lost generation”. In the 1820s. A new group enters literature, the idea of ​​which is associated with the image of the “lost generation”. These are young people who visited the fronts of the First World War, were shocked by the cruelty, and were unable to get back into the groove of life in the post-war period. They got their name from the phrase attributed to G. Stein “You are all a lost generation.” The origins of the worldview of this informal literary group lie in a feeling of disappointment with the course and results of the First World War. The death of millions called into question the idea of ​​positivism about “benign progress” and undermined faith in the rationality of democracy.

In a broad sense, “lostness” is a consequence of a break both with the value system dating back to Puritanism and with the pre-war idea of ​​the theme and style of the work. Writers of the Lost Generation are distinguished by:

Skepticism regarding progress, pessimism, which related the “lost” to the modernists, but did not mean the identity of ideological and aesthetic aspirations.

The depiction of war from the standpoint of naturalism is combined with the inclusion of the experience gained in the mainstream of human experiences. The war appears either as a given, replete with repulsive details, or as an annoying memory, disturbing the psyche, preventing the transition to peaceful life

Painful understanding of loneliness

The search for a new ideal is primarily in terms of artistic mastery: a tragic mood, the theme of self-knowledge, lyrical tension.

The ideal is in disappointment, the illusion of “a nightingale’s song through the wild voice of catastrophes”, in other words - “victory is in defeat”).

Picturesque style.

The heroes of the works are individualists who are not alien to the highest values ​​(sincere love, devoted friendship). The characters’ experiences are the bitterness of realizing their own “out-of-controlness,” which, however, does not mean a choice in favor of other ideologies. The heroes are apolitical: “ participation in social struggle prefers withdrawal into the sphere of illusions, intimate, deeply personal experiences"(A.S. Mulyarchik).

2. Literature of the “lost generation”. Chronologically, the group made a name for itself with the novels “Three Soldiers” (1921) J. Dos Passos, "The Enormous Camera" (1922) E. Cummings, "Soldier's Award" (1926) W. Faulkner. The motif of “lostness” in the context of rampant post-war consumerism seemed at first glance to have no direct connection with the memory of the war in novels F.S. Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) and E. Hemingway"The Sun Also Rises" (1926). The peak of the “lost” mentality came in 1929, when almost simultaneously the works of R. Aldington("Death of a Hero") EM. Remarque(“All Quiet on the Western Front”), E. Hemingway("Farewell to Arms")

By the end of the decade (1920s), the main idea of ​​the work of the lost was that a person is constantly in a state of war with a world that is hostile and indifferent to him, the main attributes of which are the army and the bureaucracy.

Ernest Miller Hemingway(1899 - 1961) - American journalist, Nobel laureate, participant in the First World War. He wrote little about America: the action of the novel “The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)” takes place in Spain and France; "Farewell to arms!" - in Italy; "The Old Man and the Sea" - in Cuba. The main motive of creativity is loneliness. Hemingway the writer is distinguished by the following features:

Non-bookish style (influence of journalistic experience): laconicism, precision of detail, lack of text embellishment

Careful work on the composition - a seemingly insignificant event is considered, behind which there is a human drama. Often a piece of life is taken “without beginning and end” (influence of impressionism)

Creating a realistic picture of the post-war period: a description of the conditions of reality is given with the help of verbs of movement, fullness, and appeal to the sensory perception of reality.

The use of a manner akin to Chekhov’s of emotional impact on the reader: the author’s intonation combined with subtext, what Hemingway himself called the “iceberg principle” - “if a writer knows well what he is writing about, he can omit much of what he knows, and if he writes truthfully, the reader will feel everything omitted as strongly as if the writer had said it”(E. Hemingway). Each word has a hidden meaning, so any fragment of text may be omitted, but the overall emotional impact will remain. An example is the short story “Cat in the Rain.”

Dialogues are external and internal, when the characters exchange insignificant phrases, dangling and random, but the reader feels behind these words something hidden deep in the minds of the characters (something that cannot always be expressed directly).

The hero is in a duel with himself: the Stoic code.

Novel "Fiesta"- pessimistic, it is also called the early Hemingway manifesto. Main idea the novel is the superiority of man in his desire for life, despite his uselessness at the celebration of life. Thirst for love and renunciation of love - the Stoic code. The main question is the “art of living” in new conditions. Life is a carnival. Main symbol- bullfighting, and the art of the matador is the answer to the question - “how to live?”

Anti-war novel "A Farewell to Arms!" depicts the path of insight of a hero who runs away from the war without thinking, without thinking, because he just wants to live. The philosophy of “gain is in loss” is shown using the example of the fate of one person.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald(1896 - 1940) writer who heralded the beginning of the “jazz age” to the world, embodying the values ​​of the younger generation, where youth, pleasure and carefree fun came to the fore. The heroes of early works were largely identified by the reader and critics with the author himself (as the embodiment of the American dream), therefore the serious novels “The Great Gatsby” (1925) and “Tender is the Night” (1934) remained misunderstood, since they became a kind of debunking of the myth of the American dream in the country equal opportunities.

Although in general the writer’s work falls within the framework of classical literature, Fitzgerald was one of the first in American literature to develop the principles of lyrical prose. Lyrical prose presupposes romantic symbols, the universal meaning of works, and attention to the movements of the human soul. Since the writer himself was influenced for a long time by the myth of the American dream, the motive of wealth is central in the novels.

Fitzgerald's style suggests the following features:

The artistic technique of “double vision” - in the process of narration, contrast and combination of opposites are revealed. One and: the poles of double vision - irony, mockery. (The nickname itself is Great).

Using the technique of comedy of manners: the hero is absurd, a little unrealistic

The motif of loneliness, alienation (in many ways dating back to romanticism, which existed until the end of the 19th century) - Gatsby. does not fit into the environment, both externally (habits, language) and internally (preserves love, moral values)

Unusual composition. The novel begins with a climax. Although at first it was supposed to refer to the hero’s childhood

He promoted the idea that a person of the 20th century, with his fragmented consciousness and chaos of existence, must live in accordance with moral truth.

The creative experiment begun by Parisian expatriates, modernists of the pre-war generation Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson, was continued by young prose writers and poets who came to American literature in the 1920s and subsequently brought it worldwide fame. Throughout the twentieth century, their names were firmly associated in the minds of foreign readers with the idea of ​​US literature as a whole. These are Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Thornton Wilder and others, mainly modernist writers.

At the same time, American modernism differs from European modernism in its more obvious involvement in the social and political events of the era: the shock war experience of most authors could not be silenced or avoided; it required artistic embodiment. This invariably misled Soviet researchers, who declared these writers to be “critical realists.” American criticism labeled them as "lost generation".

The very definition of “lost generation” was casually dropped by G. Stein in a conversation with her driver. She said: “You are all a lost generation, all the youth who were in the war. You have no respect for anything. You will all get drunk.” This saying was accidentally heard by E. Hemingway and he put it into use. He put the words “You are all a lost generation” as one of two epigraphs to his first novel “The Sun Also Rises” (“Fiesta”, 1926). Over time this definition, accurate and succinct, has received the status of a literary term.

What are the origins of the “lostness” of an entire generation? The First World War was a test for all humanity. One can imagine what she became for the boys, full of optimism, hope and patriotic illusions. In addition to the fact that they directly fell into the “meat grinder,” as this war was called, their biography began immediately with the climax, with the maximum overstrain of mental and physical strength, with the most difficult test for which they were absolutely unprepared. Of course, it was a breakdown. The war knocked them out of their usual rut forever and determined their worldview—an acutely tragic one. A striking illustration of this is the beginning of the expatriate Thomas Stearns Eliot's (1888-1965) poem "Ash Wednesday" (1930).

Other programmatic poetic works of the "Lost Generation" - T. Eliot's poems "The Waste Land" (1922) and "The Hollow Men" (1925) - are characterized by the same feeling of emptiness and hopelessness and the same stylistic virtuosity.

However, Gertrude Stein, who argued that the “lost” had “no respect for anything,” turned out to be too categorical in her judgment. The rich experience of suffering, death and overcoming beyond their years not only made this generation very resilient (not one of the writing brethren “drunk to death”, as was predicted for them), but also taught them to unmistakably distinguish and highly honor the enduring values ​​of life: communication with nature , love for a woman, male friendship and creativity.

The writers of the “lost generation” never formed any literary group and did not have a single theoretical platform, but the common destinies and impressions shaped their similar life positions: disappointment in social ideals, the search for enduring values, stoic individualism. Coupled with the same, acutely tragic worldview, this determined the presence in the prose of the “lost” of a number of common features, obvious, despite the diversity of individual artistic styles of individual authors.

The commonality is evident in everything, from the theme to the form of their works. The main themes of writers of this generation are war, everyday life at the front ("A Farewell to Arms" (1929) by Hemingway, "Three Soldiers" (1921) by Dos Passos, the collection of stories "These Thirteen" (1926) by Faulkner, etc.) and post-war reality - "the century jazz" ("The Sun Also Rises" (1926) by Hemingway, "Soldier's Award" (1926) and "Mosquitoes" (1927) by Faulkner, novels "Beautiful but Doomed" (1922) and "The Great Gatsby" (1925), short story collections "Stories from the Jazz Age" (1922) and "All the Sad Young Men" (1926) by Scott Fitzgerald).

Both themes in the works of the “lost” are interconnected, and this connection is of a cause-and-effect nature. The “war” works show the origins of the lost generation: front-line episodes are presented by all authors harshly and unembellished - contrary to the tendency to romanticize the First World War in official literature. Works about the “world after the war” show the consequences - the convulsive fun of the “jazz age”, reminiscent of dancing on the edge of an abyss or a feast during the plague. This is a world of destinies crippled by war and broken human relationships.

The issues that occupy the “lost” gravitate towards the original mythological oppositions of human thinking: war and peace, life and death, love and death. It is symptomatic that death (and war as its synonym) is certainly one of the elements of these oppositions. It is also symptomatic that these questions are resolved by being “lost” not at all in a mythopoetic or abstract philosophical sense, but in an extremely concrete and more or less socially definite manner.

All the heroes of "war" works feel that they were fooled and then betrayed. Lieutenant of the Italian army, American Frederick Henry (“A Farewell to Arms!” by E. Hemingway) directly says that he no longer believes the rattling phrases about “glory,” “sacred duty,” and “the greatness of the nation.” All the heroes of the writers of the “lost generation” lose faith in a society that sacrificed their children to “merchant calculations” and demonstratively break with it. Lieutenant Henry concludes a “separate peace” (that is, deserts the army), Jacob Barnes (Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”), Jay Gatsby (Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”) and “all the sad young people” plunge headlong into drinking, carousing and intimate experiences. people" of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and other prose writers of the "Lost Generation".

What do the heroes of their works who survived the war see the meaning of life? In life itself as it is, in the life of each individual person, and, above all, in love. It is love that occupies a dominant place in their value system. Love, understood as a perfect, harmonious union with a woman, is creativity, camaraderie (human warmth nearby), and a natural principle. This is the concentrated joy of being, a kind of quintessence of everything that is worthwhile in life, the quintessence of life itself. In addition, love is the most individual, the most personal, the only experience that belongs to you, which is very important for the “lost.” In fact, the dominant idea of ​​their works is the idea of ​​​​the unchallenged dominance of the private world.

All the heroes of the "lost" are building their own, alternate world, where there should be no place for “merchant calculations”, political ambitions, wars and deaths, all the madness that is happening around. "I was not made to fight. I was made to eat, drink and sleep with Catherine," says Frederick Henry. This is the credo of all the “lost”. They, however, themselves feel the fragility and vulnerability of their position. It is impossible to completely isolate yourself from the big hostile world: it constantly invades their lives. It is no coincidence that love in the works of the writers of the “lost generation” is fused with death: it is almost always stopped by death. Catherine, Frederick Henry's lover, dies ("A Farewell to Arms!"), the accidental death of an unknown woman leads to the death of Jay Gatsby ("The Great Gatsby"), etc.

Not only the death of the hero on the front line, but also the death of Catherine from childbirth, and the death of a woman under the wheels of a car in The Great Gatsby, and the death of Jay Gatsby himself, which at first glance have nothing to do with the war, turn out to be tightly connected with it. These untimely and senseless deaths appear in the “lost” novels as a kind of artistic expression of the thought about the unreasonableness and cruelty of the world, about the impossibility of escaping from it, about the fragility of happiness. And this idea, in turn, is a direct consequence of the authors’ war experience, their mental breakdown, their trauma. Death for them is synonymous with war, and both of them - war and death - appear in their works as a kind of apocalyptic metaphor modern world. The world of the works of young writers of the twenties is a world cut off by the First World War from the past, changed, gloomy, doomed.

The prose of the "lost generation" is characterized by an unmistakable poetics. This is lyrical prose, where the facts of reality are passed through the prism of the perception of a confused hero, very close to the author. It is no coincidence that the favorite form of “lost” is a first-person narrative, which, instead of an epically detailed description of events, involves an excited, emotional response to them.

The prose of the “lost” is centripetal: it does not unfold human destinies in time and space, but, on the contrary, condenses and condenses the action. It is characterized by a short period of time, usually a crisis in the fate of the hero; it can also include memories of the past, due to which the themes are expanded and the circumstances are clarified, which distinguishes the works of Faulkner and Fitzgerald. The leading compositional principle of American prose of the twenties is the principle of “compressed time”, the discovery English writer James Joyce, one of the three “pillars” of European modernism (along with M. Proust and F. Kafka).

One cannot help but notice a certain similarity in the plot solutions of the works of the writers of the “lost generation”. Among the most frequently repeated motifs (elementary units of the plot) are the short-term but complete happiness of love (“A Farewell to Arms!” by Hemingway, “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald), the futile search by a former front-line soldier for his place in post-war life (“The Great Gatsby” and “Night”) tender" by Fitzgerald, "A Soldier's Award" by Faulkner, "The Sun Also Rises" by Hemingway), the absurd and untimely death of one of the heroes ("The Great Gatsby", "A Farewell to Arms!").

All these motifs were later replicated by the “lost” themselves (Hemingway and Fitzgerald), and most importantly, by their imitators who did not smell gunpowder and did not live at the turn of the era. As a result, they are sometimes perceived as some kind of cliché. However, similar plot solutions were suggested to the writers of the “lost generation” by life itself: at the front they saw senseless and untimely death every day, they themselves painfully felt the lack of solid ground under their feet in the post-war period, and they, like no one else, knew how to be happy, but their happiness often was fleeting, because the war separated people and ruined their destinies. And the heightened sense of tragedy and artistic flair characteristic of the “lost generation” dictated their appeal to the extreme situations of human life.

The "lost" style is also recognizable. Their typical prose is a seemingly impartial account with deep lyrical overtones. The works of E. Hemingway are especially distinguished by extreme laconicism, sometimes lapidary phrases, simplicity of vocabulary and enormous restraint of emotions. Even the love scenes in his novels are laconically and almost dryly resolved, which obviously excludes any falsehood in the relationships between the characters and, ultimately, has an extremely strong impact on the reader.

Most of the writers of the “lost generation” were destined to still have years, and some (Hemingway, Faulkner, Wilder) decades of creativity, but only Faulkner managed to break out of the circle of themes, problematics, poetics and stylistics defined in the 20s, from the magic circle of aching sadness and the doom of the "lost generation". The community of the “lost”, their spiritual brotherhood, mixed with young hot blood, turned out to be stronger than the thoughtful calculations of various literary groups, which disintegrated without leaving a trace in the work of their participants.

The theme of war in the works of E. Hemingway

“Lost Generation” “Lost Generation” is a definition applied to a group of foreign writers who published a series of books in the 20s of the twentieth century, expressing disappointment in capitalist civilization, aggravated by the tragic experience of World War I. The expression “lost generation” was first used by the American writer Gertrude Stein in a conversation with E. Hemingway. Then the “lost generation” began to be called people who went through the First World War, were spiritually traumatized, lost faith in the jingoistic ideals that once captivated them, sometimes internally devastated, acutely aware of their restlessness and alienation from society. “The Lost Generation” is so named because, having gone through the circles of an unnecessary, senseless war, they lost faith in the natural need to continue their family, they lost faith in their life and the future. [29;17]

Democratic-minded intellectuals in America, France, England, Germany, Russia and other countries drawn into the war were internally convinced: the war was wrong, unnecessary, not their own. This was felt by many, which is where this spiritual closeness between people who stood on opposite sides of the barricades came from during the war.

People who went through the meat grinder of war, those who managed to survive it, returned home, leaving on the battlefields not only an arm or a leg - physical health - but also something more. Ideals, faith in life, in the future were lost. What seemed strong and unshakable - culture, humanism, reason, individual freedom - fell apart like a house of cards and turned into emptiness.

The chain of times was broken and one of the most significant and profound changes in the moral and psychological atmosphere was the emergence of the “lost generation” - a generation that had lost faith in those lofty concepts and feelings in which it was raised to respect, and that rejected devalued values. For this generation, “all the gods died, all the battles” were left behind, all “faith in man was undermined.”

Hemingway took the words “You are all a lost generation!” as the epigraph to his novel “Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)”, and the formula went around the world, gradually losing its real content and becoming a universal designation of the time and people of this time. But There was a sharp line between people who had experienced the same life experiences. Outwardly, everyone looked the same: demonstrative cynicism, faces twisted in an ironic grin, disappointed, tired intonations. But what was a true tragedy for some, became a mask for others. game, a common style of behavior.

They were traumatized, truly experienced the loss of the ideals in which they first of all sacredly believed, as a personal, unabated pain, they experienced the disorder and discord of the modern world. But they were not going to carefully cherish this state of mind; they wanted to work, and not idly talk about losses and unrealized plans.

The general meaning of the creative efforts of representatives of the “lost generation” - writers - can be defined as the desire to remove a person from the power of ethical dogma, which requires total conformism and practically destroys the value of the human personality. To do this, it was necessary to find, develop, and create a new moral principle, a new ethical standard, and even a new philosophy of existence. They were united by a fierce disgust for the war itself and for those foundations and principles (social, economic, political, ideological, moral), which in their development inevitably led to a universal tragedy. They simply hated them and swept them away. In the minds of the writers of the “lost generation,” the idea of ​​the need to isolate oneself from these principles, to bring a person out of a herd state, so that he could realize himself as an individual and develop his own life principles, not subordinated to the “established values” of an antagonistic society. The heroes of these writers never resemble puppets submissive to someone else's will - living, independent characters, with their own characteristics, with their own intonations, most often supposedly indifferent and supposedly ironic. What are the characteristics of those called the "lost generation"? Representatives of the “lost generation” are, in the overwhelming majority, young people who have just graduated from school, and sometimes did not have time to finish it. [ 20; 65]

Honest and slightly naive young men, having believed in the loud words of their teachers about progress and civilization, having read the corrupt press and listened to a lot of chauvinistic speeches, went to the front with the consciousness that they were fulfilling a high and noble mission. Many went to war voluntarily. The epiphany was terrible; Faced with naked reality, fragile youthful ideals were shattered. The cruel and senseless war immediately dispelled their illusions and showed the emptiness and falsehood of pompous words about duty, justice, and humanism. But refusing to believe chauvinistic propaganda, yesterday’s schoolchildren do not understand the meaning of what is happening. They don't understand why people different nationalities must kill each other. They begin to gradually free themselves from nationalistic hatred of soldiers of other armies, seeing in them the same unfortunate ordinary people, workers, peasants, as they themselves were. The spirit of internationalism awakens in the boys. Post-war meetings with former enemies further strengthen the internationalism of the “lost generation.” [ 18; 37]

As a result of long discussions, the soldiers begin to understand that war serves as a means of enriching some people, they understand its unjust nature and come to deny war . The experience of those who went through the meat grinder of the First World War determined for the rest of their lives their common hatred of militarism, of cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state structure, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres. Writers of the “Lost Generation” created their anti-war works, considering this work their moral duty not only to the fallen and survivors, but also to future generations. [ 18; 43]

The best representatives of the “lost generation” show firmness and courage in all life’s trials, be it everyday life in war with terrible shelling, mine explosions, cold and hunger, the death of comrades in the trenches and hospitals, or the difficult post-war years, when there is no work, no money, no self. life. The heroes face all difficulties in silence, supporting each other, fighting with all their might for their lives. The combination of “lostness” and personal courage in resisting hostile circumstances constitutes the grain of the attitude that underlies their character. The “fulcrum” of people crippled by war is front-line camaraderie, friendship. Camaraderie is the only value generated by war. In the face of mortal danger and hardship, camaraderie remains a strong force. The soldiers cling to this camaraderie as the only thread connecting them with the pre-war past, with peaceful life.

After returning to peaceful life, where former front-line soldiers are looking for the “road to a new life” in different ways and where class and other differences between them are revealed, the entire illusory nature of this concept is gradually revealed.

But those who remained faithful to front-line friendship strengthened and enriched it in difficult years peaceful and pre-war life. Comrades at the first call rushed to help their friends in the fight against emerging fascism.

After returning from war, former soldiers feel confused. Many of them went to the front from school, they have no profession, it is difficult for them to find work, they cannot get a job in life. Former soldiers no one needs. Evil reigns in the world and its reign has no end. Once deceived, they are no longer able to believe in goodness. The surrounding reality is perceived by former soldiers as a mosaic of large and small human tragedies, which embodied man’s fruitless pursuit of happiness, a hopeless search for harmony within himself, man’s attempts to find some enduring spiritual values, doomed to failure, moral ideal. [ 20; 57]

Realizing that nothing had changed in the world, that all the beautiful slogans calling on them to die for “democracy”, “homeland” were lies, that they had been deceived, they became confused, lost faith in anything, lost old illusions and they found new ones, and, devastated, began to waste their lives, exchanging it for endless drunkenness, debauchery, and the search for more and more new sensations. All this gave rise to the loneliness of the individual among people, loneliness as a consequence of the unconscious desire to go beyond the world of conformists who accept the modern order of things as the norm or universal inevitability. Loneliness is tragic, it is not just living alone, but the inability to understand another and be understood. Lonely people seem to be surrounded by a blank wall through which it is impossible to reach them either from the inside or from the outside. Many of the “lost” could not stand the struggle for life, some committed suicide, some ended up in an insane asylum, others adapted and became accomplices of the revenge-seekers.

In 1929, E.M. Remarque’s novel (Erich Maria Remarque June 22, 1898, Osnabrück - September 25, 1970) “All Quiet on the Western Front” was published, in which the author sincerely and excitedly told the truth about the war. And to this day this is one of the most striking anti-war books. Remarque showed the war in all its terrible manifestations: pictures of attacks, artillery duels, many killed and maimed in this hellish meat grinder. This book is woven from the writer's personal life experience. Together with other young men born in 1898, Remarque was drafted into the army in 1916 from school. Remarque, who took part in battles in France and other parts of the Western Front, was wounded several times. [ 11; 9] In August 1917, he ended up in the infirmary in Duisburg and in letters sent from there to his front-line comrades, he captured sad pictures that prepared the way for the creation of such memorable episodes of the novel ten years later. This novel contains a strong and unequivocal condemnation of the spirit of militarism that reigned in the Kaiser's Germany and contributed to the outbreak of war in 1914. This book is about the recent past, but it is directed to the future: life itself turned it into a warning, for the revolution of 1918, which overthrew the Kaiser’s regime, did not eradicate the spirit of militarism. Moreover, nationalist and other reactionary forces used Germany's defeat in World War I to promote revanchism.

Closely linked to the anti-war spirit of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front is its internationalism. The soldiers, the heroes of the novel, are increasingly thinking about what (or who) makes them kill people of a different nationality. Many scenes in the novel are about the camaraderie and friendship of the soldiers. Seven classmates went to the front, they fight in the same company, together they spend rare hours of rest, together they train recruits in order to protect them from inevitable death in the very first minutes of battle, together they experience the horrors of war, together they go into attacks, sit in the trenches during artillery shelling, they bury their fallen comrades together. And out of seven classmates, the hero remains alone. [ 18; 56]

Its meaning is revealed in the first lines of the epilogue: when he was killed main character, it was so quiet and calm along the entire front that military reports consisted of only one phrase: “All Quiet on the Western Front.” WITH light hand In the remark, this formula, imbued with bitter sarcasm, acquired the character of a phraseological turn of phrase. The capacious title of the novel, with deep implications, allows the reader to expand the scope of the narrative and speculate on the author’s ideas: if in the days when, from the “high” point of view of the main command, everything at the front remains unchanged, so many terrible things happen, then what can we say about the periods of violent , bloody battles? [ 19; 12]

Remarque's main novels are internally interconnected. This is like a continuing chronicle of a single human destiny in a tragic era, the chronicle is largely autobiographical. Like his heroes, Remarque went through the meat grinder of the 1st World War, and this experience for the rest of his life determined their common hatred of militarism, cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state structure, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres.

Richard Aldington (Richard Aldington July 8, 1892 - July 27, 1962) belonged to the post-war or “lost” generation of writers, since the heyday of his work dates back to the 20s and 30s. XX century Poet, short story writer, novelist, biographer, translator, literary critic, Aldington was a spokesman for the sentiments of the “lost generation” and the spiritual turmoil caused by the war. The First World War played a significant role in Aldington’s work. [ 30; 2] “Death of a Hero” (1929) is the writer’s first novel, which immediately gained fame far beyond England. Externally, according to the plot concept, the novel fits into the framework of a biographical novel (this is the story of the life of an individual from birth to death), and in terms of its problems it belongs to an anti-war novel. At the same time, the novel breaks the framework of all the usual genre definitions. Thus, considering the problem of a military catastrophe, getting to the bottom of its cause, one can notice that less than half of the space is allocated to front-line scenes themselves. The author examines the life story of his hero in fragments, groping his way through disparate influences, but traces it from beginning to end, warning in advance about tragic outcome. However, individual history appears as a typical history, as the fate of a generation. The main stages of this development, the complex process of character formation, the path of individual destiny taken in interconnections, are presented as an example of by no means a special case. [ 9; 34]

The hero of the novel is a young man, George Winterborn, who at the age of 16 read all the poets, starting with Chaucer, an individualist and an esthete who sees around him the hypocrisy of “family morality,” garish social contrasts, and decadent art. Once at the front, he becomes serial number 31819 and becomes convinced of the criminal nature of the war. At the front, personalities are not needed, talents are not needed, only obedient soldiers are needed there. The hero could not and did not want to adapt, did not learn to lie and kill. Arriving on vacation, he looks at life and society completely differently, acutely feeling his loneliness: neither his parents, nor his wife, nor his girlfriend could comprehend the extent of his despair, understand his poetic soul, or at least not traumatize it with calculation and efficiency. The war has broken him, the desire to live has disappeared, and in one of the attacks, he exposes himself to a bullet. The motives for George’s “strange” and completely unheroic death are unclear to those around him: few people knew about his personal tragedy. His death was more likely a suicide, a voluntary exit from the hell of cruelty and dishonesty, an honest choice of an uncompromising talent that did not fit into the war. Aldington strives to analyze as deeply as possible the psychological state of the hero at the main moments of his life in order to show how he gives up illusions and hopes. Family and school, founded on lies, tried to mold Winterbhorn into the spirit of the warlike singer of imperialism. Military theme and the consequences of the war run like a red thread through all of Aldington’s novels and stories. All their heroes are connected with the war, all of them reflect its harmful effects.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, 1896-1940) - American writer, known for his novels and short stories depicting the so-called American "Jazz Age" of the 1920s. The work of F. S. Fitzgerald is one of the most remarkable pages of American literature of the 20th century during its peak period. His contemporaries were Dreiser and Faulkner, Forest and Hemingway, Sandburg and T. Wolfe. In this brilliant galaxy, through the efforts of which American literature in the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century turned into one of the largest literatures in the world, Fitzgerald plays a prominent role. A writer of extraordinary subtlety, he chronologically opened a new era in the development of Russian literature, being the first to speak on behalf of the generation entering life after the global catastrophe of the First World War, capturing in deeply poetic images, filled with great expressiveness, not only its dreams and disappointments , but also the inevitability of the collapse of ideals that are far from genuine humanistic values.[ 31; 8]

Fitzgerald's literary success was indeed early and noisy. He wrote his first novel, “This Side of Paradise” (1920), immediately after finishing his army service in Alabama. The novel expressed the sentiments of those who, not having time to get to the front, nevertheless experienced the war as a turning point in history, affecting everyone who had to to live in these years when the usual order of things was undermined and traditional system values. The book told about the “lost generation”, for which “all gods died, all wars died down, all faith disappeared.” Realizing that after the historical catastrophe the previous forms of human relations became impossible, the characters of Fitzgerald’s first novels and stories feel a spiritual vacuum around them and they are conveyed the thirst for intense emotional life, freedom from traditional moral restrictions and taboos, characteristic of the “Jazz Age,” but also spiritual vulnerability , uncertainty about the future, the outlines of which are lost due to the rapidity of changes taking place in the world. [ 31; 23]

John Roderigo Dos Passos (January 14, 1896, Chicago - September 28, 1970, Baltimore) - American writer. He was a nurse during the First World War. He took part in the war of 1914-1918 in the French, Italian and American armies, where he revealed himself as a pacifist. In his work “Three Soldiers” (1921), the author acts as a major realist artist. He provides an in-depth analysis of the psychology of Americans during the war era, depicting with particular persuasiveness the state of social crisis that became typical of the advanced elements of the army towards the end of the war. His heroes were a musician, a farmer and a lens salesman - people from different social strata, with different views and concepts, living in different parts of the country and united by the terrible everyday life of the army. Each of them, in one way or another, rebelled against their destiny, against violent death, lawlessness and humiliation, against the suppression of individual will by a powerful army machine. An entire generation suffered through them. The tragic “I” that sounded from the pages of the books of Dos Passos’ contemporaries turned into a tragic “we” for the writer. [ 18; 22]

The best representatives of the “lost generation” have not lost their humanistic feelings: conscience, human dignity, a heightened sense of justice, compassion, loyalty to loved ones, self-sacrifice. These features of the “lost generation” manifested themselves in society at all critical moments of history: during World War II and after it, during “local wars.” The value of works about the “lost generation” is enormous. The writers told the truth about this generation, showed their heroes as they really were with all their positive and negative traits. Writers influenced the worldview of readers, they condemned the foundations of an antagonistic society, resolutely and unconditionally condemned militarism, and called for internationalism. With their works they wanted to prevent new wars and warn people about their exceptional danger to humanity. At the same time, the work of the writers of the “lost generation” is full of humanistic aspirations, they call on a person in any conditions to remain a person with high moral qualities: faith in the power of courage, honesty, in the value of stoicism, in the nobility of spirit, in the power of a high idea, true friendship, immutable ethical standards. [ 22; 102]

Ernest Hemingway as a representative of the "Lost Generation"

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899 – 1961) - American writer, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. Ernest Hemingway repeatedly took part in military operations. Ernest Hemingway participated in World War I, which he volunteered for. In those years when Europe was already engulfed in war, in the United States the consciousness of its power and invulnerability gave rise to a mood of smug isolationism and hypocritical pacifism. On the other hand, conscious anti-militarism was also growing among workers and intellectuals. [ 16; 7] However, since the beginning of the century, the United States has become an imperialist and even colonial power. Both the government and the largest monopolies were interested in markets and jealously monitored the redistribution of colonies, spheres of influence, etc. The largest capitalists carried out intensive exports of capital. The House of Morgan was quite openly an Entente banker. But official propaganda, this mouthpiece of the monopolies, processing public opinion, screamed louder and louder about German atrocities: the attack on little Serbia, the destruction of Louvain, and finally, submarine warfare and the sinking of the Lusitania. The newspapers increasingly demanded that the United States take part in the “war to save democracy,” in the “war to end wars.” Hemingway, like many of his peers, was eager to go to the front. But in American army he was stubbornly not accepted, and therefore, together with a friend, in April 1918, he enlisted in one of the medical units that the United States sent to the Italian army. [ 33; 10]

This was one of the most unreliable areas western front. And since the movement of American troops was slow, these volunteer ambulance columns were also supposed to display American uniforms and thereby lift the spirits of reluctant Italian soldiers. Soon Hemingway's convoy arrived at a site near Fosse Alta, on the Piave River. But he strove to go to the front line, and he was assigned to distribute gifts in the trenches - tobacco, mail, brochures. On the night of July 9, Hemingway climbed to a forward observation post. There he was hit by an Austrian mortar shell, which caused a severe concussion and many minor wounds. Two Italians next to him were killed. Having regained consciousness, Hemingway dragged the third, who was seriously wounded, to the trenches. He was discovered by a searchlight and hit by a machine gun burst, injuring his knee and lower leg. The wounded Italian was killed. During the inspection, twenty-eight fragments were removed from Hemingway, and a total of two hundred and thirty-seven were counted. In Milan, where he was treated, Hemingway experienced his first serious feelings for Agnes von Kurowski, a tall, black-haired nurse, a native of New York. Agnes von Kurowski was largely the model for nurse Catherine Barkley in the novel A Farewell to Arms! After leaving the hospital, Hemingway achieved an appointment as a lieutenant in an infantry shock unit, but it was already October, and a truce was soon concluded - Hemingway was awarded the Italian Croix de Guerre and a silver medal for valor. Then, in Italy in 1918, Hemingway was not yet a writer, but a soldier, but there is no doubt that the impressions and experiences of this six months at the front not only left an indelible mark on his entire future path, but were also directly reflected in a number of his works. In 1918 year, Hemingway returned home to the United States in the aura of a hero, one of the first wounded, one of the first awarded. Perhaps this flattered the young veteran’s pride for some time, but very soon he got rid of this illusion. [ 33; 11]

Later, he returned to the war more than once, recalling the sensations he had experienced. The experience at the front left an unhealed wound in the writer’s memory and in his very perception of the world. Hemingway was always drawn to depicting people in extreme situations, when true human character is revealed, in the “moment of truth,” as he liked to say, the highest physical and spiritual tension, a collision with mortal danger when the true essence of a person is highlighted with particular relief.

He argued that war is the most fertile topic, because it concentrates. The idea that military experience is extremely important for a writer, that a few days at the front can be more significant than many “peaceful” years, was repeated to him more than once. However, the process of gaining clarity of understanding of the true nature and nature of the catastrophe that broke out was not quick and simple for him. It occurred gradually, throughout the first post-war decade, and was largely stimulated by reflections on the fate of front-line soldiers, those who would be called the “lost generation.” He constantly thought about his experience at the front, assessed, weighed, allowed his impressions to “cool down,” and tried to be as objective as possible. [ 16; 38] Further, the theme of the First World War can be traced in his work - he works a lot in Germany, France, Lausanne. He writes about the unrest caused by the fascist regime, about a resigned France. Later, the author of the novels “A Farewell to Arms!” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” will take part in the Second World War, in the British aviation, fighting against the pilots of the FAU-1 “suicide planes”, will lead the movement of French partisans and will actively fight against Germany, for which in 1947 he was awarded a bronze medal medal. Thus, a journalist with such rich military experience was able to delve into the international problem much more deeply than many of his contemporaries.

A brave reporter, better known as a talented writer, Ernest Hemingway wrote his reports from a hot spot - Spain, engulfed in civil war. Often he surprisingly accurately noted all the features of the course of the war and even predicted its possible development. He proved himself not only as the author of impressive landscapes, but also as a capable analyst.

The problem of the “lost generation” is developed in full force in E. Hemingway’s novel “Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)”, published in 1926. It was possible to write a novel in such a deadline only with Hemingway’s incredible ability to work. But there was another circumstance, even more significant - he was writing a novel about his generation, about people whom he knew to the last line of their character, whom he observed for several years, living next to them, drinking with them, arguing, having fun, going to a bullfight together in Spain. He also wrote about himself, putting into the character of Jake Barnes his personal experience, a lot of what he himself had experienced. At one time, Hemingway decided to abandon the title of the novel "Fiesta" and decided to call it "The Lost Generation", but then he changed his mind, put the words about the "lost generation" as an epigraph, and next to it he put another - a quote from Ecclesiastes about the earth that endures forever. [ 17; 62]

While working on the novel, Hemingway was guided by life, by living characters, so the heroes of his novel are not one-dimensional, not smeared with the same paint - pink or black, they are living people who have both positive and negative character traits. Hemingway’s novel depicts characteristic features well-known part of the “lost generation”, that part of it that was truly morally destroyed by the war. But Hemingway did not want to classify himself, and many people close to him in spirit, as a “lost generation”. But the “lost generation” is heterogeneous.

On the pages of the novel, characters appear - named and unnamed - who are indisputable and definable at first glance. Those same ones are fashionable with their “lostness”, flaunting their “courageous” lack of ideality, “soldier’s” directness, even though they know about the war only by hearsay. The heroes of Hemingway’s novel absorbed the features of many people he knew; in the novel a multifaceted and beautiful image of the land arose, the image of Spain, which he knew and loved. [ 14; 76]

All of Hemingway's work is autobiographical and his own experiences, worries, thoughts and views on events in the world are expressed in his works. Thus, the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” is dedicated to the events of the First World War, in which the main character deserts, but not because of his human qualities, but because the war is disgusting to him, all he wants is to live with his beloved woman, and in the war he only cripples himself. Lieutenant Frederick Henry is a largely autobiographical person. While creating this novel, Hemingway was highly self-critical, constantly correcting and redoing what he had written. He made 32 versions of the novel's ending until he settled on a happy ending. It was, he admits, painful work. A lot of effort went into coming up with the name. [ 15; 17]

Immediately after its release, the novel topped the bestseller list. The novel marked the beginning of Hemingway's world fame. This is one of the most readable works literature of the 20th century. Novel "A Farewell to Arms!" People of all generations read with equal interest. The war occupied significant place in the works of Hemingway. The writer's attitude towards imperialist wars was unambiguous. In his novel, Hemingway shows all the horrors of war, which is a mosaic of large and small human tragedies. The narration is told from Henry's point of view and begins with descriptions of front-line life in the days of calm. There is a lot of personal, experienced and experienced by Hemingway in this image. Lieutenant Henry is not against war as such. Moreover, in his opinion, this is the courageous craft of a real man. Once at the front, he experiences a loss of illusions and deep disappointment in the war. Personal experience and friendly communication with Italian soldiers and officers awaken him from his chauvinistic frenzy and lead him to the understanding that war is a senseless, cruel massacre. The disorderly retreat of the Italian army symbolizes the lack of harmony in the world. To avoid execution based on a ridiculous sentence scribbled in a pocket notebook by an indifferent hand, Frederick attempts to escape. He succeeds. Henry's flight is a decision to leave the game, to break off his absurd ties with society. He breaks his oath, but his military duty is portrayed in the book as a duty to his subordinates. But neither Frederick himself nor his subordinates realized their own duty in relation to the war in general, did not see the meaning in it. They are united only by a sense of comradeship and genuine mutual respect. Whatever Hemingway wrote about, he always returned to his main problem - to a person in the tragic trials that befell him. Hemingway professed the philosophy of Stoicism, paying tribute to human courage in the most disastrous circumstances.[ 21; 16]

The theme of the Civil War in Hemingway’s work did not arise by chance. It grew out of reports about Italy, motivated by the author’s hatred of the fascist regime and the desire to resist it in any way possible. It is surprising that an American, at first glance an outside observer, so deeply and sincerely perceived the mentalities of completely different peoples. The danger of the nationalist ideas of fascist Italy and Germany became clear to him from the very beginning. The desire for the liberation of their territory by the patriots of Spain became close, and the lesser threat to humanity from communism became obvious.

Spain unusual country. It represents the fragmentation known throughout the world - Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia - all the inhabitants of the provinces have been competing with each other over the course of a long history and in every possible way emphasize their own independence. But during the Civil War, as Hemingway writes, it played a significant role. It would seem that such a division should have a negative impact on the course of military operations; the inability to contact neighboring provinces usually frightens and reduces the enthusiasm of the fighters. But in Spain, this fact played a diametrically opposite role - even in war, representatives of different provinces compete with each other, and this leads to the fact that the isolation of regions from each other only gave strength to the fighting spirit - everyone wanted to show their heroism, which has no equal among the heroism of their neighbors. Ernest Hemingway mentions this fact in a series of Spanish reports dedicated to Madrid. He writes about the enthusiasm that arose among the officers after the enemy cut them off from neighboring sectors of the front. The Spanish Civil War began as a conflict between the Communist Party, supported by the two great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, and the party led by General Franco, which had the support of Germany and Italy. And in fact, this became the first open opposition to the fascist regime. Hemingway, who fiercely hated this ideology and fought against it, instantly took the side of his like-minded people. Even then, the writer understood that these actions would not subsequently turn into a “small victorious war”, the fight against fascism would not end on the territory of Spain, and much larger military actions would unfold. [ 25; 31]

In the play "The Fifth Column" and the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" the author openly criticizes fascism. Hemingway criticizes everything about the dictator - from decisions to appearance to decisive actions taken in governing the people. He makes of him a person who reads a French-English dictionary upside down, acting as a duelist in front of peasant women. In his articles, the writer repeatedly called on the world to pay attention to the phenomenon that had arisen in order to cut it off in the bud. After all, the American understood that the fascist regime would not disappear in a year and a half, as many of his contemporaries believed. The writer was able to adequately assess the policies of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. He hated fascism and fought against it with all possible ways- both as a journalist and as a voluntary participant in hostilities. In his struggle against fascism, he even went so far as to join the Communist Party, without sharing its views. Since communism was seen as the only equivalent opposition to the aggressor, taking his side meant the greatest success in such a battle. In this, the civil war was of a dramatic nature for him - he was forced to take the side of other people's views, moving away from his own. The writer transfers the same conflicting feelings to Robert Jordan, the main character of the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” His hero receives the task of crossing the front line and, when the offensive of the Republican army begins, with the help of a partisan detachment, blow up a bridge in the rear of the Nazis in order to prevent them from sending up reinforcements. It would seem that the plot is too simple and uncomplicated for a great novel, but Hemingway solved a number of problems in this novel moral problems, solved them for myself in a new way. And first of all, it was the problem of the value of human life in relation to the moral duty voluntarily assumed in the name of a high idea. The novel is permeated with a sense of tragedy. His hero Robert Jordan lives with this feeling. The threat of death hovers over the entire partisan detachment, either in the form of fascist planes or in the guise of fascist patrols appearing at the detachment’s location. But this is not the tragedy of helplessness and doom in the face of death, as it was in the novel “A Farewell to Arms!”

Realizing that completing the task could end in death, Jordan, nevertheless, argues that everyone must fulfill their duty and much depends on the fulfillment of duty - the fate of the war, and maybe even more. “So instead of the individualism of Frederick Henry, who thinks only about preserving his life and his love, Hemingway’s new hero, in the conditions of a willow war, not imperialist, but revolutionary, has a sense of duty to humanity, to the lofty idea of ​​the struggle for freedom. And love in the novel rises to other heights, intertwined with the idea of ​​public duty [33; 30]

The idea of ​​duty to people permeates the entire work. And if in the novel "A Farewell to Arms!" Hemingway, through the mouth of his city, denied “lofty” words, then when applied to the war in Spain, these words again acquire their original value. The tragic sound of the novel is completed in the epilogue - Jordan completes the task, the bridge is blown up, but he himself is seriously wounded.

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