Spanish Literature of the Renaissance. Renaissance Literature

The history of the Renaissance begins in This period is also called the Renaissance. The Renaissance changed into culture and became the forerunner of the culture of the New Age. And the Renaissance ended in the 16th-17th centuries, since in each state it has its own start and end date.

Some general information

Representatives of the Renaissance are Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio. They became the first poets who began to express sublime images and thoughts in frank, common language. This innovation was received with a bang and spread in other countries.

Renaissance and art

The peculiarity of the Renaissance is that the human body became the main source of inspiration and subject of study for artists of this time. Thus, the emphasis was placed on the similarity of sculpture and painting with reality. The main features of the art of the Renaissance period include radiance, refined use of the brush, the play of shadow and light, care in the work process and complex compositions. For Renaissance artists, the main images were from the Bible and myths.

The resemblance of a real person to his image on this or that canvas was so close that fictional character seemed alive. This cannot be said about the art of the twentieth century.

The Renaissance (its main trends are briefly outlined above) perceived the human body as an endless beginning. Scientists and artists regularly improved their skills and knowledge by studying the bodies of individuals. The prevailing view then was that man was created in the likeness and image of God. This statement reflected physical perfection. The main and important objects of Renaissance art were the gods.

Nature and beauty of the human body

Renaissance art paid great attention to nature. A characteristic element of the landscapes was varied and lush vegetation. Skies of a blue hue that were pierced by the sun's rays that penetrated the clouds white, were a magnificent backdrop for the floating creatures. Renaissance art revered the beauty of the human body. This feature was manifested in the refined elements of the muscles and body. Difficult poses, facial expressions and gestures, a harmonious and clear color palette are characteristic of the work of sculptors and sculptors of the Renaissance period. These include Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and others.

Renaissance (Renaissance). Italy. 15-16th century. Early capitalism. The country is ruled by rich bankers. They are interested in art and science.

The rich and powerful gather around them the talented and wise. Poets, philosophers, artists and sculptors have daily conversations with their patrons. For a moment it seemed that the people were ruled by wise men, as Plato wanted.

They remembered the ancient Romans and Greeks. Who also built society free citizens. Where the main value is people (not counting slaves, of course).

Renaissance is not just copying the art of ancient civilizations. This is a mixture. Mythology and Christianity. Realism of nature and sincerity of images. Physical beauty and spiritual beauty.

It was just a flash. Period High Renaissance– that’s about 30 years! From the 1490s to 1527 From the beginning of the heyday of Leonardo's creativity. Before the sack of Rome.

The mirage of an ideal world quickly faded. Italy turned out to be too fragile. She was soon enslaved by another dictator.

However, these 30 years have determined the main features European painting 500 years ahead! Up to .

Realism of the image. Anthropocentrism (when a person is the main character and hero). Linear perspective. Oil paints. Portrait. Scenery…

Incredibly, during these 30 years several brilliant masters worked at once. Which at other times are born once every 1000 years.

Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian are the titans of the Renaissance. But we cannot fail to mention their two predecessors. Giotto and Masaccio. Without which there would be no Renaissance.

1. Giotto (1267-1337)

14th century Proto-Renaissance. Its main character is Giotto. This is a master who single-handedly revolutionized art. 200 years before the High Renaissance. If it were not for him, the era of which humanity is so proud would hardly have come.

Before Giotto there were icons and frescoes. They were created according to Byzantine canons. Faces instead of faces. Flat figures. Failure to comply with proportions. Instead of a landscape there is a golden background. Like, for example, on this icon.

And suddenly frescoes by Giotto appear. On them volumetric figures. Faces of noble people. Sad. Mournful. Surprised. Old and young. Different.

Frescoes by Giotto in the Church of Scrovegni in Padua (1302-1305). Left: Lamentation of Christ. Middle: Kiss of Judas (fragment). Right: Annunciation of St. Anne (Mother Mary), fragment.

Giotto's main work is the cycle of his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. When this church opened to parishioners, crowds of people poured into it. Because they have never seen anything like this.

After all, Giotto did something unprecedented. It was as if he translated biblical stories into simple, understandable language. And they have become much more accessible to ordinary people.

This is precisely what will be characteristic of many masters of the Renaissance. Laconic images. Lively emotions of the characters. Realism.

Read more about the master's frescoes in the article.

Giotto was admired. But his innovations were not developed further. The fashion for international gothic came to Italy.

Only after 100 years will a master appear, a worthy successor to Giotto.

2. Masaccio (1401-1428)

Early 15th century. The so-called Early Renaissance. Another innovator is entering the scene.

Masaccio was the first artist to use linear perspective. It was designed by his friend, the architect Brunelleschi. Now the depicted world has become similar to the real one. Toy architecture is a thing of the past.

He adopted Giotto's realism. However, unlike his predecessor, he already knew anatomy well.

Instead of blocky characters, Giotto has beautifully built people. Just like the ancient Greeks.

Masaccio did not live long life. He died, like his father, unexpectedly. At 27 years old.

However, he had many followers. Masters of subsequent generations went to the Brancacci Chapel to study from his frescoes.

Thus, Masaccio’s innovations were taken up by all the great titans of the High Renaissance.

3. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the titans of the Renaissance. Which had a tremendous impact on the development of painting.

It was he who raised the status of the artist himself. Thanks to him, representatives of this profession are no longer just artisans. These are creators and aristocrats of the spirit.

Leonardo made a breakthrough primarily in portraiture.

He believed that nothing should distract from the main image. The gaze should not wander from one detail to another. This is how his famous portraits appeared. Laconic. Harmonious.

Leonardo's main innovation is that he found a way to make images... alive.

Before him, characters in portraits looked like mannequins. The lines were clear. All details are carefully drawn. The painted drawing could not possibly be alive.

But then Leonardo invented the sfumato method. He shaded the lines. Made the transition from light to shadow very soft. His characters seem to be covered with a barely perceptible haze. The characters came to life.

Since then, sfumato will be included in the active vocabulary of all the great artists of the future.

There is often an opinion that Leonardo, of course, is a genius. But he didn’t know how to finish anything. And I often didn’t finish paintings. And many of his projects remained on paper (in 24 volumes, by the way). And in general he was thrown either into medicine or into music. And at one time I was even interested in the art of serving.

However, think for yourself. 19 paintings. And he is the greatest artist of all time. And some are not even close to greatness. At the same time, having painted 6,000 canvases in his life. It is obvious who has the higher efficiency.

About herself famous painting read the master in the article.

4. Michelangelo (1475-1564)

Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor. But he was universal master. Like his other Renaissance colleagues. Therefore, his pictorial heritage is no less grandiose.

He is recognizable primarily by his physically developed characters. Because he portrayed a perfect man. In which physical beauty means spiritual beauty.

That’s why all his heroes are so muscular and resilient. Even women and old people.

Michelangelo. Fragments of the fresco “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican.

Michelangelo often painted the character naked. And then he added clothes on top. So that the body is as sculpted as possible.

He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel himself. Although these are several hundred figures! He didn’t even allow anyone to rub paint. Yes, he was a loner. Possessing a cool and quarrelsome character. But most of all he was dissatisfied with... himself.

Michelangelo lived a long life. Having survived the decline of the Renaissance. For him it was a personal tragedy. His later works are full of sadness and sorrow.

Anyway creative path Michelangelo is unique. His early works are a praise of the human hero. Free and courageous. IN best traditions ancient Greece. What's his name David?

In the last years of life these are tragic images. Intentionally rough-hewn stone. It’s as if we are looking at monuments to the victims of 20th century fascism. Look at his Pietà.

Michelangelo's sculptures at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. Left: David. 1504 Right: Palestrina's Pietà. 1555

How is this possible? One artist in one life went through all stages of art from the Renaissance to the 20th century. What should subsequent generations do? Well, go your own way. Realizing that the bar is set very high.

5. Raphael (1483-1520)

Raphael was never forgotten. His genius has always been recognized. And during life. And after death.

His characters are endowed with sensual, lyrical beauty. It is his who is rightfully considered the most beautiful female images ever created. Their outer beauty reflects and spiritual beauty heroines. Their meekness. Their sacrifice.

Fyodor Dostoevsky said the famous words “Beauty will save the world” about. This was his favorite painting.

However, sensory images are not the only strong point Raphael. He thought through the compositions of his paintings very carefully. He was an unsurpassed architect in painting. Moreover, he always found the simplest and most harmonious solution in organizing space. It seems that it cannot be any other way.

Raphael lived only 37 years. He died suddenly. From a caught cold and medical error. But his legacy is difficult to overestimate. Many artists idolized this master. Multiplying his sensual images in thousands of his canvases..

Titian was an unsurpassed colorist. He also experimented a lot with composition. In general, he was a daring and brilliant innovator.

Everyone loved him for such brilliance of his talent. Called “The King of Painters and the Painter of Kings.”

Speaking about Titian, I want to put an exclamation point after every sentence. After all, it was he who brought dynamics to painting. Pathos. Enthusiasm. Bright color. The radiance of colors.

Towards the end of his life he developed an unusual writing technique. The strokes are quick. Thick. Pasty. I applied the paint either with a brush or with my fingers. This makes the images even more alive and breathing. And the plots are even more dynamic and dramatic.

Doesn't this remind you of anything? Of course, this is technology. And the technique of 19th century artists: Barbizonians and. Titian, like Michelangelo, would go through 500 years of painting in one lifetime. That's why he's a genius.

Read about the master's famous masterpiece in the article.

Renaissance artists are artists of great knowledge. To leave such a legacy, you had to know a lot. In the field of history, astrology, physics and so on.

Therefore, every image of them makes us think. Why is this depicted? What is the encrypted message here?

Therefore, they almost never made mistakes. Because they thoroughly thought through their future work. Using all your knowledge.

They were more than artists. They were philosophers. Explaining the world to us through painting.

That is why they will always be deeply interesting to us.

General characteristics of the Spanish Renaissance. The literature of the Renaissance in Spain is distinguished by great originality, which is explained in the features historical development Spain. Already in the second half of the 15th century. here there is the rise of the bourgeoisie, the growth of industry and foreign trade, the emergence of capitalist relations and the weakening of feudal institutions and the feudal worldview. The latter was especially undermined by the humanistic ideas that penetrated the most advanced country of that time - Italy.

However, in Spain this process proceeded in a very unique way, compared to other countries, due to two circumstances that constituted the specifics of the history of Spain of that era. The first of them is also connected with the conditions in which the reconquista took place. The fact that individual regions of Spain were conquered separately, at different times and under different conditions, led to the fact that in each of them special laws, mores and local customs were developed. The peasantry and the cities founded on the conquered lands in different places received different rights and liberties.

Heterogeneous local rights and liberties, to which various regions and cities tenaciously clung, were the cause of constant conflicts between them and the royal power. It often even happened that cities united against her with feudal lords. Therefore, by the end of the early Middle Ages, such a close alliance between the royal power and the cities against the large feudal lords had not been established in Spain. Another feature of the historical development of Spain in the 16th century. is as follows.

The result of the extraordinary influx of gold from America was a sharp rise in the price of all products - a “price revolution” that affected all European countries, but manifested itself with particular force in Spain. Since it became more profitable to buy foreign products, Spanish industry in the second half of the 16th century. greatly decreased. Agriculture also fell into decline - partly for the same reason, partly due to the massive ruin of the peasants and the impoverishment of a huge number of small noble farmers who could not stand the competition with the large landowners who enjoyed various privileges.

All the features of the history of Spain determine the general character of its literature in the 16th – 17th centuries. The literature of the Spanish Renaissance is clearly divided into two periods: 1). Early Renaissance (1475 – 1550) and 2). Mature Renaissance (1550 – first decades of the 17th century). At the beginning of this period, in Spain, as in most other countries, there was the emergence of that new, critical and realistic approach to reality, which is characteristic of the Renaissance worldview.

Spain has a number of outstanding scientists and thinkers who overturned old prejudices and paved the way for modern scientific knowledge. Printing houses appeared, Roman and Greek writers were intensively translated. The center of the humanistic movement became the university in Alcalá de Henares, founded in 1508. Nevertheless, humanistic ideas did not receive their full philosophical development in Spain.

Meeting the most hostile attitude towards themselves at court and among the aristocracy, without finding support from the bourgeoisie, they were muted by the Catholic reaction. Humanistic ideas in Spanish Renaissance literature find expression almost exclusively in poetic images, and not in theoretical writings. For the same reason, the influence of ancient and Italian models was generally much less significant in Spain than, for example, in France or England.

In the same way, the Spanish literature of the Renaissance is less characterized by the cult of form. She is characterized by masculinity, severity, sobriety, great concreteness of images and expressions, dating back to the medieval Spanish tradition. In all these respects, Spanish literature of the Renaissance has a unique, specifically national character. The religious influences of the era were clearly reflected in this literature. The ideology and practice of Catholicism left a strong imprint on both popular life and the life of the privileged classes.

Nowhere in the literature of the 16th – 17th centuries. religious themes do not occupy such a prominent place as in Spain. We find here extremely different “mystical” literature - religious poems and lyrics (Luis de Leon, San Juan de la Cruz), descriptions of “miraculous conversions”, ecstasies and visions (Teresa de Jesus), theological treatises and sermons (Luisde Granada). The greatest playwrights (Lope de Vega, Calderon), along with secular plays, write religious plays, dramatized legends and lives of saints, or “sacred acts” with the theme of glorifying the sacrament of “communion.” But even in plays with secular content, religious and philosophical themes often appear (The Mischief of Seville by Tirso de Molina, The Steadfast Prince by Calderon). Despite all the painful nature of the development of Spain, the people showed maximum national energy.

He discovered great inquisitiveness of mind, determination and courage in overcoming obstacles. The broad prospects that opened up to the people of that time, the scope of political and military enterprises, the abundance of new impressions and opportunities for various vigorous activities - all this was reflected in the Spanish literature of the 16th - 17th centuries, which is characterized by great dynamics, passion and rich imagination.

Thanks to these qualities, Spanish literature of the “golden age” (as the period from approximately the second third of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th century is called) occupies one of the first places among the national literatures of the Renaissance.

Having demonstrated itself brilliantly in all genres, Spanish literature has given especially high examples in the novel and drama, i.e. in those literary forms in which the ardor of feelings, energy and movement typical of Spain at that time could most fully be expressed. Creation of national Spanish drama. In Spain and Portugal, as well as in other countries, there was a medieval theater - partly religious (mysteries and miracles), partly completely secular, comic (farces). Medieval religious theater in Spain, due to the enormous role that the Catholic Church played in the life of the country, was extremely stable; it not only did not disappear during the Renaissance, as happened in Italy and France, but continued to develop intensively throughout the 16th and even 17th centuries; Moreover, plays of this kind were written by the greatest playwrights of the era. The genres of folk comic theater, also cultivated by great masters, remained just as popular throughout these centuries.

However, along with these old dramatic genres, by the middle of the 16th century. In Spain, a new, Renaissance system of dramaturgy was being developed, which also influenced the interpretation of the aforementioned old genres by Renaissance writers.

This new dramatic system occurred due to the collision of two principles in the theater of the medieval folk or semi-folk tradition and scientific-humanistic trends coming from Italy or directly from antiquity, but mostly also through Italian media. At first, two types of dramaturgy expressing these two trends, develop in parallel, separately from one another or entering into struggle with each other, but very soon interaction begins between them, and in the end they merge into a single dramatic system.

In this system of national drama of the Renaissance, the pinnacle of which should be recognized as the work of Lope de Vega, the main principle is still the folk principle, although Italian and ancient influences, originally mastered, played a significant role in its formation. The latter was facilitated by the appearance in the 16th century. translations into Spanish of Plautus and Terence.

Lope de Vega (1562 - 1635) Lope de Vega wrote 1800 “comedies”, to which we must add 400 religious plays and a very large number of interludes. However, Lope de Vega himself cared little about the safety of his dramatic works, which were considered a lower type of literature, as a result of which most of them were not published during his lifetime. The text of only 400 plays by Lope de Vega (almost entirely poetic) has reached us, and another 250 are known only by title. The scope of Lope de Vega's dramaturgy is unusually wide.

He depicts people of all classes and ranks in a variety of positions, writes plays of everyday, historical, legendary, mythological, pastoral content, drawing plots from Spanish chronicles and romances, from Italian novelists (Boccaccio, Bandello, etc.), from the Bible, historical works, stories from travelers, from wandering anecdotes, or freely composing them based on observations of life; he draws modern and old Spaniards, Turks, Indians, biblical Jews, ancient Romans, even Russians (in the play about False Dmitry - “ Grand Duke Moscow"). This reflects his extreme curiosity, desire to embrace the world history of mankind and at the same time an exceptionally rich imagination. "The New Art of Composing Comedy Today." Lope de Vega outlined his theoretical views on dramaturgy in a poetic discussion, which is one of the earliest Western European realistic poetics, “The New Art of Composing Comedies in Our Days.” This work, written by him already in his mature years (1609), sums up what the poet has long been putting into practice.

After various introductory remarks and an outline of the development of comedy and tragedy among the ancients, Lope de Vega's excuse is that, while fully recognizing the superiority of Aristotle's rules, he nevertheless deviates from them to please the public.

Next, he talks about dividing the play into acts, the number of which he reduces from five to three, about its construction, about the importance of exposition, the “knot” of intrigue and denouement, about different styles, how different roles should be written, about effective endings of scenes, about the use different metric sizes, about the desired volume of the play, which should not be too large so that the viewer does not get tired, about all sorts of techniques aimed at maintaining the interest of the viewer, who should not guess about the denouement until the last scene, etc. Lope de Vega's dramas defy precise and exhaustive classification.

From the entire mass of what he wrote, three groups of plays can be distinguished, especially significant ones: “heroic” plays (on subjects from national history), “cloak and sword” comedies and plays in which the people or individual representatives of them appear.

“Heroic” plays depict various episodes from the history of Spain during the time of the Gothic kings, i.e. before the Arab conquest (“The Life and Death of Wamba”), the fight against the Moors (“The Girl from Simanca”, “The Noble Abencerach”), the struggle of kings with rebellious feudal lords and the unification of the Spanish monarchy (“Fuenta Ovejuna”), and finally the discovery of America (“ New world, discovered by Christopher Columbus"). Imbued with an ardent patriotic feeling, they usually idealize their native antiquity, covered in poetry.

Lope de Vega paints here majestic and exciting pictures of the past, thereby proving the power of Spain and strengthening its claims to a leading role on the world stage. The second group of plays, the “cloak and sword” comedies, are named after the typical accessories of the noble costume in which their characters appear - representatives of mainly the middle and lower modern nobility. These everyday comedies of Lope de Vega, in other words, “comedies of manners”, constitute a very a significant part of his dramatic heritage and, moreover, the one that, during the poet’s lifetime, brought him the greatest fame, not only in his homeland, but also in other countries.

And now these plays are still extremely popular in Spain. Particularly famous are: “The Dog in the Manger”, “The Nets of Fenisa”, “Madrid Waters”, “The Valencian Wave”, “The Girl with the Jug”, “The Whims of Belisa”, “The Slave of Her Lover” " etc. The plots of these plays are based almost exclusively on the play of feelings: love, jealousy, noble pride and family honor.

At the same time, they almost completely do not show the social environment, background, life circumstances that could influence the development of the characters’ feelings. But to enliven the action, a stock of traditional motives and conventional techniques is widely used, such as secret dates, serenades, duels, disguises , unexpected meetings, misunderstandings, substitutions, all kinds of coincidences, recognitions, etc. Despite some ideological and artistic limitations of the “cloak and sword” comedies of Lope de Vega, they are a brilliant, in many respects, advanced example of the art of the Spanish Renaissance.

The central theme of these plays - love - is not of a narrow-class noble character. Lope de Vega always means love not as a sensual whim, as it often was in the aristocratic society of that time, but as a deep, all-encompassing feeling that affirms the idea of ​​a complete human personality.Such “honest” love, always striving for marriage as the only form of complete mutual possession, acting in an ennobling way on those who love, is, in the understanding of Lope de Vega, a healthy, natural feeling, equally accessible to both the nobleman and the most modest peasant.

These plays are full of cheerfulness and optimism. They breathe faith in the possibility of happiness, in the success of the human person, boldly fighting for his feelings, for his goals. Lope de Vega's heroes are brave, determined, full of energy; their movements are impetuous, their words and actions are ardent and impetuous.

These are full-blooded Renaissance natures, in which vitality overflows. The female characters of Lope de Vega are remarkable: his heroines have no less spiritual wealth, they are no less enterprising, intelligent and courageous than their partners. Seized by passion, they stop at nothing. In this respect, Lope de Vega does not deviate at all from reality, since in his contemporary noble society women, constrained by the harsh tutelage of fathers, brothers or husbands, played a very inconspicuous role. He revealed and strengthened the possibilities that he felt in the Spanish woman of his era.

Lope de Vega's everyday comedies sparkle with wit. Their gaiety comes from the internal comedy of situations arising as a result of various misunderstandings. It is enhanced by grotesque characters in whose faces they ridicule - in tones more humorous than satirical - swagger, hot temper, stupid pedantry, excessive gullibility, talkativeness and similar human weaknesses and vices.

But with special media comic beginning are the servants. The type of jester servant is already found among Lope de Vega's predecessors, but with them it is usually a simpleton who amuses the audience with his stupidity or clumsiness. The funny servant Lope de Vega sometimes performs this function, but even more often he wittily makes fun of others. Quite often he turns out to be smarter or, at least, more resourceful than his master, whom he rescues from trouble. The plays of Lope de Vega, the heroes of which are people of their people, are few in number.

In his depiction, the most modest peasants or artisans in their intelligence, energy and moral qualities are no lower than aristocrats. They are equally characterized by a sense of self-esteem and a sense of honor. Only their morals are simpler, they live closer to nature, and this is their great advantage, which completely compensates for the lack of education. "Fuente Ovejuna". The most famous of the plays of this kind and one of the peaks of Lope de Vega’s work is the drama “Fuente Ovejuna” (“The Sheep Key”). It can also be classified as a historical play, since its action takes place at the end of the 15th century during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The most significant thing in this play, imbued with truly revolutionary pathos, is that its hero is not any individual character, but the masses, the collective. The commander of the Order of Calatrava, Fernand Gomez, located with his detachment in the village of Fuente Ovejuna, commits violence against the inhabitants , insults the local mayor and tries to dishonor his daughter Laurencia.

The peasant Frondoso, who loves her, manages to protect the girl. But during the wedding of Frondoso and Laurencia, the commander appears with his henchmen, disperses the crowd, beats the alcalde with his own baton, wants to hang Frondoso and kidnaps Laurencia in order to then take possession of her by force. The peasants cannot bear such dishonor: all of them - men, women, children - arm themselves and beat the rapists. During the court case appointed by the king in this case, when the peasants are tortured, they demand a confession of who exactly killed Fernan Gomez, everyone answers as one: “Fuente Ovejuna!” The king is forced to stop the trial: he “forgives” the peasants and takes Fuente Ovejuna under his direct authority.

Such is the power of popular solidarity. In this play, the concept of honor moves from the category of noble feelings into a non-class, universal category. It becomes synonymous with the dignity of the human person, standing guard over his rights. Lope de Vega depicts how, under the influence of wild violence, social self-awareness awakens in the peasant masses, how initially disparate members of the rural community unite into a strong team, capable of struggle and feat.

Lope de Vega seeks in history the justification for the alliance of the people with royal power. Indeed, in his time, as in the early Middle Ages, the political aspirations of the Spanish people usually took the form of monarchical ideas. However, Lope de Vega did not have enough vigilance to discern the true nature of royal power, as it was in contemporary Spain.

Being a strong supporter of the system of absolutism, which he tried to reconcile with his democratic and humanistic aspirations, Lope de Vega was forced to idealize the image of the king. At the same time, as a subtle and truthful artist, he could not help but see contemporary royal power in its true light and not to reflect what he saw in his work.

He tried to overcome this contradiction by distinguishing the king as a ruler and a man; Moreover, all the negative things that royal power brought with it, he attributed to the person. As a ruler, the king is infallible; as a person, he is subject to all human weaknesses and vices, although he is capable of correction. Therefore, criticism of the king’s behavior as a human person is useless and even unacceptable: his person is sacred, it requires unconditional respect and obedience. But objectively, Lope de Vega’s images of kings often contain an exposure of the idea of ​​royal power.

Playwrights of the school of Lope de Vega. The first place belongs to Tirso de Molina (1571 - 1648), the largest playwright of this entire group and a zealous follower of Lope de Vega. Tirso de Molina was a monk and historiographer of his order. This did not prevent him from writing, along with purely religious plays, very cheerful and cheerful comedies, which brought persecution on him from the spiritual authorities. He owned about 400 plays of various kinds, of which more than 80 have reached us.

The work of Tirso de Molina is distinguished by the same inconsistency as the work of Lope de Vega. Tirso de Molina created the genre of religious and philosophical drama. The most famous play written by Tirso de Molina, “The Mischief of Seville,” belongs to this group. This legend is of folklore origin: at its core lies a story about a daredevil who invited a statue of a dead man to his dinner and paid for it with his life. Tirso de Molina associated with this story a characteristic type of an unscrupulous seducer of women and an immoralist.

Don Juan (this is the Spanish form of this name), wishing through deception to enjoy the love of Donna Anna, the bride of his friend, comes under the guise of him on a date with her and encounters her father, the commander, whom he kills. Having seduced before and after this other women of various kinds social status - a duchess, a fisherman, a shepherdess, he mockingly invites to dinner the statue of the commander he killed and, having accepted her return invitation, goes to the church where the commander is buried, and dies there, falling into the underworld.

The hero of Tirso de Molina is still very primitive. He conquers women not thanks to his personal charm, but by more crude means: aristocrats - through deception, commoners - with a promise to marry and make his chosen one a noble lady. But he captivates with his cheerfulness, energy, and extraordinary courage, which the author depicts in attractive colors. After the statue arrives, Don Juan, still drenched in cold sweat, quickly controls himself and says: “This is all just a play of the imagination.

Down with stupid fear Am I not afraid of living bodies endowed with soul, strength and intelligence? Should I be afraid of the dead? Tomorrow I will go to the chapel, since I am invited there, let all of Seville marvel at my fearless feat!” At the same time, don Juan is by no means an atheist. He thinks that he will still have time to “correct”, but for now he wants to enjoy life. To the admonitions of his servant and everyone around him, reminding him of the afterlife, he blithely replies: “You are giving me a long time!” But death takes him by surprise.

IN last moment he shouts to the statue: “I want to call the priest to forgive my sins!” - and dies without having time to repent. At the same time, the image of Don Juan contains a number of positive features and the author himself partly admires him: his exceptional strength, courage and delight in life. Along with these plays, Tirso de Molina owns many comedies, full of the most fun and witty inventions.

As a master of intrigue, he is in no way inferior to Lope de Vega, and in terms of developing characters he often surpasses him. He is especially successful with female characters, almost overshadowing the male ones in a number of his plays. His heroines are distinguished by great passion, rare energy and enterprise, ingenuity, the ability to defend their rights and fight for their happiness. Among other playwrights of this school, Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (1580 - 1639) stands out. In Alarcón's work there is already a transition from comedies of intrigue to comedies of characters, which he significantly deepens and refines much more than Lope de Vega. At the same time, his plays are characterized by restraint of imagination, rigor of composition, some dryness of images and language, as well as a clear moral tendency.

In a number of his comedies, he gives a heartfelt portrayal of friendship, generosity, etc. Plays: “The Weaver of Segovia”, “Dubious Truth”. Among the followers of Lope de Vega, Guillén de Castro (1569 - 1631) also deserves mention, often taking his plots from folk romances.

He is characterized by vividness of imagination, ardor, colorfulness, and at the same time a predilection for depicting very dramatic situations, violent feelings, and fantastic adventures. An example of this can be his play “The Youth of Sid,” the plot of which is based on folk romances about Sid. The life and work of Cervantes. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547 - 1616) was born in the town of Alcala de Henares. He belonged to the Hidalgia and was the son of a poor doctor. Lack of funds prevented him from receiving a good education, but still he graduated from the university.

At twenty-one, Cervantes entered the service of the papal ambassador to Spain, Cardinal Acquaviva. When he returned to his homeland, Cervantes went with him to Italy. After the death of the cardinal, he joined the Spanish army operating in Italy as a soldier, was soon enlisted in the navy and took part in the Battle of Lepanto (1571), where he fought bravely and was seriously injured left hand. In 1575, he decided to return to Spain, but the ship on which he was sailing was attacked by Algerian corsairs and Cervantes was captured by them. He languished in Algeria for five years, repeatedly plotting to escape, ending in failure, until he was finally redeemed from captivity.

At home, he found a ruined family, and his military services had already been forgotten in Spain. In search of income, Cervantes wrote plays for the theater, as well as various poems, for which, by presenting them to some noble person, one could receive a small monetary reward.

In addition, he was working on Galatea, which was published in 1585. At this time, Cervantes got married. The scarcity and unreliability of earnings force Cervantes to accept the position of first a grain collector for the army, then a collector of arrears. Having entrusted government money to a banker who ran away with it, Cervantes was imprisoned in 1597 on charges of embezzlement. Five years later, he was again imprisoned on charges of monetary abuse.

Cervantes spent the last 15 years of his life in great need. Nevertheless, this was the period of the highest flowering of his creativity. In 1605, the first part of the novel “The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha,” begun or at least conceived by Cervantes during his second imprisonment, was published. The publication in 1614 by a certain Avellaneda of a fake continuation of “Don Quixote” prompted Cervantes to accelerate the end of his novel, and in 1615 the second part of it was published. Shortly before this, in the same year, he published a collection of his plays, and before that, in 1613, he published Edifying Novels. The following year he completed the literary satire Journey to Parnassus. The last work Cervantes's novel "Pesiles and Sigismunda", published after his death.

The life of Cervantes, typical of a sensitive and gifted representative of hidalgia, is a series of ardent hobbies, failures, disappointments, a continuous courageous struggle with poverty and at the same time with the inertia and vulgarity of the world around him. The same long path of searching for the past is the work of Cervantes, who found himself relatively late. He writes to order, adapts to the prevailing style, develops “fashionable” genres, trying to have his say in this area, to introduce realistic content and deep moral issues into this style and genres. but these attempts invariably prove unsuccessful until, in his declining years, Cervantes creates his own own style and his own genres, capable of fully expressing his finally matured thought.

Almost all of Cervantes’s lyrics, his literary satirical poem, as well as his experiments in the field of pastoral and chivalric romance (“Galatea” and “Persiles and Sigismunda”) are distinguished by some conventionality and far-fetchedness. The same can be said about most of his dramatic work.

In his dramaturgy, Cervantes first of all seeks verisimilitude, rebelling against the too free treatment of space and time by some of his contemporary playwrights, against clutter in the plot different adventures, extravagances and absurdities, against the discrepancy between the social status of the characters and their language, etc. The pinnacle of Cervantes's dramatic work are his interludes, probably written between 1605 and 1611. These are small, witty plays in which the types and situations have much in common with medieval farces, but are much more lively.

With enormous knowledge of the people's life and psyche, Cervantes paints scenes of their lives as peasants, artisans, city dwellers, judges, whitewashed students, exposing the depravity of the clergy, the tyranny of husbands, the tricks of charlatans, and also good-naturedly ridiculing gullibility, talkativeness, passion for litigation and other human weaknesses. Subtle humor and remarkably bright language give these plays great charm.

Particularly popular of them are “Theater of Miracles”, “Salaman Cave”, “The Jealous Old Man” and “Two Babblers”. Even more remarkable is the collection of his fourteen “Edifying Short Stories.” Cervantes first established the type of Renaissance Italian short story in Spain, decisively moving away from the tradition of medieval storytellers, but at the same time he reformed this Italian type, giving it national Spanish features.

Their plots were almost entirely composed by Cervantes. Life and furnishings are entirely Spanish. The style is characterized by a truly sideboard combination of precision with humor, sometimes good-natured, sometimes bitter.

A huge amount of space is occupied by the speeches of the characters, often very lengthy. Cervantes’s short stories can be divided into three groups: love-adventurous short stories (for example, “The Gypsy Girl,” “The English Spaniard,” etc.), morally descriptive (“Riconete and Cortadillo,” “The Jealous Estramadorean” etc.) and philosophical-sententious (“Licentiate Vidrière”, “Conversation of Two Dogs”), although a strict distinction is impossible here, since many short stories contain features characteristic of other groups.

The title of the collection, “Edifying Stories,” means an invitation to take a deeper look at life and rebuild it on a moral basis. Cervantes believes in the possibility of a happy resolution to the most confusing and dangerous situations if the people caught up in them are honest, noble and energetic; he believes in the “voice of nature” and in its good forces, in the ultimate triumph of man fighting against evil and hostile principles. In this regard, he is always on the side of a young and sincere feeling that defends its rights against all coercion and social conventions.

Cervantes’s ideals, revealed in the “Edifying Stories,” are love of life, but without intoxication with it, courage without arrogance, moral demands on oneself and others, but without any asceticism or intolerance, modest, unostentatious heroism, and most importantly, deep humanity and generosity. The novel “Don Quixote” The novel “Don Quixote” was written by Cervantes in his later years. The novel is the result of his creative thoughts. This work, insufficiently appreciated by his contemporaries, brought posthumous fame to its author and was declared by critics of the 19th – 20th centuries. one of the greatest creations of human thought. “Don Quixote” - the author clearly indicates this in the prologue to the first part of the novel and in its concluding lines - was conceived primarily as a parody of chivalric romances.

Don Quixote, a poor provincial hidalgo, driven crazy by reading chivalric novels and deciding to restore the ancient institution of knight errantry, like the heroes of chivalric novels, goes on exploits in honor of his imaginary “lady” to protect all the offended and oppressed in this world. But his armor is the rusty fragments of the weapons of his ancestors, his horse is a pitiful nag, stumbling at every step, his squire is a cunning and rude local peasant, seduced by the prospect of quick enrichment, the lady of his heart is the peasant girl Aldonza Lorenzo from a neighboring village, renamed by the mad Don -Quixote in Dulcinea Toboso.

In the same way, all knightly rituals and customs are parodied in the novel: the knighting ceremony, the etiquette of “knightly service” to a lady (for example, when Don Quixote orders his “defeated” opponents to go to Dulcinea of ​​Toboso and put themselves at her disposal). Don Quixote's overheated imagination makes him see brilliant adventures or magic in everything, take windmills for giants, an inn for a luxurious castle, a barber's basin for a wonderful helmet, convicts for oppressed knights, a lady riding in a carriage for a kidnapped princess.

All the exploits Don Quixote performs to restore justice on earth lead to completely opposite results: the shepherd Andres, for whom Don Quixote stood up, is subjected to even more severe beatings after his departure; the convicts freed by him scatter to once again become the scourge of society; a ridiculous attack on a funeral procession ends with a broken leg of an innocent licentiate; the desire to help the Spanish knight, surrounded by the Moors, leads to the destruction of the puppet theater on the stage of which this was depicted.

All those whom Don Quixote is trying to “protect” pray to heaven to “punish and destroy his mercy with all the knights who have ever been born.” Don Quixote is insulted, beaten, cursed, mocked, and, to top off his shame, he is trampled by a herd of pigs.

Finally, exhausted morally and physically, the knight of the Sad Image returns to his home and there, having become seriously ill, he regains his sight before his death; he again becomes Don Alonso Quijana, nicknamed the Good for his actions, renounces chivalric nonsense and draws up a will in favor of his niece, with the proviso that she will lose her inheritance if she marries a man who loves chivalric romances.

Satire of chivalric romances was a genre very common in the Renaissance, but Cervantes deepened the situation and complicated the image of the main character. First of all, he endowed his hero with not only negative, but also positive traits, and in addition, gave him a double life - in a healthy and in a delusional state, making him almost two different characters.

Further, Cervantes gave Don Quixote a companion who partly contrasts with him and partly complements him. Last but not least, Cervantes brought Don Quixote into constant and varied contact with real life. First of all, Cervantes ridiculed in his novel not only chivalric novels as a literary genre, but also the very idea of ​​chivalry.

Ridiculing the novels of chivalry, he fought against the old, feudal consciousness, which was reinforced by them and found its poetic expression in them. He protested in his novel against the entire worldview of the ruling elite of Spain, which was trying to revive “chivalrous” ideas on new principles, and primarily against feudal-Catholic reaction that supported these ideas. Cervantes condemns not Don Quixote himself, endowed with traits of rare spiritual nobility, kindness and prudence, but those delusional knightly ideas that captured the imagination of the poor hidalgo.

The latter could only happen because Don Quixote is entirely focused on the past. This past is the world of chivalry, which Don Quixote is trying to restore. He acts blindly, following ready-made norms and rules that have become obsolete, read by him from old books, he does not know how and does not want to take into account real possibilities, the genuine needs and demands of people , with the actual state of affairs.

In his adventures, Don Quixote not only constantly fails, but also sows destruction around himself. His madness is all the more dangerous because it is contagious, as can be seen in the example of Sancho Panza. However, if Cervantes ridicules Don Quixote, he is at the same time full of deep sympathy for him. The means used by Don Quixote are absurd, but the goal is high. Cervantes emphasizes the high moral qualities, selflessness, generosity of Don Quixote, his sincere desire to benefit humanity.

According to Sancho Panza, his master has the “heart of a dove.” In moments of mental enlightenment, when Don Quixote forgets his knightly fantasies, he is unusually attractive - easy to deal with everyone, extremely humane and reasonable. His speeches arouse the admiration of his listeners; they are full of high humanistic wisdom. Remarkable in this regard are the advice that Don Quixote gives to Sancho Panza before he takes over the “governorship”: “Look inside yourself and try to know yourself, this knowledge is the most difficult of all , whatever they can be. Having known yourself, you will no longer puff yourself up, like a frog that wants to be compared to an ox.” Don Quixote continues: “Speak about your artistry, Sancho, with pride and admit without blushing that you are from the peasants, for no one will think of embarrassing you with this, since you yourself are not ashamed of it... Remember, Sancho: if you join on the path of virtue and you will try to do good deeds, then you will not have to envy the deeds of princes and lords, for blood is inherited, but virtue is acquired, and it has an independent value, unlike blood, which has no such value.” Elsewhere, Don Quixote instructs Sancho: “Genealogies are of two types: some trace their origins to sovereign princes and monarchs, but their line gradually becomes impoverished and narrowed over time, like a pyramid turned upside down, others came from the common people, but few Little by little they rise from stage to stage and, finally, become noble gentlemen. Thus, the difference between them is that they were once what they are not now, and others are now what they were not before.” Or again: “Virtues make the blood noble, and a person of humble birth, but virtuous, deserves greater respect than a noble, but vicious one.” Don Quixote says about freedom to Sancho: “Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious bounties that heaven pours out on people; no treasures can compare with it: neither those that are hidden in the bowels of the earth, nor those that are hidden on bottom of the sea.

For the sake of freedom, just as for the sake of honor, one can and should risk one’s life, and, on the contrary, captivity is the greatest of all misfortunes that can happen to a person.

I say this, Sancho, for this: you saw how we were looked after and surrounded with contentment in that castle that we had just left, and yet, despite all these luxurious dishes and soft drinks, it seemed to me personally , as if I were suffering the pangs of hunger, because I did not taste them with the same sense of freedom as if all this were mine, meanwhile, the obligations imposed by benefits and mercies are fetters that constrain the freedom of the human spirit.” A complement to the image of Don Quixote is the image of Sancho Panza. It also has precedents in medieval literature.

Cervantes created a complex, deeply realistic image that reflects the essential aspects of Spanish life of that time and is very important for general plan novel.

At first glance, Sancho Panza is the complete opposite of his master: while Don Quixote, exhausting himself physically, longs to work disinterestedly for the benefit of humanity, Sancho Panza first of all tries to please his flesh and serve himself. He loves to sleep and eat most of all (his very name is expressive: panza in Spanish means “belly”), he wants to become a count and governor, he wants his wife Teresa Panza to ride in a gilded carriage.

Dreaming of how he will become a ruler, Sancho Panza asks if he can sell all his subjects into slavery and put the money in his pocket.

He is all about practice, in the present, while Don Quixote is all about the dream of the past, which he wants to revive. But at the same time, there is a deep internal similarity between them, making them sons of one people and a product of one era.

Their fate is similar: both, carried away by their fantasies, are torn away from their family and a peaceful, healthy life; to go around the world in search of luck, and both are eventually cured of their delusions, convinced that they were at the mercy of mirages.

But the difference between them is that Don Quixote was captivated by the dream of eradicating evil on earth and of knightly glory, i.e. the old knightly ideal in its classical form, and Sancho Panza, under the influence of the mad Don Quixote, was seduced by the idea of ​​easy money, the spirit of adventurism, i.e. the modern form of the knightly ideal - the “chivalry” of primitive accumulation.

There is also a difference in how they heal from their mirages. Don Quixote, despite the failures raining down on him, remains in the grip of his knightly illusions, until, finally, the scales fall from his eyes. But that second, healthy person who lives in him develops throughout the novel under the influence of both contact with life and communication with the pure soul of Sancho Panza. Don Quixote’s speeches at the moments of enlightenment of his consciousness become more and more significant and wise, and in parallel with this, he becomes more and more trusting and frank with his squire, increasingly asks him for advice and help, and the social distance between them decreases until, in the last chapters, it disappears completely.

On the contrary, Sancho Panza is healed mentally and morally long before the end of the novel. He is freed from the nonsense he received from Don Quixote as a result of severe trials, the last of which was his “governorship”. However, he entered into the management of his “solid island” having already been cured of the thirst for profit that had previously possessed him, and this happened to him partly under the influence of the constant example of Don Quixote’s spiritual nobility and kindness.

Sancho Panza accompanies Don Quixote on the latter's third journey, no longer for reasons of profit, but out of heartfelt affection for his master, whom he sincerely loved. At the end of the novel, he does not remember the salary that he owes him. Under the influence of Don Quixote, Sancho becomes kinder and more generous in his relations with people, he is no longer driven by a thirst for enrichment, but by a love of justice and humanity. In general, both for Don Quixote, knightly undertakings, and for Sancho Panza, his dreams of enrichment are only a temporary borrowed shell, deeply alien to their nature.

Both of them are the noblest representatives of the Spanish people. If the madcap Don Quixote is the bearer of the highest humanistic ideas, then the simple-minded, merry fellow Sancho Panza is the embodiment folk wisdom and moral health. Both are close to each other, which is especially clear in the episode of the governorship of Sancho Panza, where the noble humanistic ideals of Don Quixote are crossed with the practical reason, honesty and healthy humanity of Sancho. Another moment of their deep and already final rapprochement is the ending of the novel, when Sancho Panza, shedding tears, says goodbye to the dying master, who has freed himself from his delusions and is no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but again Alonso Quijan the Good.

It is very characteristic that in a novel in which several hundred characters are presented, very few representatives of the aristocracy are shown, and if they appear, they are outlined in the most meager and general strokes.

Such are the Duke and Duchess in the second part, looking like puppets in comparison with the rest of the characters in the novel, bright and alive. Cervantes very subtly makes one feel all the emptiness and boredom of their lush, ceremony-filled life, making them rejoice at the meeting with Don Quixote and his squire.

Cervantes has a certain vague attitude towards the clergy, although his statements on this matter are also extremely disguised. In Don Quixote, clergy are not shown at all in their specific practice. Apart from a certain number of monks, theology students and priests participating in Don Quixote’s road adventures as extras, in the entire novel there is only one clergyman who has a certain physiognomy: Don Quixote's friend, the priest of the same village where the hero lives, enlightened and sensible, always able to give good advice, who discovered during an inspection of Don Quixote's library a subtle literary taste that cares about the affairs of Don Quixote and his recovery, he does not look like a priest, and no one would have guessed that he belonged to this corporation if not for his dress.

If Cervantes avoids depicting the upper classes of society and the clergy in his novel, then he gives in it a broad picture of people's life, depicting truthfully and colorfully peasants, artisans, mule drivers, shepherds, poor students, soldiers, inn maids, etc. He describes all these little people “walking on the ground with just their feet,” he describes objectively and comprehensively, without hiding the rudeness, greed, grumpiness, and tendency to cheat of many of them, but at the same time he emphasizes the huge reserve of hard work, activity, and optimism hidden in them and good nature.

Cervantes is full of trust and sincere sympathy for all these people, he tries to show them on the good side.

The rude inn maid Maritornes uses her last pennies to buy a glass of beer for poor Sancho Panza. The owner of the inn carefully treats Don Quixote, who was beaten by the muleteers. Cervantes contrasts this half-impoverished Spain, but full of living creative forces, with official Spain, predatory, arrogant and pious, idealizing itself in the pompous pictures of chivalric romances or the sugary images of pastoral novels.

In all these scenes, which form the main background of the novel, elements of a healthy life are given that are capable of further development. In addition to them are several inserted short stories, which depict higher, very complex forms of life, poeticized partly in tragic, partly in sentimental tones. These short stories echo some episodes of the main narrative. The purpose of these short stories is to show the possibility of noble and beautiful forms of human activity on a purely real basis of common sense and concepts, as opposed to the knightly ravings of Don Quixote.

The profound nationality of Cervantes's novel lies in its thoughtful and sympathetic depiction of the broad background of popular life; in the rapprochement of Don Quixote with Sancho Panza, in the demonstration of the creative possibilities hidden in this son of the Spanish people; in a clear and sober attitude towards life; in denouncing all social untruths and violence; in deep love and respect for the person about whom this book speaks; in the optimism that she breathes, despite the sad nature of most of her episodes and the sadness that permeates her.

All this corresponds to the wonderful realistic language of the novel, clear, colorful, rich in shades, incorporating many elements folk speech. The language of Cervantes's characters varies depending on their social status and character. The contrast between the measured and important, sometimes even somewhat archaic language of Don Quixote and the not always correct, but rich and expressive language, sprinkled with proverbs, sayings, interjections, truly folk speech, is especially clear. Sancho Panza. The language of the characters also changes in Cervantes in connection with the nature of the situation or the mental state of the speakers, taking on an oratorical, colloquial, pathetic, humorous or familiar tone.

Cervantes brilliantly captured the main trends and problems of his era. Summarizing them in the images of the two main characters of his novel, he put into them great universal content.

Thereby central images The novel, reflecting the actual state of Spain in the 16th – 17th centuries, at the same time acquired a much broader meaning, retaining its vitality and expressiveness in subsequent centuries. In particular, since Cervantes, who wrote his novel in the conditions of the crisis of humanism, reflected in it with enormous force the collision of the ideal aspirations of the human mind with the world of self-interest and personal interests, “Don Quixote” became for future generations of thinkers and writers a model of contrast between the ideal and “base reality” " The meaning of "Don Quixote" for further development the European novel is very large. Destroying the old chivalric romance, Cervantes at the same time lays the foundations for a new type of novel, which marks a huge step forward in the development of artistic realism.

Cervantes's novel took place at the beginning of the 17th century. an exceptional phenomenon, significantly ahead of its era. It was truly understood and could have a real influence on European literature only in the 18th and especially in the 19th century, when more high shape realism. From this moment on, the ideas, images, manner of narration, general tone and individual stylistic features of Don Quixote find a wide response in European literature.

Of the writers on whom the influence of Cervantes was especially pronounced, one can name Fielding, W. Scott, Dickens, and Gogol.

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Renaissance literature in Spain developed in complex, contradictory conditions. Some of them favored the formation of unique Renaissance phenomena in literature, while others hindered it. The positive thing was that in Spain, where for a long time there was a struggle against foreign (Arab) enslavement, where medieval cities won independence quite early, and peasants in a number of regions (Castile, etc.) did not know serfdom, the people had long developed a high consciousness of self-worth. High level national self-awareness determined the greater proximity of Spanish humanism to folklore, to the artistic creativity of its people, than to the bookish ancient culture. Together with the above-mentioned positive factor in Spain in the 16th - early 17th centuries. Another, opposite law was also in effect. Spain was at that time a country with very reactionary political regime, whose absolutism became hostile to the cities fighting for their liberties. He was hostile to bourgeois development, relied on the military strength of the middle nobility ("caballeros") and on an alliance with the Inquisition, which intensively persecuted free thought. The foreign policy of the Spanish government was also reactionary and adventurist, dragging the country into ruinous wars that usually ended in defeat and led to a decline in the prestige of Spain. Spain's plunder of the newly discovered territories of America (from 1492) also depleted the country's economy. And yet, even under such unfavorable conditions, Spanish humanism developed and produced great literary artists, especially in the field of novel and drama.

For Spanish literature early Renaissance(from the 15th to the mid-16th century) is characterized primarily by the widespread development of folk poetry in the form romance - a lyrical or lyric-epic poem, which reflected the patriotism, love of freedom and poetry of the people, - and humanistic poetry I.-L. de Mendoza-Santillana, J.-H. Manrique, Garcilaso de la Vega. In area prose dominated novel in its three varieties: knightly, pastoral and picaresque.

Literature mature Renaissance (until the 30s of the 17th century), despite the very difficult conditions for humanists that gave rise to its well-known inconsistency, it is generally characterized by great depth and realism. IN poetry At this time, a new phenomenon was the emergence epic poem (L. Camões, A. Ercilla). But the greatest achievements in Spanish literature were realized in the field literary prose And dramaturgy, the peaks of which are the works of Cervantes and Lope de Vega.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) - the greatest Spanish writer, one of the giants of world literature. Much of his literary heritage is explained in his biography, inspired by the spirit of bold adventure characteristic of his era (a trip to Italy, participation in the war against the Turks, capture by Algerian pirates, imprisonment of an innocent person).

Cervantes’s literary heritage is rich and varied: poems (“Message to Mateo Vazquez”, etc.), dramaturgy (tragedy “Numancia”, etc.), prose genres - pastoral and chivalric novels, short stories.

The crowning achievement of Cervantes's creative activity is his immortal novel "The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" (1605-1615) - a complex, deep work, although its depth, like Rabelais's novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel", is not immediately revealed to the reader. The novel is intended as parody to the deprived life content chivalric novels. The author wanted to show that excessive reading of such novels can drive a person almost to a state of insanity. However, Cervantes’s excellent knowledge of the life of the people and his ability to portray typical characters allowed him to create a truly realistic Renaissance novel, in which the depravity of not only chivalric romances, but also the entire Spanish reality was exposed, and at the same time the bright ideas of humanism were embodied. According to V.G. Belinsky, with his “Don Quixote” Cervantes “dealt a decisive blow to the ideal [here: cut off from life] direction of the novel and turned it to reality."

The complexity and depth characteristic of the novel are also inherent in its main characters - Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Don Quixote is parodic and ridiculous when, under the influence of chivalric novels, he imagines himself as a knight capable of crushing the vices around him, while in fact he commits a number of absurd acts (battles with those mistaken for giants windmills etc.), paying for the illusory nature of their fantasies with very real beatings. But Don Quixote is not only parodic, it carries within itself an affirming, Renaissance beginning. He is a noble, selfless fighter for justice, full of high enthusiasm. His humanism is manifested in the deep humanity of his actions aimed at helping people suffering injustice.

Don Quixote's judgments about freedom, peace, human dignity, and love breathe deep humanistic wisdom. This is evidenced by the advice given by Don Quixote before Sancho Panza entered the “governorship”, as well as from his speeches made on various other occasions (“Freedom is one of the most precious goods; for the sake of freedom, as well as for the sake of honor, one can and must risk life”; “Peace is the best good that exists in the world”, etc.). Don Quixote advises his squire not to hide, but to expose his peasant origins, because “a man of humble origin, but virtuous, deserves more respect than a noble, but vicious one.” For the same reason, Don Quixote considers it quite natural to fall in love with the “very pretty village girl” Aldonza Lorenzo, whom he nicknamed Dulcinea of ​​Toboso. This girl's ignorance is not an obstacle to love.

The inconsistency of Don Quixote is that he fights for the humanistic ideals generated by the anti-feudal character of the Renaissance, using archaic means drawn from the dilapidated arsenal of knights errant. From this inconsistency of the hero follows the complex contradictory attitude of the author towards him. Cervantes always makes one feel the nobility of the very idea of ​​this struggle, which was noticed by I.S. Turgenev: “Don Quixote is an enthusiast, a servant of the idea, and therefore is surrounded by its radiance.” It is no coincidence that sometimes the images of the hero and the author merge together: this happens when the hero especially expressively acts as the bearer of the humanist author’s philanthropic dream of a better life built on the principles of justice.

Sancho Panza is not so simple - Don Quixote's squire, a typical Castilian peasant, poor, but alien to humiliation, knowing his own worth, a real bearer of folk wisdom, often covered with a cheerful joke. He is also an enthusiast who, without much thought, followed Don Quixote and left his native village, first for the hope of receiving the “island” promised by Don Quixote, and later simply out of philanthropy towards the impractical hidalgo, whom he was already sorry to leave without his help. The beneficial influence of the humanist knight made it possible for Sancho Panza to reveal the remarkable qualities of a folk sage. In no work of Renaissance literature is the peasant placed on such a pedestal as he is on in Cervantes’s novel.

In the relationships of the main characters, an approach has been taken to the humanistic ideal of relationships between people. The writer makes one feel how stuffy it was for his sensitive hero to live in a world of arrogance and money-grubbing. The relatively early death of Don Quixote, who, according to Sancho Panza, was “burned out of the light by melancholy,” does not seem unexpected.

The great advantages of the novel include its wide presentation of Spanish reality. late XVI- beginning of the 17th century with all its contradictions, with an expression of sympathy for the democratic circles of society. The artistic merits of Don Quixote are great, especially its wonderful language, sometimes archaic and eloquent in the Knight of the Sorrowful Image, sometimes sparkling with all the colors of folk speech in Sancho Panza, sometimes expressive and precise in the author himself. Cervantes deserves great credit for the creation of the Spanish literary language, which is based on the Castilian dialect.

The novel "Don Quixote" is one of greatest works world literature, which had a huge influence on the formation of subsequent realism.

Lope de Bega (1562-1635) - the great Spanish writer of the Renaissance, whose dramaturgy brought him the well-deserved fame of one of the titans of the era. The extensive and varied dramatic heritage of L. de Vega - he wrote more than two thousand plays, of which about 500 were published - is usually divided into three groups. The first of them is socio-political dramas, built primarily on historical material. The second includes domestic comedies family and love character (sometimes they are called “cloak and sword” comedies - because of the characteristic attire of noble youth). The third group includes plays of a religious nature.

To understand the features dramatic works L. de Vega is of great importance for his theoretical treatise “The New Art of Composing Comedies in Our Days” (1609). It formulated the main provisions of Spanish national dramaturgy with its orientation towards the traditions of folk theater, with a critical attitude towards strict adherence to the notorious “rules” of Aristotelian-classicist poetics (where there was more attributed to Aristotle than actually put forward by him), with the desire to satisfy the needs of the audience and believability shown on stage, and the skillful construction of intrigue, tightly tied into a knot that would not give the play the opportunity to break up into separate episodes. The dramaturgy of L. de Vega was the implementation of his theoretical views.

In his domestic comedies Mostly the struggle of young people, coming from the middle nobility, for their personal happiness is shown. They overcome various obstacles that are posed by class prejudices and the despotic power of their parents. The author's sympathies are on the side of natural human feeling, which does not recognize class barriers. The best of his everyday comedies are “The Dancing Teacher”, “Dog in the Manger”, “Girl with a Jug” and others. This is usually comedy of intrigue, where little attention is paid to the psychological motivation of action and the obstacles that stand in the way of lovers are overcome relatively easily. Deep in content and artistically vibrant, the dramaturgy of L. de Vega served as a model for many Spanish playwrights. The best of his plays are performed on theater stages all over the world.

The completion of the Reconquista and the unification of Castile and Aragon gave a powerful impetus to the development of Spanish culture. In the 16th-17th centuries it experienced a period of prosperity known as the “Golden Age”.

At the end of the 15th and first half of the 16th century. In Spain, progressive thought made great strides, manifesting itself not only in the field of artistic creativity, but also in journalism and scientific works imbued with freethinking. The reactionary policies of Philip II dealt a heavy blow to Spanish culture. But the reaction could not stifle the creative forces of the people, which manifested themselves at the end of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries. mainly in the field of literature and art.

Spanish culture of the Renaissance had deep folk roots. The fact that the Castilian peasant was never a serf (See F. Engels, Letter to Paul Ernst, K. Marx and F. Engels, On Art, M.-L. 1937, p. 30.), but spanish cities won their independence early, created in the country a fairly wide layer of people who had a consciousness of their own dignity. (See F. Engels, Letter to Paul Ernst, K. Marx and F. Engels, On Art, M.-L. 1937, p. thirty.)

Although the favorable period in the development of cities and part of the peasantry of Spain was very brief, the legacy of heroic times continued to live in the consciousness of the Spanish people. This was an important source of the high achievements of classical Spanish culture.

However, the Renaissance in Spain was more controversial than in other European countries. In Spain there was not such a sharp break with the feudal-Catholic ideology of the Middle Ages as occurred, for example, in Italian cities during the era of the rise of their economic life and culture. That is why even such progressive people of Spain as Cervantes and Lope de Vega do not completely break with the Catholic tradition.

Spanish humanists of the first half of the 16th century.

Representatives of progressive thought in Spain, active in the first half of the 16th century, were called “Erasmists” (named after the famous humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam). Among them, we must mention first of all Alfonso de Valdez (died 1532), the author of sharp and caustic dialogues in the spirit of the Greek satirist Lucian, in which he attacks the papal throne and the Catholic Church, accusing them of greed and licentiousness. The outstanding Spanish philosopher Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) was also associated with Erasmus. A native of Valencia, Vivss studied in Paris and lived in England and Flanders. He took part in the pan-European humanist movement. Already in one of his early works, “The Triumph of Christ,” Vives criticizes Aristotelian scholasticism, contrasting it with the philosophy of Plato in the spirit of Italian philosophers of the Renaissance.

More important is the fact that, rejecting medieval scholasticism, Vives brings experience to the forefront: observation and experiment allow one to penetrate into the depths of nature and open the way to knowledge of the world. Thus, Vives is one of the predecessors of Francis Bacon. Man is central to his concept. Vives played an important role in the development of psychology as a science. In his work “On the Soul and Life” he examines in detail the problem of perception. In the pamphlet "The Sage" Vivss provides a humanistic critique of old scholastic teaching methods and develops a progressive pedagogical system that includes the study of classical languages, history and natural sciences. Louis Vives was also a supporter of women's education.

Another Spanish thinker who spoke out against scholasticism and Aristotle dissected by the scholastics was Francisco Sanchez (1550-1632). However, unlike Luis Vives, the spirit of free inquiry leads Sanchez to skepticism. His main work is called “On the fact that there is no knowledge” (1581). Exploring the contradictions contained in the process of human cognition, Sanchez comes to a purely negative thesis: everything we know is unreliable, relative, conditional. Such a pessimistic thesis, put forward in the era of the collapse of medieval orders and dogmatic ideas, was not uncommon, especially in Spain with its acute social contradictions and harsh living conditions.

Folk poetry

The 15th century was a century of flourishing folk art for Spain. It was during this time that many romances appeared. Spanish romance is a national poetic form, which is a short lyrical or lyric-epic poem. The romances glorified the exploits of heroes and dramatic episodes of the fight against the Moors. Lyrical romances depicted the love and suffering of lovers in a poetic light. The romances reflected patriotism, love of freedom and the poetic view of the world characteristic of the Castilian peasant.

Folk romance fertilized the development of Spanish classical literature and became the soil on which the great Spanish poetry of the 16th-17th centuries arose.

Humanistic poetry

In Spain, as in other countries, Renaissance literature developed on the basis of a synthesis of national folk art and advanced forms of humanistic literature. One of the first poets of the Spanish Renaissance, Jorge Manrique (1440-1478), was the creator of the brilliant poem “Couplets on the Death of My Father.” In the solemn stanzas of his work, he speaks of the omnipotence of death and glorifies the exploits of immortal heroes.

Already in the 15th century. An aristocratic trend appeared in Spanish poetry, striving to create “learned lyricism” modeled on the literature of the Italian Renaissance. The largest poet of the early Spanish Renaissance, Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536), belonged to this movement. In his poetry, Garcilaso followed the traditions of Petrarch, Ariosto and especially the famous pastoral poet of Italy Sannazzaro. The most valuable thing in Garcilaso's poetry is his eclogues, which depicted in an idealized form the life of shepherds in love in the lap of nature.

Religious lyrics were widely developed in Spanish poetry of the Renaissance. The head of the galaxy of so-called mystical poets was Luis de Leon (1527-1591). An Augustinian monk and doctor of theology at the University of Salamanca, an orthodox Catholic, he was nevertheless accused of heresy and thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, where he was kept from above four years. He managed to prove his innocence, but the poet’s fate itself speaks of the presence in his works of something more than a simple repetition of religious ideas. The magnificent lyrics of Luis de Leon contain deep socially significant content. He acutely feels the disharmony of life, where “envy” and “lies” reign, where unjust judges judge. He seeks salvation in a solitary contemplative life in the lap of nature (ode “blessed life”).

Luis de Leon was not the only poet persecuted by the Inquisition. Many talented sons of the Spanish people were subjected to painful torture in its dungeons. One of these poets, David Abenator Malo, who managed to break free and flee to Holland, wrote about his release: “I came out of prison, out of the grave broken.”

In the second half of the 16th century. in Spain there is an attempt to create a heroic epic. Alonso de Ercilla (1533-1594), who joined the Spanish army and fought in America, wrote a long poem “Araucana”, in which he wanted to glorify the exploits of the Spaniards. Ercilla chose Virgil’s classic poem “The Aeneid” as his model. Ercilla's huge, chaotic work is unsuccessful as a whole. It is replete with fake samples and conventional episodes. In "Araucan" the only beautiful parts are those that depict the courage and determination of the freedom-loving Araucans, an Indian tribe that defended its independence from the Spanish conquistadors.

If the form of an epic poem in the ancient style was not suitable for reflecting the events of our time, then life itself put forward another epic genre, more suitable for their depiction. This genre was the novel.

Spanish novel

From the beginning of the 16th century. chivalric romances became widespread in Spain. The unbridled fantasy of these later creations of feudal literature corresponded to some aspects of the psychology of the people of the Renaissance, who embarked on risky voyages and wandered through distant countries.

In the second half of the 16th century. The pastoral motif, introduced into Spanish literature by Garcilaso de la Vega, was also developed in the form of a novel. Mention should be made here of Jorge de Montemayor's Diana (written around 1559) and Cervantes' Galatea (1585). These novels refract the theme of the “golden age” in their own way, the dream of happy life in the lap of nature. However, the most interesting and original type of Spanish novel was the so-called picaresque novel (novela picaressa).

These novels reflected the penetration of monetary relations into Spanish life, the disintegration of patriarchal ties, the ruin and impoverishment of the masses.

This direction of Spanish literature began with the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea, better known as Celestina (circa 1492). This novella (at least in its main part) was written by Fernando de Rojas.

60 years after the appearance of “Celestina,” in 1554, the first completed example of a picaresque novel, which had a great influence on the development of European literature, the famous “Lazarillo from Tormes,” was published simultaneously in three cities in the form of a small book. This is the story of a boy, a servant of many masters. Defending his right to exist, Lazaro is forced to resort to cunning tricks and gradually turns into a complete rogue. The attitude of the novel's author towards his hero is ambivalent. He sees in trickery a manifestation of dexterity, intelligence and ingenuity inaccessible to people of the Middle Ages. But in Lazaro the negative qualities new human type. The strength of the book is in its frank depiction of the social relations of Spain, where under the cassock and noble cloak the basest passions were hidden, brought to life by the fever of profit.

The successor of the unknown author of “Lazarillo from Tormes” was the outstanding writer Mateo Aleman (1547-1614), author of the most popular picaresque novel “The Adventures and Life of the Punter Guzmán de Alfarace, Watchtower of Human Life.” Mateo Alemán's book differs from the novel of his predecessor in the breadth of its social background and in its darker assessment of new social relations. Life is absurd and cynical, says Aleman, passions blind people. Only by conquering these impure aspirations in yourself can you live wisely and virtuously. Aleman is a supporter of Stoic philosophy, inherited by Renaissance thinkers from ancient Roman authors.

Miguel de Cervantes

The picaresque novel represents that line in the development of Spanish literature, which with particular force prepared the triumph of Cervantes's realism.

The work of the greatest Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) - the founder of new Spanish literature - arose on the basis of a synthesis of all the achievements of its previous development. He raised Spanish and at the same time world literature to new heights.

Cervantes's youth was inspired by the adventurous nature of his time. He lived in Italy, took part in the naval battle of Lepanto, and was captured by Algerian pirates. For five years, Cervantes made one heroic attempt after another to break free. Ransomed from captivity, he returned home a poor man. Seeing the impossibility of existing through literary work, Cervantes was forced to become an official. It was during this period of his life that he came face to face with the prosaic real Spain, with the whole world that was so brilliantly depicted in his Don Quixote.

Cervantes left a rich and varied literary heritage. Starting with the pastoral novel Galatea, he soon turned to writing plays. One of them, the tragedy “Numancia,” depicts the immortal heroism of the inhabitants of the Spanish city of Numancia, fighting against the Roman legions and preferring death to surrendering to the mercy of the victors. Based on the experience of Italian short stories, Cervantes created an original type of Spanish short story, combining a broad depiction of life with teaching (“Edifying Short Stories”).

But everything he created pales in comparison to his brilliant work “The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha” (1605-1615). Cervantes set himself a modest task - to destroy the influence of fantastic and far-from-life chivalric novels. But his excellent knowledge of folk life, keen observation and ingenious ability to generalize led to the fact that he created something immeasurably more significant.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Engraving from the title page of one of the first editions of Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Don Quixote dreams of reviving the times of chivalry in an era when they are long gone. He alone does not understand that chivalry has outlived its time and, like the last knight, is a comic figure. In the feudal era, everything was built on the basis of fist law. And so Don Quixote wants, relying on the strength of his hand, to change the existing order, protect widows and orphans, and punish offenders. In fact, he creates unrest, causes harm and suffering to people. “Don Quixote had to pay dearly for his mistake in imagining that knight errantry was equally compatible with all economic forms of society,” says Marx.

But at the same time, the motives for Don Quixote’s actions are humane and noble. He is a staunch defender of freedom and justice, a patron of lovers, and a fan of science and poetry. This knight is a true humanist. His progressive ideals were born out of the great anti-feudal movement of the Renaissance. They were born in the struggle against class inequality, against outdated feudal forms of life. But even the society that replaced it could not realize these ideals. The callous rich peasant, tight-fisted innkeepers and merchants mock Don Quixote, his intention to protect the poor and weak, his generosity and humanity.

The duality of the image of Don Quixote lies in the fact that his progressive humanistic ideals appear in a reactionary, outdated knightly form.

The peasant squire Sancho Panza acts next to Don Quixote in the novel. The limitations of rural living conditions left their mark on him: Sancho Panza is naive and even stupid at times, he is the only person who believed in the knightly ravings of Don Quixote. But Sancho is not without good qualities. He not only reveals his intelligence, but also turns out to be the bearer of folk wisdom, which he expounds in countless proverbs and sayings. Under the influence of the humanist knight Don Quixote, Sancho develops morally. His remarkable qualities are revealed in the famous episode of the governorship, when Sancho discovers his worldly wisdom, unselfishness and moral purity. In none of the works of the Western European Renaissance is there such an apotheosis of the peasant.

The two main characters of the novel with their fantastic and naive concepts are shown against the backdrop of real, everyday Spain, a country of swaggering nobility, innkeepers and merchants, wealthy peasants and mule drivers. In the art of depicting this everyday life, Cervantes has no equal.

Don Quixote is the greatest folk book of Spain, a wonderful monument of the Spanish literary language. Cervantes completed the transformation of the Castilian dialect, one of the dialects of feudal Spain, into the literary language of the emerging Spanish nation. The work of Cervantes is the highest point in the development of Renaissance culture on Spanish soil.

Luis de Gongora

In the literature of the 17th century. gloomy, hopeless moods are increasingly intensifying, reflecting the internal breakdown in the public consciousness of the era of the progressive decline of Spain. The reaction to the ideals of humanism was most clearly expressed in the work of the poet Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627), who developed a special style called “Gongorism”. From Gongor’s point of view, only the exceptional, the bizarrely complex, and far from life can be beautiful. Gonyura searches for beauty in the world of fantasy, and even turns reality into a fantastic decorative extravaganza. He rejects simplicity, his style is dark, difficult to understand, replete with complex, confusing images and hyperbole. The literary taste of the aristocracy found its expression in Gongora's poetry. Gongorism, like a disease, spread throughout European literature.

Francisco de Quevedo

The greatest Spanish satirist was Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645). Coming from an aristocratic family, Quevedo participated in Spanish political intrigues in Italy as a diplomat. Acquaintance with the political regime in the Spanish possessions led him to deep disappointment. Taking advantage of his proximity to the court, Quevedo submitted a note in verse to Philip IV, in which he asked the king to reduce taxes and improve the situation of the people. The author of the note was captured and imprisoned by the Inquisition, where he was in chains for 4 years and came out a physically broken man. He died shortly after his release.

Quevedo’s famous picaresque novel, “The Life Story of a Rogue Called Pablos, Example of Tramps and Mirror of Swindlers,” was apparently written in the early period of his life. This book is undoubtedly the deepest of picaresque novels. Telling the story of the son of a thieving barber and a prostitute - the unlucky Pablos, Quevedo shows a whole system of abuse of a child. Brought up in such conditions, Pablos became a scoundrel. He wanders around Spain, and monstrous poverty and filth are revealed to him. Pablos sees how people deceive each other in order to exist, sees that all their energy is directed towards evil. Quevedo's novel is imbued with bitterness.

In the second period of his activity, Quevedo turned to creating satirical pamphlets. A special place among them is occupied by his “Visions” - several satirical and journalistic essays depicting images of the afterlife in a grotesque and parodic spirit. Thus, in the essay “The Devil-Possessed Policeman,” a hell is presented where kings and the court camarilla, merchants and rich people are roasted. There is no place for the poor in hell, for they have no flatterers and false friends and no opportunity to sin. In the 17th century The process of degeneration of the picaresque novel genre began.

Spanish theater

Spain, like England and France, experienced in the 16th - 17th centuries. great flowering of drama and theater. The social content of the Spanish drama from Lope de Vega to the Calderas is the struggle of the absolute monarchy, full of intense drama, with the liberties of old Spain, obtained by the Spanish nobility, cities and Castilian peasants during the reconquista.

In contrast to the French tragedy, which was based on ancient models, a national drama arose in Spain, completely original and popular. Dramatic works were created for public theaters. Patriotic spectators wanted to see on stage the heroic deeds of their ancestors and the topical events of our time.

Lope de Vega

The founder of Spanish national drama was the great playwright Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562-1635). A soldier of the “Invincible Armada” army, a brilliant socialite, a famous writer, Lopo de Vega remained a religious person throughout his entire life, and in his old age he became a priest and even a member of the “holy” Inquisition. This duality of Lope de Vega reflected the characteristic features of the Spanish Renaissance. He expressed in his work the humanistic aspirations of this wonderful era, and at the same time Lope de Vega, a leading man of his time, could not break with the traditions of feudal-Catholic Spain. Her social program was the desire to reconcile the ideas of humanism with patriarchal customs.

Lope de Vega was an artist of rare creative fertility; he wrote 1,800 comedies and 400 one-act allegorical cult plays (about 500 works have survived to us). He also wrote heroic and comic poems, sonnets, romances, short stories, etc. Like Shakespeare, Lope de Vega did not invent the plots of his plays. He used various sources - Spanish folk romances and chronicles, Italian govels and books of ancient historians. Large group Lope de Vega's plays consist of historical dramas from the lives of different peoples. He also has a play from Russian history - “The Grand Duke of Moscow”, dedicated to the events of the early 17th century.

In his main works, Lope de Vega depicts the strengthening of royal power, the struggle of Spanish kings against rebellious feudal lords and Moorish hordes. He portrays the progressive significance of the unification of Spain, while sharing the people's naive faith in the king as a representative of non-class justice, capable of resisting the tyranny of the feudal lords.

Among the historical plays of Lope de Vega, folk-heroic dramas (“Peribañez and Commander Ocaña”, “The Best Alcalde is the King”, “Fu-ente Ovejuna”), depicting the relations of three social forces - peasants, feudal lords and royalty, are of particular importance. Showing the conflict between the peasant and the feudal lord, Lope de Vega stands entirely on the side of the peasant.

The best of these plays is “Fuente Ovejuna” - one of the greatest dramas not only of Spanish, but also of world theater. Here Lone de Vega to a certain extent defeats his monarchical illusions. The action of the play dates back to the second half of the 15th century. The commander of the Order of Calatrava is rampaging through his village Fuente Ovejuna (Sheep Spring), encroaching on the honor of peasant girls. One of them, Laurencia, with a hot speech raises the peasants to revolt, and they kill the offender. Despite the fact that the peasants were obedient subjects of the king, and the commander participated in the struggle against the throne, the king ordered the peasants to be tortured, demanding that they hand over the murderer. Only the resilience of the peasants, who answer all questions with the words: “Fhonte Ovehuna did this,” forced the king to reluctantly let them go. Following Cervantes, the author of the tragedy “Numancia,” Lope de Vega created a drama about popular heroism, its moral strength and resilience.

In a number of his works, Lope depicts the despotism of royal power. Among them, the excellent drama “Star of Seville” stands out. The tyrant king encounters the inhabitants of the holy fool of Seville, defending their honor and ancient liberties. The king must retreat before these people, recognize their moral greatness. But the social and psychological power of "The Star of Seville" approaches the tragedies of Shakespeare.

The duality of Lope de Vega was most manifested in dramas dedicated to the family life of the Spanish nobility, the so-called “dramas of honor” (“The Dangers of Absence”, “Victory of Honor”, ​​etc.). For Lopo de Vega, marriage should be based on mutual love. But after the marriage has taken place, its foundations are unshakable. Having suspected his wife of treason, the husband has the right to kill her.

The so-called comedies of cloak and sword depict the struggle of young Spanish nobles - people of a new type - for freedom of feeling, for their happiness, against the despotic power of their fathers and guardians. Lope de Vega builds a comedy on dizzying intrigue, on coincidences and accidents. In these comedies, glorifying love and human free will, Lope de Vega's connection with the humanistic literary movement of the Renaissance was most evident. But Lope de Vega's young Renaissance man does not have that inner freedom, which delights us in Shakespearean comedies. The heroines of Lope de Vega are faithful to the noble ideal of honor. Their appearance has cruel, unattractive features associated with the fact that they share the prejudices of their class.

Playwrights of the Lope school

Lope de Vega performs not alone, but accompanied by a whole galaxy of playwrights. One of Lope's immediate students and successors was the monk Gabriel Telles (1571-1648), known as Tirso de Molina. The place that Tirso occupies in world literature is determined primarily by his comedy “The Mischief of Seville, or the Stone Guest,” in which he created the image of the famous seducer of women Don Juan. The hero of the play, Tirso, does not yet have the charm that captivates us in the image of Don Juan among writers of later eras. Don Juan is a depraved nobleman, remembering the feudal right of the first night, a seducer who strives for pleasure and does not disdain any means to achieve his goal. This is a representative of the court camarilla, insulting women of all classes.

Pedro Calderoy

Spanish drama once again rose to great heights in the work of Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681). The figure of Calderon is deeply contradictory. Coming from a noble aristocratic family, Calderoy was a knight of the Order of Sant Iago. priest and honorary chaplain to King Philip IV. He wrote not only for the folk theater, but also for the court theater.

Calderon's secular plays are directly adjacent to Lope's dramaturgy. He wrote “comedies of cloak and sword,” but Calderoy achieved special realistic power in his “dramas of honor.” Thus, in the drama “The Physician of His Honor,” Calderon painted an expressive portrait of a Spanish nobleman of the 17th century. Fanatical religiosity and equally fanatical devotion to his honor coexist with this nobleman with ruthless sobriety, Jesuit cunning and cold calculation.

Calderon's drama "The Alcalde of Salamey" is a reworking of the play of the same name by Lope de Vega. The village judge Pedro Crespo, who has a developed sense of self-worth and is proud of his peasant origins, condemned and executed a noble officer who dishonored his daughter. The struggle of a simple village judge against a rapist nobleman is depicted with great artistic force.

A large place in Calderon’s heritage is occupied by religious dramas - dramatized “lives of saints”, etc. The main idea of ​​these plays is purely Catholic. But Calderon usually portrays a buffoon who soberly laughs at religious miracles.

The wonderful drama “The Miraculous Magician” is close to religious plays. Marx called this work “the Catholic Faust.” The hero of the play is a searching and daring person. In his soul there is a struggle between a sensual attraction to a woman and the Christian idea. Calderon's play ends with the triumph of the Christian-ascetic principle, but the great artist depicts the earthly, sensual element as something powerful and beautiful. There are two jesters in this play. They ridicule miracles, expressing their crude distrust of religious fiction.

Calderon's philosophical concept was reflected with particular force in his drama “Life is a Dream.” The events taking place in the play are not only real, but also symbolic. King Basilio of Poland, an astrologer and magician, learns that his newborn son will be a scoundrel and a murderer. He imprisons his son Segismundo in a tower located in a desert area, and keeps him there chained and dressed in animal skin. Thus, Segismundo is a prisoner from birth. This image of a young man chained in chains is a symbolic image of humanity, which is in slavish dependence on social conditions. Wanting to verify the words of the oracle, the king orders the sleeping Segismundo to be transferred to the palace. Having woken up and learned that he is a ruler, Segismundo immediately shows the traits of a despot and a villain: he threatens the courtiers with death, raises his hand against his own father. Man is a prisoner, a slave bound in chains, or a despot and tyrant - this is Calderon’s thought.

The conclusions that Calderon reaches are fantastic and reactionary. Returned back to the tower, Segismundo wakes up and decides that everything that happened to him in the palace was a dream. He now believes that life is a dream. Dream - wealth and poverty, power and submission, right and lawlessness. If this is so, then a person must renounce his aspirations, suppress them and come to terms with the flow of life. Calderon's philosophical dramas are a new type of dramatic work, unknown to Lope de Vega.

Calderoy combines deep realism with reactionary features in his work. He sees a way out of the tragic contradictions of reality in following the ideas of the feudal-Catholic reaction, in the cult of noble honor.

Despite all the contradictions inherent in Spanish literature of the 16th-17th centuries, the artistic values ​​it created, especially the Spanish novel and drama, are an outstanding contribution to world culture.

Architecture

The plastic arts also reached great heights in this era. After a long period of dominance of Gothic style and the flourishing of Moorish architecture in Spain in the 16th century, interest in the architecture of the Italian Renaissance awakened. But, following his examples, the Spaniards originally transformed the forms of Italian architecture.

The second half of the 16th century dates back to the work of the brilliant architect Juan de Herrera (1530-1597), the creator of the special “Herreresque” style. This style takes the forms of ancient architecture. And yet Herrera’s greatest creation, the famous palace of Philip II Escorial, bears very little resemblance to the traditional forms of classical architecture.

The very idea of ​​Escorial, which is at the same time a royal palace, a monastery and a tomb, is very characteristic of the era of the Counter-Reformation. In its appearance, El Escorial resembles a medieval fortress. It is a square structure with towers at the corners. A square divided into a number of squares - this is the plan of the Escorial, reminiscent of a lattice (the lattice is a symbol of St. Lawrence, to whom this building is dedicated). The gloomy but majestic bulk of El Escorial symbolizes the stern spirit of the Spanish monarchy.

Renaissance motifs in architecture already in the second half of the 17th century. degenerate into something pretentious and cutesy, and the risky boldness of forms hides only internal emptiness and meaninglessness.

Painting

Painting was the second area after literature in which Spain created values ​​of world-historical significance. True, Spanish art does not know harmonious works in the spirit of Italian painting of the 15th-16th centuries. Already in the second half of the 16th century. Spanish culture produced an artist of striking originality. This is Domeviko Theotokopouli, a native of Crete, known as El Greco (1542-1614). El Greco lived for a long time in Italy, where he learned a lot from the famous masters of the Venetian school, Titian and Tintoretto. His art is one of the branches of Italian mannerism, which originally developed on Spanish soil. Greco's paintings were not successful at court; he lived in Toledo, where he found many admirers of his talent.

Greco's art reflected with great dramatic force the painful contradictions of his time. This art is clothed in a religious form. But the unofficial interpretation of church subjects distances El Greco’s paintings from the official templates of church art. His Christ and the saints appear before us in a state of religious ecstasy. Their ascetic, emaciated, elongated figures bend like tongues of flame and seem to reach towards the sky. This passion and deep psychologism of Greco's art brings him closer to the heretical movements of the era.

Escorial. Architect Juan de Herrera. 1563

Spanish painting experienced its real flourishing in the 17th century. Among Spanish artists of the 17th century. we should mention first of all José Ribeiro (1591-1652). Adhering to the traditions of the Italian Caravaggio, he develops them in a completely original way and is one of the most prominent national artists of Spain. The main place in his heritage is occupied by paintings depicting the executions of Christian ascetics and saints. The artist skillfully sculpts human bodies protruding from the darkness. It is characteristic that Ribeira gives his martyrs the characteristics of people from the people. The master of large compositions on religious themes, combining prayerful ecstasy and rather cold realism, was Francisco Zurbaran (1598-1664).

Diego Velasquez

The greatest Spanish artist Diego de Silva Velazquez (1599-1960) remained the court painter of Philip IV until the end of his life. Unlike other Spanish artists, Velazquez was far from religious painting; he painted genre paintings and portraits. His early works are scenes from folk life. The mythological scenes of Velazquez “Bacchus” (1628) and “The Forge of Vulcan” (1630) are also connected in a certain sense with this genre. In the painting “Bacchus” (otherwise known as “The Drunkards”), the god of wine and grapes looks like a peasant guy and is surrounded by rude peasants, one of whom he crowns with flowers. In Vulcan's Forge, Apollo appears among half-naked blacksmiths who have quit their work and look at him in amazement. Velazquez achieved amazing naturalness in depicting folk types and scenes.

Evidence of the artist’s full maturity was his famous painting “The Capture of Breda” (1634-1635) - a festive military scene with a deeply thought-out composition and a subtle psychological interpretation of the faces. Velazquez is one of the world's greatest portrait painters. His work is marked by truthful psychological analysis, often merciless. Among his best works is a portrait of the famous favorite of the Spanish king, Duke Olivares (1638-1641), Pope Innocent X (1650), etc. In Velazquez’s portraits, members of the royal house are presented in poses full of importance, solemnity and grandeur. But ostentatious grandeur cannot hide the fact that these people are marked with the mark of degeneration.

A special group of Velazquez’s portraits consists of images of jesters and freaks. Interest in such characters is typical for Spanish artists of this era. But Velazquez knows how to show that ugliness belongs to humanity just as much as beauty. Sorrow and deep humanity often shine in the eyes of his dwarfs and jesters.

A special place in Velázquez’s work is occupied by the painting “The Spinners” (1657), depicting the royal manufactory for making tapestries. Women workers are visible in the foreground; they reel wool, spin, and carry baskets. Their poses are characterized by free ease, their movements are strong and beautiful. This group is contrasted with elegant ladies inspecting the manufactory, very similar to those woven into tapestries. The sunlight penetrating into the workroom leaves its cheerful imprint on everything, bringing poetry into this picture of everyday life.

Velazquez's painting with free colorful strokes conveys the movement of form, light and transparency of air.

The most prominent of Velazquez's students was Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). His early works depict scenes of street urchins who freely and casually settled down on a dirty city street, feeling like real masters in their rags. Murillo's religious painting is marked by sentimental traits and indicates the beginning decline of the great Spanish school.