Romanticism is a literary movement that appeared in Western Europe at the end of the 18th century. Romanticism, as a literary movement, involves the creation of an exceptional hero and exceptional circumstances. Such trends in literature were formed as a result of the collapse of all the ideas of the Enlightenment period due to the crisis in Europe, which arose as a result unfulfilled hopes Great french revolution.
Romanticism as a literary movement
In Russia, romanticism, as a literary movement, first appeared after the Patriotic War of 1812. After the dizzying victory over the French, many progressive minds were waiting for changes in state structure. Alexander I’s refusal to lobby for liberal policies gave rise not only to the Decembrist uprising, but also to changes in public consciousness and literary passions.
Russian romanticism is a conflict between the individual and reality, society and dreams, desires. But dream and desire are subjective concepts, therefore romanticism, as one of the most freedom-loving literary movements, had two main trends:
- conservative;
- revolutionary.
The personality of the era of romanticism is endowed strong character, passionate zeal for everything new and unrealizable. New person tries to live ahead of those around him in order to accelerate his knowledge of the world by leaps and bounds.
Russian romanticism
Revolutionaries of romanticism of the first half of the 19th century. direct “their face” to the future, strive to embody the ideas of struggle, equality and universal happiness of people. A prominent representative of revolutionary romanticism was K.F. Ryleev, in whose works the image was formed strong man. His human hero is zealously ready to defend the fiery ideas of patriotism and the desire for freedom of his fatherland. Ryleev was obsessed with the idea of “equality and free thinking.” It was these motives that became the fundamental tendencies of his poetry, which is clearly visible in the thought “The Death of Ermak.”
Conservatives of romanticism drew the plots of their masterpieces mainly from the past, as they took legends and epic trends as a literary basis, or they were consigned to oblivion the afterlife. Such images carried the reader into the land of imagination, dreams and reverie. A prominent representative of conservative romanticism was V.A. Zhukovsky. The basis of his works was sentimentalism, where sensuality prevailed over reason, and the hero knew how to empathize and sensitively respond to what was happening around him. His first work was the elegy “Rural Cemetery,” which was filled with landscape descriptions and philosophical discussions.
The romantic in literary works pays great attention to the stormy elements and philosophical reasoning about human existence. Where circumstances do not influence the evolution of character, and spiritual culture gives birth to a special, new type of person in life.
The great representatives of romanticism were: E.A. Baratynsky, V.A. Zhukovsky, K.F. Ryleev, F.I. Tyutchev, V.K. Kuchelbecker, V.F. Odoevsky, I.I. Kozlov.
Romanticism as a literary movement. Main features and features.
Romanticism is one of the most significant literary movements of the 19th century.
Romanticism is not just a literary movement, but also a certain worldview, a system of views on the world. It was formed in opposition to the ideology of the Enlightenment, which reigned throughout the 18th century, in repulsion from it.
All researchers agree that the most important event, which played a role in the emergence of Romanticism was the Great French Revolution, which began on July 14, 1789, when angry people stormed the main royal prison, the Bastille, as a result of which France became the first constitutional monarchy, and then a republic. The revolution has become the most important stage the formation of a modern republican, democratic Europe. Subsequently, it became a symbol of the struggle for freedom, equality, justice, and improvement of the people’s lives.
However, the attitude towards the Revolution was far from clear. Many thoughtful and creative people soon became disillusioned with it, since its results were revolutionary terror, civil war, and wars between revolutionary France and almost all of Europe. And the society that arose in France after the Revolution was very far from ideal: the people still lived in poverty. And since the Revolution was a direct result of the philosophical and socio-political ideas of the Enlightenment, disappointment also affected the Enlightenment itself. It was from this complex combination of fascination and disillusionment with the Revolution and Enlightenment that Romanticism was born. The Romantics retained faith in the main ideals of the Enlightenment and the Revolution - freedom, equality, social justice, etc.
But they were disappointed in the possibility of their real implementation. Arose acute sensation gap between ideal and life. Therefore, romantics are characterized by two opposing tendencies: 1. reckless, naive enthusiasm, optimistic faith in the victory of lofty ideals; 2. absolute, gloomy disappointment in everything, in life in general. These are two sides of the same coin: absolute disappointment in life is the result of absolute faith in ideals.
Another important point regarding the attitude of the romantics to the Enlightenment: the ideology of the Enlightenment itself at the beginning of the 19th century began to be perceived as outdated, boring, and not living up to expectations. After all, development proceeds on the principle of repulsion from the previous one. Before Romanticism there was the Enlightenment, and Romanticism started from it.
So, what exactly was the impact of the repulsion of Romanticism from the Enlightenment?
In the 18th century, during the Enlightenment, the cult of Reason reigned - rationalism - the idea that reason is the main quality of a person, with the help of reason, logic, science, a person is able to correctly understand, know the world and himself, and change both for the better.
1. The most important feature of romanticism was irrationalism(anti-rationalism) - the idea that life is much more complex than it seems to the human mind, life does not lend itself to reason, logical explanation. It is unpredictable, incomprehensible, contradictory, in short, irrational. And the most irrational, mysterious part of life is human soul. A person is very often controlled not by a bright mind, but by dark, uncontrolled, sometimes destructive passions. The most opposite aspirations, feelings, and thoughts can illogically coexist in the soul. The romantics paid serious attention and began to describe strange, irrational states of human consciousness: madness, sleep, obsession with some kind of passion, states of passion, illness, etc. Romanticism is characterized by mockery of science, scientists, and logic.
2. Romantics, following the sentimentalists, highlighted feelings, emotions, defy logic. Emotionality- the most important human quality from the point of view of Romanticism. A romantic is someone who acts contrary to reason and petty calculations; romance is driven by emotions.
3. Most enlighteners were materialists, many romantics (but not all) were idealists and mystics. Idealists are those who believe that in addition to the material world there is a certain ideal, spiritual world, which consists of ideas, thoughts and which is much more important, paramount than the material world. Mystics are not just those who believe in the existence of another world - mystical, otherworldly, supernatural, etc., they are those who believe that representatives of another world are able to penetrate into the real world, that in general a connection is possible between worlds, communication. Romantics willingly introduced mysticism into their works, describing witches, sorcerers and other representatives of evil spirits. Romantic works often contain hints of a mystical explanation for the strange events that occur.
(Sometimes the concepts “mystical” and “irrational” are identified and used as synonyms, which is not entirely correct. Often they actually coincide, especially among the romantics, but still, in general, these concepts mean different things. Everything mystical is usually irrational, but not everything the irrational is mystical).
4. Many romantics have mystical fatalism- belief in Fate, Predestination. Human life is controlled by certain mystical (mostly dark) forces. Therefore, in some romantic works there are many mysterious predictions, strange hints that always come true. Heroes sometimes perform actions as if not themselves, but someone pushes them, as if some outside force is infused into them, which leads them to the realization of their Destiny. Many works of the romantics are imbued with a sense of the inevitability of Fate.
5. Dual world- the most important feature of romanticism, generated by a bitter feeling of the gap between ideal and reality.
Romantics divided the world into two parts: the real world and the ideal world.
The real world is an ordinary, everyday, uninteresting, extremely imperfect world, a world in which ordinary people, philistines, feel comfortable. Philistines are people who do not have deep spiritual interests; their ideal is material well-being, their own personal comfort and peace.
The most characteristic feature of a typical romantic is dislike for the bourgeoisie, for ordinary people, for the majority, for the crowd, contempt for real life, isolation from it, not fitting into it.
And the second world is the world of the romantic ideal, the romantic dream, where everything is beautiful, bright, where everything is as the romantic dreams, this world does not exist in reality, but it should be. Romantic Getaway- this is an escape from reality into the world of the ideal, into nature, art, into your inner world. Madness and suicide are also options for romantic escape. Most suicides have a significant element of romanticism in their character.
7. Romantics do not like everything ordinary and strive for everything unusual, atypical, original, exceptional, exotic. A romantic hero is always unlike the majority, he is different. This is the main quality of a romantic hero. He is not included in the surrounding reality, is unadapted to it, he is always a loner.
The main romantic conflict is the confrontation between a lonely romantic hero and ordinary people.
The love for the unusual also applies to the choice of plot events for the work - they are always exceptional, unusual. Romantics also love exotic settings: distant hot countries, sea, mountains, and sometimes fabulous imaginary countries. For the same reason, romantics are interested in the distant historical past, especially the Middle Ages, which the enlighteners really disliked as the most unenlightened, unreasonable time. But the romantics believed that the Middle Ages were the time of the birth of romanticism, romantic love and romantic poetry, the first romantic heroes were knights serving their beautiful ladies and writing poetry.
In romanticism (especially poetry) the motif of flight, separation from ordinary life and the desire for something unusual and beautiful.
8. Basic romantic values.
The main value for romantics is Love. Love is the highest manifestation human personality, the highest happiness, the most complete disclosure of all the abilities of the soul. This is the main goal and meaning of life. Love connects a person with other worlds; in love all the deepest, most important secrets of existence are revealed. Romantics are characterized by the idea of lovers as two halves, of the non-accidentality of the meeting, of the mystical destiny of this particular man for this particular woman. Also the idea that true love can only happen once in a lifetime, that it occurs instantly at first sight. The idea of the need to remain faithful even after the death of a beloved. At the same time, Shakespeare gave the ideal embodiment of romantic love in the tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”.
The second romantic value is Art. It contains the highest Truth and the highest Beauty, which descend to the artist (in the broad sense of the word) at the moment of inspiration from other worlds. The artist is an ideal romantic person, endowed with the highest gift, with the help of his art, to spiritualize people, to make them better, purer. The highest form of art is Music, it is the least material, the most uncertain, free and irrational, music is addressed directly to the heart, to the feelings. The image of the Musician is very common in romanticism.
The third most important value of romanticism is Nature and her beauty. The Romantics sought to spiritualize nature, to endow it with a living soul, a special mysterious mystical life.
The secret of nature will be revealed not through the cold mind of a scientist, but only through the feeling of its beauty and soul.
The fourth romantic value is Liberty, internal spiritual, creative freedom, first of all, free flight of the soul. But so does socio-political freedom. Freedom is a romantic value because it is possible only in the ideal, but not in reality.
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It originated at the end of the 18th century, but reached its greatest prosperity in the 1830s. From the beginning of the 1850s, the period began to decline, but its threads stretched throughout the 19th century, giving the basis to such movements as symbolism, decadence and neo-romanticism.
The emergence of romanticism
The birthplace of the movement is considered to be Europe, in particular England and France, which is where the name of this artistic movement - “romantisme” – comes from. This is explained by the fact that romanticism of the 19th century arose as a consequence of the Great French Revolution.
The revolution destroyed the entire pre-existing hierarchy and mixed up society and social strata. The man began to feel lonely and began to seek solace in gambling and other entertainment. Against this background, the idea arose that all life is a game in which there are winners and losers. Everyone's main hero romantic work becomes a person playing with fate, with fate.
What is romanticism
Romanticism is everything that exists only in books: incomprehensible, incredible and fantastic phenomena, at the same time associated with the affirmation of personality through its spiritual and creative life. Mainly the events unfold against the backdrop of expressed passions, all the heroes have clearly demonstrated characters and are often endowed with a rebellious spirit.
Writers of the Romantic era emphasize that main value in life - a person’s personality. Each person is a separate world full of amazing beauty. It is from there that all inspiration and sublime feelings are drawn, and also a tendency towards idealization appears.
According to novelists, the ideal is an ephemeral concept, but nevertheless has the right to exist. The ideal is beyond the ordinary, therefore main character, and his ideas are directly opposed to everyday relationships and material things.
Distinctive features
Features of romanticism lie in the main ideas and conflicts.
The main idea of almost every work is the constant movement of the hero in physical space. This fact seems to reflect the confusion of the soul, his continuously ongoing reflections and at the same time changes in the world around him.
Like many artistic movements, romanticism has its own conflicts. Here the whole concept is built on the complex relationship of the protagonist with the outside world. He is very self-centered and at the same time rebels against base, vulgar, material objects of reality, which one way or another manifests itself in the character’s actions, thoughts and ideas. The most clearly expressed in this regard are the following literary examples of romanticism: Childe Harold - the main character from Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and Pechorin - from Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time".
If we summarize all of the above, it turns out that the basis of any such work is the gap between reality and the idealized world, which has very sharp edges.
Romanticism in European literature
European romanticism of the 19th century is remarkable in that most of its works have a fantastic basis. These are numerous fairy-tale legends, short stories and stories.
The main countries in which romanticism as a literary movement manifested itself most expressively are France, England and Germany.
This artistic phenomenon has several stages:
- 1801-1815. The beginning of the formation of romantic aesthetics.
- 1815-1830. The formation and flourishing of the movement, the definition of the main postulates of this direction.
- 1830-1848. Romanticism takes on more social forms.
Each of the above countries made its own special contribution to the development of this cultural phenomenon. In France, the romantic ones had a more political overtones; the writers were hostile towards the new bourgeoisie. This society, according to French leaders, destroyed the integrity of the individual, her beauty and freedom of spirit.
Romanticism has existed in English legends for quite a long time, but until the end of the 18th century it did not stand out as a separate literary movement. English works, unlike French ones, are filled with Gothic, religion, national folklore, and the culture of peasant and working-class societies (including spiritual ones). In addition, English prose and lyrics are filled with travel to distant lands and exploration of foreign lands.
In Germany, romanticism as a literary movement was formed under the influence of idealistic philosophy. The foundations were individuality and those oppressed by feudalism, as well as the perception of the universe as a single living system. Almost every German work permeated with reflections on the existence of man and the life of his spirit.
Europe: examples of works
The following literary works are considered the most notable European works in the spirit of romanticism:
Treatise “The Genius of Christianity”, stories “Atala” and “Rene” by Chateaubriand;
Novels “Dolphine”, “Corinna, or Italy” by Germaine de Stael;
The novel "Adolphe" by Benjamin Constant;
The novel “Confession of a Son of the Century” by Musset;
Roman "Saint-Mar" by Vigny;
Manifesto "Preface" to the work "Cromwell", the novel "Notre Dame" by Hugo;
The drama "Henry III and His Court", a series of novels about the musketeers, "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "Queen Margot" by Dumas;
Novels “Indiana”, “The Wandering Apprentice”, “Horace”, “Consuelo” by George Sand;
Manifesto "Racine and Shakespeare" by Stendhal;
Poems " Old sailor" and "Christabel" by Coleridge;
- “Eastern Poems” and “Manfred” by Byron;
Collected Works of Balzac;
The novel “Ivanhoe” by Walter Scott;
The fairy tale “Hyacinth and Rose”, the novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” by Novalis;
Collections of short stories, fairy tales and novels by Hoffmann.
Romanticism in Russian literature
Russian romanticism of the 19th century arose under the direct influence Western European literature. However, despite this, it had its own characteristic features, which were traced back in previous periods.
This artistic phenomenon in Russia fully reflected the hostility of progressives and revolutionaries towards the ruling bourgeoisie, in particular, towards its way of life - unbridled, immoral and cruel. Russian romanticism of the 19th century was a direct consequence of rebellious sentiments and anticipation of turning points in the country's history.
In the literature of that time, two directions are distinguished: psychological and civil. The first was based on the description and analysis of feelings and experiences, while the second was based on propaganda of the fight against modern society. The common and main idea of all novelists was that a poet or writer had to behave in accordance with the ideals that he described in his works.
Russia: examples of works
The most vivid examples Romanticism in Russian literature of the 19th century is:
The stories “Ondine”, “The Prisoner of Chillon”, the ballads “The Forest King”, “The Fisherman”, “Lenora” by Zhukovsky;
Works “Eugene Onegin”, “The Queen of Spades” by Pushkin;
- “The Night Before Christmas” by Gogol;
- “Hero of Our Time” by Lermontov.
Romanticism in American Literature
In America, the direction received a slightly later development: First stage his dates back to 1820-1830, the next one - from 1840-1860 of the 19th century. Both stages were exceptionally influenced by civil unrest both in France (which served as the impetus for the creation of the United States) and directly in America itself (the war of independence from England and the war between North and South).
Artistic movements in American romanticism are represented by two types: abolitionist, which advocated liberation from slavery, and eastern, which idealized plantation.
American literature of this period is based on a rethinking of knowledge and genres captured from Europe and mixed with the unique way of life and pace of life on the still new and little-explored continent. American works are richly flavored with national intonations, a sense of independence and the struggle for freedom.
American romanticism. Examples of works
The Alhambra series, the stories "The Phantom Bridegroom", "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving;
The Last of the Mohicans by Fenimore Cooper;
The poem “The Raven”, the stories “Ligeia”, “The Gold Bug”, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and others by E. Alan Poe;
Gorton's novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables;
Melville's novels Typee and Moby Dick;
The novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe;
Poetically translated legends “Evangeline”, “The Song of Hiawatha”, “The Matchmaking of Miles Standish” by Longfellow;
Whitman's Leaves of Grass collection;
Essay "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" by Margaret Fuller.
Romanticism as a literary movement had a fairly strong influence on musical, theatrical art and painting - just remember the numerous productions and paintings of those times. This happened mainly due to such qualities of the movement as high aesthetics and emotionality, heroism and pathos, chivalry, idealization and humanism. Despite the fact that the age of romanticism was quite short-lived, this did not in any way affect the popularity of books written in the 19th century in subsequent decades - works of literary art from that period are loved and revered by the public to this day.
Romanticism (fr. romantisme) - phenomenon European culture in the 18th-19th centuries, representing a reaction to the Enlightenment and stimulated by it scientific and technical progress; ideological and artistic direction in European and American culture of the late 18th century - the first half of the 19th century. It is characterized by an affirmation of the intrinsic value of the spiritual and creative life of the individual, the depiction of strong (often rebellious) passions and characters, spiritualized and healing nature. It has spread to various spheres of human activity. In the 18th century, everything strange, fantastic, picturesque and existing in books and not in reality was called romantic. At the beginning of the 19th century, romanticism became the designation of a new direction, opposite to classicism and the Enlightenment.
Romanticism in literature
Romanticism first arose in Germany, among writers and philosophers of the Jena school (W. G. Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, brothers F. and A. Schlegel). The philosophy of romanticism was systematized in the works of F. Schlegel and F. Schelling. In its further development, German romanticism was distinguished by an interest in fairy-tale and mythological motifs, which was especially clearly expressed in the works of the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, and Hoffmann. Heine, starting his work within the framework of romanticism, later subjected it to critical revision.
Theodore Gericault Raft "Medusa" (1817), Louvre
In England it is largely due to German influence. In England, its first representatives are the poets of the “Lake School”, Wordsworth and Coleridge. They established the theoretical foundations of their direction, becoming familiar with the philosophy of Schelling and the views of the first German romantics during a trip to Germany. English romanticism is characterized by an interest in social problems: they contrast modern bourgeois society with old, pre-bourgeois relationships, glorification of nature, simple, natural feelings.
A prominent representative of English romanticism is Byron, who, according to Pushkin, “clothed himself in dull romanticism and hopeless egoism.” His work is imbued with the pathos of struggle and protest against the modern world, glorifying freedom and individualism.
The works of Shelley, John Keats, and William Blake also belong to English romanticism.
Romanticism became widespread in other European countries, for example, in France (Chateaubriand, J.Stal, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Prosper Mérimée, George Sand), Italy (N. U. Foscolo, A. Manzoni, Leopardi), Poland (Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki , Zygmunt Krasiński, Cyprian Norwid) and in the USA (Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, W. C. Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Longfellow, Herman Melville).
Stendhal also considered himself a French romantic, but he meant something different by romanticism than most of his contemporaries. In the epigraph of the novel “Red and Black” he took the words “The truth, the bitter truth,” emphasizing his vocation for a realistic study of human characters and actions. The writer was partial to romantic, extraordinary natures, for whom he recognized the right to “go on the hunt for happiness.” He sincerely believed that it depends only on the structure of society whether a person will be able to realize his eternal, given by nature itself, craving for well-being.
Romanticism in Russian literature
It is usually believed that in Russia romanticism appears in the poetry of V. A. Zhukovsky (although some Russians often refer to the pre-romantic movement that developed from sentimentalism poetic works 1790-1800s). In Russian romanticism, freedom from classical conventions appears, a ballad and romantic drama are created. A new idea is being established about the essence and meaning of poetry, which is recognized as an independent sphere of life, an expression of the highest, ideal aspirations of man; the old view, according to which poetry seemed to be empty fun, something completely serviceable, turns out to be no longer possible.
The early poetry of A. S. Pushkin also developed within the framework of romanticism. The poetry of M. Yu. Lermontov, the “Russian Byron,” can be considered the pinnacle of Russian romanticism. The philosophical lyrics of F. I. Tyutchev are both the completion and overcoming of romanticism in Russia.
The emergence of romanticism in Russia
In the 19th century, Russia was somewhat culturally isolated. Romanticism arose seven years later than in Europe. We can talk about his some imitation. In Russian culture there was no opposition between man and the world and God. Zhukovsky appears, who remakes German ballads in the Russian way: “Svetlana” and “Lyudmila”. Byron's version of romanticism was lived and felt in his work first by Pushkin, then by Lermontov.
Russian romanticism, starting with Zhukovsky, blossomed in the works of many other writers: K. Batyushkov, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, E. Baratynsky, F. Tyutchev, V. Odoevsky, V. Garshin, A. Kuprin, A. Blok, A. Green, K. Paustovsky and many others.
ADDITIONALLY.
Romanticism (from the French Romantisme) is an ideological and artistic movement that emerged at the end of the 18th century in European and American culture and continued until the 40s of the 19th century. Reflecting disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution, in the ideology of the Enlightenment and bourgeois progress, romanticism contrasted utilitarianism and the leveling of the individual with the aspiration for boundless freedom and the “infinite,” the thirst for perfection and renewal, the pathos of the individual and civil independence.
The painful disintegration of the ideal and social reality is the basis of the romantic worldview and art. The affirmation of the intrinsic value of the spiritual and creative life of the individual, the depiction of strong passions, spiritualized and healing nature, is adjacent to the motifs of “world sorrow”, “world evil”, and the “night” side of the soul. Interest in the national past (often its idealization), the traditions of folklore and culture of one’s own and other peoples, the desire to publish a universal picture of the world (primarily history and literature) found expression in the ideology and practice of Romanticism.
Romanticism is observed in literature, fine arts, architecture, behavior, clothing and human psychology.
REASONS FOR THE ARISE OF ROMANTICISM.
The immediate cause of the emergence of romanticism was the Great French bourgeois revolution. How did this become possible?
Before the revolution, the world was orderly, there was a clear hierarchy in it, each person took his place. The revolution overturned the “pyramid” of society; a new one had not yet been created, so the individual had a feeling of loneliness. Life is a flow, life is a game in which some are lucky and others are not. In literature, images of players appear - people who play with fate. You can recall such works of European writers as “The Gambler” by Hoffmann, “Red and Black” by Stendhal (and red and black are the colors of roulette!), and in Russian literature these are “The Queen of Spades” by Pushkin, “The Gamblers” by Gogol, “Masquerade” Lermontov.
THE BASIC CONFLICT OF ROMANTICISM
The main one is the conflict between man and the world. A psychology of rebellious personality emerges, which was most deeply reflected by Lord Byron in his work “Childe Harold’s Travels.” The popularity of this work was so great that a whole phenomenon arose - “Byronism”, and entire generations of young people tried to imitate it (for example, Pechorin in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time”).
Romantic heroes are united by a sense of their own exclusivity. “I” is recognized as the highest value, hence the egocentrism of the romantic hero. But by focusing on oneself, a person comes into conflict with reality.
REALITY is a strange, fantastic, extraordinary world, as in Hoffmann’s fairy tale “The Nutcracker,” or ugly, as in his fairy tale “Little Tsakhes.” In these tales, strange events occur, objects come to life and enter into lengthy conversations, the main theme of which is the deep gap between ideals and reality. And this gap becomes the main THEME of the lyrics of romanticism.
THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM
To the writers early XIX centuries, whose work took shape after the Great French Revolution, life set different tasks than before their predecessors. They were to discover and artistically shape a new continent for the first time.
The thinking and feeling man of the new century had behind him the long and instructive experience of previous generations, he was endowed with a deep and complex inner world, images of the heroes of the French Revolution hovered before his eyes, Napoleonic wars, national liberation movements, images of the poetry of Goethe and Byron. In Russia Patriotic War 1812 played the role of a most important historical milestone in the spiritual and moral development of society, profoundly changing the cultural and historical appearance of Russian society. According to its significance for national culture it can be compared with the period of the 18th century revolution in the West.
And in this era of revolutionary storms, military upheavals and national liberation movements, the question arises: can a new literature arise on the basis of a new historical reality, not inferior in its artistic perfection to the greatest phenomena of literature of the ancient world and the Renaissance? And can it be based on further development to be a “modern man”, a man of the people? But a man from the people who participated in the French Revolution or on whose shoulders fell the burden of the struggle against Napoleon could not be depicted in literature using the means of novelists and poets of the previous century - he required other methods for his poetic embodiment.
PUSHKIN - PROLAGER OF ROMANTICISM
Only Pushkin was the first in Russian literature of the 19th century to find, in both poetry and prose, adequate means to embody the versatile spiritual world, historical appearance and behavior of that new, deeply thinking and feeling hero of Russian life, who took a central place in it after 1812 and in features after the Decembrist uprising.
In his Lyceum poems, Pushkin could not yet, and did not dare, make him the hero of his lyrics. real person new generation with all its inherent internal psychological complexity. Pushkin’s poem seemed to represent the resultant of two forces: the poet’s personal experience and the conventional, “ready-made,” traditional poetic formula-scheme, according to the internal laws of which this experience was formed and developed.
However, gradually the poet frees himself from the power of the canons and in his poems we no longer see a young “philosopher”-epicurean, an inhabitant of a conventional “town,” but a man of the new century, with his rich and intense intellectual and emotional inner life.
A similar process occurs in Pushkin’s works in any genre, where conventional images of characters, already sanctified by tradition, give way to figures of living people with their complex, varied actions and psychological motives. At first it is the somewhat distracted Prisoner or Aleko. But soon they are replaced by the very real Onegin, Lensky, young Dubrovsky, German, Charsky. And, finally, the most complete expression of the new type of personality will be the lyrical “I” of Pushkin, the poet himself, whose spiritual world represents the deepest, richest and most complex expression of burning moral and intellectual questions time.
One of the conditions for the historical revolution that Pushkin made in the development of Russian poetry, drama and narrative prose was his fundamental break with the educational-rationalistic, ahistorical idea of the “nature” of man, the laws of human thinking and feeling.
A complex and contradictory soul " young man” of the beginning of the 19th century in “Caucasian Prisoner”, “Gypsies”, “Eugene Onegin” became for Pushkin an object of artistic and psychological observation and study in its special, specific and unique historical quality. By placing your hero each time in certain conditions, depicting him in various circumstances, in new relationships with people, exploring his psychology from different sides and using for this each time a new system of artistic “mirrors”, Pushkin in his lyrics, southern poems and “Onegin” strives from various sides to get closer to understanding his soul, and through it - further to the understanding of the patterns of contemporary socio-historical life reflected in this soul.
The historical understanding of man and human psychology began to emerge with Pushkin in the late 1810s and early 1820s. We find its first clear expression in the historical elegies of this time (“The daylight has gone out...” (1820), “To Ovid” (1821), etc.) and in the poem “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” the main character of which was conceived by Pushkin, by the poet’s own admission, as a bearer of feelings and moods characteristic of the youth of the 19th century with its “indifference to life” and “premature old age of the soul” (from a letter to V.P. Gorchakov, October-November 1822)
32. The main themes and motives of A.S. Pushkin’s philosophical lyrics of the 1830s (“Elegy”, “Demons”, “Autumn”, “When outside the city...”, Kamennoostrovsky cycle, etc.). Genre-style searches.
Reflections on life, its meaning, its purpose, death and immortality become the leading philosophical motives of Pushkin’s lyrics at the stage of completion of the “celebration of life”. Among the poems of this period, “Do I wander along the noisy streets…” is especially notable. The motif of death and its inevitability persistently sounds in it. The problem of death is solved by the poet not only as an inevitability, but also as a natural completion of earthly existence:
I say: the years will fly by,
And how many times we are not visible here,
We will all descend under the eternal vaults -
And someone else's hour is near.
The poems amaze us with the amazing generosity of Pushkin’s heart, capable of welcoming life even when there is no longer room for him in it.
And let at the tomb entrance
The young one will play with life,
And indifferent nature
Shine with eternal beauty, -
The poet writes, completing the poem.
In “Road Complaints” A.S. Pushkin writes about the unsettled personal life, about what he lacked since childhood. Moreover, the poet perceives his own fate in the all-Russian context: Russian impassability has both a direct and figurative meaning in the poem, the meaning of this word includes the historical wandering of the country in search of the right way development.
Off-road problem. But it’s different. Spiritual properties appear in A.S. Pushkin’s poem “Demons”. It tells about the loss of man in the whirlwinds of historical events. The motif of spiritual impassability was suffered by the poet, who thinks a lot about the events of 1825, about his own miraculous deliverance from the fate that befell the participants in the popular uprising of 1825, about the actual miraculous deliverance from the fate that befell the participants in the uprising on Senate Square. In Pushkin's poems, the problem of chosenness arises, the understanding of the high mission entrusted by God to him as a poet. It is this problem that becomes the leading one in the poem “Arion”.
The so-called Kamennoostrovsky cycle continues the philosophical lyricism of the thirties, the core of which consists of the poems “Desert Fathers and Immaculate Wives...”, “Imitation of Italian”, “Worldly Power”, “From Pindemonti”. This cycle brings together thoughts on the problem of poetic knowledge of the world and man. From the pen of A.S. Pushkin comes a poem adapted from the Lenten prayer of Efim the Sirin. Reflections on religion and its great strengthening moral power become the leading motive of this poem.
Pushkin the philosopher experienced his real heyday in the Boldin autumn of 1833. Among large works The poetic masterpiece “Autumn” is attractive about the role of fate in human life, about the role of personality in history. The motive of man’s connection with the cycle of natural life and the motive of creativity are leading in this poem. Russian nature, life merged with it, obeying its laws, seems to the author of the poem to be the greatest value; without it there is no inspiration, and therefore no creativity. “And every autumn I bloom again...” the poet writes about himself.
Peering into the artistic fabric of the poem “... Again I visited...”, the reader easily discovers a whole complex of themes and motifs of Pushkin’s lyrics, expressing ideas about man and nature, about time, about memory and fate. It is against their background that the main philosophical problem This poem is the problem of generational change. Nature awakens in man the memory of the past, although it itself has no memory. It is updated, repeating itself in each update. Therefore, the sound of the new pines of the “young tribe”, which the descendants will someday hear, will be the same as now, and it will touch those strings in their souls that will make them remember the deceased ancestor, who also lived in this repeating world. This is what allows the author of the poem “...Once again I visited...” to exclaim: “Hello, Young, unfamiliar tribe!”
The great poet’s path through the “cruel century” was long and thorny. He led to immortality. The motive of poetic immortality is the leading one in the poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...”, which became a kind of testament of A.S. Pushkin.
Thus, philosophical motives were inherent in Pushkin's lyrics throughout his entire work. They arose in connection with the poet’s appeal to the problems of death and immortality, faith and unbelief, change of generations, creativity, and the meaning of existence. All of A.S. Pushkin’s philosophical lyrics can be periodized, which will correspond to the life stages of the great poet, at each of which she thought about some very specific problems. However, at any stage of his work, A.S. Pushkin spoke in his poems only about things that are generally significant for humanity. This is probably why “the folk trail” to this Russian poet will not become overgrown.
ADDITIONALLY.
Analysis of the poem “When outside the city, I wander thoughtfully”
“...When outside the city, I wander thoughtfully...” So Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
begins the poem of the same name.
Reading this poem, his attitude towards all feasts becomes clear.
and the luxury of city and metropolitan life.
Conventionally, this poem can be divided into two parts: the first is about the capital’s cemetery,
the other is about rural things. In the transition from one to another, the
the poet's mood, but highlighting the role of the first line in the poem, I think it would be
It is a mistake to take the first line of the first part as defining the entire mood of the verse, because
lines: “But how I love it, sometimes in the autumn, in the evening silence, to visit the village
family cemetery…” They radically change the direction of the poet’s thoughts.
In this poem, the conflict is expressed in the form of a contrast between the urban
cemeteries, where: “Grids, columns, elegant tombs. Under which all the dead rot
capitals In a swamp, somehow cramped in a row..." and rural, closer to the poet’s heart,
cemeteries: “Where the dead slumber in solemn peace there are undecorated graves
space..." But, again, when comparing these two parts of the poem one cannot forget about
the last lines, which, it seems to me, reflect the author’s entire attitude towards these two
completely different places:
1. “That evil despondency comes over me, At least I could spit and run...”
2. “The oak tree stands wide over the important coffins, swaying and making noise...” Two parts
One poem is compared as day and night, moon and sun. Author via
comparing the true purpose of those who come to these cemeteries and those lying underground
shows us how different the same concepts can be.
I'm talking about the fact that a widow or widower will come to city cemeteries just for the sake of
in order to create the impression of grief and sorrow, although it is not always correct. Those who
lies under “inscriptions and prose and verse” during their lifetime they cared only about “virtues,
about service and ranks.”
On the contrary, if we talk about rural cemetery. People go there to
pour out your soul and talk to someone who is no longer there.
It seems to me that it is no coincidence that Alexander Sergeevich wrote such a poem for
a year before his death. He was afraid, I think, that he would be buried in the same city
capital cemetery and he will have the same grave as those whose tombstones he contemplated.
“Burns unscrewed from poles by thieves
The slimy graves, which are also here,
Yawning, they are waiting for the tenants to come home in the morning.”
Analysis of A.S. Pushkin’s poem “Elegy”
Crazy years of faded fun
It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.
But like wine - the sadness of days gone by
In my soul, the older, the stronger.
My path is sad. Promises me work and grief
The troubled sea of the future.
But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
And I know I will have pleasures
In the midst of sorrows, worries and anxiety:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction,
A. S. Pushkin wrote this elegy in 1830. It refers to philosophical lyrics. Pushkin turned to this genre as an already middle-aged poet, wise in life and experience. This poem is deeply personal. Two stanzas form a semantic contrast: the first discusses drama life path, the second sounds like the apotheosis of creative self-realization, the high purpose of the poet. Lyrical hero we can fully identify with the author himself. In the first lines (“the faded joy of crazy years / is heavy on me, like a vague hangover.”), the poet says that he is no longer young. Looking back, he sees the path traveled behind him, which is far from flawless: past fun, from which his soul is heavy. However, at the same time, the soul is filled with longing for the days gone by; it is intensified by a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty about the future, in which one sees “labor and grief.” But it also means movement and a full creative life. “Toil and Sorrow” is perceived by an ordinary person as hard rock, but for a poet it means ups and downs. Work is creativity, grief is impressions, significant events that bring inspiration. And the poet, despite the years that have passed, believes and awaits “the coming troubled sea.”
After lines that are rather gloomy in meaning, which seem to beat out the rhythm of a funeral march, suddenly a light takeoff of a wounded bird:
But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
I want to live so that I can think and suffer;
The poet will die when he stops thinking, even if blood runs through his body and his heart beats. The movement of thought is true life, development, and therefore the desire for perfection. Thought is responsible for the mind, and suffering is responsible for feelings. “Suffering” is also the ability to be compassionate.
A tired person is burdened by the past and sees the future in the fog. But the poet, the creator confidently predicts that “there will be pleasures among sorrows, worries and anxiety.” What will these earthly joys of the poet lead to? They bestow new creative fruits:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction...
Harmony is probably the integrity of Pushkin’s works, their impeccable form. Or this is the very moment of creation of works, a moment of all-consuming inspiration... The fiction and tears of the poet are the result of inspiration, this is the work itself.
And maybe my sunset will be sad
Love will flash with a farewell smile.
When the muse of inspiration comes to him, maybe (the poet doubts, but hopes) he will love and be loved again. One of the poet’s main aspirations, the crown of his work, is love, which, like the muse, is a life companion. And this love is the last. “Elegy” is in the form of a monologue. It is addressed to “friends” - to those who understand and share the thoughts of the lyrical hero.
The poem is a lyrical meditation. It is written in the classical genre of elegy, and the tone and intonation correspond to this: elegy translated from Greek means “lamentable song.” This genre has been widespread in Russian poetry since the 18th century: Sumarokov, Zhukovsky, and later Lermontov and Nekrasov turned to it. But Nekrasov’s elegy is civil, Pushkin’s is philosophical. In classicism, this genre, one of the “high” ones, obliged the use of pompous words and Old Church Slavonicisms.
Pushkin, in turn, did not neglect this tradition, and used Old Slavonic words, forms and phrases in the work, and the abundance of such vocabulary in no way deprives the poem of lightness, grace and clarity.
The era of romanticism occupies an important place in world art. This trend existed for a fairly short amount of time in the history of literature, painting and music, but left a big mark in the formation of trends, the creation of images and plots. We invite you to take a closer look at this phenomenon.
Romanticism is an artistic movement in culture, characterized by the depiction of strong passions, an ideal world and the struggle of the individual with society.
The word “romanticism” itself initially had the meaning of “mystical”, “unusual”, but later acquired a slightly different meaning: “different”, “new”, “progressive”.
History of origin
The period of romanticism dates back to the end of the 18th century and the first half of XIX century. The crisis of classicism and the excessive journalisticism of the Enlightenment led to a transition from the cult of reason to the cult of feeling. The connecting link between classicism and romanticism was sentimentalism, in which feeling became rational and natural. He became a kind of source of a new direction. The romantics went further and completely immersed themselves in irrational thoughts.
The origins of romanticism began to emerge in Germany, where by that time it was popular literary movement"Sturm und Drang". Its adherents expressed quite radical ideas, which contributed to the development of a romantic rebellious attitude among them. The development of romanticism continued in France, Russia, England, the USA and other countries. Caspar David Friedrich is considered the founder of romanticism in painting. The founder of Russian literature is Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky.
The main trends of romanticism were folklore (based on folk art), Byronic (melancholy and loneliness), grotesque-fantastic (the image is not real world), utopian (search for an ideal) and Voltairean (description of historical events).
Main features and principles
The main characteristic of romanticism is the predominance of feeling over reason. From reality, the author takes the reader to an ideal world or he himself yearns for it. Hence another sign - dual worlds, created according to the principle of “romantic antithesis”.
Romanticism can rightfully be considered an experimental movement in which fantastic images are skillfully woven into works. Escapism, that is, escape from reality, is achieved by motives of the past or immersion in mysticism. The author chooses fantasy, the past, exoticism or folklore as a means of escaping reality.
Displaying human emotions through nature is another feature of romanticism. If we talk about originality in the depiction of a person, then often he appears to the reader as lonely, atypical. The motive appears " extra person", a rebel disillusioned with civilization and fighting against the elements.
Philosophy
The spirit of romanticism was imbued with the category of the sublime, that is, the contemplation of beauty. Adherents of the new era tried to rethink religion, explaining it as a feeling of infinity, and put the idea of \u200b\u200bthe inexplicability of mystical phenomena above the ideas of atheism.
The essence of romanticism was the struggle of man against society, the predominance of sensuality over rationality.
How did romanticism manifest itself?
In art, romanticism manifested itself in all areas except architecture.
In music
Romantic composers looked at music in a new way. The melodies sounded the motif of loneliness, much attention was paid to conflict and dual worlds, with the help of a personal tone, the authors added autobiography to their works for self-expression, new techniques were used: for example, expanding the timbre palette of sound.
As in literature, interest in folklore appeared here, and fantastic images were added to operas. The main genres in musical romanticism were the previously unpopular song and miniature, which were transferred from classicism to opera and overture, as well as poetic genres: fantasy, ballad and others. The most famous representatives of this movement are Tchaikovsky, Schubert and Liszt. Examples of works: Berlioz “A Fantastic Story”, Mozart “The Magic Flute” and others.
In painting
The aesthetics of romanticism has its own unique character. The most popular genre in Romanticism paintings is landscape. For example, for one of the most famous representatives of Russian romanticism, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, this is the stormy sea element (“Sea with a ship”). One of the first romantic artists, Caspar David Friedrich, introduced third-person landscape into painting, showing a person from the back against the backdrop of mysterious nature and creating the feeling that we are looking through the eyes of this character (examples of works: “Two Contemplating the Moon”, “Rocky Mountains”) shores of Ryugin Island"). The superiority of nature over man and his loneliness is especially felt in the painting “Monk on the Seashore.”
Fine art in the era of romanticism became experimental. William Turner preferred to create canvases with sweeping strokes, with almost imperceptible details (“Blizzard. Steamboat at the entrance to the harbor”). In turn, the harbinger of realism Theodore Gericault also painted paintings that bear little resemblance to images of real life. For example, in the painting “The Raft of Medusa,” people dying of hunger look like athletic heroes. If we talk about still lifes, then all the objects in the paintings are staged and cleaned (Charles Thomas Bale “Still Life with Grapes”).
In literature
If in the Age of Enlightenment, with rare exceptions, lyrical and lyric epic genres were absent, then in romanticism they play a major role. The works are distinguished by their imagery and originality of plot. Either this is an embellished reality, or these are completely fantastic situations. The hero of romanticism has exceptional qualities that influence his fate. Books written two centuries ago are still in demand not only among schoolchildren and students, but also among all interested readers. Examples of works and representatives of the movement are presented below.
Abroad
Among the poets of the early 19th century are Heinrich Heine (the collection “The Book of Songs”), William Wordsworth (“Lyrical Ballads”), Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, as well as George Noel Gordon Byron, the author of the poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.” Gained great popularity historical novels Walter Scott (for example, "", "Quentin Durward"), novels by Jane Austen (""), poems and stories by Edgar Allan Poe ("", ""), stories by Washington Irving ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow") and fairy tales of one one of the first representatives of romanticism Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (“The Nutcracker and Mouse King», « »).
Also known are the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“Tales of the Ancient Mariner”) and Alfred de Musset (“Confessions of a Son of the Century”). It is remarkable with what ease the reader gets from the real world to the fictional one and back, as a result of which they both merge into one whole. This is partly achieved by the simple language of many works and the relaxed narration of such unusual things.
In Russia
Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky is considered the founder of Russian romanticism (elegy "", ballad ""). Co school curriculum everyone is familiar with Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov’s poem “”, where Special attention is given to the motive of loneliness. It was not for nothing that the poet was called the Russian Byron. The philosophical lyrics of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, the early poems and poems of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, the poetry of Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov and Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov - all this had a great influence on the development of domestic romanticism.
The early work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is also presented in this direction (for example, mystical stories from the “”) cycle. It is interesting that romanticism in Russia developed in parallel with classicism and sometimes these two directions did not contradict each other too sharply.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!The French word romantisme goes back to the Spanish romance (in the Middle Ages, this was the name for Spanish romances, and then a chivalric romance), the English romantic, which turned into 18th century. in romantique and then meaning “strange”, “fantastic”, “picturesque”. At the beginning of the 19th century. Romanticism becomes the designation of a new direction, opposite to classicism.
Entering into the antithesis of “classicism” - “romanticism,” the movement suggested contrasting the classicist demand for rules with romantic freedom from rules. This understanding of romanticism persists to this day, but, as literary critic Yu. Mann writes, romanticism “is not simply a denial of the ‘rules’, but the following of ‘rules’ that are more complex and whimsical.”
The center of the artistic system of romanticism is the individual, and his main conflict– individuals and society. The decisive prerequisite for the development of romanticism were the events of the Great French Revolution. The emergence of romanticism is associated with the anti-enlightenment movement, the reasons for which lie in disappointment in civilization, in social, industrial, political and scientific progress, the result of which was new contrasts and contradictions, leveling and spiritual devastation of the individual.
The Enlightenment preached the new society as the most “natural” and “reasonable”. The best minds of Europe substantiated and foreshadowed this society of the future, but reality turned out to be beyond the control of “reason”, the future was unpredictable, irrational, and modern social order began to threaten human nature and personal freedom. Rejection of this society, protest against lack of spirituality and selfishness is already reflected in sentimentalism and pre-romanticism. Romanticism expresses this rejection most acutely. Romanticism also opposed the Age of Enlightenment in verbal terms: the language of romantic works, striving to be natural, “simple”, accessible to all readers, was something opposite to the classics with its noble, “sublime” themes, characteristic, for example, of classical tragedy.
Among the late Western European romantics, pessimism towards society acquires cosmic proportions and becomes the “disease of the century.” The heroes of many romantic works (F.R. Chateaubriand, A. Musset, J. Byron, A. Vigny, A. Lamartine, G. Heine, etc.) are characterized by moods of hopelessness and despair, which acquire a universal character. Perfection is lost forever, the world is ruled by evil, ancient chaos is resurrected. The theme of the “terrible world”, characteristic of all romantic literature, was most clearly embodied in the so-called “black genre” (in the pre-romantic “Gothic novel” - A. Radcliffe, C. Maturin, in the “drama of rock”, or “tragedy of rock” - Z. Werner, G. Kleist, F. Grillparzer), as well as in the works of Byron, C. Brentano, E. T. A. Hoffmann, E. Poe and N. Hawthorne.
At the same time, romanticism is based on ideas that challenge the “terrible world” - above all, the ideas of freedom. The disappointment of romanticism is a disappointment in reality, but progress and civilization are only one side of it. Rejection of this side, lack of faith in the possibilities of civilization provide another path, the path to the ideal, to the eternal, to the absolute. This path must resolve all contradictions and completely change life. This is the path to perfection, “towards a goal, the explanation of which must be sought on the other side of the visible” (A. De Vigny). For some romantics, the world is dominated by incomprehensible and mysterious forces that must be obeyed and not try to change fate (poets of the “lake school”, Chateaubriand, V.A. Zhukovsky). For others, “world evil” caused protest, demanded revenge and struggle. (J. Byron, P. B. Shelley, Sh. Petofi, A. Mickiewicz, early A. S. Pushkin). What they had in common was that they all saw in man a single essence, the task of which is not at all limited to solving everyday problems. On the contrary, without denying everyday life, the romantics sought to unravel the mystery of human existence, turning to nature, trusting their religious and poetic feelings.
A romantic hero is a complex, passionate personality, whose inner world is unusually deep and endless; it is a whole universe full of contradictions. Romantics were interested in all passions, both high and low, which were opposed to each other. High passion is love in all its manifestations, low passion is greed, ambition, envy. The romantics contrasted the life of the spirit, especially religion, art, and philosophy, with the base material practice. Interest in strong and vivid feelings, all-consuming passions, and secret movements of the soul are characteristic features of romanticism.
We can talk about romance as a special type of personality - a person of strong passions and high aspirations, incompatible with the everyday world. Exceptional circumstances accompany this nature. Fantasy, folk music, poetry, legends become attractive to romantics - everything that for a century and a half was considered as minor genres, not worthy of attention. Romanticism is characterized by the affirmation of freedom, the sovereignty of the individual, increased attention to the individual, the unique in man, and the cult of the individual. Confidence in a person’s self-worth turns into a protest against the fate of history. Often the hero of a romantic work becomes an artist who is capable of creatively perceiving reality. The classicist “imitation of nature” is contrasted with the creative energy of the artist who transforms reality. A special world is created, more beautiful and real than the empirically perceived reality. It is creativity that is the meaning of existence; it represents the highest value of the universe. Romantics passionately defended the creative freedom of the artist, his imagination, believing that the genius of the artist does not obey the rules, but creates them.
Romantics turned to various historical eras, they were attracted by their originality, attracted by exotic and mysterious countries and circumstances. Interest in history became one of the enduring achievements of the artistic system of romanticism. He expressed himself in the creation of the genre of the historical novel (F. Cooper, A. Vigny, V. Hugo), the founder of which is considered to be W. Scott, and the novel in general, which acquired a leading position in the era under consideration. Romantics reproduce in detail and accurately the historical details, background, and flavor of a particular era, but romantic characters are given outside of history; they, as a rule, are above circumstances and do not depend on them. At the same time, the romantics perceived the novel as a means of comprehending history, and from history they moved towards penetration into the secrets of psychology, and, accordingly, of modernity. Interest in history was also reflected in the works of historians of the French romantic school (A. Thierry, F. Guizot, F. O. Meunier).
It was in the era of Romanticism that the discovery of the culture of the Middle Ages took place, and the admiration for antiquity characteristic of past era, also does not weaken at the end of 18 - beginning. 19th centuries A variety of national, historical, individual characteristics had and philosophical meaning: the wealth of a single world whole consists of the combination of these individual features, and the study of the history of each people separately makes it possible to trace, as Burke put it, uninterrupted life through new generations following one after another.
The era of Romanticism was marked by the flourishing of literature, one of the distinctive properties of which was a passion for social and political problems. Trying to understand the role of man in what is happening historical events, romantic writers gravitated towards accuracy, specificity, and authenticity. At the same time, the action of their works often takes place in settings that are unusual for a European - for example, in the East and America, or, for Russians, in the Caucasus or Crimea. Thus, romantic poets are primarily lyricists and poets of nature, and therefore in their work (as well as in many prose writers), landscape occupies a significant place - first of all, the sea, mountains, sky, stormy elements with which the hero is associated complex relationships. Nature can be akin to the passionate nature of a romantic hero, but it can also resist him, turn out to be a hostile force with which he is forced to fight.
Unusual and vivid pictures of nature, life, way of life and customs of distant countries and peoples also inspired the romantics. They were looking for the traits that constitute the fundamental basis of the national spirit. National identity is manifested primarily in oral folk art. Hence the interest in folklore, the processing of folklore works, the creation of their own works based on folk art.
The development of the genres of the historical novel, fantastic story, lyric-epic poem, ballad is the merit of the romantics. Their innovation was also manifested in lyrics, in particular, in the use of polysemy of words, the development of associativity, metaphor, and discoveries in the field of versification, meter, and rhythm.
Romanticism is characterized by a synthesis of genders and genres, their interpenetration. Romantic art system was based on a synthesis of art, philosophy, and religion. For example, for a thinker like Herder, linguistic research, philosophical doctrines, and travel notes serve the search for ways to revolutionize culture. Much of the achievements of romanticism were inherited by 19th century realism. – a penchant for fantasy, the grotesque, a mixture of high and low, tragic and comic, the discovery of “subjective man.”
In the era of romanticism, not only literature flourished, but also many sciences: sociology, history, political science, chemistry, biology, evolutionary doctrine, philosophy (Hegel, D. Hume, I. Kant, Fichte, natural philosophy, the essence of which boils down to the fact that nature - one of the garments of God, “the living garment of the Divine”).
Romanticism is a cultural phenomenon in Europe and America. In different countries, his fate had its own characteristics.
Germany can be considered a country of classical romanticism. Here the events of the Great French Revolution were perceived rather in the realm of ideas. Social problems were considered within the framework of philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. The views of the German romantics became pan-European and influenced public thought and art in other countries. Story German romanticism breaks up into several periods.
At the origins of German romanticism are the writers and theorists of the Jena school (W.G. Wackenroder, Novalis, brothers F. and A. Schlegel, W. Tieck). In the lectures of A. Schlegel and in the works of F. Schelling, the concept of romantic art acquired its outline. As one of the researchers of the Jena school, R. Huch, writes, the Jena romantics “put forward as an ideal the unification of various poles, no matter how the latter were called – reason and fantasy, spirit and instinct.” The Jenians also owned the first works of the romantic genre: Tieck's comedy Puss in Boots(1797), lyric cycle Hymns for the night(1800) and novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen(1802) Novalis. The romantic poet F. Hölderlin, who was not part of the Jena school, belongs to the same generation.
The Heidelberg School is the second generation of German romantics. Here the interest in religion, antiquity, and folklore became more noticeable. This interest explains the appearance of a collection of folk songs Boy's magic horn(1806–08), compiled by L. Arnim and Brentano, as well as Children's and family fairy tales(1812–1814) brothers J. and V. Grimm. Within the framework of the Heidelberg school, the first scientific direction in the study of folklore took shape - the mythological school, which was based on the mythological ideas of Schelling and the Schlegel brothers.
Late German romanticism is characterized by motifs of hopelessness, tragedy, rejection of modern society, and a feeling of discrepancy between dreams and reality (Kleist, Hoffmann). This generation includes A. Chamisso, G. Muller and G. Heine, who called himself “the last romantic.”
English romanticism focused on the problems of the development of society and humanity as a whole. English romantics have a sense of catastrophism historical process. The poets of the “lake school” (W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, R. Southey) idealize antiquity, glorify patriarchal relations, nature, simple, natural feelings. The work of the poets of the “lake school” is imbued with Christian humility; they tend to appeal to the subconscious in man.
Romantic poems on medieval subjects and historical novels by W. Scott are distinguished by an interest in native antiquity, in oral folk poetry.
However, the development of romanticism in France was especially acute. The reasons for this are twofold. On the one hand, it was in France that the traditions of theatrical classicism were especially strong: it is rightly believed that classicist tragedy acquired its complete and perfect expression in the dramaturgy of P. Corneille and J. Racine. And the stronger the traditions, the tougher and more irreconcilable the fight against them. On the other hand, radical changes in all areas of life were given impetus by the French bourgeois revolution of 1789 and the counter-revolutionary coup of 1794. The ideas of equality and freedom, protest against violence and social injustice turned out to be extremely consonant with the problems of romanticism. This gave a powerful impetus to the development of French romantic drama. Her fame was made by V. Hugo ( Cromwell, 1827; Marion Delorme, 1829; Hernani, 1830; Angelo, 1935; Ruy Blaz, 1938, etc.); A. de Vigny ( Marshal d'Ancre's wife, 1931; Chatterton, 1935; translations of Shakespeare's plays); A. Dumas the father ( Anthony, 1931; Richard Darlington 1831; Nelskaya Tower, 1832; Keen, or Dissipation and Genius, 1936); A. de Musset ( Lorenzaccio, 1834). True, in his later drama, Musset moved away from the aesthetics of romanticism, rethinking its ideals in an ironic and somewhat parodic way and imbuing his works with elegant irony ( Caprice, 1847; Candlestick, 1848; Love is no joke, 1861, etc.).
The dramaturgy of English romanticism is represented in the works of the great poets J. G. Byron ( Manfred, 1817; Marino Faliero, 1820, etc.) and P.B. Shelley ( Cenci, 1820; Hellas, 1822); German romanticism - in the plays of I.L. Tieck ( The Life and Death of Genoveva, 1799; Emperor Octavian, 1804) and G. Kleist ( Penthesilea, 1808; Prince Friedrich of Homburg, 1810, etc.).
Romanticism had a huge influence on the development of acting: for the first time in history, psychologism became the basis for creating a role. The rationally verified acting style of classicism was replaced by intense emotionality, vivid dramatic expression, versatility and inconsistency in the psychological development of characters. Empathy has returned to the auditorium; The biggest romantic dramatic actors became public idols: E. Keane (England); L. Devrient (Germany), M. Dorval and F. Lemaitre (France); A. Ristori (Italy); E. Forrest and S. Cushman (USA); P. Mochalov (Russia).
The musical and theatrical art of the first half of the 19th century also developed under the sign of romanticism. – both opera (Wagner, Gounod, Verdi, Rossini, Bellini, etc.) and ballet (Pugni, Maurer, etc.).
Romanticism also enriched the palette of staging and expressive means of the theater. For the first time, the principles of art of the artist, composer, and decorator began to be considered in the context of the emotional impact on the viewer, identifying the dynamics of the action.
By the middle of the 19th century. the aesthetics of theatrical romanticism seemed to have outlived its usefulness; it was replaced by realism, which absorbed and creatively rethought all the artistic achievements of the romantics: renewal of genres, democratization of heroes and literary language, expansion of the palette of acting and production means. However, in the 1880–1890s, the direction of neo-romanticism was formed and strengthened in theatrical art, mainly as a polemic with naturalistic tendencies in the theater. Neo-romantic dramaturgy mainly developed in the genre of verse drama, close to lyrical tragedy. The best plays of neo-romantics (E. Rostand, A. Schnitzler, G. Hofmannsthal, S. Benelli) are distinguished by intense drama and refined language.
Undoubtedly, the aesthetics of romanticism with its emotional elation, heroic pathos, strong and deep feelings is extremely close to theatrical art, which is fundamentally built on empathy and puts its main goal achieving catharsis. That is why romanticism simply cannot irretrievably sink into the past; at all times, performances of this direction will be in demand by the public.
Tatiana Shabalina
Literature:
Gaim R. Romantic school. M., 1891
Reizov B.G. Between classicism and romanticism. L., 1962
European romanticism. M., 1973
The era of romanticism. From the history of international relations of Russian literature. L., 1975
Russian romanticism. L., 1978
Bentley E. Life of drama. M., 1978
Dzhivilegov A., Boyadzhiev G. History of Western European theater. M., 1991
Western European theater from the Renaissance to turn of XIX-XX centuries Essays. M., 2001
Mann Yu. Russian literature XIX V. Romantic era. M., 2001
