“Corsair” is a typical example of the construction of a romantic poem. The plot is based on the culminating episode from the hero’s life, which decides his fate; neither his past nor the further development of his life are described.
The hero acts in an exotic setting:
Our free spirit takes its free flight
Over the joyful expanse of blue waters:
Wherever the winds blow foam, -
Our possessions, our home and shelter.
This is our kingdom, there are no borders...
The action in “Corsair” takes place on the islands of the Greek archipelago and in coastal Greece, which is under Turkish rule.
The hero is surrounded by mystery. His past is hidden not only from the eyes of the reader, not a single character in the poem knows about it except Conrad himself, but he keeps his secret.
And everyone can see what
Terrible peace has been given to his soul!
Look how it burns, pouring delirium into your heart,
Memories of hated years!
No, no one will ever see
So that man himself reveals all the secrets!
Love plays a fatal role in Conrad's life. Having fallen in love with Medora, he forever remains faithful to her alone. With the death of Medora, all joy in life is lost for Conrad, he mysteriously disappears:
A series of days passes,
No Conrad, he disappeared forever,
And not a single hint announced
Where did he suffer, where did he bury the flour!
The image of Gulnara is also shrouded in gloomy romance. Once in her life she found out true love. Since then, she can no longer put up with the hateful life of a concubine and slave Seid; her rebellion against the vile reality takes effective forms: she brings justice to her tyrant Seid, kills him and forever abandons her homeland, where she can no longer return.
Both female images The poems - the meek Medora, who is all devotion and adoration, and the ardent Gulnar, capable of committing a crime for the sake of love - are contrasted with each other.
Conrad finds himself in various critical situations, and his character is revealed in action, in encounters with obstacles. In no other of Byron's romantic poems of this period is the hero so connected with his companions as in The Corsair. But even in the circle of his like-minded people, Conrad remains lonely, for his loneliness is the result of a long-standing distrust of people.
Conrad is a fierce and unsociable hero, wild, controlled by his fate, a hurricane beating down on the world. They don’t know about him, where he comes from, where to strive. It is shrouded in mystery. For him there is no repentance, no despair, no atonement, what is perfect cannot be destroyed - the indelible cannot be erased; he will find peace only in the grave. He is not looking for paradise, he is looking for rest. To distract himself from himself, he rushes into action, into struggle; corsair, he declares war on society: he is chasing strong sensations. Whether death awaits him, he is ready to buy relief from boredom at any cost.
As Pushkin noted, contemporaries saw in this image a romantic image of the “husband of fate,” Napoleon, with whom Conrad had in common his unlimited power over the troops and constant happiness in battle.
Eastern poems (1813-1816). The years 1811-1812 were the years of the rise of the radical democratic movement in England itself and national liberation movements in Europe. The powerful protest of the masses during these years was reflected in Byron's satire and his political poems. However, from 1813 to 1816 in England and on the continent, reaction went on the offensive along all fronts. The three years from 1813 to 1816 were one of the darkest and most difficult in all of modern English history. The ruling elite of Great Britain was in a hurry to take advantage of the victory in the war on the continent in order to strangle all freedom-loving trends and aspirations. She abolished the Habeas Corpus Act, passed draconian laws prohibiting labor unions, etc.
The onset of domestic and international reaction made a painful impression on Byron. He is going through a deep mental crisis. Motifs of gloomy despair appear in his works. However, the theme of the struggle against political and all other oppression not only does not disappear, but is even more intensified in his works of this period, which are usually called “oriental poems.” The following poems belong to this cycle: “Gyaur”, 1813; “The Bride of Abydos”, 1813; "Corsair", 1814; "Lara", 1814; "Siege of Corinth", 1816; "Parisina", 1816.
The hero of Byron's "oriental poems" is usually a renegade rebel who rejects all the rules of a proprietary society. This is a typical romantic hero; he is characterized by exceptional personal destiny, extraordinary passions, unbending will, tragic love, fatal hatred. Individualistic and anarchic freedom is his ideal. These heroes are best characterized by the words Belinsky said about Byron himself: “This is a human personality, indignant against the common and, in his proud rebellion, leaning on himself.” The celebration of individualistic rebellion was an expression of Byron's spiritual drama, the cause of which should be sought in the death of the liberating ideals of the revolution and the establishment of a dark Tory reaction. This Byronic individualism was subsequently very negatively assessed by advanced contemporaries English poet. For example, A. S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin” emphasized that individualism romantic hero-superman is in fact only shameful selfishness, which
Lord Byron by a lucky whim
Cloaked in sad romanticism
And hopeless selfishness.
Shelley, with his characteristic gentleness and tact, during his first meeting with Byron in Switzerland, pointed out to him the futility of individualistic rebellion, generated by the lack of perspective, the absence of clear political ideals. In his poem Julian and Maddaglio, in which he described his conversations with Byron, Shelley characterized Byron's anarchic and individualistic tendencies in the pre-Italian period as follows:
And it seemed to me that the eagle spirit had gone blind,
Looking at your own unbearable brilliance.
However, by the time the “eastern poems” appeared, this contradiction between them was not so striking. Much more important then (1813-1816) was something else: a passionate call to action, to struggle, which Byron, through the mouth of his frantic heroes, proclaimed as the main meaning of existence. The most remarkable feature of the “Eastern poems” is the spirit of action, struggle, daring, contempt for all apathy embodied in them, the thirst for battle, which awakened people who had lost faith from their cowardly slumber, raised the tired, and ignited their hearts for heroic deeds. Contemporaries were deeply concerned about the thoughts scattered throughout the “eastern poems” about the destruction of the treasures of human strength and talents in the conditions of bourgeois civilization; Thus, one of the heroes of the “eastern poems” is sad about his “unspent gigantic powers,” and another hero, Conrad, was born with a heart capable of “great good,” but he was not given the opportunity to create this good. Selim is painfully burdened by inaction; In his youth, Lara dreamed of “goodness,” etc.
The heroes of Byron's poems act as judges and avengers for violated human dignity; they strive to break the shackles forcibly imposed on man by the social system of his day. In their stormy monologues one can feel the reflection of the anger that was latently brewing in those years among the people and which the poet was able to sensitively capture and express in the images of his artistic works.
The triumph of reaction gave rise to sentiments of cowardice and renegadeism. Reactionary romantics sang “obedience to providence,” shamelessly glorified the bloody war, and threatened “heavenly punishment” for those who grumble about their fate; In their work, the motives of lack of will, apathy, and mysticism sounded more and more strongly. A mood of depression has infected many the best people era. To the weak-willed, faceless heroes of the reactionary romantics, Byron contrasted the powerful passions, the gigantic characters of his heroes, who strive to subjugate circumstances, and if they fail, then they proudly die in an unequal struggle, but do not make any compromise with their conscience, do not make any the slightest concession to the hated world of executioners and tyrants. Their lonely protest is futile, and from the very beginning this casts a tragic shade on their entire appearance. But, on the other hand, their incessant desire for action, for struggle, gives them an irresistible charm, captivates and excites them. “The whole world,” wrote Belinsky, “listened with hidden excitement to the thunderous peals of Byron’s gloomy lyre. In Paris it was translated and printed even faster than in England itself.”
The composition and style of “oriental poems” are very characteristic of the art of romanticism. It is unknown where these poems take place. It unfolds against the backdrop of lush, exotic nature: descriptions are given of the endless blue sea, wild coastal cliffs, and fabulously beautiful mountain valleys. However, it would be in vain to look in them for images of the landscapes of any particular country, as was the case, for example, in Childe Harold. “The action in Lara takes place on the Moon,” Byron wrote on this occasion to his publisher Murray, advising him to refrain from any comments about the relief of the area described in this poem. Each of the “oriental poems” is a short poetic story, the center of the plot of which is the fate of one romantic hero. All focus is on revealing inner world this hero, to show the depth of his stormy and powerful passions. Compared to Childe Harold, the poems of 1813-1816 are distinguished by their plot completeness; the main character is not only a link between the individual parts of the poem, but represents its main interest and subject. But there are no large folk scenes, political assessments of current events, or a collective image of ordinary people from among the people. The protest sounding in these poems is romantically abstract.
The construction of the plot is characterized by fragmentation, a heap of random details; there are many omissions and significant hints everywhere. You can guess the motives driving the hero’s actions, but often you cannot understand who he is, where he came from, what awaits him in the future. The action usually begins with some moment snatched from the middle or even the end of the story, and only gradually does it become clear what happened earlier.
Before all other “oriental poems”, “The Gyaur” (1813) saw the light. The plot of this poem boils down to the following: The giaur confesses to a monk on his deathbed. His incoherent story is the delirium of a dying man, these are some fragments of phrases, the last painful flash of consciousness. It is only with great difficulty that one can catch the thread of his thoughts. Gyaur passionately loved Leila, she reciprocated his feelings. Joy and light filled Gyaur’s entire being. But Leila’s jealous and treacherous husband Hassan tracked her down and villainously killed her. The giaur took terrible revenge on the tyrant and executioner of Leila. Hassan died a painful death at his hands.
However, revenge did not bring Gyaur either satisfaction or peace. His troubled spirit is tormented by a secret illness. He seeks to defend his personal dignity from the attacks of some gloomy, dark world, which is personified in the poem by the mysterious and hostile background surrounding the hero. Giaur's character is revealed in the struggle and in the tragic contradictions of his soul: he fiercely resists the mysterious forces that threaten him; despair does not weaken his desire for action, for battle:
I'm vegetating like a slug
In a damp dungeon underground
Sweeter than dead melancholy
With her fruitless dream.
The giaour is tormented by the thought that his “rich feelings” are wasted on meaningless things. His monologue sounds like an accusation against society, which made him an unfortunate renegade and humiliated him.
The hero of the poem "Corsair" is the leader of pirates - fearless people who have violated the despotic law of a proprietary society, because they cannot live among "lustful slaves" and
Ambitious, thirsty for pleasure,
Whose sleep is not sound, whose laughter is not joyful...
They prefer to lead a free life on a desert island, far from the bondage of big cities:
Our whole life is a seething battle
And the joy of changing fate...
The corsair, their brave and wise leader, is the same rebel and renegade as the Gyaur. On the island of pirates, everyone respects and fears him. He is harsh and domineering. The crews of the pirate brigs are obedient to the wave of his hand, the enemies tremble at his very name. But he is terribly lonely, he has no friends, a fatal secret weighs on him, no one knows anything about his past. Only from two or three hints thrown in passing, one can conclude that Conrad in his youth, like other heroes of “oriental poems,” passionately longed to “do good”:
He was completely different before the fight
He didn’t invite people and the sky with him.
Deceived, we avoid more and more,
From a young age he already despised people.
And choosing anger as the crown of his joys,
He began to take out the evil of a few on everyone.
As in the fate of Gyaur, love plays a fatal role in Conrad’s life. Having fallen in love with Medora, he forever remains faithful to her alone. With the death of Medora, all joy in life is lost for Conrad, he mysteriously disappears. No one knows what Conrad's end was.
The hero of “The Corsair” seems to be constantly immersed in his inner world, he admires his suffering, his pride and jealously guards his loneliness, not allowing anyone to disturb his thoughts; This reflects the individualism of the hero, standing, as it were, above other people whom he despises for their insignificance and weakness of spirit. Thus, he is unable to appreciate the sacrificial love of the beautiful Gulnara, who saved him from prison at the risk of his life. The image of Gulnara is also shrouded in gloomy romance. Once in her life she knew true love. Since then, she can no longer put up with the hateful life of a concubine and slave Seid; her rebellion against the vile reality takes effective forms: she brings justice to her tyrant Seid, kills him and forever abandons her homeland, where she can no longer return.
Conrad has in common with Giaour and other heroes of “oriental poems” a powerful fortitude. However, his undaunted, fiery nature, despite its inherent features of individualism, is still more diverse and complex than the characters of the heroes of other poems; there is room in it not only for “anger”, but also for compassion.
The poem "The Corsair" is a masterpiece of English poetry. The passionate power of a romantic dream is combined in it with the comparative simplicity of the artistic development of the theme; the formidable heroic energy of the verse in “The Corsair” is combined with its subtlest musicality; the poetry of the landscapes - with depth in depicting the psychology of the hero.
The fragmentation of “oriental poems”, the rapid dynamics in the development of action, lyrical descriptions of unprecedentedly bright and bold feelings, contrasted with the dullness and dullness of the philistine world - all this required new genre and stylistic forms. Having used English rhymed pentameter verse for most of the “oriental poems,” Byron imbued it with new linguistic stylistic devices, which allowed him to achieve the greatest expressiveness for depicting action, the mood of the hero, descriptions of nature, shades of people’s emotional experiences. He freely addresses questions to the reader, widely uses exclamatory sentences, builds his plots not in a strict logical order (as was customary among classical poets), but in accordance with the character and mood of the hero. Regarding the composition of “oriental poems,” Pushkin wrote in the article “On Olin’s tragedy “The Corsair” (1828): “Byron cared little about the plans of his works or did not even think about them at all. A few scenes, loosely connected with each other, were sufficient for him for this abyss of thoughts, feelings and pictures.”
It should also be noted the evolution of Byron's hero: if Childe Harold - the first romantic character of the English poet - does not go beyond a passive protest against the world of injustice and evil, then for the rebels of the "eastern poems" the whole meaning of life lies in action, in struggle. They respond to the injustices committed by the “lawless law” of a “civilized” society with fearless confrontation, but the futility of their lonely struggle gives rise to their “proud and furious despair.” This was well explained by Belinsky, who wrote that the reason for Byron’s spiritual drama was his lack of clear political ideals and understanding of the laws of social development.
Lyrics of 1815. Around 1815, Byron created a wonderful lyrical cycle called “Jewish Melodies.” Here, as in the “oriental poems,” there are moods of gloomy despair. This is the poem “My Soul is Gloomy,” translated into Russian by Lermontov. Regarding this poem, Belinsky wrote: “Jewish Melody” and “Into the Album” also express the inner world of the poet’s soul. This is the pain of the heart, the heavy sighs of the chest, these are gravestone inscriptions on the monuments of lost joys.”
Byron's love lyrics of 1813-1817 are distinguished by their extraordinary richness and diversity: nobility, tenderness, showing the inner beauty of a free human personality and deep humanity constitute its distinctive features. This is lyricism, devoid of any mysticism, false fantasy, asceticism, or religiosity. We can say in the words of Belinsky that in Byron’s lyrics “there is heaven, but the earth is always permeated with it.”
Byron creates his ideal of love in the collection “Jewish Melodies.” The heroine of his lyric poems is not a ghostly image of the morbid fantasy of Coleridge or the late Southey, but a girl beautiful with her earthly beauty:
She comes in all her glory -
Light as the night of her country.
The entire depth of the heavens and all the stars
In her eyes are contained,
Like the sun in the morning dew,
But only softened by darkness...
And this look, and the color bows,
And light laughter, like a splash of the sea,
Everything about it speaks of peace.
She keeps peace in her soul
And if happiness gives,
That very generous hand.
When speaking about the humanism of Byron's lyric poems, one must first of all keep in mind the spirit of love of freedom and struggle with which they are filled. Byron fought not only against political oppression, but also advocated liberation from the shackles of feudal-bourgeois morality, way of life and thinking. Not only in “The Bards” and in “Harold” the poet protested against despotic oppression and the triumph of tyranny, but also in lyrical poems - such pearls of his poetry as “Imitation of Catullus”, “Into the Album”, “The Athenian Woman”, “To Tirza” , “I’ll make up my mind”, “On the question of the beginning of love”, “Imitation of the Portuguese”, “Separation”, “Oh, if there, beyond the heavens”, “You cried”, “Stanzas to Augusta”, etc., he expressed liberating ideals of his time. Deep sincerity, purity and freshness of feeling, thirst for freedom, high and genuine humanity of lyrical poems awakened the consciousness of society, set it in opposition to the hypocritical customs and mores implanted by the church during the period of reaction.
The collection “Jewish Melodies” provides an artistic summary of the poet’s contemporary struggle for democratic freedoms of the English people. The biblical stories developed by the author of the cycle serve as a conventional form, a tribute to the national revolutionary traditions coming from Milton, Burns, Blake and others. For example, in some poems Byron resorts to the technique of a revolutionary rethinking of the dogmas of religion:
Tyrants are falsely honored here
God given kings...
It’s interesting that the theme of individual heroism is addressed in a new way in this cycle. The poem “You have ended the path of life” tells about a hero who deliberately sacrificed his life for the good of the fatherland. The poet emphasizes that the hero’s name is immortal in the minds of the people:
While your people are free,
He can't forget you.
You have fallen, but your blood flows
Not on the ground, but in our veins.
Inhale the powerful courage
Your feat should be in our chest.
Thus, there is a noticeable desire to overcome the individualism of the romantic hero.
Childe Harold's relationship with the society he despised already carried within itself the seeds of a conflict that became the basis of European novel XIX century. This conflict between the individual and society will receive a much greater degree of certainty in the works created after the first two songs of Childe Harold, in the cycle of the so-called “oriental poems” (1813-1816). In this poetic cycle, consisting of six poems (“The Giaour”, “Corsair”, “Lara”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “Parisina”, “The Siege of Corinth”), the final formation of the Byronic hero takes place in his complex relationship with the world and himself. myself. The place of “oriental poems” in creative biography poet and at the same time in the history of romanticism is determined by the fact that here for the first time a new romantic concept of personality is clearly formulated, which arose as a result of a rethinking of Enlightenment views on man.
Summarizing the internal experience of his generation, Byron coined European literature very special psychological issues. It is characteristic in this sense that contemporary criticism of the poet perceived him not only as a singer of freedom, but also as an artist who looked into the innermost depths of the human soul. Thus, V. G. Belinsky, in a review of the translation of “The Prisoner of Chillon” made by V. A. Zhukovsky, speaks of “the terrible, underground torments of despair, drawn with the lightning brush of the tyrannical poet of England.” A. S. Pushkin, speaking about the same “Prisoner of Chillon” and “The Siege of Corinth,” noted as one of the main advantages of these works “the touching development of the human heart.”
Of course, we can talk about Byron’s psychologism only with certain reservations. Byron reveals the inner world of contemporary man with the help of a kind of romantic symbolism.
But this romantic language was close to the worldview of its readers. He corresponded to that idea of the bottomless mysterious incomprehensible human soul, which developed among people at the beginning of the 19th century under the influence of shifts that took place in the public consciousness of that time, so rich in “surprises” and “secrets.” (These include the Napoleonic epic and the personality of Napoleon himself, around which legends began to form during his lifetime.)
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"ORIENTAL POEMS" (2).
Section 12. GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. - “ORIENTAL POEMS”.
Unlike their predecessors - the writers of the 18th century, the romantics who replaced them considered man to be an irrational being. It is this idea, polemically opposed to the Enlightenment teaching about the reasonable and rational nature of man, that becomes the organizing principle of Byron’s “Eastern poems.”
All figurative system poems, their composition, language, style, arrangement of characters are subordinated to the task of recreating the character of their main character. Byron radically transforms the traditional genre forms of the classic poem, destroying its inherent logical sequence of presentation of events. Completely obeying the will of the author, all the components of the plot, its beginning, continuation, end, often change places. (So, the poem “Gyaur” actually begins from the end.) A similar principle of construction (which M. Yu. Lermontov used in his poem “Mtsyri”) gives the work a special form of lyrical flow, whose movement is not constrained by any obstacles. The same desire to reproduce the stormy and passionate nature of a rebel and rebel, ready to throw off any shackles imposed on him by society, determines other features of Byron's poetic manner. The rapid, as if breathless rhythm of the narrative, its excited tonality, the variety of lyrical shades, etc. - all these features are common features of “oriental poems”. The image of their main character is also characterized by the same uniformity. A lonely wanderer, carrying through life his mysterious sorrow and proud dream of freedom, he appears in various poems under different names, but his character remains unchanged. A. S. Pushkin’s famous statement about the uniformity of Byron’s heroes (“Byron... created himself a second time... In the end, he comprehended, created and described a single character (namely his own), everything except some satirical antics... he attributed to... a gloomy, powerful person , so mysteriously captivating”) refers primarily to “oriental poems”. Therefore, in order to get an idea of this entire cycle, it is enough to turn to one of the works included in it, namely the poem “The Corsair” (1814), where the Byronic conflict extraordinary personality and the society hostile to it is presented in particularly complete and direct expression.
GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. - “Corsair”.
The hero of "Corsair" - the sea robber Conrad, by the very nature of his activities, is an outcast and a renegade. His way of life is a direct challenge not only to the prevailing norms of morality, but also to the system of prevailing state laws, the violation of which turns Conrad into a “professional” criminal. The reasons for this acute conflict between the hero and the entire civilized world, beyond which Conrad retreated, are gradually revealed in the course of the plot development of the poem. The guiding thread to its ideological plan is given by the symbolic image of the sea, which appears in the pirates’ song, which precedes the narrative in the form of a kind of prologue. This appeal to the sea is one of the constant lyrical motifs of Byron's work. A. S. Pushkin, who called Byron “the singer of the sea,” likens the English poet to this “free element”:
Make noise, get excited by bad weather:
He was, oh mors, your singer!
Your image was marked on it,
He was created by your spirit:
How powerful, deep and gloomy you are.
Like you, indomitable by nothing.
("To the Sea")
The entire content of the poem is nothing more than the development and justification of its metaphorical opening. The soul of Conrad, a pirate sailing the sea, is also the sea. Stormy, indomitable, free, resisting any attempts to enslave, it does not fit into any unambiguous rationalistic formulas. Good and evil, generosity and cruelty, rebellious impulses and longing for harmony exist in her in inextricable unity. A man of powerful unbridled passions, Conrad is equally capable of murder and heroic self-sacrifice (during the fire of the seraglio belonging to his enemy, Pasha Seid, Conrad saves the latter’s wives). The duality of his appearance is shaded by the images of two women in love with him, each of whom, as it were, represents one of the hypostases of his personality. If the gentle meek Medora, the object of the Corsair’s only true love, personifies his craving for goodness and purity, then the ardent, proud Gulnar is the second rebellious “I” of the Byronic hero. Following him, she follows the path of crime: love for Conrad pushes her to kill her husband. Conrad's tragedy lies precisely in the fact that his fatal passions bring death not only to him, but also to everyone who is in one way or another connected with him. (After all, the sinless, immaculate Medora dies because of her gloomy lover: she is killed by anxiety for his life.) Marked by the seal of an ominous fate, Conrad sows death and destruction around himself. This is one of the sources of his grief and the still not very clear, barely outlined, mental discord, the basis of which is (as Byron’s further work will show) the consciousness of his unity with the criminal world, complicity in its atrocities. In this poem, Conrad is still trying to find an excuse for himself: “Yes, I am a criminal, like everyone else around me. About whom will I say otherwise, about whom?” And yet his way of life, as if imposed on him by a hostile world, to some extent burdens him. After all, this freedom-loving rebel-individualist is by no means intended by nature for “dark deeds”:
He was created for good, but evil
It attracted him to himself, distorting him.
Everyone mocked and everyone betrayed;
Like the feeling of fallen dew
Under the arch of the grotto; and like this grotto,
It petrified in its turn,
Having gone through my earthly bondage... Trans. Yu. Petrova
Like other heroes of “oriental poems,” Conrad in the distant past was pure, trusting and loving. Slightly lifting the veil of mystery that shrouds the backstory of his hero, the poet reports that the gloomy lot he has chosen is the result of persecution by a soulless and evil society, which persecutes everything that is bright, free and original. In Byron's worldview there still remains something of the Rousseauian belief that “everything comes out pure from the hands of the creator, everything spoils in the hands of man.” But, refracted through the poet’s romantic worldview, this educational symbol of faith largely changed its ideological and aesthetic nature. Placing responsibility for the destructive activities of the Corsair on a corrupt and insignificant society, Byron at the same time poetizes his personality and the state of mind in which he finds himself. As a true romantic, the author of “The Corsair” finds a special “nightly” “demonic” beauty precisely in this confused consciousness, in the chaotic impulses of the human heart. Its source, like Milton's Satan, is a proud thirst for freedom - in spite of everything and at any cost. It was this angry protest against the enslavement of the individual and the enslaving power of bourgeois relations that determined the enormous power of the artistic impact of Byronic poems on readers late XIX century. At the same time, the most insightful of them saw in Byron's apology for individualistic self-will and the potential danger contained in it. Thus, A. S. Pushkin, who admired Byron’s love of freedom, but condemned him for poetizing individualism, saw behind the gloomy “pride” of Byron’s heroes the “hopeless egoism” hidden in them (“Lord Byron, by a whim of a successful one, clothed himself in dull romanticism and hopeless egoism”),
In the poem “Gypsies,” the great Russian poet put into the mouth of one of its characters, an old gypsy, words that sound like a sentence not only to Aleko, but also to the Byronic hero as a literary and psychological category: “You only want freedom for yourself.” These words contain an extremely precise indication of the most vulnerable place in Byron's concept of personality. With all the justice of such an assessment, one cannot help but see that this most dubious side of Byronic characters arose from a very real historical basis. It is no coincidence that A. Mickiewicz, together with some critics of Byron, saw in The Corsair a certain resemblance to Napoleon." Individualistic pride, glorified by the author of the "Eastern poems", was a feature of epochal consciousness in its romantic, exaggeratedly bright expression. This ability to penetrate into the spirit of the era and explains the significance of the influence that “oriental poems” had on modern and subsequent literature, as well as on the development of the poet himself.
In 1812-1816. Byron created a number of lyric-epic poems, known in the history of literature under the name “Eastern”: “Guyar”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “Corsair”, “Lara”, “The Siege of Corinth”, “Parisina”. Byron himself did not combine them into a single cycle, and the action of these poems did not always take place in the East: Byron uses an ethnographically accurate oriental flavor to add special drama and freshness to an already known plot.
The Author's personality emerges weakly, in contrast to “Pilgrimage...”. Most often, a fictitious narrator participates (on whose behalf it is spoken - a person disinterested in the events taking place and therefore impartial). The lyrical element is associated only with lyrical digressions depicting the beauties of the East. Each of the poems is dedicated to one of Byron’s close friends: “Guyar” - to Rogers, “Ab. Bride" - Holland. “Guyar” went through 13 editions.
All the poems are united by the type of romantic hero, free composition, open dramatic conflict, fatal passion that makes one devote his life either to revenge or to mysterious and enigmatic actions, some intriguing understatement and tension.
The general tone of the poems - sublimely tragic and poetic-lyrical - is determined by Byron's general plan, which is trying to philosophically comprehend the hero's conflict with reality. The heroes of all works are maximalists, they do not accept half measures, they defend the freedom of love and their personality to the last, choosing death if victory is unattainable. The death of a loved one leads to the death of the lover, if not physical, then spiritual. Both the past of the heroes and the ending of their destinies are mysterious. Compositionally, the poems are associated with the traditions of the ballad, which conveyed only the most intense moments in the development of the plot and did not recognize the sequential development of events.
In “The Corsair,” events develop sequentially, but the Author preserves secrets related to the characters’ past and does not give an unambiguous ending. This poem is the most significant in ideological and artistic terms; the main character is a sea robber, a man who broke the law. But there is no passion for profit, for he lives the harsh life of a hermit.
He was trusting, but people deceived him, he became embittered and disillusioned with everything, speaking out not only against people, but also against heaven.
The romantic Byron thinks strictly as a rationalist. The anti-God motive arises as a consequence of the conviction that there is no justice in the world created by God! A powerful and mysterious hero suffers and is alone. Repeatedly there is a confrontation between two images: a snake, which, being crushed, is not defeated and stings, and a worm, which can be crushed with impunity. The image of a snake is associated with Conrad. But he has one joy that binds him to life - Medora’s love. She is the embodiment of the ideal, only with her the heart can be tender. The world and soul of Medora are 2 poles that cannot be connected. Conrad's tragedy is that he recognizes only his will, his idea of the world. Having opposed the tyranny of public opinion and the laws established by God, he in turn becomes a tyrant. However, Byron makes the hero think whether he has the right to take revenge on everyone for the evil of a few: the episode after the fight with Seid → in captivity and awaiting execution → here and remorse: “What seemed simple and light, suddenly became a crime on the soul.” – First awareness of the mistake. Secondly, when the slave of the Sultan who fell in love with him (a parallel with Lermontov’s “Prisoner of the Caucasus”), frees him, he returns home and sees the ship of the corsairs who are rushing to meet him: he never imagined that he could evoke love in the hearts of the pirates submissive to him.
The theme of individualism, the individual right of a person to decide what is good and what is evil, becomes more acute from poem to poem.
"The Giaour", "Corsair", "Manfred", "Cain" by J. Byron. The evolution of the romantic rebel hero. Features of romantic imagery. Creativity D.G. Byron reflected the complex and turning point era in the history of Europe that came after french revolution. As a son of his age, Byron as a person absorbed the contradictory aspirations of the post-revolutionary era, characterized by unstable social relations. Much in the poet’s personality is explained not so much by the natural innate qualities inherited from his aristocratic ancestors, his high position as an English peer, but by social cataclysms and the imperfection of bourgeois relations established throughout Europe.
Poems "Gyaur", 1813; “The Corsair”, 1814 – the cycle “Oriental Poems”, as well as “Manfred” and “Cain” are united by the presence in them of a rebel-individualist who rejects all the legal orders of a proprietary society. This is a typical romantic hero; he is characterized by the exclusivity of his personal destiny, strong passions, unbending will, and tragic love. Individualistic and anarchic freedom is his ideal. These heroes are best characterized by the words Belinsky said about Byron himself: “This is a human personality, indignant against the common and, in his proud rebellion, leaning on himself.” The praise of individualistic rebellion was an expression of Byron's spiritual drama, the reason for which should be sought in the very era that gave rise to the cult of individualism.
“The Corsair” is a lyric-epic poem by Byron, in which the lyrical principle is fused together in the image central character and an epic, narrative beginning, which manifests itself in the richness and variety of action. Conrad is a hero who represents the purest example of a romantic worldview in all of Byron’s work, and the poetics of “The Corsair” is the most characteristic example of the construction of a romantic poem. The plot is based on the culminating episode from the hero’s life, which decides his fate; neither his past nor the further development of his life are described, and in this sense the poem is fragmentary. In addition, the plot is built as a chain of bright paintings-fragments, the cause-and-effect relationships between which are not always clearly stated in the poem, and fragmentation becomes the structure-forming principle of a romantic poem. The hero is taken at the moment of the highest tension of vital forces, in circumstances that are exceptional even for his robber life. At such moments, a person’s character is revealed to the end, and the demonic, gloomy, majestic character of Conrad is created in the poem with the help of various artistic means: a portrait, the author’s characteristics, the attitude of the women who love him towards him, but mainly through a description of his actions. One of the leitmotif images of the poem is the image of the sea, so characteristic of all of Byron’s poetry; The free sea element becomes a symbol of freedom for him. The plot of the poem “The Giaur” (1813) boils down to the following: The Giaur confesses to a monk on his deathbed. His incoherent story is the ravings of a dying man, some scraps of phrases. It is only with great difficulty that one can grasp the train of his thoughts. Gyaur passionately loved Leila, she reciprocated his feelings and the lovers were happy. But Leila’s jealous and treacherous husband Hassan tracked her down and villainously killed her. The giaur took revenge on the tyrant and executioner of Leila. The giaur is tormented by the thought that his “rich feelings” have been wasted. His monologue sounds like an accusation against society, which humiliated him and made him an unfortunate renegade. The hero of the poem "Corsair" is the leader of pirates - fearless people who reject the despotic laws of the society in which they are forced to live and to whom they prefer a free life on a desert island. The corsair, their brave leader, is as much a rebel as the Giaur. On the island of pirates, everyone obeys him and fears him. He is harsh and domineering. Enemies tremble at the mere mention of his name. But he is lonely, he has no friends, a fatal secret weighs on him, no one knows anything about his past. Only from two or three hints thrown in passing, one can conclude that Conrad in his youth, like other heroes of “oriental poems,” passionately “longed to do good”:
He was created for good, but evil
It was drawn towards itself, distorting it... (Translated by Yu. Petrov)
As in the fate of Gyaur, love plays a fatal role in Conrad’s life. Having fallen in love with Medora, he forever remains faithful to her alone. With the death of Medora, the meaning of life for Conrad is lost, he mysteriously disappears. The hero of “The Corsair” is always immersed in his inner world, he admires his suffering, his pride and jealously guards his loneliness. This reflects the individualism of the hero, as if standing above other people whom he despises for their insignificance and weakness of spirit. Thus, he is unable to appreciate the sacrificial love of the beautiful Gulnara, who saved him from prison at the risk of his life. The image of Gulnara is also shrouded in gloomy romance.
Having learned true love, she can no longer put up with the hateful life of a concubine and slave Seid; her rebellion is active; she kills her tyrant Seid and forever abandons her homeland, where she can no longer return. The poem "The Corsair" is a masterpiece of English poetry. The passionate power of a romantic dream is combined in it with the comparative simplicity of the artistic development of the theme; the heroic energy of the verse in “The Corsair” is combined with its subtlest musicality; the poetry of the landscapes - with depth in depicting the psychology of the hero. In these poems, Byron continued to develop the genre of romantic poem. Having used English rhymed pentameter for most of his poems, Byron imbued it with new stylistic techniques that allowed him to achieve the greatest expressiveness for depicting action, the hero’s moods, descriptions of nature, and shades of people’s emotional experiences. He freely addresses the reader with questions, widely uses exclamatory sentences, builds his plots not in a strict logical order (as was customary among classical poets), but in accordance with the character and mood of the hero. It should also be noted the evolution of Byron's hero: if Childe Harold - the first romantic character of the English poet - does not go beyond a passive protest against the world of injustice and evil, then for the rebels of his poems the whole meaning of life lies in action, in struggle. They respond to the injustices committed by the “lawless law” of a “civilized” society with fearless confrontation, but the futility of their lonely struggle gives rise to their “proud and furious despair.”
The artistic originality of the lyrics (“My soul is gloomy”, “Jewish melody”, “Prometheus”). In formation artistic method Byron's "oriental poems" along with "Childe Harold" played a decisive role. Perceived by contemporaries as a great poetic discovery, they laid the foundations of Byronism in all its genre varieties, first of all - purely lyrical. Of course, the rich area of Byron’s lyricism is chronologically connected not with individual periods of the poet’s activity, but with his entire creative way. However, its basic artistic principles were developed in parallel with the poems of 1812-1815, and their internal connection is undeniable. Despite the fact that, by the nature of its immediate content, Byron's lyrical legacy can be divided into two groups: intimate-psychological and heroically rebellious, in essence it represents a single whole. Its different thematic aspects are connected by the commonality of the lyrical “I”. Although lyrical hero Byron's poetry evolved along with its author, the main features of his spiritual appearance: world sorrow, rebellious intransigence, fiery passions and freedom-loving aspirations - remained unchanged. The richness and diversity of these psychological shades determines the sonority of the resonance that was caused by Byron's lyrics and did not cease throughout the 19th century, causing responses in world poetry. Each of Byron's European poets-fans and successors found in him motives that were in tune with his own thoughts and feelings, and, using Byron's poems as a form of self-expression, simultaneously reproduced both the English poet and himself. Thus, Russian readers are given a vivid idea of the nature of Byron’s psychological lyrics by his poem “My Soul Is Gloomy...”, which became the property of Russian poetry thanks to the translation by M. Yu. Lermontov, whose perception is especially close to the sentiments embodied in this sample lyrical creativity English poet. Inspired by a biblical legend (King Saul, overcome by madness, calls upon the young singer David to dispel his master’s melancholy), this poem with enormous tragic force reproduces the state of a deep, gloomy, stern soul, tormented by some mysterious sorrow. The impression of the bottomless depth of this soul and the unbearable weight of the sadness that oppresses it is enhanced by the poetic structure of the poem. Its main theme, set already in the first line (“My soul is gloomy”), is revealed according to the principle of increasing drama, which reaches its culmination in the last two stanzas:
Let your song be wild. Like my crown
The sounds of fun are painful to me!
Or your chest will burst from pain.
She was full of suffering,
She languished for a long time and silently;
Like a cup of death, full of poison.
The confessional, deeply personal nature of this unique lyrical monologue, only formally connected with the Bible (the only word “crown”, going back to the biblical source, belongs to M. Yu. Lermontov and is absent in the original), is also inherent in Byron’s political lyrics. Her distinctive feature is the fusion of intimate, personal emotions with the civic feelings of the poet.
"My soul is gloomy."
My soul is gloomy. Hurry, singer, hurry!
Here is a golden harp:
Let your fingers, rushing along it,
The sounds of paradise will awaken in the strings.
And if fate did not take away hope forever,
They will wake up in my chest,
And if there is a drop of tears in the frozen eyes -
They will melt and spill.
Let your song be wild. - Like my crown,
The sounds of fun are painful to me!
I tell you: I want tears, singer,
Or your chest will burst from pain.
She was full of suffering,
She languished for a long time and silently;
And the terrible hour has come - now it is full,
Like a cup of death, full of poison.
"My soul is dark."
My soul is dark-Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let your gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o"er mine ear.-
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again-
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
"Twill flow-and cease to burn my brain-
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first-
I tell thee-Minstrel! I must weep
Or else this heavy heart will burst-
For it hated by sorrow nurst,
And ached in sleepless silence long-
And now "tis doom"d to know the worst,
And break at once-or yield to song.
"Prometheus".
Titanium! To our earthly destiny,
To our sorrowful vale,
For human pain
You looked without contempt;
But what did you get as a reward?
Suffering, stress
Yes kite, that without end
The proud man's liver is tormented,
Rock, chains sad sound,
A suffocating burden of torment
Yes, a groan that is buried in the heart,
Depressed by you, I became quiet,
So that about your sorrows
He couldn't tell the gods.
Titanium! You knew what fighting meant
Courage with torment... you are strong,
You are not afraid of torture,
But shackled by a furious fate.
Almighty Rock is a deaf tyrant,
Overwhelmed by universal malice,
Creating for the joy of heaven
What he himself can destroy,
Delivered you from death
He bestowed the gift of immortality.
You accepted the bitter gift as an honor,
And the Thunderer from you
All I could achieve was a threat;
This is how the proud god was punished!
Having loved your suffering,
You didn't want to read it to him
His fate is but a sentence
Your proud gaze opened to him.
And he comprehended your silence,
And the arrows of lightning trembled...
You are kind - that is your heavenly sin
Or crime: you wanted
There is a limit to misfortunes,
So that reason makes everyone happy!
Rock destroyed your dreams,
But the fact is that you have not resigned yourself, -
An example for all human hearts;
What was your freedom,
Hidden example of greatness
For the human race!
You are a symbol of strength, demigod,
You have illuminated the path for mortals, -
Human life is a bright current,
Running, sweeping away the path,
Partly a person can
Anticipate the running of your watch:
Aimless existence
Resistance, vegetation...
But the soul will not change,
Breathing with immortal firmness,
And the feeling that he can suddenly
In the depths of the most bitter torments
To gain your own reward,
Celebrate and despise
And turn Death into Victory.
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was your pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus"d they even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of your rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with your precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in your patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thin impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself-and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter"d recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) is the largest and most prominent figure of English romanticism on a pan-European scale. In 1813-1816, Byron created a number of lyric-epic poems, known in the history of literature under the name “oriental” (traveled to the east): “The Giaour” (1813), “The Bride of Abydos” (1813), The Corsair (1814), “Lara” "(1814), "Siege of Corinth", Parisina (1815-1816).
Main problem all "eastern" poems- the problem of the individual in its irreconcilable clash with society. Romantic hero of “eastern” poems- an individualist, an exceptional personality, possessed by strong passions. The hero breaks with society, not wanting to put up with cruel insults and injustice; rejects all legal orders of a proprietary society; he takes the path of revenge or struggle. (typical romantic hero) The meaning of this outcast's life- in the fight against despotism and in love for a pure, devoted woman. This hero is an active and active person, but he acts only in the name of his personal goals.
Myself Byron did not combine them into a single cycle, and their action does not always take place in the east. The poet uses ethnographically accurate oriental coloring to add special drama, freshness and expressiveness to an already known plot or a separate plot motive. In Eastern poems, the personality of the author appears weakly.. The lyrical element is associated here only with lyrical digressions, painting colorful, unforgettable, vibrant pictures of eastern nature.
Byron, through the lips of his frantic heroes, proclaimed a passionate call to action, to fight - the main meaning of life. The action of "oriental" poems takes place mainly in Greece, and the author relies on his personal impressions in outlining the national “oriental” flavor. Often the poem is a monologue of the hero, who talks about unusual, exceptional actions and strong passions. Storyline interrupted by lyrical digressions of the author. Composition The poem is fragmentary, it corresponds to the impulsive, impetuous actions of the romantic hero. Entering into an irreconcilable conflict with his opponents, the hero dies or leaves society forever. Heroes of the poems Byron act as judges and avengers for violated human dignity. The composition and style of “oriental poems” are characteristic of the art of romanticism. Where exactly these poems take place is unknown. It unfolds against the backdrop of lush, exotic nature: descriptions are given of the endless blue sea, wild coastal cliffs, and fabulously beautiful mountain valleys. “The action in Lara takes place on the Moon.” Each of the “oriental poems” is a small a poetic story, in the center of the plot is the fate of any one romantic hero. Poems 1813-1816 differ plot completeness; the main character is not only a connecting link between the individual parts of the poem, but represents its main subject. The poet does not describe large folk scenes here, does not give political assessments of current events, or a collective image of ordinary people from the people. The protest sounding in these poems is romantically abstract. The construction of the plot is characterized by fragmentation, a heap of random details; there are many omissions and significant hints everywhere. Action usually begins with some moment snatched from the middle or even the end of the story, and only gradually does it become clear what happened earlier. Each of the poems is dedicated to one of Byron's close friends.
All poems bear the stamp of Byron's pessimism, disappointment, his disbelief that despotism will be overthrown. The individualistic rebellion of Byron's heroes varies; it can often be due to personal motives (Selim, Gyaur), social (Lara, Minotti). Sometimes the hero of an eastern poem finds himself in the grip of evil fate, like Lara, Alp, Hugo. Hero of the poem "Corsair" is the leader of pirates - fearless people who reject the despotic laws of the society in which they are forced to live and to whom they prefer a free life on a desert island. The corsair, their brave leader, is a rebel. The hero of “The Corsair” is always immersed in his inner world, he admires his suffering, his pride and jealously guards his loneliness. This affects hero's individualism, as if standing above other people whom he despises for their insignificance and weakness of spirit. The poem “The Corsair” is a masterpiece of English poetry. In his "oriental poems" Byron continued to develop the genre of romantic poem.
9. Byron's poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Genre originality, composition. Childe Harold and the lyrical hero.
"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" is Byron's first poem written in the Romantic style. It was published between 1812 and 1818. The poem's dedication is an appeal to Ianthe, under whose name the daughter of his English acquaintances is hidden. The designation of the main character comes from the old English title childe (“child”) - a medieval designation for a young nobleman who was still only a candidate for knighthood. The central problem is the problem of personality. The poem is distinguished, first of all, by a new genre form - a lyric-epic poem, combining the story of the hero’s life and travels with the free improvisations of a poet who made not just an exciting journey to the East, but discovered the life and customs of countries that have entered a period of rapid and turbulent development . The poem is imbued with civic pathos, which is caused by an appeal to large-scale events of our time. The first two songs of “Childe Harold” are reminiscent in form of both the lyrical diary of the poet-traveler and internal monologue hero entering independent life, and a poetic essay about the fate of the peoples of Europe during the Napoleonic wars and national liberation movements. Without binding himself to rigid genre rules, Byron not only gives freedom to his imagination, he experiments in the field of content and language.. The true nature of Spain, Portugal, Albania, Greece arouses in Harold the same keen interest as the city landscapes of Lisbon, the palace of the Turkish Pasha , ruins of ancient Greek temples. The new genre form determined compositional structure poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage".
In the first and second songs, the theme of popular uprising plays a significant role. The poet welcomes the liberation movement of the peoples of Spain and Greece. Episodic but impressive images of ordinary people appear here. Poems of heroic content are replaced by sarcastic poems, in which the poet denounces British policy in the Iberian Peninsula and Greece, where, instead of helping the Greek people in their liberation struggle, Britain is engaged in robbing the country, taking away national values from it. In the third and fourth songs, the image of the hero is gradually replaced by the image of the author. These songs are structured as a lyrical reflection on life, the author’s voice sounds stronger in them, and the attitude towards modernity is more directly expressed. The poet expresses thoughts about the central event of his era - about the French bourgeois revolution, in which “mankind realized its strength and made others realize it,” about the great enlighteners Rousseau and Voltaire, who with their ideas participated in the preparation of the revolution. In the fourth song, Byron writes about the fate of Italy, its history and culture, and the suffering of the Italian people. The poem expresses the idea of the need to fight for the freedom of Italy. Created here metaphorical image"Tree of Freedom"
The poet freely handles not only the narrative line of the poem, breaking it up with inserts - ballads, stanzas, lyrical digressions - he also freely deals with his hero, either introducing him to the reader, or Harold’s personality is blurred in the flow of impressions from what the poet personally saw and experienced. Harold is a dreamer who breaks with a hypocritical society and analyzes his experiences. Here are the origins of the theme of a young man’s spiritual quest, which became one of the leading themes in 19th-century literature. Obsessed with the desire to escape from the familiar way of life, disappointed and irreconcilable, Childe Harold rushes to distant lands. Active self-analysis makes him passive in the practical sphere. All his attention is absorbed by the experiences caused by the break with society, and he only contemplates the new things that appear before his eyes during his wanderings. His melancholy has no specific reason; it is the worldview of a person living in a troubled state of the world. Childe Harold doesn't fight, he just watches modern world, trying to comprehend his tragic state. Byron denied the identity between himself and Childe Harold: he ironically refers to the pose of a disappointed wanderer, calmly observing what he sees during his wanderings.
10. W. Scott as the creator of historical romanticism. novels contributed to public consciousness era something important for the culture of the 19th century. Scott's innovation concluded. is that he, as noted by V.G. Belinsky, created the genre of historical novel, “which did not exist before him.” Scott’s rule: “To interest the reader, the events depicted in the work must be translated into the mores of the era in which we live, as well as into its language.” For the first time in English literature, he created philosophical-historical novels, and in the novels, for the first time, people appeared: real. a human collective, moving, thinking, doubting, united by common interests and passions, capable of action due to its own natural reaction to events (the Puritans in The Puritans, the mountaineers in The Legend of Montrose, in Rob Roy, in The Beauty of Perga "). A picture of the struggle of contradictory and complex interests of various social groups, parties, religious sects, V.S. expanded the boundaries of the novel and created a whole philosophy of history. Never before has a novel covered so many types, classes, classes and events. Features of the novel: the breadth of composition. , contrast of pictures, style and language. According to the old tradition, the novel should be built on a love affair. This rule was strictly observed in the 18th century and was completely transferred to the 19th century. He freed politicians from invented love affairs and transferred it to fictional heroes. Historical accuracy is maintained, the romantic intrigue is preserved. The hero-director and the “deep plot”, which in the “Gothic” novel aroused interest or fear, serve other purposes in Scott and acquire philosophical and historical significance. The connection between history and landscape.
With his works, V. Scott dealt, according to Belinsky, a “terrible blow” to those romantics who regretted the old world becoming a thing of the past. Sermons of humility, religious mysticism, detachment from the struggle for democracy. freedom, energy, sober mind, heroism of the working people. He created a new type of storytelling, based. on realistic. image rural life, reproducing the local color and peculiarities of speech of the inhabitants of the corners of Great Britain, laying the foundation for a tradition that was used by both his contemporaries (Bulwer-Lytton, W.G. Ainsworth) and those who followed. generations of writers (E. Gaskell, the Bronte sisters, D. Eliot, etc.). Novels: 1) dedicated to Scotland's recent past, period civil war: from the Puritan revolution of the 16th century. before the defeat of the mountain clans in the middle of the 18th century ("Waverley", "Guy Mannering", "Edinburgh Prison", "Scottish Puritans", "The Bride of Lamermoor", "Rob Roy", "The Monastery", etc. 2) dedicated to the past of England and continental countries (Ivanhoe, Quentin Dorward, Kenilworth, etc.).
