The history of everyday life today is a very popular area of historical and generally humanitarian knowledge. It was designated relatively recently as a separate branch of historical knowledge. Although the main subjects of the history of everyday life, such as life, clothing, work, leisure, customs, have been studied in certain aspects for a long time, currently in historical science there is an unprecedented interest in the problems of everyday life. Everyday life is the subject of a whole complex of scientific disciplines: sociology, psychology, psychiatry, linguistics, art theory, literary theory and, finally, philosophy. This theme often dominates philosophical treatises and scientific studies, the authors of which address certain aspects of life, history, culture and politics.
The history of everyday life is a branch of historical knowledge, the subject of study of which is the sphere of human everyday life in its historical-cultural, political-event, ethnic and confessional contexts. The focus of the history of everyday life, according to modern researcher N.L. Pushkareva, is reality, which is interpreted by people and has subjective significance for them as an integral life world, a comprehensive study of this reality (life world) of people of different social classes, their behavior and emotional reactions to events.
The history of everyday life originated in the middle of the 19th century, and as an independent branch of the study of the past in the humanities it emerged in the late 60s. XX century During these years, there was an interest in research related to the study of man, and in this regard, German scientists were the first to begin to study the history of everyday life. The slogan sounded: “From the study of public policy and the analysis of global public structures and processes, let us turn to the small worlds of life, to everyday life ordinary people"The direction of "history of everyday life" or "history from below" arose.
It can also be noted that the surge of interest in the study of everyday life coincided with the so-called “anthropological revolution” in philosophy. M. Weber, E. Husserl, S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, A. Schopenhauer and others proved that it is impossible to describe many phenomena of the human world and nature while remaining on the positions of classical rationalism. For the first time, philosophers drew attention to the internal relationships between various spheres of human life, which ensure the development of society, its integrity and uniqueness at each time stage. Hence, research into the diversity of consciousness, internal experience, and various forms of everyday life is becoming increasingly important.
We are interested in what was and is understood by everyday life and how scientists interpret it?
To do this, it makes sense to name the most important German historians of everyday life. The historical sociologist Norbert Elias is considered a classic in this area with his works “On the Concept of Everyday Life,” “On the Process of Civilization,” and “Court Society.” N. Elias says that a person in the process of life absorbs social norms of behavior and thinking and, as a result, they become the mental appearance of his personality, and also that the form of human behavior changes in the course of social development.
Elias also tried to define the “history of everyday life.” He noted that there is no precise, clear definition of everyday life, but he tried to give a certain concept through the contrast to non-everyday. To do this, he compiled lists of some ways of applying this concept that are found in the scientific literature. The result of his work was the conclusion that in the early 80s. The history of everyday life is so far “neither fish nor fowl”.
Another scholar who worked in this direction was Edmund Husserl, a philosopher who shaped a new attitude toward the “ordinary.” He became the founder of the phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to the study of everyday life and was the first to draw attention to the significance of the “sphere of human everyday life,” everyday life, which he called “ life world"It was his approach that was the impetus for scientists in other fields of humanities to study the problem of defining everyday life.
Among Husserl's followers, one can pay attention to Alfred Schutz, who proposed focusing on the analysis of the “world of human spontaneity,” i.e. on those feelings, fantasies, desires, doubts and reactions to immediate private events.
From the point of view of social feminology, Schutz defines everyday life as “a sphere of human experience, characterized by a special form of perception and understanding of the world, arising on the basis of work activity, which has a number of characteristics, including confidence in the objectivity and self-evidence of the world and social interactions, which, in fact, and there is a natural attitude."
Thus, followers of social feminology come to the conclusion that everyday life is that sphere of human experience, orientations and actions, thanks to which a person carries out plans, affairs and interests.
The next step towards separating everyday life into a branch of science was the emergence of modernist sociological concepts in the 60s of the 20th century. For example, the theories of P. Berger and T. Luckmann. The peculiarity of their views was that they called for studying “face-to-face meetings of people,” believing that such meetings” (social interactions) are “the main content of everyday life.”
Later, within the framework of sociology, other theories and authors began to appear, who tried to provide an analysis of everyday life. Thus, this led to its transformation into an independent direction in the social sciences. This change, of course, affected the historical sciences.
Representatives of the Annales school - Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel - made a huge contribution to the study of everyday life. "Annals" in the 30s. XX century turned to the study of the working man, the subject of their study becomes the “history of the masses” as opposed to the “history of the stars”, a history visible not “from above”, but “from below”. According to N.L. Pushkareva, they proposed to see in the reconstruction of the “everyday” an element of recreating history and its integrity. They studied the peculiarities of consciousness not of outstanding historical figures, but of the mass “silent majority” and its influence on the development of history and society. Representatives of this direction also studied the mentality ordinary people, their experiences, and the material side of everyday life. A. Ya. Gurevich noted that this task was successfully carried out by their supporters and successors, grouped around the journal “Annals” created in the 1950s. The history of everyday life appeared in their works as part of the macro-context of life in the past.
A representative of this direction, Mark Blok turns to the history of culture, social psychology and studies it, based not on an analysis of the thoughts of individual individuals, but in direct mass manifestations. The historian's focus is on man. Blok hastens to clarify: “not a person, but people - people organized into classes, social groups. In Blok’s field of vision are typical, mainly mass-like phenomena in which repeatability can be detected.”
One of Blok’s main ideas was that a historian’s research begins not with collecting material, but with posing a problem and asking questions to the source. He believed that “a historian, by analyzing the terminology and vocabulary of surviving written sources, is able to make these monuments say much more.”
The French historian Fernand Braudel studied the problem of everyday life. He wrote that one can experience everyday life through material life - “these are people and things, things and people.” The only way to experience the daily existence of a person is to study things - food, housing, clothing, luxury items, tools, money, plans of villages and cities - in a word, everything that serves a person.
Continuing the “Braudel line”, French historians of the second generation of the Annales School scrupulously studied the relationships between people’s lifestyles and their mentalities, everyday social psychology. Use of the Braudelian approach in historiographies of a number of countries Central Europe(Poland, Hungary, Austria), which began in the mid-second half of the 70s, was conceptualized as an integrative method of understanding man in history and the “spirit of the times.” According to N.L. Pushkareva, it has received the greatest recognition among medievalists and specialists in the history of early modern times and is practiced to a lesser extent by specialists studying the recent past or the present.
Another approach to understanding the history of everyday life arose and still prevails in German and Italian historiography.
In the form of the German history of everyday life, an attempt was made for the first time to define the history of everyday life as a kind of new research program. This is evidenced by the book “The History of Everyday Life. Reconstruction of Historical Experience and Way of Life,” published in the late 1980s in Germany.
According to S.V. Obolenskaya, German researchers called for studying the “microhistories” of ordinary, ordinary, invisible people. They believed that it was important to provide a detailed description of all the poor and disadvantaged, as well as their emotional experiences. For example, one of the most common research topics is the lives of workers and the labor movement, as well as working families.
A large part of the history of everyday life is the study of women's everyday life. Many works are published in Germany on women's issue, women's work, the role of women in public life in different historical eras. A center for research on women's issues has been created here. Particular attention is paid to the lives of women in the post-war period.
In addition to the German “historians of everyday life,” a number of researchers in Italy were inclined to interpret it as a synonym for “microhistory.” In the 1970s, a small group of such scientists (K. Ginzburg, D. Levy, etc.) rallied around the journal they created, starting the publication of the scientific series “Microhistory”. These scientists made worthy of the attention of science not only the common, but also the unique, accidental and particular in history, be it an individual, an event or an incident. The study of the random - argued the supporters of the microhistorical approach - should be the starting point for work on recreating multiple and flexible social identities that arise and are destroyed in the process of functioning of a network of relationships (competition, solidarity, association, etc.). In doing so, they sought to understand the relationship between individual rationality and collective identity.
The German-Italian school of microhistorians expanded in the 1980s and 90s. It was replenished by American researchers of the past, who a little later joined the study of the history of mentalities and unraveling the symbols and meanings of everyday life.
Common to the two approaches to the study of the history of everyday life - both those outlined by F. Braudel and microhistorians - was a new understanding of the past as “history from below” or “from within,” which gave voice to " little man", a victim of modernization processes: both the unusual and the most ordinary. The two approaches in the study of everyday life are also united by connections with other sciences (sociology, psychology and ethnology). They equally contributed to the recognition that the man of the past is not like a non-human today, they equally recognize that the study of this “otherness” is the path to understanding the mechanism of sociopsychological changes. In world science, both understandings of the history of everyday life continue to coexist - both as reconstructing the mental macrocontext of event history, and as the implementation of methods of microhistorical analysis.
In the late 80s - early 90s of the XX century, following Western and domestic historical science, there was a surge of interest in everyday life. The first works appear that mention everyday life. A series of articles are published in the almanac "Odyssey", where an attempt is made to theoretically comprehend everyday life. These are articles by G. S. Knabe, A. Ya. Gurevich, G. I. Zvereva.
N. L. Pushkareva made a significant contribution to the development of the history of everyday life. The main result of Pushkareva’s research work is the recognition of the direction of gender studies and women’s history (historical feminology) in domestic humanities.
Most of the books and articles written by Pushkareva N.L. are devoted to the history of women in Russia and Europe. The Association of American Slavists recommended N. L. Pushkareva’s book as a textbook in US universities. The works of N. L. Pushkareva have a high citation index among historians, sociologists, psychologists, and cultural experts.
The works of this researcher identified and comprehensively analyzed a wide range of problems in the “history of women” both in pre-Petrine Russia (X - XVII centuries) and in Russia XVIII- beginning of the 19th century.
N. L. Pushkareva pays direct attention to the study of issues privacy and everyday life of representatives of various classes Russian society XVIII - early XIX centuries, including the nobility. She established, along with the universal features of the “female ethos,” specific differences, for example, in the upbringing and lifestyle of provincial and metropolitan noblewomen. Attaching particular importance when studying the emotional world of Russian women to the relationship between the “general” and the “individual,” N. L. Pushkareva emphasizes the importance of moving “to the study of private life as the history of specific individuals, sometimes not at all famous or exceptional. This approach makes it possible” get to know them through literature, office documents, and correspondence.
The last decade has demonstrated the growing interest of Russian historians in everyday history. The main directions of scientific research are being formed, well-known sources are analyzed from a new angle, and new documents are being introduced into scientific circulation. According to M. M. Krom, in Russia the history of everyday life is now experiencing a real boom. As an example, we can cite the series "Molodaya Gvardiya" published by the publishing house " Living history. Everyday life of humanity." Along with translated works, books by A. I. Begunova, E. V. Romanenko, E. V. Lavrentieva, S. D. Okhlyabinin and other Russian authors were published in this series. Many studies are based on memoirs and archival sources, they describe in detail the life and customs of the characters in the story.
Reaching a fundamentally new scientific level in the study of the everyday history of Russia, which has long been in demand by researchers and readers, is associated with the intensification of work on the preparation and publication of documentary collections, memoirs, republication of previously published works with detailed scientific comments and reference apparatus.
Today we can talk about the formation of separate directions in the study of the everyday history of Russia - this is the study of everyday life of the period of the empire (XVIII - early XX centuries), the Russian nobility, peasants, townspeople, officers, students, the clergy, etc.
In the 1990s - early 2000s. The scientific problem of “everyday Russia” is gradually being mastered by university historians, who have begun to use new knowledge in the process of teaching historical disciplines. Historians of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov even prepared a textbook “Russian everyday life: from the origins to the middle of the 19th century,” which, according to the authors, “allows us to supplement, expand and deepen knowledge about real life people in Russia." Sections 4-5 of this publication are devoted to the daily life of Russian society in the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries and cover a fairly wide range of issues from almost all segments of the population: from the urban lower classes to the secular society of the empire. One cannot but agree with the authors’ recommendation to use this publication as an addition to existing textbooks, which will expand the understanding of the world of Russian life.
The prospects for studying Russia's historical past from the perspective of everyday life are obvious and promising. Evidence of this is the research activity of historians, philologists, sociologists, cultural experts, and ethnologists. Due to its “worldwide responsiveness,” everyday life is recognized as a sphere of interdisciplinary research, but at the same time it requires methodological accuracy in approaches to the problem. As the culturologist I. A. Mankevich noted, “in the space of everyday life, the “life lines” of all spheres of human existence converge..., everyday life is “everything that is ours mixed with something that is not ours at all...”
Task 25. In O. Balzac's story "Gobsek" (written in 1830, final edition - 1835), the hero, an incredibly rich moneylender, sets out his view of life:
“What is admired in Europe is punished in Asia. What is considered a vice in Paris is recognized as a necessity in the Azores. There is nothing lasting on earth, there are only conventions, and they are different in each climate. For one who, willy-nilly, was applied to all social standards, all your moral rules and beliefs are empty words. Only one single feeling is unshakable, embedded in us by nature itself: the instinct of self-preservation... When you live with me, you will find out that Of all earthly blessings, there is only one that is reliable enough for a person to pursue it. Is this gold. All the forces of humanity are concentrated in gold... And as for morals, man is the same everywhere: everywhere there is a struggle between the poor and the rich, everywhere. And it is inevitable. So It’s better to push yourself than to allow others to push you.”.
Underline the sentences in the text that, in your opinion, most clearly characterize Gobsek’s personality.
Why do you think the author gives his hero the name Gobsek, which means “guzzler”? What do you think could have made him like this? Write down your main findings.
A person devoid of sympathy, concepts of goodness, alien to compassion in his desire for enrichment, is called a “guzzler.” It's hard to imagine what exactly could have made him like this. A hint, perhaps, is in the words of Gobsek himself, that best teacher a person is a misfortune, only it helps a person to know the value of people and money. Difficulties, misfortunes own life and the society surrounding Gobsek, where gold was considered the main measure of everything and the greatest good, made Gobsek a “guzzler.”
Based on your conclusions, write a short story - the life story of Gobsek (childhood and youth, travel, meetings with people, historical events, sources of his wealth, etc.), told by himself.
I was born into the family of a poor artisan in Paris and lost my parents very early. Finding myself on the street, I wanted one thing - to survive. Everything boiled in your soul when you saw the magnificent outfits of aristocrats, gilded carriages rushing along the pavements and forcing you to press into the wall so as not to be crushed. Why is the world so unfair? Then... the revolution, the ideas of freedom and equality, which turned everyone’s head. Needless to say, I joined the Jacobins. And with what delight I received Napoleon! He made the nation proud. Then there was a restoration and everything that they had fought against for so long returned. Once again gold ruled the world. They no longer thought about freedom and equality and I left for the south, to Marseille... After many years hardships, wanderings, dangers, I managed to get rich and learn main principle present life- It’s better to push yourself than to be crushed by others. And here I am in Paris, and those whose carriages I once had to shy away from come to me to ask for money. Do you think I'm happy? Not at all, this confirmed me even more in the opinion that the main thing in life is gold, only it gives power over people.
Task 26. Here are reproductions of two paintings. Both artists painted works primarily in household topics. Examine the illustrations, paying attention to the time they were created. Compare both works. Is there anything in common in the portrayal of the characters and the authors’ attitude towards them? Perhaps you were able to notice something different? Write down the results of your observations in your notebook.
General: Everyday scenes from the life of the third estate are depicted. We see the artists' affection for their characters and their knowledge of the subject.
Various: Chardin depicted calm, intimate scenes in his paintings, full of love, light and peace. In Mulle we see endless fatigue, hopelessness and resignation to a difficult fate.
Task 27. Read fragments of a literary portrait famous writer 19th century (author of the essay - K. Paustovsky). In the text, the writer's name is replaced by the letter N.
Which writer did K. Paustovsky talk about? To answer, you can use the text of § 6 of the textbook, which gives literary portraits writers. Underline phrases in the text that, from your point of view, allow you to accurately determine the name of the writer.
The stories and poems of N, a colonial correspondent who himself stood under bullets, communicated with soldiers, and did not disdain the company of the colonial intelligentsia, were understandable and visual for a wide circle of writers.
About everyday life and work in the colonies, about the people of this world - English officials, soldiers and officers who create an empire far away from his native farms and cities lying under the blessed sky of old England, N. narrated. He and writers close to him in the general direction glorified the empire as a great Mother, never tired of dispatching new and new generations of her sons across the distant seas.
Children different countries were reading "The Jungle Books" by this writer. His talent was inexhaustible, his language was precise and rich, his invention was full of plausibility. All these properties are enough to be a genius, to belong to humanity.
About Joseph Rudyard Kipling.
Task 28. French artist E. Delacroix traveled a lot in the countries of the East. He was fascinated by the opportunity to depict vivid exotic scenes that excited the imagination.
Come up with several “oriental” subjects that you think might interest the artist. Write down the stories or their titles.
The death of the Persian king Darius, Shahsei-Vahsei among the Shiites with self-torture to the point of blood, bride kidnapping, horse racing nomadic peoples, falconry, hunting with cheetahs, armed Bedouins riding camels.
Give names to Delacroix's paintings shown on p. 29-30.
1. “Algerian women in their chambers,” 1834;
2. “Lion Hunt in Morocco”, 1854;
3. “Moroccan saddling a horse,” 1855.
Try to find albums with reproductions of works by this artist. Compare the names you have given with the real ones. Write down the titles of other paintings by Delacroix about the East that interest you.
“Cleopatra and the Peasant”, 1834, “Massacre on Chios”, 1824, “Death of Sardanapalus” 1827, “Duel of the Giaour with the Pasha”, 1827, “Fight of Arab Horses”, 1860, “ Fanatics of Tangier" 1837-1838.
Task 29. Contemporaries rightly considered Daumier's caricatures to be illustrations of Balzac's works.
Consider several of these works: “The Little Clerk”, “Robert Macker - Stock Player”, “The Legislative Womb”, “The Action of Moonlight”, “Representatives of Justice”, “Lawyer”.
Write signatures under the paintings (use quotes from Balzac's text for this). Write the names of the characters and the titles of Balzac's works, illustrations for which could be Daumier's works.
Task 30. Artists different eras sometimes they turned to the same plot, but interpreted it differently.
Consider reproductions in the 7th grade textbook famous painting David's "Oath of the Horatii", created during the Enlightenment. Do you think this story could have interested a romantic artist who lived in the 30s and 40s? XIX century? What would the piece look like? Describe it.
The plot could be of interest to romantics. They sought to portray heroes at moments of highest tension of spiritual and physical strength, when the inner spiritual world person, showing his essence. The piece could look the same. You can replace the costumes, bringing them closer to modern times.
Task 31. At the end of the 60s. XIX century V artistic life Impressionists burst into Europe, defending new views on art.
In L. Volynsky’s book “The Green Tree of Life” there is a short story about how one day C. Monet, as always under open air, painted a picture. For a moment the sun hid behind a cloud, and the artist stopped working. At that moment he was caught by G. Courbet, who became interested in why he was not working. “Waiting for the sun,” Monet replied. “You could paint the background landscape for now,” Courbet shrugged.
What do you think the impressionist Monet answered him? Write down possible answers.
1. Monet’s paintings are permeated with light, they are bright, sparkling, joyful - “space requires light.”
2. Probably waiting for inspiration - “I don’t have enough light.”
There are two in front of you women's portraits. When looking at them, pay attention to the composition of the work, details, and features of the image. Place the date of creation of the works under the illustrations: 1779 or 1871.
What features of the portraits did you notice that allowed you to complete this task correctly?
In clothing and in the manner of writing. “Portrait of the Duchess de Beaufort” by Gainsborough - 1779. “Portrait of Jeanne Samary” by Renoir - 1871. Gainsborough’s portraits were mostly made to order. Coldly aloof aristocrats were portrayed in a sophisticated manner. Renoir portrayed ordinary French women, young, cheerful and spontaneous, full of life and charm. The painting technique also differs.
Task 32. The discoveries of the Impressionists paved the way for the Post-Impressionists - painters who sought to capture their own unique vision of the world with maximum expressiveness.
Paul Gauguin's canvas “Tahitian Pastorals” was created by the artist in 1893 during his stay in Polynesia. Try to write a story about the content of the painting (what is happening on the canvas, how Gauguin relates to the world captured on the canvas).
Considering civilization a disease, Gauguin gravitated towards exotic places and sought to merge with nature. This was reflected in his paintings, which depicted the life of the Polynesians, simple and measured. She emphasized the simplicity and manner of writing. The flat canvases depicted compositions that were static and contrasting in color, deeply emotional and at the same time decorative.
Examine and compare two still lifes. Each work tells about the time when it was created. Do these works have anything in common?
Still lifes depict simple everyday things and simple fruits. Both still lifes are distinguished by simplicity and laconic composition.
Have you noticed a difference in the images of objects? What is she wearing?
Klas reproduces objects in detail, strictly adheres to perspective and light and shade, and uses soft tones. Cezanne presents us with a picture from different points of view, uses a clear outline to emphasize the volume of the subject, and bright, saturated colors. The crumpled tablecloth does not look as soft as Claes’s, but rather plays the role of a background and gives sharpness to the composition.
Create and record an imaginary conversation Dutch artist P. Claes and the French painter P. Cezanne, in which they would talk about their still lifes. What would they praise each other for? What would these two still life masters criticize?
K.: “I used light, air and a single tone to express the unity of the objective world and environment».
S.: “My method is hatred of the fantastic image. I write only the truth and I want to hit Paris with carrots and apples.”
K.: “It seems to me that you are not depicting objects in enough detail and incorrectly.”
S.: “An artist should not be too scrupulous, or too sincere, or too dependent on nature; the artist is to a greater or lesser extent the master of his model, and mainly of his means of expression.”
K.: “But I like your work with color, I also consider this the most important element of painting.”
S.: “Color is the point where our brain comes into contact with the universe.”
*note. When composing the dialogue, quotes from Cezanne were used.
Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s novel “Ordinary History” was one of the first Russian realistic works, telling about the daily life of ordinary people. The novel depicts pictures of Russian reality in the 40s of the 19th century, typical circumstances of human life at that time.
The novel was published in 1847. It tells about the fate of the young provincial Alexander Aduev, who came to St. Petersburg to visit his uncle. What happens to him on the pages of the book is “ ordinary story” - the transformation of a romantic, pure young man into a calculating and cold businessman.
But from the very beginning, this story is told from two sides - from the point of view of Alexander himself and from the point of view of his uncle, Pyotr Aduev. From their first conversation it becomes clear how opposite natures these are. Alexander is characterized by a romantic view of the world, love for all humanity, inexperience and a naive belief in “eternal vows” and “pledges of love and friendship.” The cold and alienated world of the capital, where a huge number of people who are absolutely indifferent to each other coexist in a relatively small space, is strange and unusual for him. Even family relations in St. Petersburg are much drier than those to which he was accustomed in his village.
Alexander's exaltation makes his uncle laugh. Aduev Sr. constantly, and even with some pleasure, plays the role of a “tub of cold water” when he moderates Alexander’s enthusiasm: he either orders him to cover the walls of his office with poetry, or throws out the “material pledge of love” out the window. Peter Aduev himself is a successful industrialist, a man of a sober, practical mind, who considers any “sentiments” unnecessary. And at the same time, he understands and appreciates beauty, knows a lot about literature, theater arts. He contrasts Alexander’s beliefs with his own, and it turns out that they are not without their truth.
Why should he love and respect a person just because this person is his brother or nephew? Why encourage the poetry of a young man who clearly has no talent? Isn't it better to show him another path in time? After all, raising Alexander in his own way, Pyotr Aduev tried to protect him from future disappointments.
The three love stories that Alexander finds himself in prove this. Each time, the romantic heat of love in him cools more and more, coming into contact with cruel reality. So, any words, actions, actions of an uncle and nephew are, as it were, in a constant dialogue. The reader compares and compares these characters, because it is impossible to evaluate one without looking at the other. But it also turns out to be impossible to choose which of them is right?
It would seem that life itself is helping Pyotr Aduev to prove that he is right to his nephew. After just a few months of living in St. Petersburg, Aduev Jr. has almost nothing left of his beautiful ideals - they are hopelessly broken. Returning to the village, he writes to his aunt, Peter’s wife, bitter letter, where he sums up his experience, his disappointments. This letter mature man, who lost many illusions, but retained his heart and mind. Alexander learns a cruel but useful lesson.
But is Pyotr Aduev himself happy? Having rationally organized his life, living according to calculations and firm principles of a cold mind, he tries to subordinate his feelings to this order. Having chosen a lovely young woman as his wife (here is a taste for beauty!), he wants to raise her as a life partner according to his ideal: without “stupid” sensitivity, excessive impulses and unpredictable emotions. But Elizaveta Alexandrovna unexpectedly takes the side of her nephew, sensing a kindred spirit in Alexander. She cannot live without love, all these necessary “excesses”. And when she gets sick, Pyotr Aduev realizes that he can’t help her in any way: she is dear to him, he would give everything, but he has nothing to give. Only love can save her, but Aduev Sr. does not know how to love.
And, as if to further prove the dramatic nature of the situation, Alexander Aduev appears in the epilogue - bald and plump. He, somewhat unexpectedly for the reader, has learned all his uncle’s principles and is making a lot of money; he is even going to marry “for the money.” When his uncle reminds him of his past words. Alexander just laughs. At that moment when Aduev Sr. realizes the collapse of his slender life system, Aduev Jr. becomes the embodiment of this system, and not its best version. It was as if they had switched places.
The trouble, even the tragedy, of these heroes is that they remained the poles of worldviews, they could not achieve harmony, the balance of those positive principles that were in both of them; they lost faith in high truths, because life and the surrounding reality did not need them. And, unfortunately, this is a common story.
The novel made readers think about the acute moral issues posed by Russian life of that time. Why did the process of degeneration of a romantically inclined young man into a bureaucrat and entrepreneur take place? Is it really necessary, having lost illusion, to free ourselves from sincere and noble human feelings? These questions still concern the reader today. I.A. Goncharov gives us answers to all these questions in his wonderful work.
The contradictions between the abstractness of the general laws of science (including history) and the concrete life of ordinary people served as the basis for the search for new approaches in historical knowledge. History reflects the general, abstracting from particulars, paying attention to laws and general development trends. To the common man with his specific circumstances and details of life, with the peculiarities of his perception and experience of the world, there was no place left, he was absent. The individualized daily life of a person, the sphere of his experiences, and the specific historical aspects of his existence fell out of the field of view of historical scientists.
Historians have turned to the study of everyday life as one of the possible ways to resolve the above-mentioned contradiction. The current situation in history also contributes to this.
Modern historical science is undergoing a deep internal transformation, which is manifested in a change in intellectual orientations, research paradigms, and the very language of history. The current situation in historical knowledge is increasingly characterized as postmodern. Having experienced the “offensive of structuralism”, which became the “new scientism” in the 60s, and the “linguistic turn” or “semiotic explosion” in the 80s of the twentieth century, historiography could not help but experience the impact of the postmodern paradigm, which spread its influence to all areas of humanities. The situation of crisis, the peak of which Western historical science experienced in the 70s of the 20th century, is being experienced by domestic science today.
The very concept of “historical reality” is being revised, and with it the historian’s own identity, his professional sovereignty, the criteria for the reliability of the source (the boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred), faith in the possibility of historical knowledge and the desire for objective truth. Trying to resolve the crisis, historians are developing new approaches and new ideas, including turning to the category of “everyday life” as one of the options for overcoming the crisis.
Modern historical science has identified ways to approach the understanding of the historical past through its subject and bearer - the person himself. A comprehensive analysis of the material and social forms of a person’s daily existence - his life microcosm, stereotypes of his thinking and behavior - is considered as one of the possible approaches in this regard.
In the late 80s - early 90s of the XX century, following Western and domestic historical science, there was a surge of interest in everyday life. The first works appear that mention everyday life. A series of articles are published in the almanac “Odyssey”, where an attempt is made to theoretically comprehend everyday life. These are articles by G.S. Knabe, A.Ya. Gurevich, G.I. Zverevoy. Interests are also the reasoning of S.V. Obolenskaya in the article “A certain Joseph Schaefer, a soldier of Hitler’s Wehrmacht” about methods of studying the history of everyday life using the example of considering the individual biography of a certain Joseph Schaefer. A successful attempt at a comprehensive description of the everyday life of the population in the Weimar Republic is the work of I.Ya., published in 1990. Bisca. Using an extensive and diverse source base, he quite fully described the daily life of various segments of the population of Germany during the Weimar period: socio-economic life, morals, spiritual atmosphere. He provides convincing data, specific examples, describes food, clothing, living conditions, etc. If in the articles of G.S. Knabe, A.Ya. Gurevich, G.I. Zvereva is given a theoretical understanding of the concept of “everyday life”, then the articles by S.V. Obolenskaya and monograph by I.Ya. Bisca is historical works, where the authors, using specific examples, try to describe and define what “everyday life” is.
The initial turn of attention of domestic historians to the study of everyday life has diminished in recent years, as there are not enough sources and serious theoretical understanding of this problem. It should be remembered that one cannot ignore the experience of Western historiography - England, France, Italy and, of course, Germany.
In the 60-70s. XX century interest arose in research related to the study of man, and in this regard, German scientists were the first to begin to study the history of everyday life. The slogan sounded: “From the study of public policy and analysis of global social structures and processes, let’s turn to the small worlds of life, to the everyday life of ordinary people.” The direction “history of everyday life” (Alltagsgeschichte) or “history from below” (Geschichte von unten) arose. What was and is understood by everyday life? How do scientists interpret it?
It makes sense to name the most important German historians of everyday life. A classic in this field, of course, is such a historical sociologist as Norbert Elias with his works “On the Concept of Everyday Life”, “On the Process of Civilization”, “Court Society”; Peter Borscheid and his work “Conversations about the history of everyday life”. I would definitely like to name a historian dealing with issues of modern times - Lutz Neuhammer, who works at the University of Hagen, and very early, already in 1980, in an article in the journal “Historical Didactics” (“Geschichtsdidaktik”), he studied the history of everyday life. This article was called "Notes on the History of Everyday Life". His other work “Life Experience and Collective Thinking” is well known. Practice "Oral History".
And a historian like Klaus Tenfeld deals with both theoretical and practical issues of the history of everyday life. His theoretical work is called "Difficulties with the Everyday" and is a critical discussion of the everyday historical movement with an excellent list of references. The publication by Klaus Bergmann and Rolf Scherker, “History in Everyday Life - Everyday Life in History,” consists of a number of theoretical works. Also, the problem of everyday life is dealt with both theoretically and practically by Dr. Peukert from Essen, who has published a number of theoretical works. One of them " New story everyday life and historical anthropology". The following works are known: Peter Steinbach “Daily Life and History of the Village”, Jurgen Kokka “Classes or Cultures? Breakthroughs and dead ends in work history", as well as Martin Brossat's remarks on the work of Jürgen Kock, and her interesting work on problems of the history of everyday life in the Third Reich. There is also a general work by J. Kuscinski “The History of Everyday Life of the German People. 16001945" in five volumes.
A work such as “History in Everyday Life - Everyday Life in History” is a collection of works by various authors dedicated to everyday life. Are being considered following problems: everyday life of workers and servants, architecture as a source of the history of everyday life, historical consciousness in the everyday life of modern times, etc.
It is very important to note that a discussion on the problem of the history of everyday life was held in Berlin (October 3-6, 1984), which on the final day was called “History from below - history from the inside.” And under this title, the materials of the discussion were published under the editorship of Jürgen Kock.
Representatives of the Annales school became the spokesmen for the latest needs and trends in historical knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century - Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre and, of course, Fernand Braudel. "Annals" in the 30s. XX century turned to the study of the working man, the subject of their study becomes the “history of the masses” as opposed to the “history of the stars”, a history visible not “from above”, but “from below”. “Human geography” was developed, history material culture, historical anthropology, social psychology and others that had previously remained in the shadow of the direction of historical research.
Marc Bloch was concerned with the problem of the contradiction between the inevitable schematism of historical knowledge and the living fabric of the real historical process. His activities were aimed at resolving this contradiction. He, in particular, emphasized that the focus of a historian’s attention should be on man, and immediately hastened to correct himself - not man, but people. In Blok’s field of vision there are typical, predominantly mass-like phenomena in which repeatability can be detected.
The comparative typological approach is the most important in historical research, but in history the regular appears through the particular, the individual. Generalization is associated with simplification, straightening, the living fabric of history is much more complex and contradictory, therefore Blok compares the generalized characteristics of a particular historical phenomenon with its variants, shows them in individual manifestations, thereby enriching the study, making it rich in specific variants. Thus, M. Blok writes that the picture of feudalism is not a set of features abstracted from living reality: it is confined to real space and historical time and is based on evidence from numerous sources.
One of Blok’s methodological ideas was that the historian’s research does not begin with the collection of material, as is often imagined, but with the formulation of the problem, with the development of a preliminary list of questions that the researcher wants to ask the sources. Not content with the fact that the society of the past, say the medieval one, decided to communicate about itself through the mouths of chroniclers, philosophers, and theologians, the historian, by analyzing the terminology and vocabulary of surviving written sources, is able to make these monuments say much more. We pose new questions to a foreign culture, which it has not asked itself, we look for answers to these questions in it, and the foreign culture answers us. In a dialogical meeting of cultures, each of them retains its integrity, but they are mutually enriched. Historical knowledge is such a dialogue of cultures.
The study of everyday life involves the search for fundamental structures in history that determine the order of human actions. This search begins with the historians of the Annales school. M. Blok understood that under the cover of phenomena understood by people lie hidden layers of deep social structure, which determines the changes occurring on the surface of social life. The task of the historian is to make the past “talk out”, that is, to say what it was not aware of or was not going to say.
Writing a story in which living people act is the motto of Blok and his followers. Collective psychology also attracts their attention because it expresses the socially determined behavior of people. A new issue for historical science at that time was human sensitivity. You cannot pretend to understand people without knowing how they felt. Outbursts of despair and rage, reckless actions, sudden mental breakdowns - cause a lot of difficulties for historians, who are instinctively inclined to reconstruct the past according to the schemes of the mind. M. Blok and L. Febvre saw their “reserved lands” in the history of feelings and ways of thinking and enthusiastically developed these themes.
M. Blok has outlines of the theory of “long time”, subsequently developed by Fernand Braudel. Representatives of the “Annals” school are primarily concerned with long-term time, that is, they study the structures of everyday life that change very slowly over time or actually do not change at all. At the same time, the study of such structures is the main task any historian, since they show the essence of a person’s daily existence, the stereotypes of his thinking and behavior that regulate his daily existence.
The direct thematization of the problem of everyday life in historical knowledge is usually associated with the name of Fernand Braudel. This is quite natural, because the first book of his famous work “Material Economy and Capitalism of the 15th-18th Centuries.” It’s called: “Structures of Everyday Life: Possible and Impossible.” He wrote about how one can experience everyday life: “Material life is people and things, things and people. Studying things - food, housing, clothing, luxury items, tools, money, plans of villages and cities - in a word, everything that serves a person - this is the only way to experience his daily existence." And the conditions of everyday existence, the cultural and historical context against which a person’s life, his history unfolds, have a decisive influence on people’s actions and behavior.
Fernand Braudel wrote about everyday life: “The starting point for me was,” he emphasized, “everyday life - that side of life in which we find ourselves involved without even realizing it - habit, or even routine, these thousands of actions taking place and ending as if by themselves, the implementation of which does not require anyone’s decision and which, in truth, occurs almost without affecting our consciousness. I believe that more than half of humanity is immersed in this kind of everyday life. Countless actions, passed down by inheritance, accumulating without any order. Repeated ad infinitum, before we came into this world, help us live - and at the same time subjugate us, deciding a lot for us during our existence. Here we are dealing with impulses, impulses, stereotypes, techniques and modes of action, as well as various types of obligations that compel action, which sometimes, more often than one might assume, go back to the most immemorial times.
Further, he writes that this ancient past is pouring into modernity and he wanted to see for himself and show others how this past, a barely noticeable history - like a compacted mass of everyday events - over the long centuries of previous history entered the flesh of the people themselves, for whom experience and the errors of the past have become commonplace and a daily necessity, escaping the attention of observers.
The works of Fernand Braudel contain philosophical and historical reflections on the marked routine of material life, on the complex interweaving of various levels of historical reality, on the dialectic of time and space. The reader of his works is faced with three different plans, three levels in which the same reality is grasped in different ways, its substantive and spatio-temporal characteristics change. It's about about fleeting event-political time at the highest level, much longer-term socio-economic processes at a deeper level, and almost timeless natural-geographical processes at the deepest level. Moreover, the distinction between these three levels (in fact, F. Braudel sees several more levels in each of these three) is not an artificial dissection of living reality, but a consideration of it in different refractions.
In the lowest layers of historical reality, as in the depths of the sea, permanence, stable structures dominate, the main elements of which are man, earth, and space. Time passes so slowly here that it seems almost motionless. At the next level - the level of society, civilization, the level that socio-economic history studies, time of average duration operates. Finally, the most superficial layer of history: here events alternate like waves in the sea. They are measured in short chronological units - this is political, diplomatic and similar “event” history.
For F. Braudel, the sphere of his personal interests is the almost motionless history of people in their close relationship with the land on which they walk and which feeds them; the history of a continuously repeating dialogue between man and nature, as persistent as if it were beyond the reach of the damage and blows inflicted by time. Until now, one of the problems of historical knowledge remains the attitude towards the statement that history as a whole can only be understood in comparison with this vast space of almost motionless reality, in identifying long-term processes and phenomena.
So what is everyday life? How can it be determined? Attempts to give an unambiguous definition have not been successful: everyday life is used by some scientists as a collective concept for the manifestation of all forms of private life, others understand by this the daily repetitive actions of the so-called “gray everyday life” or the sphere of natural unreflective thinking. German sociologist Norbert Elias noted in 1978 that there is no precise, clear definition of everyday life. The way this concept is used in sociology today includes a very diverse scale of shades, but they still remain unidentified and incomprehensible to us.
N. Elias attempted to define the concept of “everyday life”. He had been interested in this topic for a long time. Sometimes he himself was counted among those who dealt with this problem, since in his two works, “Courtly Society” and “On the Process of Civilization,” he considered issues that could easily be classified as problems of everyday life. But N. Elias himself did not consider himself a specialist in everyday life and decided to clarify this concept when he was invited to write an article on this topic. Norbert Elias has compiled preliminary lists of some of the uses of this concept that appear in the scientific literature.
