Natural school, literary direction 40s 19th century, which arose in Russia as the “school” of N.V. Gogol (A.I. Herzen, D.V. Grigorovich, V.I. Dal, A.V. Druzhinin, N.A. Nekrasov, I.S. . Turgenev and others). Theorist V. G. Belinsky.
The main publications of the almanac: “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (parts 1-2, 1845) and “Petersburg Collection” (1846).
The emergence of the “natural school” is due historically, to the rapprochement of literature with life in the first decade of the 19th century. The creativity of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol prepared the development of the “natural school” and its successes. Famous critic In the 19th century, Apollo Grigoriev saw the origins of the “natural school” in the appeal of Pushkin and Gogol to people's life. A critical depiction of reality becomes the main goal of Russian writers. Based on the material " Dead souls» Belinsky formulated the main principles of the aesthetics of the “natural school”. He outlined the path of development of Russian literature as a reflection of the social side of life, a combination of the “spirit” of analysis and the “spirit” of criticism. Belinsky's activities as an ideological inspirer were aimed at providing full support to writers following the path of Gogol. Belinsky welcomed the appearance of Herzen, Turgenev, Goncharov, and Dostoevsky in literature, immediately identifying the characteristics of their talent. Belinsky supported Koltsov, Grebenka, Dahl, Kudryavtsev, Kokarev and saw in their work the triumph and values of the “natural school”. The work of these writers constituted an entire era in the development of Russian literature in the second half of the 19th century, but the origins date back to the 40s of the 19th century. These writers published their first works in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. They formed a “natural school”. Sympathy and compassion for a poor and humiliated person, disclosure spiritual world little man(peasants, minor officials), anti-serfdom and anti-noble motives are the main features of the “natural school”. In the 1940s, poetry took its first steps towards getting closer to life. Nekrasov speaks in the spirit of the “natural school” with poems about poor and humiliated people. The term " natural school"was put forward by Fadel Bulgarin with the aim of humiliating the writers of the Gogol school. Belinsky picked up this term and assigned it to writers of realism. The influence of the “natural school” has been felt in recent decades.
1840-1849 (2 stages: from 1840 to 1846 - until Belinsky left the journal Otechestvennye zapiski and from 1846 to 1849)
Literary and social movements in the 60s of the 19th century.
The reign of Nicholas I is characterized by bureaucracy.
Nikitenko helped Gogol publish “ Dead souls"When Gogol was rejected by Moscow censorship.
1848-1855 - a dark seven years
Nicholas I dies in 1855
The first period of the reign of Alexander II is called the “Liberal Spring”. Society is gripped by optimism, and a dispute arises about the ways of developing literature about Pushkin and Gogol.
3 currents: liberal democracy and liberal aristocracy (landlord class), revolutionary democracy.
Quirk - on non-black earth lands
Corvee - peasants work for the landowner
Development of literature
The 60s of the 19th century - a decisive democratization of artistic consciousness. The pathos itself changes qualitatively in these years. From the question “who is to blame?” literature addresses the question “what to do?”
With complication public life differentiation occurs with increasing political struggle.
Pushkin's artistic universe turned out to be unique. There is a sharper specialization of literature. Tolstoy entered literature as the creator of War and Peace. Ostrovsky realizes himself in dramaturgy. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, a poet, lyricist, epic, realist, author of stories, dramas, and prose poems, tried to preserve the Pushkin universe, but Turgenev was forced to limit psychological analysis.
Attention to the “little man”
Almost always special attention People around you are not attracted to forgotten, humiliated people. Their life, their little joys and big troubles seemed insignificant to everyone, unworthy of attention. The era produced such people and such an attitude towards them. Cruel times and tsarist injustice forced the “little people” to withdraw into themselves, to withdraw completely into their souls, which had suffered, with the painful problems of that period; they lived an unnoticed life and also died unnoticed. But it was precisely such people who sometimes, by the will of circumstances, obeying the cry of the soul, began to fight against the powers that be, cry out for justice, and stopped being a rag. Therefore, after all, they became interested in their lives, and writers gradually began to devote some scenes in their works to just such people, their lives. With each work, the life of people of the “lower” class was shown more and more clearly and truthfully. Little officials station guards, “little people”, who had gone mad, against their own will, began to emerge from the shadows surrounding the world of the brilliant hall.
Karamzin laid the foundation for a huge cycle of literature about “little people” and took the first step into this previously unknown topic. It was he who opened the way for such classics of the future as Gogol, Dostoevsky and others.
It took writers a lot of effort to resurrect the “little man” for readers in their books. The traditions of the classics, the titans of Russian literature, were continued by writers of urban prose, those who wrote about the fate of the village during the years of oppression of totalitarianism and those who told us about the world of the camps. There were dozens of them. It is enough to name the names of several of them: Solzhenitsyn, Trifonov, Tvardovsky, Vysotsky, to understand the enormous scope of literature about the fate of the “little man” of the twentieth century.
Initially, Belinsky, in polemical fervor, used a phrase born in the camp of literary and ideological opponents. F. Bulgarin, editor of the newspaper "Northern Bee" and the magazine "Son of the Fatherland", sarcastically addressed it to the authors who united to publish the almanacs "Physiology of St. Petersburg" and "Petersburg Collection". The critic believed, in contrast to Bulgarin, that the so-called nature,“low pictures” must become the content of literature.
Belinsky legitimizes the name of the critical movement created by Gogol: natural school. It included A. I. Herzen, N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov, F. M. Dostoevsky, M. E. Saltykov, V. I. Dal (pseudonym Kazak Lugansky), V. A. Sollogub, D. V. Grigorovich, I. I. Panaev, E. P. Grebenka and others.
Organizationally, representatives of the “natural school” were not united. They were connected by creative attitudes, joint work in magazines, almanacs, and personal contacts. N. A. Nekrasov, rightfully considered a leader, became the editor of not only two almanacs about the life and customs of St. Petersburg, but also, together with I. I. Panaev, the owner and editor of the Sovremennik magazine.
Participants literary movement united creative enthusiasm, the pathos of “sociality,” an interested analysis of the influence of social mores on a person, and a deep interest in the fate of representatives of the lower and middle classes. The views and creativity of the writers of the “natural school” met with criticism from official journalism (primarily the Northern Bee magazine). Aesthetic and artistic innovations were embodied in two collections entitled “Physiology of St. Petersburg,” published under the editorship of Nekrasov, as well as in mass literary products, eagerly published in magazines and almanacs and having success with readers.
In terms of genre, “physiologies” were most often represented by essays, small works of descriptive and analytical content, where reality was depicted in a variety of ways, most often outside the developed plot situations through many social, professional, ethnographic, age types. The essay was an operational genre that made it possible to quickly and accurately record the state of affairs in society, with a high degree of reliability, even photographicity (as they said then, “daguerreotype”), and to present faces new to literature. Sometimes this happened to the detriment of artistry, but in the air of that time, in the aesthetic atmosphere, the ideas of combining art with science were in the air, and it seemed that one could sacrifice a measure of beauty for the sake of the truth of “reality.”
One of the reasons for such modeling of the world was that in the 30-40s in European science there was an interest in the practical (positive) direction, natural science was on the rise: organic chemistry, paleontology, comparative anatomy. Particular successes befell physiology (it is no coincidence that in one of the issues of Nekrasov’s Sovremennik in 1847 the article “The Importance and Successes of Physiology” was published). Russian, as well as Western European, writers sought to transfer the techniques of physiological science into literature, study life as peculiar organism, become “physiologists of society.” The writer - “physiologist” was understood as a true natural scientist who researches in his contemporary society, mainly in the middle and lower spheres, various types and subspecies, records regularly observed customs, living conditions, and habitat with almost scientific precision. Therefore, compositionally physiological essays were usually constructed as a combination collective portrait and everyday sketches. Actually, this form of realism presupposed the fixation of somewhat generalized, little individualized social types in a carefully described, equally typical, often vulgar and rude everyday life. “The essence of the type is to depict, for example, even a water carrier, to depict not just any one water carrier, but all of them in one,” wrote V. G. Belinsky in a review of the book “Ours, copied from life by Russians” ( 1841). It contained essays with characteristic titles: “Water Carrier”, “Young Lady”, “Army Officer”, “Coffin Master”, “Nanny”, “Medicine Man”, “Ural Cossack”.
The comparison of the Russian critic V. Maikov is read quite in the spirit of the 40s when he talks about the need to consider the laws of life society as an organic body. The writer of the forties was called upon to anatomize the “social body” and demonstrate an artistic and at the same time analytical “section” in different cultural, historical and geographical projections.
Horizontal projection northern capital brilliantly carried out by the authors of the famous two-volume collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (1844–1845). In the introduction to the first volume, V. G. Belinsky predicted the appearance of “fiction works that would, in the form of travels, trips, essays, stories, descriptions, introduce various parts boundless and diverse Russia."
His essay “Petersburg and Moscow” becomes his personal experience of such a geographical, historical and social description. In the essays “Omnibus” by Kulchitsky-Govorilin, “Petersburg Side” by Grebenka, “Petersburg Corners” by Nekrasov, the topography of the “bottom” of St. Petersburg unfolds: garbage pits, dirty basements, closets, stinking courtyards and their clogged, degraded inhabitants, crushed by poverty, misfortunes. And yet, the character of the northern capital is explored in “Physiology of St. Petersburg” primarily through a gallery of representatives of certain professions. A poor organ grinder from an essay by D. V. Grigorovich, trying in vain to feed his whole family with his craft. The janitor is yesterday’s peasant, who has become not only a guardian of cleanliness, but also order, imperceptibly transformed into something so necessary for life different classes intermediary (V.I. Dal. “Petersburg Janitor”). Other notable characters are the corrupt feuilletonist (I. I. Panaev. “Petersburg feuilletonist”), an official from Nekrasov’s poetic essay of the same name. The characters' characters are not written down; social illnesses, momentary human interests and historically established social roles are fused in them in artistic unity.
The vertical “section” of one capital house was a success for the writer Ya. P. Butkov. The book “Petersburg Peaks” (1845–1846), while not being an example of artistry, met the basic requirements of “physiology.” In the preface, the narrator seems to move from floor to floor: basements - “lower reaches”; "middle"; “under-the-cloud peaks” - attics. He gets to know those who live comfortably in the middle floors; with “grassroots” - “industrial” people who, “like swamp plants, firmly hold on to their soil”; with a “distinctive crowd”, “ special people» Attics: these are poor students, so similar to Raskolnikov who has not yet appeared, poor intellectuals. Characteristic in its style - as an echo of a peculiar fashion for natural science - is one of the reviews of “Petersburg Peaks”: “All 4th, 5th and 6th floors of the capital city of St. Petersburg came under unforgiving knife Butkova.
He took them, cut them off from the bottom, carried them home, cut them at the joints and published a piece of his anatomical preparations into the world.” The subtle critic V. Maikov gave an objective assessment of this book, pointing out not so much the poetic as the “scientific-documentary” properties of its artistry, which in itself once again characterizes physiological genres in general. “The merit of the story is purely daguerreotypical, and the description of the ordeals through which Terenty Yakimovich made his way is entertaining, like a chapter from excellent statistics.”
Under the undoubted influence of the artistic quest of the “natural school”, at the end of the first half of the century, large works domestic literature.
In his last annual review of Russian literature for 1847, V. G. Belinsky noted a certain dynamics of the genre development of Russian literature: “The novel and story have now become at the head of all other types of poetry.”
The novel “Poor People”, which brought fame to the young F. M. Dostoevsky, was published in the “Petersburg Collection”, published by N. Nekrasov in 1846. In line with the tradition of the “physiological essay”, he recreates a realistic picture of the life of the “downtrodden” inhabitants of the “St. Petersburg corners” ”, a gallery of social types - from a street beggar to “His Excellency”.
Two novels from the 40s are rightfully considered the highest achievement of the natural school: “ An ordinary story"I. A. Goncharova and “Who is to blame?” A. I. Herzen.
The most complex social, moral and philosophical meanings A. I. Herzen invested in the novel action, “full, according to Belinsky, of dramatic movement,” of a mind brought “to poetry.” This is a novel not only about serfdom, about the Russian province, it is a novel about time and environment that destroys all the best in a person, about the possibility of internal resistance to it, about the meaning of life. The reader is introduced into the problem field by a sharp and laconic question in the title of the work: “Who is to blame?” Where is the root of the reason that the best inclinations of the nobleman Negrov were drowned out by the vulgarity and idleness so widespread among the serf owners? Does he bear personal guilt for the fate of his illegitimate daughter Lyubonka, who grew up in his own house in a humiliating, ambiguous position? Who is responsible for the naivety of the subtle teacher Krutsifersky, who dreams of harmony? Essentially, all he can do is pronounce sincere pathetic monologues and revel in the family idyll, which turns out to be so fragile: his feeling for Vladimir Beltov becomes fatal and leads to death for his wife. The nobleman-intellectual Beltov comes to a provincial town in search of a worthy career in life, but not only does not find it, but also finds himself in the crucible of a tragic life collision. Who can be asked for the powerless, doomed to failure attempts of an exceptionally talented individual to find use for his powers in the suffocating atmosphere of landowner life, the government office, the domestic backwater in those spheres of life that most often “offered” the then Russia to its educated sons?
One of the answers is obvious: serfdom, the “late” Nicholas era in Russia, stagnation, which almost led to a national catastrophe in the mid-50s. The socio-historical conflict is intertwined with the ethical conflict. V. G. Belinsky very subtly pointed out the connection between social-critical and moral meaning works in description author's position: “Illness at the sight of unrecognized human dignity.” And yet, critical pathos determines, but does not exhaust, the content and meaning of the novel. TO central issues, raised in it, should be attributed to the problem national character, national identity. The meaning of the novel is also enriched thanks to Herzen’s artistic “anthropology” in its fundamental aspects: habit and peace, destroying all living things (the Negrov couple); infantilism or painful skepticism, which equally prevent youth from realizing themselves (Krutsifersky and Beltov); powerless wisdom (Dr. Krupov); destructive emotional and spiritual impulses (Lyubonka), etc. In general, attention to the “nature” of man and the typical circumstances that destroy it, break character and destiny, makes Herzen a writer of the “natural school.”
The formation of N. A. Nekrasov’s lyrics went in line with communication with the prosaic experiences of writers of the “natural school”. His first collection, “Dreams and Sounds” (1840), was of a romantic and imitative nature. Several years of work in prose genres led Nekrasov to a fundamentally new way of selecting and reproducing reality. Daily life the social lower classes is embodied in the form of a poetic short story, a “story in verse” (“On the Road”, 1845; “The Gardener”, 1846; “Am I Driving at Night”, 1847; “Wine”, 1848). The sketchy tone of the descriptions, factuality, detailed “everyday life” and sympathy for the people distinguish many of Nekrasov’s poetic experiments of the late 40s.
The cycle of stories by I. S. Turgenev “Notes of a Hunter”, most of which were written in the 40s, bears the stamp of physiology: characterized by the absence of a pronounced plot, artistic “grounding” on mass human types, descriptions of “ordinary” circumstances. At the same time, “Notes of a Hunter” is already outgrowing this genre form.
The stories of D. V. Grigorovich “The Village” and “Anton the Miserable”, the works of A. F. Pisemsky, V. A. Sollogub deepened the ambiguity of the realistic picture of the world, the main artistic coordinates of which met the requirements of the natural school.
The term was first used by Thaddeus Bulgarin as a disparaging description of the work of Nikolai Gogol’s young followers in “The Northern Bee” 1846, but was rethought by Belinsky in the article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847”: “ natural" - truthful depiction of reality.
Belinsky developed this idea about Gogol’s “school” - the movement of Russian literature towards realism - earlier: in the article “On the Russian story and the stories of Mr. Gogol” in 1835.
The main doctrine of the school: literature should be an imitation of reality. The formation of the “Natural School” dates back to 1842-1845, when a group of writers (Nikolai Nekrasov, Dmitry Grigorovich, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, Vladimir Dal) united under the ideological influence of Belinsky in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. Later, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin published there. These writers also appeared in the collections “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (1845), “Petersburg Collection” (1846), which became the program for the “Natural School”.
The most common signs on the basis of which a writer was considered to belong to the school:
1) socially significant topics,
2) critical attitude to social reality,
3) realism artistic expression, against embellishment of reality.
Belinsky emphasized that art and literature, more than ever, became an expression of social issues.
4) appeal to the “crowd”, to the “mass”, to ordinary people and to people of “low rank”. The "physiological" essays common in the 1840s met this need.
Gogol's influence:
1) satire on the “vile reality”,
2) the severity of his formulation of the problem of the “small man”
In addition to Gogol, such representatives of Western European literature as Dickens, Balzac, and George Sand influenced the writers of the natural school.
The school was criticized:
1) Bulgarin - for his passion for “low people”, for “filthy filth”, for political unreliability.
2) was ridiculed in Pyotr Karatygin’s vaudeville “Natural School” (1847). After Belinsky’s death, the very name “N.sh.” was prohibited by censorship. In the 1850s the term “Gogolian direction” was used
Among the writers included in it, the Literary Encyclopedia identifies three movements:
1) presented liberal nobility- superficial and cautious criticism of reality. Turgenev, Grigorovich, I. I. Panaev depict the estate and its inhabitants with intonations of light mockery, either in the poem (“The Landowner”, “Parasha” by Turgenev, etc.) or in the psychological story (works by I. I. Panaev). A special place was occupied by essays and stories from peasant life (“Village” and “Anton Goremyk” by Grigorovich, “Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev). This is noble realism.
2) relied on urban philistinism of the 1840s. A certain role here belonged to Fyodor Dostoevsky (“Poor People”, “The Double”, etc.). Novelty of social issues. Denial of certain aspects of social reality.
But instead of depicting the essential aspects social life- deepening into chaos and confusion of the human psyche.
3) presented "commoners"”, ideologists of “revolutionary peasant democracy”. The features of the school emerged most clearly. They manifested themselves most fully and sharply in Nekrasov (urban stories, essays - “Petersburg Corners”, anti-serfdom poems). Protest against the serf nobility, the dark corners of urban reality, merciless exposure of the underside of reality. Herzen (“Who’s to blame?”) and Saltykov (“A Confused Affair”) should also be included in this group, although the tendencies typical for the group are expressed less sharply in them than in Nekrasov.
By the 1860s, the division between writers classified as belonging to the natural school would sharply worsen.
Ex: Turgenev will take an irreconcilable position in relation to the “Contemporary” of Nekrasov and Chernyshevsky.
Belinsky
"A Look at Russian Literature 1847"(48) consists of 2 items:
"General assessment and origins of "nat.shk";
"About specific works of "NAT.SHK" writers.
The first article says that the school is at the head of modern Russian literature. The school is headed by Gogol. The origins are the satires of Kantemir, and then Khemnitser, Fonvizin, Krylov. Another Lomonosov line. These lines come together in Derzhavin and merge in Pushkin. Modern writers schools went further than Gogol, strengthened democratic ideas, commoners and peasants became their heroes.
The second article examines Herzen, Goncharov, Turgenev, Grigorovich, Dal, Druzhinin, Dostoevsky. Given benchmarking"Ordinary History" by Goncharov and "Who is to Blame?" Herzen (Herzen the thinker, Goncharov the artist; a different image of a woman - not cloyingly sentimental; great attention to Aduev Jr. - like Werner - a romantic, incapable of friendship, love). "Turgenev looked for his way in literature and found him in “Notes of a Hunter.” B especially notes “Khor and Kalinich,” where Turgenev raised the images of ordinary men to a high level.
3. Futurism as literary movement. Early creativity V. Mayakovsky.
The beginning of the 20th century is a time of unprecedented rise of Russian poetry, a time characterized by the appearance of many artistic directions- as continuing traditions Russian classics, and modernist. The latter undoubtedly includes futurism (from the Latin futurum; literally meaning “future”).
Futurism originally originated in Italy. Its first theorist and practitioner was the writer F. Marinetti. The Futurist Manifesto, published by him in 1909, became a programmatic statement of the aesthetic principles of the new direction. New art must be directed towards the future; tomorrow belongs to it. Its supporters advocated for the rejection of the cultural achievements of the past, for the search for new artistic means, linguistic techniques, futurism is characterized by pronounced formalistic features: concern for increasing the “vocabulary in its volume,” “word innovation,” and the creation of a new syntax. But at the same time, he is not alien to openly social content, revolutionary pathos, protest against those “abominations of life” that the reality of his time brought.
Out of dissatisfaction traditional art According to Mayakovsky, Russian futurism was born. It developed in its own way, independent of the European one. The Russian futurists did not have a single creative organization, but they still had one artistic and aesthetic platform. Their ideological manifesto can be called the collection “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” published in 1912. Its main provisions: firstly, to discard “Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. from the ship of modernity"; secondly, to recognize the poet’s right to “increase the vocabulary in its volume with arbitrary and derivative words.”
Futurists asserted the priority of form over content; the main thing in artistic creativity- search for new formal techniques, the goal of poetry is a valuable, “self-sufficient” word.
The new movement took on the role of revolutionary art. As such, it proposed the following principles: anti-aestheticism, poeticization of the ugly and ugly, shocking the public, demonstrative cynicism and nihilism. The futurists developed these principles not only in their creativity, but also in their way of life. Hence the extravagant costumes (for example, Mayakovsky’s yellow jacket), painted faces, ridiculous accessories, and deliberate rudeness in dealing with the public. The design of their collections was also provocative, from the titles to the dirty gray cheap paper. To bring the bourgeois public out of balance - this was the goal the futurists set for themselves.
The work of young Mayakovsky is inextricably linked with futurism. Together with D. Burliuk, V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, he participated in the creation of the collection “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” spoke at futurist debates, wrote critical articles, and was published in futurist publications of that time. Mayakovsky's experimental search was largely determined by the artistic guidelines of futurism; this concerns the main themes, poetic devices, and the language of his works.
At one of the poetry evenings, the author defined beauty this way: “This is the living life of the urban mass, these are the streets along which trams and cars run, reflected in mirrored windows and signs.” And it is precisely this kind of beauty that the poet praises. For him there is only one landscape - the urban one. In this regard, the titles of his poems are especially eloquent: “Port”, “Street”, “Signs”, “Theatres”, “Hell of the City”. At the same time, the pictures of city life amaze with their frank naturalism and rudeness: “The street sunk like the nose of a syphilitic person” or: “And some kind of rubbish was watching from the sky.” And this is how the night landscape looks like, according to Mayakovsky:
There will be a moon.
There are already
a little bit.
But the full one hung in the air.
This must be God
a wonderful silver spoon
rummages in the stars ear.
The author contrasts the primitive poetic description of the first part with a complicated prosaic explanation.
In these and other lines there is demonstrative anti-aestheticism, the desire to amaze the reader, so characteristic of futurist art. The poet defends the right to look at the world in his own way. He writes:
And somewhere behind the suns of the streets she hobbled
useless, flabby moon.
The night lights of the city are called the sun, while the real luminary is declared unnecessary and “flabby.” To apply such an epithet to the moon, sung throughout the centuries, is not this a challenge to all previous poetry?
In the poem “Could You?” the hero addresses the readers:
play nocturne
could
on the drainpipe flute?
He is a poet, he “has the right” to create according to his own laws. And “they” - they “understand nothing”:
Crazy!
Ginger!
“To them” the poet addresses his sharp “Nata”:
And if today I, a rude Hun,
I don’t want to grimace in front of you - so
I will laugh and spit joyfully,
I'll spit in your face.
Mayakovsky's works are characterized by a sharp social sound - anti-war, revolutionary. “Down with your love, art, religion, system!” - the poet proclaims in the four parts of the poem “A Cloud in Pants.”
Leaves.
After the lines of foxes there are dots.
Mayakovsky, not without challenge, called this poem “An exhaustive picture of spring.” This is how the author draws with the help of futurist word painting spring landscape. Mayakovsky, engaged in a formal search, arbitrarily divides words into syllables and violates the usual construction of a poetic line. He often resorts to various techniques of sound writing (“and from the north - gray snow”; “we will poison the waters of the Rhine with blood”; “with verses, order it to rot”). He breaks the rules of grammar:
Where is the rose more tender and tea-like? Or:
I’ll pull out your soul and trample it so that it’s big!
Sort of business card Mayakovsky can be considered neologisms. The poet's word creation undoubtedly has its source in the poetics of the futurists. In his poems - “the hell of the city”, “the emaciated lonze of the earth”, “December evening”.
If I were to be tongue-tied,
like Dant
or Petrarch!
Ignite the soul to one!
The paradox of the first part is “removed” in the second: the hero’s talent and love are so great that ordinary earthly standards are not applicable to them.
When assessing Mayakovsky’s work, one should not deny the influence of futurism on the author’s aesthetics. It was this direction that largely shaped the future “lyricist and tribune”. The pathos of revolutionary renewal, the poetry of the industrial city, the challenge to bourgeois life, on the one hand, and active search new artistic forms, on the other hand, is what the poet inherited in his work from the ideas and methods of futurism. The years during which he was associated with this direction became for him years of study, the formation of poetic skill, a literary credo, according to the laws of which his further work developed.
Natural school is a designation of a new stage in the development of Russian that arose in Russia in the 40s of the 19th century. critical realism , associated with the creative traditions of N.V. Gogol and the aesthetics of V.G. Belinsky. The name "N.sh." (first used by F.V. Bulgarin in the newspaper “Northern Bee” dated 26.II.1846, No. 22 with the polemical purpose of humiliating the new literary movement) took root in Belinsky’s articles as a designation of the channel of Russian realism that is associated with the name of Gogol. Formation of "N.sh." refers to the years 1842-1845, when a group of writers (N.A. Nekrasov, D.V. Grigorovich, I.S. Turgenev, A.I. Herzen, I.I. Panaev, E.P. Grebenka, V.I. .Dal) united under the ideological influence of Belinsky in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. Somewhat later, F.M. Dostoevsky and M.E. Saltykov published there. These writers also appeared in the collections “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (parts 1-2, 1845), “Petersburg Collection” (1846), which became the program for “N.Sh.” The first of them consisted of the so-called “physiological essays”, representing direct observations, sketches, like photographs from nature - the physiology of life in a big city. This genre arose in France in the 20-30s of the 19th century and had a certain influence on the development of the Russian “physiological essay”. The collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg” characterized the types and life of workers, minor officials, and the declassed people of the capital, and was imbued with a critical attitude to reality. The “Petersburg Collection” was distinguished by its diversity of genres and the originality of young talents. It published the first story by F.M. Dostoevsky “Poor People”, works by Nekrasov, Herzen, Turgenev and others. Since 1847, the organ “N.sh.” becomes the Sovremennik magazine. It published “Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev, “Ordinary History” by I.A. Goncharov, “Who is to Blame?” Herzen and others. Manifesto "N.sh." came the “Introduction” to the collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, where Belinsky wrote about the need for mass realistic literature, which would “... in the form of travel, trips, essays, stories... introduce various parts of boundless and diverse Russia...”. Writers must, according to Belinsky, not only know Russian reality, but also correctly understand it, “... not only observe, but also judge” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 8, 1955, pp. 377, 384). “To deprive art of the right to serve public interests,” wrote Belinsky, “does not elevate, but humiliate it, because this means depriving it of its very living force, that is, thought...” (ibid., vol. 10, p. 311) . Statement of the principles of "N.sh." contained in Belinsky’s articles: “Answer to the “Moskvitian”,” “A Look at Russian Literature of 1846,” “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847,” etc. (see ibid., vol. 10, 1956).
Promoting Gogol's realism, Belinsky wrote that “N.sh.” more consciously than before, she used the method of critical depiction of reality inherent in Gogol’s satire. At the same time, he noted that “N.sh.” “... was the result of the entire past development of our literature and a response to the modern needs of our society” (ibid., vol. 10, p. 243). In 1848, Belinsky already argued that “N.sh.” now stands in the forefront of Russian literature.
Under the motto of the “Gogolian direction” “N.sh.” united best writers of that time, although different in worldview. These writers expanded the area of Russian life, which received the right to be depicted in art. They turned to the reproduction of the lower strata of society, denied serfdom, the destructive power of money and ranks, and the vices of the social system that disfigure the human personality. For some writers, the denial of social injustice grew into a depiction of the growing protest of the most disadvantaged (“Poor People” by Dostoevsky, “A Confused Affair” by Saltykov, Nekrasov’s poems and his essay “St. Petersburg Corners,” “Anton Goremyk” by Grigorovich).
With the development of "N.sh." Prose genres begin to dominate in literature. The desire for facts, for accuracy and reliability also put forward new principles of plotting - not novelistic, but essayistic. Popular genres in the 40s were essays, memoirs, travel, stories, social and social and psychological stories. The socio-psychological novel is also beginning to occupy an important place, the flourishing of which in the second half of the 19th century predetermined the glory of Russian realistic prose. At that time, the principles of "N.sh." are transferred both to poetry (poems by Nekrasov, N.P. Ogarev, poems by Turgenev) and to drama (Turgenev). The language of literature is also being democratized. The language of newspapers and journalism, vernacular language, professionalism and dialectisms are introduced into artistic speech. Social pathos and democratic content"N.sh." influenced the cutting edge Russian art: visual (P.A. Fedotov, A.A. Agin) and musical (A.S. Dargomyzhsky, M.P. Mussorgsky).
"N.sh." provoked criticism from representatives of different directions: she was accused of being partial to “low people,” of being “filthy-phile,” of being politically unreliable (Bulgarin), of having a one-sided negative approach to life, of imitating the latest French literature. "N.sh." was ridiculed in P.A. Karatygin’s vaudeville “Natural School” (1847). After Belinsky’s death, the very name “N.sh.” was prohibited by censorship. In the 50s, the term “Gogolian direction” was used (the title of N.G. Chernyshevsky’s work “Essays on the Gogolian period of Russian literature” is typical). Later, the term “Gogolian direction” began to be understood more broadly than “N.S.” itself, using it as a designation of critical realism.
Brief literary encyclopedia in 9 volumes. State Scientific Publishing House " Soviet encyclopedia", vol. 5, M., 1968.
Literature:
Vinogradov V.V., The evolution of Russian naturalism. Gogol and Dostoevsky, L., 1929;
Beletsky A., Dostoevsky and the natural school in 1846, “Science in Ukraine”, 1922, No. 4;
Glagolev N.A., M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and natural school, “Literature at school”, 1936, No. 3;
Belkin A., Nekrasov and the natural school, in the collection: Nekrasov’s Creativity, M., 1939;
Prutskov N.I., Stages of development of the Gogolian direction in Russian literature, “Scientific notes of the Grozny Pedagogical Institute. Philological series", 1946, c. 2;
Gin M.M., N.A. Nekrasov-critic in the struggle for the natural school, in the book: Nekrasov collection, vol. 1, M.-L., 1951;
Dolinin A.S., Herzen and Belinsky. (On the question of the philosophical foundations of critical realism of the 40s), “Scientific notes of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute”, 1954, vol. 9, century. 3;
Papkovsky B.V., Natural school of Belinsky and Saltykov, “Scientific notes of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute named after Herzen”, 1949, v. 81;
Mordovchenko N.I., Belinsky in the struggle for a natural school, in the book: Literary Heritage, vol. 55, M., 1948;
Morozov V.M., “Finnish Bulletin” - the ideological comrade-in-arms of “Sovremennik” in the struggle for the “natural school”, “Scientific Notes of Petrozavodsk University”, 1958, vol. 7, v. 1;
Pospelov G.N., History of Russian literature of the 19th century, vol. 2, part 1, M., 1962; Fokht U.R., Paths of Russian realism, M., 1963;
Kuleshov V.I., Natural school in Russian XIX literature century, M., 1965.
The natural school is the conventional name for the initial stage of the development of critical realism in Russian literature of the 1840s, which arose under the influence of the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.
The “natural school” included Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Grigorovich, Herzen, Goncharov, Nekrasov, Panaev, Dahl, Chernyshevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin and others.
The term “Natural School” was first used by Thaddeus Bulgarin as a disparaging description of the work of Nikolai Gogol’s young followers in “Northern Bee” of January 26, 1846, but was reinterpreted by Vissarion Belinsky in the article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1846”: “natural”, then eat the unartificial, the strict true picture reality. The main idea of the “natural school” was the thesis that literature should be an imitation of reality.
The formation of the “Natural School” dates back to 1842-1845, when a group of writers (Nikolai Nekrasov, Dmitry Grigorovich, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, Ivan Panaev, Evgeny Grebenka, Vladimir Dal) united under the ideological influence of Belinsky in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski. Somewhat later, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Saltykov published there. These writers also appeared in the collections “Physiology of St. Petersburg” (1845), “Petersburg Collection” (1846), which became the program for the “Natural School”.
It was to Gogol - the author of “Dead Souls”, “The Government Inspector”, “The Overcoat” - that Belinsky and a number of other critics built a natural school as the founder. Indeed, many writers who belong to the natural school experienced the powerful influence of various aspects of Gogol’s work. Such is his exceptional power of satire on the “vile Russian reality”, the severity of his presentation of the problem of the “small man”, his gift for depicting the “prosaic essential squabbles of life”. In addition to Gogol, writers of the natural school were influenced by such representatives of Western European literature as Dickens, Balzac, and George Sand.
The “Natural School” aroused criticism from representatives of different directions: it was accused of being partial to “low people”, of “mudophileness”, of political unreliability (Bulgarin), of a one-sided negative approach to life, of imitation of the latest French literature. After Belinsky’s death, the very name “natural school” was banned by censorship. In the 1850s, the term “Gogolian direction” was used (the title of N. G. Chernyshevsky’s work “Essays on the Gogolian period of Russian literature” is typical). Later, the term “Gogolian direction” began to be understood more broadly than the “natural school” itself, using it as a designation of critical realism.
The most general signs on the basis of which the writer was considered to belong to the Natural School were the following: socially significant topics that captured more wide circle, than even a circle of social observations (often in the “low” strata of society), a critical attitude towards social reality, realism of artistic expression, which fought against the embellishment of reality, self-sufficient aesthetics, and romantic rhetoric.
In the works of the participants of the “natural school,” new spheres of Russian life opened up for the reader. The choice of subject matter testified to the democratic basis of their creativity. They exposed serfdom, the crippling power of money, and the injustice of the entire social system that oppresses the human personality. The question of the “little man” grew into a problem of social inequality.
The Natural School is characterized by a predominant attention to the genres of artistic prose (“physiological essay,” story, novel). Following Gogol, the writers of the Natural School subjected bureaucracy to satirical ridicule (for example, in Nekrasov’s poems), depicted the life and customs of the nobility (“Notes of a Young Man” by A. I. Herzen, “Ordinary History” by I. A. Goncharov), and criticized dark sides urban civilization (“The Double” by F. M. Dostoevsky, essays by Nekrasov, V. I. Dahl, Ya. P. Butkov), they depicted the “little man” with deep sympathy (“Poor People” by Dostoevsky, “A Confused Affair” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). From A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, the Natural School adopted the themes of the “hero of the time” (“Who is to blame?” Herzen, “Diary extra person"I. S. Turgenev and others), the emancipation of women ("The Thieving Magpie" by Herzen, "Polinka Sax" by A. V. Druzhinin). N. sh. innovatively solved traditional themes for Russian literature (thus, a commoner became a “hero of the time”: “Andrei Kolosov” by Turgenev, “Doctor Krupov” by Herzen, “The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trosnikov” by Nekrasov) and put forward new ones (a true depiction of the life of a serf village: “Notes hunter" by Turgenev, "Village" and "Anton the Miserable" by D. V. Grigorovich).
Directions.
Among the writers classified as N.Sh., the Literary Encyclopedia identifies three movements.
In the 1840s, disagreements had not yet become acute. So far, the writers themselves, united under the name of the natural school, were not clearly aware of the depth of the contradictions separating them. Therefore, for example, in the collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg,” one of the characteristic documents of the natural school, the names of Nekrasov, Ivan Panaev, Grigorovich, and Dahl are next to each other. Hence the convergence in the minds of contemporaries of urban sketches and stories of Nekrasov with the bureaucratic stories of Dostoevsky.
By the 1860s, the division between writers classified as belonging to the natural school would sharply worsen. Turgenev will take an irreconcilable position in relation to the “Contemporary” of Nekrasov and Chernyshevsky and define himself as an artist-ideologist of the “Prussian” path of development of capitalism. Dostoevsky will remain in the camp that supports the dominant order (although democratic protest was also characteristic of Dostoevsky in the 1840s, in “Poor People,” for example, and in this regard he had connecting threads with Nekrasov).
And, finally, Nekrasov, Saltykov, Herzen, whose works will pave the way for the broad literary production of the revolutionary part of the commoners of the 1860s, will reflect the interests of the “peasant democracy” fighting for the “American” path of development of Russian capitalism, for the “peasant revolution”.
