The beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century was marked in Russia by a powerful social upsurge, which demanded from literature, and above all from poetry, new content and new artistic forms capable of reflecting the complex social contradictions of reality. The end of the nineteenth century was marked by a deep crisis that engulfed the entire European culture, which was the result of disillusionment with previous ideals and a feeling of approaching the death of the existing socio-political order.

In the 19th century ended classical period Russian poetry. Mentally embracing its endless sea, one cannot but admire the amazing variety of issues and problems that Russian poets touched upon in their works, who strove to preserve and affirm faith in eternal spiritual values, in the incorruptibility of universal human ideals of Christianity in their heartfelt and emotionally agitated poems, the highest sense of life and the high destiny of man, to penetrate the secrets of the human spirit to reveal the unknown and unknown movements of the heart of life. And although each of the poets did it in his own way, he tried in a special way to reflect and comprehend the world around him, the thoughts and feelings of his contemporaries, but there was one thing in common that brought everyone, even poets very dissimilar to each other, in common - this is love for the motherland and to his long-suffering people. And in my project I want to convey all the feelings of the poets, their poems about their homeland, nature, and tell a little about them.

FI Tyutchev was born on November 23, 1803 in the Ovstug estate of the Oryol province, in a noble family. In 1821. Graduated from the Faculty of Literature of Moscow University with a Ph.D. degree. Having lived abroad with short interruptions for almost 22 years, Tyutchev never lost touch with his homeland.

There is in the lightness of autumn evenings A sweet mysterious charm: Ominous shine and variegation of trees, Crimson leaves languid, light rustle Misty and quiet azure Over the sad-orphaned earth, And, like a presentiment of descending storms, Gusty, cold wind at times, Damage, exhaustion and everything That meek smile of fading, That in a rational being we call the Divine shame of suffering.

Not the flesh, but the spirit has been corrupted in our days, And a person desperately yearns ... He breaks into the light from the night shadow And, having found light, murmurs and revolts With unbelief he burns and is dried up, He can bear it now ... And he realizes his destruction, And thirsts faith ... but it does not ask for it ... He will not say forever, with prayer and tears, As he does not grieve in front of a closed door: “Let me in! -I believe, my God! Come to the aid of my disbelief! " Poem by F.I. Tyutchev's "Our Century" was written on July 11, 1831. In this poem, the poet's personality appears in disguise, is an expression of generalized personal meaning, in addition, the pile of negations leads to the fact that

I.S. Turgenev was born on October 28, 1818 in Orlov, into a noble family. He was brought up first at home, and then studied in Moscow private boarding schools. In 1833, Turgenev entered Moscow University, but a year later he transferred to St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated with a candidate's degree. Turgenev began his career as a poet, during the years. His poems and poems were published in various magazines and were warmly received by critics and readers.

Misty morning, gray morning, Sad fields, covered with snow, Reluctantly remember the times of the past, Remember the faces long forgotten. You will remember the abundant passionate speeches, Glances, so eagerly, so timidly caught, First meetings, recent meetings, Quiet voice sounds favorite. You will remember parting with a strange smile, You will remember a lot of your dear distant, Listening to the incessant murmur of the wheels, Looking thoughtfully into the wide sky. The poem of the outstanding Russian writer and poet I. S. Turgenev "On the Road" (1843), which was later set to music and became a famous romance.

The work "Noble Nest" was written by Turgenev in 1859. The Noble Nest remains one of the writer's brightest works. Despite the collapse of hopes for the personal happiness of the hero, Lavretsky, there remains hope for a bright future for others. The image of Liza Kalitina - the "Turgenev girl" - overshadows her entire environment and becomes a symbol of Russia.

Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy was born on August 24, 1817. in St. Petersburg in a noble family. In 1834 he was enrolled as a student in the Moscow Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He spent several years abroad, and upon his return to Russia he served at the royal court. During the Crimean War, he joined the army, but did not participate in the battles, he fell ill with typhus. Tolstoy began writing poetry as a child, and his first literary experiments were approved by V.A. Zhukovsky.

Amid noisy ball, by chance, In the alarm of worldly vanity, I saw You, but Your mystery covered the features. Only the eyes gazed sadly, And the voice sounded so marvelous, Like the ringing of a distant pipe, Like the sea playing the shaft. I liked your camp thin And all your pensive look, And your laughter, and sad and sonorous, Since then it sounds in my heart. In the hours of lonely nights I love, tired, to lie down - I see sad eyes, I hear a cheerful speech; And so sadly I fall asleep, And in the dreams of the unknown I sleep ... Do I love you - I do not know, But it seems to me that I love!

It was not the wind blowing from a height that Listov touched on the moonlit night; You touched my soul - She is alarming, like sheets, She, like a multi-stringed harp. The whirlwind of life tormented her And with a crushing raid, Whistling and howling, tore the strings And brought them with cold snow. Your speech caresses the ear, Your touch is light, Like a flying fluff from flowers, Like a breeze of May night ...

A.A. Fet was born October-November 1820 In the village of Novoselki, Mtsa district, Oryol province. He began to write poetry very early. While still studying at the university, in 1840. Published the first collection of poems "Lyric Pantheon", which included mainly imitative works. In the 50s. Fet was actively published in "contemporary", "Notes of the Fatherland" and other magazines. He died in Moscow in 1892.

Some sounds rush And cling to my headboard. They are full of languid parting, Trembling with unprecedented love. It would seem, well? The last tender caress has died away, The dust has run down the street, The postage has disappeared ... And only ... But the song of separation Teases with unrealizable love, And light sounds rush And cling to my headboard.

The spruce covered my path with its sleeve. Wind. In the forest alone Noisy, and creepy, and sad, and fun, I do not understand anything. Wind. Everything around is buzzing and swaying, Leaves are spinning at their feet. Chu, there in the distance a subtlely calling horn is suddenly heard. Sweet is the call of the herald of copper! Dead leaves for me! It seems that from afar you are a poor wanderer. Gently greet you.

A.A. Grigoriev was born on July 20, 1822 in Moscow, in the family of an official. In 1842 he graduated from the law faculty of Moscow University, then left for St. Petersburg and entered the service, but soon left it and devoted himself to literary activity. poems and critical articles began to appear on the pages of St. Petersburg magazines in the second half of the 40s. The main theme of Grigoriev's work is the conflict between a romantic-minded person and the world of mercantilism and life prose.

No, I was not born to beat my forehead, Neither wait patiently in the hall, Neither eat at the prince's table, Nor with tenderness listen to nonsense. No, I was not born to be a slave, I am even in church at mass It happens badly, I confess, Listen to the august house. And what Marat felt, Sometimes I am able to understand, And whether God himself was an aristocrat, I would proudly sing curses to Him ... But on the cross, the crucified god Was the son of the crowd and a demagogue.

A poet is a man with a creative soul, He is sick from his experiences, feelings, He is sick with his work, its beauty, Which from the change of generations does not leave his lips. He gives us all his dreams, The whole picture of bygone times, He gives us heroes of excessive beauty. Heroes from changed names. And who would know how the reader wants to Find out the whole truth about the heroes famous works... But we will not be able to turn to the writer, And with sorrow we ask him for an apology. A poet is a person with a creative soul. Why did you die so early? I want you to talk to me. Alas, you died, leaving behind a lot of your own writings. You are a god, you are a king, you are a genius. You are a man with an amazing mind. You do not know conquest before the enemy. Some friends, fans, readers all around. Sleep well, my poet. I will idolize you all my life. Everyone remembers about you, there is no doubt, And I will never forget about you.

In the second half of the 19th century, there was a surge in Russian lyric poetry. Only the listing of the most famous names of poets speaks volumes - Apollon Nikolaevich Maikov (1821-1897), Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev (1882-1864), Yakov Petrovich Polonsky (1819-1898), Ivan Savich Nikitin (1824-1861), Alexei Nikolaevich Apukhtin ( 1840-1893), Konstantin Konstantinovich Sluchevsky (1837-1904), Semyon Yakovlevich Nadson (1862-1887), Konstantin Mikhailovich Fofanov (1862-1911), Fedor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873), Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875), Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820-1892), Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821-1877 / 78).

Unfortunately, the triumph of poetry was brief. In Russian literature, prose is developing, especially large epic forms. The triumph of prose turned out to be more lasting and is associated with the names of I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy. And yet the poetry of the second half XIX century had a huge role in the development of Russian literature and culture in general. Poetry was a multifaceted system in which various forms of manifestation of the lyrical "I" were present. To understand this "I" and the reader must have an open heart and soul. N.V. Gogol noted: "To read a lyrical work properly is not a trifle at all."

It is important to remember that poetry developed in two directions - Pushkin's and Gogol's. The romantics of the 19th century (especially A.S. Pushkin) proclaimed its independence from the authorities and the people, considered the poet a creator who was inspired by God. The programmatic for them was the poem by A.S. Pushkin's "The Poet and the Crowd". The slogan is the final words "Not for everyday excitement, / Not for self-interest, not for battles, / We were born for inspiration, / For sweet sounds and prayers." The ideas of the romantics of the beginning of the century were taken up by the romantics of the second half of the 19th century and substantiated the theory of "pure art". The main provisions of "pure art" can be formulated as follows: art should not depict reality, play public role... The purpose of art is to create beauty, i.e. poetic, peace. Art should exist for the elite.

The opposite point of view on the art of the civil direction was substantiated by N.V. Gogol in the poem "Dead Souls" (beginning of the seventh chapter). He compared the creator of "art for art" and the writer-denouncer. The principles of the "civil" trend in poetry of the second half of the 19th century are most consistently and vividly implemented in the poetry of N.A. Nekrasov.

Gogol proclaimed and embodied the idea that poetry should serve the people. Nekrasov made the peasant the main hero of poetry, and the struggle for his happiness - the pathos of his work. The ideas of "pure art" are the basis of the worldview and artistic system of A.A. Feta. From the point of view of the history of poetry, the Pushkin and Gogol trends enriched the literature, culture, poetry of the 19th century and prepared many phenomena in the cultural life of Russia.

The poets of the second half of the 19th century turned out to be receptive to life, to the spiritual atmosphere of Russian society. They continued and developed the traditions of the Russian poetry school of the 18th - early 19th centuries. At the same time, poets were looking for a new poetic language, original forms of its expression. They were worried about questions of national identity; the ratio of good and evil; death and immortality; spiritual generosity of people. A feature of Russian poetry of the 19th century is the magic of sound and word. I. Nikitin conveys the finest shades of color, form and sound. Landscape lyrics are developing intensively (A. Maikov, "Landscape"; I. Koltsov, "South and North"; K. Sluchevsky, "Oh, do not scold because I lived aimlessly ..." and others ").

Song character, folklore, Russian antiquity, the beauty of Russian nature, the originality of the Russian national character became the source of Russian poetry. Alexander Blok called the poem by A. Grigoriev “The Gypsy Hungarian Woman” “The only pearls of its kind in Russian lyric poetry”. The "guitar" character of the poem, set to music, made it a popular romance. Many poems by Y. Polonsky, “The Song of a Gypsy Woman” (transcribed to music by PI Tchaikovsky) became romances and folk songs. Famous romances were poems by A. Apukhtin, set to music, "A Pair of Bay", "Crazy Nights, Sleepless Nights ..."; S.Ya. Nadson "In the shadow of a brooding garden ...".

In the second half of the 19th century, Russian poetry gradually moved towards modernism. Such was the movement in world literature, especially in French poetry. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine - the French Symbolists were contemporaries of N. Nekrasov, late A.A. Feta, V. Solovyova. The forerunners of modernism in Russia were, first of all, F.I. Tyutchev, A.A. Fet.

As noted by the researcher V.S. Babaevsky: "Russian poetry XIX century, as integral with all the structural and chronological diversity, the phenomenon of the spirit of the people, does not fit strictly within the boundaries of the century. The last decade, the 1890s, already belonged to modernism. We can say that the 20th century for Russian poetry began in 1892. Poetry of K.M. Fofanov and S. Ya. Nadson linked two centuries of Russian poetry “golden” and “silver” ”.

Alexander
ARKHANGELSK

Introducing chapters from a new school textbook

Russian lyrics of the second half of the 19th century

Russian poets and the era of "social" prose. Russian poets of the early 19th century - from Zhukovsky and Batyushkov to Pushkin and Lermontov - created a new poetic language that could express the most complex experiences, the deepest thoughts about the universe. They introduced into Russian poetry the image of a lyrical hero who is both similar and not similar to the poet himself. (Just as Karamzin introduced into Russian prose the image of a storyteller, whose voice does not merge with the voices of the heroes and the author himself.)

The poets of the first half of the 19th century revised the usual system of genres. They preferred a love elegy, a romantic ballad to "high", solemn odes; re-instilled in their native literature a taste for folk culture, for Russian songs, fairy tales; embodied in their work the contradictory consciousness and the tragic experience of a contemporary person, a Russian European. They mastered the experience of world romanticism - and gradually outgrew it in many ways.

But this often happens in literature: barely reaching the artistic peak, Russian poetry sharply declined. It happened soon after the death of Pushkin, and then Baratynsky and Lermontov. That is, in the early 1840s. The poets of the older generation somehow at the same time got tired of the stormy literary life, turned off from the active process. Zhukovsky began to rearrange voluminous epic compositions - you know about his translation of Homer's Odyssey. Pyotr Vyazemsky hid for a long time in a deaf literary shadow, moved away from poetic affairs, and only in old age did his talent bloom again, he returned to the limits of his native literature. Vladimir Benediktov experienced instant popularity in the mid-1830s - and just as quickly fell out of fashion.

And many of the young lyricists of the 1840s, who remained in plain sight, seemed to have forgotten how to write. The highest skill, mastery of poetry technique, which in Pushkin's times was considered the norm, something taken for granted, was lost overnight by most poets.

And there is nothing surprising here.

In the very early XIX centuries, Russian literature learned to portray human character in his individuality, uniqueness. In the 1820s and 1830s, Russian writers began to associate the fate of their heroes with a specific historical era, with those everyday, monetary circumstances on which human behavior often depends. And now, in the 1840s, they faced new meaningful tasks. They began to look at the human personality through the prism of social relations, to explain the actions of the heroes by the influence of the "environment", to deduce them from economic and political reasons.

Readers of the 1840s – 1860s expected just such social essays. And for solving such problems, epic, narrative prose, physiological essay, journalistic article were much more suitable. Therefore, the main literary forces of that time concentrated on the prosaic "bridgehead". The lyrics seem to have lost their serious content for a while. And this inner aimlessness, empty content drained the poetic form. So the plant dries up, which was blocked from access to life-giving underground juices.

• Why, in the 1840s, prose supplants poetry to the margins of the literary process? What substantive tasks does Russian literature solve in this decade?

Pierre Jean Beranger

How to use lyric means to talk about painful things, about everyday "insignificant" life, how to express new social ideas? European poetry was also deciding the answers to these questions in the 1840s. After all, the transition from the era of romanticism to the era of naturalism took place everywhere! But there, especially in France, a tradition of social, revolutionary lyrics was already developed, a special poetic language was formed. This language was "adapted" for an emotional - and at the same time sincere - conversation about the troubles and sorrows of modern society, about the tragic fate of the "little" person. That is, the transition of poetry to a new, social quality was prepared in advance, correlated with cultural tradition.

The most significant of the European "revolutionary" poets, social lyricists, is rightfully considered the Frenchman Pierre Jean Beranger (1780-1857).

Raised by his grandfather, a tailor, he witnessed the upheavals of the French Revolution as a child. Young Beranger believed in her ideals and - which is no less important for literature - he forever remembered the sound of revolutionary folk songs sung by the rebellious crowd. The most popular of these songs is well known to you - “Marseillaise”; its somewhat bloodthirsty content - a call to violence - was clothed in a solemn and light musical form. The songs of the revolutionary era not only used juicy folk expressions and jokes that are unacceptable in "high" lyrics, but also used the possibilities of epic poetry - a short dynamic plot, a constant refrain (that is, the repetition of the "chorus" or some key lines).

Since then, the genre of a poem-song, stylized as a folk song, has prevailed in Beranger's work. Either frivolous, now satirical (often directed against the morals of the Catholic priesthood), now political, pathetic songs, these songs were liked by the general reader. In them, from the very beginning, the image of a lyric hero - a folk poet, a man from the crowd, a hater of wealth - arose and was established. (Of course, in real life, Beranger himself was not as alien to money as it might seem when reading his poetry.)

Russian lyricists began to translate Beranger in the mid-1830s. But from his vast and varied creativity, at first, only lyrical "songs" were chosen, which were so similar to the familiar experiments of stylized "folk songs" created by the poets of the beginning of the century and the Pushkin generation:

The time will come - your May will turn green;
The time will come - I will leave this world;
Your nutty curl will turn white;
The shine of agate eyes will fade away.
("My old lady". Translated by Viktor Teplyakov, 1836)

It `s naturally; we are always interested in someone else's experience just as much as it helps to cope with our own tasks. And the tasks facing Russian literature in the mid-1830s differed from those that it solved in the troubled decade of the 1840s. It was not for nothing that Heinrich Heine, a poet of heightened social feeling, was translated selectively by the Russian writers of the Lermontov generation, paying attention primarily to his philosophical lyrics, to his romantic irony. And the poets of the 1840s already paid attention to the other side of Heine's talent - to his political, civic, satirical poems.

And now, when Russian prose spoke so sharply and so bitterly about the shadow side of life, Russian poetry also had to master a new artistic experience. There was no established tradition, so the lyricists of the 1840s voluntarily went to study with Beranger.

But as a schoolchild must "mature" to serious topics that are studied in high school, so poets spend more than one year to "mature" to a successful translation. After all, a poem translated from a foreign language must retain the taste of "foreignness" - and at the same time become "our own", Russian. Therefore, only by the mid-1850s, Beranger "began to speak" in Russian naturally and naturally. And the main merit in this belongs to Vasily Stepanovich Kurochkin (1831-1875), who published the collection Songs of Beranger in 1858:

"You will live, look!" - old uncle
A whole century is ready to repeat to me.
How I laugh, looking at my uncle!
I am a positive person.
I waste everything
I will not be able to -
Since I am nothing
I do not have.
................................
Indeed, in a plate of one deli
The capital of his ancestors is sitting;
I know the servant in the tavern:
Fed and drunk constantly on credit.
I waste everything
I will not be able to -
Since I am nothing
I do not have.
("The Positive Person", 1858)

You, of course, have noticed that these verses are not simply translated into Russian. Here one of the rules of "good" translation is deliberately violated: the French spirit has completely disappeared from Beranger, the translator has pulled the poem out of someone else's cultural soil, completely transplanted it into his own. These poems sound as if they were not translated from French, but written immediately in Russian - and by a Russian poet. They are Russified, that is, they use expressions that are once and for all assigned to the Russian everyday life and are completely inappropriate in the French context. For example: "To repeat ... the whole century", "full and drunk". Another translation of Kurochkin is even more Russified - the poem "Mister Iscariots" (1861):

Mr. Iscariot -
Good-natured eccentric:
Patriot of patriots
Kind guy, merry fellow,
Spreads out like a cat
It bends like a serpent ...
Why are such people
Are we a little alienated? ..
.............................................
Zealous reader of all magazines,
He is capable and ready
The most zealous liberals
Scare with a flood of words.
Will cry out loudly: "Publicity! Publicity!
A guide of holy ideas! "
But who knows people
Whispers, sensing danger:
Hush, hush, gentlemen!
Mr. Iscariot,
Patriot of patriots
Coming here! ..

The French poem about the informer "Monsieur Iscariot" (Iscariot was the name of Judas, who denounced Christ) is not without reason turned into a Russian satire on the informer "Mr. Iscariot." Vasily Kurochkin deliberately tore the poetry of Beranger from its French roots and turned it into a fact of Russian culture. With the help of Beranger, he created the language of Russian social poetry, mastered new artistic possibilities. And he succeeded quite well.

But the fact of the matter is that luck on the chosen path had to wait too long; Russian poets of the second half of the 1850s could have done without Beranger, relying on the artistic experience of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. (A separate chapter is devoted to Nekrasov's biography and the artistic world in the textbook.) It was Nekrasov who, for the first time, within the framework of the Russian cultural tradition, managed to combine the incompatible - rough "sociality" and deep lyricism, it was he who created a new poetic language, proposed new rhythms to his native poetry that would fit new topics and new ideas. Real fame came to him immediately after the poem "Whether I am driving along a dark street at night ..." was published in the Sovremennik magazine in 1847:

Do you remember the mournful sounds of trumpets,
Splashes of rain, semi-light, semi-darkness?
Your son cried, and cold hands
You warmed him with your breath ...

Everyone read these piercing lines - and understood: here it is, a new word in poetry, the only correct form has finally been found for a story about emotional experiences associated with poverty, disorder, everyday life ...

And no one helped the poets of the 1840s to solve the artistic, substantive problems they faced.

• Why were the translations of the poems of the French poet Beranger Russified by Kurochkin? Read again the quote from the poem "Mister Iscariots". Find examples of expressions in it that are so connected with Russian speech usage that they tear Beranger's text away from the French tradition.

Lyrics by Alexey Pleshcheev

Nevertheless, in the 1840s, some Russian poets tried to speak about the same serious social problems that social prose touched on in the familiar Pushkin-Lermontov language. More often than not, it didn’t work very well. Even the most gifted of them.

So, Alexei Nikolaevich Pleshcheev (1825-1893) in this decade often wrote civil, political poetry; here is one of the most famous and most popular:

Forward! without fear and doubt
To a valiant feat, friends!
Dawn of holy redemption
I saw in heaven!

... We will not make ourselves an idol
Not on earth, not in heaven;
For all the gifts and blessings of the world
We will not fall to dust before him! ..

... Hear, brothers, the word of a brother,
While we are full of youthful strength:
Forward, forward, and no return
Whatever fate would promise us in the distance!
("Forward! Without fear and doubt ...", 1846)

Pleshcheev did not read his rebellious ideas from books at all. He seriously participated in the revolutionary circle of the "Petrashevists" (more about them will be discussed in the chapter of the textbook dedicated to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky). In 1849, the poet was arrested and, together with other active "Petrashevists", was sentenced to death by "shooting." After a terrible wait, right on the square where the execution was to take place, they announced to him that the sentence had been commuted and the execution had been replaced by a soldier's service. Pleshcheev, who survived a terrible shock, was exiled to the Urals, and only in 1859 was he allowed to return to central Russia. (First to Moscow, then to Petersburg.)

So the thoughts expressed in the poem, Pleshcheev suffered, endured and paid for with his own life. But it's one thing - real biography, and somewhat different - creativity. In his civic poems of the 1840s, Pleshcheev still used the familiar, erased from frequent use of iambic tetrameter, erased, general poetic images.

Return to the quote from the poem “Forward! without fear and doubt ... ”, re-read it.

The poet combines the ideas that came from the Bible ("We will not create an idol for ourselves ... Proclaim the teaching of love ..."), with fashionable ideas about the progress and triumph of science ("... And let under the banner of science // Our Union grows stronger and more ... "). But he cannot find any other role models, except for Pushkin's ode "Liberty", written almost thirty years earlier. Is that the political lyrics of the Decembrists - but after all, there is a completely different time in the yard, life itself speaks a different language!

Pleshcheev literally forces himself to rhyme revolutionary slogans, the artistic material resists this - and in the final stanza, Pleshcheev "drives" thought into a recalcitrant form, cripples the sound of the verse. Pay attention to the crowd of sounds in the last two lines! "Forward, forward, and without return, // Whatever fate promises us in the distance!" "VPRD ... VPRD ... BZVZVRT ... ChTBRKVD ..." A continuous series of sound collisions, completely unjustified by the concept.

And the point here is not in the individual talent of Alexei Pleshcheev. He was just a very talented poet, and many of his poems entered the golden fund of Russian classics. But such - contradictory, uneven - was the literary situation of the 1840s as a whole. The state of affairs, as we have already said, will change only in the 1850s and 1860s, after Nekrasov took the center of the literary process. And then Pleshcheev will gradually move away from deliberate "progressiveness" (although occasionally he will remember his favorite political motives), he will return to traditional poetic themes: rural life, nature.

It is these unassuming and very simple, Plescheev's lines that will be included in school textbooks and anthologies, and will be familiar to every Russian. It is enough to say the first line - and the rest will pop up in memory by themselves: "The grass turns green, // The sun shines, // Swallow with spring // Flies to us in the canopy" ("Country song", 1858, translated from Polish). Or: "A boring picture! // Clouds endlessly, // The rain is pouring, // Puddles by the porch ..." (1860).

Such was the literary fate of those Russian poets who then tried to clothe the social experience accumulated by prose into the subtle matter of verse. And the poems of other lyricists, who remained faithful to Pushkin's harmony, the elegance of "decoration", sometimes acquired some kind of museum, memorial character.

• Why did the talented poet Alexei Pleshcheev, creating "civil" poems in the 1840s, rarely achieve success?

In 1842, the first collection of poems by the young poet, son of the academician of painting Apollo Nikolaevich Maikov (1821-1897) was published. From the very beginning he declared himself as a "traditional", classical poet; as about lyrics, far from everyday life, from the momentary details of a fast-flowing life. Maykov's favorite genre is anthological lyrics. (Let's remember again: anthology in Ancient Greece was called anthology collections of the best, exemplary poems; the most famous of the antique anthologies was compiled by the poet Meleager in the 1st century BC.)

Harmony verse divine mysteries
Do not think to guess from the books of the sages:
By the shore of sleepy waters, wandering alone, by accident,
Listen with your soul to the whispering of the reeds,
Dubravy speak; their sound is extraordinary
Feel and understand ... in the harmony of verses
Unintentionally from your lips dimensional octaves
They will pour, sonorous, like the music of the oak groves.
("Octaves", 1841)

This poem was written by a young author, but one immediately senses: he is already a real master. The extended rhythm is clearly sustained, the sounding of the verse is subordinated to the musical order. If in one verse we can easily discern the onomatopoeia of the rustle of the reed ("Listen with your soul to the whispering of the tributaries"), then in the next we will hear the forest murmur ("Oak of the Rava to speak"). And in the finale, soft and hard sounds will reconcile with each other, unite in a smooth harmony: "SIZE octaves // Sing, SOUND like the Music of an oakRava" ...

And yet, if you recall Pushkin's anthological poems - and compare the lines you just read with them, you will immediately find a certain amorphousness, lethargy of Mike's lyrics. This is how Pushkin described the Tsarskoye Selo statue in 1830:

Dropping the urn with water, the maiden broke it on the cliff.
The Virgo sits sadly, idle holding a shard.
Miracle! the water will not dry up, pouring out of the broken urn;
Virgo, above the eternal stream, eternally sits sadly.

The image of the unstoppable - and at the same time, the one who has stopped was created here! - movement. The sound scale is ideally matched here: the sound "u" hums mournfully ("Urn with water ... on the Cliff ... Miracle ... from the Urn ... strUyoy ..."), the explosive sound "H" is combined with an extended " N "and itself begins to sound viscous:" sad ... everlasting ... everlasting. " And in the first line, a hard collision of consonants conveys the sensation of a blow: "aboutB yTёS her Virgo RazBila".

But this is not enough for Pushkin. It communicates to the reader a deep sense of latent sadness; eternity and sadness, sculptural perfection of forms and the gloomy essence of life are inextricably linked in him. For this, he kind of makes the verse wobble, repeat: "... the maiden broke ... the maiden sits ... the maiden ... sits sadly." Repetitions create the effect of circular, hopeless movement.

And Pushkin only needs one unexpected word among sculpturally smooth expressions to hurt the reader, scratch him, slightly prick him. This word is "idle". We meet the expression "idle shard" - and immediately imagine the confusion, sadness of the "maiden": just now the urn was intact, it was possible to pour wine, water into it - and in one second it became "idle", unnecessary, and this is already forever...

And with Maikov, with all the perfection of his early poem, everything is so smooth that there is nothing to catch the eye. The secrets of the verse are "divine" (and what else can they be?), The waters are "sleepy", the sound of oak groves is "extraordinary" ... And only years later, new images will appear in Mike's lyrics, catching the reader's attention with freshness, surprise:

Spring! the first frame is exposed -
And the noise rushed into the room,
And the gospel of the nearby temple,
And the talk of the people, and the noise of the wheel ...
("Spring! The first frame is on display ...", 1854).

Landscape poems of the late Maykov, devoid of social connotations, will challenge the general tone of the era, the dominant poetic tastes:

My garden withers every day;
He is dented, broken and empty,
Although it still flourishes magnificently
The nasturtium in it is a fire bush ...

I'm upset! Annoys me
And the autumn sun shine
And the leaf that falls from the birch
And the crackling of late grasshoppers ...
("Swallows", 1856)

The general tonality of the poem is muted, the colors are devoid of "screaming", harsh tones; but in the very depths of the poem very bold images are ripening. The metaphor of the lush wilting of autumn nature ascends to Pushkin's "Autumn", but how unexpected is the image of a flaming bush of scarlet nasturtium, how contradictory are the feelings of the lyrical hero, who is not at all delighted with this splendor, but is irritated by the "trifles" of autumn everyday life ...

• The task of increased complexity. Read the poems of Yakov Polonsky, another Russian lyricist who began his career in literature in the 1840s, but only revealed his talent in the next decade. Prepare a report about his art world using teacher advice and additional reading.

Kozma Prutkov

When "original" poetry is in a state of crisis, painfully seeking new ideas and new forms of self-expression, the parody genre usually flourishes. That is, a comic reproduction of the peculiarities of the manner of this or that writer, poet.

In the late 1840s, Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875) and his cousins Alexey Mikhailovich (1821-1908) and Vladimir Mikhailovich (1830-1884) Zhemchuzhnikovs invented ... a poet. (Sometimes a third brother, Alexander Mikhailovich, joined the joint parody work.) They began to write poetry on behalf of the never-existed graphomaniac Kozma Prutkov, and in these verses they parodied bureaucracy in all its manifestations. Whether it is overly refined, with the little finger set aside, anthological poetry or overly pretentious civic lyrics.

Because Prutkov came up with a "state" biography, turned him into an official, director of the Assay tent. The fourth of the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Lev Mikhailovich, painted a portrait of Prutkov, combining in it the soldaphone features of a bureaucrat and the mask of a romantic poet. Such is the literary guise of Kozma Prutkov, pseudo-romantic and bureaucratic at the same time:

When you meet a person in the crowd
Who is naked;
[Option: Wearing a tailcoat. - Note. K. Prutkova]
Whose forehead is darker than foggy Kazbek,
The step is uneven;
Whom the hair is raised in disarray;
Who, crying,
Always trembling in a nervous fit, -
Know: it's me!
("My portrait")

In the guise of Kozma Prutkov, the incompatible was combined - the late romantic image of a "strange", wild poet, "who is naked," and an official, "on whom a tailcoat." In the same way, he does not care what and in what manner to write poetry - whether to repeat the bravura intonations of Vladimir Benediktov, or to compose in an antique spirit, like Maikov or other "anthological" poets of the 1840s:

I love you maiden when golden
And drenched in the sun, you hold a lemon,
And young men I see a fluffy chin
Between the leaves of akanthus and white columns ...
("Ancient plastic Greek")

Prutkov grasps on the fly the style of numerous imitators of Heine, the creators of "social" poetry:

At the seaside, at the very outpost,
I saw a large vegetable garden.
Tall asparagus grows there;
Cabbage grows there modestly.

There is always a gardener in the morning
Lazily passes between the ridges;
He is wearing an untidy apron;
His gloomy look is gloomy.
............................................
The other day drives up to him
The official in the top three is dashing.
He is in warm, high galoshes,
There is a gold lorgnette on the neck.

"Where is your daughter?" - asks
The official, squinting at the lorgnette,
But, looking wildly, the gardener
He only waved his hand in response.

And the three galloped back,
Sweeping away the dew from the cabbage ...
The gardener stands gloomily
And digs a finger in the nose.
("At the seaside")

But if the "creativity" of Kozma Prutkov were only a parody and nothing more, it would have died along with its era. And it remained in the reader's everyday life, Prutkov's works have been republished for a century and a half. So they have outgrown the boundaries of genres! It is not for nothing that the creators of this collective image put into the mouth of their character a rebuke to the feuilletonist of the St. Petersburg News newspaper: "Feuilletonist, I ran through your article ... You mention me in it; this is nothing. But in it you are groundlessly blaspheming me! I will not praise ...

Are you claiming that I write parodies? Not at all! .. I do not write parodies at all! I've never written a parody! Where did you get the idea that I'm writing parodies ?! I was simply analyzing in my mind most of the successful poets; this analysis led me to a synthesis; because the gifts, scattered among other poets separately, turned out to be combined all in me as one! .. "

In Prutkov's "work", the fashionable motives of Russian poetry of the 1840s-1850s are really summed up, melted down, a funny and in its own way integral image of a bureaucratic romantic, an inspired graphomaniac, a pompous preacher of banality, the author of the project "On the introduction of like-mindedness in Russia." But at the same time Prutkov sometimes seems to accidentally add to the truth; some of his aphorisms have entered our everyday life, having lost their mocking meaning: "If you want to be happy, be happy", "A specialist is like a gumboil: his fullness is one-sided." There is something very alive in Prutkov's literary personality. And therefore, not "Prutkov's" parodies of individual (for the most part, justly forgotten) poets, but his very image has forever entered the history of Russian literature.

• What is a parody? Is it possible to consider that the poems written on behalf of Kozma Prutkov are only parodies? Why does parody flourish when literature is in crisis?

Of course, in the years more favorable for poetry in the 1850s and 1860s, literary destinies developed in different ways; many Russian poets, whose fame we are proud of to this day, have not found readers' recognition. So, two poems of the outstanding literary and theater critic Apollo Alexandrovich Grigoriev (1822-1864) - "Oh, even though you are with me ..." and "Gypsy Hungarian" - attracted general attention only because they acquired the second - life, became popular romances. Both of them are dedicated to the guitar, gypsy passion, fatal breakdown, love obsession:

Oh, even though you are with me
Girlfriend seven-string!
The soul is full of such longing
And the night is so moonlit! ..
("Oh, Speak ...", 1857)

Two guitars ringing
They ached pitifully ...
From childhood, a memorable tune,
old friend my - are you?
.........................................
It's you, dashing spree,
You, the merging of sadness, evil
With the lust of a bayadere -
You Hungarian motive!

Chibiryak, chibiryak, chibiryak,
With blue eyes, my darling!
.........
Let it hurt more and more
The sounds are howling
To hurry up the heart
Bursting with flour!
("Gypsy Hungarian", 1857)

Apollon Grigoriev knew firsthand what a "dashing spree" is; he grew up in the patriarchal Zamoskvorechye, in a family of noblemen who came out of the serf class (Grigoriev's grandfather was a peasant), and in Russian, he was unrestrained in everything - to work and to fun. He gave up a profitably starting career, needed all the time, drank a lot, sat in debt twice - and actually died while in debt ...

Being a European educated person, Grigoriev defended the idea of ​​national identity in his critical articles. He called his principles of criticism organic, that is, co-natural with art, in contrast to the "historical" criticism of Belinsky or the "real" criticism of Dobrolyubov. Contemporaries read and actively discussed Grigoriev's articles; however, his wonderful poems during the poet's lifetime came out as a separate edition only once - and in a tiny print run, only fifty copies ...

• Read The Gypsy Hungarian Woman by Apollon Grigoriev. Identify the features of a romance in the construction of a poem, show how its very structure contains a "musical" beginning.

Alexey Tolstoy

It turned out to be much more successful literary biography Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875) - one of the main "creators" of Kozma Prutkov. (You have already read in elementary school his wonderful poem "My bells, steppe flowers ...", which, like many of Tolstoy's poems, became a popular romance.)

Coming from an old family, who spent his childhood in the Little Russian estate of his mother in the Chernigov region, Alexey Konstantinovich ten years old was introduced to the great Goethe. And this was not the first "literary acquaintance" of young Alexei. His uncle, Alexei Perovsky (pseudonym - Anthony Pogorelsky), was a wonderful romantic writer, the author of the fairy tale "The Black Hen", which many of you have read. He collected in his St. Petersburg house all the color of Russian literature - Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Krylov, Gogol; the nephew was admitted to this meeting of "immortals" - and for the rest of his life he remembered their conversations, remarks, remarks.

It is not surprising that at the age of six he had already begun to write; his first poems were approved by Zhukovsky himself. Later, Tolstoy also wrote prose; in his historical novel "Prince of Silver" (completed in 1861) noble people will act and genuine passions will reign; Moreover, Alexey Konstantinovich was not at all embarrassed by the fact that the romantic principles of Walter Scott, which he followed invariably, were considered by many to be outdated. Truth cannot become outdated, and it was beneath his dignity to reckon with literary fashion.

In 1834, Aleksey Konstantinovich entered the tsar's service at the Moscow archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, studied ancient Russian manuscripts; then he served in the Russian mission in Frankfurt am Main; finally, he was enrolled in His Majesty's own office - and became a real courtier. It was at the court that he met his future wife, Sofya Andreevna Miller (née Bakhmetyeva) - they met at a ball in the winter of 1850/51.

Tolstoy's official career was developing successfully; he knew how to maintain internal independence, to follow his own principles. It was Tolstoy who helped free the great Ukrainian poet, author of the genius poem "The wide Dnieper roars and groans" Taras Shevchenko from exile in Central Asia and from the military service; did everything to get Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev released from exile in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo for an obituary in memory of Gogol; when Alexander II once asked Alexei Konstantinovich: "What is going on in Russian literature?"

Nevertheless, in the mid-1850s, having managed to take part in the Crimean War, which was extremely unsuccessful for Russia, Tolstoy decided to retire, to free himself from the service that had long weighed on him. But only in 1861, Alexander II granted his resignation - and Alexei Konstantinovich was able to fully concentrate on literary creativity.

By this time, his artistic world had already fully developed. Just as Tolstoy himself was distinguished by his inner integrity, rare mental health, so his lyrical hero is alien to insoluble doubts, melancholy; The Russian ideal of openness, the purity of feeling is extremely close to him:

If you love, so without reason,
If you threaten, it's not a joke,
Kohl swear, so rashly,
Kohl hack, so from the shoulder!

If you argue, it's so bold
Kohl punish, so for the cause,
If you forgive, so with all your soul,
If there is a feast, then a feast like a mountain!

In this eight-verse, written in 1850 or 1851, there is not a single epithet: the lyrical hero does not need shades, he strives for certainty, the brightness of the basic tones. For the same reason, Tolstoy avoids variety in the very construction of the poem; the principle of monotony (anaphora) is used sequentially, it goes from line to line: "Kohl ... so". It’s like a poet is energetically tapping the table with his hand, beating out a clear rhythm ...

Tolstoy never joined any of the warring camps - Westernizers and Slavophiles; he was a man of world culture - and at the same time a bearer of a deeply Russian tradition. The Novgorod Republic, with its democratic structure, served him as a political ideal; he believed that the Russian government had once followed moral principles, but in the modern world it had lost them, exchanged them for political interests, and reduced them to petty struggles between different groups. This means that a poet cannot adhere to any ideological "platform". So his lyrical hero - "Two staves is not a fighter, but only an occasional guest"; he is free from any "party" obligations.

It is not without reason that many of Tolstoy's poems - like those poems by Grigoriev that we spoke about - are set to music, have become "real" romances and are still sung:

Amid a noisy ball, by chance,
In the alarm of worldly vanity,
I saw you, but a mystery
Your features were covered;

Only the eyes looked sadly
And the voice sounded so wonderful
Like the ringing of a distant pipe
Like a playing shaft of the sea.
...............................................
And sadly I fall asleep
And in the dreams of the unknown I sleep ...
Do I love you - I don't know
But it seems to me that I love!
("Amid a noisy ball, by chance ...", 1851)

While preserving traditional romantic motives, Tolstoy imperceptibly "straightened" them, deliberately simplified them. But not because he was afraid to approach the abyss, to face unsolvable problems, but because his healthy nature hated any ambiguity, uncertainty. For the same reason, his lyrics lack romantic irony, with its inner tragedy, anguish; its place is taken by humor - the free laugh of a cheerful person at the imperfection of life, at the impossibility of dreams.

The most famous humorous poem by Tolstoy - "The history of the Russian state from Gostomysl to Timashev" has a genre designation: "satire". But let's read these verses, which mockingly set out the main events of Russian history:

Listen guys
What will your grandfather tell you.
Our land is rich
There is just no order in it.
.......................................
And they all became under the banner
And they say: "How can we be?
Let's send to the Varangians:
Let them come to reign. "

What is the main thing in these funny lines? A satirical, angry, caustic denunciation of traditional Russian shortcomings or the grin of a deeply Russian person at himself, at his beloved history, at the invariability of domestic vices? Of course, the second; It is not for nothing that the author puts on the mask of an old joker, and likens the readers to little children! In fact, Aleksey Tolstoy does not create a murderous satire, but a sad and cheerful parody. He parodies the form of the chronicle, the image of the chronicler ("Composed from the blades // This unwise story // Thin humble monk // Servant of God Alexey"). But the main subject of his parody is different, and what - let's say later.

The poem contains 83 stanzas, and in such a short volume Tolstoy manages to fit a parody story about all the main, symbolic events of Russian history, from the vocation of the Varangians and the baptism of Russia until 1868, when the verses were written:

When did Vladimir enter
To your father's throne
......................................
He sent for the priests
To Athens and Constantinople,
The priests came in droves
They baptize and burn,

They sing to themselves sweetly
And fill their pouch;
The earth, as it is, is abundant,
There is just no order.

Of course, this is followed by a series of princely strife - "The Tatars found out that. // Well, they think, do not be afraid! // Put on trousers, // We arrived in Russia ... // Shout:" Give tribute! "// (Though Bring the saints out.) // There is a lot of all sorts of rubbish // It has arrived in Russia. " But still there is no order as there is no. Neither Western newcomers, nor Byzantine "priests", nor Tatar-Mongols - no one brought it with them, no one coped with the invariable Russian disorder. And here, from the depths of Russian history, there is its own "organizer":

Ivan Vasilich the Terrible
His name was
For being serious
A solid person.

Not sweet with tricks
But the mind is not lame;
This brought order
What to roll the ball!

This is how Tolstoy's own - and very serious - view of the essence of Russian history appears through the parody. Its shortcomings are the continuation of its merits; this "disorder" destroys it - and it, alas, allows Russia to preserve its originality. There is nothing good in that, but what to do ... Only two rulers managed to impose "order" on her: Grozny and Peter I. But at what cost!

Tsar Peter loved order
Almost like Tsar Ivan,
And it was also not sweet,
Sometimes he was drunk.

He said: "I feel sorry for you,
You will perish completely;
But I have a stick
And I am a father to all of you! "

Tolstoy does not condemn Peter ("... I don’t blame Peter: // Give a sick person a stomach // Useful for rhubarb"), but does not accept his excessive rigidity. An ever deeper content is immersed in the light shell of parody, sadness appears through humor. Yes, Russia is sick, but the treatment may turn out to be even worse, and the result of the "healing" is still short-lived: "... Although it is very strong // There was, perhaps, a reception, // But everything is quite strong // The order became with // But the dream embraced the grave // ​​Peter in the prime of life, // You look, the earth is abundant, // There is no order again. "

The satire genre gave way to the parody genre, and the parody imperceptibly turned into a philosophical poem, albeit written in a playful form. But if a parody can do without positive content, without an ideal, then a philosophical poem can never. This means that somewhere there must be hidden Tolstoy's own answer to the question: what, after all, can heal Russian history from a centuries-old disease? Not the Varangians, not Byzantium, not a "stick" - but what then? Perhaps the hidden answer to the explicit question is contained in these stanzas:

What is the reason
And where is root of all evil,
Catherine herself
I could not comprehend.

"Madame, wonderfully with you
The order will bloom, -
They wrote to her politely
Voltaire and Diderot, -

Only the people need
To whom you are the mother
Rather give freedom
Hurry to give freedom. "

But Catherine is afraid of freedom, which could allow the people to heal themselves: "... And immediately attached // Ukrainians to the ground."

The poem ends with stanzas about Tolstoy's contemporary, Interior Minister Timashev, a staunch supporter of "order." Order in Russia is still being established - with a stick; it is not hard to guess what lies ahead.

• What is the difference between satire and humor? Why was the parody genre so close to Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy? Why do you think he chooses a parody form for a philosophical poem about the fate of Russian history?

Poets of the 1870s-1880s

You already know that the entire second half of the 19th century, from the mid-1850s to the early 1880s, passed under the sign of Nekrasov, that the era spoke in a Nekrasov voice. In the next chapter of the textbook, you will get acquainted in detail with the artistic world of Nekrasov, learn to analyze his poems and poems. A little further away, in his public shadow, were two other great lyricists, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet. They are also devoted to separate chapters in the textbook. In the meantime, let's go from the 1850s straight to the 1870s and 1880s, let's see what happened to Russian poetry after Nekrasov.

And what happened to her was almost the same as after Pushkin, after Lermontov, after the departure of any truly large-scale writer. Russian poetry was again at a loss, did not know which path to follow. Some lyricists developed social, civic motives. For example, Semyon Yakovlevich Nadson (1862-1887). Just as Vladimir Benediktov took the artistic principles of romantic poetry to the extreme, so Nadson exaggerated the pathos and style of Nekrasov's civic poetry to the limit:

My friend, my brother, a tired, suffering brother,
Whoever you are, do not lose heart.
Let untruth and evil reign supreme
Over the earth washed with tears
May the holy ideal be broken and desecrated
And innocent blood flows, -
Believe: the time will come - and Baal will perish,
And love will return to earth! ..

Nadson's poems were incredibly popular in the 1880s - almost like Benediktov's poems in the 1830s. Pleshcheev took care of him; Nadson's collection of poems, first published in 1885, went through five editions during his lifetime, the Academy of Sciences awarded him its Pushkin Prize. He was called the poet of suffering, civil anguish. And when, having lived only twenty-five years, Nadson died of consumption, a crowd of students accompanied his coffin all the way to the cemetery ...

But several years passed - and Nadson's fame began to fade. Suddenly, by itself, it turned out that he was too moralizing, too straightforward, his images were devoid of volume and depth, and many of his poems were simply imitative.

Why was this not noticed during the poet's life?

This sometimes happens in literature: the writer seems to fall into a painful point of his era, speaks exactly about what his contemporaries are thinking this minute. And they wholeheartedly respond to his poetic, literary word. A resonance effect arises, the sound of the piece is amplified many times over. And the question of how artistic this word, how original it is, fades into the background. And when some time passes and other problems arise before society, then all the hidden artistic flaws, creative "imperfections" are revealed.

In part, this also applies to another popular poet of the 1870-1880s - Alexei Nikolaevich Apukhtin (1840-1893). Unlike Nadson, he did not come from a bureaucratic raznochina, but from a well-born noble family. His childhood passed serenely, in his parental estate; he studied at the elite School of Law in St. Petersburg. And he continued not the social, civic tradition of Nekrasov, but the line of development of Russian poetry, which Maikov outlined in his time.

Apukhtin treated poetry as a pure art, devoid of bias, free from public service, as if distilled. He behaved accordingly - demonstratively avoiding participation in the "professional" literary process, could disappear from the field of view of magazines for a decade, then start publishing again. Readers, and especially readers, still appreciated Apukhtin; his gentle, broken intonation, the inner affinity of his poetics with the genre laws of romance - all this resonated in the hearts of readers:

Crazy nights, sleepless nights
The speeches are incoherent, the eyes are tired ...
The nights, illuminated by the last fire,
Autumn dead flowers are belated!
Even if time is a merciless hand
It showed me what was false in you,
Nevertheless, I fly to you with a greedy memory,
Looking for the impossible in the past ...

And then, after some time, the Apukhtinskaya lyrics began to sound more and more muffled, muffled; her excessive sentimentality, the absence of real depth began to manifest itself by itself. The place of Nadson and Apukhtin was taken by new "fashionable" poets who belonged to the next literary generation - Konstantin Fofanov, Mirra Lokhvitskaya. They took it - then, in turn, to yield it to other "performers" of the finished literary role.

Lyrics by Konstantin Sluchevsky

But in the 1880-1890s, there were really great talents in Russian poetry who not only resonated with the era, but overtook it, worked for the future. One of them is the refined lyricist Konstantin Konstantinovich Sluchevsky (1837-1904).

He was born in the year of Pushkin's death in the family of a major official (his father, a senator, died in the cholera epidemic of 1848, and his mother became the head of the Warsaw Alexandro-Mariinsky Maiden Institute). Sluchevsky studied at the First Cadet Corps and was even listed in the Golden Book of graduates; then he served brilliantly ...

The people around him always considered Sluchevsky to be a whole person; his aristocratic restraint, strict upbringing misled those around him. Because in his poems a completely different, broken-down-dramatic inner world was revealed, associated with the romantic sensation of life as a kingdom of duality:

Never, nowhere alone I go,
Two of us live between people:
The first is me, what I looked like,
And the other - then I am my dreams ...

But for the time being, almost no one from the circle of Sluchevsky read these poems, they were published in third-rate publications. But in 1860, Sovremennik opened the year with a selection of lyric poems by Sluchevsky, and then his poetic cycle appeared in Otechestvennye zapiski. The enthusiastic critic and poet Apollo Grigoriev declared the new poet a genius, Ivan Turgenev (who would later quarrel with Sluchevsky and parody him in the novel Smoke under the name of Voroshilov) agreed: "Yes, father, this is the future great writer."

Recognition inspired, but Sluchevsky found himself hostage to the fierce literary struggle of those years. Accepted in one "camp", he was immediately rejected in another. The radically different wing of the Sovremennik editorial board decided to excommunicate the poet from the magazine, despite the sympathy that Nekrasov himself felt for the young lyric poet. From the pages of other revolutionary-democratic publications, a hail of ridicule fell on Sluchevsky, he was portrayed as a retrograde, a man without ideas.

The result exceeded expectations: thinking in "outdated" categories of noble honor and dignity, Sluchevsky considered that an officer and an aristocrat should not be a hero of feuilletons. And - he retired to leave Russia. He spent several years at the University of Paris - the Sorbonne, Berlin, Leipzig universities, studied natural sciences and mathematics. And in Heidelberg he became a doctor of philosophy.

In the end, in 1866, he returned to Russia and began to make a career again - already on the civil path. He was among those close to the royal family, became a chamberlain. But from the shock inflicted on him at the very beginning of his literary path, he never recovered. And therefore he built his poetic biography as emphatically non-literary, amateur, not involved in the professional environment. (In this he was close to Apukhtin.)

Among the poems written by Sluchevsky in the 1860-1870s and not published in print, we hardly find "program", preaching poems. Their artistic structure is emphatically uneven, and their style is deliberately heterogeneous. Sluchevsky was one of the first in Russian poetry to use not just everyday, everyday speech, but even clerical: "By the totality of luminous phenomena ...", "Perfectly the dawn has warmed up ...". He developed a special poetics of imprecise accords, unpaired rhymes:

I saw my burial.
Tall candles were burning
The unslept deacon censed,
And the hoarse singers sang.
................................................
Sad sisters and brothers
(How incomprehensible nature is in us!)
Wept at happy meeting
With a fourth of the income.
................................................
The footmen were praying outside the door,
Saying goodbye to a lost place
And in the kitchen, a gorged chef
I was fiddling with the rising dough ...

These early poems are clearly influenced by the bitter social lyrics of Heinrich Heine; like most Russian lyricists of the second half of the 19th century, Sluchevsky fell into the powerful energy field of this "last romantic". But something else is already noticeable here: Sluchevsky has his own end-to-end idea, for the embodiment of which not a harmonious, perfect poetic form is required, but a rough, "unfinished" verse, unpaired, some kind of "stumbling" rhyme.

This is the thought of disunity, of the tragic disunity of human life, in the space of which souls, thoughts, hearts echo as weakly and dully as unpaired rhymes in verse.

Perhaps the most characteristic - and at the same time the most expressive - poem by Sluchevsky "Lightning fell into the stream ...". It just speaks about the impossibility of meeting, about the inevitability of suffering, about the impossibility of love: "Lightning fell into the stream. // The water did not become hot. // And that the stream was pierced to the bottom, // He does not hear through the rustle of streams ...<...>There was no other way: // And I will forgive, and you forgive. "It is not for nothing that the cemetery motif constantly arises in Sluchevsky's poems, dreary like a night wind; it is not for nothing that a second, hidden plan appears through his social sketches. The plan is mystical.

Sluchevsky constantly writes about Mephistopheles, who penetrated the world, about the demon of evil, whose double, vague image flickers here constantly. This attitude was then characteristic of more than one Sluchevsky; his lyrical hero is not without reason reminiscent of Dostoevsky's "underground" heroes. It's just that Sluchevsky was one of the first to catch and capture in his poems that attitude that will determine a lot in Russian lyrics - and in Russian culture in general - at the end of the 19th century. This attitude would later be called decadence, from the French word for decline, a painful crisis of consciousness. The poet wants to be healed of this disappointment - and cannot find healing in anything: not in social life, not in thinking about eternal life.

• The task of increased complexity. Read the poem by Sluchevsky: "Tired in the fields, I will fall asleep soundly, // Once in the village for grub. // I can see through the open window // And our garden, and a piece of brocade // Wonderful night ... The air is light ... // How quiet it’s quiet! I’ll fall asleep, loving // All God's world ... But he shouted noose! // Or have I denied myself? " Explain why the poet in a row, separated by commas, uses common expressions ("I will fall asleep solidly", "to the village for grub") - and general poetic, sublime vocabulary ("... a piece of brocade // Wonderful night ...")? Do you know where this image came from in Sluchevsky's poem: "he shouted the loops! // Or have I renounced myself?" If not, try to read the last chapters of all four Gospels, which tells about the apostle Peter's denial of Christ. Now formulate how you understand the poet's thought expressed in the final lines.

Russian poetry of the end of the century and French lyric poetry of the 1860s-1880s

Charles Baudelaire. Paul Verlaine. Arthur Rimbaud

As we have already said, Russian literature of the first third of the 19th century was a diligent student of Western literature. She quickly caught up with her "mentor", studied with German and English romantics, then with French naturalists. And in the end it "caught up" with the general course of world culture, became an equal participant in the cultural process.

This does not mean that Russian writers have completely ceased to adopt other people's experience (only a fool refuses useful lessons); but this means that they have gained internal independence, learned to move in parallel, in unison with their European counterparts. Therefore, much that happened in Russian poetry in the second half of the 19th century seems to rhyme with what was happening at the same time in European poetry, especially French. This is not so much about influence as about a non-coincidental similarity. Or, as historians and literary scholars say, about typology.

You know that after Nekrasov the best Russian lyricists returned to romantic motives of duplicity, languor of spirit, that notes of despair sounded in their work, a mood of decline appeared. The same motives are easily found in French poetry of the 1860s and 1880s.

The outstanding lyricist Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), a leftist, rebel, who directly participated in the revolutionary events of 1848, published in 1857 a collection of poems "Flowers of Evil". (The collection, being updated, was reprinted several times.) The poems collected in this book did not just challenge the philistine (also universal) morality; Baudelaire's lyric hero experienced a transcendent, almost mystical disappointment in the foundations of Christian civilization and clothed his extremely disharmonious feelings in a perfect, classical form.

Tell me where do you come from, Beauty?
Is your gaze the azure of heaven or a product of hell?
You, like wine, intoxicate the lips that clung to,
Equally you are glad to sow joy and intrigues.
Dawn and dying sunset in your eyes
You scent the aroma, as if a stormy evening;
The youth became a hero, the great fell to the dust,
Having drunk your lips with a charming urn.

Like his romantic predecessors, Baudelaire breaks aesthetics and morality, moreover, defiantly, defiantly; he exclaims, addressing Beauty: "You walk over corpses with a proud smile, // Diamonds of horror stream their cruel brilliance ..." It does not frighten him; it is not the self-sufficient Beauty that is terrible, but the world into which it comes. And therefore he accepts her catastrophism as a terrible way out of earthly despair:

Are you God or Satan? Are you an Angel or a Siren?
Not all the same: only you, Queen Beauty,
Free the world from painful captivity
You send incense and sounds and colors!
("Hymn to Beauty". Per. Ellis)

Amoralism became an artistic principle for Baudelaire. But if you carefully read his poems - bright, dangerous, really similar to swamp flowers, it becomes clear: they contain not only poison, but also an antidote; that horror, of which Baudelaire became the singer, is outlived by the poet's suffering, redeemed by the pain of the world, which he takes into himself. Nevertheless, "Flowers of Evil" became the subject of consideration in a Paris court; the poet was accused of insult public morality and sentenced to "removal" of some of the poems from the book "Flowers of Evil". The judges were not obliged to listen attentively to the hidden sounding of the lines, they made their decision proceeding from the immediate, everyday, and not the poetic meaning of the words.

Baudelaire began to be translated in Russia in the 1870s. Moreover, the pioneers were populist poets like Vasily Kurochkin and Dmitry Minaev. Their own style, a little rustic, was extremely far from the Baudelaire poetics, its complex metaphorical play and pathos, blazing with prominences. Like the Parisian judges, they paid attention to the outside, to the rebellious themes of Baudelaire - only with a positive sign. And only the Russian lyricists of the next generations were able to unravel the Baudelaire mystery, felt in his poems the forerunner of large-scale and tragic images of the 20th century: "Like a black banner, the Tosca-queen // Over a drowning brow will triumphantly develop" ("Splin". Per. Vyach.I. Ivanova).

"In time" began to translate another French lyricist who belonged to the next generation after Baudelaire - Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). In his sad poems, something familiar seemed to be felt, the thought of the inevitable duality of the human soul, the melancholy of disappointment that pervades the world, the decline of heartfelt strength - all of this we met with Nadson, Apukhtin, and Sluchevsky:

Autumn groan -
Lingering ringing
The funeral bell -
Sick in the soul
Sounds like a string
Restless ...
("Autumn Song". Per. N. Minsky)

But all of these motifs in Verlaine's poetry have a shimmering, symbolic subtext. He does not just share with the reader his "spleen", blues; he feels that the whole universe is "depressed", that the creative forces of the Universe are drying up, that a time of painful, nervous uncertainty is coming, that humanity is on the threshold of a new era, behind which there is complete uncertainty. And this subtext, too, will be unraveled only by translators of the early 20th century.

But the least of all "lucky" at the end of the 19th century with Russian translations of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the author of the genius, tragic, catastrophic and majestic poem "The Drunken Ship" (1871). It was in this poem that all the main "lines of force" of poetry of the 20th century were first identified, the traditional motives and conflicts of romantic lyrics were transferred to a fundamentally different register, associated with global historical premonitions, with upcoming universal human upheavals:

Those that controlled me got into a mess:
Their Indian marksmanship has been targeted
Sometimes, like me, without the need for sails,
He left, obeying the river current.

Following the silence that let me know
That the crew no longer existed,
I am a Dutchman, loaded with silk and grain
It was thrown into the ocean by gusts of a squall.

With the speed of a planet that barely arose,
Now diving to the bottom, then rising over the abyss,
I flew overtaking peninsulas
In spirals of alternating hurricanes.
............................................................
If I still enter the waters of Europe,
After all, they seem to me a puddle of idleness, -
I'm a paper boat - I'm out of tune
A boy full of sadness, squatting while standing.

Stand up, oh waves! To me, in so many seas
To the one who has been, - to me, who flew in the clouds, -
Sailing through the flags of amateur yachts
Or under the terrible gaze of floating prisons?
(Translated by D. Brodsky)

However, Arthur Rimbaud in Russia began to be translated much later; who became a poet in France at the end of the 19th century, in Russia he turned out to be a poet of the 20th century. But this does not mean that the Russian lyricists of the 1880-1890s did not think about the same problems, did not move in the direction set by history.

• Remember the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov's "A lonely sail is gleaming white." Compare the images of this poem with the images of "The Drunken Ship" by A. Rembo. What is the similarity, what is the fundamental difference?

Poetry of Vladimir Solovyov and the beginning of a new era in Russian lyrics

And Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) became precisely such a poet, who in many ways predicted the artistic discoveries and philosophical ideas of the 20th century. Having become a graduate of the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Moscow University and a volunteer at the Moscow Theological Academy, Solovyov delved into the study of ancient mystical treatises about Sophia. That is, about the Soul of the World, about the Wisdom of God, about the personification of the Eternal Feminine. Like many romantics, Solovyov believed that this mystical power directly affects his life, and therefore sought a mysterious meeting with Sophia.

In 1875, Vladimir Sergeevich went to London; the formal reason was work in the library of the British Museum, true reason- looking for a meeting with Sophia. Solovyov fills notebooks of notes with strange writings, where a familiar name is often found among the characters that cannot be deciphered: Sophie, Sophia. And - suddenly leaves London via Paris to Egypt. He had a "voice" calling him to Cairo. As he later wrote in the poem "Three dates": "" Be in Egypt! " - a voice sounded inside, // To Paris - and to the south the steam carries me. " Characteristic is this purely Solovyov construction of a poetic phrase: not a word is said about an intermediate state, about doubts. The decision is made instantly. Such was the nature of Solovyov.

For the same reason, he was so inclined to use symbols (by the way, remember the definition of this literary concept, look in the dictionary). After all, the symbol does not depend on the changeable reality, on the change in the angle of view. It is always mysterious in meaning, but always defined in form. So, in Solovyov's poem of 1875 "At my queen ...", which was just connected with a trip to Egypt, the colors of eternity, eternal colors predominate: "My queen has a high palace, // About seven golden pillars, // My queen has a seven-sided crown, // There are no dear stones in it. // And in the green garden of my queen // Roses and lilies, beauty blossomed, // And in a transparent wave, a silvery stream // Catches the reflection of curls and brows. .. ".

The garden of the "queen" is always green, at any time of the year, it does not fade; the roses are invariably scarlet, the lilies are white, the brook is silver. And the more constant, the more "reliable" these symbolic colors are, the more dramatic the main theme of the poem sounds. And this theme is the changeability of the poet's heart, the changeability of the face of his Heavenly Beloved.

In Egypt, Solovyov was in for a shock. He spent an icy night in the desert, waiting for the appearance of Sophia, as he was told by his inner voice, but no mysterious meeting took place, the young mystic was almost beaten by local nomads. Another poet would have perceived what had happened tragically, while in Solovyov, on the contrary, all this caused a fit of laughter. (No wonder in one of his lectures he defined man as a "laughing animal.") In general, he, like his beloved lyric poet Alexei Tolstoy, often wrote humorous poems.

For Solovyov, laughter was a kind of antidote to excessive mysticism; he deliberately played on the image of his lyrical hero, the image of the Pilgrim, the mystic, and placed him in comic situations. Up to the auto-epitaph: "Vladimir Solovyov // Lies in this place. // First there was a philosopher, // And now he has become a shkelet ..." (1892).

But with the same inexplicable ease, Solovyov returned from mockery, from disappointment - to solemn intonation, to charm in a mystical way. In the best, perhaps, of Soloviev's poems - "Ex oriente lux" (1890), Russia is harshly asked to make a choice between the belligerence of the ancient Persian king Xerxes and the sacrifice of Christ:

About Russia! in foresight high
You are busy with a proud thought;
What do you want to be the East:
East of Xerxes or Christ?

In the 1890s, the azure eyes of the invisible Sophia again clearly shone with Solovyov. This time the light did not come from the East, not from the West, but from the North. In the winter of 1894, after leaving to work in Finland, Solovyov unexpectedly felt the secret presence of Sofia in everything - in the Finnish rocks, in the pines, in the lake ... the appearance of the Antichrist. A bunch of his sad historical observations was the poem "Panmongolism":

Panmongolism! Even though the word is wild
But it caresses my ear
As if a forerunner of the great
The fate of God is full.

... Instruments of God's punishment
The stock is not depleted yet.
Prepares new blows
Swarm of Awakened Tribes.

Panmongolism - in Soloviev's understanding - is the unification of Asian peoples for the sake of enmity with the European "race"; Vladimir Sergeevich was convinced that in the XX century the united militant representatives of the "yellow race" would become the main historical force: "From the Malay waters to Altai // Leaders from the eastern islands // At the walls of drooping China // Collected the darkness of their regiments."

These motives will be developed in their work by the closest literary heirs of Solovyov, poets of the next generation, who will call themselves Russian Symbolists - you will also get acquainted with their work in the next, 11th grade.

• What moods are inherent in Russian poets of the late 19th century? What are their similarities with the romantics of the beginning of the century?

1. Blok A.A. The fate of Apollo Grigoriev // He. Collected cit .: In 8 volumes, M.-L., 1962.
2. Gippius V.V. From Pushkin to Blok. M., 1966.
3. A.A. Grigoriev Memories. M., 1980.
4. Egorov B.F. Apollon Grigoriev. M., 2000 (Series "Life of Remarkable People").
5. V.I. Korovin Noble heart and pure voice of the poet // Pleshcheev A.N. Poems. Prose. M., 1988.
6. Nolman M.L. Charles Baudelaire. Fate. Aesthetics. Style. M., 1979.
7. Novikov Vl. The artistic world of Prutkov // Works by Kozma Prutkov. M., 1986.
8. Fedorov A.V. Poetic creativity of K.K. Sluchevsky // Sluchevsky K.K. Poems and poems. M.-L., 1962.
9. Yampolsky I.G. Mid-Century: Essays on Russian Poetry 1840-1870. L., 1974.

The first dramatic experiences: vaudeville, drama "Ivanov".

The Seagull (1896). The history of the first production. Chekhov's artistic innovation: a new type of dramatic hero, the novelty of plot and compositional solutions, the richness of intonation and semantic nuances, subtext meanings, the polyphonic nature of the dialogue, the polysemy of characters and conflicts, the richness of symbolism. The drama of mutual misunderstanding, personal failure and creative dissatisfaction in the play "The Seagull".

The triumphant production of "The Seagull" - 1898 at the Moscow Art Theater. Method K.S. Stanislavsky as a generalization of the director's experience of working on Chekhov's "The Seagull". Cooperation of Chekhov with the Moscow Art Theater.

Uncle Vanya (1897), Three Sisters (1901). Plays about the lost opportunities and endless hopes of the provincial intelligentsia. Problems, figurative structure, psychological drawing. Genre originality of the works.

The Cherry Orchard (1904). Three generations, three social groups represented in the play. External (deciding the fate of the estate) and internal (determining the historical and personal fates of the heroes) conflicts. Dramatic and comic in the play. Images-symbols, cross-cutting motives. The role of minor characters. Genre.

Modern stage interpretations of Chekhov's works.

The influence of Chekhov's drama on world drama.

4. Russian poetry of the second half of the 19th century

Tradition and innovation of poetry of the second halfXIXcentury. Lyric, lyric-epic and epic genres. Language and rhythms.

ON THE. Nekrasov(1821 - 1877). The personality of the poet. The content and pathos of his work.

Nekrasov's artistic innovation. Expansion of the thematic volume, the figurative world of poetry, democratization of content and language, organic inclusion of elements of folk poetics into their own poetic world, polyphony, rhythmic wealth, genre diversity. Socio-biographical and moral-psychological traits lyric hero poetry of Nekrasov. Emotional richness and civic pathos of Nekrasov poetry. The main themes of Nekrasov's lyrics.

Poems by Nekrasov.

Lyro-epic poem "Frost, Red Nose" (1863).

Historical poems "Grandfather" (1870) and "Russian women" (1871 - 1872). A poetic embodiment of the theme of the moral feat of the Decembrists and their wives.

Folk epic "Who Lives Well in Russia" (from 1863 until the end of his life). The idea of ​​the poem and the history of its implementation. Subject-compositional originality. Rhythmic and stylistic wealth. Saturation with folklore motives, images and rhythms. The content-functional mission of the seven pilgrims-truth-seekers. Poetics and problems of the "Prologue" as a starting point and ideological and artistic grain of the story. The many-sidedness and polyphony of the poem. Picturesque crowd scenes. The depth of Nekrasov's comprehension of the content and nature of folk life, the foundations of national life and the utopianism of his socio-historical hopes (the mission entrusted to Grisha Dobrosklonov; the legend "About two great sinners").

Nekrasov's editorial activity at the head of Sovremennik and Notes of the Fatherland.

Contradictory assessments of the personality and work of Nekrasov by his contemporaries. The enduring significance of his work.

F.I. Tyutchev(1803 - 1873). The originality of the poetic world of Tyutchev's poetry: philosophical character; the key role of global oppositions (Space - Chaos, Day - Night, Life - Death, Love - Struggle,

Death is the Human Judgment), symbolic richness, romanticism with a fundamental revision of the role and meaning of the personality, the logical alignment of the poetic utterance and its sensual trepidation, the lexical and rhythmic-syntactic richness and variety of verse, the addiction to archaic forms of poetic expressiveness, parallelism as one of the fundamental compositional principles. Tyutchev and Pushkin.

Conditionally distinguished thematic blocks: landscape, natural-philosophical, love, actually philosophical lyrics, philosophical miniatures, poems of political and "Slavophil" content. (See a suitably structured list of works.)

Denisiev's cycle: life basis, ideological and artistic community, plot and compositional unity of works, the image of a lyric hero, the image of a beloved. The tragic sound of the theme of love.

Interaction of Tyutchev's poetry with Western European philosophy and poetry. The influence of Tyutchev's work on the poetry of the Silver Age (Merezhkovsky about Tyutchev: "our decadent grandfather").

A.A. Fet(1820 - 1892). A striking difference between the personality and fate of the poet from the content and emotional tone of his work. The fundamental detachment from social problems and the "lyrical impudence" (L. Tolstoy) of Fet's poetry. Main themes: nature, love, beauty, life and death, the purpose of art. Philosophical depth, romanticism and impressionism of Fet's poetry. Rhythmic and melodic richness, musicality, plastic expressiveness, emotional and psychological richness of the lyrics. Dynamism, energy and wordlessness of Fet's verse.

Contemporaries about the work of Fet (L. Tolstoy, I. Turgenev, PI Tchaikovsky and N. Chernyshevsky, D. Pisarev). Fet's influence on Russian poetry of the twentieth century.

An overview of the poetry of the 50s - 60s. Fet's line - representatives of "pure" art: Ap. Maikov, N. Shcherbina, Y. Polonsky, A.K. Tolstoy. Folklore richness, genre variety of A. Tolstoy's lyrics. Poets of the Nekrasov school: N.P. Ogarev, D. Minaev, M. Mikhailov, S. Drozhzhin, I. Golts-Miller, I. Nikitin. The satirical branch of the Nekrasov school: N. Dobrolyubov, V. Kurochkin, D. Minaev, L. Trefolev. The satirical works of Kozma Prutkov (A.K. Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers).

N.S. Leskov(1831 - 1895). The uniqueness of talent and creativity. A special place in the literature of its time.

Ideological novel-chronicle: "Cathedrals" (1872). Genre originality of the chronicle.

Anti-nihilistic (ideological) novels "Nowhere" (1865), "At the Knives" (1871).

An outline of female characters and social mores in the works "The Life of a Woman" (1863), "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (1865), "Warrior" (1866).

The story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District": fabulous manner of narration, language, functions of the narrator; principles of image creation the main character; the character and fate of Katerina Izmailova; Russian national character, the problem of naturalness, spontaneity of human nature in Leskov's coverage. The meaning of the name. Leskov's polemic roll call with Ostrovsky (Katerina Izmailova versus Katerina Kabanova).

The story "The Enchanted Wanderer" (1873). Plot-compositional organization of the narrative ("story within a story", fragmentation), fairy-tale manner. Good mischief, epic strength, spontaneity of nature and irresponsibility of behavior of the main character - Ivan Severyanich Flyagin. His complicity in the destinies of people he met on the path of life. The moral evolution of the hero. The ambiguity of the word "enchanted" in the story, the meaning of the title.

By the message "Lefty (The Tale of the Tula oblique left-hander and the steel flea)" (1882). Fantastic and epic character of the story. The linguistic and plot embodiment of the opposition of the Russian and the "alien" national worlds .. The symbolic character of the Lefty's image: external unpretentiousness - and spiritual beauty, moral dignity, giftedness, patriotism. The tragic fate of the master-nugget is the formula of the life of the Russian people. Problems of national and personal human dignity, education, statesmanship and foresight.

The theme of the tragic fate of a talented person from the people in the story "Dumb Artist" (1883).

The uniqueness of the artistic world of Leskov's works, the depth of comprehension of the Russian national character in them.

Democratic fiction 60-80s.

Traditions of the "natural school". Development of the realistic method: attention to the socio-economic aspects of the life of the people, the psychological, everyday and ethnographic thoroughness of the image. N.G. Pomyalovsky(1835 - 1863): the story "Bourgeois Happiness", the novel "Molotov", artistic interpretation of the confrontation between discordance and lordship, psychologism, the lyricism of the novel's narration, a tough statement of the problem of education in the "Sketches of the Bursa". V.A. Sleptsov(1836 - 1878): the novel "Difficult Time" - the image of the socio-ideological conflict as the basis of the plot; poisonous irony and merciless satire in the depiction of the deformities of Russian reality in Sleptsov's stories and essays. F.M. Reshetnikov(1841 - 1871): the novel "Podlipovtsy" - realistic authenticity and ethnographic expressiveness of the narrative. N.V. Uspensky(1937 - 1889): "Essays on the People's Life" - rigidity in the depiction of folk life, "anecdote" in the development of plots and characters. G.I. Uspensky(1843 - 1902). An exponent of revolutionary socialist sentiments, "the great saddener of the Russian land", a merciless denouncer of the social and moral deformities of national life. The Morals of Rasteryaeva Street (1866) is a bleak picture of the life and customs of the Russian philistinism, the embodiment of the horrors of the zoological existence of the Rasteryaevites. Cross-cutting problematics of the cycle, expressiveness of human types. The Power of the Land (1882) is the last of G. Uspensky's three essay cycles about the Russian countryside. Artistic and journalistic study of the organic connection of the peasant with the land. Idealization of the communal peasant world.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin(1826 – 1889).

Personality and worldview. The main stages of biography and creativity. Start creative path- "Provincial Essays" (1956 - 1857): a satirical denunciation of the provincial bureaucracy and, in his person, of all bureaucratic Russia.

Features of the artistic method of Saltykov-Shchedrin: satire, fantasy.

Ideological parody novel: The Story of a City (1869 - 1870) is a political satire, a phantasy-parody history of the Russian State. The content and principles of creating images of mayors. Their historical background and visionary, predictive nature. The image of the people in "History ...". Social insights and social delusions of Saltykov-Shchedrin. Artistic features of the work (convention, symbolism, irony, grotesque, fantasy, folklore elements). The meaning of the figure of the chronicler-narrator. Composition of the book. The meaning of the ending.

Socio-psychological novel: "Gentlemen Golovlevs" (1875 - 1880) - , the history of the moral degradation of the landowner family, the destruction and disintegration of the noble nest. The socially incriminating pathos of the Saltykov-Shchedrin family chronicle. Polemic orientation of the work. The image of Arina Petrovna Golovleva. Arina Petrovna's fault in the disintegration and death of the family and her misfortune as a result. Judas as a complete and final embodiment of moral self-destruction, mental mortification of the noble "last-born". Techniques for creating images of heroes (portrait, speech, facial expressions, gesture, author's commentary, generalizing assessments-characteristics). The accusatory sharpness of the story.

Ideological novel-pamphlet "Modern Idyll" (1877 - 1878, 1882 - 1883) - satire on the reactionary era, on liberal opportunism (life "in relation to meanness", "penny-picking").

Ideological tale:Fairy Tales (1883 - 1886 ). History of creation. Genre originality of Shchedrin's tales, a roll call with folk tales and fundamental difference from them. The satirical nature of Shchedrin's fairy tales, their problematic and thematic content. Generalized conditional character of images of people and animals. Fable and moralistic traditions in Shchedrin's tales.

The influence of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin on the literature of the twentieth century. Modern assessments of his work. The relevance of the images created by Shchedrin.

Literature of the 80-90s of the Х1Х century.

Overview characteristic .

V.M. Garshin (1855 - 1888 ): Anti-war pathos of military stories ("Four days", "Coward", "From the memoirs of private Ivanov"); comprehension of the social mission of art ("Artists"); the theme of loneliness, a desperate impulse to happiness, madness as a form of social protest ("Attalea princeps", "Red Flower"). Fairy tales "The Frog the Traveler", "That Which Was Not" - sad humor and skepticism of the author's position. D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak(1852 - 1912): Ural nature, Ural life, capitalization of social and economic relations in the image of Mamin-Sibiryak.

V.G. Korolenko(1853 - 1921). Realism of "Siberian stories" ("Dream of Makar"). Humanistic pathos, realistic and romantic images in the stories "In a Bad Society" (1885), The Blind Musician (1886). Folk types in the story "The Forest Is Noisy" (1895), the anti-capitalist pathos of the story "Without a Language" (1895).

"Bourgeois fiction" P. Boborykina, I. Potapenko.

A.P. Chekhov(1860 – 1904) .

The regularity of the Chekhov phenomenon at the end of the 19th century. The personality and fate of the writer. Self-education. Moral influence on loved ones. Social and medical activities. Trip to Sakhalin (1890). Stages of creative activity. The innovation of Chekhov as a prose writer.

Chekhov is a humorist. Stories from the first half of the 1980s: "A Letter to a Scientist Neighbor", "Joy", "Death of an Official", "Albion's Daughter", "Fat and Thin", "Complaints Book", "Rank Exam", "Surgery", "Chameleon", "Horse Surname", "Intruder", "Unter Prishibeev". Features of plot and compositional decisions: anecdotal plots, laconicism, openness of the finals, etc. The originality of Chekhov's heroes and the way they are portrayed. The hidden drama of comic collisions.

Deepening of themes and images of Chekhov's work by the end of the 80s. "Tosca", "Vanka", "Enemies", "Happiness", "Kashtanka", "I want to sleep", "Steppe", "Lights", "Beauties", "Name days". Strengthening the parable sounding of stories, an organic combination of humorous, lyrical and dramatic principles, economy and capacity of artistic means, thematic wealth, multi-heroism, democracy, psychological persuasiveness of Chekhov's prose.

Stories from the 90s - 900s. The complication of the personality of the Chekhovian hero, the dramatic nature of his inner life, the discrepancy with himself ("Rothschild's Violin", "Fear", "Black Monk", "Bishop"). Pictures of folk life ("Women", "Men", "In the ravine"). The depiction of the spiritual world and the moral quest of the intelligentsia ("A Boring Story", "Ward No. 6", "Duel", "Teacher of Literature", "House with a Mezzanine", My Life "," A Case from Practice "," A Man in a Case ", "Gooseberry", "About Love", "Ionych"). Female images and the theme of love in the work of the "late" Chekhov ("Jumping", "Darling", "Anna on the neck", "Lady with a dog"). The parable-philosophical content of Chekhov's stories ("The Student"), the encouraging sound of the open finals ("The Bride"). (The thematic layout given here is very arbitrary, since any work is the focus of different themes and ideas.)

Poetics of Chekhov's story: the manner of storytelling, plot and compositional features, ways of depicting heroes, the role of detail, etc.

The influence of Chekhov's prose on 20th century literature.

The Pushkin era became a high century in Russian poetry. After the life of Lermontov and Pushkin suddenly died out in the first half of the 19th century, poetry, as part of the literary process, experienced a peculiar period of stagnation.

Development of poetry in the second half of the 19th century

The poems that were created by Russian authors in the 50s were subject to sharp criticism - they were all compared with the legacy of Alexander Sergeevich, and, in the opinion of many critics, they were much "weaker" than them. During this period, poetry began to gradually replace prose. Such talented prose writers as Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky appeared in the literary field. It should be noted that it was Tolstoy who was one of the most categorical critics of the new Russian poets: he ignored Tyutchev's work, and openly called Polonsky, Maikov and Fet "mediocre".

Maybe Lev Nikolaevich was really right, and we should not perceive the poetry of the post-Pushkin era as a literary heritage? Then why do many of us associate the 19th century not only with the works of Lermontov and Pushkin, but also with the genius poems of Fet, Nekrasov, Pleshcheev, Koltsov, Polonsky, A. Tolstoy?

Moreover, if we consider Russian poetry from such a radical position, then the poets - silversmiths - Akhmatova, Blok, Bely, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva automatically fall into the category of "mediocrity" who have not reached the level of Pushkin. Therefore, we see that such an opinion is devoid of all logical grounds, and it is categorically impossible to be guided by it.

Creativity Nekrasov

In the second half of the 19th century, Russian poetry began to actively recover, despite active opposition. The creativity of N.A.Nekrasov became the pinnacle of Russian poetry in the second half of the 19th century. In his poems and poems, he raised acute topics at that time concerning the painful life of the common Russian people. Through literary techniques actively used in his works, Nekrasov tried to convey to the upper strata the concept of the greatness of a simple peasant, deprived of material wealth, but who managed to preserve true human values.

The poet perceived his literary activity primarily as his civic duty, which consisted in serving his people and homeland. Nekrasov, known for his publishing activities, became the father - mentor of aspiring poets of that time and gave them an impetus for further implementation.

Creativity Fet, Tyutchev, Pleshcheev, Polonsky

Poetic lyrics occupied a special place in the literature of that time. The poems of Fet, Tyutchev, Maykov, Pleshcheev, Polonsky, Koltsov, Nikitin were filled with admiration for the greatness of nature, its power, and at the same time vulnerability. A striking example is Tyutchev's poem "I love a thunderstorm in early May", which the reader will always associate with the magic and magic of ordinary natural phenomena that capture the human spirit.

The works of these poets, despite their lyrical content, were not deprived of their civic position. This was especially clearly observed in the work of A.K. Tolstoy - the author of many historical ballads and satirical poems, in which the monarchical regime and the very concept of royal power in Russia.