Historical poetics" A.N. Veselovsky: main problems. Historical poetics Historical poetics as a science

1. Subject of research, method, objectives.

2. The theory of syncretism in ancient poetry.

3. The problem of the origin of literary genera; Veselovsky's polemic with Hegel.

4. Typology and evolution of the epithet.

5. The concept of motive and plot.

6. The significance of “Historical Poetics” for domestic and world literary criticism.

Literature

1. Veselovsky Historical poetics. M., 1986.

2. Academic schools in Russian literary criticism. M., 1975.

3. Gorsky I.K. A.N. Veselovsky and modernity. M., 1975.

Lesson No. 10

Text. Subtext. Context (contextual analysis capabilities)

1. The concept of text and its components.

2. Text and work, text and meaning. Subtext as “text depth” (T. Silman).

3. Text and context; types of contexts. The essence of contextual study of a literary work.

4. Theory of intertextuality. Types of intertextual signs and relationships.

Text for analysis: Pelevin V. The Ninth Dream of Vera Pavlovna // Pelevin V. Yellow Arrow. M., 1998.

Text assignment

2. Determine the nature and purpose of this dialogue.

Literature

Main

1. Bakhtin M.M. The problem of text in linguistics, philology and other humanities. Experience of philosophical analysis // Bakhtin M.M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. M., 1986. P.297-325.

2. Bart R. From work to text. Pleasure from the text // Bart R. Izbr. works: semiotics. Poetics. M., 1989. P. 414-123; 463-464, 469-472, 483.

3. Kristeva Yu. Bakhtin, word, dialogue and novel // Bulletin of Moscow State University. Ser. 9. Philology. pp. 97-102.

4. Khalizev V.E. Text //Introduction to literary criticism. Literary work: basic concepts and terms. M., 1999. S. 403-406, 408-409, 412 - 414.

5. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. M., 1999. P.291-293.

Additional

1. Lotman Yu.M. Text as a semiotic problem: Text within the text // Lotman Yu.M. Favorite Art.: In 3 volumes. T.1. Tallinn, 1992. pp. 148-160.

2. Zholkovsky A. Wandering dreams: From the history of Russian modernism. M., 1994. P.7-30.

Lesson No. 11 – 12

Postmodernism as an artistic system

Part 1

1. The origins of postmodernism (philosophical and ideological).

2. Basic principles and features of postmodern poetics:

1) Intertextuality and polystylistics:

Specifics of postmodern reality (world = text);

Refusal of novelty.

2) Game and ironic discourse;

3) Transformation of the principle of dialogism:

Development of M. Bakhtin's idea of ​​polyphonism in postmodernism;

Expansion of the “creative chronotope” (M. Bakhtin’s term) and the principle of simultaneity;

Part 2

4) A new understanding of chaos (“chaosmos” is D. Joyce’s term) and the problem of postmodern artistic integrity.

4. Postmodernism – the death of art or a new phase of literary evolution?

Text for analysis: V. Pelevin “The Ninth Dream of Vera Pavlovna”

Assignment according to the text: Find the features of postmodern poetics in the proposed texts:

1) show how different language styles and strategies are combined in the text; give examples of stylistic dissonances and oxymorons;

2) how ironic discourse manifests itself in the text;

3) characterize the model of the world in Pelevin’s story.

Literature

General

1. Lipovetsky M.N. Law of steepness // Questions of literature. 1991. No. 11-12. pp. 3-36; (esp.:3-12).

2. Lipovetsky M.N. Russian postmodernism: Essays on historical poetics. Ekaterinburg, 1997. pp. 8-43.

3. Stepanyan K. Realism as the final stage of postmodernism // Znamya. 1992. No. 9 P.231-239 (esp. 231–233).

4. Epstein M. Proto-or the End of Postmodernism // Znamya. 1996. No. 3. P. 196-210 (esp. 207-209).

Additional

2. Groys B Eternal return of the new // Art. 1989. No. 10.

3. Ilyin I. Postmodernism: a dictionary of terms. M., 2001. P. 100-105; 206-219.

Lesson No. 13 – 14

Mass literature as an aesthetic phenomenon

1. Value-based approach to art. Literary hierarchies.

2. The concept of literary “top” and “bottom”, principles of differentiation.

3. The genesis of mass literature (factors that determined its emergence).

4. Specific features of poetics *.

5. Interpenetration of various spheres of literature. The role of mass literature in the historical and literary process

Literature

Main.

1. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature M., 1999. pp. 122-137.

2. Melnikov N.G. Mass literature // Introduction to literary criticism: Literary work. M., 1999. P.177-193.

3. Zverev A.M. What is “mass literature”? // Faces of US mass literature. M., 1991. P.3-37.

4. Gudkov L.D. Mass literature as a problem. For whom? // New Literary Review. 1996. No. 22. P. 92-100.

Additional.

1. Lotman Yu.M. Mass literature as a historical and cultural problem // Lotman Yu.M. Selected articles: In 3 volumes. Tallinn, 1992. T.3. WITH.

2. New literary review. 1996. No. 22. (the magazine issue is dedicated to the problems of mass literature).

Part 2

*For a more visual representation of the features of the poetics of mass literature, the following are offered messages:

1) The poetics of the action novel.

2) The artistic formula of the “pink novel”.

3) Typological characteristics of a female detective.

4) Typological characteristics of fantasy literature (foreign or Slavic).

5) Poetics of comics (for children and youth).

Literature for messages:

1. Bocharova O The Formula of Women’s Happiness (Notes on a Women’s Love Novel) // New. lit. convoy 1996. No. 22. P.292-303..

2. Weinstein O. Pink novel as a machine of desires // Ibid. P.303-330.

3. Dolinsky V. “...when the kiss is over” (About a love affair without love) // Znamya. 1996. No. 1.

4. Dubin B. Test of consistency: towards the sociological poetics of the Russian action novel // Ibid. P.252-276.

5. Erofeev V.V. On the question of the history and poetics of comics // Ibid. P.270-295.

6. Other times: the evolution of Russian science fiction at the turn of the millennium. Chelyabinsk, 2010.

7. Chakovsky S.A. Typology of the bestseller // Faces of mass literature in the USA. M., 1991. P.143-206.

Historical poetics is a branch of poetics that studies the genesis and development of meaningful artistic forms. Historical poetics is connected with theoretical poetics through relations of complementarity. If theoretical poetics develops a system of literary categories and provides their conceptual and logical analysis, through which the system of the subject itself (fiction) is revealed, then historical poetics studies the origin and development of this system. The word "poetics" denotes both the art of poetry and the science of literature. Both of these meanings, without mixing, are present in literary criticism, emphasizing the unity in it of the poles of subject and method. But in theoretical poetics the emphasis is on the second (methodological) meaning of the term, and in historical poetics - on the first (subject-based). Therefore, it studies not only the genesis and development of the system of categories, but first of all the art of speech itself, in this approaching the history of literature, but not merging with it and remaining a theoretical discipline. This preference for subject matter over method is also evident in methodology.

Historical poetics as a science

Historical poetics as a science took shape in the second half of the 19th century in the works of A.N. Veselovsky (his predecessors were German scientists, primarily W. Scherer). The basis of its methodology is the rejection of any a priori definitions proposed by normative and philosophical aesthetics. According to Veselovsky, the method of historical poetics is historical and comparative (“the development of the historical, the same historical method, only more frequent, repeated in parallel rows in the form of achieving the most complete generalization possible” (Veselovsky). For Veselovsky, an example of one-sided and non-historical generalizations was Hegel’s aesthetics , including his theory of literary genera, built only on the basis of the facts of ancient Greek literature, which were accepted as “the ideal norm of literary development in general.” Only a comparative historical analysis of all world literature allows, according to Veselovsky, to avoid the arbitrariness of theoretical constructions and derive from the material itself, the laws of the origin and development of the phenomenon being studied, as well as to identify large stages of the literary process, “repeating, under the same conditions, among different peoples.” The founder of historical poetics, in the very formulation of the method, specified the complementarity of two aspects - historical and typological. Veselovsky, the understanding of the relationship between these aspects will change, they will begin to be considered more differentiated, the emphasis will shift either to genesis and typology (O.M. Freidenberg, V.Ya. Propp), then to evolution (in modern works), but the complementarity of the historical and typological approaches will remain a defining feature of the new science. After Veselovsky, new impetus for the development of historical poetics was given by the works of Freudenberg, M.M. Bakhtin and Propp. A special role belongs to Bakhtin, who theoretically and historically explicated the most important concepts of the emerging science - “big time” and “big dialogue”, or “dialogue in big time”, aesthetic object, architectural form, genre, etc.

Tasks

One of the first tasks of historical poetics- highlighting large stages or historical types of artistic integrity, taking into account the “big time”, in which the slow formation and development of an aesthetic object and its forms takes place. Veselovsky identified two such stages, calling them the eras of “syncretism” and “personal creativity.” On slightly different grounds, Yu.M. Lotman distinguishes two stages, calling them “aesthetics of identity” and “aesthetics of opposition.” However, most scientists, after the works of E.R. Curtius, adopted a three-part periodization. The first stage of the development of poetics, called differently by researchers (the era of syncretism, pre-reflective traditionalism, archaic, mythopoetic), covers difficult-to-calculate time boundaries from the emergence of pre-art to classical antiquity: The second stage (the era of reflexive traditionalism, traditionalist, rhetorical, eidetic poetics) begins in 7-6 centuries BC in Greece and in the first centuries AD. in the East. The third (non-traditionalist, individually creative, poetics of artistic modality) begins to take shape from the mid-18th century in Europe and from the beginning of the 20th century in the East and continues to this day. Taking into account the uniqueness of these large stages of artistic development, historical poetics studies the genesis and evolution of the subjective structure (the relationship between the author, hero, listener-reader), verbal artistic image and style, gender and genre, plot, euphony in the broad sense of the word (rhythms, metrics and sound organization). Historical poetics is still a young, emerging science, which has not received any completed status. There is still no strict and systematic presentation of its foundations and formulation of central categories.

L. E. LYAPINA

GENRE SPECIFICITY OF A LITERARY CYCLE

AS A PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL POETICS

The problem of literary cyclization has become a topic in modern literary criticism.

one of the most relevant and interesting. All kinds of poetic and

prose cycles are attracting increasing attention from literary historians,

and theorists. Meanwhile, many fundamental questions remain incomplete

clarified. This is the question of the genre status of the literary cycle. Even in relation to the most distinct and mastered manifestations of literary cyclization - the lyrical cycles of the 19th-20th centuries - one can feel the wariness of researchers, which is evident even in the terminology: “genre education” (V.A. Sapogov, L.K. Dolgopolov, etc.), “ secondary genre formation" (I.V. Fomenko), "super-genre unity" (M.N. Darwin), "the phenomenon of incomplete genre genesis" (K.G. Isupov), etc., - up to a declarative refusal to consider the lyrical cycle in terms of genre (R. Vroon).

And all this - along with the recognized certainty and elaboration of the “cycle” phenomenon itself.

The stumbling block in many respects turns out to be that when trying to define a cycle as a genre, the criteria are primarily structural and compositional features, and those that seem to be designed to characterize the degree of perfection of any work of art: the level of integrity, the nature of the relationship of parts as a whole, authorship. How to evaluate this fact?

Obviously, to resolve this issue, a historical approach is necessary, especially if we are interested in cyclization on the scale of literature, and not just one kind of literature.

The first thing that attracts attention when trying to determine the historical perspective in the aspect that interests us is that the very phenomenon of cyclization was not only long ago and actively realized in verbal artistic creativity, but as if it was originally inherent in the artistic consciousness of all eras.

We find examples of various kinds of cyclic formations both in the literature of different countries and peoples, and in folklore.

The most interesting cycles were created in China since antiquity (Qu Yuan, Tao Yuan-ming, Du Fu, Bo Jui-i), in medieval India (Jayadeva, Vidyapati, Chondidash), in Korean poetry (the sizho genre of the poets of the “lake school”) ; Classical Arabic lyrics are formed according to the principle of continuous cyclization (qasidas consisting of beits are combined into cycles, cycles into divans), etc. Among European literatures, here we should first of all mention ancient, Italian (Petrarch), German (Goethe, Heine, Novalis, Chamisso, Lenau), English (Shakespeare, John Donne, Blake), French (poets of the Pleiades, Hugo, Baudelaire), Polish (Mickiewicz), and finally, Russian. These are poetic cycles; prose and drama also provide rich material.

To what extent is such a series justified? Is it possible to talk about some common foundation that unites these phenomena? Obviously, the only “foundation” for cycles of all eras is the textual criterion: the author’s conscious situation of creating a new artistic whole through the correlation of a number of other artistic wholes included in it1. The connection between this feature and the genre specificity of the cycles was felt by theoretical and literary thought only recently2. The question posed above is thereby concretized and can be formulated as follows: what is the function of the textual criterion in relation to genre formation (cycle formation) in a historical perspective?

To answer this question, the concept proposed by S. S. Averintsev3 turns out to be extremely productive, in which he defines the historical evolution of the genre category itself on the scale of world literature.

In accordance with the fundamental changes occurring in relation to the scope of the concept of “genre”, a general periodization of literature is outlined, consisting of three stages.

The first is determined by the initial syncretic unity of verbal art and the extra-literary situations it serves, when genre rules are a direct continuation of the rules of everyday behavior or sacred ritual. This is the period of pre-reflective traditionalism (literature “in itself”, but not “for itself”), where the category of authorship has been replaced for the time being by the category of authority. In the second period - reflective traditionalism - literature “realizes itself” and constitutes itself as literature. The genre receives a description of its essence from its own _______ Wed. the term “seriation” in relation to lyrical cyclization in the report: R. Vroon. "Prosody and Poetic Sequences". - Los Angeles, 1987.

I. V. Fomenko considers V. Bryusov to be the theorist who “discovered” the lyrical cycle (Fomenko I. V.

On the poetics of the lyrical cycle. - Kalinin, 1983).

Averintsev S.S. Historical mobility of the genre category // Historical poetics. Results and prospects of the study. - M., 1986, etc.

literary norms codified by theory. The category of authorship correlates with the characteristics of style, but the category of genre remains more significant and real; This is rhetorical literature. Finally, starting with the Renaissance, signs of the end of the rhetorical principle are noticeable, although real signs of a new state of literature are discovered only in the second half of the 18th century. During this period, the category “author”, having risen above the category “genre”, contributes to the destruction of the traditional system of genres.

In our opinion, this idea of ​​the evolution of genres - and all literature - allows us to understand the fundamental essence of the evolution of literary cyclization, which is based on the specific relationship of textual unity with the concept of a work of art.

At the first stage, cycles arise that consolidate the folklore type of cyclization.

The connection with everyday life, ritual, rite can be felt to a greater extent (for example, cycles of wedding, funeral songs), or to a lesser extent (the didactic-philosophical nature of the ancient Indian Upanishads, sutras of Vedic literature, moral teachings and instructions of the Sumerian texts of Eduba), but it is always there . It is characteristic that already at the very early stages it turns out to be possible to use external attachment to the ritual to create an integral work of art, which, according to the idea, completely denies the ritual itself; i.e., “literariness” occurs

reception (ancient Egyptian “Harper’s Song”)4.

The cycles of the next stage are numerous and diverse in epic, lyric poetry, and drama. The category of the author, which was gaining significance, contributed, it seems, for example, to the fact that in ancient Greece, author trilogies (tetralogies) were offered for participation in playwright competitions; in the Renaissance, novelistic cycles (“Decameron”) gained popularity, and the very idea of ​​the book became increasingly popularized and varied - a collection of related works. Let us note that the summary in one paragraph of such diverse and widely separated phenomena does not at all indicate their identification, but only the typological similarity of the cycle-forming principle used.

It is significant that neither at the first nor at the second stage were the cycles recognized and qualified as genre phenomena. This is understandable if we consider that the textual criterion during these eras is absolute - and therefore not relevant.

On the role of folklore tradition in literary cycle formation, see: Lyapina L. E. The role of folklore tradition in the formation of the Russian literary poetic cycle // Folklore tradition in Russian literature. - Volgograd, 1986.

A work of art is a quantity equal to the finished text; The degree of completeness of the text, the uniqueness of its boundaries, determines only the level of artistry of the work. The textual feature of the cycle does not become a genre-forming feature until a certain time.

It is known, however, that due to the historical nature of the “genre” phenomenon itself, “this or that feature of the genre, being a structure-forming element in one genre system, when moving to another system of genre relations may lose this quality, retaining with the previous system only a purely external connection"5.

Accordingly, the reverse process is also natural:

actualization of a certain feature to a genre-forming one in certain historical conditions.

The actualization of the textual criterion begins with the end of the period of reflective traditionalism in literature and the beginning of the third, subsequent stage of its development. At this time, as shown in the above-mentioned work of S.

S. Averintsev, the category of the author, having risen above the genre, begins to elevate “lower” genres, “non-literature” to the rank of literature. As an example, S. S. Averintsev cites Pascal’s “Thoughts”: “A book that remained unfinished due to the death of the author, but also according to some of its own internal laws: from the point of view of the traditional concept of the genre, a book without a genre, a book unfinished, failed, so to speak , non-book, non-literature, which, however, turned out to be the most vital masterpiece of the century.”6 This example shows how in the new state of literature, along with the category of genre, the category of text is blurred and rethought, or more precisely, the correlation between the concepts of “text” and “work”. In particular, violations of unambiguous textual certainty and completeness cease to correlate with the criterion of artistry and have the opportunity to move into the category of structure-forming ones.

In this regard, we can recall a large number of “unfinished”

works in Russian classical literature of the 19th century; attention has been drawn to this more than once7 precisely as a trend, the realization of an opportunity. Let us also remember the significant place that in the literature of romanticism _______ Stennik Yu. V. System of genres in the historical and literary process // Historical and literary process. - L., 1974. - P. 175.

Averintsev S.S. Historical mobility of the genre category... - P. 114.

See, for example: Sapogov B. A. “Unfinished” works. On the problem of the integrity of an artistic text // The integrity of a work of art and the problems of its analysis in the school and university study of literature. - Donetsk, 1977; Kaminsky V.I. On the structure of the lyrical plot in Russian romantic poetry // Evolution of genre-compositional forms. - Kaliningrad, 1987.

and the emerging critical realism is occupied by a fragment. From “non-literature”, a passage, an unfinished work, it passes into the status of literature, a work, an artistic device. And at this time it definitely acquires the function of a genre, or more precisely, if compared with the established system of traditional genres, a genre-substituting one.

There is a well-known example, analyzed by Yu. M. Lotman, with the publication of Pushkin’s elegy “The flying ridge of clouds is thinning...”8. As is clear from letters to Bestuzhev, Pushkin asked editors in print to omit the last three lines of this completely finished poem, thereby turning it into a fragment.

Yu. M. Lotman convincingly shows that it was not so important for Pushkin to remove lines that allegedly compromised the heroine, but rather to define as a genre the passage that would activate the reader’s interest in the mysterious personality of the lyrical hero.

In other situations, the function of conscious fragmentation was naturally different. It is significant that for the reader the most important thing in a passage is not what it is a part of, but its very incompleteness. Sometimes this feature was directly declared (for example, F. Glinka, publishing “Experiences of Two Tragic Phenomena,” stipulated that “this passage does not belong to any whole”9).

Thus “a new function of poetic form was found”10. With these words, Yu. N. Tynyanov characterized precisely the phenomenon of a fragment in poetry; in the next phrase he adds: “But the genre novelty of the fragment could only be reflected with full force during cyclization”11. The fragment and the cycle turn out to be connected both genetically and by the nature of their functioning: for the literary cycles of the third stage, it will be increasingly important that this is a cycle, a cyclical formation; everything else is perceived as subordinate to this compositional content principle. A direct manifestation of this was the ease and organicity of the interpenetration and fusion of literary genres, genres, verse and prose occurring in cyclic structures. Cyclization opened up unique opportunities for this global process. Preserving the integrity - and thereby, if desired, the genre definition of the works included in the cycle - she, for example, made it possible to rebuild the genre system not only through leveling their genre characteristics, but also through declarative _______ Lotman Yu. M. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. - L., 1983. - P. 70-72.

Quote by: Arkhipova A.V. The literary work of the Decembrists. - L., 1987. - P. 22.

Tynyanov Yu. N. Pushkin and his contemporaries. - M., 1968. - P. 188.

translating them into a compositional and content plan at the plot level.

Let us limit ourselves here to just one - classic - example: Apollo Grigoriev’s “Struggle” cycle. The poems included in its composition are emphatically defined in terms of genre: ballad, elegy, romance, etc. Being able to create “synthetic” genre forms, here A. Grigoriev follows a different path, maintaining genre inertia within the framework of each work, but creating genre-specific stylistic “interstriping” within the cycle, on intertextual connections.

The main technique is contrast: the most “difficult to combine” poems are placed next to each other. Since a complete analysis of the cycle, consisting of 18 poems, is impossible here, to illustrate what has been said, we will limit ourselves to the material of a small part of the cycle, the “subcycle”: the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th poems.

Their mutual contrast is especially obvious: 6th - “Forgive me, my bright seraphim...” - a message of the pathetic genre (to use the terminology of B. O. Kostelants); 7th - “Good night!.. It’s time!..” - a free translation of A. Mickiewicz’s sonnet, evoking associations with the genre of alba (“morning song”) cultivated by French troubadours and imbued with the spiritual peace of love; 8th - “The evening is stuffy, the wind howls...” - clearly focused on a “terrible” romantic ballad full of mysticism, 9th - “Hope!” - they repeated in a quiet echo..." - an epically detailed dialogue - a translation of a fragment of A. Mickiewicz’s poem “Conrad Wallenrod”. B.F. Egorov noted the role of thematic contrast of poems in this cycle12; the genre-style contrast is directly correlated with it. The specificity of the chronotope is also drawn into this - and from poem to poem the reader feels not only a change in the place and moment of action, but a transfer from era to era, from locality to a completely different locality, from reality to a dream, a dream - and back.

The cyclical integrity here is determined by the lyrical plot itself - the development of a single experience. In the selected segment of the cycle, the plot moves quite directionally: from the realization - a speculative, “head” thesis about the need to break up - But if I were even free...

God would have separated our path even then, And the harsh judgment of the Lord would have been right!

To a gesture, an act, the expression of which is the entire 10th poem:

Egorov B.F. Poetry of Apollo Grigoriev // Grigoriev A. Poems and poems. - M., 1978. - P. 18.

Goodbye! farewell!.. Once again I am condemned to recognize On a hard life the heavy seal of a curse not washed away by repentance...

But, having experienced grace in my heart, I now go to suffer resignedly.

However, the entire poetic meaning of this plot movement of the “subcycle” is in the painful, multidirectional and multi-purposed search for a way out: through lyrical reflection and dreams, the affirmation of a strong feeling, albeit unrequited, as the highest value of being, through hope and reasoning - and the feeling of exhaustion of these paths ( in the 10th poem quoted).

The return from dreams and dreams to reality turns out to be irreversible and tragic.

The contrast of genre transitions is perceived as a manifestation of the throwing, feelings of the lyrical hero, and the qualitative difference of these moves is a manifestation of the richness and complexity of his spiritual world, which contains so much. The play of genres creates content and thematic development.

Thus, the cycle asserts the subordination of genre forms to individual content (cf. M. N. Darwin defines the lyrical cycle as a “super-genre unity”13), if we mean traditionalist genres. In relation to new literature, cyclization has become a way to overcome genre authoritarianism - and at the same time a means of creating qualitatively different, new genre forms. The flexibility of cyclization allows this transition to be realized precisely as a complex, internally diverse process.

Analyzing the process of the birth of a new Russian - analytical - novel in connection with the historical situation of the 1st half of the 19th century, B. M. Eikhenbaum wrote: “It was a kind of cultural revolution; the more serious were the tasks facing her.

It was impossible to immediately sit down and write a new Russian novel in four parts with an epilogue - it had to be collected in the form of stories and essays, one way or another interconnected. Moreover: it was necessary that this coupling be produced not by mechanical gluing together of episodes and scenes, but by framing them or their arrangement around one character with the help of a special narrator. Thus, two most difficult immediate tasks were determined: the problem of plot cohesion and the problem of narration. In poetry this was done by Pushkin: “Eugene Onegin”

was a way out of small verse forms and genres through their cyclization; something similar should have been done in prose.

Darwin M. N. The problem of the cycle in the study of lyrics. - Kemerovo, 1983. - P. 14.

Various forms of cyclization of scenes, stories, essays and novellas are a characteristic feature of Russian prose of the 30s”14. Let us add: not only prose, but also poetry and drama. The process of cyclization since the 19th century has been a general literary phenomenon.

The possibility of this was inherent in a new understanding of text-contextual relations15, the necessity - in the desire for a qualitative restructuring of the genre system.

Of course, the mechanism of cyclization within each literary genre, as well as the specific ways of its implementation, has its own differences. But these differences seem secondary in relation to the general trends of the historical and literary process. This can be demonstrated at least by the already mentioned example of the work of A. Grigoriev.

Grigoriev not only simultaneously creates diverse poetic cycles (“Old songs, old fairy tales”, “Titanias”, “Hymns”, “Improvisations of a wandering romantic”) and prose cycles (the trilogy about Vitalin, the three-part story “One of Many” together with the story “ Another of many"), but also actively combines them within a single plan. As is known, the above-mentioned lyrical cycle “Struggle” was conceived by the author as the first part of a large multi-genre cycle “Odyssey of the Last Romantic”. In addition to “The Struggle,” it was to include the prose sketch story “The Great Tragedian,” the poems “Venezia la bella,” “Up the Volga”; The fourth part was begun - the poem “The Temptation of the Last Romantic.” The work was not completed, but the idea itself appeared quite definitely: all the mentioned works are not only significantly connected in essence, but were also published with the corresponding subtitles (“From the Odyssey about the Last Romantic”, “Excerpt from the book “The Odyssey about the Last Romantic”), expanded comments (“...this is, in a word, about the same Ivan Ivanovich...”); sending the poem “Venezia la bella” to Apollo Maykov from Florence, Grigoriev begged: “For God’s sake, do not forget to insert in the notes No. “Son of the Fatherland”, in which another “lyrical diary” from the same novel was printed (it was about “Struggle” . - L.L.) - it must be so - I conjure with all the gods"16.

In the context of this “next order” cycle, the “Struggle” cycle also became, as it were, “relative”, turning into the quality of a compositional and meaningful link.

This happened primarily at the hero level. Already during the transition from “Struggle” to “The Great Tragedian” the hero _______ Eikhenbaum B. M. “Hero of our time” // Eikhenbaum B. M. About prose. - L., 1969. - P. 249.

See about this: Ginzburg L. Ya. About lyrics. - M.; L., 1964, etc.

Quote according to the notes of B. O. Kostelyants in the book: Grigoriev A. Poems and Poems. - M.; L., 1966.

At the same time, it acquires an internal paradox (the appearing subtitle combines the absolutely limitless name “romantic” with the epithet “the last”) and becomes objectified. This, however, does not diminish the hero;

on the contrary, existing throughout the entire space of a genre-heterogeneous cycle, perceived on different planes (lyrical, epic-essay, poetic), it acquires multidimensionality, a special scale. And the genre specificity of new cyclic formations declares itself to be infinitely relative, realized on the basis not so much of generic, but of general literary patterns.

The generic specificity, along with a number of other features, gives rise to an amazing variety of cyclic forms in the period of interest to us.

B.F. Egorov emphasized that, being included in the genre-forming process, cyclization begins to generate not a genre, but genres7. These genres are waiting to be explored. The purpose of this article was to show that during the transition from traditionalist literature to new literature, the role of cyclization on the scale of all literature becomes not only genre-forming, but also genre-forming.

Egorov B.F. About genre, composition and segmentation // Genre and composition of a literary work. - Vol. 1. - Kaliningrad, 1974. - P. 9.

IZVESTIYA RAS. LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE SERIES, 2015, volume 74, no. 3, p. 65-68

REVIEWS

V.N. ZAKHAROV. PROBLEMS OF HISTORICAL POETICS ETHNOLOGICAL ASPECTS. M.: "INDRIK", 2012. 263 p.

In front of me are two books by the same author. Their titles are different, and one of them is more of a theoretical-literary nature, and the second is of a historical-literary nature. One is dedicated to the “ethnological aspects” of the “historical poetics” of Russian literature, and the other to the work of F.M. Dostoevsky. So at first glance these are two thematically completely different books. But they have one main character. This is Dostoevsky. And this in itself makes them a kind of duology.

However, the mentioned books by the famous Russian philologist and, of course, one of the leading researchers in the country and in the world of F.M. Dostoevsky also has a unity of a more general order. This is the unity of one and the same integral and consistently pursued view of Dostoevsky as a writer, throughout his life and in almost all of his works, seeking resolution of the same questions: about God, about Russia, about the Russian people.

Many of the works that made up this unique two-volume work were familiar to me before, especially since some of them were published for the first time as part of two new collected works of the writer edited by V.N. Zakharova. And yet, reading it opened up a lot of new things for me. The scope of coverage of the problems of Dostoevsky’s work is so wide here. And, most importantly, collected into a single whole, these works, partly already familiar to me, made a different, and more powerful, impression. A look at the writer, consistently carried out in relation to the entire work of Dostoevsky, methodically and consistently applied to the most diverse features of his poetics, acquires special persuasiveness in the reviewed dilogy.

This view was formulated most directly and openly by V.N. Zakharov in such sections as “Russian literature and Christianity”, “Easter story”, “Symbolism of the Christian calendar in the poetics of Dostoevsky”, “Orthodox aspects of the ethnopoetics of Russian literature”, “Christian

Christian realism", "Tenderness as a category of Dostoevsky's poetics". The author shows in them that the Christian and, more precisely, Orthodox foundations of Russian literature are manifested in Dostoevsky in a variety of things: in the timing of the action of the works to the Christian calendar and to its symbolism, and in many other ways However, the analysis of individual works of Dostoevsky is also often carried out in the dilogy primarily from this angle. Thus, about the novel “White Nights” it is said: “The miracle of Christian love, which was once revealed in the lyrics by Pushkin (the poem “I loved you.” .."), became the apotheosis of this “sentimental novel” by Dostoevsky” (IAD. P. 147).

The very central concept of the book “Problems of Historical Poetics”: “ethnopoetics” deserves special and closest attention. So V.N. Zakharov proposes to call it poetics, “which should study the national originality of specific literatures, their place in the world artistic process” (PIP. P. 113). At first glance, this concept is initially formulated and explained in a somewhat essayistic manner: “It must give an answer to what makes a given literature national, in our case, what makes Russian literature Russian. In order to understand what Russian poets and prose writers told their readers, you need to know Orthodoxy" (PIP. p. 113). However, here follows a clarifying example: “the artistic chronotope even of those works of Russian literature in which it was not consciously set by the author turned out to be Orthodox Christian” (PIP. P. 113).

In connection with this idea of ​​the author about the general nature of the ethnopoetics of Dostoevsky and some other Russian writers, many interesting observations are given in the dilogy. For example, that “in the novel “Resurrection” Nekhlyudov committed a shameful sin with Katyusha Maslova precisely on Easter - the holiday did not stop him and did not enlighten his soul” (PIP. P. 121), which in “Notes from the House of the Dead” Dostoevsky changed the time of his arrival in the Omsk prison so that “the impressions of the first month of his stay in hard labor would end with the Christmas holidays.”

nicknames, the description of which becomes the culmination of the first part of the “notes”” (PIP. P. 130), that the very name of Doctor Zhivago reflected the holiday of the Transfiguration of the Lord - according to his poems from Pasternak’s novel, “The sixth of August in the old way, the Transfiguration of the Lord” - the day , in which the “Son of Man” revealed to the disciples that He is the “Son of the Living God” (PIP. p. 114).

At the same time, it seems especially valuable that, speaking about “Orthodox aspects of the ethnopoetics of Russian literature” and polemicizing with A.M. Lyubomudrov and V.M. Lurie, V.N. Zakharov emphasizes that he means Orthodoxy “in a non-dogmatic sense”: “...Orthodoxy is not only a catechism, but also a way of life, a worldview and worldview of the people” (PIP. P. 145146). In this, the researcher relies on Dostoevsky himself, who wrote: “They say that the Russian people do not know the Gospel well, do not know the basic rules of faith. Of course this is true, but they know Christ and carry it in their hearts from time immemorial.” And this is precisely what gives V.N. grounds. Zakharov and Dostoevsky’s realism should not be called his own, in a conceptual sense, somewhat vague formula: “realism in the highest sense” - but more specifically: “Christian realism”.

True, when, developing this approach, a researcher writes about the hero of the novel “The Idiot”: “In the novel, Dostoevsky gave the image of not just a “positively beautiful person,” but a Christian, i.e. a person who lives according to Christ’s love, according to the commandments of the Sermon on the Mount up to the extreme “love your enemy” - such is the effect of the final scene of the novel, the last fraternization of Myshkin and Rogozhin at the body of the murdered Nastasya Filippovna” (PIP. p. 172) - then the question arises: can maybe so, but why then does it all end so tragically? And not only because of the imperfect earthly world, but also obviously because the actions of Myshkin himself, paradoxically, involuntarily push the heroes of the novel to this tragic denouement. Isn’t Prince Myshkin also partly embodied some specific idea of ​​Christ, not entirely shared by Dostoevsky: E. Renan or Leo Tolstoy with his “non-resistance to evil through violence”?

However, as a rule, when you want to argue with an author, possible counterarguments on his part are always visible in advance in his books. Thus, the effect of the endings of both Pushkin’s “Belkin’s Tales” and many of Dostoevsky’s works by V.N. Zakharov defines it as “tenderness.” Sometimes the inner feeling seems to rebel against

this (at least in relation to Pushkin), and I would like to replace this word with the familiar concept of “catharsis”. However, it is the word “tenderness” that is repeatedly used in these works by Dostoevsky himself (see: PIP. pp. 179-194).

Another important feature of the duology is that it was written by a textual critic. Hence the abundance of textual subjects in it: about the role of Dostoevsky’s italics, about capital and small letters in the spelling of the word “God” (which in Soviet times was often written with a small letter, while the word “Satan” with a capital letter - PIP. S. 226-227), about the second edition of "The Double", about the initial plans and final text of the novel "The Idiot", about the possibility of including the chapter "At Tikhon's" in the text of "Demons" (the researcher comes to an important conclusion: "to include the chapter "At Tikhon's" possible only to the magazine editorial office of 1871-1872” (IAD. P. 349) - and others.

This feature of both books predetermines the nature of V.N.’s decision. Zakharov many other questions. For answers to them, the researcher first of all turns to Dostoevsky himself. And here important things become clear: that, for example, “pochvennichestvo is a late term”, which “Dostoevsky and his like-minded people did not use” (PIP. P. 230), that the expression “fantastic realism”, which is used by many researchers when referring to Dostoevsky , in reality it does not occur; we find in him only: “realism reaching the fantastic” (and even then in application to “genus”, that is, rather in an everyday meaning) - or: “... what the majority calls almost fantastic and exceptional, then for sometimes the very essence of the real constitutes me" (IAD. pp. 14-15).

By the way, the author’s constant commitment not only to the meaning, but also to the letter of Dostoevsky allows him to convincingly remove from the writer the bogeys often thrown at him - such as, for example, the accusation expressed, in particular, by the director A. Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky that he allegedly said: “in a Russian person, commitment to a great idea is surprisingly combined with the greatest meanness, and the future will show what is more in him, whether a great idea or meanness.” Meanwhile, Dostoevsky’s similar, but far from identical thought (and extended not only to Russians) is expressed by his hero, Arkady Dolgoruky from the novel “The Teenager”: “... I have marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems , Russian person

V.N. ZAKHAROV. PROBLEMS OF HISTORICAL POETICS

predominantly) to cherish in your soul the highest ideal next to the greatest meanness, and everything is completely sincere" (IAD. pp. 10-11).

This same peculiar “Dostoevsky-centrism,” which is undoubtedly the author’s strong point, marks the initial, literary and theoretical sections of “Problems of Historical Poetics.” Thus, in the section “Dostoevsky and Bakhtin in the modern scientific paradigm,” a seemingly obvious, but in fact quite paradoxical idea is convincingly presented: “Dostoevsky significantly influenced Bakhtin. Many ideas that are taken to be Bakhtin’s ideas were actually expressed by Dostoevsky” ( PIP, p. 88).

The section “Problems of Historical Poetics” entitled “Textology as Technology” has a programmatic character in this regard for the author. As you know, V.N. Zakharov is the publisher of the so-called “Canonical Texts” of Dostoevsky - “publications in the author’s spelling and pun