Does modern man need literature? Why do we read fiction?

In our society, the question arises every now and then about whether literature is necessary. to modern man. Opinions were divided. Some believe that no, today it is quite possible to do without it. Others are still fighting for literature to play an important role in society.

I think that literature is, of course, necessary. Without it, it is impossible to learn to understand the world, it is impossible to feel all the richness of life, to understand human relationships. It is literature that teaches us this.

At the same time, one cannot help but notice that the majority of modern young people, instead of reading books, prefer to watch TV, take a walk, dance in a club, or surf the Internet. Very often you hear from adults that they read much more as schoolchildren and students. It's a shame, isn't it?

Many young people believe that only those who want to read should read, and no one should be forced. But no one forces anyone to immediately pick up a book and read without stopping. However, by reading books, a person gives food to his soul. Preventing yourself from perishing spiritually is just as important as maintaining physical health.

Now many people prefer opportunities social networks, thereby simplifying their life, as they believe. Instead of picking up a book and finding the answer there, people “type” a question on the Internet and, without making any effort, receive a million answers and, almost without thinking, take the first one they come across.

Unlike literature, the Internet does not teach anyone anything; it simply provides ready-made answers easily and quickly. Literature teaches us life, that is, what is not in any textbook, teaches us to understand, observe, search and think. But most importantly, it seems to me, literature teaches us not to repeat the mistakes of others.

I also noticed this pattern: those who don’t read very often make a lot of spelling mistakes. A person who reads develops a visual memory for words, and when writing, he does not need to remember the rules. Refusal to read is the path to difficulties with in writing, and then with oral.

One day, a literature teacher asked me to take a test on the topic “The Life of Pushkin” from my classmates. So that I knew which period of the poet’s life this or that student took, she gave me their works to read. Reading them, I found it very funny, but at the same time terribly unpleasant. Sometimes my peers wrote complete nonsense. For example: “Pushkin was sent to Mikhailovskoye for materials on the progress of work to exterminate locusts.”

Everyone knows the phrase: “A book is best gift" And I agree with her. When someone gives me a book, I'm really happy, I can't wait to look into it and read it.

Literature is a part of our life, history and culture, without it people would not be people.

Yulia DUBROVINA

BRIEF ABSTRACT

ABOUT HORSES

EATING OATS

ON THE BORE OF THE VOLGA, FALLING IN

TO THE CASPIAN SEA, OR WHY YOU NEED LITERATURE

(TO PRODUCTION

How often does it happen that the most fundamental and significant issues in our lives turn out to be simple and primitive, without losing their fundamentality and significance! The form turns out to be simple, but the content does not suffer from this, remaining multi-layered and multifaceted. Even more often, these questions do not arise in our consciousness at all - only because we are afraid to ask ourselves them. Indeed, try asking a person who considers himself educated (or really is) why literature is needed? It is unlikely that you will get a clear answer. Your interlocutor will probably simply shrug his shoulders, thereby indicating that the answer is obvious to him and to everyone, although it is difficult to express in words. Of course, there will be attempts to formulate the truth - to show literature as a set of those lives that the reader does not have time to live in reality, they will also remember the function of education, the continuity of generations, they will be right, but they will still forget about something, since this is too extensive subject. The following situation is also possible: the one from whom you expect an answer will be indignant at your question and perceive it as an attack on his shrines and ideals. Indeed, would a decent person allow himself such blasphemy! A consumer approach to literature will betray the questioner as a “philistine purr”, that’s all. It is appropriate here to recall the Zen legend about a student who received a stick on the head from his teacher when he began to ask unnecessary questions.

Meanwhile, the question remains simple: why is literature needed? Detective stories and romance novels are used to kill time in public transport on the way to work. (I’ll make a small digression: there is a legend that passengers of the Moscow metro are en masse devouring imperishable books from Daria Dontsova. They say, you enter the carriage and see how everyone there is greedily swallowing detective bait, while everyone simultaneously turns over one and the other same page. However, I myself saw how young people opened volumes of Petrarch and Balzac, but not one-time reading.) But what about the same Petrarch and Balzac? Do they, in essence, serve the same purpose: to obtain aesthetic pleasure? Perhaps more refined, sophisticated, elitist, but still pleasure?

Now it’s time to move the conversation from the everyday to the theoretical. We are asked to perceive literature through our feelings and emotions. We will find confirmation of this in any university textbook on literary criticism. Literature is defined as a special kind of art. But is it? It is this question that I propose to understand first, the answer to it will allow us to get closer to understanding why we need this “incomprehensible” literature.

It seems to me that literature should not be combined with art or made a “subset” of art. In the same theoretical and educational texts art is interpreted as a “form of social consciousness”, and one can say so – “a form of spiritual activity”. So why not distinguish literature as an independent unit? That is, to equalize its rights with art.

So we will see several of these shapes. I propose to highlight five: science, philosophy, literature, art, religion. The criterion for their difference should be precisely the method of their perception, the share, the specific weight of feelings and reason in each case. If religion appeals exclusively to irrational faith, then science, located at the other end of this axis, takes into account only dry logical constructs; here, any emotions will turn you away from your intended goal.

Literature is exactly in the middle. Does this mean that the shares of reason and feelings in it should be equal? Rather, we can see in it with equal probability any combination of both. The position in the center of the coordinate axis turns out to be quite advantageous; it frees literature from any restrictions and rules. Here many may be indignant, just as after the question “why is literature needed?”, but what can you do, the fact remains: literary kaleidoscope so chaotic and uncontrollable that the invention of any rules here becomes empty and meaningless.

It would seem that after such reasoning we will not find an answer to the question in which I suddenly became interested. Indeed, if literature is chaotic, if there are no rules in it, then there is not and cannot be a single purpose for its existence.

It is possible that many will perceive such “universality” as a trick (and, most likely, they will be right): the lack of clarity and certainty leads to the fact that all meaning and all responsibility are lost. But there is no need to rush to such conclusions. To avoid such a turn of thought, I will still try to narrow the “scope” of literature. This can be done by selecting the most important flower from a huge bouquet of texts. It is not at all necessary that it will turn out to be the most beautiful (we will leave the question “what is beauty?” until better times), but it will become the basis, the central, formative element of the entire composition.

It seems to me that this “flower” should be addressed to philosophy. Other “participants” of our bouquet will complement and support it. That is, the primary purpose of the existence of literature should be philosophy, the transmission of ideas, but this transmission turns out to be clothed in an original literary form.

Indeed, a philosophical treatise can become boring. Everything is too didactic, the desire to enclose thoughts in a shell of terms and categories is too obvious. Besides, why does the author of this treatise consider himself smarter than the reader?! Why does the reader suddenly find himself in the position of a learner?! What is the use of someone hammering into everyone else that the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, and horses eat oats...

At this very moment, literature comes to our aid. The “teacher-student” relationship is replaced by free discussion, or rather, by a game between the author and the reader. The author can encrypt his thought in an image. Indeed, imagine yourself on the banks of the Volga, try to see these horses... Let the reader guess what the author meant. And if he doesn’t guess, then nothing bad will happen either. The reader will create his own meaning of these images, thus turning into a co-author. And the author still has room for retreat. Nietzsche asked his audience to pay attention to what Zarathustra said, but beyond that, we see what Zarathustra did and can look at this character from a different perspective.

That is, literature becomes a mental performance or something like a “totaloscope” from Kobo Abe’s story, where there are no passive spectators, but only active participants in the action. This means that the number of fictional worlds has increased, ideas have become more complex and there is more food for thought. I hope we don't get hungry.

WHY IS FICTION NEEDED?
(something like a philosophical essay)

One can pose the question more broadly: why do we need art at all? This is an eternal question, and since eternal questions there are no definitive answers; it is legitimate to pose them again and again, so that different answers provide an opportunity to illuminate different faces an infinitely multifaceted phenomenon. This essay is a timid attempt to make our small contribution to this movement.
Art (and fiction is one of its types) is diverse and multifunctional. It would be correct to say that any type of art has a dual purpose: utilitarian and aesthetic. Utilitarian is designed to satisfy human needs that are not aesthetic. Well, the aesthetic purpose of art, by definition, satisfies the spiritual need for harmony, for beauty, which, if you believe the great writer, should sooner or later save this lost, unlucky and sinful world...
However, the perception of any art is based on a specific property of the human psyche: its ability to imagine. Let's say a few words about this paramountly important factor, without which any art would be dead.
A person’s ability to imagine, i.e. to the mental representation of images and to the experience of this representation, distinguishes a person from his smaller brothers in the same way as a sense of humor, although, apparently, in some primitive forms, imagination is not unique to man. But in human life, the role of imagination is so grandiose that it is worth looking at this phenomenon more closely.
In fact, the entire human psyche grows on the foundation of imagination, for a child can develop normally only through play and fairy tales. But do we stop playing when we become adults? What is the whole vast world of art if not a game of imagination, a game according to some invented rules? The imagination that gave birth to all forms of art: literature, music, theater, painting. Of course, art is, as has already been said, the realization of an aesthetic need, but aesthetics is only a wafer of those dreams for the sake of which we trust art, which allows us to live such lives and experience such experiences that have no place in the realities of our existence. Art is a game, the need for which, apparently, does not leave a person, even when he has left childhood (“What is our life? A game”). And it is not at all by chance that the word “game” has taken root in the theater, and in music, and even in such a grandiose stage performance as the Olympic Games.
Any event is reflected in a person through refraction in his imagination, and only in such a refracted form is it perceived and included in consciousness and memory. Consequently, all our behavior is determined by the subjective picture of our ideas, compiled by the imagination.
So, we live in an imaginary world as clearly as we live surrounded by the real attributes of existence. Therefore, the fact that art in general, and fiction in particular, is based on fiction, on play, should not confuse us. Illusions of the past, present and future permeate our lives from beginning to end. Moreover, the conventionality of art itself no longer sufficiently nourishes our imagination, and mythological and fantasy elements are also pouring into literature in a powerful stream: Swift, Hoffmann, Gogol, Bulgakov, Marquez, Clark, Lem, the Strugatskys, Asimov, Tolkien...
Now let’s return to the question: why do we still need fiction?
Let me make a reservation right away: by fiction, in the sense that interests us, I do not mean any fiction, not any reading material, but high-quality literature that meets the highest requirements, which has a chance of being called a classic over time. Its genres may be different, but what unites and distinguishes books of this level is the skill of the writer, the seriousness of his intentions - even in the genre of humor, and social significance. But how to distinguish a real book from a craft? Here are two tips smart people. “A book that is not worth reading twice is not worth reading once.” /Weber/ “The undoubted sign of any good book is that you like it the more as you get older.” /Lichtenberg/ I would also add that the best appraiser is time, and therefore an old book, if it continues to live, is obviously good.
One of the utilitarian functions of fiction is the formation of an idea of ​​how exemplary speech should be constructed so that it better fulfills the function of a means of communication. But language is only a working tool of literature; it has many other, no less significant components. The plot, images, idea of ​​the work, composition, the writer’s imagination, his thoughts, and the like. What can the reader gain from all this?
Being born into the world as an individual being, a person only after some time begins to recognize himself as a member of a certain community. At first in a nursery or in a sandbox, then at school, and there for the first time a picture of everything finally appears before his eyes. human society, this huge ocean that accommodates billions of people of the most different breeds and natures, the most different ideas and concepts, the most different values, finally. How to navigate this ocean in order to correctly, or, let’s say, with a minimum number of errors and accidents, choose your line of behavior in different situations? Our smaller brothers find the right line of behavior - in a pack, in a herd, in a pride and similar groups - intuitively. Man is also a social animal, but he is given reason, and he learns the ability to live in society through experience, reflection, comparison, analysis, trial and error. However, the circle of real communication of each person is quite limited. It is difficult to derive a generalized idea of ​​human nature from communicating with this circle. Or it will be primitive, short, short, and when leaving the usual circle, a person will find himself helpless and unarmed.
The book endlessly expands this circle of communication, gives an insight into human nature that no personal experience can give. Reading fiction, we discover types, the human mass begins to gradually become structured in our minds, we learn a lot about good and evil - and we learn all this in an accelerated manner, while spending much less effort. What we take away from reading fiction cannot be comprehended through edification, teaching, preaching, or suggestion.
In real people, even close ones, we can only suspect best case scenario, guess what and how they are thinking, and literary heroes we know everything about what and how they think. Fiction is a specific, complete course in human studies.
The heroes of the books come to life and become reality for us as living people; and how are they really different from living people whom we have never seen in reality, but about whom we have heard quite a lot: from Pushkin, Napoleon or Picasso, for example? Our ideas about these people are based solely on our imagination, on the testimony of other people, just like about Andrei Bolkonsky, Don Quixote or Robinson Crusoe. Don Quixote is no less (and perhaps more) real to us than Cervantes. In both cases, the imagination is fed by some indirect information, and not by direct impression, not by memory, and therefore both are equally real (or unreal) for us. I am still inclined to the first word (real), because I think that a person’s life in the world of his imagination is just as realistically lived by him as his external life, which can be seen from the outside.
Thus, fiction contains the colossal previous experience of many generations, allowing a person to comprehend more deeply and broadly. human nature. This is the utilitarian function of fiction.
And the fact that, as already said, it teaches people mastery of words. The word is the most important means of communication between people. The Almighty created every earthly creature, but gave the Word only to man. And it was in the Beginning, before the drawing, the song or the house were born. It is clear that a well-read person speaks words completely differently than someone who has read little. And he orients himself more freely in living space, in life’s ups and downs.
But it’s not for nothing that the subject of our reflection is called fiction. At the same time, it also performs the function of aesthetic education, “education of feelings,” according to Flaubert, for its means, as already said, are not edification, not preaching, but figurative storytelling. IN art book a word is not just a carrier of information, it is in combination with other words, their arrangement and selection, rhythm and sound, even taste! – creates an impression of beauty and harmony, develops the ability to understand this harmony and enjoy it. And therefore, unlike another, say, scientific literature, there is art. And also because, turning to the mind, it at the same time turns to a person’s feelings, and this, through the heart and imagination, is the shortest path to consciousness and acceptance. It contains and stores the memory of ancestors, but it stores it not the way, say, a history textbook does, but in some special way (as a family photo album stores immediate memory): this memory is carried by the poems of Homer, the tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Shakespeare, novels by Cervantes, Marquez and Tolstoy, short stories by Maupassant, Chekhov and Maugham, poems by Pushkin, Byron and Goethe... Through this reading we understand the world in its global space and vast time, and in this regard we have a colossal advantage over those who lived before these authors .
In a dispute with time, fiction turns out to be more victorious than even such an art form as architecture. This is how Akhmatova said about it: “Gold rusts and steel decays, / Marble crumbles - everything is ready for death. / The most lasting thing on earth is sadness, / And the most lasting is the royal word.” Of most of the architectural masterpieces of antiquity, only picturesque ruins have survived, but the creations of Homer and Khayyam are alive and will be preserved until the end of time.
Now let us ask ourselves: is there a more important subject to study than human studies? Know yourself - this is one of the main commandments of life. And, therefore, fiction is not just art, it is the most important of the arts, a guide to life, a compass, a navigator...
The people around us in life are given to us by fate, and sometimes these people are not so wise that we can profitably learn from them all their experience. But we can choose a book ourselves, and such a book is wise if we have made the right choice. You can't look for a friend and interlocutor like a book. She talks to you and at the same time, at your request, she can become silent at any moment to give you time to think or just take a break from the conversation. She can, at your request, repeat what she just told you or twenty pages ago. She is patient and not noisy (don’t count the rustling of a page being turned as noise!), she is tactful and smart, she will not betray, you can put her on a shelf, and she will not be offended and will obediently wait for the moment when you want to communicate with her again. How many people do you know with such virtues?
Thus, like any of the arts, fiction has two hypostases, but here neither of them clearly predominates, they are in a conditional, let’s say, equilibrium, balance, or something, both are important, equal in size, although the key word would be everything - I finally considered the word artistic.
Now let's look at the subject of conversation from the other side. Fiction seems to be the only type of art where, along with an aesthetic note, an ethical note also sounds powerfully. Other forms of art that are more ethically neutral cannot boast of this; perhaps only theater in this respect is comparable to a book, but only because the Word also sounds there. The point is that humanity in its development constantly overcomes the temptation of returning to savagery, chaos, and does not always overcome it successfully - the 20th century is a witness to this, but without such constant overcoming there would not only be no progress, no upward climb, there would have been no humanity itself long ago . Religion also serves the same purpose, instilling in a person that; there is good and what; there is evil, not allowing a person to sink to the bestial level, helping him to preserve in himself the divine, the human, that in the name of which he was created. Fiction solves the same problem, but by its own means, and in this sense it can probably be called a secular form of religion. It is the ethical component that unites these two great forms of human self-awareness and self-expression. They have a common purpose - to shape our souls and prevent them from degenerating. Let us remember that Pushkin considered one of his main merits: “that I awakened good feelings with the lyre.”
And here I would like to quote the words wonderful poet Boris Chichibabin. This is what he writes.
“I don’t believe, I don’t admit that a regular reader of Paustovsky, brought up on his books, could humiliate someone human dignity, to offend the weak, to break a tree or bush, to mock an animal, to desecrate a shrine, to provoke for the sake of a career or gain. I can’t imagine Paustovsky’s book in the hands of a mankurt, a boor, a Black Hundred, an anti-Semite, just as I can’t imagine with it an honorary hero of the present time - a broker, a businessman, a speculator profiting from someone else’s misfortune.”
Well said!
Feuerbach said: “True writers are the conscience of humanity.”
It would be hard and scary to live if there were not among people those who illuminate life with their light of selfless goodness, who support and keep the fire of human conscience. Bunin once wrote: “Everything is fine, everything is still simple and not scary in comparison, as long as Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is alive. After all, a genius, by his very being, seems to indicate that there are some solid, granite foundations: as if he holds on his shoulders and waters and nourishes his country and his people with his joy. Nothing that the Holy Synod forbade us to rejoice: we have long been accustomed to sadness and rejoice without him. While Tolstoy is alive, he walks along the furrow behind the plow, behind his white horse - the morning is still dewy, fresh, not scary, the ghouls are dozing - and thank God, Tolstoy is walking - because this is the sun.
Of course, Tolstoy is one of the indisputable and bright moral guidelines. There are few people of this caliber, but they were and are, they are the salt of the earth, destinies and actions are compared against them. When church pulpits were the only public platform, religious ascetics set a moral example, opposed bestiality, and stirred up human souls. In times closer to ours, great writers became such moral guides. In this series are Herzen, and Chekhov, and Korolenko, and Platonov, and Akhmatova, and Mandelstam, and Solzhenitsyn, and Grossman, and Shalamov, and Tvardovsky, and Astafiev, and Paustovsky, and Zhigulin, and Chichibabin, and Mozhaev, and Okudzhava ... These are the ones who are immediately recognizable. The moral light of these figures is dazzling in varying degrees, but for me it is undeniable. None of them are any more - some have left recently, others are long gone, and perhaps the absence of such figures is one of the reasons - or rather, the main reason - for the devastation in the minds that is characteristic of our time. About whom can we say today: while he exists, it’s still nothing?..
Chekhov's anniversary days have recently passed. Today, when words such as conscience, shame, modesty, shyness are increasingly becoming relics of the past, or, as it is now fashionable to say, “retro style,” their more than frequent use in connection with the name of Chekhov is understandable and justified. Chekhov, like Leo Tolstoy, is reliable moral guideline, tested by time. He is distinguished by some special, Chekhov-like subtle delicacy and scrupulousness. And, of course, that unique and immeasurable wealth of the soul that is humor. Humor colors Chekhov's personality in a special way, giving it a unique charm and unique tone. Chekhov's sadness, Chekhov's minor is also unique, it has a lot of charm, it is not as dramatic as Tolstoy's minor, and not as tragic as Dostoevsky's minor, but it is no less deep and suffered in its halftones and quiet harmonies. This is a minor by Levitan and Rachmaninov. He lived his life so purely, there was so much conscience, modesty, dignity, courage, independence, and fortitude in it, that just from this life alone the level of goodness in the world increased. For those who know and love Chekhov, much is simply unacceptable.
A separate conversation about poetry.
Poetry is a miracle, the nature of which is little understood, and in this mystery is perhaps one of the clues to the unfading of the poetic genre and the poetic word. Poetry is musical prose, and its effect on the conscious and subconscious is akin to the effect of music. But in poetry there is a much stronger ethical principle. To paraphrase the joke famous director Nikolai Akimov about humor, let's say that not a single scoundrel can boast that he loves poetry. This does not mean that everyone who does not like poetry is a scoundrel. He still has to prove it!
Poetry directly addresses experience, and attempts to translate the poem into a language accessible to logic are powerless. And in this powerlessness is the strength of poetry, because as soon as comprehension is successful, we move into another area, the area of ​​logical thinking, which is already outside of poetry. In this, poetry, it seems, is also close to religion, but on the other hand, so to speak, from the sacred side.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova occupies a special place in my poetic passions; I often pick up her collections and every time I am amazed at the extraordinary, divine power of her talent. Almost every poem of hers (with very few exceptions) evokes a strong emotional response in me. In this regard, none of the poets is perhaps as close to me as this proud patrician, seemingly distant, withdrawn, inaccessible, lonely, deep in herself. And - what a paradox! - no one has stamped our accursed social shame with an irreducible stigma more powerfully than she: I mean Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” one of the highest poetic creations of Russian literature. Here, every line is amazing, because it is carried out under the heart and written with the hot plasma of the heart. And in a time of hopelessness, this great, ringing confession, this accusing word, full of high dignity, unshakable courage, boundless humanity, and at the same time truly feminine in its structure, instills faith that it is possible to resist even the most transcendental, inhuman evil perpetrated by inhumans that such peaks of spirit cannot be diminished by anyone. A low bow to her, who said what the tormented “people of a hundred million” had to say through the lips of the poet.
This is very important today.
Recently, they began to practice public television answers from the country's leaders to questions asked of him, and listening to this, I am always perplexed why among these questions there is not such a simple one: what are you reading today? What book is on your bedside table? I think the answer to this question, like a mirror, should reflect the essence of a person. Unless, of course, he is lying and does not present himself in a more favorable light than he really is. But this will once again show that he also understands what the one who asked the question understands: tell me what you are reading, and I will tell you who you are.
Our topic has one more problem. What is the percentage of people who regularly read fiction in general, and poetry in particular? It is with sadness that we have to admit that this percentage, especially when it comes to poetry, is depressingly small. Once upon a time, popular series were published, publicly available, cheap books had massive circulations, there were book distributors, book sellers (does anyone remember this word?). After good books became a shortage and were sold under the counter. We know what this led to. Now the book counters are crowded, in bookstores, at book fairs there is a constant crowd of people, and the choice is huge, but, alas, especially popular among a certain part of the public and in great demand are ladies' detective stories and precocious love stories, or rather, erotic novels that have nothing to do with the genuine fiction. A good book is often replaced by bad television. Although not always bad. I remember with pleasure the magnificent recitation on television in the summer of 2009 and the most interesting commentary on “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkinist Valentin Nepomnyashchiy. There are also encouraging phenomena. The television dramatization of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” at one time caused a wave of interest in the original source. But these are exceptions rather than the rule.
Is it necessary to dramatize the situation? After all, if there is such an abundant supply, it means there is a demand for good books too. We must not forget about the role of libraries, especially now, when books have become expensive. It would, of course, be ideal if the entire society was only engaged in reading, but times are changing, the Internet and television appeared. Nevertheless, it actually forms the cultural atmosphere in society and still sets the tone. intellectual elite, the top layer, and if these people are aware of the role and significance of fiction, it’s not all bad. Alas, minimizing the number of hours spent teaching literature at school leads to sad reflections in this regard. But it is at school that a love for books is developed, from school anthologies one gets acquainted with literature, in particular, with great Russian literature, and if those who should understand this do not understand, then chaos in their heads is inevitable. Because one of the foundations on which an ethically civilized society rests is being cut down at the root.
In conclusion, I would like to make a reservation that this text is not Scientific research, as is customary in science, there are no references to sources and predecessors; here is a purely personal view, personal understanding, personal vision of the answer to the question posed in the title.

The eternal truth that says that a person stops thinking when he stops reading, in my opinion, is relevant in our dynamic and turbulent 21st century.

Of course, this applies, first of all, to real classical literature, tested, if not for centuries, then at least for decades. And not the widely advertised “reading material”, which one cannot even call a book.
There is no doubt that the current age requires intellectually developed, literate people. Moreover, the knowledge and information they acquire should not be just a set of specific information. It needs to be comprehended and analyzed. I would like to turn again to a wise thought, drawn, by the way, from classical literature. It says that in order to become a literate person, you need to read only a few books. But to find them, you have to read hundreds of others.

Conclusion one: you need to read to be able to think.
Literature is the source historical information presented to the reader in a lively and interesting manner. Thanks to the writer's talent, the reader is literally immersed in the era described. There are everyday details, clothing, interior design, customs and traditions. A little imagination - and a person finds himself, for example, at a medieval knightly tournament together with the noble Ivanhoe W. Scott or at a nineteenth-century ball with heroes of the works of Russian classics. Of course, we can say that in modern films and in computer games you can see this with your own eyes, without really straining yourself. Feel the difference. Everything is served there beautifully, but in a ready-made form. The book makes a person’s imagination work, transporting him with the power of words to a specific era.

Conclusion two: you need to read in order to know more and develop imagination and imaginative thinking.
Literature is His Majesty the Word, aesthetic, multifaceted and beautiful. Unfortunately, in the 21st century verbal degradation is very noticeable. This, from my point of view, is directly related to reading, or rather, to the reluctance to read classical works. The language of the classics is rich, bright, full of images, and most importantly, it is a true literary language that every cultured person should master. Constant reading enriches lexicon. Proverbs, sayings, idioms, verbal images saturate speech, making it truly beautiful and rich.

Conclusion three: you need to read to enrich your oral and written speech.
Discussions not just about the benefits, but about the necessity of reading true literature in the current century it can be continued. But even what is said proves: “Literature in the 21st century is necessary!”

Professor of the Department of History of Russian Literature of the 20th Century Mikhail Mikhailovich Golubkov.

Why is Russian literature needed? One of the dominant features of modern public consciousness is the feeling of a certain ideological emptiness. It is caused by a vacuum of ideas about what ours is. national identity and what shapes it. In addition, there is a vacuum of ideology that could determine the nature of the historical path traveled, our current place in the national historical space, as well as the prospects, distant and near, that open up to modern man and society as a whole.

The absence of a reflected set of ideas is the absence of a conscious historical perspective. Without it, it seems impossible to form the unity of people belonging to one nation and state, on the basis of transpersonal goals and interests - after all, this is the only thing that can be opposed to the atomization of society. On what basis is it possible to form a generally valid national idea? Firstly, on the revival of historical memory as a relevant component of everyday human existence. A modern Russian (Russian) person can and should feel like an heir to a thousand-year-old cultural and historical tradition in his everyday life. Secondly, for a modern person, just as at all times, it is necessary to understand the historical purpose of the existence of Russian civilization and personal involvement in this goal. Only then will a person feel both part of society and a member of the state.

In fact, what brings us all together, having already passed through the first decade of the 21st century? In essence, two things: language and a common thousand-year history that has given us a culture that we often do not see and do not know how to appreciate. But if we master our native language without effort, then mastering history and culture requires very significant work - both from the individual, both in the process of formation and throughout life, and from the immediate social environment in which a person matures, from school, with which the first ten (now eleven) conscious years of his life are connected. And this is where the biggest problem arises: the school does not fulfill its main task - the cultural and historical socialization of a person, does not include him in the context of a thousand-year history and does not put his fate in connection with the historical prospects of Russia - for the reason that in society itself these connections are imperceptible. It was as if they were no longer needed, no longer in demand. As a result, even if the school gives some ideas about history and Russian culture and literature, they exist (for some time) in the minds of the graduate on their own, and his office and managerial life (or even better - bureaucratic life) managerial) - without any connection with school or (university) knowledge of the humanities. Thus, a person, entering adulthood, by the age of thirty feels not like a citizen of his fatherland, but a manager, a clerk, serving (if he manages to get a good job) the interests of transnational monopolies. Alas, this is how the modern economy works; social structures are subordinated to it and determined by it. social processes. We dare to suggest that this device is not the only correct one. Rather, on the contrary: it not only does not take into account historical perspectives Russian civilization and statehood, but contradicts them.

To begin with, the deep-seated principles of relations developed over centuries of national life and everyday life are violated, when the cult of personal success simply could not dominate in the community consciousness, when the word and honesty were a priori much more important than financial solvency and determined the value of the individual, when cleanliness prevailed over uncleanliness and there was a concept of not shaking hands, a person not shaking hands, when honor was valued much higher than one’s own life. The only question that arises is: if these traits, once rooted in the national mentality, have disappeared irrevocably, how can we know about their distant existence and how can we judge them? What is the mythology of a former wonderful life, contrasted with current circumstances?

We can judge this from the literature. It is literature that conveys to us, through decades and centuries, ideas about the norms of national life. Forms ideas about what should and should not be, about that very non-shaking of hands (a word that has long become historicism). Literature shapes our ideas about historical events and about the people who participated in them - how they thought of themselves, how they felt in the space of Russian history, what moved them, forcing them to make history, commit actions, act contrary to the interests of personal success.. It is from Leo Tolstoy and from Tolstoy that we know about the war 1812, from Griboedov - about the Decembrist’s worldview on the eve of entering the Senate Square, from Alexei Tolstoy - about Peter’s transformations, from Dostoevsky - about how a person feels during the period of accelerated development of capitalism. In this sense, the heroes of “Crime and Punishment” look almost like our contemporaries, especially if we remember Luzhin’s “theory of whole caftans” and the hero’s thought that “everything in the world is based on personal interest” - a whole scientific concept is summed up under it. Dostoevsky shows what such an ideology leads to both a person and a society that has set foot on this path. But our contemporaries cannot always read and understand a novel written almost a century and a half ago. But it seems that today is about our time. Literature is the carrier of a kind of genetic code, without which a person and society lose successive connections along the vertical of time. Through literature, a person receives the experience of national life, private behavior, and manner of feeling and thinking accumulated over centuries. And to consider that this experience is archaic and inapplicable in modern conditions (one can refer to globalization) means to renounce belonging to one’s own national culture. In fact, why is it not applicable? Because you don't need it to work in the oil campaign? In any transnational monopoly, where a cursory in English? Yes, the cult of personal success at any cost is probably more in demand there, and American cinema turns out, of course, to be a more attractive carrier of social information than Russian literature of the 19th century. But in fact, what did Russian literature of the last two centuries teach? In a nutshell, we can say: a responsible attitude towards one’s own life and national destiny, insisting that it will develop one way or another with the personal and direct participation of each person. An irresponsible attitude towards one’s own life and a lack of understanding of national destiny was interpreted as a disease, as M.Yu. Lermontov directly stated in the preface to his novel, pointing out the symptoms to society and insisting on the need for “bitter medicine.” Chatsky rejected the cult of personal success with contempt, asserting his right to serve and angrily refusing to be served. It would be nice if schools taught this kind of understanding. literary texts. “Literary Matrix” is the name of a “textbook” addressed to schoolchildren and students, written by modern writers about the literature of the past two centuries (St. Petersburg, 2010). Of course, this two-volume book does not represent any kind of textbook: the authors simply discuss with the reader the emotions they experienced when they came into contact with the classics. But that’s the trick: they feel almost on an equal footing with these classics: I’m a writer, you’re a writer, what kind of reverence is there? The book is entertaining. From it I learned, for example, about the existence modern writer Terekhov, who wrote a chapter about Solzhenitsyn. This chapter represents a kind of familiar pat on the shoulder of the writer whom Terekhov calls only Solzh - without the slightest attempt to understand his work or at least outline the contours of the literary galaxy created by him. Or German Sadulaev, thinking about Yesenin, recalls how he read a not quite decent poem from the series “Moscow Tavern” at school at some official event, which may have something to do with Sadulaev personally, but not the slightest thing with Yesenin. Like the entire so-called textbook of Russian literature in general. Of course, such attempts to write “My Pushkin”, “My Yesenin” (Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, anyone) have a right to exist, but when they characterize the writer, and not the writer himself. There were “Walks with Pushkin” and “Pushkin’s House”. And “Literary Matrix” could have entered this circle, if not for one circumstance. The book has been created, as the second will be assured title page, "Starring Faculty of Philology St. Petersburg state university"! The participation of university philologists with doctoral degrees gives the book a certain university academicism, almost the status of a recommended textbook! Honestly, it remains a painful mystery to me why my colleagues from St. Petersburg University took on this very dubious undertaking. And how, exactly, did this participation manifest itself? But objectively, this book serves to discredit Russian literature - it neutralizes those of its properties that we talked about. Deprives of sacredness. Turns it into a frivolous game. Let me express myself, put my name next to what has long been on the tablets of Russian history.

Probably, exercises like the “Literary Matrix” are possible because literature has really lost its most important socio-psychological functions, among which the formation of a national view of the world, a manner of feeling and thinking is paramount. Of course, in order to “read” all this, you need to learn to read - that’s what they should serve school lessons on literature. Unfortunately, they do not always achieve their goals. A modern graduate often takes away from them the idea of ​​a certain abstract humanism, affirmed by literature, as well as reflections on the fact that “ human life is the highest value." But if it is for this thought that volumes of Russian classics were created, then how can we understand the thoughts of Petrusha Grinev under the gallows, when Savelich asks him, spitting, to “kiss the villain’s hand”: “I would prefer the most brutal execution to such vile humiliation.” This means that for Petrusha there are some more significant values ​​than his life: he is ready, without hesitation, to repeat the answer of his generous comrades to the impostor and part with his life, as Captain Mironov and their other comrades in the defense of the fortress just did - but not part with honor, which is more important for the hero...

Looking back on the experience of the twentieth century, many writers and Soviet Russia, and in emigration they blamed Russian literature for the historical upheavals that befell our lot. In the West, this point of view was argued as follows: namely literary image Russian man, sometimes broken and devoid of integrity, like Onegin or Pechorin, sometimes inactively contemplative, like Oblomov on his sofa, sometimes uneducated and lazy, like Mitrofanushka, hiding behind his mother’s skirt, humiliated us in the eyes of Europe and presented us as easy prey before the Wehrmacht, when Plan Barbarossa was developed. The Germans expected to meet solid Oblomovs here... Russian literature deceived them, instilling false ideas about the Russian people, and this deception cost us too much. For writers of a different historical experience, for those who experienced repression and raised camp theme, it was the humanistic pathos of Russian literature that revealed its complete failure. According to Varlam Shalamov, humanistic literature itself is compromised, because reality was not at all comparable with its ideals: “The collapse of its humanistic ideas, the historical crime that led to Stalin’s camps, to the ovens of Auschwitz, proved that art and literature are zero. When colliding with real life this is the main motive main question time." The same motive of mistrust classical literature can also be heard in A.I. Solzhenitsyn - from polemics with Dostoevsky, with his “Notes from dead house”, before the controversy with Chekhov.

Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn are talking about naive humanism, which interprets man as the crown of the Universe and the very meaning of its existence. When confronted with the real contradictions of life, especially with historical cataclysms, such a position reveals its complete inconsistency, and “that pathetic ideology “man is created for happiness””, inspired by literature, is knocked out “with the first blow of the contractor’s gun” (“GULAG Archipelago”).

It seems that in both cases we are talking about a false and incorrect interpretation of the deep ideological pathos literature of the 19th – 20th centuries. It contained not only ideas about the happiness for which man was created, but, we repeat, it affirmed the idea of ​​man’s responsible attitude towards the world. About the responsibility of the individual for his own honor, which is truly more valuable than happiness and life, and national destiny, for which it is not a pity to lay down your life. And we can recall not only the inactive Oblomov and Onegin, but also heroes of a completely different type: Chatsky, Petrusha Grinev, Tatyana Larina, Prince Andrei, Nikolai Rostov, Leskov’s Lefty and Ataman Platov... A whole gallery of images of the righteous created by this writer in the cycle of the same name. The function of literature in the conditions of literary centrism of Russian culture was the formation of nationally significant images of cultural heroes, with whom any literate person identifies himself to this day. They “inhabit” history, make it understandable, close and “homely”, create algorithms of behavior in a variety of life situations, form a system of everyday and ontological values. The images of literary heroes who passed from the pages of books into the national conscious and unconscious, becoming nationally significant archetypes, categories of national consciousness with which Russian people thought quite recently, were formed by the literature of previous centuries. Literature played a similar role Soviet period, including socialist realism, orienting a person, deprived by the revolution of the most important existential, ontological supports (religious, cultural, social, legal), in the historical space of the Soviet era, creating the mythology of the new world, new cultural heroes (Pavel Korchagin, Alexey Turbin, Peter the Great , the hero of Alexei Tolstoy, Vikhrov and Gratsiansky, the heroes of “Russian Forest” by L. Leonov), explaining the existential meaning of the historical cataclysms that have occurred. Literature created the image Soviet space and rooted man there, revealing to him the meaning of his historical existence. We can say that this cosmos turned out to be fragile, the historical goals set for the generations of the twentieth century were unattainable, but it was literature that created such an attractive image Soviet world that it became the national idea of ​​a huge country, a world power, for several decades. The image of the world created Soviet literature, formed the ideal of life, the approach to which determined the historical goals of several Soviet generations. And although this ideal was never achieved, it has undoubted value, and is it possible to turn away from it with disdain for the current generation, which was unable to develop for itself and its children not only an ideal, but at least some intelligible historical perspective, which would not be related to the foreign exchange rate and the price of oil?

Of course, history will inevitably present its own reckoning with Russian literature of the 20th century. Too many of the most important aspects of national life were not captured domestic artists words - neither in the metropolis, nor in emigration, nor in hidden literature. And therefore, following the Russian tradition, they remained (one hopes for the time being) not comprehended by the national-historical consciousness of people living already in early XXI century. Not refracted artistically, they seem not to be reflected in the national memory. Such are the Kronstadt uprising of the city garrison and the crews of some ships of the Baltic Fleet against the power of the Bolsheviks, the uprising of the peasant army of Ataman Antonov in the Tambov region and its suppression by the Red Army under the command of Tukhachevsky (only two stories by Solzhenitsyn in the 1990s), the famine in the South of Russia in the early 1930s years (only Tendryakov’s stories), persecution of the Church and destruction of the priesthood. And Russia’s participation in the First World War would not have been reflected in literature if not for “August the Fourteenth” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn. It just so happened in the last two or three hundred years that every Russian comprehended the historical destinies of his country, acquired national identity, absorbed the cultural genes of his nation - from literature. Through literature, I became familiar with the way of thinking and sense of existence of long-gone generations, and acquired a blood and deeply personal connection with them. This was what we usually call the literary centrism of Russian culture. And we have lost this quality.

Just two decades ago we witnessed the last outbreak of truly universal interest in literature. That was the end of the 1980s - the beginning of the 1990s, when the circulation of “thick” magazines soared to incredible heights, and the publication of any delayed work, be it “Heart of a Dog” by M. Bulgakov or “New Appointment” by A. Beck, caused general and the most sincere interest. Literature restored people's historical memory, as if it were pasting torn and torn pages into the book of national historical existence. Then it was impossible to imagine that in two years millions of copies would drop so much that they wouldn’t even reach thousands...

Literature, before the eyes of the modern generation, is ceasing to be a sphere of national identity and national self-reflection. Now literature has lost its most important function - to orient a person in historical space, to determine his existential guidelines. It has turned into a form of entertaining and optional leisure; reading has ceased to be a prestigious activity. As a result, the book market was filled with products of a completely different kind, offering Dasha Vasilyeva, a home-grown detective from Dontsova’s series, or Fandorin from Akunin’s pseudo-historical novel project as cultural heroes of our time. As a result of the loss of literature's inherent nature over the past three centuries high status In Russian culture, traditionally literary-centric, a noticeable vacuum has arisen, which so far has nothing to fill.

Is it possible to connect such a situation of existential vacuum with the loss of cultural literary centrism? I think so. The loss of literature of its traditional status and the loss of its former functions could not be painless. And here we inevitably talk about the role of the state in supporting (or completely neglecting) the artistic word and its impact on the contemporary.

Let's look back at Soviet times. The time has passed to criticize socialist realism, Soviet power, the eradication of dissent in literature. Negative Impacts on the literature of the process that is in modern literary criticism received the name “nationalization” of literature, are well known. Both individual writers and entire literary movements fell victim to it (new peasant literature, represented by the names of S. Yesenin, P. Vasilyev, S. Klyuev, A. Ganin, or the absurdism of the OBERIUTs D. Kharms, K. Vaginov, A. Vvedensky). But the state’s attention to literature was not limited to the destruction of writers and literary movements. First Congress Soviet writers(1934) marked a fundamentally new nature of the relationship between literature and power, when literature becomes a state matter, and writing becomes in demand and socially significant. The Writers' Union is being created, the Literary Institute is being formed (for the first time in world history), training professional writers, and the academic Institute of World Literature named after. M. Gorky. And all these events became the object of enormous public attention, perceived by the people of the thirties as keenly and with the same pride as the flight to the USA over the North Pole and the epic rescue of the Chelyuskinites.

Sometimes, however, you hear the following: mass discovery literary publications, support for the Literary Institute, the Writers' Union, etc. could not be carried out without persecution of writers and literary movements, which did not correspond to the official ideology. We believe this is not the case. IN in this case we are talking about multidirectional and even contradictory vectors Soviet system and Soviet policy, which carried both the deepest humanism and love for people (examples are known, among them - the elimination of homelessness, complete literacy, the absence of homeless people, universal secondary education, universal access to medical care and much more), and the cannibalism of the Gulag and everything that was connected with him. One vector almost did not intersect with another, they seemed to exist in different dimensions, which is why both “Vasily Terkin” and K. Vorobyov’s poignant story “This is us, Lord!” were written about the same era. And the positive role literature played in Soviet years, was due precisely to government attention and support. It was as a result of state influence and support that a phenomenon arose that was called socialist realism. Misunderstood in Soviet times (due to the inevitable ideologization of any philological study), ridiculed in post-Soviet times, it is now increasingly attracting the attention of researchers. It gradually becomes clear that socialist realism satisfied a very important social need. When the revolution destroyed the former social institutions, public relations violated, morality based on universal human principles was declared bourgeois, religion was interpreted as opium for the people, and the Church was subjected to unprecedented persecution - society needed a word capable of organizing a disintegrating world, deprived of previous connections and structures and not gaining new ones. Literature could say such a word and did say it. It was socialist realism that became the literary movement that was able to show a person, knocked out of previous social units, his place in the emerging world. Literature explained to the reader new world, which was happening before his eyes, structured it, indicated the individual’s place in new social structures, formed ideas about private, social, historical tasks, indicated a place in the universe. It was an organic aspiration coming from within literature. Literature took on the function of organizing a society devoid of existential, ontological, religious guidelines and primordial moral values. In other words, literature structured the post-revolutionary chaos, transformed it into a new post-revolutionary cosmos, gave it features of harmony and higher rationality, fitting the reader into it, explaining to him what the results of the grandiose historical breakdown experienced in the past decade were. Having lost the previous mythology, society needed new myths that could present the revolution as an era of first creation, the result of which is the modern universe. And literature responded to this social need, created an artistic mythology that formed in the reader a picture of the world, bright and transformed, directed towards undoubted and obvious historical prospects. Soviet mythology, created by the literature of socialist realism, constructed the categories of thinking of the builder of a beautiful communist tomorrow.

Literature gave birth to the myth of the Revolution as a grandiose historical transformation cosmic scale which led to the creation of the New World. The main constants of this myth took shape in A. Tolstoy’s historical epic “Peter the Great”, in N. Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”, in M. Sholokhov’s collective farm epic “Virgin Soil Upturned”. Next to this myth and simultaneously with it, the myth of the New Man, the hero-demiurge, was created. Its embodiment was Levinson (“The Defeat” by A. Fadeev), Pavel Korchagin (“How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky), Kurilov (“The Road to the Ocean” by L. Leonov). The traits of such a hero are asceticism, lack of personal life (love is deliberately sacrificed to the Revolution), iron will, the ability for strict rational thinking, a strong spirit ruling over a physically weak and emaciated body. The Christian motif of taming the flesh (health lost in the struggle), sacrifice and ascension are associated with the named features of the new man. In the mythological model of the new world, which was created by the literature of socialist realism, even space and time acquired special constants. Time, history could act as an inert beginning, requiring acceleration at the cost of incredible volitional efforts of the hero-demiurge and his associates, capable of grabbing Fortune by the hair and turning her to face him, jerking the wheel of history and making it spin faster (“Peter the Great” by A. Tolstoy) . The myth of victory over time is created by V. Kataev (“Time, forward!”).

Soviet mythology transformed and reinterpreted Christian and pagan images, motifs, and plots, reinterpreting them in accordance with its needs. This rethinking is most obvious in the novel “The Young Guard” by A. Fadeev. He literally absorbs canonical Christian ideas (and this aspect art world the novel was not affected during the revision). The Young Guards feel almost the same as the first Christians, their conspiratorial meetings look like catacomb meetings, they see their mission in preaching the Truth, in delivering the Good News to fellow citizens through leaflets copied by hand, copied reports from the Soviet Information Bureau; Stalin's radio speeches are transmitted to each other and to neighbors as the words of an apostolic sermon; The flags hung on November 7 resemble church banners. The conflict and its resolution fit within the framework of the same tradition: participating in the battle with the forces of darkness and infernal evil, the Young Guards win an unconditional moral victory and gain eternal life through sacrificial death. The task of forming the Soviet ideo-mythological system was set before the new literature: it had to “educate a new man.” The definition given to socialist realism in 1934 spoke of the most important “task of ideological reworking and education of working people in the spirit of socialism.” It was this literature, creating a new mythology, that oriented man in the historical space of the twentieth century, educated him, formed high spiritual ideals and opposed the ever-increasing careerism and acquisitiveness of the Stalinist bureaucracy, its lawlessness, growing repressions, the GULAG

It is quite natural that the position of literature as a subject in school was completely different from what it is now. This was the fundamental subject of the school cycle, which was emphasized by the fact that composition was the first and compulsory final exam and the first and mandatory entrance exam. The facades of a typical Soviet school building from the 30s to the 50s were decorated with profiles of writers - Lomonosov, Pushkin, Gorky, Mayakovsky. Turning to today, we can pose two fundamental questions. Firstly, does the current political class understand that the loss of cultural literary centrism is unnatural and inorganic for the Russian consciousness? Secondly, if he understands, is he able to do anything to oppose this situation?

It is not for us to answer these questions. We can only judge what is happening at school with the humanities cycle of subjects, including literature.

The situation of literature in modern schools is seen as deplorable. It seems that now it is simply not needed, it exists by inertia and every year it loses more and more hours. This situation was aggravated by the introduction of the Unified State Exam, an absolutely formal system that sharply narrows the interests of the graduate to cold pragmatism and emasculates the essence of humanitarian knowledge. The Unified State Exam dealt a crushing blow to literature in school. The point is that humanitarian knowledge, and literature in particular, in principle, cannot be formalized. The abolition of the school essay as an exam in Russian language and literature and the transition to tests and short essays led to the fact that literature lost its status compulsory subject. Studying literature “under the Unified State Exam” does not give any meaning to either the student or the university where he will bring his results. In this form, a literature exam is really not needed. Who was prevented by the essay, a form of testing knowledge that existed in the Russian school for more than two centuries, which gave a person complete opportunity to express himself - to compose a text in which understanding will be revealed artistic meanings, one’s own (civil) position, if it has managed to be formed, a personal attitude towards the characters, their actions, motivations, values? And besides, Petrusha Grinev, standing in the face of an impostor?

If we want to contrast something with the cultural and ideological vacuum of our time, we must remember the only and unique carrier of socio-historical and cultural information - fiction. Its uniqueness lies in its personal and even intimate appeal to everyone who picks up the book, in the opportunity, open to everyone, to feel like a contemporary of Peter the Great, Kutuzov, Pugachev, and to feel how Grinev, Prince Andrei, Aleksashka felt in those days Menshikov. Only for this to happen, it is necessary to educate readers who are able and willing to think. Only then will Russian literature be able to justify the fact of its historical existence to modern and future generations.