A review of the works of the last decade, the modern literary process. Review of modern Russian literature. Feature of modern literature

From the standpoint of the formation of Russian literature, the first decade of the 21st century is the most significant.

In the 90s, a kind of "reboot" of the Russian literary process took place: along with the beginning of the book boom and the appearance of "returned literature", we witnessed a certain struggle of Russian writers with the temptation of permissiveness, which we managed to overcome only by the beginning of the 2000s. That is why the process of deliberately laying the foundation of a new literature should be attributed to the beginning of the new century.

Generations of writers and genres of contemporary literature

Contemporary Russian literature is represented by several generations of writers:

• the sixties, who made themselves known in the period of the "thaw" (Voinovich, Aksyonov, Rasputin, Iskander), professing a peculiar style of ironic nostalgia and often referring to the genre of memoirs;
• The "seventies", the Soviet literary generation (Bitov, Erofeev, Makanin, Tokareva), who began their literary journey under conditions of stagnation and professed a creative credo: "The circumstances are bad, not the person";
• the perestroika generation (Tolstaya, Slavnikova,,), which actually opened the era of uncensored literature and engaged in bold literary experiments;
• writers of the late 90s (Kochergin, Gutsko, Prilepin), who made up a group of the youngest figures in the literary process.

Among the general genre diversity of modern literature, the following main directions stand out:

• postmodernism (Shishkin, Limonov, Sharov, Sorokin);

• "Women's prose" (Ulitskaya, Tokareva, Slavnikova);

• mass literature (Ustinova, Dashkova, Grishkovets).

Literary trends of our time in the mirror of literary awards

In the matter of considering the literary process in Russia in the 2000s, the most indicative would be to refer to the list of laureates , moreover, the awards are predominantly non-state ones, since they were more focused on the reader's market, which means that they better reflected the main aesthetic needs of the reading public in the past decade. At the same time, practice points to the definition of the delineation of aesthetic functions between awards.

As you know, the phenomenon of postmodernism arises and is strengthened simultaneously with the growing need to reassess cultural or historical experience. This tendency was reflected in the Russian Booker Prize, which announced itself back in the early 90s, which at the beginning of the century continued to collect samples of literary postmodernism under its auspices, designed to introduce the reader into a “parallel culture”.

During this period, awards were given to:

• O. Pavlov for "Karaganda Nines",
• M. Elizarov for the alternative history "Librarian",
• V. Aksenov for a fresh look at the Enlightenment in Voltairians and Voltaireans.

At the same time, completely diverse

Reading Russia has witnessed yet another curious trend that has demonstrated public interest in large literary forms, so familiar to admirers of classical Russian literature. This phenomenon was reflected, first of all, on the laureates of the "Big Book" award, where the traditionality of the literary presentation and the volume of the work were put at the forefront.

During the mentioned period, the "Big Book" received:

• D. Bykov, again for "Boris Pasternak",
• for the military biographical "My Lieutenant",
• V. Makanin for the modern Chechen saga "Asan".

Also noteworthy was the accompanying "Big Book" practice of "special prizes", which marked the works of Solzhenitsyn and Chekhov, which allowed stimulating mass interest in the works of the classics.
The subcultural segment of literature was provided at that time, first of all, with help, since the choice of the laureate here was carried out either using Internet surveys or on the basis of the results of online sales in online stores.

Our presentation

The tendencies examined indicate the syncretic nature of the modern literary process. The modern reader, as well as the writer, is looking for the most acceptable option for obtaining a new literary experience - from the familiar to the eye of classicism to catchy postmodernity, which means that Russian culture meets the challenges of the 21st century with living and developing literature.

STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF SECONDARY VOCATIONAL EDUCATION OF THE NOVOSIBIRSK REGION

"KUPINSKY MEDICAL TECHNICUM"

METHODOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON

by discipline LITERATURE

Chapter: Literature of the second half XX century

Theme:

Specialty: 060501 Nursing Course: 1

Kupino

2015

Explanatory note

Educational and methodological characteristics of the lesson

Course of the lesson

Handout

Additional material

Materials for monitoring

EXPLANATORY NOTE

This methodological development is intended for the organization of classroom work of students in the study of the literature of the last decade. The lesson is conducted in the form of a lecture.

The teaching aid presents tasks on the topic. The manual includes material that complements the material of the textbook.

As a result of studying the topic Literature review of the last decade

The student must:

know / understand:

The content of the studied literary works;

The main patterns of the historical and literary process and features of literary trends;

be able to:

Reproduce the content of a literary work;

Compare literary works;

Analyze and interpret a work of art using information on the history and theory of literature (topics, problems, moral pathos, system of images, compositional features, pictorial and expressive means of language, artistic detail); analyze an episode (scene) of the studied work, explain its connection with the problematics of the work;

Relate fiction to social life and culture; to reveal the specific historical and universal human content of the studied literary works; identify "cross-cutting" themes and key problems of Russian literature; correlate the work with the literary direction of the era;

use the acquired knowledge and skills in practice and everyday life for:

Creation of a coherent text (oral and written) on the necessary topic, taking into account the norms of the Russian literary language;

Participating in a dialogue or discussion;

Independent acquaintance with the phenomena of artistic culture and assessment of their aesthetic significance.

TEACHING AND METHODOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LESSON

Lesson topic: Literature review of the last decade

Occupation type: learning new

Lesson form: lecture

Location audience

Duration of the lesson: 90 minutes

Motivation topic: activation of cognitive activity and interest of students in the study of this topic, setting the goal and objectives of the lesson

Lesson objectives:

1. Educational: know / understand the content of the studied literary works; the main patterns of the historical and literary process and features of literary trends;

2. Developing: to form the ability to analyze and interpret a work of art, using information on the history and theory of literature.

3. Educational: to reveal the specific historical and human content of the studied literary works; to use the acquired knowledge and skills in practical activities and everyday life for independent acquaintance with the phenomena of artistic culture and assessment of their aesthetic significance.

Interdisciplinary integration: history, Russian

Intradisciplinary integration: Review of Russian literature of the second half of the XX century

Equipment: projector, computer, presentation, book exhibition

List of literature:

Main:

- Literature. 10th grade: textbook for general education. damage / T.F. Kurdyumova, S.A. Leonov and others; under. ed. T.F. Kurdyumova. - M .: Bustard, 2008

Literature. 11 cl. In 2h .: textbook for general education. institutions / T.F. Kurdyumova and others; under. ed. T.F. Kurdyumova. - M .: Bustard, 2011

Additional:

Lebedev Yu.V. Literature. 10 classes: a textbook for general educational institutions. Basic and profile levels. 2 hours - M .: Education, 2006

Petrovich V.G., Petrovich N.M. Literature in basic and specialized schools. Grade 11. Book for the teacher. M., 2006

Krutetskaya V.A. Literature in tables and diagrams. Grade 10. - SPb., 2008

Dictionary of literary characters in 8 volumes - Compiled and edited by V.P. Meshcheryakov. - M .: Moscow Lyceum, 1997

Chernyak M.A. Modern Russian literature (grades 10-11): teaching materials.- M .: Eksmo, 2007

Internet resources:

-

Creative Teachers Network

Course of the lesson

Organizing time: greeting the group, identifying the absent, assessing the hygienic conditions of preparing the audience for the lesson.

Motivation for learning activities

Designation of the topic of the lesson, the formation of the goal of the lesson, designation of the plan for the upcoming work in the lesson.

3. Updating basic knowledge

- student messages

4. Assimilation of new knowledge

Lecture - conversation (presentation) -

The modern literary process is characterized by the disappearance of the former canonized themes ("the theme of the working class", "the theme of the army", etc.) and a sharp rise in the role of everyday relationships. Attention to everyday life, at times absurd, to the experience of the human soul, forced to survive in a situation of breakdown, shifts in society, gives rise to special plots. Many writers seem to want to get rid of the past pathos, rhetoric, preaching, fall into the aesthetics of "shocking and shock". The realistic branch of literature, having survived the state of lack of demand, comes to comprehend the break in the sphere of moral values. "Literature on literature" and memoir prose come to a prominent place.

"Perestroika" opened the doors for a huge stream of "detained" and young writers professing different aesthetics - naturalistic, avant-garde, postmodern, realistic. One of the ways to renew realism is to try to free it from ideological preoccupation. This tendency has led to a new round of naturalism: it combines the traditional belief in the purifying power of the cruel truth about society and the rejection of pathos of any kind, ideology, preaching (prose by S. Kaledin - "The Humble Cemetery", "Stroybat"; prose and drama by L. Petrushevskaya ).

1987 is of particular importance in the history of Russian literature. This is the beginning of a unique period, exceptional in its general cultural significance. This is the beginning of the return of Russian literature. The main motive of four years ( J987-1990) becomes the motive for the rehabilitation of history and forbidden - "uncensored", "withdrawn", "repressive" - ​​literature. In 1988, speaking at the Copenhagen meeting of art workers, the literary critic Efim Etkind said: “Now there is a process that has an unprecedented, phenomenal significance for literature: the process of returning. A crowd of shadows of writers and works, about which the general reader knew nothing, poured into the pages of Soviet magazines ... Shadows are returning from everywhere. "

The first years of the rehabilitation period - 1987-1988 - is the time of the return of spiritual exiles, those Russian writers who (in the physical sense) did not leave their country.

From publications of works by Mikhail Bulgakov ("Heart of a Dog", "Crimson Island"), Andrey Platonov ("Chevengur", "Pit", "Juvenile Sea"), Boris Pasternak ("Doctor Zhivago"), Anna Akhmatova ("Requiem") , Osip Mandelstam ("Voronezh notebooks"), the creative heritage of these (well-known up to 1987) writers was restored in full.

The next two years - 1989-1990 - are the time for the active return of the whole literary system - the literature of the Russian diaspora. Until 1989, the isolated publications of emigrant writers - Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Nabokov in 1987 - were sensational. And in 1989-1990, "a crowd of shadows poured into Russia from France and America" ​​(E. Etkind) - these are Vasily Aksenov, Georgy Vladimov, Vladimir Voinovich, Sergei Dovlatov, Naum Korzhavin, Viktor Nekrasov, Sasha Sokolov and, of course, Alexander Solzhenitsyn ...

The main problem for literature in the second half of the 1980s is the rehabilitation of history. In April 1988, a scientific conference was held in Moscow with a very indicative title - "Topical Issues of Historical Science and Literature." The speakers spoke about the problem of the veracity of the history of Soviet society and the role of literature in eliminating the "white historical spots". In the emotional report of the economist and historian Yevgeny Ambartsumov, everyone supported the idea that “true history began to develop outside the ossified official historiography, in particular, by our writers F. Abramov and Y. Trifonov, S. Zalygin and B. Mozhaev, V. Astafiev and F. Iskander, A. Rybakov and M. Shatrov, who began to write history for those who could not or did not want to do it. " In the same 1988, critics started talking about the emergence of a whole trend in literature, which they designated as "new historical prose." The novels by Anatoly Rybakov, Children of the Arbat and Vladimir Dudintsev, White Clothes, published in 1987, and the novel by Anatoly Pristavkin, The Golden Cloud Slept the Night, became public events of this year. At the beginning of 1988, Mikhail Shatrov's play "Further ... further ... further ..." became the same social and political event, while the images of the "living bad Stalin" and "living non-standard Lenin" barely passed the then existing censorship.

The state of modern literature proper, that is, that which was not only published but also written in the second half of the 1980s, confirms that during this period literature was primarily a civil matter. Only ironic poets and authors of "physiological stories" ("prose guignol" (Sl.)) Leonid Gabyshev ("Odlyan, or the Air of Freedom") and Sergei Kaledin ("Stroybat") could loudly declare themselves at that time. his works depicted the dark sides of modern life - the mores of juvenile criminals or the army "hazing".

It should also be noted that the publication of the stories of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Evgeny Popov, Tatyana Tolstaya, the authors who today define the face of modern literature, in 1987 passed almost unnoticed. In that literary situation, as Andrei Sinyavsky rightly noted, these were "artistically redundant texts."

So, 1987-1990 is the time when the prophecy of Mikhail Bulgakov ("The manuscripts do not burn") came true and the program so carefully outlined by academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev was carried out: "And if we publish the unpublished works of Andrey Platonov" Chevengur "and" Pit "Some still remaining in the archives works of Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, it seems to me that it will also be useful for our culture" (from the article: Culture of Truth - Anti-culture of Lies // Literaturnaya Gazeta, 1987. No. 1). For four years, a wide Russian reader has mastered a colossal array - 2/3 of the previously unknown and inaccessible corpus of Russian literature; all citizens became readers. “The country has turned into the All-Union Reading Room, in which, following Doctor Zhivago,“ Life and Fate ”is discussed (Natalya Ivanova). These years are called the "feast of reading" years; there has been an unprecedented and inimitable increase in the circulation of periodicals (“thick” literary journals). Record circulation of the magazine "New World" (1990) - 2,710,000 copies. (in 1999 - 15,000 copies, that is, just over 0.5%); all writers became citizens (in that year, it was the writers V. Astafiev, V. Bykov, O. Gonchar, S. Zalygin, L. Leonov, V. Rasputin who became the people's deputies from creative unions in the overwhelming majority); civic ("harsh", not "graceful") literature triumphs. Its culmination is

year - "the year of Solzhenitsyn" and the year of one of the most sensational
publications of the 1990s - the article "Commemoration for Soviet Literature", in which its author - a representative of "new literature" - Viktor Erofeev announced the end of the "solzhenization" of Russian literature and the beginning of the next period in the newest Russian literature - postmodern (1991-1994). ).

Postmodernism appeared in the mid-40s, but was recognized as a phenomenon of Western culture, as a phenomenon in literature, art, philosophy only in the early 80s. Postmodernism is characterized by the understanding of the world as chaos, the world as a text, awareness of the fragmentation, fragmentation of life. One of the main principles of postmodernism is intertextuality (the correlation of the text with other literary sources).

The postmodern text forms a new type of relationship between literature and the reader. The reader becomes a co-author of the text. The perception of artistic values ​​becomes ambiguous. Literature is viewed as an intellectual game.

Postmodern storytelling is a book about literature, a book about books.

In the last third XX century postmodernism became widespread in our country. These are the works of Andrey Bitov, Venedikt Erofeev, Sasha Sokolov, Tatyana Tolstaya, Joseph Brodsky and some other authors. The system of values ​​is being revised, mythologies are being destroyed, the view of writers is often phonic, paradoxical.

Changes in political, economic, social conditions in the country at the end XX century led to many changes in literary and near-literary processes. In particular, the Booker Prize has appeared in Russia since the 1990s. Its founder is the English Booker company, which is engaged in the production of food products and their wholesale. The Russian Booker Literary Prize was established by Booker Pic, the founder of the Booker Prize in Great Britain, in 1992 as a tool to support Russian-language authors and revive publishing in Russia with the aim of making good contemporary Russian literature commercially successful in its homeland.

From a letter from Booker Committee Chairman Sir Michael Caine:

“The success of Booker Prize, with its annual committee change, independence from publishers' interests and government agencies, prompted us to establish similar awards for works in other languages. The most tempting idea was to create a Booker Prize for the best novel in Russian. By this we want to express our respect for one of the greatest literatures in the world and we hope that we will be able to help attract everyone's attention to the vibrant and problem-laden Russian literature today. " The system of awarding the prize is as follows: nominees (literary critics acting on behalf of literary magazines and publishing houses) nominate nominees, applicants for the prize (the so-called "long-list" ( long-list)). From among them, the jury selects six finalists (the so-called "short-list"), one of whom becomes the laureate (booker).

Mark Kharitonov (1992, "Lines of Fate, or Milashevich's Trunk"), Vladimir Makanin (1993, "A table covered with cloth and with a decanter in the middle"), Bulat Okudzhava (1994, "The Abolished Theater"), Georgy Vladimov (1995 , "The General and His Army"), Andrey Sergeev (1996, "Album for Stamps"), Anatoly Azolsky (1997, "The Cage"), Alexander Morozov (1998, "Others' Letters"), Mikhail Butov (1999, "Freedom" ), Mikhail Shishkin (2000, "The Taking of Izmail"), Lyudmila Ulitskaya (2001, "Kukotsky's Case"), Oleg Pavlov (2002, "Karaganda Nines, or the Tale of the Last Days"). It should be understood that the Booker Prize, like any other literary prize, is not intended to answer the question "Who is our first, second, third writer?" or "Which novel is the best?" Literary prizes are a civilized way to arouse publishing and readers' interest ("Bringing readers, writers, publishers together. So that books are bought, so that literary work is respected and even generates income. For the writer, publishers. And in general, culture wins" (critic Sergei Reingold) ).

Close attention to the Booker laureates already in 1992 made it possible to identify two aesthetic trends in the latest Russian literature - postmodernism (among the finalists in 1992 - Mark Kharitonov and Vladimir Sorokin) and postrealism (postrealism is a trend in the latest Russian prose). Typical for realism is attention to the fate of a private person, tragically lonely and trying to self-determine (Vladimir Makanin and Lyudmila Pstrushevskaya).

Nevertheless, the Booker Prize and the literary prizes that followed it (Antibooker, Triumph, the Pushkin Prize, the Paris Prize to the Russian Poet) did not fully solve the problem of the confrontation between non-commercial literature (“pure art”) and the market. The “way out of the impasse” (this was the title of the article by the critic and culturologist Alexander Genis, dedicated to the literary situation in the early 1990s) for “non-market” literature was its appeal to traditionally mass genres (literary and even song) -

fantasy ("fantasy") - "Life of insects" (1993) by Victor Pelevin;

science fiction novel - "Brand of Cassandra" (1994) by Chingiz Aitmatov;

mystic-political thriller - "Guardian" (1993)
Anatoly Kurchatkin;

an erotic novel - "Eron" (1994) by Anatoly Korolev, "Before the Horn to Rome" by Nikolai Klimontovich, "Everyday Life of the Harem" (1994) by Valery Popov;

eastern - "We can do everything" (1994) by Alexander Chernitsky;

the adventure novel “I am not me” (1992) by Alexei Slapovsky (and his “rock ballad” “Idol”, “thug romance” “Hook”, “street romance” “Brothers”);

"New detective" B. Akunin; ,

"Ladies' detective" D. Dontsova, T. Polyakova and others.
The work, which embodied almost all the features of modern Russian prose, was Vladimir Sorokin's "Ice", nominated in the 2002 shortlist. The work caused a wide resonance thanks to the active opposition of the "Walking Together" movement, which accuses Sorokin of pornography. V. Sorokin withdrew his candidacy from the shortlist.

A consequence of the blurring of the boundaries between high and mass literature (along with the expansion of the genre repertoire) was the final collapse of cultural taboos (prohibitions), including: the use of obscene (profanity) vocabulary - with the publication of the novel by Eduard Limonov "It's me - Eddie!" (1990), works by Timur Kibirov and Viktor Erofeev; for discussion in the literature of drug problems (Andrei Salomatov's novel "Kandinsky Syndrome" (1994) and sexual minorities (a sensation in 1993 was the two-volume collection of works by Evgeny Kharitonov "Tears on Flowers").

From the writing program to create a “book for everyone” - both for the traditional consumer of “non-commercial” literature and for the general reading public - a “new fictionalism” emerges (its formula was proposed by the publisher of the almanac “End of the Century”: “A detective story, but written in good language” ). The tendency of the postmodern period can be considered the orientation towards "readability", "interestingness." Genre " fantasy ", being the most viable of all genre neoplasms, was the starting point for one of the most notable phenomena in the newest Russian literature - it is the prose of fiction, or fiction-prose - fantasy literature," modern fairy tales ", the authors of which do not reflect, but invent new absolutely implausible, artistic realities.

Fiction is the literature of the fifth dimension, which is what the author's unrestrained imagination becomes, creating virtual artistic worlds - quasi-geographic and pseudo-historical.

5. Homework, instructions on how to complete it:

- Working on the lecture notes

- Preparation for test

6. Summing up the results of the lesson. Reflection.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Information for the teacher

For the first time the Russian "Booker" was awarded in 1991. Since then, not a single award-winning novel has become a bestseller, which is completely unsurprising, since well-known writers were the first to fly out of the list of nominees. Over the years - Victor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, Dmitry Bykov, Anatoly Naiman. This time, for example, TV journalist Leonid Zorin and detective author Leonid Yuzefovich. And the winner, who received the prize, remained unknown to anyone.

In total, thirty-one works were admitted to the Russian Booker competition this year. Of these, six novels made it to the final: Villa Renault by Natalia Galkina, White on Black by Ruben David Gonzalez Gallego, Jupiter by Leonid Zorin, Frau Shram by Afanasy Mamedov, Lavra by Elena Chizhova and Kazaroz by Leonid Yuzefovich.

As the chairman of the jury of the prize, Yakov Gordin, said at the ceremony of announcing the laureate, the Booker Committee chose the work in which "the soil and fate breathe" to the greatest extent. Such a work, according to the committee, turned out to be the book "White on Black", published last year by the publishing house "Limbus Press".

R.D. Gonzalez Gallego, despite his rather exotic name, is quite a Russian writer. In any case, he had never written in any other language other than Russian. The laureate was born in Moscow in 1968 in a family of Spanish communists who fled in their time in the USSR from the Francoist regime. His maternal grandfather, Ignacio Gallego, was the general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party. Ruben David Gonzalez Gallego has suffered from a serious illness since birth - cerebral palsy. Once, when he was only one and a half years old, his condition deteriorated sharply, and everyone considered that the child was no longer a tenant. And to his mother, this opinion of the doctors somehow reached as news of the death of the unfortunate baby. The heartbroken parent could not even bring herself to even look at the supposedly deceased son. And he survived by some miracle. And since then he wandered around different institutions for the disabled. Ruben David met his mother only thirty years later.

The period of wandering around the orphanages became the main theme of the writer's work. His "Booker" book "White on Black" is, in fact, a collection of short stories, where the author depicts people with whom fate brought him in a bleak orphan period of life. And in all these short stories, of course, the character and fate of the narrator himself are realized. That is why the collection "White on Black" is a complete work. As the editor-in-chief of the Limbus Press publishing house Tatiana Nabatnikova noted, it would not be a mistake to call the novel “White on Black”. The novel "White on Black", which was recognized as the best Russian book of this year, he stuffed with two working fingers of his left hand.

For the past few years, Gonzalez Gallego has been living with his old mother in Madrid. He's very productive. His works are being reissued and published in many countries. By the way, from this year the value awards booker laureates increased. Previously, the prize was twelve thousand five hundred dollars. And now it's fifteen. Finalists still get 1,000.

CONTROL MATERIALS

Seminar

1.Introduction

2. Search for a systematic analysis of the modern literary process.

3.Hypertextuality of the latest Russian literature

4. The role of the creative individuality of the writer in the formation of the literary situation.

5. Conclusion.

• Today, in the depths of the modern literary process, such phenomena and trends as avant-garde and post-avant-garde, modern and postmodern, surrealism, and persionism have been born or revived,

neosentimentalism, meterealism, social art, conceptualism, etc.

• Literature voluntarily resigned

authority to act as a mouthpiece

public opinion and educator of human souls, and the places of positive heroes-beacons were taken by homeless people, alcoholics, murderers and representatives of ancient professions.

• If in 1986 the most read books according to the "Book Review" poll: "Ulysses" by J. Joyce, "1984" by J. Orwell, "Iron Woman" by N. Berberova, then in 1995

in the lists of bestsellers there is already a different literature: "Profession-killer", "Companions of the wolfhound", "The filthy cop."

Morning

Veniamin Erofeev

Have you ever seen the sunrise? Ever watched the sun rise slowly, as if with incredible weight? When the first rays begin to disperse the darkness, liquefying and destroying it. When the sky turns from black to blue ... in a few hours. And when, nevertheless, the first rays of the sun, which has just peeped out from the horizon, cut through the sky - you do not think about anything and do not listen to anything. You just watch. For this is nowhere else to be seen. And when you come to your senses, you wonder - why did you come back? Why Aren't You There? What have you forgotten here? ...

The revitalization of the writers' creativity at the end of the century is an objective and significant fact. Just as the beginning of the twentieth century was marked by the revival of women's poetry, and modernism became a liberating element for the work of Russian writers, who brought freedom of feelings, individualism and subtle aestheticism to the culture of the Silver Age, so the end

The century has passed largely under the sign of the aesthetic discoveries of women writers.

A special place in genre form creation is occupied by dystopia. The evolution of dystopia, considered only in the period from the 1990s to the end of the 20th century, shows how complex and ramified the picture of genre mobility is. Losing its formal cruel features, it is enriched by new qualities, the main of which is a kind of worldview.

The complex picture of aesthetic spread is complemented by the situation in the field of Russian poetry of the end centuries. It is generally accepted that prose dominates the modern literary process. Over the past decade, poetry has undergone an evolution from a state of almost complete booklessness to a situation when bookshelves and bookstore counters are sagging under the load of poetry collections, published either for the author's or sponsored account in a circulation of 300-500 copies. Poetry carries the same burden of time, the same aspirations to enter new specific areas of creativity. Poetry is more painful than prose, it feels the loss of the reader's attention, of its own role to be the emotional exciter of society.

It is stated already in the titles of novels and is further implemented in tests: “Live in Moscow: manuscript as a novel "D. Pirogov,"Death of Tsar Fyodor: microroman " M.Yu.Druzhnikov, "Erosiped and other vignettes" by A. Zholkovsky. E. Popov defined the genre of his novel "Chaos" as collage novel, the title of the novel by S. Gandlevsky - "NRZB", by N. Kononov - "gentle theater: shock novel ".

"Review of Russian and Contemporary Literature"

The chronological framework of the modern literary process in Russia is the last fifteen years of the outgoing century, including heterogeneous phenomena and facts of the latest literature, sharp theoretical discussions, critical discord, literary prizes of various significance, the activities of thick journals and new publishing houses that actively publish works of contemporary writers.

The newest literature is closely connected, despite its fundamental and undoubted novelty, with literary life and the socio-cultural situation of the decades preceding it, the so-called period of "modern literature." This is a fairly long stage in the existence and development of our literature - from the mid-50s to the mid-80s.

The mid-1950s is a new starting point for our literature. The famous report by N.S. Khrushchev at the "closed" meeting of the XX Party Congress on February 25, 1956 marked the beginning of the liberation of the consciousness of the people of many millions from the hypnosis of the personality cult of Stalin. The era was called the "Khrushchev Thaw", which gave birth to the generation of the "sixties", its contradictory ideology and dramatic destiny. Unfortunately, neither the authorities nor the "sixties" have approached a genuine rethinking of Soviet history, political terror, the role of the generation of the 1920s in it, the essence of Stalinism. The failures of the “Khrushchev thaw” as an era of change are largely connected with this. But in literature there were processes of renewal, reassessment of values ​​and creative searches.

Even before the well-known decisions of the 1956 party congress, a breakthrough to new content took place in Soviet literature through the barriers of the “theory of conflict-freeness” of the 40s, through the rigid principles of the theory and practice of socialist realism, through the inertia of the reader's perception. And not only in the literature that was written “on the table”. V. Ovechkin's modest essays "District Weekdays" showed the reader the true position of the post-war village, its social and moral problems. "Lyrical prose" by V. Soloukhin and E. Dorosh took the reader away from the main roads of the builders of socialism into the real world of Russian "country roads", in which there is no external heroism, pathos, but there is poetry, folk wisdom, great work, love for the native land.

These works, by the very life material underlying them, destroyed the mythologemes of the literature of socialist realism about the ideal Soviet life, about the man-hero, going "all ahead - and higher" under the inspiring, inspiring and guiding leadership of the party.

The coming "Khrushchev thaw" seemed to have opened the floodgates. Restrained for a long time, a stream of qualitatively different literature poured in. Came to the reader books of poetry by wonderful poets: L. Martynov ("Birthright"), N. Aseev ("Lad"), V. Lugovsky ("Middle of the century"). And by the mid-60s, even poetry books by M. Tsvetaeva, B. Pasternak, A. Akhmatova will be published.

In 1956, an unprecedented poetry festival took place and the almanac "Poetry Day" was published. And poetry holidays - meetings of poets with their readers, and almanacs "Poetry Day" will become annual. Boldly and brightly declared itself "young prose" (V. Aksenov, A. Bitov, A. Gladilin. Poets E. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky, R. Rozhdestvensky, B. Akhmadulina and others became idols of youth. thousands of audiences for poetry evenings at the Luzhniki stadium.

The author's song by B. Okudzhava introduced into the dialogue between the poet and the listener an intonation of trust and participation, which was unusual for a Soviet person. Human, not ideological and stilted problems and conflicts in the plays of A. Arbuzov, V. Rozov, A. Volodin transformed the Soviet theater and its audience. The policy of the "thick" magazines changed, and in the early sixties A. Tvardovsky's "New World" published stories "Matrenin's yard", "One day of Ivan Denisovich", "An incident at the station Krechetovka" who returned from the camps and exile, still unknown to anyone. ... Solzhenitsyn.

Undoubtedly, these phenomena changed the character of the literary process, significantly broke with the tradition of socialist realism, in fact, the only method of Soviet literature officially recognized since the beginning of the 30s.

Reader's tastes, interests, preferences were transformed under the influence of the publication of works of world literature of the 20th century, which was quite active in the 60s, primarily by French writers - the existentialists of Sartre, Camus, the innovative drama of Beckett, Ionesco, Frisch, Dürrenmatt, the tragic prose of Kafka, etc. The Iron Curtain gradually parted.

But the changes in Soviet culture, as well as in life, were not so unequivocally encouraging. The real literary life of almost the same years was also marked by the cruel persecution of B.L. Pasternak for the publication in the West in 1958 of his novel Doctor Zhivago. The struggle between the magazines Oktyabr and Novy Mir (Vs. Kochetov and A. Tvardovsky) was merciless. "Secretarial literature" did not give up its positions, but healthy literary forces nevertheless did their creative work. The so-called official literature began to penetrate truly fictional, and not opportunisticly constructed texts.

In the late fifties, young front-line prose writers turned to the recent past: they explored the dramatic and tragic situations of war through the point of view of a simple soldier, a young officer. Often these situations were cruel, they put a person in front of a choice between feat and betrayal, life and death. Criticism of that time greeted the first works of V. Bykov, Y. Bondarev, G. Baklanov, V. Astafiev with caution, disapprovingly, accusing the "literature of lieutenants" of "degeroizing" the Soviet soldier, of "trench truth" and the inability or unwillingness to show a panorama of events. In this prose, the value center shifted from an event to a person, the moral and philosophical issues replaced the heroic and romantic ones, a new hero appeared who endured the harsh everyday life of war on his shoulders. “The strength and freshness of the new books lay in the fact that, without rejecting the best traditions of military prose, they showed the soldier in all magnifying detail the“ face expression ”and the“ spots ”facing death, bridgeheads, unnamed skyscrapers, containing a generalization of the entire trench gravity of the war ... Often these books carried a charge of cruel drama, often they could be defined as "optimistic tragedies", their main characters were soldiers and officers of one platoon, company, battery, regiment. " These new realities of literature were also signs, typological features of the changing nature of the literary process, which was beginning to overcome the socialist realist one-dimensionality of literature.

Attention to the person, his essence, and not the social role, became a defining feature of the literature of the 60s. The so-called "village prose" has become a true phenomenon of our culture. She raised a range of issues that arouse keen interest and controversy to this day. As you can see, really vital problems were touched upon.

The term "country prose" was coined by critics. A.I. Solzhenitsyn, in his "Word at the Presentation of the Solzhenitsyn Prize to Valentin Rasputin," clarified: "And it would be more correct to call them moralists - for the essence of their literary revolution was the revival of traditional morality, and the crushed, dying village was only a natural visual objectivity." The term is conditional, because the basis for the association of writers-"village breeders" is not at all a thematic principle. By no means every work about the village was attributed to "village prose".

Village writers changed the angle of view: they showed the inner drama of the existence of a modern village, discovered in an ordinary villager a personality capable of moral creation. Sharing the main direction of the “village prose”, in his commentary to the novel “And the day lasts longer than a century” Ch. Aitmatov formulated the task of literature of his time as follows: human personality. By this attention to the personality, "village prose" revealed a typological relationship with Russian classical literature. The writers return to the traditions of classical Russian realism, almost abandoning the experience of their closest predecessors - the socialist realist writers - and not accepting the aesthetics of modernism. The “villagers” address the most difficult and urgent problems of the existence of man and society and believe that the harsh material of their prose a priori excludes the playful principle in its interpretation. The teacher's moral pathos of the Russian classics is organically close to “country prose”. Problems of prose by Belov and Shukshin, Zalygin and Astafiev, Rasputin, Abramov, Mozhaev and E. Nosov have never been abstractly significant, but just concretely human. The life, pain and torment of an ordinary person, most often a peasant (the salt of the Russian land), who falls under the roller of state history or fateful circumstances, has become the material of “village prose”. His dignity, courage, ability in these conditions to remain faithful to himself, to the foundations of the peasant world turned out to be the main discovery and moral lesson of “village prose”. A. Adamovich wrote in this connection: “The living soul of the people, saved, carried through the centuries and trials - isn't that what it breathes, isn't that what the prose, which today is called village prose, tells us first of all about? And if they write and say that both military and rural prose are the summit achievements of our modern literature, is it not because here the writers have touched the very nerve of the life of the people.

The stories and novels of these writers are dramatic - one of the central images in them is the image of their native land - the Arkhangelsk village by F. Abramov, the Vologda village by V. Belov, the Siberian one by V. Rasputin and V. Astafiev, the Altai one by V. Shukshin. It is impossible not to love her and the person on her - in her are the roots, the basis of everything. The reader feels the writer's love for the people, but his idealization in these works is not. F. Abramov wrote: “I stand for the popular principle in literature, but I am a resolute opponent of a prayerful attitude towards everything, whatever my contemporary says ... To love a people means to see with complete clarity its merits and shortcomings, small, and ups and downs. Writing for the people means helping them understand their strengths and weaknesses. "

The novelty of the social, moral content does not exhaust the merits of “village prose”. Ontological problems, deep psychologism, and the wonderful language of this prose marked a qualitatively new stage in the literary process of Soviet literature - its modern period, with a whole complex set of searches at the content and artistic levels.

New facets to the literary process of the 60s were given by the lyrical prose of Yu. Kazakov, and the first stories by A. Bitov, the "quiet lyrics" by V. Sokolov, N. Rubtsov.

However, the compromise of the "thaw", the half-truths of this era led to the fact that at the end of the 60s censorship became tougher. Party leadership of literature with renewed vigor began to regulate and define the content and paradigm of artistry. Anything that did not coincide with the general line was squeezed out of the process. The blows of official criticism fell upon V. Kataev's Mauvist prose. The New World was taken away from Tvardovsky. The persecution of A. Solzhenitsyn, the persecution of I. Brodsky began. The socio-cultural situation was changing - “stagnation set in”.

In Russian literary culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there are still many interesting, but insufficiently meaningful pages, the study of which could contribute to a deeper understanding not only of the laws of the evolution of verbal art, but also of certain major socio-political and historical-cultural events of Russian of the past. Therefore, it is quite important nowadays to turn to journals, for a long time, often due to the ideological conjuncture, which remained outside close research attention.

Russian literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries is a special, dynamic period, characterized, among other things, by the formation of new ideals, a sharp struggle between social groups and parties, coexistence, a clash of various literary trends, trends and schools that somehow reflected polysyllabic historical and socio-political realities and phenomena of the era, intensive contacts with art abroad. For example, the philosophical and worldview foundations of Russian symbolism are largely associated with the German cultural and artistic tradition and philosophy (I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, Fr. Nietzsche). At the same time, France became the true homeland of symbolism. It was here that the main stylistic features of this large-scale artistic phenomenon were formed, its first manifestos and program declarations were published. From here, symbolism began a triumphant march through the countries of Western Europe and Russia. Literature not only presented historical events in the works of domestic and foreign authors of different ideological convictions, but also revealed the reasons that prompted them to work; the reactions of readers and critics to published works, including translated ones, which demonstrated the degree of their impact on the audience, were incorporated into the literary and public consciousness.

Along with books, literary collections, critical publications, printed periodicals enjoyed great popularity both among literary figures and among readers: newspapers (Moskovskie vedomosti, Grazhdanin, Svet, Novoye Vremya, Birzhevye Vedomosti "," Russkie vedomosti "," Courier ", etc.), magazines (" Bulletin of Europe "MM Stasyulevich - 1866-1918;" Russian Bulletin "MN Katkov-1856-1906;" Strekoza "I. F. Vasilevsky - 1875-1908; "Russian wealth" - 1876-1918; "Russian thought" - 1880-1918, etc.) and the original form of the mono-journal - diaries, created by F.M. Dostoevsky (The Diary of a Writer by D.V. Averkiev - 1885-1886; A.B. Kruglov - 1907-1914; F.K. Sologub -1914). We emphasize that all literary journals at that time were private, and only the "Journal of the Ministry of Public Education" (1834-1917), devoted to a greater extent to literary issues, was state-owned. Note that the appearance of magazines, starting from the 1840s, was largely determined by the social and political views of the publishers.

The socio-political and economic changes in our country, which began in 1985 and called perestroika, significantly influenced literary development. "Democratization", "glasnost", "pluralism", proclaimed from above as new norms of social and cultural life, have led to a reassessment of values ​​in our literature as well.

Tolstoy magazines began to actively publish works by Soviet writers, written in the seventies and earlier, but for ideological reasons were not published at that time. This is how the novels “Children of the Arbat” by A. Rybakov, “The New Appointment” by A. Beck, “White Clothes” by V. Dudintsev, “Life and Fate” by V. Grossman and others were published. ... V. Shalamov's stories and the prose of Y. Dombrovsky are widely published in periodicals. "Novy Mir" was published by A. Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

In 1988, again, Novy Mir, thirty years after its creation, published B. Pasternak's disgraced novel Doctor Zhivago with a foreword by D.S. Likhachev. All of these works were classified as so-called "detained literature." The attention of critics and readers was focused exclusively on them. Magazine circulations reached unprecedented levels, approaching the million mark. Novy Mir, Znamya, Oktyabr competed in publishing activity.

Another stream of the literary process of the second half of the eighties was made up of the works of Russian writers of the 1920s and 1930s. For the first time in Russia, it was at this time that A. Platonov's "big things" were published - the novel "Chevengur", the stories "The Foundation Pit", "Juvenile Sea", and other works of the writer. Oberiuts, E.I. Zamyatin and other writers of the 20th century. At the same time, our magazines reprinted works of the 60s and 70s published in the West that were groomed in samizdat and published in the West, such as "Pushkin House" by A. Bitov, "Moscow - Petushki" by Ven. Erofeev, "Burn" by V. Aksenov and others.

Literature of the Russian diaspora is represented just as powerfully in the modern literary process: the works of V. Nabokov, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, A. Remizov, M. Aldanov, A. Averchenko, Vl. Khodasevich and many other Russian writers returned to their homeland. The "returned literature" and the literature of the Metropolis finally merge into one mainstream of Russian literature of the 20th century. Naturally, the reader, criticism, and literary criticism find themselves in a very difficult situation, because a new, complete, without white spots, map of Russian literature dictates a new hierarchy of values, makes it necessary to develop new evaluation criteria, suggests the creation of a new history of Russian literature of the XX century without cuts and seizures. Under the powerful onslaught of first-class works of the past, for the first time widely available to the domestic reader, contemporary literature seems to freeze, trying to realize itself in new conditions. The character of the modern literary process is determined by the "delayed", "returned" literature. Without presenting a modern cut of literature, it is she who influences the reader to the greatest extent, determining his tastes and preferences. It is she who finds herself at the center of critical discussions. Criticism, also freed from the fetters of ideology, demonstrates a wide range of judgments and evaluations.

For the first time we are witnessing such a phenomenon when the concepts of "modern literary process" and "modern literature" do not coincide. In the five years from 1986 to 1990, the modern literary process is made up of works of the past, ancient and not so distant. Actually, modern literature has been pushed to the periphery of the process.

One cannot but agree with the generalizing judgment of A. Nemzer: “The literary policy of perestroika had a pronounced compensatory character. It was necessary to make up for lost time - to catch up, return, eliminate gaps, fit into the global context. " We really tried to make up for lost time, pay off long-standing debts. As this time is seen from the present day, the publishing boom of the perestroika years, with the undoubted significance of the newly discovered works, involuntarily distracted the public consciousness from the dramatic modernity.

The actual liberation of culture from state ideological control and pressure in the second half of the 1980s was legalized on August 1, 1990 by the abolition of censorship. The history of "samizdat" and "tamizdat" naturally ended. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, serious changes took place in the Union of Soviet Writers. He split into several writers' organizations, the struggle between which sometimes takes on a serious character. But various literary organizations and their "ideological and aesthetic platforms", perhaps for the first time in Soviet and post-Soviet history, practically do not influence the living literary process. It develops under the influence of not directive, but other factors more organic to literature as a form of art. In particular, the discovery, one might say, anew of the culture of the Silver Age and its new comprehension in literary criticism was one of the essential factors determining the literary process since the beginning of the 90s.

The creativity of N. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam, M. Voloshin, Vyach turned out to be reopened in full. Ivanova, Vl. Khodasevich and many other major representatives of the culture of Russian modernism. The publishers of a large series of the “New Library of the Poet” made their contribution to this fruitful process, publishing well-prepared collections of the poetry of the writers of the “Silver Age”. The Ellis Lac Publishing House not only publishes multivolume collected works of the classics of the Silver Age (Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova), but also publishes second-tier writers, for example, the excellent volume of G. Chulkov “Years of Wanderings”, which presents different creative facets of the writer, and some of his works are generally published first. The same can be said about the activities of the Agraf publishing house, which published a collection of works by L. Zinovieva-Annibal. Today we can talk about almost entirely published by the efforts of various publishing houses M. Kuzmina. The Respublika Publishing House has carried out a remarkable literary project - a multivolume publication by A. Bely. These examples can be continued.

Fundamental monographic studies by N. Bogomolov, L. Kolobaeva and other scientists help to imagine the mosaic nature and complexity of the literature of the Silver Age. Due to ideological prohibitions, we could not master this culture "over time", which would undoubtedly be fruitful. She literally "fell" on the general reader like a snow on his head, often causing an apologetic enthusiastic reaction. Meanwhile, this most complex phenomenon deserves close and attentive gradual reading and study. But it happened as it happened. Contemporary culture and the reader found themselves under the most powerful pressure from culture, which in the Soviet period was rejected as not only ideologically, but also aesthetically alien. Now the experience of modernism at the beginning of the century and the avant-garde of the 20s has to be absorbed and rethought in the shortest possible time. We can state not only the fact of the existence of works of the early XX century as full participants in the modern literary process, but also assert the fact of overlaps, influences of different currents and schools, their simultaneous presence as a qualitative characteristic of the literary process of modern times.

If we take into account the colossal boom of memoir literature, then we are faced with another feature of this process. The influence of memoirism on fiction proper is obvious to many researchers. Thus, one of the participants in the discussion "Memoirs at the End of Epochs" I. Shaitanov rightly emphasizes the high artistic quality of memoir literature: "When approaching the sphere of fiction, the memoir genre begins to lose its documentary character, giving a lesson in responsibility to literature in relation to the word ...". Despite the researcher's precise observation of a certain departure from documentaryness in many of the published memoirs, memoiristics for readers is a means of reconstructing the social and spiritual history of society, a means of overcoming cultural “blank spots” and simply good literature.

Perestroika gave impetus to the revitalization of publishing. In the early 90s, new publishing houses, new literary magazines of a wide variety of orientations appeared - from the progressive literary magazine "New Literary Review" to the feminist magazine "Preobrazhenie". Bookstores-salons "Summer Garden", "Eidos", "October 19" and others - were born by a new state of culture and in turn have a certain influence on the literary process, reflecting and popularizing one or another trend of modern literature in their activities.

In the 90s, for the first time after the revolution, the works of many Russian religious philosophers at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, Slavophiles and Westernizers, from V. Soloviev to P. Florensky, A. Khomyakov and P. Chaadaev, were republished. The Respublika Publishing House is completing the publication of the multivolume collected works of Vasily Rozanov. These realities of book publishing, undoubtedly, significantly affect the modern literary development, enriching the literary process. By the mid-90s, the literary heritage, previously unclaimed by the Soviet country, almost completely returned to the national cultural space. But modern literature itself has noticeably strengthened its position. Thick magazines again lent their pages to contemporary writers. The modern literary process in Russia, as it should be, is again determined exclusively by contemporary literature. In terms of stylistic, genre, linguistic parameters, it is not reducible to a certain causal pattern, which, however, does not at all exclude the presence of patterns and connections within the literary process of a more complex order. It is difficult to agree with researchers who do not see any signs of a process in modern literature at all. Moreover, this position is often extremely contradictory. So, for example, G.L. Nefagina asserts: "The state of literature of the 90s can be compared with the Brownian movement," and then continues: "a single general cultural system is being formed." As you can see, the researcher does not deny the existence of the system. Since there is a system, there are also patterns. What kind of "Brownian motion" is there! This point of view is a tribute to a fashionable trend, the idea of ​​modern literature after the collapse of the ideological hierarchy of values ​​as a postmodern chaos. The life of literature, especially literature with such traditions as Russian, in spite of the past times, I think, not only continues fruitfully, but also lends itself to analytical systematization.

Criticism has already done a lot in analyzing the main trends in contemporary literature. The magazines Voprosy literatury, Znamya, Novy Mir hold round tables, discussions of leading critics about the state of modern literature. In recent years, several solid monographs have been published on postmodernism in Russian literature.

The problem of modern literary development, it seems to us, lies in the mainstream of the development and refraction of various traditions of world culture in a crisis state of the world (environmental and man-made disasters, natural disasters, terrible epidemics, rampant terrorism, flourishing of mass culture, moral crisis, the onset of virtual reality and etc.), which all of humanity is experiencing together with us. Psychologically, it is aggravated by the general situation at the turn of the century and even millennia. And in the situation of our country - the realization and elimination of all the contradictions and collisions of the Soviet period of the national history and culture of socialist realism.

The atheistic upbringing of generations of Soviet people, the situation of spiritual substitution, when for millions of people religion and faith were replaced by the mythologemes of socialism, have grave consequences for modern man. To what extent does literature respond to these most difficult life and spiritual realities? Should it, as it was in classical Russian literature, give answers to difficult questions of life, or at least put them before the reader, contribute to the "softening of morals", cordiality in relations between people? Or is the writer an impartial and cold observer of human vices and weaknesses? Or maybe the lot of literature is to withdraw into a world of fantasies and adventures that is far from reality? .. And the field of literature is an aesthetic or intellectual game, and literature has nothing to do with real life, with a person in general? Does a person need art? A word alienated from God, separated from divine truth? These questions are very real and require answers.

In our criticism there are different points of view on the modern literary process and the very purpose of literature. Thus, A. Nemzer is sure that literature has stood the test of freedom and the last decade has been "wonderful". The critic singled out thirty names of Russian prose writers with whom he connects the fruitful future of our literature. Tatiana Kasatkina in her article "Literature after the end of time" asserts that there is no single literature now, but there are "scraps and fragments." She proposes to divide the "texts" of current literature into three groups: their fundamental, constitutional (and not at all positive) property ... works that you do not want to return to, even if you realize their value, which are difficult to enter the second time, which have all the properties of a zone with the effect of accumulating radiation. " Without sharing the general pathos of the researcher in assessing the current state of Russian literature, one can use its classification. After all, such a division is based on time-tested principles - the nature of the reflection of reality in literature and the author's position.

The last fifteen years of the 20th century are of special significance in the history of our literature. Russian literature finally found itself free from directive ideological pressure. At the same time, the literary process was distinguished by increased drama and complexity of an objective nature.

The desire to recreate the history of literature of the last century in all its integrity (the return to the reader of the works of A. Platonov, M. Bulgakov, B. Pasternak, Oberiuts, writers of the Silver Age, émigrés, etc.) that were forcibly not allowed in Soviet times, almost ousted modern literature in general. Thick magazines experienced a publishing boom. Their circulation was approaching the million mark. It seemed that contemporary writers were pushed to the periphery of the process and were of little interest to anyone. The active reappraisal in the “new criticism” of the culture of the Soviet period (“Commemoration for Soviet Literature”), as categorical as its recent apologetics in semi-official criticism, caused a feeling of confusion among both readers and writers themselves. And when in the early 90s the circulation of thick magazines fell sharply (political and economic reforms entered an active phase in the country), the newest literature generally lost its main platform. Intracultural problems were further complicated by extraliterary factors.

In criticism, discussions arose around the problem of the modern literary process, voices were heard calling into question the very fact of its existence. Some researchers have argued that the collapse of a unified and obligatory system of ideological and aesthetic attitudes, followed by a multidirectional literary development, lead to the automatic disappearance of the literary process. And yet, the literary process withstood, Russian literature withstood the test of freedom. Moreover, in recent years, the strengthening of the position of modern literature in the literary process is obvious. This is especially true for prose. Almost every new issue of such magazines as Novy Mir, Znamya, Oktyabr, Zvezda gives us a new interesting work that is read, debated and talked about.

The literary process of the 20th century is a kind of phenomenon that includes a complex interaction of multidirectional vectors of aesthetic search. The archaic collision of "archaists and innovators" has found its forms of embodiment in the literature of modern times. But at the same time, both writers gravitating towards classical traditions and experimental pioneers - all, in the parameters of the artistic paradigm they have adopted, are looking for forms that are adequate to changes in the consciousness of a modern person, new ideas about the world, about the function of language, about the place and role of literature.

The study of the modern literary process is multifaceted, it involves the analysis and systematization of a huge amount of factual material. The scope of the manual can hardly accommodate it.

The manual focuses on the most characteristic phenomena of modern literature, primarily associated with different principles of artistic reflection of life's reality. In modern Russian literature, as in the world artistic process, there is a confrontation between realism and postmodernism. The philosophical and aesthetic attitudes of postmodernism are actively being introduced by its brilliant theorists into the world artistic process, postmodern ideas and images are in the air. Even in the work of writers of a realistic orientation, such as Makanin, for example, we see a fairly widespread use of elements of the poetics of postmodernism. However, in the artistic practice of the postmodernists themselves, crisis phenomena have been obvious in recent years. The ideological load in postmodernism is so great that "artistry" itself, as the immanent nature of literature, begins to simply collapse under such influence.

Some researchers of postmodernism are inclined to pessimistic forecasts and believe that its history in Russia was "overwhelmingly turbulent, but short" (M. Epstein), i.e. think about it as a past phenomenon. Of course, there is some simplification in this statement, but the replication of techniques, self-repetition in the last works of the famous postmodernists V. Sorokin, V. Erofeev and others testify to the exhaustion of the “style”. And the reader, apparently, begins to get tired of the "courage" in removing linguistic and moral taboos, of intellectual games, blurring of the text boundaries and the programmed multiplicity of its interpretations.

The reader of today, as one of the subjects of the literary process, plays an important role in it. It was his need for knowledge of the true realities of history, his disbelief in the “artistically” transformed past in the works of Soviet literature, which lied so much about life that “straightened” it, that provoked a colossal interest in memoirism, its real flourishing in recent literature.

The reader returns literature to the traditional values ​​of realism, expects from it "cordiality," responsiveness, and a good style. It is from this reading need that the fame and popularity of Boris Akunin, for example, grows. The writer correctly calculated the systemic stability, the plot-based solidity of the detective genre (everyone is so tired of the plotlessness, chaos of the artistic world of postmodern works). He diversified genre shades as much as possible (from espionage to political detective), invented a mysterious and charming hero - detective Fandorin - and immersed us in the atmosphere of the 19th century, so attractive from the historical distance. And a good level of stylized language of his prose did the job. Akunin became a cult writer with his wide circle of admirers.

Interestingly, the other pole of literature also has its own cult figure - Victor Pelevin, a guru for a whole generation. The virtual world of his works is gradually replacing the real world for his admirers; in fact, they acquire a “world as text”. Pelevin, as we noted above, is a talented artist who sees the tragic collisions in the fate of mankind. However, the reader's perception of his work reveals the vulnerability and even inferiority of the artistic world he creates. Playing with "imaginations", boundless nihilism, irony without boundaries turn into imaginary creativity. A writer of outstanding talent turns into a figure of mass culture. Having created the world expected by admirers, the author becomes its captive. It is not the writer who guides the reader, but the audience determines the space of artistic searches recognizable for it. It is unlikely that such feedback is fruitful for the writer, the literary process and, of course, the reader.

The prospects for the literary process in Russia are associated with other creative tendencies, with the enrichment of the artistic possibilities of realism. Its framework, as we can see from the example of the work of many contemporary writers, can be extended up to modernist and postmodernist techniques. But at the same time, the writer retains a moral responsibility to life. He does not replace the Creator, but only seeks to reveal his intention.

And if literature helps a person to clarify the time of his existence, then “any new aesthetic reality clarifies for a person his ethical reality” (I. Brodsky). Through familiarization with aesthetic reality, a person "clarifies" his moral guidelines, learns to understand his time and correlate his fate with the highest meaning of being.

The literary process in Russia at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries instills confidence that literature is still necessary for man and mankind and is true to the great destiny of the Word.

Soviet literature reader poetry

Bibliography

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• 2. Bitov A. Pushkin House.

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• 3. Gromova M.I. Russian modern drama: textbook. - M., 1999.
• 4. Esin S.B. Principles and Techniques for the Analysis of a Literary Work: Textbook. - M., 1999.
• 5. Ilyin I.P. Postmodernism from its origins to the end of the century: the evolution of a scientific myth. - M., 1998.
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• 7. Lipovetskiy M.N. Russian postmodernism. Essays on Historical Poetics. Yekaterinburg, 1997.
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• 9. Postmodernists on Postculture: Interviews with Contemporary Writers and Critics. - M., 1996.
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The literary festival in Bath, Somerset is one of the brightest and most respected in the UK. Founded in 1995 with the support of The Independent, it has become an important event in European cultural life. Art director of the festival, Viv Groskop - journalist, writer and comedy actress - sums up the original results of the 20-year activity of the festival and names its best books, year after year. By the way, almost all of them have already been filmed.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1995

Louis de Bernier

Many have seen a wonderful film with Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz and think that Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a beautiful romance about true love. So it is, of course, it is. But it is also a novel about European history, about how strangely and closely the destinies of peoples and people are intertwined: your yesterday's ally shoots you in the back, and your yesterday's enemy saves your life. The plot of the book is based on real historical events when the Italians, being allies of Nazi Germany, occupied Greece, and then were disarmed and shot by the Germans who came, who suspected them of "sympathy for the local population." The Mediterranean charm of landscapes and characters: gentle Pelagia and courageous captain Corelli, did not leave British festival critics indifferent.

She is "Grace", 1996

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a Booker Prize winner. She dedicated this book to an attempt to solve a brutal crime that at one time rocked the whole of Canada: on July 23, 1843, the police accused 16-year-old maid Grace Marks of ruthlessly murdering her master and his pregnant mistress-housekeeper. Grace was extraordinarily beautiful and very young. But she told the police as many as three versions of what happened, and her accomplice - two. The accomplice went to the gallows, but Grace's lawyer managed to convince the judges that she was out of her mind. Grace spent 29 years in an insane asylum. Who was she really, and who committed the bloody crime? This is what Margaret Atwood is trying to tell.

American Pastoral, 1997

Philip Roth

What, in the end, did the American dream lead to? Who promised wealth, law and order to those who work hard and well-behaved? The main character, the Swede Leivow, married the beautiful Miss New Jersey, inherited his father's factory and became the owner of an old mansion in Old Rimrock. It would seem that dreams have come true, but once the American leafy happiness turns to dust at once ... And the claims, of course, not only to the American dream, but to the illusions that modern society as a whole feeds us with.

England, England, 1998

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is a witty, ironic Briton who attracts the reader with his dissimilarity from the rest. This book is a kind of satirical utopia that urges people not to confuse the legends of their country's past with what it is in the present. Nostalgia for a never-existed "golden age" pushed businessman Jack Pitman to create the England, England project - a theme park that brings together everything that personifies good old England in the eyes of the whole world.

Disgrace, 1999

J.M. Coetzee

South African Coetzee is a two-time Booker Prize winner, this is a unique case. In 1983 he already received this award for the novel The Life and Times of Michael K.. In 2003, Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The main character of the book, a university professor, because of the scandalous story with a student, is literally deprived of everything: work, the benevolence of society and leaves to live with his lesbian daughter in a distant province. A polemic novel, Coetzee's answer to the question posed by Franz Kafka: to be or not to be a person, if life has reduced him to the state of an insect in the eyes of others, should he become zero or start from scratch?

White teeth, 2000

Zadie Smith

People of different races and nationalities, crises of adolescence and middle age, unhappy love and all that stuff: a brilliant comic story that tells about friendship, love, war, earthquake, three cultures, three families over three generations and one very unusual mouse. Zadie Smith is sharp on the tongue: tartly and sarcastically ridicules human stupidity. Raising a lot of problems to the surface, he does not give answers to questions, but rather suggests analyzing or confessing, recognizing himself.

Atonement, 2001

Ian McEwan

This book could very well be number one on the list of books with an unusual plot. In pre-war England there was a rich girl and the son of a gardener, whom she was going to marry. The youngest sister of the girl dreams of being a writer and exercises in observing and interpreting human words and deeds. And now, in her opinion, her sister's beloved is a dangerous maniac. And when the girls' cousin is really raped by someone, the future writer testifies against her sister's fiancé. Of course he was innocent. Of course, my sister broke off relations with the whole family. Of course, the youngest of the sisters becomes a writer and, driven by remorse, writes a novel about this story, a novel with a happy ending. But can he change something?

Every man's heart, 2002

William Boyd

The novel is built in the form of the personal diary of a fictional character - the writer Logan Mountstuart. The events of the hero's long life (1906-1991) are woven into the fabric of history: Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Picasso, Hemingway appear in the novel. The hero is noddingly familiar with almost all the significant artists and writers of the 20th century: he bows in the streets and talks at parties. But this is not a historical novel; iconic figures are just a background or even a means to show the life of a typical European intellectual from the inside.

The Mysterious Nighttime Murder of a Dog, 2003

Mark Haddon

Christopher Boone, 15, is autistic. He lives in a small town with his father. And then one day someone killed a neighbor's dog, and the boy is the main suspect. To investigate the mysterious murder of an animal, he writes down all the facts, although his father forbids him to interfere in this story. Christopher has a sharp mind, he is strong in mathematics, but he understands little in everyday life. He cannot stand touch, does not trust strangers and never leaves the usual path alone. Christopher does not yet know that the investigation will turn his whole life upside down.

Small Island, 2004

Andrea Levy

The novel, set in 1948, touches on the themes of empire, prejudice, war and love. This is a kind of comedy of mistakes, played out in 1948. It was then that Andrea Levy's parents came to the UK from Jamaica, and their story formed the basis of the novel. The protagonist of "Little Island" returns from the war, but a peaceful life on the "big" island is not so easy and cloudless.

Something Wrong With Kevin, 2005

Lionel Shriver

The book has also been translated with the title "The Price of Dislike". Difficult, hard book about how to live if your child has committed a terrible crime. What questions to ask yourself as a parent? What are you missing? Something was always wrong with Kevin, but nobody did anything about it.

Road, 2006

Cormac McCarthy

This novel has won many awards: the British James Tate Black Memorial Award in 2006 and the American Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A terrible catastrophe has destroyed the United States and an unnamed father and son, still a boy, are moving through the territory, which is ruled by gangs of marauders and thugs, to the sea.

Half of the yellow sun, 2007

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

The book traces the fates of five main characters: the twin daughters (the beauties of Olanna and the rebel Kainene), an influential entrepreneur, the professor, his boy servant Ugwu, and the British journalist-writer Richard. Each of them has their own plans for the future and dreams, which are broken by the war. The action takes place against the backdrop of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). Readers have called Adichie's novel "The African Kite Runner", and British critics have awarded him the prestigious Orange Prize.

Outcast, 2008

Sadie Jones

1957 year. Young Lewis Aldridge returns home after serving two years for a crime that shocked sleepy Surrey. Lewis is destined to go through the path of disappointment and loss, not counting on the support of others, in danger of being broken. And only on the verge of despair he will again be given love, love as salvation ...

Little stranger, 2009

Sarah Waters

End of World War II. England. The previously brilliant family of local landowners fell into decay. Lands are being sold, the farm is unprofitable, the luxurious mansion is decaying, and its dying destroys the psyche of the remaining inhabitants: an old lady with traces of former greatness, who yearns for her first-born daughter who died in childhood, and her children - an ugly daughter who sat in girls and her son crippled in the war, on which all the burdens of the head of a ruined family fall. All events are shown through the eyes of a kind doctor, whose kindness under the finale becomes very doubtful. There is also a ghost living in the estate.

Wolfhall, 2010

Hilary Mantel

You know Cromwell's name. Only you think of Oliver Cromwell, and the main character of this book, which Viv Groskop, art director of the Bath Literary Festival, calls the best of the twenty on offer, is a guy named Thomas Cromwell. He is the son of a rowdy blacksmith, a political genius whose tools are bribery, threats and flattery. His goal is to transform England in accordance with his will and the wishes of the king, whom he faithfully serves, because if Henry VIII dies without leaving an heir, then a civil war is inevitable in the country.

Time Laughs Last, 2011

Jennifer Egan

The book "Time Laughs Last" brought the author world fame and the most prestigious literary award in the United States - the Pulitzer Prize. There are many heroes in this book. A whole tangle. But the most important, central character is Time. And it laughs the last. The youth of the heroes coincides with the birth of punk-rock, and it forever enters their lives, and for some it becomes a vocation. The book itself is structured like a musical album: its two parts are called “Side A” and “Side B”, and each of the thirteen independent chapters, like songs, has its own theme. Life is not generous to everyone, but everyone in their own way tries to resist time and remain faithful to themselves and their dreams.

On the verge of miracles, 2012

Anne Patchett

A brave and risky girl Marina Singh is looking for a miracle, and her sixth sense tells her that it is here, in the vicinity of the Amazon, that she will find what she is looking for. Search and adventure, and such different versions of the "truth." Will the heroine have enough strength?

Life after life, 2013

Kate Atkinson

Imagine having the opportunity to live life over and over again until it works out right. The main character is born and dies before she can breathe. And then he is born again, survives and tells the story of his life. Tells over and over again. Until it turns out to live the twentieth century correctly: to escape from the treacherous waves; avoid a fatal disease; find a ball rolled into the bushes; learn to shoot so as not to miss the Fuhrer.

Goldfinch, 2014

Donna Tartt

This novel has won numerous literary awards, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel is named after the painting The Goldfinch (1654) by the famous Dutch artist Karel Fabricius, which plays an important role in the fate of the book's protagonist. Stephen King also expressed his admiration for the novel, adding: “There are no more than five books like The Goldfinch in ten years. It is written both with the mind and with the soul. Donna Tartt presented to the public a brilliant novel "

A Brief History of the Seven Murders, 2015

Marlon James

On October 13, 2015, Marlon James was named the winner of the Booker Prize. James is the first Jamaican to enter the competition. His novel topped the list of best books all year, and its main characteristic is the cinematic storytelling. The book tells about the attempts on Bob Marley's life in the 1970s, uncovered three decades later, in which drug lords, beauty queens, journalists and even the CIA appeared.

Based on materials: theindependent.com.uk