Revolutionary democratic criticism. Russian literary-critical and philosophical thought of the second half of the 19th century. N. Dobrolyubov “What is Oblomovism?”
"New People" and the problems of the future of Russia in the poetry and prose of revolutionary democrats
The 1860s went down in the history of our country as the years of the high rise of the democratic movement. Already during the Crimean War, a wave of peasant protests against the arbitrariness of the landowners was growing. The political situation in the country became especially aggravated after 1855. The defeat of tsarism in the Crimean War, which revealed a deep crisis in the feudal-serf system, the unbearable oppression of the landowners, which fell with all its weight on the shoulders of millions of peasants, and the police brutality that reigned in the country, gave rise to a revolutionary situation. During these years, during the preparation and implementation of the “peasant reform” on February 19, 1861, the peasant movement gained especially wide scope. The largest was the uprising of peasants led by Anton Petrov in the village of Bezdne, Kazan province in April 1861, which was brutally suppressed by tsarist troops. The year 1861 also marked the beginning of serious student protests in St. Petersburg and some other cities, which had a pronounced democratic character. In 1861, the revolutionary organization “Land and Freedom” emerged and began its activities. Proclamations are drawn up and distributed, addressed to democratic youth, peasants, soldiers and calling for an uprising, for resistance to the tsarist authorities and the feudal landowners. "The Bell" by Herzen and Ogarev and other uncensored publications are widely distributed in Russia and contribute to the development of the democratic movement.
During these years, the most important issue for democratic revolutionaries is the question of preparing a democratic peasant revolution, of merging the scattered actions of peasants and democratic youth into a general offensive against the existing system. The ideological leaders of the unfolding movement, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, prepared the democratic forces of society for this.
On the uniqueness of Russian literary criticism.“As long as our poetry is alive and well, there is no reason to doubt the deep health of the Russian people,” wrote critic N. N. Strakhov, and his like-minded Apollo Grigoriev considered Russian literature “the only focus of all our highest interests.” V. G. Belinsky bequeathed to his friends to put in his coffin an issue of the magazine “Domestic Notes”, and the classic of Russian satire M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in his farewell letter to his son said: “Above all, love your native literature and prefer the title of writer to any other.” . According to N.G. Chernyshevsky, our literature was elevated to the dignity of a national cause that united the most viable forces of Russian society. In the minds of the 19th century reader, literature was not only “fine literature”, but also the basis of the spiritual existence of the nation. The Russian writer treated his work in a special way: for him it was not a profession, but a ministry. Chernyshevsky called literature a “textbook of life,” and Leo Tolstoy was subsequently surprised that these words did not belong to him, but to his ideological opponent. The artistic exploration of life in Russian classical literature never turned into a purely aesthetic pursuit; it always pursued a living spiritual and practical goal. “The word was perceived not as an empty sound, but as a deed - almost as “religiously” as the ancient Karelian singer Veinemeinen, who “made a boat with singing.” Gogol also harbored this belief in the miraculous power of the word, dreaming of creating such a book that itself, by the power of the only and indisputably true thoughts expressed in it, should transform Russia,” notes modern literary critic G. D. Gachev. Belief in the effective, world-transforming power of the artistic word also determined the features of Russian literary criticism. From literary problems it always rose to social problems that were directly related to the fate of the country, the people, the nation. The Russian critic did not limit himself to discussions about artistic form and the skill of the writer. Analyzing a literary work, he came up with questions that life posed to the writer and reader. The focus of criticism on a wide range of readers made it very popular: the authority of the critic in Russia was great and his articles were perceived as original works that enjoyed success on a par with literature. Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century develops more dramatically. The social life of the country at this time became unusually complicated, many political trends arose that argued with each other. The picture of the literary process also turned out to be motley and multi-layered. Therefore, criticism has become more diverse compared to the era of the 30s and 40s, when all the diversity of critical assessments was covered by the authoritative word of Belinsky. Like Pushkin in literature, Belinsky was a kind of universalist in criticism: he combined sociological, aesthetic, and stylistic approaches in evaluating works, covering the literary movement as a whole with a single gaze. In the second half of the 19th century, Belinsky’s critical universalism turned out to be unique. Critical thought specialized in certain areas and schools. Even Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the most versatile critics with a broad social outlook, could no longer claim not only to embrace the literary movement in its entirety, but also to provide a holistic interpretation of an individual work. Sociological approaches predominated in their work. Literary development as a whole and the place of an individual work in it was now revealed by the entire set of critical movements and schools. Apollo Grigoriev, for example, arguing with Dobrolyubov’s assessments of A. N. Ostrovsky, noticed facets in the playwright’s work that eluded Dobrolyubov. A critical understanding of the works of Turgenev or Leo Tolstoy cannot be reduced to the assessments of Dobrolyubov or Chernyshevsky. N. N. Strakhov’s works on “Fathers and Sons” and “War and Peace” significantly deepen and clarify them. The depth of understanding of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is not exhausted by Dobrolyubov’s classic article “What is Oblomovism?”: A. V. Druzhinin introduces significant clarifications into the understanding of Oblomov’s character.
Literary-critical activity of revolutionary democrats . The social, social-critical pathos of the articles of the late Belinsky with his socialist beliefs was picked up and developed in the sixties by the revolutionary democratic critics Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov. By 1859, when the government program and views of the liberal parties became clearer, when it became obvious that reform “from above” in any of its variants would be half-hearted, the democratic revolutionaries moved from a shaky alliance with liberalism to a severance of relations and an uncompromising fight against it. The literary-critical activity of N. A. Dobrolyubov falls on this second stage of the social movement of the 60s. He devotes a special satirical section of the Sovremennik magazine called “Whistle” to denouncing liberals. Here Dobrolyubov acts not only as a critic, but also as a satirical poet. Criticism of liberalism then alerted A. I. Herzen, (*11) who, being in exile, unlike Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, continued to hope for reforms “from above” and overestimated the radicalism of liberals until 1863. However, Herzen's warnings did not stop the revolutionary democrats of Sovremennik. Beginning in 1859, they began to pursue the idea of a peasant revolution in their articles. They considered the peasant community to be the core of the future socialist world order. Unlike the Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov believed that communal ownership of land rested not on Christian, but on the revolutionary-liberation, socialist instincts of the Russian peasant. Dobrolyubov became the founder of the original critical method. He saw that the majority of Russian writers do not share the revolutionary-democratic way of thinking and do not pronounce judgment on life from such radical positions. Dobrolyubov saw the task of his criticism as completing in his own way the work begun by the writer and formulating this verdict, relying on real events and artistic images of the work. Dobrolyubov called his method of understanding the writer’s work “real criticism.” Real criticism “examines whether such a person is possible and real; having found that it is true to reality, it moves on to its own considerations about the reasons that gave rise to it, etc. If these reasons are indicated in the work of the author being analyzed, criticism uses them and thanks the author; if not, does not pester him with a knife to his throat - how, they say, did he dare to draw such a face without explaining the reasons for its existence? "In this case, the critic takes the initiative into his own hands: he explains the reasons that gave rise to this or that phenomenon from a revolutionary-democratic position and then pronounces a verdict on it. Dobrolyubov positively evaluates, for example, Goncharov's novel "Oblomov", although the author "does not give , apparently, does not want to give any conclusions." It is enough that he "presents you with a living image and vouches only for its similarity with reality." For Dobrolyubov, such authorial objectivity is quite acceptable and even desirable, since he takes the explanation and the verdict on himself. Real criticism often led Dobrolyubov to a kind of reinterpretation of the writer’s artistic images in a revolutionary-democratic way. It turned out that the analysis of the work, which developed into an understanding of the pressing problems of our time, led Dobrolyubov to such radical conclusions that were in no way the author himself assumed. On this basis, as we will see later, Turgenev’s decisive break with the Sovremennik magazine occurred when Dobrolyubov’s article about the novel “On the Eve” was published in it. In Dobrolyubov’s articles, the young, strong nature of a talented critic comes to life, sincerely believing in the people, in whom he sees the embodiment of all his highest moral ideals, with whom he associates the only hope for the revival of society. “His passion is deep and persistent, and obstacles do not frighten him when they need to be overcome to achieve something passionately desired and deeply conceived,” writes Dobrolyubov about the Russian peasant in the article “Traits for Characterizing the Russian Common People.” All the critic’s activities were aimed at the struggle for the creation of a “party of the people in literature.” He devoted four years of tireless work to this struggle, writing nine volumes of essays in such a short time. Dobrolyubov literally burned himself out in his selfless journal work, which undermined his health. He died at the age of 25 on November 17, 1861. Nekrasov said heartfeltly about the premature death of his young friend: But your hour struck too early and the prophetic pen fell from your hands. What a lamp of reason has gone out! What heart has stopped beating! The decline of the social movement of the 60s. Disputes between Sovremennik and Russian Word . At the end of the 60s, dramatic changes took place in Russian social life and critical thought. The manifesto of February 19, 1861 on the liberation of the peasants not only did not soften, but further aggravated the contradictions. In response to the rise of the revolutionary democratic movement, the government launched an open attack on progressive thought: Chernyshevsky and D.I. Pisarev were arrested, and the publication of the Sovremennik magazine was suspended for eight months. The situation is aggravated by a split within the revolutionary democratic movement, the main reason for which was disagreement in the assessment of the revolutionary socialist capabilities of the peasantry. Activists of the "Russian Word" Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev and Varfolomey Aleksandrovich Zaitsev sharply criticized Sovremennik for (*13) its alleged idealization of the peasantry, for an exaggerated idea of the revolutionary instincts of the Russian peasant. Unlike Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, Pisarev argued that the Russian peasant is not ready for a conscious struggle for freedom, that for the most part he is dark and downtrodden. Pisarev considered the revolutionary force of modern times to be the “mental proletariat,” the common revolutionaries who bring natural science knowledge to the people. This knowledge not only destroys the foundations of the official ideology (Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality), but also opens the people’s eyes to the natural needs of human nature, which are based on the instinct of “social solidarity.” Therefore, enlightening the people with natural sciences can lead society to socialism not only by a revolutionary (“mechanical”), but also by an evolutionary (“chemical”) path. In order for this “chemical” transition to take place faster and more efficiently, Pisarev proposed that Russian democracy be guided by the “principle of economy of force.” The “mental proletariat” must concentrate all its energy on destroying the spiritual foundations of the existing society through propaganda of natural sciences among the people. In the name of so-understood “spiritual liberation,” Pisarev, like Turgenev’s hero Yevgeny Bazarov, proposed abandoning art. He really believed that “a decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,” and recognized art only to the extent that it participates in the propaganda of natural science and destroys the foundations of the existing system. In the article “Bazarov” he glorified the triumphant nihilist, and in the article “Motives of Russian Drama” he “crushed” the heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”, erected on a pedestal by Dobrolyubov. Destroying the idols of the “old” society, Pisarev published the infamous anti-Pushkin articles and the work “The Destruction of Aesthetics.” The fundamental differences that emerged during the polemics between Sovremennik and Russian Word weakened the revolutionary camp and were a symptom of the decline of the social movement. Social rise of the 70s. By the beginning of the 70s, the first signs of a new social upsurge associated with the activities of the revolutionary populists were visible in Russia. The second generation of democratic revolutionaries, who made a heroic attempt to rouse the peasants to (*14) revolution by “going to the people,” had their own ideologists who, in new historical conditions, developed the ideas of Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. “Faith in a special way of life, in the communal system of Russian life; hence faith in the possibility of a peasant socialist revolution - this is what animated them, raised tens and hundreds of people to heroic struggle against the government,” V. I. Lenin wrote about the populists of the seventies . This faith, to one degree or another, permeated all the works of the leaders and mentors of the new movement - P. L. Lavrov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, M. A. Bakunin, P. N. Tkachev. The mass “going to the people” ended in 1874 with the arrest of several thousand people and the subsequent trials of 193 and 50. In 1879, at a congress in Voronezh, the populist organization "Land and Freedom" split: "politicians" who shared Tkachev's ideas organized their own party "People's Will", proclaiming the main goal of the movement to be a political coup and terrorist forms of struggle against the government. In the summer of 1880, Narodnaya Volya organized an explosion in the Winter Palace, and Alexander II miraculously escaped death. This event causes shock and confusion in the government: it decides to make concessions by appointing the liberal Loris-Melikov as plenipotentiary ruler and appealing to the liberal public of the country for support. In response, the sovereign receives notes from Russian liberals, which propose to immediately convene an independent assembly of representatives of zemstvos to participate in governing the country “with the aim of developing guarantees and individual rights, freedom of thought and speech.” It seemed that Russia was on the verge of adopting a parliamentary form of government. But on March 1, 1881, an irreparable mistake was made. After multiple assassination attempts, the Narodnaya Volya members kill Alexander II, and after this, a government reaction occurs in the country.
Pisarev
It is precisely at this time that the most intense literary
Pisarev's activities. He came to the democratic movement towards the end of the revolutionary situation of 1859-1861. Soon after starting his activities in democratic journalism, he was subjected to a long prison sentence. His release coincided with an even more brutal offensive of reaction after Karakozov's shot in 1866. The magazine in which he had worked until that time was closed, and new repressions rained down on democratic literature. And just two years after his release, a tragic death cut short the life of the young critic.
The difficult conditions in which Pisarev’s brilliant, but short-lived activity in the democratic press unfolded, and especially the general difficult situation for the democratic movement, starting in 1862, but could not be reflected in the direction of this activity, could not help but affect the individual contradictions inherent in Pisarev.
But for all that, Pisarev was a typical “man of the sixties,” a leading fighter of the democratic movement. The main thing that catches the eye in his works, often written under the vivid impression of heavy losses, defeats and difficulties experienced by the democratic movement, is a feeling of deep, militant optimism, a firm conviction in the inevitability of movement forward, confidence in the final victory of the forces of democracy, constant combat the spirit and youthful enthusiasm of a fighter.
We cannot help but be struck by the intensity of Pisarev’s literary activity, the variety of his interests as a thinker and critic, so indicative in general for revolutionary democratic writers of the 1860s. In just over seven years of work in the democratic press, he wrote more than fifty major articles and essays, not counting reviews, and meanwhile during this time his journal activity was interrupted twice.
Throughout his entire activity in 1861-1868, Pisarev remained in the ranks of conscious fighters for a better future for his homeland Turgenev He began as a poet. V. G. Belinsky, with whom Turgenev later became friends and who exerted a spiritual influence on him, highly valued his poetic creativity. The first critically acclaimed poetic work was the poem “Parasha” (1843). In 1844 - 1845, Turgenev wrote his first stories and tried his hand at drama. In the plays “The Freeloader”, “Provincial Woman”, “A Month in the Village” Turgenev touches on themes that he would turn to later: the whimsicality of human destinies, the fleetingness of human happiness. These plays were performed successfully on stage, and critics responded favorably to them. “Turgenev made an attempt to elevate drama to the pinnacle where it comes into contact with the area of everyday tragedy,” wrote Russian theater historian N. N. Dolgov years later.
In conversations, Belinsky constantly urged the writer to turn to depicting peasant life. “The people are the soil,” he said, “keeping the vital juices of all development; personality is the fruit of this soil.” Turgenev spent the summer months in the village, hunting, communicating with peasant hunters, who maintained self-esteem, an independent mind, sensitivity to the life of nature, and revealed to the writer the everyday life of the common people. Turgenev came to the conclusion that serfdom did not destroy the living forces of the people, that “in the Russian man lies and matures the germ of future great deeds, great national development.” Hunting turned for the writer into a way of studying the entire structure of people's life, the inner structure of the people's soul, which is not always accessible to an outside observer.
At the beginning of 1847, Turgenev’s short essay “Khor and Kalinich” was published in the Sovremennik magazine, which the publisher published under the title “From the Notes of a Hunter.” The success of the essay was great and unexpected for the author. Belinsky explained it by the fact that in this work Turgenev “... approached the people from the side from which no one had approached them before.” The economical Khor with the “disposition of the face” of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, with practical sense and practical nature, with a strong and clear mind, and the poetically gifted “idealist” Kalinich are the two poles of the peasant world. They were not just representatives of their environment, but bright and original characters. In them, the writer showed the fundamental forces of the nation that determine its viability, the prospects for its further growth and formation.
Turgenev decided to write more stories, united in the general cycle “Notes of a Hunter,” most of which were written abroad. They were published as a separate book in 1852 and became not only a literary event. They played a significant role in preparing public opinion for future reforms in Russia. Readers saw in Turgenev’s book a sharp criticism of the landowner life of Russia. “Notes of a Hunter” convinced them of the need to abolish serfdom as the basis of the entire social system of Russia. The censor who allowed the book to go into print was removed from office, and the writer himself was first arrested: formally - for violating censorship rules when publishing an article dedicated to the memory of Gogol, truly - for “Notes of a Hunter” and connections with the progressive circles of revolutionary Europe - Bakunin, Herzen, Herweg. Later he was exiled to Spasskoye-Lutovinovo.
Turgenev was not the first Russian writer to write about the people. But the true artistic discovery was the depiction of a simple Russian peasant as a person, a “person.” Turgenev's peasant heroes are by no means idealized people, inseparable from their way of life with their worries and needs, and at the same time always unique, and often bright individuals. The writer portrayed ordinary peasants with great sympathy and showed that in conditions of poverty and oppression, peasants were able to maintain their intelligence, self-esteem, poetic and musical talent, and faith in a better life. At the same time, Turgenev discovered in Russian literature the theme of contradictions and contrasts in the consciousness and morality of the Russian peasantry. Rebellion and lackeyness, dreams of freedom and admiration for the master's authority, protest and humility, spiritual talent and indifference to one's own fate, worldly sharpness and complete lack of initiative - all these properties existed side by side, often turning into one another.
F. I. Tyutchev, having read “Notes of a Hunter,” especially emphasized the book’s inherent “combination of reality in the depiction of human life with everything that is hidden in it, and the hidden nature with all its poetry.” Nature is, indeed, the second hero of the book, equal with man. It crowns the living, holistic image of people's Russia. The accuracy of Turgenev's landscape and its volume have long been noted. In “Notes of a Hunter” the description of nature is determined, firstly, by the plot - we look at everything as if through the eyes of the author-“hunter”, and secondly, by Turgenev’s own philosophy of nature: the peasant lives one life with nature, peasant existence is inseparably connected with it ; all nature is alive, in every blade of grass there is a special world, which has its own laws and its own secrets. The best heroes of the book are not simply depicted “against the backdrop” of nature, but act as a continuation of its elements.
The anti-serfdom pathos of “Notes of a Hunter” lies in the fact that the writer added a gallery of living souls to Gogol’s gallery of dead souls. The peasants in “Notes of a Hunter” are serfs, dependent people, but serfdom did not turn them into slaves: spiritually they are freer and richer than their pitiful masters. The existence of strong, courageous, bright national characters turned serfdom into a shame and humiliation of Russia, into a social phenomenon incomparable with the moral dignity of the Russian person. The official order in which strong and gifted people are ruled by cruel, inhuman and narrow-minded tyrant landowners looks wild and scary. At the same time, in subsequent stories (“Mumu”, “Inn”) Turgenev notes that centuries of serfdom have weaned the people from feeling like the master of their native land, a citizen, that the Russian peasant is ready to submit to evil. And this is another reason for denouncing serfdom.
“Notes of a Hunter” contrasts two Russias: official, feudal, deadening life, on the one hand, and folk-peasant, living and poetic life, on the other hand. But the image of “Live Russia” is not socially homogeneous. There is a whole group of nobles endowed with national-Russian character traits. The book repeatedly emphasizes that serfdom is hostile to both the human dignity of the peasant and the moral nature of the nobleman, that it is a national evil that has a detrimental effect on the life of both classes.
In “Notes of a Hunter,” Turgenev first experienced Russia as a single artistic whole. The central idea of the book is the harmonious unity of the vital forces of Russian society. His book opens the 60s in the history of Russian literature and anticipates them. A direct connection from “Notes of a Hunter” goes to “Notes from the House of the Dead” by Dostoevsky, “Provincial Sketches” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, “War and Peace” by Tolstoy.
The range of Turgenev's creativity is unusually wide. He writes works (novels, stories, plays) in which he illuminates the life of various strata of Russian society. The writer is looking for ways leading to the transformation of the social structure of Russia. The will and intelligence, righteousness and kindness that he discovered in the Russian peasant already seem to him insufficient for this purpose. The peasantry is relegated to the periphery of his work. Turgenev addresses people from the educated class. In the novel "Rudin", written in 1855, its characters belong to the intelligentsia, who were fond of philosophy, dreamed of a bright future for Russia, but could do practically nothing for this, and the main character is largely autobiographical: he received a good philosophical education at the Berlin university. Rudin is a brilliant speaker, he captivates society with brilliant philosophical improvisations about the meaning of life, about the high purpose of man, but in everyday life he does not know how to clarify things clearly and accurately, and does not feel well about those around him. This is a novel about the failure of noble idealism.
Turgenev once again tries to find a hero of his time in noble society in the novel about the historical fate of the Russian nobility “The Noble Nest”, written in 1858, when revolutionary democrats and liberals were still fighting together against serfdom, but a split had already emerged between them. Turgenev sharply criticizes the groundlessness of the nobility - the separation of the class from its native culture, from the people, from Russian roots. For example, the father of the hero of Lavretsky’s novel spent his entire life abroad, in all his hobbies he is infinitely far from Russia and the Russian people. He is a supporter of the constitution, but at the same time he cannot stand the sight of his “fellow citizens” - the peasants. Turgenev feared that the nobles' groundlessness could cause many troubles to Russia, and warned about the catastrophic consequences of those reforms that “are not justified either by knowledge of their native land or by faith in the ideal.”
At the end of the novel, Lavretsky greets the younger generation: “Play, have fun, grow young forces...” At that time, such a finale was perceived as Turgenev’s farewell to the noble period of the Russian liberation movement and the advent of a new one, where the main characters were commoners. These are people of action, fighters for the education of the people. Their mental and moral superiority over representatives of the noble intelligentsia is undeniable. Turgenev was called “the chronicler of the Russian intelligentsia.” He sensitively captured the hidden movements, feelings and thoughts of the “cultural layer” of Russian people and in his novels he embodied not only already existing types and ideals, but also those barely emerging. Such heroes appear in Turgenev’s novels “On the Eve” (1860) and “Fathers and Sons” (1862): the Bulgarian revolutionary Dmitry Insarov and the commoner democrat Evgeniy Bazarov.
The hero of the novel “On the Eve” by Dmitry Insarov completely lacks a contradiction between word and deed. He is not busy with himself, all his thoughts are aimed at achieving the highest goal: the liberation of his homeland, Bulgaria. Even his love turned out to be incompatible with this struggle. Social issues are in the foreground in the novel. “Notice,” says Insarov, “the last man, the last beggar in Bulgaria and I - we want the same thing. We all have the same goal."
The novel “Fathers and Sons” is full of democratic ideology. In it, Turgenev depicted a person in diverse and complex connections with other people, with society, touching on both social and moral conflicts. In the work, not only representatives of different social groups - liberals and revolutionary democrats - collide, but also different generations. The central place in the novel is occupied by the conflict of ideological opponents: Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - the representative of the “fathers”, and Evgeny Bazarov - the representative of the “children”. In the image of the main character Evgeny Bazarov - a man of extraordinary intelligence and abilities, possessing high moral qualities and a noble soul - we see an artistic synthesis of the most significant aspects of the worldview of a heterogeneous democracy. At the same time, Bazarov is an extreme individualist, mercilessly denying morality, love, and poetry. In the novel he is characterized as a nihilist.
Turgenev dreamed of uniting social forces to prepare for the coming changes. He wrote these novels with the secret hope that Russian society would heed his warnings, that the “right” and “left” would come to their senses and stop the fratricidal disputes that threaten both themselves and the fate of Russia with tragedy. He believed that his novels would serve to unite social forces. This calculation did not come true. Revolutionary democrats interpreted these novels in their own way. Publication in the Sovremennik magazine of Dobrolyubov’s article “When will the real day come?” with criticism of the novel “On the Eve” led to Turgenev’s break with the magazine with which he had collaborated for many years. And the appearance of the novel “Fathers and Sons” only accelerated the process of ideological demarcation of Russian society, causing an effect opposite to what was expected. The topic of two generations, two ideologies turned out to be very relevant, and a heated debate erupted in the press. Friends and like-minded people accused Turgenev of exalting Bazarov and belittling his “fathers,” and of currying favor with the younger generation. The critic Pisarev, on the contrary, found in him all the best and necessary traits for a young revolutionary who still has no scope for his activities. In Sovremennik they saw in the image of Bazarov an evil caricature of the younger generation. In the context of the mobilization of democratic forces for a decisive struggle against the autocracy, Turgenev’s critical attitude towards the ideas of heterogeneous democracy, which was reflected in the development of the image of Bazarov, was perceived by the figures of Sovremennik as a deliberately hostile act. Offended by the rude and tactless polemics, Turgenev leaves abroad. He intends to complete his literary activity and writes his last stories - “Ghosts” (1864) and “Enough” (1865). They are imbued with deep sorrow, thoughts about the frailty of love, beauty and even art.
All of Turgenev’s works affirm faith in the world-transforming power of beauty, in the creative power of art. With Turgenev, not only did the poetic image of the companion of the Russian hero, the “Turgenev girl” enter into life. The writer chooses the period of a woman’s heyday, when a girl’s soul stirs in anticipation of her chosen one, such an excess of vitality is emitted that will not receive a response or earthly embodiment, but will remain a tempting promise of something infinitely higher and more perfect, a guarantee of eternity. In addition, all Turgenev's heroes pass the test of love. Turgenev wrote lyrical, largely autobiographical stories - a kind of trilogy about the evil fate that haunts lovers, about the fact that a person in love is a slave to his feelings - the stories “Asya” (1858), “First Love” (1860) and "Spring Waters" (1872). It must be said that in many of Turgenev’s works, inexplicable higher powers triumph over man, controlling his life and death.
The writer's last major works were the novels “Smoke” (1867) and “New” (1876). The novel “Smoke” revealed the extreme Westernizing views of Turgenev, who in the monologues of the hero Potugin expressed many evil thoughts about the history and significance of Russia, the only salvation of which is to tirelessly learn from the West. To the main character of the novel, Litvinov, watching the smoke from the window of the carriage, it suddenly seemed that everything Russian, his own life, was smoke that “disappears without a trace, achieving nothing...”. This novel deepened the misunderstanding between Turgenev and the Russian public. The writer was accused of slandering Russia and criticizing revolutionary emigration.
In the novel “New,” Turgenev publicly spoke out on a topical topic: the birth of a new social movement - populism. The main thing in the novel is the clashes between different parties and layers of Russian society, primarily between revolutionary agitators and peasants. The populists have never been close to the people, but they are trying to serve them. Therefore, their attempts to “agitate” the dense peasants and call them to revolt inevitably lead to bitter disappointments and even to the suicide of one of the heroes. According to Turgenev, the future does not belong to impatient troublemakers, but to sober supporters of slow change, people of action.
In the late 60s - early 80s, Turgenev created a number of novels and short stories in which he refers to the historical past of Russia ("Brigadier", "King of the Steppes Lear", "Punin and Baburin"), such mysterious phenomena of the human psyche, as hypnosis and suggestion (“Klara Milich”, “Song of Triumphant Love”), supplemented “Notes of a Hunter” with several stories conceived back in the 40s (“The End of Tchertopkhanov”, “Living Relics”, “Knocking!”), thereby strengthening the artistic unity of the book.
With the cycle of “Poems in Prose” (the first part was published in 1882), Turgenev, as it were, summed up his life and work. All the leading motives of his work are reflected in lyrical miniatures: from a song to Russian nature (“Village”), thoughts about Russia, about love, about the insignificance of human existence, about the meaningfulness and fruitfulness of suffering, to a hymn to the Russian language: “But one cannot help but believe, so that such a language would not be given to a great people!” ("Russian language").
Turgenev's literary merits were highly appreciated not only in Russia. In the summer of 1879, he received news that the University of Oxford in England had awarded him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for promoting the liberation of peasants with “Notes of a Hunter.”
Chernyshevsky
Chernyshevsky noted with chagrin that after the death of V. G. Belinsky, during the era of the “gloomy seven years,” his former friends A. V. Druzhinin, P. V. Annenkov, V. P. Botkin moved away from the principles of revolutionary democratic criticism. Based on the aesthetic teachings of the German idealist philosopher Hegel, they believed that artistic creativity is independent of reality, that a real writer moves away from the contradictions of life into a pure and worldly vanity-free sphere of eternal ideals of goodness, truth, (*140) beauty. These eternal values are not discovered in life by art, but, on the contrary, are brought into life by it, making up for its fatal imperfection, its irremovable disharmony and incompleteness. Only art can give the ideal of perfect beauty, which cannot be embodied in the surrounding reality. Such aesthetic views distracted the writer’s attention from issues of social reconstruction, depriving art of its effective character, its ability to renew and improve life. In his dissertation “Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality,” Chernyshevsky spoke out against this “slavish admiration for old, long-outlived opinions.” For about two years he sought permission to defend her: university circles were alarmed and frightened by the “spirit of free research and free criticism” contained in her. Finally, on May 10, 1855, the long-awaited event took place at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. According to the recollection of Chernyshevsky’s friend and like-minded person N.V. Shelgunov, “the small audience reserved for the debate was jam-packed with listeners. There were also students, but it seems there were more strangers, officers and civilian youth. It was very crowded, so the listeners stood on the windows... Chernyshevsky defended his dissertation with his usual modesty, but with the firmness of an unshakable conviction. After the debate, Pletnev turned to Chernyshevsky with the following remark: “It seems that this is not what I read to you at the lectures!” And indeed, this is not what Pletnev read , and what he read would not have been able to lead the public into the delight into which the dissertation led them. Everything in it was new and everything was tempting...” Chernyshevsky really solves in a new way in the dissertation the basic question of aesthetics about the beautiful : “beautiful is life”, “beautiful is that being in which we see life as it should be according to our concepts.” Unlike Hegel and his Russian followers, Chernyshevsky sees the source of beauty not in art, but in life. The forms of beauty are not brought into life by art, but exist objectively, independently of art in reality itself. By affirming the formula “beauty is life,” Chernyshevsky realizes that the forms of beauty that objectively exist in life are themselves aesthetically neutral. They are recognized as beautiful only in the light of certain human concepts. But what then is the criterion of beauty? Maybe the formula is true that there is no arguing about tastes, maybe how many people there are, so many concepts of beauty? Chernyshevsky shows that people’s tastes are far from arbitrary, that they are determined socially: different classes of society have different ideas about beauty. Moreover, true, healthy tastes are represented by those classes of society that lead a working lifestyle: “for a villager, the concept of “life” always includes the concept of work: you cannot live without work...” And therefore, “in the descriptions of a beauty in folk songs there is no one sign of beauty, which would not be an expression of flourishing health and balance of strength in the body, the always-present consequence of a life of contentment with constant and serious, but not excessive work.” And vice versa, a secular “semi-airy” beauty seems decidedly “nondescript” to the villager, and even makes an unpleasant impression on him, because he is accustomed to considering “thinness” a consequence of illness or a “bitter lot.” It is clear that Chernyshevsky's dissertation was the first manifesto of democratic aesthetics in Russia. Subordinating the ideal to the real, the art of reality, Chernyshevsky created a fundamentally new aesthetic theory, not of an idealistic, but of a materialistic type. His work, greeted with enthusiasm by young people of all ranks, irritated many prominent Russian writers. Turgenev, for example, called it “unheard-of abomination and impudence.” This was due to the fact that Chernyshevsky was destroying the foundation of idealistic aesthetics, on which an entire generation of Russian cultural nobles of the 30s and 40s was raised. In addition, Chernyshevsky’s youthful work was not free from obvious errors and simplifications. “When a stick is bent in one direction,” he said, “it can be straightened only by bending in the opposite direction: this is the law of social life.” There are a lot of such “distortions” in Chernyshevsky’s work. Thus, he claims, for example, that “works of art cannot stand comparison with living reality”: “it is much better to look at the sea itself than at its image, but for lack of the best, a person is content with the worst, for lack of a thing - its surrogate.” Of course, neither Turgenev nor Leo Tolstoy could agree with such a belittling of the role of art. What also irritated them in Chernyshevsky’s dissertation was the utilitarian, applied understanding of art, when it was assigned the role of a simple illustration of certain scientific truths. Turgenev for a long time (*142) remembered Chernyshevsky’s passage, which offended his artistic nature, and in a slightly modified form put it into Bazarov’s mouth. Looking at an album with views of Saxon Switzerland, Bazarov arrogantly notes to Odintsova that he really has no artistic taste: “... But these views could interest me from a geological point of view, from the point of view of the formation of mountains, for example... The drawing will clearly present to me that , which is presented in the book on ten whole pages.” However, these simplified judgments about art, made in the heat of polemical fervor, do not in the least detract from the truth of the general pathos of Chernyshevsky’s aesthetic views. Following Belinsky, he pushes the boundaries of art in order to enrich its content. “What is generally interesting in life is the content of art,” he asserts. In the same way, Chernyshevsky pushes the boundaries of the aesthetic, which in the works of his predecessors were usually confined to the sphere of art. Chernyshevsky shows that the area of the aesthetic is extremely wide: it covers the entire real world, all of reality. This logically follows Chernyshevsky’s thought about the need to recreate life itself according to the laws of beauty, a thought that corresponds to the deep essence of his revolutionary democratic convictions. In “Essays on the Gogol Period of Russian Literature,” Chernyshevsky showed that the traditions of Belinsky’s criticism of the 40s are still viable. Criticizing the theorists of “pure art”, developing Belinsky’s ideas, Chernyshevsky wrote: “Literature cannot help but be a servant of one or another direction of ideas: this is the purpose that lies in its nature - a purpose that it cannot refuse, even if it wanted to.” The followers of the theory of pure art, which is presented to us as something that should be alien to everyday affairs, are deceived or pretending: the words “art must be independent of life” have always served only as a cover for the struggle against trends in literature that these people did not like, with the goal of making it a servant of another direction that was more to the liking of these people." However, in a dispute with his ideological opponents, Chernyshevsky “goes too far” in the opposite direction: he recognizes the “Gogolian” direction as “meaningful,” while accusing the “Pushkinian” one of “form-creativity.” “Pushkin was primarily a poet of form... In his (*143) works one should not primarily look for deep content, clearly realized and consistent.” In fact, Chernyshevsky is inferior to Pushkin to the liberals. Considering art as one of the forms of socially useful activity, Chernyshevsky clearly underestimates its specificity. He values in art only the momentary, concrete historical content that meets the interests of society at a given moment, and is skeptical about that enduring and eternal that makes a work of real art interesting for different times and different generations. But even in this one-sidedness of Chernyshevsky his temperament as a revolutionary fighter is reflected. In the main thing, he remains right: “Only those areas of literature achieve brilliant development that satisfy the urgent needs of the era.” In his literary critical activity, Chernyshevsky constantly sought to lead the reader to conclusions of a revolutionary nature. At the same time, he was not very interested in what the author wanted to say in his work: the main attention was focused on what was expressed in it involuntarily, sometimes against the author’s wishes. Analyzing Shchedrin’s “Provincial Sketches,” Chernyshevsky sees another, deeper problem behind the denunciations of bribery by provincial officials: “it is necessary to change the circumstances of life itself in a direction where a person will not need to resort to lies, nor to extortion, nor to theft, nor to other actions that discredit him." Addressing Turgenev's story "Asya" in the article "Russian man at rendez-vous", Chernyshevsky is not interested in the artistic explanations of the hero's love failure given by the author. For a critic, the narrator of Turgenev's story is a typical "superfluous man", a noble hero whose time has passed both in life and in literature. Chernyshevsky’s sharp assessment of the “superfluous man”, soon supported by N.A. Dobrolyubov, who in the article “What is Oblomovism?” saw typical noble parasitism in the inaction of Onegin, Pechorin, Rudin, which caused the decisive disagreement of A.I. Herzen. In Kolokol he published two polemical articles on this matter - “Very dangerous!!!” (“Very dangerous!!!”) and “Superfluous people and bile worms.” In them, Herzen protested against the underestimation of the role of the noble intelligentsia in the Russian liberation movement. A disagreement with a man whose opinion had enormous authority in Russia forced Chernyshevsky to go to London for a special explanation with Herzen. But in the conversation, each of the opponents about, etc...................
REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRATIC AESTHETICS in Russia - an outstanding achievement of Russian and world philosophical and aesthetic thought, an organic component of revolutionary democratic ideology, which was a reflection of anti-serfdom revolutionary sentiments in Russian society in the 40-60s. XIX century, the real needs of democratic transformations and the revolutionary situation of pre-reform Russia.
Its revolutionary-democratic character was expressed in the substantiation of the principles of realistic art, which not only truthfully reflects social reality, but also pronounces a verdict on it from the position of the masses. The founder of revolutionary democratic aesthetics, V. G. Belinsky, overcoming the well-known limitations and speculativeness of Hegelian aesthetics, paved the way to a materialist solution to fundamental philosophical and aesthetic problems. N. G. Chernyshevsky systematically outlined the main categories of aesthetics in his dissertation “Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality” and in other works. N. A. Dobrolyubov made a significant contribution to revolutionary democratic materialist aesthetics, applying its methodological principles to the analysis of artistic practice and critical analysis of works of art.
Critically rethinking German philosophical and aesthetic thought, the aesthetics of romanticism, the Western European and Russian Enlightenment of the 18th - early 19th centuries, relying on the great Russian literature, which, starting with Pushkin, sought to get to the root of all social issues, the democratic revolutionaries created a doctrine covering almost all major aesthetic problems. These, first of all, include: analysis of art as a specific form of reflection (reproduction) of reality; justification of realism, nationality, ideology, artistry; the role of fantasy, talent, worldview in the creative process. They paid much attention to the consideration of the subject of artistic creativity, the accuracy of the writer, and his social significance. For the first time in the history of aesthetics, Russian revolutionary democrats made all aesthetic problems derived from the main, cardinal question - the relationship of aesthetic consciousness to reality. They created a system of materialistic views on art, on the categories of aesthetics, which they contrasted with idealistic concepts and theories.
Belinsky persistently argued that “poetry does not invent anything that does not exist in reality.” He gave special credit to Pushkin for the fact that he, “firmly holding on to reality, being its organ, always said something new.” Art, according to Chernyshevsky, should depict life “in the forms of life itself.” It does not borrow its forms from inner subjective or some kind of supersensible life, but uses forms that are organically created by real life.
In an effort to reveal the roots and causes of social evil, democratic revolutionaries formulated the idea of the typical in art as a reflection of the essential features and aspects of reality, specific historical, social circumstances, the economic and social status of classes and groups and their psychology.
In the development of revolutionary democratic aesthetics, much credit goes to M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. His humanism and revolutionary democracy were expressed in the defense of the aesthetic principles of highly ideological realistic art, in the criticism of naturalism.
One of the central problems of Russian aesthetics is the nationality of art. Belinsky demanded from writers the ability to raise the public self-awareness of the people, to write truthfully about their lives, avoiding “the cloying embellishment of the people’s character.” These ideas were developed by Chernyshevsky. He proved that the idea of the veracity of a work of art is impossible without revealing its nationality. He considered N. A. Nekrasov, the poet of “revenge and sadness,” to be the best poet, and appreciated in his work the highly artistic expression of a revolutionary-democratic way of thinking and feeling. Based on an analysis of Russian literature, he concluded that truly great art derives its ideological and artistic strength from serving the people and the Motherland. The talent of a truly people's writer, according to revolutionary democrats, is inherent in “guessing the general needs and thoughts of the era.” The very scale of his talent depends on the versatility and breadth of his vital and aesthetic connections with folk life, which enriches his creations with truly sublime content.
In revolutionary democratic aesthetics, the problem of the unity of form and content, the unity of thought and feeling as the truth of human characters, and the artistry of a work was developed. Works that are false in their main idea, Chernyshevsky believed, are also weak in artistic terms.
A truly artistic work, according to revolutionary democrats, can never become outdated. “It will always excite people and serve as an inexhaustible source of high pleasure” (Belinsky).
Revolutionary democrats sought to comprehend the complex problems of the artistic consciousness of the era, to find ways and forms of social self-determination of art in the revolutionary struggle, to theoretically substantiate the place of artists in the life of society, their moral and aesthetic mission. An outstanding representative of revolutionary democratic materialism and dialectics was A. I. Herzen, whose moral and aesthetic quests were embodied in the works of art he created, as well as in philosophical and aesthetic studies and literary critical articles.
The judgments of revolutionary democrats about art as a force that educates and shapes the human personality, capable of making a person a conscious participant in social transformations, are imbued with revolutionary humanistic content.
The moral content of art, according to Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, is connected with the problem of a positive hero. Progressive historical ideals can be expressed through it. Chernyshevsky embodied his artistic idea of a positive hero in the novel “What is to be done?”, on which more than one generation of revolutionaries was brought up.
Its main representatives: N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A. Dobrolyubov, D.I. Pisarev, as well as N.A. Nekrasov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin as the authors of actual critical articles, reviews and reviews.
Printed organs: magazines “Sovremennik”, “Russkoe Slovo”, “Domestic Notes” (since 1868).
The development and active influence of “real” criticism on Russian literature and public consciousness continued from the mid-50s to the end of the 60s.
N.G. Chernyshevsky
Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828 - 1889) acted as a literary critic from 1854 to 1861. In 1861, the last of Chernyshevsky’s fundamentally important articles, “Is this the beginning of change?” was published.
Chernyshevsky’s literary-critical speeches were preceded by a solution to general aesthetic issues undertaken by the critic in his master’s thesis “Aesthetic relations of art to reality” (written in 1853, defended and published in 1855), as well as in a review of the Russian translation of Aristotle’s book “On Poetry” (1854) and auto-review of his own dissertation (1855).
Having published the first reviews in “Domestic Notes” by A.A. Kraevsky, Chernyshevsky in 1854 transferred at the invitation of N.A. Nekrasov at Sovremennik, where he heads the critical department. Sovremennik owed much to the collaboration of Chernyshevsky (and, from 1857, Dobrolyubov) not only for the rapid growth in the number of its subscribers, but also for its transformation into the main tribune of revolutionary democracy. The arrest in 1862 and the hard labor that followed interrupted Chernyshevsky’s literary and critical activity when he was only 34 years old.
Chernyshevsky acted as a direct and consistent opponent of the abstract aesthetic criticism of A.V. Druzhinina, P.V. Annenkova, V.P. Botkina, S.S. Dudyshkina. Specific disagreements between Chernyshevsky the critic and “aesthetic” criticism can be reduced to the question of the admissibility in literature (art) of the entire diversity of current life - including its socio-political conflicts (“the topic of the day”), and social ideology (trends) in general. “Aesthetic” criticism generally answered this question negatively. In her opinion, socio-political ideology, or, as Chernyshevsky’s opponents preferred to say, “tendentiousness,” is contraindicated in art, because it violates one of the main requirements of artistry - an objective and impartial depiction of reality. V.P. Botkin, for example, stated that “a political idea is the grave of art.” On the contrary, Chernyshevsky (like other representatives of “real” criticism) answered the same question in the affirmative. Literature not only can, but must become imbued with and inspired by the socio-political trends of its time, for only in this case will it become an expression of urgent social needs, and at the same time serve itself. After all, as the critic noted in “Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature” (1855 - 1856), “only those areas of literature achieve brilliant development that arise under the influence of strong and living ideas that satisfy the urgent needs of the era.” Chernyshevsky, a democrat, socialist and peasant revolutionary, considered the most important of these needs to be the liberation of the people from serfdom and the elimination of autocracy.
The rejection of “aesthetic” criticism of social ideology in literature was justified, however, by a whole system of views on art, rooted in the tenets of German idealistic aesthetics - in particular, Hegel’s aesthetics. The success of Chernyshevsky’s literary-critical position was therefore determined not so much by the refutation of the particular positions of his opponents, but by a fundamentally new interpretation of general aesthetic categories. This was the subject of Chernyshevsky’s dissertation “Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality.” But first, let’s name the main literary critical works that a student needs to keep in mind: reviews “Poverty is not a vice.” Comedy by A. Ostrovsky" (1854), "On Poetry." Op. Aristotle" (1854); articles: “On sincerity in criticism” (1854), “Works of A.S. Pushkin" (1855), "Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature", "Childhood and adolescence. Essay by Count L.N. Tolstoy. War stories of Count L.N. Tolstoy" (1856), "Provincial Sketches... Collected and published by M.E. Saltykov. ..." (1857), "Russian man at rendez-vous" (1858), "Isn't this the beginning of a change?" (1861).
In his dissertation, Chernyshevsky gives a fundamentally different definition of the subject of art compared to German classical aesthetics. How was it understood in idealist aesthetics? The subject of art is beauty and its varieties: sublime, tragic, comic. The source of beauty was thought to be the absolute idea or the reality that embodies it, but only in the entire volume, space and extent of the latter. The fact is that in a separate phenomenon - finite and temporary - the absolute idea, by its nature eternal and infinite, according to idealistic philosophy, is not incarnate. Indeed, between the absolute and the relative, the general and the individual, the natural and the random, there is a contradiction similar to the difference between the spirit (it is immortal) and the flesh (which is mortal). It is not possible for a person to overcome it in practical (material, production, socio-political) life. The only areas in which the resolution of this contradiction was possible were considered religion, abstract thinking (in particular, as Hegel believed, his own philosophy, more precisely, its dialectical method) and, finally, art as the main types of spiritual activity, the success of which is enormous depends on the creative gift of a person, his imagination, fantasy.
This led to the conclusion; beauty in reality, inevitably finite and transitory, is absent; it exists only in the creative creations of the artist - works of art. It is art that brings beauty into life. Hence the corollary of the first premise: art, as the embodiment of beauty above life.// “Venus de Milo,” declares, for example, I.S. Turgenev, - perhaps, undoubtedly more than Roman law or the principles of 89 (that is, the French Revolution of 1789 - 1794 - V.N.).” Summarizing in his dissertation the main postulates of idealistic aesthetics and the consequences arising from them, Chernyshevsky writes: “Defining beauty as the complete manifestation of an idea in a separate being, we must come to the conclusion: “beauty in reality is only a ghost, put into it by our factism”; from this it will follow that “strictly speaking, the beautiful is created by our imagination, but in reality... there is no truly beautiful thing”; from the fact that there is no truly beautiful in nature, it will follow that “art has as its source the desire of man to make up for the shortcomings of the beautiful in objective reality” and that the beautiful created by art is higher than the beautiful in objective reality” - all these thoughts constitute the essence of the prevailing now concepts..."
If in reality there is no beauty and it is brought into it only by art, then creating the latter is more important than creating, improving life itself. And the artist should not so much help improve life as reconcile a person with its imperfections, compensating for it with the ideal-imaginary world of his work.
It was to this system of ideas that Chernyshevsky contrasted his materialistic definition of beauty: “beauty is life”; “beautiful is the being in which we see life as it should be according to our concepts; “Beautiful is the object that shows life in itself or reminds us of life.”
Its pathos and at the same time its fundamental novelty consisted in the fact that the main task of man was recognized not to create beauty in itself (in its spiritually imaginary form), but to transform life itself, including the present, current one, according to this person’s ideas about its ideal . Solidarizing in this case with the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Chernyshevsky seems to be saying to his contemporaries: first of all, make life itself beautiful, and do not fly away from it in beautiful dreams. And second: If the source of beauty is life (and not an absolute idea, Spirit, etc.), then art in its search for beauty depends on life, generated by its desire for self-improvement as a function and means of this desire.
Chernyshevsky also challenged the traditional opinion of beauty as the supposed main goal of art. From his point of view, the content of art is much broader than beauty and constitutes “generally interesting things in life,” that is, it covers everything. what worries a person, what his fate depends on. For Chernyshevsky, man (and not beauty) essentially became the main subject of art. The critic interpreted the specifics of the latter differently. According to the logic of the dissertation, what distinguishes an artist from a non-artist is not the ability to embody an “eternal” idea in a separate phenomenon (event, character) and thereby overcome their eternal contradiction, but the ability to reproduce life collisions, processes and trends that are of general interest to contemporaries in their individually visual form. Art is conceived by Chernyshevsky not so much as a second (aesthetic) reality, but as a “concentrated” reflection of objective reality. Hence those extreme definitions of art (“art is a surrogate for reality”, “a textbook of life”), which, not without reason, were rejected by many contemporaries. The fact is that Chernyshevsky’s desire, legitimate in itself, to subordinate art to the interests of social progress in these formulations turned into oblivion of his creative nature.
In parallel with the development of materialist aesthetics, Chernyshevsky also reinterprets such a fundamental category of Russian criticism of the 40s - 60s as artistry. And here his position, although it is based on individual provisions of Belinsky, remains original and, in turn, is polemical to traditional ideas. Unlike Annenkov or Druzhinin (as well as such writers as I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov), Chernyshevsky considers the main condition of artistry not the objectivity and impartiality of the author and the desire to reflect reality in its entirety, not the strict dependence of each fragment of the work ( character, episode, detail) from the whole, not the isolation and completeness of the creation, but an idea (social tendency), the creative fruitfulness of which, according to the critic, is commensurate with its vastness, truthfulness (in the sense of coincidence with the objective logic of reality) and “consistency.” In the light of the last two requirements, Chernyshevsky analyzes, for example, the comedy by A.N. Ostrovsky “Poverty is not a vice”, in which he finds “a sugary embellishment of what cannot and should not be embellished.” The erroneous initial thought underlying the comedy deprived it, Chernyshevsky believes, of even plot unity. “Works that are false in their main idea,” the critic concludes, “are sometimes weak even in a purely artistic sense.”
If the consistency of a truthful idea provides unity to a work, then its social and aesthetic significance depends on the scale and relevance of the idea.
Chernyshevsky also demands that the form of the work correspond to its content (idea). However, this correspondence, in his opinion, should not be strict and pedantic, but only expedient: it is enough if the work is laconic, without unnecessary excesses. To achieve such expediency, Chernyshevsky believed, no special author's imagination or fantasy is needed.
The unity of a truthful and consistent idea with a corresponding form is what makes a work artistic. Chernyshevsky’s interpretation of artistry thus removed from this concept the mysterious aura that representatives of “aesthetic” criticism had endowed it with. It was also freed from dogmatism. At the same time, here, as in determining the specifics of art, Chernyshevsky’s approach was guilty of unjustified rationality and a certain straightforwardness.
The materialistic definition of beauty, the call to make everything that excites a person the content of art, the concept of artistry intersect and are refracted in Chernyshevsky’s criticism in the idea of the social purpose of art and literature. The critic here develops and clarifies Belinsky’s views of the late 30s. Since literature is a part of life itself, a function and means of its self-improvement, it, says the critic, “cannot help but be a servant of one or another direction of ideas; this is a purpose that lies in her nature, which she cannot refuse, even if she wanted to refuse.” This is especially true for autocratic-serf Russia, which is undeveloped politically and civilly, where literature “concentrates... the mental life of the people” and has “encyclopedic significance.” The direct duty of Russian writers is to spiritualize their work with “humanity and concern for the improvement of human life,” which have become the dominant need of the time. “The poet,” writes Chernyshevsky in “Essays on the Gogol Period...”, is a lawyer., of her (the public. - V.NL) own ardent desires and sincere thoughts.
Chernyshevsky’s struggle for a literature of social ideology and direct public service explains the critic’s rejection of the work of those poets (A. Fet. A. Maykov, Ya. Polonsky, N. Shcherbina), whom he calls “epicureans”, “for whom public interests do not exist, for whom public interests are known.” only personal pleasures and sorrows. Considering the position of “pure art” in everyday life to be by no means disinterested, Chernyshevsky in “Essays on the Gogol Period...” also rejects the argumentation of the supporters of this art: that aesthetic pleasure “in itself brings significant benefit to a person, softening his heart, elevating his soul,” that aesthetic experience “directly... ennobles the soul by the sublimity and nobility of objects and feelings with which we are seduced in works of art.” And a cigar, objects Chernyshevsky, softens, and a good dinner, in general health and excellent living conditions. This, the critic concludes, a purely epicurean view of art.
The materialist interpretation of general aesthetic categories was not the only prerequisite for Chernyshevsky’s criticism. Chernyshevsky himself indicated two other sources of it in “Essays on the Gogol Period...”. This is, firstly, Belinsky’s legacy of the 40s and, secondly, Gogol’s, or, as Chernyshevsky clarifies, the “critical direction” in Russian literature.
In “Essays...” Chernyshevsky solved a number of problems. First of all, he sought to revive the precepts and principles of criticism of Belinsky, whose very name was under censorship ban until 1856, and whose legacy was suppressed or interpreted by “aesthetic” criticism (in the letters of Druzhinin, Botkin, Annenkov to Nekrasov and I. Panaev) one-sidedly, sometimes negative. The plan corresponded to the intention of the editors of Sovremennik to “fight the decline of our criticism” and “to improve, if possible,” their own “critical department,” as stated in the “Announcement about the publication of Sovremennik” in 1855. It was necessary, Nekrasov believed, to return to the interrupted tradition - to the “straight path” of “Notes of the Fatherland” of the forties, that is, Belinsky: “... what faith there was in the magazine, what a living connection between him and the readers!” Analysis from democratic and materialist positions of the main critical systems of the 20s - 40s (N. Polevoy, O. Senkovsky, N. Nadezhdin, I. Kireevsky, S. Shevyrev, V. Belinsky) at the same time allowed Chernyshevsky to determine for the reader his own position in the emerging with the outcome of the “dark seven years” (1848 - 1855) of the literary struggle, as well as to formulate modern tasks and principles of literary criticism. “Essays...” also served polemical purposes, in particular the fight against the opinions of A.V. Druzhinin, which Chernyshevsky clearly has in mind when he shows the selfish-protective motives of S. Shevyrev’s literary judgments.
Considering in the first chapter of “Essays...” the reasons for the decline of criticism by N. Polevoy, “who at first so cheerfully emerged as one of the leaders in the literary and intellectual movement” of Russia, Chernyshevsky concluded that for viable criticism, firstly, modern philosophical theory, Secondly. moral feeling, meaning by it the humanistic and patriotic aspirations of the critic, and finally, orientation towards truly progressive phenomena in literature.
All these components organically merged in Belinsky’s criticism, the most important principles of which were “fiery patriotism” and the latest “scientific concepts,” that is, the materialism of L. Feuerbach and socialist ideas. Chernyshevsky considers other major advantages of Belinsky’s criticism to be its struggle against romanticism in literature and in life, the rapid growth from abstract aesthetic criteria to animation by the “interests of national life” and the judgments of writers from the point of view of “the significance of his activities for our society.”
In “Essays...” for the first time in the Russian censored press, Belinsky was not only associated with the ideological and philosophical movement of the forties, but was made its central figure. Chernyshevsky outlined the scheme of Belinsky’s creative emotion, which remains the basis of modern ideas about the activity of a critic: the early “telescopic” period - the search for a holistic philosophical understanding of the world and the nature of art; a natural meeting with Hegel on this path, a period of “reconciliation” with reality and a way out of it, a mature period of creativity, which in turn revealed two moments of development - according to the degree of deepening of social thinking.
At the same time, for Chernyshevsky, the differences that should appear in future criticism in comparison with Belinsky’s criticism are also obvious. Here is his definition of criticism: “Criticism is a judgment about the merits and demerits of a literary movement. Its purpose is to encourage the expression of the opinion of the best part of the public and to promote its further dissemination among the masses” (“On Sincerity in Criticism”).
“The best part of the public” are, without a doubt, democrats and ideologists of the revolutionary transformation of Russian society. Future criticism should directly serve their tasks and goals. To do this, it is necessary to abandon the workshop isolation among professionals and enter into constant communication with the public. reader, as well as gain “all possible ... clarity, certainty and directness” of judgment. The interests of the common cause, which she will serve, give her the right to be harsh.
In the light of the requirements, first of all, of social-humanistic ideology, Chernyshevsky undertakes an examination of both the phenomena of current realistic literature and its sources in the person of Pushkin and Gogol.
Four articles about Pushkin were written by Chernyshevsky simultaneously with “Essays on the Gogol period...”. They included Chernyshevsky in the discussion started by A.V.’s article. Druzhinin “A.S. Pushkin and the latest edition of his works”: 1855) in connection with Annenkov’s Collected Works of the poet. Unlike Druzhinin, who created the image of a creator-artist, alien to the social conflicts and unrest of his time, Chernyshevsky appreciates in the author of “Eugene Onegin” the fact that he “was the first to describe Russian morals and the life of various classes ... with amazing fidelity and insight” . Thanks to Pushkin, Russian literature became closer to “Russian society.” The ideologist of the peasant revolution especially cherishes Pushkin’s “Scenes from the Times of Knights” (they should be placed “not lower than “Boris Godunov””), the meaningfulness of Pushkin’s verse (“every line... touched, aroused thought”). Crete, recognizes the enormous importance of Pushkin “in the history of Russian education.” enlightenment. However, in contrast to these praises, the relevance of Pushkin’s legacy for modern literature was recognized by Chernyshevsky as insignificant. In fact, in his assessment of Pushkin, Chernyshevsky takes a step back compared to Belinsky, who called the creator of “Onegin” (in the fifth article of Pushkin’s cycle) the first “poet-artist” of Rus'. “Pushkin was,” writes Chernyshevsky, “primarily a poet of form.” “Pushkin was not a poet of someone with a specific view of life, like Byron, he was not even a poet of thought in general, like ... Goethe and Schiller.” Hence the final conclusion of the articles: “Pushkin belongs to a bygone era... He cannot be recognized as a luminary of modern literature.”
The general assessment of the founder of Russian realism turned out to be unhistorical. It also made clear the sociological bias in Chernyshevsky’s understanding of artistic content and poetic idea, which was unjustified in this case. Willingly or unwittingly, the critic handed Pushkin over to his opponents - representatives of “aesthetic” criticism.
In contrast to Pushkin’s legacy, the Gogolian legacy according to Chernyshevsky’s thought, addressed to the needs of social life and therefore full of deep content, receives the highest appreciation in “Essays...”. The critic especially emphasizes Gogol’s humanistic pathos, which was essentially not noticed in Pushkin’s work. “To Gogol,” writes Chernyshevsky, “those who need protection owe a lot; he became the head of those. who deny evil and vulgarity."
The humanism of Gogol’s “deep nature,” however, Chernyshevsky believes, was not supported by modern advanced ideas (teachings), which had no impact on the writer. According to the critic, this limited the critical pathos of Gogol’s works: the artist saw the ugliness of the facts of Russian social life, but did not understand the connection of these facts with the fundamental foundations of Russian autocratic-serf society. In general, Gogol had the “gift of unconscious creativity,” without which one cannot be an artist. However, the poet, adds Chernyshevsky, “will not create anything great if he is not also gifted with a wonderful mind, strong common sense and subtle taste.” Chernyshevsky explains Gogol's artistic drama by the suppression of the liberation movement after 1825, as well as the influence on the writer of the protective minded S. Shevyrev, M. Pogodin and his sympathies for patriarchy. Nevertheless, Chernyshevsky’s overall assessment of Gogol’s work is very high: “Gogol was the father of Russian prose,” “he is credited with firmly introducing the satirical into Russian literature - or, as it would be more fair to call his critical trends,” he is “the first in Russian literature to have a decisive desire to content and, moreover, striving in such a fruitful direction as critical.” And finally: “There was no writer in the world who was as important for his people as Gogol was for Russia,” “he awakened in us consciousness about ourselves - this is his true merit.”
Chernyshevsky’s attitude towards Gogol and the Gogolian trend in Russian realism, however, did not remain unchanged, but depended on which phase of his criticism it belonged to. The fact is that in Chernyshevsky’s criticism there are two phases: the first - from 1853 to 1858, the second - from 1858 to 1862. The turning point for them was the emerging revolutionary situation in Russia, which entailed a fundamental division between democrats and liberals on all issues, including literary ones.
The first phase is characterized by the critic’s struggle for the Gogolian direction, which remains effective and fruitful in his eyes. This is a struggle for Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Grigorovich, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, for the strengthening and development of their critical pathos. The task is to unite all anti-serfdom writer groups.
In 1856, Chernyshevsky dedicated a large review to Grigorovich, by that time the author not only of “The Village” and “Anton the Miserable”, but also of the novels “Fishermen” (1853), “Migrants” (1856>, imbued with deep participation in life and fate “ commoners", especially serfs. Contrasting Grigorovich to his numerous imitators, Chernyshevsky believes that in his stories "peasant life is depicted correctly, without embellishment; strong talent and deep feeling are visible in the description."
Until 1858, Chernyshevsky took “extra people” under protection, for example, from the criticism of S. Dudyshkin. reproaching them for lack of “harmony with the situation,” that is, for opposition to the environment. In the conditions of modern society, such “harmony,” Chernyshevsky shows, will come down only to “being an efficient official, a managerial landowner” (“Notes on Journals,” 1857*. At this time, the critic sees in “superfluous people” more victims of the Nicholas reaction , and he values the share of protest that they contain. True, even at this time he treats them differently: he sympathizes with Rudin and Beltov, who strive for social activity, but not with Onegin and Pechorin.
Particularly interesting is Chernyshevsky’s attitude towards L. Tolstoy, who, by the way, spoke extremely hostilely about the critic’s dissertation and his very personality at that time. In the article “Childhood and adolescence. Essay by Count L.N. Tolstoy...” Chernyshevsky revealed extraordinary aesthetic sensitivity when assessing the artist, whose ideological positions were very far from the mood of the critic. Chernyshevsky notes two main features in Tolstoy’s talent: the originality of his psychological analysis (unlike other realist writers, Tolstoy is not concerned with the result of the mental process, not the correspondence of emotions and actions, etc., but “the mental process itself, its forms, its laws , dialectics of the soul") and the sharpness ("purity") of the "moral feeling", the moral perception of the depicted." The critic rightly understood Tolstoy's mental analysis as an expansion and enrichment of the possibilities of realism (we note in passing that at first even such a person was very skeptical about this feature of Tolstoy's prose a master like Turgenev, who called it “picking out the dirty linen from under the armpits.”) As for the “purity of moral feeling”, which Chernyshevsky noted, by the way, in Belinsky, Chernyshevsky sees in it a guarantee of the artist’s rejection, after moral falsity, also of social untruth , social lies and injustice.This was already confirmed by Tolstoy’s story “The Morning of the Landowner,” which showed the meaninglessness of lordly philanthropy in relation to the peasant under the conditions of serfdom. The story was highly praised by Chernyshevsky in “Notes on Journals” in 1856. The author was given credit for the fact that the content of the story was taken “from a new sphere of life,” which also developed the writer’s very view “of life.”
After 1858, Chernyshevsky’s judgments about Grigorovich, Pisemsky, Turgenev, as well as about “superfluous people” changed. This is explained not only by the break between democrats and liberals (in 1859 - 1860 L. Tolstoy, Goncharov, Botkin, Turgenev left Sovremennik), but also by the fact that during these years a new trend was emerging in Russian realism, represented by Saltykov-Shchedrin (in 1856, “Russian Bulletin” began publishing his “Provincial Sketches”), Nekrasov, N. Uspensky, V. Sleptsov, A. Levitov, F. Reshetnikov and inspired by democratic ideas. Democratic writers had to establish themselves in their own positions, freeing themselves from the influence of their predecessors. Chernyshevsky is also involved in solving this problem, believing that Gogol’s direction has exhausted itself. Hence the overestimation of Rudin (the critic sees in him an unacceptable “caricature” of M. Bakunin, with whom the revolutionary tradition was associated), and other “superfluous people” whom Chernyshevsky no longer separates from the liberal nobles.
Chernyshevsky’s famous article “Russian man at rendez-vous” (1958) became a declaration and proclamation of an uncompromising demarcation from noble liberalism in the Russian liberation movement of the 60s. It appears at the moment when, as the critic specifically emphasizes, the denial of serfdom, which united liberals and democrats in the 40s and 50s, was replaced by the polar opposite attitude of the former allies to the coming, Chernyshevsky believes, peasant revolution.
The reason for the article was the story by I.S. Turgenev’s “Asya” (1858), in which the author of “The Diary of an Extra Man”, “The Calm”, “Correspondence”, “Trips to Woodland” depicted the drama of failed love in conditions when the happiness of two young people seemed both possible and close . Interpreting the hero of “Asia” (along with Rudin, Beltov, Nekrasov’s Agarin and other “superfluous people”) as a type of noble liberal. Chernyshevsky gives his explanation of the social position (“behavior”) of such people - albeit revealed in the intimate situation of a date with a beloved girl who reciprocates. Filled with ideal aspirations and sublime feelings, they, the critic says, fatally stop short of putting them into practice and are unable to combine word with deed. And the reason for this inconsistency is not in any of their personal weaknesses, but in their belonging to the dominant noble class, burdened with “class prejudices.” It is impossible to expect decisive actions from a noble liberal in accordance with “the great historical interests of national development” (that is, to eliminate the autocratic serfdom system), because the main obstacle for them is the nobility itself. And Chernyshevsky calls for a decisive rejection of illusions regarding the liberation-humanizing capabilities of the noble oppositionist: “The idea is developing in us more and more strongly that this opinion about him is an empty dream, we feel... that there are people better than him, precisely those whom he offends; that we would be better off without him.”
In his article “Polemical Beauty” (1860), Chernyshevsky explains his current critical attitude towards Turgenev and his break with the writer, whom the critic had previously defended from attacks, by the incompatibility of revolutionary democracy with reformism. cnpalai “Our way of thinking became so clear for Mr. Turgenev that he stopped approving of him . It began to seem to us that Mr. Turgenev’s latest stories were not as close to our view of things as before, when his direction was not so clear to us, and our views were not so clear to him. We parted".
Since 1858, Chernyshevsky’s main concern has been devoted to raznochinsko-democratic literature and its authors, called upon to master the craft of writing and show the public heroes other than “superfluous people,” close to the people and inspired by popular interests.
Chernyshevsky connects his hopes for creating a “completely new period” in poetry primarily with Nekrasov. Back in 1856, he wrote to him in response to a request to speak about the famous collection “Poems of N. Nekrasov” that had just been published: “We have never had a poet like you.” Chernyshevsky retained his high assessment of Nekrasov throughout the following years. Having learned about the poet’s fatal illness, he asked (in a letter on August 14, 1877 to Pypin from Vilyuysk) to kiss him and tell him, “the most brilliant and noble of all Russian poets. I’m crying for him” (“Tell Nikolai Gavrilovich,” Nekrasov answered Pypin, “that I thank him very much, I am now consoled: his words are more valuable than anyone else’s words”). In the eyes of Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov is the first great Russian poet who became truly popular, that is, who expressed both the state of the oppressed people (the peasantry), and faith in their strength, the growth of national self-awareness. At the same time, Chernyshevsky cherishes the intimate lyrics of Nekrasov - “poetry of the heart,” “plays without a tendency,” as he calls it, - which embodied the emotional-intellectual structure and spiritual experience of the Russian raznochinsky intelligentsia, its inherent system of moral and aesthetic values.
In the author of “Provincial Sketches” M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chernyshevsky saw a writer who went beyond the critical realism of Gogol. Unlike the author of Dead Souls, Shchedrin, according to Chernyshevsky, already knows “what the connection is between that branch of life in which facts are found and other branches of mental, moral, civil, state life,” that is, he knows how to construct private outrages Russian social life to their source - the socialist system of Russia. “Provincial Sketches” are valuable not only as a “wonderful literary phenomenon,” but also as a “historical fact” of Russian life” on the path of its self-awareness.
In his reviews of writers ideologically close to him, Chernyshevsky raises the question of the need for a new positive hero in literature. He is waiting for “his speech, the most cheerful, at the same time the calmest and most decisive speech, in which one could hear not the timidity of theory before life, but proof that reason can rule over life and a person can reconcile his life with his convictions.” Chernyshevsky himself became involved in solving this problem in 1862, creating in the casemate of the Peter and Paul Fortress a novel about “new people” - “What is to be done?”
Chernyshevsky did not have time to systematize his views on democratic literature. But one of its principles - the question of depicting the people - was developed by him very thoroughly. This is the subject of the last of Chernyshevsky’s major literary critical articles, “Isn’t this the beginning of change?” (1861), the occasion for which was “Essays on National Life” by N. Uspensky.
The critic opposes any idealization of the people. In conditions of the social awakening of the people (Chernyshevsky knew about mass peasant uprisings in connection with the predatory reform of 1861), he believes that it objectively serves protective purposes, since it reinforces popular passivity, the belief in the inability of the people to independently decide their fate. Nowadays, the depiction of the people in the form of Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin or Anton Goremyka is unacceptable. Literature must show the people, their moral and psychological state “without embellishment,” because only “such an image testifies to the recognition of the people as equal to other classes and will help the people get rid of the weaknesses and vices instilled in them over centuries of humiliation and lawlessness. It is equally important, not content with routine manifestations of folk life and ordinary characters, to show the people in whom the “initiative of popular activity” is concentrated. This was a call to create images of people's leaders and rebels in literature. Already the image of Saveliy, the “hero of Holy Russia” from Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” spoke of this. that this behest of Chernyshevsky was heard.
Chernyshevsky's aesthetics and literary criticism are not distinguished by academic dispassion. They, in the words of V.I. Lenin, imbued with the “spirit of class struggle.” And also, we add, the spirit of rationalism, faith in the omnipotence of reason, characteristic of Chernyshevsky as an educator. This obliges us to consider Chernyshevsky’s literary critical system in the unity of not only its strong and promising premises, but also its relatively weak and even extreme premises.
Chernyshevsky is right in defending the priority of life over art. But he is mistaken when, on this basis, he calls art a “surrogate” (that is, a substitute) for reality. In fact, art is not only special (in relation to the scientific or social-practical activity of a person), but also a relatively autonomous form of spiritual creativity - an aesthetic reality, in the creation of which a huge role belongs to the holistic ideal of the artist and the efforts of his creative imagination. In turn, by the way, underestimated by Chernyshevsky. “Reality,” he writes, “is not only more vivid, but also more complete than fantasy. Fantasy images are only a pale and almost always unsuccessful reworking of reality. This is true only in the sense of the connection between artistic fantasy and the life aspirations and ideals of a writer, painter, musician, etc. However, the very understanding of creative fantasy and its possibilities is erroneous, for the consciousness of a great artist does not so much remake the real world as create a new world.
The concept of an artistic idea (content) acquires from Chernyshevsky not only a sociological, but sometimes a rationalistic meaning. If its first interpretation is completely justified in relation to a number of artists (for example, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin), then the second actually eliminates the line between literature and science, art and sociological treatise, memoirs, etc. An example of an unjustified rationalization of artistic content is the following statement by a critic in a review of the Russian translation of Aristotle’s works: “Art, or, better said, POETRY... distributes among the mass of readers a huge amount of information and, more importantly, familiarity with the concepts developed by science - - this is the great significance of poetry for life.” Here Chernyshevsky, wittingly or unwittingly, anticipates the future literary utilitarianism of D.I. Pisareva. Another example. Literature, the critic says elsewhere, acquires authenticity and content if it “talks about everything that is important in any respect that happens in society, considers all these facts ... from all possible points of view, explains, from what causes each fact comes, what supports it, what phenomena must be brought into existence to strengthen it, if it is noble, or to weaken it, if it is harmful.” In other words, a writer is good if, while recording significant phenomena and trends in social life, he subjects them to analysis and makes his own “sentence” on them. This is how Chernyshevsky himself acted as the author of the novel “What is to be done?” But to fulfill such a formulated task it is not at all necessary to be an artist, for it is completely solvable within the framework of a sociological treatise, a journalistic article, brilliant examples of which were given by Chernyshevsky himself (remember the article “Russian man on rendez-vous”), Dobrolyubov, and Pisarev.
Perhaps the most vulnerable place in Chernyshevsky's literary critical system is the idea of artistry and typification. Agreeing that “the prototype for a poetic person is often a real person,” raised by the writer “to a general meaning,” the critic adds: “There is usually no need to raise it, because the original already has a general meaning in its individuality.” It turns out that typical faces exist in reality itself, and are not created by the artist. The writer can only “transfer” them from life into his work in order to explain them and judge them. This was not only a step back from the corresponding teachings of Belinsky, but also a dangerous simplification, reducing the work and work of the artist to copying reality.
The well-known rationalization of the creative act and art in general, the sociological bias in the interpretation of literary and artistic content as the embodiment of one or another social trend explain the negative attitude towards Chernyshevsky’s views not only of representatives of “aesthetic” criticism, but also of such major artists of the 50s and 60s , like Turgenev, Goncharov, L. Tolstoy. In Chernyshevsky’s ideas they saw the danger of “enslaving art” (N.D. Akhsharumov) by political and other transitory tasks.
While noting the weaknesses of Chernyshevsky's aesthetics, one should remember the fruitfulness - especially for Russian society and Russian literature - of its main pathos - the idea of the social and humanistic service of art and the artist. Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov would later call Chernyshevsky’s dissertation one of the first experiments in “practical aesthetics.” L. Tolstoy’s attitude towards her will change over the years. A number of provisions of his treatise “What is art?” (published in 1897 - 1898) will be directly consonant with the ideas of Chernyshevsky.
And one last thing. We must not forget that literary criticism was for Chernyshevsky, in the conditions of a censored press, in fact, the main opportunity from the position of revolutionary democracy to highlight the pressing problems of Russian social development and influence it. One can say about Chernyshevsky the critic what the author of “Essays on the Gogol Period...” said about Belinsky: “He feels that the boundaries of literary issues are narrow, he yearns in his office, like Faust: he is cramped in these walls lined with books , - it doesn’t matter whether they are good or bad; he needs life, not talk about the merits of Pushkin’s poems.”
Founder of real criticism. Dobrolyubov went down in the history of social thought and literature as one of the most prominent participants in the revolutionary democratic movement. The pathos of all his activities lay in the awareness of “the great role of the masses in the economy of human societies.” His critical articles and reviews were not only of purely literary significance. They served as answers to questions raised by life, were a form of ideological struggle, and raised young readers to be fighters for the revolutionary transformation of reality. K. Marx and F. Engels highly valued the activities of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov.
They compared Russian critics with Lessing and Diderot, thereby affirming the significance of Russian revolutionary democracy in the history of world aesthetic thought. in the article “The Beginning of Demonstrations” he wrote that Dobrolyubov is dear to “educated and thinking Russia.” “a writer who passionately hated arbitrariness and passionately awaited a popular uprising against the “internal Turks” - against the autocratic government.”
Dobrolyubov was the founder of real criticism. It provided the opportunity for a journalistic study of reality, led to comprehension and social analysis of social phenomena depicted in literature, “to reasoning,” as the critic wrote, “about the environment, about life, about the era that gave rise to this or that work in the writer.”
Being a materialist, Dobrolyubov, following Chernyshevsky, proceeded from the position that reality is always higher than art and that a work of art is required, first of all, to be faithful to the “meaning of reality.” However, one should not conclude from this that Dobrolyubov underestimated the role of literature in public life. He wrote: “If we thought that literature cannot mean anything at all in the life of the people, then we would consider all writing useless. But we are convinced that with a certain degree of development of the people, literature becomes one of the forces driving society...” The progressive views of the artist-creator contribute to the deepest and most complete insight into the essence of the Czech life phenomena that are displayed in the work. However, in practice, Dobrolyubov constantly had to deal with more complex situations when the writer’s declarative statements contradicted the objective meaning of the creations he created. Therefore, the democratic critic specifically focused on a problem of great theoretical and practical significance. We are talking about a complex, dialectical relationship between the writer’s worldview and his artistic creativity. Dobrolyubov argued that when evaluating a particular work, one should first of all proceed not from the “abstract reasoning” of the writer, not from his “declarations” and “syllogisms.” The key to characterizing a writer’s talent, the originality of his “view of the world” should be sought “in the living images he creates.”
Characteristic, that Dobrolyubov posed these questions in the article “The Dark Kingdom” (859), dedicated to. A lively controversy erupted around the playwright's early work; his works sometimes received mutually exclusive assessments. Dobrolyubov even had to enter into a hidden polemic with Chernyshevsky, who, in a review of 854, reproaching Ostrovsky for Slavophile tendencies, argued that “the wrong direction ruins the strongest talent.”
Thus, in itself, a truthful depiction of reality (not naturalistic, of course, but “clarified in the mind of the artist”) provides “real criticism” with sufficient grounds for drawing conclusions regarding those life conditions that predetermined the emergence of certain conflicts, characters, types. Dobrolyubov’s famous articles about Goncharov (“What is Oblomovism”), Ostrovsky (“The Dark Kingdom” and “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom”), Turgenev (“When will the real day come?”), Dostoevsky (“Downtrodden People”) are based on this principle ").
Dobrolyubov developed those trends that were outlined in Belinsky’s latest articles, directly linking the nationality of the literal rounds with the reflection of public interests. The critic regretted that “between dozens of literary parties! there is almost never a party of the people in literature.” And even though our modern concept of party differs from the meaning that Dobrolyubov gave to this term, the word was still uttered.
Dobrolyubov was deeply aware of the historical significance of the friendship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, considering their joint actions in the fight against a common enemy an urgent need. Therefore, any attempts to pit the two peoples against each other evoked the most ardent protest on his part. He taught his readers to distinguish between the reactionary measures of the tsarist government, leading to national discord, and the constant desire of Russian society for fraternal unity with the Ukrainian people.
In the article “Traits for Characterizing the Russian Common People,” Dobrolyubov wrote: “We have no reason for separation from the Little Russian people... If the Little Russians themselves do not completely trust us, then this is to blame for such historical circumstances in which the administrative part of Russian society participated, and certainly not the people "
In a short review About Shevchenko, Dobrolyubov raised the most important problems that are extremely important for the development of Ukrainian democratic literature: the relationship between folk poetry and literature, the role of the Russian literary language in the development of the literary language of the Ukrainian people, etc. About Shevchenko, the revolutionary critic wrote: “He is a completely folk poet, such, we cannot indicate anyone in our country. Even Koltsov cannot be compared with him... the whole range of his thoughts and sympathies is in perfect accordance with the meaning and structure of people’s life.” These considerations are important not only as an exceptionally high assessment of the brilliant author of “Kobzar”, but also as a theoretical understanding of the principle of nationality in literature. Of particular interest is Dobrolyubov’s positive review of the poem “Haydamaky”. At one time I had a negative attitude towards this work. Dobrolyubov approached the poem more objectively, seeing in it a faithful reproduction of the folk character, based on the traditions of Ukrainian folklore.
Principles Dobrolyubov’s literary and critical activities turned out to be very important for outstanding representatives of Ukrainian democratic literature of the second half of the 19th century. Thus, I. Ya. knew Dobrolyubov’s articles well and in his works devoted to the work of great Russian writers, he more than once expressed judgments close to the thoughts of the Russian critic. It is no coincidence that Franko’s remarkable study of Shevchenko is called “The Dark Kingdom.” Explaining the choice of this name, Franko referred to Dobrolyubov’s famous article, calling it! "the best work of the most outstanding Russian critic."
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Homework on the topic: Dobrolyubov (1836-1886): Founder of real criticism.
criticism of the second half of the 19th century by a profound interpreter of “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy. It is no coincidence that he called his work “a critical poem in four songs.” Leo Tolstoy himself, who considered Strakhov his friend, said: “One of the blessings for which I am grateful to fate is that there is N.N. Strakhov.”
Literary-critical activity of revolutionary democrats
The social, social-critical pathos of the articles of the late Belinsky with his socialist beliefs was picked up and developed in the sixties by the revolutionary democratic critics Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov.
By 1859, when the government program and views of the liberal parties became clearer, when it became obvious that reform “from above” in any of its variants would be half-hearted, the democratic revolutionaries moved from a shaky alliance with liberalism to a severance of relations and an uncompromising fight against it. The literary-critical activity of N. A. Dobrolyubov falls on this second stage of the social movement of the 60s. He devotes a special satirical section of the Sovremennik magazine called “Whistle” to denouncing liberals. Here Dobrolyubov acts not only as a critic, but also as a satirical poet.
Criticism of liberalism then alerted A. I. Herzen, (*11) who, being in exile, unlike Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, continued to hope for reforms “from above” and overestimated the radicalism of liberals until 1863.
However, Herzen's warnings did not stop the revolutionary democrats of Sovremennik. Beginning in 1859, they began to pursue the idea of a peasant revolution in their articles. They considered the peasant community to be the core of the future socialist world order. Unlike the Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov believed that communal ownership of land rested not on Christian, but on the revolutionary-liberation, socialist instincts of the Russian peasant.
Dobrolyubov became the founder of the original critical method. He saw that the majority of Russian writers do not share the revolutionary-democratic way of thinking and do not pronounce judgment on life from such radical positions. Dobrolyubov saw the task of his criticism as completing in his own way the work begun by the writer and formulating this verdict, relying on real events and artistic images of the work. Dobrolyubov called his method of understanding the writer’s work “real criticism.”
Real criticism “examines whether such a person is possible and real; having found that it is true to reality, it moves on to its own considerations about the reasons that gave rise to it, etc. If these reasons are indicated in the work of the author being analyzed, criticism uses them and thanks the author; if not, he doesn’t pester him with a knife to his throat - how, they say, did he dare to draw such a face without explaining the reasons for its existence?” In this case, the critic takes the initiative into his own hands: he explains the reasons that gave rise to this or that phenomenon from a revolutionary-democratic position and then pronounces a verdict on it.
Dobrolyubov positively evaluates, for example, Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov,” although the author “does not and, apparently, does not want to give any conclusions.” It is enough that he “presents you with a living image and vouches only for its resemblance to reality.” For Dobrolyubov, such authorial objectivity is quite acceptable and even desirable, since he takes upon himself the explanation and the verdict.
Real criticism often led Dobrolyubov to a peculiar reinterpretation of the writer’s artistic images in a revolutionary-democratic manner. It turned out that the analysis of the work, which developed into an understanding of the pressing problems of our time, led Dobrolyubov to such radical conclusions that the author himself had never expected. On this basis, as we will see later, Turgenev’s decisive break with the Sovremennik magazine occurred when Dobrolyubov’s article about the novel “On the Eve” was published in it.
In Dobrolyubov’s articles, the young, strong nature of a talented critic comes to life, sincerely believing in the people, in whom he sees the embodiment of all his highest moral ideals, with whom he associates the only hope for the revival of society. “His passion is deep and persistent, and obstacles do not frighten him when they need to be overcome to achieve something passionately desired and deeply conceived,” writes Dobrolyubov about the Russian peasant in the article “Traits for Characterizing the Russian Common People.” All the critic’s activities were aimed at the struggle for the creation of a “party of the people in literature.” He devoted four years of tireless work to this struggle, writing nine volumes of essays in such a short time. Dobrolyubov literally burned himself out in his selfless journal work, which undermined his health. He died at the age of 25 on November 17, 1861. Nekrasov said soulfully about the premature death of his young friend:
But your hour struck too soon
And the prophetic pen fell from his hands.
What a lamp of reason has gone out!
What heart has stopped beating!
The decline of the social movement of the 60s. Disputes between Sovremennik and Russian Word.
At the end of the 60s, dramatic changes took place in Russian social life and critical thought. The manifesto of February 19, 1861 on the liberation of the peasants not only did not soften, but further aggravated the contradictions. In response to the rise of the revolutionary democratic movement, the government launched an open attack on progressive thought: Chernyshevsky and D.I. Pisarev were arrested, and the publication of the Sovremennik magazine was suspended for eight months.
The situation is aggravated by a split within the revolutionary democratic movement, the main reason for which was disagreement in the assessment of the revolutionary socialist capabilities of the peasantry. Activists of the "Russian Word" Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev and Varfolomey Aleksandrovich Zaitsev sharply criticized Sovremennik for (*13) its alleged idealization of the peasantry, for an exaggerated idea of the revolutionary instincts of the Russian peasant.
Unlike Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, Pisarev argued that the Russian peasant is not ready for a conscious struggle for freedom, that for the most part he is dark and downtrodden. Pisarev considered the revolutionary force of modern times to be the “mental proletariat,” the common revolutionaries who bring natural science knowledge to the people. This knowledge not only destroys the foundations of the official ideology (Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality), but also opens the people’s eyes to the natural needs of human nature, which are based on the instinct of “social solidarity.” Therefore, enlightening the people with natural sciences can lead society to socialism not only by a revolutionary (“mechanical”), but also by an evolutionary (“chemical”) path.
In order for this “chemical” transition to take place faster and more efficiently, Pisarev proposed that Russian democracy be guided by the “principle of economy of force.” The “mental proletariat” must concentrate all its energy on destroying the spiritual foundations of the existing society through propaganda of natural sciences among the people. In the name of so-understood “spiritual liberation,” Pisarev, like Turgenev’s hero Yevgeny Bazarov, proposed abandoning art. He really believed that “a decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,” and recognized art only to the extent that it participates in the propaganda of natural science and destroys the foundations of the existing system.
In the article “Bazarov” he glorified the triumphant nihilist, and in the article “Motives of Russian Drama” he “crushed” the heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”, erected on a pedestal by Dobrolyubov. Destroying the idols of the “old” society, Pisarev published the infamous anti-Pushkin articles and the work “The Destruction of Aesthetics.” The fundamental differences that emerged during the polemics between Sovremennik and Russian Word weakened the revolutionary camp and were a symptom of the decline of the social movement.
The social upsurge of the 70s.
By the beginning of the 70s, the first signs of a new social upsurge associated with the activities of the revolutionary populists were visible in Russia. The second generation of democratic revolutionaries, who made a heroic attempt to rouse the peasants to (*14) revolution by “going to the people,” had their own ideologists who, in new historical conditions, developed the ideas of Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. “Faith in a special way of life, in the communal system of Russian life; hence faith in the possibility of a peasant socialist revolution - this is what animated them, raised tens and hundreds of people to heroic struggle against the government,” V. I. Lenin wrote about the populists of the seventies . This faith, to one degree or another, permeated all the works of the leaders and mentors of the new movement - P. L. Lavrov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, M. A. Bakunin, P. N. Tkachev.
The mass “going to the people” ended in 1874 with the arrest of several thousand people and the subsequent trials of 193 and 50. In 1879, at a congress in Voronezh, the populist organization "Land and Freedom" split: "politicians" who shared Tkachev's ideas organized their own party "People's Will", proclaiming the main goal of the movement to be a political coup and terrorist forms of struggle against the government. In the summer of 1880, Narodnaya Volya organized an explosion in the Winter Palace, and Alexander II miraculously escaped death. This event causes shock and confusion in the government: it decides to make concessions by appointing the liberal Loris-Melikov as plenipotentiary ruler and appealing to the liberal public of the country for support. In response, the sovereign receives notes from Russian liberals, which propose to immediately convene an independent assembly of representatives of zemstvos to participate in governing the country “with the aim of developing guarantees and individual rights, freedom of thought and speech.” It seemed that Russia was on the verge of adopting a parliamentary form of government. But on March 1, 1881, an irreparable mistake was made. After multiple assassination attempts, the Narodnaya Volya members kill Alexander II, and after this, a government reaction occurs in the country.
Conservative ideology of the 80s.
These years in the history of the Russian public are characterized by the flourishing of conservative ideology. It was defended, in particular, by Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontyev in the books “East, Russia and the Slavs” and “Our “New Christians” F. M. Dostoevsky and Count Leo Tolstoy.” Leontiev believes that the culture of each civilization goes through three stages of development: 1) primary simplicity, 2) blossoming complexity, 3) secondary mixed simplification. Leontyev considers the main sign of decline and entry into the third stage to be the spread of liberal and socialist ideas with their cult (*15) of equality and general prosperity. Leontyev contrasted liberalism and socialism with “Byzantism” - strong monarchical power and strict ecclesiasticalism.
Leontyev strongly criticized the religious and ethical views of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He argued that both writers were influenced by the ideas of socialism, that they turned Christianity into a spiritual phenomenon, derived from earthly human feelings of brotherhood and love. Genuine Christianity, according to Leontyev, is mystical, tragic and terrible for a person, for it stands on the other side of earthly life and evaluates it as a life full of suffering and torment.
Leontyev is a consistent and principled opponent of the very idea of progress, which, according to his teachings, brings one or another people closer to mixed simplification and death. To stop, delay progress and freeze Russia - this idea of Leontyev suited the conservative policy of Alexander III.
Russian liberal populism of the 80-90s.
In the era of the 80s, revolutionary populism was experiencing a deep crisis. The revolutionary idea is being replaced by the “theory of small affairs”, which in the 90s will take shape in the program of “state socialism”. The government's transition to the side of peasant interests can peacefully lead the people to socialism. The peasant community and artel, handicrafts with the patronage of zemstvos, active cultural assistance from the intelligentsia and the government can withstand the onslaught of capitalism. At the dawn of the 20th century, the “theory of small affairs” quite successfully developed into a powerful cooperative movement.
Religious and philosophical thought of the 80-90s. The time of deep disappointment in political and revolutionary forms of struggle against social evil made Tolstoy’s preaching of moral self-improvement extremely relevant. It was during this period that the religious and ethical program for the renewal of life in the work of the great writer finally took shape and Tolstoyism became one of the popular social movements.
In the 80-90s, the teachings of the religious thinker Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov began to gain fame. At the heart of his “Philosophy of the Common Cause” is the idea, grandiose in its audacity, of the great calling of man to completely master the secrets of life, defeat death and achieve god-like power and control over the blind forces of nature. Mankind, according to Fedorov, through its own (*16) efforts can transform the entire bodily composition of a person, making him immortal, resurrect all the dead and at the same time achieve control of “solar and other stellar systems.” “Born from the tiny earth, the viewer of immeasurable space, the viewer of the worlds of this space must become their inhabitant and ruler.”
In the 80s, along with the democratic ideology of the “common cause”, along with V. S. Solovyov’s “Readings on God-Humanity” and “The Justification of Good,” the first sprouts of the philosophy and aesthetics of the future Russian decadence appeared. N.M. Minsky’s book “In the Light of Conscience” is published, in which the author preaches extreme individualism. The influence of Nietzschean ideas is increasing, Max Stirner is being pulled out of oblivion and becoming almost an idol with his book “The One and His Property,” in which outright egoism was proclaimed the alpha and omega of modernity...
Questions and assignments: What explains the diversity of trends in Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century? What are the features of Russian criticism and how are they related to the specifics of our literature? What did Westerners and Slavophiles see as the weaknesses and advantages of Russian historical development? What, in your opinion, are the strengths and weaknesses of the social programs of Westerners and Slavophiles? How does the program of the Pochvenniks differ from the Westernizing and Slavophile ones? How did the soil scientists determine the significance of Pushkin in the history of new Russian literature? Describe the principles of “real criticism” of Dobrolyubov. What is unique about the social and literary-critical views of D. I. Pisarev? Give a description of the social and mental movement in Russia in the 80s - 90s.
LITERATURE IN THE 19th century. The bourgeois reforms of the mid-19th century were a milestone in the socio-economic life of Russia and marked the beginning of the capitalist period in its history.
The spread of radical aspirations among young people, in connection with the Polish uprising and the St. Petersburg fires of 1862, made a strong impression on both the leadership and part of society. The reaction begins.
Grigoriev created his aesthetics under the influence of idealist philosophers F. Schelling and T. Carlyle. The main pathos of Grigoriev’s “organic criticism” is the defense in art of the “thought of the heart,” the synthesis of the artist’s thought and soul.
Directions of Russian social thought under Alexander II. Questions of philosophy, religion; new youth. Chernyshevsky about these issues.
“Sovremennik” is a magazine published from early 1847 to mid-1866 by Nekrasov and Panaev (from 1863 - by Nekrasov alone), purchased from Pletnev.
Creator of "History of the Russian State" (vol. 1-12, 1816-29), one of the significant works in Russian historiography. The founder of Russian sentimentalism ("Letters of a Russian Traveler", "Poor Lisa", etc.).
The scientific study of the history of Russian literature originates from Belinsky. Belinsky was the first to clearly establish the specificity of literature as an ideological phenomenon; Belinsky showed the regularity of the literary process.
Lermontov's main theme is personality in the process of self-knowledge and self-incarnation, that is, development. The character of most of his poems of the early period is very indicative: these are lyrical sketches, excerpts from his diary.
Creative heritage and features of Turgenev’s artistic style Turgenev’s influence on writers of a later period (Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky). Turgenev is the creator of the socio-psychological novel.
Under this name, in 1818 and 1819, two collections were published in St. Petersburg, published by P. P. Svinin and dedicated to Ch. image of Russian “nuggets”, people who come from the people.
Oblomovshchina is a phenomenon of the landowner system depicted by Goncharov during the era of the collapse of serfdom in Russia. In a number of its features, Oblomovism also characterized post-reform reality.
The issue that invariably worried enlightened Russian society was the attitude towards religion. In the 40s, Russian humanistic thought, which followed the path of secularization, that is, separation from religion and the Church, included the idea of socialism.
On the role of artistic detail in works of literature. Artistic detail in Gogol's work. On the creation of artistic images in Turgenev’s novels. Representation of the crisis era for Russia in the novel “Fathers and Sons.”
It seems to me that without the writer Saltykov-Shchedrin it is impossible to understand the political life of the second half of the 19th century. The significance of his satirical works for the history of Russia is enormous.
Chaadaev about the past and present of Russia. The future of Russia according to “Philosophical Letters”, “Apology of a Madman”. The concept of the history of the development of the Russian people.
Literary dreams, critic and public, "Rumor" and "Telescope".
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