Advanced Russian literature has always spoken out in defense of the people, always strived to truthfully illuminate the conditions of their life, to show their spiritual wealth - and its role in the development of self-awareness of Russian people was exceptional.

Since the 80s. Russian literature began to widely penetrate abroad, amazing foreign readers with its love for man and faith in him, with his passionate denunciation of social evil, with his ineradicable desire to make life more just. Readers were attracted by the tendency of Russian authors to create broad pictures of Russian life, in which the depiction of the fate of the heroes was intertwined with the formulation of many fundamental social, philosophical and moral problems.

By the beginning of the 20th century. Russian literature began to be perceived as one of the powerful streams of the world literary process. Noting the unusualness of Russian realism in connection with Gogol’s centenary, English writers wrote: “...Russian literature has become a torch shining brightly in the darkest corners of Russian national life. But the light of this torch spread far beyond the borders of Russia - it illuminated the whole of Europe.”

Russian literature (in the person of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy) was recognized as the highest art of speech due to its unique attitude towards the world and man, revealed by original artistic means. Russian psychologism, the ability of Russian authors to show the interconnection and conditionality of social, philosophical and moral problems, the genre looseness of Russian writers who created the free form of the novel, and then the short story and drama, were perceived as something new.

In the 19th century Russian literature adopted a lot from world literature, now it generously enriched it.

Having become the property of foreign readers, Russian literature widely introduced them to the little-known life of a huge country, to the spiritual needs and social aspirations of its people, to their difficult historical fate.

The importance of Russian literature increased even more on the eve of the first Russian revolution - both for Russian (which had grown significantly in number) and for foreign readers. The words of V.I. Lenin in the work “What to do?” are very significant. (1902) about the need to think “about the worldwide significance that Russian literature is now acquiring.”

Both literature of the 19th century and modern literature helped to understand what exactly contributed to the maturation of the explosion of popular anger and what the general state of modern Russian reality was.

L. Tolstoy’s merciless criticism of the state and social foundations of Russian life, Chekhov’s depiction of the everyday tragedy of this life, Gorky’s search for the true hero of new history and his call “Let the storm strike stronger!” - all this, despite the difference in the writers' worldviews, indicated that Russia found itself at a sharp turning point in its history.

The year 1905 marked the beginning of the “end of the “eastern” immobility” in which Russia found itself, and foreign readers sought an answer to the question of how all this happened in the most accessible source to them - Russian literature. And it is quite natural that special attention has now begun to be attracted to the work of modern writers, reflecting the mood and social aspirations of Russian society. At the turn of the century, translators of fiction were paying great attention to which works were most successful in Russia, and were rushing to translate them into Western European languages. Released in 1898–1899 Three volumes of “Essays and Stories” brought Gorky all-Russian fame; in 1901 he was already a famous European writer.

At the beginning of the 20th century. there was no doubt that Russia, which had learned a lot from the historical experience of Europe, was itself beginning to play a huge role in the world historical process, hence the increasingly increasing role of Russian literature in revealing changes in all areas of Russian life and in the psychology of Russian people.

Turgenev and Gorky called the liberated Russia “teenager” in the European family of nations; Now this teenager was turning into a giant, calling to follow him.

V.I. Lenin's articles about Tolstoy show that the global significance of his work (Tolstoy was already recognized as a world genius during his lifetime) is inseparable from the global significance of the first Russian revolution. Viewing Tolstoy as an exponent of the sentiments and aspirations of the patriarchal peasantry, Lenin wrote that Tolstoy with remarkable power reflected “the features of the historical originality of the entire first Russian revolution, its strength and its weakness.” At the same time, Lenin clearly outlined the boundaries of the material subject to the writer’s depiction. “The era to which L. Tolstoy belongs,” he wrote, “and which was reflected in remarkable relief both in his brilliant works of art and in his teaching, is the era after 1861 and before 1905.”

The work of the greatest writer of the new century, Gorky, was inextricably linked with the Russian revolution, who reflected in his work the third stage of the liberation struggle of the Russian people, which led him to 1905, and then to the socialist revolution.

And not only Russian, but also foreign readers perceived Gorky as a writer who saw a true historical figure of the 20th century. in the person of the proletarian and who showed how the psychology of the working masses changes under the influence of new historical circumstances.

Tolstoy depicted with amazing power a Russia already receding into the past. But, recognizing that the existing system is becoming obsolete and that the 20th century is the century of revolutions, he still remained faithful to the ideological foundations of his teaching, his preaching of non-resistance to evil through violence.

Gorky showed Russia as it replaced the old one. He becomes the singer of young, new Russia. He is interested in the historical modification of the Russian character, the new psychology of the people, in which, unlike previous and a number of modern writers, he looks for and reveals anti-humble and strong-willed traits. And this makes Gorky’s work especially significant.

The confrontation between two great artists in this regard - Tolstoy, who has long been perceived as the pinnacle of realistic literature of the 19th century, and the young writer, reflecting in his work the leading trends of modern times, was caught by many contemporaries.

K. Kautsky’s response to the novel “Mother” he had just read in 1907 is very characteristic. “Balzac shows us,” Kautsky wrote to Gorky, “more accurately than any historian, the character of young capitalism after the French Revolution; and if, on the other hand, I managed to understand Russian affairs to some extent, then I owe this not so much to Russian theoreticians as, perhaps to an even greater extent, to Russian writers, primarily Tolstoy and you. But if Tolstoy teaches me to understand the Russia that was, then your works teach me to understand the Russia that will be; understand the forces that are nurturing a new Russia.”

Later, saying that “Tolstoy, more than any other Russian, plowed and prepared the ground for a violent explosion,” S. Zweig will say that it was not Dostoevsky or Tolstoy who showed the world the amazing Slavic soul, but Gorky allowed the amazed West understand what and why happened in Russia in October 1917, and will especially highlight Gorky’s novel “Mother”.

Having highly appreciated Tolstoy’s work, V.I. Lenin wrote: “The era of preparation for the revolution in one of the countries oppressed by the serf-owners, thanks to Tolstoy’s brilliant illumination, appeared as a step forward in the artistic development of all mankind.”

Gorky became the writer who illuminated with great artistic force the pre-revolutionary sentiments of Russian society and the era of 1905–1917, and thanks to this illumination, the revolutionary era, which ended with the October Socialist Revolution, in turn, was a step forward in the artistic development of mankind. By showing those who walked toward this revolution and then carried it out, Gorky opened a new page in the history of realism.

Gorky’s new concept of man and social romanticism, his new coverage of the problem of “man and history,” the writer’s ability to identify the sprouts of the new everywhere, the huge gallery he created of people representing old and new Russia - all this contributed to both the expansion and deepening of artistic knowledge of life. New representatives of critical realism also made their contribution to this knowledge.

So, for the literature of the early 20th century. The simultaneous development of critical realism, which at the turn of the century was experiencing a time of renewal, but without losing its critical pathos, and socialist realism, became characteristic. Noting this remarkable feature of the literature of the new century, V. A. Keldysh wrote: “In the context of the revolution of 1905–1907. For the first time, that type of literary relationship arose, which was later destined to play such a significant role in the world literary process of the 20th century: “old”, critical realism develops simultaneously with socialist realism, and the appearance of signs of a new quality in critical realism is largely the result of this interaction.”

Socialist realists (Gorky, Serafimovich) did not forget that the origins of a new image of life go back to the artistic quests of such realists as Tolstoy and Chekhov, while some representatives of critical realism began to master the creative principles of socialist realism.

Such coexistence would later be characteristic of other literatures during the years of the emergence of socialist realism in them.

The simultaneous flowering of a significant number of great and dissimilar talents, noted by Gorky as the uniqueness of Russian literature of the last century, was also characteristic of the literature of the new century. The creativity of its representatives develops, as in the previous period, in close artistic relationships with Western European literature, also revealing its artistic originality. Like the literature of the 19th century, it has enriched and continues to enrich world literature. Particularly indicative in this case is the work of Gorky and Chekhov. Under the sign of the artistic discoveries of the revolutionary writer, Soviet literature will develop; his artistic method will also have a great influence on the creative development of democratic writers in the foreign world. Chekhov's innovation was not immediately recognized abroad, but starting in the 20s. it found itself in the sphere of intensive study and development. World fame first came to Chekhov the playwright, and then to Chekhov the prose writer.

The work of a number of other authors was also noted for innovation. Translators, as we have already said, paid attention in the 1900s. attention to both the works of Chekhov, Gorky, Korolenko, and the works of writers who came to prominence on the eve and during the years of the first Russian revolution. They especially followed the writers grouped around the publishing house “Znanie”. L. Andreev’s responses to the Russo-Japanese War and the rampant tsarist terror (“Red Laughter,” “The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men”) became widely known abroad. Interest in Andreev’s prose did not disappear even after 1917. The trembling heart of Sashka Zhegulev found an echo in distant Chile. A young student of one of the Chilean lyceums, Pablo Neruda, will sign with the name of St. Andrew’s hero, whom he chose as a pseudonym, his first major work, “Festive Song,” which will receive a prize at the “Spring Festival” in 1921.

Andreev’s dramaturgy, which anticipated the emergence of expressionism in foreign literature, also gained fame. In “Letters on Proletarian Literature” (1914), A. Lunacharsky pointed out the overlap between individual scenes and characters in E. Barnavol’s play “Cosmos” and Andreev’s play “Tsar Hunger.” Later, researchers will note the impact of Andreevsky drama on L. Pirandello, O’Neill and other foreign playwrights.

Among the features of the literary process of the early 20th century. The extraordinary variety of dramaturgical searches and the rise of dramatic thought should be attributed. At the turn of the century, Chekhov's theater appeared. And before the viewer had time to master the innovation of Chekhov’s psychological drama that amazed him, a new, social drama by Gorky appeared, and then the unexpected expressionist drama of Andreev. Three special dramaturgies, three different stage systems.

Simultaneously with the enormous interest shown in Russian literature abroad at the beginning of the new century, interest in old and new Russian music, the art of opera, ballet, and decorative painting is also growing. A major role in arousing this interest was played by concerts and performances organized by S. Diaghilev in Paris, performances by F. Chaliapin, and the first trip of the Moscow Art Theater abroad. In the article “Russian Performances in Paris” (1913), Lunacharsky wrote: “Russian music has become a completely definite concept, including the characteristics of freshness, originality and, above all, enormous instrumental skill.”

Introduction

In Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. During the period of “unheard-of changes” and “unprecedented revolts”, scientific and technological progress and acute political cataclysms, deep and serious changes took place in art, which determined new and unique paths for its development.

On the one hand, the art of that time was a rejection of old artistic traditions, an attempt to creatively rethink the heritage of the past. Never before has an artist been so free in his creativity - creating a picture of the world, he received a real opportunity to focus on his own taste and preferences.

The culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is multifaceted. Sometimes it seems like a continuous jumble of styles, trends, trends and schools, simultaneously interacting and opposing each other. The experienced shocks, wars, changes in the social structure, the trends of new values ​​and aspirations of the West, the increasing interest of society in the sciences and art - all this greatly influenced the development of the culture of that time. A surge of creative energy, the emergence of new genres, changes and complications in the themes of works became the beginning of a new era, which is called the Silver Age.

This period is still of great interest to both professionals and ordinary art lovers. My goal is to examine in as much detail as possible the literature, fine arts, architecture and theatrical art of that era, since these areas of culture provide the most accurate understanding of the essence of the Silver Age. I would like to consider and classify the main movements, highlight specific genres from them and describe their most striking features. Also, my task is to list the main cultural figures who contributed to the development of a particular type of art.

Literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Symbolism

The era of the Silver Age began with the Symbolists; Symbolism became the first significant modernist movement in Russia. All changes in literature, new schools and movements are partly under his influence, even those created in contradiction to him. There is no unity of concepts in Russian symbolism; it did not have a single school, nor a single style; it was expressed in an abundance of ways of self-expression. What united the Symbolists was a distrust of the ordinary and banal, a desire to express their thoughts through symbols and allegories, be it fine art or literature; the desire to give his creation an even more vague, ambiguous coloring.

Initially, Russian symbolism has the same roots as Western - “a crisis of positive worldview and morality.” The desire to replace morality and logic with aesthetics, the position that “beauty will save the world” became the main principle of the early Russian symbolists, as opposed to the ideology of populism. At the end of the 19th century, the intelligentsia and bohemians, looking with some alarm at a future that did not promise anything good, took symbolism as a breath of fresh air. It became more and more popular, involving more and more talented people, who, each with their own unique view of things, made symbolism so multifaceted. The symbolists became an expression of longing for spiritual freedom, a tragic premonition of future changes, a symbol of trust in proven centuries-old values. A feeling of trouble and instability, fear of change and the unknown united people who were so different in philosophy and attitude to life. Symbolism is an amazing collection of many individuals, characters, intimate experiences and impressions that are stored deep in the soul of a poet, writer or artist. Only a feeling of decline, nostalgic moods, and melancholy unite many faces into one.

At the origins of symbolism in St. Petersburg were Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his wife Zinaida Gippius, in Moscow - Valery Bryusov. The motives of tragic isolation, detachment from the world, and strong-willed self-affirmation of the individual can be traced in the works of Gippius; social orientation, religious and mythological subjects - in Merezhkovsky; the balance of the opposite, the struggle for life and humility before death permeate Bryusov’s work. The poems of Konstantin Balmont, who declared the “search for correspondences” between sound, meaning and color, characteristic of symbolists, are becoming very popular. Balmont's passion for sound writing, colorful adjectives that displace verbs, leads to the creation of almost “meaningless” texts, according to his ill-wishers, but this phenomenon later leads to the emergence of new poetic concepts.

A little later, a movement of younger symbolists developed, creating romantically colored circles in which, exchanging experiences and ideas, they honed their skills. A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov and many others paid great attention to moral and ethical ideals, trying to combine the interests of society with their own.

Literature and art at that time were experiencing a rapid rise, old styles were reborn, new ones appeared, and it was impossible to determine exactly where one ended and the other began, the boundaries were ethereal and foggy, everything was in the air.

The history of symbolism is very tragic, as is the history of many other genres. At first, the symbolism was met more than coldly - the works, unadapted to Russian society, not related to the land and people, were incomprehensible to the broad masses, and were practically ridiculed. After a short period of heyday, in defiance of the Symbolists, innovative movements with more down-to-earth and rigid principles began to form. In the last decade before the revolution, symbolism experienced crisis and decline. Some Symbolists did not accept the 1917 revolution and were forced to immigrate from the country. Many continued to write, but symbolism inexorably faded away. Those who remained in the country were faced with a rethinking of previous values. The symbolist had nothing to earn a living in post-revolutionary Russia.

At the beginning of the 20s, several centers of Russian emigration were formed, including in Paris, Prague, Berlin, Harbin, and Sofia. Taking into account the conditions of a particular country, the foundations of the cultural life of the Russian diaspora were formed here. The culture of Russian emigration was based on the traditions of classical culture. These people considered their task to be the preservation and development of Russian culture. Russian newspapers played a significant role in establishing the spiritual life of the emigration; about a hundred of them were published. In countries such as Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, educational institutions of the Russian diaspora opened. Berlin has good conditions for publishing works by emigrant authors. Among the foreign intelligentsia, various ideological and political movements arose, which reflected the search for ways to revive Russia and its culture; one of these movements was Eurasianism.

The deterioration of the international situation in the 1930s contributed to the resumption of disputes among emigrants about the fate of Russia and the possibility of returning to their homeland. Writer A. Kuprin and poetess M. Tsvetaeva returned to the USSR. But the strengthening totalitarian system forced many to abandon the idea of ​​returning home.

Poetry at the end of the 19th century was called the “poetic renaissance” or “silver age”.

Gradually, the term “Silver Age” began to be attributed to that part of Russian artistic culture that was associated with symbolism, acmeism, “neo-peasant” and partly futuristic literature.

Literary directions:

1. Realism - continues to develop (L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, etc.)

2.Modernism - from French. the words “newest, modern.” Modernists believed in the divine transformative creative role of art.

Symbolism is a literary artistic movement that considered the purpose of art to be an intuitive comprehension of world unity through symbols.

This is the first and largest movement of modernism. The beginning of self-determination was laid by D.S. Merezhkovsky (1892). He called mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability.

V. Bryusov became the leader of symbolism. BUT symbolism turned out to be a heterogeneous movement; several independent groups took shape within it. In Russian symbolism, it is customary to distinguish 2 main groups of poets: “senior” symbolists (Bryusov, Balmont, Sologub, Kuzmin, Merlikovsky, Gippius) and “younger” symbolists (Blok, Bely, Ivanov).

In the publishing life of the Symbolists, there were two groups: St. Petersburg and Moscow. This turned into a conflict.

The Moscow group (Liber Bryusov) considered the main principle of literature to be “art for art’s sake.”

Petersburgskaya (Merezhkovsky, Zippius) defended the priority of religious and philosophical searches in symbolism. They considered themselves genuine symbolists and considered their opponents to be decadents.

Characteristic:

polysemy

full significance of the subject plan of the image

concentration of the absolute in the individual

Music: the second most important aesthetic category of symbolism

The relationship between the poet and his audience: the poet addressed not everyone, but the reader-creator.

Acmeism is a modernist movement (from the Greek tip, pinnacle, highest degree, pronounced qualities). This movement declared specifically sensory perception of the external world, returning the word to its original non-symbolic meaning.

At the beginning of their path, the Acmeists were close to the Symbolists, then associations appeared: 1911 - the Workshop of Poets.

The highest type of realism

The 19th century in Russian literature was a time of dominance of critical realism. The works of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, Chekhov and other great writers put Russian literature in first place. In the 90s in Russia, the proletariat rose up to fight the autocracy.

A writer, if only he
The wave, and the ocean is Russia,
Can't help but be outraged
When the elements are outraged.

A writer, if only he
There is a nerve of a great people,
Can't help but be amazed
When freedom is defeated.

Y. P. Polonsky (1819-1898)

A “storm” was approaching - “the movement of the masses themselves,” as V.I. Lenin characterized the third, highest, stage of the Russian liberation movement.

The works of critical realists who came to literature in 1890-1900 were deprived of that enormous generalizing power that distinguished the great works of Russian classics. But these writers also deeply and truthfully depicted certain aspects of their contemporary reality.

Gloomy pictures of poverty and ruin of the Russian countryside, hunger and savagery of the peasantry emerge from the pages of the stories of I. A. Bunin (1870 - 1953). Photo 1.

L. N. Andreev (1871-1919) depicted the joyless, hopeless life of “little people” in many of his stories. Photo 2.

Many works protested against all kinds of arbitrariness and violenceA. I. Kuprina (1870-1938):
"Moloch", "Gambrinus" and especially the famous story "The Duel", which sharply criticized the tsarist army.

The traditions of the Russian classics were continued and developed by the emerging proletarian literature, which reflected the most important thing in the life of Russia at that time - the struggle of the working class for its liberation. This revolutionary literature was united in its desire to make art “part of the common proletarian cause,” as demanded
V. I. Lenin in the article “Party organization and party literature.”

The ranks of proletarian writers were led by Gorky, who expressed the heroic character of the new era with enormous artistic power.

Having begun his literary activity with bright, revolutionary-romantic works,

During the period of the first Russian revolution, Gorky laid the foundation for realism of the highest type - socialist realism.

Following Gorky, he paved the way to socialist realism
A. S. Serafimovich (1863-1945) is one of the brightest and most original writers of the proletarian camp.

The talented revolutionary poet Demyan Bedny published his striking satirical poems and fables on the pages of the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda.

Poems whose authors were not professional writers, but worker poets and revolutionary poets also occupied a large place in the Marxist press. Their poems and songs (“Boldly, comrades, keep up”

L.P. Radina, “Varshavyanka” by G.M. Krzhizhanovsky, “We are blacksmiths” by F.S. Shkulev and many others) talked about the work and life of workers, called for the fight for freedom.

And at the same time, in the opposite, in the bourgeois-noble camp, confusion and fear of life, a desire to get away from it, to hide from the approaching storms, grew. The expression of these sentiments was the so-called decadent (or decadent) art, which arose back in the 90s, but became especially fashionable after the revolution of 1905, in an era that Gorky called “the most shameful decade in the history of the Russian intelligentsia.”

Openly renouncing the best traditions of Russian literature: realism, nationalism, humanism, the search for truth, the decadents preached individualism, “pure” art, detached from life. Unified in essence, decadence was outwardly very colorful. It broke up into many schools and movements at war with each other.

The most important of them were:

symbolism(K. Balmont, A. Bely, F. Sologub);

acmeism(N. Gumilev, O. Mandelstam, A. Akhmatova);

futurism(V. Khlebnikov, D. Burliuk).

The work of two major Russian poets was associated with symbolism: Blok and Bryusov, who deeply felt the inevitability of the death of the ugly old world, the inevitability of impending social upheavals. Both of them managed to break out of the narrow circle of decadent moods and break with decadence.
Their mature creativity was permeated with deep, excited thoughts about the fate of their homeland and people.

Vladimir Mayakovsky began his creative career among the futurists, but very soon he overcame their influence.
In his pre-October poetry, hatred of the old world and joyful anticipation of the coming revolution resounded with enormous force.

Imbued with revolutionary romance and a deep understanding of the laws of life, the work of Gorky, the subtle lyricism of the anxiously passionate poetry of Blok, the rebellious pathos of the poems of the young Mayakovsky, the irreconcilable partisanship of proletarian writers - all these diverse achievements of Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were perceived by the literature of socialist society.

To be continued.

At the end of the 19th century, rapid development of capitalism was planned. Factories and plants are being consolidated, their number is growing. So, if in the 60s there were about 15 thousand large enterprises in Russia, then in 1897 there were already more than 39 thousand. During the same period, the export of industrial goods abroad increased almost fourfold. In just ten years, from 1890 to 1900, over two thousand miles of new railways were laid. Thanks to Stolypin's reforms, agricultural production continued to grow.

The achievements in the field of science and culture were significant. At this time, scientists worked successfully and made a huge contribution to world science: the creator of the Russian scientific school of physics P.N. Lebedev; founder of new sciences - biochemistry, biogeochemistry, radiogeology - V.I. Vernadsky; world-famous physiologist I.P. Pavlov, the first Russian scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize for his research in the physiology of digestion. The Russian religious philosophy of N.A. has become widely known throughout the world. Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, B.C. Solovyova, S.N. Trubetskoy, P.A. Florensky.

At the same time, this was a period of sharp aggravation of contradictions between entrepreneurs and workers. The interests of the latter began to be expressed by Marxists who formed the Social Democratic Labor Party. Small concessions to the workers on the part of the authorities supporting the capitalists did not bring the desired results. Population discontent led to revolutionary situations in 1905 and February 1917. The situation was aggravated by two wars in a relatively short period: the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 and the first imperialist war of 1914-1917. Russia could no longer emerge from the second war with honor. There was a change of power.

A complex situation has also been observed in the literature. A.P. added pages to their books. Chekhov (1860-1904) and L.N. Tolstoy (1828-1910). They were replaced by young writers and those who began their creative activity in the 80s: V.G. Korolenko, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, V.V. Veresaev, N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. At least three directions have emerged in literature: the literature of critical realism, proletarian literature and the literature of modernism.

This division is conditional. The literary process was characterized by a complex and even contradictory character. In different periods of creativity, writers sometimes adhered to opposite directions. For example, L. Andreev began his creative career as a critical writer, and ended in the Symbolist camp; V. Bryusov and A. Blok, on the contrary, were at first symbolists, later switched to realism, and then became the founders of new Soviet literature. V. Mayakovsky’s path in literature was equally contradictory. Such writers of critical realism as M. Gorky (1868-1936), A.S. Serafimovich (Popov, 1863-1949), Demyan Bedny (E.A. Pridvorov, 1883-1945), gravitating towards peasant themes S. Podyachev ( 1866-1934) and A.S. Neverov (1880-1923) began as writers of a realistic direction, and then, having gone over to the side of the revolutionary people, they shared new art.