A people deprived of public freedom has the only tribune, from the height of which it makes you hear the cry of your indignation and your conscience,” A.I. Herzen wrote in the last century. For the first time in the entire long history of Russia, the government has now given us freedom of speech and the press. But, despite the enormous role of the media, Russian literature is the master of thoughts, raises layer after layer of the problems of our history and life. Maybe E. Yevtushenko was right when he said: "in Russia - more than a poet! ..".
Today, one can very clearly trace the artistic, historical, socio-political significance of a literary work in connection with the socio-political situation of the era. This wording means that the features of the era are reflected in the theme chosen by the author, his characters, artistic means. These features can give a work of great social and political significance. So, in the era of the decline of serfdom and the nobility, a number of works about "superfluous people" appeared, including the famous "Hero of Our Time" by M.Yu. Lermontov. The very name of the novel, the controversy surrounding it, showed its social significance in the era of the Nikolaev reaction. A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published during the period of criticism of Stalinism in the early 60s, was also of great importance. Modern works demonstrate an even greater connection between the era and the literary work than before. Now the task is to revive the rural owner. Literature responds to it with books about the dekulakization and depeasantization of the countryside.
The closest connection between modernity and history even gives rise to new genres (for example, the chronicle) and new visual means: documents are introduced into the text, time travel for many decades is popular, and more. The same applies to environmental issues. Can't take it anymore. The desire to help society makes writers, such as Valentin Rasputin, move from novels and short stories to journalism.
The first topic that unites a very large number of works written during the 50s - 80s is the problem of historical memory. The words of Academician D.S. Likhachev could serve as an epigraph to it: “Memory is active. It does not leave a person indifferent, inactive. She owns the mind and heart of man. Memory resists the destructive power of time. This is the greatest value of memory.
"Blank spots" were formed (or rather, they were formed by those who constantly adapted history to their interests) not only in the history of the whole country, but also in its individual regions. The book of Viktor Likhonosov "Our little Paris" about the Kuban. He believes that its historians are indebted to their land. "Children grew up without knowing their native history." About two years ago, the writer was in America, where he met with the inhabitants of the Russian colony, emigrants and their descendants from the Kuban Cossacks. A storm of reader letters and responses was caused by the publication of the novel - the chronicle of Anatoly Znamensky "Red Days", which reported new facts from the history of the civil war on the Don. The writer himself did not immediately come to the truth and only in the sixties he realized that "we do not know anything at all about that era." In recent years, several new works have been published, such as Sergei Alekseev's novel "Sedition", but there is still a lot of unknown.
The theme of those who were innocently repressed and tortured during the years of Stalinist terror sounds particularly prominent. Great work was done by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his "Gulag Archipelago". In the afterword to the book, he says: “I stopped working not because I considered the book finished, but because there was no more life left for it. I not only ask for indulgence, but I want to shout: when the time comes, the opportunity - get together, friends, survivors, who know well, but write another comment next to this one ... "Thirty-four years have passed since they were written, no, stamped on heart, these words. Solzhenitsyn himself was correcting the book abroad, dozens of new testimonies have come out, and this appeal will apparently remain for many decades to the contemporaries of those tragedies, and to the descendants, before whom the archives of the executioners will finally be opened. After all, even the number of victims is unknown!.. The victory of democracy in August 1991 gives hope that the archives will soon be opened.
And therefore, the words of the already mentioned writer Znamensky seem to me not entirely true: “Yes, and how much had to be said about the past, it seems to me, has already been said by A.I. rock "Aldan - Semenov. Yes, and I myself 25 years ago, during the years of the so-called thaw, paid tribute to this topic; my story about the camps called "Without repentance" ... is published in the magazine "North" (N10, 1988)". No, I think witnesses, writers, and historians still have to work hard.
A lot has already been written about Stalin's victims and executioners. I note that the continuation of the novel "Children of the Arbat" by A. Rybakov "Thirty-fifth and Other Years" has been published, in which many pages are devoted to the secret springs of preparing and conducting trials of the 30s over the former leaders of the Bolshevik Party.
Thinking about Stalin's time, you involuntarily transfer your thoughts to the revolution. And today she is seen in many ways differently. “We are told that the Russian revolution brought nothing, that we have great poverty. Quite right. But ... We have a perspective, we see a way out, we have a will, a desire, we see a path ahead of us ... ”N. Bukharin wrote this way. Now we are wondering: what did this will do with the country, where did this path lead and where is the way out. In search of an answer, we begin to turn to the origins, to October.
It seems to me that A. Solzhenitsyn explores this deeper than anyone. And these questions are touched upon in many of his books. But the main thing of this writer about the origins and beginning of our revolution is the multi-volume "Red Wheel". We have already printed parts of it - "August the fourteenth", "October the sixteenth". The four-volume "March the Seventeenth" is also printed. Alexander Isaevich continues to work hard on the epic.
Solzhenitsyn persistently does not recognize not only the October, but also the February revolution, considering the overthrow of the monarchy a tragedy of the Russian people. He argues that the morality of the revolution and the revolutionaries is inhumane and inhumane, the leaders of the revolutionary parties, including Lenin, are unprincipled, they think, first of all, about personal power. One cannot agree with him, but it is also impossible not to listen, especially since the writer uses a huge number of facts and historical evidence. I would like to note that this outstanding writer has already agreed to return to his homeland.
Similar arguments about the revolution can be found in the memoirs of the writer Oleg Volkov "Immersion in Darkness". , an intellectual and a patriot in the best sense of the word, spent 28 years in prisons and exile. He writes: “During the more than two years that my father lived after the revolution, it was already clearly and irrevocably determined: a sharply tamed peasant and a somewhat softer bridled worker had to identify themselves with power. But it was no longer possible to talk about this, to expose imposture and deceit, to explain that the iron lattice of the new order leads to enslavement and the formation of an oligarchy. Yes, and it's useless ... "
Is this the way to evaluate the revolution?! It's hard to say, only time will tell the final verdict. Personally, I do not consider this point of view correct, but it is also difficult to refute it: after all, you will not forget either about Stalinism or about today's deep crisis. It is also clear that it is no longer possible to study the revolution and the civil revolution from the films “Lenin in October”, “Chapaev” or from the poems of V. Mayakovsky “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” and “Good”. The more we learn about this era, the more independently we will come to some conclusions. A lot of interesting things about this time can be found in Shatrov's plays, B. Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago", V. Grossman's story "Everything flows" and others.
If there are sharp differences in the assessment of the revolution, then everyone condemns Stalin's collectivization. And how can one justify it if it has led to the ruin of the country, the death of millions of industrious owners, to a terrible famine! And again I would like to quote Oleg Volkov about the time close to the “great turning point”:
“Then they were just setting up a mass transportation of robbed peasants to the abyss of the desert expanses of the North. For the time being, they snatched it out selectively: they would impose an “individual” unpaid tax, wait a little and - they would declare it a saboteur. And there - lafa: confiscate property and throw it in jail! ... "
Vasily Belov tells us about the front of the collective farm village in the novel "Eve". The continuation is the “Year of the Great Break, Chronicle of 9 Months”, which describes the beginning of collectivization. One of the truthful works about the tragedy of the peasantry during the period of collectivization is the novel - the chronicle of Boris Mozhaev "Men and Women". The writer, relying on documents, shows how that stratum in the countryside is formed and takes power, which thrives on the ruin and misfortune of fellow villagers and is ready to rage to please the authorities. The author shows that the perpetrators of "excesses" and "dizziness from success" are those who ruled the country.
Need a cheat sheet? Then save -» Literary review of the works of recent years. Literary writings!The literary festival in Bath, Somerset is one of the brightest and most respected in the UK. Founded in 1995 with the support of The Independent, it has become an important event in European cultural life. The art director of the festival, Viv Groskop, a journalist, writer and comedian, sums up the 20-year history of the festival and names its best books, year after year. By the way, almost all of them have already been filmed.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1995
Louis de Bernier
Many have seen a wonderful film with Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz and think that Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a beautiful novel about true love. So, of course, it is. But it is also a novel about European history, about how strange and closely the destinies of nations and people intertwine: your yesterday's ally shoots you in the back, and your yesterday's enemy saves your life. The plot of the book is based on real historical events, when the Italians, being allies of Nazi Germany, occupied Greece, and then were disarmed and shot by the Germans who came, suspecting them of "sympathy for the local population." The Mediterranean charm of landscapes and characters: the gentle Pelageya and the courageous Captain Corelli, did not leave British festival critics indifferent.
She is "Grace", 1996
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is a Booker Prize winner. She devoted this book to an attempt to unravel the brutal crime that once stirred up all of Canada: on July 23, 1843, the police accused the 16-year-old maid Grace Marks of mercilessly killing her master and his pregnant housekeeper mistress. Grace was unusually beautiful and very young. But she told the police as many as three versions of what happened, and her accomplice - two. The accomplice went to the gallows, but Grace's lawyer managed to convince the judges that she was out of her mind. Grace spent 29 years in an insane asylum. Who was she really, and who committed the bloody crime? This is what Margaret Atwood is trying to tell.
American Pastoral, 1997
Philip Roth
Where did the American dream eventually lead? Which promised wealth, law and order to those who work hard and behave well? The protagonist, Swede Leivow, married the beautiful Miss New Jersey, inherited his father's factory and became the owner of an old mansion in Old Rimrock. It would seem that dreams have come true, but one day the American leaf happiness turns to dust at once ... And the claims, of course, are not only to the American dream, but to the illusions that modern society feeds us as a whole.
England, England, 1998
Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes is a witty, ironic Briton who attracts the reader with his dissimilarity to the rest. This book is a kind of satirical utopia, urging people not to confuse the legends of their country's past with what it is in the present. Nostalgia for a "golden age" that never existed prompted businessman Jack Pitman to create the "England, England" project - a theme park that contains everything that personifies good old England in the eyes of the whole world.
Infamy, 1999
J.M. Coetzee
South African Coetzee is a two-time winner of the Booker Prize, this is a unique case. In 1983, he already received this award for his novel The Life and Times of Michael K. In 2003, Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The protagonist of the book, a university professor, loses literally everything because of a scandalous story with a student: his job, the goodwill of society, and goes to live with his lesbian daughter in a distant province. A polemic novel, Coetzee's answer to the question posed by Franz Kafka: to be or not to be a person, if life has reduced him in the eyes of others to the state of an insect, should he become zero or start from scratch?
White teeth, 2000
Zadie Smith
People of different races and nationalities, teenage and midlife crises, unhappy love and all that: a brilliant comic story that tells the story of friendship, love, war, earthquake, three cultures, three families over three generations and one very unusual mouse. Zadie Smith is sharp-tongued: poignantly and poignantly ridicules human stupidity. Raising many problems to the surface, does not give answers to questions, but rather offers to analyze or confess, recognizing oneself.
Redemption, 2001
Ian McEwen
This book could very well be number one on the list of books with an unusual plot. In pre-war England there lived a rich girl and the son of a gardener, whom she was going to marry. The girl's younger sister dreams of being a writer and practices observing and interpreting human words and deeds. And now, in her opinion, her sister's lover is a dangerous maniac. And when the girls' cousin turns out to be really raped by someone, the future writer testifies against her sister's fiancé. Of course he was innocent. Of course, the sister broke off relations with the whole family. Of course, the youngest of the sisters becomes a writer and, driven by remorse, writes a novel about this story, a novel with a happy ending. But can he make a difference?
Every Man's Heart, 2002
William Boyd
The novel is built in the form of a personal diary of a fictional character - the writer Logan Mountstuart. The events of the hero's life long (1906-1991) are woven into the fabric of history: Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Picasso, Hemingway appear in the novel. The hero is familiar with almost all the significant artists and writers of the 20th century: he bows in the streets and talks at parties. But this is not a historical novel; iconic figures are just a background or even a means to show the life of a typical European intellectual from the inside.
Mysterious nocturnal murder of a dog, 2003
Mark Haddon
15-year-old Christopher Boone has autism. He lives in a small town with his father. Then one day, someone killed the neighbor's dog, and the boy is the prime suspect. To investigate the mysterious murder of an animal, he writes down all the facts, although his father forbids him to interfere in this story. Christopher has a sharp mind, he is strong in mathematics, but understands little in everyday life. He can't stand touch, doesn't trust strangers, and never leaves his usual path alone. Christopher does not yet know that the investigation will turn his whole life upside down.
Little Island, 2004
Andrea Levy
The novel, set in 1948, deals with the themes of empire, prejudice, war and love. This is a kind of comedy of errors, played out in 1948. It was then that Andrea Levy's parents arrived in the UK from Jamaica, and their story formed the basis of the novel. The protagonist of the "Little Island" returns from the war, but the peaceful life on the "big" island is not so easy and cloudless.
Something Wrong with Kevin, 2005
Lionel Shriver
The book was also translated with the title "The Price of Dislike". A difficult, difficult book about how to live if your child has committed a terrible crime. What questions should you ask yourself as a parent? What did you miss? There was always something wrong with Kevin, but no one did anything about it.
Road, 2006
Cormac McCarthy
This novel has won many awards: the British James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2006 and the American Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A terrible catastrophe has destroyed the United States and an unnamed father and son, still a boy, are moving through the territory, which is run by gangs of marauders and cutthroats, to the sea.
Half a yellow sun, 2007
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The book traces the fate of five main characters: the twin daughters (beautiful Olanna and rebel Kainene) of an influential businessman, professor, his boy servant Ugwu and British journalist-writer Richard. Each of them has their own plans for the future and dreams that the war breaks. The action takes place against the background of the civil war in Nigeria (1967-1970). Readers called Adichie's novel "African's Wind Runner", and British critics awarded him the prestigious Orange Award.
Outcast, 2008
Sadie Jones
1957 A young Lewis Aldridge returns home after serving two years for a crime that has shocked sleepy Surrey. Lewis is destined to go through a path of disappointment and loss, not counting on the support of others, in danger of being broken. And only on the verge of despair will he again be granted love, love as salvation ...
Little stranger, 2009
Sarah Waters
End of World War II. England. The once brilliant family of local landowners fell into disrepair. The lands are being sold, the farm is unprofitable, the chic mansion is deteriorating, and its dying destroys the psyche of the remaining inhabitants: an old lady with traces of her former greatness, who yearns for her first-born daughter who died in childhood, and her children - an ugly daughter who sat in the girls and a son crippled in the war, on whom all the hardships of the head of a ruined family fall. All events are shown through the eyes of a kind doctor, whose kindness becomes very doubtful towards the end. And a ghost lives in the manor.
Wolfhall, 2010
Hilary Mantel
You know Cromwell's name. When you think of Oliver Cromwell, and the protagonist of this book, which Viv Groskop, art director of the Bath Literary Festival, calls the best of the twenty presented, is a guy named Thomas Cromwell. He is the son of a rowdy blacksmith, a political genius whose tools are bribery, threats and flattery. His goal is to transform England in accordance with his will and the desires of the king, whom he faithfully serves, because if Henry VIII dies without leaving an heir, then a civil war is inevitable in the country.
Time has the last laugh, 2011
Jennifer Egan
The book "Time Laughs Last" brought the author worldwide fame and the most prestigious literary award in the United States - the Pulitzer Prize. There are many heroes in this book. A whole ball. But the most important, central character is Time. And it has the last laugh. The youth of the heroes coincides with the birth of punk rock, and it enters their lives forever, and for some it becomes a vocation. The book itself is built like a musical album: its two parts are called “Side A” and “Side B”, and each of the thirteen independent chapters, like songs, has its own theme. Life is not generous to everyone, but everyone in their own way tries to resist time and remain true to themselves and their dreams.
On the threshold of miracles, 2012
Ann Patchett
A brave and risky girl Marina Singh is looking for a miracle, and her sixth sense tells her that it is here, in the vicinity of the Amazon, that she will find what she is looking for. Searches and adventures, and such different versions of the "truth". Is the heroine strong enough?
Life after life, 2013
Keith Atkinson
Imagine that you have the opportunity to live life over and over until you get it right. The main character is born and dies before she can breathe. And then is born again, survives and tells the story of his life. Tells again and again. Until you manage to live the twentieth century correctly: escape from the insidious waves; avoid a fatal illness; find a ball rolled into the bushes; learn to shoot so as not to miss the Fuhrer.
Goldfinch, 2014
Donna Tartt
This novel has won numerous literary awards, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel is named after the painting The Goldfinch (1654) by the famous Dutch artist Karel Fabricius, which plays an important role in the fate of the protagonist of the book. Stephen King also expressed admiration for the novel, adding: “There are about five books like The Goldfinch in ten years, no more. It is written with both mind and soul. Donna Tartt presented to the public a brilliant novel
A Brief History of the Seven Murders, 2015
Marlon James
On October 13, 2015, Marlon James was named the winner of the Booker Prize. James is the first Jamaican to compete. His novel was in the lead all year in the lists of the best books, its main characteristic is the cinematic narration. The book is about the assassination attempts on Bob Marley in the 1970s, uncovered three decades later, involving drug lords, beauty queens, journalists and even the CIA.
Source: theindependent.com.uk
- Read also:Literature of the 50s–80s (review)
Death of I.V. Stalin. XX Party Congress. Changes in the social and cultural life of the country. New trends in literature. Themes and problems, traditions and innovation in the works of writers and poets.
Reflection of the conflicts of history in the destinies of the heroes: P. Nilin "Cruelty", A. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich", V. Dudintsev "Not by bread alone ...", etc.
A new understanding of the problem of man in war: Y. Bondarev "Hot Snow", V. Bogomolov "The Moment of Truth", V. Kondratyev "Sasha" and others. The study of the nature of heroism and betrayal, a philosophical analysis of human behavior in an extreme situation in the works of V. Bykov "Sotnikov", B. Okudzhava "Be healthy, schoolboy", etc.
The role of works about the Great Patriotic War in the education of patriotic feelings of the younger generation.
Poetry of the 60s . The search for a new poetic language, form, genre in the poetry of B. Akhmadullina, E. Vinokurov, R. Rozhdestvensky, A. Voznesensky, E. Yevtushenko, B. Okudzhava and others. The development of the traditions of Russian classics in the poetry of N. Fedorov, N. Rubtsov, S.Narovchatov, D.Samoilov, L.Martynov, E.Vinokurov, N.Starshinov, Yu.Drunina, B.Slutsky, S.Orlov, I.Brodsky, R.Gamzatov and others.
Reflection on the past, present and future of the Motherland, the assertion of moral values in the poetry of A. Tvardovsky.
« urban prose» . Themes, moral issues, artistic features of the works of V. Aksenov, D. Granin, Y. Trifonov, V. Dudintsev and others.
« village prose» . Image of the life of the Soviet village. The depth, integrity of the spiritual world of a person connected by his life with the earth, in the works of F. Abramov, M. Alekseev, S. Belov, S. Zalygin, V. Krupin, P. Proskurin, B. Mozhaev, V. Shukshin, and others.
Dramaturgy. Moral problems of the plays by A. Volodin "Five Evenings", A. Arbuzov "Irkutsk History", "Cruel Intentions", V. Rozov "Good Hour", "Nest of the Capercaillie", A. Vampilov "Last Summer in Chulimsk", "Senior son”, “Duck hunting”, etc.
Dynamics of moral values in time,anticipation of the danger of losing historical memory: “Farewell to Matera” by V. Rasputin, “Stormy Station” by Ch. Aitmatov, “Dream at the Beginning of the Fog” by Y. Rytkheu and others.
An attempt to evaluate modern life from the standpoint of previous generations: “The Sign of Trouble” by V. Bykov, “The Old Man” by Y. Trifonov, “The Shore” by Y. Bondarev, etc.
Historical theme in Soviet literature. Resolution of the question of the role of the individual in history, of the relationship between man and power in the works of B. Okudzhava, N. Eidelman,
V. Pikul, A. Zhigulina, D. Balashova, O. Mikhailov and others.
Autobiographical literature. K. Paustovsky,
I. Ehrenburg.
The growing role of journalism. Journalistic orientation of works of art of the 80s. An appeal to the tragic pages of history, reflections on universal values.
Journals of this time,their position. (“New World”, “October”, “Banner”, etc.).
The development of the science fiction genre in the works of A. Belyaev, I. Efremov, K. Bulychev and others.
Author's song. Its place in the historical and cultural process (content, sincerity, attention to the individual). The significance of the work of A. Galich, V. Vysotsky, Yu. Vizbor, B. Okudzhava and others in the development of the art song genre.
The multinationality of Soviet literature.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn. Information from the biography.
« Matrenin yard» *. "One day of Ivan Denisovich". A new approach to the image of the past. The issue of generational responsibility. The writer's reflections on the possible ways of human development in the story. The skill of A. Solzhenitsyn - a psychologist: the depth of characters, historical and philosophical generalization in the writer's work.
V.T. Shalamov. Information from the biography.
« Kolyma stories» .(two stories of your choice). Artistic originality of Shalamov's prose: lack of declarations, simplicity, clarity.
V.M. Shukshin. Information from the biography .
Stories: "Freak", « Choosing a village to live», « cut off», « Microscope», « Oratorical reception» . Image of the life of the Russian village: the depth and integrity of the spiritual world of the Russian people. Artistic features of V. Shukshin's prose.
N.M. Rubtsov. Information from the biography .
Poems : « Visions on the hill», « autumn leaves» (you can choose other poems).
The theme of the motherland in the poet's lyrics, acute pain for her fate, faith in her inexhaustible spiritual strength. Harmony of man and nature. Yesenin traditions in Rubtsov's lyrics.
Rasul Gamzatov. Information from the biography.
Poems: « Cranes», « In the mountains, horsemen quarreled,used to...» (you can choose other poems).
The penetrating sound of the theme of the motherland in the lyrics of Gamzatov. The technique of parallelism, which reinforces the semantic meaning of the eight lines. The ratio of national and universal in the work of Gamzatov.
A.V. Vampilov.Data from the biography.
Play « Provincial jokes» ( you can choose another dramatic work).
The image of the eternal, indestructible bureaucrat. The affirmation of kindness, love and mercy. Gogol traditions in Vampilov's dramaturgy.
Russian literature of recent years (overview)
Foreign literature (review)
J.-W. Goethe.« Faust» .
E. Hemingway.« The Old Man and the Sea» .
E. - M. Remarque.« Three comrades»
G. Marquez.« One hundred years of solitude» .
P. Coelho.« Alchemist» .
Works for conversations on modern literature
A. Arbuzov « Wandering years» .
V. Rozov « Looking for Joy» .
A. Vampilov « Last summer in Chulimsk» .
V. Shukshin « Up to the third cocks», « Dumas» .
V. Erofeev "Moscow - Petushki"
Ch. Aitmatov. "White steamboat" (After a fairy tale)", "Early cranes", "Piebald dog running along the edge of the sea".
D. Andreev. "Rose of the World".
V. Astafiev. "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess".
A. Beck. "New Appointment".
V. Belov. "Carpenter's Tales", "The Year of the Great Break".
A. Bitov. "Georgian Album".
V. Bykov. "Raid", "Sotnikov", "Sign of trouble".
A. Vampilov. "Elder Son", "Farewell in June".
K. Vorobyov. "Killed near Moscow".
V. Vysotsky. Songs.
Y. Dombrovsky. "Faculty of unnecessary things".
V. Ivanov. "Original Russia", "Great Russia".
B. Mozhaev. "Men and women".
V. Nabokov. "Defense of Luzhin".
V. Nekrasov. "In the trenches of Stalingrad", "A little sad story".
E. Nosov. "Usvyatsky helmet-bearers", "Red wine of victory".
B. Okudzhava. Poetry and prose.
B. Pasternak. Poetry.
V. Rasputin. "Farewell to Matera", "Live and remember".
V. Shalamov. Kolyma stories.
Poetry of the 60s–90s and the last decade (A. Kuznetsov, N. Tryapkin, G. Aigi, D. Prigov, V. Vishnevsky and others).
Approximate essay topics
nineteenth century
Socio-political situation in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The influence of the ideas of the Great French Revolution on the formation of public consciousness and the literary movement.
Romanticism. Social and philosophical foundations of its origin.
Moscow Society of Philosophers, its philosophical and aesthetic program.
Basic aesthetic principles of realism. Stages of development of realism in the XIX century.
K.N. Batyushkov. The cult of friendship and love in the work of Batyushkov. The role of the poet in the development of Russian poetry.
V.A. Zhukovsky. Artistic world of romantic elegies and ballads.
The main problems of the fables of I.A. Krylov. The theme of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the fables of I.A. Krylov.
Creativity of the Decembrist poets. Features of the civil-heroic romanticism of the Decembrists, leading themes and ideas of their work (K.F. Ryleev,V.F. Rayevsky and others).
A.S. Pushkin - the creator of the Russian literary language; the role of Pushkin in the development of Russian poetry, prose and dramaturgy.
Freedom-loving lyrics by A.S. Pushkin, its connection with the ideas of the Decembrists ("Liberty", "To Chaadaev", "Village").
Southern poems by A.S. Pushkin, their ideological and artistic features, the reflection in the poems of the character traits of "modern man".
The tragedy "Boris Godunov" by A.S. Pushkin. The historical concept of the poet and its reflection in the conflict and plot of the work.
The Decembrist theme in the work of A.S. Pushkin ("To Siberia", "Arion", "Anchar").
The theme of the poet's spiritual independence in Pushkin's poetic manifestos ("The Poet and the Crowd", "The Poet", "To the Poet").
Philosophical lyrics of the poet (“A gift in vain, a random gift ...”, “Do I wander along the noisy streets ...”).
The novel "Eugene Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin - the first Russian realistic novel, its social problems, system of images, features of the plot and composition.
Patriotic poems by A.S. Pushkin ("To the slanderers of Russia", "Borodino anniversary", "In front of the tomb of the saint").
Pushkin's fairy tales, their problems and ideological content.
The value of the creative heritage of A.S. Pushkin. Pushkin and our modernity.
The place and significance of the poets of the Pushkin "pleiade" in Russian poetry. The originality of D.V. Davydova, P.A. Vyazemsky, E.A. Baratynsky, A.A. Delviga, N.M. Yazykova, D.V. Venevitinov.
The themes and originality of M.Yu. Lermontov, its genres, features of the character of the lyrical hero.
The theme of the poet and poetry in the work of M.Yu. Lermontov ("Death of a Poet", "Poet", "Prophet").
The development of realistic tendencies in the lyrics of M.Yu. Lermontov, the interaction of lyrical, dramatic and epic principles in lyrics, its genre diversity.
The socio-philosophical essence of the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Demon", the dialectic of good and evil, rebellion and harmony, love and hate, fall and rebirth in the poem.
"A Hero of Our Time" as a socio-psychological and philosophical novel by M.Yu. Lermontov, its structure, system of images.
A.V. Koltsov. Organic unity of lyrical and epic principles in Koltsov's songs, features of their composition and visual means.
A feature of the creative talent of N.V. Gogol and his poetic vision of the world. A.S. Pushkin on the specifics of Gogol's talent.
The poem "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol, its idea, features of the genre, plot and composition. The role of the image of Chichikov in the development of the plot and the disclosure of the main idea of the work.
The main features of Russian classical literature of the 19th century: national identity, humanism, life-affirming pathos, democracy and nationality.
Geopolitics of Russia: protection of the national-state interests of the country in the works of L. N. Tolstoy, N. A. Nekrasov, F. I. Tyutchev.
Delimitation of socio-political forces in the 1860s, controversy on the pages of the periodical press. Magazines "Sovremennik" and "Russian Word" and their role in the social movement.
Journalistic and literary-critical activity of N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A. Dobrolyubova and D.I. Pisarev.
N.G. Chernyshevsky. Socio-political and aesthetic views. Literary and critical activity of N.G. Chernyshevsky.
The novel "What to do?" N.G. Chernyshevsky, its socio-political and philosophical character, problems and ideological content. The theory of "reasonable egoism", its attractiveness and impracticability.
ON THE. Nekrasov is the organizer and creator of the new Sovremennik.
Roman I.A. Goncharov "Oblomov" as a socio-psychological and philosophical novel.
"Notes of a hunter" I.S. Turgenev - the history of creation, problems and artistic originality. V.G. Belinsky about "Notes".
The novel "Fathers and Sons" by I.S. Turgenev, his problems, ideological content and philosophical meaning. The main conflict of the novel and the reflection in it of the socio-political struggle on the eve and during the reforms.
The image of Bazarov as a “transitional type” of a “restless and yearning person” in the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons". controversy around the novel. DI. Pisarev, M.A. Antonovich and N.N. Strakhov about Fathers and Sons.
I.S. Turgenev "Poems in prose", themes, main motives and genre originality.
Drama "Thunderstorm" A.N. Ostrovsky. The problem of personality and environment, tribal memory and individual activity of a person in relation to the moral laws of antiquity.
The innovative character of A.N. Ostrovsky. The relevance and topicality of the problems raised in his works.
Soul and nature in the poetry of F.I. Tyutchev.
Features of the love lyrics of F.I. Tyutchev, her dramatic intensity (“Oh, how deadly we love ...”, “Last Love”, “On the Eve of the Anniversary of August 4, 1864”, etc.).
The immediacy of the artistic perception of the world in the lyrics of A.A. Feta (“Do not wake her at dawn ...”, “Evening”, “How poor our language is! ..”, etc.).
Genre diversity of A.K. Tolstoy. The main motives of the poet's lyrics ("Among the noisy ball ...", "Not the wind, blowing from a height ...", etc.).
Socio-political and cultural life of Russia in the 1870s - early 1880s. Formation of the ideology of revolutionary populism.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is an employee and editor of Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski.
"Tales" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, their main themes, fantastic orientation, Aesopian language.
Roman F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment", posing and solving the problems of moral choice and human responsibility for the fate of the world.
Raskolnikov and his theory of crime. The essence of the "punishment" of a lost person and its path to spiritual rebirth in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment".
N.S. Leskov and his legends about the truth-seekers and the people's righteous ("Cathedral", "The Enchanted Wanderer", "Lefty").
"War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy. Idea, problems, composition, system of images.
Spiritual search L.N. Tolstoy in Anna Karenina.
The search for a positive hero and ideals A.P. Chekhov in the stories ("My life", "House with a mezzanine", "Jumper").
Innovation of Chekhov's dramaturgy.
Cognitive, moral, educational and aesthetic role of Russian literature of the 19th century, its global significance and relevance for the present.
Late 19th - early 20th century
Modernist currents. Symbolism and young symbolism. Futurism.
The motives of the immortality of the soul in the work of I.A. Bunin.
A.I. Kuprin. The affirmation of the high moral ideals of the Russian people in the stories of the writer.
Moral and social searches of the heroes of I.S. Shmelev.
The concept of society and man in the dramatic works of M. Gorky.
Autobiographical novels by M. Gorky "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities"
The ideals of service to society in the interpretation of V. Ya. Bryusov.
The theme of the historical fate of Russia in the work of A.A. Blok.
Acmeism as a trend in literature; representatives of acmeism.
Fate and Creativity M.I. Tsvetaeva.
Epic novel by M. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don". The uniqueness of the image of the Russian character in the novel.
Novels and stories about the war "Young Guard" by A. Fadeev, "Star" by E. Kazakevich, "In the trenches of Stalingrad" by V. Nekrasov.
Soviet historical novel "Peter the Great" by A. Tolstoy.
Satirical novels and stories by I. Ilf and E. Petrov.
Reflection of the tragic contradictions of the era in the work of A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam.
The development of the traditions of Russian folk culture in the poetry of the 30s of A. Tvardovsky, M. Isakovsky, P. Vasiliev.
Patriotic poetry and songs of the Great Patriotic War.
M.A. Sholokhov is the creator of the epic picture of folk life in the Don Stories.
The military theme in the work of M. Sholokhov.
The originality of the composition of the novel "The White Guard" by M.A. Bulgakov.
The tragedy of the image of the Civil War in the dramaturgy of M.A. Bulgakov ("Days of the Turbins", "Running", etc.).
The novel "Other Shores" by V.V. Nabokov as a novel-memoir of Russia.
Early lyrics by B. Pasternak.
A. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin". The book about a fighter is the embodiment of the Russian national character. I. Bunin about "Vasily Terkin".
A. Tvardovsky's poem "Road House": problems, images of heroes.
“Camp” prose by A. Solzhenitsyn “The Gulag Archipelago”, novels “In the First Circle”, “Cancer Ward”.
Philosophical novels by Ch. Aitmatov: “Stormy stop-station”, “And the day lasts longer than a century”, “Plaha”.
The image of the difficult path of the Soviet intelligentsia in the novels of Y. Bondarev "Coast", "Choice", "Game".
Philosophical fantastic prose of A. and B. Strugatsky.
Historical novels by L. Borodin, V. Shukshin, V. Chivilikhin, B. Okudzhava.
Realistic satire by F. Iskander, V. Voinovich, B. Mozhaev, V. Belov, V. Krupin.
Neomodernist and postmodernist prose of V. Erofeev "Moscow - Petushki".
Artistic exploration of the everyday life of modern man in the "cruel" prose of T. Tolstoy, L. Petrushevskaya, L. Ulitskaya and others.
The image of a working man in the poetic works of Y. Smelyakov, B. Ruchev, L. Tatyanicheva and others.
The spiritual world of a Russian person in lyrical verses and poems by N. Rubtsov.
The lyrics of poets of the front generation M. Dudin, S. Orlov, B. Slutsky and others.
Epic comprehension of the Patriotic War in the novel by V. Grossman "Life and Fate".
Philosophical and parable narration about the war in the stories of V. Bykov "Sotnikov", "Obelisk", "Sign of Trouble".
The variety of folk characters in the work of V. Shukshin.
Early stories by A. Solzhenitsyn: “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, “Matryona Dvor”.
Poetry of the 60s XX century.
N. Rubtsov. The development of Yesenin's traditions in the books "The Star of the Fields", "The Soul Keeps", "Pine Noise", "Green Flowers", etc.
The Nobel lecture by I. Brodsky is his poetic credo.
Books of poems by I. Brodsky "Part of speech", "The end of a beautiful era", "Urania", etc.
Socio-psychological dramas by A. Arbuzov "Irkutsk History", "Tales of the Old Arbat", "Cruel Intentions".
Theater A. Vampilov: "The Elder Son", "Duck Hunt", "Provincial Jokes", "Last Summer in Chulimsk".
Conditional-metaphorical novels by V. Pelevin "The Life of Insects" and "Chapaev and the Void".
Literary criticism of the mid-80s-90s. 20th century
The development of the detective genre at the end of the twentieth century.
From the standpoint of the formation of Russian literature, the first decade of the 21st century is the most significant.
In the 1990s, a kind of “reset” of the Russian literary process took place: along with the beginning of the book boom and the emergence of “returned literature”, we witnessed a certain struggle of Russian writers with the temptation of permissiveness, which was overcome only by the beginning of the 2000s. That is why the process of consciously laying the foundation of a new literature should be attributed to the beginning of the new century.
Generations of writers and genres of modern literature
Modern Russian literature is represented by several generations of writers:
- the sixties, who declared themselves back in the period of the “thaw” (Voinovich, Aksyonov, Rasputin, Iskander), professing a peculiar style of ironic nostalgia and often turning to the genre of memoirs;
- "seventies", the Soviet literary generation (Bitov, Erofeev, Makanin, Tokareva), who began their literary path in conditions of stagnation and professed a creative credo: "Bad circumstances, not a person";
- the perestroika generation (Tolstaya, Slavnikova, ,), which actually opened the era of uncensored literature and engaged in bold literary experiments;
- writers of the late 90s (Kochergin, Gutsko, Prilepin), who made up the group of the youngest figures in the literary process.
Among the general genre diversity of modern literature, the following main directions stand out:
postmodernism (Shishkin, Limonov, Sharov, Sorokin);
"women's prose" (Ulitskaya, Tokareva, Slavnikova);
mass literature (Ustinova, Dashkova, Grishkovets).
Literary trends of our time in the mirror of literary awards
In the matter of considering the literary process in Russia in the 2000s, it would be most indicative to refer to the list of laureates , moreover, the awards were predominantly non-state, since they were more focused on the reader's market, which means they better reflected the main aesthetic demands of the reading public in the past decade. At the same time, practice points to the definition of the delimitation of aesthetic functions between awards.
As is known, the phenomenon of postmodernism arises and strengthens simultaneously with the growing need for a reassessment of cultural or historical experience. This trend was reflected in the Russian Booker Prize, which announced itself back in the early 90s, which at the beginning of the century continued to “collect” under its auspices samples of literary postmodern, designed to introduce the reader into a “parallel culture”.
During this period, awards were given to:
- O. Pavlov for "Karaganda deviatiny",
- M. Elizarov for the alternative history "Librarian",
- V. Aksyonov for a fresh look at the Enlightenment in "Voltaireans and Voltaireans".
At the same time, completely diverse
Reading Russia has witnessed another curious trend that has demonstrated public interest in the major literary forms so familiar to admirers of classical Russian literature. This phenomenon was reflected, first of all, in the winners of the Big Book award, where the traditional character of the literary presentation and the volume of the work were put at the forefront.
During the mentioned period, the Big Book was received by:
- D. Bykov, again for Boris Pasternak,
- for the military biographical "My Lieutenant",
- V. Makanin for the modern Chechen saga "Asan".
Also noteworthy was the accompanying "Big Book" practice of "special prizes", which marked the works of Solzhenitsyn and Chekhov, which made it possible to stimulate mass interest in the works of the classics.
The subcultural segment of literature was provided at that time, first of all, with the help, since the choice of the winner here was carried out either using online surveys or based on the results of online sales in online stores.
Our presentation
The considered trends indicate the syncretism of the modern literary process. The modern reader, as well as the writer, is looking for the most acceptable option for obtaining a new literary experience - from the classics familiar to the eye to the catchy postmodern, which means that the national culture meets the challenges of the 21st century with a living and developing literature.
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(short review)
1. Background.
Book boom in Russia: more than 100,000 books a year. Difficulties in choosing a book.
"Modern" literature - after 1991
Background: 2 literature in the USSR: official and unofficial. Lack of "mass" literature. Perestroika: the return of forgotten names, the truth about history, the birth of new literature from the underground. Literary disaster of 1992
2. Mass Literature.
The birth of popular literature in the early 1990s. Genres of popular literature:
Detective. 1990s: Alexandra Marinina. 2000s: Daria Dontsova and Boris
Akunin.
- action movie (action): Alexander Bushkov, Victor Dotsenko.
- "pink romance";
Thriller.
- fiction. Sergey Lukyanenko. The dependence of popular literature on television series.
Growing interest in memoirs and other forms of non-fiction.
New trends in popular literature since 2005:
- glamorous literature. Oksana Robsky.
- "anti-glamor" literature. Sergey Minaev.
- investigative novels. Yulia Latynina.
- Imitations of super bestsellers.
3. "Post-Soviet" Literature.
The disappearance of "socialist realism" in the early 1990s. Growing nostalgia for the USSR in the early 2000s. Rehabilitation of socialist realism. Alexander Prokhanov. The novel "Mr. Hexogen".
The phenomenon of "thick" literary magazines. Literature of a realistic orientation. Traditions of the "liberal" Soviet literature of the "sixties".
Writers of "middle age":
Dmitry Bykov. The novels "Justification", "Spelling", "Evacuator", "J.-D."
Andrey Gelasimov. The novel "The Year of Deception", the story "Thirst".
Olga Slavnikova. Novel "2017".
Alexey Slapovsky. The novels "Quality of Life", "They".
Ludmila Ulitskaya. The novel "Daniel Stein, translator".
"New Realism".
Zakhar Prilepin. The novels "Pathologies", "Sankya", "Sin".
4. Between realism and postmodernism
The older generation:
Tatyana Tolstaya. Roman "Kis".
Ludmila Petrushevskaya. The novel "Number One or In the Gardens of Other Possibilities". Vasily Aksenov. The novels "Voltairians and Voltairians", "Moscow-kva-kva", "Rare Earths".
Middle generation:
Mikhail Shishkin. The novels "The Capture of Ishmael", "Venus Hair".
Aleksey Ivanov. The novels "The Heart of Parma", "The Gold of Revolt".
5. Russian postmodernism.
The origins are in the underground of the 1970s and 1980s. Sotsart. Moscow Conceptualism.
Dmitry Prigov.
Lev Rubinstein.
Vladimir Sorokin. Rising prominence in the late 1990s. The novels "Blue Fat", "Ice Trilogy", "The Day of the Oprichnik". Films "Moscow," Kopeyka ". Opera "Children of Rosenthal".
"Junior" conceptualists:
Pavel Pepperstein, Oleg Anofriev "The Mythogenic Love of Castes".
"Petersburg fundamentalists".
Imperial theme.
Pavel Krusanov. The novels "Angel Bite", "Bom-Bom", "American Hole".
Ironic line: Sergey Nosov. The novels "Hungry Time", "The Rooks Have Flew".
Viktor Pelevin. Satire and Buddhism. The novels "Chapaev and the Void", "Generation P", "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf", "EmpireV". Alexey Ivanov. Modern "fantasy" with historical. novels "The Heart of Parma", "The Gold of Revolt" (about the Pugachev uprising). Mikhail Shishkin (lives in Switzerland) "The Capture of Ishmael 2000." Russian Booker Prize. "Venus hair" (about the psychology of a Russian person.)
Sergei Bolmat. The novels "Themselves", "In the air". Mikhail Elizarov. The story "Nails", the novels "Pasternak", "The Librarian". Alexander Garros and Alexey Evdokimov. The novels "Puzzle", "Gray Slime", "The Truck Factor".
Main directions
in modern Russian literature
It is now less and less common to hear voices shouting: "We have no literature."
The concept of " Modern literature”For many, it is now associated not with the Silver Age and not even with the “village” prose of the 70s, but with today’s living literary process. The fact that literature is alive and will live is evidenced by several facts:
- firstly, these are literary awards, large and small, well-known, such as the Booker Prize, and just born, for example, the name of Pushkin's Ivan Petrovich Belkin, awards that help talented writers survive and thoughtful readers orient themselves.
- Secondly, the incredible activity of book publishing. Now not only “thick” magazines are rushing for literary novelties, but also the book publishing houses Vagrius, Zakharov, Podkova, etc. Often the book manages to come out earlier than the last part of the same novel - in the magazine, which forms a healthy competition.
- Thirdly, literary fairs. Annual fairs of non/fiction intellectual literature in Moscow, book fairs of contemporary literature in the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg become a real event; meetings with writers, round tables and discussions encourage authors to write and readers to read.
- Fourth, the literary Internet. Despite the fact that “seterature” differs in many respects from traditional “paper” literature, they are still close relatives, and a growing number of electronic libraries and literary sites, where each visitor is a reader, a writer, and a critic, where there are no “high instances” and authorities, but there is only love for the word and text, testifies to the advent of a new literary generation.
What are the main trends and general patterns of Russian literature in 2001-2002?
For the last two years, literature in Russia has continued to develop according to the same laws as it has been throughout the last decade, its main directions are:
- postmodernism,
- realism (in all its varieties),
- modernism
- neosentimentalism.
If we talk about the general patterns of the literary process of 2001-2002, then two points should be noted.
1. Postmodernism , as before, has a "tacit" influence on all modern literature, but the balance of power is changing. Just as it used to be necessary to defend realism from postmodernism (in 1995, Booker was awarded to Georgy Vladimov with his realistic novel The General and His Army as a warning to fans of the postmodernist Viktor Pelevin who attacked the competition jury), so today postmodernism needs to be protected by the same Booker jury (jury members In 2002, under the leadership of Vladimir Makanin, they declared: “The inclusion of the name of Vladimir Sorokin on the“ short list ”is in this case the only way to protest against the persecution of the writer, threatening him with judicial reprisal. We consider it unacceptable to create such a precedent”).
2. Strengthens tendencies to blur borders
- between realistic and non-realistic trends in literature (a feature of most modern texts, most clearly in the work of Olga Slavnikova, Nikolai Kononov, Vera Pavlova, Natalia Galkina);
- between intellectual and mass literature (books by Boris Akunin, Tatyana Tolstaya).
between literary genres (“female detective” by Daria Dontsova, Tatyana Polyakova, and others, “detective & utopia & parody” by Holm Van Zaichik, etc.);
- between literature and non-literary reality. (The extremist movement “Walking Together” and their actions of public destruction of books by Vladimir Sorokin and Bayan Shiryanov are, on the one hand, and on the other, the blurring of boundaries between literature and the reality outside of it, taking place in the sphere of mass media.
- The use of advertising and PR technologies to "promotion" of writers and the implantation of paid advertising and PR messages into the fabric of works of art - all this is the reality of recent years).
Let us now dwell on the analysis of the main trends in Russian literature over the past 2 years.
Postmodernism , which came from the underground to legal literature in the second half of the 80s under the name "other literature", today continues to develop actively.
Founders of Russian postmodernism are poets Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, Timur Kibirov, Ivan Zhdanov, Alexander Eremenko etc., prose writers Venedikt Erofeev, Vladimir Sorokin, Viktor Erofeev.
It should be noted that Russian postmodernism, whether it is the 70s or the 2000s, is characterized by the divisionpostmodern artistic strategies into 2 varieties:
- The first is “postmodernism as a complex of worldview attitudes and aesthetic principles”, and the second is “postmodernism as a manner of writing”, that is, “deep” postmodernism and “superficial”, when only its aesthetic techniques are used: “citation”, language games, unusual construction of the text, as in the novel by Tatyana Tolstaya "Kys" (2001). Hundreds of volumes have been written about postmodernism and more than 600 of its definitions have been given, but if you try to summarize, it turns out that postmodernism is a new type of consciousness, characterized by a global crisis in the hierarchy of values. The destruction of the hierarchy of values is based on the idea of equal size and equality of all elements of the Universe, there is no division into “spiritual” and “material”, into “high” and “low”, into “soul” and “body”. In postmodern literature, this phenomenon is expressed very clearly: the heroine of V. Narbikova’s story “The Balance of the Light of Day and Night Stars” speaks of love like this: “We love each other like: a dog, a potato, a mother, the sea, beer, a pretty girl, panties, a book , playboy, Tyutchev".The key concept of postmodernism is "the world as a text” can be explained as follows: the world is unknowable, but is given to us as a description of this world, therefore it (the world) consists of a sum of texts and is itself a heterogeneous and endless text. A person can perceive only a text (a description of the world), and his consciousness is also the sum of texts. Any work (and any consciousness) is a part of this endless text. Hence the idea of polyquotation as a norm (there is no point in dividing into one's own and another's), experiments with the beginning / end of the text (both concepts are relative, since the text is endless), games with the reader (the world-text is anonymous, and therefore the author does not exist, the reader - just as much an author as a writer).
Postmodern literature in the last 2 years has been presented in a very diverse way. This is a literary game in the novels "Feast", "Ice" by the patriarch of Russian postmodernism Vladimir Sorokin, where the author continues his destructive experiments with various styles. Mikhail Kononov in the novel "The Naked Pioneer" offers his own scandalous version of one of the chapters of his native history - the Great Patriotic War. Mikhail Elizarov, called the "new Gogol" by critics, publishes "Nails", pseudo-nostalgic pseudo-memoirs, striking in their musicality, organicity and richness of language. Anastasia Gosteva (“Travel-Lamb”, “The Den of the Enlightened”), a representative of the new female prose, writes postmodern texts dedicated to the peculiarities of the “drug addict” consciousness. Yulia Kisina's book "Simple Desires" (Petersburg publishing house "Alethea"), also refers to the new women's prose, here the author ("Sorokin in a skirt", according to some critics), deconstructs (dismembers) the holy of holies - childhood, which turns out to be not "pink", but black and monstrous in nature. Human monstrousness is a cross-cutting theme of the work of Yuri Mamleev, known to readers from "Connecting Rods" and other books, in 2001 his new novel "Wandering Time" was published. Dmitry Bykov's sensational novel "Justification" amazingly combines postmodernist strategies for constructing a text (a fantasy type of narration, playing "another story") with traditionally realistic ones designed for a "conservative" reader. Readers could get acquainted with the "philological" novels of Vladimir Novikov "A Romance with Language, or Sentimental Discourse", Sergei Nosov's "Mistress of History", "Give Me a Monkey", Valery Iskhakov's "Chekhov's Reader" and "A Slight Taste of Treason".
contemporary modernism has its roots in the literature of the Silver Age. Most often, contemporary modernist authors, who oppose themselves to "literature of verisimilitude", identify with postmodernist writers, however superficially, at the level of "postmodernism as a manner of writing". The internal difference between modernism and postmodernism is that the vertical in the value system has not been destroyed: the classical division into “high” and “low”, “spiritual” and “material”, “brilliant” and “talentless” has been preserved. The modern modernist text goes back to the Russian-language work of Vladimir Nabokov, while the postmodernist one undoubtedly goes back to the works of Daniil Kharms. Tatyana Tolstaya's novel "Kys", which received the Triumph Prize for 2001, combined the features of intellectual and popular literature and became an event in the artistic life of Russia. A dystopian novel, a parody novel, a story about the life of a country that was once Russia, and now a settlement thrown back by the Explosion almost into the Stone Age. The modernist strategy of the author is manifested, on the one hand, in the rejection of the heritage of realistic traditions (this is an “unusual” form of organizing the novel - the alphabet, and the language games of the author with the reader, and postmodernist techniques), on the other hand, in the space of the novel “Kys” there is some kind of Truth, to which the hero aspires, which is completely impossible in a postmodern novel. The parody of Tatyana Tolstaya's novel is not absolute: it ends where the realm of Truth, Goodness and Beauty begins.
Modern Russian realism exists in several varieties, the first of which isneo-critical realism. It has its roots in the "natural school" of Russian realism of the 19th century, with its pathos of denying reality and depicting all aspects of life without limitation. Modern naturalism, revived in the late 80s of the XX century, is associated primarily with the name of Sergei Kaledin ("Humble Cemetery", "Stroybat"). Many critics rank as naturalism (and even "darkness") the prose of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya of the 70-90s, Svetlana Vasilenko (until 1995, according to the writer), Vladimir Makanin. Among the new critical prose of 2001-2002. - Roman Senchin's story "Minus", depicting the hopeless life of a small Siberian town in the traditions of the natural school, Oleg Pavlov's "army" story "Karaganda deviatiny, or the Tale of the Last Days" (included, by the way, in the short list of the Booker Prize 2002), the story of abandoned village of Alexander Titov with a demonstrative name: "The life that was not." The pathos of the texts conditionally referred to neo-critical realism is pessimistic. Disbelief in the “high” destiny of a person, the choice as a hero of a creature with a limited, narrowed, “drowsy”, according to critic E. Koksheneva, consciousness - all this predetermines the main patterns of style - heaviness, laconism and deliberate artlessness of the style.
The second, now rare, variety realism - ontological or metaphysical realism, which flourished in the 70s of the XX century of Russian literature. The "village" prose of Vasily Belov, Valentin Rasputin and others has become a school of ontological realism for a group of today's young writers. The philosophical and aesthetic essence of ontological realism can be reduced to the following: in human life there is a high, but hidden meaning that needs to be comprehended, and not to seek and equip one's own place under the sun. A Russian person can comprehend this meaning only through unity, through "catholicity", while any individual path is untrue. The key idea of ontological realists is “panpsychism”: the whole world surrounding a person is animated, and therefore realistic poetics in “village” prose coexists with symbolist ones. New, today's ontological realists are also looking not for obvious causal relationships of life phenomena, but for its mystical and sacred Christian meaning. Reality, which is understood as standing in the face of God, temporal in the light of Eternity, etc. As an example in the literature of the last two years, one can cite the prose of Lydia Sycheva, Yuri Samarin, Dmitry Ermakov, Olga Shevchenko, Yuri Goryukhin, Vladimir Bondar, where the common denominator is their religiosity, their Christian view of the world.
The third type of realistic wingRussian literature is post-realism. The term, proposed by the scholar and critic Mark Lipovetsky, was introduced to designate artistic attempts to comprehend the existential duel of the individual with the chaos of life. Postrealism is open to postmodernist poetics, and, like today's modernists, writers Mikhail Butov, Irina Polyanskaya, Nikolai Kononov, Yuri Buida, Mikhail Shishkin also use the aesthetic techniques of postmodernism. However, first of all, post-realism is existential realism, with its idea of personal responsibility, the idea of freedom that requires individual verification and fitting, the idea of connectedness and the belief in the incompletion and insolubility of the duel of the individual with chaos. The novel Grasshopper's Funeral by Nikolai Kononov (one of the winners of the Apollon Grigoriev Prize) is a story about the hero's childhood, about how his grandmother died, and he and his mother followed her, with all the horrors of caring for a paralyzed woman. But naturalistic descriptions are harmonized by the language of the novel, its internal poetic rhythm, repetitions, and an abundance of adjectives and subordinate clauses. The existential temperament of the novel by Nikolai Kononov, combined with sophisticated naturalism and poetic language, results in the phenomenon of post-realism. Post-realistic poetics is characteristic of the work of Olga Slavnikova. Her last work, which was included in the top three laureates of the Apollon Grigoriev Prize, is Immortal. A story about a real person. "Immortal" Slavnikova, at first glance, a phantasmagoria with a touch of furious pamphlet. The heroes of the story are poor provincials knocked out of the "usual" Soviet existence. However, the sick, unfortunate, sometimes scary inhabitants of the Ural town paradoxically remain people, and all their terrible ghosts disappear when real pain, real death, real life appear. The Immortal is a terrible book, but it is not an apology for fear at all. The reader hears the hidden music of hope, because the tragedy of an individual unique person is associated with the tragic history of our country, and this history is unthinkable without a multidimensional and free word. Personality in an existential duel with the chaos of life, as we see, is an inexhaustible topic.
The next trend in Russian literature in recent years isneosentimentalism , the appearance of which is claimed by almost all well-known critics. This artistic trend is based on the traditions of sentimentalism of the 18th century. The ideal put forward by Nikolai Karamzin in Poor Liza is a sensitive person. Awareness of the value of simple feelings of a private, “small”, non-heroic person has become extremely relevant in today's literature. In dramaturgy, the plays of Yevgeny Grishkovets are classified as neo-sentimentalism, in poetry - by Timur Kibirov, in prose - most of the works of women's prose. It is indicative that Lyudmila Ulitskaya became the winner of the Booker Prize in 2001 with her neo-sentimentalist novel The Kukotsky Case. The novel is saturated with childish freshness of feelings. L. Ulitskaya comments on the title and concept of her novel in the following way: “Casus is a case. I told about the case of Kukotsky - about a man and his fate. This incident seems to me an incident of each of us. Any person is a specific case in the hand of the Lord God, in the world compote in which we all swim ... In this case, this is Kukotsky. But it can be an incident of everyone who carefully observes life, fearlessly and honestly looks at the world ... ". Something similar can be said about the heroes of the story "Girls", the novel "Tsyu-yurih". And yet, the neo-sentimentalism of recent years is not equal to Karamzin's sentimentalism: the sensitivity of the newest time, as it were, has passed the phase of irony, doubt and reflection, postmodern polyquotation, the phase of self-denial. A “new sincerity”, a “new sensitivity” appears, where total irony is defeated by “counter-irony”. So, for example, Andrey Dmitriev's story "The Road Back", which won the "big" Apollon Grigoriev Prize in 2002, is a story about how the nanny of a boy who has now become a writer went to the store, but instead ended up, along with a cheerful company, far from Pskov - in the Pushkin mountains, where the next birthday of the first poet was officially and drunkenly celebrated. The “cathedral” jubilation-libation (everyone loves Pushkin, and at the same time each other) is replaced by penniless hangover loneliness: the drinking companions have disappeared, and the heroine has a many-kilometer-long “road back” on foot. The story is encrusted with inconspicuous Pushkin quotes, the illiterate, but having bought collections of poems with her last pennies, Maria is seen as a sick double of the legendary Arina Rodionovna, her spree and hangover, melancholy and humility, a penchant for fantasizing and earthiness, unrestraint, roguishness and clumsy affection for the "master's children" at once deadly real and mythical. Without knowing it herself, the dissolute passion-bearer secretly educates the narrator. He learned to read from the same penny book, which contained the most important verses, and Maria’s desperate journey became part of the soul, which is destined to comprehend what a “cruel age”, “a vague hangover”, “striped miles”, “fatal passions”, “secret freedom”, “good feelings” Russia, which you can’t exchange for anything.
A special kind of modern literature, which cannot be ignored due to its increasing importance - this popular literature. It is possible to separate mass and non-mass literature according to various criteria: in this case, the following feature seems to be productive: following a stable genre canon. Mass literature consists of stable genre schemes such as detective story, romance novel, etc. The more fully the author follows the genre canon, the more "reliable" his success as a reader. Non-mass literature is based on the opposite strategy - unpredictability, here new genres are invented and literary experiments are carried out. As already mentioned, one of the signs of our time has become the blurring of the boundaries between popular and intellectual literature.
The most striking development in this area isdetective series by Boris Akunin. In the last 2 years, this is the end of the “provincial” series - the novel “Pelagia and the Black Monk”, the continuation of the “Fandorinsky” and “post-Fandorinsky” series - “Altyn-Tolobas”, the diptych “Lover (ca) of death”, “Extracurricular reading”. When the name of Erast Fandorin became known to a large circle of readers, and the total circulation of books about him reached a million copies by the end of 2000, G. Chkhartishvili explained the principle of creating and popularizing texts as a project implementation: “... the roots of literature are in the heart, and the roots of a literary project are in my head. I came up with a multi-component, intricate drawing. Therefore, the project. Thoughtfulness, consideration of the cultural situation and market conditions are characteristic of the entire history of "Fandorin". On the other hand, The Adventures of Erast Fandorin is designed primarily for a person who has an idea about the main books of Russian literature in the amount of average erudition of a university graduate, not necessarily a humanitarian one (N. Leskov, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy). Akunin focuses on the "literary centrism" of Russian culture. The reader is flattered by the recognition of both the parodic rethinking of well-known stories (“Anna Karenina” in “The Jack of Spades”), as well as quoting and stylizing them. He does not feel like a stranger in the past: he plunges into the language of the literature of those years, reproduced by the average classic dictionary, sees characters and situations that resemble what he once read. According to the critic, "Russian classics have acquired a pleasant presentation and now affect the mind and emotions not in an exciting, but in a calming way." The idea of B. Akunin includes not only the creation of all possible variants of the detective genre, as reported on the cover of each book, but also the consistent projection of the main plot of each of the novels on the key texts of Russian literature, arranged in historical order - from Karamzin's "Poor Lisa" to the first time of the action of "Azazele" before "Slum People" by Gilyarovsky in "The Lover of Death". The novel "Extracurricular Reading" is built as a postmodern text, with its philosophy of a single and endless text of culture: the title of each chapter is at the same time the title of one of the works of world literature.
The success of the series of books about Fandorin attracted the attention of readers to the books of the professional historian Leonid Yuzefovich, who has been writing about the 80s and 90s of the 19th century for more than two decades. The works of L. Yuzefovich about the legendary detective Ivan Dmitrievich Putilin (one of the latest - "Harlequin Costume", "Prince of the Wind"), due to the hero's occupation, have a detective basis, but they are not actually detectives: this is traditional realistic prose, novels of characters that have long had a stable a circle of adherents who value equally the professionalism of a historian and the talent of a writer, a connoisseur of the past alien to the conjuncture, possessing a leisurely intonation, excellent language. as a series of "The Adventures of Ivan Putilin", with a single stylish design.
Evgeny Lukin and Vyacheslav Rybakov, having created another literary hoax, came up with an author with a mysterious biography and name - Holm van Zaychik. The genre in which "The Story of the Greedy Barbarian", "The Case of the Independent Dervishes", "The Case of Igor's Campaign", "The Case of the Victorious Monkey" are written can be defined as a "utopian detective story". Some critics speak of van Zaichik's post-postmodernism, that is, the homely, cozy, non-revolutionary use of postmodernist strategies. Indeed, in the novels of van Zaichik, the great state of the future appears - Ordus (Horde plus Russia), where detective stories unfold. Irony and sentimentality, detective intrigue and witty allusions to modern St. Petersburg realities - all this speaks of a talented combination of a genre that is massive in its essence and its intellectual content.
In addition to the "intelligent" historical and utopian detective stories, the ironic detective story is incredibly spreading. The books of Darya Dontsova (of the last ones are “A Bouquet of Beautiful Ladies”, “Smile of 45th Caliber”, “Fig Leaf Couture”, “Walking Under the Fly”. “Miracles in a Saucepan”) date back to the novels of Ioanna Khmelevskaya, whose success in Russia, obviously, was the reason for the appearance of Russian ironic detectives. Dontsova's novels, unlike her Polish colleague, do not go beyond mass literature and do not create a new synthesis of intellectuality and mass character. The heroine Dontsova, a middle-aged lady, pretty, wealthy and educated, in contrast to Pani Joanna, ironizes everything and everyone, does not have the ability for self-irony, which leads to an abundance of platitudes and tactlessness and a high degree of predictability of her investigations.
If detectives are ranked on a scale of irony - seriousness ("hard" detective), then Andrei Kivinov's stories "It's Served to Die", "Slaughter" Department will be located first, then - Alexandra Marinina's "Unlocked Door", "Phantom of Memory", followed by stories Tatyana Polyakova "The Young Lady and the Hooligan", "Ghostbusters", "Fitness for Little Red Riding Hood", Alexander Bushkov closes the scale "The Vulture", "Bulldog Fight", "Piranha: First Throw". "Indecent Dance".
Apparently, mass literature is needed no less than intellectual literature - it has its own functions, its own tasks. At the non/fiction intellectual literature book fair in Moscow in November of this year, the majority of visitors spoke out against the division of literature into intellectual and mass literature, which should not be forgotten when talking about the modern literary process. at the same time, looking at the abundance of colorful covers, it is necessary to remember that modern literature is not alive in single pockets for reading in the subway. Yuri Davydov, Chairman of the Booker Jury 2001, admitted that he faced a very difficult choice and it was extremely difficult for him to name just one work as the best. “I had to read many works, but strangely enough, I did not have a funeral mood. I was afraid that, having become closely acquainted with modern literature, I would discover its complete and final decline. Fortunately, this did not happen. Young authors write, and they write wonderfully.” And the writer Vladimir Makanin, chairman of the Booker Jury 2002, assessing the results, said briefly: "I am satisfied with the high quality of the prose." So there really is no reason for pessimism.
