Epic Theater" by B. Brecht. Analysis of the play “Mother Courage and Her Children. Ideological problems of the anti-fascist drama by B. Brecht “Mother Courage”. The embodiment of the principles of "epic" theater in the play American literature after the war

In the late 30s - early 40s. Brecht creates plays that stand on a par with the best works of world drama. These are Mother Courage and The Life of Galileo.

The historical drama “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939) is based on a story by a German satirist and publicist of the 17th century. Grimmelshausen’s “A detailed and outlandish biography of the great deceiver and vagabond Courage,” in which the author, a participant in the Thirty Years’ War, created a remarkable chronicle of this darkest period in the history of Germany.

The main character of Brecht's play is the sutler Anna Firliig, nicknamed "Courage" for her courageous character. Having loaded the van with popular goods, she, along with her two sons and daughter, follows the troops to the war zone in the hope of extracting commercial benefits from the war.

Although the play takes place in the era of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, which was tragic for the fate of Germany, it is organically connected with the most pressing problems of our time. With its entire content, the play forced the reader and viewer on the eve of the Second World War to think about its consequences, about who benefits from it and who will suffer from it. But there was more than just one anti-war theme in the play. Brecht was deeply concerned about the political immaturity of the ordinary working people of Germany, their inability to correctly understand the true meaning of the events taking place around them, thanks to which they became the support and victims of fascism. The main critical arrows in the play are aimed not at the ruling classes, but at everything that is bad and morally distorted in the working people. Brecht's criticism is imbued with both indignation and sympathy.

Courage is a woman who loves her children, lives for them, strives to protect them from war, but at the same time goes to war in the hope of profiting from it and actually becomes the culprit in the death of children, because each time the thirst for profit turns out to be stronger than maternal feeling. And this terrible moral and human fall of Courage is shown in all its terrible essence.

The play unfolds in the form of a dramatic chronicle, allowing Brecht to paint a broad and diverse picture of life in Germany in all its complexity And inconsistency, and on show your heroine against this background. War for Courage is a source of income, a “golden time.” She doesn’t even understand that she herself was responsible for the death of all her children. Only once, in the sixth scene, after her daughter was violated, did she exclaim: “Damn the war!” But in the next picture she again walks with a confident gait and sings “a song about war - the great nurse.” But the most unbearable thing about Courage’s behavior is her transitions from Courage the mother to Courage the selfish trader. She checks the coin to see if it's counterfeit. And does not notice how at this moment the recruiter takes her son Eilif away to become a soldier in the princely army. The tragic lessons of the war taught the greedy cantina nothing. But showing the heroine’s insight was not the author’s task. For the playwright, the main thing is that the audience learns a lesson from her life experience.

moral

There are many songs in the play "Mother Courage and Her Children", as, indeed, in many other plays by Brecht. But a special place is given to the “Song of the Great Surrender,” which Courage sings. This song is one of the artistic techniques of the “alienation effect.” According to the author, it is intended to interrupt the action for a short time in order to give the viewer the opportunity to think and analyze the actions of the unfortunate and criminal merchant, to explain the reasons for her “great surrender”, to show why she did not find the strength and will to say “no” "principle: "to live with wolves - howl like a wolf." Her “great surrender” was based on the naive belief that good money could be made from the war. So the fate of Courage grows to a grandiose moral the tragedy of the “little man” in capitalist society. But in a world that morally disfigures ordinary workers, there are still people who are able to overcome humility and perform a heroic act. Such is Courage’s daughter, the downtrodden, mute Catherine, who, according to her mother, is afraid of war and cannot see the suffering of a single living creature. Catherine is the personification of the living, natural power of love and kindness. At the cost of her life, she saves the peacefully sleeping inhabitants of the city from a sudden enemy attack. The weakest of all, Catherine turns out to be capable of active action against the world of profit and war, from which her mother cannot escape. Catherine’s feat makes us think even more about Courage’s behavior and condemn it. Sentencing Courage, perverted by bourgeois morality, to terrible loneliness, Brecht leads the viewer to the idea of the need to break a social system in which bestial morality reigns, and everything honest is doomed to destruction.

In emigration, in the struggle against fascism, Brecht's dramatic creativity flourished. It was extremely rich in content and varied in form. Among the most famous plays of the emigration is “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939). The more acute and tragic the conflict, the more critical, according to Brecht, a person’s thought should be. In the conditions of the 30s, “Mother Courage” sounded, of course, as a protest against the demagogic propaganda of war by the Nazis and was addressed to that part of the German population that succumbed to this demagoguery. War is depicted in the play as an element organically hostile to human existence.

The essence of "epic theater" becomes especially clear in connection with Mother Courage. Theoretical commentary is combined in the play with a realistic manner that is merciless in its consistency. Brecht believes that realism is the most reliable way of influence. That is why in “Mother Courage” the “true” face of life is so consistent and consistent even in small details. But one should keep in mind the two-dimensionality of this play - the aesthetic content of the characters, i.e. a reproduction of life, where good and evil are mixed regardless of our desires, and the voice of Brecht himself, not satisfied with such a picture, trying to affirm good. Brecht's position is directly manifested in the zongs. In addition, as follows from Brecht’s director’s instructions for the play, the playwright provides theaters with ample opportunities to demonstrate the author’s thoughts with the help of various “alienations” (photography, film projection, direct address of actors to the audience).

The characters of the heroes in Mother Courage are depicted in all their complex contradictions. The most interesting is the image of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage. The versatility of this character evokes various feelings in the audience. The heroine attracts with her sober understanding of life. But she is a product of the mercantile, cruel and cynical spirit of the Thirty Years' War. Courage is indifferent to the causes of this war. Depending on the vicissitudes of fate, she hoists either a Lutheran or a Catholic banner over her wagon. Courage goes to war in the hope of big profits.

Brecht's disturbing conflict between practical wisdom and ethical impulses infects the entire play with the passion of argument and the energy of preaching. In the image of Catherine, the playwright painted the antipode of Mother Courage. Neither threats, nor promises, nor death forced Catherine to abandon her decision, dictated by her desire to help people in some way. The talkative Courage is opposed by the mute Catherine, the girl’s silent feat seems to cancel out all the lengthy reasoning of her mother. Brecht's realism is manifested in the play not only in the depiction of the main characters and in the historicism of the conflict, but also in the life-like authenticity of episodic characters, in Shakespearean multicoloredness, reminiscent of a “Falstaffian background.” Each character, drawn into the dramatic conflict of the play, lives his own life, we guess about his fate, about his past and future life and seem to hear every voice in the discordant chorus of war.

In addition to revealing the conflict through the clash of characters, Brecht complements the picture of life in the play with zongs, which provide a direct understanding of the conflict. The most significant zong is “Song of Great Humility”. This is a complex type of “alienation,” when the author speaks as if on behalf of his heroine, sharpens her erroneous positions and thereby argues with her, instilling in the reader doubts about the wisdom of “great humility.” Brecht responds to the cynical irony of Mother Courage with his own irony. And Brecht’s irony leads the viewer, who has already succumbed to the philosophy of accepting life as it is, to a completely different view of the world, to an understanding of the vulnerability and fatality of compromises. The song about humility is a kind of foreign counterpart that allows us to understand the true, opposite wisdom of Brecht. The entire play, which critically portrays the practical, compromising “wisdom” of the heroine, is a continuous debate with the “Song of Great Humility.” Mother Courage does not see the light in the play, having survived the shock, she learns “no more about its nature than a guinea pig about the law of biology.” The tragic (personal and historical) experience, while enriching the viewer, taught Mother Courage nothing and did not enrich her at all. The catharsis she experienced turned out to be completely fruitless. Thus, Brecht argues that the perception of the tragedy of reality only at the level of emotional reactions in itself is not knowledge of the world, and is not much different from complete ignorance.

2. The image of mother Courage

In the late 30s - early 40s. Brecht creates plays that rank with the best works of world drama. These are Mother Courage and The Life of Galileo.

The historical drama “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939) is based on a story by a German satirist and publicist of the 17th century. Grimmelshausen's "A thorough and outlandish biography of the great deceiver and vagabond Courage", in which the author, a participant in the Thirty Years' War, created a remarkable chronicle of this darkest period in the history of Germany.

The main character of Brecht's play is the sutler Anna Firliig, nicknamed "Courage" for her courageous character. Having loaded the van with marketable goods, she, along with her two sons and daughter, follows the troops into the war zone in the hope of extracting commercial benefits from the war.

Although the play takes place in the era of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, which was tragic for the fate of Germany, it is organically connected with the most pressing problems of our time. With its entire content, the play forced the reader and viewer on the eve of the Second World War to think about its consequences, about who benefits from it and who will suffer from it. But there was more than just one anti-war theme in the play. Brecht was deeply concerned about the political immaturity of ordinary working people in Germany, their inability to correctly understand the true meaning of the events taking place around them, thanks to which they became the support and victims of fascism. The main critical arrows in the play are aimed not at the ruling classes, but at everything that is bad and morally distorted in the working people. Brecht's criticism is imbued with both indignation and sympathy.

Courage is a woman who loves her children, lives for them, strives to protect them from war - at the same time, she goes to war in the hope of profiting from it and actually becomes the culprit in the death of her children, because every time the thirst for profit turns out to be stronger than maternal feelings . And this terrible moral and human fall of Courage is shown in all its terrible essence.

The play unfolds in the form of a dramatic chronicle, allowing Brecht to paint a broad and diverse picture of German life in all its complexity and contradictions, and against this background to show his heroine. War for Courage is a source of income, a “golden time”. She doesn’t even understand that she herself was responsible for the death of all her children. Only once, in the sixth scene, after her daughter was violated, did she exclaim: “Damn the war!” But in the next picture she again walks with a confident gait and sings “a song about war - the great nurse.” But the most unbearable thing in Courage’s behavior is her transition from Courage the mother to Courage the selfish trader. She checks the coin to see if it is counterfeit, and does not notice how at that moment the recruiter takes her son Eilif away to become a soldier in the princely army. The tragic lessons of the war taught the greedy cantina nothing. But showing the heroine’s insight was not the author’s task. For the playwright, the main thing is that the audience learns a lesson from her life experience.

There are many songs in the play "Mother Courage and Her Children", as, indeed, in many other plays by Brecht. But a special place is given to the “Song of the Great Surrender,” which Courage sings. This song is one of the artistic techniques of the “alienation effect”. According to the author’s plan, it is intended to interrupt the action for a short time in order to give the viewer the opportunity to think and analyze the actions of the unfortunate and criminal merchant, to explain the reasons for her “great surrender”, to show why she did not find the strength and will to say “no” to the principle: “ To live with wolves is to howl like a wolf.” Her “great surrender” consisted in the naive belief that good money could be made from the war. Thus, the fate of Courage grows into a grandiose moral tragedy of the “little man” in a capitalist society. But in a world that morally disfigures ordinary workers, there are still people who are able to overcome humility and perform a heroic act. Such is Courage’s daughter, the downtrodden, mute Catherine, who, according to her mother, is afraid of war and cannot see the suffering of a single living creature. Catherine is the personification of the living, natural power of love and kindness. At the cost of her life, she saves the peacefully sleeping inhabitants of the city from a sudden enemy attack. The weakest of all, Catherine turns out to be capable of active action against the world of profit and war, from which her mother cannot escape. Catherine’s feat makes us think even more about Courage’s behavior and condemn it. Condemning Courage, perverted by bourgeois morality, to terrible loneliness, Brecht leads the viewer to the idea of the need to break a social system in which bestial morality reigns, and everything honest is doomed to destruction.

And black. It was a bright, festive, slightly extravagant union, for which, it seemed, nothing was impossible. The new music embodies the dream of unity and equality, harmony and tolerance. In the second half of the decade, troubles befell rock: the Beatles announced the final cessation of concert activities, in 1966 Bob Dylan was in a car accident and was...

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Anti-war pathos and allegorical meaning of the drama By. Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children"

I. The plot of the action is an opinion about the war. (Even before the action begins, we hear a dialogue between the recruiter and the sergeant major. And the latter pronounces the opinion that the world is a disorder, the basis of the immorality of society, “only wars create harmony.” For him, war is an exciting phase in which players begin to fear the world, for then they will have to count how much they have lost.)
II. There is no war without soldiers. (Mother Courage feeds from the war, because she is a market woman and sells in the army. And when they want to take her son Eilif into the army, she says: “Let other people’s sons become soldiers, not mine.” But the cunning recruiter still persuades the guy to enlist to the troops while Mother Courage was bargaining.)
III. Anyone who wants to live through war must pay it something.
Mother Courage meets her son Eilif only two years later, but he is brave and respected by the commander. He brutally deals with the peasants, and the war writes off everything. For now. And the second son, Courage Schweitzerkas, is taken into the army as a treasurer, because he is honest and decent. For this he suffered, because, trying to protect the regiment’s cash register, he was shot. The mother was not allowed to mourn and bury Schweitzerkas. Eilif also dies, for he kills a peasant family precisely during a short peace. And Mother Courage at this time is trying to improve her material affairs. Finally, Katrin’s daughter also dies when her mother went to the city to buy goods. And again she goes along the roads of war, without even having time to bury her daughter.
IV. The allegorical meaning of the images of Mother Courage’s children. (Each of Mother Courage’s children is the personification of some virtue. Eilif is brave, courageous. Schweitzerkas is honest, decent. Katrin is generous and kind. But they all die in war. Such is the fate of human virtues who die amid moral decay. It is no coincidence the priest says that war turns everything inside out and demonstrates the most terrible human vices, which in peacetime may not have appeared: “The ones who are to blame here are those who started the war, who turn out the worst that is in people.”)
V. What is the meaning of hidden irony. (Already in the title itself, Courage is called not a mother, but a mother. Why? Because there is a hidden irony here. Can a real mother want war? Of course not, even if this does not concern her children. And she does not treat her own too carefully. Every time the fate of her children is decided, she bargains, even when it comes to the life of her son - honest Schweitzerkas. The author's irony extends to other images - a priest, a cook, a sergeant major, a soldier, etc. because they live behind moral rules that are turned inside out. Irony helps to understand the allegorical meaning of Brecht's drama.)
VI. The meaning of the finitude of drama. (When Brechtov was reproached for the fact that his heroine did not curse the war, he said that his goal was different: let the viewer come to the conclusion himself. Although Mother Courage says: “Even though she was sunk, this is war!” - but this is not faith, because she continues to profit from the war. Her last words are: “I must continue to trade.”)

Bertolt Brecht's theory of epic theater, which had a huge influence on 20th-century drama and theater, is very challenging material for students. Conducting a practical lesson on the play “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939) will help make this material accessible to assimilation.

The theory of epic theater began to take shape in Brecht's aesthetics back in the 1920s, during a period when the writer was close to left-wing expressionism. The first, still naive, idea was Brecht's proposal to bring theater closer to sports. “Theater without an audience is nonsense,” he wrote in the article “More Good Sports!”

In 1926, Brecht completed work on the play “Like That Soldier, Like That Soldier,” which he later considered the first example of epic theater. Elisabeth Hauptmann recalls: “After staging the play “What is this soldier, what is that” Brecht acquires books about socialism and Marxism... Somewhat later, while on vacation, he writes: “I am up to my ears in Capital.” Now I need to know all this for sure...”

Brecht's theatrical system develops simultaneously and in inextricable connection with the formation of the method of socialist realism in his work. The basis of the system - the “alienation effect” - is the aesthetic form of the famous position of K. Marx from “Theses on Feuerbach”: “Philosophers have only explained the world in different ways, but the point is to change it.”

The first work that deeply embodied this understanding of alienation was the play “Mother” (1931) based on the novel by A. M. Gorky.

Describing his system, Brecht used either the term “non-Aristotelian theater” or “epic theater.” There is some difference between these terms. The term “non-Aristotelian theater” is associated primarily with the negation of old systems, while “epic theater” is associated with the affirmation of a new one.

The basis of “non-Aristotelian” theater is a critique of the central concept, which, according to Aristotle, is the essence of tragedy - catharsis. The social meaning of this protest is explained by Brecht in the article “On the theatricality of fascism” (1939): “The most remarkable property of a person is his ability to criticize... The one who gets used to the image of another person, and, moreover, without a trace, thereby refuses critical attitude towards him and himself.<...>Therefore, the method of theatrical acting, adopted by fascism, cannot be considered as a positive model for the theater if we expect from it pictures that will give the audience the key to solving the problems of social life” (Book 2, p. 337).

And Brecht connects his epic theater with an appeal to reason, without denying feeling. Back in 1927, in the article “Reflections on the Difficulties of the Epic Theatre,” he explained: “The essential... in the epic theater is probably that it appeals not so much to the feelings as to the mind of the viewer. The viewer should not empathize, but argue. At the same time, it would be completely wrong to reject feeling from this theater” (Book 2, p. 41).

Brecht’s epic theater is the embodiment of the method of socialist realism, the desire to tear away the mystical veils from reality, to reveal the true laws of social life in the name of its revolutionary change (see articles by B. Brecht “On Socialist Realism”, “Socialist Realism in the Theater”).

Among the ideas of epic theater, we recommend focusing on four main provisions: “the theater should be philosophical,” “the theater should be epic,” “the theater should be phenomenal,” “the theater should give an alienated picture of reality” - and analyze their implementation in the play “Mother Courage and her children."

The philosophical side of the play is revealed in the peculiarities of its ideological content. Brecht uses the principle of a parabola (“the narrative moves away from the author’s contemporary world, sometimes even from a specific time, a specific situation, and then, as if moving along a curve, it returns again to the abandoned subject and gives its philosophical and ethical understanding and assessment...”).

Thus, the parabolic play has two plans. The first is B. Brecht's reflections on modern reality, on the flaring flames of the Second World War. The playwright formulated the idea of the play, which expresses this plan: “What should the production of Mother Courage show first of all? That big things in wars are not done by small people. That war, being a continuation of business life by other means, makes the best human qualities disastrous for their owners. That the fight against war is worth any sacrifice” (Book 1, p. 386). Thus, “Mother Courage” is not a historical chronicle, but a warning play; it is addressed not to the distant past, but to the near future.

The historical chronicle constitutes the second (parabolic) plan of the play. Brecht turned to the novel of the 17th century writer X. Grimmelshausen “A simpleton in defiance, that is, an outlandish description of the hardened deceiver and tramp Courage” (1670). The novel, against the backdrop of the events of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), depicted the adventures of the canteen Courage (that is, bold, brave), the girlfriend of Simplicius Simplicissimus (the famous hero from Grimmelshausen's novel "Simplicissimus"). Brecht's chronicle presents 12 years of the life (1624–1636) of Anna Vierling, nicknamed Mother Courage, and her travels through Poland, Moravia, Bavaria, Italy, and Saxony. “A comparison of the initial episode, in which Courage with three children goes to war, not expecting anything bad, with faith in profit and luck, with the final episode, in which the canteen, who has lost her children in the war, has essentially already lost everything in life, with stupid tenacity pulls his van along the beaten path into darkness and emptiness - this juxtaposition contains a parabolically expressed general idea of the play about the incompatibility of motherhood (and more broadly: life, joy, happiness) with military commerce.” It should be noted that the period depicted is only a fragment in the Thirty Years' War, the beginning and end of which are lost in the flow of years.

The image of war is one of the central philosophically rich images of the play.

Analyzing the text, students must reveal the causes of war, the necessity of war for businessmen, the understanding of war as “order”, using the text of the play. The whole life of mother Courage is connected with the war; she gave her this name, children, and prosperity (see picture 1). Courage chose the “great compromise” as a way to survive in the war. But a compromise cannot hide the internal conflict between the mother and the sutler (mother - Courage).

The other side of the war is revealed in the images of the Courage children. All three die: the Swiss because of his honesty (picture 3), Eilif - “because he accomplished one more feat than was required” (picture 8), Catherine - warning the city of Halle about the attack of enemies (picture 11). Human virtues are either perverted during the war, or they lead the good and honest to death. This is how a grandiose tragic image of war as “the world in reverse” arises.

Revealing the epic features of the play, it is necessary to turn to the structure of the work. Students must study not only the text, but also the principles of Brechtian production. To do this, they should become familiar with Brecht's work, The Courage Model. Notes for the 1949 production." (Book 1. pp. 382-443). “As for the epic principle in the production of the German Theater, it was reflected in the mise-en-scenes, and in the drawing of images, and in the careful finishing of details, and in the continuity of action,” wrote Brecht (Bk. 1. P. 439). Epic elements are also: the presentation of the content at the beginning of each picture, the introduction of zongs commenting on the action, the widespread use of the story (from this point of view one can analyze one of the most dynamic pictures - the third, in which there is a bargain for the life of the Swiss). The means of epic theater also include montage, that is, the connection of parts, episodes without merging them, without the desire to hide the junction, but, on the contrary, with a tendency to highlight it, thereby causing a stream of associations in the viewer. Brecht in the article “The Theater of Pleasure or the Theater of Instruction?” (1936) writes: “The epic author Deblin gave an excellent definition of epic, saying that, unlike a dramatic work, an epic work can, relatively speaking, be cut into pieces, with each piece retaining its vitality” (Bk. 2. p. 66 ).

If students understand the principle of epicization, they will be able to give a number of specific examples from Brecht's play.

The principle of "phenomenal theater" can only be analyzed using Brecht's work "The Courage Model". What is the essence of phenomenality, the meaning of which the writer revealed in his work “Buying Copper”? In the old, “Aristotelian” theater, only the actor’s play was a truly artistic phenomenon. The remaining components seemed to play along with him, duplicating his creativity. In an epic theater, each component of the performance (not only the work of the actor and director, but also light, music, design) must be an artistic phenomenon (phenomenon), each must have an independent role in revealing the philosophical content of the work, and not duplicate other components.

In “The Courage Model,” Brecht reveals the use of music based on the principle of phenomenality (see: Book 1, pp. 383–384), the same applies to scenery. Everything unnecessary is removed from the stage, not a copy of the world is reproduced, but its image. For this purpose, few but reliable details are used. “If in the big a certain approximation is allowed, then in the small it is unacceptable. For a realistic depiction, careful development of the details of costumes and props is important, because here the viewer’s imagination cannot add anything,” wrote Brecht (Bk. 1, p. 386).

The effect of alienation seems to unite all the main features of epic theater and gives them purposefulness. The figurative basis of alienation is metaphor. Alienation is one of the forms of theatrical convention, the acceptance of the conditions of the game without the illusion of plausibility. The alienation effect is intended to highlight the image, to show it from an unusual side. At the same time, the actor should not merge with his character. Thus, Brecht warns that in scene 4 (in which Mother Courage sings “The Song of Great Humility”) playing without alienation “is fraught with social danger if the performer of the role of Courage, hypnotizing the viewer with her performance, encourages him to get used to this heroine.<...>He will not be able to feel the beauty and attractive power of a social problem” (Book 1, p. 411).

Using the effect of alienation with a purpose different from that of B. Brecht, the modernists depicted on stage an absurd world in which death reigns. Brecht, with the help of alienation, sought to show the world in such a way that the viewer would have a desire to change it.

There was great debate around the ending of the play (see Brecht’s dialogue with F. Wolf. - Book 1. pp. 443–447). Brecht answered Wolf: “In this play, as you correctly noted, it is shown that Courage did not learn anything from the disasters that befell her.<...>Dear Friedrich Wolf, it is you who confirm that the author was a realist. Even if Courage has not learned anything, the public can, in my opinion, still learn something by looking at her” (Book 1, p. 447).

24. The creative path of G. Böll (analysis of one of the novels of your choice)

Heinrich Böll was born in 1917 in Cologne and was the eighth child in the family. His father, Victor Böll, is a hereditary cabinetmaker, and his mother's ancestors are Rhineland peasants and brewers.

The beginning of his life's journey is similar to the fate of many Germans whose youth fell on a period of political adversity and the Second World War. After graduating from public school, Heinrich was assigned to a humanitarian Greco-Roman gymnasium. He was among those few high school students who refused to join the Hitler Youth, and was forced to endure humiliation and ridicule from others.

After graduating from high school, Heinrich Böll abandoned the idea of volunteering for military service and became an apprentice at one of the Bonn used bookstores.

The first attempts at writing also date back to this time. However, his attempt to escape reality and immerse himself in the world of literature was unsuccessful. In 1938, the young man was mobilized to serve his labor duty in draining swamps and logging.

In the spring of 1939, Heinrich Böll entered the University of Cologne. However, he failed to learn. In July 1939 he was called up for Wehrmacht military training, and in the fall of 1939 the war began.

Böll ended up in Poland, then in France, and in 1943 his unit was sent to Russia. This was followed by four serious injuries in a row. The front moved west, and Heinrich Böll wandered around the hospitals, full of disgust for war and fascism. In 1945, he surrendered to the Americans.

After his captivity, Böll returned to devastated Cologne. He re-entered the university to study German and philology. At the same time he worked as an auxiliary worker in his brother’s carpentry workshop. Belle also returned to his writing experiments. His first story, “Message” (“Message”), was published in the August 1947 issue of “Carousel” magazine. This was followed by the story “The Train Arrives on Time” (1949), a collection of short stories “Wanderer, when you come to Spa...” (1950); novels "Where Have You Been, Adam?" (1951), “And didn’t say a single word” (1953), “House without a Master” (1954), “Billiards at half past nine” (1959), “Through the Eyes of a Clown” (1963); the stories “Bread of the Early Years” (1955), “Unauthorized Absence” (1964), “The End of a Business Trip” (1966) and others. In 1978, a 10-volume collection of Böll’s works was published in Germany. The writer’s works have been translated into 48 languages.

In Russian, Böll's story first appeared in the magazine "In Defense of Peace" in 1952.

Böll is an outstanding realist artist. War, as depicted by the writer, is a global catastrophe, a disease of humanity that humiliates and destroys the individual. For the little ordinary person, war means injustice, fear, suffering, poverty and death. Fascism, according to the writer, is an inhuman and vile ideology; it provoked the tragedy of the world as a whole and the tragedy of the individual.

Böll's works are characterized by subtle psychologism, revealing the contradictory inner world of his characters. He follows the traditions of the classics of realistic literature, especially F.M. Dostoevsky, to whom Böll dedicated the script for the television film “Dostoevsky and Petersburg.”

In his later works, Böll increasingly raises acute moral problems that arise from a critical understanding of his contemporary society.

The pinnacle of international recognition was his election in 1971 as president of the International PEN Club and the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972. However, these events testified not only to the recognition of Böll’s artistic talent. The outstanding writer was perceived both in Germany itself and in the world as the conscience of the German people, as a person who keenly felt “his involvement with the time and his contemporaries,” who deeply perceived other people’s pain, injustice, everything that humiliates and destroys the human personality. Every page of Bell's literary work and every step of his social activity are imbued with endearing humanism.

Heinrich Böll organically does not accept any violence from the authorities, believing that this leads to the destruction and deformation of society. Numerous publications, critical articles and speeches by Böll in the late 70s and early 80s are devoted to this problem, as well as his last two great novels, “The Careful Siege” (1985) and “Women in a River Landscape” (published posthumously in 1986) .

This position of Böll, his creative style and commitment to realism always aroused interest in the Soviet Union. He visited the USSR several times; in no other country in the world did Heinrich Böll enjoy such love as in Russia. “The Valley of Rattling Hooves”, “Billiards at Half Past Nine”, “Bread of the Early Years”, “Through the Eyes of a Clown” - all this was translated into Russian until 1974. In June 1973, Novy Mir completed the publication of Group Portrait with a Lady. And on February 13, 1974, Bell met the exiled A. Solzhenitsyn at the airport and invited him home. This was the last straw, although Bell had been involved in human rights activities before. In particular, he stood up for I. Brodsky, V. Sinyavsky, Y. Daniel, and was indignant at the Russian tanks on the streets of Prague. For the first time after a long break, Heinrich Böll was published in the USSR on July 3, 1985. And on July 16 he died.

There are relatively few external events in the biography of Böll the writer; it consists of literary work, trips, books and speeches. He belongs to those writers who write one book all their lives - a chronicle of their time. He was called “the chronicler of the era”, “Balzac of the second German Republic”, “the conscience of the German people”.

The novel “Billiards at half past nine” can be called the central novel of Bellev’s work; it formulates many of the most important leitmotifs of Bellevsky poetics. When analyzing the poetics of the novel's title, it was noted that in this novel a special type of textual fabric is most clearly manifested; it can be called “billiard”. As B.A. Larin noted, “The author’s style is manifested not only in the choice of words, the order and composition of verbal chains, in the effects of semantic duality and multifacetedness, in leitmotifs, enriched repetitions, refrains, parallelisms, and a large context...” [Larin 1974; 220]. It is a “special composition of verbal chains”, when various text fragments, repeated many times (in the form of several invariants) and colliding in various combinations, pass through the entire text. For example, a color description of billiards, each reference to which (as well as to each surrounding phrase) gives a new billiard figure - a new composition of text fragments, new meanings.

Moreover, the question of choosing a participle, and, consequently, the rules of the game, the playing space, posed in “Billiards ...”, is the most important for all of Bell’s heroes. The attribution of the heroes to one or another space, which remains unchanged, is associated with an opposition that is very important for Bell’s poetics, realized through the motif of movement (dynamics/statics). By belonging to space, Bell's characters are static (similar to billiard balls, which, according to the rules of the game, also cannot go beyond the playing field or end up on any other field; after all, there they will no longer be participants in the game) and therefore are always easily recognized by the players another space. The story with Hugo (hotel fight) is very typical: “You know, they shouted while beating me: “Lamb of God.” This is the nickname they gave me. ... In the end, I was sent to a shelter. Nobody knew me there - neither children nor adults, but not even two days had passed before they called me “the lamb of God,” and I felt scared again.” Each game space has its own characters associated with them; they are characterized by staticity in relation to the chosen space (communion).

The division into buffaloes and lambs, or rather, the choice of one or another communion, is purely voluntary and occurs at a certain time. The roles that the heroes of the novel have chosen for themselves are also chosen voluntarily; they can be abandoned (the role, not the space, which is very important for a writer). But, having once chosen the path, that is, the space of life (buffaloes or lambs), the person in the novel strictly follows the laws of this space. Thus, in Belle's poetics, these play spaces have one very important quality: immutability. In this they are similar to the Catholic rite of communion. Having accepted this or that sacrament, a person, the hero of the novel, once and for all chooses his god and laws. Some become servants of the devil (everything he personifies - meanness, baseness, evil); and others - God. The problem of the invariability of the choice of the sacrament is repeatedly addressed by Johanna, Heinrich, Robert Femeli, Alfred Shrella: “... woe to the people who did not take the buffalo sacrament, you know that sacraments have a terrible property, their effect is endless; people suffered from hunger, but a miracle did not happen - the bread and fish did not increase, the sacrament of the lamb could not satisfy hunger, but the communion of the buffalo gave people plenty of food, they never learned to count: they paid a trillion for candy... and then they didn’t have there were three pfennigs to buy themselves a bun, but they still believed that decency and decency, honor and loyalty are above all, when people are stuffed with the sacrament of a buffalo, they imagine themselves to be immortal.” (141) Elisabeth Blaukremer also speaks about this: “And after that I do not dare to scream when I see this Bloodsucker comfortably seated next to Kundt, Blaukremer and Halberkamm! Before, I never shouted, I endured everything, drank a little, read Stevenson, went for walks, helped lift the mood of voters in order to collect more votes. But Plich is too much. No! No!". (111) After the death of Dmitry, Elizabeth voluntarily takes the sacrament of the buffalo, for some time the role she plays among the buffaloes seems tolerable to her, then the appearance of the Bloodsucker - Plich forces her to change her role, but she is unable to leave the space of the buffaloes (after all, it is closed ) and, in the end, she dies.

The first and very important characteristic of playing spaces is immutability, the second, related to it, is isolation. It is impossible to move from space to space, taking into account the first characteristic. This isolation is reminiscent of the properties of a billiards field; according to the rules of the game, the balls should not cross the boundaries of the field, and the player can only direct them with a cue from the outside, also without crossing the boundary of the field.

Analyzing the space of shepherds, you pay attention to the fact that their spatial and temporal characteristics are inseparable from each other. Thus, there are certain spatiotemporal nodes or chronotopes, outside of which the poetics of the text is not revealed.

One of these nodes is a special pastoral chronotope. The space of the shepherds gets its name in the dialogue between Robert and Shrella; belonging to it is more difficult to determine, but in terms of its characteristics it really lies between buffaloes and lambs. The characters in this space are quite closed and interact little with each other; their way of uniting into one space is akin to uniting members of the English Club: everyone is on their own and, at the same time, they are members of the same club. The characteristics of the space of shepherds are as follows:

In their inner essence, they unconditionally profess the laws of space of the lambs; - due to the specifics of their existence (“feed my sheep”), they are forced to outwardly comply with the rules of the game of buffalo space.

The specificity of this connection is manifested in the fact that some ideas professed by the lambs are not carried out so directly by the shepherds. Saving the “sheep” they graze from turning into buffalos (or “rams” that will go anywhere after the buffalo that called them and promised them something pleasant), they are far from meek; in a world “where one movement of a hand can cost a person his life” (138) there is no place for meekness and non-resistance to evil with violence, they protest against this evil, but this is not a sacrifice of the lambs, but a warning to the “sheep” and well-calculated revenge on the buffaloes for the already dead lambs and "lost sheep".

The shepherds in both novels are characterized by a very special relationship with time and space. When studying the poetics of the title of the novel “Billiards...” it became clear that through the game of billiards the relationships to time and space of the players of all three game spaces in the novel are revealed.

The main shepherd of the novel, Robert Femel, has a special feeling for billiards. He is the only one who does not see something behind the color and lines of billiards, and it is in them that he discovers the world. He feels calm and open right here, in the billiard room; the basic concepts that reveal the image of Robert in the novel are associated with this time and space: “Dynamics and dynamite, billiards and correct, scars on the back, cognac and cigarettes, red on green, white on green..." (270). For Robert, the color and lines created by the red and white balls on the green felt of the billiard table are the language he speaks to those he is open to: Hugo and Alfred. Interestingly, this is a language that can only be spoken one-on-one, and this language only relates to the past.

This ability to organize the world around us in their own way is characteristic of shepherds: “Feed my sheep!..” - in order to shepherd sheep, you must be able to organize them. In the same way, he organizes a special, different time around himself. The temporal layer of the novel is divided into two: eternity and momentary. The title contains an indication of the time of the game: “at half past ten”, as it were, combines both parts of the opposition. On the one hand, this is extreme specificity (hours and minutes are indicated), on the other, absolute infinity, since it is always “at half past nine.”

The connection between the second part of the novel’s title – “at half past nine” – with the first is very important. All structure-forming motives associated with billiards can exist only in one part of the temporal opposition (either in the eternal or in the momentary). Without reference to a particular time, none of the leitmotifs that create the structure of the novel will take place. The opposition itself, lambs/shepherds - buffaloes, is also present in two time layers: on the one hand, the confrontation between the heroes of the novel is determined by a specific time frame; for each of the events mentioned by the heroes, a specific date can be selected (which is often already selected by the author); on the other hand, the opposition between good and evil is eternal, it goes back to the creation of the world.

The players of each space have access to one of these layers (lambs - eternity; buffaloes - immediacy), only shepherds are able to cross the boundaries of game spaces, replacing one time layer around themselves with another. “Hugo loved Femel; every morning he came at half past nine and released him before eleven; thanks to Femel, he already knew the feeling of eternity; Wasn’t it always like this, wasn’t it already a hundred years ago that he stood at the white shiny door, with his hands behind his back, watching a quiet game of billiards, listening to the words that either threw him back sixty years, or threw him twenty years forward? , then again they were thrown back ten years, and then suddenly they were thrown into today, indicated on the big calendar.”

However, we will begin our analysis with “Billiards at half past nine.” The Rhine is openly named only once - in the title of the song "Watches on the Rhine", but the river as such appears several times in important scenes.

Johanna and Heinrich go to the river on their wedding night (87); the young man wants his beloved not to experience pain and fear. In fact, the shore turns out to be the most natural, organic place for Johanna: the river is green (187) - in the symbolism of the novel, this color is a sign of the indicated heroine. Repeatedly (59, 131) we are talking about a silvery crown, similar to the skeleton of a sea animal - an attribute of a folkloric sea or river princess, a co-natural creature. Silver/gray is another color for Johanna. In the novel, it is associated with the river distance, the horizon that beckons; Johanna feels the river as her native element, the distance does not frighten her: “Flood, flood, I was always drawn to throw myself into the flooded river and let myself be carried to the horizon.” Beyond the horizon is infinity, eternity.

The silver-green leaves above Johanna's head that very night are a sign of eternal youth. Many years later, Johanna asks Heinrich: “Carry me to the riverbank again” (151). The disenchanted princess wants to return to her kingdom; there is, however, another subtext - the desire to die in one’s homeland. Here this extremely common motif is translated, naturally, into a metaphorical plane - we are talking about the spiritual homeland. A special time dimension also appears. Johanna does not want to see her grandchildren grow up, she does not want to “swallow the years” (149), she tells Henry: “My boat is sailing, don’t sink it” (151). The boats are made from calendar sheets; running them is a way to get rid of time and at the same time hold out, stay clean. In this sense, Belle's Rhine is close to Lethe, with the only difference that for the heroes of the novel, complete oblivion is undesirable and impossible: it is rather a transition to a new dimension, to eternity.

Another motif resurrects similar layers of symbolism, although in a slightly different way (not without similarities with “Women on the banks of the Rhine”). The ominous “Why, why, why” sounds in Johanna’s ears “like the call of a raging river in flood” (147 – 148). Here the river is a threatening element, it brings death with it - this is the despair that the ancestor, yearning for the sacrament of the lamb, did not want to be imbued with. The Johanna River is calm, majestic and pure, it flows into eternity, and therefore cannot rage.

So far we have been talking about “the river in general”; The Rhine, we recall, appears only once, in the title of the song “The Guard on the Rhine,” which was once patriotic, but acquired a chauvinistic sound after the First World War [Bell 1996; 699 (commentary by G. Shevchenko)]. The generalization, the mythology, is replaced by a specific reality, a familiar symbol of the nation - and this side of the “river theme” will be explored somewhat below.

So, the study showed that an essential feature of the two selected novels by Bell is the presence of a system of chronotopes: shepherds, rivers, national past. It is interesting, however, that, according to preliminary data, these chronotopes are included in the structure of a number of other novels by the writer. If further work confirms this hypothesis, then it will be possible to argue that a stable set of chronotopes is a genetic feature of Bellean poetics.

Literature and the “consumer society” (general characteristics, coverage of the creative path of J.D. Salinger / E. Burgess / D. Copeland - at the student’s choice).

AMERICAN LITERATURE AFTER THE WAR

In no way inferior to the pre-war one. The war became a test of values. Our literature about war is tragic, positive, not meaningless, the death of a hero is not absurd. Americans portray war as absurd and place emphasis on pointless discipline and confusion.

A person who is at war with meaning is either a fool or a madman. The goals of war have nothing to do with human life. This literature is more individualistic.

The first years after the war are the darkest times for intellectuals: the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War. Commission (1953) to investigate un-American activities, many film and literary figures were involved in the integrity check.

The country's economy grew, the country became vulgar and cynical. Intellectuals rebelled against pragmatism (D. Steinbeck, A. Miller, D. Gardner, N. Miller), against lack of spirituality and totalitarianism. They tried to play the role of spiritual leaders, nonconformists (Buddhism, new Christianity).

Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 in New York City into the family of a smoked meat merchant. He studied at three colleges, but did not graduate from any of them. Completed training at the Pennsylvania Military School. Jerome began writing in military school, but decided to take literature seriously a little later. In 1940, his story “Young Folks” was published in Story magazine.

In 1942, Salinger was drafted into the army. He served in World War II with the 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Division. Things were hard at the front, and in 1945 the future classic of American literature was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. The bitter and tragic experience of the war years played a big role in shaping him as a writer.

In 1943, the Saturday Evening Post magazine published his story "The Varioni Brothers", the royalties for which he donated to the fund for annual awards for emerging writers.

In the late 40s and early 50s, Salinger created his best stories, and in the summer of 1951 his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published, which a few months later took first place on the American bestseller list . In 1951, the collection Nine Stories was published. In the late 1950s, Salinger published four more stories, all in the New Yorker magazine: “Franny” (1955), “Raise High the Roof Beam” (Carpenters, 1955), “ Zooey" (Zooey, 1957). In 1961, two stories appeared as a separate book called “Franny and Zooey” (Franny and Zooey), the other two were published together in 1963. The resounding success of the stories and the novel did not bring satisfaction to the author, who had always shunned publicity. The writer leaves New York, settles in the provinces and becomes inaccessible to telephone calls and the ubiquitous journalists. Here he is working on completing a series of stories about the Glass family, the last of which, “Hapworth, 16. 1924,” was published in 1965. Since then, readers have known almost nothing about Salinger's work.

Now Jerome David Salinger is 83 years old and lives in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire. And he still remains an author who enjoys enormous popularity, and not only in the United States.

Jerome David Salinger. In 1951 he wrote “The Catcher in the Rye.” Reflected the spirit of the times and an entire generation. Holden Caulfield is at the same time and much more, he has become a symbolic, mythological figure. But this is also a concrete image: from the many specific details, his speech bears the imprint of time, it gives the main charm of the book. The speech consists of American high school student slang. The genre is an educational novel, but it occupies a special position. Holden rejects adulthood (the abyss) without hesitation. Holden's neurosis is his way of escaping reality, he is obsessed with the idea of a pure life, he is visited by the thought of death.

The author is hidden in the book. The hero lives in a spiritual vacuum; there is not a single adult nearby whom he can trust. It seems that Selinger agrees with him. But in the story itself, his rightness and wrongness are affirmed at the same time; Holden should not be taken for granted. The book suggests a combination of indulgence and humor.

In literary terms, it is a compromise.

The Beat Movement and American Literature

Beat literature is one of the central events. On the one hand, the beaters are associated with the protest movement, on the other hand, with the avant-garde. The literary program dates back to Rimbaud, the surrealists, and was the last serious attempt to realize the avant-garde.

This is Kerouac, Rinsberg and Burroughs talking about the beat generation (nonconformist youth of the 50s and 60s). Socially conditioned by hipculture (hipsters). Hipsters are not just social outcasts; although they were lumpen, they were voluntarily. Hipsters are white blacks (drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes), they deliberately oppose themselves to culture. This is a socio-cultural emigration to the bottom, a lumpen-intellectual bohemia. An act of negativism, a denial of the values of society, they wanted to feel enlightened.

The semantic center is black music, alcohol, drugs, homosexuality. The range of values includes Sartrean freedom, the strength and intensity of mental experiences, and readiness for pleasure. Vivid manifestation, counterculture. Security for them is boredom, and therefore illness: live fast and die young. But in reality everything was more vulgar and rude. The beatniks glorified hipsters and gave them social significance. Writers lived this life, but they were not marginalized. The beatniks were not literary exponents, they only created a cultural myth, the image of a romantic rebel, a holy madman, a new sign system. They managed to instill in society the style and tastes of the marginalized.

Initially, the biniks were hostile towards society. In this they are similar to Rimbaud and Whitman, surrealists, expressionists (Miller, G. Stein, etc.) All authors who created spontaneously can be called the predecessors of the beatniks. In music there were simultaneously jazz improvisations.

The beatniks believed. That in literature life should be depicted as a stream without plot or composition, a stream of words should flow freely, but in practice they were not so radical. a quarter he failed five. The situation is complicated by the fact that Pansy is not the first school that the young hero leaves. Before this, he had already abandoned Elkton Hill, because, in his opinion, “there was one big linden tree there.” However, the feeling that there is a “phony” around him - falseness, pretense and window dressing - does not let Caulfield go away throughout the entire novel. Both adults and peers with whom he meets irritate him, but he cannot bear to be alone.

The last day of school is rife with conflict. He returns to Pencey from New York, where he went as captain of the fencing team to a match that did not take place due to his fault - he forgot his sports equipment in the subway car. Roommate Stradlater asks him to write an essay for him - describing a house or room, but Caulfield, who likes to do things his own way, tells the story of his late brother Allie's baseball glove, who wrote poetry on it and read it during games. Stradlater, having read the text, is offended by the author who deviated from the topic, declaring that he put a pig on him, but Caulfield, upset that Stradlater went on a date with a girl whom he himself liked, does not remain in debt. The matter ends with a brawl and Caulfield's broken nose.

Once in New York, he realizes that he cannot come home and tell his parents that he was expelled. He gets into a taxi and goes to the hotel. On the way, he asks his favorite question that haunts him: “Where do the ducks go in Central Park when the pond freezes over?” The taxi driver, of course, is surprised by the question and wonders if the passenger is laughing at him. But he doesn’t even think of making fun of him; however, the question about ducks is more likely a manifestation of Holden Caulfield’s confusion in the face of the complexity of the world around him, rather than an interest in zoology.

This world both oppresses him and attracts him. It’s hard for him with people, but unbearable without them. He tries to have fun at the hotel nightclub, but nothing good comes of it, and the waiter refuses to serve him alcohol as he is underage. He goes to a night bar in Greenwich Village, where his older brother D.B., a talented writer who was lured by big screenwriter fees in Hollywood, liked to hang out. On the way, he asks another taxi driver a question about ducks, again without receiving an intelligible answer. At the bar he meets an acquaintance of D.B. with some sailor. This girl arouses such hostility in him that he quickly leaves the bar and goes on foot to the hotel.

The hotel elevator operator asks if he wants a girl - five dollars for the time, fifteen for the night. Holden agrees “for a while,” but when the girl appears in his room, he does not find the strength to part with his innocence. He wants to chat with her, but she came to work, and since the client is not ready to comply, she demands ten dollars from him. He reminds us that the agreement was about the five. She leaves and soon returns with the elevator operator. The next skirmish ends with another defeat of the hero.