Historical and functional study of literature. Symbol and allegory as types of artistic imagery

Along with the potential, imaginary reader (addressee), indirectly and sometimes directly present in the work, reading experience as such is interesting and important for literary studies. Really existing readers and their groups have very different, often dissimilar attitudes towards literature and requirements for it. These attitudes and demands, orientations and strategies can either correspond to the nature of literature and its state in a given era, or diverge from them, and sometimes quite decisively. By receptive aesthetics they are designated by the term horizon of expectations, taken from sociologists K. Mannheim and K. Popper. The artistic effect is considered as the result of a combination (most often conflicting) of the author’s program of influence with perception carried out on the basis of the horizon of reader expectations. The essence of a writer’s activity, according to H.R. Jauss, is to take into account the horizon of reader expectations, and at the same time violate these expectations, to offer the public something unexpected and new. At the same time, the reading environment is thought of as something deliberately conservative, while writers are seen as breakers of habits and renewers of the experience of perception, which, we note, is not always the case. In the reading environment, affected by avant-garde trends, authors are expected not to adhere to rules and norms, not to follow something established, but, on the contrary, to make recklessly bold shifts and destruction of everything familiar. Readers' expectations are incredibly varied. From literary works they expect hedonistic satisfaction, shocking emotions, admonitions and teachings, expression of well-known truths, broadening of horizons (cognition of reality), immersion in the world of fantasy, and (which most corresponds to the essence of the art of eras close to us) aesthetic pleasure in organic combination with familiarization with spiritual world an author whose work is marked by originality and novelty. This last type of reader expectations can rightfully be considered hierarchically the highest, the optimal setting of artistic perception.

The outlook, tastes and expectations of the reading public largely determine the fate of literary works, as well as (117) the degree of authority and popularity of their authors. “The history of literature is not only the history of writers<...>but also the history of readers,” noted N.A. Rubakin, a famous book scholar and bibliographer at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries.

The main area of the historical-functional study of literature is the existence of works in great historical time, their life over the centuries. At the same time, it is also important to consider how the writer’s work was mastered by the people of his time. The study of responses to a newly published work amounts to necessary condition its comprehension. After all, authors, as a rule, turn primarily to the people of their era, and the perception of literature by its contemporaries is often marked by the extreme severity of reader reactions, be it sharp rejection (repulsion) or, on the contrary, warm, enthusiastic approval. Thus, Chekhov seemed to many of his contemporaries as “the measure of things,” and his books as “the only truth about what was happening around.”

The study of the fate of literary works after their creation is based on sources and materials of various kinds. This is the number and nature of publications, circulation of books, the availability of translations into other languages, and the composition of libraries. These are, further, written responses to what was read (correspondence, memoirs, notes in the margins of books). But the most significant in understanding the historical functioning of literature are statements about it that “come out to the public”: reminiscences and quotes in newly created literary works, graphic illustrations and director’s productions, as well as responses to literary facts publicists, philosophers, art historians, literary critics and critics. It is to the activities of the latter, which constitute an invaluable evidence of the functioning of literature, that we turn. (118)

LITERARY CRITICISM

Real readers, firstly, change from era to era and, secondly, are decidedly not equal to one another at every historical moment. Especially sharply different from each other are readers of a relatively narrow artistic educated layer, who are most involved in the intellectual and literary trends of their era, and representatives of wider circles of society) who are (not entirely accurately) called “mass readers.”

A kind of vanguard of the reading public (more precisely, its artistically educated part) consists of literary critics. Their activity is a very significant component (at the same time a factor) of the functioning of literature in its modern times. The vocation and task of criticism is to evaluate works of art (mostly newly created ones) and at the same time justify their judgments. “You read a poem, look at a painting, listen to a sonata,” wrote V.A. Zhukovsky, - you feel pleasure or displeasure - that’s the taste; you analyze the reason for one and the other - that’s criticism.”

Literary criticism plays the role of a creative mediator between writers and readers. She is able to stimulate and guide writing activity. V.G. Belinsky, as is known, had a considerable influence on writers who came to literature in the 1840s, in particular on F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Nekrasova, I.S. Turgenev. Criticism also influences the reading public, sometimes quite actively. The critic’s “beliefs, aesthetic taste,” his “personality as a whole,” “can be no less interesting than the writer’s work.”

Criticism of past centuries (up to the 18th) was predominantly normative. She persistently correlated the works under discussion with genre models. New criticism (19th-20th centuries) proceeds from the author’s rights to creativity according to the laws that he recognized over himself. She is interested primarily in the unique and individual appearance of the work, understands the originality of its form and content (and in this sense is interpretive). “May Aristotle forgive me,” wrote D. Diderot, anticipating the aesthetics of romanticism, “but the criticism that derives immutable laws on the basis of the most perfect works is incorrect; as if there weren’t countless ways to please!”

Evaluating and Interpreting individual works, criticism at the same time considers and literary process modernity (the genre of critical review of current literature in Russia has been strengthened since the Pushkin era), and also forms artistic and theoretical programs, directing literary development(articles by the late V.G. Belinsky on the “natural school”, works by Vyach. Ivanov and A. Bely on symbolism). The competence of literary critics also includes the consideration of works created long ago in the light of the problems of their (critics) modernity. Vivid evidence of this is the articles of V.G. Belinsky about Derzhavin, I.S. Turgenev “Hamlet and Don Quixote”, D.S. Merezhkovsky about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Literary criticism has an ambiguous relationship with the science of literature. Based on the analysis of works, it turns out to be directly involved in scientific knowledge. But there is also criticism - essays, which does not pretend to be analytical and demonstrative, but is an experience of subjective, predominantly emotional mastery of works. Characterizing his article “The Tragedy of Hippolytus and Phaedra” (about Euripides) as an essayistic one, I. Annensky wrote: “I intend to talk not about what is subject to research and calculation, but about what I experienced, pondering the speeches of the heroes and trying to grasp behind them is the ideological and poetic essence of tragedy.” “Sentences of taste” undoubtedly have their legal rights in literary criticism even in cases where they do not receive logical justification.

MASS READER

The range of reading and, most importantly, the perception of what people read from different social strata are very different. So, in the Russian peasant, and partly urban, worker and craft environment of the 19th century. the center of reading was literature of a religious and moral orientation: books primarily of the hagiographic genre, called “divine” (which, we note, at that time did not attract the attention of the artistically educated environment and the educated layer in general; one of the few exceptions is N.S. Leskov). The reading range of the popular reader also included books of an entertaining, adventurous, sometimes erotic nature, which were called “fairy tales” (the famous “Bova”, “Eruslan”, “The Tale of My Lord George”). These books, to some extent, “looked back” at teaching religious and moral literature: the ideal of legal marriage was indisputable in the eyes of the authors, the principles of morality triumphed in the final episodes. “High” literature of the 19th century. for a long time did not find a way to the public reader (in (120) to some extent the exception was Pushkin's tales, Gogol’s “Evenings on the Farm...”, Lermontov’s “Song about<...>merchant Kalashnikov"). In the Russian classics, the popular reader saw something alien to his interests, far from his spiritual and practical experience, perceived it according to the criteria of habitual hagiographic literature, and therefore most often experienced bewilderment and disappointment. Thus, in Pushkin’s “The Miserly Knight,” listeners paid attention primarily to the fact that the Baron died without repentance. Not accustomed to fiction in “non-entertaining”, serious works, people perceived what was depicted by realist writers as a description of people, destinies, and events that actually took place. ON THE. Dobrolyubov had every reason to complain that the work of great Russian writers was not becoming the property of the people.

A program for bringing together folk culture and the culture of the educated stratum (“lordly”) was outlined by F.M. Dostoevsky in the article “Bookishness and Literacy” (1861). He argued that artistically educated people, striving to enlighten all others, should address readers from the people not condescendingly (as obviously smart people to obviously stupid ones), but respecting their gracious, unfettered faith in justice, and at the same time remembering that The people treat the “master's teaching” with historically justified suspicion. Dostoevsky considered it necessary for Russia for the educated part of society to unite with the “national soil” and absorb the “national element.” Populists and Tolstoyans thought and worked in this direction at the end of the 19th century. The publishing activity of I.D. played a major role. Sytin and Tolstoy's "Mediator". Contacts between the popular reader and “great literature” have significantly strengthened.

XX century with its painful socio-political collisions, not only did not soften, but, on the contrary, exacerbated the contradictions between the reading experience of the majority and the artistically educated minority. In the era of world wars, totalitarian regimes, excessive urbanization (in some cases violent), the mass reader is naturally alienated from spiritual and aesthetic traditions and does not always receive anything positively significant in return. X. Ortega y Gasset wrote about (121) the unspiritual masses filled with life's lusts and consumer moods in 1930. According to him, the appearance mass man XX century is connected primarily with the fact that the new era “feels stronger, more “alive” than all previous eras”, that “it has lost all respect, all attention to the past<...>completely refuses any inheritance, does not recognize any models or norms.” All this, naturally, is not conducive to mastering genuine, high art.

However, the reading range of the general public any era (including ours) is very wide and, so to speak, multi-colored. It is not reduced to primitive “reading” and includes literature that has undeniable merits, and, of course, the classics. The artistic interests of the so-called “mass reader” invariably go beyond the scope of trivial, monotonous, low-quality works.

Related information.

Understanding is interpersonal in nature. It, according to Schleiermacher, requires “the talent for knowing the individual person.” Understanding occurs in two ways. Firstly, in direct and immediate communication between a few people, usually two, face to face (“interview”). This aspect of understanding as primary and most important is carefully considered by A.A. Ukhtomsky. Basically, hermeneutics is focused on understanding achieved on the basis of texts, primarily written ones, which brings this area of knowledge closer to philology.

Understanding (as is clear from the above judgments of G. G. Gadamer) is far from being reduced to the rational sphere, to the activity of the human intellect, to logical operations and analysis. It can be said to be foreign-scientific and similar to artistic creativity rather than scientific works. Understanding constitutes the unity of two principles. This is, firstly, intuition of an object, its “grasping” as a whole and, secondly) on the basis of direct understanding, after it an interpretation (German: Erklärung) arises and strengthens, often analytical and designated by the term “interpretation” (Latin: interpretatio - explanation). In interpretation, direct (intuitive) understanding is formalized and rationalized.

Thanks to the interpretation (interpretation) of statements, the incompleteness of their initial understanding is overcome. But it is not completely overcome: understanding (including rationally justified) is at the same time (to a large extent) misunderstanding. It is not appropriate for an interpreter to make claims to the exhaustive completeness of the truth about a work and the person behind it. Understanding is always relative, and the fatal obstacle to it is arrogance. “There is no understanding,” Gadamer wrote, “when a person is sure that he already knows everything.” A.V. spoke convincingly about this. Mikhailov: in interpretations there is always a misunderstanding, because from any point of view (individual, historical, geographical) not everything is visible; A humanist, even if he is equipped with knowledge and the scientific method, must be aware of the limitations of his capabilities.

Interpretation as a secondary (formative and, as a rule, rational) component of understanding is perhaps the most important concept of hermeneutics, very vital for art criticism and literary criticism.

Interpretation involves translation statements into another language (in another semiotic area), with its recoding(to use the term of structuralism). The phenomenon being interpreted somehow changes, transforms; his second, new appearance, differing from the first, original one, turns out to be both poorer and richer at the same time. Interpretation is selective and at the same time creative ( creative) mastery of a statement (text, work).

At the same time, the activity of the interpreter is inevitably connected with his spiritual activity. It is at the same time educational (has a focus on objectivity) and subjectively directed: the interpreter of the statement brings into it something new, his own. In other words, interpretation (this is its nature) strives both for comprehension and for the “completion” of what is understood. The task of the interpreter of the text, according to Schleiermacher, is to “understand the speech first as well, and then better, than its initiator,” that is, to realize what for the speaker “remained unconscious,” i.e. to give additional clarity to the statement, how to highlight it, to reveal the hidden meaning in the obvious sense.

The above encourages you to characterize the meaning of the word meaning. This, according to A.F. Losev, one of the most difficult categories for philosophy. This term is essential for hermeneutics, and therefore for literary criticism. The meaning of the word “meaning” is associated with the idea of a certain universality, the origin of being and its deep value. According to the modern philosopher, this word “always retains an ontological flavor.”

Meaning is both present in human reality and external to it. Life is imbued with the energy of meaning (for it strives to coincide with being), but does not become its full embodiment: it sometimes approaches it, sometimes it moves away from it. At the same time, meaning (this is its actual hermeneutical aspect) is one way or another present in subjectively colored statements, their interpretations (interpretations) and (more broadly) in the communication of people.

The meaning of an utterance is not only what the speaker puts into it (consciously or unintentionally), but also what the interpreter extracts from it. The meaning of the word, argued the prominent psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, constitutes the totality of what it evokes in consciousness, and “always turns out to be a dynamic, fluid, complex formation that has several zones of varying stability.” In a new context, the word easily changes its meaning. Subjectively colored, personal statements, “included” in communication, apparently, conceal in themselves a bunch of meanings, explicit and hidden, conscious and unconscious of the speaker. Being “ambiguous”, they naturally do not have complete certainty. Therefore, statements turn out to be capable of being modified, completed, and enriched in various contexts of perception, in particular in an endless series of interpretations.

§ 2. Dialogicality as a concept of hermeneutics

An original discussion of the problems of hermeneutics, which greatly influenced modern humanitarian thought (not only domestic), was undertaken by M.M. Bakhtin, who developed the concept of dialogicity. Dialogue- this is the openness of a person’s consciousness and behavior to the surrounding reality, his readiness to communicate “on equal terms”, the gift of a lively response to the positions, judgments, opinions of other people, as well as the ability to evoke a response to his own statements and actions.

Dominant beginning human existence, Bakhtin believed, is interpersonal communication (“ Be- Means communicate"), between individuals and their communities, peoples, cultural eras, constantly changing and enriching " dialogical relationship”, into the world of which statements and texts are involved: “There are no boundaries to the dialogical context (it goes into the limitless past and limitless future).” Dialogical communication can be direct (as a rule, being two-way) and mediated by texts (often being one-way, such as the contact between the reader and the author).

Dialogical relationships mark the emergence (birth) of new meanings, which “do not remain stable (once and for all completed)” and “will always change (renewing).” Bakhtin emphasizes that it is wrong to reduce dialogical relations to contradiction and dispute, that this is, first of all, a sphere of spiritual enrichment of people and their unity: “ Agreement-one of the most important forms of dialogic relationships. The agreement is very rich in varieties and shades.” In dialogue (spiritual meeting) with the author, the reader, according to Bakhtin, overcomes the “foreignness of the alien”, strives to “reach, go deeper into the creative core of the personality” of the creator of the work and at the same time demonstrates the ability to be spiritually enriched by the experience of another person and the ability to express oneself.

Characterizing science and art in terms of communication theory, Bakhtin argued that dialogism forms the basis of the humanities and artistic creativity. Here statements (texts, works) are aimed at something else full consciousness and there is “activity questioning, provoking, answering, agreeing, objecting, etc.” . In the humanitarian sphere one comprehends “ speaking being", which is personal in nature.

A different matter, Bakhtin argues, is the natural and mathematical sciences, where “ silent things(objects, phenomena, entities, patterns). What is important here is not the “depth of penetration” of the vocation of humanitarian work), but accuracy knowledge. Scientists call this attitude to reality monologue. He characterizes monologue activity as “final, reifying, causal, explanatory and mortifying.” Invading the humanitarian sphere, especially art, monologism, Bakhtin believes, does not bring the best results, because it drowns out the voice another person.

The Bakhtinian concept of dialogical relations is in many ways similar to the simultaneously developed ideas of Western European “dialogists” (M. Buber and others), as well as the teachings of A.A. Ukhtomsky about the interview as a high value. These ideas (like Bakhtin's concept of dialogicity) develop the provisions of traditional hermeneutics.

§ 3. Non-traditional hermeneutics

IN Lately Abroad (most of all in France), a different, broader idea of hermeneutics has become widespread. Nowadays this term denotes the doctrine of any perception (comprehension, interpretation) of facts (actions, texts, statements, experiences). Modern humanities began to include in the sphere of hermeneutics even the activity of self-knowledge, which is associated with a person’s concern for himself and switching his view from the outside world to his own person.

Characterizing modern humanitarian knowledge, the French philosopher P. Ricoeur speaks of two radically opposing hermeneutics. He calls the first, traditional, discussed above (hermeneutics-1) teleological(purposeful), restoring meaning; here there is invariably attention to the other meaning of the statement and the human spirit expressed in it. Hermeneutics 2, on which Ricoeur focuses, is oriented archaeologically: on the root cause of the statement and reveals the background of the obvious meaning, which marks its reduction, exposure, in any case, its decline. The scientist sees the origins of this branch of hermeneutic thought in the teachings of Marx, Beggars, and Freud, who saw the dominant of human existence in economic interest, the will to power, and sexual impulses. These thinkers, Ricoeur believes, acted as “the main actors suspicions" and as mask rippers; their teachings are, first of all, “activities for exposure"false" consciousness. Revelatory (reductionist) hermeneutics, he argues, are based on the theory of illusion: a person is inclined to seek solace (for life is cruel) in the illusory world of spirituality and proclaimed meanings. And the task of archaeologically oriented, revealing hermeneutics is to “declassify” the unconscious and hidden: here “the hidden and silent part of a person is brought to public view,” which, the scientist emphasizes, is most relevant to psychoanalytic interpretations. Let us add to what P. Ricoeur said: the deconstructivism of Jacques Derrida with his like-minded people and successors is also in line with the revealing, reducing hermeneutics. As part of hermeneutics-2, interpretations lose their connections with direct understanding and dialogical activity, and most importantly, they lose their desire to gain agreement.

This branch of hermeneutics, using Bakhtin’s vocabulary, can rightfully be called “monological,” because it claims to be the completeness of acquired knowledge. Its main principle is to remain in positions of “alienated” outsideness, to consider personal manifestations as if from a bird’s eye view. If traditional hermeneutics strives to transform someone else’s into one’s own, to gain mutual understanding and agreement, then the “new” hermeneutics is prone to arrogance and suspicion of the statements in question, and therefore sometimes turns into an ethically flawed peeking into the hidden and hidden.

At the same time, the installations of non-traditional hermeneutics are attractive due to their desire for clarity and rigor of knowledge. A comparison of the two types of understanding and interpretation that we have characterized leads to the idea that for the humanities a certain balance of trust and criticism towards “speaking being”, towards the sphere of human self-manifestation, is vital and optimal.

Perception of literature.

Reader

The considered provisions of hermeneutics shed light on the patterns of perception of literature and on its subject, i.e. the reader.

In perceiving activity it is legitimate to distinguish two sides. When mastering a literary work, what is primarily important is a lively and simple-minded, non-analytical, holistic response to it. "True art<…>- wrote I.A. Ilyin, - you need to take it into yourself; one must directly commune with it. And for this you need to contact him with the greatest artistic trust, - childish open your soul to him." The same idea in relation to the theater was expressed by I. V. Ilyinsky. According to him, a cultured spectator is like a child: “The true culture of the spectator is expressed in a direct, free, unfettered response to what he sees and hears in the theater. Reacting according to the will of the soul and heart."

At the same time, the reader strives to be aware of the impressions he received, to think about what he read, and to understand the reasons for the emotions he experienced. This is a secondary, but also very important facet of the perception of a work of art. G.A. Tovstonogov wrote that the theater spectator after during a certain period of time during the performance he “exchanges” the feelings he experienced in the theater for thoughts. This fully applies to the reader. The need for interpretation of works grows organically from the living, unsophisticated reader responses to it. The reader who does not think at all and the one who looks in what he reads only as a reason for reasoning are limited in their own way. And a “pure analyst”, perhaps even more so than one who is childlike in his naivety.

The immediate impulses and mind of the reader correlate with the creative will of the author of the work in a very difficult way. Here there is both the dependence of the perceiving subject on the artist-creator, and the independence of the former in relation to the latter. When discussing the “reader-author” problem, scientists express multidirectional, sometimes even polar, judgments. They either absolutize the reader’s initiative, or, on the contrary, talk about the reader’s obedience to the author as some kind of indisputable norm for the perception of literature.

The first kind of “tilt” took place in the statements of A.A. Potebni. Based on the fact that the content of a literary work (when it is finished) “develops not in the artist, but in those who understand,” the scientist argued that “the merit of the artist is not in the minimum content that he thought when creating, but in known flexibility of the image”, capable of “exciting the most diverse content.” Here, the creative (constructive) initiative of the reader, his free, borderless “construction” of what is present in the work, is elevated to the absolute level. This is the idea of the independence of readers from the creator of the work, his. intentions and aspirations are taken to extremes in modern poststructuralist works, especially in R. Barthes with his concept of the death of the author (see pp. 66–68).

But in the science of literature, another tendency is also influential, opposing the leveling of the author for the sake of elevating the reader. Polemicizing with Potebnya, A.P. Skaftymov emphasized the reader’s dependence on the author: “No matter how much we talk about the reader’s creativity in the perception of a work of art, we still know that the reader’s creativity is secondary, it is determined in its direction and facets by the object of perception. The reader is still led by the author, and he demands obedience in following his creative paths. And a good reader is one who knows how to find in himself a breadth of understanding and give himself to the author.” According to N.K. Bonetskaya, it is important for the reader to remember, first of all, about the original, primary, unambiguously clear artistic meanings and meanings coming from the author, from his creative will. “The meaning put into a work by the author is a fundamentally constant quantity,” she asserts, emphasizing that forgetting this meaning is extremely undesirable.

The indicated points of view, while having undoubted reasons, are at the same time one-sided, since they mark a focus either on uncertainty and openness, or, on the contrary, on certainty and unambiguous clarity of artistic meaning. Both of these extremes are overcome by hermeneutically oriented literary criticism, which understands the reader’s relationship with the author as a dialogue, interview, meeting. For the reader, a literary work is both a “container” of a certain range of feelings and thoughts that belong to the author and expressed by him, and a “stimulator” (stimulator) of his own spiritual initiative and energy. According to J. Mukarzhovsky, the unity of the work is determined by the creative intentions of the artist, but around This “core” groups “associative ideas and feelings” that arise in the reader regardless of the will of the author. To this we can add, firstly, that in very many cases the reader’s perception turns out to be predominantly subjective, or even completely arbitrary: incomprehensible, bypassing the creative intentions of the author, his view of the world and artistic concept. And, secondly (and this is the main thing), it is optimal for the reader synthesis deep understanding of the author’s personality, his creative will and his own (reader’s) spiritual initiative. L.N. wrote about this kind of reader orientation as good and universal. Tolstoy: "<…>When we read or contemplate a work of art by a new author, the main question that arises in our soul is always this: “Well, what kind of person are you?<…>If this is an old, already familiar writer, then the question is no longer about who you are, but “come on, what else can you tell me that’s new? From what side will you illuminate my life now?

For dialogue-meetings that enrich the reader to take place, he needs aesthetic taste, a keen interest in the writer and his works, and the ability to directly experience them artistic merit. At the same time, reading is, as V.F. wrote. Asmus, “work and creativity”: “No work can be understood<…>if the reader himself, at his own peril and risk, does not follow in his own consciousness the path outlined in the work by the author<…>The creative result of reading in each individual case depends<… >from the entire spiritual biography<…>reader<…>The most sensitive reader is always inclined to re-read an outstanding work of art."

This is norm(in other words, the best, optimal “option”) of reader perception. It is carried out in its own way each time and not always to the fullest extent. In addition, author's orientations towards the tastes and interests of the reading public can be very different. And literary criticism studies the reader from various angles, but the main thing is in his cultural and historical diversity.

§ 2. The presence of the reader in the work. Receptive aesthetics

The reader can be present in the work directly, being concretized and localized in its text. Authors sometimes think about their readers and also have conversations with them, reproducing their thoughts and words. In this regard, it is legitimate to talk about reader's image as one of the facets of artistic “objectivity”. Without the live communication of the narrator with the reader, the stories of L. Stern, Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”, and the prose of N.V. are unimaginable. Gogol, M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, I.S. Turgenev.

Another, even more significant, universal form of artistic refraction of the perceiving subject is the latent presence in the integrity of the work of his imaginary reader, more precisely, the “concept of the addressee.” The reader-addressee can be a specific person (Pushkin’s friendly messages), and contemporary to the author the public (numerous judgments of A.N. Ostrovsky about the democratic viewer), and some distant “providential” reader, about whom O.E. spoke. Mandelstam in the article “About the interlocutor”.

The reader-addressee was carefully examined by West German scientists (Konstanz) in the 1970s (H.R. Jauss, W. Iser), who formed the school of receptive aesthetics ( German Rezeption - perception). M. Naumann (GDR) worked in the same vein at the same time. These scientists proceeded from the fact that artistic experience has two sides: productive (creative, creative) and receptive (sphere of perception). Accordingly, Jauss and Iser believed that there are two types of aesthetic theories: traditional theories of creativity (manifested primarily in art) - and a new theory of perception, created by them, which puts at the center not the author, but his addressee. The last one was called implicit reader, latently present in the work and to it immanent. The author (in the light of this theory) is characterized, first of all, by the energy of influence on the reader, and it is this that is given decisive importance. The other side of artistic activity (the generation and imprinting of values and meanings) is relegated to the background (although not rejected) by supporters of receptive aesthetics. In the composition of verbal and artistic works, the program of influence on the reader embedded in them is emphasized. impact potential(German: Wirkungspotenzial), so that the structure of the text is considered as appeal(address to the reader, message sent to him). The impact potential invested in a work, say representatives of receptive aesthetics, determines its perception by a real reader.

§ 3. Real reader. Historical and functional study of literature

Along with the potential, imaginary reader (addressee), indirectly and sometimes directly present in the work, reading experience as such is interesting and important for literary studies. Really existing readers and their groups have very different, often dissimilar attitudes towards literature and requirements for it. These attitudes and demands, orientations and strategies can either correspond to the nature of literature and its state in a given era, or diverge from them, and sometimes quite decisively. By receptive aesthetics they are designated by the term horizon of expectations, taken from sociologists K. Mannheim and K. Popper. The artistic effect is considered as the result of a combination (most often conflicting) of the author’s program of influence with perception carried out on the basis of the horizon of reader expectations. The essence of a writer’s activity, according to H.R. Jauss, is to take into account the horizon of reader expectations, and at the same time violate these expectations, to offer the public something unexpected and new. At the same time, the reading environment is thought of as something deliberately conservative, while writers are seen as breakers of habits and renewers of the experience of perception, which, we note, is not always the case. In the reading environment, affected by avant-garde trends, authors are expected not to adhere to rules and norms, not to follow something established, but, on the contrary, to make recklessly bold shifts and destruction of everything familiar. Readers' expectations are incredibly varied. From literary works they expect hedonistic satisfaction, shocking emotions, admonitions and teachings, expression of well-known truths, broadening of horizons (cognition of reality), immersion in the world of fantasy, and (which most corresponds to the essence of the art of eras close to us) aesthetic pleasure in organic combination with an introduction to the spiritual world of the author, whose work is marked by originality and novelty. This last type of reader expectations can rightfully be considered hierarchically the highest, the optimal setting of artistic perception.

The outlook, tastes and expectations of the reading public largely determine the fate of literary works, as well as the degree of authority and popularity of their authors. “The history of literature is not only the history of writers<…>but also the history of readers,” noted N.A. Rubakin, famous book scholar and bibliographer at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries.

The main area of the historical-functional study of literature is the existence of works in great historical time, their life over the centuries. At the same time, it is also important to consider how the writer’s work was mastered by the people of his time. The study of responses to a newly appeared work is a necessary condition for its comprehension. After all, authors, as a rule, turn primarily to the people of their era, and the perception of literature by its contemporaries is often marked by the extreme severity of reader reactions, be it sharp rejection (repulsion) or, on the contrary, warm, enthusiastic approval. Thus, Chekhov seemed to many of his contemporaries as “the measure of things,” and his books as “the only truth about what was happening around.”

The study of the fate of literary works after their creation is based on sources and materials of various kinds. This is the number and nature of publications, circulation of books, the availability of translations into other languages, and the composition of libraries. These are, further, written responses to what was read (correspondence, memoirs, notes in the margins of books). But the most significant in understanding the historical functioning of literature are statements about it that “come out to the public”: reminiscences and quotes in newly created literary works, graphic illustrations and director’s productions, as well as responses to literary facts by publicists, philosophers, art historians, literary critics and critics . It is to the activities of the latter, which constitute an invaluable evidence of the functioning of literature, that we turn.

§ 4. Literary criticism

A kind of vanguard of the reading public (more precisely, its artistically educated part) consists of literary critics. Their activity is a very significant component (at the same time a factor) of the functioning of literature in its modern times. The calling and task of criticism is to evaluate works of art (mostly newly created ones) and at the same time justify their judgments. “You read a poem, look at a painting, listen to a sonata,” wrote V.A. Zhukovsky, - you feel pleasure or displeasure - that’s the taste; you analyze the reason for one and the other - that’s criticism.”

Evaluating and interpreting individual works, criticism at the same time examines the literary process of our time (the genre of critical review of current literature in Russia has been strengthened since the Pushkin era), and also forms artistic and theoretical programs, directing literary development (articles of the late V.G. Belinsky about “ natural school”, works by Vyach. Ivanov and A. Bely about symbolism). The competence of literary critics also includes the consideration of works created long ago in the light of the problems of their (critics) modernity. Vivid evidence of this is the articles of V.G. Belinsky about Derzhavin, I.S. Turgenev “Hamlet and Don Quixote”, D.S. Merezhkovsky about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Literary criticism has an ambiguous relationship with the science of literature. Based on the analysis of works, it turns out to be directly involved in scientific knowledge. But there is also criticism - essays, which does not pretend to be analytical and demonstrative, but is an experience of subjective, predominantly emotional mastery of works. Characterizing his article “The Tragedy of Hippolytus and Phaedra” (about Euripides) as an essayistic one, I. Annensky wrote: “I intend to talk not about what is subject to research and calculation, but about what I experienced, pondering the speeches of the heroes and trying to grasp behind them is the ideological and poetic essence of tragedy." “Sentences of taste” undoubtedly have their legal rights in literary criticism even in cases where they do not receive logical justification.

§ 5. Mass reader

The range of reading and, most importantly, the perception of what people read from different social strata are very different. So, in the Russian peasant, and partly urban, worker and craft environment of the 19th century. the center of reading was literature of a religious and moral orientation: books primarily of the hagiographic genre, called “divine” (which, we note, at that time did not attract the attention of the artistically educated environment and the educated layer in general; one of the few exceptions is N.S. Leskov). The reading range of the popular reader also included books of an entertaining, adventurous, sometimes erotic nature, which were called “fairy tales” (the famous “Bova”, “Eruslan”, “The Tale of My Lord George”). These books, to some extent, “looked back” at teaching religious and moral literature: the ideal of legal marriage was indisputable in the eyes of the authors, the principles of morality triumphed in the final episodes. “High” literature of the 19th century. For a long time I did not find a way to the people's reader (to some extent the exception was Pushkin's fairy tales, Gogol's "Evenings on the Farm...", Lermontov's "Song about<…>merchant Kalashnikov"). In the Russian classics, the popular reader saw something alien to his interests, far from his spiritual and practical experience, perceived it according to the criteria of habitual hagiographic literature, and therefore most often experienced bewilderment and disappointment. Thus, in Pushkin’s “The Miserly Knight,” listeners paid attention primarily to the fact that the Baron died without repentance. Not accustomed to fiction in “non-entertaining”, serious works, people perceived what was depicted by realist writers as a description of people, destinies, and events that actually took place. ON THE. Dobrolyubov had every reason to complain that the work of great Russian writers was not becoming the property of the people.

XX century with its painful socio-political collisions, not only did not soften, but, on the contrary, exacerbated the contradictions between the reading experience of the majority and the artistically educated minority. In the era of world wars, totalitarian regimes, excessive urbanization (in some cases violent), the mass reader is naturally alienated from spiritual and aesthetic traditions and does not always receive anything positively significant in return. X. Ortega y Gasset wrote in 1930 about the unspiritual masses filled with life's lusts and consumerist moods. According to him, the appearance of the mass man of the 20th century. is connected primarily with the fact that the new era “feels stronger, more “alive” than all previous eras”, that “it has lost all respect, all attention to the past<…>completely refuses any inheritance, does not recognize any models or norms.” All this, naturally, is not conducive to mastering genuine, high art.

Literary hierarchies and reputations

Literary works fulfill their artistic purpose in different ways, to a greater or lesser extent, or even evade it altogether. In this regard, such concepts as, on the one hand, high literature (strict, truly artistic), on the other, mass (“trivial”) literature (“paraliterature,” “literary bottom”), as well as fiction, are vital. There is no clarity and rigor in distinguishing these phenomena in modern literary criticism; the concepts of literary “top” and “bottom” give rise to endless disagreements and disputes. But experiments in arranging literary facts into certain hierarchies are being undertaken very persistently.

§ 1. “High Literature.” Literary classics

The phrases “high (or strict) literature” and “literary elite” do not have complete semantic certainty. At the same time, they serve to logically isolate from the entire “literary mass” (including opportunistic speculation, graphomania, and, in the words of an American scientist, “dirty literature”, such as pornography) that part of it that is worthy of respectful attention and, most importantly, , true to her cultural and artistic calling. A certain “peak” of this literature (“high”) is the classics - that part of artistic literature that is interesting and authoritative for row generations and constitutes the “golden fund” of literature.

The word "classical" (from lat. classicus - exemplary) is used by art and literary critics in different meanings: the classics as writers of antiquity are contrasted with the authors of modern times, and representatives of classicism (also called classics) are contrasted with the romantics; in both of these cases, behind the word “classical” there is an idea of order, measure, harmony. In the same semantic vein, the literary term “classical style”, which is associated with the idea of harmonious integrity and is thought of as a kind of guideline for each national literature (in Russian literature, the classical style is most fully embodied in the works of Pushkin).

In the phrase artistic(or literary) classics (which will be discussed) contain an idea of the significance, scale, and exemplary nature of works. Classic writers are, according to famous expression D.S. Merezhkovsky, eternal companions humanity. Literary classics are a collection of works first row. This is, so to speak, the height of literature. As a rule, it is recognized only from the outside, from the outside, from another, subsequent era. Classical literature (and this is its essence) is actively included in interepochal (transhistorical) dialogical relations.

The hasty elevation of an author to the high rank of a classic is risky and not always desirable, although prophecies about the future glory of writers are sometimes justified (remember Belinsky’s judgments about Lermontov and Gogol). To say that this or that modern writer is destined for the fate of a classic is appropriate only speculatively, hypothetically. An author recognized by his contemporaries is only a “candidate” for classics. Let us remember that at the time of their creation the works of not only Pushkin and Gogol, L. Tolstoy and Chekhov, but also N.V. Kukolnik, S.Ya. Nadsona, V.A. Krylov (the most popular playwright of the 1870s–1880s). The idols of their time are not yet classics. It happens (and there are many examples of this) that “literary writers appear who, by the artistically unreflective opinion and the pointless philistine taste of the public, rise to heights that are inappropriate and do not belong to them, are declared classics during their lifetime, are placed unreasonably in the pantheon of national literature and then, sometimes even during life (if they live long) - they fade, fade, fade away in the eyes of the new younger generations.” The question of who is worthy of the reputation of a classic, apparently, is called upon not to be decided by the contemporaries of the writers, but by their descendants.

The boundaries between classics and “non-classics” in the strict literature of past eras are blurred and changeable. Now there will be no doubt about the characterization of K.N. Batyushkova and B.A. Baratynsky as classical poets, but for a long time these contemporaries of Pushkin were in the “second rank” (together with V.K. Kuchelbecker, I.I. Kozlov, N.I. Gnedich, whose services to Russian literature are indisputable, but the scope of literary activity and popularity among the public is not so great).

Contrary to widespread prejudice, artistic classics are by no means some kind of fossil. The life of famous works is full of endless dynamics (despite the fact that the high reputations of writers remain stable). “Every era,” wrote M.M. Bakhtin, - in his own way re-emphasizes the works of the immediate past. The historical life of classical works is, in essence, a continuous process of their social and ideological re-emphasis.” The existence of literary works over a long period of time is associated with their enrichment. Their semantic composition is capable of “growing, being further created”: against a “new background”, classical creations reveal “more and more new semantic moments.”

At the same time, the famous creations of the past are perceived differently at each individual historical moment, often causing disagreements and disputes. Let us recall the widest range of interpretations of Pushkin and Gogol’s works, the strikingly different interpretations of Shakespeare’s tragedies (especially Hamlet), the infinitely diverse readings of the image of Don Quixote or the work of I.V. Goethe with his “Faust”, which is the subject of the famous monograph by V.M. Zhirmunsky. They caused a storm of discussion and controversy in the 20th century. works by F.M. Dostoevsky, in particular - the image of Ivan Karamazov.

The existence of literature in great historical time is marked not only by the enrichment of works in the minds of readers, but also by serious “losses of meaning.” What is unfavorable for the existence of classics is, on the one hand, the avant-garde neglect of cultural heritage and the arbitrary, distorting modernization of famous creations - their straightforward modernization (“the fantasies of a lost mind and taste tyrannize the classics from all sides”), on the other hand, the deadening canonization, petrification, dogmatic schematization authoritative works as embodiments of final and absolute istai (what is called cultural classicism). This extreme approach to the classics has been repeatedly disputed. So, K.F. Ryleev argued that “the excellent works of some ancient and modern poets should inspire<… >respect for them, but not at all reverence, for this<…>inspires<…>some kind of fear that prevents one from approaching the exalted poet." The norm of attitude towards the classics is a non-imperative, free recognition of its authority, which does not exclude disagreement, critical attitude, dispute (this is precisely the position of G. Hesse, stated in his essay “Gratitude to Goethe”).

It is far from indisputable that the formula “our contemporary”, often applied to Shakespeare, Pushkin, or Tolstoy, smacks of excessive familiarity. Classics are designed to help readers understand themselves from a broader perspective, while being outside of the modern times. cultural life- as living in great historical time. Constituting a reason and incentive for dialogue between different, although in some ways similar cultures, it is addressed primarily to people who are spiritually sedentary (D.S. Likhachev’s expression), who are keenly interested in the historical past and are involved in it.

Classics are sometimes characterized as canonized literature. So, bearing in mind the famous Russian writers of the 18th–19th centuries, V.B. Shklovsky, not without irony, spoke about a number of “literary saints who have been canonized.” However, the canonization of the classics, expressed in the promotion of publications best works, in the establishment of monuments to great writers and poets, in the inclusion of their creations in educational programs, in their persistent popularization, has an unconditional positive significance for artistic culture.

At the same time, truly classical literature and literature sanctioned by certain authorities (the state, the artistic elite) there is a serious difference. Official authorities (especially when totalitarian regimes) often absolutize the significance of a certain part of literature (both past and modern) and impose their point of view on the reading public, sometimes quite aggressively. A striking example of this is the directive phrase spoken in 1935 by I.V. Stalin that Mayakovsky was and remains the best, most talented poet of the Soviet era. Acts of canonization of the writers' creativity were also the awarding of Stalin Prizes. The canonization of writers and their work is sometimes claimed (and to this day!) by cultural and artistic elites. “We are ready,” Vyach wrote fifteen years ago. Sun. Ivanov, - to making new decisions about what exactly from the past our present and future need most.”

However, the reputation of a classic writer (if he is truly a classic) is not so much created by someone’s decisions (and the corresponding literary policy), as it arises spontaneously, shaped by the interests and opinions of the reading public over a long period of time, by its free artistic self-determination. “Who makes the lists of classics?” - this question, which is sometimes raised and discussed by art and literary critics, in our opinion, is not entirely correct. If such lists are compiled by any authoritative individuals and groups, then they only record general opinion, already established about writers.

Glorified beyond the program
And eternal beyond schools and systems,
It is not made by hand
And it is not imposed on us by anyone.

These words by B.L. Pasternak about Blok (the poem “Wind”), in our opinion, is a poetic formula that characterizes the optimal path of an artist of words to the reputation of a classic.

Among the literary classics, we can distinguish authors who have gained worldwide lasting significance (Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dostoevsky), and national classics are writers who have the greatest authority in the literatures of individual nations (in Russia this is a galaxy of literary artists, starting with Krylov and Griboedov, with Pushkin at the center). According to S.S. Averintsev, the works of Dante - for Italians, Goethe - for Germans, Pushkin - for Russians “partly retain the rank of “Scripture” with capital letters". National classics, naturally, are included in world classics only partially.

In a number of cases, famous creations of art are subject to very harsh criticism. Thus, in the seventh “Philosophical Letter” P.Ya. Chaadaev crushed Homer, claiming that the poet glorified the “disastrous heroism of passions”, idealized and deified “vice and crime.” According to him, the moral feeling of a Christian should generate disgust for the Homeric epic, which “relaxes the tension of the mind,” “lulls and lulls a person to sleep with its powerful illusions” and on which lies “an unthinkable stigma of dishonor.” He spoke harshly about Shakespeare's plays by L.N. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and Drama.”

In the 20th century, artistic classics as such often turned out to be a “shaking tripod” (at the beginning of the century, this expression of Pushkin was, far from accidentally, picked up by Khodasevich). Justifying the program of symbolism, A. Bely saw the merit “truly” contemporary art in that he “torn off and broke the immaculate fossilized mask of classical art.” In this kind of attack on the classical heritage (which has some reasons as a protest against dogmatically narrow interpretations of famous works), a deathly immobility is mistakenly attributed to it and the inescapable dynamics of the perception of truly artistic creations is forgotten.

The phrase “mass literature” has different meanings. IN in a broad sense this is all that in literature that was not highly appreciated by the artistically educated public: it either caused its negative attitude or remained unnoticed by it. So, Yu.M. Lotman, having distinguished between “top” and “mass” literature, included the poems of F.I. into the latter’s sphere. Tyutchev, how they quietly appeared in Pushkin’s era. The scientist believes that Tyutchev’s poetry went beyond the scope of mass literature only then (the second half of the 19th century) when it was highly appreciated by the artistically educated layer.

Literary "bottom" Russian XIX V. It’s not difficult to imagine, having become acquainted at least in the most general terms with the famous story about My Lord George, reprinted many times from 1782 to 1918, full of very primitive sentimentality, banal melodramatic effects and at the same time rudely colloquial. Here is a quote that does not need comment: “The queen began to cry inconsolably, tearing her dress and hair, running around her chambers, like an amazed Bacchus nymph, wanting to take her own life; the girls hold her, not daring to say anything, and she shouts: “Ah! Unhappy Muslim, what have I done to myself and how could I let such a villain escape from the hands of such a villain who will blaspheme my honor everywhere! Why did I reveal myself in my love to such a hard-hearted deceiver, seduced by his beautiful face? but the girls took it away and took her without any feeling, carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed.”

V. G. Belinsky, in his review of the next edition of this story (author - Matvey Komarov) exclaimed: “How many generations in Russia began their reading, their pursuit of literature with “The English My Lord”!” And he ironically noted that Komarov is “a figure as great and as mysterious in our literature as Homer in Greek,” that his works “sold almost tens of thousands of copies and found a larger audience than the Vyzhigins.” Bulgarin".

Paraliterature serves the reader whose concepts of life values, good and evil are exhausted by primitive stereotypes and gravitate towards generally accepted standards. It is in this respect that it is massive. According to X. Ortega y Gasset, a representative of the masses is “anyone and everyone who, neither in good nor in evil, does not measure himself by a special measure, but feels the same “like everyone else,” and is not only not depressed, but satisfied with his own indistinguishability."

In accordance with this, the heroes of books belonging to paraliterature are, as a rule, deprived of character, psychological individuality, and “special features.” “My Vyzhigin,” wrote F. Bulgarin in the preface to the novel “Ivan Vyzhigin,” “is a being, kind by nature, but weak in moments of error, subject to circumstances, a person of whom we see many and often in the world. This is how I wanted to portray him. The incidents of his life are such that they could happen to anyone without the addition of fiction.”

The characters in the works that we classify as paraliterature are turned into a fiction of personality, into a kind of “sign”. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the authors of pulp novels are so fond of significant mask surnames. "G. Bulgarin, wrote A. S. Pushkin about the novels of his literary antagonist, punishes persons with various intricate names: he calls the murderer Nozhev, the bribe-taker - Vzyatkin, the fool - Glazdurin, and so on. Historical accuracy alone did not allow him to call Boris Godunov Khlopoukhin, Dmitry the Pretender Convict, and Marina Mnishek Princess Whore, but these faces are presented somewhat palely.”

The extreme schematism of paraliterary characters distinguishes them from the heroes of high literature and good fiction: “People in the flesh mean little to paraliterature; it is more occupied with the unfolding of events in which man is destined for the role of a means.”

Paraliterature compensates for the lack of characters with dynamically developing action, an abundance of incredible, fantastic, almost fabulous incidents. Visual evidence of this is the endless books about the adventures of Angelica, which are a huge success among the undemanding reader. The hero of such works usually does not actually have human face. He often appears in the guise of Superman. Such, for example, is Jerry Cotton, a miracle detective created through the efforts of a team of anonymous authors working for one of the West German publishing houses. “Jerry Cotton is a superman hero, a fanatic of justice and duty. True, psychologically, he is an empty place and his mental abilities are not subjected to special tests (unlike Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Jules Maigret), but he has no equal in his countless arts - shooting, boxing, judo, driving a car, piloting an airplane, skydiving, scuba diving, the ability to drink whiskey without getting drunk, etc. Jerry's omnipotence is almost divine in nature... it is not limited by common sense, nor by considerations of plausibility, nor even by the laws of nature...”

Nevertheless, paraliterature strives to convince the reader of the authenticity of what is depicted, that the most incredible events “could happen to anyone without the addition of fiction” (F. Bulgarin). Paraliterature either resorts to mystification (the same Bulgarin, in the preface to the novel “Dmitry the Pretender,” claimed that his book was based on inaccessible materials from Swedish archives), or “furnishes” adventures that are impossible in reality with recognizable and documented details. Thus, the authors of books about the adventures of Jerry Cotton “make sure that telephone numbers are genuine (that is, a New York subscriber list), that the names and addresses of drinking establishments and clubs are correct, that car chase routes are accurate in terms of distances and timing . All this produces a captivating effect on naive readers.”

Paraliterature is the brainchild of the spiritual consumption industry. In Germany, for example, the production of “trivial novels” is literally put on a conveyor belt: “The publishing house produces a certain number of titles of trivial novels of one genre or another (women’s, detective, western, adventure, science-fiction, soldier’s novels) per month, strictly regulated in terms of plot, character, language, style and even volume (250–272 pages of book text). To do this, it supports authors on a contractual basis, who regularly, within pre-planned deadlines, deliver revisions of the manuscript that meet pre-specified standards. These manuscripts are published not under the name of the author, but under some sonorous pseudonym, which, like the manuscript, belongs to the publishing house. The latter has the right, without agreeing with the author, to correct and redo manuscripts at its own discretion and to publish manuscripts of different authors under a common pseudonym.”

Thus, the author's principle is destroyed in the very process of producing paraliterature. This feature of hers developed gradually. At the end of the 18th century. and later, authorship in mass literature, while retained in essence, nevertheless remained latent, implicit. Thus, the most popular in Russia in the 19th century. books by Matvey Komarov, about whom almost nothing is known to this day, were published anonymously. Modern paraliterature invariably and consistently abandons the category of “author.”

Mass literature, with its clichédness and “authorlessness,” evokes a purely negative attitude towards itself among the majority of representatives of the artistically educated classes, including writers. At the same time, experiments are being made to consider it as a cultural phenomenon that also has positive properties. This is the monograph by the American scientist J. Cavelti. It (the first chapter has recently been translated into Russian) challenges the usual idea that mass literature constitutes a lower and perverted form of something better, and argues that it not only has every right to exist, but also has advantages over recognized masterpieces . Mass literature here is characterized as “formal”, gravitating toward stereotypes that, however, embody deep and capacious meanings: it expresses the “escapist experiences” of a person, responding to the need of “the majority of modern Americans and Western Europeans” to escape life with its monotony, boredom and everyday irritation , - the need for images of ordered existence and, most importantly, for entertainment. These reader requests, the scientist believes, are satisfied by saturating works with motifs (symbols) of “danger, uncertainty, violence and sex.”

“Formular literature,” according to Cavelti, expresses the conviction that “true justice is the work of the individual, not the law.” Therefore, her hero is invariably active and adventurous. “Formularity” is seen by scientists mainly in such genres as melodrama, detective story, western, thriller.

Elevating mass literature, Cavelti emphasizes that its basis is formed by stable, “basic models” of consciousness inherent in everyone to people. Behind the structures of “formular works” are “original intentions” that are understandable and attractive to the vast majority of the population. Noting this, Cavelti speaks of the limitations and narrowness of high literature, “a small number of masterpieces.” The scientist considers the opinion “that great writers have a unique ability to embody the main myths of their culture” to be “common,” that is, a prejudice and delusion. And he concludes that classic writers reflect only “the interests and attitudes of the elite audience reading them.”

Cavelti, as can be seen, radically revises the long-rooted evaluative opposition between the literary “top” and “bottom”. His bold innovation seems far from certain. At least because “formularity” is not only a property of modern mass literature, but also the most important feature of all art of past centuries. At the same time, the work on “formula literature” awakens thought. It encourages a critical attitude towards the traditional antithesis (top literature and mass literature), stimulates the understanding of the value heterogeneity everything in literature that is not a masterpiece of the classics. In this regard, in our opinion, it is promising to distinguish between mass literature in the narrow sense (as literary bottom) and fiction as median areas.

§ 3. Fiction

The word "fiction" (from fr. belles lettres - belles lettres) is used in different meanings: in a broad sense - fiction (this word usage is now outdated); in a narrower sense - narrative prose. Fiction is also considered as a part of mass literature, and is even identified with it.

We are interested in a different meaning of the word: fiction is literature of the “second” series, non-exemplary, non-classical, but at the same time having undeniable merits and fundamentally different from the literary “lower” (“reading”), i.e. the middle space of literature.

Fiction is heterogeneous. In its sphere, what is primarily significant is the range of works that do not have artistic scale and pronounced originality, but discuss the problems of their country and era, meeting the spiritual and intellectual needs of contemporaries, and sometimes even descendants. This kind of fiction, according to V.G. Belinsky, expresses “the needs of the present, the thought and question of the day” and in this sense is similar to “high literature”, invariably in contact with it.

These are numerous novels, stories and stories by you. Iv. Nemirovich-Danchenko (1844–1936), reprinted several times during the 1880–1910s. Having not made any actual artistic discoveries, being prone to melodramatic effects and often straying into literary cliches, this writer at the same time said something of his own and original about Russian life. Nemirovich-Danchenko was closely attentive to worldly righteousness as the most important factor in national life, to the appearance and destinies of people with “big hearts” who “cannot be seen right away”: “They are all buried somewhere under a bushel, like a gold mine in<…>rock."

It often happens that a book that embodied the thoughts and needs of a historical moment, which found a lively response among the writer’s contemporaries, later falls out of reader’s use and becomes part of the history of literature, of interest only to specialists. Such a fate befell, for example, the story of Count Vl. Sollogub "Tarantas", which had a resounding but short-lived success. Let us also name the works of M.N. Zagoskina, D.V. Grigorovich, I.N. Potapenko.

Fiction that responds (or strives to respond) to the literary and social trends of its time is heterogeneous in value. In some cases, it contains the beginnings of originality and novelty (more in the sphere of ideological and thematic rather than artistic), in others it turns out to be predominantly (or even completely) imitative and epigonic.

Imitation(from etc. - gr. epigonoi - born after) is “uncreative adherence to traditional models” and, we add, annoying repetition and eclectic variation of well-known literary themes, plots) motives, in particular - imitation of writers of the first rank. According to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “the fate of all strong and energetic talents is to lead a long line of imitators.” So, behind the innovative story N.M. Karamzin’s “Poor Liza” was followed by a stream of works similar to it, not much different from one another (“Poor Masha”, “The Story of Unfortunate Margarita”, etc.). Something similar later happened with the themes, motifs, and stylistics of N.A.’s poetry. Nekrasov and A.A. Blok.

The danger of epigonism sometimes threatens talented writers who are able to say (and have said) their word in literature. Thus, the first works of N.V. were predominantly imitative in nature. Gogol (poem “Hans Küchelgarten”) and N.A. Nekrasov (lyrical collection “Dreams and Sounds”). It also happens that a writer who has clearly shown himself later resorts to self-repetition too often, becoming an epigone of himself (in our opinion, such a brilliant poet as A.A. Voznesensky did not avoid such a tendency). According to A.A. Fet, for poetry “there is nothing more deadly than repetition, and especially itself.”

It happens that a writer’s work combines the principles of epigonism and originality. These are, for example, the stories and stories of S.I. Gusev-Orenburgsky, where they are clearly imitation of G.I. Uspensky and M. Gorky, as well as an original and bold coverage of modern times (mainly the life of the Russian provincial clergy). Epigonism has nothing to do with the writer’s reliance on traditional artistic forms, with continuity as such. (For artistic creativity, the optimal setting is continuity without imitation. This is, first of all, the writer’s lack of his own themes and ideas and the eclecticism of the form, which is taken from his predecessors and is in no way updated.

But truly serious fiction invariably avoids the temptations and temptations of epigonism. The best of the fiction writers (“ordinary talents,” according to Belinsky, or, as M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin called them, “apprentices,” whom, like masters, “every school” has) play a good role in the literary process and responsible. They are vital and necessary for great literature and society as a whole. For major artists, words constitute “a nutrient channel and a resonating medium”; fiction “in its own way feeds the root system of masterpieces”; ordinary talents sometimes fall into imitation and imitation, but at the same time “they often grope for, and even open for development, those thematic, problematic layers that will later be deeply plowed by the classics.”

Fiction, actively responding to the “topic of the day”, embodying the trends of the “little time”, its worries and anxieties, is significant not only as part of current literature, but also for understanding the history of social, cultural and artistic life of past eras. “There are literary works,” wrote M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, - who at one time enjoyed great success and even had a considerable share of influence on society. But now this “its time” passes, and works that were of keen interest at the moment, works whose publication was greeted with general noise, are gradually forgotten and handed over to the archives. Nevertheless, not only contemporaries, but even distant posterity have no right to ignore them, because in this case literature constitutes, so to speak, a reliable document, on the basis of which it is easiest to restore the characteristic features of the time and recognize its requirements. Consequently, the study of this kind of works is a necessity, it is one of the indispensable conditions for a good literary education.”

In a number of cases, fiction, due to the strong-willed decisions of the powerful, is elevated to the rank of classics for some time. This was the fate of many works of literature of the Soviet period, such as, for example, “How the Steel Was Tempered” by N.A. Ostrovsky, “Destruction” and “Young Guard” by A.A. Fadeeva. It is right to call them canonized fiction.

Along with fiction that discusses the problems of its time, there are also widely published works created with the intention of entertainment, easy and thoughtless reading. This branch of fiction tends to be “formular” and adventurous, and differs from faceless mass production. The author's individuality is invariably present in it. A thoughtful reader always sees differences between such authors as A Conan Doyle, J. Simenon, A Christie. Individual originality is no less noticeable in this type of fiction, such as Science fiction: R. Bradbury cannot be “confused” with St. Lemom, I.A. Efremova - with the Strugatsky brothers. Works that were initially perceived as entertaining reading may, having stood the test of time, come somewhat closer to the status of literary classics. Such, for example, is the fate of the novels of Dumas the Father, which, although not masterpieces of literary art and not marking the enrichment of artistic culture, have, however, been loved by a wide circle of readers for a whole century and a half.

The right to exist of entertaining fiction and its positive significance (especially for young people) is beyond doubt. At the same time, a complete, exclusive focus on literature of this kind is hardly desirable for the reading public. It is natural to listen to the paradoxical phrase of T. Mann: “So-called entertaining reading is undoubtedly the most boring that ever happens.”

Fiction as a “middle” sphere literary creativity(both in its seriously problematic and in its entertainment branches) is in close contact with both the “top” and the “bottom” of literature. This applies to the greatest extent to such genres as adventure and historical novels, detective stories and science fiction.

Such recognized classics of world literature as Charles Dickens and F.M. owe much to the adventurous novel with its entertaining nature and its intense intrigue. Dostoevsky. " Most of Dickens's novels are based on a family secret: the child of a rich and noble family persecuted by relatives who want to illegally take advantage of his inheritance<…>“Dickens knows how to use this well-worn plot as a person with enormous poetic talent,” Belinsky wrote in an article about E. Hsu’s novel “Paris Mysteries,” simultaneously noting the secondary nature of E. Hsu’s novel in relation to the works of the English novelist (“Paris Mysteries” is an awkward and an unsuccessful imitation of Dickens's novels"). In some cases, the plot based on a “family secret” is complicated by Dickens’ detective motives (the novel “ Bleak House"). One of the masters of detective fiction, the English writer W. Collins, author of the novels “The Moonstone” and “The Woman in White,” which are still popular today, co-authored Charles Dickens’ novel “Our Mutual Friend.” Friendship and collaboration with Dickens had a beneficial effect on the literary activity of Collins - one of the founders of good, artistically complete detective prose, which was later represented by such names as A. Conan Doyle and J. Simenon.

One of the striking examples in world literature of the interaction of its heights of the “middle sphere” is the artistic practice of F.M. Dostoevsky. In the critical and journalistic article “Bookishness and Literacy” (1861), Dostoevsky writes about the need to “deliver to the people” “as much have a nice And entertaining reading" “Smart people will probably tell me that my book will contain little efficient, useful? There will be some kind of fairy tales, stories, various fantastic games, without a system, without a direct goal, in a word, gibberish, and that the people will not distinguish my book from “The Beautiful Mohammedan” the first time. Let him not tell the difference the first time, I answer. Let him even think about which of them to give preference to. So she told him I'll like it, if he compares it with his favorite book<…>And since I will still place even though most curious, most enticing, but at the same time there are good articles in this book, then little by little I will achieve the following results: 1) that the people behind my books will forget “The Beautiful Mohammedan”; 2) not only will he forget; he will even give my book a positive advantage over hers, because the property of good essays is to purify the taste and mind<…>And finally, 3) due to pleasure<…>delivered by my books, little by little the desire to read will spread among the people.”

Dostoevsky confirmed his thoughts about the need for entertaining reading for the general reader through creative practice. Also in 1861, the magazine “Time” published his novel “Humiliated and Insulted” - a work in which the connection between Dostoevsky’s prose and the tradition of entertaining fiction is most obvious. Literary criticism later wrote, recalling the enormous success of the novel among a wide variety of readership: “They literally read it, the ordinary public greeted the author with enthusiastic applause; criticism in the person of its most brilliant and authoritative representative, in the person of Dobrolyubov<…>treated him extremely sympathetically."

Dostoevsky, in later years, widely used narrative techniques characteristic of fiction and mass literature. Artistically rethinking the effects of criminal plots, he used them in his famous novels “Crime and Punishment”, “Demons”, “The Brothers Karamazov”.

§ 4. fluctuations in literary reputations. Unknown and forgotten authors and works

The reputations of writers and their works are marked by greater or lesser stability. It is impossible to imagine, for example, that the opinion of Dante or Pushkin as stars of the first magnitude will ever be replaced by the opposite, and, say, P.I. Shalikov, known at the beginning of the 19th century. sentimentalist, will find himself elevated to the high rank of classic. At the same time, literary reputations undergo fluctuations, and sometimes very sharp ones. So, Shakespeare until the middle of the 18th century. if he was not in complete obscurity, then in any case he did not have high authority and did not attract much attention to himself. For a long time, the poetry of F.I. was not highly appreciated. Tyutcheva. On the contrary, V.G. Benediktov, S.Ya. Nadson and I. Severyanin aroused the noisy delight of their contemporaries, but soon found themselves pushed to the periphery literary life.

“Differences” in the reading public’s interest in writers and their works are not a matter of chance. Exist factors of literary success. They are very heterogeneous.

Reader expectations undergo changes (depending on the atmosphere of social life of a given era), and attention is drawn to works of one or a completely different content and artistic orientation, while others are relegated to the periphery. Thus, over the past decades, the reputations of writers who capture existence as disharmonious and who are inclined to universalize tragedy, to skepticism and pessimistic, hopelessly gloomy attitudes have significantly increased. F. Villon and C. Baudelaire, F. Kafka and the Oberiuts became more readable. L.N. Tolstoy as the author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”, where the author’s trust in the harmonious principles of existence made itself felt (remember the Rostovs or the Levin-Kitty line), which previously almost led in the reader’s consciousness, has largely given way to the tragic - hysterical F.M. Dostoevsky, about whom they now write and talk more than about any of the classic writers. The correspondence of the authors’ mentality (no matter when they lived) with the spirit of the time of the perception of literature is perhaps the main factor in the “readability” of works and the dynamics of their reputations.

There is another factor in the fluctuation of writers’ reputations, which I.N. focused on. Rozanov in his 1928 monograph. Based on the judgments of representatives of the formal school, the scientist argued that in every literary era there is a sharp divergence of tastes and views of the older and younger generations, in which the second is repelled by the first: the literary “idols” of the elders are debunked by the younger ones, the reputations of writers and their works are revised; Yesterday's "leaders" are contrasted with today's new, truly modern. All this is considered by the scientist as a guarantee against stagnation in literary life, as a condition for its “further movement.”

At the same time, success among contemporaries (especially in eras close to us) is greatly facilitated by the loudness and effectiveness of the author’s “statement” of his own originality and novelty. If the writer is an innovator, wrote I.N. Rozanov “goes his way without noise,” then he is not noticed for a long time. If he (such were Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, the leaders of symbolism) “strikes loudly with his oars on the blooming grass,” causing irritation of the “Old Believers” and giving rise to “wrong talk, noise and abuse,” then he attracts everyone’s attention and gains fame and becomes an authority among his contemporaries; at the same time, sometimes it turns out that “the throat is more important than the head” (meaning, “probably, the noisy performances of the futurists”). There is a lot of truth in these thoughts. The encouragement of writers by official authorities, influential social circles, and the media is also of considerable importance. A certain role is also played by the impulse of self-affirmation of those authors who, even without talent, persistently achieve fame, publications, and critical recognition.

At the same time, such popular lifetime writers, highly valued by their contemporaries, as N.M. Karamzin and V.A. Zhukovsky, N. Ostrovsky and A.P. Chekhov, were by no means “noisy innovators”. There are, therefore, other than the energy of self-affirmation, and, undoubtedly, deeper reasons for the writer gaining a high reputation among his contemporaries. It is impossible not to admit that the main and only reliable (albeit not always quickly acting) factor of success with the public, long-term and lasting, is a fully realized writing talent, the scale of the author’s personality, the originality and originality of his works, the depth of “creative contemplation” of reality.

No matter how significant the opinions of readers are, there is no reason to measure the merit of works and writers by their success among the public, their readability, and fame. According to T. Mann (referring to the work of R. Wagner), great success among contemporaries rarely falls to the share of genuine and large-scale art. In literary and artistic life, in fact, situations widely exist, on the one hand, of “inflated fame” (remember Pasternak’s: “Being famous is ugly”), on the other, “undeserved oblivion.” Having resorted to a paradox, about this kind of disproportions V.V. Rozanov put it this way: “Our talents (read in the subtext: as well as popularity. - V.Kh.) are somehow connected with vices, and virtues with obscurity.” This writer-essayist was attracted to unknown authors: “Fate protects those whom it deprives of glory,” he believed. A.S. paid tribute to a similar mindset. Khomyakov:

Happy is the thought that did not shine
Human rumor welcomes spring,
I was in no hurry to dress up prematurely
In sheets and color is her youthful strength,
But it exploded with its roots.

Let us also remember Akhmatova’s couplet: “Pray at night, so that you/Suddenly do not wake up famous.” The fame and popularity of a poet do not always signify a keen understanding of him by the general public.

The work of writers, little noticed by their contemporaries and/or subsequently forgotten, is very heterogeneous. In this area - not only what is called graphomania, which is hardly worthy of reader attention and literary discussion, but also significant phenomena in the history of literature in their own way. Among little-noticeable and forgotten writers, as A.G. rightly noted. Gornfeld, there are undoubted merits, their “ant work is not fruitless.” These words of the scientist are true not only in relation to I.A. Kushchevsky, whom he studied, but also to a great many writers who, to use the expression of Yu.N. Tynyanov, were defeated (or, we add, did not strive to reach the general public). Among them is A.P. Bunin and N.S. Kokhanovskaya (XIX century), A.A. Zolotarev and BA Timofeev (early 20th century). One of the responsible and urgent tasks of literary criticism is to understand how the largest phenomena of literature are formed from the efforts of unnoticed writers; necessary, according to M.L. Gasparov, “so that all these numerous names do not remain faceless for the reader, so that each author stands out” in some way.

Nowadays this diverse and rich layer of literature (the work of little-noticeable and unknown writers) is being carefully studied. K. persistently attracts the attention of the humanitarian community with the multi-volume encyclopedic publication “Russian Writers 1800–1917. Biographical Dictionary", half already accomplished.

§ 5. Elite and anti-elite concepts of art and literature

The functioning of literature (especially over the past centuries), as is clear from what has been said, is marked by a sharp disproportion between what has been created and accumulated, carried out and achieved in the sphere of verbal art, and what can be somewhat fully perceived and understood by the general public. circles of the reading public. The heterogeneity and sometimes polarity of artistic interests and tastes of society have given rise to two diametrically opposed (and equally one-sided) concepts of art and literature: elitist and anti-elite.

Turning to this side of literary life, let us characterize the meaning of the terms “elite” and “elitism.” Elites They call, firstly, social groups that are sufficiently involved in a certain area of culture (scientific, philosophical, artistic, technical, state) and actively operating in it. Secondly, the same term (using mainly the word “elitism”) refers to a social phenomenon, mostly negative. This is the arrogant isolation of representatives of privileged groups, their alienation from the life of society and the people. In judgments on the topic “art and the elite”, “elitism of artistic creativity”, both meanings of these words coexist and intertwine, sometimes quite bizarrely.

Proponents of the elitist concept argue that artistic creativity is intended for a narrow circle of connoisseurs. Romantics, in particular the Jena school in Germany, paid tribute to this understanding of art. Participants last time they elevated the circle of artists above all other mortals as tasteless philistines. According to a modern scientist, romanticism is “a worldview based on the idea of geniocentrism.” F. Schlegel wrote: “What are people in relation to other creatures of the earth (i.e. animals. - A.X.), then artists - in relation to people<…>Even in external manifestations, the artist’s lifestyle must be different from the lifestyle of other people. They are Brahmins, the highest caste." Wagner, Schopenhauer and, in particular, Nietzsche paid tribute to similar ideas. In the 20th century elitist (one might say “geniocentric”) concepts of art are very widespread. In the words of Ortega y Gasset, art “is intended<…>only to a very small category of people"; The art that is now becoming stronger, and which is the future, is “art for artists, not for the masses, “the art of a caste, not a demos.”

This kind of view was repeatedly subjected to severe criticism both in the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, in one of his letters (1946), T. Mann argued that the elitist, closed art of his era would eventually fall into a situation of “death loneliness.” And he expressed the hope that future artists will be freed from solemn isolation: art will move away “from being alone with the educated elite” and will find ways “to the people.”

The “confinement” of art in a narrow circle of its practitioners, its separation from the life of broad layers of society, is opposed by another kind of extreme, anti-elitist, namely: a sharp and unconditional rejection of works of art that cannot be perceived and assimilated by the general public. He spoke skeptically about the “scientific” art of Rousseau. L.N. sharply criticized Tolstoy in his treatise “What is Art?” many first-class creations for their inaccessibility to the majority.

Both concepts (elitist and anti-elitist) are one-sided in that they absolutize the disproportion between art in its entirety and what can be understood by the general public: they think of this disproportion as universal and irremovable.

Genuine, high art(artistic classics and everything akin to it) is outside this antithesis, does not obey it, overcomes it and denies it. It does not always become available to the general public, but one way or another it is aimed at contacts with it; it often arises and strengthens in small, narrow social groups (remember “Arzamas” in the time of Pushkin’s youth), but later turns out to be the property of large communities. The nutritious soil of “great literature” is both the life of “small” human communities and the fate of broad social strata and the people as a whole. The right to the highest assessment has both literature that addresses primarily and even exclusively the artistically educated minority and is initially understood only by them (for example, the poetry of the Symbolists), as well as literature that was initially addressed to a wide circle of readers (“The Captain’s Daughter” by A.S. Pushkin, poems and poems by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.Tvardovsky). Therefore, the unequivocally sharp and harshly evaluative opposition of elitist-high art to low-class art or, on the contrary, elitist-limited authentic and popular art has no basis. The boundaries between the elite “closedness” of art and its general accessibility (popularity, mass appeal) are mobile and fluctuating: what is inaccessible to the general public today often turns out to be intelligible to it and highly valued by it tomorrow. A fruitful overcoming of both militantly elitist and militantly anti-elitist ideas about art was the aesthetic education program at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. stated by F. Schiller (“Letters on Aesthetic Education”) and influential in subsequent eras. Art and literary critics (including theorists) persistently and rightly emphasize that the development of artistic values is a complex, intense and difficult process. And the vocation of literary and artistic workers is not to “adapt” a work to prevailing tastes and demands modern readers, but to look for and find ways to expand the artistic horizons of the public - so that art in all its richness becomes the property of ever wider sections of society.

Notes:

Prozorov V.V. On the components of modern literary criticism//Philology. Saratov, 1996. P. 28.

See instructions for the appropriate scientific literature in: Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary (articles: “Bibliography”, “Source Studies”, “Textology”).

Hegel G.W.F. Aesthetics: In 4 vols. T. 1. P. 119; M., 1973. T. 4. P. 221. Russian philosophers also showed themselves in a similar way. Yes, Vl. Soloviev argued that beauty has a “common ontological basis” and is “the sensual embodiment of one absolutely objective unified truth” (Soloviev Vl. S. Beauty in nature. P. 388).

Kant I. Criticism of the power of judgment. M., 1994. S. 91, 93, 96, 98–99. 19

Kant I. Criticism of the power of judgment. P. 131.

Schiller F. O sublime (to the further development of some of Kant’s ideas) // Schiller F. Lonely artist. pp. 251–252.

Cm.: Mukarzhovsky Ya. Studies in aesthetics and art theory. pp. 219, 240.

Tolstoy L.N.. Poly. collection cit.: In 90 volumes. M., 1951. T. 30. P. 19.

Asmus V.F.. Reading as work and creativity// Asmus V.F. Questions of theory and history of aesthetics. pp. 62–66. Recently, other considerations were expressed, in our opinion, controversial: “The culture of rereading was the whole European culture the traditionalist era, from ancient Greek times to the end of the 18th century; and the culture of first reading began with the Romantic era and reached full development in the 20th century. A culture of rereading is one that uses a set of traditional, stable and conscious techniques, highlighting a pantheon of canonized reread classics<…>A culture of first reading is one that proclaims a cult of originality, declares independence from any given conventions, and instead of canonized classics, it upholds those who were ahead of their time. unrecognized geniuses; in such conditions, the freshness of first reading is the ideal of perception, and even when we reread a poem or novel, we involuntarily try to throw out of our heads everything that we remember about it, and it’s as if we are playing first reading with ourselves” ( Gasparov M.L. First reading and rereading//Tynyanovsky collection. Third Tynianov readings. Riga) 1988. P. 19.). It seems to us that “first reading” and “re-reading” are necessary and complementary facets of the culture of artistic perception in any era.

Cm.: Beletsky A.I.. On one of the immediate tasks of historical and literary science (the study of the history of the reader) (1922) // Beletsky A.I.. In the workshop of a word artist. pp. 117–119.

The keynote presentation of this school was the collective monograph: Rezeptionsästhetik. Theorie und Piaxis Hisg. R. Warning. Munich, 1975.

This facet of artistic subjectivity was first brought to the fore in the 1930s works of film director S.M. Eisenstein (see: Zholkovsky A.K., A.K. Shcheglov. Works on the poetics of expressiveness. M., 1996. P. 37–53.).

cm .: lser W. Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästtietisclier Wiltanig. München, 1976. S. 7, 9.

See types of artistic imagery.

Historical and functional study of literature. Literary criticism.

The reading public, with its attitudes and preferences, interests and outlook, is studied not so much by literary scholars as by sociologists, constituting the subject of the sociology of literature. At the same time, the impact of literature on the life of society, its understanding and comprehension by readers (in other words, literature in the changing socio-cultural contexts of its perception) is the subject of one of the literary disciplines - the historical-functional study of literature (the term was proposed by M.B. Khrapchenko in the late 1960s). The main area of the historical-functional study of literature is the existence of works in great historical time, their life over the centuries. However, for this scientific discipline It also turns out to be important to consider how the writer’s work was mastered by the people of his time. The study of responses to a newly appeared work is a necessary condition for its comprehension. After all, authors turn, as a rule, first of all to the people of their era, and the perception of literature by its contemporaries is often marked by the extreme severity of reader reactions, be it sharp, rejection (rejection) or, on the contrary, warm, enthusiastic approval. Thus, Chekhov seemed to many of his contemporaries as “the measure of things,” and his books as “the only truth about what was happening around.” The study of the fate of literary works after their creation is based on sources and materials of various kinds. This is the number and nature of publications, circulation of books, the availability of translations into other languages, and the composition of libraries. These are, further, written responses to what was read (correspondence, memoirs, notes in the margins of books). But the most significant in understanding the historical functioning of literature are statements about it that “come out to the public”: reminiscences and quotes in newly created literary works, graphic illustrations and director’s productions, as well as responses to literary facts by publicists, philosophers, art historians, literary critics and critics .

Criticism- Greek the art of disassembling. The word judgment came into Russian from French. This judgment may be an expression of personal taste. This judgment is not enough. Critical judgment presupposes the presence of an assessment that would express the assessment and opinion of the majority educated people, professionally prepared for literary activity. Critical evaluation is based on higher and more precise criteria of aesthetic judgment.

The task of criticism is to summarize, to present the general reader’s assessment. Express it in professional language with utmost persuasiveness.

Criticism is a science that requires the art of writing. The history of criticism allows us to perceive the literary process differently and deeply study the history of literary texts.

Classics, fiction and popular literature.

The phrases “high (or strict) literature” and “literary elite” do not have complete semantic definition. At the same time, they serve to logically isolate from the entire “literary mass” that part of it that is worthy of respectful attention. A certain “peak” of this literature (“high”) is the classics—that part of literary literature that is interesting and authoritative for a number of generations and constitutes the “golden fund” of literature.
Word " classical"(from the Latin classicus - exemplary) is used by art and literary critics in different meanings: the classics as writers of antiquity are contrasted with the authors of modern times, and representatives of classicism (also called classics) are contrasted with the romantics; in both of these cases, the word “classical” is opposed to the idea of order , measure, harmony. In the same semantic vein, the literary term “classical style”, which is associated with the idea of harmonious integrity and is thought of as a kind of guideline for each national literature (in Russian literature, the classical style is most fully embodied in the work of Pushkin).

it is addressed primarily to people who are spiritually sedentary (D.S. Likhachev’s expression), who are keenly interested in the historical past and are involved in it.

Glorified beyond the program
And eternal beyond schools and systems,
It is not made by hand
And it is not imposed on us by anyone.
These words by B.L. Pasternak about Blok (the poem “Wind”), in our opinion, is a poetic formula that characterizes the optimal path of an artist of words to the reputation of a classic.
As part of the literary classics, we can distinguish authors who have gained worldwide enduring significance (Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dostoevsky), and national classics - writers who have the greatest authority in the literatures of individual nations (in Russia this is a galaxy of literary artists, starting with Krylov and Griboyedov , in the center of which is Pushkin).

Word " fiction"(from the French belles lettres - belles lettres) is used in different meanings: in a broad sense - fiction (this usage is now outdated); in a narrower sense - narrative prose. Fiction is also considered as a part of mass literature, and is even identified with her.
We are interested in a different meaning of the word: fiction is literature of the “second” rank, non-exemplary, non-classical, but at the same time having undeniable merits and fundamentally different from the literary “lower” (“reading”), i.e. the middle space of literature.
Fiction is heterogeneous. In its sphere, what is primarily significant is the range of works that do not have artistic scale and pronounced originality, but discuss the problems of their country and era, meeting the spiritual and intellectual needs of contemporaries, and sometimes even descendants.

These are your numerous novels, novellas and stories. Iv. Nemirovich-Danchenko (1844-1936), reprinted several times during the 1880-1910s. Having not made any actual artistic discoveries, being prone to melodramatic effects and often straying into literary cliches, this writer at the same time said something of his own and original about Russian life.

the story of Count Vl. Sollogub "Tarantas", which had a resounding but short-lived success. Let us also name the works of M.N. Zagoskina, D.V. Grigorovich, I.N. Potapenko.
Fiction that responds (or strives to respond) to the literary and social trends of its time is heterogeneous in value. In some cases, it contains the beginnings of originality and novelty (more in the sphere of ideological and thematic rather than artistic), in others it turns out to be predominantly (or even completely) imitative and epigonic.
Epigonism (from the Old Greek epigonoi - born after) is “uncreative adherence to traditional models” and, we add, annoying repetition and eclectic variation of well-known literary themes, plots) motives, in particular - imitation of writers of the first rank. According to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “the fate of all strong and energetic talents is to lead a long line of imitators.” So, behind the innovative story N.M. Karamzin's "Poor Liza" was followed by a stream of similar works

The danger of epigonism sometimes threatens talented writers who are able to say (and have said) their word in literature. Thus, the first works (133) of N.V. were predominantly imitative in nature. Gogol (poem "Hans Kuchelgarten")

Fiction, actively responding to the “topic of the day”, embodying the trends of the “small time”, its worries and anxieties, is significant not only as part of current literature, but also for understanding the history of social and cultural-artistic life of past eras.

Along with fiction that discusses the problems of its time, there are also widely published works created with the intention of entertainment, easy and thoughtless reading. This branch of fiction tends to be “formular” and adventurous, and differs from faceless mass production. The author's individuality is invariably present in it. A thoughtful reader always sees differences between such authors as A Conan Doyle, J. Simenon, A Christie. No less noticeable is the individual originality in this type of fiction, such as science fiction: R. Bradbury cannot be “confused” with St. Lemom, I.A. Efremova - with the Strugatsky brothers. Works that were initially perceived as entertaining reading may, having stood the test of time, come somewhat closer to the status of literary classics. Such, for example, is the fate of the novels of Dumas the Father, which, although not masterpieces of literary art and not marking the enrichment of artistic culture, have, however, been loved by a wide circle of readers for a whole century and a half.
The right to exist of entertaining fiction and its positive significance (especially for young people) is beyond doubt.

Such recognized classics of world literature as Charles Dickens and F.M. owe much to the adventurous novel with its entertaining nature and its intense intrigue. Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky, in later years, widely used narrative techniques characteristic of fiction and mass literature. Artistically rethinking the effects of criminal plots, he used them in his famous novels

The literary "bottom" of the Russian XIX century. It’s not difficult to imagine, having become acquainted at least in the most general terms with the famous story about My Lord George, reprinted many times from 1782 to 1918, full of very primitive sentimentality, banal melodramatic effects and at the same time rudely colloquial.

Paraliterature serves the reader whose concepts of life values, good and evil are exhausted by primitive stereotypes and gravitate towards generally accepted standards.

Modern paraliterature invariably and consistently abandons the category of “author.”
Mass literature, with its clichédness and “authorlessness,” evokes a purely negative attitude towards itself among the majority of representatives of the artistic-educated strata, including writers. At the same time, experiments are being made to consider it as a cultural phenomenon that also has positive properties. This is the monograph by the American scientist J. Cavelti. Mass literature here is characterized as “formal”, gravitating toward stereotypes that, however, embody deep and capacious meanings: it expresses the “escapist experiences” of a person, responding to the need of “the majority of modern Americans and Western Europeans” to escape life with its monotony, boredom and everyday irritation , the need for images of ordered existence and, most importantly, for entertainment.

Cavelti, as can be seen, radically revises the long-rooted evaluative opposition between the literary “top” and “bottom”. His bold innovation seems far from certain. If only for one reason: “formularity” is not only a property of modern mass literature, but also the most important feature of all art of past centuries.

§ 3. Real reader. Historical and functional study of literature

Along with the potential, imaginary reader (addressee), indirectly and sometimes directly present in the work, reading experience as such is interesting and important for literary studies. Really existing readers and their groups have very different, often dissimilar attitudes towards literature and requirements for it. These attitudes and demands, orientations and strategies can either correspond to the nature of literature and its state in a given era, or diverge from them, and sometimes quite decisively. By receptive aesthetics they are designated by the term horizon of expectations, taken from sociologists K. Mannheim and K. Popper. The artistic effect is considered as the result of a combination (most often conflicting) of the author’s program of influence with perception carried out on the basis of the horizon of reader expectations. The essence of a writer’s activity, according to H.R. Jauss, is to take into account the horizon of reader expectations, and at the same time violate these expectations, to offer the public something unexpected and new. At the same time, the reading environment is thought of as something deliberately conservative, while writers are seen as breakers of habits and renewers of the experience of perception, which, we note, is not always the case. In the reading environment, affected by avant-garde trends, authors are expected not to adhere to rules and norms, not to follow something established, but, on the contrary, to make recklessly bold shifts and destruction of everything familiar. Readers' expectations are incredibly varied. From literary works they expect hedonistic satisfaction, shocking emotions, admonitions and teachings, expression of well-known truths, broadening of horizons (cognition of reality), immersion in the world of fantasy, and (which most corresponds to the essence of the art of eras close to us) aesthetic pleasure in organic combination with an introduction to the spiritual world of the author, whose work is marked by originality and novelty. This last type of reader expectations can rightfully be considered hierarchically the highest, the optimal setting of artistic perception.

The outlook, tastes and expectations of the reading public largely determine the fate of literary works, as well as the degree of authority and popularity of their authors. “The history of literature is not only the history of writers<…>but also the history of readers,” noted N.A. Rubakin, a famous book scholar and bibliographer at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries.

The main area of the historical-functional study of literature is the existence of works in great historical time, their life over the centuries. At the same time, it is also important to consider how the writer’s work was mastered by the people of his time. The study of responses to a newly appeared work is a necessary condition for its comprehension. After all, authors, as a rule, turn primarily to the people of their era, and the perception of literature by its contemporaries is often marked by the extreme severity of reader reactions, be it sharp rejection (repulsion) or, on the contrary, warm, enthusiastic approval. Thus, Chekhov seemed to many of his contemporaries as “the measure of things,” and his books as “the only truth about what was happening around.”

The study of the fate of literary works after their creation is based on sources and materials of various kinds. This is the number and nature of publications, circulation of books, the availability of translations into other languages, and the composition of libraries. These are, further, written responses to what was read (correspondence, memoirs, notes in the margins of books). But the most significant in understanding the historical functioning of literature are statements about it that “come out to the public”: reminiscences and quotes in newly created literary works, graphic illustrations and director’s productions, as well as responses to literary facts by publicists, philosophers, art historians, literary critics and critics . It is to the activities of the latter, which constitute an invaluable evidence of the functioning of literature, that we turn.

From the book Historical Roots Fairy tale author Propp Vladimir

EAT. Meletinsky Structural and topological study

From the book Chekhov at school author Gromov Leonid Petrovich

Kozlova L.A. Studying A.P. Chekhov's views on art in the 10th grade The origins of the vitality of genuine art of the past in the impeccable truth of life - the main character of all the great works of writers, in the undivided fusion of their bright ideals of goodness, freedom, struggle and

From the book Theory of Literature author Khalizev Valentin Evgenievich

From the book Pushkin: Biography of a Writer. Articles. Evgeny Onegin: comments author Lotman Yuri Mikhailovich

§ 3. Contextual study The term “context” (from the Latin contextus - close connection, connection) is firmly entrenched in modern philology. For a literary scholar, this is an endlessly wide area of connections between a literary work and facts external to it, both literary and

From the book Dracula by Stoker Bram

From the book History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century. Part 2. 1840-1860 author Prokofieva Natalya Nikolaevna

From the book Volume 4. Materials for biographies. Perception and assessment of personality and creativity author Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich

Historical-heroic stories by A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky Among romantic stories, stories with historical-heroic themes can be distinguished as a special type, and the material of these stories is taken from various aspects of life. The place of their action is also strictly not

From the book Theory of Literature. History of Russian and foreign literary criticism [Anthology] author Khryashcheva Nina Petrovna

The historical and literary family of the Kireyevskys You have to live a lot to imbue a short thought in your soul: what is talent, brilliance, especially the art of writing, causticity and wit of style, if under this magnificence there does not lie an ordinary being, which we simply call

From the book History of Foreign Literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries author Zhuk Maxim Ivanovich

Historical-typological direction

From the book Technologies and Methods of Teaching Literature author Philology Team of authors --

From the book Ostrich - Russian Bird [collection] author Moskvina Tatyana Vladimirovna

Historical and literary materials Hippolyte Taine History of English literature Introduction. Section V (abbreviated)Emergence<...>The original moral state is contributed by three different sources: race, environment and moment. By the word race we mean that

From the book Russian Symbolists: Studies and Research author Lavrov Alexander Vasilievich

5.2.3. Studying a dramatic work in literature lessons in middle and high school. Plan for mastering the topic. The place of dramatic works in literature programs. Peculiarities of perception of works of drama by middle and high school students

From the book The Formation of Literature author Steblin-Kamensky Mikhail Ivanovich

5.3. Studying the theory of literature as a basis for analyzing a work of art Plan for mastering the topic Information of a theoretical and literary nature in school curricula (principles of inclusion in the school curriculum, correlation with the text of the work being studied,

From the author's book

Real Vova on a wonderful roof After a long break, comedian Yuri Mamin, author of “Neptune's Feast”, “Fountain”, “Window to Paris” and “Sideburn”, released a new film, the creation of which took about ten years. Both time and money spent on a big complex

From the author's book

HISTORICAL AND LITERARY INTENTIONS OF IVANOV-RAZUMNIK In 1923, Ivanov-Razumnik’s book “Peaks. Alexander Blok. Andrei Bely" - the last in which he could give his interpretation of the phenomena of modern Russian literature and formulate his critical assessments. After

Literature has always been “culture-centric,” as indicated by the term itself (lat. literature - written, from litera - letter): a set of written and socially significant texts, in a narrower sense - only fiction, form of word art. Therefore, within the framework of culture, the importance of artistic activity as its ancient and fundamental component is great. Literature has the most essential features of art, which were formed at its birth and preserved in all its forms.

Unlike other types of art, literature has a special intermediary function (mediator) thanks to the verbal form, i.e. it can combine artistic and systemic-logical forms of human exploration of the world. It can impart this property to some synthetic types and genres of art - theater, opera, song, etc.

Literary history as a science - one of the sections of humanitarian knowledge about literature, including the philosophy of literature (i.e. the definition of goals, objectives, guidelines, ontology, epistemology, axiology of literature), aesthetics of literature (understanding of beauty), ethics of literature (understanding moral ideal), sociology, poetics, psychology, pedagogy, economics of literature and a number of other areas, all of which intersect and do not exist separately from one another.

The history of literature today appears relatively new science dating back no more than two centuries. However, for thousands of years, humanity has, in one way or another, recorded information about its development. Legends about ancient rulers, sages, singers, storytellers - Tutankhamun, Orpheus, Homer, Confucius and Zarathustra - existed orally and were then written down. Biographies of Provençal troubadours (13th century) and the first biography of Shakespeare (N. Rowe, 1709) are largely based on legends. The real and the documentary organically mixed with the fantastic, history was represented in the personalities of the authors, the main thing was not separated from the secondary.

In parallel, another source of the science of literature developed - poetics as normative theory (Aristotle, Horace, N. Boileau, etc.). In particular, since the time of Aristotle, the prevailing belief in the immutability of the eternal laws of literary creativity, special attention was paid to genre classification and style codification.

The third important source of literary history is literary criticism, reaching great heights already by the 18th century.

The pinnacle of realization of the possibilities of the history of literature as a science at the end of the 20th century. can be considered "The History of World Literature", prepared by a team of famous Russian scientists (M.: Nauka, 1983-1994).

To the main literary methods of studying the literary process should include:

- bibliographic method, created by Sh.-O. Sainte-Beuve, who interpreted a literary work in the light of the biography of its author;
- cultural-historical method, developed by I. Ton in the 1860s, consisted of analyzing an array of works based on identifying the determination of literature - the rigid action of three laws ("race", "environment" and "moment") that shape culture;
- comparative historical method (currently comparative studies, based on this method is experiencing a new rise) has established itself to end of the 19th century V.;
- sociological method, which took shape in the first decades of the 20th century, had a huge influence on the science of literature, when literary phenomena were considered as derivatives of social processes. The vulgarization of this method (“vulgar sociologism”) has become a famous brake on the development of literary criticism;
- formal method proposed by domestic literary scholars (Yu.N. Tynyanov, V.B. Shklovsky, etc.). highlighted the study of the form of a work as the main problem. On this basis, the Anglo-American "new criticism" 1930-1940s, and later - structuralism, which makes extensive use of quantitative research indicators;
- system-structural method, akin to structuralism, formed in the works of the Tartu school (Yu.M. Lotman and others); the largest structuralists (R. Barth, J. Kristeva and others) in their later works switched to the position poststructuralism (deconstructivism), proclaiming the principles of deconstruction and intertextuality;
- typological method declared itself in the second half of the 20th century: unlike comparative studies, which studies contact literary interactions, representatives of this method examined the similarities and differences in literary phenomena not on the basis of direct contacts, but by determining the degree of similarity of the conditions of cultural life;
- historical-functional And historical-genetic methods declared themselves at the same time: the first put at the center the study of the peculiarities of the functioning of literary works in the life of society, and the second - the discovery of the sources of literary phenomena;
- historical-theoretical method, which emerged in the 1980s, has two aspects: on the one hand, historical and literary research acquires a pronounced theoretical sound; on the other hand, science affirms the idea of the need to introduce a historical moment into theory. The method allowed us to identify a significant amount of data to present the development of culture as a change of stable and transitional periods.

- "literary process" as a term appeared in the late 1920s. to characterize the historical existence, functioning and evolution of literature as a whole perceived in the context of culture. Each period of literature gives rise to its own type of writer and his worldview, and also asserts its own specific image of a person;
- genre (system of genres), conveying the measure and character of convention in art, is a historically understandable type of form-content unity in literature;
- artistic method - this is a system of principles of selection, assessment and perception of reality; it is based on the concept of the world, man and art and the moral and aesthetic ideal;
- direction - the most general typological association of writers of a certain era based on the similarity of artistic method;
- currents - a more subtle differentiation of writers into groups within one direction, literary phenomena that have not formed into directions;
- style - characteristics of the form of the work (composition, language, methods of creating characters, etc.) and the aspect of the individual, the special.

The history of literature appears in one of the ways studying cultural tradition. The modern theory of intertextuality, which views any test as composed of pre-existing texts, has attracted increased attention to the problem of traditional literary creativity. The history of literature can thus be described using personal models. Among the most fruitful can be named: the model of Homer (an example of imitation is Virgil’s “Aeneid”), the model of Anacreon (Anacreontics in world poetry of the 17th-19th centuries), the model of ancient tragedian playwrights (tragedies of French classicism), the model of " Divine Comedy" Dante ("Dead Souls" by N. Gogol), the model of Petrarch (Petrarchism), the model of Shakespeare (European romanticism, "Boris Godunov" by A. Pushkin), many personal models of the 20th century (Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Camus, Hemingway, Brecht, etc.).