Art, as you know, is extremely versatile. A huge number of genres and directions allows each author to realize his creative potential to the greatest extent, and gives the reader the opportunity to choose exactly the style that he likes.
One of the most popular and, without a doubt, beautiful art movements is romanticism. This direction became widespread at the end of the 18th century, embracing European and American culture, but later reaching Russia. The main ideas of romanticism are the desire for freedom, perfection and renewal, as well as the proclamation of the right of human independence. This trend, oddly enough, has spread widely in absolutely all major forms of art (painting, literature, music) and has become truly massive. Therefore, one should consider in more detail what romanticism is, as well as mention its most famous figures, both foreign and domestic.
In this area of art, a similar style initially appeared in Western Europe, after the bourgeois revolution in France in 1789. The main idea of romantic writers was the denial of reality, dreams of a better time and a call to fight for a change of values in society. As a rule, the main character is a rebel, acting alone and looking for the truth, which, in turn, made him defenseless and confused in front of the outside world, so the works of romantic authors are often saturated with tragedy.
If we compare this trend, for example, with classicism, then the era of romanticism was distinguished by complete freedom of action - writers did not hesitate to use a variety of genres, mixing them together and creating a unique style, which was based one way or another on the lyrical beginning. The current events of the works were filled with extraordinary, sometimes even fantastic events, in which the inner world of the characters, their experiences and dreams were directly manifested.
Visual arts also came under the influence of romanticism, and its movement here was based on the ideas of famous writers and philosophers. Painting as such was completely transformed with the advent of this trend, new, completely unusual images began to appear in it. Romantic themes touched on the unknown, including distant exotic lands, mystical visions and dreams, and even the dark depths of human consciousness. In their work, the artists largely relied on the legacy of ancient civilizations and eras (Middle Ages, the Ancient East, etc.).
The direction of this trend in tsarist Russia was also different. If European authors touched on anti-bourgeois topics, then Russian masters wrote on the topic of anti-feudalism.
The craving for mysticism was expressed much weaker than among Western representatives. Domestic figures had a different idea of what romanticism is, which can be traced in their work in the form of partial rationalism.
These factors have become fundamental in the process of the emergence of new trends in art on the territory of Russia, and thanks to them, the world cultural heritage knows Russian romanticism as such.
It originated at the end of the 18th century, but reached its greatest prosperity in the 1830s. From the beginning of the 1850s, the period begins to decline, but its threads stretch through the entire 19th century, giving rise to such trends as symbolism, decadence and neo-romanticism.
Europe, in particular England and France, is considered the birthplace of the direction, from where the name of this artistic direction came from - "romantisme". This is explained by the fact that the romanticism of the 19th century arose as a result of the French Revolution.
The revolution destroyed the entire hierarchy that existed before, mixed society and social strata. The man began to feel lonely and began to seek solace in gambling and other entertainment. Against this background, the idea arose that all life is a game in which there are winners and losers. The main character of each romantic work is a man playing with fate, with fate.
Romanticism is everything that exists only in books: incomprehensible, incredible and fantastic phenomena, at the same time associated with the assertion of the individual through her spiritual and creative life. Mainly events unfold against the backdrop of expressed passions, all the characters have clearly manifested characters, and are often endowed with a rebellious spirit.
Writers of the era of romanticism emphasize that the main value in life is the personality of a person. Each person is a separate world full of amazing beauty. It is from there that all inspiration and lofty feelings are drawn, as well as a tendency to idealization.
According to novelists, the ideal is an ephemeral concept, but nevertheless having the right to exist. The ideal is beyond everything ordinary, therefore the main character and his ideas are directly opposed to worldly relations and material things.
The features of romanticism both lie in the main ideas and conflicts.
The main idea of almost every work is the constant movement of the hero in physical space. This fact, as it were, reflects the confusion of the soul, its continuously ongoing reflections and, at the same time, changes in the world around it.
Like many artistic movements, Romanticism has its own conflicts. Here the whole concept is based on the complex relationship of the protagonist with the outside world. He is very egocentric and at the same time rebels against base, vulgar, material objects of reality, which one way or another manifests itself in the actions, thoughts and ideas of the character. The following literary examples of romanticism are most pronounced in this regard: Childe Harold - the main character from Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and Pechorin - from Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time".
If we summarize all of the above, it turns out that the basis of any such work is the gap between reality and the idealized world, which has very sharp edges.
European romanticism of the 19th century is remarkable in that, for the most part, its works have a fantastic basis. These are numerous fairy-tale legends, short stories and stories.
The main countries in which romanticism as a literary movement manifested itself most expressively are France, England and Germany.
This artistic phenomenon has several stages:
Each of the above countries has made its own, special contribution to the development of the aforementioned cultural phenomenon. In France, the romantic ones had a more political coloring, the writers were hostile towards the new bourgeoisie. This society, according to French leaders, ruined the integrity of the individual, her beauty and freedom of spirit.
In English legends, romanticism has existed for a long time, but until the end of the 18th century it did not stand out as a separate literary movement. English works, unlike French ones, are filled with Gothic, religion, national folklore, the culture of peasant and working societies (including spiritual ones). In addition, English prose and lyrics are filled with travel to distant lands and exploration of foreign lands.
In Germany, romanticism as a literary trend was formed under the influence of idealistic philosophy. The foundations were individuality and the oppressed by feudalism, as well as the perception of the universe as a single living system. Almost every German work is permeated with reflections on the existence of man and the life of his spirit.
The following literary works are considered the most notable European works in the spirit of romanticism:
The treatise "The Genius of Christianity", the stories "Atala" and "Rene" Chateaubriand;
The novels "Delphine", "Corinne, or Italy" by Germaine de Stael;
The novel "Adolf" by Benjamin Constant;
The novel "Confession of the son of the century" by Musset;
The novel Saint-Mar by Vigny;
Manifesto "Preface" to the work "Cromwell", the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" by Hugo;
Drama "Henry III and his court", a series of novels about musketeers, "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "Queen Margot" by Dumas;
The novels "Indiana", "The Wandering Apprentice", "Horas", "Consuelo" by George Sand;
Manifesto "Racine and Shakespeare" by Stendhal;
The poems "The Old Sailor" and "Christabel" by Coleridge;
- "Oriental Poems" and "Manfred" Byron;
Collected Works of Balzac;
The novel "Ivanhoe" by Walter Scott;
The fairy tale "Hyacinth and the Rose", the novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" by Novalis;
Collections of short stories, fairy tales and novels of Hoffmann.
Russian romanticism of the 19th century was born under the direct influence of Western European literature. However, despite this, he had his own characteristic features, which were tracked in previous periods.
This artistic phenomenon in Russia fully reflected all the hostility of the foremost workers and revolutionaries to the ruling bourgeoisie, in particular, to its way of life - unbridled, immoral and cruel. Russian romanticism of the 19th century was a direct result of rebellious moods and anticipation of turning points in the history of the country.
In the literature of that time, two directions are distinguished: psychological and civil. The first was based on the description and analysis of feelings and experiences, the second - on the propaganda of the fight against modern society. The general and main idea of all novelists was that the poet or writer had to behave according to the ideals that he described in his works.
The most striking examples of romanticism in Russian literature of the 19th century are:
The stories "Ondine", "The Prisoner of Chillon", the ballads "The Forest King", "Fisherman", "Lenora" by Zhukovsky;
Compositions "Eugene Onegin", "The Queen of Spades" by Pushkin;
- "The Night Before Christmas" by Gogol;
- "Hero of Our Time" Lermontov.
In America, the direction received a slightly later development: its initial stage dates back to 1820-1830, the subsequent one - 1840-1860 of the 19th century. Both phases were exceptionally influenced by civil unrest, both in France (which served as the impetus for the creation of the United States), and directly in America itself (the war for independence from England and the war between North and South).
The artistic trends in American romanticism are represented by two types: abolitionist, which advocated emancipation from slavery, and eastern, which idealized plantation.
American literature of this period is based on a rethinking of knowledge and genres captured from Europe and mixed with a peculiar way of life and pace of life on a still new and little known mainland. American works are richly flavored with national intonations, a sense of independence and the struggle for freedom.
The Alhambra cycle, the stories The Ghost Groom, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving;
The novel "The Last of the Mohicans" by Fenimore Cooper;
The poem "The Raven", the stories "Ligeia", "The Gold Bug", "The Fall of the House of Usher" and others by E. Alan Poe;
The novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables by Gorton;
The novels Typei and Moby Dick by Melville;
The novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe;
Poetically arranged legends of "Evangeline", "Song of Hiawatha", "Wooing of Miles Standish" by Longfellow;
Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" collection;
"Woman in the Nineteenth Century" by Margaret Fuller.
Romanticism, as a literary trend, had a rather strong influence on musical, theatrical art and painting - it is enough to recall the numerous productions and paintings of those times. This happened mainly due to such qualities of the direction as high aesthetics and emotionality, heroism and pathos, chivalry, idealization and humanism. Despite the fact that the age of romanticism was rather short-lived, this did not in the least affect the popularity of books written in the 19th century in the following decades - the works of literary art of that period are loved and revered by the public to this day.
The French word romantisme goes back to the Spanish romance (in the Middle Ages, the Spanish romances were called so, and then the chivalrous romance), the English romantic, which turned into the 18th century. in romantique and then meaning "strange", "fantastic", "picturesque". At the beginning of the 19th century romanticism becomes the designation of a new direction, opposite to classicism.
Entering into the antithesis of "classicism" - "romanticism", the direction assumed the opposition of the classicist requirement of rules to romantic freedom from rules. This understanding of romanticism persists to this day, but, as the literary critic J. Mann writes, romanticism is “not just a rejection of the ‘rules’, but following the ‘rules’ more complex and whimsical.”
The center of the artistic system of romanticism is the individual, and its main conflict is between individuals and society. The decisive prerequisite for the development of romanticism was the events of the French Revolution. The emergence of romanticism is associated with the anti-enlightenment movement, the causes of which lie in disappointment in civilization, in social, industrial, political and scientific progress, which resulted in new contrasts and contradictions, leveling and spiritual devastation of the individual.
Enlightenment preached the new society as the most "natural" and "reasonable". The best minds of Europe substantiated and foreshadowed this society of the future, but reality turned out to be beyond the control of “reason”, the future was unpredictable, irrational, and the modern social order began to threaten human nature and personal freedom. The rejection of this society, the protest against lack of spirituality and selfishness is already reflected in sentimentalism and pre-romanticism. Romanticism expresses this rejection most sharply. Romanticism also opposed the Enlightenment on a verbal level: the language of romantic works, striving to be natural, "simple", accessible to all readers, was something opposite to the classics with its noble, "sublime" themes, typical, for example, for classical tragedy.
Among the later Western European romantics, pessimism in relation to society acquires cosmic proportions, becomes the "disease of the century." The heroes of many romantic works (F. R. Chateaubriand, A. Musset, J. Byron, A. Vigny, A. Lamartine, G. Heine, etc.) are characterized by moods of hopelessness, despair, which acquire a universal character. Perfection is lost forever, the world is ruled by evil, ancient chaos is resurrecting. The theme of the “terrible world”, characteristic of all romantic literature, was most clearly embodied in the so-called “black genre” (in the pre-romantic “Gothic novel” - A. Radcliffe, C. Maturin, in the “drama of rock”, or “tragedy of rock”, - Z. Werner, G. Kleist, F. Grillparzer), as well as in the works of Byron, C. Brentano, E. T. A. Hoffmann, E. Poe and N. Hawthorne.
At the same time, romanticism is based on ideas that challenge the "terrible world" - primarily the ideas of freedom. The disappointment of romanticism is a disappointment in reality, but progress and civilization are only one side of it. The rejection of this side, the lack of faith in the possibilities of civilization provide another path, the path to the ideal, to the eternal, to the absolute. This path must resolve all contradictions, completely change life. This is the path to perfection, “to the goal, the explanation of which must be sought on the other side of the visible” (A. De Vigny). For some romantics, the world is dominated by incomprehensible and mysterious forces, which must be obeyed and not try to change fate (the poets of the “lake school”, Chateaubriand, V.A. Zhukovsky). For others, "world evil" provoked a protest, demanded revenge, struggle. (J. Byron, P. B. Shelley, S. Petofi, A. Mitskevich, early A. S. Pushkin). The common thing was that they all saw in man a single entity, the task of which is not at all reduced to solving ordinary problems. On the contrary, without denying everyday life, the romantics sought to unravel the mystery of human existence, turning to nature, trusting their religious and poetic feelings.
A romantic hero is a complex, passionate person, whose inner world is unusually deep, endless; it is a whole universe full of contradictions. Romantics were interested in all passions, both high and low, which were opposed to each other. High passion - love in all its manifestations, low - greed, ambition, envy. The lowly material practice of romance was opposed to the life of the spirit, especially religion, art, and philosophy. Interest in strong and vivid feelings, all-consuming passions, in the secret movements of the soul are characteristic features of romanticism.
You can talk about romance as a special type of personality - a person of strong passions and high aspirations, incompatible with the everyday world. Exceptional circumstances accompany this nature. Fantasy, folk music, poetry, legends become attractive to romantics - everything that for a century and a half was considered as minor genres, not worthy of attention. Romanticism is characterized by the assertion of freedom, the sovereignty of the individual, increased attention to the individual, unique in man, the cult of the individual. Confidence in the self-worth of a person turns into a protest against the fate of history. Often the hero of a romantic work becomes an artist who is able to creatively perceive reality. The classic "imitation of nature" is opposed to the creative energy of the artist who transforms reality. It creates its own, special world, more beautiful and real than empirically perceived reality. It is creativity that is the meaning of existence, it represents the highest value of the universe. Romantics passionately defended the creative freedom of the artist, his imagination, believing that the genius of the artist does not obey the rules, but creates them.
Romantics turned to different historical eras, they were attracted by their originality, attracted by exotic and mysterious countries and circumstances. Interest in history became one of the enduring conquests of the artistic system of romanticism. He expressed himself in the creation of the genre of the historical novel (F. Cooper, A. Vigny, V. Hugo), the founder of which is considered to be V. Scott, and in general the novel, which acquired a leading position in the era under consideration. Romantics accurately and accurately reproduce historical details, the background, the color of a particular era, but romantic characters are given outside of history, they, as a rule, are above circumstances and do not depend on them. At the same time, romantics perceived the novel as a means of comprehending history, and from history they went to penetrate into the secrets of psychology, and, accordingly, modernity. Interest in history was also reflected in the works of historians of the French romantic school (O. Thierry, F. Guizot, F. O. Meunier).
It was in the era of Romanticism that the discovery of the culture of the Middle Ages took place, and the admiration for antiquity, characteristic of the past era, also did not weaken at the end of the 18th - beginning. 19th centuries The diversity of national, historical, individual characteristics also had a philosophical meaning: the wealth of a single world whole consists of the totality of these individual features, and the study of the history of each people separately makes it possible to trace, in the words of Burke, uninterrupted life through new generations following one after another.
The era of Romanticism was marked by the flourishing of literature, one of the distinguishing features of which was a passion for social and political problems. Trying to comprehend the role of man in ongoing historical events, romantic writers gravitated towards accuracy, concreteness, and reliability. At the same time, the action of their works often unfolds in an environment unusual for a European - for example, in the East and America, or, for Russians, in the Caucasus or in the Crimea. Thus, romantic poets are predominantly lyric poets and poets of nature, and therefore in their work (however, just like in many prose writers) a significant place is occupied by the landscape - first of all, the sea, mountains, sky, stormy elements, with which the hero is associated complex relationships. Nature can be akin to the passionate nature of a romantic hero, but it can also resist him, turn out to be a hostile force with which he is forced to fight.
Unusual and vivid pictures of nature, life, life and customs of distant countries and peoples also inspired romantics. They were looking for features that constitute the fundamental basis of the national spirit. National identity is manifested primarily in oral folk art. Hence the interest in folklore, the processing of folklore works, the creation of their own works based on folk art.
The development of the genres of the historical novel, fantasy story, lyrical-epic poem, ballad is the merit of the romantics. Their innovation also manifested itself in lyrics, in particular, in the use of polysemy of the word, the development of associativity, metaphor, discoveries in the field of versification, meter, and rhythm.
Romanticism is characterized by a synthesis of genera and genres, their interpenetration. The romantic art system was based on a synthesis of art, philosophy, and religion. For example, for such a thinker as Herder, linguistic research, philosophical doctrines, and travel notes serve as the search for ways of revolutionary renewal of culture. Much of the achievement of romanticism was inherited by the realism of the 19th century. - a penchant for fantasy, the grotesque, a mixture of high and low, tragic and comic, the discovery of the "subjective person".
In the era of romanticism, not only literature flourishes, but also many sciences: sociology, history, political science, chemistry, biology, evolutionary doctrine, philosophy (Hegel, D. Hume, I. Kant, Fichte, natural philosophy, the essence of which boils down to the fact that nature - one of the garments of God, "the living garment of the Deity").
Romanticism is a cultural phenomenon in Europe and America. In different countries, his fate had its own characteristics.
Germany can be considered a country of classical romanticism. Here, the events of the French Revolution were perceived more in the realm of ideas. Social problems were considered within the framework of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics. The views of the German romantics are becoming pan-European, influencing social thought, the art of other countries. The history of German romanticism falls into several periods.
At the origins of German romanticism are writers and theorists of the Jena school (W.G. Wackenroder, Novalis, brothers F. and A. Schlegel, W. Tieck). In the lectures of A. Schlegel and in the writings of F. Schelling, the concept of romantic art took shape. As R. Huh, one of the researchers of the Jena school, writes, the Jena romantics “put forward as an ideal the union of various poles, no matter how the latter are called – reason and fantasy, spirit and instinct.” The Jenens also own the first works of the romantic direction: the comedy Tika Puss in Boots(1797), lyric cycle Hymns to the night(1800) and novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen(1802) Novalis. Romantic poet F. Hölderlin, who was not a member of the Jena school, belongs to the same generation.
The Heidelberg School is the second generation of German Romantics. Here, interest in religion, antiquity, folklore was more noticeable. This interest explains the appearance of a collection of folk songs Boy's magic horn(1806-08), compiled by L. Arnim and Brentano, as well as Children's and family fairy tales(1812–1814) brothers J. and W. Grimm. Within the framework of the Heidelberg school, the first scientific direction in the study of folklore took shape - the mythological school, which was based on the mythological ideas of Schelling and the Schlegel brothers.
Late German romanticism is characterized by motifs of hopelessness, tragedy, rejection of modern society, a sense of the mismatch between dreams and reality (Kleist, Hoffmann). This generation includes A. Chamisso, G. Muller and G. Heine, who called himself "the last romantic."
English romanticism is focused on the problems of the development of society and humanity as a whole. The English romantics have a sense of the catastrophic nature of the historical process. The poets of the “lake school” (W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, R. Southey) idealize antiquity, sing of patriarchal relations, nature, simple, natural feelings. The work of the poets of the "lake school" is imbued with Christian humility, they tend to appeal to the subconscious in man.
Romantic poems on medieval plots and historical novels by W. Scott are distinguished by an interest in native antiquity, in oral folk poetry.
However, the formation of romanticism was especially acute in France. The reasons for this are twofold. On the one hand, it was in France that the traditions of theatrical classicism were especially strong: it is rightly considered that the classicist tragedy acquired its complete and perfect expression in the dramaturgy of P. Corneille and J. Racine. And the stronger the traditions, the tougher and more uncompromisingly the struggle against them proceeds. On the other hand, the French bourgeois revolution of 1789 and the counter-revolutionary coup of 1794 gave impetus to fundamental transformations in all areas of life. The ideas of equality and freedom, protest against violence and social injustice turned out to be extremely consonant with the problems of romanticism. This gave a powerful impetus to the development of French romantic drama. Her fame was V. Hugo ( Cromwell, 1827; Marion Delorme, 1829; Ernani, 1830; Angelo, 1935; Ruy Blas, 1938 and others); A. de Vigny ( Marshal d'Ancre's wife 1931; chatterton, 1935; translations of Shakespeare's plays); A. Dumas-father ( Anthony, 1931; Richard Darlington, 1831; Nel tower, 1832; Kin, or Debauchery and Genius, 1936); A. de Musset ( Lorenzaccio, 1834). True, in his later dramaturgy, Musset departed from the aesthetics of romanticism, rethinking its ideals in an ironic and somewhat parodic way and saturating his works with elegant irony ( Caprice, 1847; Candlestick, 1848; Love is no joke, 1861 and others).
The dramaturgy of English romanticism is represented in the works of the great poets J. G. Byron ( Manfred, 1817; Marino Faliero, 1820 and others) and P.B. Shelley ( Chenci, 1820; Hellas, 1822); German romanticism - in the plays of I.L. Tick ( Life and death of Genoveva, 1799; Emperor Octavian, 1804) and G. Kleist ( Penthesilea, 1808; Prince Friedrich of Homburg, 1810 and others).
Romanticism had a huge impact on the development of acting: for the first time in history, psychologism became the basis for creating a role. The rationally verified acting style of classicism was replaced by violent emotionality, vivid dramatic expression, versatility and inconsistency in the psychological development of characters. Empathy returned to the auditoriums; the idols of the public were the largest dramatic romantic actors: E.Kin (England); L. Devrient (Germany), M. Dorval and F. Lemaitre (France); A.Ristori (Italy); E. Forrest and S. Cashman (USA); P. Mochalov (Russia).
The musical and theatrical art of the first half of the 19th century also developed under the sign of romanticism. - both opera (Wagner, Gounod, Verdi, Rossini, Bellini, etc.), and ballet (Pugni, Maurer, etc.).
Romanticism also enriched the palette of staging and expressive means of the theater. For the first time, the principles of art of an artist, composer, decorator began to be considered in the context of the emotional impact on the viewer, revealing the dynamics of action.
By the middle of the 19th century. the aesthetics of theatrical romanticism seemed to have outlived itself; it was replaced by realism, which absorbed and creatively rethought all the artistic achievements of the romantics: the renewal of genres, the democratization of heroes and literary language, and the expansion of the palette of acting and staging means. However, in the 1880s and 1890s, the direction of neo-romanticism was formed and strengthened in theatrical art - mainly as a polemic with naturalistic tendencies in the theater. Neo-romantic dramaturgy mainly developed in the genre of poetic drama, close to lyrical tragedy. The best neo-romantic plays (E. Rostand, A. Schnitzler, G. Hoffmansthal, S. Benelli) are distinguished by intense drama and refined language.
Undoubtedly, the aesthetics of romanticism, with its emotional elation, heroic pathos, strong and deep feelings, is extremely close to the theatrical art, which is fundamentally based on empathy and sets the achievement of catharsis as its main goal. That is why romanticism simply cannot irretrievably sink into the past; at all times, performances of this direction will be in demand by the public.
Tatyana Shabalina
Literature:
Guym R. romantic school. M., 1891
Reizov B.G. Between classicism and romanticism. L., 1962
European romanticism. M., 1973
The era of romanticism. From the history of international relations of Russian literature. L., 1975
Russian romanticism. L., 1978
Bentley E. Drama life. M., 1978
Dzhivilegov A., Boyadzhiev G. History of the Western European theatre. M., 1991
Western European theater from the Renaissance to the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Essays. M., 2001
Mann Yu. Russian literature of the 19th century. The era of romanticism. M., 2001
Romanticism is movement in European and American culture of the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. Romanticism opposed the mechanistic conception of the world, created by the science of modern times and accepted by the Enlightenment, with the image of a historically becoming world-organism; discovered in man new dimensions associated with the unconscious, imagination, sleep. The faith of the Enlightenment in the power of reason and, at the same time, in the dominance of chance, thanks to romanticism, lost its strength: romanticism showed that in the world-organism, permeated with endless correspondences and analogies, chance does not reign, and reason does not rule over man, given to the mercy of irrational elements. In literature, romanticism created new free forms that reflected a sense of openness and infinity of being, and new types of hero that embodied the irrational depths of man.
Etymologically the term romanticism is associated with the designation in the Romance languages of a narrative work on a fictional plot (Italian romanzo, 13th century; French rommant, 13th century). In the 17th century, the epithet “romantic” appeared in England, meaning: “fictional”, “bizarre”, “fantastic”. In the 18th century, the epithet becomes international (appears in Russia in the 1780s), most often denoting a bizarre landscape that appeals to the imagination: “romantic locations” have a “strange and amazing look” (A.T. Bolotov, 1784; quote from: Nikolyukin A.N. On the history of the concept of "romantic". In 1790, the aesthetician A. Edison puts forward the idea of "romantic dreaming" as a special way of reading, in which the text serves only as a "hint that awakens the imagination" (Adison A. Essays on the nature and principles of taste. Hartford, 1821). In Russia, the first definition of the romantic in literature was given in 1805: “An object becomes romantic when it acquires the appearance of a miraculous, without losing its truth” (Martynov I.I. Severny vestnik. 1805). The prerequisites for romanticism were the mystical theosophical teachings of the 18th century (F. Gemstergeis, L.K. Saint Martin, J. G. Hamann), the historical and philosophical concept of J. G. Herder about the poetic individuality of nations (“the spirit of the people”) as a manifestation of the “world spirit »; various phenomena of literary pre-romanticism. The formation of romanticism as a literary trend takes place at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, with the publication of “Heart Outpourings of a Monk Who Loves Art” (1797) by V.G. Wackenroder, “Lyrical Ballads” by S.T. Coleridge and W. Wordsworth (1798), The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald" by L. Tieck (1798), a collection of fragments by Novalis "Pollen" (1798), the story "Atala" by F.R. de Chateaubriand (1801).
Having begun almost simultaneously in Germany, England and France, the romantic movement gradually embraced other countries: in the 1800s - Denmark (the poet and playwright A. Elenschleger, who had close ties with the German romantics), Russia (V.A. Zhukovsky, in his own definition, "the parent in Rus' of German romanticism"; letter to A.S. Sturdze, March 10, 1849); in 1810-20s - Italy (G. Leopardi, U. (N.) Foscolo, A. Manzoni), Austria (playwright F. Grillparzer, later poet N. Lenau), Sweden (poet E. Tegner), USA ( W. Irving, J. F. Cooper, E. A. Poe, later N. Hawthorne, G. Melville), Poland (A. Mitskevich, later Y. Slovatsky, Z. Krasinsky), Greece (poet D. Solomos); in the 1830s, romanticism also finds expression in other literatures (the most significant representatives are the novelist J. van Lennep in Holland, the poet S. Petőfi in Hungary, J. de Espronceda in Spain, the poet and playwright J. J. Gonsalves de Magalhains in Brazil ). As a movement associated with the idea of nationality, with the search for a certain literary “formula” of national self-consciousness, romanticism gave rise to a galaxy of national poets who expressed the “spirit of the people” and acquired cult significance in their homeland (Elenschläger in Denmark, Pushkin in Russia, Mickiewicz in Poland, Petofi in Hungary, N. Baratashvili in Georgia). The general periodization of romanticism is impossible because of its heterogeneous development in different countries: in the main countries of Europe, as well as in Russia, romanticism in the 1830s and 40s loses its leading importance under the pressure of new literary movements - Biedermeier, realism; in countries where romanticism appeared later, it retained a strong position much longer. The concept of "late romanticism", often applied to the main line in the development of European romanticism, usually assumes as a turning point the mid-1810s (the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the beginning of a pan-European reaction), when the first wave of romanticism (the Jena and Heidelberg romantics, the "lake school”, E.P. de Senancourt, Chateaubriand, A.L.J. de Stael) comes the so-called “second generation of romantics” (Swabian romantics, J. Byron, J. Keats, P. B. Shelley, A. de Lamartine , V. Hugo, A. Musset, A. de Vigny, Leopard, etc.).
Jena romantics (Novalis, F. and A. Schlegel) were early theorists of romanticism who created this concept. In their definitions of romanticism, there are motives for the destruction of familiar boundaries and hierarchies, an inspiring synthesis that replaced the rationalist idea of “connection” and “order”: “romantic poetry” “must now mix, then merge poetry and prose, genius and criticism” (Schlegel F. Aesthetics. Philosophy. Criticism), the romantic is like a “true fairy tale”, in which “everything should be wonderfully mysterious and incoherent - everything is alive ... All nature should be somehow miraculously mixed with the whole world of spirits” (Novalis. Schriften. Stuttgart , 1968). In general, the Jena romantics, having connected the concept of romanticism with a number of related ideas (“magical idealism”, “transcendental poetry”, “universal poetry”, “wit”, “irony”, “musicality”), not only did not give romanticism a complete definition, but approved the idea that “romantic poetry” “cannot be exhausted by any theory” (F. Schlegel, ibid.), which, in essence, retains its strength in modern literary criticism.
As an international movement romanticism also had pronounced national characteristics . The tendency of German romanticism to philosophical speculation, the search for the transcendental and the magical-synthetic vision of the world was alien to French romanticism, which realized itself primarily as an antithesis to classicism (which had strong traditions in France), was distinguished by psychological analyticism (the novels of Chateaubriand, de Stael, Senancourt, B .Constan) and created a more pessimistic picture of the world, permeated with motives of loneliness, exile, nostalgia (which was associated with the tragic impressions of the French Revolution and the internal or external emigration of French romantics: “The revolution expelled my spirit from the real world, making it too terrible for me "(Jobert J. Diary. March 25, 1802). English romanticism, represented by the poets of the "lake school" (Coleridge, Wordsworth), gravitated, like German, to the transcendent and otherworldly, but found it not in philosophical constructions and mystical visionaryism, but in direct contact with nature, childhood memories. antism was distinguished by considerable heterogeneity: the interest in antiquity, in the reconstruction of the archaic language and style, in the "night" mystical moods, characteristic of romanticism, manifested itself already among the "archaist" writers of the 1790-1820s (S.S. Bobrov, S.A. Shirinsky - Shikhmatov); later, along with the influence of English and French romanticism (widespread Byronism, moods of "world sorrow", nostalgia for the ideal natural states of man), the ideas of German romanticism were also realized in Russian romanticism - the doctrine of the "world soul" and its manifestation in nature, the presence of the other world in the earthly world, about the poet-priest, the omnipotence of the imagination, the Orphic idea of the world as a dungeon of the soul (creativity of the philosophers, poetry of Zhukovsky, F.I. Tyutchev). The idea of "universal poetry" in Russia was expressed in the opinion that "the whole world, visible and dreamy, is the property of the poet" (OM Somov. On romantic poetry, 1823); hence the diversity of themes and images of Russian romanticism, which combined the experience of recreating the distant past (the harmonic "golden age" of antiquity in the idylls of A.A. Delvig, the Old Testament archaism in the works of V.K. Kuchelbeker, F.N. Glinka) with visions of the future, often colored in the tone of dystopia (V.F. Odoevsky, E.A. Baratynsky), who created artistic images of many cultures (up to a unique imitation of the Muslim worldview in "Imitations of the Koran" (1824) by A.S. Pushkin) and a wide range of moods (from Bacchic hedonism K.N. Batyushkov, D. V. Davydov to a detailed development of the theme of the “living dead” with reports on the sensations of dying, being buried alive, and decay in the poetry of M.Yu. Lermontov, A.I. The romantic idea of nationality found its original embodiment in Russian romanticism, which not only recreated the structure of the people's consciousness with its deep archaic and mythological layers (Ukrainian novels by N.V. Gogol), but also painted the image of the people themselves as alienated and ironic, which has no analogues in modern literature. an observer of the dirty struggle for power ("Boris Godunov" by Pushkin, 1824-25).
With all national differences, Romanticism also possessed integrity of mind, which manifested itself primarily in the consciousness that “the infinite surrounded man” (L. Uhland. Fragment “On the Romantic”, 1806). The boundaries between the various spheres of being, which determined the classical world order, lost their power over the romantic personality, which came to the conclusion that “we are connected with all parts of the universe, as well as with the future and the past” (Novalis. Pollen. No 92). Man for romantics no longer serves as a “measure of all things”, but rather contains “all things” in their past and future, being incomprehensible to himself the secret writing of nature, which romanticism is called upon to decipher: “The mystery of nature ... is fully expressed in the form of man ... The whole history of the world is dormant in each of us, ”wrote the romantic natural philosopher G. Steffens (Steffens N. Caricaturen des Heiligsten. Leipzig, 1821). Consciousness no longer exhausts a person, since “everyone carries his somnambulist in himself” (J.W. Ritter. Letter to F. Baader, 1807; see Beguin. Vol. 1); Wordsworth creates an image of the "lower part of the soul" (under soul - the poem "Prelude"), not affected by the external movements of life. The soul of a person no longer belongs to him alone, but serves as a plaything for mysterious forces: at night, “what is not ours in us” is awake in us (P.A. Vyazemsky. Tosca, 1831). Instead of the principle of hierarchy, which organized the classical model of the world, romanticism brings the principle of analogy: “That which moves in the heavenly spheres must rule in the images of the earth, and the same thing agitates in the human chest” (Thick, Genoveva, 1799. Scene “Field battles"). The analogies reigning in the romantic world cancel the vertical subordination of phenomena, equate nature and man, inorganic and organic, high and low; The romantic hero endows “natural forms” with “moral life” (Wordsworth. Prelude), and comprehends his own soul in external, physical forms, turning it into an “internal landscape” (P. Moreau’s term). Opening in every object the connections leading to the world as a whole, to the “world soul” (the idea of nature as a “universal organism” was developed in F. W. Schelling’s treatise “On the Soul of the World”, 1797), romanticism destroys the classical scale of values; W. Hazlitt ("The Spirit of the Age", 1825) calls Wordsworth's "muse" an "equalizer" based on the "principle of equality." Ultimately, this approach leads in the late romanticism of the 1830s (the French school of “violent romantics”) to the cultivation of the terrible and ugly, and even to the appearance in 1853 of the “Aesthetics of the ugly” by the Hegelian K. Rosencrantz.
The fundamental openness of a romantic person, his thirst "to be everything" (F. Hölderlin. Hyperion, 1797-99) determined many of the essential features of literary romanticism. The hero of the Enlightenment, with his conscious struggle for a certain place in life, is being replaced in romanticism by a wanderer hero who has lost social and geographical roots and freely moves between regions of the earth, between sleep and reality, driven more by premonition and magical coincidences than by a clearly posed purpose; he can accidentally acquire earthly happiness (J. Eichendorff. From the life of an idler, 1826), go into a transcendent otherness (Heinrich’s transition to the “country of Sophia” in the project for completing the novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” by Novalis, 1800) or remain “a wanderer for eternity whose ship sails and sails and anchors nowhere” (Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1809-18). For romanticism, the distant is more important than the near: “Distant mountains, distant people, distant events - all this is romantic” (Novalis. Schriften). Hence, the interest of romanticism in other being, in the “world of spirits”, which ceases to be otherworldly: the border between heavenly and earthly is either overcome in an act of poetic insight (“Hymns to the Night” by Novalis, 1800), or the “other world” itself breaks into everyday everyday life (fantasy stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gogol). Related to this is an interest in geographical and historical otherness, the mastery of foreign cultures and epochs (the cult of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, allegedly combining creativity and direct religious feeling, in Wackenroder; the idealization of the customs of the American Indians in Chateaubriand's Atala). The otherness of the alien is overcome by the romantics in the act of poetic reincarnation, spiritual relocation into another reality, which at the literary level manifests itself as stylization (recreation of the “old German” narrative manner in Tieck’s The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald, folk song among the Heidelberg romantics, various historical styles in Pushkin’s poetry; Hölderlin's attempt at reconstruction of Greek tragedy).
Romanticism reveals the historical volume of the artistic word , now perceived as the “common property” of the entire history of literature: “When we speak, with every word we raise the ashes of thousands of meanings assigned to this word for centuries, and by various countries, and even by individuals” (Odoevsky. A. N. Nikolyukin Russian Nights. Epilogue. 1834). The very movement of history is understood as a constant resurrection of eternal, primordial meanings, a constant consonance of the past, present and future, therefore, the self-awareness of older romantics is formed not in repulsion from the past (in particular, from classicism), but in search of prototypes of romantic art in the past: “ W. Shakespeare and M. de Cervantes (F. Schlegel. A conversation about poetry. 1800), J. W. Goethe (as the author of the novel The Years of Wilhelm Meister's Teaching, 1795-96), as well as the entire era of the Middle Ages ( where did the idea of romanticism as a return to the Middle Ages, developed in de Stael's book "On Germany", 1810, and presented in Russian criticism by V. G. Belinsky, come from). The Middle Ages serve as the subject of a lovingly nostalgic recreation in the historical novel, which reached its peak in the work of W. Scott. The romantic poet puts himself above history, giving himself the right to move through different eras and historical styles: “The new era of our poetry should present, as it were, in a perspective reduction, the entire history of poetry” (A.V. Schlegel. Lectures on Fine Literature and Art, 1801- 04). The poet is credited with a higher, synthetic view of the world, excluding any incompleteness of vision and understanding: the poet "rise above his era and flood it with light ... In a single moment of life, he embraces all generations of mankind" (P.S. Ballanche. Experience on social institutions, 1818 Part 1. Chapter 10). As a result, poetry loses the character of a purely aesthetic expression, being understood from now on as “a universal language in which the heart finds agreement with nature and with itself” (W. Hazlitt. About poetry in general, 1818); the boundaries of poetry open into the realm of religious experience, prophetic practice (“True poetic inspiration and prophetic are akin to each other”, G. G. Schubert. Symbolism of sleep, 1814. Chapter 2), metaphysics and philosophy, and finally, into life itself (“Life and Poetry is one thing". Zhukovsky. "I am a young Muse, it happened ...", 1824). Imagination becomes the main tool of poetic creativity, as well as any thinking, for romanticism (his theory was developed in the treatise by I.G.E. .Solger "Erwin", 1815). In theory, the novel is proclaimed the highest literary genre as a magical fusion of all forms of verbal creativity - philosophy, criticism, poetry and prose, however, attempts to create such a novel in reality ("Lucinda" by F. Schlegel, 1799, "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" by Novalis) do not reach the theoretically proclaimed ideal. The feeling of fundamental incompleteness, the openness of any statement brought to the fore the genre of the fragment (which, however, could grow to a significant size: the subtitle “fragment” has the only major completed work of Novalis “Christianity and Europe”, 1799; Byron’s poem “Giaur”, 1813), and in the field of expressive means led to the cultivation of irony, understood as the constant critical rise of the artist above his own statement. Romantic irony in drama took the form of the destruction of stage illusion, playing with the course of action (Thick's plays "Puss in Boots", 1797, where the audience interferes with the performance, and "Zerbino", 1798, where the hero tries to start the action in the opposite direction), in prose it manifested itself in the destruction of the integrity of the action and the unity of the book itself (in the novel “Godvi”, 1800, by C. Brentano, the characters quote the novel itself, the heroes of which they are; in “The Worldly Views of Cat Murr”, 1820-22, Hoffmann, the main action is interrupted “ waste sheets" with a biography of Kapellmeister Kreisler).
At the same time, the notion of poetic utterance as a direct “sudden outpouring of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth, Preface to the second edition of Lyric Ballads, 1800) takes root in romanticism, which leads to the development of the genre of lyrical meditation, sometimes growing to the scale of a monumental poem (“ Prelude by Wordsworth). And in the epic genres, the author-narrator, with his subjective position and clearly expressed emotions, comes to the fore; arbitrarily arranging narrative episodes, interspersing them with lyrical digressions (the novels of Jean Paul with their whimsical composition; Don Juan, 1818-23, Byron; The Wanderer, 1831-32, A.F. Veltman; Eugene Onegin ", 1823-31, Pushkin), he himself becomes a formative factor: for example, Byron's personality determined the form of his poems, since "he began to tell from the middle of the incident or from the end, without caring at all about soldering the parts" ("Son of the Fatherland". 1829). Romanticism is also characterized by free cyclical forms with alternating philosophical and lyrical comments and inserted short stories (Serapion's Brothers, 1819-21, Hoffmann; Russian Nights, 1844, Odoevsky). The idea of a world-organism permeated with analogies also corresponds to the literary form, in which fragmentation is often combined with fluidity, the predominance of fusion over distinct articulations of form. Novalis defines such a form as "a magical romantic order", "for which rank and value do not matter, which does not distinguish between beginning and end, large and small" (Schriften); Coleridge defends the poetic principle of "lines flowing into each other instead of forming a closure at the end of each couplet" (Biographia literaria, Chapter 1) and implements this principle in the "vision" of Kubla Khan (1798). The language of poetry is compared with the languages of music (see Musicality in Literature) and sleep; this latter is "more rapid, spiritual and short in its course or flight" than ordinary language (Schubert. Symbolism of sleep. Chapter 1).
The evolution of the romantic worldview from the second half of the 1810s moved towards the disintegration of the original synthetic-integral vision, the discovery of irreconcilable contradictions and the tragic foundations of being. Romanticism in this period (especially in the 1820s) is increasingly understood by the romantics themselves in a negative protest spirit, as a rejection of norms and laws in the name of individualism; Romanticism - "liberalism in literature" (Hugo. Preface to the "Poems of C. Dovall", 1829), "Parnassian atheism" (Pushkin. To Rodzianka, 1825). Eschatological moods are growing in the historical consciousness of romanticism, the feeling is growing stronger that “the drama of human history, perhaps, is much closer to the end than to the beginning” (F. Schlegel. Signature of the era, 1820), the theme of “the last man” is affirmed in literature (“ The Last Death, 1827 and The Last Poet, 1835, Baratynsky; novel The Last Man, 1826, Mary Shelley). The past no longer enriches, but burdens the world (“The world is tired of the past, it must either perish or finally rest.” - P.B. Shelley, Hellas, 1821); “People and time as a slave, the Earth grew old in captivity” - P.A. Vyazemsky. Sea, 1826); history is now conceived tragically, as an alternation of sin and redemptive sacrifice: already the title character of Hölderlin's tragedy The Death of Empedocles (1798-99) felt himself called to die in order to redeem his era, and in the 1820s P.S. Ballanche builds the concept of history as recurring sacrificial and redemptive cycles (“Prolegomena to the experiments of social palingenesis”, 1827). Late Romanticism is experiencing with renewed vigor the Christian sense of man's primordial sinfulness., which is perceived as his irrational guilt before nature: man, "this is a mixture of dust with a deity", with his "mixed essence" only "brings a conflict into the elements of nature" (Byron. Manfred, 1817). The theme of inherited guilt, the inevitability of fate, damnation and redemption by blood sounds in the “tragedies of rock” (Z. Werner, F. Grillparzer), the tragedy of G. Kleist “Pentesileia” (1808), and the dramas of Hugo. The principle of analogy, which allowed early romanticism to “make dazzling leaps across impenetrable ditches” (Berkovsky), is losing its power; the unity of the world turns out to be either imaginary or lost (this attitude was anticipated by Hölderlin in the 1790s: “Blessed unity ... is lost for us.” - Hyperion. Preface).
In late romanticism, with its conflict of ideal and reality (romantic "two worlds"), the hero is irrevocably alienated from the world, society and the state: "a wandering spirit, expelled from another world, he seemed a stranger in this world of the living" (Byron. Lara, 1814 ); “I live alone among the dead” (Lermontov. Azrael, 1831); poets in the world turn out to be not priests, but “wanderers on earth, homeless and orphans” (Polevoi N.A. Essays on Russian literature). The romantic person himself undergoes a bifurcation, becoming "a battlefield on which passions fight with will" (A.A. Marlinsky. About the novel by N. Polevoy "The Oath at the Holy Sepulcher", 1833); he either realizes an irreconcilable contradiction in himself, or is confronted with his demonic double (“Elixirs of the Devil”, 1815-16, Hoffmann; “The city fell asleep, I wander alone ...” from the cycle “Return to the Motherland”, 1826, G. Heine) . The duality of reality at the metaphysical level is understood as an irreconcilable and hopeless struggle between good and evil, Divine and demonic ("Eloa", 1824, A. de Vigny, where an angel tries to save Lucifer with his love, but ends up in his power; "Demon", 1829- 39, Lermontov). The dead mechanism, from which romanticism, it would seem, got rid of thanks to its metaphor of the world as a living organism, returns again, personified in the image of an automaton, a puppet (Hoffmann's prose; "On the Puppet Theater", 1811, Jugeist), a golem (a short story by L. Arnim " Isabella of Egypt, 1812). The credulity inherent in early romanticism, the confidence that “the filial bonds of Nature bound him to the world” (W. Wordsworth. Prelude), is replaced by suspicion and a sense of betrayal: “Poison is in everything that the heart cherishes” (Delvig. Inspiration, 1820) ; “Though you are a man, you have not betrayed me,” Byron addresses his sister in Stanzas to Augusta (1816). Salvation is seen in flight (romantic "escapism", partly represented already in early romanticism in the prose of Senancourt and Chateaubriand) to other forms of life, which can be nature, exotic and "natural" cultures, the imaginary world of childhood and utopia, as well as in altered states of consciousness: now not irony, but madness is proclaimed a natural reaction to the antinomies of life; madness expands a person's mental horizons, since a madman "finds such relationships between objects that seem impossible to us" (Odoevsky. Russian Nights. Second Night). Finally, "emigration from the world" (an expression of Chateaubriand: quote from: Schenk) can be realized in death; this motif acquires a special distribution in late romanticism, which widely developed the Orphic metaphor of the body and life as a dungeon, which is already present in Hölderlin ("we are now languishing in our sick flesh." - Hyperion) and Wordsworth ("The shadows of the prison begin to close over the growing child." - Ode: Signs of Immortality, 1802-04). The motif of love for death appears (in Shelley's story "Una Favola", 1820-22, the poet is in love with life and death, but only the latter is true to him, "dwelling with love and eternity"), the idea that "perhaps it is death that leads to higher knowledge” (Byron, Cain, 1821). The antithesis of the flight from the divided world in late romanticism can be a godless rebellion or a stoic acceptance of evil and suffering. If early romanticism almost destroys the distance between man and God, friendly connecting them almost on an equal footing ("God wants the gods"; "we have appointed ourselves people and have chosen God for ourselves, as they choose a monarch" - Novalis), then in late romanticism their mutual alienation takes place. Romanticism now creates the image of a heroic skeptic - a man who fearlessly broke with God and remains in the middle of an empty, alien world: “I do not believe, O Christ, Your holy word, I came too late to too old a world; from an age devoid of hope, an age will be born in which there will be no fear, ”says the hero Musset (Rolla. 1833); in "Faust" by N. Lenau (1836) the hero refuses to serve as a "shoe" for Christ's foot and decides to independently assert his own "inflexible I"; to the “eternal silence of the Divine”, such a hero “responds with only one cold silence” (Vigny, Mount of Olives, 1843). The stoic position often leads romance to an apology of suffering (Baratynsky. “Believe me, my friend, we need suffering ...”, 1820), to its fetishization (“Nothing gives us such greatness as great suffering.” - Musset. May Night, 1835 ), and even to the idea that the blood of Christ does not atone for human suffering: Vigny plans a work on the Last Judgment, where God, as a defendant, appears before humanity-judge in order to "explain why creation, why the suffering and death of the innocent" (Vigny A de Journal d'un poete).
The aesthetics of realism and naturalism, which largely determined the literary process of the second half of the 19th century, painted the concept of romanticism in negative tones, associating it with rhetorical verbosity, the predominance of external effects, melodramaticism, which are really characteristic of the epigones of romanticism. However, the circle of problems outlined by romanticism (the themes of lost paradise, alienation, guilt and redemption, motifs of theomachism, God-forsakenness and "nihilistic consciousness", etc.) turned out to be more durable than romantic poetics proper: it retains its significance in later literature, which uses other stylistic means and is no longer aware of its continuity with the romantic tradition.
Romanticism is often understood not only as a historical concept, but also as a universal aesthetic category (the Jena romantics already saw in the “romantic” an element inherent in all poetry; in the same spirit, Charles Baudelaire considered any “modern art” to be “romantic”, in which there is "subjectivity, spirituality, colors, striving for the infinite" - "Salon 1846"). G.W.F. Hegel defined the word “romantic” as one of the three (along with symbolic and classical) global “art forms”, in which the spirit, breaking with the outside, turns to its inner being in order to “enjoy its infinity and freedom” there. "(Aesthetics. Part 2. Section 3, introduction). There is also an idea of the romantic as an eternally recurring phenomenon, alternating with the same eternal “classicism” (“Every classicism presupposes a previous romanticism.” - P. Valeri. Variete, 1924). Thus, romanticism can also be comprehended as a timeless spiritual and aesthetic orientation inherent in the works of various eras (romanticism).
The word romantic comes from German Romantik, French romanticisme, English romanticism.
The artistic method that developed at the beginning of the 19th century. and widely used as a direction (flow) in the art and literature of most European countries, including Russia, as well as in the literature of the United States. To later eras, the term "romanticism" is applied to a large extent on the basis of the artistic experience of the first half of the 19th century.
The work of romantics in each country has its own specifics, explained by the peculiarities of national historical development, and at the same time it also has some stable common features.
In this generalizing characteristic of romanticism, one can distinguish: the historical soil on which it arises, the features of the method and the character of the hero.
The common historical ground on which European romanticism arose was the turning point associated with the French Revolution. Romantics adopted from their time the idea of individual freedom put forward by the revolution, but at the same time in Western countries they realized the defenselessness of man in a society where monetary interests were victorious. Therefore, the attitude of many romantics is characterized by confusion and confusion in front of the outside world, the tragedy of the fate of the individual.
The main event of Russian history at the beginning of the XIX century. were the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Decembrist uprising of 1825, which had a huge impact on the entire course of the artistic development of Russia and determined the range of topics and issues that worried Russian romantics (see Russian literature of the 19th century).
But for all the originality and originality of Russian romanticism, its development is inseparable from the general movement of European romantic literature, just as the milestones of national history are inseparable from the course of European events: the political and social ideas of the Decembrists are successively connected with the basic principles put forward by the French Revolution.
With the general tendency to deny the surrounding world, romanticism did not constitute a unity of socio-political views. On the contrary, the views of the romantics on society, their positions in society, the struggle of their time were sharply dissimilar - from revolutionary (more precisely, rebellious) to conservative and reactionary. This often gives grounds for dividing romanticism into reactionary, contemplative, liberal, progressive, etc. It is more correct, however, to speak of progressiveness or reactionaryness not of the method of romanticism itself, but of the social, philosophical or political views of the writer, given that the artistic work of such, for example, , a romantic poet, like V. A. Zhukovsky, is much broader and richer than his political and religious convictions.
A special interest in the individual, the nature of her attitude to the surrounding reality, on the one hand, and opposition to the real world of the ideal (non-bourgeois, anti-bourgeois) - on the other. The romantic artist does not set himself the task of accurately reproducing reality. It is more important for him to express his attitude towards it, moreover, to create his own, fictional image of the world, often on the principle of contrast with the surrounding life, so that through this fiction, through contrast, to convey to the reader both his ideal and his rejection of the world he denies. This active personal beginning in romanticism leaves its mark on the entire structure of a work of art, determines its subjective character. The events that take place in romantic poems, dramas and other works are important only for revealing the characteristics of the personality that interests the author.
So, for example, the story of Tamara in the poem "The Demon" by M. Yu. Lermontov is subordinated to the main task - to recreate the "restless spirit" - the spirit of the Demon, to convey in cosmic images the tragedy of modern man and, finally, the attitude of the poet himself to reality,
Where they do not know how without fear
Neither hate nor love.
The literature of romanticism put forward its hero, most often expressing the author's attitude to reality. This is a person with especially strong feelings, with a uniquely sharp reaction to a world that rejects the laws that others obey. Therefore, he is always placed above those around him (“... I am not created for people: I am too proud for them, they are too mean for me,” says Arbenin in M. Lermontov’s drama “A Strange Man”).
This hero is lonely, and the theme of loneliness varies in works of various genres, especially often in lyrics (“It is lonely in the wild north ...” G. Heine, “An oak leaf came off a darling branch ...” M. Yu. Lermontov). Lonely are the heroes of Lermontov, the heroes of J. Byron's oriental poems. Even rebel heroes are lonely: Byron's Cain, A. Mickiewicz's Conrad Wallenrod. These are exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances.
The heroes of romanticism are restless, passionate, indomitable. “I was born / With a seething soul, like lava,” Arbenin exclaims in Lermontov's Masquerade. “Hateful is the languor of rest” to the hero of Byron; “... this is a human personality, indignant against the general and, in its proud rebellion, leaning on itself,” wrote V. G. Belinsky about Byron's hero.
The romantic personality, carrying rebelliousness and denial, is vividly recreated by the Decembrist poets - representatives of the first stage of Russian romanticism (K. F. Ryleev, A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, V. K. Kyuchelbeker).
An increased interest in the individual and the spiritual world of a person contributed to the flourishing of lyrical and lyrical-epic genres - in a number of countries it was the era of romanticism that put forward great national poets (in France - Hugo, in Poland - Mickiewicz, in England - Byron, in Germany - Heine). At the same time, the deepening of the romantics into the human "I" in many ways prepared the psychological realism of the 19th century. Historicism was a major discovery of romanticism. If the whole life appeared before the romantics in motion, in the struggle of opposites, then this was also reflected in the depiction of the past. Was born
historical novel (V. Scott, V. Hugo, A. Dumas), historical drama. Romantics sought to colorfully convey the color of the era, both national and geographical. They did a lot to popularize oral folk art, as well as works of medieval literature. Promoting the original art of their people, the Romantics drew attention to the artistic treasures of other peoples, emphasizing the unique features of each culture. Turning to folklore, romantics often embodied legends in the genre of a ballad - a plot song with dramatic content (German romantics, poets of the "lake school" in England, V. A. Zhukovsky in Russia). The era of romanticism was marked by the flourishing of literary translation (in Russia, V. A. Zhukovsky was a brilliant propagandist of not only Western European, but also Eastern poetry). Rejecting the strict norms prescribed by the aesthetics of classicism, the romantics proclaimed the right of every poet to the diversity of artistic forms created by all peoples.
Romanticism does not immediately disappear from the scene with the rise of critical realism. For example, in France, such famous romantic novels by Hugo as Les Misérables and Year 93 were created many years after the end of the career of the realists Stendhal and O. de Balzac. In Russia, the romantic poems of M. Yu. Lermontov, the lyrics of F. I. Tyutchev were created when literature had already declared itself significant successes of realism.
But the fate of romanticism did not end there. Many decades later, in different historical conditions, writers often again turned to romantic means of artistic representation. So, the young M. Gorky, creating both realistic and romantic stories at the same time, it was in romantic works that he most fully expressed the pathos of the struggle, the spontaneous impulse for the revolutionary reorganization of society (the image of Danko in "The Old Woman Izergil", "The Song of the Falcon", "The Song of the Petrel ").
However, in the XX century. Romanticism is no longer an integral artistic movement. We are talking only about the features of romanticism in the work of individual writers.
In Soviet literature, the features of the romantic method were clearly manifested in the works of many prose writers (A. S. Grin, A. P. Gaidar, I. E. Babel) and poets (E. G. Bagritsky, M. A. Svetlov, K. M. Simonov, B. A. Ruchev).
