Shindina A.N.

Literature lesson notes, grade 10

Subject.The originality of the Pushkin era. Stages of creativity

But talent lives, genius immortal!

F.N.Glinka

Goals: introduce the life and work of A.S. Pushkin; reveal the uniqueness of Pushkin's era.

Tasks:

educational: work on expressive reading of poems; otradevelop skills and abilities to work on the analysis of lyricaltext.

developing: promote the development of monologue speech (give messages on literary theme); promote the development of expressive reading of the lyrical and artistic works of A.S. Pushkin; promote the development of creative initiative; development of memory and imagination.

nurturing : cultivate qualities such as perseverance, efficiency, independence; educate and develop a communicative culture; bring up positive attitude to educational activities.

Equipment:

- portrait of A.S. Pushkin; books about his life; statements of his contemporaries about him; presentation.

Plan:

Opening remarks (0.5 min.)

Checking homework (8 min.)

Review what you have learned (5 min.)

Expressive reading of poems (12 min.)

Lesson summary (3 min.)

Homework (1 min.)

Literature: Textbook on literature grade 10 in 2 parts. Part 1, ed. V.Ya. Korovina M 2011

G.A. Gukovsky “Pushkin and Russian Romantics” M., 1965

Lotman Yu.M. A.S. Pushkin. Research and articles. – M., 1996

Mann Yu.V. Poetics of Russian romanticism. – M., 1976

Movelesson

Organizational moment (1 min.)

Hello guys! Have a seat. Write down the date, topic of the lesson and epigraph.

Opening remarks (2 min.)

Guys, today we meet with Pushkin again. Why "again"? We have known Pushkin since childhood. His work accompanies us all our lives, because there is no vitally important question to which we would not find the answer in his poems. Pushkin is the same for everyone, but everyone can call him “my Pushkin” and tell what exactly attracts him in the poet.

Checking homework (7 min.)

Talk about the periods of Russian literature of the 19th century

Iperiod (1801-1825)

IIperiod (1826-1842) literature of the 30s

IIIperiod (1842-1855)

IVperiod (1855-1868)

Vperiod (1869-1881)

VIperiod (1882-1895)

VIIperiod (1895-1904)

Talk about the main themes and problems of 19th century literature.

Review what you have learned (7 min.)

Discussion of issues

What do you know about the era in which A.S. lived and worked? Pushkin?

What works of A.S. Do you know Pushkin?

What are the main themes of Pushkin's lyrics?

What are the main motives that permeate the work of A.S. Pushkin?

Working on literary concepts (8 min.)

Lyrics is a type of literature that reflects life through the depiction of individual (single) states, thoughts, feelings, impressions and experiences of a person caused by certain circumstances. Feelings and experiences are not described, but expressed. The characteristic features of the lyrics are poetic form, rhythm, lack of plot, small size, a clear reflection of the experiences of the lyrical hero. The word "lyrics" Greek origin, but does not have direct transfer. IN Ancient Greece poetic works depicting the inner world of feelings and experiences were performed to the accompaniment of the lyre, and this is how the word “lyrics” appeared.

The term Lyrical Hero was introduced by Tynianov in relation to Blok’s lyrics.

Elegy -(Latin elegia from the Greek elegos plaintive melody of a flute) - a genre of lyrics that describes a sad, pensive or dreamy mood, this is a sad reflection, the poet’s reflection on a fast-moving life, on losses, parting with native places, with loved ones, about that joy and sadness are intertwined in a person’s heart... In Russia, the heyday of this lyrical genre dates back to the beginning of the 19th century:elegies wrote K. Batyushkov, V. Zhukovsky,, , N. Nekrasov, A. Fet; in the twentieth century - V. Bryusov, I Annensky, A. Blok and others.

Fable - those events, cases, actions, states in their causal and chronological sequence that are compiled and formalized by the author inbased on the patterns perceived by the author in the development of the depicted phenomena.

VI . Teacher's word about the writer (8 min.)

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin occupies a special place in Russian culture.Great Russian national poet, prose writer,. His work became the embodiment of the love of freedom, patriotism and powerful creative forces of the Russian people.

A.S. Pushkin was born on June 6 (May 26, old style) 1799 in Moscow. His father, Sergei Lvovich (1771 -1848), belonged to an old but impoverished noble family. Among his acquaintances there were many writers, and his brother Vasily Lvovich gained fame as a poet. Sergei Lvovich was known as a wit, was fond of literature and loved to recite Moliere, Racine and other French playwrights.

Pushkin's home education was common for most noble families. Parents read to children French books and spoke French. His first teachers of the Russian language were his grandmother Marya Alekseevna, who had an excellent command of Russian speech, his nanny Arina Rodionovna, and his uncle Nikita Kozlov, who walked with Pushkin throughout his entire life.

Pushkin's first poems date back to 1813. For Russia, this was a time of patriotic upsurge after the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812, a time of freedom-loving sentiments and aspirations.

At the Lyceum, Pushkin wrote more than 130 works. Pushkin’s first published poem, “To a Friend the Poet,” was published in the journal “Bulletin of Europe” in 1814. Pushkin’s Lyceum poems have many similarities with his works! Russian and French writers. He borrowed themes, genres, motifs, and images characteristic of contemporary literature. The breadth of poetic vision, the variety of feelings and moods, the sensitivity of poetic hearing, the desire for harmony were already reflected in Pushkin’s early poems.

After graduating from the Lyceum, young Pushkin entered the public service- to the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. The St. Petersburg “big society” struck with a mass of new impressions: social entertainment and intrigue, friendly communication and love, poetry classes and debates about politics. Pushkin’s worldview is formed in the atmosphere of St. Petersburg freethinking: acquaintance with P.Ya. Chaadaev, with members of the secret society “Union of Prosperity” N.I. Turgenev and F.N. Glinka, participation in the work of the literary and theatrical society “Green Lamp” and the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

St. Petersburg impressions were reflected in “hidden”, unpublished poetry: “Liberty” (1817), “Village” (1819), “To Chaadaev” (1818), “Hurray! Jumps to Russia...” (a satire on Alexander I). During the same period, the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, conceived while still at the Lyceum, was completed. The poem was enthusiastically received by readers and critics. The poem was published as a separate edition in the fall of 1820, when the poet had already been exiled to the south for his freedom-loving poems.

In the lyrics of the period of southern exile, the leading place belonged to romantic genres: elegy (“The daylight has gone out...”, “The flying ridge of clouds is thinning...”, “I have outlived my desires...”), a friendly message, a ballad (“Song about the prophetic Oleg").

Pushkin’s main achievement during the period of southern exile was his romantic poems: “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” (1821), “The Robber Brothers” (1821), “The Bakhchisarai Fountain” (1821-1823), “The Gypsies” (finished in Mikhailovsky in 1824) .

Pushkin transformed Russian romantic poetry. In contrastfrom the elegiac romanticism of the 10s of the 19th century, Pushkin’s poetry was imbued with the spirit of rebellion. In Pushkin's romantic poems, the influence of Byron's work is obvious. The hero of Pushkin's poems is a proud, independent person in conflict with the surrounding reality; a person striving for freedom.

The concept of the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin", work on which began in May 1823, was innovative. Pushkin tried to overcome the romantic conventions of the plots of “southern” poems, looking for a new contemporary hero, a new style.

Pushkin created magnificent samples love lyrics, which reflected the poet’s feelings for A. Riznich, K. Sobanskaya, E. Vorontsova. Count Vorontsov, who had Pushkin in Odessa at his disposal, tried to get rid of him. The police uncovered letters from Pushkin that contained careless expressions. Pushkin was arrested. The southern exile ended with an order for him to go to the family estate of Mikhailovskoye in the Pskov province.

In Mikhailovsky, a real exile awaited the poet. On behalf of the tsar, they announced a terrible accusation of atheism and corrupting influence on the minds of young people. Pushkin was placed under double surveillance: police and church. The timing of the exile has not been determined. The poet was deprived of freedom of movement. Pushkin was connected with the outside world by intensive correspondence and friendship with neighbors, the landowner of the village of Trigorskoye P.A. Osipova and her daughters.

The love lyrics of this period are characterized by sophisticated psychologism (“I remember a wonderful moment...”, “Burnt Letter”, “Confession”). The poet creates realistic works in Mikhailovsky: the central chapters of “Eugene Onegin” (III-VI), the historical tragedy “Boris Godunov”, which reflects thoughts about the relationship between history and personality, people and power. The philosophical depth of the tragedy was not appreciated by his contemporaries. Pushkin was ahead of his time.

Pushkin considered the problem of the nationality of literature put forward to the Decembrists to be an important problem. The poet understood the task of nationality not only as an appeal to the folk language and themes from native history, but also as a study of folk psychology, the national mindset, and the characteristics of the people's mentality. Pushkin believed that these traits are most clearly expressed in folklore. Pushki writes down Arina Rodionovna’s fairy tales, goes to fairs and records folk songs, and studies the folklore of other peoples.

In Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin received news of the death of Tsar Alexander I, of the events on Senate Square on December 14, 1825, of the investigation of the participants in the uprising conducted by the new Tsar, Nicholas I. These events could not but influence the fate of the disgraced poet. In September 1826, he was summoned to Moscow to talk with the Tsar.

The conversation that took place changed Pushkin’s fate: he would be returned from exile, he would be allowed to live in Moscow, and in 1827 in St. Petersburg. Nicholas I respected Pushkin’s frankness, declaring that if he had been in St. Petersburg on December 14, 1825, he would have gone out to Senate Square. The new tsar even promised to personally be the censor of Pushkin's works. Nicholas I impressed Pushkin with his directness and readiness for reform.

Reflections on modernity, on the prospects of a new reign led the poet to the theme of Peter I (“Stanzas” in which Pushki called on Nicholas I: “be like your ancestor in everything”; the unfinished historical novel “Arap of Peter the Great”; the poem “Poltava depicting the triumph of “Russia” young").

The times that followed the defeat of the uprising were terrible. “It took at least ten years for a person to come to his senses about his sad position as an enslaved and persecuted being,” wrote A.I. Herzen in the article “Literature and public opinion after December 14, 1825.” “People were overcome by deep despair and general despondency.” Society was stratified into those who were sympathetic to the Decembrists, and those who took a conservative point of view, insisting on an evolutionary path.

Naturally, in order to preserve the foundations of statehood and strengthen central government Tough measures were necessary, often leading to the total destruction of centers of free thought and the suppression of unrest. The III Department of the Office of His Imperial Majesty was created under the control of the chief of gendarmes A.Kh. Benckendorf. Surveillance, detection, and eavesdropping have become widespread and legalized. Moscow, according to the memoirs of the priest's contemporaries, was filled with spies. The number of agents sometimes included people of high society, among them were writers.

Pushkin returned to such an atmosphere after exile. He did not recognize society - neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg. The poet was cut off from the best people of his generation. Many of his close friends and good friends languished in the convict holes of Siberia. Even the names of many could not be spoken out loud.

At this time, the poet had to find his place and be true to His ideals. Pushkin tried to establish a close connection with the Moscow Telegraph magazine, where young poets collaborated, but after a closer look, the poet moved away from them. During these years, the public began to greet him less enthusiastically. He was still admired, read and revered, but by the end of the decade the drain of interest became noticeable. This also happened because Pushkin began to create realistic works, but the reading public was not ready for this. Having entered the wide expanse of realistic creativity,poetdid not confirm, but destroyed his image created by the readership, which did not meet the expectations of the public, who were eager to repeat the melodies that had once conquered them.

The poet created new genres, truly innovative works, introduced new heroes, and mastered new themes. He covered with his gaze the endless spaces of his native land, delved into the life, law, psychology, and attitudes of his contemporaries, people of different classes and characters. Everything was subject to his talent, his imagination, artistic thought, which endlessly dominated the small world of the past and contemporary reality. Y. Lotman wrote: “Pushkin went so far ahead of his time that his contemporaries began to feel that he was behind them.”

In the second half of the 20s of the XIX century. Pushkin's interest in philosophical issues intensifies. Lyrical works are diverse in genre and style. These are the program poems “The Poet” (1827), “The Poet and the Crowd” (1828 in which Pushkin reflects on the purpose of the poet and poetry and the relationship between the poet and the authorities, the poet and the people; “Memory,” “Yes, in vain, an accidental gift...”, “Anchar” (all - 1828); “The road of complaint”, “Am I wandering along noisy streets...”, “Once upon a time there lived a poor knight...” (all - 1829).

Boldino autumn 1830G.- a short but most fruitful period in Pushkin’s work. During three months of forced seclusion (due to cholera quarantines), Pushkin wrote as much as he had created in the previous decade. In September-October, "Belkin's Tales" and the last chapters of "Eugene Onegin" were written. At the end of October - beginning of November - the cycle of philosophical and psychologicalical"small tragedies" In the Boldino autumn, “The Tale ofpriest and his worker, the fool", "History of the village of Goryukhin"about 30 poems(“Elegy”, “Demons”, “Spell”, “Poems composedat night during insomnia", "For the shores of the fatherlanddistant...").

In his work on “Eugene Onegin,” Pushkin’s movement towards the “poetry of reality” was revealed. “Belkin’s Tale” marked the beginning of a new, “prosaic” period of creativity. The philosophical line continued in the works of the 30s of the 19th century.

Pushkin constantly experienced psychological discomfort. The literary atmosphere of that time was also unfavorable. Many of Pushkin's works were not successful (Boris Godunov, Belkin's Tales) or were not published. The persecution of Pushkin began in the press, inspired by his longtime enemy, journalist and writer F.V. Bulgarin. In the last years of Pushkin's work, the crack in his relationship with modern literature reached alarming proportions.

Despite difficult everyday and literary circumstances, Pushkin followed his calling, striving to become the spiritual leader of the Russian enlightened nobility. Reflections on the connection between three forces: the autocracy, the enlightened nobility and the people - formed the basis of the philosophical and historical concept. Work on the “History of Peter” led Pushkin to the reign of Catherine II. Spring 1833G.he began collecting materials about the Pugachev rebellion. At the same time, he worked on the remaining unfinished novel "Dubrovsky", in which he first showed the peasant uprising. In September 1833G.Pushkin obtained permission to organize an order in the Volga region and the Urals, in which he collected rich material about Pugachev and met with eyewitnesses of the uprising.

Second Boldino autumn - 1833G.- marked by the creation of philosophical works: the story “The Queen of Spades”, fairy tales “About the Fisherman and the Fish”, “About the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights”, the lyrical masterpiece “Autumn”.

The two most important facets of creativity in the last years of Pushkin’s life (1834-1836) were philosophical lyrics (“It’s time, my friend, it’s time...”, “I visited again...”, “It was time: our young holiday...” ) and the novel “The Captain's Daughter” (1836).

The result of the long and difficult “free road” through the “cruel lawsuit” was the poet’s immortality. With particular pride, Pushkin expressed his thoughts in his poetic testament - the poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...” (1836).

The situation around Pushkin and his family worsened. Secular gossip and intrigue brought the “last act” of life’s drama closer. January 25, 1837G.A duel between Pushkin and Dantes took place, in which the poet was mortally wounded. January 29 (February 10) 1837G.Pushkin died. Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the great poet. On the night of February 3, the coffin with Pushkin’s body was secretly taken from St. Petersburg to the Holy Mountains of the Pskov province. On February 6, the poet was buried in the Svyatogorsk Monastery, not far from Mikhailovsky.

VII . Expressive reading of poems (12 min.)

Guys, let’s turn to the poems: “Liberty”, “Village”, “To Chaadaev”

Village

Greetings, deserted corner,

A haven of peace, work and inspiration,
Where the invisible stream of my days flows
In the bosom of happiness and oblivion.
I am yours: I exchanged the vicious court for Circus,
Luxurious feasts, fun, delusions
To the peaceful sound of oak trees, to the silence of fields,
For free idleness, a friend of reflection.

I am yours: I love this dark garden
With its coolness and flowers,
This meadow, filled with fragrant stacks,
Where bright streams rustle in the bushes.
Everywhere in front of me there are moving pictures:
Here I see two lakes, azure plains,
Where the fisherman's sail sometimes turns white,
Behind them are a series of hills and striped fields,
Scattered huts in the distance,
On the damp banks wandering herds,
The barns are smoky and the mills are cold;
Everywhere there are traces of contentment and labor...

I am here, freed from vain shackles,
I am learning to find bliss in the truth,
With a free soul to worship the law,
Do not listen to the murmurs of the unenlightened crowd,

Participate in answering a shy plea
And don't envy fate
A villain or a fool - in unjust greatness.

Oracles of the ages, here I ask you!
In majestic solitude
Your joyful voice can be heard more clearly.
He drives away the gloomy sleep of laziness,
The heat in me gives rise to work,
And your creative thoughts
They ripen in the depths of the soul.

But a terrible thought here darkens the soul:
Among flowering fields and mountains
A friend of humanity sadly remarks
Everywhere ignorance is a murderous shame.
Without seeing the tears, without listening to the groan,
Chosen by fate for the destruction of people,
Herelordship wild, without feeling, without law,
Appropriated by a violent vine
And labor, and property, and the time of the farmer.
Leaning on an alien plow, submitting to the scourge,
Here skinny slavery drags along the reins
An unforgiving owner.
Here a painful yoke drags everyone to the grave,
Not daring to harbor hopes and inclinations in my soul,
Here young maidens bloom
For the whim of an insensitive villain.
Dear support for aging fathers,
Young sons, comrades of labor,
From their native hut they go to multiply
Yard crowds of exhausted slaves.
Oh, if only my voice could disturb hearts!
There seems to be a barren heat burning in my chest
And hasn’t the fate of my life given me a formidable gift?
I'll see, oh friends! unoppressed people
And slavery, which fell due to the king’s mania,
And over the fatherland of enlightened freedom
Will the beautiful dawn finally rise?

To Chaadaev

Love, hope, quiet glory
Deception did not last long for us,
The youthful fun has disappeared
Like a dream, like morning fog;
But the desire still burns within us,
Under the yoke of fatal power
With an impatient soul
Let us heed the calling of the Fatherland.
We wait with languid hope
Holy moments of freedom
How a young lover waits
Minutes of a faithful date.
While we are burning with freedom,
While hearts are alive for honor,
My friend, let's dedicate it to the fatherland
Beautiful impulses from the soul!
Comrade, believe: she will rise,
Star of captivating happiness,
Russia will wake up from its sleep,
And on the ruins of autocracy
They will write our names!

Analyze the message “To Chaadaev” from the point of view of style and see how the personal theme is combined with the civil one.

VIII . Lesson summary (3 min.)

Guys, in the next lesson we will continue the conversation about the life and work of A.S. Pushkin.

What are the merits of Pushkin? Pushkin's merits are enormous:

Reformer of all genres of Russian literature

Stands at the origins of the poetry of the golden age

Had a colossal influence on all spheres of Russian art

Central figure of Russian culture

What genres dominated Pushkin’s lyrics in different years of his lyceum creativity? How are they characterized?

IX . Homework (1 min.)

Learn by heart one of the poems written during the period of southern exile.

There are a very small number of works in world literature about which it can be said: while describing their contemporary era, they simultaneously influence it, creating history anew. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” is rightfully included among these few “golden” works of human thought, which have become not only the most detailed “encyclopedia of Russian life”, but also a kind of manifesto of the first representatives of the awakened social consciousness.

Pushkin began working on “Eugene Onegin” back in 1823 in Chisinau, and finished his work in 1831, having spent a total of 7 years, 4 months and 17 days of his life creating the novel. Such long and painstaking work on this work has justified itself. “Eugene Onegin” became the central and perhaps the most outstanding Pushkin creation.

Pushkin himself, when conceiving this work, dreamed of creating a narrative about the fate of the hero, which could become a reflection of the social life of Russian society. The author managed to bring his plan to life, and “Eugene Onegin” became a real panorama of Russian reality of the nineteenth century.

Not a single, even the most inconspicuous, side of the life of Russian society escapes the author’s attention; he turns his attention to literally everything, from the highest society of St. Petersburg to the serfs. Therefore, from the nine chapters of the novel we can easily learn about the social life of that time (theaters, balls, literary societies), and about folk traditions, such as Christmas fortune-telling, and even about which ballerinas were the most famous in those years . The author describes in detail the nature of the places where the novel takes place, paying attention to the change of seasons and the surrounding landscapes.

Such an encyclopedic coverage of reality turned out to be possible thanks to Pushkin’s special, new technique in literature - the presence of the author’s image in the novel. The author-narrator appears here in different persons: he is Onegin’s good friend, and Tatiana’s patron and protector, and a poet, and a witness to the events taking place in the novel. His image helps to expand the scope of the work from the plot to the general historical, making the novel more rich. In addition, the hero’s consciousness cannot accommodate all the versatility of life, therefore it is the author’s comments in lyrical digressions that perform a special function in the creation of the famous “encyclopedia of Russian life.” It is the author who reflects on Russian writers, on romanticism, sentimentalism and classicism, recalls his past, some biographical details of his contemporaries, etc.

Lyrical digressions and detailed descriptions of people's lives make Eugene Onegin a real historical novel. Only instead of famous personalities of that era, ordinary average people act there, who, nevertheless, are worthy of becoming the face of their time. Thus, through lyrical digressions and images of the main characters, we can now imagine in all details the Pushkin era and the people who lived then.

The most striking image in this regard is Eugene Onegin. After all, it was through his example that Pushkin showed “the distinctive features of the youth of the nineteenth century”: “involuntary devotion to dreams, inimitable strangeness, and a sharp, chilled mind.” This image also reflected the tragic fate of the best people of that era - the noble intelligentsia, whose public role began to fade after the Decembrist uprising. The most important sign of the spirit of the times in the work is the mood of the hero - his disappointment, lack of business and purpose in life.

Such a state of a person’s soul was not uncommon in Pushkin’s times. In many ways, such people defined the spirit of this era, becoming its main characteristic. Thus, we can draw the following conclusion: when depicting Onegin, Pushkin draws attention to a pattern characteristic of many of his contemporaries, and shows his entire era in one single image.

The Pushkin era was an interesting and controversial time, but the writer was able to depict it in his novel in all its complexity and versatility. Therefore, it is not in vain that they say that using “Eugene Onegin” you can study the nineteenth century as if from a history textbook.

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There are little things in everyday life, without which much is incomprehensible in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy. This is the history of culture - and there are no trifles in it. Why does Tatyana Larina, who wrote a letter to Onegin, risk her honor? Why did Onegin, not wanting to kill Lensky in a duel, shoot first?...

If the highest manifestation of culture is art, then “everyday culture” is its foundation. A person begins to learn the art of behavior in society from childhood, as his native language, and usually does not realize how huge a number of skills - “words” of this cultural language - he masters. This is a natural way of development. But there are cases when a person must behave in a special way: for example, in a church, at a diplomatic reception or in a palace. This is ritual behavior, and a person learns the rules of such behavior like a foreign language - breaking the “grammar” of this behavior is impossible, even dangerous.

There are times in history when the entire structure of social life changes dramatically, and then even everyday behavior has to be learned as ritual. In Russia, such a sharp turn is associated with the name of Peter I. In his desire to turn the country towards Europe, the Tsar-Transformer introduced foreign customs with an iron hand. Then Paul I banned the wearing of round hats - these fashions came from France, which executed its king, and in Russia were perceived as revolutionary. And Nicholas I persecuted goatees as an unacceptable manifestation of freethinking.

In the 18th century, everyone understood the language of taffeta flies on the face. With their help, high society coquettes could declare their love or show their severity. And the “language of flowers” ​​was copied into albums at the end of the 19th century... All these features of everyday life, separated from us by two centuries, are a foreign language, it requires decoding.

About love [ed. ]

The letters are a wonderful monument to the era. To understand a person, read his letters. The same person writes differently to different people. We build an image not only of the one who writes the letter, but also of the one to whom it is addressed.

Lermontov writes one of his most significant poems, “Valerik,” and begins it with words from Tatyana’s letter. This is not a trifle, but one of the most important cultural phenomena. We are observing one of the most complex universal mechanisms of culture - the creation of the context of an era, we see how a separate work is built into a mosaic of texts.

Tatyana wrote her letter in French: Pushkin explained that “she didn’t know Russian well.” In the 19th century French was the language of heartfelt confessions. Tatyana looked for samples of confession letters from her favorite writers, in French novels. Diaries, albums, letters allow us to imagine with great certainty the people of Pushkin’s time. Thus, Pushkin always wrote letters to women in French.

Time passed. The enthusiastic romanticism of the early 19th century was replaced by a fascination with Byron and his skeptical heroes. Onegin was already laughing at the dreamy Lensky. The young people of the 1820s were unlike their older contemporaries.

So, I'm getting married... [ed. ]

Most people saw borrowed shawls, a new carriage and a pink dressing gown in marriage. Others - a dowry and a sedate life. Still others got married because everyone gets married, and they are already 30 years old.

Marriage is an important step in the life of a young man. Wedding is a sacrament, and divorce was then practically impossible. The girl was considered a bride at the age of fourteen or fifteen. At this age, she was already dancing like an adult at children's balls, where young people came to look for brides for themselves. This was customary among the nobles; and the merchants and officials lived according to the old fashioned way: they entrusted the matchmaker to find the bride, and certainly find out how much her dowry was.

A special story is the weddings of kings and emperors. When the time came to marry or give away the Grand Dukes and Princesses, they looked through all the influential families of foreign countries where suitable grooms or brides could be found, and, in accordance with the need state union, strengthening relations, they sent someone to find out about the mood of this court. Here marriage is a state matter.

Romantics considered feelings the most important condition for a happy marriage. The norm of “romantic” behavior at the beginning of the 19th century was “kidnapping” the bride to mutual pleasure. If everything went as it should, after they “shaked hands,” a conspiracy followed, a dinner with relatives and close friends, at which the engagement was announced. In the remaining time between the agreement and the wedding, on the eve of the church ceremony, the groom said goodbye to his single life by throwing a “stag party,” and the bride had a “bachelorette party.”

After the wedding, family life began. Unfortunately, it is not always successful. In the old days it was very difficult to get a divorce, and therefore most often the spouses, having discovered a complete dissimilarity of characters, simply, as they said then, lived on the road.

When entering into marriage, a serving nobleman was obliged to ask for the highest permission. Serfs had to obtain permission to marry from their mistress.

Duels [ed. ]

Until the end of the 17th century, Russia did not know anything like this. Duels entered Russian reality in Peter's times. In the “Military Article” of Peter I, a chapter “Patent on duels and starting quarrels” appeared. The Russian emperor banned duels: only the tsar could control the lives of his subjects and judge them.

Peter's decrees were not repealed either during the time of Alexander I or under Nicholas I, but they were never executed. The duelist was sentenced to death, and then the execution was replaced by demotion to soldier and exile - most often to the Caucasus, “under the bullets of the highlanders.” However, in the eyes of society, a person with such a story looked like a hero, and young ladies fell in love with young sufferers, who, in the words of Lermontov’s Pechorin, “underneath a thick overcoat beats a passionate and noble heart.”

A duel is not a fight or a murder. The duel of honor was based on compliance with the strict rules of the dueling code. A person's behavior during a duel, as on the battlefield, gave him the reputation of a brave man or a coward.

At different times, the attitude towards the duel changed. The fight is a protest against the oppressed position of the human person, proof that there are values ​​that are more valuable than life itself and are not subject to the state - honor, human dignity.

Parade [ed. ]

The parade is the daily changing of the guard. In Catherine’s time, this was a corporal’s job, but Paul I himself was present at the ceremony every day and observed the thoroughness of the bearing, the orderliness of the ranks and the accuracy of the execution of commands. Officers, going to the morning divorce every day, said goodbye to their loved ones and put a wallet with money in their bosom, so that in case of unexpected exile they would not be left without a penny.

The entire life of the state was under the vigilant control of the emperor. Even at home, in private life, citizens felt like they were under a glass bell. With the end of the era of Paul I, the parades did not stop immediately.

The parade instilled in a person the spirit of obedience and destroyed the individual. An army trained for parade was not fit for war. History has cruelly proven that life is different from the parade, and yet during at least three reigns - Paul, Alexander and Nicholas - the sovereigns sought to build Russia “in front” to make it easier to manage a huge empire. Military settlements were even invented, when entire villages were given up as soldiers, and the peasants themselves had to support the army and work in the fields together with their whole family...

And the ball shines in all its glory[ed. ]

A ball is a special event in the life of a person in the 19th century. For a young girl who has just begun to be taken out into the world, this is a reason for excitement: there they will see her in a beautiful ballroom dress, and there will be a lot of light, and she will dance, and then everyone will know how light and graceful she is... I remember Natasha Rostova’s first ball .

Ball is a magical time. Despite the strict order, the ball allowed for a lot of options, unexpected turns, and the longer it lasted, the more freedom, the more fun the dancing.

The ball season began in late autumn and flared up in winter, when the capital's nobles returned from their estates, and the local nobles, having completed field work, trudged in whole carts to Moscow with their adult daughters for the “bride fair”.

The ball was always opened by the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess with a minuet, after them the courtiers and guard officers no lower than a colonel danced. The second dance at the ball was often the quadrille, which sometimes took the place of the first ceremonial polonaise. After the polonaise and quadrille, it was time for the waltz. The main dance of the ball was the mazurka. The ball ended with a cotillion - a kind of quadrille, which was danced to the tune of a waltz, a dance-game, the most relaxed and playful.

Masquerade [ed. ]

In 1830, public balls and masquerades opened for the first time in Russia. It was not difficult to get into them; you just had to buy a ticket and have a fancy dress.

Masquerade is emancipation, a game in which everything impossible became possible. This is the breaking down of all barriers of class and property, this is a break from an endlessly normalized life. The mask made everyone equal. Here a society lady could dance with a petty official who would never be accepted in her house, and a famous dandy could flirt with a lady of the demimonde. Due to promiscuity, it was believed that a decent woman had no place at a masquerade, but the temptation was too great. Women were attracted to risky adventures.

Like any game, the masquerade had its own rules and its own so-called playing space and time. Masquerades took place from Christmastide to Lent (during Lent all public entertainment was stopped, only philharmonic concerts of serious music were allowed); their space was the ballrooms, decorated in a special way for the occasion. The rules allowed only those who came in masks and costumes to participate in the celebration.

The custom of meeting New Year in public masquerade established itself in Russia in the 18th century, especially during the reign of Catherine II. Like balls, masquerades began at six o'clock and ended after midnight. During the holiday, the mask became a substitute for personality. The person was freed, played the role that he liked. Therefore, the choice of mask was especially important. But, like any game, the masquerade ended, the tired participants took off their masks and returned to their usual activities.

In theater seats[ed. ]

In Russia, theater in the sense as we understand it appeared quite late. The daughter of Peter I, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, was a big fan of performances. She not only invited the Italian troupe, but also demanded that all courtiers attend the theater, and officials pledged to be present at all performances. In Catherine's time, the Russian public already willingly attended performances.

In Pushkin's time, theater was loved passionately. It became a kind of club, performances were attended daily. Young people were attracted by the magical world of the wings, the charm of ballet, and the majestic beauty of tragedy. A special festive life unfolded around the young actresses and the theater school, full of eroticism and brave adventurism.

The artists were not presented with bouquets, wreaths, or gifts, only on the next day of the benefit performance a gift was sent to the house from the sovereign: the first artists - a diamond ring, the artists - earrings or a clasp (a necklace made of precious stones or a clasp for such a necklace). The fashion for bringing bouquets and gifts was introduced by foreign dancers who appeared on the St. Petersburg stage.

Ballet flourished during Pushkin's time. Charles (Karl) Louis Didelot, the “high priest of choreography,” was invited to the Russian stage at the end of the 18th century and dominated the theater at the end of the 1819s.

The theater shaped the viewer. The tragic actress Ekaterina Semyonova created majestic images of heroines, and Istomina made young hearts beat faster with her entrancing dance. Yu. I. Lotman wrote that only in the mirrors of art do we find the true face of a person of that era.

In an old house [ed. ]

A man lives in a house. The fashions of his time, his lifestyle, his social affiliation - everything is reflected in the way he dresses, the way his home looks. For mid-19th centuries, damask wallpaper is a sign of the old times, and in the 1800s it was the most fashionable. During the time of Catherine, Chinese fashions from Europe penetrated into Russia, and “Chinese” rooms and pavilions began to appear in palaces.

Ordinary city or village houses were uniform. A low staircase was usually made in an extension, the whole half of which was further divided in two for two latrines - the master's and the lackey's. In the hall there was a table in the corner, on it a camisole or underwear was laid out, which was being cut, sewn or mended; in another corner they were sewing soles for boots.

Then followed a suite of three rooms: a hall (aka dining room) with four windows, a living room with three and a sofa with two windows. The bedroom, dressing room and girls' room looked into the courtyard, and the children's room was located on the mezzanine. The office was located next to the buffet.

The interior decoration was also almost the same everywhere. Thrift was evident in the preservation of the furniture - the upholstery, chintz or faded morocco, was protected with covers made of thick linen.

In St. Petersburg the houses were completely different. These were not even houses, but palaces; the richest people owned them. Petty officials settled on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, renting rooms in small one-story houses somewhere on Okhta, Kolomna or Peski.

Noble nests[ed. ]

Most Russian writers were born and spent their childhood on estates. For us, the name of Lermontov is forever associated with Tarkhany, Leo Tolstoy with Yasnaya Polyana, and Turgenev with Spassky-Lutovinov. The roots of this phenomenon must be sought in Russian history.

Peter I forced the nobles to serve by issuing a special decree about this. The well-born and those who wanted to make a career flocked to St. Petersburg, to the court. The estates turned out to be abandoned, only elderly people remained there. Peter III allowed the nobles to decide for themselves whether to serve or stay on the estates. Under Catherine, a non-serving nobleman aroused suspicion - it was opposition, an open challenge. Therefore, young people were enlisted in the regiment - they had to serve for at least several years.

One of those who willingly retired was Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov, later a famous master of gardening, the author of wonderful memoirs.

The architecture of manor buildings remained very simple for a long time. The windows of the hall and living room overlooked the garden. The garden and park were mandatory components of the estate. If they were not there, if the estate did not make jam and did not treat people with their own apples, this was perceived as a deviation from the norm. Rich families spent the summer in the countryside, and for the winter went to the city - either to the province, or to the capital.

Patriarchal life inevitably became a thing of the past. A.P. Chekhov felt sorry for the cherry orchards that were cut down in old estates...

In the cabin [ed. ]

The salon began when, on an announced day, without a special invitation, a certain group of people gathered to talk, exchange opinions, and play music. Such meetings did not include cards, feasts, or dancing. Traditionally, the salon was formed around a woman - she brought that atmosphere of intellectual coquetry and grace that created the indescribable atmosphere of the salon.

In Moscow, the house of Princess Volkonskaya was an elegant gathering place for all the remarkable personalities of modern society. Representatives of high society, dignitaries and beauties, youth and mature age, people of intellectual work - professors, writers, journalists, poets, artists - united here.

Musician, poetess, artist, Zinaida Volkonskaya was comprehensively gifted and well educated. She mastered the difficult art of being a salon hostess - she knew how to organize a casual conversation, structure an evening in such a way that it seemed to everyone that it was a complete improvisation. Here, serious music coexisted with played charades, poetry with epigrams and jokes.

Each salon was distinguished by its selection of visitors, its “character”. If they came to Princess Volkonskaya to enjoy music and poetry, and at Delvig’s a society of literary friends gathered, then in the St. Petersburg houses of Elizaveta Mikhailovna Khitrovo and her daughter, Countess Fikelmon, the wife of a diplomat, a high-society political salon gathered.

In N. M. Karamzin’s salon, the French language was prohibited from the very beginning. With the death of Nikolai Mikhailovich in 1826, the Karamzin salon did not stop. His daughter Sofya Nikolaevna became the owner of the salon together with Ekaterina Andreevna, the writer’s widow. Anna Fedorovna Tyutcheva, the daughter of a poet and maid of honor of the Empress, recalled that for twenty years or more, E. A. Karamzina’s salon was one of the most attractive places in St. Petersburg social life, a true oasis of literary and intellectual interests among the brilliant and lush, but little spiritualized St. Petersburg Sveta.

In the years 1839-1849, salons increasingly turned into literary circles. They became a sign of the new time, the time of thick magazines and democratic circles.

Epiphany frosts are crackling...[ed. ]

The wonderful Russian artist Dobuzhinsky recalled the Christmas tree in home. She and her father made many of the Christmas tree decorations themselves in advance: they gilded and silvered walnuts, cut out baskets for sweets from colored paper and glued multi-colored paper chains. Some bonbonnieres and decorations were preserved for the next year. Ruddy apples, mint and Vyazma gingerbread were hung on threads. The tree itself was always up to the ceiling and filled the apartment with a pine smell for a long time.

The custom of decorating a Christmas tree came to us from ancient times. Gifts were placed under the tree for each family member, and a candle was supposed to burn during Christmas dinner. Both dinner and gifts - all this was supposed to provide the family with a prosperous year and a well-fed life.

With the onset of Christmas, fasting ended and the fun time of Christmastide began - dressing up, masquerades, Christmas fortune-telling. The time from Christmas to Epiphany was full of significant events. A week after Christmas, New Year began - according to the old style. Peter I issued a decree in which it was ordered that the next day after December 31, 7208 from the creation of the world, be considered January 1, 1700. All Muscovites were instructed to celebrate this event with special solemnity. Russia entered a new century together with Europe - the 18th century began.

The evening before Epiphany - Christmas Eve. That evening the girls wondered about their fate. The holiday of Epiphany or Epiphany was celebrated in Russia very solemnly. The cycle of Christmas holidays ended with Epiphany. They ended with Maslenitsa. A cheerful rite of farewell to winter was the burning of an effigy of Maslenitsa. Spring was coming - the forty days of Lent. The last days of Holy Week were distinguished by Easter and Easter cakes.

In the Masonic lodge[ed. ]

The Brotherhood of Freemasons, which Pierre Bezukhov, one of the main characters in Leo Tolstoy's epic War and Peace, was offered to join, is a Masonic order. The Masons were a worldwide secret brotherhood whose goal was to lead humanity to achieve heaven on earth, the kingdom of Astraea. This goal could not be achieved through revolutions; there was only one way - the voluntary self-improvement of each person. The ritual of admission to membership in the Masonic lodge is described in detail and accurately by Tolstoy.

Not trusting their ideas to paper, the Masons widely used symbols - secret signs, rings, carpets. Freemasonry of the 18th-19th centuries is a very complex phenomenon. Many books have been written about him, but even the greatest experts in Freemasonry admitted that it is impossible to know him.

For a man of Pushkin's time, Freemasonry is not just a game. Freemasons argued that Freemasonry is the education of adults. It was not for nothing that Pushkin joined the Chisinau Masonic Lodge. Almost all Decembrists were Freemasons. Thus, Freemasonry is a significant fact of the culture of Pushkin’s time.

Bookstores [ed. ]

At the beginning of the 19th century, most bookstores were open; they were attached to the Apraksin market in St. Petersburg, near the walls of St. Basil's in Moscow. Catherine II allowed the establishment of private, so-called free printing houses - unanimity was destroyed, the book market in Russia expanded.

Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov, who arrived in Moscow, rented the printing house of Moscow University. In two years, from a run-down establishment with outdated machines, he made it the best in Russia. An educated man with good taste, Novikov published educational literature, translated novels, dictionaries, and historical works. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin began his writing career at the Novikova Printing Company (as a translator).

There were no public libraries in Russia in Pushkin's time. Novikov seems to have been the first to establish a reading library in Moscow.

Pushkin knew the St. Petersburg bookseller and publisher Ilya Ivanovich Glazunov well. The poet visited his shop in Gostiny Dvor almost every day. Glazunov opened his reading library in 1824.

In Pushkin's time, booksellers ceased to be just merchants and traders - they became intermediaries between the writer and the public, disseminators of education. In the 1830s, the star of bookseller and publisher Alexander Filippovich Smirdin rose in St. Petersburg. Smirdin's shop on Nevsky Prospekt became a real writers' club.

As mentioned above, in the first decade of the century the leading genre in Russian literature was poetry. In the poems of the Decembrist poets - Ryleev, Odoevsky, Kuchelbecker - the pathos of high citizenship sounds, the themes of the homeland and service to society are raised. After the defeat of the Decembrists (1825), pessimism increased in literature, but there was no decline in creativity. It should be recalled that Pushkin was the creator of the Russian literary language. It is right to say that before Pushkin in Russia there was no literature worthy of the attention of Europe in terms of depth and diversity equal to the achievements of European creativity. The poet bequeathed to his descendants: “It is not only possible, but also necessary to be proud of the glory of your ancestors... Respect for the past is the feature that distinguishes education from savagery...”.

Even during the life of A.S. Pushkin began to gain wide popularity N.V. Gogol . Gogol’s acquaintance with Pushkin took place in 1831, and at the same time “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” was published in St. Petersburg in two parts, which delighted Pushkin. The first printed form of The Inspector General appeared in 1836. In the writer’s works, the recreation of the truth and color of life was accompanied by witty satire and exposure of autocratic orders. He took over the creative literary baton from the genius Pushkin Mikhail Yurjevich Lermontov . Pushkin's death in a duel with Dantes revealed Lermontov to the Russian public in all the strength of his poetic talent. The poem “The Death of a Poet,” which circulated in manuscripts, and other poetic works of the poet aroused hatred towards their author from the “crowd standing at the throne,” which partly predetermined his early death in a duel with Nikolai Martynov - great poet did not live ten years to Pushkin's age.
It should be remembered that the work of M.Yu. Lermontov took place during the reign of the emperor Nicholas I (1825-1855), which are considered "the apogee of autocracy". One of the primary tasks of Nicholas I’s internal political course was to strengthen the police-bureaucratic administrative apparatus and strengthen the personal power of the autocrat. However, as we see from the example of M.Yu. Lermontov, as well as a whole galaxy of patriotic writers - Tyutchev, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, and appeared only at the beginning of his writing career Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin – this century also became the apogee of Russian classical literature. Historical facts indicate that already in the middle of the 19th century the growing global significance of Russian culture became increasingly clear.

"Silver Age" of Russian culture

(late 19th - early 20th century)

The “golden age” of Russian culture was replaced by
"silver Age" . In the history of Russian culture, the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries is usually called the “Silver Age”. The “Silver Age” took shape at the turn of the century. This period did not last long, only about twenty years, but it gave the world wonderful examples of philosophical thought, demonstrated the life and melody of poetry, resurrected the ancient Russian icon, gave impetus to new directions in painting, music, theatrical art, and became a time of formation
Russian avant-garde . The feeling of lack of demand, unfulfillment, often accompanying avant-garde artists, enhances their characteristic drama, disharmony with the world, which they carry within themselves and express in the intonations of loneliness and the tragedy of everything that happens.

In the accepted chronology the beginning Russian avant-garde scientists date back to 1900-1910. The main trend characteristic of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was synthesis of all arts . In literature, which continued to play an extremely important role in cultural life countries, this trend was expressed in the transition from realism to symbolism . Dmitry Merezhkovsky declared three main elements of new art: mystical content, symbols and expansion of artistic impressionability.
“In the life of a symbolist, everything is a symbol. There are no symbols,” she wrote Marina Tsvetaeva. In 1900, the younger symbolists - A.A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others began to seek healing from the ills of decadence in spiritually-religious, moral-aesthetic and universal ideals, trying to combine public interests with personal ones. It is in their work that the artistic method of the Symbolists receives an objective-idealistic interpretation. The material world is just a mask, through which another world of the spirit shines through. Images of masks and masquerade constantly flash in the poetry and prose of the Symbolists. The material world is depicted as something chaotic, illusory, as a lower reality compared to the world of ideas and entities. Russian symbolism adopted a number of aesthetic and philosophical attitudes from the West, refracting them through the teaching
Vladimir Solovyov "about the soul of the world." Russian poets experienced with painful intensity the problem of personality and history in their “mysterious connection” with eternity, with the essence of the universal “world process”. For them, the inner world of a person is an indicator of the general tragic state of the world, including the “terrible world” of Russian reality, doomed to destruction, a resonator of natural historical elements, a receptacle of prophetic forebodings of imminent renewal.

Russian fiction of the first decade is characterized by not just symbolism. During the years of the first Russian revolution there arose urban poetry . This is mass poetry, close to the urban “lower classes”: the authors are often their own, workers. The poems are clear and specific, this is a kind of response to real events. Proletarian poetry is permeated with revolutionary appeals, and this also corresponds to the spirit of the Russian proletariat. Poems were published in many magazines, in particular in the journal of legal Marxism “Life”, which became widespread and reached thirteen thousand copies. The “Sreda” community and the literary department of “Life” have prepared the creation of a broad association of writers around the publishing house of the partnership "Knowledge" headed by Maxim Gorky . Since 1904, collections of the partnership began to be published in huge circulations of up to 80 thousand copies at that time. The mass reader's literary taste was developing, and the culture of this period had significant educational potential, and an entire system of self-education was developed.

The years of post-revolutionary reaction were characterized in Russian artistic consciousness by the mood of pessimism of the so-called "renunciation". The creative path was the most difficult Leonida Andreeva , who became one of the recognized leaders decadence , but retaining the spirit of protest against capitalist relations that depersonalize people.

Russian literature found a way out in the emergence of a “neorealistic” style that did not have clear external signs. Along with the reviving realism, new forms arose romanticism. This was especially evident in poetry. A new creative upsurge was characteristic of I. Bunina , became a true masterpiece "Garnet bracelet"
A. Kuprina . The search for new forms of expression of the inner world of man was embodied in two new symbolic movements: acmeism and futurism .

Acmeism (Greek - the highest level of something, blooming power), received a certain theoretical justification in the articles N. Gumileva “The legacy of symbolism is acmeism”, S. Gorodetsky “Some trends in modern Russian poetry”, O. Mandelstam "Morning of Acmeism ", A. Akhmatova,
M. Zenkevich, G. Ivanov, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva. Having united in the group “Workshop of Poets”, they joined the magazine “Apollo”, contrasted the mystical aspirations of symbolism towards the “unknowable” with the “element of nature”, declared a concrete sensory perception of the “material world”, returning the word to its basic, original meaning. Already in the first decade of the twentieth century there were so many poets in Russia that the nineteenth century. compared to the 20th century it may seem “deserted”.
By the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, new major Russian and future Soviet poets and prose writers began to enter literature:
V.V. Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, A.A. Akhmatova, M.V. Tsvetaeva,
A. Tolstoy and others. Symbolism was replaced by other literary movements during this period. The features of symbolism appeared in such different, competing directions as those mentioned above futurism, acmeism, as well as new peasant poetry, the best representative of which was the amazing poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin . A special type of worldview renaissance man twentieth century manifested itself not only in literature, but also in fine arts. The artists of the circle turned out to be especially closely associated with symbolism "World of Art". In the decorative and applied field of research, the “World of Art” showed two trends: one of them came from Abramtsevo, the estate Savva Mamontov , where in the 80s many artists worked on the revival of Russian icons and Russian antiquity. Similar work was carried out on the princess's estate M. Tenisheva , in the Smolensk province. Another trend was the search for a modern style - Art Nouveau style . Within the framework of this style, arose constructivism.

In 1906, the World of Art circle united in the name of the main goal - to glorify Russian art in the West. Famous cultural figure of that era Sergei Diaghilev finds use for his talent as an organizer - he organizes an exhibition in Paris "Two centuries of Russian painting and sculpture" . In this exhibition, along with artists of the 18th century, the most significant masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were also widely represented. Thus began the conquest of Paris - the heart of the cultural life of Europe - by Russian art. In 1907, Parisians were introduced to Russian music. The success of the program of five concerts of contemporary Russian music is greatly facilitated by the participation of the composers themselves: Sergei Rachmaninov , Nikolai Rimsky – Korsakov and others.
It can be argued that "Diaghilev Seasons" The years 1909-1911 became outstanding events in world artistic life. Russian art influences the formation of a new artistic culture. In the second decade of the twentieth century, many artistic groups emerged. In 1910, in Moscow, in the premises of the literary and artistic circle on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, an exhibition was opened "Jack of Diamonds" , in which they took part

P. Konchalovsky, M. Larionov , N. Goncharova , A. Lentulov, R. Falk – “leftist” representatives of the fine arts. Joined them futurists And cubists. M.F. Larionov organized special exhibitions - “Donkey’s Tail”, “Target”. In 1913, he published the newspaper "Luchism" - a manifesto of abstract art. During these same years, the first true pioneers of abstractionism worked: V. Kandinsky, K. Malevich, V. Tatlin. They created trends that have become widespread in history. foreign art 20-30s of the twentieth century: abstractionism (Kandinsky), Suprematism (Malevich), constructivism (Tatlin).
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, new architectural styles appeared: modern, new Russian style, neoclassicism. Architects saw architectural truth in the organic connection between “ building material, design and form." There is also a trend here
to the synthesis of arts: elements of painting are introduced into architecture,
sculptures. Showcase their outstanding innovative abilities
V.M. Vasnetsov, M.A. Vrubel, A.N. Benoit, I.E. Grabar, S.V. Milyutin, A.S. Golubkina and other artists.

Despite the fact that the Russian avant-garde, like the Western one, gravitated towards asociality, towards the absolutization of the creative “I”, however, the Russian socio-cultural soil silver age affected the work of avant-garde artists. This is the tragedy of “muteness” (“Black Square” by K. Malevich) and the metaphysical search for a new religious consciousness. The tasks of the avant-garde are to express "spiritual absolutes" in forms corresponding to the depths of the psyche of a changing person - an individual located on the edge of a familiar, somewhat outdated world. Hence, perhaps, the desire for a synthesis of the arts of the future, for their new coexistence. Everything served this purpose sign system artistic culture of the Silver Age.
Russian cultural history of this period is the result of a complex and enormous journey. In the development of social consciousness, art and literature of that era, many directions, trends, circles arose and existed, most of of which turned out to be very unstable. This, in particular, confirmed the idea of ​​the collapse of culture, its end.
The feeling of the need for a fundamentally new scientific and artistic interpretation of reality has become universal in the public consciousness. Here are religious and philosophical quests, and a new type of person, the beginning of the philosophy of non-violence, and the creation new type of culture .

The period of “transitional” cultures is always dramatic, and always complex and contradictory. A characteristic feature of this era is cosmologism . The cosmology of Russian culture is formed as an urgent need of the time, as an expression of a general anxious mood.
In the philosophy of this period, cosmologism is formalized theoretically: it is inherent V. Solovyov, N. Fedorov, V. Rozanov, N. Lossky . The cosmic orientation formed the basis of the search for Russian poetry (V. Bryusov,
A. Bely, A. Blok) , new directions of Russian painting ( M. Vrubel ) and Russian music ( A. Scriabin ). A new type of culture is being formed based on criticism: spiritual culture is built on the foundation of rethought experiences of both distant and very close years.

At the intersection of cultures, a characteristic feature of Russian psychology finds its ultimate expression - religiosity , including simultaneously according to words
A.P. Krasavina and “militant atheism.” The main thing in the formation of a new type of culture is faith, not reason . Therefore, in Russia they are not just looking for new values, new ideals - they are looking for values ​​of eternity, “absolute goodness”, "eternal and imperishable beauty", ahistorical wisdom.
The unsurpassed, brilliant intellectualism of the generalizations of the philosophy of the new Renaissance was not adequately appreciated either by compatriots or the general Western public of that period, although it gave a new direction to the culture, philosophy, and ethics of Russia and the West, anticipating existentialism, philosophy of history, and modern theology.

Let's also say that many Russian writers of the beginning of the century turned to dramaturgy . This is natural: the theater attracts a huge audience, it is in the prime of its strength and capabilities.
On the stage of the young Art Theater plays are staged L. Tolstoy , A. Chekhov, M. Gorky . “Children of Vanyushin” are enjoying success
S. Naydenova , dramas L. Andreeva , S. Yushkevich . The beginning of the revolutionary upsurge was marked by the desire to institutionalize the unity of realist writers. Created in 1899 in Moscow N. Teleshov literary community "Wednesday" became one of the centers of such unity. Members of the community became Bunin, Serafimovich, Veresaev, Gorky, Andreev. Sreda meetings were attended by Chekhov, Korolenko, Mamin-Sibiryak, Chaliapin, Levitan, Vasnetsov .

Russian modernism- a natural phenomenon caused by deep processes of Russian culture. Questions of the further development of Russian literature were ripening, fundamentally concentrated on three problems: attitude to the traditions of Russian literature, determination of the novelty of content and form, determination of a general aesthetic worldview. A need was formed, in words Valeria Bryusova , "find a guiding star in the fog."

Representatives of the creative intelligentsia, subjecting pre-existing artistic principles to critical reflection, looked for other ways to explore the world. Some believed that they could gain a direct, uncomplicated view of nature. Neglecting the analysis of social relations, they discovered "quiet poetry of everyday life". Others concentrated the intensity of feelings and passions of people of the new century in an artistic image. For many, the premonition was embodied in symbols that gave rise to complex associations. All these were different ways to comprehend the world, to reveal the artistic truth in it, to recognize the essence behind the phenomenon, to see the universal behind the small.

The “Silver Age” is rightly called the time of the “great synthesis”, when art was comprehended as a single whole. The combination of different artistic languages ​​made it possible to perceive the figurative content of the synthetic work from different sides and from different angles. The ideal of the time is the artist of the universal type, and the ideal of the fusion of art is the theater. It was in the theater that, according to various cultural figures, it was possible to achieve the long-desired unity, the synthesis of art. Theatricalization permeates all the work of artists of this time. Game, fantasy - all this became so close to the work of many artists of this period. The fascination with the theatrical “harlequinade” and the mask is a typical phenomenon in music, literature, theater, and painting. Images - masks, dolls, puppets - cross-cutting characters in creativity I. Stravinsky, A. Blok, K. Somov .

Let's sum it up summary: the artistic culture of the “Silver Age” is contradictory and multifaceted. The nature and multifaceted nature of poetic quests and artistic culture in general were significantly influenced by the historical reality between the two revolutions (1905-1917). In all types and genres of culture, rejection of the surrounding reality, bourgeois culture and civilization, a radical denial of the orders of the modern world and intuitive anticipation of the coming of a new time. The sense of time in various forms permeates the entire artistic culture of this period.
It can be said without exaggeration that the achievements of Russian art of the “Silver Age” have global significance. Literature, painting, sculpture, theater and music became a kind of prologue to the art of the 20th century, reflecting, as if in a mirror, the contradictions and complexities of the culture of the new era.

The current is strong in the heart and brain
The high system of the past era,
What's wrong with modernity?
I can't reconcile.
A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov, 1898
In 1926, Ivan Bunin wrote, not without irony: “In general, I’ve been wondering for a long time: where does such interest in Pushkin come from in recent decades, what does “new” Russian literature have in common with Pushkin, is it possible to imagine anything more opposite than it - and Pushkin, that is, the embodiment of simplicity, nobility, freedom, health, intelligence, tact, measure, taste?” (1) And across the page, remembering his mother and his childhood years with their belonging to the “native world (...) of his fathers and grandfathers and all their distant days, Pushkin’s days..." (2), he himself answered: “For my childhood, adolescent dreams, nothing could be more beautiful, more poetic than her youth and the world where she grew up, where in the estates there was There are so many wonderful albums with Pushkin’s poems, and how could I not adore Pushkin, and not just adore him as a poet, but also, as it were, his own, ours!”(3)
In fact, at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, Pushkin’s time for the first time occupied the highest level in the national historical and cultural hierarchy and, as a result, turned out to be one of the dominant artistic culture 1900 - 1910s. There are many reasons for this. Then Russian social thought, in fact, for the first time, acquired the necessary time perspective in order to take a more detached and unbiased look at the culture and literature of its golden age (this name was born just then), and evaluate their original power and universal significance. In addition to a certain historical perspective, which made it possible to generalize the past and necessary for the birth of any retrospective aspiration, Pushkin’s era was attractive for its internal stability, especially important for the enlightened man of the Silver Age. The surrounding reality gave little reason for confidence in the future - the famine of 1891 and 1898, the Khodynka disaster of 1896, student riots and demonstrations of the 1890-1900s, the bloody and lost Russian-Japanese War of 1904, and finally, the revolutionary unrest of 1905-1906 . with considerable sacrifices. In this tragic chain of events, Russian self-consciousness inevitably lost the strength of its foundations.
For the further full life of Russian culture, it needed an antithesis to chaos and destruction - its own timeless guidelines, ideals, a kind of cultural absolute. The choice was unconditional and impeccable - they were Pushkin and high culture his time. In the perception of the generation I.A. Bunin, Pushkin, his younger contemporaries and the era itself were examples of true harmony, since such was seen only in “that which did not have a direct connection with the historical moment, in which there was no anxiety, “looking into the future,” the tension of open struggle, baring of the soul ."(4)
Pushkin's poems and prose, for the most part very far from modern political problems, spoke to the Russian heart perhaps about the most necessary things - about love, honor, speech, death, about the beauty of Russian nature. “We loved according to Pushkin and suffered according to Dostoevsky,” the writer Mikhail Osorgin would later write about his youth at the turn of the century.(5)
In the bright genius of the poet, the national consciousness saw the embodiment of the long-sought and unsuccessfully sought compromise of “Great Russian, Russian and Russian.” (6) In his work, contemporaries of the turn of the century were attracted by the absolute freedom from the wary isolation and orthodox narcissism of any nationalist movements. At the same time, the “openness” of Pushkin’s muse and the poet’s assimilation of a vast layer of classical Western European culture did not deprive his creations of deep patriotism and national identity. Thanks to this quality, Pushkin (followed by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) became, in the words of G.P. Fedotov, the true “crown bearer of the Russian people” (7)
The appeal to Pushkin's time, which at first glance affected only literature and fine arts, was a consequence of global ideological shifts in Russian culture as a whole. Paradoxically, the discovery at the turn of the century of the charm of Pushkin's era was closely connected with the artistic worldview of symbolism (8), which established itself in the late 1880s and lasted until the 1910s. It is impossible to explain this fact only by passeist aspirations or by the general programmatic cultural polyphony of the era. In addition, the frankly retrospective Russian neoclassicism of the 1900-1910s - a direct embodiment of the aesthetics of Pushkin's time - had no direct analogues in art Western Europe. This means only one thing - this phenomenon had purely Russian roots. Let's try to identify them. Symbolism, which affirmed the primacy of creativity over knowledge, and for the first time unconditionally bowed its knees not to works of art, but to their creators, created a special image of the person of art. A solitary artist, deep in dialogue with himself, living as if outside the vulgar and boring everyday life, sometimes possessing strange habits, quirks and weaknesses, but soaring above reality in moments of inspiration, appeared before his contemporaries as a new prophet. During these moments, suddenly illuminating the abysses of human consciousness, the era, it would seem, forgave him everything, even seeing in his vices a manifestation of his gift. Pushkin did not really fit this demonic image, but he was a genius, and therefore it is no coincidence that it was from the era of symbolism that all the vicissitudes of his life became the focus of public attention.
The worldview of Symbolism was distinguished not only by reverence for the artist and refined poetic dreams, but also by clear apocalyptic motives, premonitions of the death of culture, that everything was imminent. Lena disaster. The most serious philosophical developments were refracted in such emotional coloring of the art of the era of symbolism. These years became a time of radical analytical revaluation of the entire cultural history of mankind; there was a rejection of the previously unshakable idea of ​​progressive social development, which was previously a source of social optimism throughout the entire modern era. By the beginning of the era, the ideas of N.Ya. Danilevsky, the now recognized predecessor of Spengler and Toynbee, who first formulated the concept of the cultural and historical age of peoples, had already been made public; at the turn of the century, the social philosophy of S.L. Frank, the ideas of K. Leontiev, and the visionary writings of A. Bogdanov, who painted a picture of the death of civilization due to exhaustion, appeared natural resources and degradation of culture.
A unique philosophical result of the era of symbolism can be called the famous book by O. Spengler “The Decline of Europe” (9) (published in 1918-1922), as we know, which determined civilization and the final stage of any culture and thus predicted the end of Western European culture. Treating this phase as an obvious decadence and degeneration, he listed its characteristic features - emasculated philosophy, the displacement of religion by atheism, the replacement of spirituality with practical intellect, the transformation of money into a universal value, the movement of life into a “world city”, the loss of a living connection with the earth, the dominance of animal passions and sensuality in art. The philosopher built this quite recognizable series on the example of Hellenic culture, which was replaced by the barbaric, in his opinion, Roman civilization. However, it is not difficult to discover its complete identity with the cultural situation in Russia at the turn of the century, which was collectively called decadence by its contemporaries. Spengler's enumeration could well serve as a characterization of the main themes of Russian literary and philosophical essayism at the turn of the century.
The appearance in Russian culture of apocalyptic motifs similar to Western European ones is symptomatic. According to Spengler, every culture passes into the stage of civilization after a corresponding revaluation of values; bitterness itself about the decline of one’s culture is already a clear sign of its decadence. The 19th century turned out to be amazingly capacious for Russia in its historical, cultural and aesthetic-philosophical results - it was then that Russian culture finally managed to master the full range of problems characteristic of Western Europe and from this new ideological frontier turn to its own cultural and historical essence. Exaggerating the process somewhat, D.S. Merezhkovsky wrote: “For eight centuries from the beginning of Russia to Peter we slept; century from Peter to Pushkin we woke up, in half a century from Pushkin to L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky we woke up and experienced three millennia of Western European humanity. The spirit is breathtaking from this speed, similar to the speed of a stone flying into the abyss.” (10) The relative synchronization that occurred with the European cultural process (we emphasize - only cultural) transformed the era of Russian symbolism during the tragic “premonition of civilization,” using O. Spengler’s term.
Russian symbolism is dualistic, outwardly very close to the Western European worldview; it had deep national roots, determined by the usual hierarchy of values, traditions of culture, life and language. In this aspect, the emotional feeling of loss, impending catastrophe, and approaching abyss were not a groundless abstraction. In Russia in those years, global changes in the interpretation of the fundamental concepts of national mentality - space and time - were clearly visible for the first time.
For Russia, classified by A. Toynbee as a traditional society, space has always been comparable to Space. “A person of a traditional society, seeing the world as the Cosmos, experiences not just fascination, for him the universe has holiness. In modern society (the author means Western Europe - M.N.) the world is rational (desacralized, devoid of holiness (...) Feeling the world as Cosmos, a person feels like in a cozy home, for the well-being of which he is responsible. (.. .) It is the holiness of the world and the inclusion of man in it that gives rise to a common ethic in a traditional society.”(11) The original sacredness of the surrounding world, characteristic of the Russian worldview, actually shaped the space of Russia, the Russian landscape, which has always had a powerful attractive force for the heart and mind .
By in the words of D,s Likhacheva: “Wide space has always possessed the hearts of Russians. It resulted in concepts and ideas that do not exist in other languages. How, for example, does will differ from freedom? Because free will is freedom combined with space, with unobstructed space. (...) Russian culture has long considered freedom and space to be the greatest aesthetic and ethical blessing for man.”(12) These words reveal the “blood” connection between Russian man and nature, which he feels at the same time as the embodiment and grandiose miraculous work of the Creator, full of divine harmony, a connection that Russian culture, including modern times, reflected in many literary monuments. Such is the nature of Pushkin, who in his own way reflected the infinity of the Russian land, the infinity of space towering above it, the poetry of the simple. The world before his eyes is a prototype of the universe, subject to the universal laws of life.
The interpretation of time, set by the Sun, Moon, changes of seasons, field work, remained unchanged for centuries in Russia - time was cyclical and not divided into equal segments.”(13) Life was determined by sunset and sunrise, rains or droughts, harvests or under-delivery. These natural cyclic coordinates were incomparably more important than the direct final course of each individual life. It is easy to find analogies for this understanding in antiquity - as is known, for the ancient world, clocks remained an insignificant detail of everyday life. In the XVIII - first half of the XIX century. The main place where the educated part of Russian society spent several months (often more than six months) annually was the estate. Children were usually born here, their childhood passed, and the life path of the older generation of the family, who found their last refuge in the family estates, often ended here.
So, in the era of symbolism in Russia, a holistic figurative picture of the world, rooted in ancient times and having a certain ethnic and geographical reference, was irrevocably replaced by a rational one - dispersed, mosaic, composed as a collage of rather random concepts and patterns of different cultures. Signs of these fundamental ideological changes are easy to find in literature and journalism at the turn of the century. In this situation, it was necessary to find one’s own point of reference, to designate a certain constant of Russian existence - this turned out to be the era of Pushkino, which attracted people with its ethical and cultural integrity, the loss of which was so painfully felt in the aesthetics of symbolism. Looking into Pushkin's time and trying to comprehend the secrets of its harmony gave hope for the preservation of national identity.
The inextricable connection between the culture of Pushkin’s time (this phrase also emerged in those years) and the estate aroused wide and lively interest in estate monuments late XVIII-first third of the 19th century. The first signs of this interest in various fields of art and literature occurred at the turn of the century.
Already in 1895, the young artist S.Yu. turned to the theme of the estate. Zhukovsky, for whom various types of estates later became the content of his entire creative life. The painting masterpieces of M.V. date back to 1897. Yakunchikova-Weber “Cases” and “From the Window of an Old House”, glorifying the classical harmony of Vvedensky near Moscow. Since 1898, paintings-elegies by one of the largest symbolist artists V.E. began to appear. Borisov-Musatov, depicting gentlemen and ladies in ancient dresses against the backdrop of Central Russian estate landscapes. In 1902-1903, his famous canvases “Ghosts” and “Reservoir” appeared, inspired by the beauty of Golitsyn’s Zubrilovka; by 1905, sketches for the unrealized paintings of the mansion of A.I. Derozhinskaya "Dream of a Deity", "Autumn Evening", "Walk at Sunset", completely built on variations of the estate theme. In 1901-1903, I. E. Grabar painted a series of estate landscapes; in 1903, K. A. Somov created painting "Echoes of Past Time" - a portrait of a girl in a manor house in an Empire dress. This io?a?aiu, which can certainly be continued, irrefutably testifies to the desire of a person at the turn of the century to penetrate into the secrets of the manor harmony of Pushkin's time, its organic fusion with nature and way of life of grandfathers and great-grandfathers, finally, try to relive the distant, past. It is not for nothing that the current is persistent in Russian painting of the early 20th century. the motive of dressing up is definitely the desire to take a closer look at one’s appearance in an ancient costume.
Pushkin's time and the images of his heroes create in the minds of an enlightened person challenges to criticism of his paintings. Addressing in a letter to Count S.D. The artist recommended his views to Sheremetev in the following way: “Would you find it possible to allow me to paint in your Astafievsky and Kuskovsky houses. I am a big lover of antiquity, especially Pushkin's time. Here it is so clearly expressed and wonderfully carefully preserved. (...) Unfortunately, (..) there are few truly cultured and subtle people who know how to appreciate this shrine, who did not turn them (master's houses - M.N.) into factories, but the parks where Eugene Onegin walked are like firewood”(15)) The critic wrote about his painting “The Road Trip”; “Here is an old manor’s house, unprepossessing in appearance, but with a magnificent portico - an entrance on columns; lights can be seen in the windows... The times of Tatiana and Onegin are immediately resurrected before us and there is something chivalrous, the romanticism of antiquity, the poetry of the idle, carefree life of the past century. , a lordly, but apparently neglected estate. On a bench in one of the alleys adjacent to the house sits something like Onegin.”(16)
It is natural that the attractive images of the estate of Pushkin’s era are reflected in literature. The hero of Bunin’s famous story “Antonevsky Apples,” written in 1900 and imbued with deep nostalgia for the passing great estate culture of the 19th century, reflects on the happy days that passed in the estate, filled with work and spiritual searches: “... here are the magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, a student at the Pushkin Lyceum. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her polonaises on the clavichord, her languid reading of poems from Eugene Onegin. And the old dreamy life will appear before you...”(17)
This “old dreamy life,” which was dreamed of at the turn of the century, could not but affect architecture - a kind of mirror of the spiritual aspirations of the era and the most concrete embodiment of its way of life. However, one cannot help but say that the peculiar estate Renaissance (18) experienced by Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was not only a consequence of the noted trends in culture, but also of the relative social and economic stability that began after 1905. About these years G.P. Fedotov wrote: “The eight years that elapsed between the first revolution and the war will, in many respects, remain forever the most brilliant moment in the life of old Russia. As if the country had recovered from a serious illness, it was in a hurry to live, feeling how meagerly its remaining years were numbered. The industry was booming. A fever of construction that gripped all the cities, promising economic growth, offering a new outlet for peasant energy. Rich Russia developed enormous spiritual energy.”(19)
Under these conditions, the revival of widespread estate construction became possible. The peak of interest in the estate of Pushkin’s time occurred in the pre-war 1910s. This phenomenon was accurately recorded by Anna Akhmatova.
“The dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,
The lake shores were sad,
And we cherish the century
A barely audible rustle of footsteps.” .
Her "Dark Youth" was written in 1911.
The poeticization of the world of the estate of Pushkin's time in architecture acquired very specific forms of an apology for Russian classicism, expressed earlier than others by members of the capital's World of Art association. The first manifesto of this kind was the article by A.M. Benoit “Picturesque Petersburg” (20), published in 1902. Not without the influence of this publication, already in the next 1903, the first projects of buildings in the still non-existent neoclassical style appeared. Among them, the work of the young architect I.A. attracted attention. Fomin(21), who soon (in 1904) appeared in the magazine “World of Art” with a programmatic article “Moscow Classicism”(22), in which for the first time (after several decades of “fatigue” from this style) the architecture of Moscow received a high professional assessment classicism and empire style.
This is how Fomin described it: “...Empire found “suitable soil” in Russia.” Empire became “Russian”, “Moscow”. When we say “an old Russian manor house”, we are talking about Empire. Since then, when we, having gone through the school of Peter the Great, became Europeans, our Russian style became somewhat alien to us and, having fallen behind it, we gradually began to get used to a number of successive Western styles, but none responded so well to the Russian nature and character. bar of that time, the “Empire” style was simple, calm and stately, devoid of pretentiousness and antics.”(23)
Admiration for the noble laconicism and harmony of the chamber Moscow Empire style was naturally combined with admiration for the culture of Pushkin’s era, because the post-fire city was precisely that enchanting estate of Pushkin’s Moscow. Yu. Shamurin wrote: “The melodious Russian soul, with its lyrical light transforming everything that is dear to it into beauty and poetry, fell in love with the “nest of the nobility.” The dreamy gazebos among the darkness, the speakers peeking out from behind the trees, the gates with lions and the muddy ponds in the park became lovely. The idyll of the estates was associated precisely with their romantic dilapidation, their richness in memories, their contrast with the noise, bustle and activity of the cities.”(24)
The new ideal declared in print in the same year 1904 found architectural and artistic embodiment - Fomin created a project for a wooden dacha in the Empire style, in which a person of the beginning of the 20th century faced. a collective image of an old manor's estate appeared. A white stone base, smooth walls covered with darkened planed boards, cut through by elongated windows of “empire” proportions and framed by white columns, a heavy pediment with traditional empire wreaths and ribbons, and finally, an open semi-rotunda colonnade facing the garden - all these components of the overall composition soon became firmly established among the popular techniques of estate neoclassicism, which came historical process development of the Russian estate, internal completeness. One cannot but agree with T.P. in this regard. Kazhdan; “Neoclassicism completed the line of development of estate architecture of the 19th - early 20th centuries, returning it “back to square one”, to the origins of landowner culture, creating the complete illusion of a traditional ideal estate environment in which the diverse modern cultural life of a cook could organically and fruitfully function and develop within the framework of traditions, and along the paths determined by new artistic movements.”(25)
In the process of a kind of “sacralization” of the estate that took place in Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century, the Pushkin theme played a very important role. The customers of the new neoclassical estate ensembles (and not only the nobility, for whom Pushkin was “one of their own,” but also the merchants), trying to once again make them havens of muses, sincerely dreamed of Pushkin’s time, of the estates of Onegin and Tatiana, of the once calm and measured lordly life . However, the architectural forms of the new estates could be connected with Pushkin’s poetry only indirectly. It’s amazing, but true - in the poet’s poems we will not find a single detailed description of the appearance of the estate buildings. Architectural delights were of little interest to the poet; what was much more important for him was the spiritual essence of estate life, its connection with nature, “the traditions of dear old times,” its carelessness and solitude, which left room for thinking about the most important things - love, life, death. Let us illustrate this with poetic lines.
“How happy I am when I can leave the annoying noise of the capital and the courtyard and escape into the deserted oak groves, onto the banks of these silent waters.”
"The master's house is secluded,
Protected from the winds by a mountain,
He stood over the river. In the distance
Before him they dazzled and bloomed
Golden meadows and fields,
Villages flashed by; here and there
The herds roamed the meadows,
And the canopy expanded thick
Huge neglected garden,
Shelter of brooding dryads.
The venerable castle was built
How castles should be built:
Excellently durable and calm,
In the taste of smart antiquity."
“Tatiana walked alone for a long time.
She walked and walked. And suddenly in front of me
From the hill the master sees the house,
Village, grove under the hill
And a garden above the bright river."
“What's in them? Now I'm glad to give it away
All this rags of a masquerade,
All this shine, and noise, and fumes
For a shelf of books, for a wild garden,
For our poor home,
Yes for the humble cemetery,
Where is the cross and the shadow of the branches today?
Over my poor nanny..."
“From boredom, so varied,
My name is hills, meadows,
Shady maple trees in the garden,
Deserted river bank
And village freedom."
It is not difficult to notice that the poet’s gaze, quickly gliding over the main house, is always carried away to the picturesque surroundings of the estate - meadows, fields, hills and copses, which spoke much more to his heart and mind. This is not surprising, because Pushkin perceived life in the village not as a random passer-by, diligently depicting what he saw, but as an integral part of his inner being, and therefore his gaze is most often directed “from within” the estate world to the outside - it is not for nothing that many of the poet’s poems seem to be sketches from his window at home in Mikhailovsky.
This is how the famous “Once again I visited that corner of the earth...” and descriptions of estates in prose works are constructed. In “Roman in Letters” we read: “The old house on the mountain, the garden, the lake, the pine groves, all this in the fall and winter, of course, is a little sad, but in the spring and summer it should seem like an earthly paradise.” The descriptions of the estates in the story “Dubrovsky” are also extremely sparse. About the Troekurov estate: “... above the dense greenery of the grove rose the green roof and belvedere of a huge stone house - on the other there was a five-domed church and an ancient bell tower...”; about Dubrovsky’s estate: “... to the left, but in an open place, is a gray house with a red roof.” However, this brevity is also natural, since Pushkin turned to the figurative memory of his contemporaries, for whom such conventional, almost iconic, definitions were enough to create in their imagination a holistic idea of ​​the described estates.
And yet, despite the lack of detailed verbal descriptions, images of Onegin’s estate, the Larins’ house and the landscape that surrounded them lived in the minds of every Russian person from childhood. Of course, each of them had their own specific appearance, born from their own visual impressions, but they were all united by a commonality that was difficult to convey in words, which made it possible to easily feel the falseness or correspondence to the images of Pushkin’s poem, which became popular at the beginning of the 20th century. popular architectural metaphors.
According to the remarkable researcher of Russian estates A.N. Grech in Petrovsky (Durnev) near Moscow, “on the side of the main building there was an outbuilding with columns - a typical “Larinsky house”, just ready for decoration.” (26) Similar comparisons were born in the imagination of the unsurpassed memoirist artist Vladimir Miloshevsky when describing the Kholomkov of the Gagarin princes: “ Oneginolarinsky landscape! Soft in its quiet but caressing forms! "(27)
Analogies with Pushkin’s images arose among the inhabitants of the Ostashevo estate near Moscow - the son of K.R., Grand Duke Oleg Konstantinovich:
Night has already arrived.
The estate is falling asleep...
A swarm of sweet impressions lulls me to sleep,
And the dream was inspired by the shadow of sleepy antiquity,
And I remembered Pushkin’s Evgeniy At the Larins’ estate in the midst of the same silence. Exactly the same house, the same closets, Portraits on the walls, scales in all corners, Sofas, mirrors, porcelain, toys, slides And sleepy flies on the white ceilings.” (1912-1913)
Aesthetic adherence to the idealized “Onegin-Larinsk” Russia - not serfdom, but native, homely, poeticized creative and represented a traditional symmetrical three-part composition of the main volume with porticoes under the pediment and side wings connected by lowered passages. Similar techniques were developed in their estate buildings by F.O. Shekhtel (Gorki), V.D. Adamovich (Islavskoe), A.E. Erichson (Lyubvino), I.V., Zholtovsky (Lipki-Alekseysk, Berezhki, Lubenkino), A.E. Belogrud (Parafievko and Kachanovka), I.A. Fomin (Kholomki) and others.
Like all of the listed estate buildings, the main house on the estate of Prince A.G. Gagarin Kholomki, Pskov province, built by Fomin in 1912-1913, which had a compact volume of good proportions with a six-column portico on the main facade and an open semi-rotunda on the park one, embodied a holistic idea of ​​​​the classical estate of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. Outstanding Soviet historian art M.A. Ilyin wrote about this building: “The genius of Quarenghi hovers over this austere building.” (29). Indeed, the Fominsk house, along with the houses of Zholtovsky, Shekhtel, Erikhsono, surprisingly accurately corresponded to the stable image of the Russian estate that had developed in the national consciousness.
The laconicism of the harmonious classical compositions of these buildings obviously echoed the manor houses in the canvases of V.E. Borisova-Musatova. Their figurative kinship is symptomatic - it reveals an important feature of neoclassicism of the 1900-1910s, which is still more inclined to embody the modern dream of an ancient estate, cleared of prosaic details by the imagination, than to its specific historical stylization.
In addition to the refined ensembles erected by subtle stylists, true professionals who consciously resurrected the spirit of the estates of Pushkin’s time, many more modest neoclassical estate houses appeared in Russia in those years. For example, in the Moscow province - in Dubki of Countess Liven, in the Kursk province - in Makarovka A.N. Smetsky, in Lebyazhye G.A. Novosiltsev, in Fitizh Stremoukhovs30, etc. Their familiar forms expressed the diversity of aesthetic and artistic experiences of their time in the form of the “Onegin-Larinsk” estate - a dream come true and an unattainable ideal of the era - but “retold” in the language of its time and inspired by modern art.
Not isolated and typical for the beginning of the 20th century. There were also reconstructions of old Empire buildings. The main house of the ancient Znamenskoye-Gubailovo village near Moscow was rebuilt, possibly preserving its classic appearance. Lovely classic manor house of P.V. Lopukhin in Vvedensky near Zvenigorod was rebuilt, but also preserving the original appearance. (“The old house was wooden - it was demolished not long ago, and in its place the last owner of Vvedensky, Count Gudovich, built almost the same one - a stone one.” (31))
The image of an empire-style estate, an estate of Pushkin's time, was transferred to dacha construction at the end of the 1900-1910s. Not having the ability to maintain a large estate, the middle class and intelligentsia created their country dachas in the form of previous estates. This is how Bunin described one of these dachas: “The yard of the dacha, similar to an estate, was large. To the right of the entrance there was an empty stable with a hayloft in the superstructure, then a long outbuilding for servants, connected to the kitchen, from behind which birch and linden trees looked out, to the left, but on the hard, lumpy ground, old pine trees grew spaciously, on the lawns between them were giant steps. and a swing, further, already at the wall of the forest, there was a flat croquet court. The house was also large, standing just opposite the entrance, behind it a large space was occupied by a mixture of forest and garden with a darkly majestic alley of ancient fir trees, running in the middle of this mixture from the back balcony to the bathhouse and pond.”(32)
A similar impression, for example, was made by the dacha of the artist Zhukovsky in the Tver province: “Approaching the dacha where Stanislav Yulianovich lived, I saw a large house, painted yellow. (...) The house gave me the impression of a landowner’s estate. But the specific landowner situation was absent. I remember the large rooms with canvases and stretchers.”(33)
In addition to the meaningful appeal, the craving for emotional and visual “dressing up”, as real as possible immersion in the world of the estates of Pushkin’s time - the native world, familiar from childhood from the lines of “Eugene Onegin”, their buildings had another advantage that was very important for most dacha owners . Pushkin’s estates, be it the Larins’ house with a “shelf of books and a wild garden,” or the house in Mikhailovsky of Pushkino itself, were very modest in their architectural forms. Thanks to this quality, it was not difficult to reproduce them in new, most often wooden, country houses of the 1910s.
This kind of building is successfully illustrated by a charming wooden house in the provincial Empire style in Udelnaya near Moscow - with a simple four-column portico, a once open veranda on columns, white tiled stoves and high ceilings. This is a dacha in L.A. Tamburer, who knew I.V.’s family closely. Tsvetaev and his daughters.34 The famous architect Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky, who built it in 1908-1909, who gained wide recognition in pre-revolutionary Russia, according to eyewitnesses, subsequently asked more than once: “How is my “Larinsky” house?”
And soon a chain of Russian catastrophes, of which, perhaps, the largest, which has not yet been overcome, was the cultural catastrophe that completely destroyed Onegin-Larin Russia, and carried away the “Lorin” houses of the turn of the century and their beautiful prototypes into oblivion. All that remains of them is a faint trace and a “selective” memory due to circumstances, which determined the boundless, orthodox, even sometimes exalted worship of the literature and art of Pushkin’s time,” which we experienced during the Soviet period and directly inherited from the pre-revolutionary decade.
NOTES
1 Bunin I.A. Thinking about Pushkin.//Bunin I.A. Collection Op. T,6. M., 1988, S. 619.
2. Ibid. P.620.
3. Ibid. P.621.
4. Dolgopolov L. But at the turn of the century. About Russian literature late XIX- beginning of the 20th century. L., 1985. P.275.
5. Osorgin M.A. Time. Ekaterinburg, 1992. P.535.
6. Fedotov G.P. Fate and sins of the Russian people. T.1.SPb., 1991. With. 179
7. Ibid. P. 143.
8. Gorelov M.M. Stanislav Yulianovich Zhukovsky. Life and art. 1875-1944. M., 1982. P. 150,
9. The introduction in 1886 by the French poet Jean Moreas of the term “symbolism” (in the programmatic work “Manifesto of Symbolism”), in fact, completed the process of self-determination of a new artistic movement, signs of which appeared in the art of Western Europe back in the 1850-1860s. Baudelaire's poetic opuses, Wagner's operas, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the philosophical ideas of D. Reskino, the diverse activities of W. Morriseau - these are the milestones that contributed to the formation of the foundations of artistic thinking of symbolism. Constant attention to Western European cultural life, characteristic of the entire Russian culture of the second half of the 19th century, contributed to the rapid rooting of his ideas on Russian soil and determined the “predisposition” of many Russian artists, writers, musicians, and architects towards him. The ideas of symbolism penetrated into Russia and were mastered, as it were, in several meaningful registers. As a way of artistic thinking, French symbolism was perceived mainly through literature - from Baudelaire to Valéry, as the principles of visual plastic form - through the painting of Puvis de Chauvanneau, Moreau, Gauguin, Redono and other artists, and most widely and massively - through applied graphics, in including a poster. At the end of the 1880s, V.S. Solovyov wrote the essays “Beauty in Nature” and “The General Meaning of Art,” which laid the foundations for the theory of Russian symbolism. In 1893, the first manifesto of Russian literary symbolism appeared - it was D.S. Merezhkovsky’s brochure “On the principles of decline and new trends in modern Russian literature,” which contained the texts of two lectures by the writer given in 1892; since 1894 V.Ya. Bryusov is already publishing collections “Russian Symbolists”. In the 1890s - 1900s, the theme of symbolism was widely included in Russian painting - in the works of M.V. Nesterovo, A.I. Kuindzhi, V.M. Vasnetsov, M.A. Vrubel, M.V. Yakunchikova, V.E. . Borisov-Musotov and other artists. In 1910, Andrei Bely published his book “Symbolism,” which most fully and accurately defined the ideological foundations of this artistic movement. Despite the voices already heard at that time about the decline of symbolism, A. Blok in those years still saw prospects for the future. The given dates allow us to orient this direction in the historical context of Russian culture.
10. Merezhkovsky D.S. L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.// Complete. Collection Op. T.XII. M.1914. P.270.
11. Kara-Murza S. Russia: what does it mean “not to be the West”? // Our Contemporary, 1997, No. 9, p. 125, 127-128.
12. Likhachev D.S. Open spaces and space.// Likhachev D.S. Favorites. SPb., LOGOS, 1997. P.472, 475.
13. Koro-Murza S. Decree op., p. 128.
14. Nashchokina M.V. Decree cit., p. 2.
15. Romanov N. XXXI Traveling exhibition in Moscow.//Scientific word. Book 5. 1903. P. 153.
16. Erch. Echoes of the day. XXXI Traveling exhibition of paintings.//Moscow leaflet, 1903, April 13.
17. Bunin I.A. Antonov apples.// Decree op. T.2. M., 1987. P.168.
18. Nashchokina M.V. Neoclassical estates of Moscow. // Russian estate. Sat. OIRU 3(19). M., 1997. P.73.
19. Fedotov G.P. Op. op. P. 170.
20. Benois A.N. Picturesque Petersburg.// World of Art, 1902, vol. 7, No. 1-6, Chronicle, p. 1-5.
21. Nashchokina M.V. Ivan Fomin: turn to neoclassics. // Architecture of the world. Issue 7. M., 1998. P.104-105.
22. Fomin I.A. Moscow classicism. (Architecture in Moscow in the era of Catherine II and Alexander I).// World of Art, 1904, No. 7. P.149-198.
23. Ibid. P. 188.
24. Shamurin Yu.I. Podmoskovnye. M., 1912. P.4.
25. Kazhdon T.P. The artistic world of a Russian estate. M., 1997. P.272.
26. Grech A.N. Wreath to estates.// Monuments to the Fatherland. Issue 32. M., 1995. P.9.
27. Milashevsky V.A. Yesterday, the day before yesterday... Memoirs of an artist. M., 1980. P.277.
28. Russia in its past and present. M., 1914-1915. R.H. [p.54-55.]. The buildings belong to the work of I.V. Rylsky was established by the author, in the color tab “Russian estate. No. 4" named after I.V. Zholtovsky is indicated incorrectly.
29. Ilyin M.A. Ivan Aleksandrovich Fomin. M., 1946. P. 18.
30. Kholodova E. Estates of the Kursk province. Historical and architectural essays. // Library of the “Slavic House” 2 - 1997.
31. Grech A.N. Decree. Op. P.18.
32. Bunin I.A. Zoyka and Valeria, // Decree. Op. T.5. P.321.
33. Quote. by: Gorelov M.M. Decree. Op. P. 101.
34. Sineokovo T.L. Udelnaya before and after... Udelnaya, 1994. P.16.