What are the characteristics of a romantic hero? Types of Romantic Heroes

Romantic hero

Romantic hero- one of artistic images literature of romanticism. A romantic is an exceptional and often mysterious person who usually lives in exceptional circumstances. The collision of external events is transferred to the inner world of the hero, in whose soul there is a struggle of contradictions. As a result of this reproduction of character, romanticism extremely highly raised the value of the individual, inexhaustible in its spiritual depths, revealing its unique inner world. Man in romantic works is also embodied through contrast, antithesis: on the one hand, he is understood as the crown of creation, and on the other, as a weak-willed toy in the hands of fate, forces unknown and beyond his control, playing with his feelings. Therefore, he often turns into a victim of his own passions.

Signs of a Romantic Hero

1. An exceptional hero in exceptional circumstances
2. Reality is actively being recreated in accordance with the ideal
3. Independence
4. The insolubility of the conflict between the hero and society
5. Abstract perception of time
6. Two or three distinct character traits

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See what “Romantic hero” is in other dictionaries:

romantic hero- see hero of the work + romanticism...

hero of the work- one of the main characters works of art (as opposed to a character); the development of the character of the hero and his relationships with other characters play a decisive role in the development of the plot and composition of the work, in revealing it... ... Terminological dictionary-thesaurus on literary criticism

hero- 1. A person who has accomplished military or labor feats. Selfless, fearless, brilliant (obsolete), daring (obsolete poet.), valiant, glorious (obsolete), famous, famous, true, legendary, courageous, folk, real, ... ... Dictionary of epithets

Grushnitsky ("Hero of Our Time")- See also Juncker. He's only been in the service for a year. He was in an active detachment and was wounded in the leg. Out of a special kind of dandyishness, he wears a thick soldier’s overcoat. He has a St. George cross. He is well built, dark and black-haired; he looks like he can... Dictionary of literary types

- - born on May 26, 1799 in Moscow, on Nemetskaya Street in Skvortsov’s house; died January 29, 1837 in St. Petersburg. On his father's side, Pushkin belonged to the ancient noble family, who, according to the legend of genealogies, came from a native “from ... ... Large biographical encyclopedia

Pushkin A. S. Pushkin. Pushkin in the history of Russian literature. Pushkin studies. Bibliography. PUSHKIN Alexander Sergeevich (1799 1837) the greatest Russian poet. R. June 6 (according to the old style May 26) 1799. P.’s family came from a gradually impoverished old ... ... Literary encyclopedia

1. The hero of A.P. Sumarokov’s tragedy “Dimitri the Pretender” (1771). The historical prototype is False Dmitry I, also probably Yuri (Grigory) Otrepiev. In 1601, the Pretender appeared in Poland under the name of Dimitri, the son of Ivan IV the Terrible; in the summer of 1604 with... ... Literary heroes

The hero of A.S. Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit” (1824; in the first edition, the spelling of the surname is Chadsky). Probable prototypes of the image are P.Ya. Chaadaev (1796 1856) and V.K. Kuchelbecker (1797 1846). The nature of the hero’s actions, his statements and relationships with... ... Literary heroes

- (French Jean Valejean) hero of V. Hugo’s novel “Les Miserables” (1862). One of the prototypes of the hero was the convict Pierre Morin, who in 1801 was sentenced to five years of hard labor for a stolen piece of bread. Only one person, the bishop of the city of Digne, Monsignor de... ... Literary heroes

Sunset Beach ... Wikipedia

Books

• M. Lermontov. Complete Works, M. Lermontov. Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov is a younger contemporary of Pushkin and the second greatest figure after him in Russian poetry of the 19th century. In 2014, the 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth is celebrated. It was his destiny...

Romanticism (1790-1830) is a trend in world culture that emerged as a result of the crisis of the Age of Enlightenment and its philosophical concept of “Tabula rasa,” which translated means “blank slate.” According to this teaching, a person is born neutral, pure and empty, like a white sheet of paper. This means that if you engage in his education, you can raise an ideal member of society. But the flimsy logical structure collapsed when it came into contact with the realities of life: the bloody Napoleonic Wars, the French Revolution of 1789 and other social upheavals destroyed people's faith in the healing properties of the Enlightenment. During the war, education and culture did not play a role: bullets and sabers still spared no one. Powerful of the world this they studied diligently and had access to all famous works art, but this did not prevent them from sending their subjects to death, did not prevent them from cheating and cunning, did not prevent them from indulging in those sweet vices that from time immemorial have corrupted humanity, regardless of who and how they are educated. No one stopped the bloodshed, preachers, teachers and Robinson Crusoe with their blessed work and “God’s help” did not help anyone.

People are disappointed and tired of social instability. The next generation was “born old.” “Young people found use for their idle powers in desperation.”- as Alfred de Musset wrote, the author who wrote the brightest romantic novel"Confession of the son of the century." He described the condition of a young man of his time as follows: “Denial of everything heavenly and everything earthly, if you like, hopelessness”. Society has become imbued with world grief, and the main postulates of romanticism are a consequence of this mood.

The word "romanticism" comes from the Spanish musical term "romance" (a piece of music).

Main features of romanticism

Romanticism is usually characterized by listing its main characteristics:

— Romantic dual world- This sharp contrast ideal and reality. Real world cruel and boring, and the ideal is a refuge from the hardships and abominations of life. A textbook example of romanticism in painting: Friedrich’s painting “Two Contemplating the Moon.” The eyes of the heroes are directed towards the ideal, but the black hooked roots of life do not seem to let them go.

— Idealism– this is the presentation of maximum spiritual demands on oneself and on reality. Example: Shelley's poetry, where the grotesque pathos of youth is the main message.

— Infantilism– this is an inability to bear responsibility, frivolity. Example: the image of Pechorin: the hero does not know how to calculate the consequences of his actions, he easily injures himself and others.

— Fatalism (evil fate)- This tragic character relationship between man and evil fate. Example: " Bronze Horseman"Pushkin, where the hero is pursued by evil fate, having taken away his beloved, and with her all hopes for the future.

— Many borrowings from the Baroque era: irrationality (fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, stories of Hoffmann), fatalism, gloomy aesthetics (mystical stories of Edgar Allan Poe), fight against God (Lermontov, poem “Mtsyri”).

— Cult of individualism– the clash between personality and society is the main conflict in romantic works (Byron, “Childe Harold”: the hero contrasts his individuality with an inert and boring society, setting off on an endless journey).

Characteristics of a Romantic Hero

• Disappointment (Pushkin “Onegin”)
• Nonconformism (rejected existing value systems, did not accept hierarchies and canons, protested against rules) –
• Shocking behavior (Lermontov “Mtsyri”)
• Intuition (Gorky “Old Woman Izergil” (the legend of Danko))
• Denial of free will (everything depends on fate) - Walter Scott "Ivanhoe"

Themes, ideas, philosophy of romanticism

The main theme in Romanticism is the exceptional hero in exceptional circumstances. For example, a highlander captive since childhood, miraculously saved and ending up in a monastery. Usually children are not taken captive in order to take them to monasteries and replenish the staff of monks; the case of Mtsyri is a unique precedent of its kind.

The philosophical basis of romanticism and the ideological and thematic core is subjective idealism, according to which the world is a product of the subject’s personal feelings. Examples of subjective idealists are Fichte, Kant. Good example subjective idealism in literature – “Confession of a son of the century” by Alfred de Musset. Throughout the entire narrative, the hero immerses the reader in subjective reality, as if reading a personal diary. Describing his love conflicts and complex feelings, he shows not the surrounding reality, but the inner world, which, as it were, replaces the outer one.

Romanticism dispelled boredom and melancholy - typical feelings in the society of that period. The secular game of disappointment was brilliantly played out by Pushkin in the poem “Eugene Onegin.” Main character plays to the public when he imagines himself beyond the understanding of mere mortals. A fashion arose among young people to imitate the proud loner Childe Harold, the famous romantic hero from Byron's poem. Pushkin chuckles at this trend, portraying Onegin as a victim of yet another cult.

By the way, Byron became an idol and icon of romanticism. Distinguished by his eccentric behavior, the poet attracted the attention of society, and won recognition with his ostentatious eccentricities and undeniable talent. He even died in the spirit of romanticism: in an internecine war in Greece. An exceptional hero in exceptional circumstances...

Active Romanticism and Passive Romanticism: What's the Difference?

Romanticism is by its nature heterogeneous. Active romanticism- this is a protest, a rebellion against that philistine, vile world that has such a detrimental effect on the individual. Representatives of active romanticism: poets Byron and Shelley. An example of active romanticism: Byron's poem "Childe Harold's Travels".

Passive romanticism- this is reconciliation with reality: embellishing reality, withdrawing into oneself, etc. Representatives of passive romanticism: writers Hoffman, Gogol, Scott, etc. An example of passive romanticism is Hoffmann's The Golden Pot.

Features of Romanticism

Ideal- this is a mystical, irrational, unacceptable expression of the world spirit, something perfect that we must strive for. The melancholy of romanticism can be called “longing for an ideal.” People crave it, but cannot receive it, otherwise what they receive will cease to be an ideal, since from an abstract idea of ​​beauty it will turn into a real thing or a real phenomenon with errors and shortcomings.

Features of romanticism are...

• creation comes first
• psychologism: the main thing is not events, but people’s feelings.
• irony: raising oneself above reality, making fun of it.
• self-irony: this perception of the world reduces tension

Escapism is an escape from reality. Types of escapism in literature:

• fantasy (care in fictional worlds) – Edgar Allan Poe (“The Red Mask of Death”)
• exoticism (going to an unusual area, into the culture of little-known ethnic groups) - Mikhail Lermontov (Caucasian cycle)
• history (idealization of the past) – Walter Scott (“Ivanhoe”)
• folklore (folk fiction) – Nikolai Gogol (“Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”)

Rational romanticism originated in England, which is probably explained by the unique mentality of the British. Mystical romanticism appeared precisely in Germany (the Brothers Grimm, Hoffmann, etc.), where the fantastic element is also due to the specifics of the German mentality.

Historicism- this is the principle of considering the world, social and cultural phenomena in a natural historical development.

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The great French bourgeois revolution and the half-century agitation of the Enlightenment that underlay it gave rise to unprecedented enthusiasm in the intellectual environment of Europe, the desire to remake and recreate everything, to lead humanity to the “golden age” of history, to achieve the abolition of all class boundaries and privileges - that is, “Freedom, equality and fraternity." It is no coincidence that almost all romantics are fanatics of freedom, only each of them understood freedom in their own way: it could be civil, social freedoms, which were demanded, for example, by Constant, Byron and Shelley, but most often it is creative, spiritual freedom, personal freedom, individual freedom.

Romantic poets proclaimed personality, individuality as the basis of history. In their aesthetics, man is not alone from(a representative of a collective, society, class, not an abstract person, as was customary among the enlighteners up to Fichte); he is unique, strange, alone - he is both the creator and the goal of history.

Following the classicists, the romantics turn to the main conflict of history: society - man (the famous classicist opposition “duty - feeling”). But the romantics reverse positions, turning them in favor of the individual, at least from the point of view of today's liberal way of thinking on its head:

man - society

therefore, “I” – “they”.

Romantic individualism gives rise to the main motives of romantic plotting: rebellion, escape from reality into nature (literally, escape from civilization), into creativity (into a poetic imaginary world or into religion, mysticism), into melancholy (themes of sleep, dreams, the motif of a lost lover, themes of death and afterlife unity), into the historical past and national folklore. Hence the favorite genres of romantic literature: civic and journalistic lyrics; descriptive poetry, poems of wanderings (East and South-East Europe), pictures of harsh and lush nature as a reason for philosophizing about the universe and the place of man in it; confessional lyrics and confessional novel; “black” or gothic novel; drama of fate; fantastic novella with elements of horror; ballad and historical novel.

The magnificent romantic historiography of Guizot, Thierry, Michelet rises on the crest of this overwhelming interest in the individual and his role in the historical process. The creator of history here becomes a specific person - a king, an emperor, a conspirator, a leader of an uprising, a politician, and at the same time, as Walter Scott's novel shows, the people. The historicism of thinking characteristic of romantic consciousness is also a product of the Great French Bourgeois Revolution, as a global revolution in all spheres of life of Europeans. During the revolutionary period, history, which had previously changed almost imperceptibly, like stalagmites and stalactites growing in the depths of caves, rushed at a gallop, drawing millions of people into the sphere of its action, clearly demonstrating the connection of man with the movement of time, with the environment, with the national environment.

Romantics exalt the individual and put him on a pedestal. A romantic hero is always an exceptional person, unlike the people around him; he is proud of his exclusivity, although it becomes the cause of his misfortunes, his strangeness. The romantic hero challenges the world around him; he is in conflict not with individual people, not with socio-historical circumstances, but with the world as a whole, with the entire universe. Romantics therefore focus on depicting the spiritual, psychological life of heroes, and the inner world romantic hero everything consists of contradictions. Romantic consciousness, in rebellion against everyday life, rushes to extremes: only heroes romantic works They strive for spiritual heights, become like the creator himself in their search for perfection, others in despair give themselves over to evil, not knowing the extent of the depth of moral decline. Some romantics look for an ideal in the past, especially in the Middle Ages, when direct religious feeling was still alive, others - in the utopias of the future. One way or another, the starting point of romantic consciousness is the rejection of dull bourgeois modernity, the affirmation of the place of art not just as entertainment, relaxation after working day dedicated to making money, but as an urgent spiritual need of man and society. The protest of the romantics against the self-interest of the “Iron Age”. That is why the favorite hero of romantic literature is the artist in the broad sense of the word - writer, poet, painter and especially musician, because the romantics considered music, which directly affects the soul, to be the highest of the arts. Romanticism gave rise to new ideas about the tasks and forms of existence of literature, which we generally adhere to to this day. In terms of content, art henceforth becomes a rebellion against alienation and the transformation of a person, great in his calling, into a private individual. For the romantics, art became the prototype of creative work and pleasure, and the artist and the image of the romantic hero became the prototype of that integral, harmonious person who has no limit either on earth or in space. Romantic “escape from reality”, escape into the world of dreams, the world of the ideal is the return to man of the consciousness of that true fullness of being, that calling that was taken from him by bourgeois society.

Romanticism used, seriously transforming it, the sentimentalist image of personality. But it is not sentimental sensitivity, but passion that is the basis of the romantic personality: the soul of the romantic does not vibrate in response to all the calls of reality, but only responds with a few strong sounds. Passion can be combined with icy indifference; a romantic’s mind is often “chilled.” Goethe emphasized passion as a defining feature of the new man: “A will that surpasses the strength of the individual is a product of the new time.” All-consuming passions that lead to obsession need freedom to manifest themselves.

The romantic hero chooses freedom in a wide range of meanings: from socio-political freedom to artistic freedom. Civil freedom was sung by revolutionary writers, liberals, and participants in liberation movements in Europe and America. And writers who held conservative social views had their own apology for freedom, or rather, an apology for their freedom: they developed the idea of ​​this freedom in a metaphysical sense (later these thoughts were picked up by existential philosophy) and in a social sense (in the future, these constructions led to the development of the doctrine of the so-called Christian democracy).

Among the different faces of romantic freedom there is also freedom from mechanical determination and immutability social role(Hoffmann’s favorite theme), and, finally, liberation from man’s mortal predestination, the struggle against which turns into a cosmic, God-fighting rebellion (this theme is embodied by Byron and Espronceda). Boundless freedom is the secret of the alienated, Byronic hero: it is never known exactly what extricated him from among people, what restrictions of freedom he could not bear.

But the most important, truly constitutive feature of a romantic personality, its most painful passion is imagination. Living in imagination is more familiar to her than living in reality; and the one who cannot do this, in whom the imagination sleeps, will never escape from the empirical kingdom of vulgarity. This belief cannot be reduced to a popular literary motif; it is one of the cardinal features of the spiritual culture of the era. Alexander Humboldt, whose activities and writings undoubtedly influenced the worldview of his contemporaries and who himself was in in every sense words “man of the era,” commented on Columbus’s letter: “It is of extraordinary psychological interest and with new strength shows that the poet’s creative imagination was characteristic of the brave navigator who discovered the New World, as, indeed, of all major human personalities.”

Imagination in the spiritual structure of a romantic personality is not equivalent to a dream. The epithet “creative,” which echoes Fichte’s doctrine of the “productive imagination,” does not necessarily refer only to art (this is obvious from Humboldt’s statement). The word “creative” gives the imagination an active, goal-setting, volitional character. The romantic personality is characterized by imagination, mixed with will, and therefore a crisis of imagination, “fury at the sight of the discrepancy between his capabilities and plans,” as Byron defined it, painfully experienced by a series of romantic characters, starting with Senancourt’s Oberman. This is a crisis in the life-building program of romanticism.

There remains a lot of evidence of such a life-building program - confessionals, memoirs, pamphlets, even legal ones (see L. Megron). Attempts to implement it were varied - from decisive and sometimes heroic actions in life to eccentric everyday and literary behavior, the creation of a stylized spiritual self-portrait in letters and other documents. Several generations of young people who grew up in an atmosphere of romanticism “were engaged in modeling their historical character in the most extreme form, in the form of romantic life-creativity - the deliberate construction of artistic images and aesthetically organized plots in life” (L. Ginzburg). The very idea of ​​life-building was suggested by the historical process: after all, it seemed that history was created by the energy and human greatness of people like Napoleon or Bolivar - two archetypes of a romantic character. Many other real personalities of the era (Riego, Ypsilanti, Byron) also served as models of romantic life.

The moral pathos of the romantics was associated, first of all, with the affirmation of the value of the individual, which was embodied in the images of romantic heroes. The first, most striking type is the loner hero, the outcast hero, who is usually called the Byronic hero. The opposition of the poet to the crowd, the hero to the mob, the individual to a society that does not understand and persecutes him - characteristic feature romantic literature.

E. Kozhina wrote about such a hero: “A man of the romantic generation, a witness of bloodshed, cruelty, tragic destinies people and entire nations, striving for the bright and heroic, but paralyzed in advance by the pitiful reality, out of hatred for the bourgeois, placing the knights of the Middle Ages on a pedestal and even more acutely aware in front of their monolithic figures of his own duality, inferiority and instability, a man who is proud of his “I”, because it is only this that sets him apart from the philistines, and at the same time he is burdened by him, a man who combines protest, and powerlessness, and naive illusions, and pessimism, and unspent energy, and passionate lyricism - this man is present in all romantic canvases of the 1820s."

The dizzying change of events inspired, gave rise to hopes for change, awakened dreams, but sometimes led to despair. The slogans of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity proclaimed by the revolution opened up scope for the human spirit. However, it soon became clear that these principles were not feasible. Having generated unprecedented hopes, the revolution did not live up to them. It was discovered early that the resulting freedom was not only good. It also manifested itself in cruel and predatory individualism. The post-revolutionary order was least of all like the kingdom of reason that the thinkers and writers of the Enlightenment dreamed of. The cataclysms of the era influenced the mindset of the entire romantic generation. The mood of romantics constantly fluctuates between delight and despair, inspiration and disappointment, fiery enthusiasm and truly world-wide sorrow. The feeling of absolute and boundless personal freedom is adjacent to the awareness of its tragic insecurity.

S. Frank wrote that “the 19th century opens with a feeling of “world sorrow.” In the worldview of Byron, Leopardi, Alfred Musset - here in Russia in Lermontov, Baratynsky, Tyutchev - in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, in the tragic music of Beethoven, in the terrible fantasy of Hoffmann, in the sad irony of Heine - a new consciousness of the orphanhood of man in the world, of tragic impossibility is heard his hopes, the hopeless contradiction between the intimate needs and hopes of the human heart and the cosmic and social conditions of human existence.”

Indeed, doesn’t Schopenhauer himself speak about the pessimism of his views, whose teaching is painted in gloomy tones, and who constantly says that the world is filled with evil, meaninglessness, misfortune, that life is suffering: “If the immediate and immediate goal of our life is not there is suffering, then our existence represents the most stupid and inexpedient phenomenon. For it is absurd to admit that the endless suffering flowing from the essential needs of life, with which the world is filled, was aimless and purely accidental. Although each individual misfortune seems to be an exception, misfortune in general is the rule.”

The life of the human spirit among the romantics is contrasted with the baseness of material existence. From the feeling of his ill-being, the cult of a unique individual personality was born. She was perceived as the only support and as the only point of reference life values. Human individuality was thought of as an absolutely valuable principle in itself, torn out from the surrounding world and in many ways opposed to it.

The hero of romantic literature becomes a person who has broken away from old ties, asserting his absolute dissimilarity from all others. For this reason alone, she is exceptional. Romantic artists, as a rule, avoided depicting ordinary and ordinary people. The main characters in their artistic work are lonely dreamers, brilliant artists, prophets, individuals endowed with deep passions and titanic power of feelings. They may be villains, but never mediocre. Most often they are endowed with a rebellious consciousness.

The gradations of disagreement with the world order among such heroes can be different: from the rebellious restlessness of Rene in Chateaubriand’s novel of the same name to the total disappointment in people, reason and the world order, characteristic of many of Byron’s heroes. The romantic hero is always in a state of some kind of spiritual limit. His senses are heightened. The contours of the personality are determined by the passion of nature, the insatiable desires and aspirations. Romantic personality exceptional by virtue of its original nature and therefore completely individual.

The exclusive intrinsic value of individuality did not even allow the thought of its dependence on surrounding circumstances. Starting point romantic conflict is the individual’s desire for complete independence, the assertion of the primacy of free will over necessity. The discovery of the intrinsic value of the individual was an artistic achievement of romanticism. But it led to the aestheticization of individuality. The very originality of the individual was already becoming a subject of aesthetic admiration. Breaking out of his environment, the romantic hero could sometimes manifest himself in violation of prohibitions, in individualism and selfishness, or even simply in crimes (Manfred, Corsair or Cain in Byron). The ethical and aesthetic in assessing a person might not coincide. In this, the romantics differed greatly from the enlighteners, who, on the contrary, completely merged the ethical and aesthetic principles in their assessment of the hero.

The enlighteners of the 18th century created many positive heroes who were carriers of high moral values ​​and, in their opinion, embodied reason and natural norms. Thus, Robinson Crusoe by D. Defoe and Gulliver by Jonathan Swift became the symbol of the new, “natural”, rational hero. Of course, the true hero of the Enlightenment is Goethe's Faust.

A romantic hero is not just goodie, he is not even always positive; a romantic hero is a hero who reflects the poet’s longing for an ideal. After all, the question of whether the Demon in Lermontov or Conrad in Byron’s “Corsair” is positive or negative does not arise at all - they are majestic, containing in their appearance, in their deeds, indomitable strength of spirit. A romantic hero, as V. G. Belinsky wrote, is “a person who relies on himself,” a person who opposes himself to the entire world around him.

An example of a romantic hero is Julien Sorel from Stendhal's novel The Red and the Black. The personal fate of Julien Sorel was closely dependent on this change in historical weather. From the past he borrows his internal code of honor, the present condemns him to dishonor. According to his inclinations as a “man of ’93”, an admirer of revolutionaries and Napoleon, he was “too late to be born.” The time has passed when positions were won through personal valor, courage, and intelligence. Nowadays, for the “hunt for happiness,” the plebeian is offered the only help that is in use among the children of timelessness: calculating and hypocritical piety. The color of luck has changed, as when turning a roulette wheel: today, in order to win, you need to bet not on red, but on black. And the young man, obsessed with the dream of fame, is faced with a choice: either to perish in obscurity, or to try to assert himself by adapting to his age, putting on the “uniform of the times” - a cassock. He turns away from his friends and serves those whom he despises in his soul; an atheist, he pretends to be a saint; a fan of the Jacobins - trying to penetrate the circle of aristocrats; being endowed with a sharp mind, he agrees with fools. Realizing that “everyone is for himself in this desert of selfishness called life,” he rushed into battle in the hope of winning with the weapons forced upon him.

And yet, Sorel, having taken the path of adaptation, did not completely become an opportunist; Having chosen the methods of winning happiness accepted by everyone around him, he did not fully share their morality. And the point here is not simply that a gifted young man is immeasurably smarter than the mediocrities in whose service he is. His hypocrisy itself is not humiliated submission, but a kind of challenge to society, accompanied by a refusal to recognize the right of the “masters of life” to respect and their claims to set moral principles for their subordinates. The top are the enemy, vile, insidious, vindictive. Taking advantage of their favor, Sorel, however, does not know that he owes his conscience to them, since, even while treating a capable young man kindly, they see him not as a person, but as an efficient servant.

An ardent heart, energy, sincerity, courage and strength of character, a morally healthy attitude towards the world and people, a constant need for action, for work, for the fruitful work of the intellect, humane responsiveness to people, respect for ordinary workers, love for nature, beauty in life and art, all this distinguished Julien’s nature, and he had to suppress all this in himself, trying to adapt to the animal laws of the world around him. This attempt was unsuccessful: “Julien retreated before the judgment of his conscience, he could not overcome his craving for justice.”

Prometheus became one of the favorite symbols of romanticism, embodying courage, heroism, self-sacrifice, unbending will and intransigence. An example of a work based on the myth of Prometheus is the poem by P.B. Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound", which is one of the poet's most significant works. Shelley changed the ending mythological plot, in which, as is known, Prometheus nevertheless reconciled with Zeus. The poet himself wrote: “I was against such a pitiful outcome as the reconciliation of a fighter for humanity with his oppressor.” Shelley creates from the image of Prometheus an ideal hero, punished by the gods for violating their will and helping people. In Shelley's poem, the torment of Prometheus is rewarded with the triumph of his liberation. The fantastic creature Demogorgon, appearing in the third part of the poem, overthrows Zeus, proclaiming: “There is no return for the tyranny of heaven, and there is no successor for you.”

Women's images Romanticism is also contradictory, but extraordinary. Many authors of the Romantic era returned to the story of Medea. The Austrian writer of the era of romanticism F. Grillparzer wrote the trilogy “The Golden Fleece”, which reflected the “tragedy of fate” characteristic of German romanticism. “The Golden Fleece” is often called the most complete dramatic version of the “biography” of the ancient Greek heroine. In the first part, the one-act drama “The Guest,” we see Medea as a very young girl, forced to endure her tyrant father. She prevents the murder of Phrixus, their guest, who fled to Colchis on a golden ram. It was he who sacrificed the golden fleece ram to Zeus in gratitude for saving him from death and hung the golden fleece in the sacred grove of Ares. The seekers of the Golden Fleece appear before us in the four-act play “The Argonauts.” In it, Medea desperately but unsuccessfully tries to fight her feelings for Jason, against her will, becoming his accomplice. In the third part, the five-act tragedy “Medea,” the story reaches its climax. Medea, brought by Jason to Corinth, appears to others as a stranger from barbarian lands, a sorceress and a sorceress. In the works of romantics, it is quite common to see the phenomenon that foreignness lies at the heart of many insoluble conflicts. Returning to his homeland in Corinth, Jason is ashamed of his girlfriend, but still refuses to fulfill Creon’s demand and drive her away. And only having fallen in love with his daughter, Jason himself began to hate Medea.

Home tragic theme Grillparzer's Medea lies in her loneliness, because even her own children are ashamed and avoid her. Medea is not destined to get rid of this punishment even in Delphi, where she fled after the murder of Creusa and her sons. Grillparzer did not at all seek to justify his heroine, but it was important for him to discover the motives for her actions. Grillparzer's Medea, the daughter of a distant barbarian country, has not accepted the fate prepared for her, she rebels against someone else's way of life, and this greatly attracted romantics.

The image of Medea, striking in its inconsistency, is seen by many in a transformed form in the heroines of Stendhal and Barbet d'Aurevilly. Both writers portray the deadly Medea in different ideological contexts, but invariably endow her with a sense of alienation, which turns out to be detrimental to the integrity of the individual and, therefore, entails itself death.

Many literary scholars correlate the image of Medea with the image of the heroine of the novel “Bewitched” by Barbet d’Aurevilly, Jeanne-Madeleine de Feardan, as well as with the image of the famous heroine of Stendhal’s novel “The Red and the Black” Matilda. Here we see three main components of the famous myth: unexpected, stormy the birth of passion, magical actions with either good or harmful intentions, the revenge of an abandoned witch - a rejected woman.

These are just some examples of romantic heroes and heroines.

The revolution proclaimed individual freedom, opening up “unexplored new roads” before it, but this same revolution gave birth to the bourgeois order, the spirit of acquisition and selfishness. These two sides of personality (the pathos of freedom and individualism) manifest themselves very complexly in the romantic concept of the world and man. V. G. Belinsky found a wonderful formula when speaking about Byron (and his hero): “this is a human personality, indignant against the general and, in his proud rebellion, leaning on himself.”

However, in the depths of romanticism, another type of personality is formed. This is, first of all, the personality of an artist - a poet, musician, painter, also elevated above the crowd of ordinary people, officials, property owners, and secular loafers. Here we are no longer talking about the claims of an exceptional individual, but about the rights of a true artist to judge the world and people.

The romantic image of the artist (for example, among German writers) is not always adequate to Byron’s hero. Moreover, Byron's individualist hero is contrasted with a universal personality that strives for the highest harmony (as if absorbing all the diversity of the world). The universality of such a personality is the antithesis of any limitation of a person, whether associated with narrow mercantile interests, or with a thirst for profit that destroys personality, etc.

Romantics did not always correctly assess the social consequences of revolutions. But they were acutely aware of the anti-aesthetic nature of society, which threatens the very existence of art, in which “heartless purity” reigns. Romantic artist, unlike some writers of the second half of the 19th century century, did not at all seek to hide from the world in an “ivory tower.” But he felt tragically lonely, suffocating from this loneliness.

Thus, in romanticism two antagonistic concepts of personality can be distinguished: individualistic and universalistic. Their fate in the subsequent development of world culture was ambiguous. The rebellion of Byron's individualist hero was beautiful and captivated his contemporaries, but at the same time its futility was quickly revealed. History has harshly condemned the claims of an individual to create his own court. On the other hand, the idea of ​​universality reflected a longing for the ideal of a comprehensively developed person, free from the limitations of bourgeois society.

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ROMANTICISM IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE. Three types of romantic hero.

Romanticism is a trend in literature, an artistic type of creativity, the characteristic feature of which is the display and reproduction of life outside the real-specific connections of a person with the surrounding reality.

The emergence of romanticism. Romanticism arose at the end of the 18th century. The birthplace of romanticism is Germany; the emerging aesthetics gave the world a number of philosophers: F. Schelling, Fichte, Kant. German romanticism had a decisive influence on all types of art: ballet, painting, literature, landscape art. Many romantics were linguists; they were interested in language as an expression of the spirit of the nation, an expression of thoughts and feelings. Romanticism describes a bright, exceptional plot, sublime passions, feelings, love intrigue.

Romanticism has its own way of typification. These are exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances. Romantics portray human qualities on departure from the ordinary. Since the birth of romanticism, telepathy and parapsychology have been resurrected. The birth of romanticism is a crisis of rational aesthetics. A new typology of hero is emerging. These types have become eternal. .

The first type of hero. 1. The hero is a wanderer, a fugitive, a wanderer (he was created by Byron, he was in Pushkin (Aleko), .. Wandering is not geographical, but spiritual, internal migration, the search for the unknown. The search for the highest truth. Wandering is a metaphor for striving into the unknown, an eternal search, longing for the infinite, this longing leads to alienation from society, opposition to others, the world, and God.

This type of hero gave rise to timeless images. Image of the sea...(restlessness, tossing...)

Image of the road...

Don Quixote is a wanderer who is always looking and cannot find.

The image of a disappearing horizon.

The second type of hero is a strange eccentric, a dreamer, out of this world. He is characterized by childish naivety, worldly inability, on earth he is not at home, but visiting. (Odoevsky “Town in a snuffbox”, Pogorelsky, Dostoevsky).

The third type of hero The hero is an artist, a poet with a capital letter. An artist is not only a profession, but a state of mind. Creativity among romantics, who is the main creator? - God. Romantics call him a cosmic artist; for them, poetry is a revelation. They decided that the creation of the world was not completed, and the poet should continue the work of the Creator. They raised the poet to such a height... And gave rise to symbolism.

Visions, hallucinations, dreams gave rise to creativity. Romantics created a biography of Raphael. Zhukovsky's article about how he painted the Madonna painting. “He languished with this image for a long time, but it did not work out on canvas. Raphael fell asleep and had a vision. He saw this image, woke up and wrote. The poet is a spiritual ascetic.

On the topic: methodological developments, presentations and notes

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