Realism as an artistic method. Message on the topic “Realism What topics did realists write about?”

Modern natural science, which alone has reached its most recent, systematic and scientific development, like all recent history, dates back to the replacement era, which the Germans called the Reformation, the French the Renaissance, and the Italians the Quinquenecento.

This poha begins in the second half of the 15th century. Blooming in the field of art at this time is one of the sides of the greatest progressive revolution, characterized by the breakdown of feudal foundations and the development of new economic relations. The royal authorities, relying on the townspeople, broke the feudal nobility and founded large, essentially national monarchies, in which modern European sciences developed. These shifts, which took place in an atmosphere of powerful popular upsurge, are closely connected with the struggle for secular culture to be independent of religion. In the XV-XVI centuries, advanced realistic art was created

In the 40s of the XIX century. Realism becomes an influential movement in art. It is based on direct, lively and unbiased perception and truthful reflection. reality. Like romanticism, realism criticized reality, but at the same time it proceeded from reality itself, and in it it tried to identify ways to approach the ideal. Unlike romantic hero, the hero of critical realism may be an aristocrat, a convict, a banker, a landowner, a petty official, but he is always a typical hero in typical circumstances.

Realism of the 19th century, in contrast to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, according to the definition of A.M. Gorky is, first of all, critical realism. Its main theme is the exposure of the bourgeois system and its morality and vices contemporary writer society. C. Dickens, W. Thackeray, F. Stendhal, O. Balzac revealed the social meaning of evil, seeing the reason in the material dependence of man on man.

In the debate between classicists and romantics in fine arts Gradually the foundation was laid for a new perception - a realistic one.

Realism, as a visually reliable perception of reality, assimilation to nature, approached naturalism. However, E. Delacroix already noted that “realism cannot be confused with the visible semblance of reality.” The significance of an artistic image depended not on the naturalism of the image, but on the level of generalization and typification.

The term "realism", introduced by the French literary critic J. Chanfleury in the mid-19th century, was used to designate art that opposed romanticism and academic idealism. Initially, realism came closer to naturalism and the “natural school” in art and literature of the 60-80s.

However, later realism self-identified as a movement that does not coincide with naturalism in everything. In Russian aesthetic thought, realism means not so much an accurate reproduction of life, but rather a “truthful” representation with a “sentence on the phenomena of life.”

Realism expands the social space of artistic vision, makes the “universal art” of classicism speak in a national language, and rejects retrospectivism more decisively than romanticism. A realistic worldview is the other side of idealism[ 9, pp. 4-6].

In the XV-XVI centuries, advanced realistic art was created. In the Middle Ages, artists, submitting to the influence of the church, moved away from the real image of the world inherent in the artists of antiquity (Apollodorus, Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Palephilus). Art moved towards the abstract and mystical; the real depiction of the world, the desire for knowledge, was considered a sinful matter. Real images seemed too material, sensual, and, therefore, dangerous in the sense of temptation. Artistic culture fell, visual literacy fell. Hippolyte Taine wrote: “Looking at church glass and statues, at primitive painting, it seems to me that the human race has degenerated, consumptive saints, ugly martyrs, flat-chested virgins, a procession of colorless, dry, sad personalities, reflecting the fear of oppression.”

The art of the Renaissance introduces new progressive content into traditional religious subjects. In their works, artists glorify man, show him as beautiful and harmoniously developed, and convey the beauty of the world around him. But what is especially characteristic of the artists of that time is that they all live in the interests of their time, hence the completeness and strength of character, the realism of their paintings. The broadest social upsurge determined true nationality best works Renaissance. The Renaissance is a time of greatest cultural and artistic upsurge, which marked the beginning of the development of realistic art of subsequent eras. A new worldview was emerging, free from the spiritual oppression of the church. It is based on faith in the strengths and capabilities of man, a greedy interest in earthly life. Great interest in people, recognition of values and beauty real world determine the activities of artists, the development of a new realistic method in art based on scientific research in the field of anatomy, linear and aerial perspective, chiaroscuro and proportions. These artists created deeply realistic art.

Realism in literature is a direction whose main feature is a truthful depiction of reality and its typical features without any distortion or exaggeration. This originated in the 19th century, and its adherents sharply opposed sophisticated forms of poetry and the use of various mystical concepts in works.

Signs directions

Realism in 19th-century literature can be distinguished by clear characteristics. The main one is artistic image reality in images familiar to the average person, which he regularly encounters in real life. Reality in the works is considered as a means for a person to understand the world around him and himself, and the image of each literary character is worked out in such a way that the reader can recognize himself, a relative, colleague or acquaintance in it.

In the novels and stories of realists, art remains life-affirming, even if the plot is characterized by tragic conflict. Another feature of this genre is the desire of writers to consider the surrounding reality in its development, and each writer tries to discover the emergence of new psychological, public and social relations.

Features of this literary movement

Realism in literature, which replaced romanticism, has the signs of art that seeks and finds truth, striving to transform reality.

In the works of realist writers, discoveries were made after much thought and dreaming, after analyzing subjective worldviews. This feature, which can be distinguished by the author’s perception of time, determined distinctive features realistic literature of the early twentieth century from traditional Russian classics.

Realism inXIX century

Such representatives of realism in literature as Balzac and Stendhal, Thackeray and Dickens, George Sand and Victor Hugo, in their works most clearly reveal the themes of good and evil, and avoid abstract concepts and show real life of their contemporaries. These writers make it clear to readers that evil lies in the lifestyle of bourgeois society, capitalist reality, and people’s dependence on various material values. For example, in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son, the owner of the company was heartless and callous not by nature. It’s just that such character traits appeared in him due to the presence of a lot of money and the ambition of the owner, for whom profit becomes the main achievement in life.

Realism in literature is devoid of humor and sarcasm, and the images of the characters are no longer the ideal of the writer himself and do not embody his cherished dreams. From the works of the 19th century, the hero practically disappears, in whose image the author’s ideas are visible. This situation is especially clearly visible in the works of Gogol and Chekhov.

However, this is most clearly literary direction manifests itself in the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who describe the world as they see it. This was expressed in the image of characters with their own strengths and weaknesses, the description of mental torment, a reminder to readers of the harsh reality that cannot be changed by one person.

As a rule, realism in literature also affected the fate of representatives of the Russian nobility, as can be judged from the works of I. A. Goncharov. Thus, the characters of the heroes in his works remain contradictory. Oblomov is a sincere and gentle person, but due to his passivity he is not capable of better things. Another character in Russian literature has similar qualities - the weak-willed but gifted Boris Raisky. Goncharov managed to create the image of an “anti-hero”, typical of the 19th century, which was noticed by critics. As a result, the concept of “Oblomovism” appeared, referring to all passive characters whose main features were laziness and lack of will.

In the disputes between classicists and romantics in the fine arts, the foundation was gradually laid for a new perception - realistic.

However, the criterion of “realism” was not the accuracy of the reproduction of the surrounding reality. Striving for a correct depiction of nature, the Barbizonians, for example, were suspicious of realism, considering it too prosaic, aimed at creating “copies” rather than genuine art. The Barbizonians did not like the social orientation of creativity.

The democracy of realistic art is manifested in a sympathetic reflection of the life of the working people.

The struggle for Russian national art was fully expressed in the Itinerants movement. Academic language artistic style the Wanderers talked about everyday life social problems ah Russia.

Its historical limitations were predetermined, on the one hand, by the backwardness of Russian public life, remnants of serfdom, slavery and spiritual lack of freedom, on the other - the provincialism of Russian academic art."

3. Impressionism: a new direction in art

Itinerant movement in Russia coincides in time with the artistic discoveries of the Impressionists in France, who, in contrast to salon art, tried to find poetry in everyday life. They reject the plot and disdain the ideological commitment of the artist. Impressionism was far from the critical realism of Russian artists. New discoveries in the field of color, transmission of light and color made by the Impressionists both impressed Russian painters and raised doubts. In 1874 I. Kramskoy noted: “We certainly need to move towards light, colors, air, but... how to do so as not to lose along the way the most precious quality of an artist - the heart?” And in 1884, he emphasized the lack of “simplicity” of concepts, “inspiration and thought” in French art and the predominance of “a kind of floury tone” in painting.

The transcendence of impressionism beyond the limits of normative aesthetics and ideas about the subject of art is already felt in this characteristic. It is no coincidence that Kramskoy remarked in 1875: “You are not unaware of the strange phenomenon that the thing that excited good reviews there, in Paris, abroad, does not at all evoke the same impression in Russia. Why is this?"

The Russian critic V. Stasov, who did not accept the French innovation, emphasized that the Impressionists “forgot both man and his soul.”

Impressionism, represented by its most prominent representative, Claude Monet (1840-1926), freed itself from classicist forms of perception of reality and, completely abandoning the historical and cultural experience of visual and logical comprehension of reality, introduced an extremely subjective experience of light and space.

The concept of the world, which assumed that its appearance was stable and constant, was discarded as an outdated and fleeting impression.

Capturing subtle movements becomes the artist's goal. Vision turns into the only way of artistic perception, and color becomes the only formative principle.

The spatial environment, with its depth and infinity among the romantics, is replaced by the impressionists with the “external appearance of objects losing their contours in the flow of light and air. Naturalism was taken to the extreme by the impressionists; the fixation of any object on the canvas for the sake of solving “visual” problems reduced, for example, Monet's landscape genre to the level of color science exercises.

The last attempt of the 19th century to create a holistic aesthetic myth and implement it in architecture, sculpture, decorative and applied arts, painting and scenography was the Art Nouveau style, artificially created in 1886-1914.

Art Nouveau is distinguished by eclecticism, but historical forms of art are focused on development in the future and should have led to the blurring of the lines between elite and mass art.

The end of the 19th century summed up the artistic and worldview quests of the entire modern era; there was a painful process of self-determination of art and its artistic nature.

Modern on turn of the 19th century- XX centuries had "the significance of a stage that completed the grandiose development of European culture, which began in antiquity. There is no doubt that the attempt made at the turn of the century to generalize the aesthetic experience of mankind, to synthesize the artistic traditions of the West and East, antiquity and the Middle Ages, classicism and romanticism was accompanied and, to a certain extent, , generated by the phenomena of decline, crisis of the system of scientific, aesthetic and ethical values.

However, something else is also certain - this art created the preconditions that led to radical changes in the world artistic culture XX century.

Realism

Realism (material, real) is an artistic movement in art and literature, which was established in the first third of the 19th century. The origins of realism in Russia were I. A. Krylov, A. S. Griboyedov, A. S. Pushkin (in Western literature, realism appeared somewhat later, its first representatives were Stendhal and O. de Balzac).

Features of realism. Principle life truth, which guides the realist artist in his work, striving to give the most complete reflection of life in its typical properties. The fidelity of the depiction of reality, reproduced in the forms of life itself, is the main criterion of artistry.

Social analysis, historicism of thinking. It is realism that explains the phenomena of life, establishes their causes and consequences on a socio-historical basis. In other words, realism is unthinkable without historicism, which presupposes an understanding of a given phenomenon in its conditionality, development and connection with other phenomena. Historicism is the basis of the worldview and artistic method of a realist writer, a kind of key to understanding reality, allowing one to connect the past, present and future. In the past, the artist looks for answers to pressing questions of our time, and interprets modernity as the result of previous historical development.

Critical portrayal of life. Writers deeply and truthfully show the negative phenomena of reality, focusing on exposing the existing order. But at the same time, realism is not devoid of life-affirming pathos, because it is based on positive ideals - patriotism, sympathy for the masses, the search for a positive hero in life, faith in the inexhaustible possibilities of man, the dream of a bright future for Russia (for example, “ Dead souls"). That is why in modern literary criticism, instead of the concept of “critical realism,” which was first introduced by N. G. Chernyshevsky, they most often speak of “classical realism.” Typical characters in typical circumstances, that is, characters were depicted in close connection with the social environment that raised them and formed them in certain socio-historical conditions.

The relationship between the individual and society is the leading problem posed by realistic literature. The drama of these relationships is important for realism. As a rule, the focus of realistic works is on extraordinary individuals, dissatisfied with life, “breaking out” of their environment, people who are able to rise above society and challenge it. Their behavior and actions become the subject of close attention and study for realist writers.

The versatility of the characters’ characters: their actions, deeds, speech, lifestyle and inner world, the “dialectics of the soul,” which is revealed in the psychological details of its emotional experiences. Thus, realism expands the possibilities of writers in the creative exploration of the world, in the creation of a contradictory and complex personality structure as a result of subtle penetration into the depths of the human psyche.

Expressiveness, brightness, imagery, precision of the Russian literary language, enriched with elements of lively, colloquial speech, which realist writers draw from the common Russian language.

A variety of genres (epic, lyrical, dramatic, lyric-epic, satirical), in which all the richness of the content of realistic literature is expressed.

Reflection of reality does not exclude fiction and fantasy (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sukhovo-Kobylin), although these artistic means do not determine the main tone of the work.

Typology of Russian realism. The question of the typology of realism is associated with the disclosure of known patterns that determine the dominance of certain types of realism and their replacement.

In many literary works there are attempts to establish typical varieties (trends) of realism: Renaissance, educational (or didactic), romantic, sociological, critical, naturalistic, revolutionary-democratic, socialist, typical, empirical, syncretic, philosophical-psychological, intellectual, spiral-shaped, universal, monumental... Since all these terms are rather conventional (terminological confusion) and there are no clear boundaries between them, we propose to use the concept “stages of development of realism”. Let us trace these stages, each of which takes shape in the conditions of its time and is artistically justified in its uniqueness. The complexity of the problem of the typology of realism is that typologically unique varieties of realism not only replace each other, but also coexist and develop simultaneously. Consequently, the concept of “stage” does not at all mean that within the same chronological framework there cannot be another kind of flow, earlier or later. That is why it is necessary to correlate the work of one or another realist writer with the work of other realist artists, while identifying the individual uniqueness of each of them, revealing the closeness between groups of writers.

First third of the 19th century. Krylov’s realistic fables reflected the real relationships of people in society, depicted living scenes, the content of which was varied - they could be everyday, social, philosophical and historical.

Griboyedov created “high comedy” (“Woe from Wit”), that is, a comedy close to drama, reflecting in it the ideas by which educated society lived in the first quarter of the century. Chatsky, in the fight against serf owners and conservatives, defends national interests from the standpoint of common sense and popular morality. The play contains typical characters and circumstances.

In Pushkin's work, the problems and methodology of realism have already been outlined. In the novel “Eugene Onegin,” the poet recreated the “Russian spirit,” gave a new, objective principle for depicting the hero, and was the first to show “ extra person", and in the story " Stationmaster» - « little man" In the people, Pushkin saw the moral potential that determines national character. In the novel " Captain's daughter“The historicism of the writer’s thinking was revealed - both in the correct reflection of reality, and in the accuracy of social analysis, and in understanding historical patterns phenomena, and in the ability to convey the typical characteristics of a person’s character, to show him as a product of a certain social environment.

30s of the XIX century. In this era of “timelessness”, public inaction, only the brave voices of A. S. Pushkin, V. G. Belinsky and M. Yu. Lermontov were heard. The critic saw in Lermontov a worthy successor to Pushkin. The man in his work bears the dramatic features of the time. In fate

Pechorin, the writer reflected the fate of his generation, his “age” (“Hero of Our Time”). But if Pushkin devotes his main attention to the description of the character’s actions, gives the “outline of character,” then Lermontov focuses on inner world hero, in depth psychological analysis his actions and experiences, on the “history of the human soul.”

40s of the XIX century. During this period, realists received the name “natural school” (N.V. Gogol, A.I. Herzen, D.V. Grigorovich, N.A. Nekrasov). The works of these writers are characterized by accusatory pathos, rejection of social reality, and increased attention to everyday life. Gogol did not find the embodiment of his lofty ideals in the world around him, and therefore was convinced that in the conditions of contemporary Russia, the ideal and beauty of life could be expressed only through the denial of ugly reality. The satirist explores the material, material and everyday basis of life, its “invisible” features and the spiritually wretched characters arising from it, firmly confident in their dignity and right.

Second half of the 19th century. The work of writers of this time (I. A. Goncharov, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. S. Turgenev, N. S. Leskov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky, V. . G. Korolenko, A. P. Chekhov) distinguishes qualitatively new stage in the development of realism: they not only critically comprehend reality, but also actively look for ways to transform it, show close attention to the spiritual life of man, penetrate into the “dialectics of the soul,” create a world populated by complex, contradictory characters, saturated with dramatic conflicts. The works of writers are characterized by subtle psychologism and large philosophical generalizations.

The turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The features of the era were most clearly expressed in the works of A. I. Kuprin and I. A. Bunin. They sensitively captured the general spiritual and social atmosphere in the country, deeply and accurately reflected the unique pictures of life of the most diverse segments of the population, and created a complete and truthful picture of Russia. They are characterized by such themes and problems as the continuity of generations, the heritage of centuries, the root connections of man with the past, the Russian character and features of national history, the harmonious world of nature and the world of social relations (devoid of poetry and harmony, personifying cruelty and violence), love and death , the fragility and fragility of human happiness, the mysteries of the Russian soul, loneliness and the tragic predestination of human existence, ways of liberation from spiritual oppression. The original and original creativity of writers organically continues the best traditions of Russian realistic literature, and above all, a deep penetration into the essence of the life depicted, the disclosure of the relationship between the environment and the individual, attention to the social and everyday background, and the expression of the ideas of humanism.

Pre-October decade. A new vision of the world in connection with the processes taking place in Russia in all areas of life determined a new face of realism, which differed significantly from classical realism in its “modernity”. New figures emerged - representatives of a special trend within the realistic direction - neorealism ("renewed" realism): I. S. Shmelev, L. N. Andreev, M. M. Prishvin, E. I. Zamyatin, S. N. Sergeev-Tsensky , A. N. Tolstoy, A. M. Remizov, B. K. Zaitsev, etc. They are characterized by a departure from the sociological understanding of reality; mastering the sphere of the “earthly”, deepening the concrete sensory perception of the world, artistic study of the subtle movements of the soul, nature and man coming into contact, which eliminates alienation and brings us closer to the original, unchanging nature of being; a return to the hidden values of the folk-village element, capable of renewing life in the spirit of “eternal” ideals (pagan, mystical flavor of the depicted); comparison of the bourgeois urban and rural way of life; the idea of the incompatibility of the natural force of life, existential good with social evil; a combination of the historical and metaphysical (next to the features of everyday or concrete historical reality there is a “superreal” background, mythological subtext); the motive of purifying love as a kind of symbolic sign of the all-human natural unconscious principle that brings enlightened peace.

Soviet period. Distinctive features that arose at this time socialist realism became party spirit, nationality, depiction of reality in its “revolutionary development”, propaganda of heroism and romance of socialist construction. In the works of M. Gorky, M. A. Sholokhov, A. A. Fadeev, L. M. Leonov, V. V. Mayakovsky, K. A. Fedin, N. A. Ostrovsky, A. N. Tolstoy, A. T. Tvardovsky and others affirmed a different reality, a different person, different ideals, different aesthetics, principles that formed the basis of the moral code of a fighter for communism. A new method in art was promoted, which was politicized: it had a pronounced social orientation and expressed state ideology. At the center of the works was usually goodie, inextricably linked with the team, which constantly had a beneficial influence on the individual. The main sphere of application of the forces of such a hero is creative work. It is no coincidence that the industrial novel has become one of the most common genres.

20-30s of the XX century. Many writers, forced to live under a dictatorial regime, in conditions of cruel censorship, managed to maintain internal freedom, showed the ability to remain silent, be careful in their assessments, switch to allegorical language - they were devoted to the truth, to the true art of realism. The genre of dystopia was born, in which a harsh critique of a totalitarian society based on the suppression of personality and individual freedom was given. The fates of A.P. Platonov, M.A. Bulgakov, E.I. Zamyatin, A.A. Akhmatova, M.M. Zoshchenko, O.E. Mandelstam were tragic; they were deprived of the opportunity to publish in the Soviet Union for a long time.

The “thaw” period (mid-50s - first half of the 60s). Into this historical time Young poets of the sixties declared themselves loudly and confidently (E. A. Evtushenko, A. A. Voznesensky, B. A. Akhmadulina, R. I. Rozhdestvensky, B. Sh. Okudzhava, etc.), who became “rulers of thoughts” of his generation together with representatives of the “third wave” of emigration (V.P. Aksenov, A.V. Kuznetsov, A.T. Gladilin, G.N. Vladimov,

A. I. Solzhenitsyn, N. M. Korzhavin, S. D. Dovlatov, V. E. Maksimov, V. N. Voinovich, V. P. Nekrasov, etc.), whose works were characterized by a sharply critical understanding of modern reality, preservation the human soul in the conditions of the command-administrative system and internal opposition to it, confession, moral quests of the heroes, their liberation, emancipation, romanticism and self-irony, innovation in the field of artistic language and style, genre diversity.

The last decades of the 20th century. A new generation of writers, already living in somewhat relaxed political conditions within the country, came up with lyrical, urban and rural poetry and prose that did not fit into the rigid framework of socialist realism (N. M. Rubtsov, A. V. Zhigulin,

V. N. Sokolov, Yu. V. Trifonov, Ch. T. Aitmatov, V. I. Belov, F. A. Abramov, V. G. Rasputin, V. P. Astafiev, S. P. Zalygin, V. M. Shukshin, F. A. Iskander). The leading themes of their work are the revival of traditional morality and the relationship between man and nature, which revealed the writers’ closeness to the traditions of Russian classical realism. The works of this period are permeated with a feeling of attachment to native land, and therefore responsibility for what happens on it, a feeling of the irreplaceability of spiritual losses due to the severance of age-old connections between nature and man. The artists comprehend the turning point in the sphere of moral values, the shifts in society in which they are forced to survive human soul, reflect on the catastrophic consequences for those who lose historical memory, experience of generations.

The latest Russian literature. In the literary process recent years Literary scholars identify two trends: postmodernism (blurred boundaries of realism, awareness of the illusory nature of what is happening, a mixture of different artistic methods, stylistic diversity, increased influence of avant-gardeism - A. G. Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, V. O. Pelevin, T. N. Tolstaya, T. Yu. Kibirov, D. A. Prigov) and post-realism (traditional for realism attention to the fate of a private person, tragically lonely, in the vanity of humiliating everyday life, losing moral guidelines, trying to self-determinate - V. S. Makanin, L. S . Petrushevskaya).

So, realism as a literary and artistic system has a powerful potential for continuous renewal, which manifests itself in one or another transitional era for Russian literature. In the works of writers who continue the traditions of realism, there is a search for new themes, characters, plots, genres, poetic means, a new way of talking with the reader.

19th century realists widely
pushed the boundaries of art.
They began to depict the most ordinary, prosaic phenomena.
Reality has entered
into their works with all their
social contrasts,
tragic dissonances.
Nikolay Gulyaev

By the middle of the 19th century, realism was finally established in world culture. Let's remember what it is.

Realism - an artistic movement in literature and art, which is characterized by the desire for objectivity and immediate authenticity of what is depicted, the study of the relationship between characters and circumstances, the reproduction of details of everyday life, and truthfulness in the transfer of details.

The term " realism" was first proposed French writer and literary critic Chanfleury in the 50s of the XIX century. In 1857 he published a collection of articles entitled “Realism”. An interesting fact is that almost simultaneously this concept began to be used in Russia. And the first one to do it was famous literary critic Pavel Annenkov. At the same time, the concept realism" and in Western Europe, both in Russia and Ukraine began to be widely used only in the 60s of the 19th century. Gradually the word " realism" entered the people's vocabulary different countries in relation to various types art.

Realism is opposed to the previous romanticism, in overcoming which it developed. The peculiarity of this direction is the formulation and reflection of acute social problems in artistic creativity, a conscious desire to give one’s own, often critical, assessment of the negative phenomena of life around us. Therefore, the focus of realists is not just facts, events, people and things, but general patterns reality.

Let us consider what were the prerequisites for the formation of realism in world culture. The rapid development of industry in the 19th century required precise scientific knowledge. Realist writers, carefully studying life and trying to reflect its objective laws, were interested in sciences that could help them understand the processes occurring in society and in man himself.

Among the many scientific achievements that had a serious impact on the development of social thought and culture in the second half of the 19th century, special mention should be made of the theory of the English naturalist Charles Darwin on the origin of species, natural scientific explanation of mental phenomena by the founder of physiology Ilya Sechenov, opening Dmitry Mendeleev periodic law of chemical elements, which influenced the subsequent development of chemistry and physics, geographical discoveries associated with travel Petra Semyonova And Nikolai Severtsov in the Tien Shan and Central Asia, as well as research Nikolai Przhevalsky Ussuri region and his first trips to Central Asia.

Scientific discoveries of the second half of the 19th century. changed many established views on the surrounding nature, proved its relationship with man. All this contributed to the birth of a new way of thinking.

The rapid progress taking place in science captivated writers, arming them with new ideas about the world around them. Main problem, raised in the literature of the second half XIX century, - relations between the individual and society. To what extent does society influence a person's destiny? What needs to be done to change a person and the world? These questions are considered by many writers of this period.

Realistic works are characterized by such a specific artistic medium as concreteness of images, conflict, plot. At the same time artistic image in such works cannot be correlated with a living person; he is richer than a specific person. “An artist should not be a judge of his characters and what they say, but only an impartial witness... My only job is to be talented, that is, to be able to distinguish important evidence from unimportant ones, to be able to illuminate figures and speak their language,” wrote Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

The goal of realism was to truthfully show and explore life. The main thing here, as theorists of realism argue, is typing . Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy precisely said about this: “The artist’s task... is to extract the typical from reality... to collect ideas, facts, contradictions into a dynamic image. A person, say, during his working day says one phrase that is characteristic of his essence, he will say another in a week, and a third in a year. You force him to speak in a concentrated environment. It’s a fiction, but one in which life is more real than life itself.” Hence objectivity this artistic movement.

Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century continues the realistic traditions of Pushkin, Gogol and other writers. At the same time, society feels the strong influence of criticism on the literary process. This is especially true for work " Aesthetic relations of art to reality » famous Russian writer, critic Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. His thesis that “the beautiful is life” will become the ideological basis of many works of art second half of the 19th century. Material from the site

A new stage in the development of realism in Russian artistic culture is associated with penetration into the depths of human consciousness and feelings, into the complex processes of social life. Works of art created during this period are characterized by historicism — display of phenomena in their historical specificity. Writers set themselves the task of revealing the causes of social evil in society, showing life-like pictures in their works, and creating historically specific characters in which the most important patterns of the era will be captured. Therefore, they depict the individual person, first of all, as a social being. As a result, reality, as modern Russian literary critic Nikolai Gulyaev notes, “appeared in their work as an “objective flow,” as a self-moving reality.”

Thus, in the literature of the second half of the 19th century, the main problems become problems of the individual, pressure on it environment, an exploration of the depths of the human psyche. We invite you to find out and understand for yourself what happened in Russian literature in the second half of the 19th century by reading the works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

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