World culture of the 19th century: new trends. Russian culture of the Silver Age Self-awareness of European culture of the 19th century

The 1860s were felt by humanity as turning points: old ideals and values ​​were lost, having become obsolete, and new ones had not yet been formed. The realization was born that an entire era had ended and a new aesthetics was required; it was time to set other tasks, to solve them with the help of other artistic techniques. The real problem was not “what to display”, but “how” to do it, so many different concepts arose. Art became noticeably individualized and became subjective, even in comparison with romanticism. The political situation remained tense - either Austria was at war with Prussia (1866), then Prussia with France (1870), and unprecedented upheavals began in France itself (72 days of the Paris Commune in 1871, and in 1878 the confrontation between the republican parliament and the monarchical Senate almost caused civil war).

Social tension was linked to economic and political instability, but at the same time art developed quite rapidly and in innovative ways. Science has reached an unprecedentedly high level - important discoveries have been made...

It is not surprising that the world, having become acquainted with new technologies, positively accepted many philosophical trends that presupposed the practicality of knowledge.

Several priority aesthetic trends emerged in philosophy, literature and artistic culture that influenced the worldview of Europeans in the 2nd half of the 19th century:

Positivism, which gave rise to naturalism and realism;

Symbolism;

Aestheticism and decadence;

Intuitionism and Theosophy, which created metaphysical art and modified romantic Orientalism...

POSITIVISM - based on something stable and undoubted (i.e. positive), it was based on the methodology of the natural sciences and decisively dissociated itself from metaphysics and esotericism. Positivism gravitated towards validity, evidence and sought to become universally valid. Positive thinking presupposed knowledge that had a purely applied, practical application. It did not tolerate abstraction, recognizing only the primacy of facts. Positivism viewed art from the point of view of human self-improvement. It is not surprising that in this field literary realism of the 19th century was born in the person of Balzac and Dickens, and the emergence of naturalism in Zola began, which led to an interest in human psychology (especially in Italy, where verism was formed in literature and musical theater at the turn of the century).

NATURALISM is a tendency to explain social phenomena and processes by natural factors. This is the result of the intensive development of biology, when society began to be viewed from the perspective of the functioning of the human body. Observations of reality were carried out dispassionately and objectively, facts were meticulously recorded. The characters of people raised by their environment, with its values, traditions and conventions, were studied, and physiological motives characteristic of different social strata of society were also taken into account. The emphasis was on the predetermined fate of the hero. Naturalists did not give a critical assessment of what they observed and did without artistic generalizations and theorizing (while realism generalized and typified, although there was one base - positivism). The theorist of naturalism is Emile Zola, who was inspired by the teachings of Georg Mendel on genetics. Writers explored cause-and-effect relationships (Hauptmann - drama “Before Sunrise”). Zola, Maupassant, Courbet and Millet talked about the social lower classes of society, like Gorky’s “At the Depths.” Their traditions were developed by Ed. Manet and E. Degas. We should not forget about the artists of the realistic movement - Millet, Courbet and the Itinerants, who gravitated toward a critical display of reality, especially its ugly sides.

SYMBOLISM protested against the methods of naturalism, originating in the 1860s and continuing the ideas of the romantics of the early 19th century. It was based on the dualism of materialism and idealism, the opposition of society and the individual. The spiritual and moral principle became closer to religiosity. The idea was taken beyond the limits of feelings. The artist’s subjective world was revealed through ideas-symbols. The hidden aspects of life phenomena were explored. In French literature, symbolism is represented by the names of Mallarmé and Verlaine, Rimbaud and Maeterlinck, in Austrian literature - Rilke, in Russian - Bryusov, Balmont, Merezhkovsky, etc. Symbolism received its highest expression in painting (G. Moreau, M. Denis, Puvis de Chavannes) and music (Debussy). In Russia, they became acquainted with French symbolism only in 1911, when Bryusov published Verlaine in Russian, and Balmont wrote the manifesto “Elementary Word on Symbolic Poetry,” but we should not forget that for the enlightened part of Russian society, the French language was the norm of education! The symbolists also strove for spiritual freedom, anticipating the tragedy of social upheavals in the future; they doubted the usual spiritual values, realizing that they had ceased to be in demand by society in the new era. But to show the “hidden reality”, new artistic means were required, because it was impossible to express the “inexpressible” with the usual ones. Symbolism was also distinguished by its tendency to synthesize types of art. Literature, painting and music came closer together, as was practiced by the romantics - painting became musical, and literature borrowed a lot from music...

AESTHETISM was distinguished by a special attitude towards art as an object of refined pleasure, worthy only of a select part of society - the intellectual elite (translated from Greek, the term stands for “perceiving”, i.e. capable of perception). The basis of the aesthetic tendency is the idea of ​​​​transforming the world and man through Beauty, which Schiller wrote about in his letters about aesthetic education. A philosophy of the direction has emerged - aesthetic humanism as a system of views on the development of personality, art and society as a whole. Aesthetes combined the concepts of Good and Morality in the process of forming the human personality with the Beauty of art and everything around them, and as a result of such a synthesis, a creative personality with special principles was born. Aestheticism had its own program and motto “art for art’s sake.” Through art it was supposed to affirm universal human values ​​and concepts, enhance the role of the humanistic ideal and free consciousness from imposed stereotypes. Friedrich Nietzsche was considered the ideologist of the doctrine; the largest representation in culture was England (Wilde, Beardsley and Whistler). They all opposed positivism, considering it mundane and overly practical, leading to the commercialization of culture. Among the critics of positivism was the physicist Avenarius (not to be confused with his namesake Russian writer). He proposed the theory of empirio-criticism (i.e. criticism of experience) as the basis for aestheticism, because the idea of ​​the world comes not so much from experience and what can be touched and seen in reality, but rather from sensations. Avenarius was listened to attentively in the early 70s. Impressionists of France, even before their first exhibition in 1874. The famous French landscape painter C. Corot compiles a collection of observations of instantaneous changes in nature - “Aesthetic Joy”.

DECADENCE - for a long time it was identified with symbolism, although these are two successive phases of one movement with a common spiritual environment and the principles of its reflection in art. Decadence is prone to a pessimistic perception of life, aestheticization of the ugly and repulsive, calling not to hate, but to love it. Against this background, symbolism appeared as an intellectual reflection on what was happening, an attempt to explore the lyrical world of the individual, the region of the subconscious. They had similar themes - the world of fantasy and legends, the East and the European Middle Ages, mysticism and the kingdom of dreams, the melancholy of female images (Ophelia, the femme fatale, like Salome and androgynes), symbols of plants and animals, especially the stage of withering and dying. Decadence created moods, symbolism substantiated and embodied them, preparing the phenomenon of modernity with the idea of ​​a synthesis of arts. Symbolism manifested itself in painting, Art Nouveau - in interior design and books, applied arts and architecture. They were based on the panaesthetic philosophy of Wagner and Ruskin, Pater and Morris with the idea of ​​GesammtKunstWerk.

INTUITIVISM - the theme of the transformation of life and man, the search for ways of the future and utopia, the dominance of intuition over the power of intellect and reason, have formed a special direction in the theory of knowledge. Intuition, as the most reliable way of knowing, was studied by Henri Bergson (1859-1941). Art is designed to keep a person from endless reflection, which destroys consciousness, soul, life. A person can escape from problems by creating myths - such is the nature of human intelligence. Consciousness projects fantastic creatures around itself and invents events, filling existence through the prism of the world of art. A person has the illusion of mastering life processes and managing them. Having realized the situation, you can master it, subjugating it to yourself, said the intuitionists. Art can help a person to self-identify, relieve problems, and take him away from endless worries and thoughts on necessary and unnecessary matters. And through the creation of an artistic world, a person will be able to adapt to the world. In England, this was preached by George Moore and William Morris in News from Nowhere, and in France, Charles Baudelaire wrote a treatise on the immorality of drug use, Artificial Paradise.

The ideas of decadents and aesthetes, impressionists and symbolists have greatly interested modern philosophers engaged in the study of human subconscious activity. One of these philosophers was the founder of the “philosophy of life” movement, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). The aesthetes considered him their leader.

In 1871, F. Nietzsche, discussing the general problems of art and the state of musical theater in particular, wrote a work about Richard Wagner, who was an idol not only of German-speaking countries of the 2nd half of the 19th century - “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.” Nietzsche considered music the main form of art (in solidarity with the romantics).

Since 1875, a fashionable fascination with the other world has penetrated European culture. From spiritualism with the spinning of saucers and tables, from conversations with mediums, many people keen on esotericism moved on to more complex scientific subjects - theosophy and anthroposophy.

The further we move away from the 19th century, the closer it becomes to us. This phenomenon can be explained, apparently, by the fact that many problems - social, ethical, artistic - posed then, still concern us today.

The beginning of this era dates back to the war for the independence of the North American colonies, to the Great French Revolution of 1789, which dealt a decisive blow to the feudal system, on the ruins of which a new civilization was built, characterized by the following features:

the industrial revolution that began in England became comprehensive for Europe and North America: an industrial society was created on the basis of large-scale machine production and a complex division of labor;

Feudal lords and peasants are losing their positions, in the new social structure of society the bourgeoisie, proletariat and urban intelligentsia, which have increased in number and have significant influence in society, come to the fore;

civil society with its laws and political parties is being formed;

nations and national states are formed within their modern borders;

a variety of forms of state and social structure is emerging.

Political, socio-economic and national issues found their expression in the cultural life of European society XIX centuries, where traditional subsystems of culture (religious, aristocratic, folk) lose their former significance.

The natural development of the market was the “industrial revolution” - this is the name given to the rapid development of production in the 19th century and its qualitative change associated with scientific and technical discoveries. P. Sorokin calculated that “the 19th century alone brought more discoveries and inventions than all previous centuries combined,” namely 8527.

New means of overcoming time and space emerged, thanks to which cultural and scientific exchange between peoples intensified. This is primarily due to the development of transport and communications. In the 19th century, ocean shipping appeared (Fulton's steamship - 1807), railway and automobile communications.

Richard Trevithick was the first to come up with the idea of ​​converting to steam traction. In 1802, the first locomotive he built transported 10 tons of ore or 70 passengers at a speed of 8 km/h. Stephenson significantly improved the locomotive, its power and speed. This made it possible in the second quarter of the 19th century to move on to the construction of railways on a massive scale: by 1840 in Europe and America, the railway network amounted to 8 thousand km, and in 1850 - more than 38 thousand km. The construction of railways also began in Russia (the first in 1837 between St. Petersburg and Pavlovsk - 27 km, then Nikolaevskaya: St. Petersburg - Moscow).

The appearance of the automobile (1886, G. Deimer and K. Benz) and the airplane (the first flight of the Wright brothers - 1903) would have been impossible without the invention of the engine (in 1876 - N. Otto, in 1897 - R. Diesel).

Another discovery of the 19th century was the use of electricity. Direct current - the basis for the practical use of electricity - was obtained in 1800. In 1808, Devi demonstrated the principle of operation of an arc lamp; in 1880, Edison introduced an incandescent lamp, after which electricity began to be widely used for domestic needs, which radically changed the way of life of people way. The use of electricity would have been impossible without the development of the fundamentals of an electric motor in 1821 by Faraday and the development of an electric machine in 1831. It should be noted that in 1834, academician Jacobi invented the first model of an electric motor.

These discoveries led to the invention in 1837, independently of each other, of the telegraph by S. Morse and Cook and Wheatstone. But back in 1828-1832, Schilling designed the electric telegraph in Russia. Already in 1868, the length of the telegraph line in England was over 25 thousand km. The telegraph is quickly gaining ground, and society is becoming more informed.

Communication between people, continents, and cultures accelerates with the invention of the telephone. The first telephone was a device designed by F. Reis in 1861, but it remained a toy. In 1860, the Italian Manzetti also invented the telephone, but did not patent it, like the American A. Bell in 1876. This telephone received practical application in all civilized countries of the world. At first, the conversation range was about 30 km, then up to 72 km, but with the introduction in 1890 of the induction loading system and vacuum tube amplifiers, the range problem was eliminated.

The 19th century can truly be considered the century of the triumph of technology, the radical re-equipment of mankind with tools of labor and armament with new technical methods of production: from the plow to the tractor, from the simplest steam engine to the massive use of electrical energy and to the airplane...

The foundation of these qualitative changes was the development of science, both applied and fundamental. Physics and chemistry, which already made great strides in the 18th century, have come to the fore in the new century and are developing problems of thermal and electrical energy. The law of conservation and transformation of energy was discovered, and physicists began to strive to explain all physical and chemical processes in nature with energy. However, already in the second half of the century, discoveries in the field of the electrical and atomic structure of matter led to a clash between energy theory and atomic theory. The works of the Austrian physicist L. Boltzmann, the Englishman J.K. Maxwell, the German M. Planck and others led to the creation of a new physics based on the study of electromagnetic waves and the atomic structure of matter. Its main directions, developed by H.A. Lorenz, V.K. Roentgen, E. Rutherford, N. Bohr, A. Einstein, a large group of Russian physicists, boiled down to the following fundamental theoretical principles:

a) the inexhaustibility of the structural structure of nature;

b) complementarity and mutual necessity contrasted with the classical function of the material and energy pictures of the world;

c) the active role of the scientist - a cognizing subject, and therefore a philosophical study of the problem of the objectivity of knowledge.

Let us recall the names of some scientists, the significance of whose discoveries should be familiar to students studying physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

The Englishman D. Joule and the German R. Mayer not only confirmed the law of conservation of energy, but also created a whole branch of theoretical mechanics.

Russian chemist A. Butlerov, building on the research of A. Cooper and F.A. Kekule, created the theory of the chemical structure of matter. At the Kazan school of organic chemists, to which A.M. belonged. Butlerov, university professor N.N. In 1842, Zinin discovered a method for producing aniline and replacing vegetable dyes with aniline ones, and only then, in 1856, the English chemist W.G. Perkin synthesized aniline dye. There, Clausewitz discovered the element ruthenium (Russian).

In 1859-1861 W. Bunsen and G. Kirchhoff discovered spectral analysis. In 1869 Mendeleev D.I. discovered the periodic law of chemical elements, which was included in the periodic system of elements that he developed. Thus, the foundation of modern chemistry was laid, new chemical sciences were created - physical chemistry, stereochemistry, electrochemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology. By the end of the century, chemistry had become a leading branch of science.

The rapid development of machine production is also associated with the development mathematics and mechanics. Russian mathematicians actually determined all the main directions of this science. The discoveries of the rector of Kazan University, Professor N.I., were of great theoretical importance. Lobachevsky - the founder of non-Euclidean geometry, later used to solve cosmic problems, the theory of quantum. Discoveries in mathematical physics M.V. Ostrogradsky, creation of the theory of differential equations by A.M. Lyapunov, foundations of modern number theory P.L. Chebyshev led to the fact that the Russian school of mathematics was considered the most advanced in the world.

The formation of a qualitatively new picture of the world was largely due to the successes biological science. Already at the beginning of the century, various hypotheses about the evolution of all living things appeared. The science of paleontology arose, proving that man appeared on Earth much later than living beings and plants. French scientist J.B. Lamarck and his followers came to the idea of ​​the evolution of species. Based on the material accumulated by various sciences, Charles Darwin, in a work published in 1859, scientifically substantiated the evolutionary development of the organic world as a result of natural selection. This teaching finally supplanted the theological idea of ​​life on Earth and established in the minds of the world's scientists the idea of ​​a scientific-historical approach to the analysis of all life phenomena.

Before Darwin, Russian scientists H.I. Pander and K.M. Baer and the German biologist T. Schwann created a theory of the cellular structure of the entire organic world. All this led to the work of G. Mendel, then T. Morgan, which gave rise to a new science - genetics.

Investigating the causes of wine fermentation, the French scientist Louis Pasteur established the role of microorganisms in this process, and then in infectious diseases, and developed measures to combat the most dangerous diseases. He was the first to apply protective vaccinations against rabies and anthrax, developed a method of food preservation (pasteurization), and created the foundations of bacteriology and the theory of immunity. In 1888, the Pasteur Institute (Paris) was created. The work of the German microbiologist R. Koch is associated with the study of pathogens of tuberculosis, cholera, and diphtheria. These works served as the basis for the formation of scientific sanitation and hygiene, and the prevention of infectious diseases. Medicine of the 19th century acquired significant social significance.

In the last century, new directions and methods of diagnosis and treatment have appeared in medical science. The discoveries of J. Liebig about chemical processes in a living organism, R. Virchow about the degeneration of cells and tumors, and Russian scientists I.M. had an exceptional influence on the development of medicine. Sechenova, S.P. Botkina, I.P. Pavlova in the field of studying the human nervous system...

Throughout the century, philosophy tried to first explain the mechanistic picture of the world, and then find a way out of the existing contradiction between objective knowledge and its interpretation. From an idealistic position, I. Kant, I.G. tried to solve these problems. Fichte, F.V. Schelling, G. Hegel, who stood at the pinnacle of classical German philosophy. In the middle of the century, K. Marx and F. Engels created a dialectical-materialist doctrine, with the help of which they tried to explain natural and social processes. In the second half of the century, the following stand out: the theory of vulgar materialism (L. Buchner, K. Focht), positivism (O. Comte, G. Spencer), irrationalism (A. Schopenhauer, E. Hartmann), neo-Kantianism (W. Windelband, G. Rickert ), intuitionism (A. Bergson), neo-Hegelianism (F.G. Bradley, J. Royce, A. Liebert), Machism (E. Dewey), philosophy of life (F. Nietzsche, G. Simmel, O. Spengler). All this multitude of philosophical trends, which students will become acquainted with in the course of philosophy, did not provide a single systemic justification for those natural scientific shifts with which the 19th century was so rich.

For study and explanation social phenomena and processes O. Comte, G. Spencer, M. Weber, E. Durkheim created a new direction of science - sociology, on its basis social psychology, sociology of art, sociometry, sociology of knowledge and many other areas of related sciences are formed.

At the end of the century, socio-philosophical ideas appeared that had a greater influence on the development of society and culture in the 20th century: “psychoanalysis” by S. Freud, which reduces all cultural events to various forms of manifestation of the primary life instincts and drives of a person, and the counterculture of F. Nietzsche, boiling down to the denial of official culture.

To summarize what has been said, it should be noted that in the 19th century the main political and ideological doctrines were formed, on the basis of which the entire human society developed in the 20th century and which influenced the culture of the era.

The 19th century did not give a single direction or style in culture. This is how it differs from previous eras. This could not happen in a rapidly changing, mobile and unstable world. Reason, on which the enlighteners placed their hope, was unable to resolve the contradictions and show the path to a perfect world order. Every major personality or circle of like-minded people sought to say a new word in search of truth.

One of the largest movements of this kind was romanticism, which emerged in the 1870s during the period of breaking down feudal relations and the emergence of capitalism. The romantic movement spread to all European countries, and later to Russia and America. In each country, romanticism manifested itself differently and existed until the 30-60s of the 19th century, entering into a unique relationship with critical realism. Romanticism went through several stages in its development and evolved noticeably during this movement. The early romantics enthusiastically accepted the Great French Bourgeois Revolution. It seemed to them that the ugly world would be organized according to the laws of justice, beauty and nobility. They hoped that the ideal of a perfect person would be embodied in reality. But the hopes were not justified. The harmony of the individual and society was lost. Trying to overcome the one-sidedness of Enlightenment rationalism, believing that freedom is possible only within the limits of individual spiritual life, the romantics turned away from public life a person and his purpose to the problems of the inner, spiritual, emotional life of the individual. For romantics, a person is a small universe, a microcosm. A person must find himself, and for this Fr. Novalis (1772-1801) introduced a symbol into romantic literature - the image of a “blue flower”, which had an important meaning for romantics: the search for oneself. This search is an intense, complex process, and romantics turn their interest to strong and vivid feelings, all-consuming passions, to the secret movements of the soul, to its new side - the individual, the unconscious.

Proclaiming freedom and independence as their main life principle, they encroached on established traditions, they break them, not considering it their duty to follow the precepts of their teachers. They advocate the renewal of artistic forms, against the normativity of classicism, believing that in addition to ancient art there was Gothic art, chivalric novels and folk legends, and extolled them in their creativity. Seemingly destructive tendencies - nihilism and the breaking of traditions - are in fact the creative essence of romanticism. They revived the glory of the Renaissance figures, who had begun to be forgotten, and aroused interest in the Middle Ages (often idealizing it), and in the culture of the East.

Romantics believed that there is nothing frozen in the world, there is an eternal renewal in it and man exists in an ever-changing world. This was universal - in literature, art, philosophy and politics, psychology - the desire for renewal, unlimited freedom: civil and personal. In the works of romantics, there is a motif of the captivating eternal search for an ideal, wanderings, and longing for the distance. And a change of place, action or character is the opposite of the principles of classicism. The characters move around, images of a mail coach and travel appear. In Russian literature, for example, these are the travels of Chichikov in a stagecoach or Chatsky, who arrives from somewhere at the beginning of the play (“He was treated, they say, in sour waters...”), and then leaves somewhere again (“Give me a carriage, carriage"). In L. Tieck's novel “The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald” the hero meets many people and finds in each of them something dear and close.

The essence of the romantic worldview is the recognition of the dramatic insoluble contradiction between the ugly reality and the high ideal that is incompatible with it. According to V. Hugo, “the ugly... exists next to the beautiful, the ugly – next to the beautiful, the grotesque – with the sublime, evil with good, darkness with light... Everything is connected with each other.” Fixing contrasts, the early romantics sought to combine them. Hence the halftones, the “flowing” poetic style. According to F. Schlegel (1772-1829), a German philosopher of culture, integrity “is the highest diversity of phenomena.” And every phenomenon, every object is complex; to understand it, you need to take into account all its facets, look at it from different points of view. Likewise, Novalis (German writer and philosopher) in “Fragments” and the novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” conveys the idea that life and death appear in a dialectical unity; and after Henry’s meeting with Zuleima (on the eve of the Crusade to Jerusalem), adjustments are made to the understanding of the goals and nature of the war.

Romantic heroes experience feelings from delight to disappointment, from inspiration to despair. M. Prishvin subtly expressed the essence of romanticism - “the striving for the unprecedented.”

The literature and art of romanticism are characterized by an appeal to spiritualized and healing nature. One of the facets of the romantic ideal was the garden. He attracted romantic writers with his ability to respond to various states of the human soul. The garden itself awakens the most subtle, sensitive strings of the human heart, so the garden is a place for dreams, thoughts and memories. The garden as a model of the world reflects the romantic idea of ​​the role and place of man in the world, of his relationship with nature: the man of romanticism feels himself an important part of nature, endowed with the same creative capabilities as it, entering into competition with it.

The unstable peace in Europe, dissatisfaction with the present, the desire for freedom brought to the fore the following themes:

Napoleon's personality. Hopes associated with progressive changes in the socio-political life of Europe. Then - political conflicts, which did not stop even after Napoleon.

Liberation movements against Napoleonic occupation (especially in Italy, Germany, Greece), colonization of America.

Luddite movement in England.

Social changes associated with the victory of the financial bourgeoisie, parliamentary reforms and, at the same time, the independent movement of the working class.

All these problems pass through a person, his soul. Romantics created new genres: historical novel, psychological story, lyric poetry, ballad, lyric poems. They especially clearly and holistically realized the historicism of thinking in their work, recognizing the equivalence of past and new cultures.

Historical novels about turning points in the history of culture were created by Walter Scott (1771-1832): “The Puritans”, “Rob Roy”, “Ivanhoe”, etc., Alfred de Vinon: the novel “Saint Mar” (about the conspiracy of the nobles against Cardinal Richelieu) , Victor Hugo (1802-1885): "The Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris"", "Les Miserables", "The Man Who Laughs", "93", by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1882) - a figure in the national liberation movement, a Polish poet - the poem "Pan Tadeusz".

Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) spoke out against slavery and cruelty towards Indians during the colonization of North America: “The Last of the Mohicans”, “Pioneers”, “St. John’s Wort”, Henry Longfellow (1807-1882) - “The Song of Hiawatha " and etc.

However, the heroism of protest or national liberation and revolutionary struggle often coexists among the romantics (especially of the later period) with the motifs of “world sorrow”, “world evil”, the “night” side of the soul, which are clothed in conventional forms of grotesque and fantasy. A critical attitude towards imperfect social reality gives rise to romantic irony, and later satire. On the other hand, romanticism tends to produce inner world a restless man. The idea of ​​the dissonant essence of life, the tragic disintegration of the original harmony is strengthened. This tragic gap between social reality and the romantic ideal was deeply felt, was called dual worlds and is the most characteristic feature of the romantic method.

Who are they - romantic writers? The formation of romanticism is largely associated with the name of the English poet, peer, member of the House of Lords and at the same time rebel-revolutionary J. Byron (1788 - 1824). Yes, he spoke out in defense of the Luddites, he was a member of the Italian Carbonari movement and died in Greece, participating in the national liberation movement. And in his poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812) he created the image of a free individual, a disappointed loner rebel, a bearer of the social sentiments of the early 19th century. In the “eastern” poems “The Giaour,” “The Corsair,” and “Lara,” Byron openly calls on the oppressed peoples to rise up against their oppressors. Byron wrote the philosophical drama poems “Manfred” and “Cain” and one of the poet’s best works, “Don Juan.” Active humanism and prophetic foresight made Byron the ruler of the thoughts of the then Europe. A person for whom independence is more valuable than personal peace and happiness is called the “Byronic hero.”

Famous romantics were the Englishmen J. Keats and Percy Bishu Shelley.

J. Keats (1795 - 1821) in “Endymion” speaks out against Puritan hypocrisy, and in the odes “Fire” and “Psyche” he sang the cult of beauty and harmony in nature. He is the author of the symbolic-allegorical poem "Hyperion".

P.B. Shelley (1792-1822) - author of the allegorical poem "Queen Mab", exposing the depravity of contemporary society. In the poem "The Rise of Islam" he justifies the violent overthrow of despotism. Philosophical understanding he gave problems of freedom and tyranny in the tragedy “Cenci” and in the lyric poem “Prometheus Unbound”.

Famous representatives of romanticism were the world-famous storytellers William Hauff, Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers J. and V. Grimm, who turned to folk art: language, images, morality, in an allegorical form they exposed and ridiculed the greed, acquisitiveness of the rich, glorified courage, intelligence, human dignity of ordinary people.

In addition to the previously mentioned famous German writers and romantic philosophers (Fr. Novalis, F. Schlegel, L. Tieck), it is necessary to note Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822). In his work, German romanticism reached its peak. A gifted man, he was a writer, composer and artist. In his works, he brought out an eccentric hero, a dreamer, escaping into the world of art and fantasy. His characters are characterized by subtle philosophical irony and whimsical fantasy, reaching the point of mystical grotesquery (the novel “The Devil’s Elixir”), combined with a critical perception of reality (the story “The Golden Pot”, the fairy tales “Little Zaches”, “The Lord of the Fleas”) and a satire on German philistinism and feudal absolutism (the novel “The Everyday Views of Murr the Cat”). Hoffmann’s poetic images fit well with music; they were translated into their works by R. Schumann (“Kreisleriana”), J. Offenbach (“The Tales of Hoffmann”) and P.I. Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker).

In the first half of the 19th century, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a great German poet who combined romance and irony in his work. The theme of unrequited love (one's own failure) became dominant in Heine's lyrics for a long time. With unusual power, he is able to depict in a few lines a complex picture of feelings, a landscape rich in mood, and give a small everyday sketch. A political theme sometimes results in a feuilleton or a truly lyrical work, and lyrical poems suddenly acquire a sharp social meaning. Often poems are close in form to folk songs.

After the French Revolution of 1830, Heine left for Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. Here the poet’s satirical talent finally took shape. He supported a fragmented Germany, dreamed of a united democratic homeland, followed the labor movement, and was friends with K. Marx.

Poem “Germany. Winter's Tale" - about the impressions of a trip to my homeland. The disgusting image of reactionary Germany and the love for people's Germany. But freedom and happiness will not come on their own, they must be conquered.

We are a new song, we are a better song

Now, friends, let's begin.

We will turn heaven into earth,

The earth will be our paradise.

The Nazis included Heine's works on the list of books subject to burning and eternal oblivion, which indicates modern sound his poetry.

The establishment of the principles of romanticism in France is associated with the names of Francois Chateaubriand (1768-1848), Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863), Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and George Sand (1804-1876). They represented different directions of romanticism: Chateaubriand - conservative, religious; de Stael is liberal (by the way, she defends the right of women to freedom of feelings); Sand is democratic.

From American writers In addition to those noted above, special mention should be made of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the founder of detective literature. His short stories are predominantly tragic, fantastic or humorous. Experts consider him the forerunner of symbolism.

Under the influence of European romanticism, in the middle of the 19th century, romanticism took shape in Russia, which had different trends. The specific features of one of them were the pathos of high citizenship. The central themes were the Motherland and service to the Fatherland. These are the works of the Decembrists: “Dumas” by K.F. Ryleev, poems by A.I. Odoevsky, V.F. Raevsky, V.K. Kuchelbecker and others. Their works are manifestos of the struggle for “oppressed human freedom.” The work of I.I. developed in line with civil romanticism. Kozlova, A.A. Delviga, N.M. Yazykova.

The spiritual world of man and his innermost feelings were sung by V.A. Zhukovsky (“Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”, “To Her”, in the work “The Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors” Zhukovsky glorifies his beloved homeland), K.N. Batyushkov.

After the defeat of the Decembrists, when disappointment gripped a significant part of Russian society, the mood of pessimism intensified in literature - elegiac motives were most clearly expressed in the poetry of E.A. Baratynsky. Attempts to comprehend the contradictions of existence and personality were made by F.I. Tyutchev and V.F. Odoevsky. The pinnacle of romanticism in Russian literature was the early work of A.S. Pushkin. His freedom-loving poems “Liberty”, “Village”, “To Chaadaev” and others gained enormous popularity. The entire advanced intelligentsia of Russia knew them by heart. Disappointment in reality, longing for the ideal of a free and rebellious personality fueled the early romantic poems and mature lyrics of M.Yu. Lermontov (“Duma”, “Both Bored and Sad”, “Prophet”, poem “Mtsyri”, drama “Masquerade”). In the poem “Demon”, Lermontov symbolically embodied the ideas of personal rebellion against the injustice of the “world order”, the tragedy of loneliness.

But there were other trends in romanticism that spoke from the position of official nationality, glorifying the triune formula of “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality” - F. Bulgarin, N. Grech, O. Senkovsky and others.

In the visual arts, romanticism was most clearly manifested in the painting of France. Here, during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, in a stubborn struggle against the dogmatism of official academic classicism, the most consistent school of romanticism emerged.

The collapse of illusions associated with the splendor of Napoleonic times, dissatisfaction with the present and the thirst for great passions - this is what French romanticism grew out of. The frozen antique mask and the face of the people distorted by despair and hope - the absurdity of the old canons in painting was too obvious. The framework of classicism could not accommodate the events that shook Europe and France. In the struggle of passions, the boiling of poetic feelings, a new art was born - romanticism, designed to reflect all the drama, all the complexity of the new time. It is in real life, in contrast to classicism, that artists find the significant and heroic.

The term “romanticism” in relation to painting was first used in an obituary written on the death of the French artist Theodore Gericault; before that it was used only in literature.

Géricault belonged to a generation of French youth who lived with a shocked consciousness, but awakened by Napoleonic victories and defeats. His first works were inspired by victories - “An officer of mounted rangers going on the attack” (1812), then, as a contrast to him, “A wounded cuirassier leaving the battlefield” (1814). The manifesto of the new art was the seven-meter canvas “The Raft of the Medusa” (1819) - a tragic report about the shipwreck of the frigate “Medusa” in 1816, about the death of almost the entire crew. “This is France itself, this is our society loaded onto the raft of the Medusa,” wrote the historian Michelet. Yes, the picture was perceived as a journalistic work: a homemade sail is inflated by the wind directed in the opposite direction from the ship that appeared on the horizon, and the raft is carried back. The meaning of the picture outgrows the meaning of the real episode: France, humiliated and trampled after its rise, was experiencing the catastrophe of its fall... will it be saved?

The pro-government press called the author a “dangerous rebel.” The painting, now a masterpiece of the Louvre, is outlawed. During the author's lifetime, although his works appeared at exhibitions, none of them were purchased. Theodore Gericault lived short life and died in poverty. Meanwhile, the painting opened a new page in Western European painting. Gericault's work is truly distinguished by all the qualities that are associated with romanticism: intensity of feeling and flight of imagination, passion for dramatic situations, passionate dynamics. All this disrupted the balance of the composition and made the drawing uneven.

One of the most important figures in the art of the 19th century was Eugene Delacroix. Russian critic V. Stasov assessed him as “the most important revolutionary and pioneer” in the field of color, in the development of harmonic laws of color painting. I.E. Repin wrote that “in terms of brilliance and power of colors, he took a bold step forward...”. This step was reflected in the work of the French impressionists. A.V. Surikov called Delacroix “a composer in painting.” And he was right - Delacroix devoted a lot of work and effort to developing the composition and musicality of painting (chased rhythm and harmony inherent in music). Comprehensively gifted, he possessed both musical and literary talent, Delacroix left diaries and articles about art and artists, which revealed the novelty of his aesthetic judgments, which ran counter to dogmatic, academic opuses about painting. But the main thing is that he left behind his works, completed over 40 years of creativity.

Fame came to him in 1822, when he exhibited “Dante’s Boat” in the salon: Virgil and Dante are crossing the gloomy River Styx, where the bodies of the evil living dead swirl. The viewer was amazed not only by the plot, but also by the coloristic power of color. “To better imagine the stunning impression of Delacroix’s debut,” Théophile Gautier later wrote, “we must remember how insignificant and dull ... the neoclassical school, a distant reflection of David, became in the end. A meteor falling into a swamp amid flames, smoke and noise could not have caused more confusion in a chorus of frogs.” There were other opinions: the picture was “painted with a drunken broom.” But one thing was clear: it was a victory!

Starting with the theme of Dante, Delacroix turns to Shakespeare, Goethe, W. Scott, and Byron. During the days of mourning for Byron in April 1824, Delacroix exhibited the canvas “Massacre at Chios” at the Paris Salon. This was the bomb that blew up the Salon. Progressive Europe followed with alarm the dramatic events in Greece, and... Delacroix strongly, furiously brought down on the audience the truth of the horror of war. Enemies from the camp of the classics called this painting “a massacre of painting.” Defending romantics from the malicious attacks of conservatives, Hugo wrote: “It is not the thirst for something new that excites minds, but the need for truth, and this need is enormous.” The tragedy of Byron is inspired by the painting “The Death of Sardanapalus” - Delacroix was attracted to powerful passions, and he coped with this brilliantly thanks to a rich coloristic solution. Art critics believe that this is one of the artist’s most romantic paintings. The Minister of Fine Arts La Rochefoucauld warns the young artist and announces that he cannot count on any government orders until he changes his manners. The thunder of the July Revolution of 1830 had to ring out for Delacroix to cease being an outcast. There was nothing to be surprised at, because the famous strangler of freedom Thiers once said: “We know these romantics - today he is a romantic, and tomorrow a revolutionary.”

"The most interesting time of our century" was named by A.S. Pushkin's revolutionary coup in Paris. “I started painting on a modern subject - a barricade,” Delacroix wrote to his brother. “If I didn’t fight for the freedom of the fatherland, then at least I will make paintings in his honor!”

“Freedom on the barricades on July 28, 1830” is what the artist called his canvas. It was a grand reportage of what had happened, unprecedented in the history of art. Apotheosis of the French Revolution. A joyful hymn to Victory. The painter combined the seemingly impossible - the protocol reality of a reportage with the sublime fabric of a romantic, poetic allegory. How was this picture received? After the victory, the passions around the picture flared up again: the heroes are outraged - “the mob”, “this girl” is outraged: “if Freedom is like that... we don’t need it, we have nothing to do with this shameful vixen!”

160 years have passed, and today “Freedom on the Barricades” is the pride of France, the pearl of the Louvre.

Delacroix had a rare breadth of views, objectivity and historicism in his judgments about art, and was able to highly appreciate the new word - Courbet's realism. In 1864, a year after Delacroix’s death, a canvas with the significant title “The Apotheosis of Delacroix” appeared at the Salon, where Edouard Manet, Charles Baudelaire... admirers of his talent gathered around the deceased artist. Among them one could count Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, who also revered the great romantic and considered him the father of French painting of the 19th century.

The discovery of complex individuality by the romantics served considerable service to the realists, paving the way for them to new heights in understanding the inner world of man.

Realism inherits the most important of the principles of romantic aesthetics - the principle of historicism. But if among the romantics it had an idealistic basis, then among the realists it had a materialistic basis (their special interest in the economic structures of society, in the social psychology of the broad masses of the people; historicism is embodied in the depiction not of the past, as with the romantics, but of modern bourgeois reality as a certain stage in history countries). What both styles have in common is their criticism of classicism and its main canons.

Romanticism gave impetus to the development of realism, but he himself was not defeated by his brainchild. The crossing of these directions is found in Honore de Balzac, C. Dickens, M.Yu. Lermontov, L. Maskani, G. Heine and others.

The cruel practice of life forced artists to delve deeper into social life, into modern reality and comprehend all the contradictions of an established capitalist society.

The realistic tradition has a long history in culture. However, a holistic understanding and the term “realism” itself emerged in the 20s of the 19th century; its significance intensified by the middle of the century, when this direction became dominant in European culture. Realism of the 19th century is usually called critical realism.

Critical realism is based on the following principles:

an objective reflection of the essential aspects of life combined with the height and truth of the author’s ideal (“Nature presents unusual spectacles, sublime contrasts; they may remain incomprehensible to the mirror, which unconsciously reproduces them,” Stendhal wrote, and Balzac continues: “The task of art is not , to copy nature, but to express it!”);

reproduction of typical characters in typical circumstances with the completeness of their individualization (according to Balzac, the artist is not a simple chronicler of his era, but a researcher of its morals, an analytical scientist, a politician and a poet);

life-like authenticity of the image (“in the forms of life itself”);

predominant interest in the problem of “personality and society” (in their connection and opposition);

criticism of material, unspiritual progress and bourgeois civilization.

France is the birthplace of critical realism in literature. Here realism goes through two stages in its development. The first - the formation and establishment as a leading direction in literature (late 20s - 40s) - is represented by the works of Beranger, Merimee, Stendhal, Balzac. The second (50-70s) is associated with the name of Flaubert - the heir to realism of the Balzac-Stendhal type and the predecessor of the “naturalistic realism” of the Zola school.

The founder of critical realism not only in France, but also in Western European literature, was the French writer Henri Bayle, better known under the pseudonym Stendhal (1783-1842). He was not only the first to substantiate the main principles and program for the formation of realism, but also brilliantly embodied the principles of realistic aesthetics in artistic masterpieces. The originality of his creative individuality will be fully revealed in the type of socio-psychological novel he created. The writer's first experience in this genre was the novel "Armans" (1827). The novel “Red and Black” takes on the character of social research. “Chronicle of the 19th century” is the subtitle of the novel. Here France becomes the theater of action, represented in its main social forces and in their interaction. The cycle of “Italian Chronicles” is remarkable. Stendhal was very prolific as a writer. His last masterpiece was “The Parma Cloister” (1839), dictated in 53 days! Balzac called the novel " best book over the past fifty years."

Example of realistic poetry France XIX century was given by the poet Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780 - 1857), who was twice tried for his political songs during the period of reaction. Bérenger's revolutionary poetry has no equal in French literature of the 1st half of the 19th century. The art of the refrain, the looseness of the verse, the variety of intonations that freely convey colloquial speech influenced the formation of the leading genre of song - revolutionary-democratic poetry. Beranger played a major role as a poet who turned to a utopian song, a song-reflection, a song-fable - they found followers in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

Western European realism reached its highest point of development in the work of Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850). The origins of his work are deep and varied. In the encyclopedicism of interests and knowledge, Balzac could compete with the geniuses of the Renaissance. His main creation - the multi-volume epic "The Human Comedy" - absorbed the main achievements of culture and science of more than one generation, predetermining the paths for the further advancement of human thought. He devoted all his strength to her, writing 90 novels and short stories out of the planned 143 books. It included such novels as “The Unknown Masterpiece”, “Shagreen Skin”, “Eugenie Grande”, “Père Goriot” and many others, each of which can be considered complete, but Balzac insisted that his individual works should be perceived as a whole in the context of The Human Comedy.

The general concept and characters (more than two thousand) connect them to the real contemporary history of France, almost year after year from 1816 to 1848. Before us is a realistic picture of the enrichment of the bourgeoisie, the morals changing in noble society in connection with the penetration of the bourgeoisie into it, the contradictions public life of the country. “The historians themselves could only be his secretary,” Balzac declares in the preface to the epic.

Prosper Merimee (1803-1870) - playwright, master of short stories (among them “Colomba” (1840), “Carmen” (1845), which served as the basis for the libretto of Wiese’s opera, and his masterpiece “Matteo Falcone”). In his short stories, he solves a difficult problem: through a single event, to show the history of entire nations and other eras. Merimee is the author of the great novel “Chronicle of the Times of Charles IX” (about the struggle between Catholics and Protestants), a tragedy of people divided by different religions. “Papists! Huguenots! Superstitions here and there. Our litanies, your psalms - one nonsense is worth another. These words from one brother to another contain the progressive and educational meaning of the entire work. In addition to Mérimée’s original works, translations of Pushkin, Gogol, and Turgenev into French occupy an important place in his legacy. He wrote a number of articles about the work of these writers, praising Russian literature.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) created a collective portrait of the French bourgeoisie of the 2nd half of the 19th century. “Life”, “Dear Friend”, “Mont-Ariol” are Maupassant’s best novels, in which the sharpness of social analysis and anti-bourgeois orientation reached high tension, and the purity of human feelings is opposed to spiritual squalor, selfishness and false morality.

The national originality of English critical realism is determined primarily by the satirical, accusatory orientation of the work of most major writers under the influence of bourgeois liberalism, on the one hand, and the growth and development of the proletariat, on the other. The development of political economy, sociology, philosophy and heated debate on socio-political and economic issues leave a definite imprint on literature.

The ideas of the century, the state of the social movement and the moral principles of the era were reflected in the social novels of Charles Dickens (1812-1870), William Thackeray (1811 - 1863), John Galsworthy (1867-1933), sisters Charlotte (1816-1855) and Emilia (1818). -1848) Bronde and J. Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) - the largest representatives of critical realism in England.

Guardian of the great tradition of the English novel, Dickens was both a great reformer and innovator in the genre of the novel; he managed to embody a huge number of ideas and observations in his creations. His works “The Last Papers of the Pickwick Club”, “David Copperfield”, “Dombey and Son”, “Bleak House”, “The Adventures of Oliver Twist”, “The Antiquities Shop” and others were successful among all classes of English society. And this was no accident. He wrote about what everyone knows well: about family life, about grumpy wives, about gamblers and debtors, about oppressors of children, about cunning and clever widows... More than any of his contemporaries, Dickens was an exponent of the conscience of the nation.

The artist (more than 2 thousand drawings for his works and the works of other writers are known), publisher and writer W. Thackeray professed the ideals of “enlightened republicanism.” He writes in a variety of genres - pamphlets, crime chronicles, satirical essays, essays. A broad panorama of English society in the 1st half of the 19th century is drawn by Thackeray in “Vanity Fair” (the subtitle is symbolic: “A Novel without a Hero”). This work cemented the author's name as a remarkable realist, depicting morals and characters without bias or bias, where everyone plays their role - the deceiver or the deceived.

John Galsworthy gave an epic picture of the morals of bourgeois England at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries in his famous trilogy “The Forsyte Saga” and “Modern Comedy”.

Classics of science fiction - a new genre in literature, which became very popular in the 19th century. XX century are Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) and Jules Verne (1828 - 1905) - the emergence of this genre was evidence of an unprecedented interest in scientific knowledge in connection with scientific and technological discoveries.

Finally, it is necessary to note another outstanding writer-playwright of England, laureate Nobel Prize 1925 George Bernard Shaw - creator of drama debates of a political and philosophical nature. The sharp language and wise thoughts of his works became aphorisms (“Pygmalion”, “Caesar and Cleopatra”, etc.).

In the USA, the ideas of critical realism were developed by Walt Whitman (1819-1892), glorifying free labor and independent personality, in Germany - Heinrich Mann, in Norway - Heinrich Ibsen (1828-1906).

The name realism in fine art is directly related to Courbet, who, having rented a warehouse next to the Salon (he was not allowed into the Salon), exhibited his works under the guise of “Realism,” although some researchers believe that he should be considered one of the founders of the “natural school.” It seems that he went further than “naturalism,” because, not without the influence of Proudhon, he declared that a realist artist must convey the morals, ideas, and appearance of his era. Courbet's innovation lay not in the fact that he painted genre scenes from everyday life, but in the fact that he monumentalized this trivial everyday life, raising it to the rank of a “historical painting.” He first called his main work, “Funeral in Ornans,” “Historical Picture of a Funeral in Ornans,” apparently wanting to emphasize that such everyday events, happening before everyone’s eyes, are living, authentic history. TO the best works Courbet owns the “Artist’s Workshop” and “Stone Crusher”.

Jean François Millet worked simultaneously with Courbet. He was weaker than Courbet as a painter, but superior to him as an artist. He possessed the poetry of the heart, which Courbet did not have. “The art of painting is to convey the appearance of objects. But this is not the goal of art, but only a means, a language that is used to express one’s thoughts. What is called composition is the art of conveying one’s thoughts to others,” wrote Millet.

Having grown up in the village and associated with it all his life, Millet in his mature years painted exclusively peasants and their work in the fields. Without violating realistic authenticity, he achieves an impression of biblical grandeur in his small-sized paintings: “Man with a Hoe,” “Gatherers of Ears,” “The Sower.”

Indeed, the representative of critical realism was Honore Daumier. Like Balzac, he created the “Human Comedy” of the era in thousands of drawings, lithographs and paintings. He worked in satirical magazines, and this determined the direction of his work as a political cartoonist. Daumier did not escape prison for his satire on the king, the strongest of which was the lithograph “Down the curtain, the farce is played.” The artist’s highest achievement during the years of the July Monarchy was the tragic sheet “Transnonen Street” about the massacre of civilians. From 1830 to 1834 alone, there were 520 press trials in France, despite the existing law on freedom of the press. Daumier creates the lithograph “The Printer Who Defended Press Freedom.” But in 1834 the government ended freedom of speech and restored censorship. Daumier switches to the genre of satire of morals. He is one of the first urbanists in art. From 1837 to 1851, Daumier made approximately thirty lithographed series (several thousand lithographs have survived): “Parisian Types”, “Respectable Bourgeois”, “Workers of Justice”, etc. - the whole life of France over several decades.

In the 80s, naturalism became an influential movement in literature.

“We are the same diligent workers who carefully inspect the building, who discover rotten beams, internal cracks, shifted stones - all those damages that are not visible from the outside, but can lead to the death of the entire building. Isn’t this a more useful, serious and worthy activity... than climbing onto a high pedestal with a lyre in your hands? - Emile Zola (1840-1902).

“We must treat people like mastodons or crocodiles. Is it possible to get excited about the horns of some and the jaws of others? Show them, make stuffed animals out of them, put them in jars of alcohol - that’s all, but don’t pronounce moral judgments in front of them, and who are you all, you little toads?” - Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).

These confessions of two outstanding masters of words reflect the position of supporters of naturalism, who deliberately limit the role of the writer, not allowing him to make generalizations.

Naturalism in literature is a one-sided development of realism, a rejection of ideals, of penetration into the inner essence of a phenomenon, a denial of the artist’s right to fiction and expression of his feelings and views. Striving for an objective depiction of reality, naturalists likened their method to the scientific study of life, which would be based on experiment, accuracy of description and documentation. Their aesthetics are in tune with the philosophy of positivism

The 19th century occupies a special place in the culture of modern times. Bourgeois civilization, reaching maturity, enters a stage of crisis, accompanied by changes in spiritual life and artistic culture. In solving the most important problems, culture tries to stay within the space of the fundamental principles of the era: anthropocentrism, rationalism, scientism, Eurocentrism. But by the 19th century. the world became different, which led to the beginning of the process of revaluation of values. The famous philosopher and cultural scientist José Ortega y Gasset, characterizing the 19th century, writes: “Three factors made the creation of this new world possible: democracy, experimental science and industrialization. None of these factors were the creation of the century, they appeared two centuries earlier. The nineteenth century put them into practice."

A detailed description of the first factor will require attention to such events as the War of Independence of the North American Colonies and the Great French Bourgeois Revolution. Adopted on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence of the North American Colonies, ahead of Europe, embodied the principles of liberalism in bourgeois legislation, thereby becoming a model for the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and with it for the constitutions of most European states. Realities of the 19th century. clearly demonstrated that the “kingdom of Reason” promised by the Enlightenment turned into the triumph of bourgeois reason, “universal equality” was reduced to formal equality before the law, freedom resulted in the freedom of merciless capitalist exploitation, the revolutionary brotherhood of the third estate disintegrated, the warring classes dispersed on opposite sides of the barricades. The course of revolutionary events in the 19th century seemed to refute the rationalistic view of the world. From now on, the problem of the relationship between ideal and reality becomes the driving motive of sociocultural development. In France, which became a kind of political testing ground for Europe, during the years of revolutions, a wide variety of forms of political structure were tested: from the classical bourgeois republic to the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeois empire.

When characterizing such a cultural factor as industrialization It should be assumed that it began at the end of the 18th century. industrial revolution in England, in the 19th century. becomes the determining economic indicator of the development of Western countries. Its result was the emergence of an industrial society, an industrial civilization, which is characterized by the following characteristic features:

· Her Majesty the Machine ascended the throne. The factory changed manufacturing, leading to an unprecedented increase in labor productivity, consolidation of enterprises, standardization of products and dehumanization of production; in a number of countries the working class made up half of the population; If previously the basis of productive forces were three sources of energy: the muscular power of humans and animals, water and wind, now other sources have appeared: steam, electricity, the energy of combustion of liquid fuel; according to P. Sorokin, the 19th century “brought more discoveries and inventions than all previous centuries combined”;

· the level of well-being and quality of life has changed; people's lives include telephone and telegraph, photography and cinema, radios and new vehicles that allow them to travel faster (steam locomotive, steamship, car, electric tram, metro); new roads are being built, including railways (by the end of the century - about 1 million km), bridges, canals (for example, Suez); steam and water heating, central water supply and sewerage, electric lighting in houses and on the streets appear in urban houses;

· is being formed middle class, which ultimately gives the new society sustainability;

· a new system of values ​​is emerging, the main of which in industrial civilization is technical progress: together with science, it provides people with well-being; benefit, prosperity, comfort and other guidelines of “sensual” culture dominate in the public consciousness, which gradually begins to identify cultural progress with economic growth; understanding technological progress as a defining civilizational feature inevitably leads to a contrast between the “advanced” Western civilization and the “backward” civilizations of other countries, and to the establishment of Eurocentrism in the public consciousness.

Such a cultural factor as the science entered its “golden age”. The rise of the natural sciences ends at the end of the 19th century. "revolution in natural science." Scientific discoveries of M. Faraday, D. Maxwell, M. Planck, P. Curie, M. Sklodowska-Curie, D. Mendeleev, E. Rutherford, N. Bohr, G. Mendel, I. Pavlov, L. Pasteur, R. Koch follow one after another. A real revolution in science and a cultural shock in the minds of his contemporaries were produced by the ideas of Charles Darwin, which cast doubt on theological interpretations of the origin of the world and man.

Progress in natural science has also influenced the humanities, many of which are moving to the position of biological reductionism (for example, certain areas of ethnology, psychology, sociology). Numerous schools, trends and theories appear and develop in philosophy: neo-Kantianism, pragmatism, “philosophy of life”, positivism, intuitionism, etc.

In the scientific consciousness, the principle of benefit gradually transforms the concept of truth, and scientific and technological progress are perceived as inextricably linked. The technical development of the world is clearly beginning to outstrip its humanitarian understanding. Preoccupation with material progress leaves little room for spirituality. Along with the weakening of faith in the supernatural, the rise of atheism, and the decline in the social significance of the Christian Church, there is a decline in interest in Christian values ​​and a dulling of moral sense in general. Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes this process as a “revaluation of values,” and Oswald Spengler as a “decline,” noting the dying of Western culture and its transition to the stage of civilization.

When characterizing artistic culture XIX century it is also necessary to see complex and contradictory trends. On the one hand, art continues to develop - various styles and trends replace each other: empire style, romanticism, critical realism, naturalism, symbolism, impressionism, etc. We can also talk about the absence of a single aesthetic dominant: generic, specific, genre. On the other hand, art reveals a certain problem, associated, in particular, with the fact that the bourgeoisie, which came to power in most countries, had a modest aesthetic level, clearly inferior to the aristocracy of the past with its limited demands and lack of internal desire for art ( the craving for external luxury and titles appears only in the 2nd half of the century). Art turned out to be of little use to anyone. Problems are also generated by the surrounding reality itself, which turns out to be far from the kingdom of reason, freedom and justice, which was promised by the Enlightenment. Increasing socio-economic contradictions caused the growth of the workers' and socialist movements in Europe and the national liberation struggle in the world. All this posed difficult challenges for art. Not accepting the realities of bourgeois reality, art in the form of romanticism, “pure” art, flees from real life into the world of fairy tales, fantasy, exoticism, the past, into the inner world of man. Another way out is a critical position, characteristic primarily of critical realism.

Another problem in the development of artistic culture in the 19th century is associated with the growing influence of science, which, on the one hand, questioned the role of art in the life of society, and on the other hand, influenced it (for example, in impressionism). When characterizing new trends in the artistic culture of the 19th century, we should emphasize the strengthening of the subjective principle. The main thing for the artist is not What depict, and How reflect your inner vision, feeling, attitude to reality. In the future, this leads to the construction of a new reality, to the search for new means, forms, and angles. The subject of art becomes not only the surrounding reality, but also the inner world of the artist. In other words, there is a decentralization of artistic culture.

The culture of the 19th century occupies a special place in the history of Western Europe. And this is due to a change in the very existence of European civilization. Three new factors determined the development of Europe starting from the 19th century: experimental science, industrialization and processes of democratization.

For the first time in history, science became a determining factor in social and economic development. It was from the 19th century that the characteristic tendency for Western Europe began to identify scientific and economic progress with cultural progress.

The 19th century proposed a new social ideal: society is associated with a factory, headed by scientists. The mechanization of production led to industrial civilization, which was characterized by mass production, the process of urbanization, and the pursuit of technical innovations. Incarnation new era became a Machine. Contemporaries called the 19th century “the age of railroads,” “the age of steam,” “the age of steel,” and “the age of electricity.” And indeed, the inventions of this century literally “collapsed” on man like an avalanche: a steam locomotive, a steamship, a car, a telephone, a telegraph, a tram, a subway, steam heating, water supply and sewerage, gas and electric lighting. According to the research of P. Sorokin, in the 19th century. 8,527 discoveries and inventions were made - more than in all previous history. All this changed the familiar world of Europeans.

But the changes affected not only everyday human life. Scientific discoveries changed the familiar picture of the world before our eyes: the Newtonian world order, so understandable, obvious, so easily proven by experience, turned out to be only the outer shell of this world. Scientific discoveries and hypotheses testified to the depth and complexity of the world order, and most importantly, to the “non-obviousness” of scientific truth. D. Mendeleev created the periodic table, M. Faraday and J. Maxwell developed the electromagnetic theory, P. Curie and A. A. Becquerel - the theory of radioactivity, E. Rutherford and N. Bohr studied the structure of the atom; G. Mendel and T. Morgan created the theory of genetics, L. Pasteur and R. Koch laid the foundations of bacteriology. And the real “blow” for the public was the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin and the theory of relativity of A. Einstein. These discoveries could no longer be treated as exclusively scientific: they offered a new worldview and changed the usual picture of the world.

In fact, man finds himself at the center of a contradiction: the visible world and the world that science talks about are not the same thing. One of the main features of the new era was the formation of a relativistic type of thinking.

Another consequence of the “scientific revolution” of the 19th century was the peculiar feeling of man that new knowledge and discoveries do not make the world more understandable, and certainly do not clarify the meaning of human life.

Parallel to this scientific paradox, there was a process of “disenchantment of the world” - the process of a person losing religious beliefs. After Charles Darwin’s discovery, which explained the origin of man not from God, but from primates, the philosophical thought of the era challenged society and proved that God himself was generated by man, his fear and weakness (S. Freud).

The 19th century began to study and criticize the Bible and the church, and K. Marx called religion “the sigh of an oppressed creature.” Gradually, bourgeois society began to perceive religion as a symbol of civilization, a condition for its stability, and replaced faith with the observance of rituals. Secular society separated church and state, introduced civil registration of births and marriages, banned Jesuit schools...

The religious one was replaced by a new system of values: benefit, prosperity, comfort, loyalty, rationality, safety. All this became the basis of bourgeois morality, to which was added the principle of equality of all before the law and faith in technological progress.

The characteristic features of the worldview of the new era can also be called:

Social optimism associated with the success of science and technology;

Positivism, which originates in the philosophy of O. Comte, and has become the universal principle of the new scientific worldview, rejecting everything unknown, mysterious and supersensible;

Cosmopolitanism, because in the 19th century European culture ceased to be closed (in many countries of the world a parliamentary system was established, political parties were created, and the United States became an equal partner and even a competitor); Cosmopolitanism manifested itself especially clearly at the end of the 19th century and was expressed in a passion for the cultures of various regions and countries (Africa, the East, Russia, etc.), as well as in the tradition of holding international exhibitions;

Politicization, which has become an integral feature of a person in the 19th, and even more so the 20th century; From now on, everyone felt involved in the events taking place, which was facilitated by journalism, the birth of radio and other media.

The understanding of nature also became new: utilitarianism defined the attitude towards nature as a source of energy, natural resources and a grandiose workshop. “Nature is not a temple, but a workshop,” these words of Turgenev’s character for a long time determined the attitude of the European to the world around him.

As a result of such significant shifts in worldview, the European found himself in a tragic situation of loneliness and misunderstanding of himself: he is now not the image and likeness of God, not the creator and not “the measure of all things,” but “a set of chemical elements,” “an animal closely related with a monkey,” a weak-willed hostage of the subconscious or “homo faber” (“producing man”). The essence of man, his soul, purpose and meaning of existence - these questions remained unresolved. For the first time in European culture, technological progress outstripped the humanitarian understanding of human existence, and this became the biggest problem of the culture of the 19th-20th centuries (and sometimes a threat to the very existence of man, as evidenced by World War I).

It was the unresolved “eternal” questions of existence that gave rise to such “polyphony” in philosophy and art at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Only one quality unites such different ideas of the new era as critical realism and immoralism, decadence and intuitionism, the philosophy of Nietzsche and the views of Freud. If past cultural eras were affirmative in nature, i.e. proposed and defended a new model of existence (be it the polis democracy of antiquity, the Christian asceticism of the Middle Ages, Renaissance titanism, the rationalism of the Enlightenment or romantic sentimentalism), then the culture of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries became a culture of denial, a culture of doubt and disappointment. For the first time, the rejection of existing forms of human awareness did not give rise to a new, generally accepted concept of his existence. It is the absence of a new concept that makes the turn of the 19th-20th centuries an era of crisis in European culture.

This is also the reason for the philosophical searches, tossing and tragic worldview characteristic of the European culture of modern times.

Characteristic features of art:

1. The emergence of mass culture.

In the second half of the 19th century. V Western Europe bourgeois democracy was established, and the first features of the emerging mass consciousness began to appear.

Social sciences and humanities were forced to take into account the mass factor. Literature took the leading place, publishing developed, and a mass of new magazines appeared with previously unprecedented circulations.

A differentiation of functions in creative activity has emerged: in addition to artists, a special corps of intermediaries has emerged - publishers, traders works of art, entrepreneurs, etc. The mainspring of the distribution of works of art was commercial interest. The entrepreneur tried to please all tastes, so the creation of low-quality and pseudo-artistic products was encouraged. It was in the 19th century. mass culture with all its contradictions and vices was born.

2. The emergence of technocratic forms of art.

Scientific and technological discoveries have given rise to new forms of art unimaginable in previous times, such as photography and cinema. These types of art combine technicalism and an orientation towards mass consumption, because... do not require a trained or educated viewer. At the same time, the advent of photography caused a real crisis in painting, because... the artist could no longer compete with the camera lens in the truthfulness of the image, and this became one of the reasons that artists began to look for their own style of painting.

3. Impact of urbanization.

The growth of cities led not only to social changes, but also to the emergence of new topic in European art. The theme of the city became one of the main ones in the art of impressionist artists. For symbolist poets, the city was the embodiment of the chaos of life, the lostness and loneliness of man (the work of Charles Baudelaire). The city acquired the opposite meaning in avant-garde art (for futurists, the city is a symbol of progress, energy, speed).

4. Protest against bourgeois morality.

The denunciation of bourgeois morality, pragmatism, and the lack of spirituality of the new European way of life became one of the main themes in the art of the 19th century. In the 40s, it established itself in European culture as artistic method critical realism, showing social contradictions in society, the spiritual world of man and his struggle for self-affirmation (French writers O. de Balzac, G. de Maupassant, G. Flaubert, E. Zola; C. Dickens, D. Galsworthy in England; F. M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy in Russia). Among the realist artists are O. Daumier, G. Courbet, J.-F. Millet.

On the basis of realism and romanticism, new artistic and aesthetic theories were formed. The successor to some romantic traditions was the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” that arose in England in 1842 - a society of poets and artists: poet and painter D. P. Rosseti (1828-1882), poetess C. Rosseti (1830-1879), painters J. E. . Milles (1842-1896) and E. Burn-John (1821-1878), artist, designer, writer W. Morris (1834-1896). The Pre-Raphaelites combined their rejection of modern civilization with the idealization of the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, and demands for the aestheticization of life. The ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites largely influenced the development of symbolism and Art Nouveau style in the fine and decorative arts.

Hatred of the bourgeois world, anarchic rebellion, and longing for harmony are characteristic of the work of Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). He became disillusioned with the ideas of humanism and expressed sentiments of depression, rebellious apostasy, and a challenge to public morality. Baudelaire described the sensations of the decline of bourgeois civilization and praised the beauty of decay. The only salvation in the “era of sadness” is art, which lives by completely different laws: it welcomes everything strange, mystical and even ugly.

Since the late 50s of the XIX century. Western European art entered an era of decadence (from the French - decline). This phenomenon became a reflection of the crisis in spiritual culture, pessimism and disappointment, and social apathy. The creators of decadence are C. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine (1844-1896), A. Rimbaud (1854-1891), A. Gide, O. Wilde, symbolist poets, artist O. Beardsley, philosopher F. Nietzsche (1844 - 1900 ). Even the titles of their works reflect their “fascination” with evil: the collections “Flowers of Evil” by Charles Baudelaire, “Through Hell” by A. Rimbaud, “Herodias” by S. Mallarmé (1842-1898), “Beyond Good and Evil” from F. Nietzsche.

The characteristic features of decadence are:

The gap between the ethical and the aesthetic: the cult of beauty, the aestheticization of the ugly;

Immoralism: recognition of the artist outside of morality, glorification of sin and vice;

Recognition of the insurmountability of evil;

Refinement and morbidity of art;

Opposition to “philistine morality”;

Appeal to the irrational;

Simultaneous disgust for life and the refinement of enjoying it.

6. The influence of positivism.

Positivism deprived man of the sphere of the ideal, the sphere of human values. In art, positivism influenced the emergence of naturalism and impressionism.

Naturalism (from Latin - natural, natural) strived for an “objective”, dispassionate reproduction of reality and proceeded from the idea of ​​complete predetermination of a person’s fate by the social environment and heredity (French writers E. Zola, brothers E. and J. Goncourt, German writers A. Holtz, K. Hauptmann).

The influence of positivism can also be traced in the field of artistic culture. Impressionism made the focus on experience and experimentation its goal. Impressionism (from French - impression) is a movement in painting that declares as its goal a new vision of the world through the direct transmission of light, color, and the dynamics of change (artists C. Monet (1840-1926), C. Pissarro (1830-1903), E. Degas (1834-1917), O. Renoir (1841-1919), sculptor O. Rodin (1840-1917)).

The characteristic features of impressionism can be called:

Lack of ideology and social themes;

Lack of ideal beauty;

Violation of the laws of classical painting (lack of composition, fragmentation, cuts of figures, decomposition of complex tones into pure colors, a peculiar manner of applying paint);

Striving for objectivity;

- “discovery” of the city landscape;

Interest in “philistine” life (entertainment in parks, boating, episodes in theaters, on dance floors, in restaurants);

The influence of impressionism can be traced in the works of many writers, artists, composers representing various creative methods, in particular, the Austrian poet R. M. Rilke (1875-1926), French composers M. Ravel (1875-1937), C. Debussy (1862- 1918) etc.

The impressionist method did not aim to comprehend the essence of man or reality, and therefore it can be considered as one of the manifestations of the crisis of humanistic culture. At the same time, the impressionists opened the beginning of a new era - the era of searching for new views and methods of artistic creativity.

7. The emergence of the “Philosophy of Life”.

The turn of the 19th – 20th centuries demonstrates an attempt to create global philosophical concepts that wanted to contrast positivism with certain ideological foundations. “Life” as a whole was chosen as the starting concept for the new philosophy. It could be interpreted as a biological-naturalistic concept (F. Nietzsche), as a cosmic (A. Bergson) or cultural-historical (O. Spengler). In any case, the concept of “life” was interpreted as a comprehended organic integrity and creative dynamics.

A reflection of such views in art can be called the painting of the Post-Impressionists (A. Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 - 1901), P. Cezanne (1839 - 1906), P. Gauguin (1848 - 1903), V. Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)). These artists were not united by either a common program or a common painting method, but all of them had the following in common:

Searches for the beginnings of being;

Searches for the material and spiritual foundations of the worldview;

The courage of the creative method;

Dramatic tension, disturbing, expressive nature of the works;

Search for stable structural patterns of the universe, devoid of insignificance;

Harmonic balance of nature;

Synthetic generalizations of color and line;

The appearance of antisocial characters (drunkards, tramps, prostitutes).

8. Opposition to technocracy.

The development of machine production, which became the most important condition for the existence of European civilization and which became associated with progress, simultaneously caused a wave of reflection and criticism on the part of philosophers and artists. The most famous work on this topic is the work of the German philosopher O. Spengler (1880-1936) with the very symptomatic title “The Decline of Europe (essays on the morphology of world history).” The development of a pessimistic view of the future of Western culture begins with Spengler. His work substantiates the thesis about the dying of Western European civilization as a result of the victory of technology over spirituality.

The tragedy of man becoming an appendage to the machine was first realized at the turn of the century: man, the creator of culture, is measured by average labor productivity. The advent of a culture without individuality, a culture without a soul, became a terrible premonition that permeated the worldview of the era. “Machines, technology, the power that it brings with it, the speed of movement that it gives rise to, create chimeras and fanaticism, direct human life to fictions that give the impression of unreal realities. A bad infinity is revealed everywhere, knowing no end,” wrote the Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev.

“Inhumane man”, “unnatural nature”, “non-Christian culture” - this is how the German theologian R. Guardini defined the essence of the changes that occurred in culture by the beginning of the 20th century.

Of course, artists and poets, sensitive to the changes taking place, tried to contrast the machine’s lack of spirituality with a new style. One of the main directions in which the desire for the creative, unique, and natural was clearly manifested was the Art Nouveau style (from the French - newest, modern).

It was most fully embodied in the field of architecture, fine and decorative arts, and printing art. Representatives of Art Nouveau used new technical and constructive means (metal, glass, reinforced concrete structures) to create highly individualized, unusual works, all elements of which were subject to a single ornamental rhythm and figurative and symbolic design. Art Nouveau art is distinguished by the poetics of symbolism, the decorative rhythm of flexible flowing lines, stylized plant motifs, and recourse to ancient techniques (fresco, mosaic, stained glass). Architects: H. van de Velde in Belgium, J. Olbrich in Austria, A. Gaudi in Spain, F. O. Shekhtel in Russia. The features of Art Nouveau are manifested in the works of artists: G.Moro, G.Klimt, A.Mukha, O.Beardsley, M.A.Vrubel.

Artistic culture of the 19th century. developed under the influence of various political, economic, social, religious, and national factors. The Great French Revolution, which proclaimed the ideas of freedom, equality, and fraternity, was of particular importance for its development.

Since practice diverged significantly from the ideals proclaimed by the revolution, the art developing during this period critically comprehended reality, therefore criticism was characteristic of the artistic culture of the 19th century.

Features of the development of culture and art of the 19th century V. is the variety of artistic movements and styles that reflected the complexity of the new era.

The period of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. is rightfully considered the Silver Age of Russian culture (a detailed table is presented below). The spiritual life of society is rich and diverse.

The political changes that occurred after the reforms of Alexander II were not as significant as the social and psychological changes. Given greater freedom and food for thought, scientists, writers, philosophers, musicians and artists seem to be eager to make up for lost time. According to N.A. Berdyaev, having entered the 20th century. Russia has experienced an era comparable in significance to the Renaissance; in fact, this is the time of the Renaissance of Russian culture.

Main reasons for rapid cultural growth

A significant leap in all spheres of the country’s cultural life was facilitated by:

• new schools opened in large numbers;
• an increase in the percentage of literate, and therefore reading, people to 54% by 1913 among men and 26% among women;
• an increase in the number of people wishing to enter university.

Government spending on education is gradually increasing. In the second half of the 19th century. The state treasury allocates 40 million rubles a year for education, and in 1914 no less than 300 million. The number of voluntary educational societies, which could be attended by a wide variety of segments of the population, and the number of public universities are increasing. All this contributes to the popularization of culture in such areas as literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and science is developing.

Culture of Russia in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

Russian scientists, artists, painters and writers are gaining fame abroad. The achievements of Russian culture of the period under review are receiving worldwide recognition. The names of Russian travelers and discoverers adorn world maps. The artistic forms that originated in Russia have a significant influence on foreign culture, many of whose representatives now prefer to look up to Russian writers, sculptors, poets, scientists and artists.