Tambov State University G.R. Derzhavin

University of the Foreign languages

ESSAY

by discipline: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

on the topic: "Classicism as a literary movement»

Tambov 2008

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….3

The history of the emergence of classicism in world literature……...5

The fundamental principles of classicism as a literary trend……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Features of the development of classicism in French literature…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Features of the development of classicism in Russian literature………15

Classicism in other European literatures…………………..17

Distinctive features of the classicism of Russia from the classicism of France and other European countries……………………………………….18

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...20

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………...22

Introduction

Classicism is one of the most important trends in the literature of the past. Having established itself in the works and creativity of many generations, putting forward a brilliant galaxy of poets and writers, classicism left such milestones on the path of the artistic development of mankind as the tragedies of Corneille, Racine, Milton, Voltaire, the comedies of Molière and many other literary works. History itself confirms the viability of the traditions of the classicist artistic system and the value of the concepts of the world and the human person underlying it, primarily the moral imperative characteristic of classicism.

Undoubtedly, classicism did not always and in everything remain identical to itself. Like any significant phenomenon of human culture, it was characterized by a tense dialectic of development. This is especially obvious if we consider classicism in the perspective of its three centuries of existence and in various national variants, in which it appears to us in France, in Germany and in Russia. Taking its first steps in the 16th century, that is, at the time of the mature Renaissance, classicism absorbed and reflected the atmosphere of this revolutionary era, and at the same time it carried new trends that were destined to vigorously manifest themselves only in the next century. Scholars rightly place emphasis on the continuity of the classicism of the 17th century with a wide range of ideological and aesthetic concepts of the Renaissance. And at the same time, the 17th century, with its inherent complexity and inconsistency of the historical process, is already breaking the old ideas about the world and man, determining the nature and development of culture in general and classicism in particular as one of the leading artistic trends of the era. At the same time, the difference in the fate of classicism in individual countries, its national specificity, clearly emerges.

The fact that classicism is one of the most studied and theoretically thought-out literary trends is indisputable. But, despite this, its detailed study is still an extremely relevant topic for a modern researcher, largely due to the fact that it requires special flexibility and subtlety of analysis. This is primarily due to the complex dynamics of various literary movements of the era of the emergence of classicism, as well as the conventionality of schematizing classifications given by researchers of the 18th century. The formation of the concept of classicism requires a systematic, purposeful work of the researcher based on attitudes towards artistic perception and the development of value judgments in the analysis of the text. Therefore, in modern science, contradictions often arise between the new tasks of literary research and the old approaches to the formation of theoretical and literary concepts about classicism. This problem determines the need for theoretical and experimental substantiation of the ways of formation of theoretical and literary concepts in the framework of considering classicism as a literary trend.

In connection with the need to develop theoretical and methodological foundations for the formation of the concept of classicism, the purpose of this work can be formulated as considering the history of the formation of classicism as a literary movement, identifying its main features and tracing the features of its development in French, Russian and other European national literatures.

The purpose of the study, in turn, determines the following tasks:

To study works on the theory and history of literature that are directly related to the research problem, and, having systematized the material worked out, to trace the history of the development of classicism as a literary trend

Highlight the fundamental principles of classicism

Reveal the original nature of the development of classicism within the framework of various national literatures (French, Russian and others)

Determine the distinctive features of the development of classicism in Russia from the classicism of France and other European countries.

ChapterI

The history of the emergence of classicism in world literature

Classicism (from the Latin classicus - “exemplary, first-class”) is an artistic movement that originated in the Renaissance, which, along with the Baroque, occupied an important place in the literature of the 17th century and continued to develop in the Enlightenment - until the first decades of the 19th century.

The adjective "classical" is very ancient: even before getting its main meaning in Latin, "classicus" meant "noble, wealthy, respected citizen." Having received the meaning of “exemplary”, the concept of “classical” began to be applied to such literary works and authors that became the subject of school study, were intended for reading in classes. It was in this sense that the word was used both in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, and in the 17th century the meaning of “worthy for study in classes” was fixed in dictionaries (for example, in the dictionary of Richlet 1680). The definition of "classical" was therefore applied only to ancient, ancient authors, and not to modern writers, even if their works were recognized as artistically perfect and aroused the admiration of readers.

Voltaire was the first to use the epithet "classical" in relation to the writers of the 17th century. The modern meaning of the word "classical", which significantly expands the list of authors belonging to the literary classics, began to take shape in the era of romanticism. At the same time, the concept of "classicism" appeared. Both terms among the romantics often had a negative connotation: classicism and "classics" were opposed to "romantics" as outdated literature, blindly imitating antiquity - innovative literature. On the contrary, the opponents of romanticism, primarily in France, began to use these words as a designation of a truly national literature that opposes foreign (English, German) influences, they defined the word "classics" of the great authors of the past - Corneille, Racine, Molière, La Rochefoucauld.

The high appreciation of the achievements of French literature of the 17th century, its importance for the formation of other national literatures of the New Age - German, English and others - contributed to the fact that this century was considered the "era of classicism", in which French writers and their diligent students in other countries played a leading role. countries. The same writers who clearly did not fit into the framework of classicist principles were assessed as "lagging behind" or "lost their way." In fact, two terms were established, the meanings of which partly intersected: “classical” - exemplary, artistically perfect, included in the fund of world literature, and “classic” - referring to classicism as a literary movement, embodying the artistic principles of classicism.

“Classicism” is a concept that entered the history of literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, written by scientists of the cultural-historical school (G. Lanson and others). Following these works, the term “classicism” began to be actively used in literary criticism. The features of classicism were primarily determined from the dramatic theory of the 17th century and from N. Boileau's treatise “Poetic Art” (1674). It was considered as a direction oriented towards ancient art, drawing its ideas from Aristotle's Poetics, and on the other hand, as literature of the era of absolute monarchy, embodying absolutist ideology.

The revision of this concept of classicism in both foreign and domestic literary criticism falls on the 1950s and 60s: from now on, classicism began to be interpreted by most scientists not as an “artistic expression of absolutism”, but as “a literary movement that experienced a period of bright heyday in the 15th century, in years of strengthening and triumph of absolutism”. The term "classicism" retained its role even when scientists turned to non-classical, baroque works of literature of the 15th century. In the definition of classicism, they singled out, first of all, the desire for clarity and accuracy of expression, strict obedience to the rules (the so-called “three unities”), and alignment with antique samples.

The origin and spread of classicism was associated not only with the strengthening of the absolute monarchy, but with the emergence and influence of the rationalist philosophy of R. Descartes, with the development of the exact sciences, primarily mathematics. In the first half of the 20th century, classicism was called the "school of the 1660s" - a period when great writers - Racine, Molière, Lafontaine and Boileau - simultaneously worked in French literature.

Gradually, the origins of classicism were revealed in the Italian literature of the Renaissance period: in the poetics of D. Cintio, J. Ts. Scaliger, L. Castelvetro, in the tragedies of D. Trissino and T. Tasso. The search for an “ordered manner”, the laws of “true art” was found both in English (F. Sidney, B. Johnson, D. Milton, D. Dryden, A. Pope, D. Addison), and in German (M. Opitz, G. .Gotsched, I.V. Goethe, F. Schiller), and in the same Italian (D. Chiabrera, V. Alfieri) literature of the 17-18 centuries. A significant place in European literature was also occupied by Russian classicism of the Enlightenment (A.P. Sumarokov, M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin and others). All this made modern researchers consider classicism as one of the important components of the artistic life of Europe for several centuries and as one of the two main literary trends that laid the foundations of the culture of the New Age.

The fundamental principles of classicism as a literary movement

Classicism is formed, experiencing the influence of other pan-European trends in art that are directly in contact with it: it repels the aesthetics of the Renaissance that preceded it and opposes the Baroque art that actively coexists with it, imbued with a consciousness of general discord generated by the crisis of the ideals of the past era. Continuing some of the traditions of the Renaissance (admiration for the ancients, faith in reason, the ideal of harmony and measure), classicism was a kind of antithesis to it. Behind the external harmony in classicism lies the internal antinomy of the worldview, which made it related to the baroque. Generic and individual, public and private, reason and feeling, civilization and nature, which acted as a single harmonious whole in the art of the Renaissance, are polarized in classicism, becoming mutually exclusive concepts. This reflected a new historical state, when the political and private spheres began to disintegrate, and social relations turned into a separate and abstract force for a person.

The principles of rationalism (from the Latin ratio - “reason, rationality, expediency, reasonable validity of everything, the harmony of the Universe, due to its spiritual beginning”), corresponding to the philosophical ideas of R. Descartes and Cartesianism, underlie the aesthetics of classicism. Descartes defended the inviolability of the visible picture of the world, which corresponded to the state model of an absolute monarchy, which was a “public pyramid”, where the monarch was at the top, and the rest were subjects of His Majesty. Classicism formulated the goal of literature as an impact on the mind to correct vices and educate virtue, which clearly expressed the author's point of view (for example, Corneille glorifies the heroes who defend the state, the absolute monarch). In accordance with it, the denunciation of ignorance, selfishness, despotism of the feudal order and the assertion of human dignity, civic and moral duty should be carried out from the standpoint of statehood and enlightenment. At the same time, the monarchy was glorified, which reasonably governs the people and cares about education. Classicists define the view of a work of art as an artificial creation - consciously created, reasonably organized, logically built.

The exaltation of the mind was due to the belittling of feelings, direct perception of the surrounding reality. Creating a work of art, the writer tried in every possible way to get closer to antique samples and strictly follow the rules specially developed for this by the theoreticians of classicism. This hampered the freedom of creativity, tore literature away from life, the writer from modernity, and thus gave his work a conditional, artificial character. The most important thing is that the socio-political system of this era, based on the oppression of the common people, in no way corresponded to reasonable concepts of natural, normal relations between people.

Having put forward the principle of "imitation of nature", the classicists consider it an indispensable condition for its strict observance of the unshakable rules drawn from ancient poetics (Aristotle, Horace) and art, which determine the laws of the artistic form, in which the reasonable creative will of the writer is manifested, turning life material into beautiful, logically slender and clear work of art. The artistic transformation of nature, the transformation of nature into beautiful and ennobled, is at the same time an act of its highest knowledge - art is called upon to reveal the ideal regularity of the universe, often hidden behind the external chaos and disorder of reality. Therefore, the mind, which comprehends the ideal pattern, acts as an “arrogant” principle in relation to individual characteristics and the living diversity of life.

Aesthetic value for classicism has only generic, enduring, timeless. In each phenomenon, classicism seeks to find and capture its essential, stable features (this is connected with the appeal to antiquity as an absolute supra-historical aesthetic norm, as well as the principles of typification of characters that act as the embodiment of any social or spiritual forces). The classic image gravitates towards the model in which life is stopped in its ideally eternal form, it is a special mirror where the individual turns into generic, temporary into eternal, real into ideal, history into myth, it depicts what is everywhere and what is not anywhere. in the reality. He is the triumph of reason and order over chaos and the fluid empiricism of life. The embodiment of sublime ethical ideas in harmoniously beautiful forms that are adequate to them gives the works created according to the canons of classicism a shade of utopianism, also due to the fact that the aesthetics of classicism attaches great importance to the social and educational function of art.

The aesthetics of classicism establishes a strict hierarchy of genres, which are divided into "high" (tragedy, epic, ode, heroic poem, etc.), the sphere of which was state life or religious history, and the heroes were monarchs, generals, mythological characters, religious ascetics) and "low" (comedy, satire, fable), depicting the private everyday life of people of the middle classes. An intermediate place was occupied by "middle" genres (drama, message, elegy, idyll, sonnet, song), depicting the inner world of an individual. They did not play a prominent role in the literary process. The classification of genres was based on the theory of “three styles” (high, low and medium), known since ancient times. One of the styles was provided for each genre, each genre has strict boundaries and clear formal features. No mixing of the sublime and the base, the tragic and the comic, the heroic and the mundane is allowed.

The heroes of the works of classicism, mainly tragedies, were "high": kings, princes, generals, leaders, nobles, higher clergy, noble citizens who care about the fate of the fatherland and serve it. Heroes were depicted only in verse and in an elevated style, since prose was considered humiliating, “despicable” for high-ranking officials. In comedies, not only high-ranking persons were depicted, but also commoners, serf servants.

In the works of classicism, the characters were divided into strictly positive and negative, into virtuous, ideal, devoid of individuality, acting at the behest of reason, and carriers of vice, who are in the grip of selfish passions. At the same time, in the depiction of positive characters, there was schematism, reasoning, that is, a tendency to moralizing reasoning from the author's positions.

The characters, as a rule, were unilinear: the hero personified any one quality (passion) - intelligence, courage, courage, nobility, honesty or greed, deceit, stinginess, cruelty, flattery, hypocrisy, boasting (for example, Mitrofan's leading feature in " Undergrowth "- laziness). Heroes were portrayed statically, without the evolution of characters. In fact, they were just images-masks. Often used "talking" names of characters (Tartuffe, Pravdin).

In the works of classic writers, there has always been a conflict between good and evil, reason and stupidity, duty and feeling, that is, the so-called stereotypical collision, in which good, reason, and duty won. In other words, in the works of classicism, vice was always punished, and virtue triumphed. Hence the abstractness and conventionality of the image of reality.

The heroes of classicism spoke in a pompous, solemn, upbeat language. Writers, as a rule, used such poetic means as Slavicisms, hyperbole, metaphor, personification, metonymy, comparison, antithesis, emotional epithets, rhetorical questions and exclamations, appeals, mythological similes. Syllabic versification dominated and Alexandrian verse was used. The actors uttered long monologues in order to more fully reveal their views, beliefs, principles. Such monologues slowed down the action of the play.

In dramaturgy, the theory of “three unities” dominated - place (all the action of the play took place in one place), time (events in the play developed during the day), action (what happened on the stage had its beginning, development and end, while there were no “extra” episodes and characters that are not directly related to the development of the main plot). Proponents of classicism usually borrowed plots for works from ancient history or mythology. The rules of classicism demanded a logical unfolding of the plot, harmony of composition, clarity and conciseness of the language, rational clarity and noble beauty of style.

ChapterII

Features of the development of classicism in French literature

The poetics of French classicism takes shape and is gradually realized in the struggle with precision literature and burlesque, but it receives a complete systemic expression only in N. Boileau's Poetic Art (1674), which generalized the artistic experience of French literature of the 17th century.

The initiator of poetry and poetics of classicism was F. Malherbe. The reform of language and verse carried out by him was consolidated by the French Academy, which was entrusted with the task of creating a universally binding linguistic and literary canon. The leading genre of classicism was tragedy, solving the most important social and moral problems of the century. Social conflicts are depicted in it as reflected in the souls of the characters, who are faced with the need to choose between moral duty and personal passions. This collision reflected the emerging polarization of the public and private being of a person, which also determined the structure of the image. The generic, social essence, the thinking, rational “I” opposes the direct individual being of the hero, who, taking the point of view of reason, surveys himself, reflects, languishes with his split, feels the imperative to become equal to his ideal “I”.

At an early stage (according to P. Corneille), this imperative merges with the duty to the state, and later (according to J. Racine), as the alienation of the state intensifies, it loses its political content and acquires an ethical character. The inner feeling of the impending crisis of the absolutist system is reflected in the tragedies of Racine and in the fact that an ideally harmonious artistic construction is in conflict with the chaos of blind and spontaneous passions reigning in them, before which the mind and will of man are powerless.

In French classicism, "low" genres also reached a high development - fable (J. La Fontaine), satire (Boileau), comedy (Molière). It was in the "low" genres, the image of which is built not in the ideal distance of the historical or mythological past, but in the zone of direct contact with the present, that the realistic beginning was developed. This primarily applies to Moliere, whose work absorbed various ideological and artistic trends and largely determined the further development of literature.

Within the framework of classicism, prose also develops, which is characterized by typification of passions, analytical characteristics, accuracy and clarity of style (the prose of the moralists F. La Rochefoucauld, B. Pascal, J. La Bruyère, as well as the psychological novel by M. M. Lafayette).

The genre nature of the thinking of the French classicists led to the fact that each of the writers contributed to the development of a particular genre, which occupied a hierarchical place in the general genre system.

In the work of J. Racine, the dominant genre was the psychological tragedy: "Andromache", "Phaedra" and others. Racine believed that rationality is the basis of the work: "common sense and reason were the same at all times." The playwright refused the "perfect" hero: "Heroes must have average virtues, that is, virtue capable of weakness."

The leading genre in the work of P. Corneille was the political tragedy: "Sid", "Horace", etc. The main conflict in his plays is the struggle of feelings and duty to the state, fatherland, king, society. "Tragedy," he argued, "needs a nobler and more masculine passion than love..." Therefore, the tragedy of Corneille is formed as a political treatise on contemporary problems of the historical era to the playwright.

The leading genre in the work of J.-B. Moliere - "high comedy" ("Tartuffe", "Miserly", etc.). With Molière, comedy ceased to be a "low" genre: his best plays were called "high comedies", because in them, as in tragedy, the most important social, moral and philosophical problems of the century were solved. Molière put forward the demand for scenic truth. He argued: "The theater is a mirror of society." His plays were predominantly satirical. "We," noted the comiciographer, "inflict a heavy blow on vices, expose them to general ridicule." Moliere subordinated the development of the plot, the conflict, not to the disclosure of character, but centered the image on revealing the main character trait.

Having entered a period of decline at the end of the 17th century, classicism was revived in the Age of Enlightenment. A new, enlightening classicism coexisted throughout the 18th century. with enlightenment realism, and by the end of the century it becomes again the dominant artistic trend. Enlighteners in many ways continue the traditions of classicism of the 17th century. They turned out to be close to the position expressed in classicism of a person who consciously relates to the world and to himself, capable of subordinating his aspirations and passions to social and moral duty.

However, the socio-political orientation of Enlightenment classicism is changing. In the traditions of classicism, Voltaire creates tragedies imbued with the struggle against religious fanaticism, absolutist oppression, and the pathos of freedom. The appeal to antiquity as to the world of ideal prototypes, which was the essence of classicism, including the Enlightenment, had deep roots in the ideology of the Enlightenment. Where enlighteners sought to penetrate beyond the external empiricism of life, to go beyond private life, they found themselves, as a rule, in the world of ideal abstractions, because in all their constructions they proceeded from an isolated individual and did not seek the essence of a person in the social conditions of his being. , not in history, but in abstractly understood human nature. The literature of the Great French Revolution, which clothed heroic aspirations in ancient myths and legends (the work of M. J. Chenier and others), is closely connected with enlightenment classicism.

In the era of the Napoleonic Empire, classicism lost its lively progressive content. Nevertheless, as an epigone current, it existed in France until the 30s and 40s. 19th century

Features of the development of classicism in Russian literature

Classicism in Russia originated in the second quarter of the 18th century. under the ideological influence of the era of Peter the Great (with its pathos of unconditional subordination of the individual to consciously understood national interests) in the work of the first Russian enlighteners - the founders of the new Russian literature Kantemir, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov.

V.I. Fedorov proposes to subdivide the history of the formation of classicism in Russia into several periods:

1st period: literature of the time of Peter the Great, which is of a transitional nature. The main feature is the intensive process of "secularization" (that is, the replacement of religious literature with secular literature - 1689-1725). The main genres at this stage were oratorical prose, political treatises and sermons directed against the reforms of Peter I. During this period, the first published newspaper Vedomosti appeared, textbooks, poems, novels appeared, and dramaturgy appeared. The most striking figure, one of the most educated people was Feofan Prokopovich.

3rd period: 1760-1770 - the further evolution of classicism, the flowering of satire, the emergence of prerequisites for the emergence of sentimentalism. During this period, parody genres, humorous poems, novels were actively developed and literary magazines were published.

4th period: the last quarter of a century - the beginning of the crisis of classicism, the design of sentimentalism, the strengthening of realistic tendencies. The literature of the last, 4 periods, developed during the period of upheavals, social explosions, foreign revolutions (American, French). During this period, the comic opera flourished, the work of Fonvizin (fables, songs, comedies), the work of Derzhavin (odes), the work of Radishchev (author of Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow), Krylov (fables, comedies, tragedies).

The main thing in the ideology of classicism is state pathos. The state, created in the first decades of the 18th century, was declared the highest value. The classicists, inspired by the Petrine reforms, believed in the possibility of its further improvement. It seemed to them a rationally arranged social organism, where each estate performs the duties assigned to it. “Peasants plow, merchants trade, warriors defend the fatherland, judges judge, scientists cultivate science,” wrote A.P. Sumarokov. The state pathos of the Russian classicists is a deeply contradictory phenomenon. It also reflected the progressive tendencies associated with the final centralization of Russia, and at the same time - utopian ideas coming from a clear overestimation of the social possibilities of enlightened absolutism.

Equally contradictory is the attitude of the classicists to the "nature" of man. Its basis, in their opinion, is selfish, but at the same time amenable to education, the influence of civilization. The key to this is the mind, which the classicists opposed to emotions, "passions". Reason helps to realize "duty" to the state, while "passions" distract from socially useful activities. “Virtue,” Sumarokov wrote, “we owe not to our nature. Morality and politics make us useful to the common good in terms of enlightenment, reason and purification of hearts. And without that, people would have long ago exterminated each other without a trace.

The originality of Russian classicism lies in the fact that in the era of its formation it combined the pathos of serving the absolutist state with the ideas of the early European Enlightenment. In 18th century France absolutism had already exhausted its progressive possibilities, and society was facing a bourgeois revolution, which was ideologically prepared by the French enlighteners. In Russia in the first decades of the XVIII century. absolutism was still at the head of progressive transformations for the country. Therefore, at the first stage of its development, Russian classicism adopted from the Enlightenment some of its social doctrines. These include primarily the idea of ​​enlightened absolutism.

Russian classicism was distinguished by its constant appeal to national themes, to plots from Russian reality, from Russian history. In the preaching of national ideas, in the formation of socially useful, civic qualities of a person, in the development of an anti-despotic orientation, in educational tendencies, the objectively progressive significance of Russian classicism lay, its connection with life, the people, was closer.

In Russian classicism, a denunciatory-realistic tendency manifested itself, expressed in satire, comedy, fable, which violated the principle of abstract depiction of reality inherent in traditional classicism. There was a strong connection with folk art, which gave the works of Russian classicism a democratic imprint, while Western European classicism avoided the inclusion of colloquial expressions and the use of folklore techniques.

Classicism in other European literatures

Under the influence of French literature, classicism also developed in other European countries: in England (A. Pope, J. Addison), Italy (V. Alfieri, partly Ugo Foscolo), and Germany (Gottsched, Schiller, Goethe). However, in European literature, classicism was not as widespread as in French and Russian.

The classicist works of Gottsched, wholly oriented towards French models, did not leave a significant mark in German literature, and only in the second half of the 18th century. a new German classicism is emerging as an original artistic phenomenon (the so-called Weimar classicism). Unlike French, he puts forward moral and aesthetic problems to the fore. Its foundations were laid by J. I. Winkelmann, but it reached its highest peak with J. W. Goethe and F. Schiller in the Weimar period of their work. The "noble simplicity", harmony and artistic perfection of the Greek classics, which arose under the conditions of polis democracy, were opposed by German poets to the squalor of German reality and all modern civilization, crippling a person. Schiller and, to some extent, Goethe, sought in art the main means of educating a harmonious personality and, turning to antiquity, sought to create a new, modern, high-style literature capable of fulfilling this task.

Distinctive features of classicism in Russia from the classicism of France and other European countries

In contrast to the French classicism of the XVII century. and in direct accordance with the Age of Enlightenment in Russian classicism of the 30-50s, a huge place was given to the sciences, knowledge, and enlightenment. The country has made the transition from church ideology to secular. Russia needed accurate, useful knowledge for society. Lomonosov spoke about the benefits of the sciences in almost all of his odes. The first satire of Kantemir “To your mind. On those who blaspheme the teaching." The very word "enlightened" meant not just an educated person, but a citizen who was helped by knowledge to realize his responsibility to society. "Ignorance" meant not only a lack of knowledge, but at the same time a lack of understanding of one's duty to the state.

In the Western European educational literature of the 18th century, especially at the late stage of its development, "enlightenment" was determined by the degree of opposition to the existing order. In Russian classicism of the 30s-50s, "enlightenment" was measured by the measure of civil service to the absolutist state. The Russian classicists - Kantemir, Lomonosov, Sumarokov - were close to the struggle of the enlighteners against the church and church ideology. But if in the West it was about protecting the principle of religious tolerance, and in some cases atheism, then Russian enlighteners in the first half of the 18th century. denounced the ignorance and rude morals of the clergy, defended science and its adherents from persecution by church authorities. The first Russian classicists already knew the enlightening idea of ​​the natural equality of people. “The flesh in your servant is one-sided,” Cantemir pointed out to a nobleman who was beating a valet. Sumarokov reminded the "noble" class that "born from women and from ladies / / Without exception, all forefather Adam." But this thesis at that time was not yet embodied in the demand for the equality of all classes before the law. Cantemir, based on the principles of "natural law", called on the nobles to humane treatment of the peasants. Sumarokov, pointing to the natural equality of nobles and peasants, demanded from the "first" members of the fatherland of education and service to confirm their "nobility" and command position in the country.

In the purely artistic realm, the Russian classicists faced such difficult tasks that their European counterparts did not know. French literature of the middle of the 17th century. already had a well-crafted literary language and secular genres that had developed over a long period of time. Russian literature at the beginning of the 18th century. had neither one nor the other. Therefore, the share of Russian writers of the second third of the XVIII century. the task was not only to create a new literary trend. They were supposed to reform the literary language, master genres unknown in Russia until that time. Each of them was a pioneer. Kantemir laid the foundation for Russian satire, Lomonosov legitimized the ode genre, Sumarokov acted as the author of tragedies and comedies.

In the field of literary language reform, the main role belonged to Lomonosov. The Russian classicists also fell to such a serious task as the reform of Russian versification, the replacement of the syllabic system with a syllabic-tonic one. Trediakovsky wrote a treatise entitled "A New and Short Way to Add Russian Poetry", in which he substantiated the basic principles of a new, syllabic-tonic system. Lomonosov, in his discussion "On the Benefits of Church Books in the Russian Language," carried out a reform of the literary language and proposed the doctrine of the "three calms."

Conclusion

Summing up, it should be noted once again that classicism was one of the main trends in the literature of the 17th - early 19th centuries, an important feature of which was the appeal to the images and forms of ancient literature and art as an ideal aesthetic standard. The aesthetics of classicism are based on the principles of rationalism, which affirms the view of a work of art as a creation consciously created, reasonably organized and logically constructed. Images in classicism are devoid of individual features, as they are recognized primarily to capture stable, generic features that act as the embodiment of any social or spiritual forces. A strict hierarchy of genres has been established, which are divided into high, low and medium. Each genre has strict boundaries and clear formal features. Classical dramaturgy approved the so-called principle of "unity of place, time and action", which also had to be observed. These are the main features of classicism as a literary trend identified in the course of the study.

Also of no small importance is the fact that classicism had national variants, often quite significantly different from each other. Basically, these differences concerned preferences in the choice of genres and subjects. The most complex and controversial path of development fell to the lot of Russian classicism, since in the era of the emergence of this literary trend in Russia there was no basis for its development, which led to a reform of versification. The features of European classicism in Russia were manifested in the most clearly presented civil-patriotic pathos, a pronounced satirical and accusatory tendency, as well as in the connection of literature with the origins of folk art.

Like any major literary trend, classicism, having actually left the stage, continues to live in the literature of later eras and even partly in modern literature. Classicism bequeathed to her a high civic pathos, the principle of a person's responsibility to society, the idea of ​​duty based on the suppression of a personal, selfish beginning in the name of common state interests.

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Pakhsaryan N. French literature of the 17th-18th centuries - (http://www.natapa.msk.ru/biblio/works/classicus.htm).

Pospelov, G. N. Problems of historical development of literature. M., Education, 1972.

Details Category: A variety of styles and trends in art and their features Posted on 03/05/2015 10:28 Views: 10488

"Class!" - we talk about what arouses our admiration or corresponds to our positive assessment of an object or phenomenon.
Translated from Latin, the word classicus and means "exemplary".

Classicismcalled the artistic style and aesthetic direction in European culture of the XVII-XIX centuries.

What about as a sample? Classicism developed the canons according to which any work of art should be built. Canon- this is a certain norm, a set of artistic techniques or rules that are mandatory in a certain era.
Classicism is a strict trend in art, it was only interested in the essential, eternal, typical, random signs or manifestations were not interesting to classicism.
In this sense, classicism performed the educational functions of art.

Buildings of the Senate and Synod in St. Petersburg. Architect C. Rossi
Is it good or bad when there are canons in art? When you can only like this and nothing else? Do not rush to a negative conclusion! The canons made it possible to streamline the work of a certain type of art, to give direction, to show samples and to sweep aside everything insignificant and not deep.
But the canons cannot be an eternal, unchanging guide to creativity - at some point they become obsolete. This is what happened at the beginning of the 20th century. in the visual arts and in music: the norms that had taken root over the course of several centuries had outlived their usefulness and were torn apart.
However, we have already jumped ahead. Let's return to classicism and take a closer look at the hierarchy of genres of classicism. We will only say that as a certain trend, classicism was formed in France in the 17th century. A feature of French classicism was that it affirmed the personality of a person as the highest value of being. In many ways, classicism relied on ancient art, seeing in it an ideal aesthetic model.

Hierarchy of genres of classicism

In classicism, a strict hierarchy of genres is established, which are divided into high and low. Each genre has certain characteristics, which should not be mixed.
Consider the hierarchy of genres on the examples of various types of art.

Literature

Nicolas Boileau is considered the greatest theorist of classicism, but the founder is Francois Malherba, who reformed the French language and verse and developed poetic canons. N. Boileau expressed his views on the theory of classicism in the poetic treatise "Poetic Art".

Bust of Nicolas Boileau by F. Girardon. Paris, Louvre
In dramaturgy had to be respected three unities: the unity of time (the action must take place within one day), the unity of place (in one place) and the unity of action (there must be one storyline in the work). The French tragedians Corneille and Racine became the leading representatives of classicism in dramaturgy. The main idea of ​​their work was the conflict between public duty and personal passions.
The goal of classicism is to change the world for the better.

In Russia

In Russia, the emergence and development of classicism is associated primarily with the name of M.V. Lomonosov.

M. V. Lomonosov at the monument "1000th Anniversary of Russia" in Veliky Novgorod. Sculptors M.O. Mikeshin, I.N. Schroeder, architect V.A. Hartmann
He carried out a reform of Russian verse and developed the theory of "three calms".

"The theory of three calms" M.V. Lomonosov

The doctrine of the three styles, i.e. The classification of styles in rhetoric and poetics, which distinguishes between high, medium and low (simple) styles, has been known for a long time. It was used in ancient Roman, medieval and modern European literature.
But Lomonosov used the doctrine of three styles to build a stylistic system Russian language and Russian literature. Three "styles" according to Lomonosov:
1. High - solemn, majestic. Genres: ode, heroic poems, tragedies.
2. Medium - elegies, dramas, satires, eclogues, friendly compositions.
3. Low - comedies, letters, songs, fables.
Classicism in Russia developed under the influence of the Enlightenment: the ideas of equality and justice. Therefore, in Russian classicism, an obligatory author's assessment of historical reality was usually assumed. This we find in the comedies of D.I. Fonvizin, satires A.D. Cantemir, fables by A.P. Sumarokova, I.I. Khemnitser, odes to M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin.
At the end of the XVIII century. the tendency to see in art the main force of human education intensified. In this regard, a literary trend arises sentimentalism, in which feeling (and not reason) was declared the main thing in human nature. The French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau called for being closer to nature and naturalness. This call was followed by the Russian writer N.M. Karamzin - let's remember his famous "Poor Lisa"!
But in the direction of classicism, works were created in the 19th century. For example, "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov. Although in this comedy there are already elements of romanticism and realism.

Painting

Since the definition of "classicism" is translated as "exemplary", then some kind of model is natural for it. And supporters of classicism saw it in ancient art. It was the highest example. There was also a reliance on the traditions of the high Renaissance, which also saw a model in antiquity. The art of classicism reflected the ideas of a harmonious structure of society, but reflected the conflicts of the individual and society, the ideal and reality, feelings and reason, which testify to the complexity of the art of classicism.
The artistic forms of classicism are characterized by strict organization, balance, clarity and harmony of images. The plot should develop logically, the composition of the plot should be clear and balanced, the volume should be clear, the role of color should be subordinated with the help of chiaroscuro, the use of local colors. So wrote, for example, N. Poussin.

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)

N. Poussin "Self-portrait" (1649)
French artist who stood at the origins of classicism painting. Almost all of his paintings are based on historical and mythological subjects. His compositions are always clear and rhythmic.

N. Poussin "Dance to the Music of Time" (circa 1638)
The painting depicts an allegorical round dance of Life. It circles (from left to right): Pleasure, Diligence, Wealth, Poverty. Next to the two-headed stone statue of the Roman god Janus sits a baby blowing soap bubbles - a symbol of the fleeting human life. The young face of the two-faced Janus looks to the future, while the old face is turned to the past. The winged, gray-bearded old man, to the music of which the round dance is spinning, is Father Time. At his feet sits a baby who holds an hourglass, reminiscent of the rapid movement of time.
The chariot of the sun god Apollo rushes across the sky, accompanied by the goddesses of the seasons. Aurora, the goddess of dawn, flies ahead of the chariot, scattering flowers in her path.

V. Borovikovsky “Portrait of G.R. Derzhavin" (1795)

V. Borovikovsky “Portrait of G.R. Derzhavin, State Tretyakov Gallery
The artist depicted in the portrait a man whom he knew well and whose opinion he valued. This is a formal portrait, traditional for classicism. Derzhavin is a senator, a member of the Russian Academy, a statesman, this is evidenced by his uniform and awards.
But at the same time, this is a famous poet, passionate about creativity, educational ideals and social life. This is indicated by a desk littered with manuscripts; luxury ink set; shelves with books in the background.
The image of G. R. Derzhavin is recognizable. But his inner world is not shown. Rousseau's ideas, which have already been actively discussed in society, have not yet appeared in the work of V. Borovikovsky, this will happen later.
In the 19th century Classicism painting enters a period of crisis and becomes a force holding back the development of art. Artists, preserving the language of classicism, begin to turn to romantic subjects. Among Russian artists, first of all, it is Karl Bryullov. His work came at a time when classical works of form were filled with the spirit of romanticism, this combination was called academism. In the middle of the XIX century. the young generation gravitating towards realism began to rebel, represented in France by the Courbet circle, and in Russia by the Wanderers.

Sculpture

The sculpture of the era of classicism also considered antiquity as a model. This was facilitated, among other things, by archaeological excavations of ancient cities, as a result of which many sculptures of Hellenism became known.
Classicism reached its highest incarnation in the works of Antonio Canova.

Antonio Canova (1757-1822)

A. Canova "Self-portrait" (1792)
Italian sculptor, representative of classicism in European sculpture. The largest collections of his works are in the Louvre in Paris and in the St. Petersburg Hermitage.

A. Canova "Three Graces". Saint Petersburg, Hermitage
The sculptural group "Three Graces" refers to the late period of creativity of Antonio Canova. The sculptor embodied his ideas of beauty in the images of the graces - ancient goddesses personifying female charm and charm. The composition of this sculpture is unusual: the graces stand side by side, the two extreme faces face each other (and not the viewer) and the girlfriend standing in the center. All three slender female figures merged into an embrace, they are united by the interweaving of hands and a scarf falling from the hand of one of the graces. Canova's composition is compact and balanced.
In Russia, the aesthetics of classicism include Fedot Shubin, Mikhail Kozlovsky, Boris Orlovsky, Ivan Martos.
Fedot Ivanovich Shubin(1740-1805) worked mainly with marble, sometimes turning to bronze. Most of his sculptural portraits are in the form of busts: busts of Vice-Chancellor A. M. Golitsyn, Count P. A. Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky, Potemkin-Tavrichesky, M. V. Lomonosov, Paul I, P. V. Zavadovsky, a statue of Catherine II legislators and others.

F. Shubin. Bust of Paul I
Shubin is also known as a decorator, he created 58 marble historical portraits for the Chesme Palace, 42 sculptures for the Marble Palace, etc. He was also a bone carver of the Kholmogory carved bone.
In the era of classicism, public monuments became widespread, in which the military prowess and wisdom of statesmen were idealized. But in the ancient tradition, it was customary to depict models naked, while the norms of morality modern to classicism did not allow this. That is why figures began to be depicted as naked ancient gods: for example, Suvorov - in the form of Mars. Later they began to be depicted in antique togas.

Monument to Kutuzov in St. Petersburg in front of the Kazan Cathedral. Sculptor B.I. Orlovsky, architect K.A. Tone
Late, Empire classicism is represented by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

B. Thorvaldsen. Monument to Nicolaus Copernicus in Warsaw

Architecture

The architecture of classicism was also focused on the forms of ancient architecture as standards of harmony, simplicity, rigor, logical clarity and monumentality. The order, in proportions and forms close to antiquity, became the basis of the architectural language of classicism. Order- a type of architectural composition that uses certain elements. It includes a system of proportions, prescribes the composition and shape of the elements, as well as their relative position. Classicism is characterized by symmetrical-axial compositions, restraint of decorative decoration, and a regular system of city planning.

London's Osterley Park mansion. Architect Robert Adam
In Russia, representatives of classicism in architecture were V.I. Bazhenov, Karl Rossi, Andrey Voronikhin and Andrey Zakharov.

Carl Barthalomeo-Rossi(1775-1849) - Russian architect of Italian origin, author of many buildings and architectural ensembles in St. Petersburg and its environs.
Rossi's outstanding architectural and urban planning skills are embodied in the ensembles of the Mikhailovsky Palace with its adjacent garden and square (1819-1825), Palace Square with the grandiose arched building of the General Staff Building and the triumphal arch (1819-1829), Senate Square with the Senate and Synod buildings (1829). -1834), Alexandrinsky Square with the buildings of the Alexandrinsky Theater (1827-1832), the new building of the Imperial Public Library and two uniform long buildings of Theater Street (now the street of the architect Rossi).

The building of the General Staff on Palace Square

Music

The concept of classicism in music is associated with the work of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, who are called the Viennese classics. It was they who determined the direction of the further development of European music.

Thomas Hardy "Portrait of Joseph Haydn" (1792)

Barbara Kraft "Posthumous portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" (1819)

Karl Stieler "Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven" (1820)
The aesthetics of classicism, based on confidence in the rationality and harmony of the world order, embodied these same principles in music. It was required from her: the balance of parts of the work, the careful finishing of details, the development of the main canons of the musical form. During this period, the sonata form was finally formed, the classical composition of parts of the sonata and symphony was determined.
Of course, the path of music to classicism was not simple and unambiguous. There was the first stage of classicism - the Renaissance of the XVII century. Some musicologists even consider the Baroque period as a particular manifestation of classicism. Thus, the works of I.S. Bach, G. Handel, K. Gluck with his reformist operas. But the highest achievements of classicism in music are nevertheless associated with the work of representatives of the Viennese classical school: J. Haydn, W. A. ​​Mozart and L. van Beethoven.

Note

It is necessary to distinguish between concepts "music of classicism" and "classical music". The concept of "classical music" is much broader. It includes not only the music of the period of the era of classicism, but also the music of the past in general, which has withstood the test of time and is recognized as exemplary.

Classicism (from Latin classicus - “exemplary”) is an artistic direction (flow) in art and literature of the 17th - early 19th centuries, which is characterized by high civic themes, strict adherence to certain creative norms and rules. In the West, classicism was formed in the struggle against the magnificent baroque. The influence of classicism on the artistic life of Europe in the 17th - 18th centuries. was wide and long-term, and in architecture it continued into the 19th century. Classicism, as a certain artistic direction, tends to reflect life in ideal images, gravitating towards the universal “norm”, a model. Hence the cult of antiquity in classicism: classical antiquity appears in it as an example of perfect and harmonious art.

Writers and artists often turn to the images of ancient myths (see Ancient Literature).

Classicism flourished in France in the 17th century: in drama (P. Corneille, J. Racine, J. B. Molière), in poetry (J. La Fontaine), in painting (N. Poussin), in architecture. At the end of the XVII century. N. Boileau (in the poem "Poetic Art", 1674) created a detailed aesthetic theory of classicism, which had a huge impact on the formation of classicism in other countries.

The clash of personal interests and civic duty underlies the French classic tragedy, which reached ideological and artistic heights in the work of Corneille and Racine. Corneille's characters (Sid, Horace, Cinna) are courageous, stern people driven by duty, completely subordinating themselves to the service of state interests. Showing conflicting mental movements in their characters, Corneille and Racine made outstanding discoveries in the field of depicting the inner world of a person. Imbued with the pathos of the study of the human soul, the tragedy contained a minimum of external action, easily fit into the famous rules of the "three unities" - time, place and action.

According to the rules of the aesthetics of classicism, strictly adhering to the so-called hierarchy of genres, tragedy (along with the ode, the epic) belonged to the “high genres” and had to develop especially important social problems, resorting to ancient and historical plots, and reflect only sublime heroic sides. "High genres" were opposed by "low" ones: comedy, fable, satire, etc., designed to reflect modern reality. In the genre of fable, Lafontaine became famous in France, and in the genre of comedy - Molière.

In the 17th century, permeated with the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment, classicism was imbued with passionate criticism of the order of the feudal world, the protection of natural human rights, and freedom-loving motives. It is also distinguished by a great attention to national historical subjects. The largest representatives of enlightenment classicism are Voltaire in France, J. W. Goethe and J. F. Schiller (in the 90s) in Germany.

Russian classicism originated in the second quarter of the 18th century, in the works of A. D. Kantemir, V. K. Trediakovsky, M. V. Lomonosov, and reached development in the second half of the century, in the works of A. P. Sumarokov, D. I. Fonvizin, M. M. Kheraskov, V. A. Ozerova, Ya. B. Knyazhnina, G. R. Derzhavin. It presents all the most important genres - from ode and epic to fable and comedy. D. I. Fonvizin, the author of the famous satirical comedies Brigadier and Undergrowth, was a remarkable comedian. Russian classic tragedy showed a keen interest in national history (Dimitri the Pretender by A. P. Sumarokov, Vadim Novgorodsky by Ya. B. Knyaznin, and others).

At the end of the XVIII - beginning of the XIX century. Classicism, both in Russia and throughout Europe, is in crisis. He is increasingly losing touch with life, closing in a narrow circle of conventions. At this time, classicism is subjected to sharp criticism, especially from the romantics.

1. Introduction.Classicism as an artistic method...................................2

2. Aesthetics of classicism.

2.1. Basic principles of classicism .................................…………….….....5

2.2. The picture of the world, the concept of personality in the art of classicism...…...5

2.3. Aesthetic nature of classicism .............................................................. ........nine

2.4. Classicism in painting ....................................................... .........................15

2.5. Classicism in sculpture .............................................................. .......................16

2.6. Classicism in architecture ............................................................... .....................eighteen

2.7. Classicism in Literature .................................................................. .......................twenty

2.8. Classicism in music .............................................................. ...............................22

2.9. Classicism in the theater .............................................................. ...............................22

2.10. The originality of Russian classicism .............................................................. ....22

3. Conclusion……………………………………...…………………………...26

Bibliography..............................…….………………………………….28

Applications ........................................................................................................29

1. Classicism as an artistic method

Classicism is one of the artistic methods that really existed in the history of art. Sometimes it is denoted by the terms "direction" and "style". Classicism (fr. classicisme, from lat. classicus- exemplary) - an artistic style and aesthetic trend in European art of the 17th-19th centuries.

Classicism is based on the ideas of rationalism, which were formed simultaneously with the same ideas in the philosophy of Descartes. A work of art, from the point of view of classicism, should be built on the basis of strict canons, thereby revealing the harmony and logic of the universe itself. Of interest to classicism is only the eternal, unchanging - in each phenomenon, he seeks to recognize only essential, typological features, discarding random individual features. The aesthetics of classicism attaches great importance to the social and educational function of art. Classicism takes many rules and canons from ancient art (Aristotle, Horace).

Classicism establishes a strict hierarchy of genres, which are divided into high (ode, tragedy, epic) and low (comedy, satire, fable). Each genre has strictly defined features, mixing of which is not allowed.

The concept of classicism as a creative method implies a historically conditioned way of aesthetic perception and modeling of reality in artistic images: the picture of the world and the concept of personality, the most common for the mass aesthetic consciousness of a given historical era, are embodied in ideas about the essence of verbal art, its relationship with reality , its own internal laws.

Classicism arises and is formed in certain historical and cultural conditions. The most common research belief connects classicism with the historical conditions of the transition from feudal fragmentation to a single national-territorial statehood, in the formation of which the absolute monarchy plays a centralizing role.

Classicism is an organic stage in the development of any national culture, despite the fact that different national cultures go through the classic stage at different times, due to the individuality of the national variant of the formation of a general social model of a centralized state.

The chronological framework for the existence of classicism in different European cultures is defined as the second half of the 17th - the first thirty years of the 18th century, despite the fact that early classicist trends are palpable at the end of the Renaissance, at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. Within these chronological limits, French classicism is considered the standard embodiment of the method. Closely associated with the flourishing of French absolutism in the second half of the 17th century, it gave European culture not only the great writers - Corneille, Racine, Molière, Lafontaine, Voltaire, but also the great theorist of classic art - Nicolas Boileau-Depreau. Being himself a practicing writer who earned fame during his lifetime with his satires, Boileau was mainly famous for creating the aesthetic code of classicism - the didactic poem "Poetic Art" (1674), in which he gave a coherent theoretical concept of literary creativity, derived from the literary practice of his contemporaries. Thus, classicism in France became the most self-conscious embodiment of the method. Hence its reference value.

The historical prerequisites for the emergence of classicism connect the aesthetic problems of the method with the era of aggravation of the relationship between the individual and society in the process of becoming an autocratic statehood, which, replacing the social permissiveness of feudalism, seeks to regulate the law and clearly distinguish between the spheres of public and private life and the relationship between the individual and the state. This defines the content aspect of art. Its main principles are motivated by the system of philosophical views of the era. They form a picture of the world and the concept of personality, and already these categories are embodied in the totality of artistic techniques of literary creativity.

The most general philosophical concepts present in all philosophical currents of the second half of the 17th - late 18th centuries. and directly related to the aesthetics and poetics of classicism - these are the concepts of "rationalism" and "metaphysics", relevant for both idealistic and materialistic philosophical teachings of this time. The founder of the philosophical doctrine of rationalism is the French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). The fundamental thesis of his doctrine: "I think, therefore I exist" - was realized in many philosophical currents of that time, united by the common name "Cartesianism" (from the Latin version of the name Descartes - Cartesius). In essence, this is an idealistic thesis, since it derives the material existence from an idea. However, rationalism, as an interpretation of reason as the primary and highest spiritual ability of a person, is equally characteristic of the materialistic philosophical currents of the era - such as, for example, the metaphysical materialism of the English philosophical school of Bacon-Locke, which recognized experience as a source of knowledge, but put it below the generalizing and analytical activity of the mind, extracting from the multitude of facts obtained by experience the highest idea, a means of modeling the cosmos - the highest reality - from the chaos of individual material objects.

To both varieties of rationalism - idealistic and materialistic - the concept of "metaphysics" is equally applicable. Genetically, it goes back to Aristotle, and in his philosophical teaching it denoted a branch of knowledge that explores the inaccessible to the senses and only rationally speculatively comprehended by the highest and unchanging principles of everything that exists. Both Descartes and Bacon used the term in the Aristotelian sense. In modern times, the concept of "metaphysics" has acquired an additional meaning and has come to denote an anti-dialectical way of thinking that perceives phenomena and objects without their interconnection and development. Historically, this very accurately characterizes the peculiarities of thinking of the analytical era of the 17th-18th centuries, the period of differentiation of scientific knowledge and art, when each branch of science, standing out from the syncretic complex, acquired its own separate subject, but at the same time lost its connection with other branches of knowledge.

2. Aesthetics of classicism

2.1. Basic principles of classicism

1. The cult of reason 2. The cult of civic duty 3. Appeal to medieval subjects 4. Abstraction from the image of everyday life, from historical national identity 5. Imitation of antique samples 6. Compositional harmony, symmetry, unity of a work of art 7. Heroes are carriers of one main feature, given outside development 8. Antithesis as the main technique for creating a work of art

2.2. Worldview, personality concept

in the art of classicism

The picture of the world generated by the rationalistic type of consciousness clearly divides reality into two levels: empirical and ideological. The external, visible and tangible material-empirical world consists of many separate material objects and phenomena that are not connected with each other in any way - this is a chaos of individual private entities. However, above this chaotic multitude of individual objects, their ideal hypostasis exists - a harmonious and harmonious whole, the universal idea of ​​the universe, which includes the ideal image of any material object in its highest, purified from particulars, eternal and unchanging form: in the way it should be according to original intention of the Creator. This general idea can only be comprehended in a rational-analytical way by gradually purifying an object or phenomenon from its specific forms and appearance and penetrating into its ideal essence and purpose.

And since the idea precedes creation, and the indispensable condition and source of existence is thinking, this ideal reality has the highest primary character. It is easy to see that the main patterns of such a two-level picture of reality are very easily projected onto the main sociological problem of the period of transition from feudal fragmentation to autocratic statehood - the problem of the relationship between the individual and the state. The world of people is the world of individual private human beings, chaotic and disorderly, the state is a comprehensive harmonious idea that creates a harmonious and harmonious ideal world order from chaos. It is this philosophical picture of the world of the XVII-XVIII centuries. determined such substantive aspects of the aesthetics of classicism as the concept of personality and the typology of conflict, universally characteristic (with the necessary historical and cultural variations) for classicism in any European literature.

In the area of ​​human relations with the outside world, classicism sees two types of connections and positions - the same two levels that make up the philosophical picture of the world. The first level is the so-called "natural person", a biological being, standing along with all the objects of the material world. This is a private entity, possessed by selfish passions, disorderly and unrestricted in its desire to ensure its personal existence. At this level of human connections with the world, the leading category that determines the spiritual image of a person is passion - blind and unrestrained in its desire for realization in the name of achieving individual good.

The second level of the concept of personality is the so-called "social person", harmoniously included in society in his highest, ideal image, conscious that his good is an integral part of the common good. A “public person” is guided in his worldview and actions not by passions, but by reason, since it is reason that is the highest spiritual ability of a person, giving him the opportunity for positive self-determination in the conditions of a human community based on the ethical norms of consistent community life. Thus, the concept of the human personality in the ideology of classicism turns out to be complex and contradictory: a natural (passionate) and social (reasonable) person is one and the same character, torn apart by internal contradictions and in a situation of choice.

Hence - the typological conflict of the art of classicism, which directly follows from such a concept of personality. It is quite obvious that the source of the conflict situation is precisely the character of the person. Character is one of the central aesthetic categories of classicism, and its interpretation is significantly different from the meaning that modern consciousness and literary criticism puts into the term "character". In the understanding of the aesthetics of classicism, character is precisely the ideal hypostasis of a person - that is, not the individual warehouse of a particular human personality, but a certain universal view of human nature and psychology, timeless in its essence. Only in this form of an eternal, unchanging, universal human attribute could character be an object of classic art, unambiguously related to the highest, ideal level of reality.

The main components of character are passions: love, hypocrisy, courage, stinginess, a sense of duty, envy, patriotism, etc. It is by the predominance of one passion that the character is determined: “in love”, “stingy”, “envious”, “patriot”. All these definitions are precisely "characters" in the understanding of the classic aesthetic consciousness.

However, these passions are not equivalent to each other, although according to the philosophical concepts of the XVII-XVIII centuries. all passions are equal, since they are all from human nature, they are all natural, and it is not possible to decide which passion is consistent with the ethical dignity of a person and which is not, not a single passion by itself can. These decisions are made only by the mind. While all passions are equally categories of emotional spiritual life, some of them (such as love, avarice, envy, hypocrisy, etc.) are less and more difficult to agree with the dictates of reason and are more connected with the concept of selfish good. Others (courage, sense of duty, honor, patriotism) are more subject to rational control and do not contradict the idea of ​​the common good, the ethics of social ties.

So it turns out that reasonable and unreasonable passions, altruistic and egoistic, personal and public passions collide in conflict. And reason is the highest spiritual ability of a person, a logical and analytical tool that allows you to control passions and distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood. The most common type of classic conflict is a conflict situation between personal inclination (love) and a sense of duty to society and the state, which for some reason excludes the possibility of realizing love passion. It is quite obvious that by its nature this is a psychological conflict, although a necessary condition for its implementation is a situation in which the interests of an individual and society collide. These most important ideological aspects of the aesthetic thinking of the era found their expression in the system of ideas about the laws of artistic creativity.

2.3. Aesthetic nature of classicism

The aesthetic principles of classicism have undergone significant changes during its existence. A characteristic feature of this trend is the worship of antiquity. The art of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome was considered by the classicists as an ideal model of artistic creativity. Aristotle's "Poetics" and Horace's "Art of Poetry" had a great influence on the formation of the aesthetic principles of classicism. Here, there is a tendency to create sublimely heroic, ideal, rationalistically clear and plastically completed images. As a rule, in the art of classicism, modern political, moral and aesthetic ideals are embodied in characters, conflicts, situations borrowed from the arsenal of ancient history, mythology or directly from ancient art.

The aesthetics of classicism oriented poets, artists, composers to the creation of works of art that are distinguished by clarity, logic, strict balance and harmony. All this, according to the classicists, was fully reflected in ancient artistic culture. For them reason and antiquity are synonymous. The rationalistic nature of the aesthetics of classicism manifested itself in the abstract typification of images, the strict regulation of genres and forms, in the interpretation of the ancient artistic heritage, in the appeal of art to reason, and not to feelings, in the desire to subordinate the creative process to unshakable norms, rules and canons (norm - from lat. norma - guiding principle, rule, pattern; generally accepted rule, pattern of behavior or action).

As in Italy, the aesthetic principles of the Renaissance found their most typical expression, so in France of the 17th century. - aesthetic principles of classicism. By the 17th century the artistic culture of Italy has largely lost its former influence. But the innovative spirit of French art was clearly indicated. At this time, an absolutist state was formed in France, which united society and centralized power.

The strengthening of absolutism meant the victory of the principle of universal regulation in all spheres of life, from the economy to the spiritual life. Debt is the main regulator of human behavior. The state embodies this duty and acts as a kind of entity alienated from the individual. Submission to the state, fulfillment of public duty is the highest virtue of the individual. A person is no longer thought of as free, as was typical of the Renaissance worldview, but as subordinate to norms and rules alien to him, limited by forces beyond his control. The regulating and limiting force appears in the form of an impersonal mind, to which the individual must obey and act, following his commands and prescriptions.

The high rise in production contributed to the development of the exact sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, and this, in turn, led to the victory of rationalism (from Latin ratio - mind) - a philosophical direction that recognizes the mind as the basis of human knowledge and behavior.

Ideas about the laws of creativity and the structure of a work of art are due to the same epoch-making type of worldview as the picture of the world and the concept of personality. Reason, as the highest spiritual ability of man, is thought not only as an instrument of knowledge, but also as an organ of creativity and a source of aesthetic pleasure. One of the most striking leitmotifs of Boileau's Poetic Art is the rational nature of aesthetic activity:

French classicism affirmed the personality of a person as the highest value of being, freeing him from religious and church influence.

Interest in the art of ancient Greece and Rome emerged as early as the Renaissance, which, after centuries of the Middle Ages, turned to the forms, motifs and plots of antiquity. The greatest theorist of the Renaissance, Leon Batista Alberti, back in the 15th century. expressed ideas that foreshadowed certain principles of classicism and were fully manifested in Raphael's fresco "The School of Athens" (1511).

The systematization and consolidation of the achievements of the great Renaissance artists, especially the Florentine ones led by Raphael and his student Giulio Romano, constituted the program of the Bologna school of the late 16th century, the most characteristic representatives of which were the Carracci brothers. In their influential Academy of Arts, the Bolognese preached that the path to the heights of art lay through a scrupulous study of the heritage of Raphael and Michelangelo, imitation of their mastery of line and composition.

Following Aristotle, classicism considered art to be an imitation of nature:

However, nature was by no means understood as a visual picture of the physical and moral world, which appears to the senses, but precisely as the highest intelligible essence of the world and man: not a specific character, but its idea, not a real-historical or modern plot, but a universal human conflict situation, not given landscape, but the idea of ​​a harmonious combination of natural realities in an ideally beautiful unity. Classicism found such an ideally beautiful unity in ancient literature - it was it that was perceived by classicism as the already reached pinnacle of aesthetic activity, the eternal and unchanging standard of art, which recreated in its genre models that very highest ideal nature, physical and moral, which art should imitate. It so happened that the thesis about imitation of nature turned into a prescription to imitate ancient art, from where the term “classicism” itself came from (from Latin classicus - exemplary, studied in class):

Thus, nature in classic art appears not so much reproduced as modeled after a high model - "decorated" by the generalizing analytical activity of the mind. By analogy, one can recall the so-called “regular” (i.e., “correct”) park, where the trees are trimmed in the form of geometric shapes and symmetrically seated, paths that have the correct shape are strewn with multi-colored pebbles, and water is enclosed in marble pools and fountains. This style of landscape gardening art reached its peak precisely in the era of classicism. From the desire to present nature as “decorated”, the absolute predominance of poetry over prose in the literature of classicism follows: if prose is identical with simple material nature, then poetry, as a literary form, is certainly an ideal “decorated” nature.

In all these ideas about art, namely, as a rational, ordered, normalized, spiritual activity, the hierarchical principle of thinking of the 17th-18th centuries was realized. Within itself, literature also turned out to be divided into two hierarchical ranks, low and high, each of which was thematically and stylistically associated with one - material or ideal - level of reality. Satire, comedy, fable were classified as low genres; to high - ode, tragedy, epic. In the low genres, everyday material reality is depicted, and a private person appears in social connections (at the same time, of course, both a person and reality are still the same ideal conceptual categories). In high genres, a person is presented as a spiritual and social being, in the existential aspect of his existence, alone and along with the eternal foundations of the questions of being. Therefore, for high and low genres, not only thematic, but also class differentiation on the basis of the character's belonging to one or another social stratum turned out to be relevant. The hero of low genres is a middle-class person; high hero - a historical person, a mythological hero or a fictional high-ranking character - as a rule, a ruler.

In low genres, human characters are formed by base everyday passions (stinginess, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, envy, etc.); in high genres, passions acquire a spiritual character (love, ambition, revenge, sense of duty, patriotism, etc.). And if everyday passions are unambiguously unreasonable and vicious, then existential passions are divided into reasonable - public and unreasonable - personal, and the ethical status of the hero depends on his choice. It is unambiguously positive if it prefers a rational passion, and unambiguously negative if it chooses an unreasonable one. Classicism did not allow semitones in ethical assessment - and this was also affected by the rationalistic nature of the method, which excluded any mixture of high and low, tragic and comic.

Since in the genre theory of classicism those genres that reached the greatest flourishing in ancient literature were legitimized as the main ones, and literary creativity was conceived as a reasonable imitation of high standards, the aesthetic code of classicism acquired a normative character. This means that the model of each genre was established once and for all in a clear set of rules, from which it was unacceptable to deviate, and each specific text was aesthetically evaluated according to the degree of compliance with this ideal genre model.

Ancient examples became the source of the rules: the epic of Homer and Virgil, the tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Seneca, the comedy of Aristophanes, Menander, Terence and Plautus, the ode of Pindar, the fable of Aesop and Phaedrus, the satire of Horace and Juvenal. The most typical and illustrative case of such genre regulation is, of course, the rules for the leading classic genre, tragedies, drawn both from the texts of ancient tragedians and from Aristotle's Poetics.

For the tragedy, a poetic form (“Alexandrian verse” - a six-foot iambic with a pair of rhymes), an obligatory five-act construction, three unities - times, places and actions, a high style, a historical or mythological plot and a conflict, suggesting a mandatory situation of choosing between reasonable and unreasonable, were canonized. passion, and the very process of choice was supposed to constitute the action of the tragedy. It was in the dramatic section of the aesthetics of classicism that rationalism, hierarchy and normativity of the method were expressed with the greatest completeness and obviousness:

Everything that has been said above about the aesthetics of classicism and the poetics of classic literature in France applies equally to almost any European variety of the method, since French classicism was historically the earliest and aesthetically the most authoritative incarnation of the method. But for Russian classicism, these general theoretical provisions found a kind of refraction in artistic practice, as they were due to the historical and national features of the formation of a new Russian culture of the 18th century.

2.4. Classicism in painting

At the beginning of the 17th century, young foreigners flocked to Rome to get acquainted with the heritage of antiquity and the Renaissance. The most prominent place among them was occupied by the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin, in his paintings, mainly on the themes of ancient antiquity and mythology, who gave unsurpassed examples of geometrically accurate composition and thoughtful correlation of color groups. Another Frenchman, Claude Lorrain, in his antiquated landscapes of the environs of the "eternal city" streamlined the pictures of nature by harmonizing them with the light of the setting sun and introducing peculiar architectural scenes.

Poussin's coldly rational normativism evoked the approval of the court of Versailles and was continued by court painters like Lebrun, who saw in classic painting an ideal artistic language for praising the absolutist state of the "sun king". Although private clients favored variations of the Baroque and Rococo, the French monarchy kept Classicism afloat by funding academic institutions such as the School of Fine Arts. The Rome Prize provided the most talented students with the opportunity to visit Rome for a direct acquaintance with the great works of antiquity.

The discovery of “genuine” ancient painting during the excavations of Pompeii, the deification of antiquity by the German art historian Winckelmann, and the cult of Raphael, preached by the artist Mengs, who was close to him in terms of views, in the second half of the 18th century breathed new breath into classicism (in Western literature this stage is called neoclassicism). The largest representative of the "new classicism" was Jacques-Louis David; his extremely laconic and dramatic artistic language served with equal success to promote the ideals of the French Revolution ("Death of Marat") and the First Empire ("Dedication of Emperor Napoleon I").

In the 19th century, classicism painting enters a period of crisis and becomes a force holding back the development of art, not only in France, but also in other countries. The artistic line of David was successfully continued by Ingres, while maintaining the language of classicism in his works, he often turned to romantic subjects with oriental flavor (“Turkish baths”); his portrait work is marked by a subtle idealization of the model. Artists in other countries (such as, for example, Karl Bryullov) also imbued classically shaped works with the spirit of romanticism; this combination is called academism. Numerous art academies served as its breeding grounds. In the middle of the 19th century, the young generation gravitating towards realism, represented in France by the Courbet circle, and in Russia by the Wanderers, rebelled against the conservatism of the academic establishment.

2.5. Classicism in sculpture

The impetus for the development of classical sculpture in the middle of the 18th century was the works of Winckelmann and archaeological excavations of ancient cities, which expanded the knowledge of contemporaries about ancient sculpture. On the verge of baroque and classicism, such sculptors as Pigalle and Houdon fluctuated in France. Classicism reached its highest embodiment in the field of plastic art in the heroic and idyllic works of Antonio Canova, who drew inspiration mainly from the statues of the Hellenistic era (Praxiteles). In Russia, Fedot Shubin, Mikhail Kozlovsky, Boris Orlovsky, Ivan Martos gravitated towards the aesthetics of classicism.

Public monuments, which became widespread in the era of classicism, gave sculptors the opportunity to idealize the military prowess and wisdom of statesmen. Loyalty to the ancient model required the sculptors to depict models naked, which was in conflict with accepted moral standards. To resolve this contradiction, the figures of modernity were initially depicted by sculptors of classicism in the form of naked ancient gods: Suvorov - in the form of Mars, and Polina Borghese - in the form of Venus. Under Napoleon, the issue was resolved by moving to the image of contemporary figures in antique togas (such are the figures of Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly in front of the Kazan Cathedral).

Private customers of the era of classicism preferred to perpetuate their names in tombstones. The popularity of this sculptural form was facilitated by the arrangement of public cemeteries in the main cities of Europe. In accordance with the classical ideal, the figures on tombstones, as a rule, are in a state of deep rest. Sculpture of classicism is generally alien to sharp movements, external manifestations of such emotions as anger.

Late, Empire classicism, represented primarily by the prolific Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen, is imbued with a rather dry pathos. The purity of lines, the restraint of gestures, the impassivity of expressions are especially valued. In the choice of role models, the emphasis shifts from Hellenism to the archaic period. Religious images are coming into fashion, which, in the interpretation of Thorvaldsen, make a somewhat chilling impression on the viewer. The tomb sculpture of late classicism often bears a slight touch of sentimentality.

2.6. Classicism in architecture

The main feature of the architecture of classicism was the appeal to the forms of ancient architecture as the standard of harmony, simplicity, rigor, logical clarity and monumentality. The architecture of classicism as a whole is characterized by the regularity of planning and the clarity of volumetric form. The order, in proportions and forms close to antiquity, became the basis of the architectural language of classicism. Classicism is characterized by symmetrical-axial compositions, restraint of decorative decoration, and a regular system of city planning.

The architectural language of classicism was formulated at the end of the Renaissance by the great Venetian master Palladio and his follower Scamozzi. The Venetians absolutized the principles of ancient temple architecture so much that they applied them even in the construction of such private mansions as Villa Capra. Inigo Jones brought Palladianism north to England, where local Palladian architects followed Palladio's precepts with varying degrees of fidelity until the middle of the 18th century.

By that time, the surfeit of the "whipped cream" of the late Baroque and Rococo began to accumulate among the intellectuals of continental Europe. Born by the Roman architects Bernini and Borromini, the baroque thinned into rococo, a predominantly chamber style with an emphasis on interior decoration and arts and crafts. For solving major urban problems, this aesthetics was of little use. Already under Louis XV (1715-74) urban planning ensembles in the “ancient Roman” style were being built in Paris, such as Place de la Concorde (architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel) and the Church of Saint-Sulpice, and under Louis XVI (1774-92) a similar “noble laconicism" is already becoming the main architectural trend.

The most significant interiors in the style of classicism were designed by the Scot Robert Adam, who returned to his homeland from Rome in 1758. He was greatly impressed by both the archaeological research of Italian scientists and the architectural fantasies of Piranesi. In the interpretation of Adam, classicism was a style that was hardly inferior to rococo in terms of sophistication of interiors, which gained him popularity not only among democratically minded circles of society, but also among the aristocracy. Like his French colleagues, Adam preached a complete rejection of details devoid of a constructive function.

The Frenchman Jacques-Germain Soufflot, during the construction of the Saint-Genevieve church in Paris, demonstrated the ability of classicism to organize vast urban spaces. The massive grandeur of his designs foreshadowed the megalomania of Napoleonic Empire and late Classicism. In Russia, Bazhenov was moving in the same direction as Soufflet. The Frenchmen Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-Louis Boulet went even further towards the development of a radical visionary style with an emphasis on the abstract geometrization of forms. In revolutionary France, the ascetic civic pathos of their projects was of little use; Ledoux's innovation was fully appreciated only by modernists of the 20th century.

The architects of Napoleonic France drew inspiration from the majestic images of military glory left by imperial Rome, such as the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus and Trajan's Column. By order of Napoleon, these images were transferred to Paris in the form of the triumphal arch of Carruzel and the Vendôme column. In relation to the monuments of military greatness of the era of the Napoleonic wars, the term "imperial style" - Empire style is used. In Russia, Karl Rossi, Andrey Voronikhin and Andrey Zakharov showed themselves to be outstanding masters of the Empire style. In Britain, the Empire corresponds to the so-called. "Regency style" (the largest representative is John Nash).

The aesthetics of classicism favored large-scale urban development projects and led to the ordering of urban development on the scale of entire cities. In Russia, almost all provincial and many county towns were replanned in accordance with the principles of classic rationalism. Such cities as St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Warsaw, Dublin, Edinburgh and a number of others have turned into genuine open-air museums of classicism. Throughout the space from Minusinsk to Philadelphia, a single architectural language, dating back to Palladio, dominated. Ordinary building was carried out in accordance with the albums of standard projects.

In the period following the Napoleonic Wars, classicism had to get along with romantically colored eclecticism, in particular with the return of interest in the Middle Ages and the fashion for architectural neo-Gothic. In connection with the discoveries of Champollion, Egyptian motifs are gaining popularity. Interest in ancient Roman architecture is replaced by reverence for everything ancient Greek (“Neo-Greek”), which was especially pronounced in Germany and the United States. German architects Leo von Klenze and Karl Friedrich Schinkel are building up, respectively, Munich and Berlin with grandiose museum and other public buildings in the spirit of the Parthenon. In France, the purity of classicism is diluted with free borrowings from the architectural repertoire of the Renaissance and Baroque (see Beaus-Arts).

2.7. Classicism in literature

The French poet Francois Malherbe (1555-1628), who reformed the French language and verse and developed poetic canons, is considered the founder of the poetics of classicism. The leading representatives of classicism in dramaturgy were the tragedians Corneille and Racine (1639-1699), whose main subject of creativity was the conflict between public duty and personal passions. "Low" genres also reached high development - fable (J. La Fontaine), satire (Boileau), comedy (Molière 1622-1673).

Boileau became famous throughout Europe as the "legislator of Parnassus", the largest theorist of classicism, who expressed his views in the poetic treatise "Poetic Art". Under his influence in Great Britain were the poets John Dryden and Alexander Pope, who made the alexandrine the main form of English poetry. The English prose of the era of classicism (Addison, Swift) is also characterized by Latinized syntax.

Classicism of the 18th century developed under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment. The work of Voltaire (1694-1778) is directed against religious fanaticism, absolutist oppression, filled with the pathos of freedom. The goal of creativity is to change the world for the better, to build society itself in accordance with the laws of classicism. From the positions of classicism, the Englishman Samuel Johnson surveyed contemporary literature, around whom a brilliant circle of like-minded people formed, including the essayist Boswell, the historian Gibbon and the actor Garrick. Three unities are characteristic of dramatic works: the unity of time (the action takes place one day), the unity of place (in one place) and the unity of action (one storyline).

In Russia, classicism originated in the 18th century, after the transformations of Peter I. Lomonosov carried out a reform of Russian verse, developed the theory of "three calms", which was essentially an adaptation of French classical rules to the Russian language. The images in classicism are devoid of individual features, as they are intended primarily to capture stable generic features that do not pass over time, acting as the embodiment of any social or spiritual forces.

Classicism in Russia developed under the great influence of the Enlightenment - the ideas of equality and justice have always been the focus of attention of Russian classic writers. Therefore, in Russian classicism, genres that imply a mandatory authorial assessment of historical reality have received great development: comedy (D. I. Fonvizin), satire (A. D. Kantemir), fable (A. P. Sumarokov, I. I. Khemnitser), ode (Lomonosov, G. R. Derzhavin).

In connection with the call proclaimed by Rousseau to closeness to nature and naturalness, crisis phenomena are growing in the classicism of the late 18th century; the cult of tender feelings - sentimentalism - comes to replace the absolutization of reason. The transition from classicism to pre-romanticism was most clearly reflected in the German literature of the Sturm und Drang era, represented by the names of J. W. Goethe (1749-1832) and F. Schiller (1759-1805), who, following Rousseau, saw in art the main force of education person.

2.8. Classicism in music

The concept of classicism in music is steadily associated with the work of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, called Viennese classics and determined the direction of further development of musical composition.

The concept of "music of classicism" should not be confused with the concept of "classical music", which has a more general meaning as the music of the past that has stood the test of time.

The music of the era of Classicism sings of the actions and deeds of a person, the emotions and feelings experienced by him, the attentive and holistic human mind.

The theatrical art of classicism is characterized by a solemn, static structure of performances, measured reading of poetry. The 18th century is often referred to as the "golden age" of the theatre. The founder of European classical comedy is the French comedian, actor and theatrical figure, the stage art reformer Molière (nast, name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) (1622-1673). For a long time, Molière traveled with a theater troupe around the provinces, where he got acquainted with the stage technique and the tastes of the public. In 1658 he received permission from the king to play with his troupe at the court theater in Paris. Based on the traditions of the folk theater and the achievements of classicism, he created the genre of social comedy, in which buffoonery and plebeian humor were combined with grace and artistry. Overcoming the schematism of Italian comedies del arte (Italian commedia dell "arte - a comedy of masks; the main masks are Harlequin, Pulcinella, the old merchant Pantalone, etc.), Molière created life-like images. He ridiculed the class prejudices of the aristocrats, the limitations of the bourgeois, the hypocrisy of the nobles ( "The tradesman in the nobility", 1670). With particular intransigence, Moliere exposed hypocrisy, hiding behind piety and ostentatious virtue: "Tartuffe, or the Deceiver" (1664), "Don Juan" (1665), "The Misanthrope" (1666). The artistic heritage of Molière had a profound influence on the development of world drama and theater. The Barber of Seville (1775) and The Marriage of Figaro (1784) by the great French playwright Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais (1732-1799) are recognized as the most mature embodiment of the comedy of manners. They depict the conflict between the third estate and the nobility. Operas by V.A. Mozart (1786) and G. Rossini (1816).

2.10. The originality of Russian classicism

Russian classicism arose in similar historical conditions - its prerequisite was the strengthening of autocratic statehood and national self-determination of Russia since the era of Peter I. The Europeanism of the ideology of Peter the Great's reforms aimed Russian culture at mastering the achievements of European cultures. But at the same time, Russian classicism arose almost a century later than French: by the middle of the 18th century, when Russian classicism was just beginning to gain strength, in France it had reached the second stage of its existence. The so-called "enlightenment classicism" - a combination of classic creative principles with the pre-revolutionary ideology of the Enlightenment - flourished in French literature in the work of Voltaire and acquired an anticlerical, socially critical pathos: a few decades before the French Revolution, the times of apologia for absolutism were already a distant history. Russian classicism, by virtue of its strong connection with the secular cultural reform, firstly, initially set itself educational tasks, seeking to educate its readers and set the monarchs on the path of public good, and secondly, acquired the status of a leading trend in Russian literature towards the time when Peter I was no longer alive, and the fate of his cultural reforms was put in jeopardy in the second half of the 1720s - 1730s.

Therefore, Russian classicism begins “not with the fruit of spring - an ode, but with the fruit of autumn - satire”, and socially critical pathos is inherent in it from the very beginning.

Russian classicism also reflected a completely different type of conflict than Western European classicism. If in French classicism the socio-political principle is only the ground on which the psychological conflict of rational and unreasonable passions develops and the process of free and conscious choice between their dictates is carried out, then in Russia, with its traditionally anti-democratic catholicity and the absolute power of society over the individual, the situation was completely otherwise. For the Russian mentality, which had just begun to comprehend the ideology of personalism, the need to humble the individual in front of society, the individual in front of the authorities was not at all such a tragedy as for the Western worldview. The choice, relevant for the European consciousness as an opportunity to prefer one thing, in Russian conditions turned out to be imaginary, its outcome was predetermined in favor of society. Therefore, the very situation of choice in Russian classicism lost its conflict-forming function, and was replaced by another.

The central problem of Russian life in the XVIII century. there was a problem of power and its succession: not a single Russian emperor after the death of Peter I and before the accession of Paul I in 1796 came to power legally. 18th century - this is the age of intrigues and palace coups, which too often led to the absolute and uncontrolled power of people who by no means corresponded not only to the ideal of an enlightened monarch, but also to ideas about the role of the monarch in the state. Therefore, Russian classic literature immediately took a political and didactic direction and reflected precisely this problem as the main tragic dilemma of the era - the inconsistency of the ruler with the duties of the autocrat, the conflict of experiencing power as an egoistic personal passion with the idea of ​​​​power exercised for the benefit of subjects.

Thus, the Russian classicist conflict, having preserved the situation of choosing between rational and unreasonable passion as an external plot pattern, was fully realized as a socio-political one in nature. The positive hero of Russian classicism does not humble his individual passion in the name of the common good, but insists on his natural rights, defending his personalism from tyrannical encroachments. And the most important thing is that this national specificity of the method was well understood by the writers themselves: if the plots of French classicist tragedies were drawn mainly from ancient mythology and history, then Sumarokov wrote his tragedies on the plots of Russian chronicles and even on plots of not so distant Russian history.

Finally, another specific feature of Russian classicism was that it did not rely on such a rich and continuous tradition of national literature as any other national European variety of method. What any European literature had at the time of the emergence of the theory of classicism - namely, a literary language with an ordered style system, the principles of versification, a definite system of literary genres - all this had to be created in Russian. Therefore, in Russian classicism, literary theory was ahead of literary practice. The normative acts of Russian classicism - the reform of versification, the reform of style and the regulation of the genre system - were carried out between the middle of 1730 and the end of the 1740s. - that is, basically before a full-fledged literary process unfolded in Russia in line with classic aesthetics.

3. Conclusion

For the ideological premises of classicism, it is essential that the desire of the individual for freedom is assumed here to be just as legitimate as the need of society to bind this freedom with laws.

The personal principle continues to retain that immediate social significance, that independent value, with which the Renaissance first endowed it. However, in contrast to him, now this beginning belongs to the individual, along with the role that society now receives as a social organization. And this implies that any attempt by the individual to defend his freedom in spite of society threatens him with the loss of the fullness of life ties and the transformation of freedom into a devastated subjectivity devoid of any support.

The category of measure is a fundamental category in the poetics of classicism. It is unusually multifaceted in content, has both a spiritual and plastic nature, touches, but does not coincide with another typical concept of classicism - the concept of the norm - and is closely connected with all aspects of the ideal affirmed here.

The classic mind, as a source and guarantor of balance in nature and people's lives, bears the stamp of poetic faith in the original harmony of all things, confidence in the natural course of things, confidence in the presence of an all-encompassing correspondence between the movement of the world and the formation of society, in the humanistic, human-oriented nature of this connections.

I am close to the period of classicism, its principles, poetry, art, creativity in general. The conclusions that classicism makes about people, society, the world seem to me the only true and rational. Measure, as the middle line between opposites, the order of things, systems, and not chaos; a strong relationship of a person with society against their rupture and enmity, excessive genius and selfishness; harmony against extremes - in this I see the ideal principles of being, the foundations of which are reflected in the canons of classicism.

List of sources

In literature, classicism was born and spread in France in the 17th century. The theoretician of classicism is Nicolas Boileau, who formed the basic principles of style in the article "Poetic Art". The name comes from the Latin "classicus" - exemplary, which emphasizes the artistic basis of the style - the images and forms of antiquity, which began to have a special interest at the end of the Renaissance. The emergence of classicism is associated with the formation of the principles of a centralized state and the ideas of "enlightened" absolutism in it.

Classicism glorifies the concept of reason, believing that only with the help of the mind can one obtain and streamline a picture of the world. Therefore, the main thing in the work is its idea (that is, the main idea and form of the work must be in harmony), and the main thing in the conflict of reason and feelings is reason and duty.

The main principles of classicism, characteristic of both foreign and domestic literature:

• Forms and images from ancient (Greek and Roman) literature: tragedy, ode, comedy, epic, poetic odic and satirical forms.
• A clear division of genres into "high" and "low". The "high" include ode, tragedy and epic, the "low", as a rule, funny - comedy, satire, fable.
• Distinctive division of heroes into good and bad.
• Compliance with the principle of the trinity of time, place, action.

Classicism in Russian literature

18th century

In Russia, classicism appeared much later than in European countries, as it was "brought" along with European works and enlightenment. The existence of style on Russian soil is usually placed in the following framework:

1. The end of the 1720s, the literature of the time of Peter the Great, secular literature, which differs from the church literature that had previously dominated Russia.

The style began to develop first in translations, then in original works. The names of A. D. Kantemir, A. P. Sumarokov and V. K. Trediakovsky (reformers and developers of the literary language, they worked on poetic forms - on odes and satires) are associated with the development of the Russian classical tradition.

1. 1730-1770 - the heyday of style and its evolution. It is associated with the name of M. V. Lomonosov, who wrote tragedies, odes, and poems.
2. The last quarter of the XVIII century - the emergence of sentimentalism and the beginning of the crisis of classicism. The time of late classicism is associated with the name of D. I. Fonvizin, the author of tragedies, dramas and comedies; G. R. Derzhavin (poetic forms), A. N. Radishcheva (prose and poetry).

(A. N. Radishchev, D. I. Fonvizin, P. Ya. Chaadaev)

D. I. Fonvizin and A. N. Radishchev became not only developers, but also destroyers of the stylistic unity of classicism: Fonvizin in comedies violates the trinity principle, introduces ambiguity in the assessment of heroes. Radishchev becomes a harbinger and developer of sentimentalism, providing psychologism to the narrative, rejecting its conventions.

(Representatives of classicism)

19th century

It is believed that classicism existed by inertia until the 1820s, however, during the late classicism, the works created within its framework were only formally classical, or its principles were used intentionally, to create a comic effect.

Russian classicism of the early 19th century is moving away from its breakthrough features: the assertion of the primacy of reason, civic pathos, opposition to the arbitrariness of religion, against its oppression of reason, criticism of the monarchy.

Classicism in foreign literature

The original classicism relied on the theoretical developments of ancient authors - Aristotle and Horace ("Poetics" and "Epistle to the Pisons").

In European literature, with identical principles, style ends its existence from the 1720s. Representatives of classicism in France: Francois Malherbe (poetic works, reformation of the poetic language), J. La Fontaine (satirical works, fable), J.-B. Molière (comedy), Voltaire (drama), J.-J. Rousseau (late classic prose writer, forerunner of sentimentalism).

There are two stages in the development of European classicism:

• The development and flourishing of the monarchy, contributing to the positive development of the economy, science and culture. At this stage, representatives of classicism see as their task the glorification of the monarch, the assertion of its inviolability (Francois Malherbe, Pierre Corneille, the leading genres are ode, poem, epic).
• The crisis of the monarchy, the discovery of shortcomings in the political system. Writers do not glorify, but rather criticize the monarchy. (J. Lafontaine, J.-B. Moliere, Voltaire, leading genres - comedy, satire, epigram).