Literary critics - who are they? Russian critics

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Literary criticism is a field of creativity that is on the verge of art (that is, fiction) and the science of it (literary criticism). Who are the experts in it? Critics are people who evaluate and interpret works from the standpoint of modernity (including the point of view of pressing problems of spiritual and social life), as well as their personal views, affirm and identify the creative principles of various literary movements, have an active influence on the literary process, and directly influence the formation of a certain social consciousness. They are based on the history and theory of literature, aesthetics and philosophy.

Literary criticism is often politically topical, journalistic in nature, intertwined with journalism. Its close connection with related sciences is observed: political science, history, textual criticism, linguistics, bibliography.

Russian criticism

The critic Belinsky wrote that each epoch of the literature of our country had a consciousness of itself, which is expressed in criticism.

It's hard to disagree with this statement. Russian criticism - just asa unique and striking phenomenon, like classical Russian literature. This should be noted. Various authors (critic Belinsky, for example) have pointed out many times that it, being synthetic in nature, played an enormous role in the social life of our country. Let us recall the most famous writers who devoted themselves to the study of the works of the classics. Russian critics are D. I. Pisarev, N. A. Dobrolyubov, A. V. Druzhinin, A. A. Grigoriev, V. G. Belinsky and many others, whose articles contained not only a detailed analysis of works, but also their artistic features, ideas, images. They sought to see the most important social and moral problems of that time behind the artistic picture, and not only capture them, but sometimes offer their own solutions.

Meaning of criticism

Articles written by Russian critics continue to have a great influence on the moral and spiritual life of society. It is no coincidence that they have long been included in the compulsory school curriculum of our country. However, in literature lessons for a number of decades, students mostly got acquainted with critical articles of a radical orientation. Critics of this direction - D. I. Pisarev, N. A. Dobrolyubov, N. G. Chernyshevsky, V. G. Belinsky and others. At the same time, the works of these authors were most often perceived as a source of quotations with which schoolchildren generously "decorated" their compositions.

Stereotypes of perception

This approach to the study of the classics formed stereotypes in artistic perception, significantly impoverished and simplified the overall picture of developmentRussian literature, distinguished primarily by fierce aesthetic and ideological disputes.

Only recently, thanks to the emergence of a number of in-depth studies, the vision of Russian criticism and literature has become multifaceted and more voluminous. Articles by N. N. Strakhova, A. A. Grigorieva, N. I. Nadezhdina, I. V. Kireevsky, P. A. Vyazemsky, K. N. Batyushkova, N. M. Karamzin (see the portrait of Nikolai Mikhailovich, made by the artist Tropinin, below) and other outstanding writers of our country.

Features of literary criticism

Literature is the art of the word, which is embodied both in a work of art and in a literary-critical speech. Therefore, a Russian critic, like any other, is always a bit of both a publicist and an artist. The article, written with talent, necessarily contains a powerful fusion of various moral and philosophical reflections of the author with deep and subtle observations on the literary text itself. The study of a critical article is of very little use if its main provisions are perceived as a kind of dogma. It is important for the reader to intellectually and emotionally experience everything said by this author, to determine the degree of evidence of the arguments put forward by him, to think about the logic of thought. Criticism of works is by no means an unambiguous thing.

Critic's own vision

Criticists are people who reveal their own vision of the writer's work, offer their own unique reading of the work. The article often makesrethink the artistic image, or it may be a criticism of the book. Some estimates and judgments in a talentedly written work can serve as a genuine discovery for the reader, but something will seem controversial or erroneous to us. Particularly interesting is the comparison of different points of view regarding the work of an individual writer or one work. Literary criticism always provides us with rich material for reflection.

The we alth of Russian literary criticism

We can, for example, look at the work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin through the eyes of V. V. Rozanova, A. A. Grigorieva, V. G. Belinsky and I. V. Kireevsky, to get acquainted with how Gogol's contemporaries perceived his poem "Dead Souls" in different ways (critics V. G. Belinsky, S. P. Shevyrev, K. S. Aksakov), how in the second half of the 19th century the heroes of "Woe from the mind" Griboyedov. It is very interesting to compare the perception of the novel "Oblomov" by Goncharov with the way it was interpreted by D. S. Merezhkovsky and D. I. Pisarev. The portrait of the latter is shown below.

Articles dedicated to the work of L. N. Tolstoy

For example, a very interesting literary criticism is devoted to the work of L. N. Tolstoy. The ability to show the "purity of moral feeling", the "dialectics of the soul" of the heroes of the works as a characteristic feature of Lev Nikolayevich's talent was one of the first to reveal and designate N. G. Chernyshevsky in his articles. Speaking about the works of N. N. Strakhov dedicated to "War and Peace" can be rightfully asserted: there are fewthere are works in Russian literary criticism that can be put next to him in terms of the depth of penetration into the author's intention, the subtlety and accuracy of observations.

Russian criticism in the 20th century

It is noteworthy that the result of often fierce disputes and difficult searches of Russian criticism was its desire at the beginning of the 20th century to "return" Russian culture to Pushkin, to his simplicity and harmony. V. V. Rozanov, proclaiming the need for this, wrote that the mind of Alexander Sergeevich protects a person from everything stupid, his nobility - from everything vulgar.

In the mid-1920s, a new cultural upsurge occurs. The young state, after the end of the civil war, finally gets the opportunity to seriously engage in culture. In the first half of the 20th century, the formal school dominated literary criticism. Its main representatives are Shklovsky, Tynyanov and Eikhenbaum. Formalists, rejecting the traditional functions that criticism performed - socio-political, moral, didactic - insisted on the idea of the independence of literature from the development of society. In this they went against the prevailing ideology of Marxism at that time. Therefore, formal criticism gradually came to an end. In subsequent years, socialist realism dominated. Criticism becomes a punitive tool in the hands of the state. It was controlled and directed directly by the party. Criticism sections and columns appeared in all magazines and newspapers.

Today, of course, the situation has changed radically.