Contemporary modernism in literature. Characteristic features of modernism. Modernism in the characteristics of Western literature of the twentieth century

Modernism in Russian literature “Silver Age” of Russian culture of the 20th century. End of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. - relatively short
but incredibly rich in public,
political and cultural events segment
Russian history. This time is also called
"silver" age", comparing with the "golden age"
- the era of the highest flowering of Russian literature
and art - the 19th century. Comparatively
small geographical area of ​​Moscow and
Petersburg at that time, the density of various
artistic talent was so high
that there are no corresponding examples for it not only in
Russian, but also in world history. Some poets -
great, large and simply significant - dozens.

Features of modernism in literature:

denial of classical art
heritage;
recited discrepancy with theory and
practice of realism;
focus on the individual person,
not social;
increased attention to spiritual rather than
social sphere of human life;
focus on form at the expense of content.

Representatives of modernism in literature in Russia:

Borii s Leoniidovich Pasternai (January 29, 1890, Moscow - May 30, 1960,
Peredelkino, Moscow region) -
Russian writer, poet, translator; one of
greatest poets of the 20th century.
In 1955, Pasternak wrote the novel
"Doctor Zhivago". Three years later the writer
was awarded the Nobel Prize for
literature, after this he was
subjected to bullying and persecution from outside
BLOCK
Alexander
Aleksandrovich
Soviet
government.
, Russian poet.

BUNIN Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953), Russian writer and poet,
Nobel Prize winner in
literature (1933).
AKHMATOVA (real name Gorenko)
Anna Andreevna (June 11 (23), 1889
- March 5, 1966) Russian poetess,
translator and literary critic,
one of the most significant figures
Russian literature of the 20th century.
Nobel Prize nominee
on literature.

ESENIN Sergey Alexandrovich
(1895-1925), Russian poet,
representative of the new peasant
poetry and lyrics, and more
late period of creativity -
imagism.
MAYAKOVSKY Vladimir
Vladimirovich (7 (19) July 1893-
April 14, 1930), Russian poet,
one of the brightest representatives
avant-garde art of the 1910-1920s. One of the biggest
poets of the 20th century.
In addition to poetry, he clearly showed himself
as a playwright, screenwriter,
film director, film actor,
artist, magazine editor.

Gumilyov treated them the same way,
Khlebnikov, Klyuev, Severyanin, Bely,
Sologub, Balmont, Bryusov, Voloshin,
Ivanovs (Vyacheslav and Georgy), Kuzmin,
Tsvetaeva, Khodasevich, Gippius,
Mandelstam is just the most
noticeable, but not all of them.

The birth of modernism.

The first modernist periodical in
Russia became the magazine "World of Art",
organized by young artists A.N. Benois,
K.A. Somov, L. S. Bakst, E. E. Lansere,
S.P. Diaghilev in 1899, writers (Zinaida
Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky) were
invited to lead the literary department of the magazine,
whose main purpose was to promote a new
painting. On the pages of the magazine "World of Art"
printed their first works Blok, Gippius,
Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Bryusov, Bely, Sologub. IN
Korney Chukovsky acted as a critic.

The split of modernism.

Russian literature after the revolution of 1917
shared the tragic fate of the country and
further developed in three directions:
Literature of Russian Abroad - I. Bunin,
V. Nabokov, I. Shmelev; literature, not
officially recognized in its time in the USSR
not published - M. Bulgakov, A. Akhmatova,
A. Platonov and others; Russian Soviet
literature (mostly
socialist realism) - M. Gorky,
V. Mayakovsky, M. Sholokhov.

Representatives of modernism in foreign literature:

Anne de Noailles (November 15, 1876- 30
April 1933) - French
poetess, mistress of literary
salon
Paul Eluair (December 14, 1895-
November 18, 1952) - French
poet who has published more than a hundred
poetry collections.

Guillois m Apollineir (26 August 1880
- November 9, 1918) - French
poet, one of the most
influential figures
European avant-garde of the early 20th century
century.
Jacques Prévert (4 February 1900- 11
April 1977) - French poet
and film playwright.

Modernism in the fine arts.

Modernism is a set of artistic movements in
art of the second half of the 19th - mid-20th centuries.
The most significant modernist trends were
impressionism, expressionism, neo- and post-impressionism,
Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism. And also later movements -
abstract art, dadaism, surrealism. In the narrow sense
modernism is considered as an early stage of avant-gardeism,
the beginning of a revision of classical traditions. Date of birth
Modernism is often referred to as 1863 - the year of its opening in Paris
“Salon of the Rejected”, where works of artists were accepted.
In a broad sense, modernism is “another art”, the main
whose purpose is to create original works,
based on inner freedom and a special vision of the world
author and carrying new means of expression
figurative language, often accompanied by shocking
and a certain challenge to established canons.

Directions of modernism.

Abstract expressionism is a special style of painting when the artist
spends a minimum amount of time on his creativity, scatters
paint on the canvas, randomly touches the painting with brushes, randomly
applies strokes.
Dadaism - works of art in the style of collage, layout on
canvas of several fragments of the same theme. Images are usually
imbued with the idea of ​​denial, a cynical approach to the topic. The style arose
immediately after the end of the First World War and became a reflection of the feeling
hopelessness reigning in society.
Cubism - chaotically arranged geometric figures. The style itself
highly artistic, created true masterpieces in the style of cubism
Pablo Picasso. The artist Paul approached his work somewhat differently
Cezanne - his paintings are also included in the treasury of world art.
Post-Impressionism - rejection of visible reality and replacement of real
images with decorative stylization. A style with great potential
but it was fully realized only by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.

Representatives of modernism in art:

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich–
great Russian artist.
Painting styles: Avant-garde,
Cubism, Suprematism, etc. (11
February 1878 – May 15, 1935).
Kazimir Malevich is
an iconic figure not only in
Russian art, but also in
world history of painting. IN
in particular he was
the founder of a new species
art - Suprematism,
marking his appearance
a picture that is known in
all over the world as - Black
Square. Painting Black
Square was painted in 1915
year and called the real one
a sensation among connoisseurs and
critics. Existed

"Black square"
"An Englishman in Moscow"

"Argentine polka"
Self-portrait

"Laundry on the fence"
"Boulevard"

Fu"lla Ludovit Slovak painter
"The Boy in the Hat"
M. Pashteka: Artist and
sitters.

M. A. Bazovsky: Farmers.
E. Shimerova: Still life with a newspaper.

Modernism in architecture.

Wide open spaces for modernist architecture
opened as a result of the consequences of the Second World War.
Many European cities were destroyed. Was planned
the world of a new formation. A fundamental
the ability to design entire neighborhoods without special
connections to the “old” architectural ensemble of cities.
The largest buildings in the modernist style
occurred in cities with the greatest destruction -
Berlin and Le Havre. On these giant construction sites
large international teams worked
famous modernist architects - Hans Scharoun,
Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer,
Pier Luigi Nervi, Marcel Breuer, Auguste Perret, Bernard
Zehrfuss and many others.

Basic principles of architectural modernism:

use of the most modern
building materials and structures,
rational approach to solution
internal spaces (functional
an approach),
lack of decoration trends,
fundamental rejection of historical
reminiscences in the appearance of buildings,
their “international” character.

House of Vicens (1883-1888) Barcelona.

House of Vicens (18831888) Barcelona.
Architect Antonio Gaudi
(1852-1926). House of Vicens
develops the theme of Arabic
fairy tales "A Thousand and One Nights".
Rounded towers, graceful
metal ornaments in
in the form of palm leaves
rhythmically alternating belts
arches, blind windows with wrought iron
bars... Creativity of A.
Gaudi threw
a kind of bridge from

Casa Batllo (1904-1906) Barcelona.

Casa Batllo (19041906) Barcelona.
Bluish-green facade of the House
Batllo resembles something foamed
sea ​​wave, then splashes
volcanic lava, then skin
strange animals.

Sagrada Familia (1883-1926) Barcelona.

Gaudi's main creation is the cathedral
Sagrada Familia (St.
family), which he did not have time
complete during your lifetime. By design
he was supposed to be
architectural embodiment
stories of the New Testament. Facade
The cathedral consists of three portals,
symbolizing Faith, Hope
and love. Middle represents
a deep grotto of Bethlehem; He

House of Tassel (1892-1893) Luxembourg.

House of Tassel (18921893) Luxembourg.
Architect Victor Orta. (1861-1947). "A perfect architect
art modernism" is called a Belgian architect
Victor Orta. Tassel's house is rightfully considered the first example of "
pure modernism", which brought worldwide fame and glory
aspiring architect.

Skyscrapers in Chicago, USA.

Architect Louis
Sullivan. (18561924).
Chicago architect Louis's first skyscraper
Sullivan in the city of St. Louis produced
a real revolution in architecture. Steel
frames with vertical structures,
stuffed with high-speed elevators and other
technology, clearly challenged the classics.

Museum of Modern Art, New York (1943-1959).

Architect
Frank Lloyd
Wright.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York is one of
the first museums of modern art in the world. Now this
the museum, located in Manhattan, enjoys
deserved fame and is very popular among visitors.

Residential buildings in the modernist style. France.

Architect Le
Corbusier (18871965)

House of the Singer company (1902-1904) St. Petersburg.

House of the Singer Company (1902
-1904) St. Petersburg.
Architect Pavel Yulievich Syuzor. In Russia one of the most
notable and typical monuments of Art Nouveau is the Company House
"Singer" (now "House of Books") on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg. On the one hand, the building is not connected with its surroundings
ensemble, which is considered a town planning error, on the other hand
On the other hand, this is an example of successful planning in difficult conditions

Kazansky railway station building. Moscow. (1902-1904)

Kazansky building
station. Moscow. (19021904)
Architect A.V.
Shchusev

Modern- style in European and American art at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Modernism reinterpreted and stylized the features of art from different eras, and developed its own artistic techniques based on the principles of asymmetry, ornamentality and decorativeness. Natural forms also become the object of modernity stylization. This explains not only the interest in floral ornaments in modernist works, but also their very compositional and plastic structure - the abundance of curvilinear outlines, floating nerves, new contours reminiscent of plant forms.

Lev Bakst "Portrait of Andrei Lvovich Bakst, son of the artist"

Closely connected with modernity is symbolism, which served as the aesthetic and philosophical basis for modernity, relying on modernity as a plastic realization of its ideas. Art Nouveau had different names in different countries, which are essentially synonymous: Art Nouveau - in France, Secession - in Austria, Art Nouveau - in Germany, Liberty - in Italy.

Alexander Benois "Bath of the Marquise." 1906

Modern painting is characterized by the desire to create an independent artistic system. One of the founders of these ideas was the Pont-Aven school with Paul Gauguin. Unlike other styles, paintings and panels of Art Nouveau were considered as elements of the interior, giving it a new emotional coloring. That's why Decorativeness became one of the main qualities of Art Nouveau painting.

Gustav Klimt "Life and Death" (1908 -1916)

Painting is characterized by a paradoxical combination of decorative conventions, ornamental “carpet backgrounds” and foreground figures and faces “sculpted” with sculptural clarity(G. Klimt, F. Knopf, M. A. Vrubel), as well as large color planes (L. S. Bakst, E. Munch) and subtle emphasized nuances (Vrubel, Benoit). All this gave the paintings greater expressiveness. Symbolism also introduced the symbolism of line and color into Art Nouveau painting; The themes of world grief, death, and eroticism were widely represented; It became common for artists to turn to the world of mystery, dreams, legends, fairy tales, etc. A striking example of modern painting are the paintings of Gustav Klimt. Modern artists worked in all countries of Europe and America: Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Holland, Russia, the USA, etc.

Alphonse Mucha "Zodiac" 1896

Modernism- (from the French modern - modern) the general name of a number of art movements of the first half of the 20th century, which are characterized by the denial of traditional forms and aesthetics of the past. Modernism is close to avant-gardeism and opposite to academicism.

In Russian aesthetics, “modern” means the artistic style of the late 19th - early 20th centuries that historically preceded modernism.(Russian Art Nouveau, Art Nouveau, Art Nouveau, Secession, etc.), therefore it is necessary to distinguish between these two concepts in order to avoid confusion.

Modernism is a set of artistic movements in the art of the second half of the 19th - mid-20th centuries The most significant modernist trends were impressionism, modernism, expressionism, neo- and post-impressionism, fauvism, cubism, and futurism. As well as later movements - abstract art, Dadaism, surrealism. In a narrow sense, modernism is considered as an early stage of avant-gardeism, the beginning of a revision of classical traditions. The date of the birth of modernism is often cited as 1863, the year of the opening of the “Salon of the Rejected” in Paris, where works by artists were accepted. In a broad sense, modernism is “another art”, the main goal of which is to create original works based on internal freedom and a special vision of the world by the author and carrying new expressive means of visual language, often accompanied by shockingness and a certain challenge to established canons.

Avant-garde - a general concept that unites all types of experimental, modernist, emphatically unusual endeavors in art, searches in the art of the 20th century.

Kazimir Malevich "Athletes" (1930 -1931)

The common features of all avant-garde movements are constant confrontation with all established and recognized movements and a constant readiness to put forward new unprecedented artistic principles that can stun the artistic environment and the public. For this purpose, techniques, methods, themes, images that were previously considered incompatible with art are used. The constant introduction of such “incredible”, “unthinkable” innovations into art created an atmosphere of constant tension, revolutionary expectations, scandals and clashes around the avant-garde.

Modernism (fr. newest, modern) in literature is a direction, an aesthetic concept. Modernism is associated with the comprehension and embodiment of a certain supernaturalness, superreality. The starting point of modernism is the chaotic nature of the world, its absurdity. The indifference and hostile attitude of the outside world towards a person lead to the awareness of other spiritual values ​​and bring a person to a transpersonal basis.

The modernists broke all traditions with classical literature, trying to create a completely new modern literature, placing above all else the value of the individual artistic vision of the world; the artistic worlds they create are unique. The most popular topic for modernists is the conscious and unconscious and the ways they interact. The hero of the works is typical. The modernists turned to the inner world of the average person: they described his most subtle feelings, pulled out the deepest experiences that literature had not previously described. They turned the hero inside out and showed everything that was indecently personal. The main technique in the work of modernists is the “stream of consciousness,” which allows one to capture the movement of thoughts, impressions, and feelings.

Modernism consists of different schools: imagism, dadaism, expressionism, constructivism, surrealism, etc.

Representatives of modernism in literature: V. Mayakovsky, V. Khlebnikov, E. Guro, B. Livshits, A. Kruchenykh, early L. Andreev, S. Sokolov, V. Lavrenev, R. Ivnev.

Postmodernism initially appeared in Western art, arose as a contrast to modernism, which was open to understanding by a select few. A characteristic feature of Russian literary postmodernism is a frivolous attitude towards its past, history, folklore, and classical literature. Sometimes this unacceptability of traditions goes to extremes. The main techniques of postmodernists: paradoxes, wordplay, use of profanity. The main goal of postmodern texts is to entertain and ridicule. These works, for the most part, do not carry deep ideas; they are based on word creation, i.e. text for text's sake. Russian postmodern creativity is a process of language games, the most common of which is the play on quotes from classical literature. The motive, the plot, and the myth can be quoted.

The most common genres of postmodernism: diaries, notes, collections of short fragments, letters, comments written by characters in novels.

Representatives of postmodernism: Ven. Erofeev, A. Bitov, E. Popov, M. Kharitonov, V. Pelevin.

Russian postmodernism is heterogeneous. It is represented by two movements: conceptualism and social art.

Conceptualism is aimed at debunking and critically understanding all ideological theories, ideas and beliefs. In modern Russian literature, the most prominent representatives of conceptualism are the poets Lev Rubinstein, Dmitry Prigov, Vsevolod Nekrasov.

Sots art in Russian literature can be understood as a variant of conceptualism, or pop art. All works of socialist art are built on the basis of socialist realism: ideas, symbols, ways of thinking, and the ideology of the culture of the Soviet era.

Representatives of Sots Art: Z. Gareev, A. Sergeev, A. Platonova, V. Sorokin, A. Sergeev

Online tutors in Russian literature will help you understand the peculiarities of literary movements and trends. Qualified teachers provide assistance in completing homework and explaining incomprehensible material; help prepare for the State Exam and the Unified State Exam. The student chooses for himself whether to conduct classes with the selected tutor for a long time, or to use the teacher’s help only in specific situations when difficulties arise with a certain task.

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The 20th century went down in cultural history as a century of experimentation, which later often became the norm. This is the time of the appearance of various declarations, manifestos and schools, often encroaching on centuries-old traditions and immutable canons. For example, the inevitability of imitation of beauty, which Lessing wrote in his famous work “Laocoon, or on the limits of painting and poetry,” was criticized. The starting point of aesthetics was the ugly.

The term modernism appears at the end of the century and is assigned, as a rule, to unrealistic phenomena in art following decadence. However, the search for modernism is preceded by both precision and mannerism, the surrealist frescoes of Hieronymus Bosch, “The Flowers of Evil” by Charles Baudelaire, and programs of “pure art.”

Modernism as a philosophical and aesthetic phenomenon has the following stages: avant-garde (between the wars), neo-avant-garde (50-60s), which is quite controversial, but has grounds, postmodernism (70-80s)

Modernism continues the unrealistic trend in the literature of the past and moves into the second half of the twentieth century.

Modernism is both a creative method and an aesthetic system, which is reflected in the literary activities of a number of schools, often very different in their programmatic statements. Common features: loss of a fulcrum, a break with both the positivism of the century and the traditional worldview of Christian Europe, subjectivism, deformation of the world or artistic text, loss of a holistic model of the world, creation of a model of the world each time anew at the will of the artist, formalism.

It was at the end of the century. Formalistic movements appear in literature and art - formalism, naturalism . Naturalists base it on the philosophy of positivism, which refuses generalizing knowledge, establishing the laws of reality, and sets the task only of describing reality.

Post-war devastation, and then a period of stabilization in the 20s. became the social soil on which modernist art of the 20s and 30s grew up. The collapse of the usual foundations of life during the First World War led to the desire to renew and remake old art, because it could no longer meet the needs of society. This is how formalist movements in literature and art arise: futurism, dadaism and surrealism, etc. They grow from a common social soil, objectively reflecting the confusion of a person knocked out of his usual rut by the events of the First World War. He ceased to understand the world, which was previously so stable and explainable. Some unknown forces threw him into a bloody chaos of nations, into a seething whirlpool of events. He emerged from this massacre alive, but confused; he managed to hate these forces without realizing that they were governed by objective laws. He just realized that everything in the world is not stable.

In the face of an unknown danger, many people develop a feeling of uncertainty and at the same time a desire to rebel, to protest in the face of society.

All these directions of the beginning of the 20th century, in which the features of a deep spiritual crisis and decline, the spirit of doubt, nihilism, despondency, appeared, starting from those that arose in the 19th century impressionism and symbolism, act under the flag of innovation, which most fully expresses the innermost spirit of the new era.

Criticism, supporting claims to novelty, began to call these trends 20th century. modernism. During the First World War, modernist movements ( cubism, suprematism, surrealism) appear in large quantities in literature and art. Modernism as a literary movement that swept Europe at the beginning of the century had the following national varieties: French and Czech surrealism, Italian and Russian futurism, English imagism and the “stream of consciousness” school, German expressionism, Swedish primitivism, etc.

As a rule, all modernist movements proclaimed “art for art’s sake,” rejecting ideology and realism.

The method of their creativity is formalism: instead of images of the objective world, subjective associations arise, a play of subconscious impulses.

During the period of stabilization, wide sections of the intelligentsia find satisfaction in the revival of philosophical theories subjective idealism. They are tired of reason and crude realism; they are impressed by the teaching about the subconscious impulses of man, about a world not controlled by reason. They crave complete personal freedom.

This is how they become fashionable theories of Bergsonianism and Freudianism.

The Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, based on his many years of experience, creates the theory of psychoanalysis, which had a significant impact on the concept of personality in the literature of the twentieth century. Freud transformed the theory of psychoanalysis from a method of treating neuroses into a universal method of understanding the human personality at a deep level. But Freud the philosopher is a consistent subjective idealist. He argues that the dark forces of instinct lie at the heart of human actions. Freud contrasted Homo sapiens with Instinctive and Unconscious Man.

Turning to the analysis of human mental experiences, Freud considers the main task to be penetration into the world of the subconscious and the world of instincts, for he is convinced that only the study of these principles of human existence can explain human behavior.

Studying all kinds of deviations in the psyche in the clinic, Freud came to the conclusion that “consciousness is not the master of its own house,” that most often it is absent, and the human “I” strives to avoid trouble and get pleasure. At the same time, Freud claims that the dominant beginning of all human actions is his subconscious, where he attributes fear and hunger, that is, Freud seeks to explain social phenomena with the categories of the subconscious, denying the influence of social causes on human behavior and psyche. Freud studied the mechanisms of pathological behavior of people, examined slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, and dreams, proving that mental disorders differ from mental health not qualitatively, but quantitatively. Freud expressed the idea of ​​a special mission for art: occupying an intermediate stage between health and neurosis, art, according to Freud, performs a psychotherapeutic function, compensating in spiritual and artistic activity for what is unattainable in reality.

Modernism took psychoanalysis and free association from Freud as a way of exploring the unconscious, took the concept of an autonomous creator who is the final authority.

In realistic literature, the influence of Freud's ideas is easy to see in the attention to the ambivalence (antagonism) of feelings as a phenomenon of mental life (love - hate, attraction - repulsion, friendship - envy), in the rehabilitation of sexuality, which, thanks to psychoanalysis, entered the cultural paradigm of the century, in increased attention to the instinctive and subconscious in human behavior.

Freud's student and follower, Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), introduced the concept of an archetype - a stable and almost unchanged stereotype of human behavior. It is revealed at the subconscious level, in that mental layer where the archaism of ancient myths, fragments of primitive magical rituals, artistic images and atavistic fears are preserved. The concept of the unconscious, introduced by Jung, has widely entered into the artistic culture of the century, incorporating the experience of previous generations, the experience with which a person is born and exists, even without knowing anything about it. The collective unconscious appears in the form of symbols and archetypes as a universal language, cipher and code of the entire history of human culture.

The idea of ​​a mask proposed by Jung, which continued the ideas of the American psychologist William James (1842-1910), who believed that several hypostases can exist in the mind of a normal person, that in practice a person has as many different social personalities as there are different groups of people whose opinions he values.

The philosophy of intuitionism of the French idealist philosopher Henri Bergson is closely related to Freud's theory.

Henri Bergson, who published his works back in the 19th century, teaches that the determining factor in human life is not objective consciousness, but the subconscious, which can only be grasped intuitively. The stream of consciousness, into which various involuntary associations and memories flow like streams, only gradually realized - this is what, according to Bergson, should become the object of study for both the philosopher and the scientist. Only intuition can make it possible to directly know the truth, and this knowledge occurs outside the process of sensory and rational perception of the environment. Bergson's teaching stems from a distrust of the intellect, which has purely practical significance. The intellect cannot explain the deep processes of the psyche; only intuition is capable of this. Language, according to Bergson, is also unable to express all the shades of internal experiences; in literature, the analysis of reality is replaced by an artistic description of mental states.

The literary school, which was based on the theory of S. Freud, which attracted writers with its wide possibilities for revealing the human psyche, became widespread.

Freud's “psychoanalysis” became the basis for the depiction of man in the works of M. Proust, Andre Gide, and in the dramas of T. Williams.

The ideas of modernism in the work of individual artists and schools, in each specific work, often receive a different interpretation. Modernism can be decisive in a writer’s work as a whole (F, Kafka, D. Joyce) or can be felt as one of the techniques that has a significant impact on the artist’s style (M. Proust, W. Wolfe). Modernism helped to draw attention to the uniqueness of man’s inner world, to unchain the creator’s imagination as a phenomenon of the real world surrounding man. The artist is no less important than what he depicts, said Picasso, who liked to repeat that he knew what apples looked like, and in Cezanne’s painting he was interested in something else.

In English literature in the field of the modernist novel, the most characteristic figures are James Joyce, Aldous Huxley and representatives of the psychological school Virginia Woolf, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson.

The name of the Anglo-Irish writer James Joyce is associated with the school of “stream of consciousness”. “Stream of consciousness” as a writing technique is an illogical internal monologue that reproduces the chaos of thoughts and experiences, the smallest movements of consciousness. This is a free associative flow of thoughts in the sequence in which they arise, interrupt each other and are crowded with illogical piles. This term - “stream of consciousness” - first appeared in the works of William James, where he developed the idea that consciousness “is not a chain where all the links are connected in series, but a river.”

Joyce's novel Ulysses has been hailed as the pinnacle of narrative art. This is a monumental work in which the author seeks to penetrate the subconscious of his characters, to restore the flow of their thoughts, feelings, and associations. The ancient world of Odysseus and his wanderings is translated by Joyce into the story of the Dublin bourgeois Bloom, wandering around Dublin for one day, his wife Marion and the restless artist Dedalus (Daedalus). Ulysses contains 18 episodes similar to Homer's Odyssey. The novel was called “the greatest work of our days,” “a magnificent, fantastic, one-of-a-kind work, a heroic experiment of an eccentric genius” (S. Zweig), “an expression of the collective unconscious” and the meaninglessness of the era (C. Jung), “a game with language in the spirit of pop art (H. Kenner), “the gospel of modernist aesthetics” (E. Genieva). The vast space of the novel, one and a half thousand pages, tells the story of just one day, June 16, 1904, typical of the characters: history teacher, intellectual Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, a baptized Jew, an advertising agent, and his wife, singer Marion (Molly). Exploring the labyrinths of the consciousness of his heroes, Joyce subjects his heroes to almost X-ray scanning with the help of various modifications of the stream of consciousness.

Joyce describes in great detail what the heroes did, what they were thinking about, conveys the stream of their consciousness, their internal monologues, strives to trace the impulses independent of consciousness that drive them, tries to reveal the complexity of the erotic complexes inherent in each of the heroes. Dozens of pages reproduce the chaotic train of thought of Bloom, Marion and Dedalus. Joyce refuses punctuation marks, does not use capital letters in places, and uses sound recording techniques. Sometimes conveying the fragmentation and uncertainty of Bloom's thoughts, Joyce simply breaks off phrases and words, leaving the reader to figure it out for themselves.

“...the stockings wrinkle at the ankles. I can't stand it, it's so tasteless. These writers, they all have their head in the clouds. Foggy, sleepy, symbolic. Aesthetes, that’s who they are. I would not be surprised if it turns out that such food produces these same poetic thoughts in the brain. Just take any of these policemen, sweating stew in their shirts, and you can’t squeeze a line of poetry out of him. They don’t even know what poetry is. You need a special mood.

Misty gull flapping its wings

With a piercing scream flies over the waves...

... Or go to old Harris and chat with young Sinclair? Well-mannered man. Must be having breakfast. I need to get my old binoculars repaired. Hertz lenses, six guineas. The Germans will get through everywhere. They sell it cheap just to conquer the market. At a loss. You could buy it for the occasion at the lost property office at the station. It's amazing what people don't forget in trains and dressing rooms. And what are they thinking about? Women too. Incredible... there's a little clock on the roof of the bank that you can use to check your binoculars." This passage is very characteristic of Joyce’s manner and at the same time it is one of the most accessible passages in the novel.

The novel uses Greek mythology, but the novel itself is also a myth, modern and ancient. The main symbolism of the novel is the meeting of father and son, Odysseus and Telemachus (Bloom takes the drunken Dedalus to him, saving him from the police, and imagines that this is his dead son Rudy). The setting of the novel, Dublin, which is reproduced on the pages of the novel with extraordinary care: diagrams, plans of districts, streets, houses, also becomes a unique symbol. The novel contains a lot of interpolated materials: newspaper reports, autobiographical data, quotes from scientific treatises, historical opuses and political manifestos.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was recognized as the head of the “psychological school,” who in her work demonstrated the diversity of possibilities of the psychological novel. Representatives of the “psychological school” considered the main task of their art to be the study of human psychological life, which they isolated from the social environment. The world around them interested them only to the extent that it was reflected in the minds of the heroes.

All of Woolf's novels are a kind of journey into the depths of personality, which the reader may or may not accept, but which he has no right to dictate. Wulf persistently searched, being a bold experimenter, for new paths in art, striving for the utmost depth of psychological analysis, to reveal the boundless depths of the spiritual principle in man. Hence the free form of dialogues and monologues, the impressionistic manner of describing the situation and landscape, the original composition of novels, which is based on the reproduction of the flow of feelings, experiences, emotions of the characters, and not the transfer of events.

Arguing with realists who followed the typical or the general, Woolf convinced of the need to pay attention to what is considered small - to the world of the soul. All her novels are about this inner life, in which she finds more meaning than in social processes. She explained the peculiarities of a person’s inner world by the eternal qualities of human nature, but she sympathized with people. She perceived life as a bizarre but natural interweaving of light and darkness, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, youth and old age, flourishing and fading.

Her most famous novels are Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).

Modernism as an artistic movement is characterized by subjectivism and a generally pessimistic view of progress and history, a non-social attitude towards man, a violation of the holistic concept of personality, the harmony of external and internal life, the social and biological in it. In terms of worldview, modernism argued with the apologetic picture of the world and was anti-bourgeois; at the same time, he was clearly alarmed by the inhumanity of revolutionary practical activity.

Modernism defended the individual, proclaimed its self-purpose and sovereignty, the immanent nature of art.

The border between modernism and realism in a number of specific examples from the work of modern authors is quite problematic, because, according to the observation of the Kyiv literary critic D. Zatonsky, “modernism... does not occur in a chemically pure form.” It is an integral part of the artistic panorama of the twentieth century.

Schools such as Dadaism, surrealism and expressionism most expressed themselves in line with the modernism of the 20-30s. We'll talk about them.

Disputes with realists, at least theoretical ones, can be considered fundamental for modernism as a method. Marxist literary criticism (P. Lafargue, G. Plekhanov) since the end of the last century has taken a negative position towards modernism, seeing in it a manifestation of the crisis and collapse of bourgeois culture. At the same time, in Soviet Russia, at first, avant-garde artists were exhibited, poets and prose writers so far from realistic aesthetics as J. Cocteau, J. Joyce, M. Proust were translated; in those years one could read Freud and Nietzsche. The turn to dictatorship and totalitarianism, with its suspicious attitude towards the individual, doomed art to decades of unfreedom.

What is characteristic of avant-gardeism as a stage of modernism? Avant-garde (French avant-garde - vanguard) is a term that has a wider semantic field in foreign science, often acting as a synonym for modernism in our understanding. The outlines of avant-gardeism, which historically unites various directions - from symbolism and cubism to surrealism and pop art, are also elusive; They are characterized by a psychological atmosphere of rebellion, a feeling of emptiness and loneliness, and an orientation toward a future that is not always clearly represented.

It is significant that the avant-garde art that was rapidly developing in the 10-20s turned out to be enriched with a revolutionary idea (sometimes only conditionally symbolic, as with the expressionists who wrote about revolution in the sphere of the spirit, that is, in general). This gave optimism to the avant-garde, painting its canvases red, and attracted revolutionary-minded artists to it, who saw avant-gardeism as an example of anti-bourgeois protest (Brecht, Aragon, Eluard).

The twentieth century was the century of destruction of the old world and its art. The rebellion was dissolved in everything: it was no coincidence that the word “wild” appeared as the name of the theater in which Brecht performed with songs, as an integral part and concept of the school of painting (Fauvism). Avant-garde art resorted to masquerade and caricature. The breakdown of traditional forms was accompanied by the revival of new genres - circus, music hall, pantomime, black jazz - and a simplification of forms. The sophistication of the Impressionists’ colors did not correspond to the spirit of the times: “scream” and disharmony settled in the paintings of their “heirs” - the Expressionists.

Outwardly, it seemed that the avant-garde rejected traditions, but its protest was primarily directed against canons and established forms. Speaking about the desire of art to break out of three-dimensional space, Cocteau compared Picasso to an escaped convict, striving for freedom beyond the boundaries of his own “I”.

The avant-garde believed that art does not have to be recognizable and liked at first sight. They refused to deceive the public and called for understanding the world, which is more difficult than recognizing the familiar. True, Aristotle also noted that the public experiences joy when it sees something familiar to it.

Avant-gardeism does not simply cross out reality - it moves towards its reality, relying on the immanent laws of art. The avant-garde rejected the stereotypical forms of mass consciousness, did not accept war, the madness of technocracy, or the enslavement of man.

In general, the apolitical avant-garde was united by the idea of ​​freedom, although the surrealists considered the Russian revolution a “ministerial crisis.” The avant-garde contrasted the mediocrity and bourgeois order, the canonized logic of the realists with rebellion, chaos and deformation, and the morality of the bourgeois with freedom of feelings and unlimited imagination.

Ahead of its time, the avant-garde updated the art of the twentieth century, introduced urban themes and new techniques into poetry, new principles of composition and various functional styles of speech, graphic design (refusal of punctuation, ideograms), free verse and its variations, and updated European versification.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, traditional forms of art, such as realism and romanticism, could no longer convey all the realities of the new life. As the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset aptly put it, the new art was based on the “absolute negation of the old.” To designate this period of culture, as well as the totality of new movements in art that have existed since the end of the 19th century. and, at least until the 50-60s of the XX century, most researchers use the concept of “modernism”.

Modernism is a general name for literary trends and movements of the twentieth century, which are characterized by attempts to display new phenomena in the life of society using new artistic means.

Modernists, unlike realists, defended the special mission of the artist, capable of foreseeing the path of development of a new culture. Realistic means of expression are, in their opinion, outdated and not convincing enough to convey the mental state of a person who finds himself alone with problems in this hostile world. At the same time, the American scientist John Miller emphasized that “modernism can be considered a rebellion against “realism,” but not against “reality.” Modernists proclaimed the value and self-sufficiency of the individual, and sought special artistic means to display the entire complex of contradictions of the 20th century. They were not characterized by an appeal to existing reality, at the same time they rejected the romantic departure from the realities of life, they were not interested in the objective world, they were passionate about “creating a new reality,” and the more implausible it was, the more definite it appeared in the imagination of modernists .

In the works of modernism, reality was embodied with the help of new artistic techniques, for example, such as “ mindflow”, which directly conveys the process of the character’s inner speech during his collision with reality, or “montage”, which, as in cinema, is based on the combination of various themes, images and fragments and is a way of understanding the world.

Among the first representatives of modernism in world literature were the Irish James Joyce, French Marcel Proust and the Austrian Franz Kafka. They were responsible for a number of important creative discoveries, on the basis of which entire literary trends and trends later began to emerge. Material from the site

In poetry of the first half of the twentieth century, the same changes occurred as in prose. Poetic experiments of a Spaniard Federico Garcia Lorca, French Fields of Eluard, Anglo-American Thomas Eliot, Austrians Georg Trakl And Rainer Maria Rilke, Czech Vitezslava Nezvala, Poles Juliana Tuwima And Galczynski constants, as well as many others, contributed to changes in the artistic form of lyrics. Under the influence of the synthesis of various types of arts, poetry became more and more elegant. As the embodiment of the long-standing dream of many poets, musicians and artists about the synthesis of arts, figurative (visual) poetry also appeared. French lyricist Guillaume Apollinaire I even came up with a special term for such texts “ calligram"(from Greek. callis- beautiful and gramma- writing). The poet declared: “Calligram is a comprehensive artistry, the advantage of which is that it creates a visual lyricism that has hitherto been almost unknown. This art is fraught with enormous possibilities; its pinnacle can be a synthesis of music, painting, and literature.” Such design of the text, in his opinion, is necessary “so that the reader perceives the entire poem at first glance, just as a conductor takes in the musical notes of the score at one glance.”

In an effort to penetrate the reader’s subconscious, modernist poets increasingly gravitated towards subjectivism, image-symbols, encryptedness, and actively used the free (without a specific meter or rhyme) form of the poem  vers libre.

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