The concept of "romanticism" is often used as a synonym for the concept of "romance". By this they mean the tendency to look at the world through rose-colored glasses and an active life position. Or they associate this concept with love and any actions for the sake of their loved one. But romanticism has several meanings. The article will focus on a narrower understanding that is used for a literary term, and on the main character traits of a romantic hero.

Characteristic features of the style

Romanticism is a trend in literature that arose in Russia in the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. This style proclaims the cult of nature and the natural feelings of man. Freedom of self-expression, the value of individualism and the original character traits of the protagonist become new characteristic features of romantic literature. Representatives of the direction abandoned rationalism and the primacy of the mind, which were characteristic of the Enlightenment, and put the emotional and spiritual sides of a person at the forefront.

In their works, the authors do not display the real world, which was too vulgar and vile for them, but the inner universe of the character. And through the prism of his feelings and emotions, the outlines of the real world are visible, the laws and thoughts of which he refuses to obey.

Main conflict

The central conflict of all works written in the era of romanticism is the conflict between the individual and society as a whole. Here the protagonist goes against the rules established in his environment. At the same time, the motives for such behavior can be different - actions can both go for the benefit of society, and have a selfish intention. In this case, as a rule, the hero loses this fight, and the work ends with his death.

A romantic is a special and in most cases very mysterious person who tries to resist the power of nature or society. At the same time, the conflict develops into an internal struggle of contradictions, which takes place in the soul of the main character. In other words, the central character is built on antitheses.

Although in this literary genre the individuality of the protagonist is valued, literary critics have nevertheless identified what features of romantic heroes are the main ones. But, even despite the similarity, each character is unique in its own way, since they are only general criteria for highlighting a style.

Ideals of society

The main feature of the romantic hero is that he does not accept the well-known ideals of society. The main character has his own ideas about the values ​​of life, which he tries to defend. He, as it were, challenges the whole world around him, and not an individual person or group of people. Here we are talking about the ideological confrontation of one person against the whole world.

At the same time, in his rebellion, the main character chooses one of two extremes. Either these are unattainable highly spiritual goals, and the character is trying to catch up with the Creator himself. In another case, the hero indulges in all sorts of sins, not feeling the measure of his moral fall into the abyss.

Bright personality

If one person is able to withstand the whole world, then it is as large and complex as the whole world. The protagonist of romantic literature always stands out in society, both externally and internally. In the soul of the character there is a constant conflict between the stereotypes already laid down by society and his own views and ideas.

Loneliness

One of the saddest traits of the romantic hero is his tragic loneliness. Since the character is opposed to the whole world, he remains completely alone. There is no such person who would understand it. Therefore, he either himself flees from a society he hates, or he himself becomes an exile. Otherwise, the romantic hero would no longer be like this. Therefore, romantic writers focus all their attention on the psychological portrait of the central character.

Either past or future

The features of the romantic hero do not allow him to live in the present. The character is trying to find his ideals in the past, when the religious feeling was strong in the hearts of people. Or he indulges himself with happy utopias that supposedly await him in the future. But in any case, the main character is not satisfied with the era of dull bourgeois reality.

Individualism

As already mentioned, the hallmark of the romantic hero is his individualism. But it's not easy to be "different from others." This is a fundamental difference from all the people who surround the main character. At the same time, if a character chooses a sinful path, then he realizes that he is different from others. And this difference is taken to the extreme - the cult of personality of the protagonist, where all actions have an exclusively selfish motive.

The era of romanticism in Russia

The poet Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky is considered the founder of Russian romanticism. He creates several ballads and poems ("Ondine", "The Sleeping Princess" and so on), in which there is a deep philosophical meaning and aspiration for moral ideals. His works are saturated with his own experiences and reflections.

Then Zhukovsky was replaced by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol and Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. They impose on the public consciousness, which is under the impression of the failure of the Decembrist uprising, the imprint of an ideological crisis. For this reason, the work of these people is described as a disappointment in real life and an attempt to escape into their fictional world, filled with beauty and harmony. The main characters of their works lose interest in earthly life and come into conflict with the outside world.

One of the features of romanticism is the appeal to the history of the people and their folklore. This is most clearly seen in the work "Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, a young guardsman and a daring merchant Kalashnikov" and a cycle of poems and poems dedicated to the Caucasus. Lermontov perceived it as the birthplace of free and proud people. They opposed the slave country, which was under the rule of Nicholas I.

The early works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin are also imbued with the idea of ​​romanticism. An example is "Eugene Onegin" or "The Queen of Spades".

Who is a romantic hero and what is he like?

This is an individualist. Superman who lived through two stages: before the collision with reality; he lives in a "pink" state, he is seized by the desire for a feat, a change in the world. after a collision with reality; he continues to consider this world both vulgar and boring, but he becomes a skeptic, a pessimist. With a clear understanding that nothing can be changed, the desire for feat is reborn into a desire for danger.

Every culture has its own romantic hero, but Byron, in his Childe Harold, gave a typical representation of the romantic hero. He put on the mask of his hero (he says that there is no distance between the hero and the author) and managed to comply with the romantic canon.

All romantic works. Distinguish characteristic features:

First, in every romantic work there is no distance between the hero and the author.

Secondly, the author of the hero does not judge, but even if something bad is said about him, the plot is built in such a way that the hero is not to blame. The plot in a romantic work is usually romantic. Romantics also build a special relationship with nature, they like storms, thunderstorms, cataclysms.

In Russia, romanticism arose seven years later than in Europe, since in the 19th century Russia was in a certain cultural isolation. One can speak of Russian imitation of European romanticism. This was a special manifestation of romanticism, in Russian culture there was no opposition of man to the world and God. The variant of Byron's romanticism lived and felt in his work the first in Russian culture Pushkin, then Lermontov. Pushkin had a gift for attention to people, the most romantic of his romantic poems is The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. Pushkin groped for and identified the most vulnerable spot in a person's romantic position: he wants everything only for himself.

Lermontov's poem "Mtsyri" also does not fully reflect the characteristic features of romanticism.

There are two romantic heroes in this poem, therefore, if this is a romantic poem, then it is very peculiar: firstly, the second hero is conveyed by the author through an epigraph; secondly, the author does not connect with Mtsyri, the hero solves the problem of self-will in his own way, and Lermontov throughout the poem only thinks about solving this problem. He does not judge his hero, but he does not justify it either, but he takes a certain position - understanding. It turns out that romanticism in Russian culture is transformed into reflection. It turns out romanticism in terms of realism.

We can say that Pushkin and Lermontov failed to become romantics (although Lermontov once managed to comply with romantic laws - in the drama `Masquerade'). By their experiments, the poets showed that in England the position of an individualist could be fruitful, but not in Russia. Although Pushkin and Lermontov failed to become romantics, they paved the way for the development of realism.In 1825, the first realistic work was published: "Boris Godunov", then "The Captain's Daughter", "Eugene Onegin", "A Hero of Our Time" and many others.

Despite the complexity of the ideological content of romanticism, its aesthetics as a whole opposed the aesthetics of classicism of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Romantics broke the centuries-old literary canons of classicism with its spirit of discipline and frozen grandeur. In the struggle for the liberation of art from petty regulation, the Romantics defended the unrestricted freedom of the artist's creative imagination.

Rejecting the restrictive rules of classicism, they insisted on mixing genres, substantiating their demand by the fact that it corresponds to the true life of nature, where beauty and ugliness, tragic and comic are mixed. Glorifying the natural movements of the human heart, the Romantics, in opposition to the rationalistic demands of classicism, put forward a cult of feeling, and the logically generalized characters of classicism of the romantics opposed their extreme individualization.

The hero of romantic literature, with his exclusivity, with his heightened emotionality, was born from the desire of romantics to oppose prosaic reality with a bright, free personality. But if progressive romantics created images of strong people with unbridled energy, with violent passions, people rebelling against the dilapidated laws of an unjust society, then conservative romantics cultivated the image of an “extra person”, coldly closed in his loneliness, completely immersed in his experiences.

The desire to reveal the inner world of man, interest in the life of peoples, in their historical and national originality - all these strengths of romanticism foreshadowed the transition to realism. However, the achievements of the Romantics are inseparable from the limitations inherent in their method.

The laws of bourgeois society, misunderstood by the romantics, appeared in their minds in the form of irresistible forces playing with man, surrounding him with an atmosphere of mystery and fate. For many romantics, human psychology was shrouded in mysticism, it was dominated by moments of the irrational, obscure, mysterious. The subjective-idealistic idea of ​​the world, of a lonely, self-contained personality, opposed to this world, was the basis for a one-sided, non-concrete depiction of a person.

Along with the real ability to convey the complex life of feelings and souls, we often meet in romantics the desire to turn the diversity of human characters into abstract schemes of good and evil. The pathetic elation of intonation, the tendency to exaggerate, to dramatic effects sometimes led to stiltedness, which also made the art of the Romantics conditional and abstract. These weaknesses, to one degree or another, were characteristic of everyone, even the largest representatives of romanticism.

The painful discord between the ideal and social reality is the basis of the romantic worldview and art. The assertion of the inherent value of the spiritual and creative life of the individual, the image of strong passions, spiritualized and healing nature in many romantics - the heroism of protest or national liberation, including the revolutionary struggle, is adjacent to the motifs of "world sorrow", "world evil", the night side of the soul, clothed in the forms of irony, the grotesque, the poetics of the dual world.

Interest in the national past (often idealized), the traditions of folklore and culture of one's own and other peoples, the desire to create a universal picture of the world (primarily history and literature), the idea of ​​art synthesis found expression in the ideology and practice of romanticism.

Romanticism in music took shape in the 20s of the 19th century under the influence of the literature of romanticism and developed in close connection with it, with literature in general (turning to synthetic genres, primarily opera, song, instrumental miniatures and musical programming). The appeal to the inner world of a person, characteristic of romanticism, was expressed in the cult of the subjective, the craving for the emotionally intense, which determined the primacy of music and lyrics in romanticism.

Musical romanticism manifested itself in many different branches associated with different national cultures and with different social movements. So, for example, the intimate, lyrical style of the German romantics and the "oratorical" civil pathos, characteristic of the work of French composers, differ significantly. In turn, representatives of the new national schools based on the broad national liberation movement (Chopin, Moniuszko, Dvorak, Smetana, Grieg), as well as representatives of the Italian opera school, closely associated with the Risorgimento movement (Verdi, Bellini), in many ways differ from contemporaries in Germany, Austria or France, in particular, the tendency to preserve the classical traditions.

Nevertheless, all of them are marked by some general artistic principles that allow us to speak of a single romantic structure of thought.

By the beginning of the 19th century, fundamental studies of folklore, history, and ancient literature appeared, medieval legends, Gothic art, and Renaissance culture, forgotten in oblivion, were resurrected. It was at this time that many national schools of a special type developed in the composer's work of Europe, which were destined to significantly expand the boundaries of common European culture. Russian, which soon took, if not the first, then one of the first places in world cultural creativity (Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, "Kuchkists", Tchaikovsky), Polish (Chopin, Moniuszko), Czech (Sour Cream, Dvorak), Hungarian (List), then Norwegian (Grieg), Spanish (Pedrel), Finnish (Sibelius), English (Elgar) - all of them, merging into the general mainstream of the composer's work in Europe, in no way opposed themselves to the established ancient traditions. A new circle of images emerged, expressing the unique national features of the national culture to which the composer belonged. The intonation structure of the work allows you to instantly recognize by ear belonging to a particular national school.

Beginning with Schubert and Weber, the composers involved in the common European musical language the intonational turns of the ancient, predominantly peasant folklore of their countries. Schubert, as it were, cleansed the German folk song from the lacquer of the Austro-German opera, Weber introduced into the cosmopolitan intonation structure of the singspiel of the 18th century song turns of folk genres, in particular, the famous hunters' choir in The Magic Arrow. Chopin's music, with all its salon elegance and strict adherence to the traditions of professional instrumental writing, including sonata-symphonic writing, is based on the unique modal coloring and rhythmic structure of Polish folklore. Mendelssohn widely relies on everyday German song, Grieg - on the original forms of Norwegian music-making, Mussorgsky - on the old modality of ancient Russian peasant modes.

The most striking phenomenon in the music of romanticism, which is especially vividly perceived when compared with the figurative sphere of classicism, is the dominance of the lyrical-psychological principle. Of course, a distinctive feature of musical art in general is the refraction of any phenomenon through the sphere of feelings. Music of all eras is subject to this pattern. But the romantics surpassed all their predecessors in the value of the lyrical beginning in their music, in strength and perfection in conveying the depths of the inner world of a person, the subtlest shades of mood.

The theme of love occupies a dominant place in it, because it is this state of mind that most comprehensively and fully reflects all the depths and nuances of the human psyche. But it is highly characteristic that this theme is not limited to the motives of love in the literal sense of the word, but is identified with the widest range of phenomena. The purely lyrical experiences of the characters are revealed against the background of a broad historical panorama (for example, in Musset). A person's love for his home, for his fatherland, for his people runs like a thread through the work of all romantic composers.

A huge place is given in musical works of small and large forms to the image of nature, closely and inextricably intertwined with the theme of lyrical confession. Like the images of love, the image of nature personifies the state of mind of the hero, so often colored by a sense of disharmony with reality.

The theme of fantasy often competes with images of nature, which is probably generated by the desire to escape from the captivity of real life. Typical for romantics was the search for a wonderful, sparkling with the richness of colors of the world, opposed to gray everyday life. It was during these years that literature was enriched with the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, the fairy tales of Andersen, the ballads of Schiller and Mickiewicz. Among the composers of the romantic school, fabulous, fantastic images acquire a national unique coloring. Chopin's ballads are inspired by Mickiewicz's ballads, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Berlioz create works of a fantastic grotesque plan, symbolizing, as it were, the wrong side of faith, striving to reverse the ideas of fear of the forces of evil.

In the visual arts, romanticism manifested itself most clearly in painting and drawing, less expressively in sculpture and architecture. E. Delacroix, T. Gericault, K. Friedrich were prominent representatives of romanticism in the visual arts. Eugene Delacroix is ​​considered the head of the French romantic painters. In his canvases, he expressed the spirit of love of freedom, active action (“Freedom Leading the People”), passionately and temperamentally appealed to the manifestation of humanism. Gericault's everyday paintings are distinguished by relevance and psychologism, unprecedented expression. Spiritual, melancholic landscapes of Friedrich (“Two contemplating the moon”) are again the same attempt of romantics to penetrate into the human world, to show how a person lives and dreams in the sublunar world.

In Russia, romanticism began to manifest itself first in portraiture. In the first third of the 19th century, for the most part, she lost contact with the high-ranking aristocracy. A significant place began to be occupied by portraits of poets, artists, art patrons, the image of ordinary peasants. This trend was especially pronounced in the work of O.A. Kiprensky (1782 - 1836) and V.A. Tropinin (1776 - 1857).

Vasily Andreevich Tropinin strove for a lively, laid-back characterization of a person, expressed through his portrait. Portrait of the son (1818), "A.S. Pushkin" (1827), "Self-portrait" (1846) amaze not with a portrait resemblance to the originals, but with an unusually subtle penetration into the inner world of a person. It was Tropinin who was the founder of the genre, somewhat idealized portrait of a man from the people (The Lacemaker, 1823).

At the beginning of the 19th century, Tver was a significant cultural center of Russia. All the prominent people of Moscow have been here for literary evenings. Here, young Orest Kiprensky met A.S. Pushkin, whose portrait, painted later, became the pearl of world portrait art, and A.S. Pushkin will dedicate poems to him, where he will call him "the favorite of light-winged fashion." The portrait of Pushkin by O. Kiprensky is a living personification of a poetic genius. In the resolute turn of the head, in the arms crossed vigorously on the chest, the whole appearance of the poet reveals a sense of independence and freedom. It was about him that Pushkin said: “I see myself as in a mirror, but this mirror flatters me.” A distinctive feature of Kiprensky's portraits is that they show the spiritual charm and inner nobility of a person. The portrait of Davydov (1809) is also full of romantic mood.

Many portraits were painted by Kiprensky in Tver. Moreover, when he painted Ivan Petrovich Vulf, a landowner from Tver, he looked with emotion at the girl standing in front of him, his granddaughter, the future Anna Petrovna Kern, to whom one of the most captivating lyrical works was dedicated - A.S. Pushkin's poem “I remember wonderful moment... Such associations of poets, artists, musicians became a manifestation of a new trend in art - romanticism.

The luminaries of Russian painting of this era were K.P. Bryullov (1799 -1852) and A.A. Ivanov (1806 - 1858).

Russian painter and draftsman K.P. Bryullov, while still a student of the Academy of Arts, mastered the incomparable skill of drawing. Sent to Italy, where his brother lived, to improve his art, Bryullov soon impressed St. Petersburg patrons and patrons with his paintings. The large canvas "The Last Day of Pompeii" was a huge success in Italy, and then in Russia. The artist created in it an allegorical picture of the death of the ancient world and the advent of a new era. The birth of a new life on the ruins of an old, crumbling world is the main idea of ​​Bryullov's painting. The artist depicted a mass scene, the heroes of which are not individual people, but the people themselves.

The best portraits of Bryullov constitute one of the most remarkable pages in the history of Russian and world art. His "Self-portrait", as well as portraits of A.N. Strugovshchikova, N.I. Kukolnik, I.A. Krylova, Ya.F. Yanenko, M Lanchi are distinguished by the variety and richness of their characteristics, the plastic power of the drawing, the variety and brilliance of technology.

K.P. Bryullov introduced a stream of romanticism and vitality into the painting of Russian classicism. His "Bathsheba" (1832) is illuminated by inner beauty and sensuality. Even Bryullov's ceremonial portrait ("Horsewoman") breathes with living human feelings, subtle psychologism and realistic tendencies, which distinguishes the direction in art called romanticism.

Romanticism is an ideological trend in art and literature that appeared in Europe in the 90s of the 18th century and became widespread in other countries of the world (Russia is one of them), as well as in America. The main ideas of this direction is the recognition of the value of the spiritual and creative life of each person and his right to independence and freedom. Very often, in the works of this literary trend, heroes with a strong, rebellious disposition were depicted, the plots were characterized by a bright intensity of passions, nature was depicted in a spiritualized and healing way.

Having appeared in the era of the Great French Revolution and the world industrial revolution, romanticism changed such a direction as classicism and the Enlightenment as a whole. In contrast to the adherents of classicism, who support the ideas of the cult significance of the human mind and the emergence of civilization on its foundations, romantics put mother nature on a pedestal of worship, emphasize the importance of natural feelings and the freedom of aspirations of each individual.

(Alan Maley "The Graceful Age")

The revolutionary events of the late 18th century completely changed the course of everyday life, both in France and in other European countries. People, feeling acute loneliness, were distracted from their problems by playing various games of chance, and having fun in a variety of ways. It was then that the idea arose to imagine that human life is an endless game, where there are winners and losers. In romantic works, heroes were often depicted opposing the world around them, rebelling against fate and fate, obsessed with their own thoughts and reflections on their own idealized vision of the world, which sharply disagrees with reality. Realizing their defenselessness in a world where capital rules, many romantics were in confusion and confusion, feeling infinitely lonely in the life around them, which was the main tragedy of their personality.

Romanticism in Russian literature of the 19th century

The main events that had a huge impact on the development of romanticism in Russia were the War of 1812 and the Decembrist uprising of 1825. However, distinguished by originality and originality, Russian romanticism of the early 19th century is an inseparable part of the pan-European literary movement and has its common features and basic principles.

(Ivan Kramskoy "Unknown")

The emergence of Russian romanticism coincides in time with the maturing of a socio-historical turning point in the life of society at a time when the socio-political structure of the Russian state was in an unstable, transitional state. People of advanced views, disappointed in the ideas of the Enlightenment, promoting the creation of a new society based on the principles of reason and the triumph of justice, resolutely rejecting the principles of bourgeois life, not understanding the essence of antagonistic life contradictions, felt feelings of hopelessness, loss, pessimism and disbelief in a reasonable solution to the conflict.

Representatives of romanticism considered the human personality, and the mysterious and beautiful world of harmony, beauty and high feelings contained in it, to be the main value. In their works, representatives of this trend depicted not the real world, too base and vulgar for them, they displayed the universe of feelings of the protagonist, his inner world, filled with thoughts and experiences. Through their prism, the outlines of the real world appear, with which he cannot come to terms and therefore tries to rise above it, not obeying its social and feudal laws and morals.

(V. A. Zhukovsky)

One of the founders of Russian romanticism is the famous poet V.A. Zhukovsky, who created a number of ballads and poems that had a fabulous fantastic content (“Ondine”, “The Sleeping Princess”, “The Tale of Tsar Berendey”). His works have a deep philosophical meaning, the desire for a moral ideal, his poems and ballads are filled with his personal experiences and reflections, inherent in the romantic direction.

(N. V. Gogol)

The thoughtful and lyrical elegies of Zhukovsky replace the romantic works of Gogol ("The Night Before Christmas") and Lermontov, whose work bears a peculiar imprint of an ideological crisis in the minds of the public, impressed by the defeat of the Decembrist movement. Therefore, the romanticism of the 30s of the 19th century is characterized by disappointment in real life and withdrawal into an imaginary world where everything is harmonious and perfect. Romantic protagonists were portrayed as people cut off from reality and having lost interest in earthly life, conflicting with society, and denouncing the powerful of this world for their sins. The personal tragedy of these people, endowed with high feelings and experiences, consisted in the death of their moral and aesthetic ideals.

The mindset of progressively thinking people of that era was most clearly reflected in the creative heritage of the great Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. In his works “The Last Son of Liberty”, “Novgorod”, which clearly trace the example of the republican freedom of the ancient Slavs, the author expresses his ardent sympathy for the fighters for freedom and equality, those who oppose slavery and violence against the personality of people.

Romanticism is characterized by an appeal to historical and national sources, to folklore. This was most clearly manifested in the subsequent works of Lermontov (“The Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the young guardsman and daring merchant Kalashnikov”), as well as in a cycle of poems and poems about the Caucasus, which was perceived by the poet as a country of freedom-loving and proud people who opposed the country of slaves and masters under the rule of the tsar-autocrat Nicholas I. The images of the main characters in the works of Izmail Bey "Mtsyri" are depicted by Lermontov with great passion and lyrical pathos, they bear the halo of the chosen ones and fighters for their Fatherland.

The early poetry and prose of Pushkin (“Eugene Onegin”, “The Queen of Spades”), the poetic works of K. N. Batyushkov, E. A. Baratynsky, N. M. Yazykov, the work of the Decembrist poets K. F. Ryleev, A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, V. K. Kuchelbeker.

Romanticism in foreign literature of the 19th century

The main feature of European romanticism in foreign literature of the 19th century is the fantastic and fabulous nature of the works of this direction. For the most part, these are legends, fairy tales, novellas and short stories with a fantastic, unrealistic plot. The most expressive romanticism manifested itself in the culture of France, England and Germany, each of the countries made its own special contribution to the development and spread of this cultural phenomenon.

(Francisco Goya" Harvest " )

France. Here, literary works in the style of romanticism were of a bright political color, largely opposed to the newly-minted bourgeoisie. According to French writers, the new society that emerged as a result of social changes after the French Revolution did not understand the value of the personality of each person, destroyed its beauty and suppressed the freedom of the spirit. The most famous works: the treatise "The Genius of Christianity", the stories "Attala" and "Rene" by Chateaubriand, the novels "Delphine", "Korina" by Germaine de Stael, the novels by George Sand, Hugo "Notre Dame Cathedral", a series of novels about the musketeers Dumas, a collection writings of Honore Balzac.

(Karl Brullov "Horsewoman")

England. In English legends and traditions, romanticism was present for a long time, but did not stand out as a separate direction until the middle of the 18th century. English literary works are distinguished by the presence of a slightly gloomy Gothic and religious content, there are many elements of national folklore, the culture of the working and peasant class. A distinctive feature of the content of English prose and lyrics is the description of travels and wanderings to distant lands, their study. A striking example: "Oriental Poems", "Manfred", "Childe Harold's Journey" by Byron, "Ivanhoe" by Walter Scott.

Germany. The foundations of German romanticism were greatly influenced by the idealistic philosophical worldview, which promoted the individualism of the individual and his freedom from the laws of feudal society, the universe was viewed as a single living system. German works written in the spirit of romanticism are filled with reflections on the meaning of human existence, the life of his soul, and they are also distinguished by fabulous and mythological motifs. The most striking German works in the style of romanticism: fairy tales by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, short stories, fairy tales, Hoffmann's novels, Heine's works.

(Caspar David Friedrich "Stages of life")

America. Romanticism in American literature and art developed a little later than in European countries (30s of the 19th century), its heyday falls on the 40s-60s of the 19th century. Such large-scale historical events as the US War of Independence at the end of the 18th century and the Civil War between North and South (1861-1865) had a huge impact on its appearance and development. American literary works can be conditionally divided into two types: abolitionist (supporting the rights of slaves and their emancipation) and eastern (supporters of plantation). American romanticism is based on the same ideals and traditions as European, in its rethinking and understanding in its own way in the conditions of a peculiar way of life and pace of life of the inhabitants of a new, little-known continent. American works of that period are rich in national trends, they have a keen sense of independence, the struggle for freedom and equality. Outstanding representatives of American romanticism: Washington Irving ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "The Ghost Groom", Edgar Allan Poe ("Ligeia", "The Fall of the House of Usher"), Herman Melville ("Moby Dick", "Typey"), Nathaniel Hawthorne ("The Scarlet Letter", "The House of Seven Gables"), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("The Legend of Hiawatha"), Walt Whitman, (poetry collection "Leaves of Grass"), Harriet Beecher Stowe ("Uncle Tom's Cabin"), Fenimore Cooper ("The Last of the Mohicans").

And although romanticism reigned in art and literature for a very short time, and heroism and chivalry were replaced by pragmatic realism, this in no way diminishes his contribution to the development of world culture. Works written in this direction are loved and read with great pleasure by a large number of fans of romanticism around the world.

The word "romanticism" is sometimes used as a synonym for the concept of "romance". For example, speaking of youthful romanticism, they mean a tendency to an idealistic, optimistic outlook on life, an active life position. Here we will talk about the second, cultural and literary meaning of the term "romanticism".

Romanticism- the last "great style" in the history of art, that is, the last trend that has manifested itself in all areas of spiritual activity and artistic creativity: in the visual arts, music, literature. Its emergence was preceded by two centuries of unconditional dominance of rationalism in art. The literary embodiment of rationalism is classicism, it has accumulated significant aesthetic fatigue, and the French Revolution became an external event that hastened the change of literary eras. Romanticism is a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but it does not negate classicism recklessly, out of a single spirit of contradiction. The relationship of romantics with enlighteners is the relationship of different generations in the family, when children refute the values ​​of their fathers, not realizing to what extent they are a product of their father's upbringing.

Romanticism is the highest point in the development of humanistic art, which began in the Renaissance, when man was proclaimed the measure of all things. The youth, before whose eyes the drama of the French Revolution unfolded, survived all its ups and downs, oscillating between delight, enthusiasm for the fall of the monarchy and horror at the execution of King Louis XVI and the Jacobin terror. The revolution showed the utopian nature of the enlightening ideal of reason as the natural basis of human existence and exposed the unpredictability of history. Contemporaries recoiled from its violent methods, from the pompous demagoguery of the leaders of the revolution, from France, which under Napoleon had become the enslaver of peoples. Disappointment in the results of the French Revolution called into question the ideology of the Enlightenment that gave rise to it, and in the art of the post-revolutionary era - in romanticism - there was a complete change in worldview and aesthetic guidelines.

The materialism and rationalism of the Enlightenment are replaced by subjective idealism as the philosophical basis of creativity; socio-political issues, which belonged to a central place in educational literature, are replaced by an interest in the individual, taken outside the system of social relations, because this traditional system collapsed, and the outlines of a new, capitalist system were just beginning to appear on its ruins.

The world for romantics is a mystery, a riddle, which can only be known by the revelation of art. Fantasy, banished by the Enlightenment, is returning to romantic literature, and the fantastic among the romantics embodies the idea of ​​the fundamental unknowability of the world. The world of romance is known like children — with all the senses, through the game, they look at it through the prism of the heart, through the prism of the subjective emotions of the individual, and this perceiving consciousness is equal to the rest of the outside world. Romantics exalt the personality, put it on a pedestal.

A romantic hero is always an exceptional nature, not like the people around him, he is proud of his exclusivity, although it becomes the cause of his misfortunes, his misunderstanding. The romantic hero challenges the world around him, he is in conflict not with individual people, not with socio-historical circumstances, but with the world as a whole, with the entire universe. Since a single person is equal in size to the whole world, it must be as large and complex as the whole world. Romantics, therefore, focus on depicting the spiritual, psychological life of heroes, and the inner world of a romantic hero consists entirely of contradictions. Romantic consciousness, in rebellion against everyday life, rushes to extremes: some heroes of romantic works aspire to spiritual heights, assimilate in their search for perfection to the creator himself, others in despair indulge in evil, not knowing the measure in the depths of moral decline. Some romantics are looking for an ideal in the past, especially in the Middle Ages, when direct religious feeling was still alive, others - in the utopias of the future. One way or another, the starting point of romantic consciousness is the rejection of dull bourgeois modernity, the assertion of the place of art not just as entertainment, rest after a day of work dedicated to making money, but as an urgent spiritual need of man and society. The protest of the romantics against the self-interest of the "Iron Age" is expressed in the poem "The Last Poet" by E. A. Baratynsky (1835):

The age marches along its iron path, There is self-interest in the hearts, and a common dream Hour by hour, urgent and useful More distinctly, more shamelessly busy. Childish dreams have disappeared in the light of Poetry's enlightenment, And it's not about her that generations are busy, Devoted to industrial cares.

That is why the favorite hero of romantic literature is an artist in the broadest sense of the word - a writer, poet, painter and especially a musician, because music, which directly affects the soul, was considered by the romantics to be the highest of the arts. Romanticism gave rise to new ideas about the tasks and forms of existence of literature, which we mostly adhere to this day. In terms of content, art now becomes a revolt against alienation and the transformation of a person, great in his vocation, into a private individual. For the Romantics, art became the prototype of creative labor-enjoyment, and the artist and the image of the romantic hero became the prototype of that whole, harmonious person who has no limits either on earth or in space. Romantic "escape from reality", departure into the world of dreams, the world of the ideal is the return to man of the consciousness of that true fullness of being, that vocation that was taken away from him by bourgeois society.

The most important achievements of romanticism were the discovery of the categories of historicism and nationality, as well as the development of the theory of romantic irony by the German theorist Friedrich Schlegel (1775-1854). He was a member of the earliest circle of German romantics - the Jena School, and his main work - "Fragments" (1797-1798). Here Schlegel expresses the idea that the era of a completely new art has come, which will not be aimed at repeating the ideal of antiquity, not at achieving perfection, but the meaning of its existence will be in continuous search, in development: "Romantic poetry can never be completed, She is always in the making." Schlegel's criterion of perfection for the first time is not the degree of approximation to antique models, but the degree of intensity of creation, not beauty, but aesthetic energy. Schlegel put forward the idea of ​​universal art as the only perfect tool for understanding and transforming the world, he considered the artist to be the vicar of God, the creator on earth. But already the early romantics understood that such a lofty idea of ​​art and the artist is utopian, that the artist is essentially only a man, and therefore any of his judgments is relative, not absolute. The category of romantic irony is the awareness of the contradiction between the romantic ideal and reality.

According to Friedrich Schlegel, romantic irony is the highest of liberties, an extreme degree of freedom, a captivating series of contradictions, an artfully organized disorder. The artist must take an ironic position not only in relation to the world, but in relation to himself, to his creative process and to his work. That is, in the category of romantic irony, the artist voluntarily and openly admits his impotence in realizing the ideal. The difference between romantic irony and traditional irony is that in irony the artist ridicules what lies outside him, and in romantic irony - himself. In this category, a romantic break with reality avenges itself, romantic irony arises from the impossibility of unraveling the world's riddle, from the recognition of the boundaries of the embodiment of the ideal, from the emphasis on the playful nature of artistic creativity. Romantic irony proved to be the most important discovery of romantic aesthetics.

The development of romanticism in different national literatures followed different paths. It depended on the cultural situation in specific countries, and not always those writers who were preferred by readers in their homeland turned out to be significant on a pan-European scale. Thus, in the history of English literature, romanticism is embodied primarily by the poets of the Lake School, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but for European romanticism, Byron was the most important figure among the English romantics.

Distinguishes interest with fabulous and mythological motifs, which is especially pronounced in the work of the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Hoffmann. Heine, starting his work within the framework of romanticism, later subjected him to a critical revision.
In close connection with German influences is the emergence of Romanticism in England, where the first representatives of it are the poets of the Lake School, Wordsworth and Coleridge. They established the theoretical foundations of their direction, having become acquainted, while traveling in Germany, with the philosophy of Schelling and the views of the first German romantics. English romanticism is characterized by an interest in social problems: they oppose to modern bourgeois society the old, pre-bourgeois relations, the glorification of nature, simple, natural feelings.
A prominent representative of English romanticism is Byron, who, in the words of Pushkin, "clothed in dull romanticism and hopeless egoism." His work is imbued with the pathos of struggle and protest against the modern world, the glorification of freedom and individualism.
The works of Shelley, John Keats, William Blake also belong to English romanticism.
Romanticism also spread in other European countries, for example, in France (Chateaubriand, J. Stael, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Prosper Merimee, George Sand), Italy (N.U. Foscolo, A. Manzoni, Leopardi) , Poland (Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Slowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, Cyprian Norwid) and in the USA (Washington Irving, Cooper, W.K. Bryant, Edgar Poe, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Herman Melville)
It is usually believed that in Russia romanticism appears in the poetry of V.A. Zhukovsky (although some Russian poetic works of the 1790-1800s are often attributed to the pre-romantic movement developing from sentimentalism). In Russian romanticism, freedom from classical convention appears, a ballad, a romantic drama, is created. A new idea of ​​the essence and meaning of poetry is affirmed, which is recognized as an independent sphere of life, an expression of the highest, ideal aspirations of man; the former view, according to which poetry was an empty pastime, something completely serviceable, is no longer possible.
Early poetry of A.S. Pushkin also developed within the framework of romanticism. The poetry of M.Yu. can be considered the pinnacle of Russian romanticism. Lermontov, "Russian Byron". Philosophical lyrics F.I. Tyutchev is both the completion and the overcoming of romanticism in Russia.

Chapter 1. Russian romantic poet Vladimir Lensky

In a creative dispute with supporters and practitioners of romanticism, fighting for the establishment of realism, Pushkin introduced into the novel a collective image of a Russian romantic poet at the turn of the 1910s-1920s. Vladimir Lensky. Developing this character, he analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of romanticism. The author's attitude towards Lensky is complex: good-natured irony, sympathy for the hero in love, bitterness over his premature and senseless death.
While working on "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin, as already mentioned, survived the tragedy of the defeat of the Decembrist uprising. Among those executed and driven to hard labor were many writers, Pushkin's friends: K. Ryleev, the largest representative of the Decembrists' civic romanticism; A. Bestuzhev, V. Küchelbecker, A. Odoevsky, V. Raevsky.The sixth chapter of the novel, which tells about the duel and death of Lensky, was created in 1826, largely after the news of the execution of Ryleev and his comrades... In the subtext of the stanzas dedicated to the duel of Lensky, - Pushkin's painfully painful experience... The excited story about the death of Lensky and the author's lyrical thoughts about the possible fate of the hero were perceived by the most sensitive contemporaries as a poetic requiem for the Decembrists... The image of Lensky is multifaceted and should not be interpreted unambiguously.
Describing his hero, Pushkin says that Lensky was brought up by reading Schiller and Goethe (it can be assumed that the young poet had good taste if he chose such great teachers for himself) and was a capable poet:
And the muses of sublime art,
Lucky, he did not shame:
He proudly preserved in songs
Always high feelings
Gusts of a virgin dream
And the beauty of important simplicity.
And further:
He sang love, obedient to love,
And his song was clear
Like the thoughts of a simple-hearted maiden,
Like a baby's dream, like the moon
In the deserts of the sky serene.
Note that the concepts of "simplicity" and "clarity" in the poetry of the romantic Lensky do not coincide with the requirement of simplicity and clarity inherent in the realist Pushkin. In Lensky they come from ignorance of life, from striving for the world of dreams, they are generated by "the poetic prejudices of the soul." Pushkin the realist speaks of simplicity and clarity in poetry, referring to such qualities of realistic literature that are due to a sober look at life, aspiration understand its laws and find clear forms of its embodiment in artistic images.
Pushkin points to one feature of the character of Lensky the poet: to express his feelings in a bookish, artificial way. Here Lensky came to the grave of Olga's father:
Returned to his penates,
Vladimir Lensky visited
The neighbor's monument is humble,
And he dedicated his breath to the ashes;
And for a long time my heart was sad.
"Poor Yorick," he said dejectedly,
He held me in his arms.
How often did I play as a child
His Ochakov medal!
He read Olga for me,
He said: will I wait for the day?
And, full of sincere sadness,
Vladimir immediately drew
He has a funeral madrigal.
Surprisingly organically combined naturalness and mannerisms in expressing feelings. On the one hand, Lensky dedicates a sigh to the ashes instead of simply sighing; and on the other hand, he behaves quite naturally: "And for a long time my heart was sad." And this is suddenly followed by a quotation from Shakespeare ("Poor Yorick..."), which is perceived as another "dedication" of Larin's breath. And then again, a completely natural memory of the deceased.
Another example. The eve of the duel. Before the fight Lensky Olga. Her ingenuous question: “Why did the evening disappear so early?” disarmed the young man and dramatically changed his state of mind.
Jealousy and annoyance gone
Before this clarity of sight...
A very natural behavior of a young man in love and jealous, who "had an ignorant heart." The transition from doubts about Olga's feelings to hope for her reciprocal feeling gives a new turn to Lensky's thoughts: he convinces himself that he must protect Olga from the "corruptor" Onegin.
And again pensive, dull
Before my dear Olga,
Vladimir has no power
Remind her of yesterday;
He thinks: “I will be her savior
I will not tolerate a corrupter
Fire and sighs and praises
Tempted a young heart;
So that the despicable, poisonous worm
I sharpened a stalk of a lily;
To a two-morning flower
Withered still half-opened.
All this meant, friends:
I'm shooting with a friend.
The situation that led to a quarrel between two friends in the form Lensky imagines it to be is far from reality. In addition, being alone with his thoughts, the poet expresses them not in ordinary words, but resorts to literary cliches (Onegin is a despicable, poisonous worm; Olga is a stalk of lilies, a two-morning flower), book words: savior, corrupter.
Pushkin also finds other methods of depicting Lensky's character. There is also a slight irony here: the contrast between the excited state of the young man and Olga’s usual behavior at the meeting (“... as before, Olenka jumped from the porch to meet the poor singer); and a comic solution to the severity of the situation by introducing a colloquial-everyday turn of speech: "And silently he hung his nose"; and the author's conclusion: "All this meant, friends: I'm shooting with a friend." Pushkin translates the content of Lensky's monologue into ordinary, natural spoken language. The author's assessment of everything that happens as absurdity is introduced (a duel with a friend).
Lensky anticipates the tragic outcome of the duel for him. As the fateful hour approaches, the melancholy mood intensifies (“The heart full of longing sank in it; Saying goodbye to the young maiden, It seemed to be torn apart”). The first phrase of his elegy:
Where, where did you go,
My golden days of spring?
a typically romantic motive for complaining about the early loss of youth.
The examples given show that Lensky was immediately conceived as a typical image of the Russian romantic poet at the turn of the 1910s-1920s.
Lensky is depicted in just a few chapters of the novel, so the analysis of this image makes it easier to see that innovative feature of Pushkin's realism, which is expressed in the ambiguity of the assessments given by the author to his characters. In these assessments, in relation to the image of Lensky, sympathy, and irony, and sadness, and a joke, and sorrow are expressed. Considered separately, these estimates can lead to one-sided conclusions. Taken in interconnection, they help to better understand the meaning of the image of Lensky, to more fully feel its vitality. There is no predestination in the image of a young poet. The further development of Lensky, if he had remained alive, did not exclude the possibility of his transformation into a romantic poet of the Decembrist orientation (he could “be hanged like Ryleev”) under appropriate circumstances.

Chapter 2. M.Yu. Lermontov - "Russian Byron"

2.1 Lermontov's poetry

Lermontov's poetry is inextricably linked with his personality; it is a poetic autobiography in the full sense. The main features of Lermontov's nature are an unusually developed self-consciousness, the efficiency and depth of the moral world, the courageous idealism of life's aspirations.
All these features were embodied in his works, from the earliest prose and poetic outpourings to mature poems and novels.
Even in the youthful "Tale" Lermontov glorified the will as a perfect, irresistible spiritual energy: "to want is to hate, love, regret, rejoice, live" ...
Hence his fiery requests for a strong open feeling, indignation at petty and cowardly passions; hence his demonism, which developed amid forced loneliness and contempt for the surrounding society. But demonism is by no means a negative mood: “I need to love,” the poet confessed, and Belinsky guessed this trait after the first serious conversation with Lermontov: “I was gratified to see in his rational, chilled and embittered view of life and people the seeds of deep faith in the dignity of both. I said this to him, and he smiled and said: God willing."
Lermontov's demonism is the highest stage of idealism, the same as the dreams of people of the 18th century about an all-perfect natural man, about the freedom and valor of the golden age; it is the poetry of Rousseau and Schiller.
Such an ideal - the most daring, irreconcilable denial of reality - and young Lermontov would like to throw off the "education of the chain", to be transported to the idyllic realm of primitive mankind. Hence the fanatical adoration of nature, the passionate penetration of its beauty and power. And all these traits can by no means be associated with any kind of external influence; they existed in Lermontov even before he met Byron and merged only into a more powerful and mature harmony when he recognized this truly dear soul to him.
In contrast to the disappointment of Chateaubriand's Rene, which is rooted exclusively in selfishness and self-adoration, Lermontov's disappointment is a militant protest against "baseness and oddities", in the name of sincere feeling and courageous thought.
Before us is poetry not of disappointment, but of sadness and anger. All the heroes of Lermontov - Demon, Izmail-Bey, Mtsyri, Arseny - are overwhelmed with these feelings. The most real of them - Pechorin - embodies the most, apparently, everyday disappointment; but this is a completely different person than the "Moscow Childe Harold" - Onegin. He has many negative traits: selfishness, pettiness, pride, often heartlessness, but next to them is a sincere attitude towards himself. "If I am the cause of the unhappiness of others, then I myself am no less unhappy" - absolutely truthful words in his mouth. He more than once yearns for a failed life; on a different soil, in a different air, this strong organism would undoubtedly have found a more honorable deed than persecuting the Grushnitskys.
The great and the insignificant coexist side by side in it, and if it were necessary to distinguish between the one and the other, the great would have to be attributed to the individual, and the insignificant to society ...
Creativity Lermontov gradually descended from behind the clouds and from the Caucasus mountains. It stopped at the creation of quite real types and became public and national. In Russian literature of the 19th century there is not a single noble motive in which Lermontov's untimely silenced voice is not heard: her sadness about the miserable phenomena of Russian life is an echo of the life of a poet who sadly looked at his generation; in her indignation at the slavery of thought and the moral insignificance of her contemporaries, Lermontov's demonic impulses resound; her laughter at stupidity and vulgar comedianism is already heard in Pechorin's annihilating sarcasm at Grushnitsky.

2.2 Mtsyri as a romantic hero

The poem "Mtsyri" is the fruit of the active and intense creative work of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. Even in his youth, the poet's imagination drew the image of a young man pronouncing an angry, protesting speech in front of his listener on the verge of death "- a senior monk. In the poem "Confession" (1830, the action takes place in Spain), the hero, imprisoned in prison, proclaims the right to love, which is higher than monastic charters. Passion for the Caucasus, the desire to depict situations in which the courageous character of the hero can be revealed with the greatest fullness, leads Lermontov at the time of the highest heyday of his talent to create the poem "Mtsyri" (1840), repeating many verses from the previous stages of work over the same way.
Before "Mtsyri" the poem "The Fugitive" was written. In it, Lermontov develops the theme of punishment for cowardice and betrayal. Short story: a traitor to duty, who forgot about his homeland, Harun fled the battlefield without taking revenge on his enemies for the death of his father and brothers. But neither friend, nor beloved, nor mother will accept the fugitive, even everyone will turn away from his corpse, and no one will take him to the cemetery. The poem called for heroism, for the struggle for the freedom of the fatherland. In the poem "Mtsyri" Lermontov develops the idea of ​​courage and protest, embodied in "Confession" and the poem "The Fugitive". In "Mtsyri" the poet almost completely excluded the love motive that played such a significant role in "Confession" (the love of the hero-monk for the nun). This motive was reflected only in a brief meeting between Mtsyri and a Georgian woman near a mountain stream.
The hero, defeating the involuntary impulse of a young heart, renounces personal happiness in the name of the ideal of freedom. The patriotic idea is combined in the poem with the theme of freedom, as in the work of the Decembrist poets. Lermontov does not share these concepts: love for the motherland and a thirst for will merge into one, but "fiery passion". The monastery becomes a prison for Mtsyri, the cells seem stuffy to him, the walls are gloomy and deaf, the guards-monks are cowardly and miserable, he himself is a slave and a prisoner. His desire to know, "we were born into this world for will or prison," is due to a passionate impulse to freedom. Short days to escape is his will. Only outside the monastery he lived, and did not vegetate. Only these days he calls bliss.
Mtsyri's freedom-loving patriotism is least of all like a dreamy love for his native beautiful landscapes and expensive graves, although the hero yearns for them too. Precisely because he truly loves his homeland, he wants to fight for the freedom of his homeland. But at the same time, the poet sings of the warlike dreams of a young man with undoubted sympathy. The poem does not fully reveal the hero's aspirations, but they are palpable in allusions. Mtsyri remembers his father and acquaintances primarily as warriors; it is no coincidence that he dreams of the battles in which he is. wins, it is not for nothing that dreams draw him into the "wonderful world of worries and battles." He is convinced that he could be "not one of the last daring ones in the land of the fathers." Although fate did not allow Mtsyri to taste the rapture of battle, he is a warrior with all the system of his feelings. He was distinguished by severe restraint from childhood. The young man, proud of this, says; "Do you remember, in my childhood I never knew tears." He gives vent to tears only during the escape, because no one sees them.
The tragic loneliness in the monastery hardened the will of Mtsyri. It is no coincidence that he fled from the monastery on a stormy night: what frightened the timid monks filled his heart with a sense of brotherhood with a thunderstorm. The courage and stamina of Mtsyri manifests itself with the greatest force in the battle with the leopard. He was not afraid of the grave, because he knew; the return to the monastery is a continuation of the former sufferings. The tragic ending testifies that the approach of death does not weaken the spirit of the hero and the power of his freedom-loving patriotism. The old monk's admonitions do not make him repent. Even now he would "trade paradise and eternity" for a few minutes of living among loved ones (verses that caused discontent of the censors). It is not his fault if he failed to join the ranks of the fighters for what he considered his sacred duty: the circumstances turned out to be insurmountable, and he "argued with fate" in vain. Defeated, he is not spiritually broken and remains a positive image of our literature, and his masculinity, integrity, heroism were a reproach to the fragmented hearts of timid and inactive contemporaries from noble society. The Caucasian landscape is introduced into the poem mainly as a means of revealing the image of the hero.
Despising his surroundings, Mtsyri feels only kinship with nature. Imprisoned in a monastery, he compares himself to a typical pale leaf that has grown between damp flagstones. Breaking free, he, along with sleepy flowers, raises his head when the east has become rich. A child of nature, he falls to the ground and learns, like a fairy-tale hero, the secret of bird songs, the riddles of their prophetic chirping. He understands the dispute of the stream with the stones, the thought of the separated rocks, eager to meet. His gaze is sharpened: he notices the brilliance of snake scales and the tint of silver on the fur of the leopard, he sees the teeth of distant mountains and the pale strip "between the dark sky and earth", it seems to him that his "diligent gaze" could follow the flight of angels through the transparent blue of the sky . (The verse of the poem also corresponds to the character of the hero). Lermontov's poem continues the traditions of advanced romanticism, Mtsyri, full of fiery passions, gloomy and lonely, revealing his "soul" in a confession story, is perceived as a hero of romantic poems.
However, Lermontov, who created "Mtsyri" in those years when the realistic novel "A Hero of Our Time" was being created, introduces such features into his work that are not in his earlier poems. If the past of the heroes of "Confession" and "Boyar Orsha" remains completely unknown, and we do not know the social conditions that shaped their characters, then the lines about Mtsyri's unhappy childhood and fatherland help to better understand the hero's feelings and thoughts. The very form of confession, characteristic of romantic poems, is associated with the desire to reveal more deeply - "to tell the soul." This psychologism of the work, the detailing of the hero's experiences are natural for the poet, who at the same time created a socio-psychological novel. The combination of abundant metaphors of a romantic nature in the confession itself (images of fire, fieryness) with a realistically accurate and poetically stingy speech of the introduction is expressive. ("Once a Russian general...")
The romantic poem testified to the growth of realistic tendencies in Lermontov's work. Lermontov entered Russian literature as a successor to the traditions of Pushkin and the Decembrist poets, and at the same time as a new link in the chain of development of national culture. According to Belinsky, he introduced his own, "Lermontov's element" into the national literature. Concisely explaining what should be invested in this definition, the critic noted the "original living thought" in his poems as the first characteristic feature of the poet's creative heritage. Belinsky repeated "Everything breathes with original and creative thought."

Conclusion

A romantic hero, whoever he is - a rebel, a loner, a dreamer or a noble