A look at Russian criticism. – The concept of contemporary criticism. - The study of the pathos of the poet, as the first task of criticism. - The pathos of Pushkin's poetry in general. - Analysis of Pushkin's lyrical works In harmony, my rival Was the noise of the forests, or a violent whirlwind, Or the orioles chant

Paphos (Greek) - suffering, passion, excitement, inspiration. According to Aristotle, death or another tragic event that happens to the hero of a work, causing compassion or fear in the viewer, which is then resolved in a cathartic experience. Suffering brought about by the own actions of a person driven by a strong passion, the resolution of passion in suffering.

In modern literary criticism, pathos is defined as the leading emotional tone of a work, its emotional mood.

Paphos is heroic, dramatic, tragic, satirical, romantic and sentimental.

HEROIC PATHOS - reflects the greatness of a person who performs a feat in the name of a common cause. At the same time, the actions of the heroes must certainly be associated with personal risk, personal danger, associated with the real possibility of a person losing some essential values ​​- up to life itself. Another condition for the manifestation of the heroic is the free will and initiative of a person: forced actions, as Hegel pointed out, cannot be heroic. The desire to remake the world, the structure of which seems unfair, or the desire to defend the ideal world (as well as close to the ideal and seemingly so) - this is the emotional basis of heroics. Examples: in ancient Greek myths these are images of heroes, or, as they were called in Greece, heroes who perform unprecedented feats for the benefit of their people. This is Hercules with his twelve labors or Perseus, who cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa. In the "Iliad" of Homer - Achilles, Patroclus, Hector, who became famous in the battles of Troy. In later works of folklore - historical songs, epics, heroic tales, epics, military tales - in the center is a mighty, fair hero-warrior, protecting his people from foreign invaders.

DRAMATIC PATHOS - the author depicts the suffering of his characters in the drama of their position, experiences, struggle with a heavy emotional anguish and penetrating sympathy. This drama is manifested in experiences, conflicts in private life, in the disorder of personal fate, in ideological “wandering”. The author can also condemn his characters, see in their suffering a just retribution for the falsity of the aspirations that led to the drama of the situation. Often, the influence of external circumstances gives rise to internal inconsistency in the mind of the character, a struggle with himself. Then the drama deepens to tragedy. An example is Bulgakov's "Running".

TRAGIC PATHOS - among the ancient Greeks, it was associated with the fact that the will of the gods dominates the lives of people, the fatal predestination of fate, in whose power the whole life of people, or with the concept of guilt of tragic heroes who violated some higher law and pay for it. (e.g. Oedipus by Sophocles). The pathos of tragedy is the realization of a loss, and an irreparable loss, of some important life values ​​- human life, social, national or personal freedom, the possibility of personal happiness, cultural values, etc. The first condition of the tragic is the regularity of this conflict, such a situation when its unresolved cannot be tolerated. Secondly, the insolubility of the conflict means the impossibility of its successful resolution - it is certainly associated with victims, with the death of certain indisputable humanistic values. Such, for example, is the nature of the conflict in Pushkin's Little Tragedies, Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm, and Bulgakov's The White Guard.

If heroic pathos is always the ideological affirmation of the characters portrayed, then the dramatic and tragic types of pathos can contain both their affirmation and their negation. The satirical depiction of characters always carries a condemning ideological orientation.

SATIRICAL PATHOS - indignantly mocking denial of certain aspects of public life. Human characters and relationships become the subject of mocking comprehension and corresponding depiction. Satirical pathos arises in the process of generalizing emotional comprehension of the comic discrepancy between the real emptiness of the characters' existence and subjective claims to significance. For example, the feigned and laudatory tone of Gogol's depiction of the capital's secular society expresses his mocking, ironic attitude towards high-ranking people, who attach great importance to all sorts of trifles. It is laughter that “penetrates”, deepens the subject, is an inalienable property of satire. Authors who use satirical pathos in their works: Gogol, Griboyedov, Saltykov-Shedrin, Ilf and Petrov, Bulgakov.

SENTIMENTAL PATHOS. Sentimentality literally translated from French means sensitivity. In some situations, almost every person happens to show sentimentality - for example, most normal people cannot pass indifferently past the suffering of a child, a helpless person, or even an animal. But even if sentimental pity is directed at the phenomena of the surrounding world, the center always remains a person who reacts to it - touching, compassionate. At the same time, sympathy for another in sentimentality is fundamentally inactive, it acts as a kind of psychological substitute for real help (such, for example, is the artistically expressed sympathy for the peasant in the work of Radishchev and Nekrasov). This is spiritual tenderness, caused by the awareness of moral virtues in the characters of people who are socially humiliated or associated with an immoral privileged environment. One of the most characteristic sentimental works is Goethe's story "The Sufferings of Young Werther". Its pathos is created by the depiction of the experiences of a young man who became disillusioned with the empty and vain life of the urban noble-bureaucratic society. Werther seeks satisfaction in a simple rural life, in a sensitive admiration of nature, in helping the poor. His touching love for Lotta is hopeless - Lotta is married. And because of the dramatic hopelessness of his situation, the impracticability of his lofty ideal, Werther commits suicide. Another example: "Moo-mu" Turgenev.

ROMANTIC PATHOS - the rise of romantic self-awareness is caused by aspiration to the ideal of civil freedom. This is an enthusiastic state of mind, caused by the desire for a lofty ideal. A romantic hero is always tragic, he does not accept reality, is at odds with himself, he is a rebel and a victim. romantic heroes- Spiritually rich natures who cannot fully express themselves, because life sets boundaries for them, undeservedly expels them from society. Romanticism is characterized by a violent manifestation of feelings. The conflict with the surrounding world and its complete rejection, opposition to it of a higher, ideal world created by the creative imagination of the artist, is the basis of the romantics' worldview. For example, the early Gorky denied the lack of heroism in the life around him, dreamed of strong, strong-willed natures, of fighters. In contrast to the gray, philistine existence, the world of his stories is bright, exotic. The action takes place in an unusual setting, surrounded by romantic elements. The heroes of the works are more symbolic than typical. "Song of the Falcon", "Song of the Petrel", "Danko".

Romance is related to heroism by the desire for a lofty ideal. But if heroism is a sphere of active action, then romance is an area of ​​emotional experience and aspiration that does not turn into action. The objective basis of romance is such situations in personal and social life, when the realization of a lofty ideal is either impossible in principle, or is not feasible at a given historical moment. However, on such an objective basis, in principle, not only the pathos of romance, but also tragedy, and irony, and satire can arise, so that the decisive moment in romance is still the subjective moment, the moment of experiencing the inevitable gap between dream and reality. The natural world of romance is a dream, a fantasy, a daydream, which is why romantic works so often turn either to the past (“Borodino” by Lermontov) or to something fundamentally non-existent (“Aelita” by A.N. Tolstoy).

What is the difference between sentimental and romantic pathos? Sentimentality is tenderness, addressed to the obsolete, fading way of life with its simplicity and moral integrity of relationships and experiences. Romance is the enthusiasm addressed to this or that "superpersonal" ideal and its incarnations.

PAPHOS IN MASSCULTURE. In epic cinema, pathos is a vital element. Without it, the viewer will be purple, killed Epic Hero or he overcame. It is necessary that the popcorn eater get goosebumps from the severity and epicness of the mesilov on the screen. For this, Paphos Moments serve: sublime Monologues, In Which Every Word Must Be Capitalized, Accompanied By Anguished symphonic music. And if the hero dies, then without vomiting blood and stiffness, he will utter the Farewell Monologue, close his eyes and sharply throw back his head, as if he had been pulled out of power. Pathos moments are necessarily accompanied by pathos phrases: "Ail bi bek!", "Come and take it!"; "Our arrows will cover the sun from you - We will fight in the shade!"; “Whoever comes to us with a sword will die by the sword!” etc.

Reviews

Is it the best evening?
Did everyone pour?
Good.

Blogger Navalny, who is shown in your picture, is, of course, cool.
Paphos, I'll tell you, and rushing.
And, of course, weak women expect from the hero of Paphos the Heroic.
And something else. I don't know, but something romantic. Maybe sentimental. Ultimately, dramatic...
But not a corruption scandal in bed!
And when it comes up literary critic shows indignantly mocking denial of the Hero...
...

And if it's easier to say, then for love!
Well, for these and for those!

Pathos- this is the main emotional tone, the main emotional mood of the work, as well as the emotional and evaluative coverage of a particular character, event, phenomenon by the author.

heroic, or heroic pathos, is associated with the active, effective assertion of lofty ideals, in order to achieve which the heroes have to overcome very serious obstacles, risk their own well-being, and often their lives. The ballad of M.Yu. is permeated with heroic pathos. Lermontov "Borodino".

Tragedy, or tragic pathos, expresses suffering, unbearable grief. As a rule, it is associated with situations in which any decision of the hero will inevitably lead him to misfortune, and his choice is a choice of "two evils". Tragic pathos is based on a conflict that does not have a favorable resolution (such is the conflict between Danila Burulbash and the Sorcerer in N.V. Gogol's Terrible Revenge). Tragic pathos characterizes the short story by I. A. Bunin "Bastes".

Romance, or romantic pathos, in its manifestations, it is very similar to heroic pathos, since it conveys a strong emotional experience, aspiration for a lofty and significant ideal. But romantic pathos is based not on the active implementation of the goal, but on the experience of a dream (often unattainable), on the search for means to translate this dream into reality. The poem "Mtsyri" by M. Yu. Lermontov is based on romantic pathos.

Sentimentality, or sentimental pathos, arises when in a work the author deliberately emphasizes his emotional attitude to the depicted and persistently seeks to evoke similar emotions in the reader. Example: N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Peasant Children”.

drama, or dramatic pathos, manifests itself in works where the relationship of the characters or the relationship of the character with the outside world is characterized by particular tension, conflict, but, unlike tragic situations, a favorable outcome is possible here, although it requires the characters to make the right decisions and activity and decisive action. Example: short story by V. G. Rasputin "French Lessons".

Humor, or humorous pathos, we feel in works that present us with comic characters and situations. This pathos, as a rule, is accompanied by a kindly smile of the reader. Example: vaudeville A.P. Chekhov "Bear".

Satire, or satirical pathos, directed against the vices that are "flagged" by laughter, causing not so much fun as indignation of the reader. Example: short story by A.P. Chekhov "Chameleon".

Invective as a kind of pathos, it involves a frank expression of accusation against people or events. For example: A. S. Pushkin “The Desert Sower of Freedom”, where the poet clearly expresses his indignation towards people endowed with a slave psychology, deprived of the concept of honor.

Lyrical pathos involves the creation of a special atmosphere in the work, setting the reader to the manifestation of a subjectively interested attitude towards what is described by the author.

Class exile, but could not bear it. In Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" the position of Voinitsky is dramatic; In "Bigva on the Road" by G. Nikolaeva, there is a dramatically hopelessly strong, deep feeling of Bakhirev and Tina, which is in conflict with their family relationships and public opinion. Thus, by creating dramatically tense situations in the fate of their characters, writers get the opportunity to more clearly convey the ideological understanding and assessment of the significant contradictions of social life. The drama of the situations and experiences of people in reality and characters in literary works is created by the influence of external forces and circumstances that threaten their aspirations and their lives. But often the influence of external circumstances gives rise to internal inconsistency in the mind of a person, a struggle with oneself. Then the drama deepens to tragedy.

TRAGIC PATHOS

The words "tragic", "tragedy" originated from the ancient Greek name of the folk choral ritual representations of the death and resurrection of the god of fertility Dionysus. Later, the Greeks developed a class-state system; this posed moral questions for them, which they tried to resolve in plays depicting the conflicts of human life. The old name of the performances was preserved, but they began to designate the very content of such plays. Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that tragedy arouses feelings of “compassion and fear” in the viewer and leads to “purification (“catharsis”) of such affects” (20, 56).

According to the mythological views of the ancient Greeks, the will of the gods, the "fatal" predestinations of "fate" dominate over people's lives. In some tragedies, for example, in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, this is directly depicted. The hero of the tragedy, Oedipus, unknowingly became a criminal - the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. Having ascended the throne, Oedipus, with his crimes, brought a plague to the city. As king, he must find the criminal and save the people. But in the search it turns out that the criminal -

It is he himself. Then Oedipus, experiencing severe moral suffering, blinds himself and goes into exile. Oedipus himself is guilty of his crimes, but both the author of the tragedy, Sophocles, and his hero are aware of everything that happened as a manifestation of “fate”, “fate”, which, according to their beliefs, is predetermined from above and from which people cannot escape. This understanding of life was also expressed in other ancient tragedies. Therefore, in the theories of tragedy and the tragic, in particular by Hegel, their definition was somehow connected with the concepts of "fate", "fate", in whose power the whole life of people, or with the concept of "guilt" of tragic heroes who violated some higher law. and paying for it.

Chernyshevsky rightly objected to such narrowing concepts and defined the tragic as everything "terrible" in a person's life (99, 30). However, his definition must be recognized as too broad, since both dramatic situations and those created by external accidents can be “terrible”. Apparently, the definition of the tragic given by Belinsky is closer to the truth: “The tragic lies in the collision of the natural attraction of the heart with the idea of ​​duty, in the resulting struggle and, finally, victory or fall” (24, 444). But even this definition needs serious additions.

The tragedy of real life situations and the experiences they cause should be considered in terms of similarity and at the same time in contrast to drama. Being in a tragic situation, people experience deep spiritual tension and agitation, causing them suffering, often very severe. But this agitation and suffering are generated not only by clashes with some external forces that threaten the most important interests, sometimes the very life of people and cause resistance, as happens in dramatic situations. The tragedy of the situation and experiences lies mainly in the internal contradictions and struggle that arise in the minds, in the soul of people. What are these internal contradictions?

According to the definition of the tragic, given by Belinsky, one side of the internal inconsistency is the “natural attraction of the heart”, that is, spiritual personal attachments, love feelings, etc., and the other side is the “idea of ​​duty”, that which prevents the “attraction heart,” but with what the consciousness of the moral law connects the lover.

Usually these are the laws of marriage, given vows, responsibility to the family, clan, state.

All these relations can only become one of the sides of an internal, tragic contradiction when they do not have an external compulsion for a person, but are recognized by him as the highest moral forces, standing above his personal interests and having a “superpersonal” meaning for him. This is always a social meaning, although it is often interpreted in a religious or abstract-moralistic sense. The internal struggle that arises in the human soul, the struggle with oneself, causes a pathetic experience in him and dooms him to deep suffering. All this is possible only for a person who has a high moral development, who is able to go deep into tragic experiences in his self-consciousness. An insignificant person, devoid of moral dignity, cannot become a tragic subject.

Fiction, depicting the tragic situations and experiences of characters, always takes into account the moral level of their characters. However (as in the depiction of dramatic situations and experiences), the pathos of the tragic hero and the pathos of the author do not always coincide. The tragic pathos of the work itself, arising from the ideological worldview of the writer, can have a different orientation - both affirmative and negative. The writer is aware of the historical progressivity and truthfulness of those lofty moral ideals in the name of which his hero is going through a tragic struggle with himself, or else he is aware of their historical falsity and doom. All this cannot but affect the outcome of the tragic struggle of the literary hero, his entire fate and the pathos of the work, in which, however, grief for the suffering of the human spirit always sounds.

Thus, the tragic situation lies in the contradiction and struggle of personal and "superpersonal" principles in the mind of man. Such contradictions arise both in the public and in the private life of people.

One of the most important and very common types of tragic conflicts that necessarily arise in the development of different peoples is the contradiction between the "historically necessary demand" of life and the "practical impossibility of its implementation" (4, 495). Conflicts of this kind manifest themselves with particular force when the state power of the ruling

Classes has already lost its progressiveness, has become reactionary, but the social forces of the nation that would like to overthrow it are still too weak for that. Such a conflict is depicted in many literary works that reveal the tragedy of popular uprisings, such as the slave uprising in ancient Rome led by Spartacus in Giovagnoli's novel Spartacus or the spontaneous peasant uprising in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, as well as the tragedy of many more conscious political movements. At the same time, tragedy is usually combined with heroism and drama.

The artistic work of the Decembrist poets (“The Argives” by Kuchelbecker, “thoughts” and Ryleev’s poems, as well as their lyrics) is permeated with heroic-tragic pathos. The same can be said about the work of populist writers (lyrics by V. Figner, the novel by Stepnyak-Kravchinsky "Andrey Kozhukhov").

However, tragic contradictions can also arise in the lives of those progressive-minded representatives of society who do not directly participate in the heroic struggle against the reactionary government, but are opposed to it. Realizing the need and at the same time the impossibility of changing the existing state of affairs on their own, acutely feeling their loneliness, these people also come to a tragic self-esteem. This kind of tragedy was shown, for example, by Shakespeare in Hamlet. The hero of this tragedy understands that his revenge on King Claudius cannot significantly change anything in the society in which he lives - Denmark will remain a "prison". But Hamlet, a man of high humanistic ideals, cannot come to terms with the evil around him either. Reflecting on political and moral issues century in philosophical terms, he comes to an ideological crisis, disappointment in life, moods of doom. But he morally conquers the fear of death.

Tragic pathos is often imbued with those works that reproduce the private life, moral and domestic relations of people that are not directly related to political conflicts.

The tragic conflict in family and domestic relations is shown by A. Ostrovsky in the play "Thunderstorm" (which he inaccurately called "drama"). Married against her will, Katerina tragically oscillates between the consciousness of her marital debt, from the age of instilled in her by religious

Representations of her environment, and love for Boris, which seems to the heroine a way out of the family enslavement ™. She goes on a date with Boris, but the consciousness of her sinfulness takes over in her, and she repents before her husband and mother-in-law. Then, unable to bear remorse, contempt and reproaches of the family, Boris's indifference, complete loneliness, Katerina throws herself into the river, but by her death Ostrovsky affirms the strength and height of her character, rejecting moral compromises.

Tragic pathos finds expression not only in dramaturgy, but also in epic and lyric poetry. So, in the mind of Mtsyri, the hero of Lermontov's poem of the same name, there is a deep contradiction between his contempt for the slavish life of the monastery, his thirst to free himself from it, romantic aspirations into the imaginary "wonderful world of worries and battles" and the inability to find a way into this world, the consciousness of his weakness, brought up in him a slavish life, a sense of doom. "Mtsyri" is a romantic-tiko-tragic poem in its pathos.

An excellent example of tragedy in lyrics is A. Blok's cycle of poems "On the Kulikovo Field", written in 1908, long before the war and revolution. These poems allegorically, on a historical theme, expressed the poet's great love for his homeland, and at the same time, though vague, but deep awareness of the doom of the entire autocratic-noble way of Russian life, with which the poet was firmly connected by birth and upbringing. The poems are imbued with a sense of the tragic impossibility of preserving and saving this life from inevitable death.

Revealing the tragic conflicts of life, writers sometimes express an ideological denial of both the characters of the characters and the actions arising from them. In Pushkin's tragedy "Boris Godunov" all the state activity of the protagonist proceeded in a difficult struggle with internal forces hostile to him, in an atmosphere of growing moral condemnation of him. “The Opinion of the People” becomes, as it were, a tragic chorus, reminding Boris of his villainy, committed for the sake of seizing political power and causing terrible torment of an unclean conscience. With the whole development of the plot of his realistic tragedy, Pushkin expresses the ideological condemnation of the hero who has violated the moral law.

Soviet literature reflected the tragic conflicts that arose under the conditions of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the civil war

We, later - the war with Nazi Germany. Such, for example, are the actions and experiences of the female commissar in the denouement of V. Vishnevsky's Optimistic Tragedy. Surrounded by the Germans with her battalion, the heroine, in order to gain time for the offensive of other detachments, dooms herself to death before the very victory, calling on the sailors to be steadfast in the fight. Or Fyodor Talanov in Leonov's "Invasion", overcoming the difficult experiences generated by his past, and his discord with his family, selflessly pretends to be the partisan commander Kolesnikov before his enemies and goes to his death.

Thus, the tragic contradictions that arise in the process of the development of society are ultimately not accidental, but socially and historically. They are manifested in the actions and moral world of people. dooming them to suffering, sometimes to death. Reproducing tragic conflicts, writers intensify the painful experiences of their heroes in the plots of their works and force difficult events in their lives, revealing their own understanding of the tragic contradictions of life.

If heroic pathos is always the ideological affirmation of the characters portrayed, then the dramatic and tragic types of pathos can contain both their affirmation and their negation. The satirical depiction of characters always carries a condemning ideological orientation.

SATIRICAL PATHOS

Satirical pathos is the most powerful and sharp indignantly mocking denial of certain watchmen of public life. The word "satire" (lat. satura mixture) was used by some Roman poets to refer to collections of poems with a mocking and instructive orientation - fables, anecdotes, everyday scenes. In the future, this name was transferred to the content of works in which human characters and relationships become the subject of mocking reflection and appropriate depiction. In this sense, the word "satire" was established in world literature, and then in literary criticism.

A satirical assessment of social characters is convincing and historically true only when these characters are worthy of such an attitude, when they have such properties that evoke a negative, mocking attitude of writers. Only

In this case, the mockery expressed in artistic images works, will cause understanding and sympathy among readers, listeners, viewers. Such an objective property of human life, causing a mocking attitude towards it, is its comedy. A convincing definition of comedy was given by Chernyshevsky: comedy is “the inner emptiness and insignificance (of human life. - E. R.), hiding behind an appearance that has a claim to content and real value» (99, 31).

Consequently, when a person in his essence, according to the general structure of his interests, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, is empty and insignificant, but claims the significance of his personality, without himself realizing this inconsistency in himself, then he is comical; people recognize the comic nature of his behavior and laugh at him.

The tendency of many writers to notice the comic in life and creatively reproduce it in their works is determined not only by the properties of their inborn talent, but also by the fact that, due to the peculiarities of their worldview, they pay primary attention to the discrepancy between claims and real opportunities in people of a certain social environment.

Thus, Gogol hoped for the moral correction of the Russian nobility and bureaucracy as the leading strata of society of his time. But comprehending their life in the light of his lofty civic ideals, the writer discovered that behind external class conceit, complacency, arrogance, there is a limited and baseness of interests, a tendency to empty entertainment, to a career and profit. And the higher in their position certain nobles and officials then stood, the more their comic essence manifested itself in actions, speech, the more sharply Gogol ridiculed them in stories and plays.

Here is an image of the bureaucratic-noble “society” on the main street of St. horses and your children... Everything that you will meet on Nevsky Prospekt, everything is full of decency... Here you will meet the only sideburns, passed with extraordinary and amazing art under a tie... Here you will meet a wonderful mustache, no feather, no brush indescribable; mustache to which

The puppy is the best half of life, the subject of long vigils during the day and night ... Here you will find such waists that you have never even dreamed of: thin, narrow waists, no thicker than a bottle neck ... ”etc. ( "Nevsky Avenue").

The feigned-laudatory tone of Gogol's image expresses his mocking, ironic attitude (gr. eironeia - pretense) to the capital's secular society. In mockery, one can hear the latent hostility and hostility of the writer to these high-ranking people, who attach great importance to all sorts of trifles. Gogol's irony sometimes becomes even sharper and turns into sarcasm (gr. sarkasmos - torment) - indignant and accusatory ridicule. Then his image is imbued with satirical pathos (for example, in the lyrical ending of Nevsky Prospekt).

Satirical pathos is generated by the objective comic properties of life, and in it an ironic mockery of the comic nature of life is combined with a sharp denunciation, indignation. Satire does not depend, therefore, on the arbitrariness of the writer, on his personal desire to ridicule something. It requires a corresponding subject - the comicality of the most ridiculed life. Satirical laughter is a very deep and serious laughter. About the distinctive features of such laughter, Gogol wrote: “Laughter is more significant and deeper than people think. Not the kind of laughter that is generated by temporary irritability, a bilious, morbid disposition of character; not that light laughter that serves for idle entertainment and amusement of people - but that laughter that ... deepens the subject, makes something that would slip through brightly, without the penetrating power of which the trifle and emptiness of life would not frighten a person " (45, 169).

It is laughter that “penetrates”, deepens the subject, is an inalienable property of satire. It differs from simple playfulness or mockery in its cognitive content. And if such laughter, according to Belinsky, "destroys a thing," then by "characterizing it too correctly, it expresses too correctly its ugliness." It comes "from the ability to see things in their true form, to grasp their characteristic features, to express their funny sides" (24, 244). And such laughter refers not to an individual person or event, but to those general, characteristic features of social life that have found their manifestation in them. That is why satire helps to understand

Vat some important aspects of human relationships, gives a kind of orientation in life, os-

All this determines the place of the satirical image

Life in the literature of different peoples. Satire arose

Historically later than heroism, tragedy, drama.

It developed most intensively when life

The ruling strata and their state power began to lose their former progressive significance and more and more reveal their conservatism, their inconsistency with the interests of the whole society.

In ancient Greek literature, a satirical denunciation of the life of the ruling strata was already given in the fables of Archilochus (the son of a slave leading a wandering lifestyle). With particular force, satirical pathos is expressed in many comedies of Aristophanes. For example, in the comedy "The Horsemen", written during the crisis of the slave-owning Athenian democracy, the struggle of the Tanner (Paphlagonian) and the Sausage Man (Porakritos) for power in the house of the old De-

Mos, personifying the Athenian people. The Sausage Man wins, who, appeasing Demos, treats him to a hare stolen from the Paphlagonian. The whole comedy is directed against the military policy of the radical party in power, its leader Cleon (whom the audience easily guessed in the face of the Paphlagonian).

In Roman literature, Juvenal gained fame as the sharpest satirist. For example, in the fourth satire Juvenal

"tells how a fisherman brought a huge fish as a gift to the emperor and the State Council at a special meeting discussed how to cook it, on what dish to serve, so that it would be worthy of the imperial table.

The satirical comprehension and depiction of the life of the ruling strata of society received great development in Western European literatures during the Renaissance. His most significant expression was the monumental story French writer F. Rabelais "Gargan-tua and Pantagruel" (1533-1534). It provides a critique of the most diverse aspects of the life of medieval society. Rabelais sharply ridicules feudal wars, depicting the campaign of King Picrochole against Father Gargantua. Taking advantage of a quarrel between shepherds and bakers over cakes, Picrochole unleashes a war, not agreeing to any concessions. He smugly longs for world domination, is sure that all fortresses and cities will fall without any resistance, dreams of prey, distributes in advance

Approximate their future possessions, but suffers a complete defeat. Caustically ridicules Rabelais and the dominant religious ideology, the absurdities of Holy Scripture.

Equally prominent in the development of world satirical literature was the story English writer J. Swift "Gulliver's Travels" (1726). Summarizing his observations on the clashes of political parties in England, Swift shows the struggle for power of the Tremexens and Slemexens, differing from each other only in the height of the heels on the shoes, but giving this great importance. And the emperor hesitates, so he has one heel higher than the other, and he limps. Just as bitterly ridicules Swift and the country's foreign policy. The great powers of Lilliputia and Blefuscu are waging a fierce war, which arose due to the fact that in the first of them, by decree of the emperor, it is prescribed to break an egg from a sharp end, and in the second - from a blunt one; and there is no end in sight to the bloody war.

In Russia, the development of satire was also closely connected with the historical life of society. In the 17th century satire is presented in folk art(“The Tale of Ersh Ershovich”, “Shemyakin Court”), in the 18th century. - in the works of Kantemir, Lomonosov, Novikov, Fonvizin, Krylov. The heyday of Russian satire falls on the 19th century. and is due to the ever-increasing anti-people nature of the autocratic feudal system and the growth of the liberation movement in the country. Griboedov's Woe from Wit, the epigrams of Pushkin and Lermontov, Pushkin's History of the Village of Goryukhin, and Gogol's work are filled with satirical pathos. The satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin is of world importance, especially his "History of a City" (1869-1870).

Proceeding from his revolutionary-democratic views, Saltykov-Shchedrin sharply revealed the deep socio-political contradiction of Russian public life throughout historical era. He showed the complete degeneration of autocratic power, which is an inert, stupid and cruel force that exists only to suppress the people and brought them to the state of "stupidity", to the ability to either slavishly be touched by their superiors, or spontaneously and cruelly rebel. The writer entirely focused on this negative political state of power and the people, artistically embodied it in fantastic images and scenes that elicit sarcastic laughter from readers. In depicting the life of the people, his satire borders on tragedy.

In Soviet literature, which reflects the progressive development of society as a whole, the satirical depiction of life, of course, does not acquire such scope, but still has its grounds. Satire is directed primarily against the enemies of the revolution. Such, for example, are the satirical fables of Demyan Bedny or Mayakovsky's ROSTA Window. Later, satirical works appear, exposing not only external enemies Soviet country, but also remnants of the old in the minds and behavior of people, as well as revealing contradictory phenomena in the life of the new society. Mayakovsky's poem "The Sitting Ones", which was positively assessed by V. I. Lenin, ridicules the bureaucratic style of work, when people "involuntarily have to be torn" between many meetings. The same problematics was developed by the poet in the comedy "Banya": the Chief Boss Pobedonosikov, boasting of his previous services to the revolution (in which he did not participate), slows down the movement of the "time machine" forward.

Satirical works were also created by I. Ilf and E. Petrov, E. Schwartz, S. Mikhalkov, Yu. Olesha, M. Bulgakov and other writers.