Lecture 20-21. English romanticism

1. English romanticism: general characteristics.
2. Images and ideas of W. Blake.
3. Leikist Poetry (Lake School): Main Themes and Genres.
4. Creativity D.G.N. Byron: main problems and images.
5. Creativity V.Scott.

The very notion of romantic» arose in English literature back in the 17th century, in the era of the bourgeois revolution. Throughout the XVIII century. in England, many essential features of the romantic worldview were outlined - ironic self-esteem, anti-rationalism, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "original", "extraordinary", "inexplicable", craving for antiquity. And critical philosophy, and the ethics of rebellious individualism, and the principles of historicism, including the idea of ​​"folk" and "folk", developed over time precisely from English sources, but already in other countries, primarily in Germany and France. So the initial romantic impulses that arose in England returned to their native soil in a roundabout way. The decisive impetus that crystallized romanticism as a spiritual trend came to the British from outside. It was the impact of the French Revolution.

In England, at the same time, the so-called “quiet”, although in fact it was not at all quiet and very painful, revolution was taking place - industrial; its consequences were not only the replacement of the spinning wheel with a loom, and muscle strength with a steam engine, but also profound social changes: the peasantry disappeared, the proletariat, rural and urban, was born and grew, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, finally conquered the position of “master of life”.

The chronological framework of English romanticism almost coincides with German (1790 - 1820). The British, in comparison with the Germans, less propensity to theorize and a greater focus on poetic genres. Exemplary German Romanticism associated with prose (although almost all of his adherents wrote poetry), English - with poetry(although novels and essays were also popular).English romanticism is focused on the problems of the development of society and humanity as a whole. The English romantics have a sense of the catastrophic nature of the historical process.

Poets of the Lake School (W. Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, R. Southey) idealize antiquity, sing of patriarchal relations, nature, simple, natural feelings. The work of the poets of the "lake school" is imbued with Christian humility, they tend to appeal to the subconscious in man.

Romantic poems on medieval plots and historical novels by W. Scott are distinguished by an interest in native antiquity, in oral folk poetry.

The main theme of the work of J. Keats, a member of the "London Romantics" group, which in addition to him included Ch. Lam, W. Hazlitt, Lee Hunt, is the beauty of the world and human nature.

Major poets of English Romanticism Byron and Shelley, poets of the "storm", carried away by the ideas of struggle. Their element is political pathos, sympathy for the oppressed and disadvantaged, protection of individual freedom. Byron remained true to his poetic ideals until the end of his life, death found him in the thick of the "romantic" events of the Greek War of Independence. The images of rebel heroes, individualists with a sense of tragic doom, for a long time retained their influence on all European literature, and following the Byronian ideal was called "Byronism".

Images and ideas of W. Blake

An early, bright and at the same time insufficiently recognized phenomenon of English romanticism was the work of William Blake (1757-1827). He was the son of an average London merchant, his haberdasher father, noticing his son's ability to draw early, sent him first to an art school, and then as an apprentice to an engraver. In London, Blake spent his whole life and became, to a certain extent, the poet of this city, although his imagination was torn upwards, into transcendental spheres. In drawings and poems, which he did not print, but engraved like drawings, Blake created his own special world. These are like waking dreams, and in his life Blake from an early age said that he saw miracles in broad daylight, golden birds in the trees, and in later years he said that he talked with Dante, Christ and Socrates. Although the professional environment did not accept him, Blake found true friends who helped him financially under the guise of "orders"; at the end of his life, which nevertheless turned out to be very difficult (especially in 1810 - 1819), a kind of friendly cult developed around him, as if as a reward. Blake was buried in the center of the City of London, next to Defoe, in the old Puritan cemetery, where preachers, propagandists and generals from the times of the 17th century revolution had previously found peace.

Just as Blake made homemade engraved books, so did he create an original homemade mythology, the components of which turned out to be taken by him in heaven and in the underworld, in the Christian and pagan religions, from old and new mystics.

The task of this special, rationalized religion is a universal synthesis. The combination of extremes, their connection through struggle - this is the principle of building Blake's world. Blake seeks to bring heaven to earth, or rather reunite them, the crown of his faith –deified person.

Blake created his main works in the 18th century. These are “Songs of Innocence” (1789) and “Songs of Experience” (1794), “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790), “The Book of Urizen” (1794). In the 19th century he wrote "Milton" (1804), "Jerusalem, or the Incarnation of the Giant Albion" (1804), "The Ghost of Abel" (1821).

In terms of genre and form, Blake's poetry is also a picture of contrasts. Sometimes these are lyrical sketches, short poems that capture a street scene or a movement of feeling; sometimes these are grandiose poems, dramatic dialogues, illustrated with equally large-scale author's drawings, in which–giants, gods, powerful human figures symbolizing Love, Knowledge, Happiness, or non-traditional symbolic creatures invented by Blake himself, such as Urizen and Los, personifying the forces of knowledge and creativity, or, for example, Theotormon - the embodiment of weakness and doubt. Blake's whimsical gods are meant to fill in the gaps in the already known mythology. These are symbols of those forces that are not indicated either in ancient or biblical myths, but which, according to the poet, exist in the world and determine the fate of man. Everywhere and in everything, Blake sought to look deeper, further than was customary.

“In an instant to see eternity and the sky - in a cup of a flower » –Blake's central principle. It's about seeing from the inside, not the outside. In every grain of sand, Blake sought to see a reflection of the spiritual essence.

Blake's poetry and all his work is a protest against the leading tradition of British thinking, empiricism. The notes left by Blake in the margins of the writings of Bacon, the "father of modern science," really show how alien Blake was from the beginning to this fundamental principle of modern thinking. For him, Baconian "certainty" is the worst lie, just as Newton appears in Blake's pantheon as a symbol of evil and deceit.

Poetry Blake contains all the main ideas that will become the main ones for romanticism, although in its contrasts an echo of the rationalism of the previous era is still felt. Blake perceived the world as an eternal renewal and movement, which makes his philosophy related to the ideas of the German philosophers of the romantic period. At the same time, he was able to see only what his imagination revealed to him.

Blake wrote: "The world is an infinite vision of Fantasy or Imagination." These words define the foundations of his work: Democracy and humanism. Beautiful and bright images appear in the first cycle (Songs of Innocence), they are overshadowed by the image of Jesus Christ. In the introduction to the second cycle, one can feel the tension and uncertainty that arose during this period in the world, the author sets a different task, and among his poems there is "Tiger". In the first two lines, an image contrasting with the Lamb (lamb) is created. For Blake, the world is one, although it consists of opposites. This idea would become fundamental to romanticism.

As a revolutionary romantic, Blake consistently rejects the gospel's central message of humility and submissiveness. Blake firmly believed that the people would win in the end, that on the green soil of England "Jerusalem" would be built, a just, classless society of the future.

Leikist poetry: main themes and genres

LAKE SCHOOLpoets, a group of English, romantic poets con. 18 - beg. 19 centuries, who lived in the north of England, in the "land of the lakes" (the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland).

Poets of the "Lake School" W. Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge And R. Southey also known under the name "leukists" (from English, lake-lake). Contrasting their work with the classicist and enlightenment tradition of the 18th century, they carried out a romantic reform in English poetry.

At first, warmly welcoming the Great French Revolution, the poets of the "Lake School" subsequently recoiled from it, not accepting the Jacobin terror; political the views of the "leukists" became more and more reactionary over time. Rejecting the rationalistic ideals of the Enlightenment, the poets of the "Lake School" opposed them faith in the irrational, in traditional Christian values, in an idealized medieval past.

Over the years, there has been a decline in the very poetic. creativity of the "leukists". However, their early, best works are still the pride of English poetry. The "Lake School" had a great influence on the younger generation of English romantic poets (J. G. Byron, P. B. Shelley, J. Keats). The poets of the "lake school" (W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, R. Southey) idealize antiquity, sing of patriarchal relations, nature, simple, natural feelings. The work of the poets of the "lake school" is imbued with Christian humility, they tend to appeal to the subconscious in man.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), the son of a lawyer who was in charge of the affairs of an aristocratic landowner, was born in the north of England, in Cumberland, the edge of the lakes. He studied at a local school and at the University of Cambridge. After traveling around the country and traveling to the continent (primarily to France), Wordsworth returned to his native land and settled here with his poet friends.

After "Lyrical Ballads" (1798), published by him jointly with Coleridge, the assertion of the reputation of Wordsworth, which he retained, began to become canonical: Wordsworth is considered by the British to be one of the greatest lyric poets.

Wordsworth's legacy, in proportion to his long life, is quite extensive. These are lyrical poems, ballads, poems, of which the most famous are "The Walk" (1814), "Peter Bell" (1819), "The Charioteer" (1805 - 1819), "Prelude" (1805 -1850), which is a spiritual autobiography of the poet . He left, in addition, several volumes of correspondence, a lengthy description of the lake district and a number of articles, among which a special place is occupied by the preface to the second edition (1800) of Lyric Ballads, which played such a significant role in English literature that it is called the Preface ”: it’s like an “introduction” to a whole poetic era.

The 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads retained the original idea of ​​a brief pre-notification, which was that these were experimental verses, that they were a “test of public taste”, but otherwise the introduction grew due to discussions about the norms of poetic language and the creative process. In principle, the "Preface" is a manifesto of naturalness, understood broadly: as life itself, reflected in poetry, as a direct way of expression devoid of artificiality.

The main creative merit of Wordsworth as a poet lies in the fact that he seemed to speak in verse - without visible tension and generally accepted poetic conventions. Now, of course, much in his poems looks traditional, but at one time it seemed "strange vernacular."

The Lyric Ballads opened with Coleridge's Tale of the Old Mariner and Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, two poets' paramount works and epoch-making poetry. Unlike the poets of the previous era, the romantic poet paints not only what he sees, feels, thinks, he seeks to capture the very process of experiencing - how he sees, hears, thinks: poetic psychologism, sometimes expressed with elegant, transparent simplicity. Wordsworth's poetic speech is sometimes really so natural that the verses seem to disappear altogether, revealing the poetry of life itself. The ordinary world and simple speech - such a theme and such a style quite organically expressed Wordsworth's life philosophy.

The poet depicted in his poems an unpretentious life, from feverishly growing cities he called to the eternal peace of nature, showing the philosophical and utopian conservatism that was generally characteristic of most romantics, which was a reaction to bourgeois progress. With Wordsworth this conservatism eventually passed into political reactionaryness; but to the extent that the reminder of world harmony, of the unity of man and nature, served as a necessary correction to soulless entrepreneurship, in which they saw the leading trend of the time, to that extent Wordsworth's lyrics are an expression of feelings that are truly wholesome and attractive.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), the tenth son of a provincial priest, early showed both brilliant abilities and inclinations that brought him misfortune. He entered the University of Cambridge and, for unclear reasons, left his studies. From the age of nineteen, while still a student, he began to take opium and became a lifelong slave of this drug. Coleridge actually ended his life as a long-term home patient in the family of a patient and devoted doctor friend.

Coleridge experienced his highest creative upsurge at the beginning of his literary career, on the eve of the publication of Lyrical Ballads. This, in the words of biographers, "the time of miracles" (1797 - 1798) actually lasted less than a year. During this time, Coleridge wrote The Tale of the Old Mariner, began Khan Kubla and Christabel, wrote some other ballads and his best lyric poems (Midnight Frost, Nightingale, Hymn Before Sunrise, Wordsworth "). The ballads, together with The Tale of the Old Sailor, were included in the famous collection published jointly with Wordsworth. “Khan Kubla” and “Kristabel” remained “fragments” as a special romantic genre approved by the romantics. Published many years later (1816), they literally stunned contemporaries: Shelley, having heard "Christabel" from Byron's lips, almost fainted.

The leading poetic thought of Coleridge is about the constant presence in life of the inexplicable, mysterious, difficult to comprehend. The mystery breaks into the normal course of life suddenly, as it happens in The Tale of the Old Sailor: the narration does not unfold from the beginning, it is presented as if in a hurry and, moreover, by an unusual narrator - an old sailor who stopped a young man who was going to a wedding feast and "stuck him in his burning gaze.

For the history of literature, Coleridge's prose is also important, autobiographical and critical, which amounted to several volumes in total and surpassed the poetic heritage of the poet in volume: Shakespeare's lectures (first given in 1812 - 1813), "Literary Biography" (1815 - 1817), fragmentary notes "Falling Leaves" (1817) and "Table Phrasebook", which Coleridge led in the last years of his life and which was published shortly after his death (1835). This book aroused Pushkin's interest and suggested to him his own "phrase book".

"The Tale of the Old Sailor" by S. Coleridge

The narration does not unfold from the beginning, it is presented as if in a hurry and, moreover, by an unusual narrator - an old sailor who stopped a young man on his way to the wedding feast and "stabbed him with a burning look." The reader is destined for the role of this young man: the poem should just as well take him by surprise, and, judging by the reaction of his contemporaries, Coleridge actually succeeded in this - under the cover of the ordinary, the fantastic opens up, which, in turn, suddenly turns into the ordinary, and then again the fantastic . The old sailor tells how one day, having finished loading, their ship went on its usual course, and suddenly a squall came up.

This flurry is not just a storm - metaphysical evil or revenge overtakes a person who has violated the eternal order in nature: a sailor, having nothing to do, killed an albatross, which accompanied, as usual, a ship at sea. For this, the elements take revenge on the entire team, falling on the ship either with the wind, or with a dead calm, or with cold, or with scorching heat. Sailors are doomed to a painful death mainly from thirst, and if the culprit of the misfortune alone remains alive, then only in order to suffer a special punishment: to be tormented by painful memories all his life. And the old sailor is relentlessly haunted by frightening visions, about which he, in order to somehow ease his soul, tries to tell the first person he meets. Chased, truly bewitching lines hypnotize the listener, and with it the reader, creating extraordinary and irresistible pictures: through the ship's rigging, the disk of the sun seems to be the face of a prisoner peeking out from behind the prison bars; a ghost ship is chasing an unfortunate ship; sailors-ghosts of the dead crew surround their unlucky comrade with curses.

In these bright (even too) pictures, the causal relationship of events is not always visible, therefore, explanations of what is happening are immediately given in the margins: “The Old Navigator, violating the laws of hospitality, kills a benevolent bird,” etc. Psychologism breaks through the conditional decorativeness, everything means - from the brightest verbal colors to autocommentary - are used for the expressive reproduction of experiences, whether they are hallucinations that occur after many days of thirst, or a purely physical sensation of solid ground under one's feet.

Each state of mind is transmitted in dynamics, Coleridge captures in his poems a state of drowsiness, dreams, a sense of elusive time, this was his creative contribution not only to poetry, but also to the development of all literature.

The Romantic World and Romantic Poetics of D. Keats' Creativity

John Keats (1795 - 1821) came from a solid, friendly middle-bourgeois urban family, over which, however, fate seemed to weigh. Keats had not yet left his youth when his parents died: his father, who kept a cart stable in the City, was killed by falling from his horse; mother died of tuberculosis. In the autumn of 1820, Keats, accompanied by a faithful friend, went to Italy, where he died at the beginning of 1821. A year later, the ashes of the drowned Shelley were buried in the same cemetery. During his short life, marred by illness, Keats managed to publish almost everything he created. In less than four years from the moment he began to publish, he published three books - two collections (1817, 1820), which included sonnets, odes, ballads, the poems "Lamia", "Isabella", and a separate edition of the poem "Endymion "(1817); a number of poems, including "Lady Without Mercy", appeared in the press.

Keats' lyrics are, like those of other romantics, states of mind and heart captured in poetry. The reasons can be very diverse, the objects are innumerable, deliberately random, they are brought to the surface by the course of life. Reading the Iliad, the chirping of a grasshopper, the singing of a nightingale, a visit to Burns's house, receiving a friendly letter or a laurel wreath, a change of mood, as well as the weather, all lead to the writing of poetry. Keats takes another step in poetry towards the direct reflection of feelings, achieving the effect of being present when emotions move and - the pen, grabbing them on the fly.

Poetic self-observation is sometimes directly announced as the theme, the task of the poem, as, for example, in the sonnet written "On the occasion of the first reading of Homer in Chapman's translation." Keats seeks to convey the sense of belonging that gripped him to the Homeric world, which until then had remained closed to him. The sonnet does not explain what the poet read and about, it only speaks of the uniqueness of the experience, similar to revelation: the experience, and not the object that caused it, becomes the main one.

In the sonnet “The Grasshopper and the Cricket,” the poet again gives a sketch of his state: winter half-asleep, through which he hears the chirping of a cricket and recalls the summer crackle of a grasshopper.

Several odic poems included in the second collection of Keats and respectively called "Ode to Melancholy", "Ode to Psyche", etc., in turn, are detailed psychological studies. Dreams, dreams, the work of the imagination, the course of creativity are represented here by a scattering of unexpected pictures, images, symbols, caused in the mind of the poet by a nightingale's song.

Aesthetic views and creativity of Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was a representative of English romanticism and a remarkable lyric poet. However, on the whole, his work differs from Byron's poetry primarily in its greatest optimism. Even in the darkest poems, Shelley always comes to life-affirming conclusions. “Tomorrow will come” - this phrase of the poet is the best epigraph to his works.

In the great philosophical poem "A Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (1816), Shelley holds the idea that the sense of beauty is the highest manifestation of the human spirit, which makes man the crown of creation. Beautiful works of art and nature, which bear the stamp of beauty, are immortal. However, the style of this poem is complicated and romantically "obscured", complex metaphors and comparisons make it extremely difficult to read.

Shelley's best work of 1816 is the poem "Alastor, or the Spirit of Loneliness". This lyrical work tells of a young poet who seeks to escape from human society, which he despises, into the beautiful world of nature and find happiness in this world. However, he searches in vain for his ideal of love and beauty among the desert rocks and picturesque valleys. "Tormented by the demon of passion", a lonely young man dies. Nature punishes him because he moved away from people, because he wanted to become higher than their sorrows and joys. Shelley denounces the individualism that became widespread in those years due to the apathy and stagnation that prevailed in public life.

Shelley's talent was predominantly lyrical. It was in Italy that he created the main masterpieces of his beautiful lyrics. His poems amaze with the strength and immediacy of feeling, musicality, variety and novelty of rhythms; they are saturated with vivid metaphors and epithets, rich in internal rhymes and alliteration. Shelly is sensitive to nature. In lyrical poems, the poet draws pictures of a serene blue sea, merging with the azure of heaven, he conveys the impressions that were born in his soul at the sight of the beauties of Italy. Fragrant lemon groves grow green everywhere, autumn leaves sparkle with gold, cool silvery streams murmur, spotted lizards hide under stones. Sometimes the thoughts of the poet rush to a distant homeland.

Shelley's descriptions of nature are deeply philosophical. Such is a series of poems known under the general name "Variability", the poem "Cloud" and some others. They affirm the idea of ​​the immortality of nature, its eternal development. The poet, as it were, draws a parallel between "variability" in the life of society and in the life of nature.

The general tone of Shelley's poetry is deeply optimistic: just as spring follows winter, so the age of social disasters and wars is inevitably replaced by an age of peace and prosperity. The theme of invincibility and immortality of the forces of life and freedom is expressed, for example, in "Ode to the West Wind". The theme of the "west wind", the destructive wind, is a traditional theme in English poetry. Before Shelley, many poets developed it. However, in Shelley this theme receives a completely different interpretation. For him, the autumn west wind is not so much a destructive force that destroys all living things, all the beauty of summer with its breath, but the keeper of the forces of new life.

Shelley is fond of the art and literature of ancient Hellas, he is close to the plastic images of ancient Greek art and the atheistic teachings of Greek materialist philosophers. Shelley's favorite image from childhood was the image of the great philanthropist - the titan Prometheus, who stole fire in heaven for people, openly opposed the tyranny of Zeus, who tried to "destroy people." Shelley believed that modern Greeks inherited all the valor, intelligence and talent of their ancestors.

When Shelley learned about the preparations in Greece for an uprising against the yoke of the Turks, his joy and exultation knew no bounds. Impressed by this news, Shelley creates his lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound. Undoubtedly, Shelley's optimistic ideas were closely connected with the romantic aspirations of the poet.

In the lyrical drama "Freed Prometheus" was again resolved important for democracy in the 20s of the XIX century. the problem of the uprising and overthrow of the reactionary authorities with the help of physical force: Hercules, the personification of the power of the revolutionary people, frees the prisoner of Jupiter - Prometheus, breaking his chains.

Shelley introduced new words and phrases into poetry, generated by that turbulent, critical era; heroic tone, march-like rhythms are combined with his sincere lyrics. Colorful comparisons and vivid images perfectly match the juicy brilliance of Shelley's poetry, vividly reflect his worldview, dreams of a just society and equality for all.

Romanticism as a literary trend emerged at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, in the era of transition from the feudal system to the bourgeois one.

The formation of romanticism takes place during and after the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794. This revolution was the most important moment in the history of not only France, but also other countries. Significance of the historical experience of the French bourgeois revolution for the XIX century. very large. The collapse of the feudal-noble world, the triumph of new social relations caused important shifts in people's minds.

The socio-historical soil of romanticism in England had its own characteristics.

The bourgeois revolution took place in the country in the middle of the 17th century. Dissatisfaction with the consequences of the industrial revolution ripened among the people. The transition to machine production enriched only entrepreneurs, while the working and living conditions of ordinary people worsened.

Romantic culture is a reflection of the process of alienation of the individual in bourgeois society.

The image of the individual as self-valuable, not dependent on ugly social circumstances, which are sharply condemned by romantics.

This person lives in his own unique, individual inner world and, not accepting reality, creates himself, with the help of his imagination, an ideal world.

Personality psychology is characterized by the expectation of change, the desire for something new. Human psychology is characterized by an individualistic character.

In the aesthetics of romanticism, the sublime and beautiful occupy a large place. Romantics considered imagination the highest form of knowledge. Poetic imagination was placed above reason, just as poetry was declared the most important form of human activity. Romantics highly valued in art its moral impact on the souls of people. Romantics admired the genius of Shakespeare. The Romantics gave reason a subordinate place in relation to feeling and intuition; reason was recognized to the extent that it helped the work of the imagination.

Romantics are characterized by an appeal to nature, in which they seek harmony and beauty, an appeal to folk art.

Romantics opposed the sharp division of the tragic and the comic in art, against strict rules in the selection of vocabulary.

A romantic work is characterized by a special emotional atmosphere of high feelings and passions, sincerity and immediacy of emotions, free composition.

It is believed that romantic art is not characterized by humor.

Indeed, the comic among romantics is inferior to tragic themes. However, one can note the humor in the essays of Charles Lam, in a number of poems by Byron and Shelley. Romantic art always reflects modern life, responds to the problems of the times.

Political disagreements between individual groups of romantics led to the formation of various currents:

In English romanticism, there were three main currents: "leukists" (poets of the "lake school") - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; revolutionary romantics - Byron and Shelley; London romantics - Keith, Lam, Hazlitt, Hunt.

Romanticism in England is distinguished by its national identity. In the works of English romantics, the national tradition of depicting life is reflected. Enlightenment ideas are strong in English romanticism (by Byron, Scott, Hazlitt).

In English Romanticism, the sublime is not always understood as exceptional. Often the sublime is revealed in the simple, the ordinary. Imagination reveals the wonderful, the magnificent in the most ordinary and everyday.

Romantic art as a whole was distinguished by the novelty of its vision of life and in its own way reflected the truth of life, conveyed the character of the era.

William Blake (1757-1827)

The founder of romanticism in English literature, William Blake, during his lifetime was known as an engraver and artist. His poems were published posthumously. In literary circles, interest in Blake's poetry arose in the 60s of the 19th century.

Blake's passionate poetry contains great philosophical generalizations covering the fate of the whole world. Outraged by social injustice, the poet demands an active attitude towards life. The poetry of Blake himself is a boiling of passions and feelings.

A denouncer of the established church, Blake was not, however, an atheist. Criticizing the Christian religion, he professed a "religion of humanity."

The radical moods of the poet are expressed in the pre-romantic ballad "King Gwyn", which is folkloric in spirit and is included in the first poem in Blake's collection "Poetic Sketches". The theme of this ballad is a popular uprising against the tyranny of King Gwyn.

During the period of the French bourgeois revolution, Blake's best poetry collections were created: "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience". The characters in this collection are children. The poems are imbued with a mood of joy and happiness.

In the poems "Child-Joy", "Evening Song" the love of life is conveyed. Joy already lies in the fact that a person has been given life, that he lives. In the poem "Holy Thursday" the poet admires the children. Purity of the soul, a bright perception of life are associated with childhood. But already in the "Songs of Innocence" a joyful attitude is sometimes replaced by an anxious mood.

The bright emotions of the "Songs of Innocence" are opposed by the mournful and bitter feelings of the "Songs of Experience", which reveal the other side of being. In the depiction of the fate of children, the tragic situation of the people in the conditions of bourgeois England is revealed.

"Songs of Experience" are sad reflections on the tragedy of life, an angry accusation of cruelty and injustice of social relations. The main idea of ​​"Songs of Experience" is gaining wisdom.

The poem "The Little Chimney Sweep" tells about the difficult childhood of the poor.

The result of Blake's poetic work was the Prophetic Books, on which he worked in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The "Prophetic Books" consist of a series of poems, usually subdivided into two groups. By its nature, the "Prophetic Books" are lyric-philosophical poems in which the problems of the fate of the world and mankind are posed.

The "Prophetic Books" affirm the idea of ​​the significance of the French Revolution for humanity, expresses the poet's belief in the future harmony of being, in the triumph of freedom, labor and creativity.

Criticizing despotism and religion, Blake opposes religious dogmas with his idea of ​​the divine dignity of man. In the "Prophetic Books" the dream is expressed of the time when the end of slavery on earth will come, man will be free and harmony and beauty will triumph.

Blake's poems, written in blank verse, expressed the basic principles of his aesthetics.

There are no individual images in Blake's poetry; the poet turns to symbolism, fantasy. In Blake's style, the dialectic of the struggle between good and evil, the movement of history and its exceptional moments are conveyed.

One of the characteristic features of romantic poetry in England appeared in Blake's poems - a combination of irony and pathos, satire and lyricism.

Blake was translated into Russian by K.D.Balmont and S.Ya.Marshak.

Blake's place in the history of English poetry is determined by the fact that he developed a rethinking of biblical symbols and prepared the revolutionary romantic philosophical poetry of Byron and Shelley.

lake school

The group of Romantics who made up the Lake School included Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. They are united not only by the fact that they lived in the north of England, in the land of lakes (hence they are called "leukists", from lake - lake), but some common features of their ideological and creative path.

At the beginning of their creative activity, they are characterized by rebellious moods, they welcome the French bourgeois revolution, but later, disappointed in its results, they lose faith in active struggle and move to conservative positions.

They pave the way for Romantic art in England. This is the progressive meaning of their work in the 80s and 90s, but later they turn more and more to the ideas of passivity and humility.

They influenced Byron and Shelley.

Shelley created a parody of Wordsworth's poem "Peter Bell", but he also paid homage to this poet in the sonnet "To Wordsworth".

A certain commonality of the ideological and creative positions of the poets of the "lake school" does not mean the identity of views and talent.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were truly gifted. Southey's modest talent was combined with reactionaryness. Robert Southey in the 90s created a number of accusatory works, wrote a drama about the peasant uprising "Wat Tyler". But already in the drama The Fall of Robespierre, written jointly with Coleridge, his departure from radical moods is revealed. In the late 90s, Southey wrote ballads on medieval themes, in which religious ideas are expressed and supernatural images are given.

Southey's evolution from rebellious moods to mysticism and religions of humility was reflected in the poems: "Talaba the Destroyer", "Madok", "The Curse of Kehama". The content of the poem "Vision of the Court" is reactionary in nature.

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Byron's romanticism is folk in its essence.

Byron was committed to enlightenment ideals and the aesthetics of classicism, but he was a romantic poet. The worship of reason is accompanied by the thought of the unreasonableness of modern reality. The ideas of the enlighteners appear in Byron's work in a new form. The poet no longer has an optimistic faith in the omnipotence of reason. The pathos of Byron's life and work is in the struggle against tyranny. His main dream was the dream of the freedom of mankind.

Byron's personality is highly controversial. Various principles struggle in his mind and creativity - the desire to fight for the liberation of peoples from tyranny and individualistic moods. Believing that freedom will triumph in the future, the poet cannot rid himself of pessimism.

Byron studied at Cambridge University, was fond of history, read the works of the Enlightenment, wanted to become a politician.

The first collections of his poems were published anonymously. These are “Flying sketches”, “Poems for different occasions”. Under his own name, Byron begins to publish with the collection Leisure Hours. Already in these youthful poems, the themes of a break with a hypocritical and cruel society are outlined.

The satirical poem "English Bards and Scottish Reviewers" became a bold entry into the literary and social life of England. Byron comes out with sharp attacks on almost all modern English literature for neglecting the truth of life and for turning to mysticism.

In 1812 Byron speaks in the House of Lords in defense of the interests of the Irish people.

Realizing the difficulties of the struggle against the forces of evil, seeing the cruelty of the modern regime, Byron experiences moods of longing and despair. In the spiritual atmosphere of loneliness, Byron creates his romantic "oriental" poems: "Gyaur", "Bride of Abydos", "Corsair", "Lara", "Siege of Corinth", "Parisina".

The main problem of all "Eastern" poems is the problem of personality in its collision with society. The romantic hero of the "eastern" poems is an individualist, an exceptional personality. The hero breaks with society, not wanting to put up with injustice; he takes the path of struggle. The meaning of this outcast's life is in the struggle against despotism and in love for a pure, devoted woman. The action of the "Eastern" poems takes place mainly in Greece, and the author relies on his personal impressions in describing the national "Eastern" flavor.

Byron's cycle of lyrical poems "Jewish Melodies" is distinguished by great passion of feelings. These poems were set to music.

Following Milton, Byron turns to biblical motifs, but the lyrical theme of the poems is connected with the poet's experiences caused by modern events, the modern position of the individual in society.

In 1815-1816. the poems of the Napoleonic cycle are published. Byron in these verses expresses his attitude towards the personality of Napoleon. The character of an outstanding personality is evaluated by the poet in connection with the cause of freedom. Attitude towards Napoleon is changing. In some poems, Napoleon is described sympathetically, but in the "Ode from the French" a critical assessment of the tyrant was indicated.

The persecution of the poet by the English bourgeois-aristocratic society, dissatisfied with the freedom-loving nature of his work, as well as the painful situation created in connection with the family drama (the break with his wife Annabela Milbank), caused Byron to leave England, and he was no longer destined to return to homeland.

In the Swiss period of creativity, Byron creates pessimistic poems filled with hopeless longing and torment: "Dream", "Darkness".

The philosophical drama "Manfred" is devoted to the theme of the loneliness of a rebellious personality. This is a poem about the inner world of a hero reflecting on his life. Dissatisfied with life and himself, the hero of the poem moves away from society to the mountains, where he lives as a hermit. Manfred seeks to comprehend the meaning of life.

In the poem "Prometheus" Byron painted the image of a hero, a titan, persecuted because he wants to alleviate the human pain of those living on earth. Almighty Rock chained him as a punishment for his good desire to "put an end to misfortunes."

Since 1817, the Italian period of Byron's work begins. The poet creates his works in the context of the growing movement of the Carbonari for the freedom of Italy. Byron himself was a member of this national liberation movement.

In Italy, the poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" was completed. Childe Harold is a dreamer who breaks with hypocritical society. Childe Harold rushes to distant lands. Childe Harold does not fight, he only looks at the modern world, trying to comprehend its tragic state. In some ways, the image of Childe Harold is close to the author: a feeling of loneliness, an escape from high society, a protest against hypocrisy.

The historical tragedy "The Two Foscari" is dedicated to the Italian theme.

The mystery of "Cain" is the largest work of the late Byron. This is a lyrical drama. Based on the material of the well-known biblical legend, the poet raises modern philosophical problems. The biblical image of Cain is rethought by Byron. It is no longer a symbol of evil; the murder of Abel is committed by Cain by the evil will of Jehovah. Cain himself appears in the poem as the embodiment of humanity and kindness; exalted is Cain's love for Ada.

Cain is a rebel, a hero striving for action in the name of truth, goodness and happiness. When the question arises of choosing a life path, he chooses the path of heroic struggle. The hero fights against the injustice and despotism of Jehovah. Cain believes in good.

The poem "Cain" is written in blank verse. The poem was translated into Russian by I. Bunin.

In the early 1920s, Byron created the satirical poems The Vision of the Court, The Irish Avatar, and The Bronze Age.

"Vision of Judgment"- political satire. The satire is directed against the poet Robert Southey and against the King George III sung by him. Byron parodies Southey's work of the same name.

"Don Juan"
The adventures of Don Juan differ significantly from the pilgrimage of the romantic Childe Harold. If the dreamer Childe Harold is shown against the backdrop of heroic events, then Don Juan, an ordinary man, "ready for anything", is depicted in the circumstances of his private life.

In Don Juan, Byron takes the next step towards realism, although the poem as a whole remains a romantic work. The romanticism of the poem is in the all-penetrating lyrical feeling. Byron considered his poem "an epic satire".

"Don Juan" is a satire on modern society, although the time of action is attributed to the period preceding the French bourgeois revolution. Turning to the theme of Don Juan, Byron essentially creates a character that does not look like a traditional seducer. Byron's Don Juan is an image of a natural person who lives by earthly passions. The sincerity of the hero's behavior comes into conflict with the hypocrisy of bourgeois society, where moral concepts are perverted.

Don Juan is forced to adapt to circumstances for the sake of saving his life or for the sake of sensual pleasures, but he is morally superior to those around him.

The basis of the plot of the poem is the adventures of Don Juan. Don Juan's upbringing was "admirably virtuous." He was taught dead languages ​​and scholasticism, but he remained a lively and spontaneous youth. A love story with a married lady forces the hero to leave his homeland. Inessa sends her son to foreign lands, fearing a scandal.

Boarding the ship, Don Juan says goodbye to Spain. After a shipwreck, surviving thanks to his courage, Don Juan finds himself on an island where he meets the beautiful Hyde, the daughter of the pirate Lambro. Love for Gaide, the idyll of short and happy days spent on the seashore, suddenly ends.

Lambro appears at a sumptuous feast hosted by Hyde in honor of his lover. On his orders, Don Juan is seized and sold into slavery in Turkey. Hyde dies of grief.

Lambro is a romantic hero who takes revenge on the whole world for his desecrated homeland - Greece. Nevertheless, he remains the bearer of evil. The image of the cruelty of the world is connected with his image. The third canto of the poem includes a hymn dedicated to Greece, calling for the struggle for freedom.

At the slave market, Don Juan is bought by Sultana Gulbey. However, Don Juan refuses to accept her love, even on pain of death. Together with the British John Johnson, he flees from Constantinople and ends up in the camp of Suvorov.

Don Juan shows miracles of courage and one of the first breaks into the fortress. Suvorov sends him to Petersburg to report on the capture of Ishmael by the Russians. At the court of Catherine II, who made Don Juan her favorite, he is in the spotlight. However, very soon, under the pretext of improving his health, Don Juan goes on a secret mission to England.

The idea of ​​England as a country where freedom reigns is exposed in the scene of Don Juan arriving in Britain: he had to immediately fight the robbers.

Don Juan is accepted in high society. He is invited to his place by Lord Henry Amondeville. Boredom hovers in high society. Being in the circle of Amondeville, Don Juan draws attention to the modest girl Aurora Rabbi, who does not look like hypocritical representatives of high society. Fascinated by Aurora, Don Giovanni nevertheless succumbs to the desires of the socialite Countess Fitz-Falk.

The lyrical digressions of the poem speak of the inevitability of the growth of revolutionary sentiment. The people will not want to "keep" kings these days.

Byron participated in the national liberation movement of the Greek people. A number of freedom-loving works were written in Greece. FROM great feeling Byron wrote about Greece, the land of heroes. Byron gave his life fighting for the freedom of Greece. He died at Missolungi on April 19, 1824.

The "Byronic" hero is a restless person, dissatisfied with modern reality, a rebellious, disappointed and lonely person.

Byron was translated into Russian by V.A. Zhukovsky, M.Yu. Lermontov, A.N. Pleshcheev, K.D. Balmont, S.Ya.

Byron's revolutionary romanticism was of world significance. Byron's work is one of the brightest pages in the national literary heritage of England.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Percy Bysshe Shelley in his works staged actual problems time. His political poetry was an expression of people's aspirations for liberation from the bourgeois-monarchist regime.

Shelley's revolutionary beliefs formed the basis of his friendship with Byron, but there were also differences between them. Byron's work clearly showed a tendency to move from abstract symbolic images to real ones. Shelley's artistic system is characterized by complex symbolism and vivid metaphor.

Yielding to Byron in the skill of depicting popular movements, Shelley also had an advantage over him.

Byron was often fond of the sympathetic portrayal of the individualist hero, Shelley denounced individualism in any of its manifestations. Byron was skeptical about the future. Shelley ardently believed in a happy future and painted in his poems joyful utopian pictures of the life of a liberated humanity.

Shelley attended Oxford University but was expelled. In 1812 Shelley acted as a defender of the interests of the Irish people. The Irish problem became the content of his pamphlets. Freedom-loving ideas are expressed in the pamphlet "Declaration of Rights".

Shelley's political, moral and ethical views were formed under the influence of the French Enlightenment.

Philosophical poem by Shelley "Queen Mab". The development of the author's thought about historical progress.

The sorceress Queen Mab steals the soul of the sleeping Ianta (a symbol of humanity) and together with her in a winged chariot rushes to the starry worlds. Here Queen Mab shows Iante the cruelty of the past and the present and contrasts them with a picture of the future. The scene of the poem is the universe, but the author characterizes quite earthly phenomena - tyranny, huckstering, religion.

Shelley reveals ugly social relationships. Society destroys people's talents. Poverty and hard work killed the energy of the unknown Miltons, the unknown Catons and Newtons.

Shelley denounces religion. God is presented in the poem as a tyrant. Denying the Christian God, while maintaining an enlightening faith in reason. The poem contains a call to fight against tyranny.

Shelley paints a utopian picture of the future. Deserts will be turned into pastures, cold climates will be replaced by warm ones. The person will become free and happy.

Shelley's poem was a response to contemporary popular movements. "Rise of Islam". In it, the poet embodied his ideal of revolution.

A picture of an uprising against tyranny. Not only the central heroes - Laon and Sitna, but also the people participate in the revolutionary struggle. Shelley leads his characters to believe that tyranny must be actively fought.

The heroic theme in Shelley's work found its most vivid expression in a philosophical poem. "Freed Prometheus".

Shelley decided to present his Prometheus not reconciled, not flinching in the face of an insidious adversary; he embodied in his image the best human qualities: the greatness of the soul, fearlessness before the power of evil.

In 1819, Shelley creates a tragedy written in blank verse - "Cenci". The plot is based on the facts of the 16th century concerning the history of the death of the Chenci family. The tragedy of "Cenci" called for a fight against any manifestation of despotism. The heroine of the play is capable of a bold, courageous act, but she is alone in her struggle.

IN "Ode to the West Wind" the symbolic image of the West Wind expresses the idea of ​​renewal of life. The West Wind destroys everything old in its path and contributes to the creation of a new one.

The theme of love is a poem "Epipsychhidion". In symbolic form, the poet speaks of his feelings for Emilia Viviani. True love is ideal, it is based on mutual understanding, intellectual communication; love is omnipotent, it conquers evil, freeing people from darkness.

Shelley created wonderful lyrical poems - reflections on art and the tragic fate of the poet. In the poem "To the Lark" true art is compared to the song of a lark. Art should be as direct, pure and joyful as the captivating song of a free bird.

Shelley's poems "Ode to the Defenders of Liberty", "Ode to Liberty", "Liberty", "Ode to Naples" sounded a solemn hymn to freedom. These works were written about the dramatic events of our time, but the poet does not give event specifics, it is important for him to convey an emotional reaction to them.

Shelley, as a romantic poet, seeks in the present that beauty in which the future is anticipated. Shelley is aware of the power of the impact of poetry on society. Admiring the beautiful images of poetry, people imitate them.

Shelley entered world literature as a tyrannical poet, glorifying the heroism of a beautiful freedom-loving personality who opposed social inequality.

The dream of a romantic poet is a happy future.

Shelley's lyrics had a great influence on the subsequent poetry of England, in particular the poetry of William Morris.

Walter Scott (1771-1832)

The work of Walter Scott is an important stage in the development of the literary process in England, reflecting the transition from romanticism to realism.

Scott relied on the achievements of the writers of the 18th century, considering Fielding his teacher. Walter Scott entered world literature as the creator of historical novel.

The writer lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, in that critical era when feudal relations were replaced by bourgeois ones. The change of eras sharpened interest in the past, in history. Scott combined in his work the study of history with the philosophical understanding of the events of the past and the brilliant artistic skill of the novelist.

Scott's contemporaries read his novels. They were highly appreciated by all the major writers and critics of the 19th century. The historicism of Scott's work was of great importance for the development of the realistic novel of the 19th century.

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Scott's father was a famous lawyer. Studied jurisprudence. The past of the homeland aroused keen interest in Scott. He begins to collect Scottish folklore, writes down ballads and songs, visits places of historical events, studies the history of Scotland, England and other European countries.

In 1802 Scott published two volumes of Scottish Folk Songs, which he began collecting from an early age. They reflected the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people who lived in ancient times; they sounded the voice of the people of Scotland. Following these collections, Scott's poems appeared - "The Song of the Last Minstrel", "Marmion", "Lady of the Lake", "Rockby".

Already the first of the poems was an extraordinary success and made the author famous. The "Song of the Last Minstrel" contains descriptions of medieval castles, Scottish landscapes, hunting scenes and fairy tale adventures.

Objectively, Scott recognized the right of the people to fight against oppression, but he was afraid of revolutionary changes, and he was frightened by the idea of ​​democracy.

During his life, Scott wrote 28 novels, several novels and short stories.

Many of his novels are devoted to the history of Scotland. The writer carefully studied the history of monuments, documents, costumes, customs. And yet, the main thing in Scott's novels is not the depiction of everyday life and customs, but the depiction of history in its movement and development.

The key novels with good reason can be considered "Rob Roy" and "Ivanhoe". In these two novels, the skill of Scott as a novelist was manifested in all its brilliance.

Novel related to Scotland "Rob Roy". The events described in it take place at the beginning of the 18th century. in the highlands of Scotland. The writer introduces us into an atmosphere of intense political struggle. The union of 1707 was imposed on the people of Scotland, by which Scotland was finally annexed to England. A conspiracy is brewing, preparations are underway for the uprising of 1715.

Young Frank Osbaldiston, who came from England to his uncle's estate, gets into the atmosphere of political struggle and intrigue. The main storyline of the novel is connected with the story of Frank. The novel reproduces the difficult living conditions of ordinary people inhabiting the beautiful Mountain Country. He embodies the features of the national avenger in the image of Rob Roy.

Rob Roy is a real-life leader of the Scottish Highlanders. Rob Roy went to the mountains and led a detachment of the same, like him, destitute highlanders. The image of a generous and courageous people's avenger, the memory of which, as "the Scottish Robin Hood - a thunderstorm of the rich, a friend of the poor", was forever preserved in the hearts of his compatriots.

The novel Ivanhoe.

The events take place at the end of the 12th century. It was a period of struggle between the Anglo-Saxons, who had lived on the territory of England for several centuries, and the conquerors - the Normans, who took possession of England at the end of the 11th century.

In the same period, there was a struggle for the centralization of royal power, the struggle of King Richard against the feudal lords. Scott's novel represents this difficult era.

The gallery of characters in the novel is diverse: representatives of the old Anglo-Saxon nobility (Cedric, Athelstan), Norman feudal lords and knights (Fron de Boeuf, de Malvoisin, de Bracy), peasant slaves (Gurt and Wamba), churchmen (Abbot Aimer, Grand Master Luke Bomanoar , monks), King Richard the Lionheart, leading the fight against the feudal clique led by his brother Prince John.

Scott paints a realistic picture of the cruelty of feudal orders and mores. Already at the very beginning of the story, the contrast between the beauty of majestic nature and the living conditions of the people is emphasized.

Two figures appear against the backdrop of a forest landscape; around the neck of each of them are put on metal rings, "like a dog collar, tightly sealed." One says: "Gurth, son of Beowulf, born slave of Cedric of Rotherwood"; on another, "Wamba, son of Whitliss the Brainless, slave of Cedric of Rotherwood."

Peasant slaves are talking about the state of affairs in the country. "We only have the air we breathe." In folk scenes and in folk characters, the connection between Scott's work and the folklore tradition was clearly manifested. First of all, this is felt in the image of Robin Hood, created on the basis of folk legends.

Scott described Robin Hood as a truly folk hero, a fighter against injustice. In the tradition of English folk art scenes of archery, a duel with clubs in the forest are written. In the spirit of folk poetry, images of the brave shooters of Robin Hood are also given, in particular, the cheerful joker, the reckless monk Tuk, who fights on the side of the peasants. Lover of drink and plenty of food. The knock brings to mind Shakespeare's Falstaff.

If in Ivanhoe Scott talks about the victory of feudal relations over patriarchal ones, then in a number of novels dedicated to the events of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, he refers to the depiction of the struggle of the bourgeoisie with the feudal order.

Scott objectively showed the historical inevitability of the collapse of the feudal system and the establishment of the bourgeois one.

Scott's historicism is also revealed in the novel "Puritans".

The novel tells about the events of 1679, when a Puritan uprising broke out in Scotland against the restored Stuart dynasty in 1660. In The Puritans, the fate of the Scot Henry Morton is shown. Initially a moderate Puritan, Henry Morton becomes one of the leaders of the rebellious Puritans. The cruelty of royal power forces him to take an active part in the struggle.

The figure of the hero, the story of his love is overshadowed by the turbulent flow of unfolding events, in this case - the struggle between the feudal and bourgeois camps.

These two social forces are represented in the novel by the images of the monarchist general Cloverhouse and one of the leaders of the Puritan uprising, Burleigh. In the image of the cruel aristocrat Claverhouse, the fanaticism of the royalists is shown, seeking by any means to crack down on the popular movement in order to assert their power. Claverhouse is opposed by Burleigh as an image that expresses the historical necessity of the performance of the Puritans.

The main pathos of the novel is due to the inclusion of wonderful, vivid folk images in it. The people in the novel "Puritans" have a central place.

The undeniable merit of Scott's novels was manifested in the artistically complete method of combining descriptions of private life with historical events.

As the creator of the genre of the historical novel, Walter Scott entered the world literature, taking a place in the first row of its best representatives.

English romanticism

Romanticism in English art appears already in the early 70s of the XVIII century.

The immediate impetus for the emergence of pre-romantic and romantic moods in English society was the agrarian-industrial revolution that began in the late 50s of the 18th century, this, according to F. Engels, “silent revolution”, as well as the war of the North American states for independence (1773-1778 ).

The agrarian-industrial revolution caused, on the one hand, the unrestrained growth of large industrial centers, huge industrial cities with a multimillion working population, which changed the face of the country beyond recognition; on the other hand, the agrarian-industrial revolution gave rise to glaring social disasters in the country, the impoverishment and final ruin of the countryside, the transformation of the rural population into poor paupers who were forced to replenish the army of unemployed proletarians in the cities; a whole class of free tillers, the so-called yeomen, by whose hands the English bourgeois revolution of the seventeenth century was carried out, completely disappears from the face of the earth around 1760. Colossal social transformations - the disappearance of some classes of the population and the creation of new classes - classes of industrial and agricultural proletarians - gave rise to an increase in crime, famine, prostitution, increased national and religious oppression in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the colonies, and this, in turn, caused unrest and riots among the workers of England, farmers in Scotland and Ireland, in the colonies and protectorates.

From the 60s and 70s of the 18th century, the first actions of the English working class began, which were still unorganized, immature in nature, but were of great importance for the development of advanced trends in English social thought and literature.

Ultimately, the labor movement owes its emergence to the then-advanced teaching of the great utopian socialists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Robert Owen in England, Charles Fourier, Mably Saint-Simon, and others in France), which had a huge impact not only on writers -romantics, but also critical realists of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century.

In the depths of the working class, by the beginning of the 90s of the 18th century, a “democratic party” arose, headed by republicans and revolutionary philosophers from among the petty bourgeoisie. The most significant of the leaders of this party was the London shoemaker Thomas Paine, the great American and English revolutionary who headed the so-called "London Correspondence Society", created initially for correspondence with the French revolutionaries, then rallied around itself the vanguard of democratic forces throughout the country, publishing its rich periodicals. . 1 Following the example of the London society, about 300 similar societies arose throughout the country. In Edinburgh, the society of Scottish republicans was called the "Convent".

The turbulent events of the American Revolution (1773-1778) and the Great French Bourgeois Revolution (1789-1794) greatly increased the activity populace Britain; the defeat of these revolutions, the collapse of the "brilliant promises of the Enlighteners", which promised the world after the overthrow of the feudal regime "eternal equality, freedom, fraternity and harmony in public life", gave rise to pessimism and despair among several generations of European democrats, created the basis for the emergence of an elegiac-romantic trend in art.

William Blake (1757-1827). The most prominent representative of early English romanticism was William Blake.

William Blake lived a long life full of tireless titanic work. This life is an example of heroic fortitude, loyalty to one's revolutionary convictions, and uncompromising honesty.

Like R. Burns, Blake very early discovered that the society in which he was born and lived is criminal, hypocritical, that it encourages dead, lifeless art, and that any truly gifted artist, if he only wants to remain a creative artist, does not have the right to put up with this society, its religion, philosophy, law, business practice, etc., but is obliged to oppose it, to deny all the institutions of this society, to wage continuous war against its official art. “Genius is angry,” Blake remarks. "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the nags of teaching."

Having made the discovery twenty years before Hegel that bourgeois society is hostile to art, relying in this opinion on the entire previous course of development of English literature and art from Shakespeare, Fielding and up to and including sentimental writers, Blake actively fought with his work against official art - as in painting (against the classicist Reynolds), and in poetry - against Dryden, Pope and court poets. And if Berne, having paid with an early death for his poetic feat, managed to tell many bitter truths into the eyes of possessive England, proclaiming a complete break between advanced art and the morality and religion of bourgeois Britain, then Blake could not break through the cordons of the Academy of Arts and London literary censorship. Moreover, after 1793, the British government, frightened by the growth of the labor and democratic movement, introduced the White Terror and brutally cracked down on every freedom-loving writer and artist. In the language of the Puritan revolutionaries of 1649, Blake wrote in his diary during the White Terror in England: "Defending the Bible in a real 1794 would have been tantamount to suicide."

Earning his living as an artisan-copymaker exploited by more prosperous and mediocre fellows, Blake selflessly created for the future in his hours free from earnings, fully aware that during his lifetime he was doomed to the tragedy of obscurity and non-recognition. “My heart is full of what is to come,” he wrote in an 1805 diary. Indeed, his brilliant achievements as a poet and graphic artist passed without a trace for his contemporaries. But his genius fertilized later Anglo-American literature. It would not be an exaggeration to say that his ideas and his accomplishments contributed in part to the formation of such exceptional talents as William Morris, Bernard Shaw, Walt Whitman, Meredith, T. Hardy, Longfellow, E. Dickenson, R. Frost, K. Sandburg and many others. others

According to the unanimous opinion of art historians and major artists, he is also the father of modern English book graphics.

William Blake was born in London, the son of a poor merchant. William had three brothers. The eldest, James, later became a merchant, he continued the work of his father. The favorite of the family - brother John, a merry fellow and careless reveler - enlisted in the colonial troops and died far from his homeland; two younger brothers - William and Robert - were bound by bonds of tender friendship all their lives (until the untimely death of Robert in 1789).

From childhood, William was distinguished by dreaminess, his imagination painted for him bright images of some beautiful angel-like creatures who talked to him in the garden, in the bedroom, in a dream. He told his mother about flights to some mountain world, where he was surrounded by beautiful fairies in white robes, they told him and sang about the exploits and valor of heroes, about distant lands, about a little girl whose head was decorated with a wreath of wildflowers.

Noticing the extraordinary power of imagination in her son, the mother decided that he should study art. The father, who wanted to first teach his youngest son some craft, did not resist the mother's desire, and thus, William Blake from the age of 10 became an engraver's apprentice.

Blake's life is not rich in events. At first, a diligent student of the classicists who dominated in the middle of the 18th century, however, already in 1777 he made an unexpected discovery that "where there is monetary calculation, art cannot exist." Furious energy, intransigence, subsequently open war against official religion and classical art made his works unacceptable either for the royal academy of arts or for publication. A staunch supporter of Thomas Paine, a continuer of the revolutionary traditions of the 17th century leftist Puritans, who clothed their demands for social justice and equality in the form of religious heresy, Blake had to keep his beliefs secret in the era of reaction, otherwise he would have to share the fate of the democrats of the 90s exiled to hard labor in New Guiana, to Australia, to the mines, or hanged, imprisoned or insane asylum for life, etc.

Blake spent his entire life in London, living on more than modest earnings as a copyist, only occasionally receiving commissions for original works. One and only time Blake and his wife Catherine went to the provinces, where the rich and dignitary landowner-philanthropist Hayley provided him with a small house with a garden. However, this joyful solitude of the artist was soon interrupted by a quarrel with an arrogant patron and an attack on his garden and house by a marauding soldier, and this soldier, by the name of Scofield, so deftly slandered Blake (who bravely defended his garden from the intrusion of a robber) before the royal court that the poet threatened with imprisonment on charges of treason to the king and fatherland; Blake was saved from the grave consequences of Blake's slander only by the intervention of his patron, the landowner Hayley, who was elected judge of the district.

Until the last day of his life, Blake did not let go of the pen and chisel and died at the age of 70, forgotten by all those few people who knew and supported him in his youth. His wife Catherine Blake, after the death of her husband, tried in vain to find a publisher and publish the works of the great artist. After her death, Blake's executor, the sectarian Tatham - a hypocrite and obscurantist - destroyed many brilliant engravings, letters, diaries and poems that horrified this narrow-minded person with their "blasphemous" content.

It has already been said above that Blake is the first great English romantic. In his work, for the first time in English literature, an irreconcilable hostility to bourgeois society was so mercilessly and sharply reflected. Sentimental complaints, characteristic of the poetry of the 50s of the 18th century, finally gave way to angry condemnation and the heroic call to "storm the sky."

Despite the symbolic encryption, the revolutionary biblical imagery that Blake inherited from the revolution of 1649, one can clearly feel the nationality of Blake's "ideal" poetry, its ideological and artistic closeness to the "real" poetry of R. Burns.

Just as Berne welcomed the French Revolution in the "Liberty Tree", so Blake responded to the revolutionary events of the era by creating revolutionary-romantic works - the ballad "King Gwyn" (a response to the American Revolution), the poems "America", "Europe" and others works.

In the ballad translated into Russian by S. Ya. Marshak - “King Gwyn” (1782), V. Blake did what Byron (in 1812) and Shelley (in 1813) did thirty years after him, who - one in Childe Harold, and the other in Queen Mab - again (completely independently of Blake) created a collective image of a rebellious people, which had a huge impact on the entire further development of English and European literature.

In the translation of S. Ya. Marshak, the chased tread of the revolution, which is available in Blake's poems, is perfectly conveyed:

There is a crowd of children and wives

From villages and villages

And their moan sounds like rage

On an iron winter day.

Their moan sounds like a wolf's howl,

In response, the earth hums.

The people are heading

Tyrant King.

News rushes from tower to tower

All over the big country:

"Your opponents are innumerable,

Get ready, Gwyn, for war!"

The farmer left the plow

Worker - hammer,

The shepherd changed his flute

On the battle horn...

And if Berne speaks of the ominous power of the "hereditary thieves," 2 Blake describes in a few sparing words the horrendous poverty of the masses, which completely exhausted the patience of the people and led the country to revolution:

In the possessions of Gwyn poverty

Robbed to know

The last sheep - and that

Tried to pick.

The thin earth does not feed

Sick children and wives

Down with the tyrant king

Let him leave the throne!

If R. Berne confines himself in his "Tree of Freedom" to brilliant prophecies:

But I believe: the day will come, -

And he is not far off, -

When the leaves of the magical canopy

Spread over us

Forget slavery and want

Peoples and lands, brother,

And people will live in harmony

What a friendly family, brother!

then Blake paints a grandiose picture of the coming European revolution; he says that victory will go to the people at a high price - at the cost of countless victims and destruction:

The time has come - and agreed

Two sworn enemies

And the cavalry takes off

Loose snow.

The whole earth trembles

From the sound of footsteps.

Human blood waters the fields

And she has no shores.

Hunger and need fly

Over a pile of dead bodies.

How much grief and labor

For those who survived!

Tired bloody god of war

He is drunk on blood.

Smelling steam from the fields of the country

Rising like mist...

However, both Burns and Blake have the same assessment of the prospects for the revolutionary struggle of the people: both predict the final triumph of the forces of reason and progress, both believe in the coming of a great age of social equality and brotherhood among peoples, in the defeat of reaction:

The day will come and the hour will strike

When mind and honor

The whole earth will have a turn

Stay in first place.

I can predict you

What will be the day

When around All people will become brothers!

(Burns. "Honest Poverty")

Not two tailed stars

collided with each other,

Scattering the stars like fruit

From a blue bowl.

That Gordred, the mountain giant,

Walking over bodies

Overtook the enemy - and Gwyn collapsed,

Chopped in half.

His army is gone

Who could - left alive,

And who remained - on that

The shaggy eagle sat down.

And rivers of blood snow from the fields

Rushed into the ocean

To mourn sons

Sleepless giant.

Already here, in his first collection of poems, 3 Blake's attraction to the titanism of images, to showing action in boundless geographical expanses - among mountains, seas, oceans, deserts and entire continents - is evident. Sometimes Blake's titans become crowded within one planet and they break out into space...

The gigantic power of the people in the ballad under consideration is personified in the image of the Giant Gordred, who was born by the Norwegian mountains (Blake intended his ballad for printing, and therefore he moved the scene to Norway with its wild nature; the forces of feudal tyranny appear here in the form of the king of Norway - the tyrant Gwin) .

Subsequently, this collision (the hero is the son of the Earth) will be comprehended by Shelley and Byron. Regardless of Blake, they created several images of the titans - the sons of the Earth, fighting for the cause of the people. As you know, the original development of this theme belongs to the Greek writers, who borrowed it from myths. In ancient Greek myths, the Earth is the people who gave birth to heroes, supporting them in difficult times of life (the myth of Antey). Shelley, freely varying the theme of ancient Greek literature, makes his Prometheus the son of the Earth (the people), which supports and inspires him in an unequal struggle with Zeus.

Blake has Gordred as Earth's favorite son. He, without closing his eyes day or night, stands guard over the interests of the people.

Three great revolutions have fertilized Blake's work: the English bourgeois-democratic revolution of the 17th century, the American revolution of 1777-1782, and the Great French bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1789-1794.

A century and a half of revolutionary storms in Europe and America found their symbolic expression in Blake's lofty, majestic epic and lyrical-epic prophetic poems. Such poems as "The French Revolution", "America", "Europe", "The Ramparts, or the Four Zoas" and many others. etc., reflect the course of revolutions that destroyed to the ground not only the economic and political system of the old society, but also the superstructural, ideological foundations that had been established for centuries - the metaphysical philosophical system, feudal jurisprudence, morality, ethics, aesthetics, ideology.

Revolutions in the life of European and American society were accompanied by a revolution in the field of art and aesthetics.

The idea of ​​the purpose and purpose of art, the role of the artist in the life of society, and the tasks facing progressive art have changed radically. Blake, already at the beginning of his career, turns to dialectics, to the idea of ​​development through contradiction and the removal of this contradiction.

According to Blake's theory, the life of each person, just like the life of society as a whole, has three stages: Innocence (or the first stage), Experience (or the second stage) and Wisdom (or the third stage). Blake's early collection of poems is called "Songs of Innocence". This collection is dominated by bright colors, cheerful, optimistic tone. The poems of the collection are distinguished by simplicity and clarity of form, some kind of crystal transparency and melody. According to Swinburne, the verses of the "Songs of Innocence" are filled with "the scent of April".

The first stage of development corresponds to childhood (both for each individual person and for the new social order that replaces the old one). Therefore, the theme of the poems, their mood is a cloudless, serene early childhood and infancy. According to the poet, a child is a symbol of spiritual purity and serenity. The child is surrounded by "universal mercy" and "love". He is alien to fatal passions - individualism, envy, self-interest, etc.; but at the same time this serene existence is short-lived and is not an ethical ideal: the child does not understand grief, doubt; inquisitive, restless work of thought is inaccessible to him, therefore the world of his joys is a conditional, poetic-philosophical world, which the poet needs to indicate the first stage of development.

The book "Songs of Innocence" is equipped with original author's illustrations, which in many ways complement the symbolism of her images. One of the first poems is called "Joy-Child". The baby (the hero of this poem) sits on his mother's lap, they are in a cup of a huge orange-pink flower. Above them stretches a blue sunny sky. The shepherd boy plays the flute and talks peacefully with the snow-white lambs nestled at his feet. The emerald green of the lawns and the bright flowering of cornflowers in the rye complete the picture of the serenity of this bright world. All these masterfully written vignettes and screensavers help to recreate the atmosphere of joyful expectation of future happiness, some extraordinary future destiny. So Joy-child says:

I'm only two days old.

I do not have

For now, the name.

What shall I call you?

I am glad that I live.

Joy - so call me!

My joy -

Only two days -

Joy is given to me by fate.

Looking at my joy

Joy be with you!

The same mood of childish carelessness and serenity is created by the world-famous poem "The Fly" (which Arthur and Gemma loved in childhood - the heroes of the Voynich novel "The Gadfly"), later transferred by the author to the following collection 4:

little fly,

your summer paradise

brushed away by hand

I don't know.

I am also a fly:

My short age

And what are you, a fly,

Not a human?

Here I am playing

I live while

I'm blind

The hand will wave.

If there is power in thought,

And life and light

And there is a grave

Where there is no thought

Then let me die

Or I'll live

happy fly

I'm calling myself! five

Already in this early (the second in a row after "Poetic Fragments") Blake's collection of poetry, the features of his future romantic utopias stand out: the embodiment of the abstract idea of ​​Good and Progress in the biblical and revolutionary-puritan system of images. The lions lying calmly next to the lambs, the shepherd with a pipe, touched by the sight of his flock, the carefree midge - all this recalls the legends and fables of the Puritan poets of Cromwell's time. At the same time, already in these early poems, the restless beating of the heart of a romantic is noticeable: among all these idylls, no, no, and a bitter complaint about the cruelty and injustice that reigns all around will break through; from the image of the jubilant spring nature, the poet moves on to showing the inner world of his lyrical heroes, which is alien to complacency and is a sharp contrast with the surrounding jubilant harmony of the life of idyllic shepherdesses and villagers. Such, for example, is the poem "Song of the Forest Flower":

between the green leaves

I wandered in the spring

There he sang his song

Forest flower:

How sweetly I slept

In the dark, in the silence

Whispering of anxiety

His half asleep.

In front of the dawn

I woke up bright

But the light makes me bitter

Resentment met ...

Thus, the crystal clear form of the verse of Dryden, Pop and Burns is still observed here, but their bright mood is gradually replaced by bitterness, a feeling of undeserved resentment, etc., that is, by that eternal, "nothing insatiable desire" (In G. Belinsky), that complex mood, which is an expression of grief, disappointment and “wayward exaggeration of one’s own despair” (Shelley), which is characteristic of the romantics of a later era.

Burns is characterized by a heroic-optimistic perception of even deeply tragic events. This is explained by his blood connection with the people, with his life, with his worldview. This is, for example, a description of MacPherson's heroic behavior before his execution:

So fun, desperate

He went to the gallows

For the last time, for the last dance, McPherson started ...

The same heroic-optimistic mood characterizes Blake's early poems and poems, but there is also a noticeable difference from the poetic tradition of the 18th century: along with the heroic-folk tradition, Blake's poetic fabric often includes the motif of hopeless sorrow.

As for the form of Blake's verse, if in lyrics he uses traditional meters, then in poems he acts as an innovator - the revolution inspired him to search for new forms, and he really found them: Blake's free, often arrhythmic verse was subsequently perceived and creatively developed W. Whitman and W. Morris.

Blake was an innovator and pioneer in the creation of a new creative method, a new romantic aesthetic, and in this he undoubtedly overtook art schools and literature in other European countries by 20-25 years.

In addition to the poem "Song of the Forest Flower" cited above, there are other poems in the collection "Songs of Innocence" that testify to the gradual formation of a new method and to a gradual departure from the aesthetics and artistic practice of Dryden and Pop's classicism.

Thus, the playful children's poem "Dream" is full of hidden anxiety. The introduction to the collection is reminiscent of the early poems of the German romantic Heinrich Heine (from the "Book of Songs"). On a cloud, a shepherd playing the flute saw a baby sitting in a magic cradle. The little one orders the poet-shepherd:

Dear traveler, take your time.

Can you play me a song?

I played with all my heart

And then he played again.

Record for everyone, singer

What you sang for me!

The boy cried out at last

And melted into the brilliance of the day ...

Another poem in the collection - "Crystal Hall" leads even further away from the rules of classicism; it is also somewhat reminiscent of H. Heine's "Introduction to the Book of Songs":

I dreamed of curls and roses

And the lips of loved ones sorrowful speeches ...

Everything is gone... only that remains

What could I translate into captivating sounds ...

("Introduction to the 1st Book of Songs.")

Blake's:

On a free wave I wandered,

And the young maiden was taken captive,

She took me to hell

From four crystal walls.

The hall glowed, but inside

I saw a different world in it,

There was a little night

With a wonderful little moon...

Here we are clearly dealing with the Romantic's manner of referring to supernatural events and situations. Like Byron and Shelley, Blake is never out of touch with reality enough to "soar in the blue air." His fantasy is always an "expanded and in-depth picture of the truth": no colorful patterns of "ideal poetry" were able to make him forget the real world, the fatherland, the suffering people:

Another England was

Still unknown to me

And new London over the river

And the new Tower in the sky.

Not the same girl with me

And all transparent, in the rays,

There were three of them - one in the other,

Oh, sweet, incomprehensible fear!

And their triple smile

I was lit up by the sun

And my blissful kiss

Returned three times

I to the innermost of the three

He extended his arms - one thing for her.

And suddenly my palace fell apart,

The child is crying in front of me.

He lies on the ground, and his mother

Leaning over him in tears

And, returning to the world again,

I'm crying, we're tormented by grief.

No less dramatic is a short poem about a little black boy who should receive the same amount of affection and the same caring attention, the poet claims, as any white baby.

The poem "Little Black Boy" is just the beginning of a large anti-colonial theme in Blake's poems and engravings. The dream of a child born into slavery about freedom expresses one of the main thoughts, one of the main leitmotifs of Blake's entire work: all people born before the revolution are slaves of the king, lords and capitalists. About royal despotism, Blake spoke quite clearly during the years of the revolution: "The tyrant is the worst evil and the cause of all others." (Notes on the margins of Bacon's book. Collected works, p. 402, Keynes ed., LNY, 1957.)

In Poetic Sketches and Songs of Innocence, there are still no great social generalizations, pictures of wild arbitrariness and stunning poverty of workers in English factories of the era of the industrial revolution. In the serene, sunny, spring world of these poems, only occasionally the groans of tortured, crippled people burst in (“Chimney Sweep”, “Little Black Boy”). But in themselves, in their innovative form, the verses of Blake's first two collections of poetry were a challenge to a mighty fighter who entered the literary arena "to build and revenge." The passionate pathetic, emotional and sensual texture of Blake's verse with its truly folk, often folklore tradition broke, destroyed the rationally cold poetics of classicism. Even such an innocent, seemingly at first glance, work as "Holy Thursday" was a bold challenge to the tradition of A. Pop:

The guys are walking through the city two in a row,

In green, red, blue dressed attire,

What a lot of children - your flowers, the capital,

They sit over a row row - and their faces glow.

And it is completely unacceptable for the strict, rational poetics of Boileau, Dryden, A. Pope and Blair that the introduction into the language of poetry of coarse folk humor and the description of everyday affairs and concerns of peasants and workers (which is also found in Burns) in many lyric poems of "Poetic Sketches" and Songs of Innocence. So, in the spirit of Burns's love lyrics, the poem “You can’t express with a word ...” is written full of mild humor:

Words cannot express

All the love for my beloved:

The wind moves gliding

Quiet and invisible.

I said, I said everything

What was hidden in the soul

Ah, my love is in tears,

She left in fear.

And a moment later

The traveler passing by

Quiet, insinuating, joking

He took possession of his beloved.

Paintings national holiday are recreated in the cheerful poem "The Laughing Song". In the vocabulary of this work there are many words from the vernacular, many common words and expressions introduced by Blake with great courage.

Blake, like Byron and Pushkin, likes to twist religious subjects, saturate them with new, revolutionary content, thus hoping to be as accessible as possible to readers of his era, brought up on religious texts.

These are his aphorisms and sayings from the collection "Proverbs of Hell", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" and some others.

These proverbs were supposed to be deadly weapons in the hands of the opponents of the official religion, and it is not Blake's fault that they were not useful to the fighters of the era of the industrial revolution.

“An equal law for wolves and lambs,” we read in the proverbs of Hell, “robbery and robbery.”

"Love your friends - crush your enemies."

“If you were hit on your left cheek, answer your enemy with the same measure,” etc.

The verses of the collection The Eternal Gospel are permeated with revolutionary puritanical "heresy":

The Christ I Honor

Hostile to your Christ.

With a hooked nose your Christ,

And mine, like me, is slightly snub-nosed.

Yours is a friend to all people without distinction,

And my blind reads parables.

What do you consider the Garden of Eden -

I'll call it absolute hell.

We look at the bible all day:

I see the light - you see the shadow...

("Everlasting Gospel.")

Blake is trying to humanize the image of Christ, to remove from him that crown of thorns of incomprehensible suffering and forgiveness, which was placed on him by the learned lackeys of the rich - the church fathers during the first centuries of the Christian chronology. The image of Christ drawn by Blake rather resembles a Puritan revolutionary, and it must be said that his Christ is close to the spirit of early Christianity, which, as V. I. Lenin points out, during the first 250 years of its existence was the most revolutionary teaching of the rebellious slaves of the Roman Empire, doctrine was the complete expropriation of slave owners - large landowners.

Was Christ so meek?

In what it is visible - that is the question.

For three days they searched for their mother and father.

When did they find him, Christ

The words were uttered:

I do not know you. I am born

Paternal fulfill the law.

When the rich Pharisee

Appearing in secret from people,

I began to consult with Christ,

Christ inscribed with iron

He has advice in his heart.

To be born again into the world.

Christ was proud, confident, strict.

Nobody could buy it.

This is the only way in the world

So as not to get self-interest in the network.

Betray friends while loving enemies?

No, this is not the advice of Christ.

He preached courtesy

Respect, meekness, but not flattery!

He triumphantly carried his cross.

That's why Christ was executed...

From the point of view of the revolutionary yeoman peasants of the 17th century, God and the son of God were slandered by the rich and those in power. The god of the rich and strong is a greedy, cruel, bloodthirsty despot, created in the image and likeness of an earthly tyrant. His son, on the other hand, is a model of supernatural humility - a fictitious, absurd figure, convenient for covering up the self-interest and selfishness of exploiters of all shades with a mask of meekness and forgiveness. It is this Christ of the officially approved and taught gospel in school and church that Blake satirizes in his Eternal Gospel:

Antichrist flattering Jesus

Could cater to every taste.

Would not revolt synagogues,

Did not drive merchants over the threshold,

And, meek, like a tame donkey,

Caiaphas 6 mercy he found.

God did not write in his tablet,

To humiliate ourselves...

humiliating myself,

You humiliate the god!

("Everlasting Gospel.")

Thus, in this glorification of the plebeian "heresy" we meet a leitmotif that is very characteristic of all progressive romanticism - a fierce condemnation of humility, humiliating servility, slavish lack of will. Submission means, according to revolutionary romantics, the death of the individual, the rebirth of the individual consists in awakening in her the consciousness of her human rights and the need to fight for them. The progressive romantics of that era entered into a deadly struggle for the souls of people with religion, which sought by any means to instill fear and slavish obedience in the minds and hearts. “Only he is worthy of life and freedom who every day goes to battle for them!” writes Goethe.

I don't want to bow down to anyone! Byron's Cain proudly exclaims. The souls of Shelley's heroes "rapists have no power to take possession."

In contrast to the progressive and revolutionary romantics, conservative romanticism proclaims as its ethical ideal the main postulate of Christianity about the necessity and benefits of patience. At the same time, naturally, the unattainability of happiness “in this world” for a person was proclaimed. Instead of happiness, reactionary romanticism offers the consolations of religion, instead of life and action, the sweet speeches of the priests, who supplement and strengthen the power of the crowned despots of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

“The best lot in this life is faith in providence,” says one of the heroes of the Russian conservative romantic Zhukovsky. The hero of Chateaubriand Chactas and his other hero Rene, having lost personal happiness, find consolation and oblivion in Catholicism and missionary activity, etc.

Unlike elegiac-conservative and reactionary romanticism, revolutionary romanticism denies religion.

You Man! Blake exclaims. - Bow before your humanity - all other deities are lies!

It has already been said above that one of the main merits of progressive romantics in the field of aesthetics is the denial of the significance of religion for art and for the social life of people. Continuing the traditions of the great artists and aesthetics of the past - Boccaccio, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, digger poets, Swift and Fielding, Berne, Blake, Byron, Shelley and Keith freed English art from the deadening religious dogma that left its indelible mark on the art of English sentimentalism and, like Goethe in Germany and Pushkin in Russia, cleared the way for the conquests of mid-century critical realism.

Like Goethe, Byron and Shelley, Blake is a poet-philosopher. He understood that the social life of his time was complex and diverse, and the rough, straightforward canons of the aesthetics of classicism were not able to express its complex dialectics. He called artists

See eternity in one moment

A huge world - in a grain of sand,

In a single handful - infinity,

And the sky is in a cup of a flower,

Blake teaches in his Songs of Innocence:

Joy, sadness - two patterns

In the thin fabrics of the deity...

Can be traced in sorrow

Happiness silk thread;

That's the way it's always been

This is how it should be:

Joy mixed with sadness

We are destined to know

Remember this - don't forget -

And pave the way for the Truth...

Like Shakespeare and Burns - his great compatriots, Blake constantly thought about the people, about their lives, about their fate. In his works there are vivid scenes of folk life, such as descriptions of field work, life, customs. This is his poem "The Song of Laughter":

At the hour when the leaves rustle, laughing,

And the key laughs, snaked among the stones,

And we laugh, exciting the distance, we

And the hills send us an answer with laughter,

And laughs rye and intoxicated barley,

And the grasshopper is happy to laugh all day,

And in the distance it sounds like the hubbub of birds,

“Ha ha ha! Haha! - ringing laughter of girls,

And in the shade of the branches the table is set for everyone,

And, laughing, a nut cracks between the teeth, -

Come at this hour without fear of sin,

Laugh heartily: “Ho-ho-ho! Ha ha!"

The defeat of the French Revolution of 1789-1794, the endless wars and the gloomy era of the restoration of 1815-1830 were hard-pressed by all the progressive people of Europe. Bitterness and bewilderment, disappointment and grief were universal.

Blake's last (third) lyric collection, Songs of Experience, is a cry of despair.

The experience of defeat, acquired at the cost of blood and the death of the best sons of the people, was hard and had a sobering effect: now Blake sees only the "desert of London"; the giant octopus city appears to him as an arena of unheard-of daily torment for millions of workers who work day and night in the "smoky factories of Satan", giving them their blood and brain. Instead of cheerful, careless, laughter, the poet hears only the crying of hungry children and the curses of unemployed cripples and prostitutes. So in the poem "Good Thursday" it is said about the "begging of the rich English nation", which starves the children of workers, thus killing their tomorrow, their hope for the future:

Why is this holiday holy?

When a rich land is so

Children born in begging

Feeds with a greedy hand?

What is it - songs or groans -

Rushing to the sky, trembling?

Hungry crying from all sides

Oh, how poor my country is!

In the complex poetic fabric of Blake's philosophical poems, along with the images of mythical titans (Orc, Los, etc.) fighting in the heavens with the spirits of evil (Uraizen) for the Freedom of mankind, there are many lines of the so-called "real poetry", in which the actual conflicts of his turbulent times. These are the lines in which the war is condemned:

The sword is about death in a military field,

Sickle - spoke about life,

But to your cruel will

The sword of the sickle did not subdue.

No less real are the bitter lines in which Blake condemns the Malthusian ministers who proclaimed that in England it was necessary to ensure that as many poor people as possible perished:

If Tom turned pale, if he turned yellow

From deprivation, work and hunger,

You say - bah, yes, he, like a boar, is healthy ...

If the kids get sick, then let them die,

On Earth and without them, we are so cramped!

If Tom asks for bread, send him to jail!

Let him listen to the fables of the priests - after all, he

Without work it is dangerous to walk in cities:

Maybe he will forget about respect and fear ...

Blake died in obscurity. The books of his poems, which he himself decorated with his amazing drawings and engravings, were partly lost, partly scattered around the world. From the 50-60s of the 19th century, interest in his work arose in England, and then in America. In 1957, by decision of the World Peace Council, the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Blake, the poet-prophet, who bequeathed to mankind his bold dreams of social equality, of the eternal brotherhood of peoples, was solemnly celebrated:

I want to get the arrow of my dreams!

Give me a spear! Golden bow!

Unfold, clouds! I'll fly

On a chariot of fire!

I will not succumb in the mental struggle

And I will not put the sword to sleep, tired,

Until Jerusalem rises

Among the English lush herbs!

"Jerusalem is called freedom among the children of Albion," Blake explains the symbolism of the last line. These poems became the revolutionary anthem of his native people.

"Lake School". In the 90s of the 18th century, along with representatives of progressive romanticism, conservative romantics appeared - Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. These three poets formed the so-called "lake school" of romantic poetry (in English - leukists). This name was given because all three lived for a long time in a picturesque area - Cumberland - replete with lakes (in English lake - lake).

The preface to the second edition of the collection of lyrical ballads (1800) by Wordsworth and Coleridge is essentially the first manifesto of English romanticism.

In this preface, for the first time, new principles of literary creativity were proclaimed, which ran counter to the rules of classicism. It put forward the requirement to describe not only the great events of history, but also the daily life of small people; depict not only civil prowess, but also the inner world of a person, the contradictions of his soul. The poets of the “lake school” raised Shakespeare to the shield, opposing the diverse reflection of life in his works to the artificial canons of the classicists, who deprived literature of its national identity. One of the central points of the aesthetic program of the Leikists was the demand to develop the artistic traditions of folk poetry. All this enriched the possibilities of literature, made it possible to reflect the contradictions of reality with greater depth.

At the same time, speaking out against capitalist progress, which, even at an early stage of its development, gave rise to innumerable disasters and destroyed centuries-old traditions and customs, the Leukists opposed this progress with idealized pictures of the pre-capitalist village, the Middle Ages: they idealized the work of a medieval artisan and the life of the patriarchal peasantry, which seemed to be them light and joyful, filled with artistic creativity in the form of songs, dances and crafts. They contrasted this life with the hard life of industrial workers, while completely denying the positive role of technical progress, calling on the government to ban the construction of railways, factories, etc.

Thus, the Leukists looked back; they regretted what had already gone irrevocably into the past. This ultimately determined the reactionary nature of their worldview, which is especially clearly manifested in the second period of their work, when, after the defeat of the French Revolution and the suppression of uprisings in Ireland, the domination of reaction came.

The reactionary worldview of the Leikists made it impossible to complete the work they had begun to renew English poetry and bring it closer to the requirements of life. For example, Wordsworth's demand for simplicity and folk language led him in the end to the limitation of linguistic and stylistic means and the one-sided selection of poetic vocabulary, to the rejection of realistic traditions created in English poetry by such remarkable writers as Spencer, Milton, Burns and others.

The Leikists came to preach Christian humility and sing of the wisdom of "divine providence." So, for example, the reflection of the complex phenomena of social life during the era of the industrial revolution in the work of Coleridge is clothed in the form of religious and mystical symbols. However, the poets of the "lake school" for the first time most clearly formulated the features of the new romantic method and put an end to the dominance of classic poetics in English literature, and this is their undoubted merit.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850). The great poet of the period of romanticism is the oldest of the representatives of the "lake school" William Wordsworth.

Wordsworth entered the history of English literature as a wonderful lyricist of nature, a singer of the French Revolution of 1789-1794, an innovator who boldly introduced colloquial and common language into poetry.

William Wordsworth was born in one of the western counties of England, in the family of a notary. He was orphaned early; together with his younger sister Dorothy, the boy was brought up by relatives; childhood impressions of the future poet were bleak.

After graduating from school by the age of 17, W. Wordsworth entered the University of Cambridge. In his student years, he begins to seriously work on himself, trying to find his own way in literature.

Of great importance to Wordsworth was a summer vacation trip to Switzerland, where he walked through several cantons and then visited neighboring regions of France.

The majestic beauty of the mountain landscape literally shocked the young man. He becomes a fan of Rousseau ideas, claims that nature ennobles and "heals" the human soul, while the industrial city, with its egoism and eternal hustle, kills it. "Love of nature," Wordsworth would later say, "teaches us to love Man."

These same early pre-romantic and romantic moods subsequently received a deep and comprehensive expression in the mature work of the poet.

The first collections of poems by Wordsworth - "Evening Walk" and "Picturesque Sketches" were published only in 1793.

Pictures of rural England, her modest workers, painted by a novice poet, however, did not attract public attention. This is due primarily to the fact that Wordsworth appears in these works as a student, as a follower of the poetry of the English sentimentalists of the 18th century - Thomson, Gray, Shenstone, pre-romantics - MacPherson and Chatterton.

Loyalty to the ideals of the moderate wing of the English enlighteners (Defoe, Richardson, Lillo, Thomson, Goldsmith, etc.) was reflected in many of the works of the late Wordsworth: later works like "Peter Bell" and "The Walk", as well as some of the lyrical ballads. In this, the creative crisis found its expression, to which the poet came in the era of the triumph of reaction.

But even in his early youth, and throughout his entire life, we observe in Wordsworth a contradictory attitude towards the religious idea of ​​"wise non-intervention" in "the struggle and strife of life." The fact is that in his student years, Wordsworth often succumbed to the noble pathos of "public indignation", without which the work of any honest artist is inconceivable.

This indignation arose in the mind of the English poet under the influence of turbulent social events - the spontaneous struggle of the working class of that era, which was partly expressed in the activities of orators, propagandists and poets of the "correspondent societies" (covering all of Britain in the 90s of the 18th century with a dense network ), as well as the poems and letters of the great folk poet of Scotland, Robert Burns. According to his sister and friend Dorothy Wordsworth, he knew by heart almost all the works of Burns available at that time.

In the poem "At the Grave of Robert Burns," Wordsworth admits that "the bard of Caledonia" "taught an inexperienced youth the great art of building a golden throne of verse on the soil of modest everyday truth."

The strength and tenderness of Burns' poetic form captivated Wordsworth forever. He organically accepted Burns' demand for simplicity and naturalness of verse, his ironic contempt for everything supernatural. Later (by 1815) Wordsworth came under the banner of the official English church; began to support the most reactionary government (George IV), but even then he condemned Robert Southey for his "absurd predilection" for "devilry and all kinds of witchcraft."

In his youth, Wordsworth sang of the great poetic feat of Burns, his courage as a great citizen of his unfortunate homeland of Scotland.

He never managed to rise to a truly comprehensive understanding of the meaning of the revolutionary aesthetics of Burns. Nevertheless, Wordsworth brushed aside all the slander that was used to blacken Burns's name by "money hacks for hire" in the early nineteenth century. And this in itself was already a great civil feat, for Berne was objectionable to the ruling clique of Britain. In contrast to such false critics of Burns as the well-known journalist Gifford, as Prof. Moser, Cunningham and others, who tried to defame Burns as allegedly immoral, Wordsworth wrote:

“... I tremble and shy before you,

Great, adamant and proud spirit..."

("At the Grave of Robert Burns").

He deeply regrets that he was not personally acquainted with the "radiant genius of Caledonia." Impressed by the incendiary speeches of speakers from the "correspondent societies" and the fiery poetry of Robert Burns, Wordsworth travels to revolutionary Paris to personally observe the exploits of the "heroes of truth." The influence of the French Revolution on the formation of the ideology and worldview of the English poet was decisive: no matter how much Wordsworth “sinned” later, surrendering one after another his positions as a democrat under the influence of reaction and priestly obscurantism, deep down he was always faithful to the ideas of Freedom, Equality, Fraternity inscribed on the banners of the great revolution. And this protected him from the final death as a creative person.

Communication with the best representatives of revolutionary Paris helped Wordsworth understand the unfair, treacherous nature of the rulers of "perfidious Britain." Returning, Wordsworth gives a rebuke (in an open letter) to the reactionary Bishop Watson, who demanded in his sermon that the workers and peasants of England humbly bear the yoke of exploitation: “Slavery,” Wordsworth answered Watson, “is a bitter and poisonous drink. In the face of him, one can be consoled only by the fact that the people can, when they wish, smash the cup to smithereens on the ground.

Inspired by the French Revolution and the public indignation caused by the White Terror unleashed in England by the Pitt government (mortally frightened by the actions of the British Republicans), Wordsworth created one of his most remarkable works - the poem "Guilt and Sorrow, or an Incident on the Salisbury Steppe" (1792-1793 ).

By the violent pathos of indignation, by the bitterness and strength of the denial of the English reality of the era of the industrial revolution, by the sorrow for the ruined lives with which the poem is filled, it can be compared with such masterpieces of Shelley as "The Masquerade of Anarchy" or with "Ode to the authors of the death penalty bill for workers" Byron.

Although there is never an open call for revolution anywhere in the poem, nevertheless, the tragic events and tragic destinies drawn by the poet themselves make the reader come to the conclusion that this world is really bad, its law is cruel (Wordsworth) , and if so, then such a world is worthy only of destruction.

Already the first stanzas of the poem introduce us into the atmosphere of loneliness and hopelessness that surrounds a traveler wandering along deserted roads. He walks through the Salisbury desert, which was once a blooming paradise. The cruel and self-serving landowner-proprietor - the noble lord - drove the peasants out of several large villages by force and turned the flourishing land into a dull, endless pasture, on which herds of fine-fleeced sheep should graze.

A traveler passing through a deserted, devastated village, past a dilapidated hotel, walks in rags, almost barefoot; no one will greet him kindly at the doorstep, will not offer him an overnight stay with stew for "a copper penny." Night approaches, thunder rumbles in the distance, the winds "rage and collide like warriors in bloody battles." A tired and exhausted traveler is looking for a more or less reliable shelter for the night and at least one living soul with whom one could exchange a few words in order to alleviate the terrible burden of loneliness.

However, a vainly tormented person casts inquisitive glances around, shuddering, adding a step at each new clap of thunder: all around are only gloomy ruins; instead of a living human voice, he hears only a terrible dull creak - this is the wind swinging the corpse of a hanged man chained on the gallows - the whole world seems to the weary traveler to be a continuous hostile element, he is “afraid to meet people”, empty houses “open their dark windows and doors, like the jaws of a coffin ...".

The peasant - the hero of Wordsworth's poem - is a victim of a cruel and unjust law: he, a young, good-natured, naive guy, was forcibly recruited into the fleet by royal recruiters.

In the Royal Navy, he suffered a lot from the inhuman treatment of officers, from the beatings of the boatswains, from hunger and cold, from the hardships of war. And when it came time for him to retire from the fleet, the officer-treasurer fraudulently shortchanged the sailor, and he lost the miserable pennies that were due to him and with which he wanted to help his family, who were dying from poverty.

Finding himself on the shore without a penny in his pocket, the sailor, driven to the last degree of despair, commits a murder not far from his home, hoping to use the money of his random companion. However, the dead man turned out to be as bitter a poor man as the sailor himself. Moved by a feeling of horror and remorse, the sailor somehow hid the corpse in the bushes and, not daring to cross the threshold of his house, hurried away - towards the unknown.

Gloomy despair is now his lot, in the future he does not see any harbor, not a single hope "enlightens his weary soul." The fate of the sailor was very typical of the era of the industrial revolution, when, according to Wordsworth's predecessor Robert Burns, often "... a rogue, having achieved power, tore, like weed shoots from the soil, poor families ..." (Burns. "Two Dogs" ).

No less typical is the fate of a soldier's widow, whom a sailor accidentally meets (they settle down together for the night in the so-called dead house - an abandoned shepherd's hut). She was the daughter of a prosperous farmer who knew how to provide a modest income for his family. He even taught his daughter to read and write; the girl enjoyed reading books that she found at home and with neighbors, helped her father work in the garden and around the house, grew flowers, and played with her peers on the picturesque river bank.

As soon as the daughter was 20 years old, the modest well-being, which was ensured by the incessant hard peasant labor, came to an end: the cruel landlord drove the farmer and his daughter from their homes. For the last time, “tormented by cruel sadness, the father looked at the house of his ancestors, at the bell tower of the church, where he got married in his youth, at the cemetery, where his wife’s grave was and where he hoped to eventually find peace himself (having previously given his daughter in marriage and brought into the house worker-in-law).

Wordsworth skillfully depicts in many of his poems the collapse of the centuries-old farming way, the ruin and desolation of the village, the triumph of large landowners, lords and usurers.

The girl soon finds her unfaithful happiness in marriage with a young and strong guy who made good money with his craft. However, the cruel, unexpectedly erupted war deprived of bread, and then the life of three cute babies, the children of the farmer's daughter, and then took away her husband as well.

Exhausted and sick, she mingled with a large crowd of homeless people like herself, sinking lower and lower to the social bottom. Her last refuge before meeting with the sailor was a cheerful "gypsy gang of thieves."

Having told each other their stories and thus relieving the soul, the sailor and the soldier go on their endless journey. But on this path, a new grief awaited the sailor - he unexpectedly met his dying wife, who told him the sad story of the death of their family: the community accused them of killing a wanderer found dead near their hut (in fact, her husband killed him).

The sailor's wife dies in his arms, and he himself dies on the gallows.

Showing the tragedy of the fate of farm workers suffering from the arbitrariness of rich lords and the law, which has become an obedient tool in the hands of fraudulent rich people, Wordsworth emphasizes with particular force what, in his opinion, is the most terrible, the moral degradation of disadvantaged and declassed workers. The sailor and the soldier - strong and kind people - under the influence of grief, suffering and poverty degraded morally, becoming capable of causing evil. And, according to the author, those orders and social institutions that the bourgeois system affirms are to blame for this.

After Bonaparte, strangling all the gains of French democracy, declared himself First Consul, Wordsworth experienced a spiritual drama caused in him by a temporary (but deep) disappointment in the revolution and its methods. Disappointment in the end results of the French Revolution of 1789-1794. gave rise to romanticism in his worldview and creative method.

Now he no longer shares the convictions of Thomas Paine and his French republican friends about the need for a revolutionary transformation of society, but relies on the "peaceful victory of good and social justice", i.e. shares the point of view of the great utopian socialists, his contemporaries Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and Saint-Simon. However, he still proceeded from the conviction that existing social institutions and the Anglican Church are harmful and anti-popular institutions and, as such, must eventually be eliminated. This allowed the English poet to create (until about 1815) his most significant works, which were included in the golden fund of modern English literature.

Among the masterpieces of Wordsworth, first of all, it is necessary to note the lyric cycle "Lucy" (1799); "Cuckoo" (1804-1807); "Ode on the comprehension of the essence of immortality" (1802-1807); cycle "Journey through Scotland" (1807); sonnet "Beautiful evening, quiet and free" (1807); "Do not despise the sonnet, critic" (1827) (approved by A. S. Pushkin).

The assessments given to Wordsworth by his contemporaries - revolutionary poets - Byron and Shelley, are perhaps too harsh and therefore largely unfair (see Shelley's "Peter Bell III", "Preface" to Byron's "Don Juan"). Of course, the great poets and revolutionaries were irritated by the public position of Wordsworth, who (after 1807) was gradually approaching an alliance with the reactionary English government of George IV.

However, even during this very sad period in his life, the muse of the older romanticist constantly and sensitively responded to the sufferings of the people, the poet found the courage to continue to angrily attack not only the “foreign usurper” - Napoleon I, but also punish with the sword of his satire domestic hangers and exploiters. So, for example, Wordsworth was the first major artist in England, who (together with Germaine de Stael) denounced the "predatory ambitious" - Bonaparte in such works as in the sonnet "To Toussaint Luverture" (1803); in the poem "On the death of the Venetian Republic" (1802-1807); "On the suppression of the independence of Switzerland" (1807); "Insulted feelings of the Tyrolean" (1815); "Indignation of a noble Spaniard" (1810); "Feelings of a noble Biscay at the funeral of the victims of despotism" (1810); "Spanish Guerillas" (1811); "The exploits of the valiant Russian patriots" (1812-1813), etc.

At the same time, he did not spare the bison of domestic reaction, who flooded the green fields of the "Emerald Isle" with the blood of Irish peasants ("In Defense of the Irish Peasants", 1804-1807); welcomed the fighters against “the most shameful scam in the history of England” - the Negro trade (“In honor of the author of the “Bill of Punishment for Negro Traders”, 1807); severely condemned the betrayal of the British in Cintra (treatise and poem about Cintra, 1815); exposed the treachery of British diplomats in the Middle East ("Freedom of Greece", 1815).

In sonnet No. 13, the poet writes about social injustice, which is a product of the private property system. “We live only for show ... we consider the richest (and most criminal) to be the very first citizen ... we are accustomed to mindlessly worship greedy money-grubbing, slavishly cowardly follow the lead of robbery and extortion ...”

In Sonnet No. 5, he exclaims: "England is a stinking, stagnant swamp..."

"England is always ready to oppose with all its might any democratic transformations in Greece, Egypt, India, Africa." "... Oh, England, heavy is the burden of your transgressions against the nations of the world!"

In the cycle of "Sonnets dedicated to freedom" Wordsworth mourns the death of his bright hopes and ideals, generated by the revolutionary storm in Paris. He speaks with sadness and contrition of heart about that irrevocable time when "fidelity was betrothed to newborn freedom." But at the same time, Wordsworth is not boundlessly in despair.

Unlike other representatives of the "lake school" (Cole Ridge, Southey), he still retains the belief that in the end the peoples will win, that Bonaparte is just a "pathetic bastard", a traitor and a degenerate who abused those who believed in him masses, but powerless to change the course of history. When popular democracy will win, Wordsworth does not know. Most likely, he thought, it will be beyond the life of his generation, but it will certainly be. “Happy is he who, indifferent to the pope, the consul and the king, can measure the depth of his own soul in order to know the fate of a person, and live in hope!” (Sonnet No. 5). Wordsworth conveyed this confidence in the final victory of the forces of democracy and the people to Byron and Shelley, who enthusiastically read his political lyrics in 1806-1811.

Wordsworth's romantic method found its most complete expression in two of his remarkable works - in the lyric cycle "Lucy" and in the collection "Lyrical Ballads".

In the lyrical cycle "Lucy", Wordsworth romantically comprehends the death of his enlightening dreams of universal harmony and happiness, which he embodies in the image of a pure and touching peasant girl Lucy.

As is often the case with other major romantics of the era (Byron, Hugo, Heine) - full of "inexplicable charm and charm" the beautiful feminine image of the heroine is fraught with a hidden, philosophical meaning; mourning the death of Lucy, Wordsworth told us about how lonely people became in a hostile post-revolutionary world, how they suffer from their disunity, being unable to overcome it. (The same theme will sound very powerful later in Coleridge's The Old Sailor and Byron's Manfred.)

Violet hid in the woods,

Under the stone, barely visible.

A star twinkled in the sky

Alone, always alone...

Beauty Lucy is a symbol of English Freedom and Democracy.

Having left his native country for a long time, the poet recalls the maiden in a foreign land - Freedom, who brought happiness to his homeland. But during his absence something terrible and irreparable happened. And the poet, who is in a foreign country, suddenly felt an inexpressible longing, bordering on despair.

Anguish filled my heart,

"What if Lucy died?" -

I said the first time...

A terrible presentiment did not deceive the singer.

Lucy is gone, and from that

So the world has changed...

The death of enlightenment dreams of harmony, the collapse of the ideals of the great revolution plunged several generations of democrats into deep despair at the beginning of the 19th century. This despair, the melancholy of loneliness, generated by the unbearable oppression of reaction, was expressed by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and after them Byron and Shelley in many romantic works.

An indelible impression not only on the English public, but throughout Europe was made by the collection of poems "Lyrical Ballads", as well as the preface to the second edition of these ballads (1800), which is essentially the first manifesto of English romanticism.

The co-authors (Wordsworth and Coleridge) distributed the roles among themselves in the following way: Wordsworth was supposed to describe the life, way of life and views of ordinary peasants in the forms of real life; as for Coleridge, he had to write in the forms of ideal poetry, that is, to express the truth of life in fabulous mythological images and unusual situations.

In his preface to the second edition of the lyrical ballads, Wordsworth announced that the co-authors acted as innovators and experimenters. And, indeed, the introduction of the spoken language of the peasants of the northern and western counties of England, the interest in the life and suffering of workers, the depiction of their morals and a direct sense of nature marked the birth of the romantic school in England, which proclaimed Nature (i.e., real reality) as the main subject of art and applied a death blow to the poetry of classicism, which in England was remarkable for its amazing tenacity and continued to exist even after the death of Burns.

In essence, Wordsworth developed that great work of reform and renewal of the language and themes of great British poetry, which Berne began with his work and finally completed Byron (partly Shelley). The "Lyrical Ballads" of Wordsworth and Coleridge are an important milestone in this great nationwide literary struggle for a new art; for a bold appeal to the life and life of the peasants, Wordsworth was praised by the English democrat critic William Hazlyit, ballads were loved and highly praised by Shelley and Walter Scott. A. S. Pushkin, who closely followed the progress of foreign literature, also noted that “... In mature literature, the time comes when minds, bored with monotonous works of art, limited by the circle of conventional language, turn to fresh folk fictions and to strange vernacular, contemptible at first. So now Wordsworth and Coleridge have carried away the opinion of many ... The works of English poets are full of deep feelings and poetic thoughts, expressed in the language of an honest commoner.

It is not for nothing that the greatest English critic Ralph Fox speaks in his book The Novel and the People of the "clear vigilance" of many of Wordsworth's lyrical ballads.

Not everything, however, in Wordsworth's collection is equal; the requirement of simplicity and naturalness is sometimes unsuccessfully embodied by the poet in artistic images(as a result of which, for example, such a poem ridiculed by Byron in his satire "Bards and Observers" as "The Idiot Boy" appeared).

At this stage of his creative development, Wordsworth was greatly hindered by the idea of ​​Christianity, the belief in the afterlife, which sometimes forced him to create such humbly hypocritical poems as "We are seven."

However, the main advantage of Wordsworth's poems, so to speak, his mind, was different: the poet truthfully depicted the mental suffering of the representatives of the peasant class, destroyed by the industrial revolution. The poet painted with real colors a dramatic picture of a dying farming world, already familiar to us from his earlier poem "Guilt and Sorrow". The secret of the vitality and depth of his art, his poetic images is in fidelity to reality, the truth of life.

Before the reader passes a series of images of destitute people, bitterly complaining about their fate and wondering why they suffered the "punishment of providence." What was new (compared with the poetry of Gray, Thomson, Goldsmith) was that Wordsworth's characters spoke in their usual simple language, that they told the story of their troubles and misfortunes in such a simple and natural way, as was characteristic only of Burns' farmers. Such is the story "The Last of the Herd."

The poet met an elderly peasant with a sheep in his arms, who, shedding bitter tears, spoke about the torments he was experiencing: he used to have a small flock of sheep, and the peasant was glad that he had six healthy children. He, sparing no effort, worked in the sheepfold and in his field, providing the family with a modest income.

But then a lean year came, and some of the sheep had to be sold in order to buy bread for the children. Some of the sheep died from the disease. Only a dozen sheep remained. Then a small lamb had to be slaughtered in the hungry winter time, followed by the turn of the old sheep, and finally, the last lamb is carried in the arms of the father of the family, who does not know what he will feed his large family tomorrow, what will happen to his children if he suddenly dies from grief and exhaustion of strength ... “The worst thing, sir,” the peasant says to the poet, “is that in my heart during the years of prosperity there was so much love for my children ... and now? Now there is only one concern in him, and there is little love left ... "

Severe poverty, crushing the peasant with its burden, deprives him of human warmth, love for the little ones dear to him before.

The heroine of the poem "Wanderer", the daughter of a farmer; recalls how a rich man "steals his piece of arable land" from her father.

Her father behaves like a religious stoic: he encourages his daughter to rely on the will of God, to strengthen her faith with prayer. But the daughter internally protests against the injustice of this peasant god, indifferent to the suffering of farmers, peace-loving "criminal rich."

Once in a large industrial city, a young peasant woman finds herself, as it were, in a stone desert: “among the many houses she wanders homeless ... in the middle of a thousand tables bursting with food, she remains hungry.”

Yes, the authorities did not provide a wide choice for ruined farmers, those who could not be hired as a farm laborer to a landowner or factory workers could only beg, get by somehow with odd jobs, or steal and rob, for which they were supposed to be hanged, fire, exile in tropical colonies where yellow fever was rampant.

With great skill, skillfully resorting to a simple colloquial intonation, the poet draws the loneliness of a mother, half-mad with grief and tears for a lost child (“Turn”); the despair and impotent anger of decrepit old age, doomed to a half-starved existence (“Grandmother Blake and Harry Gill”); the weeping of hungry children, the grief of young girls who have lost their usual courage of adult men, shedding bitter tears at a crossroads. Sometimes the poet follows those of the renegades who went to the big city, towards the unknown. The ballad "The Dreams of Poor Susanna" tells of a country girl languishing in the "stone desert" of London. The song of a tame thrush, accidentally heard by a girl on the street, brings her into a state of enthusiastic ecstasy: she is completely given over to memories of her native village. Instead of a dull and monotonous row of houses, her imagination draws for her blooming gardens, a hill, a stream, water meadows, her father's house immersed in the white flowering of apple trees.

But the vision disappears as quickly as it appeared; a stream, a hill, a garden, a house dissolve in the morning mist.

The joy caused by the vision of the past Happiness and independence is replaced by mute despair at the sight of the gray, monotonous facades of a huge and indifferent city - an octopus, with indifferent cruelty sucking blood and vitality from its defenseless victims, tens of thousands appearing on its squares and avenues in search of work and of bread. Susanna is doomed to languish in the prison city, like a bird in a cage that accidentally delighted her with its singing.

In his "Lyrical Ballads" Wordsworth appears as a poet of simple hearts, as a singer of spiritual beauty, "imperceptible valor" and the honor of working people.

The poeticization of the life and work of the peasant and worker in the works of the Romantics, the rejection of the literary hero of the previous eras, the aristocrat and the son of a wealthy bourgeois, gradually prepared a revolution in the novel of the middle of the 19th century, the most important genre of European literature. The essence of this revolution was precisely the creation of positive images of the peasant and the worker, in a critical attitude towards the life of the propertied classes.

Ralph Fox in his book The Novel and the People, speaking about the significance of the October Socialist Revolution for the artistic creativity of many writers, refers to the example of Wordsworth, who was also inspired all his life by those ideas, those impressions that he experienced in Paris in 1792-1794. “Wordsworth felt,” writes Fox, “how the same driving force strengthens the imagination of his contemporaries with the life-giving juices of the French Revolution. “It was wonderful to live on that bright morning,” and the grandeur of this morning for the first time gave him the clear vigilance of “Lyrical Ballads”. This vigilance of sight weakened somewhat in Wordsworth during the subsequent tedious years of struggle ... "8.

Wordsworth most clearly reflected this influence in the verse novel Prelude, published posthumously in 1850. The novel consists of 14 books. It was written in white pentameter English verse, the favorite meter of Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and many other English poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. The novel has a subtitle: "The growth of poetic consciousness - an autobiographical poem." In a brief introduction to this political and philosophical poetic work, it is reported that Wordsworth began working on the novel as early as 1799 and finished it in rough form by 1805, and in subsequent years of his life he supplemented, expanded and edited the books that made it up. Subsequently, Wordsworth expanded his plan: "Prelude" was supposed to open two more major works - "Walk" and "The Hermit". “In relation to the bulk of the Walk,” writes Wordsworth, “the Prelude, according to the author’s intention, should have been treated approximately as one of the porticos relates to the entire mass of the Gothic cathedral,” the author managed to complete the “Walk”; as for The Hermit, the poet created only a draft of the first book and plans for the second and third.

Some literary scholars rightly reproach Wordsworth for the fact that in The Walk there are didactic passages, that questions of theology and religious morality are discussed in it. This is all true. But we should also not forget that the most intimate thoughts of the poet found their expression in the Prelude and The Walk, that the evolution of his aesthetic and socio-political views was reflected here, that at the same time both novels abound with truly beautiful poetic pages. No wonder such a harsh critic as John Keats calls "The Walk" among the "few of the most brilliant creations of the century."

The most important in the "Prelude" are the ninth ("Stay in France"), tenth ("Stay in France" - continuation) and eleventh book ("France"). It expresses those democratic sympathies and ideals that the author formed as a result of direct observation of the events of 1792-1794.

Despite the vagueness of social ideals and the inevitably limited understanding of the tasks and goals of the Jacobin party, Wordsworth came to the "heroic and revolutionary" embodiment of reality in his poetic epic. The enormous creative power of the revolutionary traditions of the great French people contributed to the birth of a first-class poet. As for the abstract character of his social ideas and political ideals, for the romanticist of the 90s of the 18th century and the 10s, 20s and even 30s of the 19th century, this abstract democratic aspiration, indignation and protest against the monarchy and police brutality.

This was an era when the struggle between labor and capital was relegated to the background by the struggle between the liberal and radical progressive parties, on the one hand, and the feudal and semi-feudal despotism, on the other. A writer who sincerely loved Freedom, Man, Virtue, etc., immediately became in the front ranks of the fighters against the "police states" and, therefore, honestly and conscientiously fulfilled his duty to the people.

As F. Engels points out, not only for the first third of the 19th century, but also for the 60-70s, the demand for a republic was the slogan and political ideal of the advanced workers of England and Europe. The Chartists in England and the heroes of the barricade battles in Paris and Silesia in the 30s, 48s, 60s and even 70s of the 19th century were republicans.

Thus, we can conclude that, on the whole, Wordsworth's political ideals were advanced and even progressive throughout his life, although not revolutionary, like those of Shelley, Byron, Petofi.

At the beginning of the ninth book of the Prelude, Wordsworth recalls how, having lived for more than a year in London, he worked hard on himself, read a lot, visited museums, exhibitions, trying to improve himself as much as possible so as to create a significant literary work.

The poet attached special importance to the purity of thoughts and uncompromising honesty, which were characteristic of him in his youth. It is about this period of his life that Shelley speaks in his sonnet:

You were the Star that pointed the way in the stormy Ocean...

In honorable poverty you sang

Those songs to truth, to liberty.. 9.

("To Boardsworth")

Purity of thoughts, love for truth, freedom and man - this is what first of all distinguishes the author of the "Prelude" and what characterizes his most important distinguishing features as an artist-creator. The desire to belong to the highest, privileged class, in his opinion, most often brings defeat or death to talent. This theme, barely outlined in Wordsworth's novel, then receives a powerful development in the work of the late romantics and critical realists of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century.

“I was irresistibly attracted to Paris,” says Wordsworth in his Prelude, his poetic account of the turbulent days of the 1789 revolution. Blinded and shocked, the young Englishman walked through the streets of Paris, eagerly listening to the fiery speeches of the Parisians, accompanied all the demonstrations coming from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and Montmartre to the Saint-Germain Palace. He attended the meetings of the Convention, listened to the speeches of the Jacobins (book 9, line 49) and no doubt applauded them wildly. Although in the text of the novel there is no direct indication of the poet's behavior during the debates in the Convention, but a little lower the author expresses his feelings in a magnificent revolutionary-symbolic phrase:

I saw: the power of the Revolution,

Like a ship at anchor under the breath of a storm

Tensed... 10

The image of the revolution-ship, which proudly resists violent storms, is found, by the way, in the work of Radishchev. Already during the period of the death of the Jacobin dictatorship, lamenting the collapse of the ideals of the entire 18th century, Radishchev wrote in his ode “Freedom”:

Hope, Freedom and Joy carrying the ship

Devoured in a moment one whirlpool of fury ...

On the wide, spacious square where the Bastille used to stand, Wordsworth "sat down on a pile of logs in the rays of dawn" and picked up a pebble from the ground - a fragment of the fortress wall - as a memory of the fallen despotism.

Evidently, in editing the text of the ninth book after 1805, Wordsworth, after an enthusiastic glorification of the Revolution and its measures, inserts several false phrases of a protective nature. Such, for example, is the phrase: "All these things for me ... did not represent, however, a vital interest" (lines 106-107). There are many similar reservations, apparently intended for the Society for the Eradication of Vice, in the Prelude. But, of course, they are not decisive in assessing the merits of this wonderful novel as a whole. To Wordsworth, the author of the "Prelude", it is quite possible to attribute the verses of A. Blok:

Forgive the gloom - is it

Hidden engine of it?

He was a child of Good and Light,

He is all - Freedom triumph!

Such an opinion can be supported, I think, by the following lines of the poet himself from the beginning of the ninth book:

But the first stormy squall rushed past,

And the powerful hand of violence rested;

Among people who are rich from birth,

And the chosen ministers of the crown

There was a long talk about a long fight

Good and Evil in this cruel world...

But the emptiness and absurdity of those speeches

Bored me soon, I broke through

In the wide outside world - became a patriot;

I gave all my heart to the people,

I dedicated my love to him...

(Book 9, lines 106-124)

"Prelude" - a lyrical-epic heroic narrative, reminiscent of the revolutionary-romantic poems of Byron and Shelley - "The Prisoner of Chillon", "Childe Harold", "Queen Mab", "The Rise of Islam", "Prince Atanaz", etc.; there is not a trace here of those salon poems or sugary odes that Southey and Wordsworth supplied in the 1920s and 1930s and which (in fragments) are now included in numerous anthologies stored on the shelves of school and university libraries in English-speaking countries.

In the "Prelude" we meet with the characteristic genre features of that passionate, excited and lyrically rich poetic narrative (with elements of revolutionary classicism, with an appeal to the images of ancient heroes), which were loved by Blake, Berne, André Chenier, Hugo, Mickiewicz, Petofi, Byron, Shelley, Solomos and many other romantic poets. Poems of this kind are characterized by the presence of a collective image of a revolutionary people (for example, in Byron in Childe Harold - Guerillas, Italian and Greek rebels; in Shelley in The Rise of Islam - English republicans; in Blake in Prophetic Poems and in The King Guine" - peasants and artisans rebels).

A true display of the camp of the counter-revolution, the creation of the image of a revolutionary hero, a clear outline of the social and aesthetic ideal - everything that characterizes the poems of Blake, Byron, Hugo, Petofi, Shelley - we find in Wordsworth's Prelude.

The purifying effect of the great revolution inspired the poet: discarding the absurd, scholastic puritanical dogmas, "all the rubbish and rags of the masquerade", inherited from Blair's vile cemetery poetry, Wordsworth sang with inspiration in the name of "the great future of England, France and all mankind":

That was truly a great hour,

When the timid suddenly grew bolder, -

And passions, excitement, struggle

In opinions was conducted openly by all,

Under every roof where the world used to be

reigned. The earth itself seemed

Suddenly lit up under my feet

And often I then said aloud,

And then often repeated:

"Oh, what a challenge to the whole story -

Past and all future!”

(Book 9, lines 161-175.)

Shelley called the French Revolution of 1789-1794 the most significant event of his time and constantly urged Byron to create a work worthy of this "greatest of revolutions." His own poems and poems, dedicated to France in the 90s of the 18th century, coincide in their subject matter with the poems of the Prelude. The images of the revolutionaries Laon, Athanase, the republicans from Queen Mab are in many ways reminiscent of the heroic image of the brave Republican Michel Bopy, created by Wordsworth. Moreover, in terms of the beauty of the white verse, the Prelude is not inferior to either the poems of Queen Mab, or the stanzas of Prince Athanase or Rosalind and Helena.

Communist and progressive criticism (Fox, Barbusse, Rolland) in the 20-30s of the 20th century repeatedly pointed to the creator of the Prelude as an example of an honest reflection in the art of the heroic revolutionary people by a writer with moderate democratic and even conservative views. And this is a restoration of justice, since in the 19th century reactionary literary criticism declared Wordsworth a "religious poet", the study of which is highly desirable in schools for the purposes of religious education.

A close analysis of the Prelude fundamentally undermines this view, based on Wordsworth's "ecclesiastical sonnets", with the proviso that his poems like "Guilt and Sorrow" are "sins of youth". It is impossible to declare an artist "predominantly a religious poet" who attacked the defenders of Faith, King and Order so fiercely and with conviction, as Wordsworth did in the Prelude, who also cursed the government of George III for unleashing a dirty war. against revolutionary France.

Wordsworth draws two camps for us: the camp of counter-revolutionary émigrés and the camp of the armed revolutionary people. His sympathy and sympathy are invariably on the side of the people, the people of the future - the Republicans of 1793. At first, the poet tries to speak impartially about the counter-revolutionary conspirators, highlighting and emphasizing even the pretty features in some of them:

Group of officers of the King,

Huddled now in apartments,

I kept company many times...

There were those who had been in battles

brave soldiers; majority

Belonged to the nobility by birth,

French aristocracy...

This is how the class composition of the conspirators who conceived the dirty work of the Restoration is determined:

Difference

In age, in character, nothing

They did not interfere with being all at the same time,

And in every heart one passion nested:

Destroy the foundations of the revolution ...

Only this thought alone was a delight,

One gave joy and hope -

No one thought that misfortune and death

For each of them could turn around

This secret conspiracy...

(Book 9, lines 125-150.)

Wordsworth comes in the Prelude also to the recognition that the people are the subject and object of history. Describing the triumphal procession of armed militias from the provinces through Paris, he then creates an epic image of the defender of the gains of the revolution, General Michel Bopi, the hero of the battles on the banks of the Loire. The creative feat of Wordsworth is all the more important because Michel Bopi is a real person, he was in great friendship with the poet. However, it would be wrong to assume that the image of Bopi is a photograph of a general. This is a generalized image of the heroic defenders of the young revolutionary republic in general. The image of Bopi may well be placed next to such heroes as Prince Atanaz, Laon, Lionel in Shelley, as Wallace and Bruce in Burns, Cromwell and Robin Hood in Scott, Enjolras and Gauvin in Hugo, Larivinier and Paul Arcene in George Sand. Wordsworth, who shunned conspirators, was drawn to this unusually bright man with all the fibers of his soul:

Among the former officers of the king

I distinguished only one: he was

Rejected by their environment as a patriot,

Supporter of the Revolution. More modest

There was no man in the world

Responsive, kinder and sweeter ...

He was an inspirational enthusiast:

Fate's cruel menacing blows,

Seemed to cleanse this soul

And tempered; he didn't get mad

But, like a flower in the alpine mountain meadows,

Seemed to reach for the light of the sun

Even stronger...

Hero of Wordsworth

Born an aristocrat

From an ancient illustrious family,

But he devoted himself entirely

Serving the poor, as if

He was bound with them by an invisible chain!

He valued and respected the man

For his pride and dignity.

Insidious and embittered slaves

He did not despise, he did not avenge them for evil,

But he treated them with obvious participation,

Forgiving insults, trying to awaken

Love in them for the Motherland, for Freedom, for Man ..,

(Book 9, lines 288-300.)

It seems that these lines were written not by Wordsworth, but by Shelley, characterizing one of his radiant heroes, who were also made of such material that “the rapists had no power to take possession of their souls” (“Atanaz”), and who, like their creator himself, were prodigal children of the aristocratic class, selflessly served the cause of the poor, the cause of the revolution, were distinguished by modesty, spiritual purity, integrity of character, purposefulness, possessed the fearlessness of a hero, death.

The characterization that Byron Shelley gave as "the best, humblest and most perfect of people" involuntarily comes to mind when reading the lines in which Wordsworth characterizes the spiritual qualities of his hero. The real Bopi was far from being as perfect as the image of a revolutionary created by the poet in the ninth book of the Prelude:

He might seem a little vain,

But this is only at first glance;

In fact, he was far from vanity,

As the stars are far from the mountains of the earth;

He was distinguished by benevolence

And he created an atmosphere of happiness

And joy. Ebullient energy

Was all fulfilled; Brotherhood and Freedom

He defended and glorified before all;

He was part of a great

Progress...

(Book 9, lines 360-371)

Thus, Wordsworth emphasizes the typicality of his hero, which makes him even more significant, even more artistically significant.

Revealing the world of Bopey's spiritual interests, Wordsworth recounts the conversations he allegedly had with Michel Bopey:

How often in the silence of the night

We argued about power in the state,

About wise and useful restructuring,

About ancient valor, the rights of the people,

Habits and customs of old,

About the new, conquering the routine

In violent revolutionary storms...

About arrogance and magnificence

Few selected births and grievous

Lawlessness of the working people;

He kept thinking about it

And in those days I was much cleaner, better

And he could judge deeper and more truthfully,

The later, immersed in the mire of life

And having learned to put up with evil...

We were occupied with the wisdom of our ancestors,

that we found in books

And with the ardor of youth they brought into life ...

(Book 9, lines 308-328.)

This story about the conversations of two friends is very reminiscent of the conversation between Julian and Maddallo from Shelley's poem of the same name:

I argued with him

About life, human nature...

I objected: “It remains for us to find out, -

And who wants to, can know it, -

How strong are the age-old chains...

In which our mind, as in an underground crypt,

It is tormented, and there is nothing for us to breathe ...

Perhaps, like a straw, shackles.

We know that from what crushes us,

We have lost a lot of things now ... "

The essential feature of the advanced literature of the first third of the 19th century was its anti-monarchist pathos. Shelley dreams that the "plague word - king" will forever disappear from the everyday life of peoples. Byron wrote:

Tyrants are falsely revered by us

From God-given kings...

Tyranny, which runs like a red thread through all the work of romantic poets, was borrowed from the French and German enlighteners. So, in Voltaire's "The Babylonian Princess" we meet furious curses and mockery of the monarchs: "Unfortunately, those who have power and crowns sent hordes of murderers to plunder ... tribes and stain the lands of their fathers with blood. These killers were called heroes. Robbery was called glory ... "

Cruelty, unscrupulousness and treachery of the crowned persons are shown in poems, dramas and ballads by Byron, Hugo, Heine, Petofi, Lermontov, Ryleev and others. In Wordsworth, in the ninth book, we also find lines of condemnation and debunking of the monarchical regime. These fiery lines were written secretly by the same hand that wrote lifeless rhymed praises for the Tori newspapers on the occasion of the name day or birthday of princesses and princes. At heart, Wordsworth never agreed with the principle of one-man unlimited power:

Most

We loved (I'll say now openly)

The insignificance and vulgarity of kings

And their backyards imagine. By flattery

The road is paved there by the villain

Criminal, the more stupid the scoundrel - the higher

He is lifted up, where talent and honor

Worth nothing, empty, cold,

Sinister world, cruel and vain,

Where is the truth and sincere feelings

With an evil mockery, with a mockery, they reject ...

(Book 9, pp. 340-350.)

Good and Evil intertwined there closely,

And greedy bloodthirst in the grip

Foreign lands their cliques combine

With terror and violence in the father's land...

(Book 9, lines 351-354.)

From this it becomes clear that hidden power of anger and indignation that erupted from the poet when a national liberation movement flared up in the countries of Europe and the punishers brutally suppressed it.

Despite the outward, visible humility and acceptance of the reaction, the poet's heart has always belonged to those who fought for Freedom and Equality - for the slogans proclaimed by the Convention and forever remained close to the heart of Wordsworth.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the second talented poet of the Lake School. While still a student at Oxford University, he met the poet Southey, the third Lakeist poet. They were fascinated by the ideas of the French Revolution and the social views of Godwin. Influenced by the teachings of the latter, both poets decided to leave for the virgin forests of America and create the Pantisokratia community there, for whose members the oppression of statehood and private property was to be destroyed. However, these youthful plans were never destined to come true.

In 1798 Coleridge published Lyric Ballads with Wordsworth. Coleridge then went to Germany, where he studied idealistic philosophy at the University of Göttingen, which had a great influence on the nature of his work. Like Wordsworth, Coleridge was radical in his youth; he denounced the terror that the Pitt government carried out in Ireland. He responded to the French Revolution with the ode "The Fall of the Bastille" (1789); he mourned the untimely death of the brilliant Poate youth Chatterton.

But in 1794, Coleridge wrote (with Southey) the tragedy The Fall of Robespierre, in which he cursed the leaders of the Jacobins and justified the Thermidorian counter-revolutionary coup. After this, Coleridge moved away from the ideals of democracy and the Enlightenment. Among the mature works of Coleridge, included in the "Lyrical Ballads", one should dwell on the "Old Sailor" - a ballad in seven parts. This work is very characteristic of the second period of the poet's work. The ballad contains vivid life episodes and sketches. Such, for example, is the picture of the departure of a sailing brig on a long voyage:

They make noise in the crowd - the rope creaks,

The flag is raised on the mast.

And we are sailing, here is the father's house,

Here is the church, here is the lighthouse.

However, this work is based on the reactionary idea that a person should meekly submit to the “inscrutable providence of the Lord”, that the world is controlled by some mysterious forces, to resist which it is a sin. There is a lot of mysticism, complex romantic symbolism, descriptions of miracles; reality in the ballad is combined with fantasy in the most bizarre way.

The story begins with the fact that a man hurrying to the wedding feast is detained by an old sailor who begins to tell the story of one forgotten voyage. The guest escapes all the time, he hurries to the sounds of music and fun coming from the windows, but the old man’s magical look stops him, he is forced to listen to the story of how a cruel sailor killed an albatross sitting on the stern of the ship in the sea - a prophetic bird that brings - according to legend sailors, happiness. For this, God punished the wicked: all his comrades died, and he alone, tormented by thirst and tormented by remorse, remained alive on a dead ship, which froze motionless in the middle of a lifeless ocean. The shocked sailor fell to his knees, his rough lips began to utter the words of a prayer, and, as if by a wave of a magic wand, the spell was dispelled. A fresh wind blew the sails, and the ship quickly rushed to the coast. After listening to this story, the wedding guest forgets that he went to have fun at the wedding feast, his soul is immersed in "the contemplation of the divine."

However, it should be noted that, despite the weakness of the main idea of ​​the work (sermon of humility), the ballad has a number of poetic virtues. Coleridge appears in the ballad as a great artist of the sea. The experiences of the hero are also masterfully depicted, the dialectic of his soul is deeply revealed.

Coleridge's verse is distinguished by sonority and expressiveness. Such a strict connoisseur as Byron speaks with praise of the work of Coleridge. He even tried to get the poem "Christabel" printed and to provide material assistance to its author, who was then in great need.

"Christabel" is one of Coleridge's creative successes. The action of the poem is attributed to the Middle Ages. The beautiful and brave girl Christabel enters into a fight with her stepmother, the witch Geraldine, who seeks to win the heart of her father, the knight Leolin. Using the traditions of the so-called "Gothic novel", Coleridge paints fantastic pictures of a medieval castle full of mysterious horrors of an enchanted forest, etc. The poet was going to show at the end of this remaining unfinished poem how the pious Christabel defeats the evil and treacherous Geraldine. Thus, here too, just as in The Old Sailor, the idea of ​​Christian piety triumphs.

In another of his works - in an unfinished fragment of "Kubly Khan" (1816) - Coleridge comes to the approval of irrational art. The description of the luxurious palace and gardens of the almighty eastern despot Kubla Khan is full of vague symbols, which are further complicated by vague hints and omissions.

Robert Southey (1774-1843). The third of the Lakeist poets, Robert Southey, was the son of a Bristol merchant. He studied at Oxford University, where he was fond of the ideas of Godwin and the French Republicans. As a young man, Southey emerged as a radical writer. He protested against feudal oppression and royal arbitrariness:

And who will answer the nation for

That the court wasted millions

While the poor man dries from hunger?

Southey also protested against capitalist institutions, rebelled against the militaristic policy of the government, welcomed the French Revolution ("Joan of Arc"). However, in adulthood, Southey became a reactionary. Unlike Wordsworth and Coleridge, who retained sympathy for the people to the end (Coleridge , for example, condemned the massacres of Irish patriots, Wordsworth mourned the plight of the English peasant), Southey called for the execution of workers, shamelessly praising predatory wars, wrote odes and poems in which he glorified the king and his ministers.

Shelley, who came to visit Southey at his home in Caswick in 1811, noted with chagrin that Southey had become a Berkeleian, a supporter of the government and an ardent preacher of Christianity. After his defection, Southey received the honorary title of court poet laureate from the king, for which he was repeatedly subjected to caustic ridicule from Byron. Southey recalled with shame the "sins of youth" - his works such as "The Complaints of the Poor" and "The Blenheim Battle", in which he condemned social inequality and war. When in 1816 one of the radicals published his poem "Wat Tyler", which describes the feat of the people's leader, who raised the masses against the feudal lords, Southey initiated a lawsuit against him. Great poems, ballads, descriptions of the lives of crowned heads constitute Southey's later legacy. His ballads are a pastiche of medieval poetry. Imitation was the reason for their low artistry.

Byron mercilessly denounced the poet laureate for his betrayal of radicalism and shameful servility to the ruling clique in such works as the preface to Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment, a parody of Southey's own poem of the same name. This latter, too, however, did not remain in debt. In response to the withering criticism in Byron's Liberal, he issued a dirty leaflet - Anti-Liberal, where he called Byron and Shelley nothing more than "satanic poets"; he viciously triumphed when he learned of Byron's death.

The second, more mature period in the history of English romanticism begins at the very beginning of the 1910s with the appearance on the literary arena of the revolutionary romantics - Byron and Shelley, as well as the poet Keats, who is close to them in the spirit of his work. Ideologically, these writers were associated with the left wing of the Democratic Republican Party, which expressed the interests of the working masses of the large industrial centers of England and the revolutionary-minded Irish peasantry; it fought under the banner of revolutionary-democratic ideas worked out during half a century of bitter struggle between the British workers' opposition and the heroic revolutionary party Irishmen United. Both Byron and especially Shelley reflected in their work the mood of the many millions of proletarian and semi-proletarian masses in town and country, who fought heroically for labor legislation, for trade unions, for the overthrow of the monarchy, the eradication of the remnants of feudalism, for the revival of an independent and free Ireland.

Notes.

1. The most prominent poets and satirists of these societies were T. Spence, famous for his satirical magazine "Pig Feed", Sheffield cutler, poet, revolutionary pre-romantic James Montgomery, D. Tellwall, Peter Pindar (D. Walcot) and many others. etc. Meetings of the London "Correspondent Society" were attended by the prominent English philosopher and novelist William Godwin, author of the novel "Caleb Williams" highly valued by N. G. Chernyshevsky. The work of T. Payne "Rights of Man" is read and reread by the great national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns; the prominent romantic poet Thomas Moore, a friend of D. Byron, who also gained fame in Russia, becomes the singer of defeated and humiliated Ireland. Until now, his elegy "Evening Ringing" (translated by I. Kozlov) is very popular.

2. See "The Tree of Liberty" by R. Burns.

3. V. Blake. Poetic sketches, 1782.

4. The poem "Fly" in Sat. "Songs of Experience"

5. Blake's poems are given in the translation of S. Ya. Marshak.

6. Caiaphas - the high priest of the Jerusalem temple.

7. Scholars of English literature point, for example, to the fact that Shelley knew many of Wordsworth's diric ballads by heart and constantly recited "Tinterite Abbey" to Byron, who was very fond of listening to this recitation by Shelley.

8. R. Fox. Romance and people. L., GIHL, 1939, p. 207.

9. P. B. Shelley. "To Wordsworth" (1814), In the book: "Poetry and Prose". M., 1959, p. 290 (ea English)

10. To Wordsworth. Pzhetic works. London - New York, 1951, p. 758 (book 9, lines 50-51). All subsequent quotations are from this edition, with book numbers and lines indicated in the text.

English romanticism. The Romantics played a huge role in transforming the cult of Shakespeare (as a new phenomenon in everyday life in England) into an aesthetic program, in which the Shakespeareanization mastered by the pre-Romantics took its rightful place. However, different romantics and at different stages expressed their attitude to Shakespeare in a wide range: from Shakespeareization, bordering on Shakespearianism (for example, in S. T. Coleridge, a representative of the Lake School - i.e. initial stage English romanticism) to “anti-Shakespearianism” (for example, in the representative of the next generation - J. G. Byron, whose opposition to Shakespeare was brilliantly presented and argued by A. S. Pushkin).

The aesthetic premise of English Romanticism was a disillusionment with classicism and enlightenment realism as artistic systems based on enlightenment philosophy. They did not fully reveal the inner world of man, the laws of human history, which were comprehended in a new way in the light of the French Revolution. The foundations of romanticism in England were laid by William Blake (1757-1827), but romanticism received recognition later.

"Lake School" The first stage of English romanticism (1793-1812) is associated with the activities of the Lake School. It included William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Robert Southey (1774-1843). They lived in the land of lakes, so they began to be called leukists (from the English lake - lake).

All three poets supported the French Revolution in their youth. But already in 1794 they were moving away from these positions. In 1795 Wordsworth and Coleridge meet for the first time. They are united by their disappointment in the revolution, they are afraid of the bourgeois world. Under these conditions, they create a collection of "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). The success of this collection marked the beginning of English Romanticism as a literary movement. Wordsworth's preface to the second edition of Lyric Ballads (1800) became the manifesto of English romanticism. Wordsworth formulates the tasks of the authors as follows: “So, the main task of these Poems was to select cases and situations from everyday life and retell or describe them, constantly using, as far as possible, ordinary language, and at the same time color them with the colors of the imagination. , thanks to which ordinary things would appear in an unusual form; finally - and this is the main thing - to make these cases and situations interesting, revealing in them with truthfulness, but not deliberately, the fundamental laws of our nature ... ".

Wordsworth makes a great contribution to English poetry in that he breaks with the conventions of eighteenth-century poetic language. The revolution accomplished by Wordsworth and Coleridge was described by A. S. Pushkin as follows: “In mature literature, the time comes when minds, bored with monotonous works of art, limited by the circle of the agreed, chosen language, turn to fresh folk fictions and to strange vernacular, at first contemptible” (“On the poetic style”, 1828).

Wordsworth seeks to penetrate into the psychology of the peasant. Peasant children retain a special naturalness of feelings, the poet believes. His ballad "We are seven" tells about an eight-year-old girl. She is naively sure that there are seven children in their family, not realizing that two of them have died. The poet sees mystical depth in her answers. The girl intuitively guesses about the immortality of the soul.

But the city, civilization deprives children of their natural affections. In the ballad "Poor Susanna", the singing of a thrush reminded young Susanna of "the native land - on the slope of the mountains, a blooming paradise." But "the vision soon disappears." What awaits the girl in the city? - "A bag with a stick, and a copper cross, // Yes, begging, yes hunger strikes, Yes, an evil cry: "Away, thief ...".

Coleridge takes a slightly different path in Lyrical Ballads. If Wordsworth wrote about the unusualness of the ordinary, then Coleridge wrote about exceptional romantic events. The most famous work of Coleridge was the ballad "The Tale of the Old Sailor". An old sailor stops a young man hurrying to a feast and tells him his extraordinary story. During one of his voyages, a sailor killed an albatross, a bird that brings good luck to ships. And trouble came to his ship: the water ran out, all the sailors died, and the sailor was left alone among the corpses. Then he realized that the cause of the misfortune was his evil deed, and offered up a prayer of repentance to heaven. The wind immediately blew, the ship landed on the ground. Not only life, but also the soul of the sailor was saved. The hero of Coleridge, at first devoid of a spiritual beginning, begins to see clearly in his suffering. He learns about the existence of another, higher world. An awakened conscience reveals to him the highest moral values. This romantic ideal is tinged with mysticism.

Thus, the representatives of the “lake school” are characterized by a combination of bold aesthetic searches, interest in their native history, stylization of folk art forms, and conservative political and philosophical views.

Second phase of English Romanticism covers 1812-1832 (from the publication of Songs I and II of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to the death of Walter Scott). The main achievements of this period are associated with the names of Byron, Shelley, Scott, Keats. Byron's poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" sounded the idea of ​​freedom for all peoples, affirmed not only the right, but also the duty of every people to fight for independence and freedom from tyranny. For the first time, a romantic type of character was created, called the Byronic hero. The second remarkable achievement of this period is the emergence of the genre of the historical novel, whose creator was Walter Scott.

By the beginning of the second period, a circle of London romantics had finally taken shape. The circle advocated the rights of the individual, for progressive reforms. Of greatest importance among the works of the London Romantics are the poems and verses of John Keats (1795-1821). He developed the traditions of the poetry of the great Scottish poet of the 18th century. Robert Burns. Keats conveys in his poems a feeling of bright joy from contact with nature, he claims: “The poetry of the earth knows no death” (sonnet “The Grasshopper and the Cricket”, 1816). In his poems ("Endymion", 1818, "Hyperion", 1820), the passion for ancient Greek mythology and history characteristic of the romantics (as opposed to the classicist passion for ancient Rome) affected. Conservative critics have strongly condemned Keats' innovative poetry. The sick and unrecognized poet had to leave for Italy. Keats died very young. And the following year, Shelley died, the great English poet who, together with Byron, defined the face of English romantic poetry of the second period.

Lit.: History of world literature: In 9 t. M .: Nauka, 1988. V. 5 (there is a bibl.).

The development of romanticism in England It is also connected with the historical conditions of the development of Europe in the first half of the 19th century. Literature was undoubtedly greatly influenced by the great French Revolution and the war of England against Napoleon, as well as internal social and political relations. The situation in the country was extremely unsettled.

In the first post-war years (1815-1816), the standard of living of the masses fell, and economic crises became more frequent. In England, there is an upsurge of the democratic movement (1816-20s), factory workers are widely involved in the unrest. Among the intelligentsia, many criticize the capitalist system, and the writings of the utopian socialist R. Owen appear. Late 20s early 30s. also marked by a new intensification of the class struggle. Large trade union organizations of workers arise - trade unions, for example, the great national union of spinners. All this affects the uniqueness of the writers' worldview.

English romanticism is characterized by a focus on the problems of the development of society and humanity as a whole, a keen sense of the inconsistency, even the catastrophic nature of the historical process. While in Germany, romanticism was predominantly associated with the field of philosophy, ethics and aesthetics.

The ideas and sentiments of English Romanticism were anticipated in the poetry of William Blake, as well as in sentimentalism and pre-romanticism. The directly romantic worldview in English literature is represented by various artists who form different currents in the same mainstream of English romanticism. Thus, the poets of the “lake school” idealize antiquity, pre-bourgeois, patriarchal relations, present the rejection of modern industrial society, glorify nature, simple, natural feelings. Other moods are characteristic of the work of Byron and Shelley. These are the moods of struggle and protest. The two poets are united by political pathos, a sharp negative attitude towards the existing system, sympathy for the oppressed and destitute. In Byron's poetry, above all, a sense of tragic hopelessness, the motives of "world sorrow" are also presented.

The work of another English romantic, Walter Scott, appears differently. He is the author of romantic poems on medieval subjects and the founder of the historical novel genre in European literature.

Romantic tendencies are shaped differently in the work of John Keats, who was a member of the group of "London romantics" (Hunt, Lam, and others). The beauty of the world of nature and man is presented in his poetry, the theme of love takes the first place. Thus, English romanticism is also heterogeneous in its composition. Various aesthetic romantic tendencies take shape and coexist in it.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, an ideological and creative community of poets developed in the north-west of England, who would later be called the poets of the "lake school" - leukists (from the English word lake - lake), because. the northwest of England is considered the Lake District (Cumberland). These are such romantic poets as William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They rejected the ideals of the Enlightenment and essentially carried out a romantic reform of English poetry.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

The poet was greatly influenced by the French Revolution, who was practically an eyewitness to it, because. in 1792 he leaves for Paris. It was at this time that such works full of democracy and humanism were born, such as the poems "Guilt and Sorrow" (1794), "The Ruined Hut" (1795, the tragedy "Border Residents" (1796), the novel in verse "Prelude", etc. Especially the collection "Lyrical Ballads" (1798) became famous, which caused a real revolution in the literature of that time. The poet also introduces the spoken language of the peasants of the north-west of England into the poetic fabric of the ballads, essentially producing a genuine reform in the field of the literary language of that time. Wordsworth made heroes his ballads of ordinary people - representatives of the lower classes - farmers, laborers, the unemployed. He truthfully depicts the ruin of millions of small farmers, shows the suffering of the poor. However, he is faithful to the religious and Puritan dogmas. He preaches the teachings of the church about non-resistance to evil by violence. This can be seen in such ballads as "Idiot Boy", "Gypsies", etc.

The aesthetic views of the poet played a historical role in the development of romanticism in Britain and the United States. At that time, it was very difficult to get a higher education and complete a master's degree in England. The preface to the second edition of Lyric Ballads (1800) is traditionally considered the manifesto of romanticism in England. Wordsworth asserts the superiority of the Imagination over the enlightening Reason. Proves that Fantasy and Intuition help to comprehend the essence of things and characters immeasurably deeper than science can do by summarizing the facts. Wordsworth argues that poets are a kind of prophets (teachers) who are morally responsible for the fate of their fellow citizens. He speaks of moral improvement. About wise non-interference in "unrighteous deeds". The poet's thought is important that the comprehension of the beauty of nature leads to the comprehension of the beauty of God. Thus, Wordsworth is partly faithful to the ideals of medieval philosophers. Rural life is conceived by him in merger with beautiful and eternal nature. That is why the villagers can become an example of the primordial human passions, which is why the poet depicts them and the rural nature in his works.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

In his student years, the poet is also under the influence of strong impressions from the French Revolution of 1789-94. and political events in England itself. Together with Robert Southey, also a poet of the "lake school", he is going to go to America and found there a commune of equal and free workers "Pantisocracy". In 1793, Coleridge wrote the eclogue "Fire, Famine and Massacre", in which he glorifies the democrats of his time - Priestley, Sheridan, Godwin. In 1795, he gave political lectures in Bristol, trying to expose the policies of the government of William Peet Jr.

After 1797, the poet's mind became disillusioned with the results of the French Revolution. He leaves for Germany, where he studies classical German philosophy, gets acquainted with the work of German romantics. Coleridge puts his thoughts into a poetic form and writes the ode "Despondency", where he expresses his own attitude.

Coleridge interested in the aesthetics of the Middle Ages. He turns to the art of English poets of the Middle Ages, looking for confirmation of his aesthetic and ethical ideals. He also preaches the need to learn from the creators of folk ballads, he believes that it is necessary to use a living, colloquial language in works of art.

The most famous works of Coleridge are the ballad "The Tale of the Old Sailor" (1798), the poem "Christabel" (was unfinished, but published at the insistence of Byron in 1816), the unfinished poem "Kubla Khan" (1816). These works clearly show the theme of the fatal disunity of people, the inescapable loneliness of the individual, terrifying Life in Death. This theme in different versions will pass through the entire world literature.

Robert Southey (1774 - 1843)

IN early period of his work, Robert Southey is also inspired by the great French. Revolution. In his early works, he refers to historical events of a heroic nature. So, in the poem "Wat Tyler" (1789) is based on the events of the Peasants' War of 1381. The poet refers to a heroic personality, creating, in fact, in literature one of the types of a romantic hero. Such, in its inner character, is the play "Joan of Arc", where the well-known story of the French heroine takes on a different sound. The poet condemns the expansion of the British during the Hundred Years' War, thus. exposing the contemporary policy of England towards Napoleonic France. Southey, like Coleridge, refers to the Middle Ages, its history and literature. Many of his works are written on medieval or Eastern romantic themes - "Talaba the Destroyer" (1801), "The Curse of Kegama" (1810), "Roderick, the Last of the Goths" (1814). A lot in the works of Southey and mythological fiction: he uses the images of witches, devils, mermaids.

Southey becomes the court poet laureate, for which he was condemned more than once. So, Byron and Shelley sneer at his poetry: "There was so much sleepy boredom in his poetry and prose," wrote Shelley. In 1809 Byron criticized the Lake School poets in his article "English Bards and Scottish Reviewers". He condemned Southey and called him a renegade. He ridicules Southey for his lackey servility to the royal family, considers him a corrupt reactionary scribbler. However, we will not pass judgment on the poets of the "lake school", because. they have made a considerable contribution to English poetry and world consciousness.

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