Contemporary literature or classics?
Many have the same point of view - of course, a classic! It would seem, what can you think about here? But no, there is something about. Let's see which is better? Classics ... deep thoughts, real feelings, realism of what is described. On it we grow, learn to think, it gives us spiritual food - we understand through the classics what is good, what is evil. We understand ourselves through the experiences of the heroes, we look deep into our souls and understand: this is how it happens, these are the real feelings, this is what Honor, Duty, Motherland mean. Classics educates us as a Man with a capital letter. Its merits are undeniable. But the classic educates us for the most part during the period of growing up, the spiritual formation of our "I" as a person, she gives us, in fact, the experience that in real life we \u200b\u200bhave not yet acquired due to our age. Of course, there is no limit to perfection. But we can improve only when certain conditions are created for us: the availability of free time, the desire to read and reflect on the problems that worried and worried mankind, etc. etc. Objectively, such conditions are not present in every one of us. At this point, let's make a reservation. I am taking the average person of the middle class and middle class, I do not take into account people for whom spiritual food is akin to material food. So, the average person, as a rule, has a completely different mind than the desire to read the classics: how to feed yourself and your family, how to raise children, how to enter / graduate from university. The average person comes home after work / school exhausted by the same day. How many of these average people will sit by the fireplace, or just in an armchair with a volume of Dostoevsky in their hands? Hardly. What does this person want? Is it really thinking, improving and expanding your horizons? No. The realities are such that such a person wants to be distracted more often, to forget and not think about anything. Here modern literature in all its diversity comes to our aid, represented by all genres and literary trends. Let's take as a basis modern fantasy, which as a literary trend at the present stage is the most successful and popular with readers. Open any fantasy novel and look for deep thoughts there. Do you find many of them? I don’t think so. I will make a reservation. I am not suggesting that the entire fantasy direction is easy reading. But most of the books in this genre are undoubtedly yes. And let's ask the next question, is there a need for a deep meaning? Is the average person tired of a day looking for deep thoughts and moral dilemmas, opening another novel about the adventures of the next / next hit / hit? I don’t think so. So the writers do not seek to put into their books the very profundity inherent in the classics, since the modern reader simply does not look for it there. Demand creates supply. Therefore, perhaps, there is no need to condemn the writers of modern literature: they only reflect the demand that we, the readers, generate. Modern literature gives us the opportunity to escape from the problems that worry us and plunge into a world where all problems are insignificant and can be easily solved with a wave of a hand or a magic wand. We are immersed in a world in which everything is easy, understandable and simple. Once - and you are rich, twice - you are famous, three - you already rule, if not the world, then certainly your empire. Everything is easy to understand and there are no moral dilemmas. Summarize. On the one hand, this kind of literature dulls our mind, but on the other hand, we find in it rest and the realization of our desires, which we often cannot get in life. Thus, modern literature is both negative and positive. Classics ... Classics were, are and will be. And that's it. So, dear readers, do not look for deep meaning in the literature, which is intended for relaxation, and do not make high demands on it. Better read the classics. And do not look for entertainment in the classics, because then it is no longer a classic.
The Wax Museum. Pushkin.
The question in the title is by no means idle. When from time to time I have the opportunity to work at school and teach my favorite literature, even high school students may be genuinely surprised by the fact, for example, that I indicate only the year of birth for a modern writer. "Is he still alive?" They ask. The logic is that since he is alive - why do they study at school? The concept of a "living classic" does not fit in their heads.
And the truth is - which of the living can be considered living classics? I'll try to answer offhand: in sculpture - Zurab Tsereteli and Ernst Unknown, in painting - Ilya Glazunova, in literature - already mentioned, in music - Paula McCartney... In relation to them, a similar term is also used - " living legend". And although, strictly speaking, a legend is a story about "deeds of bygone days," in the context of the present day, the legend has become much younger. There is nothing to do - you put up with this circumstance ...
There is a point of view according to which only that which was created before the beginning of the twentieth century should be considered a classic. There is logic in this statement. The artistic culture of the past, using Pushkin's formula, "awakened" in people "good feelings", sowed " reasonable, kind, eternal "(N.A. Nekrasov). But already in the second half of the 19th century, the picture began to change. The first type of art that was affected by "corruption" was painting.
Have appeared french impressionists... They have not yet completely broken with realism, although it is difficult to call them real modernists. But for the first time, the defining moment of art was the subjective in andthe artist's vision, his mood and state, the impression of the surrounding world.
Further more. Instead of the usual landscapes, still lifes, battle paintings, animal painting, portraits the audience sees color spots, curved lines, geometric shapes. Modernism is moving away from the objective world. And the abstractionism that inherits it and does mark the fact that the Spanish thinker H. Ortega y Gasset called “ dehumanizing art».
As for our "Silver Age", there were many "broken and deceitful gestures" (S. Yesenin). Posing, "life-building", shocking, experiments with word and sound. And as it turns out later, there are very few genuine artistic discoveries. And even those were not discoveries in the full sense of the word - both Blok and Yesenin, and each in their own way absorbed and assimilated the classics of the "golden age", creatively rethinking and reincarnating it.
And the phrase “ soviet classics"As well as" soviet intelligentsia"In a sense, nonsense. Yes, talentedly written novel by A. , only the author himself defined its main idea as "reforging of human material". What does it sound like, think about it - "human material" ?!
I'm not in favor of giving up something and throw "off the steamer of modernity"- enough already, we passed ... But if we draw a dividing line between" that "classics and the latest - of course, I will choose that one. And I will advise others. How much was written by Soviet writers on the topic of the day! Now what? These opuses are interesting, perhaps, to literary historians, as a document of the time. " Cavalier of the Golden Star "by S. Babaevsky," Russian Forest "," Bars "by F. Panferov... The list is easy to go on and will take more than one page. But why?
« Pure art »Feta passed through decades and centuries. Tendentious through and through novel by N. Chernyshevsky "What is to be done?" long forgotten. Only those works where there is love and compassion for a person, where a living word glimmers, where a thought is read, are the everlasting classics.
Pavel Nikolaevich Malofeev ©
Translated from the Latin language, the word "classic" (classicus) means "exemplary". From this essence of the word comes the fact that literature, called classical, received this "name" due to the fact that it is a kind of reference point, an ideal, in the mainstream of which the literary process strives to move at a certain stage of its development.
A look from modernity
Several options are possible. From the first, it follows that the classics are works of art (in this case, literary) at the time of consideration belonging to previous eras, whose authority was tested by time and remained unshakable. This is how in modern society all previous literature is regarded up to the 20th century inclusive, while in the culture of Russia, for example, the classics mainly means the art of the 19th century (therefore, it is revered as the "Golden Age" of Russian culture). The literature of the Renaissance and Enlightenment breathed new life into the ancient heritage and chose the works of exclusively antique authors as a model (the term “Renaissance” already speaks for itself - this is the “revival” of antiquity, an appeal to its cultural achievements), in view of the appeal to an anthropocentric approach to the world ( which was one of the foundations of the worldview of man in the ancient world).In another case, they can become "classic" already in the era of their creation. The authors of such works are usually called “living classics”. Among them, A.S. Pushkin, D. Joyce, G. Marquez, etc. Usually, after such a recognition comes a kind of "fashion" for the newly-made "classic", in connection with which there is a huge number of works of imitative nature, which in turn cannot be classified as classics, since "follow sample ”does not mean to copy it.
The classic was not "classic", but became:
Another approach in defining "classical" literature can be made from the point of view of the cultural paradigm. Art of the 20th century, developing under the sign of "", sought to completely break with the achievements of the so-called "humanistic art", approaches to art in general. And in relation to this, the work of an author who is outside the modernist aesthetics and adheres to the traditional (because "classics" is usually a well-established phenomenon, with an already established history) can be attributed (of course, all this is conditional) to the classical paradigm. However, in the environment of the “new art” there are also authors and works that were later or immediately recognized as classical (such as the above-mentioned Joyce, who is one of the brightest representatives of modernism).These books do not leave you indifferent. With them it is light, sad, funny, exciting, interesting ... Whom can literary critics around the world call modern classics?
Russia: Leonid Yuzefovich
What to read:
- adventure novel "Cranes and Dwarfs" (Big Book Prize, 2009)
- the historical detective novel "Kazarosa" (nomination for the Russian Booker Prize, 2003)
- documentary novel "Winter Road" (National Bestseller Award, 2016; "Big Book", 2016)
What to expect from the author
In one of his interviews, Yuzefovich said about himself as follows: his task as a historian is to honestly reconstruct the past, and as a writer - to convince those who want to listen to him that this was indeed the case. Therefore, the line between fiction and reliability in his work is often imperceptible. Yuzefovich likes to combine different layers of time and narrative plans in one work. And he does not divide events and people into unambiguously good and bad, emphasizing that he is a storyteller, not a teacher of life and a judge. Reflections, assessments, conclusions - for the reader.
USA: Donna Tartt
What to read:
- the action-packed novel "Little Friend" (WNSmith Literary Award, 2003)
- epic novel "The Goldfinch" (Pulitzer Prize, 2014)
- the action-packed novel The Secret History (bestseller of the year according to The New York Times, 1992)
What to expect from the author
Tartt loves playing with genres: in each of her novels there is a detective component, both psychological and social, and adventurous-rogue, and intellectual in the spirit of Umberto Eco. In the work of Donna, the continuity of the traditions of classical literature of the 19th century is noticeable, in particular of such titans as Dickens and Dostoevsky. Donna Tartt compares the process of working on the book in terms of duration and complexity with a round-the-world voyage, a polar expedition, or ... a wall-length painting painted with an ink brush. The American woman is distinguished by her love for details and details, explicit and hidden quotes from the great works of literature and philosophical treatises, and the minor characters in her novels are no less lively and complex than the main characters.
United Kingdom: Antonia Bayette
What to read:
- Neo-Victorian novel Possess (Booker Prize, 1990)
- novel-saga "Children's Book" (short-list of the Booker Prize, 2009)
What to expect from the author
If you, as a reader, are delighted with Leo Tolstoy, have mastered at least something from Proust and Joyce, then you will also like the multilayered epic intellectual novels of the Briton Antonia Bayette. As Bayette admits, she likes to write about the past: the novel “Possess” takes place today, but also plunges into the Victorian era, and the family saga “Children's Book” covers the Edwardian period that followed. Bayette compares the work of the writer with collecting - ideas, images, destinies in order to study and tell people about them.
France: Michel Houellebecq
What to read:
- dystopian novel "Obedience" (member of The New York Times rating "100 Best Books of 2015")
- social science fiction novel "Island Opportunity" (Interalier Prize, 2005)
- socio-philosophical novel "Map and Territory" (Goncourt Prize, 2010)
- social and philosophical novel "Elementary Particles" (prize "November Prize", 1998)
What to expect from the author
He is called the enfant terrible ("intolerable, capricious child") of French literature. He is the most translated and most read of the contemporary authors of the Fifth Republic. Michel Houellebecq writes about the imminent decline of Europe and the collapse of the spiritual values \u200b\u200bof Western society, boldly speaks about the expansion of Islam in Christian countries. When asked how he writes novels, Houellebecq replies with a quote from Schopenhauer: "The first and practically only condition for a good book is when you have something to say." - Houellebecq, "C" est ainsi que je fabrique mes livres "And adds: the writer does not need to try to understand everything," it is best to observe the facts and not necessarily rely on any theory. "
Germany: Bernhard Schlink
What to read:
- the socio-psychological novel "The Reader" (the first novel by a German writer on The New York Times bestseller list, 1997; Hans-Fallada-Preis, 1997; Die Welt Literary Prize, 1999)
What to expect from the author
Schlink's main theme is the conflict between fathers and children. But not so much eternal, caused by a misunderstanding between the older and younger generations, but quite specific, historical - of the Germans who adopted the ideology of Nazism in the 1930s – 1940s, and their descendants, who are torn between condemning terrible crimes against humanity and trying to understand their motives. The “Reader” also raises other difficult topics: love between a young man and a woman with a large age difference, unacceptable in a conservative society; illiteracy, which, it would seem, has no place in the middle of the twentieth century, and its fatal consequences. As Schlink writes, “to understand does not mean to forgive; to understand and condemn at the same time is possible and necessary, but it is very difficult. And this burden has to be borne. "
Spain: Carlos Ruiz Safon
What to read:
- mystery-detective novel "The Shadow of the Wind" (Joseph-Beth and Davis-Kidd Booksellers Fiction Award, 2004; Borders Original Voices Award, 2004; NYPL Books to Remember Award, 2005; Book Sense Book of the Year: Honorable Mention, 2005 ; Gumshoe Award, 2005; Barry Award for Best First Novel, 2005)
- mystic-detective novel "Angel's Game" (Prize Premi Sant Jordi de novel.la, 2008; Euskadi de Plata, 2008)
What to expect from the author
The novels of the famous Spaniard are often called neo-Gothic: they contain frightening mysticism, a detective plot with intellectual riddles in the taste of Umberto Eco, and passionate feelings. "Shadow of the Wind" and "Angel's Game" unites the scene - Barcelona - and the plot: the second novel is a prequel to the first. The mysteries of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the intricacies of destinies captivate both the heroes of Carlos Ruiz Zafon and the readers. The Shadow of the Wind became the most successful novel published in Spain since the days of Don Quixote by Cervantes, and The Game of an Angel became the best-selling book in the history of the country: 230,000 copies of the novel were sold out in the week after its publication.
Japan: Haruki Murakami
What to read:
- Philosophical and fantasy novel "The Chronicles of the Clockwork Bird" (Yomiuri Prize, 1995; Dublin Literary Prize nomination, 1999)
- Dystopian novel Hunt for Sheep (Noma Prize, 1982)
- psychological novel "Norwegian Forest" (member of the rating "Top 20 best-selling books on Amazon.com", 2000 [the year when the book was fully translated into English], 2010 [the year when the book was filmed])
What to expect from the author
Murakami is called the most "western" writer of the Land of the Rising Sun, but he leads the story in his books like a true son of the East: storylines arise and flow like streams or rivers, and the author himself describes, but never explains, what is happening. There are questions, but there are no answers to them, the main characters are “strange people” who clearly do not meet the majority's ideas about normality and well-being. The world of characters is like a surreal collage of reality with dreams, fantasies, fears, protests of repressed will. “Literary work is always a bit of a deception,” Murakami stresses. "But the writer's fantasy helps a person to look at the world around him in a different way."
