Ideological struggle and social movement in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Ideological struggle and social movement in Russia in the first half of the 19th century Critical activity of Xenophon Polevoy

Ideological struggle and social movement in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Ideological struggle and social movement in Russia in the first half of the 19th century Critical activity of Xenophon Polevoy

MOSCOW STATE PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE them. V.I. LENINA VOLUME LXXXVI. 1954
Uchen. notes of MGPI im. Lenin, v. 86, department. Foreign Literature, vol. 2. - M., 1954

O. V. Lovtsova

POLITICAL AND SOCIO-COMMON ESSAYS OF BALZAC IN THE 30S OF THE XIX CENTURY

http://psujourn.narod.ru/lib/pss_bal.htm

The development of realism in the art and literature of France in the first third of the 19th century is inextricably linked with the political struggle of the advanced forces of French society against the Bourbons, and is a reflection of this struggle.

Public life prompted democratically minded artists and writers with contemporary social themes. The desire for a truthful depiction of a person with his suffering caused by difficult social conditions is characteristic of many writers and artists of this time. And a truthful analysis of bourgeois reality in an era when the leading contradictions were more and more fully revealed bourgeois society, it was necessary to contain a critical attitude to the depicted world. Truth could not be without criticism. This is exactly how critical realism was born in France in the 1820s (Béranger, Stendhal, Balzac, Merimee, Charlet, and others). The realistic method in art and literature is thus engendered by revolutionary tendencies, by the need realized by people to "look with sober eyes at their position in life and their mutual relations" 1.

Realistic works of art and literature, truthfully and critically depicting the bourgeois world, teach to hate it and thus, in turn, give rise to revolutionary tendencies. That is why the bourgeoisie is fighting so fiercely against realism.

Balzac's work was a condensation and a brilliant expression of the leading realistic trend in French literature of the 20s-40s, which had deep connections with the general revolutionary upsurge in France before 1830 and then before the revolution of 1848.

These lively and direct connections between Balzac's realistic method and social reality are very clearly revealed not only in the brilliant Human Comedy, but also in Balzac's sketchy heritage.

Balzac's essay heritage is extensive (he wrote only 216 essays and 91 feuilletons), but to this day it remains out of sight of foreign criticism. If individual Balzac scholars mention this side of Balzac's creativity in passing, then the vast majority of critics do not consider it necessary to do this either. Balzac's essays are simply hushed up by bourgeois criticism. They are not reissued; they were included, and by no means all of them, only in two complete collections of Balzac's works: in the so-called "definitive" edition of Kalmann-Levi of 1868-1879 and in two additional volumes of the Konar edition of 1935-1938.

Until now, the attention of Soviet criticism has also been directed mainly to the study of the novels of the Human Comedy. Meanwhile, the essays are the most extensive and highly interesting and grateful material that makes it possible to observe the formation of the realistic method of Balzac, to understand from what source this method was fed, to explain the appearance on the literary scene of the early 30s of the last century Balzac - a mature realist.

Balzac's essays, due to their open, passionate and sharp denunciation of the foundations of bourgeois society and their pronounced deep sympathy for the people of France, are extremely relevant. They make Balzac our living contemporary.

Balzac's sketches are original sketches for the large canvas of The Human Comedy, at the same time they also have an independent artistic value. This genre seems to us to be the primary realistic artistic genre in the work of Balzac. Balzac's essays provide an opportunity to reveal the formation of his realism, to discover his most direct and lively connection with social reality, which prompted Balzac to modern themes, which he realized in his large and small canvases.

Clever and insightful Balzac realized very early that there are no inexplicable phenomena in history. He also wanted to be a historian of French society. True, he formulated this task of his only in 1842 in the preface to The Human Comedy. However, Balzac's desire to give a "history of manners" of French society may be unconscious: at the very beginning, it is noticeable even in his earliest essays of the 1920s. Already in them, describing this or that type, this or that social phenomenon, Balzac sought to explain it, finding the social reason that gave rise to this phenomenon, or type, to reveal social connections and dependencies, that is, in essence, to reveal the typical circumstances in which one or the willow social type operates. This desire was not always equally realized in his essays; insufficient depth of knowledge of life, the immaturity of artistic skill, as well as an involuntary tribute to entertainment, the main requirement for an essay in the time of Balzac, prevented this in the 20s.

The essays of the 1930s and 1940s already show a confident realistic writing, they give expressive detailed typical pictures. They speak of greater courage and breadth in the formulation of social questions, of greater power of criticism, their conclusions are distinguished by depth and principle, according to social issues and ideological range they are very close to the "Human Comedy". Thus, in Balzac's essays of the early 1930s ("Usurer", "Minister", "Banker", "Artist's Revenge", "One Artist's Workshop", "Philipoten", etc.), typical circumstances in which the characters introduced by the author act , have already been expanded to the significance of historical processes, and the problems developed in them are so huge that they are cramped within the limits of a small essay, and Balzac transfers them to his large canvases of The Human Comedy.

Due to their artistic expressiveness, abundance of themes, depth and breadth of social generalizations, and especially due to their social sharpness and publicism, Balzac's essays should be singled out as an independent genre in his work.

The essays of Balzac's contemporaries testify that the absolute majority of their authors were not characterized by that deep insight into the essence of the real relations of French bourgeois society and that sharpness of historical and social vision that distinguish Balzac's work as a whole and which are reflected in his essays, even the earliest.

Essays gave Balzac a huge amount of living material, borrowed directly from reality, enriched his creative memory, developed the sharpness of his observation and his extraordinary ability to generalize, typify, and thus were the school of realistic writing.

I. THE FIRST STAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF BALZAC'S REALISM

ESSAYS OF THE 1920s

The beginning of Balzac's literary activity falls on the 20s of the 19th century, that is, in the years of the Restoration. The history of France in the first twenty years of the last century is marked by events of world significance, the empire of Napoleon I, which arose on the ashes of the revolution, was a bourgeois government "which strangled the French revolution and preserved only those results of the revolution that were beneficial to the big bourgeoisie" 2 . This empire has collapsed.

The feudal-Catholic oppression of the Restoration in France (1814), which followed this, and the policy of Bourbon patronage of the feudal aristocracy, ruinous for the country as a whole, caused great discontent in the suffering. At the same time, the development of capitalism, which the Restoration could not stop, formed new social classes of the big industrial bourgeoisie and the factory proletariat, and exposed social contradictions more and more. Lenin wrote that the French state during the Restoration was ".... a step towards transformation into a bourgeois monarchy" 3 .

The constitution, "torn out", according to Engels, from the hands of Louis XVIII (4/VI, 1814), was a compromise between the nobility and the top of the bourgeoisie and did not eliminate public discontent. The economic situation in France was deteriorating. The workers, oppressed by unemployment and lack of rights, the army, outraged by the mass layoffs, the peasants, alarmed by the encroachment on their lands acquired during the revolution, began to worry. The lightning success of Napoleon during the "Hundred Days" is explained by his use of public discontent with the Bourbons. A coalition of almost all European states crushed Napoleon a second time and restored the monarchy of Louis XVIII by force of bayonets. The second Bourbon Restoration cost the French people even more than the first. Huge "indemnity, the maintenance of the occupying army, until. 1822, all the losses from the enemy invasion fell heavily on the shoulders of the French people. The oppression of the occupation was aggravated by the rampant noble and clerical reaction. This white terror was encouraged by the Legislative Chamber, "incomparable" in its ultra-reactionary composition , which sought the restoration of the privileges of the nobility, the return to the clergy of the lands confiscated during the revolution.

“After the fall of Napoleon, which the kings and aristocrats of that time ... fully identified with the defeat of the French Revolution ... in all countries after 1815, the counter-revolutionary parties held the reins of government in their hands. Feudal aristocrats dominated all cabinets from London to Naples, from Lisbon to St. Petersburg,” Engels wrote, characterizing both the Bourbon Restoration in France and the united front of reaction in Europe who supported it.

Despite the restoration of the old nobility and the return of some of their old privileges, a revolution was taking place in France, forming new social classes of the big industrial bourgeoisie and the factory proletariat.

The impoverishment and stinking lack of rights of the French people contributed to the growth of widespread public discontent and the development of the freedom movement. A working-class movement, still immature in terms of the forms of struggle, develops, and a strike struggle arises. Government repressions contribute to the creation of secret revolutionary societies and their increased activity in 1820-1822.

With the accession to the throne of Charles. X (1824) the reaction deepens even more. The further policy of Charles X contributes to an ever greater intensification of public indignation.

The government is undertaking a military adventure in Algeria in order to divert the attention of the people from internal affairs and to satisfy the interests of the commercial bourgeoisie. But these temporary measures could no longer hold back the formidable course of history, could not stop the imminent July Revolution of 1830.

France was moving steadily and rapidly towards revolution. During this historical decade, which prepared the July Revolution of 1830, Balzac's worldview took shape and his literary views matured. Stormy modernity, full of so many social events, powerfully attracted the attention of the young Balzac. This was already reflected in his earliest works (The Walls of 1820 and others).

In the early 20s, an unquenchable thirst literary creativity, supplemented by the need to earn money, pushed Balzac to the only form of this creativity available to him at that time, to work in a newspaper. This work threw him into the whirlpool public life, taught him to penetrate deeper into the meaning of what is happening, developed his extraordinary ability to observe, strengthened his desire to understand social phenomena, to find their social causes. Balzac collaborates in the so-called "petty" press, giving, obviously, all kinds of reporting, as well as various scenes from nature. This early newspaper creativity of Balzac has not reached us.

Essay material of the second half of the 1920s has been preserved. We are referring to his Code of Honest Men (1825) and A Little Dictionary of Parisian Signs (1826). five

"The Code of Honest People or the Art of Not Being a Fool" is a combination of a large number of essays. Pursuing a playful goal - to warn readers against the possibility of being deceived - the author displays a whole gallery of all kinds of "money-grubbers", from petty pickpocket to the government, profiting from the rent of gambling houses. A comic, humorous interpretation of the material very often develops into a satirical one: in this early work, the features of the future Balzac are already visible - a realist, an exposer of bourgeois society, the so-called "honest people". These essays are unequal in artistic and ideological terms, along with bright journalistic pages, there are also superficial ones.

However, the search for the social causes of the movement of society, so characteristic of Balzac's work, is already evident in these early essays.

Already here, Balzac does not just want to draw individual types, he is trying to find a connection between the various elements of this society and establish general laws that govern them. Only Balzac is characterized by such a desire to deeply understand and show reality, such seriousness in solving even a comic topic. We are convinced of this by a simple comparison with essays by other authors. 20s. Another work by Balzac of the 1920s is the “Little Critical and Anecdotal Dictionary of Parisian Signs”, published under the pseudonym “Idle”, contains small humorous, and sometimes satirical descriptions of signs that adorn the facades of Parisian fashion stores and all kinds of shops. These descriptions are, in essence, the germinal form of the essay. Works of this kind were very popular in the 20s and 30s in the Parisian press, they were called "physiology", which meant a description from nature. They were distinguished by brevity, witty and well-aimed expressiveness, topicality. Under Balzac's pen, they, in addition, acquired a social orientation, pamphletery, in contrast to the moralizing or empty scoffing of many other contemporary Balzac authors of similar works. The widest public dissatisfaction with the corrupt policy of the Restoration, the general pre-revolutionary upsurge of these years, imparted passion and harshness of protest to the essays of the young Balzac. The main value of the little essays from the "Dictionary of Parisian Signs" is the criticism of the bourgeois with his tastes and pretensions, as well as the criticism of the cheap and implausible effects of reactionary romantic literature (d'Arlincourt and others).

This criticism, as well as realistic pages from such early novels of the young Balzac as "Steny" (1820), "The Pirate Argo" (1824), "Vann Chlor" (1825) testify that the aesthetic s were close to the positions of Stendhal. It was during these years that Stendhal fought against classicism as a support of reaction in art (“Racine and Shakespeare”, I - 1823, II - 1825) and against reactionary romantics (the articles “On Literary Parties in 1825”, about d "Arlencourt, etc. His positions were essentially realistic, although Stendhal himself called himself a "romanticist". This struggle, flowing into the mainstream of general political uprisings against the reactionary regime of the Restoration, which prepared the revolution of 1830, objectively reflected the mood of the democratic masses. which he fought and which most closely matched the position of the young Balzac.

The significance of the essays of the 1920s in Balzac's work lies in the fact that they are the first reproductions of modern reality in artistic form in his work, his first realistic experiments.

Despite their artistic immaturity, one can already observe the birth of Balzac's realistic method in them. This is evidenced by the modern social theme of the essays and the desire to give social types in connection with the outside world.

This makes it possible to understand the appearance on the literary arena of France in the early 1930s of such a major realistically mature work by Balzac as “Scenes of Private Life”, in which he already reveals himself to be a great connoisseur of real relationships, French society.

II. THE FLOWERING OF CRITICAL REALISM IN BALZAC'S ESSAYS OF THE 30'S

The July Monarchy, which took shape as a result of the July Revolution of 1830, was, in the words of Marx, "nothing but a joint-stock company for the exploitation of the French national wealth: its dividends were distributed among ministers, chambers, 240,000 electors and their henchmen" 6 Louis-Philippe was director of this company. The victory of the revolution, won by the workers, artisans, petty bourgeoisie and student youth, brought tangible results not to them, but to the bourgeoisie, more precisely, to one of its factions: bankers, stockbrokers, railway kings, owners of coal mines, iron mines and forests, etc. , - that is, the financial aristocracy. The financial bourgeoisie, in the person of their protege Louis-Philippe, "sat on the throne, ... dictated laws in the chambers, ... handed out government posts" 7 . She kept the state in constant financial dependence. Public debt has become the main subject of speculation and the most important source of enrichment of the financial elite. Each new loan "gave the financial aristocracy a new opportunity to rob the state" 8 and contributed to the robbery of the population.

The policy of the July Monarchy incessantly "harmed trade, industry, agriculture, shipping" 9 and had the most disastrous effect on the position of the working masses of France.

It deteriorated sharply in the very first years of the July Monarchy. Taxes have increased. Already at the beginning of 1831, the workers were saying: "We have overthrown the yoke of the tribal aristocracy in order to fall under the yoke of the financial aristocracy." The working and living conditions of the working masses were extremely difficult (18-hour working day, child labor, etc.).

The position of the broad masses of the peasantry was no less difficult. The increase in taxes caused great indignation among the peasants. The big landowners and kulaks ruthlessly exploited and ruined the poor. In the 1940s, when Balzac wrote his Peasants, the pauperization of the working strata of the countryside was already progressing extremely rapidly. “The peasant’s parcel,” wrote Marx about this period, “is only a pretext that allows the capitalist to extract profit, interest and rent from the land, leaving the farmer himself to extort his wages as he pleases ... Small landed property, enslaved to such an extent by capital. .. turned the majority of the French nation into troglodytes” 10 .

The social struggle in France during the period of the July Monarchy is characterized by a large number of revolutionary workers' uprisings. During the years 1830-1848 workers' uprisings broke out incessantly. These were the years of the formation of the proletariat and the growth of its class consciousness.

The workers were supported by the republican-minded petty bourgeoisie, which, like them, did not have any political rights.

The government's game of "democratism" and republicanism did not deceive anyone, on the contrary, government repressions and the desire to convince the people that the "revolution is over" and the time for "public order" was coming, caused widespread discontent.

Already in October 1830, there were serious unrest in Paris with threats against Louis Philippe and exclamations in honor of the republic. The whole of 1831 was also full of political unrest, the end of the year marked by a revolutionary uprising of the Lyon weavers, indicating the entry into public struggle new class - the proletariat. At the same time, political unrest broke out in a number of cities (Strasbourg, Marseille, Toulouse, Toulon, etc.). Marx and Engels regarded this uprising as a turning point in the history of the class struggle in Western Europe. The following year, 1832, was no less turbulent, and in June a great republican uprising broke out, organized by the secret "Society of the Friends of the People" with the aim of overthrowing the monarchy. In April 1834 - the second pronounced political uprising of the weavers in Lyon. The rebels - workers, artisans, merchants, employees - openly raised the red banner of struggle for a democratic republic. This uprising also found a response in Paris and in a number of provincial cities (Saint-Etienne, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, etc.). In Paris, the uprisings lasted two days and were brutally suppressed by soldiers. And 1835 brought new evidence of hatred for the "king of shopkeepers" - Fieschi's shot at Louis Philippe (28/VII),

In these uprisings, as well as in the uprising of 1839, "the French proletariat acquired military training and significant political experience" 11, it became a force capable of carrying out a revolution.

In the 1940s, the wave of the labor movement intensified. These years in the French labor movement are marked by the activities of communist revolutionaries, members of the "Society of the Seasons".

Balzac, a contemporary and a witness to these turbulent political revolutionary events, was not an outside observer. His essays and all his journalism of these years indicate that he actively interfered in the political life of France. His essays paint not only morals, but they are violently invaded by politics. They testify to Balzac's disillusionment and the results of the July Revolution, which he assessed from popular positions. The breadth of the social theme is now combined in his essays with the greatest artistic expressiveness and realism.

The thirties of the last century are marked in the creative biography of Balzac by an extraordinary abundance of works and the breadth of the ideological range. These traits are reflected in his essay heritage. During these years and in the next decade, the last in the life of Balzac, he wrote a large number of essays. Most of all Balzac's essays fall precisely on the 30s, or rather, at their beginning. Back in the late 1920s, Balzac began collaborating in the Siluet, Fashion, and Vor magazines, and since the early 1930s, he has also been published in the weeklies Caricature and Sharivari. In them, he places essays, sketches, sketches, stories and an article. Only "Caricature" from October 18. 30 to September 1832 placed over 100 essays by Balzac. This weekly journal of the Republican opposition was created in protest against laws restricting the press; he maliciously and mercilessly ridiculed the entire system of the July monarchy.

The largest masters of French graphics - Granville, Gavarni, Monier, Daumier, Travies, Charlet and others - were involved in cooperation in "Caricature", as well as in "Sharivari". their "planches" - caustic color caricatures of the government and Louis Philippe - enjoyed invariable sympathy and attention in broad democratic circles. Satirical caricatures were a peculiar and powerful weapon of political struggle. Balzac was actually one of the leaders and inspirers of Caricature. The first few issues of this journal were entirely filled with essays and sketches by one Balzac. Very often, Balzac's essays here were a kind of literary satirical commentary on multicolored caricatures ("1831", "Lolo-Fifi in a jury trial", "Pedlar, freedom", etc.). Many of his essays were illustrated by Daumier, Monier, Granville and other artists. Balzac's essays were published in Caricature under pseudonyms (Alfred Coudreux, Henri B., Count Alex, de B., Eugene Morisseau, etc.), or anonymously. Their belonging to Balzac is proved by the materials of the Balzac scholar Lovanjul.

Balzac's essays of the 40s were published mainly in various almanacs, large, richly illustrated collections, along with essays by many other authors (J. Sand, Musset, Gauthier, A. Carr, Judge, Delors, Gozlan, etc.). So in 40, 41, 44, Balzac published essays: “Monograph on rentiers” (almanac “The French depicted by themselves” 1840, vol. III), “Provincial woman” (ibid., in vol. I, for 1841), “Paris Leaving” (almanac “The Demon in Paris”, 1844), etc. Balzac’s essays of these years are very few, but more extensive and detailed, which is determined by the expansion of the author’s public interests. These are mature realistic essays, some of which Balzac included in The Human Comedy only with compositional changes (for example, the essay "Provincial Woman" in 1841 was included entirely in the novel "Provincial Muse" in 1843).

Comparing the essays of the 20s, 30s and 40s, one can observe the development of this genre in the work of Balzac, and the maturation of his artistic skill.

Distinguished from its very inception by a great desire for realism and social orientation, Balzac's essay later retained and deepened these features, primarily expanding the social theme, which was in direct connection with Balzac's deepening knowledge of social reality.

The satirical tendencies characteristic of Balzac's essay of the 1920s are especially intensified and developed by the beginning of the 1930s, which is a consequence of the growing revolutionary situation in the country.

In the satire of Balzac's essays, one can hear the echoes of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary moods of the broad democratic masses, their indignation at the emerging bourgeois system. Balzac's satire contains popular assessments of the July Monarchy, so it has a deeply progressive character. On a purely artistic level, the satirical manner of writing, which requires extremely concise and accurate descriptions, and therefore broad generalizations, played a very important role in improving Balzac's artistic skills. She contributed to the development and flourishing of his realistic method.

Many of Balzac's essays from the 1830s are masterpieces of social satire. They directly, ardently, caustically and mercilessly smash the anti-people nature of the government, the general venality of the July Monarchy, as a monarchy of speculators and political rogues who deceived the people and appropriated all the gains of the revolution.

All this essay material is brightly publicistic and testifies to Balzac's extremely active interest in the issues of public life in France.

A huge number of Balzac's essays of the 30s can be reduced to three main cycles: political, social, and essays relating to the problems of art and literature. You can also outline several basic themes set or disclosed in them.

The leading theme of political essays is the theme of exposing the July monarchy, its coming to power with the help of deceiving the masses. The essays contain a critique of bourgeois parliamentarianism and an assessment of the constitutional July Monarchy as a trading house of Louis-Philippe, Lafitte, Casimir Perrier and E°. This topic is revealed by such essays by Balzac as “Two meetings in one year”, “1831”, “Minister”, “Deputy of that time”, “Great acrobats”, “Lolo-Fifi in a jury trial” and many others. This theme is accompanied by the theme of the revolution and the people of France.

The theme of the social support of the July government of political rogues and speculators, its stronghold - bankers, usurers and shopkeepers of all stripes is also widely developed in the essays. This social and moral support of Louis-Philippe Balzac draws in the essays "Banker", "Usurer", "Grocer", "Guard", "Public Order", "The Best Republican", "Two Human Destinies", "Philipotin", "Opinion my grocer", "Here's a man!" and etc.

In a cycle of social essays, Balzac develops the theme of the emptiness and content of secular life, the amoralism of high society, due to the corrupting influence of idleness and money (essays "High Society", "The Idle and the Hard Worker". "Poor, Rich Man", "Intermission", "Revenge artist”, “What gloves tell about morals”, etc.).

The second theme of the essays of the same cycle are questions of marriage, family relations, built on monetary interest, questions of women's education and the fate of women in bourgeois society.

The essays also reveal the hypocrisy and hypocrisy of bourgeois morality (“In the Boarding School for Young Girls”, “Family Picture”, “A Sample of a Conversation in a French Style”, “Madame Vseotboga”, etc.).

The third cycle covers essays on issues of literature and art. Problems of art and the fate of the artist in bourgeois society, the problem of truthfulness in art, questions of the relationship of the artist, writer with bourgeois society, literary brokerage as a form of spiritual exploitation, bohemia, as a consequence of this exploitation, the dependence of art on considerations of capitalist profit - these are the range of questions which Balzac puts in such essays as “The Studio of an Artist”, “Revenge of the Artist”, “The Morality of One Bottle of Champagne”, “Clucker”, etc.

The theme of the literary struggle against the romantics was sharply interpreted by Balzac in the satirical genres of the essay, in his parodies (“Romantic Akathists”, “Paper Knife”, etc.).

It is necessary to make a reservation that this division is not categorical: not always essays can be attributed only to one or another cycle. They often contain character traits different cycles. So, social and everyday essays, due to their publicism, develop into political ones (“Usurer”) and, conversely, political essays contain many features of social and everyday ones (“Filipoten”).

Limited by the size of the article, we will focus only on the first two cycles of Balzac's essays, completely bypassing the third.

POLITICAL ESSAYS OF THE 1930s

The subject of the July Monarchy is a very broad theme that pervades most of Balzac's essays to varying degrees. But the narrower theme of the coming of the government of Louis Philippe to power as a result of the July Revolution of 1830 and the theme of the July uprising itself received a very interesting and important interpretation for "comprehension of Balzac's work as a whole in such his essays as" Two meetings in one year "," 1831", "Minister", "Deputy of that time", "Philipoten", etc.

The essay "Two meetings in one year" 12 was placed in the "Caricature" on August 11, 1831, signed by Henri V. It was caused by the just celebrated anniversary of the July Revolution. Balzac recalls the July uprising and draws two meetings of three brave patriots, participants in the July barricades, that took place in the same year. One meeting took place in the hospital, the second - in ... prison. Filled with ardent sympathy and sympathy for the people, the picture of the July uprising, given by Balzac in an essay as an act of the greatest justice, heroism, courage and self-sacrifice of the people, images of patriots: a young student who abandoned the joys of first love in order to win freedom, and, especially, the image of a worker - a printer leaving hungry children and rushing to the barricades to get bread for them - they say that it was here that Balzac saw a positive beginning, the heroism of his era. He assesses the uprising as a nationwide cause, admires the courage and stamina of the July fighters, their disdain for death: less than a reproach ... not a complaint! ..

It was a people's affair, it was an hour of danger, everyone was here. People, how beautiful you are! exclaims Balzac. Two wounded rebels meet at the hospital, where a third comes to visit and cheer them up. They, "forgetting about their sufferings, thought only of their homeland", talked about a future victory; these, according to the author, were "projects for the freedom of the glory of France, the happiness of all her children!".

A year has elapsed. Honest patriots meet again not at a celebration in honor of the victory, but in the prison where the government threw them. These "three people greet each other with a look, and in this gloomy and silent recognition one can read the history of the entire era, expressed in one word: Betrayal!" 13.

Such is Balzac's brief but expressive assessment of the July Monarchy.

The civic pathos, the deep emotion with which the essay "Two Meetings" was written, speak of Balzac's positive assessment of the July uprising as a just struggle for the freedom of France, "for the happiness of all her children." The result of the uprising, when “there were twice as many winners as those who fought,” Balzac sarcastically assesses. The revolution is over, the victorious people are driven into their basements and prisons, and the trading house of Louis-Philippe, Lafitte, Casimir Perrier and Co. is shamelessly and arrogantly in power - that's what Balzac says in this essay.

The sketch "1831" adjoins the essay "Two Meetings" 14 . He responds to the following event of the day: on May 28, 1831, in the shop of Aubert, where the color satirical lithographs of the magazine "Caricature" were always exhibited for viewing and sale, the caricature "National Award" was exhibited. The artist depicted a patriot, a participant in the July uprising in an iron collar (which was put on when put up at the pillory), symbolizing this true freedom received by the people as a result of the revolution.

Balzac's sketch "1831" depicts a crowd of spectators in front of the window of Aubert's shop. One of the spectators, a man of moderate views, is loudly indignant, regarding this lithograph as a malicious caricature of the government, as a "pencil revolution." After 10 days, the same spectator sees a young man exposed at the pillory in the square and inquires about his crime. He is answered that "this is a patriot, he fought in the great week and was wounded three times, winning freedom."

So Balzac comments on the government reprisal after one of the clashes between the revolutionary people and the national guard, this guardian of the new regime, skirmishes; with which the year 1831 so abounded. Balzac uses here a very interesting technique of drawing on the artistic satire of the Caricature magazine in order to enhance the satirical power of his exposure. He resorts to a similar technique quite often in his essays. Thus, the essays "Peddler of Freedom", "Lolo-Fifi in a Jury Trial", "Bacchanalia 1831" are a kind of literary and artistic commentary on the corresponding lithographs of "Caricatures".

The revolutionary uprisings of the people and their suppression with the help of the National Guard are captured in many essays by Balzac. Such, for example, are the essays “The Best Republican”, “Here is a man!”, “Acquaintance”, “How it happens that the commissar’s spurs interfere with trade”, etc. In all of them, the theme of the people revolted and defeated, deceived, suppressed and again rebellious, the theme is resolved with Balzac's invariable sympathy for the people.

The exposure of the bourgeois parliamentarism of the July Monarchy, which secures a parliamentary majority for itself by doubly bribing voters and deputies, that is, by turning elections into vote speculation, takes place in many of Balzac's essays, for example, in the essay "Deputy of the Time" 15 . Here Balzac speaks of elections as a system of bribery and deduces one such deputy who, before being elected, revealed oppositional views (he read the National, "made" the opposition in the departmental newspaper), but with the election he turned sharply to the right. “Having reached the Chamber, where he promised to sit on the left, he sits on the benches located to the left of the entrance, that is, those that are to the right of the rostrum. It's not his fault that there are two left sides. In the next session, in order to avoid all sorts of misconceptions, he will sit in the center, ”Balzac ironically comments on the behavior of this “member of the government”, who is deeply indifferent whether he sits on the right or left; he wants only the money that he is paid for it. As an epigraph to this essay, Balzac took a stanza from Beranger's poem "Puzan or the report of the deputy of Mr. X. on the session of the chamber in 1818":

"I fixed my affairs
I am a trustee of churches
He gave service to the brothers,
He built three sons,
And stay in sight
Also next year.
I visited the ministers
Feasted, feasted
I feasted with them!” 16

This appeal to Beranger's poem, which belongs to the era of restoration, is not accidental. Balzac emphasizes that since then, despite the revolution, nothing has changed in the electoral system of France: venality still reigns here.

With the help of bought votes and bought deputies, a government is created. One of the representatives of such a corrupt government is brought out by Balzac in the satirical essay "Minister" 17 . The very first words of the essay convey a satirical shade to the portrait of the minister:

“He was a short man, otherwise he would not have been appointed minister”; it is difficult to notice him behind a pile of papers on the table, says Balzac, emphasizing the insignificance and physical insignificance of this member of the government. Just as insignificant is his moral character. Instead of an imperious and firm person, capable of resisting various opinions and leading them, as the minister should be, according to the author, we see a miserable little man who is a toy in the hands of various factions. Thus, the legitimist demands from him a policy aimed at strengthening royal rights; the July Republican industrialist insists that it is necessary to "let the revolution develop fully", introducing it into the framework of legality, and to create a "government that does not require large expenditures", etc. ..; the representative of the party of the existing order, on the contrary, speaks of the need to "strengthen." “Beat the rebels, the workers. The National Guard will help you, and so will the Chamber. We have received freedom ... now order and protective measures are needed. If you don't support the existing order, there will be no sustainability. Any change will destroy you,” he says. He is supported by the national guard, he advises to help Belgium (which has just broken away from Holland and turned into an independent state. - 0. L.).

“By undertaking war, you will achieve peace within the country,” he shouts. Finally, all four of them “grabbed the poor little man, shook him so thoroughly that the first one was pulled out of his hands. volume of his lectures, the second - a briefcase, the third tore off the sleeve of his tailcoat, and the last deprived him of his popularity. “... Manage yourself! - shouted the minister "and everyone went to dinner, where, presumably, they came to a common decision.

It is impossible not to be amazed at the accuracy and subtlety of Balzac's satirical portrayal of these four representatives of different parties in Parliament. These images from Balzac's sketch can serve as an artistic illustration of the characterization of the parliamentary parties of France during the July Monarchy, which is given by Marx in The Class Struggle in France. The demands of these deputies to the Minister are given by Balzac as a condensed program of their parties. Expressed in an extremely brief and undisguised form, they reveal the cynical anti-people essence of these programs. In fact: the Republican industrialist needs a further "legalized" revolution, nevertheless carried out with the help of people's organizations, that is, with the hands and blood of the people, but in his - the industrialist's - interests; the party of the existing "order", that is, the big financial bourgeoisie, must "get rid of the dissatisfied", divert the attention of the revolutionary people from the internal affairs of France, if only by providing military assistance to Belgium.

Balzac's satirical device consists here in this exposure of the political face of the bourgeois parties; he does not exaggerate anything in this, but only removes the cover of "republicanism" and "democratism", which the parliamentarians used to hide behind when speaking to the masses, and which became unnecessary in the business conversation of seasoned politicians.

Drawing the political appearances of these "dealers", Balzac shows how far they are, in essence, from the true interests of France, the interests of the people. Later, in 1840, Balzac would say the same thing about this government: "The court of Louis Philippe has nothing national, it is completely indifferent to the masses."

Balzac also makes sketches of portraits of these politicians. They are brightly individual, although they are given in the extremely brief form of a satirical portrait. The short essay "Minister" strikes with the power of generalization with which it is written out as main character, as well as all the others. The language of this essay is noteworthy - to the limit it is short, precise, well-aimed. The essay "Minister" is a mature realistic satire of great expressiveness.

In Balzac's essays, for the first time in his work, images of a banker and a usurer appear, which he then deployed in The Human Comedy to the meaning of symbols of bourgeois society during the restoration era and the July monarchy. This is the social pillar of the Louis Philippe monarchy, the environment that feeds it: in fact, usurers and bankers ruled France. Engels said: “The real ministers are not Messrs. Guizot and Duchatel, and Messrs. Rothschild, Fulda and other big Parisian bankers. They run the ministries and the ministries make sure that only people loyal to the current system and those who profit from it run in the elections.” The essay "The Banker" appeared for the first time in the "Caricature" on August 4, 1831, signed by Henri B ... The portrait of the character (he does not bear any name) is already given in two epigraphs to this essay: "The banker is like a louis d'or: hard, round , heavy and flat", he "stalks the profit with both gray eyes." Then follows a detailed description of the financier. First of all, this is not the former clumsy, rude farmer. In contrast, the modern banker is a suave man of the world. “There is nothing more elegant both in language and in manner than the modern financier,” says the author. He is exquisitely dressed, he is not at all alien to reflections on the bow of a tie, for example. Despite the frivolous secular appearance, this person is "capable of serious calculations and large speculations." He is guided in life by the “wise rule”, according to which streams become “full-flowing rivers” and when calculating “he will never throw off the smallest difference” even to his best friend. He plays big on the stock exchange, spreading false rumors and profiting from it. He is so knowledgeable about the issues of increasing and decreasing exports and imports that the author calls his discussions on this topic "scientific dissertations." Otherwise, he leads an elegant social life, visits theaters, gambling houses, drags after dancers, since very often he is still a young man.

The banker is the center of Parisian society: he is omnipresent - his activity penetrates everywhere, and at the same time all the threads of business life lead to him.

In this realistic image of a banker, one can already see the features of the future bankers of the "Human Comedy" - Nyusingen, Tillier, Keller, Tailfer, Vovine and others. image of a banker.

It was created simultaneously with the image of the banker Taifer from "Shagreen Skin", since the essay "Orgy" included in "Shagreen Skin" and depicting a revelry in the house of Taifer, was placed in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" back in May 1831, and The Red Hotel and the entire Shagreen Skin came out in August 1831, as did the essay The Banker. However, despite this, both of these types are brightly individual. The image of the banker from the essay is marked by even greater breadth and clarity of realistic drawing, while Tyfer is not free from the well-known romantic reflection that secret atrocity casts on him. The crimes of the banker from the essay are completely obvious - and, so to speak, "legitimate" - he speculates heavily on the stock exchange with the help of false rumors and stingily rips off interest even from his best friends.

This type is related to another representative of the financial corporation, which tenaciously and imperiously holds in its hands the entire state, business and private life of Parisian society - the type of usurer. Balzac gave several images of the usurer in his essays, the earliest of which is the usurer Gobsek in the essay "The Moneylender".

The essay "The Moneylender" was placed by him on 6. III. 1830 in the magazine "Fashion", and in April of the same year was included without changes in "Scenes of Private Life", as the first part of the story, which was called "The Dangers of Vicious Life". Then, in the edition of 1835, this story, having undergone processing, took the name "Papa Gobsek", and in the first edition of the "Human Comedy" in 1842 it began to be called as it is now called - "Gobsek" 19.

In view of the impossibility of acquainting ourselves directly with the essay itself through the magazine Fashion, we were forced to turn to the work of Lalande, who had this essay at his disposal.

Using it, as well as manuscripts from the collection of Lovenzhul and the first editions of "The Perils of a Vicious Life" (1830), "Papa Gobsek" (1835) and "Gobsek" (1842), Lalande establishes the textual correspondences and compositional changes of this work as a whole 20.

Built on positivist principles, Lalande's work contains only one valuable indication: the precise definition of the boundaries of the essay "The Moneylender" in the story "The Perils of a Vicious Life", in the first part of which he entered in its entirety. In addition, Lalande cites several phrases from the essay that were not included in the "Dangers". In other words, with the help of these instructions of Lalande, we were able to restore the essay "The Moneylender" in the form in which it was placed in the "Mode", using for this the first edition of "The Perils of a Vicious Life" 21

Consider this essay. Balzac even retains its title in the text of the new work. So, after the words of attorney Derville: “I want to tell you about a character that you cannot even imagine: this is the Usurer,” we first read the title of the essay “The Usurer”, after which the entire essay 22 follows.

The essay gives a very detailed portrait of the usurer, he is familiar to us: his face “is pale and dull, it looks like worn out gilded silver, and I would like the Academy to allow me to call it the face of the moon,” says the author. - Flat hair, carefully combed and as if sprinkled with ashes. The face is impassive, like that of Talleyrand: the features seem to be cast in bronze. Yellow, like a marten's eye, almost devoid of eyelashes. Pointy nose and thin lips.

This person always speaks in a low, soft tone and never loses his temper. His small eyes are always protected from the light by a cap lined with green. He is dressed in black. His age is a mystery. It is not known whether he grew old before his time, or whether he preserved his youth so that it would always serve him.

As you can see, Balzac and later did not add anything to this accurate, extremely expressive, realistic portrait; almost the same we can find him now in Gobsek.

What followed was a description of the pawnbroker's room, as clean as an Englishman's house, where everything was worn out, from the rug by the bed to the green cloth on the bureau. The room resembles the cell of an old maid who wipes her furniture all day long. The fireplace was never lit, and in winter the wood, buried under the ashes, smoked without a flame. The wear and tear of things, the cold fireplace - all this characterizes the main feature of the usurer - stinginess. He saves even his movements, and his life is measured, like the actions of an automaton, says the author. He is relentless with his clients. “Sometimes his victims scream loudly and lose their temper, then a deep silence reigns in him, as in a kitchen where a duck has just been slaughtered,” says the author, perfectly defining the true nature of the relationship between the usurer and his victims with the word “slaughtered”. “From 8 p.m. this man-promissory note turns into an ordinary person: this is the mystery of the transformation of metals into a human heart. Then he rubs his hands, and his gaiety is like the empty laughter of "Leatherstocking" but even with the greatest fits of joy, his conversation is always monosyllabic. Such is the neighbor who was awarded me by chance in the house on the Rue Gre, where I live” 24 , says the author.

Balzac gives a description of this house: “This house is dark and damp, without a courtyard. The windows face the street only. The arrangement of rooms of equal size, with one door opening onto a long, dimly lit corridor, suggests that the house was once part of a monastery. His appearance is so dull that the gaiety of some papa's boy disappears before he enters my neighbor. The house and it are similar to each other. This shell and its rock” 25 . The poverty and colorlessness of the dwelling emphasize once again the stinginess of the usurer himself and his outward insignificance. He is so stingy that he himself runs on foot through all of Paris to receive his bills and at the same time deducts 2 francs from clients in payment to the cab driver. He makes his own coffee. He has no servant: an old doorkeeper cleans his room at a certain hour. “Finally, by chance, which Stern would call predestination, this man is called Mr. Gobsek (“dry throat”),” says Balzac, and finishes: “Now you know the object that I put on the operating table” 26 . These last words, according to Lalande, were in the essay "The Moneylender", but they are absent in the "Dangers". This is quite natural: they defined the creative task of the essay as a portrait of a usurer and became superfluous in a large work that describes not only the usurer.

This ends the static description of the usurer type. The next part of the essay shows this character in action. Balzac tells how one evening he went to the old usurer and found him sitting motionless in an armchair; he "had fun", recalling his morning visits for payments to the Countess Emilia Resto (such is her name in the essay) and Fanny Malvo, the seamstress.

Gobsek recounts these visits to the Countess's mansion and the grisette's attic. Giving along the way portraits and furnishings of these two representatives of different levels of the social ladder, Balzac also draws them as bearers of opposite qualities - vice and virtue. Their images are expressive and complete, they are bright realistic types living an independent life in the essay, despite the fact that they are only intended to complement the image of a usurer. It was here that Balzac gave his first detailed realistic picture of secular depraved morals, outlined the theme of the collapse of an aristocratic family. In addition to Gobsek, all the main participants in the drama appear here - the Count and Countess Resto, her lover, so far unnamed, who later received the name of Maxime du Trale. Balzac gradually adds more and more strokes to Gobsek's drawing. Here is Gobsek at the graphics. He gladly leaves dirty footprints on a lush carpet, in this one cannot help but see his awareness of his power. He draws a portrait of the countess, describes her magnificent bedroom (this passage is familiar to us from Gobsek 0.L.) and, looking at the countess with disapproval, thinks: “Pay for your luxury, pay for your name, your honor, the exclusive rights that you have. There are tribunals, courts, scaffolds for the unfortunate who do not have bread, but for you, sleeping in silks, there are remorse and gnashing of teeth hidden under a smile, there are steel claws that grab your heart.

These words of Gobsek sounded democratic and testified rather to the democratic sympathies of the author himself than to the character of the essay.

The same democratic sympathies of the author are also found in the scene of Gobseck's visit to the seamstress Fanny Malvo. The clean little room in which she lives, works and heroically struggles with poverty is in harmony with her spiritually pure appearance and is given as a sharp contrast to the luxurious bedroom of the depraved countess.

The moral purity and steadfastness of Fanny makes a deep impression on Gobsek. Balzac paints him softened in the presence of Fanny. So, Gobsek says: “It seemed to me that I was in an atmosphere of sincerity and simplicity. I breathed easily. I noticed a simple couch made of wood topped with a cross adorned with two branches of boxwood. I was touched. I felt disposed to leave her both the money I had asked for and the Countess's diamond; but I thought that this gift could be fatal for her and, on reflection, left everything as it was, especially since some actress or newlywed could pay more than one and a half thousand francs for a diamond. And then, - I said to myself, - she may have a cousin who will make himself a pin out of a diamond and eat a thousand francs. Balzac here tried to portray the struggle of two principles - good and evil, generosity and greed. - in the soul of the usurer, not noticing the falsity) of this situation. After all, the struggle in the soul of Gobsek was caused by the sincerity and naive sulfur of Fanny, long lost by himself. This gave the image of the usurer sentimental features, and later Balzac corrected this error against realism. We will return to this.

Returning from his payers, Gobsek philosophizes. It should be noted that all the main features of Gobsek's philosophy, which we find in the latest edition of this image, are already laid down in the essay, or rather, in Gobsek's last, final argument. He talks about his craft, which allows him to "penetrate ... into the deepest bends of the human heart", to see someone else's life naked.

He speaks of various spectacles that pass before him: “About disgusting ulcers, mortal grief, love, poverty, which awaits the waters of the Seine, joys young man that lead him to the scaffold, about the laughter of despair and magnificent holidays. Yesterday a tragedy... tomorrow a comedy” 29 . He was never worried about famous orators, but the victims of his calculations "shocked him sometimes with the power of their words." “Exalted actors, they played for me alone,” says the pawnbroker. But I can't be deceived. I read in hearts. There is nothing hidden for me." He says that money gives him power over everyone: “Nothing is denied to the one who unties and ties a wallet. With its help they buy ministers, conscience and power, they buy women and their most tender caresses ... they buy everything. We are the silent and unknown kings of life, because money is life. But if I have everything, then I am fed up with everything. There are thirty of us in Paris. Bound by the same interests, we gather on a certain day in a cafe... There we expose all the secrets of finance. No fortune can deceive us, because we have all the secrets of all families, and we have a black book in which the most important notes on public credit, banking and trade are written ... Like me, we all came to the conclusion that, like the Jesuits, love power and money for the sake of power and money itself” 30 . Gobsek speaks of the humblest and most recalcitrant being humbled in his room, and ends his philosophy with the question: "Do you now think that there are no joys under this white mask, the immobility of which has so often surprised you?" The narrator returned home stunned. “This dry old man has grown up. In front of my eyes, he turned into a fantastic image: I saw the incarnation of the power of gold.

Life, people terrified me. Is money really everything? I asked myself." This ended the essay "The Moneylender". Such was the original image of Gobsek. It is clear that all the most characteristic features of Gobsek, known from the story, stand out clearly here. In particular, the physical portrait of Gobsek has not undergone any fundamental changes, nothing has been changed in the descriptions of his dwelling, which is quite typical for such an inhabitant. Even his philosophy of the power of money is mainly revealed in this essay. The power of money is not portrayed as mystical, self-sufficient, standing above the life of society, but as a very specific power, having social roots: we buy ministers, conscience and power, says Gobsek. This determines the place and role of the usurer in bourgeois French society. Balzac gives the image of a miser-usurer not as a Parisian “individual” that is interesting only from a psychological point of view, but this is precisely what Lalande is trying to prove, who calls this essay by Balzac “a zoological study in the manner of Buffon”, “a story of passion”, etc. 32. but as a social figure above all.

Nevertheless, some of Gobsek's views and features of his psychological make-up underwent very significant changes in subsequent editions.

So, for example, in recent editions, Gobseck's words about "scaffolds for the poor", which sounded too democratic in the mouth of a usurer, for whom, in essence, there were neither rich nor poor, but only "debtors", disappeared. This changed the image of Gobseck towards greater realism. These words sounded too authorial; later Balzac gave this reasoning a protective character of Gobsek:

“In order to protect their property, the rich invented judges, as well as the guillotine - this kind of candle, on which the ignorant are destined to burn themselves,” we read in the final text of Gobsek 33. This last wording moderated the sharpness of the essay's social criticism, but was more typical of the usurer's reasoning.

From the exposition of the essay, the image of this cruel, inexorable usurer is clear, whose victims either scream or beg, equally to no avail. And he calls himself "relentless." But this image was not maintained by Balzac in the essay to the end. His moneylender suddenly turns out to be different, capable of displaying sentimental feelings. Let us remember his visits to Fanny Malvo. Gobsek softens, becomes sentimental, admiring Fanny, this working girl. He sees the cross at her head. He was so moved (!) That he was ready not only to forgive her a debt of a thousand francs, but also to add to this a precious stone, which he had just received with difficulty in payment of the debt from the countess. True, stinginess still wins, but this passage still reduces the realistic image of the usurer and makes him a hypocrite. But Gobsek was not a hypocrite, he was an outspoken, cynical predator.

This sentimental passage was included without change, like the whole essay in general, by Balzac in the story “The Dangers of a Vicious Life” (the essay was its first part “The Usurer”) and here it did not differ from the general ideological task of the story, showing where bad paths lead. Two other parts of the story - "Attorney" and "The Death of a Husband" - deployed and complemented the image of Gobsek. Along with the truly realistic, typical features that Gobsek was endowed with (the stranglehold of a predator, the relentless pursuit of profit, etc.), here one could also find atypical features that reduce the cruel realism of this image.

So, at the end of the story, Gobsek abandoned his trade as a usurer, was elected a deputy. "He longs to receive the title of baron and the cross," which the Viscountess Granier promises him. Gobsek was characterized as a man who now amuses himself by doing good, as he once did usury. “He despised people because he read in their souls like in a book, and he likes to pour out good and evil on them alternately, this is how he appears to me in the form of a fantastic image of Fate,” 34 the author concluded.

So, here we see a repentant Gobsek, doing good, having switched to the "path of virtue", as an example to all his high-society clients. Realist Balzac very soon saw the atypicality of such an end to the career of his usurer. He reworks The Perils of a Vicious Life, changes the title, and in 1835 in the story "Papa Gobsek" 35 gives a more typical, more generalized image of a Parisian usurer. The artistic canvas of the story unfolds even wider here, a bizarre and cruel biography of Gobsek is introduced, depicting him as a man who has gone through great trials. We read this biography even now in the final text of Gobsek. Twenty years of wandering life, trials, dangers and pleasures, The listed losses and successes led Gobsek to complete indifference to everything that was not gold.

It was his god. Now Balzac makes Gobseck deliberately non-religious, in order to make him a skeptic in the final version. "Poor bastard! She believed in something, ”Gobsek exclaims skeptically, seeing the box branch and the cross at Fanny’s head.

Gobsek's philosophy unfolds even wider and deeper in another, new passage, which also appears for the first time only in Papa Gobsek. This passage is also preserved in the final edition of The Gobseck. Gobsek says that he does not believe in anything: "he who is forced against his will to rush into all worldly whirlpools, for that conviction and moral prescriptions are empty words." In life, one should be guided by only one sense of personal interest, because there is only one reliable material good - this is gold “... HERE,” he says, “the struggle between the poor and the rich, everywhere it is inevitable. So it is better to be an exploiter than an exploited one.”

Such is the complete cynical philosophy of the acquirer and exploiter. In accordance with this philosophy, Balzac draws a further outline of Gobsek. First of all, the end of Gobseck changes radically. In "Papa Gobsek" there is no longer that repentant usurer who has become virtuous, which was brought out in "The Perils of a Vicious Life". There is also not a single word here that Gobsek renounced usury, that he is looking for the title of baron and the cross, that he lives like a gentleman and travels only in a carriage. All this is too petty and insignificant for the one who buys Power itself, and therefore all this is removed by Balzac from the new text.

The last edition of Gobsek (1842) differs little from Papa Gobsek. Here, all the details that deprived the clarity of the realistic drawing of this image have been removed, everything is subordinated to a single goal - to give a generalized and at the same time expanded realistic type. That is why Balzac frees the image of Gobseck from the remnants of sentimentality that were still in him. Thus, Gobseck is no longer going to forgive Fanny Malvo's debt, he feels himself only capable of "offering her a loan (of only twelve to a hundred!) To facilitate her purchase of some profitable enterprise" 37 . And it is no longer Fanny's purity and naive faith that inspire him with this idea, but her diligence, in which he sees a guarantee of the return of his money. It is precisely such a “movement of the soul”, more characteristic of the usurer, more characteristic of his entire moral character, that Balzac now draws.

The final image of Gobsek was created as a result of the consistent disclosure of the features outlined in the essay. That is how it was intended from the very beginning. Only the scene with Fanny violated his realistic severity. Balzac's further work on this image speaks of a persistent, stubborn and consistent struggle for realism. From edition to edition, the image became more realistic, drier, more callous, freeing itself from the slightest touch of sentimentality, so abundantly given to it in The Perils of a Vicious Life. At the same time, he became epic, became the personification of the era, as the social, even state role of Gobsek was emphasized more and more: “After France recognized Haiti ... Gobsek was appointed a member of the commission for the liquidation of property claims and the distribution of contributions following from Haiti. Gobsek was an insatiable boa constrictor of this great cause,” 38 says Balzac.

The image of Gobsek is extremely far from the romantic exaggeration, which is, for example, in the image of Tyfer. ("Shagreen leather"). Gobsek's power is consecrated by the laws of bourgeois society, hence the integrity and epic character of this image.

In the last edition, that is, in the story "Gobsek" (1842), Balzac drew a fundamentally different, more natural than in "The Perils of a Vicious Life", the end of Gobsek. His passion for enrichment led to more and more accumulation and ended quite logically - pathology. Marx characterizes this end in this way: “... in Balzac, who thoroughly studied all the shades of avarice, the old usurer Gobsek is depicted as having already fallen into childhood at the time when he begins to create treasures by piling up goods” 39 .

The essay "The Moneylender" is of double interest for the study of Balzac's essay heritage.

First of all, it retains its independent artistic significance, as a compositionally complete essay in which social types are striking in their realistic expressiveness and liveliness, and the circumstances in which the axes live and act are so typical of France of that era that they acquire historical significance.

In addition, with the help of this essay, one can observe the consistent development of one of the main realistic characters of the "Human Comedy" - the usurer Gobseck - into the greatest generalization of the era created by Balzac; you can see how Balzac came from an essay type to a detailed artistic image - a generalization.

Observation of the creation of the image of Gobsek from the usurer from the essay to the hero of the story allows us to raise the question of the new quality that typification acquires in the novels of the Human Comedy.

The sketch characters are sketched by Balzac, although they potentially contain all the typical features. In the stories of the "Human Comedy" they acquire a wide life turn necessary for the comprehensive manifestation of their personality, typical circumstances here grow to historical significance, the philosophy of the social personality acquires the features of the philosophy of the era. All this turns the sketch characters into living multifaceted images of the "Human Comedy".

From the analysis of the essay "The Moneylender" one can especially clearly see the significance in the work of Balzac of the essay, in general, as a study for a large artistic canvas. Very many of Balzac's essays, initially published separately, were later included by him in certain works of the Human Comedy.

The symbols of bourgeois France of the era of the July Monarchy appear before us in Balzac's essays on the images of shopkeepers of various categories, from nightcap merchants to rentiers. These images are comprehended by Balzac as the social and moral support of the July Monarchy. If the bankers and usurers were in power and thus were its direct social support, then the middle and petty commercial bourgeoisie supported the regime of Louis Philippe in a rather peculiar way. The moderate philosophy of the bourgeois "golden mean", striving to preserve "order", strongly promoted by Louis Philippe, found the most vivid response in her mind. The cowardly, petty-bourgeois inclination of the owner to "order", concern for his "shop" forced this middle and petty bourgeoisie to support the regime of the July monarchy in every possible way. It was the “shop” that supplied the privates to the National Guard.

True, in the July days of 1830, the National Guard stood "Between the insurgents and the troops" and either went over to the side of the first, then hesitated, which also played into the hands of the rebels, but with the accession of the "king of shopkeepers" - Louis Philippe, she more and more became the guardian of his monarchy. The National Guard actively helped the troops in suppressing revolutionary uprisings and labor unrest, naturally coming to a decisive action against the workers' barricades in June 1848. “In the days of June, no one fought with such fanaticism to save property and restore credit as the Parisian petty bourgeoisie - the owners of cafes and restaurants, wine merchants, small merchants, shopkeepers, artisans and others. The shop became alarmed and moved against the barricade in order to restore traffic leading from the street to the shop,” Marks says. Such was the end of the "freethinking" of the National Guard. However, during the July Monarchy, not everything was clear for the petty and middle bourgeoisie, and therefore, for the national guard. Hesitating and doubting, being very often dissatisfied with the domination of the big financial bourgeoisie, being infringed by this latter, unable to withstand competition with it, dissatisfied with their political lack of rights, the petty and middle bourgeoisie sometimes stood up in opposition to the July regime.

This alternation of oppositional and loyalist moods of the petty bourgeoisie is very expressively shown by Balzac in his series of essays depicting shopkeepers of all stripes, grocers, the National Guard, rentiers (the essays "The Grocer", "The Opinion of My Grocer", "The Best Republican", "Philipotain", "Monograph on Rentier", "Guard", "Public Order", "Bust Seller", "Here is a man!", etc.).

The essay "The Grocer" appeared for the first time in the "Silhouette" on 22. IV. 1830 40 . Balzac's realistic manner is clearly visible in this early essay. The sketchy, but extremely expressive and accurately captured in detail portrait of a grocer is accompanied, supplementing it, by a detailed, albeit very brief, description of the everyday surroundings. Giving his grocer as the type most clearly representing the bourgeois environment cultivated by the July monarchy, Balzac shows the narrowness of his spiritual interests and his inertia. The grocer "reads" Voltaire in such a way that death catches him on. 17th page of the preface. He has engravings hanging in his living room: a soldier - a farmer and "Attack on the outpost of Clichy" 41 - all this proves "that poetry and fine arts are not alien to him," says the author. - He admires Paul de Kock and Victor Ducange, cries at a melodrama performance... and understands Hernani. Are there many French citizens who have reached such heights?!” 42, - ironically Balzac.

Balzac speaks of the social significance of this type, defining it as "the strongest of all social ties."

“We hold on to everything,” say the grocers, and the author raises the question: who is more of a monarch, the king of the grocer or the king’s grocer? 43. This sketchy image has not yet been developed, it is a portrait given almost statically, but the versatility of the characterization makes it possible to present this image in action.

All the features barely outlined in the above-mentioned essay, Balzac will develop and deepen in 10 years, in the second version of this essay.

The style of the first version of the essay "The Grocer" is of historical and literary interest, as evidence of the formation of Balzac's realistic aesthetics, his struggle for realism. The essay is written in a parodic style. Balzac here ridicules the puffiness, false elation, phrase-mongering of the style of the romantics and the eclectic philosophical school of Victor Cousin. The beginning of the essay can serve as an example of a parody of the style of the romantics: “A sublime being, an incomprehensible being, a source of life and joy, light and pleasure, an example of resignation! You combine all this in yourself, O grocer, and, to complete your merits, you yourself do not suspect it! 44 .

Cousin's lectures, which Balzac himself listened to in his time, are parodied in the following passage: new school, heavenly trilogy; this trilogy, this trinity, this triangle consists of tea, coffee and chocolate, the triple essence of today's breakfasts, the source of all pre-dinner delights.

The second version of the essay "Grocer" Balzac placed in 1840 in the anthology "The French, depicted by themselves" 46 . The essay is more than doubled. The parody of style, as a topical element, has been eliminated. Balzac thoughtfully and seriously gives an in-depth social image of the grocer. “In my eyes,” he says, “the grocer... the best way expresses modern society. The former social characteristic of the grocer: "In my eyes," he says, "the grocer ... best expresses modern society." The former social characteristic of the grocer: "We hold on to everything" is deepened and supplemented by the new one: "We hold on to everything." This formula gives the image already historical features. It emphasizes the main feature characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie - the petty-bourgeois fear for the existing order and hence the instability of its political views. An army of grocers, says Balzac, will support everything. “Perhaps she will support both, and the republic, and the empire, and the Legitimists, and the new dynasty, but she will undoubtedly support. Support is her motto. If she does not stand for the current social order, whatever it may be, who will she sell? 47.

The shopkeepers are thus the social pillar of Louis Philippe's monarchy, argues Balzac; the grocer contains "a voter, a soldier of the national guard and a juror" 48. This determines the general appearance of the shopkeeper, he cannot be otherwise. father, good husband, good host. That says it all," 49 - Balzac finishes the portrait of a grocer.

The essay "My Grocer's Opinion" in "Caricature" (7.4.1831) depicts the political views of a grocer The grocer is dissatisfied with the stagnation in business, competition and war, which reduce him to the disastrous role of decorating the counter, since no one buys anything. . When asked by the author about the best form of government, the grocer spoke in favor of "a republic without war and privileges, where all citizens would be completely free and unusually equal in everything except the right to become shopkeepers." From this political ideal of the grocer, it can be seen that, fundamentally, he "diverges" very little from the regime of Louis Philippe.

The philistine fear of the shopkeeper for his property is also depicted by Balzac in the essay “How it happens that the spurs of the police commissioner interfere with trade”, placed in the “Caricature” 29.XII. 1831 under the pseudonym Eugène Morisseau. Seeing a police commissar in spurs and concluding from this that the uprising is being suppressed, the owner of the tobacco shop Mushine runs home in a fright, hastily hides expensive varieties of tobacco (which deprives himself of the opportunity to sell it) and asks his wife to prepare him the uniform of the National Guardsman. To the question of the frightened wife, “on what street is the uprising”, the tobacconist replies that there is no uprising yet, but if it is allowed to start, at least in the afternoon, “then by the lanterns they can already declare a republic.” Given that this event took place after the Polish uprising, when, as the author says, Emperor Nicholas pursued some remnants of the Poles (that is, the rebels who had taken refuge in France - O. L.), with the help of the obliging ministry of Giske, up to Bergère ”(Zhiske is the prefect of the position), then the origin of the blind fear of the layman before the threat of an uprising allegedly approaching from all sides will become clear.

The desire to get closer to the throne, to achieve rewards, the loyal obligingness of shopkeepers is the subject of Balzac’s ridicule in such essays as “A Particular Difficulty”, “Here is a Man!” fifty . The reactionary role of the National Guard, as a strangler of popular, workers' uprisings, is vividly and satirically mercilessly stigmatized by the essays "The Best Republican", "Here is a man!", "Acquaintance" 51 and others. republican institutions," 52 nightcap dealer Bonnichon, "voluntary militiaman", "citizen of the promised land ... heir to the splendor of Louis the Great," as Balzac ironically calls him. He lives in a "republic" cut exactly to his measurements" and puts on business cards:

"Bonnichon, merchant of nightcaps, citizen of the best of the republics" 53 . As you know, in July 1830. in response to the popular demands of the republic, Lafayette brought Louis-Philippe to the balcony of the town hall and introduced the people with the words: "Here is the best of the republics!" This historical episode is the object of Balzac's sarcasm. Balzac caustically calls the July Monarchy a republic tailored to the standards of shopkeepers.

Bonnichon, commander of a company of the national guards, had his head crushed in the rue Saint-Denis by a flower pot thrown from the top floor, and his shop with nightcaps was also destroyed. Beaten Bonnishon bitterly complains about the rebels, who did not appreciate his services to his homeland.

But if this comic character complains about such an assessment of his loyal feelings, then another shopkeeper, the manufacturer of gilded things Delatte from the essay “Here is a man!” seeks orders for the initiative shown in the suppression of "a political uprising on the night of October 18-19, 1830 at the Palais Royal" 54.

The punitive measures of Casimir Perrier and the National Guard against workers' uprisings are extremely sharp and satirically ridiculed in the essay Acquaintance. As you know, C. Perrier used water pumps to disperse popular demonstrations, for which he was nicknamed Casimir Pompier, that is, a fireman 55 . That is what Balzac calls him in the essay "Public Order" and others. The essay "Acquaintance" 56 tells just about one such incident at the Palais Royal. The essay depicts this square filled with worried people, and "firemen" dispersing them with the help of pumps. Balzac's sympathy is entirely on the side of the people, he says that by "extinguishing" public unrest in this way, this government fire engine incites popular hatred. It is with great pleasure that he draws the people's "reaction" to these government measures: someone from the crowd, sneaking up unnoticed from behind to the officer in command of the "firemen" detachment, puts a bucket of water on his head. The wet officer, vainly trying to free himself from this new headgear, spins around like a madman and spews wild curses, and the people laugh approvingly.

The story of the unsuccessful meeting between the dandy and the grisette, which constitutes the main plot knot of the essay, their images, written out, although briefly, but extremely realistically, are obscured by a picture of popular unrest, which turns into the main event of the essay. It is necessary to note the features of Balzac's artistic skill in this essay. There is no description of the insurgent masses here, Balzac only mentions a crowd of worried people who flooded the pavement. However, we hear the voices of this people. This effect is achieved by reproducing the live exclamations of the masses. So, in response to the curses of the ill-fated “fireman” officer, encouraging exclamations and laughter of the people rush from all sides: “Ah! Ha ha ha! Bravo! Ore! Notably! Ho-ho-ho!"

The image-symbol, the greatest generalization of the era of the July monarchy, is the satirical image of the grocer Filipoten from an essay of the same title 57 . It seems to have merged all the numerous sketchy images of Balzac's grocers, all those Bonnichons, Mitouffles, Mouchinet, Delattes, and created a vivid detailed typical image of a shopkeeper, an image that embodies an entire era in the history of France. All the most characteristic features of the representatives of the middle mercantile world are reproduced in the image of Philipotene. Drawing his external and internal appearance, domestic environment, Balzac describes step by step his political life against the backdrop of the historical events of France. In the satirical and realistic image of this bai-modeler, as in a mirror, the vacillations and political instability of the petty and middle bourgeoisie of this period are reflected. Ill of the first restoration Philipotene is a “liberal”, that is, a Bonapartist, but he only dares to shout “Vivat” to Napoleon. hiding between two mattresses so no one could hear him...

Guided in his life only by the instinct of self-preservation, Philippotin gradually comes from Bonapartism to the assertion of "jnste-milieu". His "participation" in the July Revolution of 1830, Balzac ironically describes as follows: "Having lived until July 27, Philipotin did not know what to do; "Constitutionalist" did not come out, he abstained too. On July 28, he toured his cellars to check on the condition of the cheeses and oysters. In the continuation of the evening of the 29th (that is, when the revolution had already ended - 0. L.) his indignation erupted in all directions, and. he was prevented from going to take the Louvre, only by assuring him that the patriots had been in charge there since morning” 58.

So the revolution happened without the participation of this shopkeeper. But at the end of it, the political career of Philipotena began. In payment of old debts and for new loans to the government, he is offered first a parliamentary seat, then an order. "He came in as a simple grocer and left rewarded for July." Philipotene is so flattered that the king himself shook his hand when rewarding him, that he cannot decide to wash his hand, which was touched by the royal hand, for 15 days. This is the real king of shopkeepers!” 59, he exclaims. He becomes a loyal subject, a national guard, commands a company "in a brilliant attack against a few defenseless ones" (as Balzac calls the rebels of 1831-1832). He kills "the enemies of the throne and the counter." He donates all his property to the regime of Louis Philippe in the hope of a brilliant appointment, scolds the republic and shouts: “Long live the juste-milieu!” “here is the obligatory defender of a system he does not understand.

In Philipotene's house, “everything breathes with those feelings that inspire it. A long line of portraits adorns his dining room ... these are portraits of the monarch and his august family” 60 . It is known that Louis-Philippe had an extremely large family, which was a source of ridicule for satirical, opposition magazines and cartoonists. The "cartoon" also mocked Louis Philippe's demagogic boasting of participation in the battles of Jemappe and Valmy in 1792 on the side of the revolutionary French troops. He mentioned this so often that Caricature depicted him as a tricolor parrot, shouting out only one answer to all questions: “Valmy! Zhemapp!" 61. By placing pictures depicting these historical battles in the living room of Philipoten, Balzac ridicules the loyal feelings of Philipoten and the boasting of his master.

The situation at Philipotene also testifies to his political inclinations; he has striped, tricolor wallpaper like the national flag, and his furniture is also decorated with tricolor fabric. Philipotene is so afraid of offending his Majesty the King that pears are never served at his dinner. This is because cartoonists of the time very often portrayed Louis Philippe as a pear due to the resemblance of his head and excessively obese body to this fruit. The “pear”, as well as the “umbrella” (Louis-Philippe liked to walk around Paris dressed like a simple bourgeois, with an umbrella in his hands), “became satirical symbols of the “bourgeois king” in French caricature and the opposition satirical press. Balzac repeatedly beats in his essays these "signs" of the royal person.Thus in the "Monograph on Rentier" he says that a respectable bourgeois detained on the street during labor unrest is enough to show his umbrella as evidence of good intentions in order to be released.

Balzac brings the image of Philipotene so close to the image of Louis Philippe himself that they seem to merge. It is sometimes difficult to understand which of them Balzac has in mind. Even the names of Philipotene and his son Pulotene, being a diminutive of the name of Louis-Philippe and the satirical nickname of his eldest son - Grand Poulot, testify to the spiritual kinship of these essay characters with their master. The image of Philipotene - the embodiment of moral insignificance - is a double of Louis Philippe. However, striving to be a historian, Balzac shares the images of the shopkeeper and his monarch, drawing the characteristic end of his hero. He shows how Philippotin, having connected all his aspirations with the regime of Louis Philippe and sacrificing his "shop" to him, is disappointed in the July regime, for instead of the expected prefecture he receives only the position of a gatekeeper in one of the royal castles. Philipotene is indignant, buys a red cap, goes to the barricade, where he perishes, in fact, he himself does not know in the name of what. He dies on a working barricade, fighting for a bench. This outwardly paradoxical end of Philipotene, his sudden "leftward" as a result of the failure of all of him. hopes for a brilliant future under the July regime are, in fact, extremely characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie, hallmarks which were constant fluctuations and political instability arising from its social role.

The satirical image of Philipotene acquires a broad and general meaning. This image reflected both moral squalor and mercantilism, as well as the historical, spontaneous protest of the petty bourgeoisie against the dominance of large financial predators. Assembled like a mosaic from numerous and versatile essays, journalistic, sometimes satirical sketches of 1830-1832, the image of Philipotene acquired extraordinary life expressiveness and realistic completeness. The inner world and actions of the character were made by Balzac not dependent on the biological environment, as most of his contemporaries did, but on the socio-historical situation, on the course of history, which the author was able to see so deeply only thanks to a journalistic approach to assessing social phenomena and types. .

The typical circumstances in which this character is placed are the events of French history during the era of the July Monarchy. The display of historical perspective in this remarkable satirical essay by Balzac is truly striking in its breadth. In terms of the power of generalization and artistic merit, this essay is close to the large canvases of The Human Comedy.

Another moral support of the July monarchy - the lumpen proletariat, representatives of the Parisian bottom - is drawn by Balzac in the essay "Two human destinies, or a new means of reaching people" 6 public enthusiasm, intervening in the crowd, shouting like crazy: "Long live such and such!" 63 They are also hired "among other friends...of the public order and of the kingdom founded in July", to put down uprisings, to kill insurgents. “Unfortunately, they killed only 52 republicans, of whom there were 25 women, 13 children and 12 old men,” 64 - ironically Balzac, - I drove them away. Having lost this income and having been in prison, they became Chouans on the Vendée road. And here one of them, Ripopet, found himself. He made a terrible name for himself with the help of robberies, murders, arson and violence.

“The authorities, not being able to seize him, caressed him, cajoled, forgave and rewarded him very generously... Now Ripopet is happy, he has a place... and he is fussing about an honorary chair,” 65 the author concludes.

This essay testifies to the fact that already in the early 1930s Balzac could observe the emerging political orientation of the government of Louis Philippe towards the criminal elements of French society. , as Marx and Engels talk about in their works on the history of France of this period. The image of Ripopet is very curious, anticipating the later image of Vautrin, his last incarnation. By the way, we note that the features of Vautrin and the fact of attracting a criminal to the state service are also described by Balzac in the essay "The Soldier's Tale" 66 .

The essay "Two Fates" is also interesting as an illustration of Balzac's political views of this period. Here he deals with both the monarchy of Charles X (with whose support the smugglers Ripopet and Maclu flourish) and the monarchy of Louis Philippe, showing both in their true light. Balzac here allows sharp attacks against legitimism and its support - the aristocracy. Thus, drawing the “activity” of Ripopet on the Vendean road, Balzac says: “He did not limit himself to killing passers-by, appropriate their purse and inspire them with a love of legitimism. He was always ambitious…” 3 and became an honorary member of the society. "Who knows? Balzac asks. - Isn't that how the famous Montmorency family began? ”, That is, one of the most noble aristocratic families of France, blood related to the royal dynasty.

Thus Balzac questions the legitimacy of the origin of the wealth and power of the old aristocracy, the pillar of legitimism.

From the analysis of Balzac's political essays, one can see the fertilizing role of journalistic activity in the development of his realism and in the general direction of his work. Journalism, as a kind of social activity, helped Balzac to find the main social spring that sets society in motion, directed Balzac's attention to major social topics. In terms of improving artistic skills, journalism, especially its satirical form, contributed to the development of typing techniques, broad generalization, since satire required the greatest expressiveness with the greatest brevity.

Political essays, created in most cases on actual, often historical, material, contain fiction only to the minimum extent that it is necessary for typification, and there is almost no intrigue in them. They do not contain a developed action, and their plot is in most cases simple. These features, first of all, they differ from the "Human Comedy",

Political essays also testify to the ups and downs in Balzac's political views and reflect his contradictions in this area in the best possible way.

Essays from the early 1830s indicate that Balzac's legitimist views, which he developed in Birthright (1824), underwent significant changes during the July Revolution of 1830.

In essays with a bright anti-royalist coloring (The Secret Assembly of the Carlists, 1831, On Caricatures, 1830), he allows himself sharp assessments of the throne and the altar.

He assesses the royalists as ambitious, who, having seized power, "soon would have destroyed it themselves, wishing to possess it each separately" 67 , and who only cover up their selfish desires with words about "the good and happiness of France." He laughs at the efforts of Charles X to restore the feudal monarchy. He sees how “the old throne and the old altar, worn out, wormed, patched and broken, try to lean on each other and both fall” 68 .

At the same time, there are a number of essays from the same period in which Balzac's democratic sympathies, in particular his sympathy for the worker, are expressed extremely clearly, and the defense of the rights of the people to their share in the gains of the revolution sounds strong and convincing. Such are the essays "Two meetings in one year", "1831" or the essay of 1844 "Paris leaving". In the latter, Balzac calls the Lyon weavers "victims", says that "every branch of industry has its own Lyon weavers" 69 . At the same time, a number of essays and articles in 1832 speak of Balzac's royalist views (The Refusal, 1832).

All this testifies to the struggle of contradictions in Balzac's political views, to a hundred searches for some kind of solution to political issues. Essays, as well as an appeal to the positive Republican hero in the novels of the "Human Comedy" of the 30s-40s, convince us that, regardless of Balzac's monarchical views, his sympathy for the people, for the worker, was constant and guiding in all his quest. At the heart of his monarchical delusions was always not self-interest, but the desire for the good of France, for the good of the French people, to establish a form of government in which the nation, the people would be arranged in the best possible way.

However, it must be taken into account that Balzac misunderstood the people's welfare and associated its possibility only with absolute monarchy. The sympathetic depiction of the revolution as a popular cause and the sharp, implacable criticism of the monarchy of Louis Philippe as the result of the July Revolution in Balzac's essays testify to the presence and then to the destruction of Balzac's illusions associated with this revolution, about the collapse of hopes for a better future for France under such a government, as the monarchy of Louis Philippe.

Hence his disillusionment with the revolution and his sharp turn to the right. The result of this is the relapse of the royalism of 1832 in the views of Balzac (article "On the situation of the royalist party") 70 and his entry into the reactionary royalist party.

Warm sympathy in the depiction of the July uprising of 1830 as an act of the greatest self-sacrifice of labor funds, as a movement of the people who rebelled for their rights, a sharp exposure of the subsequent deception of the people by the bourgeoisie, its betrayal of the interests of the people and the seizure of all the gains of the revolution, permeate Balzac's essays of the early 30s years (“Two meetings in one year”, “1831”, “Minister”, “Great acrobats”, etc.).

The 30s were marked by the appearance in the work of Balzac of a hero from the people (Ludovic Vergniaud - "Colonel Chabert", 1832, Bourges - "The mass of an atheist", 1836), then a positive Republican hero (Michel Chretien - "Lost Illusions", 1837-1839 -1843, "The Secret of Princess Kadinyan", 1839).

In 1840, Balzac, analyzing Stendhal's novel "The Parma Monastery", compares his Michel Chrétien with the character of the "Parma Monastery" - the stern Italian Republican Ferrante Palla Balzac admired the spiritual greatness of this man, disinterestedness, devotion, the strength of his conviction:

“Palla Ferante... catches your eye and arouses your admiration. Contrary to your beliefs, constitutional monarchical or religious, he conquers you. Great in his poverty, he glorifies Italy." In the same article, in the subsequent words of Balzac about the leveling of all characters and passions in France under the pressure of bourgeois laws and under the influence of the "uniform of the national guard", that is, the general system of the July monarchy, there is not only an acute regret of the artist, who does not see strong characters and passions , as objects for depiction, but also the protest of the humanist against the dominance of depressing stupidity, dull narrow-mindedness or disgusting adventurism of stockbrokers and shopkeepers, the mainstay of the July Monarchy, trying to mold the face of France in their own image.

So, the search for a truly positive hero can only go in the direction indicated by the images of folk heroes from essays and Michel Chrétien, we see confirmation of this in the image of the republican Nizeron (“Peasants”, 1844), “solid as iron and pure as gold” . Drawing this defender of people's rights, so honest that he was the conscience of the town, a staunch republican who gave his only son to the defense of the republic, Balzac remarks: “the republic could seem acceptable if it were guided by its principles” (emphasis mine. - 0 . L.). "If she were guided by his principles" - these words are not so far from the "Political Confession of Faith", which Balzac wrote on April 17, 1848. These were the days when, according to Marx, after the February Revolution, “historical gigantic words flaunted on all the walls of Paris: French Republic! Freedom equality Brotherhood". “Just at this time, immediately after the February Revolution, the Germans, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians rose up - each people in accordance with the special conditions of its position. Russia and England, the latter itself captured by the movement, the former intimidated by it, were not prepared for intervention. Thus, the republic did not meet a single national enemy on its way,” 71 says Marx. Balzac, of course, could not ignore such a wide spread of the revolution in Europe, which testified to its urgent historical necessity.

The “Political Confession of Faith” is clear evidence that the revolutionary events and Balzac’s powerful historical realism, that extraordinary understanding of real relations by him, which Marx and Engels note, pushed him to revise his monarchical positions and led to the recognition of the republic as a form of government. This trend, which had been outlined since 1830, matured somewhere in the depths of Balzac's consciousness, under the weight of his royalist views. “Let the new republic be mighty and wise... This is my wish, and it is equivalent to all confessions of faith!” 72, wrote Balzac in this last political document of his life. What is this if not a courageous admission of the complete failure of one's monarchical aspirations? Since an "ideal" monarchy is impossible (and Balzac already saw that it was impossible), then let the republic be powerful and wise!

Balzac was at that time already seriously ill, did not write anything, he died two years after he spoke out for the republic. He did not have time to realize this his last word in artistic practice. But be that as it may, it can be said with certainty that neither the bourgeois republic of 1848, washed in the blood of the June insurgents, nor, even more so, the second empire of Louis Bonaparte, could satisfy his demand for a "wise and powerful government", precisely because of their anti-people, clearly expressed bourgeois predatory essence, which Balzac so passionately denounced in the person of the July Monarchy.

Thus, Balzac's essays of the 1930s outline that evolution in Balzac's political views, which is evidenced by the images of Republican goodies in the 1830s and 40s in The Human Comedy and the Political Confession of Faith of 1848.

SOCIAL ESSAYS OF THE 1930s

A number of themes are also developed in the essays of this cycle. First of all, - the theme of denunciation of falsehood, emptiness and lack of content of aristocratic secular life, as well as idleness, immorality and decay of high society. This is precisely what the essays “High society”, “The idle and the hard worker”, “The poor rich man”, “Intermission”, “What gloves tell about morals”, “The Bois de Boulogne and the garden of Luxembourg”, etc., speak about this.

Drawing a secular ball ("High Society") 73 , Balzac shows a whole gallery of its participants of all ranks, conditions and ages, revealing inner world each of them. The high society is presented by Balzac as an accumulation of selfish, selfish and predatory aspirations, hidden behind feigned secular smiles and brilliant manners. Everything here is false and artificial: fun, smiles, and dances. “I prefer the coven of convicts when they are chained or let out for a walk. It's terrible, but true!.. That's fun without ulterior motives... I prefer the drive,” says Balzac 74 , pronouncing his harsh sentence on high society.

Behind the external brilliance of high society lies immorality and crime. This Balzac shows with great realism in a very short, beautifully completed and compositionally well-coordinated essay "Intermission". This essay appeared for the first time in Caricature (October 1830). The hero of the essay, a secular young man Stanislav B... kills his old rich relative with a blow of a hammer on the bridge of his nose, deftly proves an alibi and receives an inheritance. Although they are convinced of his guilt, he is accepted in society and is reputed to be decent person, on the grounds that he has an annual income of sixty thousand, an amazing crew, and great influence. “Is it not necessary to see every day what honor is surrounded by malicious bankrupts, counterfeiters and faiths? Why close access to the world to the killer? 75 - Balzac asks, summarizing and typing the hero and his crime. This essay is also curious because the image of Stanislav B ... precedes such types of Balzac's later works as the "Prince of Bohemia" Palferin and Maxime du Traille.

The image of Palferin appeared for the first time in the story "Prince of Bohemia", 25. P. 1840, published in the "Review parisienne" under the title "Fantasy Kladina", that is, almost 10 years after the essay "Intermission". Stanislav B... from the essay "Intermission", the predecessor of Palferin, was just such a representative of the bohemia from the impoverished aristocracy, who escaped from the circle of material hardships only with the help of crime. The same is true of another high-society "robber in yellow gloves" - Maxime du Traille, whose image was outlined in the essay "The Moneylender" (1830) and developed in the story "Gobsek" (1842). In the story "The Secret of Princess Kadinyan" (1839), Maxime du Traille is bred as "a bravo of the highest flight, who did not believe in either God or the devil, capable of anything ...". He has charming manners and a satanic mind, "he instilled in everyone equally fear and contempt", but no one dared to express this contempt to him. The image of Stanislav B... from the essay "Intermission" is especially close to Maxime du Traille. If Palferin still has something of liveliness and sincerity of feelings, albeit very unstable, then in M. du Traille, like in Stanislav B ... cold calculation dominates everything. Du Traill, who was known as "the most dexterous, the most cunning, the most educated, the most daring, the most subtle, the most prudent of all pirates in yellow gloves, with a convertible and excellent manners. He has no conscience, no honor ... ", - this M. du Traille owes many features to Stanislav B ... from the essay "Intermission". Thus, the early sketch character, containing the most characteristic features of the era, gave life to one of the most colorful types of The Human Comedy.

The laconic language, the lively typical image, the swiftness of the tempo and the dramatic nature of the action, the striking general coherence of this very small essay testify to the fact that Balzac's realism manifested itself here in full. The theme of the murder, so often developed by the "Frantic Romantics", received an extremely realistic interpretation in this essay by Balzac, testifying to the author's critical perception and comprehension of the phenomena of reality.

The same stern verdict on the high society is passed by Balzac in the essays "The Idle and the Worker", "The Poor Rich Man", "On the Goat's Wool Trousers", "The Bois de Boulogne and the Garden of Luxembourg" 76 . In these essays, the theme of work and creativity is clearly heard, which Balzac contrasts with the idle and empty life of the wealthy classes. In the essay "The Bois de Boulogne and the Garden of Luxembourg" this topic becomes polemically acute. Here, in contrast to the writers who, when drawing French youth, have in mind only the moral difference between its individual representatives, Balzac puts forward another principle of characterization: estate, class. He calls for a comprehensive description of the pictures of life that sweep before the artist, that is, for genuine typification, and not moralization. Secular, fashionable youth, prancing on magnificent horses in the Bois de Boulogne, Balzac contrasts other French youth, working, studying, living not in aristocratic quarters, but in the suburbs, “... these young people are less graceful, less elegant ... but it is among them that all the celebrities of the era are recruited: justice, advocacy, science, the arts belong to them; their days, sometimes their nights, are devoted to work, and this is how publicists, poets, orators are created in silence.

Balzac's sympathies are clearly on the side of this last youth, with whom he associates the future of France. One can name a number of images of the "Human Comedy" in which Balzac glorifies selfless creativity; these are the scientist Claes, the inventor Sechard, the writer d "Artez, the talented politician Zephyrin Mark, the doctor Bianchon, and others.

Each of them is to some extent obliged to the collective image of the French working youth, which Balzac gave in the essay "The Bois de Boulogne and the Garden of Luxembourg". This essay was first published by Balzac on 12. VI. 1830 in "Fashion". Four years later, with some minor changes, it was placed in the IV volume of the New Paintings of Paris in the 19th Century (1834-1835) under the title "Paris Youth". At the same time, Balzac also includes him in the story “The Golden-Eyed Girl” (Volumes III and IV of “Scenes of Parisian Life”, 1834-1835), where we can read it now.

Even in The Physiology of Marriage (1829), Balzac wrote that rough material calculation characterizes bourgeois society and all its institutions, including the institution of marriage. In the social essays of the 1930s, he again returns to the questions of the family, built on monetary interests, to the questions of raising children. He gives vivid pictures of the life of a philistine philistine family with the inevitable adultery, draws hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality. The range of these issues is the theme of the essays: “In the boarding house for young girls”, “Workshop of one artist”, “Struggle”, “Family picture”, “Sample conversation in the French way”, “Inconsistency”, “Madame Vseotboga”, etc.

Balzac condemns the bourgeois system of female education, which boils down to the fact that only a “living decoration of the salon” is prepared from a girl, an obedient, flower-crowned slave of her future husband, resignedly putting on marriage chains, no matter whose hand is extended, “if only they were gilded.” Broken by such upbringing, women waste their youth on trifles (the essays “In the boarding house for young girls”, “The workshop of one artist”).

Often, against their will, given by their parents to a more profitable fiancé, they throw themselves into adultery or die as silent victims (the essays “A Sample of a Conversation in the French Style” - “Abortion”, “Fight”, “Family Picture”, etc.). Thus, the same criticism and the same demands for the correct education of women and the arrangement of marriages according to personal inclination sound again in the essays as in the Physiology of Marriage.

Hypocrisy, brought to its highest expression - hypocrisy, is cruelly ridiculed by Balzac in the satirical essay "Madame of All God" 78. This essay is a masterpiece of Balzac's anti-church satire. In the realistic grotesque image of his heroine, Madame Doctrovei-Balbina Vseotboga, Balzac gave a generalization of hypocrisy. a caustic satire on church morality. In terms of the destructive power of anti-Catholic denunciation, this essay can be compared with the story "The Duchess of Lange" (1833). But if the theme of the perverting influence of Catholicism on human nature and the psyche is resolved in the latter in ominous, tragic tones, then in the essay it is developed in a tone of caustic mockery.

Prayer and gossip, Madame Vseotboga rents chairs in one of the churches of the aristocratic quarter. She is so passionate about the mission of saving the souls of her parishioners that she transfers her zeal even to saving the souls of... dogs! Giving her dog Toby to the veterinarian for treatment, she earnestly asks not to give him meat on Fridays. This essay gives an artistically expressive satirical image of a hypocrite and is an interesting evidence of Balzac's anti-Catholic, anti-church freethinking. It is hard to believe after "Madame Vseotboga" and "Duchess of Lange" in the possibility of a radical change in Balzac's views in this area, in his Catholic orthodoxy.

It is not surprising that the Catholics did not fully believe him, seeing that Balzac's artistic practice contradicted his theory of Catholicism.

Many essays, previously self-published, are included by Balzac in novels. In addition to those already mentioned by us, these are the essays "The Petty Merchant", placed for the first time in the "Caricature" 16/XP 1830 and "Paris Youth" ("Fashion" 12/VI 1830), included by Balzac in "The Golden-eyed Girl" (1834-1835 ); the essays "The Last Napoleon" ("Caricature" 16 / HP 1830, "Orgy" ("Revue des Deux Mondes", Mai. 1831) and "The Suicide of a Poet" ("Revue de Paris" 27/V 1831), as already mentioned, included in "Shagreen Skin"; essays "Touraine landscape" and "The last review of the troops under Napoleon" ("Caricature" 25/XI 1830), wholly included in "The Thirty-Year-Old Woman" (1831-1844) and very many others We do not analyze these essays included in the "Human Comedy" and have lost their independent significance; this is not part of our tasks. We will touch only on some essays of the 30s, although they were included in the "Human Comedy", but have not lost their independent significance, and essays used by Balzac in part in the later novels of the Human Comedy.

Such is the essay "Provincial" 79 published in "Caricature" on 12/V 1831 and used 15 years later in the story "Comedians Unknowingly" (1846), as well as the essay "Provincial Woman" (1841), included in the novel "Provincial muse" (1843).

The essay "Provincial" draws a provincial who arrived in Paris. He is full of respect for his own person, and on the grounds that at home he is a conspicuous person, the first wit and gentleman, he behaves cheekily in the capital and criticizes Paris with the ignorance of a savage. He confuses the Franconi circus with the Opera, the famous Taglioni with the tightrope dancer M. Saki, becomes delighted with wax mannequins in the windows of barbershops and yawns while listening to Paganini. He is self-confident and self-satisfied: “I have nothing to be afraid of, unless the devil will circle me around his finger. I read so much, I educated myself so much before leaving, I consulted with so many, and I myself am not a blunder!” he says 80 . The provincial is prudent in a rural way: not being poor, he only walks, buys the cheapest delicacies (barley sugar) in theater buffets, “trades at the box office”, etc. His costume is tasteless to the limit: “with carrot-colored hair, he wears the shoes are polished with yolk, and the earrings and gloves are green!” 81 With all his swagger, the provincial reveals a truly patriarchal innocence: "calls the waiter, sir," "bows to the ushers, talks to the clackers." His credulity borders on stupidity, as a result of which he remains deceived all around: he is robbed, borrowed from him, “women who look sensitive, but in reality are devilishly cruel” rob him.

Fifteen years later, when creating his Gazonal (“Comedians, unknown to himself”) 82, Balzac turned to this essay character. His features formed the basis of the image of Gasonal - a Provençal who came to Paris. Even the outward features of the sketchy, provincial - the clumsiness of the figure and the bad taste of the costume - are repeated in the Gasonal.

He is also prudent and walks only on foot; a wealthy manufacturer, he complains about the insufficient length of 4-pound bread and the high cost of cabs. Gazonal is just as ignorant and self-satisfied, just as simple-hearted and trusting. He tells the lackey about all his misfortunes, and the dexterous courtesan Jenny Kadin defrauds him of a bill for an amount greater than his entire fortune. A number of the same adventures take place with him as with the essay characters, with the difference that they are not simply listed by the author, as in the essay, but deployed in a series of very vivid and lively pictures of Parisian life, political, business and private.

The image of Gazonal - an ingenuous provincial - was also used by Balzac as a "fresh eye" to expose the ministerial and parliamentary behind-the-scenes mechanics.

The expansion of the scope of the character from everyday life to the state gave Balzac the opportunity to most fully and comprehensively portray the character of the hero, to give a type. It is this breadth of showing reality that distinguishes Balzac's story "The Comedians Unknowingly to Themselves" from the essay "The Provincial", whose task was nevertheless narrow and reduced to the characterization of one character. Here we can observe, in essence, the same process of strengthening the typification of the hero and reality as in the essay "The Moneylender" and the story "Gobsek". The image of the provincial is sketched in the essay, although it contains all the typical features; in the story, he receives the necessary detailed background - Parisian reality in its typical phenomena.

Balzac's extensive use of essay material in his novels took various forms. Sometimes the content of the essay served as a canvas, a plan for a new work, as it was with the essays "Gobsek" and "Provincial". Sometimes the essay was transferred to the artistic fabric of the new work as a whole, undergoing only compositional changes or no changes at all (“The Bois de Boulogne and the Garden of Luxembourg”, “Touraine Landscape”, “Provincial Woman”, etc.).

In addition, Balzac's novels contain countless sketches (landscapes, types, etc.), which are not formally taken from any particular essay, however, are executed in a sketchy manner and are, as it were, cursory sketches from nature.

Essays in the time of Balzac were descriptions from nature, for example, landscapes or small sketches taken from living street life, as well as abstract sketches - “physiology”. These latter were attempts to give generalized descriptions various phenomena, professions, occupations, characteristics of their representatives, etc. In the early 30s, Balzac wrote such comic "physiology" (for example, the "physiology" of a suit, breakfast, cigar, etc.). In The Code of Honest People, he also used the form "physiology".

In The Human Comedy, kinship with such "physiology" is indicated primarily by extensive descriptions of various occupations and trades, the characteristics of individual episodic persons and landscapes. Such, for example, are the "physiology" of the cab business (stagecoaches of Lil-Adan) and the professions of clerks in the novel The First Step, or the pages depicting salt mining near Guérande ("Beatrice"). A cursory portrait of a creditor ("Eugene Grande") and a characterization of a decent woman ("Nyusingen Banking House", 1838) also remind of "physiology"! at the same time significantly differing from them in their realism. By the way, we note that Balzac later (1841) republished the sketch of a decent woman separately as an independent essay.

The presence of such “physiology” in the artistic fabric of the “Human Comedy” indicates that Balzac retained the sketchy manner of writing in his large canvases, although this manner and form of the essay itself underwent significant changes in Balzac throughout his work.

Balzac's appeal to major social topics also predetermined a radical restructuring of the essay and its form. In an effort to give a generic type to . expanded social background, Balzac abandoned the form of "physiology" - superficial, static, plotless and abstract descriptions of phenomena, devoid of connections with the social concrete world, and came to a new form of this genre - a truly realistic essay. Some works of The Human Comedy are written entirely in a sketchy manner. Such, for example, are "Comedians unknown to themselves", both "Godissart", "Pierre Grasu" and others. "Comedians" is nothing but a chain of essays, united with the help of main characters and intrigue.

The sketch is the primary realistic genre in Balzac's work, a kind of etude painted from life, which very often served as a sketch for a large canvas of The Human Comedy. Not all of the essays he wrote were included in the novels, that's not the point, not only this determines their proximity to the "Human Comedy". The method by which the essays were created, which is based on a clear drawing of the typical phenomena of life and their social analysis, this realistic method became the leading method of Balzac, the author of The Human Comedy.

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We have reviewed Balzac's most characteristic essays in ideological and artistic terms. The main features of Balzac's essays should be considered the journalistic social nature of typification, as well as their historicism. They contain responses to a number of revolutionary political events that took place in France and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and the author's sympathetic attitude towards these events is very clearly expressed.

Balzac's essays respond to the daily political life of France (parliamentary meetings, parliamentary elections, popular unrest and government repression, etc.).

Being a kind of literary and artistic reaction to the July Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the monarchy of Louis Philippe, Balzac's essays are at the same time a mirror of this era. Balzac is not limited to the live reproduction of individual phenomena of socio-political life and pictures of the mores of the society of his time; he gives non-isolated sketches of facts. His essay describes a social phenomenon, gives a type on a broad social historical background, shows the regularity of the described phenomenon, its historical conditionality. This method of creativity allows Balzac to achieve in the essays a great power of typification, broad social generalizations, which sharply distinguishes his essays from the essays of his contemporaries.

The phenomena and types described by Balzac in the essays are given in terms of social and historical, therefore, it can be argued that Balzac was the historian of his society in the essays. Balzac's assessment as a historian of French society during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, given by Engels and based on an analysis of Balzac's novels, can also be attributed to Balzac the essayist.

Setting before himself in the essays of the 1920s the still limited goal of artistic sketching of one or another type or social phenomenon, Balzac very quickly outgrew these tasks, striving even then to find some general laws that govern the life of the social type he depicted.

The essays of the 1930s and 1940s give not only a detailed picture of the life of social types; the phenomena or types depicted in them are always given in connection with the life of society, depending on it. In addition, and - this is the main thing - the essays of this period speak of the expansion of the author's creative range, he draws not only morals, politics is violently invading his essay.

The essays of the 1930s and 1940s depict representatives of the most diverse strata of contemporary French society. Here we meet the most colorful figures who personified the era - bankers and shopkeepers, usurers and rentiers, ministers and notaries; essays tell us about provincials and provincial women, about the landlord, secular and political life of France, about saints and courtesans, about the morals of the national guard, about soldiers and workers, about writers, scientists and artists, about literary disputes and bohemia, in essays we get acquainted with Parisian children and the Parisian lumpenproletariat. Thus, Balzac's essays describe French society from a variety of angles.

Descriptions of individual social, in particular, Parisian types, were filled with contemporary Balzac journals, almanacs and various other publications; the essay genre was extremely popular at that time. However, these essays did not give a realistic picture of social life. Only in Balzac's essays, even in those where he simply described Paris and its boulevards, is the author's desire to present not an isolated phenomenon, but depict it together with the living background of French life, always visible. In Balzac's essays, we are confronted by the vast motley world of France during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, a world in which, like in a mirror, the history of France is reflected. Balzac's essays give such a lively, concrete and broad idea of ​​France of that time, which all the essays of his time taken together do not give.

Observing various social types, Balzac is not limited to dry collecting them. He seeks to know the phenomenon or type in their social entity, that is, to determine their general, and not just private, meaning, their connection with society, the era, and reproduce all this in an artistic form. He wants to express the philosophy of the era with them and, thus, make the essay types a complete reflection of his time. Balzac spoke about this in the preface to the 1st edition of the novel "Chuans" (January 15, 1829) 83 . Later, these principles were fully and completely formulated by him in the Preface to The Human Comedy (July 1842). He writes in it: “By adhering to careful reproduction, a writer can become a more or less accurate, more or less fortunate, patient or bold depiction of human types, a narrator of domestic dramas, an archaeologist of social life, a counter of professions, a chronicler of good and evil, but to deserve praise that every artist should strive for, should I not have studied the foundations or one common basis of these social phenomena, to grasp the hidden meaning of a huge collection of types, passions and events? .. Depicted in this way, a society should include the basis of its movement” 84.

Balzac's essays reveal the author's steady desire for the artistic embodiment of these theses. Balzac's keen and active interest in the phenomena of reality, the desire to deeply cognize it, involved him in the very thick of social life. French reality, saturated with stormy revolutionary events, constantly changed by these events, awakened Balzac's creative thought, prompted him to develop social themes, prompted these themes. The social modern theme first came to the work of Balzac with an essay, sounded here with ever-increasing force and received a truly realistic coverage.

Essays were for Balzac a school of realistic writing. A deep analysis of social phenomena and blatant contradictions in the social life of France naturally led Balzac to a critical artistic depiction of reality. Therefore, the social theme in Balzac's essays was primarily a revealing theme. Modern French society appeared to Balzac as a society in which the bourgeoisie “left no other connection between people than bare interest, a heartless “chistogan” 85; it is basically the same as it is reflected in his essays of the 1930s and 1940s.

However, it would be wrong to reduce the significance of Balzac's essays only to exposing the system of the July monarchy. Their cognitive and artistic significance is not exhausted by this, it is much deeper. Sketches, drawing historical events France of the 30s and their echoes in Europe, at the same time give pictures of social life and draw social types that generalize not only the July monarchy, but bourgeois society as a whole

Essays from the 1930s and 1940s are different a high degree artistic skill, great realistic expressiveness. Instead of a light outline sketch - a silhouette of the 20s, here we see a finished portrait, a genuine realistic type acting in typical circumstances. The appeal to the big questions of social life also determined the form of the essays, their greater volume, plot content and the greater typicality of their images. Thanks to this, the sketch types approach the full-blooded artistic images of The Human Comedy. They differ from the latter in a narrower scope, which limits the possibility of their versatile display.

The themes of the essays of the 1930s and 1940s do not give the impression of fragmentation and randomness, as was sometimes the case in the 1920s; they reveal an ideological relationship with each other. The essays of the 1930s and 1940s constitute a series of thematic cycles that tell us about the ideas and themes that were fully developed in The Human Comedy.

Balzac's essays testify to the ideological and artistic connection with the entire Human Comedy. In them one can find not only similar situations, textual and figurative correspondences with the "Human Comedy", - they already have the circle of ideas and themes that Balzac set and widely developed in the "Human Comedy". Often, Balzac's essays are an example of how a large theme, later developed by him in novels, was embodied in a brief and therefore especially condensed, expressive and effective form of an essay (cf. the essay "The Moneylender" and the story "Gobsek", the essay "Atelier of an Artist" and "Unknown Masterpiece", "Intermission" and "Red Hotel", "Banker" and "Nyusnizhen's Banking House", etc.).

The combative, sharp nature of the realism of Balzac's sketches makes them close to our present. His exposure of the greedy, mercantile nature of bourgeois society, the dishonor and self-interest of governments that deceive and rob the people of France, the deceit and venality of bourgeois parliamentarianism are of particular relevance in our day, when the corrupt bourgeois governments of modern France are betraying the interests of the French people to American imperialism.

Precisely now, when the brutalized Anglo-American imperialists are striving to establish world domination by planting puppet fascist governments and direct military seizure and plunder of peaceful peoples, Balzac's essays testify against them.

Balzac's essays, like all the work of the great realist, who already in the middle of the last century acted as an exposer and accuser of an inhuman, predatory bourgeois society, are a sharp weapon of progressive mankind in the struggle for peace, against the ever-increasing imperialist aggression.

Notes.

1 K. Marx, F. Engels. Selected works in 2 volumes. T. I, 1948. M., Gospolitizdat, p. 12.

2 I. V. Stalin. On the shortcomings of party work and measures for the liquidation of Trotskyists and other double-dealers. Gospolitizdat 1954. p. 7.

3 V. I. Lenin Op. vol. 17, 4th ed., p. 368.

4 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. V, pp. 18-19. Article by F. Engels from the Polar Star, April 1. 846

5 Balzac H. de. Oeuvres completes. P. Conard. 1935. Oeuvres diverse. t. I, pp. 64-141; 150-201.

6 K. Marx, F. Engels. class struggle in France. Selected works in 2 vols. M. Gospolitizdat, vol. I, 1948, p. 114.

7 Ibid., p. 112.

8 Ibid., p. 113.

9 Ibid., p. 114.

10 K. Marx, F. Engels. The eighteenth Brumaire Louis Bonaparte. Selected works in 2 vols., vol. I, 1948. M. Gospolitizdat, p. 296.

11 F. Engels. Reform movement in France. Juri. " proletarian revolution”, No. 4, 1940. p. 139.

12 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres completes. conard. Paris. 1938. Oeuvres diverse, t. 2, p. 413-414.

13 ibid. p. 414.

14 ibid., p. 391-392. "1831" Henri B. "La Caricature". 16. VI. 1831.

15 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverse. P. Conard. 1938, t. 2. p. 325-327. Un deputé d "alors. "La Caricature" 24. III. 1831. Alfred Coudreux.

16 P. J. Beranger. Fav. songs, 1950, p. 137. M. Goslitizdat.

17 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres compl. Oeuvres diverse. P. Conrad. 1938, t. 2, p. 147-148. The same, in Russian, in coll. op. Balzac, ed. Lunacharsky. M. 1947, vol. XX, pp. 14-16.

18sp. de Lovenjoule. Histoire des oeuvres de Balzac. P. 1879, pp. 166-320.

20 V. Lalande, Les états successifs d "une nouvelle de Balzac: "Gobseck" RHLF No. 2, 1939, p. 180-200.

21 Balzac H. "Les dangers de 1" inconduite", "Scènes de la vie privée". P. 1830, éd Mame et Delaunay. v I, p. 177-197.

22 ibid. p. 178.

24 Ibid. p. 178-180.

25 ibid. p. 180.

26 W. Lalande. Les états successits d "une nouvelle de Balzac: "Gobseck" KHLF No. 2. 1939, p. 184.

27 Balzac H. Scènes de la vie privée. P. 1830. ed Mame et Delaunay. v. I, p. l89.

28 Ibid., pp. 193-194.

29 and 30 Ibid., pp. 194-196.

31 Ibid., p. 197.

32 On this basis, Lalande draws a parallel between Balzac's "scientific" method and that of the nineteenth-century naturalist novelists (p. 190).

33 Balzac O. Sobr. op. p / ed. Lunacharsky, vol. I. "Gobsek", p. 129. M. L. 1933. GIHL.

34 Balzac H. Scènes de la vie privée P. 1830. Mame et Delaunay. "Dangers de 1 "inconduite", t. I, p. 267-269.

35 Bazac H. Études de moeurs au XIX siècle. 1835. P. Bechet, t. IX. v. I. Le Papa Gobseck.

36 Ibid., pp. 235-240; Balzac O. Sobr. op. M. GIKHL, 1933, v. 1. "Gobsek", pp. 121-122.

37 Balzac O. Sobr. op. p / ed. Lunacharsky, M. GIKHL. 1933, vol. I. "Gobsek", p. 129.

38 Ibid., p. 163.

39 K. Marx. Capital, vol. 1, p. 594. Note. 28-a. Gospolitizdat. 1949

40 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverse. Paris. Conrad, t. II. 1938. p. 11-14. L "Epicier.

41 "Attack on the outpost of Clichy" - a lithograph from a painting by O. Werke, depicting one of the episodes of the defense of Paris by the National Guard in 1814.

42 O. Balzac, Coll. soch., vol. XX, 1947. M. Goslitizdat, p. 6, Per. B. Griftsova.

43 Ibid., pp. 6, 7, 8.

44 Ibid., p. 5.

45 Ibid., p. b.

46 Les Français peints par eux-mêmes. P. Curmer. 1840, t. I, p. 1-7.

47 O. Balzac. Sobr. soch., vol. XX, M. Goslitizdat, 1947, pp. 34-35.

48 Ibid., p. 36.

49 Ibid., p. 38.

50 ibid. p. -44-446, r. 503-504.

51 ibid. p. 375-377, p. 392-394.

55 Caricature published many color cartoons depicting C. Perrier (Pompier) and Marshal Lobo as elephants watering the crowd from their trunks, or as firefighters. These cartoons were often commented on by Balzac.

56 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverse. P. l938, t. II, r. 375-377.

57 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverges P. 1938. Conard. ,eleven. R. . 505-510.

58 Ibid., p. 506

60 Ibid., p. 507

61 "La Caricature" No. 43, 25. VII. 1831. (Planche 86).

62 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverse. P. 1938. Conard t. II, p. 474-476.

65 Ibid., p. 476.

66 O. de Balzac. Works, vol. XX. - M., Goslitizdat. 1947 "Soldier's Tale", p. 176.

67 H. de Balzac, ib. p. 368-370.

68 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres. Calmann Levy. P. 1863-76, t. XXI, p. 492.

69 O. Balzac. Sobr. cit., vol. XX. M. GIKHL. 1947 Leaving Paris, p. 82.

70 N. de Balzac. Oeuvres. Calmann. Levy P. 1868-76, t. XXIII, p. 368.

71 K. Marx. Class struggle in France, K. Marx, F. Engels. Selected works in 2 vols. M. Gospolitizdat. 1948, vol. 1, pp. 117, 122.

72 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres. Calmann Levy. P. 1868, t. XXIII, p. 788.

73 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverse. conard. P. 1938, t. II, p. 149-150.

74ib. p. 151-152.

75 ibid., the same in Russian: Balzac, O. de. Sobr. cit., p / ed. Lunacharsky, vol. XX M. GIKHL. 1947, p. 105.

76H. de Balzac. Oeuvres diverse. Paris. 1938. Conard, t. II, p. 28-30; p. 343-344; R. 382-383; R. 53-56.

78ib. p. 30-32. Madame Toutendieu. May 13, 1830. La Silhouette.

79 O. Balzac. Sobr. cit., vol. XX. M, Goslitizdat. 1947. "Provincial", pp. 25-27.

80 O. Balzac. Sobr. cit., vol. XX. M. Goslitizdat, 1947. Provincial, p. 26.

81 Ibid., p. 27.

82 O. Balzac. Sobr. cit., vol. IX. M. GIKHL, 1Q. 36. "Comedians, unknown to themselves."

83 H. de Balzac. Oeuvres completes. Paris. Calmann Levy. 1863-1879, t. XXIII, p. 372.

84 Sat. "Balzac on Art". M.-L., "Art". 1941, p. 8. Preface to The Human Comedy.

85 K. Marx, f. Engels. Selected products in 2 volumes, M., Gospolitizdat, 1948, v. 1. p. 11.

Advanced Russian literature of the 10-30s of the XIX century

Advanced Russian literature of the 10-30s of the XIX century developed in the struggle against serfdom and autocracy, continuing the liberation traditions of the great Radishchev.

The time of the Decembrists and Pushkin was one of the essential stages of that long struggle against serfdom and autocracy, which unfolded with the greatest acuteness and in a new quality later, in the era of revolutionary democrats.

The struggle against the autocratic-feudal system, which intensified at the beginning of the 19th century, was due to new phenomena in the material life of Russian society. The intensification of the process of disintegration of feudal relations, the ever greater penetration of capitalist tendencies into the economy, the growth of exploitation of the peasantry, its further impoverishment - all this exacerbated social contradictions, contributed to the development of the class struggle, the growth of the liberation movement in the country. For the progressive people of Russia, it became more and more obvious that the existing socio-economic system was an obstacle to the progress of the country in all areas of economic life and culture.

The activities of representatives of the noble period of the liberation movement turned out to be directed, to one degree or another, against the basis of feudalism - feudal ownership of land and against political institutions that corresponded to the interests of the feudal landowners, protecting their interests. Although the Decembrists, according to V. I. Lenin’s definition, were still “terribly far ... from the people,”1 but for all that, their movement in its best aspects reflected the hopes of the people for liberation from centuries of slavery.

The greatness, strength, talent, inexhaustible possibilities of the Russian people were revealed with particular brightness during the Patriotic War of 1812. Popular patriotism, which grew up in the Patriotic War, played a huge role in the development of the Decembrist movement.

The Decembrists represented the first generation of Russian revolutionaries, whom V. I. Lenin called "revolutionary nobles" or "noble revolutionaries." “In 1825 Russia saw for the first time a revolutionary movement against tsarism,” said V. I. Lenin in his Report on the Revolution of 1905.2

In the article “In Memory of Herzen,” V. I. Lenin cited Herzen’s characterization of the Decembrist movement: “The nobles gave Russia the Bironov and Arakcheevs, countless “drunk officers, bullies, card players, heroes of fairs, hounds, brawlers, sekunov, seralniks,” Yes, beautiful-hearted Manilovs. “And between them,” wrote Herzen, “people developed on December 14, a phalanx of heroes fed, like Romulus and Remus, by the milk of a wild beast ... These are some kind of heroes, forged from pure steel from head to toe, warriors-companions, who deliberately went out to obvious death in order to awaken the younger generation to a new life and purify children born in an environment of butchery and servility.’”1 V. I. Lenin emphasized the revolutionary significance of the Decembrist movement and its role for the further development of advanced social thought in Russia and with respectfully spoke about the republican ideas of the Decembrists.

IN AND. Lenin taught that under the conditions when the exploiting classes dominate, “there are two national cultures in every national culture.”2 The disintegration of the feudal-serf system was accompanied by the rapid development of advanced Russian national culture. In the first decades of the 19th century, it was a culture directed against the "culture" of the reactionary nobility, the culture of the Decembrists and Pushkin - the culture for which Belinsky and Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, representatives of a qualitatively new, revolutionary democratic stage of the Russian liberation movement.

During the years of the war with Napoleon, the Russian people not only defended their independence by defeating the hitherto invincible hordes of Napoleon, but also liberated other peoples of Europe from the Napoleonic yoke. The victory of Russia over Napoleon, being an event of world-historical significance, became a new and important step in the development of national self-consciousness. "It was not Russian journals that awakened the Russian nation to a new life—it was awakened by the glorious dangers of 1812," asserted Chernyshevsky.3 The exceptional significance of 1812 in the historical life of Russia was also repeatedly emphasized by Belinsky.

“The time from 1812 to 1815 was a great epoch for Russia,” wrote Belinsky. “We mean here not only the outward grandeur and brilliance with which Russia covered herself in this great epoch for her, but also the internal progress in citizenship and education, which was the result of this epoch. It can be shown without exaggeration that Russia has lived longer and stepped further from 1812 to the present day than from the reign of Peter until 1812. On the one hand, the 12th year, having shaken all of Russia from end to end, awakened its dormant forces and discovered in it new, hitherto unknown sources of strength... the beginning of public opinion; in addition, the 12th year dealt a strong blow to the stagnant antiquity ... All this greatly contributed to the growth and strengthening of the emerging society.

With the development of the revolutionary movement of the Decembrists, with the advent of Pushkin, Russian literature entered a new period in its history, which Belinsky rightly called the Pushkin period. The patriotic and emancipatory ideas characteristic of the preceding advanced Russian literature were raised to a new, high level.

The best Russian writers “following Radishchev” sang of freedom, patriotic devotion to the motherland and people, angrily denounced the despotism of the autocracy, boldly revealed the essence of the feudal system and advocated for its destruction. While sharply criticizing the existing social order, advanced Russian literature at the same time created images of positive heroes, passionate patriots, inspired by the desire to devote their lives to the cause of liberating the motherland from the chains of absolutism and serfdom. Hostility to the entire system that existed at that time, ardent patriotism, exposure of the cosmopolitanism and nationalism of the reactionary nobility, a call for a decisive break in feudal-serf relations is the pathos of the work of the Decembrist poets, Griboedov, Pushkin and all progressive writers of this time.

The powerful upsurge of national self-consciousness, caused by 1812 and the development of the liberation movement, was an incentive for the further democratization of literature. Along with the images of the best people from the nobility, in fiction images of people from the lower social classes began to appear more and more often, embodying the remarkable features of the Russian national character. The pinnacle of this process is the creation by Pushkin in the 30s of the image of the leader of the peasant uprising Emelyan Pugachev. Pushkin, although not free from prejudice against the "merciless" methods of peasant reprisal against the landlords, nevertheless, following the truth of life, embodied in the image of Pugachev the charming features of an intelligent, fearless, devoted to the people leader of the peasant uprising.

The very process of establishing realism in Russian literature of the 1920s and 1930s was very complex and proceeded in a struggle that took sharp forms.

The beginning of the Pushkin period was marked by the emergence and development of progressive romanticism in literature, inspired by poets and writers of the Decembrist circle and headed by Pushkin. “Romanticism is the first word that announced the Pushkin period,” wrote Belinsky (I, 383), linking the struggle for the originality and popular character of literature, the pathos of love of freedom and public protest with the concept of romanticism. Progressive Russian romanticism was generated by the demands of life itself, reflected the struggle between the new and the old, and therefore was a kind of transitional stage on the road to realism (while the romantics of the reactionary trend were hostile to all realistic tendencies and advocated the feudal-serf order).

Pushkin, having led the direction of progressive romanticism and survived the romantic stage in his work, embodying the strongest aspects of this romanticism, unusually quickly overcame its weaknesses - the well-known abstractness of images, the lack of analysis of the contradictions of life - and turned to realism, the founder of which he became. The inner content of the Pushkin period of Russian literature was the process of preparing and establishing artistic realism, which grew on the basis of the socio-political struggle of the advanced forces of Russian society on the eve of the uprising of December 14, 1825 and in the post-December years. It is Pushkin who has the historical merit of the comprehensive development and implementation in artistic creativity by the principle of the realistic method, the principles of depicting typical characters in typical circumstances. The principles of realism laid down in Pushkin's work were developed by his great successors - Gogol and Lermontov, and then raised to an even higher level by revolutionary democrats and strengthened in the fight against all kinds of reactionary trends by a whole galaxy of progressive Russian writers. Pushkin's work embodies the foundations of the world significance of Russian literature, which grew with each new stage of its development.

In the same period, Pushkin achieved his great feat, transforming the Russian literary language, improving on the basis of the national language the structure of the Russian language, which, according to I. V. Stalin, “has been preserved in everything essential, as the basis of the modern Russian language.”1

In his work, Pushkin reflected the proud and joyful consciousness of the moral strength of the Russian people, who demonstrated their greatness and gigantic power to the whole world.

But the people, who overthrew the “idol weighing over the kingdoms” and hoped for liberation from feudal oppression, after the victorious war, remained in serf captivity as before. In the manifesto of August 30 of the year, which, in connection with the end of the war, granted various “mercies”, only the following was said about the peasants: “Peasants, our faithful people, may they receive their reward from God.” The people were deceived by the autocracy. The defeat of Napoleon ended with the triumph of reaction, which determined the entire international and domestic policy of Russian tsarism. In the autumn of 1815, the monarchs of Russia, Prussia and Austria formed the so-called Holy Alliance to fight national liberation and revolutionary movements in European countries. At the congresses of the Holy Alliance, which Marx and Engels called "bandit" congresses,2 measures were sought and discussed to combat the development of revolutionary ideas and national liberation movements.

The year 1820 - the year of Pushkin's expulsion from Petersburg - was especially rich in revolutionary events. These events unfolded in Spain, Italy and Portugal; a military conspiracy was uncovered in Paris; Petersburg, an armed uprising of the Semenovsky regiment broke out, accompanied by serious unrest in the entire royal guard. The revolutionary movement also spread to Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, Moldavia and Wallachia. The leading role played in the reactionary policy of the Holy Alliance by Alexander I, together with the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, made the name of the Russian Tsar synonymous with European reaction. The Decembrist M. Fonvizin wrote: “Alexander became the head of the monarchist reactionaries... After the deposition of Napoleon, the main subject of all the political actions of Emperor Alexander was the suppression of the spirit of freedom that had arisen everywhere and the strengthening of monarchical principles...”3 The revolutions in Spain and Portugal were suppressed. An attempt at an uprising in France ended in failure.

The internal policy of Alexander I over the last ten years of his reign was marked by a fierce struggle against all manifestations of opposition sentiments in the country and advanced public opinion. Peasant unrest became more and more stubborn, sometimes lasting for several years and pacified by military force. During the years from 1813 to 1825, at least 540 peasant unrest took place, while only 165 of them are known for the years 1801-1812. The largest mass unrest occurred on the Don in 1818-1820. “When there was serfdom,” writes V. I. Lenin, “the whole mass of peasants fought against their oppressors, against the class of landlords, who were guarded, protected and supported by the tsarist government. The peasants could not unite, the peasants were then completely crushed by darkness, the peasants had no helpers and brothers among the city workers, but the peasants still fought as best they could and as best they could.

The unrest that took place in individual army units was also connected with the mood of the serfs who fought with the landowners. The soldier's service lasted at that time for 25 years, and for the slightest misconduct, the soldier was doomed to indefinite life service. Cruel corporal punishment then raged in the army. The largest of the army unrest was the indignation of the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment in St. Petersburg, which was distinguished by its special unity and stamina. In the St. Petersburg barracks, revolutionary proclamations were found calling for a fight against the tsar and the nobles, declaring that the tsar "is none other than a strong robber." The indignation of the Semenovites was suppressed, the regiment was disbanded and replaced by a new staff, and the "instigators" of the indignation were subjected to the most severe punishment - driven through the ranks.

“... Monarchs,” writes V. I. Lenin, “at times flirted with liberalism, at other times they were the executioners of the Radishchevs and ‘let loose’ on the loyal subjects of the Arakcheevs ...”.2 During the existence of the Holy Alliance, flirting with liberalism was not needs and on loyal subjects, the rude and ignorant royal satrap Arakcheev, the organizer and chief boss military settlements, a special form of recruitment and maintenance of the army.

The introduction of military settlements was a new measure of serf oppression and was met with unrest by the peasants. However, Alexander I declared that "military settlements will be at all costs, even if the road from St. Petersburg to Chudov had to be laid with corpses."

The reaction also raged in the field of education, and the struggle against the revolutionary ideas that were spreading in the country was carried out through the expansion of religious and mystical propaganda. At the head of the Ministry of Public Education was placed the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, the reactionary Prince A. Golitsyn - "a servile soul" and a "destroyer of education", as Pushkin's epigram characterizes him. With the help of his officials Magnitsky and Runich, Golitsyn under the guise of a "revision" undertook a campaign against the universities. Many professors who inspired suspicion among the reactionaries were removed from higher education. The captiousness of censorship reached its extreme limits at that time. In the press, all discussions about the systems of the political system were forbidden. The country was covered with an extensive network of secret police.

Decembrist A. Bestuzhev in a letter from Peter and Paul Fortress Nicholas I, remembering last years the reign of Alexander I, noted: “The soldiers grumbled in languor with exercises, purges, guards; officers to the scarcity of salaries and exorbitant severity. Sailors to menial work doubled by abuse, naval officers to inaction. People with talents complained that they were barred from the road to the service, demanding only silent obedience; scholars to the fact that they are not allowed to teach, youth to obstacles in learning. In a word, dissatisfied faces were seen in all corners; they shrugged their shoulders in the streets, whispered everywhere - everyone said what would this lead to?

The years of the triumph of the Holy Alliance and the Arakcheevshchina were at the same time the years of the upsurge of revolutionary sentiment among the advanced nobility. During these years, secret societies of the future Decembrists were organized: the Union of Salvation, or the Society of True and Faithful Sons of the Fatherland (1816-1817), the Welfare Union (1818-1821), the Southern Society (1821-1825) headed by Pestel and S. Muravyov-Apostol, the Northern Society (1821-1825), and finally, the Society of United Slavs (1823-1825) - these are the most important associations of the future Decembrists. Despite all the variety of political programs, ardent love for the motherland and the struggle for human freedom were the main principles that united all the Decembrists. “Slavery of the vast, disenfranchised majority of Russians,” wrote the Decembrist M. Fonvizin, “cruel treatment of superiors with subordinates, all kinds of abuses of power, arbitrariness reigning everywhere, all this revolted and indignantly educated Russians and their patriotic feeling.” 2 M. Fonvizin emphasized that the sublime love for the fatherland, a sense of independence, first political, and later popular, inspired the Decembrists in their struggle.

All advanced Russian literature of the first third of the 19th century developed under the sign of the struggle against autocracy and serfdom. The creative work of Pushkin and Griboyedov is organically connected with the revolutionary movement of the Decembrists. Poets VF Raevsky, Ryleev, Kuchelbeker came out of the Decembrists themselves. Many other poets and writers were also involved in the orbit of the Decembrist ideological influence and influence.

According to the Leninist periodization of the historical process, there were three periods in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement: “... 1) the noble period, approximately from 1825 to 1861; 2) raznochinskiy or bourgeois-democratic, approximately from 1861 to 1895; 3) proletarian, from 1895 to the present.3 The Decembrists and Herzen were the main representatives of the first period. V. I. Lenin wrote: “... we clearly see three generations, three classes that acted in the Russian revolution. First - the nobles and landowners, the Decembrists and Herzen. The circle of these revolutionaries is narrow. They are terribly far from the people. But their work is not lost. The Decembrists woke up Herzen, Herzen launched a revolutionary agitation.”4

December 14, 1825 was a milestone in the socio-political and cultural life of Russia. After the defeat of the December uprising, a period of ever-increasing reaction began in the country. “The first years following 1825 were horrendous,” Herzen wrote. “It took at least ten years for one to come to oneself in this unfortunate atmosphere of enslavement and persecution. People were seized by deep hopelessness, a general decline in strength ... Only Pushkin's sonorous and wide song sounded in the valleys of slavery and torment; this song continued the past era, filled the present with courageous sounds and sent its voice to the distant future.

In 1826, Nicholas I created a special corps of gendarmes and established the III Department of "His Majesty's Own Chancellery." III Section was obliged to pursue "state criminals", he was entrusted with "all orders and news on the affairs of the higher police." The Baltic German Count A. Kh. Benkendorf, an ignorant and mediocre martinet who enjoyed the boundless trust of Nicholas I, was appointed chief of the gendarmes and head of the III Department. Benkendorf became the strangler of every living thought, every living undertaking.

“On the surface of official Russia, the ‘facade empire’, only losses, a ferocious reaction, inhuman persecution, and the aggravation of despotism were visible. Nikolai was visible, surrounded by mediocrities, soldiers of parades, Baltic Germans and wild conservatives - himself distrustful, cold, stubborn, ruthless, with a soul inaccessible to high impulses, and mediocre, like his entourage.

In 1826, a new censorship charter was introduced, called "cast iron". This statute was directed against "free-thinking" writings "filled with the fruitless and pernicious sophistication of modern times."3 Two hundred and thirty paragraphs of the new statute opened up the widest scope for casuistry. According to this charter, which obligated to look for a double meaning in the work, it was possible, as one contemporary said, to reinterpret the Our Father in the Jacobin dialect.

In 1828, a new censorship charter was approved, somewhat softer. However, this statute also provided for the complete prohibition of any judgments about the state structure and government policy. According to this statute, fiction was recommended to be censored with extreme strictness in relation to "morality". The Rules of 1828 marked the beginning of a multiplicity of censorship, which was extremely difficult for the press. Permission to print books and articles was made dependent on the consent of those departments to which these books and articles could relate in terms of content. After the revolutionary events in France and the Polish uprising, it was time for real censorship and police terror.

In July 1830, a bourgeois revolution took place in France, and a month later, revolutionary events spread to the territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Italian states. Nicholas I created plans for military intervention to suppress the revolution in Western Europe, but his plans were thwarted by an uprising in the Kingdom of Poland.

The time of the Polish uprising was marked by a strong upsurge of the mass movement in Russia. The so-called "cholera riots" broke out. In Staraya Russa, Novgorod province, 12 regiments of military settlers revolted. Serfdom continued to be a heavy burden on the popular masses of Russia and served as the main brake on the development of capitalist relations. In the first decade of the reign of Nicholas I, from 1826 to 1834, there were 145 peasant unrest, an average of 16 per year. In the years that followed, the peasant movement continued to grow in spite of severe persecution.

To maintain "calm" and "order" in the country, Nicholas I intensified the reactionary policy in every possible way. At the end of 1832, the theory of "official nationality" was declared, which determined the internal policy of the Nikolaev government. The author of this "theory" was S. Uvarov, the "Minister of the Redemption and Obscuration of Education," as Belinsky called him. The essence of the theory was expressed in the formula: “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality”, and the last member of the formula, the most popular and popular, was also the main one for the reactionaries: demagogically distorting the meaning of the word “nationality”, they sought to establish serfdom as the main guarantee of the inviolability of church and state . S. Uvarov and other apologists for the "theory" of official nationality clearly understood that the historical fate of the autocratic system was predetermined by the fate of serfdom. “The question of serfdom,” said Uvarov, “is closely connected with the question of autocracy and even autocracy. “These are two parallel forces that have evolved together. Both have one historical beginning; their legitimacy is the same. - What we had before Peter I, then everything is gone, except for serfdom, which, therefore, cannot be touched without a general shock. manage to move Russia 50 years away from what theories are preparing for her, then I will fulfill my duty and die in peace. Uvarov carried out his program with strict consistency and perseverance: without exception, all areas of state and public life were gradually subordinated to the system of the strictest government guardianship. Science and literature, journalism, and theater were also regulated accordingly. I. S. Turgenev later recalled that in the 1930s and 1940s, “the governmental sphere, especially in St. Petersburg, captured and conquered everything.”2

Never before has the autocracy oppressed society and the people so cruelly as in the time of Nikolaev. Yet persecution and persecution could not kill the freedom-loving thought. The revolutionary traditions of the Decembrists were inherited, expanded and deepened by a new generation of Russian revolutionaries - revolutionary democrats. The first of them was Belinsky, who, according to V. I. Lenin, was “the forerunner of the complete displacement of the nobles by the raznochintsy in our liberation movement.”3

Belinsky entered the public arena three years before Pushkin's death, and during these years the revolutionary-democratic worldview of the great critic had not yet taken shape. In the post-December era, Pushkin did not see and still could not see those social forces that could lead the fight against serfdom and autocracy. This is the main source of those difficulties and contradictions in the circle of which Pushkin's genius was destined to develop in the 1930s. However, Pushkin shrewdly guessed the new social forces that finally matured after his death. It is significant that in the last years of his life he carefully looked at the activities of the young Belinsky, spoke sympathetically about him, and quite shortly before his death decided to involve him in joint journal work in Sovremennik.

Pushkin was the first to guess a huge talent in Gogol and with his sympathetic review of "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" helped the young writer to believe in himself, in his literary vocation. Pushkin gave Gogol the idea for The Government Inspector and Dead Souls. In 1835, it was finally decided historical meaning Gogol: as a result of the publication of two of his new books - "Arabesques" and "Mirgorod" - Gogol gained fame as a great Russian writer, the true heir of Pushkin in the transformation of Russian literature. In the same 1835, Gogol created the first chapters of Dead Souls, begun on the advice of Pushkin, and a year later the Inspector General was published and put on stage - a brilliant comedy, which was an event of tremendous social significance. Another great successor of Pushkin, who continued the traditions of the liberation struggle under the conditions of the Nikolaev reaction, was Lermontov, who had already created his drama Masquerade and the image of Pechorin in Princess Ligovskaya during Pushkin's lifetime. Lermontov's wide popularity in Russian society began with his poem "The Death of a Poet", where he responded to the murderers of Pushkin, stigmatizing them with amazing power of artistic expression, with courage and directness.

Pushkin fell victim to the autocratic serf system, hunted down by the high-society court servants; he died, as Herzen later wrote, at the hands of “... one of those foreign brawlers who, like medieval mercenaries ..., give their sword for money to the services of any despotism. He fell in the full bloom of his strength, without finishing his songs, without saying what he had to say.

The death of Pushkin became a national grief. Several tens of thousands of people came to bow to his ashes. “It already looked like a popular demonstration, like public opinion suddenly awakening,” wrote a contemporary.2

After the defeat of the Decembrist uprising, Moscow University became one of the centers of progressive, independent thought. “Everything went back,” Herzen recalled, “blood rushed to the heart; activity, hidden outside, boiled, hidden inside. Moscow University resisted and began to be the first to cut out because of the general fog. The sovereign hated him ... But, despite this, the disgraced university grew in influence; into it, as into a common reservoir, the young forces of Russia poured in from all sides, from all strata; in its halls they were cleansed of prejudices captured at the hearth, came to the same level, fraternized among themselves and again spilled into all directions of Russia, into all its layers ... The motley youth, who came from above, below, from the south and north, quickly fused into a compact mass of partnership. Social distinctions did not have with us that offensive influence which we find in English schools and the barracks ... A student who would take it into his head to show off his white bone or wealth among us would be excommunicated from "water and fire" ... "(XII, 99, 100).

In the 1930s, Moscow University began to play an advanced social role not so much thanks to its professors and teachers, but thanks to the youth it united. The ideological development of university youth proceeded mainly in student circles. The development of Belinsky, Herzen, Ogarev, Lermontov, Goncharov, as well as many others, whose names subsequently entered the history of Russian literature, science and social thought, was connected with participation in circles that arose among students of Moscow University. In the mid-1950s, Herzen recalled in Past and Thoughts that “thirty years ago, the Russia of the future existed exclusively between a few boys who had just come out of childhood ... and they had the legacy of December 14, the legacy of a universal science and purely folk Russia” (XIII, 28).

The “December 14 Legacy” was already developed at a new revolutionary-democratic stage of social thought, in the 40s, when Belinsky and Herzen worked together on the creation of Russian materialist philosophy, and Belinsky laid the foundations of realistic aesthetics and criticism in Russia.

In the process of forming his revolutionary-democratic views, which were determined by the growth of the liberation movement in the country and, in connection with this, the continuously escalating political struggle in Russian society, Belinsky launched a struggle for Pushkin's legacy. It can be said without any exaggeration that Pushkin's national and world fame was revealed to a large extent thanks to the work of Belinsky, thanks to the fact that Pushkin's work was illuminated by advanced revolutionary democratic theory. Belinsky defended Pushkin's heritage from reactionary and false interpretations, he waged an uncompromising struggle against all kinds of attempts to take Pushkin away from the Russian people, to distort and falsify his image. Belinsky stated with all certainty about his judgments about Pushkin that he considered these judgments far from final. Belinsky showed that the task of determining the historical and "undoubtedly artistic significance" of a poet like Pushkin "cannot be solved once and for all, on the basis of pure reason." “No,” Belinsky argued, “its solution must be the result of the historical movement of society” (XI, 189). And hence comes Belinsky's astonishing sense of historicism in the inevitable limitations of his own assessments of Pushkin's work. “Pushkin belongs to the ever-living and moving phenomena, which do not stop at the point at which their death found them, but continue to develop in the consciousness of society,” wrote Belinsky. “Each epoch pronounces its own judgment about them, and no matter how correctly it understands them, it will always leave the next epoch to say something new and more true ...” (VII, 32).

Belinsky's great historical merit lies in the fact that, realizing all of Pushkin's work in the prospects for the development of the liberation movement in the country, he revealed and approved Pushkin's significance as the founder of Russian advanced national literature, as a harbinger of the future perfect social order based on respect for man to man. Russian literature, beginning with Pushkin, reflected the global significance of the Russian historical process, steadily advancing towards the world's first victorious socialist revolution.

In 1902, in the work "What is to be done?" V. I. Lenin emphasized that Russian literature began to acquire its worldwide significance due to the fact that it was guided by advanced theory. V. I. Lenin wrote: “... only a party led by an advanced theory can fulfill the role of a leading fighter. And in order to at least somewhat concretely imagine what this means, let the reader remember such predecessors of Russian social democracy as Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and the brilliant galaxy of revolutionaries of the 70s; let him think about the universal significance that Russian literature is now acquiring...”1

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, which opened a new era in world history, the world-historical significance of Russian literature and the world significance of Pushkin as its founder were fully revealed. Pushkin found a new life in the hearts of the many millions of Soviet people and all progressive mankind.

PAINTING OF THE 30-50sXIXCENTURIES


INTRODUCTION

As we can see, the work of Venetsianov's students in the history of Russian art has its own specific place at different stages of its development, including the 20s and 40s. Meanwhile, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, although not a very significant, but still noticeable milestone lies. In the painting of the 1930s and 1950s, new possibilities are being discovered, new paths are opening up. The very conditions of social life in Russia predetermined these qualities. After 1825, more clearly than before, the crisis of the state system and the conflict between the advanced part of society and the tsarist government were revealed. Art inevitably had to respond to these changes. In the 30s, romanticism in Russian painting acquired a new character - more conflicting, sometimes prophetic (like Ivanov), having lost its former harmony. By the 1940s, romanticism had largely exhausted its strength; opened the way to critical realism. This process in painting went on consistently, capturing both the main masters of those years and minor artists.


K. BRYULLOV

While the genre line, so definitely revealed in the work of Venetsianov and his students, continued its development, in the 1930s and 1940s the historical picture came to the fore. It was she who turned out to be the genre in which the intersection of classicism and romanticism took place. The first to combine both of these directions in the famous painting "The Last Day of Pompeii" was Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852).

Bryullov enjoyed great fame during his lifetime. Everything was easy for him, but this ease had a downside: the artist never chose difficult paths in art. In the 1920s, having found himself in Italy, he joined that tradition of romantic, "enjoyable" interpretation of mythological or historical themes, which replaced the heroic interpretation. Bryullov selects several plots from ancient mythology, from the works of Italian Renaissance literature, from the Bible. These plots are not connected with dramatic clashes of characters, with tragic events. They are calm, contemplative, make it possible to convey the external beauty of phenomena. In the unfinished painting “Erminia with the Shepherds” (1824), dedicated to one of the episodes of the poem “The Liberated Jerusalem” by Torquato Tasso, Bryullov interprets the scene in the spirit of an ancient idyll, conveying the life of shepherds in the surrounding nature in pastoral tones. Here Bryullov faced the problems of the plein air, but he skillfully bypassed them, more and more gravitating towards decorativeness and external brilliance.

In the 30s, a new stage in the master's creative development began - the idyllic worldview was replaced by a tragic one. At the turn of the decade, for several years, the idea of ​​​​Bryullov's central work, the painting "The Last Day of Pompeii" (1830-1833), was ripening, although it was written very quickly - in a fit of inspiration, as was often the case with Bryullov. He depicted a multi-figured scene: people, caught in the city by the eruption of Vesuvius, are fleeing; thunder is already rumbling above them and lightning is flashing; death is approaching. But at this moment of mortal danger they retain their dignity and greatness. Even the dead are sanctified by this human beauty. Bryullov's painting seems to mark a premonition of a worldwide catastrophe that will befall humanity. At the same time, this picture is also turned to the recent past - in it one can hear the response of events contemporary to Bryullov. There is a deep pattern in the fact that the artist turned to the image of the human mass; in his picture there is no longer any one hero, as was the case with historical painters of the previous generation. Now the picture is dedicated not to the hero, but to humanity, its fate. Social shifts, historical events that took place at the beginning of the 19th century, a sense of impending change that everyone experienced the best people Europe of that time, made these amendments to the understanding historical genre. But in addition, the historical convention has been replaced by historical truth. Bryullov approached sources in a new way, striving to be as accurate as possible in reproducing an event that took place in the past. Just at the time when the idea of ​​the “Last Day of Pompeii” was being formed, Italian archaeologists, with many of whom Bryullov had friendly relations, were excavating Pompeii. Before the eyes of the astonished Europeans of the 19th century, the old city opened up - with its architecture, with traces of the life of people of that time. Bryullov in the picture reproduced a real piece of the city - its specific monuments. In addition, the artist used a letter to Tacitus from Pliny the Younger, who witnessed the tragic events. This letter described many episodes that found a place in Bryullov's composition. All these discoveries, to a certain extent, redeemed that superficial theatrical academicism, which manifested itself in spectacular poses and movements, in invented lighting, in external colorful brilliance. In the process of working on the painting, the artist sought to bring them as close as possible to each other and combine the dynamics of forms discovered by romanticism, the expressiveness of movement with the stability of the composition. This half-way connection was evidence of the very "crossing" of classicism with romanticism, which was mentioned above.

After The Last Day of Pompeii, Bryullov failed to create significant works on historical subjects: the new time required a deeper development of historical characters and situations. Once - already in Russia, where he returned in triumph in 1836 - the artist took up a painting on the subject of Russian history - "The Siege of Pskov". But the work dragged on, the composition failed, and in the end Bryullov stopped working on this plot.

The growing interest of the artist in the portrait, and, moreover, in the psychological portrait, contradicted the principles of historical thinking, which were reflected in The Last Day of Pompeii. The portrait in Bryullov's work has evolved. In the 1930s, his highest achievements were associated with the ceremonial forms of the image of people, and this image included a certain plot narrative that provided for some sublime, special moment in human existence. An example of such a portrait is the famous Horsewoman (1832). In this work, Bryullov portrayed the pupil of the famous lover of music and painting, a close friend of the artist Countess Yu. P. Samoilova - Jovanina. A young girl in a brilliant white and blue dress, shimmering with silver, proudly sits on a black horse. The horse reared up; meanwhile, the rider in the pose of the Amazon sits quietly. All this happens at the porch of some rich villa, against the backdrop of greenery. The picture has a large format; it is perfectly organized in its linear and color composition and could be an adornment of any magnificent palace hall.

Bryullov in the 30s of the XIX century. made several more portraits of this kind and the same size. But already at the end of the 30s, and even more so in the 40s, the ceremonial portrait in his work recedes into the background; now Bryullov is most looking for psychological expressiveness, resorting to the form of an intimate portrait much more often, reducing the size of the canvases in his portrait works. A group of portrait works with a pronounced romantic character belongs to this time (“N. N. Kukolnik”, 1836; “A. N. Strugovshchikov”, 1841; “Self-Portrait”, 1848). Each of them, expressing the general features of Bryullov's psychological portrait, has unique features. The puppeteer is presented against a background of gloomy nature; he is in solitude, surrendering to his thoughts and experiences. Strugovshchikov is depicted in an armchair; but he does not sybaritize, does not indulge in laziness or a dream, but is inwardly concentrated.

This internal inconsistency of the image is fully expressed by Bryullov's self-portrait, who depicted himself as a tired, disappointed, life-weary man, whose dreams did not come true, and life did not go the way it could and should have gone. "Planers" and "Self-portrait" were painted with a free brush; they are far from the academic system of painting, which Bryullov was dependent on, and testify to the mastery of new color and texture possibilities of painting.

In the portrait, the artist's path through romanticism led to a realistic image. One of latest works Bryullov - a portrait of the archaeologist Michelangelo Lanci (1851) - gives us an example of the image of a living real person in environment, in a specific time, in a specific physical and mental state.

Bryullov painted many portraits of his contemporaries. The best of them always present a living person with their own world, their own unique psychology; he suffers, rejoices, indulges in melancholy, thinks, feels. Bryullov achieves diversity in compositional options, asserting in Russian portraiture those models of solutions that later find confirmation and development in portraiture of the second half of the 19th century.

F. BRUNI

While Bryullov gradually overcame academicism in his work, most of his associates and contemporaries "fixed" in the academic system, entering into an increasingly tangible contradiction with the needs of the time. Two prominent academicians remained within this system - F. A. Bruni (1799-1875) and P. V. Basin (1793-1877). One of the most sensational works of painting of the 30-40s of the XIX century. there was a painting by Bruni "The Copper Serpent" (1826-1841). The artist spent 15 years working on it. Like Bryullov or Alexander Ivanov, he set himself a big goal: to express the most important issues of modern life in the form of a historical picture. Bruni depicted a biblical scene - the punishment of the Jews who left Egyptian captivity and grumbled during their wanderings against God, who sent down rain on them in the form of poisonous snakes. Bruni paints a terrible picture of human suffering, horror, death. His heroes are writhing in convulsions, rushing about, dying. The Bronze Serpent is filled with pessimism and gloomy forebodings.

Conservative thought - S.S. Uvarov's theory of "official nationality", the purpose of which was: "to smooth out the confrontation of the so-called European education with our needs; to heal the newest generation from a blind, thoughtless predilection for the superficial and foreign, spreading in these souls a reasonable respect for domestic ... "In the 40s, the main directions of social thought were formed: Slavophiles, Westerners and revolutionaries.

Westerners - this is the first bourgeois-liberal trend in Russia. Westerners believed in the indivisibility of human civilization and argued that the West leads this civilization, showing examples of the implementation of the principles of freedom and progress, which attracts the attention of the rest of mankind.

Slavophiles- hostile attitude. towards the West and idealized pre-Petrine Russia, relying on the originality of the Russian people, believing in a special path for its development. Each nation lives its own "originality", the basis of which is the ideological principle, penetrating all aspects of people's life. The ideological differences between the Westernizers and the Slavophils, however, did not prevent their rapprochement in the practical issues of Russian life: both currents denied serfdom; both opposed the existing state administration; both demanded freedom of speech and the press.

In the 40s, having broken away from the Westerners, a third trend of social thought took shape - revolutionary democratic. It was represented by Belinsky, Herzen, the Petrashevites, the then young Chernyshevsky and Shevchenko. The revolutionaries believed that Russia would follow the Western path, but unlike the Slavophiles and Westerners, they believed that revolutionary upheavals were inevitable.

44. Eastern issues in foreign policy in 30-50 years. Crimean War D Another problem that Russia faced during these years in the field of foreign policy was the so-called Eastern question. The Eastern question acquired the greatest acuteness in the 1920s and 1950s. During this period, three crisis situations arose in the Eastern question: 1) in the early 1920s. in connection with the uprising in 1821 in Greece, 2) in the early 30s. in connection with the war of Egypt against Turkey and the emerging threat of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 3) in the early 50s. in connection with the emergence of a dispute between Russia and France over "Palestinian shrines", which served as a pretext for the Crimean War. Entry at the beginning of the XIX century. Transcaucasia inevitably raised the question of joining the entire North Caucasus to Russia. In 1817, the Caucasian War, which lasted for many years, began, costing tsarism many strengths and sacrifices and ending only by the middle of the 60s. 19th century Although tsarism pursued aggressive goals, objectively the entry of the Caucasus into Russia was of a progressive nature. An end was put to the devastating raids from neighboring states - the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The entry of the Caucasus into Russia contributed to the socio-economic and cultural development of its peoples. In the first half of the XIX century. there was an active process of voluntary entry of Kazakhstan into the Russian Empire; the beginning of the accession of Central Asia was laid, the territories of the Kazakhs became part of Russia. In 1854 the city of Verny (now Almaty) was founded. An important aspect of Russia's foreign policy during this period was connected with the Crimean War. The reason for the Crimean War was the outbreak that arose in the early 50s. dispute between Orthodox and catholic church about the "Palestinian shrines" located on the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Nicholas I, for his part, sought to use the resulting conflict for a decisive offensive against the Ottoman Empire, believing that he would have to wage war with one weakened empire, the calculations of Nicholas I turned out to be erroneous. England did not go along with his proposal to divide the Ottoman Empire. In 1853 a secret treaty was concluded between England and France directed against Russia. Thus, the Crimean War began in an atmosphere of diplomatic isolation of Russia. At the beginning of March 1854, England and France presented Russia with an ultimatum to clear the Danubian principalities and, having received no answer, declared war on Russia. The fate of the war was decided in the Crimea, although hostilities took place on the Danube, in Transcaucasia, and in a number of other places. In early September 1854, the heroic defense of Sevastopol began, which lasted 11 months. The defeat of serf Russia undermined its prestige in the international arena. The Crimean War contributed to the further deepening of the crisis of the feudal-serf system in Russia.

48. Populism 70-80 years. 19th century. Populism - the ideology and movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 2nd half. XIX century, which expressed the interests of the peasants. The doctrines of populism, for all their differences, are similar in the main thing - they are a reflection of the pre-capitalist and pre-state values ​​of the peasantry: the idealization of the community, the rejection of capitalism, criticism of serfdom, apolitism, absolutization strong personality. The autocracy must be overthrown by means of a popular revolution. Faith in the opening possibilities of the people, as soon as they become free. Populism is a kind of peasant communal socialist utopia. Ancestors - A.I. Herzen, N.G. Chernyshevsky; ideologists - M.A. Bakunin, P.L. Lavrov, P.N. Tkachev. The main populist organizations of the 60-80s: "Ishutintsy", "Chaikovtsy", "Land and Freedom", " People's Will"," Black redistribution ". Since the second half of the 80s, the influence of liberal populism has been growing - N.K. Mikhailovsky.

In 1841, the British take Canton, Amoy and Ningbo. In 1842 the British captured Shanghai and Zhenjiang. The threat to Nanjing made China sue for peace. China ceded Hong Kong to England, opened Canton, Amoy and Fuzhou to British trade, returned Ningbo and Shanghai to Britain and paid an indemnity of 20 million dollars

Notes:

* To compare the events that took place in Russia and in Western Europe, in all chronological tables, starting from 1582 (the year of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in eight European countries) and ending with 1918 (the year of the transition of Soviet Russia from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar), the DATE column indicates date according to the Gregorian calendar only, and the Julian date is shown in brackets along with a description of the event. In chronological tables describing the periods before the introduction of a new style by Pope Gregory XIII, (in the DATE column) dates are in the Julian calendar only. At the same time, the translation into the Gregorian calendar is not done, because it did not exist.

Literature and sources:

Russian and world history in tables. Author-compiler F.M. Lurie. St. Petersburg, 1995

Chronology of Russian history. Encyclopedic reference book. Under the direction of Francis Comte. M., " International relationships". 1994.

Chronicle of world culture. M., " White City", 2001.


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