Modern literature (at the choice of the applicant)

Modern Literature (60-80s)

2-3 works of the applicant's choice from the following recommendation list:

F. Abramov. Wooden horses. Alka. Pelagia. Brothers and sisters.

V.P. Astafiev. King fish. Sad detective.

V.M. Shukshin. Villager. Characters. Conversations under a clear moon.

V.G. Rasputin. Deadline. Farewell to Mother. Live and remember.

Yu.V. Trifonov. Waterfront house. Old man. Exchange. Another life.

V.V. Bykov. Sotnikov. Obelisk. Wolf Pack.

The concept of "modern literature" covers a fairly large and, most importantly, full of important social and political events period, which, of course, had an impact on the development of the literary process. Within this period, there are quite pronounced chronological "sections", qualitatively different from one another and at the same time interdependent, developing common problems at one or another turn of the historical spiral.

Second half of the fifties - the beginning of the sixties was called the "thaw", according to the story of the same name by I. Ehrenburg. The image of the thaw as a symbol of the time was, as they say, on the minds of many, it is no coincidence that almost simultaneously with the story of I. Ehrenburg, even a little earlier, a poem by N. Zabolotsky with the same title was published in Novy Mir. This is due to the fact that in the country after the death of Stalin (1953) and especially after the XX Congress of the CPSU (1956), the rigid framework of political censorship in relation to works of art was somewhat weakened, and works appeared in the press that more truthfully reflect the cruel and contradictory past and present of the Fatherland. First of all, such problems as the image of the Great Patriotic War and the condition and fate of the Russian countryside were largely subjected to revision and reassessment. Time distance, beneficial changes in the life of society created an opportunity for analytical reflection on the paths of development and the historical fate of Russia in the 20th century. A new military prose was born, associated with the names of K. Simonov, Yu. Bondarev, G. Baklanov, V. Bykov, V. Astafiev, V. Bogomolov. They were joined by the growing theme of Stalinist repressions. Often these themes were intertwined, forming a fusion, exciting the minds of the public, activating the position of literature in society. These are “The Living and the Dead” by K. Simonov, “Battle on the Road” by G. Nikolaeva, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by A. Solzhenitsyn, “Silence” and “Last Salvos” by Yu. The "non-conflict" period was rejected without regret. Literature returned to the wonderful traditions of the classics, putting forward the "difficult questions" of life, enlarging and sharpening them in works of different styles and genres. All these works are to some extent marked by one common quality: the plot, as a rule, is based on the fact that the intervention of the authorities in the fate of the characters leads to dramatic and sometimes tragic consequences. If in the previous period, marked by "conflictlessness", the unity of power and people, party and society was affirmed, now the problem of confrontation between power and the individual, pressure on the individual, humiliation of it is outlined. Moreover, the heroes of various social groups recognize themselves as a person, from military leaders and production directors (“The Living and the Dead”, “Battle on the Road”), to an illiterate peasant (B. Mozhaev “From the Life of Fyodor Kuzkin”).

By the end of the 60s censorship is tightened again, marking the beginning of "stagnation", as this time was called fifteen years later, on a new round of the historical spiral. A. Solzhenitsyn, some village writers (V. Belov, B. Mozhaev), representatives of the so-called "youth" direction of prose (V. Aksenov, A. Gladilin, A. Kuznetsov), who were forced to emigrate later in order to maintain creative freedom, and sometimes even political, as evidenced by the references of A. Solzhenitsyn, I. Brodsky, the persecution of A. Tvardov as the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, who published the sharpest works of those years. In the 1970s, however, a weak attempt was made to rehabilitate the consequences of Stalin's "personality cult", especially his role as Commander-in-Chief during the Great Patriotic War. Literature again, as in the 1920s and 1940s, is divided into two streams - official, "secretary" (that is, writers who held high positions in the Union of Soviet Writers), and "samizdat", distributing works either not published at all or published abroad. B. Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago", "The Gulag Archipelago" and "The Cancer Ward" by A. Solzhenitsyn, poems by I. Brodsky, journalistic notes by V. Soloukhin "Reading Lenin", "Moscow - Petushki" by V. Erofeev and a number of other works published in the late 80s - early 90s and continuing to be published to this day ...

Nevertheless, lively, sincere, talented literature continues to exist, even despite the tightening of censorship. In the 1970s, the so-called "village prose" became more active, coming to the fore in terms of depth of problems, brightness of conflicts, expressiveness and accuracy of the language, in the absence of special stylistic and plot "frills". Village writers of the new generation (V. Rasputin, V. Shukshin, B. Mozhaev, S. Zalygin) are moving from the social problems of the Russian village to philosophical, moral, and ontological problems. The problem of recreating the Russian national character at the turn of the epochs, the problem of the relationship between nature and civilization, the problem of good and evil, momentary and eternal are being solved. Despite the fact that in these works the acute political problems that disturb society were not directly touched upon, they nevertheless gave the impression of opposition; The discussions about “village” prose that took place on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta and the journal Literaturnaya Uba in the early 1980s literally split criticism into “soilers” and “Westerners,” just like a hundred years ago.

Unfortunately, the last decade has not been marked by the appearance of such significant works as in previous years, but it will forever go down in the history of Russian literature with an unprecedented abundance of publications of works that, for censorship reasons, were not published earlier, starting from the 1920s, when Russian prose essentially split into two streams. The new period of Russian literature is passing under the sign of obscurity and the merging of Russian literature into a single stream, regardless of where the writer lives and where he lived, what his political preferences are and what his fate is. The hitherto unknown works of A. Platonov "The Pit", "The Juvenile Sea", "Chevengur", "Happy Moscow", E. Zamyatin "We", A. Akhmatova "Requiem", the works of V. Nabokov and M. Aldanov are published, the emigrant writers of the last wave (70s - 80s) return to Russian literature: S. Dovlatov, E. Limonov, V. Maksimov, V. Sinyavsky, I. Brodsky; there is an opportunity to evaluate firsthand the works of the Russian "underground": "courtly mannerists", Valery Popov, V. Erofeev, Vik. Erofeeva, V. Korkia and others.

Summing up this period of development of Russian literature, we can conclude that its most striking achievement was the work of the so-called "village writers", who managed to raise deep moral, social, historical and philosophical problems based on the material of the life of the Russian peasantry in the 20th century.

The novels and short stories by S. Zalygin, V. Belov, B. Mozhaev show how the process of depeasantization began, deeply affecting not only the country's economy, but also its spiritual and moral foundation. What all this led to is eloquently evidenced by the stories of F. Abramov and V. Rasputin, the stories of V. Shukshin and others.

F. Abramov (1920-1982) reveals the tragedy of the Russian peasantry, behind which stands the tragedy of the whole country, on the example of the northern Russian village of Pekashino, the prototype of which was the native village of F. Abramov Verkola. The Pryaslin tetralogy, which includes the novels Two Winters and Three Summers, Brothers and Sisters, Crossroads, House, tells about the life of the inhabitants of Pekashin, who together with the whole country went through difficult trials of the pre-war, war and post-war years, up to the seventies. The central characters of the tetralogy are Mikhail Pryaslin, who from the age of 14 remained not only for the head of an orphaned family, but also for the main peasant on the collective farm, and his sister Liza. Despite their truly inhuman efforts to raise and put younger brothers and sisters on their feet, life turned out to be unkind to them: the family is disunited, broke up: who goes to jail, who is forever dissolved in the city, who dies. Only Mikhail and Lisa remain in the village.

In the 4th part, Mikhail, a strong, thick-set forty-year-old man, whom everyone respected and obeyed before, turns out to be unclaimed due to numerous reforms that destroyed the traditional way of life in the northern Russian village. He is a groom, Liza is seriously ill, his daughters, with the exception of the youngest, look at the city. What's next for the village? Will she be destroyed like her parents' house, or will she endure all the trials that have befallen her? F. Abramov hopes for the best. The finale of the tetralogy, for all its tragedy, inspires hope.

F. Abramov's short stories "Wooden Horses", "Pelageya", "Alka" are very interesting, in which, using the example of three women's destinies, the far from encouraging evolution of the female national character in difficult and critical times can be traced. The story "Wooden Horses" introduces us to Vasilisa Melentievna, a woman with a fabulously epic name and the soul of a righteous person. From her appearance, everything around brightens up, even her daughter-in-law Zhenya is waiting, she can’t wait for Melentyevna to come to visit them. Melentievna is a person who sees the meaning and joy of life in work, whatever it may be. And now, old and infirm, she even goes to the nearby forest for mushrooms, so that the day will not be lived in vain. Her daughter Sonya, in the difficult post-war period, found herself in logging and deceived by her beloved, commits suicide not so much from shame in front of people, but from shame and guilt in front of her mother, who did not have time and could not warn and stop her.

This feeling is incomprehensible to Alka, a modern village girl who flutters through life like a moth, either clinging with all her might to city life, to the dubious share of a waitress, or striving for the luxurious, in her opinion, life of a stewardess. With her seducer - a visiting officer - she cracks down cruelly and decisively, seeking his dismissal from the army, which in those years actually meant civil death, and thus obtaining a passport (as you know, in the 50s and 60s, peasants did not have a passport, and in order to move to the city, it was necessary to get a passport by hook or by crook). Through the image of Alka, F. Abramov drew the attention of readers to the problem of the so-called “marginal” person, that is, a person who had just moved to the city from the village, who had lost his former spiritual and moral values ​​and did not find new ones, changing them to external signs of urban life.

Problems of the "marginal" personality V. Shukshin (1929-1974), who experienced the difficulties of growing a “natural” person, a native of the Altai village, into urban life, into the environment of the creative intelligentsia, also worried a semi-urban, semi-village person.

But his work, in particular, short stories, is much broader than the description of the life of the Russian peasantry in a critical era. The problem with which V. Shukshin came to literature of the 60s , in essence, remained unchanged - this is the problem of the fulfillment of the personality. His characters, who “invent” another life for themselves (Monya Kvasov “Stubborn”, Gleb Kapustin “Cut Off”, Bronka Pupkov “Mil Pardon, Madam”, Timofei Khudyakov “Ticket for the Second Session”), yearn for fulfillment at least in that fictional world. Shukshin's problematic is unusually acute precisely because behind the bright, as if from the face of the hero, narrative, we feel the author's anxious reflection on the impossibility of real life, when the soul is occupied with "the wrong thing." V. Shukshin passionately affirmed the seriousness of this problem, the need for each person to stop and think about the meaning of his life, about his purpose on earth, about his place in society.

V. Shukshin called one of his last books "Characters". But, in fact, all his work is devoted to depicting bright, unusual, unique, original characters that do not fit into the prose of life, into its ordinary everyday life. According to the title of one of his stories, these original and unique Shukshin characters began to be called "freaks". those. people who carry in their souls something of their own, unique, distinguishing them from the mass of homogeneous characters-types. Even in his basically ordinary character, Shukshin is interested in those moments of his life when something special, unique, highlighting the essence of his personality, appears in him. Such is Sergei Dukhavin in the story “Boots”, who buys insanely expensive, elegant boots in the city for his wife, the milkmaid Klava. He is aware of the impracticality and senselessness of his act, but for some reason he cannot do otherwise, and the reader understands that this instinctively manifests a feeling of love for his wife, hidden behind everyday life, that has not cooled down over the years of living together. And this psychologically precisely motivated act gives rise to a response from the wife, just as sparingly expressed, but just as deep and sincere. The unpretentious and strange story told by V. Shukshin creates a bright feeling of mutual understanding, harmony of “complex simple” people who are sometimes forgotten behind the ordinary and petty. Klava awakens a feminine sense of coquetry, youthful enthusiasm, lightness, despite the fact that the boots, of course, turned out to be small and went to the eldest daughter.

Respecting the right of a person to be himself, even if the exercise of this right makes a person strange and absurd, unlike others, V. Shukshin hates those who seek to unify the personality, bring everything to a common denominator, hiding behind ringing socially significant phrases, shows that envy, pettiness, selfishness are often hidden behind this empty and ringing phrase (“My son-in-law stole a car of firewood”, “Unscrupulous”). In the story "Unscrupulous" we are talking about three old men: Glukhov, Olga Sergeevna and Otavikha. Socially active, energetic and decisive Olga Sergeevna in her youth preferred the modest and quiet Glukhov to the desperate commissar, but, finally left alone, she returned to her native village, maintaining good and even relations with her aged and also lonely admirer. The character of Olga Sergeevna would never have been unraveled if the old man Glukhov had not decided to start a family with a lonely Otavikha, which aroused Olga Sergeevna's anger and jealousy. She led the fight against the elderly, using the phraseology of public condemnation with might and main, talking about the immorality and immorality of such a union, emphasizing the impermissibility of intimate relationships at this age, although it is clear that it was primarily about mutual support for each other. And as a result, she aroused shame in the old people for the viciousness (non-existent) of their thoughts about living together, the fear that Olga Sergeevna would tell this story in the village and thereby completely disgrace them. But Olga Sergeevna is silent, quite satisfied that she managed to humiliate, trample people, maybe she is silent for the time being. Glad someone else's humiliation and Gleb Kapustin in the story "Cut off".

V. Shukshin's favorite heroes are extraordinary thinkers, who are in an eternal search for the meaning of life, often people with a subtle and vulnerable soul, sometimes doing ridiculous, but touching deeds.

V. Shukshin is a master of a short story, which is based on a vivid sketch “from nature” and a serious generalization contained in it based on this sketch. These stories form the basis of the collections "Villagers", "Conversations under a clear moon", "Characters". But V. Shukshin is a writer of a universal warehouse, who created two novels: “Lubavins” and “I came to give you freedom”, the screenplay “Kalina Krasnaya”, the satirical plays “And in the morning they woke up” and “Until the third roosters”. Fame brought him both directing and acting.

V. Rasputin (b. 1938) is one of the most interesting writers belonging to the younger generation of the so-called village writers. He became famous thanks to a series of stories from the life of a modern village near the Angara: “Money for Mary”, “Deadline”, “Live and Remember”, “Farewell to Mother”, “Fire”. The stories are distinguished by the concreteness of the sketches of the life and life of the Siberian village, the brightness and originality of the characters of peasants of different generations, the philosophy, the combination of social, environmental and moral issues, psychologism, an excellent sense of language, poetic style...

Among the characters of the heroes of V. Rasputin, who brought him fame, first of all, it is necessary to single out a gallery of images that critics defined as "Rasputin's old women" - his peasant women, who endured all the hardships and hardships on their shoulders and did not break, retaining purity and decency, conscientiousness, as one of his favorite heroines defines the main quality of a person - the old woman Daria from "Farewell to Mother". These are truly the righteous on whom the earth rests. Anna Stepanovna from the story “The Deadline” considers the biggest sin in her life to be that during collectivization, when all the cows were herded into a common herd, after the collective farm milking, she milked her cow Zorka in order to save her children from starvation. Once, her daughter found this occupation: “Her eyes burned me to the very soul,” Anna Stepanovna repents before her death to her old friend.

Daria Pinigina from the story "Farewell to Matera" is perhaps the most vivid and in a good way declarative image of the old righteous woman from the stories of V. Rasputin. The story itself is deep, polyphonic, problematic. Matera is a huge island on the Angara, a prototype of the Siberian paradise. It has everything that is necessary for a normal life: a cozy village with houses decorated with wonderful wooden carvings, which is why almost every house has a sign nailed to it: “protected by the state”, a forest, arable land, a cemetery where ancestors are buried, meadows and mowing, a pasture, a river. There is the Royal Foliage, which, according to legend, attaches the island to the main land, therefore, is the key to the strength and indestructibility of being. There is the owner of the island - a mythological creature, his amulet, patron. And all this must perish forever, go under water as a result of the construction of another hydroelectric power station. Residents perceive the change in their fate in different ways: the young are even glad, the middle generation comes to terms with the inevitability of what is happening, some even burn their houses ahead of schedule in order to quickly receive compensation and drink it away. And only Daria rebels against the thoughtless and fleeting farewell to Matera, seeing her off into inevitable oblivion slowly, with dignity, decorating and mourning her hut, cleaning up the graves of her parents in the cemetery, praying for those who offended her and the island with their thoughtlessness. The weak old woman, the dumb tree, the mysterious owner of the island rebelled against the pragmatism and frivolity of modern people. They could not radically change the situation, but, having stood in the way of the inevitable flooding of the village, they delayed the destruction even for a moment, made their antagonists think, among them the son and grandson of Daria, and readers. Therefore, the finale of the story sounds so ambiguous and biblically sublime. What's next for Matera? What awaits Humanity? There is protest and anger in the very posing of these questions.

In recent years, V. Rasputin has been engaged in journalism (the book of essays "Siberia! Siberia ...") and social and political activities.

IN 60s - 80s The so-called “military prose” also announced itself quite loudly and talentedly, illuminating everyday life and deeds, “days and nights” of the Great Patriotic War in a new way. "Trench Truth", i.e. the unvarnished truth of being a “man at war” becomes the basis for moral and philosophical reflections, for solving the existential problem of “choice”: the choice between life and death, honor and betrayal, a majestic goal and countless sacrifices in its name. These problems underlie the works of G. Baklanov, Yu. Bondarev, V. Bykov.

This problem of choice is solved most dramatically in V. Bykov's stories. In the story "Sotnikov" one of the two captured partisans saves his life by becoming the executioner for the other. But such a price of his own life becomes prohibitively difficult for him too, his life loses all meaning, turning into endless self-accusation and finally leads him to thoughts of suicide. In the story "Obelisk" the question of heroism and sacrifice is raised. Teacher Ales Moroz voluntarily surrenders to the Nazis in order to be next to his students, taken hostage. Together with them, he goes to his death, miraculously saving only one of his students. Who is he - a hero or a lone anarchist who disobeyed the order of the commander of the partisan detachment, who forbade him to do this? What is more important - the active struggle against the Nazis as part of a partisan detachment or the moral support of children doomed to death? V. Bykov affirms the greatness of the human spirit, moral uncompromisingness in the face of death. The writer earned the right to this with his own life and fate, having gone through the long four years of the war as a warrior.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, literature, like society as a whole, was going through a deep crisis. The history of Russian literature in the 20th century so developed that, along with aesthetic laws, its development was determined by circumstances of a socio-political, historical nature, which were by no means always beneficial. And now, attempts to overcome this crisis through documentary art, often striving for naturalism (“Children of the Arbat” by Rybakov, Shalamov), or by destroying the integrity of the world, peering into the gray everyday life of gray, inconspicuous people (L. Petrushevskaya, V. Pietsukh, T. Tolstaya) have not yet led to significant results. At this stage, it is rather difficult to catch any creative tendencies of the modern literary process in Russia. Time will show everything and put it in its place.

Modern literary process

Literature is an integral part of a person's life, his kind of photography, which perfectly describes all internal states, as well as social laws. Like history, literature develops, changes, becomes qualitatively new. Of course, one cannot say that modern literature is better or worse than that which was earlier. She's just different. Now there are other literary genres, other problems that the author covers, other authors, after all. But whatever one may say, the “Pushkins” and “Turgenevs” are not the same now, the time is not right now. Sensitive, always quiveringly responding to the mood of the time, Russian literature today shows, as it were, a panorama of a divided soul, in which the past and the present are intertwined in a bizarre way. Literary process since the 80s. of the twentieth century, marked its unconventionality, dissimilarity to the previous stages in the development of the artistic word. There was a change of artistic eras, the evolution of the creative consciousness of the artist. Moral and philosophical problems are at the center of modern books. The writers themselves, participating in disputes about the modern literary process, perhaps agree on one thing: the latest literature is interesting already because it aesthetically reflects our time. So, A. Varlamov writes: " Today's literature, whatever crisis it may be in, saves time. This is its purpose, the future - this is its addressee, for the sake of which one can endure the indifference of both the reader and the ruler".P. Aleshkovsky continues the thought of his colleague:" One way or another, literature constructs life. Builds a model, tries to hook, highlight certain types. The plot, as you know, has not changed since antiquity. Overtones are important ... There is a writer - and there is Time - something non-existent, elusive, but alive and pulsating - something with which the writer always plays cat and mouse".

Back in the early 1980s, two camps of writers took shape in Russian literature: representatives of Soviet literature and representatives of the literature of the Russian emigration. It is interesting that with the death of the outstanding Soviet writers Trifonov, Kataev, Abramov, the camp of Soviet literature became significantly impoverished. There were no new writers in the Soviet Union. The concentration of a significant part of the creative intelligentsia abroad led to the fact that hundreds of poets, writers, figures in various fields of culture and art continued to work outside their homeland. And only since 1985, for the first time after a 70-year break, Russian literature got the opportunity to be a single whole: the literature of the Russian abroad of all three waves of Russian emigration merged with it - after the civil war of 1918-1920, after World War II and the Brezhnev era. Returning back, the works of emigration quickly joined the flow of Russian literature and culture. Literary texts that were banned during the period of their writing (the so-called "returned literature") became participants in the literary process. Domestic literature has been significantly enriched by previously banned works, such as A. Platonov's novels "The Pit" and "Chevengur", E. Zamyatin's dystopia "We", B. Pilnyak's story "Red Tree", "Doctor Zhivago" by B. Pasternak, "Requiem" and "Poem without a Hero" by A. Akhmatova and many others. "All these authors are united by the pathos of studying the causes and consequences of deep social deformations" (N. Ivanova "Questions of Literature").

There are three main components of the modern literary process: the literature of the Russian diaspora; "returned" literature; actual modern literature. To give a clear and concise definition of the last of them is still not an easy task. In modern literature, such trends as avant-garde and post-avant-garde, modern and postmodern, surrealism, impressionism, neo-sentimentalism, metarealism, sotsart, conceptualism, etc. have appeared or revived.

But against the backdrop of postmodern tendencies, "classical, traditional" literature also continues to exist: neorealists, post-realists, and traditionalists not only continue to write, but also actively fight against the "pseudo-literature" of postmodernity. It can be said that the entire literary community has been divided into those who are "for" and those who are "against" new trends, and literature itself has become an arena for the struggle of two large blocs - traditionalist writers who focus on the classical understanding of artistic creativity, and postmodernists who adhere to radically opposite views. This struggle influences both the ideological content and the formal levels of the emerging works.

The complex picture of aesthetic dispersion is complemented by the situation in the field of Russian poetry at the end of the century. It is generally accepted that prose dominates the modern literary process. Poetry bears the same burden of time, the same features of a confused and scattered era, the same aspirations to enter new specific zones of creativity. Poetry, more painfully than prose, feels the loss of the reader's attention, of its own role as an emotional exciter of society.

In the 1960s and 1980s, poets entered Soviet literature, bringing with them a lot of new things and developing old traditions. The themes of their work are diverse, and poetry is deeply lyrical and intimate. But the theme of the Motherland has never left the pages of our literature. Her images, connected either with the nature of her native village, or with the places where a person fought, can be found in almost every work. And each author has his own perception and feeling of the Motherland. We find penetrating lines about Russia in Nikolai Rubtsov (1936-1971), who feels himself to be the heir to centuries of Russian history. Critics believe that the work of this poet combined the traditions of Russian poetry of the 19th-20th centuries - Tyutchev, Fet, Blok, Yesenin.

Our contemporaries invariably associate the name of Rasul Gamzatov (1923) with eternal themes. Sometimes they say about him that his future path is difficult to predict. He is so unexpected in his work: from winged jokes to the tragic “Cranes”, from the prose “encyclopedia” “My Dagestan” to the aphorisms “Inscriptions on daggers”. But still, it is not difficult to isolate the themes on which his poetry rests. and Gamzatov, and other remarkable poets of our time, you see the enormous life experience of a person who in his poems expresses what is difficult for us to express.

One of the main ideas of modern poetry is citizenship, the main thoughts are conscience and duty. Yevgeny Yevtushenko belongs to public poets, patriots, citizens. His work is a reflection on his generation, on kindness and malice, on opportunism, cowardice and careerism.

The role of dystopia

Genre diversity and blurring of boundaries for a long time did not allow to detect typological patterns in the evolution of literature genres at the end of the century. However, the second half of the 1990s already made it possible to observe a certain commonality in the picture of the diffusion of the genres of prose and poetry, in the emergence of innovations in the field of the so-called "new drama". It is obvious that large prose forms have left the stage of artistic prose, and the "credit of trust" in authoritarian narration has been lost. First of all, it experienced the genre of the novel. Modifications of his genre changes demonstrated the process of "coagulation", giving way to small genres with their openness to various types of form creation.

Anti-utopia occupies a special place in genre creation. Losing formal rigid features, it is enriched by new qualities, the main of which is a kind of worldview. Anti-utopia has had and continues to have an impact on the formation of a special type of artistic thinking, such as statements on the principle of "photo negative". A feature of anti-utopian thought lies in the destructive ability to break the habitual patterns of perception of the surrounding life. Aphorisms from the book Vic. Erofeev's "Encyclopedia of the Russian Soul" ironically, "from the opposite" formulate this type of relationship between literature and reality: "A Russian has an apocalypse every day", "Our people will live badly, but not for long." Classic examples of anti-utopia such as the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin, "Invitation to the Execution" by V. Nabokov, "Castle" by F. Kafka, "Animal Farm" and "1984" by J. Orwell, at one time played the role of prophecies. Then these books stood on a par with others, and most importantly, with another reality that opened its abysses. "Utopias are terrible because they come true," N. Berdyaev once wrote. A classic example is A. Tarkovsky's "Stalker" and the subsequent Chernobyl disaster with the Death Zone deployed around these places. The "inner ear" of Makanin's gift led the writer to the phenomenon of a dystopian text: The issue of the Novy Mir magazine with V. Makanin's dystopian story "The One-Day War" was signed for publication exactly two weeks before September 11, 2001, when the terrorist strike that hit America was the beginning of the "uninvited war." The plot of the story, for all its fantasticness, seems written off from real events. The text looks like a chronicle of the events that followed in New York on September 11, 2001. Thus, a writer writing a dystopia is moving along the path of gradually drawing the real outlines of the very abyss into which humanity, man, is striving. Among such writers, the figures of V. Pietsukh, A. Kabakov, L. Petrushevskaya, V. Makanin, V. Rybakov, T. Tolstoy and others stand out.

In the 1920s, E. Zamyatin, one of the founders of Russian anti-utopia, promised that literature in the 20th century would come to combine the fantastic with everyday life and become that diabolical mixture, the secret of which Hieronymus Bosch knew so well. The literature of the end of the century exceeded all expectations of the Master.

Classification of modern Russian literature.

Modern Russian literature is classified into:

neoclassical prose

Conditionally metaphorical prose

"Other prose"

Postmodernism

Neoclassical prose addresses the social and ethical problems of life, proceeding from the realistic tradition, inheriting the "teacher's" and "preach" orientation of Russian classical literature. The life of society in neoclassical prose is the main theme, and the meaning of life is the main problem. The author's worldview is expressed through the hero, the hero himself inherits an active life position, he takes on the role of a judge. The peculiarity of neoclassical prose is that the author and the hero are in a state of dialogue. It is characterized by a naked look at the terrible, monstrous in its cruelty and immorality phenomena of our life, but the principles of love, kindness, brotherhood - and, most importantly, catholicity - determine the existence of a Russian person in it. Representatives of neoclassical prose include: V. Astafiev "The Sad Detective", "The Damned and the Killed", "Merry Soldier", V. Rasputin "To the same land", "Fire", B. Vasiliev "Assuage my sorrows", A. Pristavkin "A golden cloud spent the night", D. Bykov "Spelling", M. Vishnevetskaya "The month came out of the fog", L. Ulitskaya "Kukotsky's Case", "Medea and her children", A. Volos "Real Estate", M. Paley "Cabiria from the Bypass Canal".

In conventionally metaphorical prose, myth, fairy tale, scientific concept form a bizarre, but recognizable modern world. Spiritual inferiority, dehumanization acquire material embodiment in a metaphor, people turn into different animals, predators, werewolves. Conditional-metaphorical prose sees absurdity in real life, guesses catastrophic paradoxes in everyday life, uses fantastic assumptions, tests the hero with extraordinary possibilities. She is not characterized by the psychological volume of character. A characteristic genre of conventionally metaphorical prose is dystopia. Conditionally metaphorical prose includes the following authors and their works: F. Iskander "Rabbits and Boas", V. Pelevin "Life of Insects", "Omon Ra", D. Bykov "Justification", T. Tolstaya "Kys", V. Makanin "Laz", V. Rybakov "Gravilet", "Tsesarevich", L. Petrushevskaya "New Robinsons", A. Kabakov "Defector", S. Lukyan enko "Spectrum".

"Other prose", in contrast to conventionally metaphorical, does not create a fantastic world, but reveals the fantastic in the surrounding, real. It usually depicts a destroyed world, life, a broken history, a torn culture, a world of socially "shifted" characters and circumstances. It is characterized by the features of opposition to officialdom, the rejection of established stereotypes, of moralizing. The ideal in it is either implied or looms, and the author's position is disguised. Plots are random. The "other prose" is not characterized by the traditional dialogue between the author and the reader. Representatives of this prose are: V. Erofeev, V. Pietsukh, T. Tolstaya, L. Petrushevskaya, L. Gabyshev.

Postmodernism is one of the most influential cultural phenomena of the second half of the 20th century. In postmodernism, the image of the world is built on the basis of intracultural ties. The will and laws of culture are higher than the will and laws of "reality". In the late 1980s, it became possible to talk about postmodernism as an integral part of literature, but by the beginning of the 21st century, we have to state the end of the "postmodern era". The most characteristic definitions that accompany the concept of "reality" in the aesthetics of postmodernism are chaotic, changeable, fluid, incomplete, fragmentary; the world is the "scattered links" of being, forming into bizarre and sometimes absurd patterns of human lives or into a temporarily frozen picture in the kaleidoscope of universal history. Unshakable universal values ​​lose their status as an axiom in the postmodern worldview. Everything is relative. N. Leiderman and M. Lipovetsky write about this very accurately in their article "Life after death, or New information about realism": "The unbearable lightness of being, the weightlessness of all hitherto unshakable absolutes (not only universal, but also personal) - this is the tragic state of mind that postmodernism expressed."

Russian postmodernism had a number of features. First of all, this is a game, demonstrativeness, outrageousness, playing with quotes from classical and socialist realist literature. Russian postmodern creativity is non-judgmental creativity, containing categoricalness in the subconscious, outside the text. Russian writers -postmodernists include: V. Kuritsyn "Dry Thunderstorms: Flying Zone", V. Sorokin "Blue Salo", V. Pelevin "Chapaev and Emptiness", V. Makanin "underground, or Hero of our time", M. Butov "Freedom", A. Bitov "Pushkinsky House", V. Erofeev "Moscow - Peteriyada" Posriyida " that ".

The events that took place in the last decades of the last century affected all spheres of life, including culture. There have also been significant changes in literature. With the adoption of the new Constitution, a turning point occurred in the country, which could not but affect the way of thinking, the worldview of citizens. New values ​​have emerged. Writers, in turn, reflected this in their work.

The theme of today's story is modern Russian literature. What trends are observed in the prose of recent years? What are the characteristics of 21st century literature?

Russian language and modern literature

The literary language is processed and enriched by the great masters of the word. It should be attributed to the highest achievements of the national speech culture. At the same time, the literary language cannot be separated from the folk language. Pushkin was the first to understand this. The great Russian writer and poet showed how to use the speech material created by the people. Today, in prose, authors often reflect the folk language, which, however, cannot be called literary.

Time frame

When using such a term as "modern Russian literature", we mean prose and poetry created in the early nineties of the last century and in the 21st century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, cardinal changes took place in the country, as a result of which literature, the role of the writer, and the type of reader became different. In the 1990s, the works of such authors as Pilnyak, Pasternak, Zamyatin finally became available to ordinary readers. The novels and stories of these writers were read, of course, before, but only by advanced book lovers.

Exemption from prohibitions

In the 1970s, a Soviet person could not calmly go into a bookstore and purchase the novel Doctor Zhivago. This book, like many others, was banned for a long time. In those distant years, it was fashionable for representatives of the intelligentsia, if not aloud, but to scold the authorities, criticize the “correct” writers approved by it and quote the “forbidden” ones. The prose of disgraced authors was secretly reprinted and distributed. Those who were engaged in this difficult business could lose their freedom at any moment. But forbidden literature continued to be reprinted, distributed and read.

Years have passed. Power has changed. Such a thing as censorship simply ceased to exist for some time. But, oddly enough, people did not line up in long lines for Pasternak and Zamyatin. Why did it happen? In the early 1990s, people lined up at grocery stores. Culture and art were in decline. Over time, the situation improved somewhat, but the reader was no longer the same.

Many of today's critics of the prose of the XXI century respond very unflatteringly. What the problem of modern Russian literature is, will be discussed below. First, it is worth talking about the main trends in the development of prose in recent years.

The Other Side of Fear

In times of stagnation, people were afraid to say an extra word. This phobia in the early nineties of the last century turned into permissiveness. Modern Russian literature of the initial period is completely devoid of an instructive function. If, according to a survey conducted in 1985, the most widely read authors were George Orwell and Nina Berberova, 10 years later the books "Crappy Cop", "Profession - Killer" became popular.

At the initial stage of its development, modern Russian literature was dominated by such phenomena as total violence and sexual pathologies. Fortunately, during this period, as already mentioned, the authors of the 1960s and 1970s became available. Readers had the opportunity to get acquainted with the literature of foreign countries: from Vladimir Nabokov to Joseph Brodsky. The work of previously banned authors has had a positive impact on modern Russian fiction.

Postmodernism

This trend in literature can be characterized as a peculiar combination of worldview attitudes and unexpected aesthetic principles. Postmodernism was developed in Europe in the 1960s. In our country, it took shape in a separate literary movement much later. There is no single picture of the world in the works of postmodernists, but there is a variety of versions of reality. The list of modern Russian literature in this direction includes, first of all, the works of Viktor Pelevin. In the books of this writer, there are several versions of reality, and they are by no means mutually exclusive.

Realism

Realist writers, unlike modernists, believe that there is a meaning in the world, however, it should be found. V. Astafiev, A. Kim, F. Iskander are representatives of this literary movement. It can be said that in recent years the so-called village prose has regained popularity. So, often there is an image of provincial life in the books of Alexei Varlamov. The Orthodox faith is, perhaps, the main one in the prose of this writer.

A prose writer can have two tasks: moralizing and entertaining. There is an opinion that third-class literature entertains, distracts from everyday life. Real literature makes the reader think. Nevertheless, among the themes of modern Russian literature, the crime occupies not the last place. The works of Marinina, Neznansky, Abdullaev, perhaps, do not lead to deep reflections, but they gravitate towards a realistic tradition. The books of these authors are often called "pulp fiction". But it is difficult to deny the fact that both Marinina and Neznansky managed to occupy their niche in modern prose.

In the spirit of realism, the books of Zakhar Prilepin, a writer and well-known public figure, were created. Its heroes mainly live in the nineties of the last century. Prilepin's work causes a mixed reaction among critics. Some consider one of his most famous works - "Sankya" - a kind of manifesto for the younger generation. And the story of Prilepin "Vein" Nobel laureate Günther Grass called it very poetic. Opponents of the Russian writer's work accuse him of neo-Stalinism, anti-Semitism and other sins.

Women's prose

Does this term have a right to exist? It is not found in the works of Soviet literary critics, yet the role of this phenomenon in the history of literature is denied by many modern critics. Women's prose is not just literature created by women. It appeared in the era of the birth of emancipation. Such prose reflects the world through the eyes of a woman. The books of M. Vishnevetskaya, G. Shcherbakova, M. Paley belong to this direction.

Are the works of the Booker Prize winner Lyudmila Ulitskaya women's prose? Maybe just a few pieces. For example, stories from the collection "Girls". The heroes of Ulitskaya are equally men and women. In the novel "Kukotsky's Case", for which the writer was awarded a prestigious literary award, the world is shown through the eyes of a man, a professor of medicine.

Not many modern Russian works of literature are actively translated into foreign languages ​​today. Such books include novels and stories by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Viktor Pelevin. Why are there so few Russian-speaking writers today who are interesting in the West?

Lack of interesting characters

According to publicist and literary critic Dmitry Bykov, modern Russian prose uses an outdated narrative technique. Over the past 20 years, not a single living, interesting character has appeared whose name would become a household name.

In addition, unlike foreign authors who are trying to find a compromise between seriousness and mass character, Russian writers seemed to be divided into two camps. The creators of the above-mentioned "pulp fiction" belong to the first. To the second - representatives of intellectual prose. A lot of art-house literature is being created that even the most sophisticated reader cannot understand, and not because it is extremely complex, but because it has no connection with modern reality.

publishing business

Today in Russia, according to many critics, there are talented writers. But good publishers are not enough. On the shelves of bookstores regularly appear books "promoted" authors. Of the thousands of works of low-quality literature, not every publisher is ready to look for one, but worthy of attention.

Most of the books of the writers mentioned above reflect the events not of the beginning of the 21st century, but of the Soviet era. In Russian prose, according to one of the famous literary critics, nothing new has appeared in the last twenty years, since writers have nothing to talk about. Under the conditions of the disintegration of the family, it is impossible to create a family saga. In a society that prioritizes material matters, an instructive novel will not arouse interest.

One may not agree with such statements, but in modern literature there really are no modern heroes. Writers tend to look to the past. Perhaps soon the situation in the literary world will change, there will be authors who can create books that will not lose popularity in a hundred or two hundred years.

Theory:

In the 1950s, a number of decrees were issued in the USSR aimed at improving the quality of dramaturgy. The keen interest of the ruling circles in modern drama was due not only to general ideological considerations, but also to another additional reason. The seasonal repertoire of the Soviet theater was supposed to consist of thematic sections (Russian classics, foreign classics, a performance dedicated to an anniversary or holiday date, etc.). At least half of the premieres had to be prepared according to modern dramaturgy. It was desirable that the main performances were staged not on light comedy plays, but on works of serious subjects. Under these conditions, most of the country's theaters, concerned about the problem of the original repertoire, were looking for new plays.

The general rise of theatrical art in the late 1950s led to the rise of dramaturgy. The works of new talented authors appeared, many of which determined the main paths for the development of drama in the coming decades. Approximately during this period, the individualities of three playwrights were formed, whose plays were staged a lot throughout the Soviet period - V. Rozov, A. Volodin, A. Arbuzov.

Among all the variety of genres and styles that have swept the theater from the late 50s of the XX century up to the present day, in modern dramaturgy one can note the clear predominance of the traditional Russian theater socio-psychological plays. Despite the frankly everyday, even everyday background of the action itself, most of these works had a very deep, multi-layered philosophical and ethical subtext.

Here, the writers actively used such techniques as:

· creating an "undercurrent"

· embedded plot,

· expansion of the stage space through the introduction of poetic or subject symbols.

· For example, a small flower garden with daisies in A. Vampilov's play "Last Summer in Chulimsk", like the old cherry orchard from the well-known drama of the same name by A. Chekhov, becomes for Vampilov's heroes a kind of test for the ability to love, humanity, love of life.

· Very effective, enhancing the psycho-emotional impact on the viewer, were such techniques as off-stage "voices", sometimes constituting, in fact, a separate plan of action, or fantastic visions of the characters.

The late 1950s - early 1970s were marked by the bright individuality of A. Vampilov. During his short life he wrote only a few plays: Farewell in June, « Eldest son", « Duck hunting», « Provincial jokes, « Twenty minutes with an angel And " The case with the metropolitan page», « Last summer in Chulimsk» and unfinished vaudeville" Incomparable Tips". Returning to Chekhov's aesthetics, Vampilov set the direction for the development of Russian drama in the next two decades.

Exercise: P Read one of the plays by the proposed authors (A. Volodin, V. Rozov, A. Vampilov) and prepare a brief retelling.

Independent work No. 55-56.

Theory: textbook by V.A. Chalmaev, S.A. Zinin “Literature of the XX CENTURY. Part 2”, pp. 326 – 352.

Exercise: Based on the theoretical material of the textbook, prepare answers to the following questions:

1. What events in the literary life of recent years do you consider the most significant? What books (publications) caught your attention and why? By what criteria do you determine the degree of significance of a work of art in modern culture?

2. Based on the materials of the site http:// magazines.russ.ru, prepare short reports about the leading "thick" literary magazines: Novy Mir, Znamya, Zvezda, Oktyabr, Neva. Find information about the time when the magazine was created, restore its brief history, and describe its place in the literary process of recent decades.

3. Explain how you understand the meaning of concepts postmodernism, postrealism, neonaturalism, neosementalism. Describe the main features of each of these currents.

4. What socio-cultural factors have a decisive influence on the development of modern cultural and social life?

5. Prepare a report on modern Russian literary awards (Booker Prize, Anti-Booker Prize, Apollon Grigoriev Prize, Andrei Bely Prize, Ivan Petrovich Belkin Prize), Pay attention to what literary merits are marked by each prize.

Independent work No. 57

W. Shakespeare "Hamlet", O. Balzac "Gobsek", G. Flaubert "Salambo", I.-V. Goethe. "Faust"

Impressionist poets (Ch. Baudelaire, A. Rimbaud, O. Renoir, P. Mallarme and others).

Exercise: prepare a review (in writing) of a work of foreign literature of the 19th century that you yourself read.

Approximate review plan:

1. Brief bibliographic information about the book.

2. The meaning of the title of the work.

3.Personal impressions of the read.

4. Features of the plot and composition.

5. The skill of the writer in depicting the characters of the heroes.

6. Language and style of behavior.

7. The main idea of ​​the work.

8. Relevance of the issue.

Independent work No. 58.

E. Hemingway. "The Old Man and the Sea", E.-M. Remarque. "Three comrades", G. Marquez. "One Hundred Years of Solitude", P. Coelho. "Alchemist".

Task: prepare an electronic presentation on one of the proposed topics:

1. Based on the textbook material and additional literature, prepare an overview of E. Hemingway's work. What are the main themes of his works. Expand the content, main theme and idea of ​​the story "The Old Man and the Sea". What works by the author would you recommend reading?

2. Get acquainted with the work of G. - G. Marquez. Expand the content, main themes and idea of ​​the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. What interested you in the writer's work? What works would you recommend?

3. Get acquainted with the work of P. Coelho. Expand the content, main theme and idea of ​​one of the works of this writer. What interested you in the work of this writer? What books would you recommend reading?

APPENDIX No. 1.

Poem analysis scheme

Determine the topic (About what?)

· Lyrical plot: how does the lyrical hero appear at the beginning, does his state change at the end?

What kind of mood is imbued with? Does it change throughout the poem?

The role of the landscape (if any)

What figurative and expressive means does the poet use? (anaphora, metaphors, epithets, comparisons, litote hyperbolas);

Genre of verse (elegy, message, appeal, ode, landscape lyrics, madrigal, epigram, epitaph)

The composition of the poem (is it possible to divide the verse into semantic parts)

Features of the syntactic structure (which sentences on the purpose of the statement and intonation prevail)

The sound structure of the language (the predominance of sounds)

your attitude towards what you read.

Visual and expressive means

· Anaphora - repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several lines of poetry

· Hyperbola- exaggeration

· Litotes- understatement

· Metaphor- a hidden comparison of an object or phenomenon based on the similarity of features.

· personification- Animation of inanimate objects.

· Oxymoron- a combination of words that are opposite in meaning ( hot snow, living corpse, sweet poison)

· Comparison- comparison of objects according to the principle of their similarity (there is a word How).

· Epithet- figurative definition of an object or phenomenon

Lyric genres:

ü Oh yeah- a solemn lyrical poem glorifying a heroic deed.

ü landscape sketch- a picture of nature.

ü Elegy- a poem riddled with sadness, sad thoughts about life, fate, your dream.

ü Message- addressing another person.

ü Satire- a work that ridicules shortcomings.

ü Epigram- a satirical poem addressed to a certain person.

ü Madrigal – a short poem expressing admiration, a compliment.

ü Epitaph - gravestone inscription in poetic form, dedicated to the deceased.

APPENDIX No. 2.

Theory:

An episode is a part of the text that reveals semantic and compositional unity.

1. Determine the place of this episode in the development of the plot:

At what point in the hero's life do we meet him?

· What do we already know about it and about the author's attitude towards it?

2. Formulate a general impression of what you read, think about what caused it. How does the author create it?

· What is interesting in the events, actions of the hero, in relation to people?

Pay attention to the form of the narration: on whose behalf is it being conducted? What is the advantage of this approach?

Imagine through whose eyes we see the picture?

Think about how the place and time are depicted (in other words, what is the originality of the chronotope)?

Pay attention to the features of word selection, grammatical organization of the text. How do they clarify their understanding of what is happening?

3. Draw a conclusion about the main idea of ​​the episode:

What did you learn about the hero? What questions have arisen?

· What was the future fate of the hero?

4. Compare your understanding of the episode with its interpretation in criticism, in other forms of art.

APPENDIX No. 3.

How to make a summary?

Abstract- these are genres of work with a different source. The purpose of this genre is to fix, rework this or that scientific text.

The synopsis is a verbatim extract from the source text. At the same time, the abstract is not a complete rewriting of someone else's text. Usually, when writing an abstract, the source text is first read, the main provisions are highlighted in it, examples are selected, the material is re-arranged, and only then the text of the abstract is drawn up. The abstract can be complete when the work is done with the entire text of the source or incomplete when one or more issues raised in the source are of interest.

The general sequence of actions in compiling a textual summary can be defined as follows:

1. Understand the goals and objectives of note taking.

2. Get acquainted with the work as a whole: read the preface, introduction, table of contents and highlight informationally significant sections of the text.

4. Make a summary, for this:

Consistently highlight the theses in the text and write them down with subsequent argumentation;

Write a brief summary - summarize the text of the abstract, highlight the main content of the material worked out, and evaluate it.

Abstracts can be planned, they are written on the basis of the drafted plan of the article, book. Each question of the plan corresponds to a certain part of the abstract.

APPENDIX No. 4.

Analysis plan for a dramatic work:

2. Poster (list of actors): in what main have they already been characterized? How does the arrangement of characters help to guess the nature (social, love, philosophical, psychological) of a dramatic work? We pay attention to the choice of names, the sequence of their presentation, the author's remarks.

3. Design remarks of the play: what "tips" to the director, actors they hide in themselves. What features of the temporal and spatial organization of the action explain the guess about the play's conflict?

4. The first appearance of the main characters. How are they revealed in the system of monologues, dialogues, remarks aside? Are we talking about the external or internal (psychological), conscious or unconscious conflict of the hero?

5. The main stages in the development of a dramatic conflict: its culmination and the outcome of the action. How are they related to the author's idea of ​​the play?

6. Individual scenes of the work are known to you. Try to explain one of them.

References

Main literature:

1. Lebedev Yu. V. Literature. Grade 10. Proc. for educational institutions. At 2 o'clock - M .: « Education »

2. Zinin S.A. Sakharov V. And Literature of the 19th century. Grade 10 Reader for educational institutions. At 2 o'clock - M., OOO « TID « Russian word - RS »

3. Belokurova S.P., Sukhikh I.N. Literature. Grade 10 (basic level): workshop: secondary (complete) general education - M .: Publishing Center "Academy" - 176 p.

4. Zinin S.A. Literature of the XX century. Grade 11: Proc. for educational institutions. At 2 o'clock - M.: LLC "TID "Russian Word", 2007.-600s.

Additional literature:

1. Kozhinov V. A prophet in his Fatherland. - M., 2002.

3. Musatov V.V. History of Russian literature in the first half of the twentieth century. - M., 2001.

4. Nabokov V. Lectures on Russian literature. - M., 2001.

5. Russian literature of the twentieth century. / Ed. A.G. Andreeva. - M., 2002.

6. Russian literature of the XIX century. (part 1, 2, 3). 10 cells / Ed. Ionina G.N. - M., 2001.

7. Smirnova L.N. Russian literature of the late nineteenth - early twentieth centuries. - M., 2001.

8. Sokolov A.G. History of Russian literature of the 19th–20th centuries. - M., 2000.

9. Timina S.I. Russian prose of the late twentieth century. - M., 2001.

From the standpoint of the formation of Russian literature, the first decade of the 21st century is the most significant.

In the 1990s, a kind of “reset” of the Russian literary process took place: along with the beginning of the book boom and the emergence of “returned literature”, we witnessed a certain struggle of Russian writers with the temptation of permissiveness, which was overcome only by the beginning of the 2000s. That is why the process of consciously laying the foundation of a new literature should be attributed to the beginning of the new century.

Generations of writers and genres of modern literature

Modern Russian literature is represented by several generations of writers:

• the sixties, who declared themselves back in the period of the “thaw” (Voinovich, Aksyonov, Rasputin, Iskander), professing a peculiar style of ironic nostalgia and often turning to the genre of memoirs;
• "seventies", the Soviet literary generation (Bitov, Erofeev, Makanin, Tokareva), who began their literary path in conditions of stagnation and professed a creative credo: "Bad circumstances, not a person";
• the perestroika generation (Tolstaya, Slavnikova,,), which actually opened the era of uncensored literature and engaged in bold literary experiments;
• writers of the late 90s (Kochergin, Gutsko, Prilepin), who made up the group of the youngest figures in the literary process.

Among the general genre diversity of modern literature, the following main directions stand out:

• postmodernism (Shishkin, Limonov, Sharov, Sorokin);

• "women's prose" (Ulitskaya, Tokareva, Slavnikova);

• mass literature (Ustinova, Dashkova, Grishkovets).

Literary trends of our time in the mirror of literary awards

In the matter of considering the literary process in Russia in the 2000s, it would be most indicative to refer to the list of laureates , moreover, the awards were predominantly non-state, since they were more focused on the reader's market, which means they better reflected the main aesthetic demands of the reading public in the past decade. At the same time, practice points to the definition of the delimitation of aesthetic functions between awards.

As you know, the phenomenon of postmodernism arises and strengthens simultaneously with the growing need for a reassessment of cultural or historical experience. This trend was reflected in the Russian Booker Prize, which announced itself back in the early 90s, which at the beginning of the century continued to “collect” samples of literary postmodernity under its auspices, designed to introduce the reader into a “parallel culture”.

During this period, awards were given to:

• O. Pavlov for "Karaganda deviatiny",
• M. Elizarov for the alternative history "Librarian",
• V. Aksyonov for a fresh look at the Enlightenment in "Voltaireans and Voltaireans".

At the same time, completely diverse

Reading Russia has witnessed another curious trend that has demonstrated public interest in the major literary forms so familiar to admirers of classical Russian literature. This phenomenon was reflected, first of all, in the winners of the Big Book award, where the traditional character of the literary presentation and the volume of the work were put at the forefront.

During the mentioned period, the Big Book was received by:

• D. Bykov, again for Boris Pasternak,
• for the military biographical "My Lieutenant",
• V. Makanin for the modern Chechen saga "Asan".

Also noteworthy was the accompanying "Big Book" practice of "special prizes", which marked the works of Solzhenitsyn and Chekhov, which made it possible to stimulate mass interest in the works of the classics.
The subcultural segment of literature was provided at that time, first of all, with the help, since the choice of the winner here was carried out either using online surveys or based on the results of online sales in online stores.

Our presentation

The considered trends indicate the syncretism of the modern literary process. The modern reader, as well as the writer, is looking for the most acceptable option for obtaining a new literary experience - from the classic to the catchy postmodern, which is familiar to the eye, which means that the national culture meets the challenges of the 21st century with a living and developing literature.

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