Authors:
A. E. Yeremeyev
Omsk Humanitarian Academy, Omsk, Russian Federation
Abstract:
The problems of genre formation and stylistic originality in Russian prose of the first half of the 19th century are directly related to the development of romantic consciousness and the transformation of philosophical and
allegorical forms. In this regard, it seems fruitful and important to identify the direction and ways of restructuring traditional genres in the artistic practice of I. V. Kireevsky as a kind of indicator of the main tendencies of the Russian literary process of the 19th century, the formation of that “thinking” that will become the fundamental beginning of its national identity. In this article, the specified problems are comprehended in the analysis of the biographical sketch of I. V. Kireevsky “E. A. Baratynsky”. The genre-style form of this essay by I. V. Kireevsky is considered as one of the sources of essay thinking in Russian classical literature. The synthesis of genre traditions, the transformation of philosophical and allegorical genres, and finally, the search for ways to depict the integral personality of the hero – all these features of essaying biography are comprehended based on the research of S. S. Averintsev and M. N. Epstein. Kireevsky’s biographical sketch not only combines two different attitudes (biographies and an essay), he gives rise to a new genre quality in their organic fusion. The author no longer comprehends reality, but rather the development of the consciousness of Baratynsky the poet.
In an essay essay, speech becomes aphoristic. A certain philosophism arises as a means for ordering the systematization of the phenomena of reality, there is a desire to summarize, to help the reader comprehend the entire complexity of the poetic talent and life of the great poet. Kireevsky, exploring the modern world through the prism of Baratynsky’s biography, for the first time in Russian aesthetic thought realizes the dialectic of the conjugation of the author-creator with the reader and the epoch itself, develops the most complex multilateral act of cognition of the author-creator and the revealing one, i.e. critic, as well as the knowing – the reader. Therefore, the true subject of aesthetic comprehension is the comprehension of the spiritual world, the living knowledge of the artist, that is, the awareness of his life creation. The rhetorical principle, the use of diatribes, rubrications, a certain didacticism, the desire for universalism, the recreation of the process of thinking – all of the above techniques stubbornly oppose any clear definition of their genre dominant, creating a kind of supra-genre system, designated as essayism.
Keywords:
I. V. Kireevsky, E. A. Baratynsky, essayism, biographical sketch, aphoristics, philosophical and allegorical genres, rhetorical organization of life material.
Paper submitted:
November 5, 2020.
For citation:
Yeremeyev A. Ye. (2020) EEssayism as the leading form of artistic culture in the 19th century. The Science of Person: Humanitarian Researches, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 8–16. DOI: 10.17238/issn1998-5320.2020.14.4.1.
