Philosophy of love in the works of Russian literature of the XIX-XX centuries. The theme of love in the works of Russian writers The theme of love in works of fiction

The theme of love in Russian literature

Love jumped out in front of us like a killer jumps around the corner

and instantly hit us both at once ...

M. Bulgakov

Love is a high, pure, wonderful feeling that people have sung about since ancient times. Love, as they say, never gets old.

If we erect a certain literary pedestal of love, then, undoubtedly, the love of Romeo and Juliet will come first. This is perhaps the most beautiful, most romantic, most tragic story that Shakespeare told the reader. Two lovers go against fate, despite the enmity between their families, no matter what. Romeo is ready for the sake of love to give up even his own name, and Juliet agrees to die, if only to remain faithful to Romeo and their high feeling. They die in the name of love, they die together because they cannot live without each other:

There is no sadder story in the world

Than the story of Romeo and Juliet...

However, love can be different - passionate, tender, prudent, cruel, unrequited ...

Let us recall the heroes of Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" - Bazarov and Odintsova. Two equally strong personalities collided. But strangely enough, Bazarov turned out to be able to truly love. Love for him was a strong shock, which he did not expect, and in general, before meeting Odintsova, love in the life of this hero did not play any role. All human suffering, emotional experiences were unacceptable for his world. It is difficult for Bazarov to confess his feelings, first of all to himself.

But what about Odintsova? .. As long as her interests were not affected, as long as there was a desire to learn something new, Bazarov was also interesting to her. But as soon as the topics for general conversation were exhausted, interest disappeared. Odintsova lives in her own world, in which everything goes according to plan, and nothing can disturb peace in this world, not even love. Bazarov for her is something like a draft that flew in through the window and immediately flew back. Such love is doomed.

Another example is the characters in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Their love is just as sacrificial, it would seem, as the love of Romeo and Juliet. True, here Margarita sacrifices herself for the sake of love. The master was frightened by this strong feeling and ended up in a lunatic asylum. There he hopes that Margarita will forget him. Of course, the failure that befell his novel also affected the hero. The master flees from the world and, above all, from himself.

But Margarita saves their love, saves the Master from madness. Her feeling for the hero overcomes all obstacles that stand in the way of happiness.

Many poets have also written about love.

I really like, for example, the so-called Panaev cycle of Nekrasov's poems, which he dedicated to Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva, the woman he passionately loved. It is enough to recall such poems from this cycle as “She got a heavy cross ...”, “I don’t like your irony ...”, to say how strong the poet’s feeling for this beautiful woman was.

And here are the lines from a beautiful poem about love by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev:

Oh, how deadly we love

As in the violent blindness of passions

We are the most likely to destroy

What is dear to our heart!

How long have you been proud of your victory?

You said she's mine...

A year has not passed - ask and tell

What is left of her?

And, of course, one cannot fail to mention Pushkin's love lyrics here.

I remember a wonderful moment:

You appeared before me

Like a fleeting vision

Like a genius of pure beauty.

In the languor of hopeless sadness,

In the anxieties of noisy bustle,

And dreamed of cute features ...

Pushkin handed these poems to Anna Petrovna Kern on July 19, 1825, on the day of her departure from Trigorskoye, where she was visiting her aunt P. A. Osipova and constantly met with the poet.

I want to finish my essay again with lines from another poem by the great Pushkin:

I loved you: love still, perhaps

In my soul it has not completely died out;

But don't let it bother you anymore;

I don't want to sadden you with anything.

I loved you silently, hopelessly,

Either timidity or jealousy languish;

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

How God forbid you be loved to be different.

(The image shows the ball of Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova)

People are always waiting for a miracle, looking at the sky, looking for it in books, looking for it in life. And this miracle is most often love. It is love, this all-consuming feeling, which is most often the leading one in literary works, because it makes a person commit crimes, feats, change history, give happiness to a person or cause suffering. Being an amazing property of a person, love helps to shape personality.

This theme is eternal in literature. All creative people have dedicated at least one of their works to great love.

Take, for example, "Quiet Don". In it, the theme of love is one of the main ones. Here the author revealed all its facets, making it clear that love is not unambiguous.

A vivid example of this is G. Melekhov's feeling for Aksinya. It was so strong that it made them not pay attention to the opinions of others. But after the wedding of Gregory with Natalya, Aksinya from a lucky woman becomes a suffering woman. Melekhov loved both women in his own way. Love was his spiritual salvation when there was cruelty around him

Turgenev's heroes of the novel "Fathers and Sons" are strong people who collided on the path of life. Love for Bazarov was a shock. Before meeting with Odintsova, love for this person did not mean anything, because it is difficult for Bazarov to confess his love. And Odintsova does not respond to his feelings. The girl lives in her own world. She is not interested in Bazarov.

(Asya and Mr. NN.)

Another fragrant and languid and sad work about the love of this writer: the story "Asya". Here, this feeling brought suffering to a girl who fell in love for the first time and did not receive reciprocity.

(Tender feelings of the Master to Margarita)

Love pervades the Master and Margarita. The name itself says it. All happiness that falls to a person comes from love. This feeling of loving heroes elevates them above the world, helps them withstand any trials, purifying and transforming them for the sake of love.
In Kuprin's story "Garnet Bracelet" love is deified. Hopelessly in love, Georgy Stepanovich Zheltkov saw in his woman the embodiment of all earthly beauty. But disappointment in his love led to a more tragic end than the feelings of Vera Nikolaevna Sheina.

Poetic works are even more dedicated to love. There is no such poet who has not written at least one poem on a love theme.

Recall the lines of F.I. Tyutchev, written to the illegitimate wife and mother of his three children, Elena Denisyeva, rejected by society and everyone she cherished, just because of one incredible love for her husband:

Oh, how deadly we love

As in the violent blindness of passions

We are the most likely to destroy

What is dear to our heart!

This feeling is no less clearly shown in "Eugene Onegin", where Tatyana's poor soul in love rushes about, not knowing how to confess her love to Onegin, and, finally, writes him a letter. Here, too, unrequited love is shown.

It is possible to enumerate for a long time the works of Russian literature in which this topic is touched upon. Russian literature is one of the richest in works about love. It is depicted in works, as if saying: and at the moment of its highest manifestation it rained, gardens bloomed or sand sang on the dunes. But two people have known the great mystery of love, insidious and beautiful, all-destroying and creative. Such are the many facets of this feeling described in the literature of all times.

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1. The theme of love in the works of foreign writers.

In the Middle Ages, the chivalric romance was popular in foreign literature. Knightly romance - as one of the main genres of medieval literature, originates in a feudal environment in the era of the emergence and development of chivalry, for the first time in France in the middle of the 12th century. The works of this genre are filled with elements of the heroic epic, boundless courage, nobility and courage of the main characters. Often, knights went to exploits not for the sake of their kind or vassal duty, but in the name of their own glory and glorification of the lady of their heart. Fantastic adventure motifs, an abundance of exotic descriptions make the chivalric romance partly similar to a fairy tale, the literature of the East and the pre-Christian mythology of Northern and Central Europe. The emergence and development of the chivalric romance was greatly influenced by the work of ancient writers, in particular Ovid, as well as the rethought legends of the ancient Celts and Germans.

Consider the features of this genre on the example of the work of the French medievalist philologist, writer Joseph Bedier "The Romance of Tristan and Isolde". Note that in this work there are many elements alien to traditional chivalric novels. For example, the mutual feelings of Tristan and Isolde are devoid of courtesy. In the chivalric novels of that era, the knight went to great deeds for the sake of love for the Beautiful Lady, who for him was the living bodily embodiment of the Madonna. Therefore, the knight and the same Lady had to love each other platonically, and her husband (usually the king) is aware of this love. Tristan and Iseult, his beloved, are sinners in the light of Christian morality, not only medieval. They only care about one thing - to keep their relationship secret from others and to prolong their criminal passion by any means. Such is the role of Tristan's heroic leap, his constant "pretense", Isolde's ambiguous oath at the "God's court", her cruelty towards Brangien, whom Isolde wants to destroy because she knows too much, etc. Tristan and Isolde are defeated strongest desire to be together, they deny both earthly and divine laws, moreover, they doom not only their own honor, but also the honor of King Mark to desecration. But Uncle Tristana is one of the noblest heroes who humanly forgives what he should punish like a king. He loves his wife and nephew, he knows about their deceit, but this does not show his weakness at all, but the greatness of his image. One of the most poetic scenes of the novel is an episode in the forest of Morua, where King Mark found Tristan and Isolde sleeping, and, seeing a naked sword between them, he readily forgives them (in the Celtic sagas, a naked sword separated the bodies of the heroes before they became lovers , but in the novel it is a hoax).

To some extent, it is possible to justify the heroes, to prove that they are not at all guilty of their sudden outbreak of passion, they fell in love not at all because, say, Isolde’s “blondness” attracted him, and Tristan’s “valor” attracted her, but because the heroes drank a love potion by mistake, intended for a completely different occasion. Thus, love passion is depicted in the novel as the result of the action of a dark force that penetrates into the bright world of the social world order and threatens to destroy it to the ground. This clash of two irreconcilable principles already contains the possibility of a tragic conflict, which makes The Romance of Tristan and Isolde a fundamentally pre-courtly work in the sense that courtly love can be arbitrarily dramatic, but it is always joy. The love of Tristan and Isolde, on the contrary, brings them one suffering.

“They languished apart, but suffered even more” when they were together. “Isolde has become a queen and lives in grief,” writes the French scholar Bedier, who retold the novel in prose in the nineteenth century, “Isolde has a passionate, tender love and Tristan is with her, whenever she wants, day and night.” Even while wandering in the forest of Morois, where lovers were happier than in the luxurious castle of Tintagele, their happiness was poisoned by heavy thoughts..

Many other writers have been able to capture their thoughts about love in their works. For example, William Shakespeare gave the world a number of his works that inspire exploits and risk in the name of love. His "Sonnets" are filled with tenderness, luxurious epithets and metaphors. Harmony is rightly called the unifying feature of the artistic methods of Shakespeare's poetry. The impression of harmony comes from all the poetic creations of Shakespeare.

The expressive means of Shakespeare's poetry are unusually diverse. They inherited a lot from the entire European and English poetic tradition, but introduced a lot of absolutely new things. Shakespeare also shows his originality in the variety of new images he introduced into poetry, and in the novelty of the interpretation of traditional plots. He used poetic symbols common to Renaissance poetry in his works. Already by that time there was a significant number of familiar poetic devices. Shakespeare compares youth with spring or sunrise, beauty with the charm of flowers, the withering of a person with autumn, old age with winter. The description of the beauty of women deserves special attention. "Marble whiteness", "lily tenderness", etc. these words contain boundless admiration for female beauty, they are filled with endless love and passion.

Undoubtedly, the play "Romeo and Juliet" can be called the best embodiment of love in the work. Love triumphs in the play. The meeting of Romeo and Juliet transforms them both. They live for each other: "Romeo: My heaven is where Juliet is." Not languid sadness, but a living passion inspires Romeo: “All day long, some kind of spirit carries me up above the earth in joyful dreams.” Love transformed their inner world, influenced their relationships with people. Romeo and Juliet's feelings are severely tested. Despite the hatred between their families, they choose boundless love, merging in a single impulse, but individuality has been preserved in each of them. The tragic death only adds to the special mood of the play. This work is an example of a great feeling, despite the early age of the main characters.

2. The theme of love in the works of Russian poets and writers.

This topic is reflected in the literature of Russian writers and poets of all times.For more than 100 years, people have been turning to the poetry of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, finding in it a reflection of their feelings, emotions and experiences. The name of this great poet is associated with a tirade of poems about love and friendship, with the concept of honor and Motherland, images of Onegin and Tatyana, Masha and Grinev arise. Eventhe most rigorous reader will be able to discover something close to him in his works, because they are very multifaceted. Pushkin was a man passionately responding to all living things, a great poet, creator of the Russian word, a man of high and noble qualities. In the variety of lyrical themes that permeate Pushkin's poems, the theme of love is given such a significant place that the poet could be called a chanter of this great noble feeling. In all world literature, one cannot find a more striking example of a particular predilection for precisely this side of human relations. Obviously, the origins of this feeling lie in the very nature of the poet, sympathetic, able to reveal in each person the best properties of his soul. In 1818at one of the parties, the poet met the 19-year-old Anna Petrovna Kern. Pushkin admired her radiant beauty and youth. Years later Pushkin met again with Kern, as charming as before. Pushkin presented her with a recently printed chapter of Eugene Onegin, and between the pages he put verses written specially for her, in honor of her beauty and youth. Poems dedicated to Anna Petrovna “I remember a wonderful moment” is a famous hymn to a high and bright feeling. This is one of the pinnacles of Pushkin's lyrics. Poems will captivate not only with the purity and passion of the feelings embodied in them, but also with harmony. Love for the poet is a source of life and joy, the poem "I loved you" is a masterpiece of Russian poetry. More than twenty romances have been written on his poems. And let time pass, the name of Pushkin will always live in our memory and awaken the best feelings in us.

With the name of Lermontov, a new era of Russian literature opens. Lermontov's ideals are boundless; he longs not for a simple improvement of life, but for the acquisition of complete bliss, a change in the imperfection of human nature, an absolute resolution of all the contradictions of life. Eternal life - the poet does not agree to anything less. However, love in the works of Lermontov bears a tragic imprint. This was influenced by his only, unrequited love for a friend of his youth - Varenka Lopukhina. He considers love impossible and surrounds himself with a halo of martyrdom, placing himself outside the world and life. Lermontov is sad about the lost happiness “My soul must live in earthly captivity, Not for long. Maybe I won’t see more, Your gaze, your sweet gaze, so tender for others.

Lermontov emphasizes his remoteness from everything worldly: "Whatever it is earthly, but I will not become a slave." Lermontov understands love as something eternal, the poet does not find solace in routine, fleeting passions, and if he sometimes gets carried away and steps aside, then his lines are not the fruit of a sick fantasy, but just a momentary weakness. “At the feet of others, I did not forget the gaze of your eyes. Loving others, I only suffered the Love of the old days.

Human, earthly love seems to be an obstacle for the poet on his way to higher ideals. In the poem “I will not humiliate myself before you,” he writes that inspiration is dearer to him than unnecessary quick passions that can throw the human soul into the abyss. Love in Lermontov's lyrics is fatal. He writes, “Inspiration saved me from petty fuss, but there is no salvation from my soul even in happiness itself.” In Lermontov's poems, love is a lofty, poetic, bright feeling, but always unrequited or lost. In the poem "Valerik", the love part, which later became a romance, conveys a bitter feeling of losing touch with his beloved. “Is it crazy to wait for love in absentia? In our age, all feelings are only for a period, but I remember you, ”the poet writes. The theme of betrayal of a beloved, unworthy of a great feeling or not standing the test of time, becomes traditional in Lermontov's literary creations related to his personal experience.

The discord between dream and reality permeates this wonderful feeling; love does not bring joy to Lermontov, he receives only suffering and sorrow: “I am sad because I love you.” The poet is worried about the meaning of life. He is sad about the transience of life and wants to have time to do as much as possible in the short time allotted to him on earth. In his poetic reflections, life is hateful to him, but death is terrible.

Considering the theme of love in the works of Russian writers, one cannot but appreciate Bunin's contribution to the poetry of this subject. The theme of love occupies almost the main place in Bunin's work. In this topic, the writer has the opportunity to correlate what happens in the soul of a person with the phenomena of external life, with the requirements of a society that is based on the relationship of purchase and sale and in which wild and dark instincts sometimes reign. Bunin was one of the first in Russian literature to devote his works not only to the spiritual, but also to the bodily side of love, touching with extraordinary tact the most intimate, intimate aspects of human relationships. Bunin was the first to dare to say that bodily passion does not necessarily follow a spiritual impulse, which happens in life and vice versa (as happened with the heroes of the story "Sunstroke"). And no matter what plot moves the writer chooses, love in his works is always a great joy and a great disappointment, a deep and insoluble mystery, it is both spring and autumn in a person’s life.

At different periods of his work, Bunin speaks of love with varying degrees of frankness. In his early works, the characters are open, young and natural. In such works as "In August", "In Autumn", "Dawn All Night", all events are extremely simple, brief and significant. The feelings of the characters are ambivalent, colored with halftones. And although Bunin talks about people who are alien to us in appearance, life, relationships, we immediately recognize and realize in a new way our own premonitions of happiness, expectations of deep spiritual changes. The rapprochement of Bunin's heroes rarely achieves harmony; as soon as it appears, it most often disappears. But the thirst for love burns in their souls. A sad parting with his beloved is completed by dreamy dreams ("In August"): "Through tears I looked into the distance, and somewhere I dreamed of the southern sultry cities, a blue steppe evening and the image of some woman who merged with the girl I loved ... ". The date is remembered because it testifies to a touch of a genuine feeling: "Whether she was better than the others whom I loved, I do not know, but that night she was incomparable" ("Autumn"). And in the story "Dawn all night" Bunin tells about a premonition of love, about the tenderness that a young girl is ready to give to her future lover. At the same time, youth tends not only to get carried away, but also quickly disappointed. Bunin's works show us this painful gap between dreams and reality for many. “After a night in the garden, full of nightingale whistling and spring trembling, young Tata suddenly hears through her sleep how her fiancé shoots jackdaws, and understands that she does not love this rude and ordinary-mundane person at all.”

Most of Bunin's early stories are about the desire for beauty and purity - this remains the main spiritual impulse of his characters. In the 1920s, Bunin wrote about love, as if through the prism of past memories, peering into the departed Russia and those people who are no longer there. This is how we perceive the story "Mitina's Love" (1924). In this story, the writer consistently shows the spiritual development of the hero, leading him from love to collapse. In the story, feelings and life are closely intertwined. Mitya's love for Katya, his hopes, jealousy, vague forebodings seem to be covered with a special sadness. Katya, dreaming of an artistic career, spun in the fake life of the capital and cheated on Mitya. His torment, from which he could not save the connection with another woman - the beautiful but down to earth Alyonka, led Mitya to commit suicide. Mitin's insecurity, openness, unpreparedness to face harsh reality, inability to suffer make us feel more acutely the inevitability and inadmissibility of what happened.

In a number of Bunin's stories about love, a love triangle is described: husband - wife - lover ("Ida", "Caucasus", "The most beautiful sun"). In these stories, an atmosphere of inviolability of the established order reigns. Marriage is an insurmountable barrier to achieving happiness. And often what is given to one is ruthlessly taken away from another. In the story "Caucasus", a woman leaves with her lover, knowing for sure that from the moment the train leaves, hours of despair begin for her husband, that he will not stand it and rush after her. He is really looking for her, and not having found her, he guesses about the betrayal and shoots himself. Already here the motif of love as a "sunstroke" appears, which has become a special, ringing note of the "Dark Alleys" cycle.

Memories of youth and the Motherland bring together the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" with the prose of the 1920s and 1930s. These stories are told in the past tense. The author seems to be trying to penetrate into the depths of the subconscious world of his characters. In most stories, the author describes bodily pleasures, beautiful and poetic, born in genuine passion. Even if the first sensual impulse seems frivolous, as in the story "Sunstroke", it still leads to tenderness and self-forgetfulness, and then to true love. This is exactly what happens with the heroes of the stories "Business cards", "Dark alleys", "Late hour", "Tanya", "Rusya", "In a familiar street". The writer writes about ordinary lonely people and their lives. That is why the past, filled with early, strong feelings, seems to be truly golden times, merges with the sounds, smells, colors of nature. As if nature itself leads to the spiritual and physical rapprochement of people who love each other. And nature itself leads them to inevitable separation, and sometimes to death.

The skill of describing everyday details, as well as a sensual description of love, is inherent in all the stories of the cycle, but the story "Clean Monday" written in 1944 appears not just as a story about the great secret of love and a mysterious female soul, but as a kind of cryptogram. Too much in the psychological line of the story and in its landscape and everyday details seems like a ciphered revelation. Accuracy and abundance of details are not just signs of the times, not just nostalgia for forever lost Moscow, but the opposition of East and West in the soul and appearance of the heroine, leaving love and life for a monastery.

3. The theme of love in the literary works of the XX century.

The theme of love continues to be relevant in the 20th century, in the era of global catastrophes, a political crisis, when humanity is making attempts to re-form its attitude to universal values. Writers of the 20th century often depict love as the last remaining moral category of the then destroyed world. In the novels of the writers of the “lost generation” (Remarque and Hemingway belong to them), these feelings are the necessary stimulus for which the hero tries to survive and live on. The “Lost Generation” is the generation of people who survived the First World War and remained spiritually devastated.

These people renounce any ideological dogmas, search for the meaning of life in simple human relationships. The feeling of a comrade's shoulder, which almost merged with the instinct of self-preservation, guides the mentally lonely heroes of Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front through the war. It also determines the relationship that arises between the characters of the novel "Three Comrades".

The hero of Hemingway in the novel A Farewell to Arms renounced military service, what is usually called the moral duty of a person, renounced for the sake of a relationship with his beloved, and his position seems very convincing to the reader. A man of the 20th century is constantly faced with the possibility of the end of the world, with the expectation of his own death or the death of a loved one. Katherine, the heroine of A Farewell to Arms, dies, as does Pat in Remarque's Three Comrades. The hero loses a sense of being needed, a sense of the meaning of life. At the end of both works, the hero looks at the dead body, which has already ceased to be the body of the beloved woman. The novel is filled with the author's subconscious thoughts about the mystery of the origin of love, about its spiritual basis. One of the main features of the literature of the 20th century is its inseparable connection with the phenomena of social life. The author's reflections on the existence of such concepts as love and friendship appear against the backdrop of the socio-political problems of that time and, in essence, are inseparable from reflections on the fate of mankind in the 20th century.

In the work of Francoise Sagan, the theme of friendship and love usually remains within the framework of a person's private life. The writer often depicts the life of the Parisian bohemia; most of her characters belong to her. F. Sagan wrote her first novel in 1953, and it was then perceived as a complete moral fall. In the artistic world of Sagan, there is no place for a strong and truly strong human attraction: this feeling must die as soon as it is born. It is replaced by another - a feeling of disappointment and sadness.

Conclusion

Love is a high, pure, wonderful feeling that people have sung since ancient times, in all languages of the world. Love has been written about before, is being written about now, and will be written about in the future.No matter how different love is, this feeling is still beautiful. Therefore, they write so much about love, compose poems, love is sung in songs. The creators of beautiful works can be listed indefinitely, since each of us, whether he is a writer or a simple person, has experienced this feeling at least once in his life. Without love there will be no life on earth. And when reading works, we come across something sublime, which helps us to consider the world from the spiritual side. After all, with each hero we experience his love together.

Sometimes it seems that everything has been said about love in world literature. But love has a thousand shades, and each of its manifestations has its own holiness, its own sadness, its own break and its own fragrance.

List of sources used

Anikst A. A. Shakespeare's work. M.: Allegory, 2009 - 350 p.
Bunin, I. A. Collected works in 4 volumes. V.4 / I. A. Bunin. – M.: Pravda, 1988. – 558 p.
Volkov, A.V. Prose of Ivan Bunin / A.V. Volkov. – M.: Moskov. worker, 2008. - 548 p.
Grazhdanskaya Z. T. "From Shakespeare to Shaw"; English writers of the XVI-XX centuries. Moscow, Prosveshchenie, 2011
Nikulin L.V. Kuprin // Nikulin L.V. Chekhov. Bunin. Kuprin: Literary portraits. - M.: 1999 - S. 265 - 325.
Petrovsky M. Dictionary of literary terms. In 2 volumes. M.: Allegory, 2010
Smirnov A. A. "Shakespeare". Leningrad, Art, 2006
Teff N. A. Nostalgia: Stories; Memories. - L .: Fiction, 2011. - S. 267 - 446.
Shugaev V.M. Experiences of a reading person / V.M. Shugaev. – M.: Sovremennik, 2010. – 319 p.

The theme of love in Russian literature is one of the main ones. A poet or prose writer reveals to his reader the languor of the soul, experiences, suffering. And yes, it has always been in demand. Indeed, one may not understand the topic of the author's attitude to his own work, aspects of philosophical prose, but the words of love in literature are spoken so accessible that they can be applied in various life situations. In what works is the theme of love most clearly reflected? What are the features of the authors' perception of this feeling? Our article will tell about it.

The place of love in Russian literature

Love has always existed in fiction. If we talk about domestic works, then Peter and Fevronia of Murom immediately come to mind from the story of the same name by Yermolai-Erasmus, which belongs to ancient Russian literature. Recall that other topics then, except for Christian ones, were taboo. This art form was strictly religious.

The theme of love in Russian literature arose in the 18th century. The impetus for its development was Trediakovsky's translations of works by foreign authors, because in Europe they already wrote with might and main about the wonderful feeling of love and the relationship between a man and a woman. Then there were Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Karamzin.

The theme of love in the works of Russian literature reached its special flowering in the 19th century. This era gave the world Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and many other luminaries. Each writer had his own, purely personal attitude to the theme of love, which can be read through the lines of his work.

Pushkin's love lyrics: the innovation of a genius

The theme of love in Russian literature of the 19th century reached special heights in the work of A. Pushkin. Lyrics, glorifying this bright feeling, are rich, multifaceted and contain a whole series of features. Let's sort them out.

Love as a reflection of personal qualities in "Eugene Onegin"

"Eugene Onegin" is a work where the theme of love in Russian literature sounds especially expressive. It shows not just a feeling, but its evolution throughout life. In addition, through love, the main images of the novel are revealed.

In the center of the story is the hero whose name is in the title. The reader is forced throughout the novel to be tormented by the question: is Eugene capable of love? Brought up in the spirit of the mores of the high-society metropolitan society, in feelings he is devoid of sincerity. Being in a "spiritual impasse", he meets Tatyana Larina, who, unlike him, knows how to sincerely and disinterestedly love.

Tatyana writes a love letter to Onegin, he is touched by this act of the girl, but no more. Disappointed, Larina agrees to marry the unloved and leaves for St. Petersburg.

The last meeting of Onegin and Tatyana happens after several years. Eugene confesses his love to a young woman, but she rejects him. The woman admits that she still loves, but is bound by the obligations of marriage.

Thus, the protagonist of Pushkin's novel fails the exam with love, he was frightened by an all-consuming feeling, rejected it. The revelation came too late.

Lyubov Lermontov - an unattainable ideal

Love for a woman was different for M. Lermontov. For him, this is a feeling that completely absorbs a person, this is a force that nothing can defeat. According to Lermontov, love is something that will definitely make a person suffer: "Everyone cried who loved."

This lyric is inextricably linked with women in the life of the poet himself. Katerina Sushkova is a girl with whom Lermontov fell in love at the age of 16. The poems dedicated to her are emotional, they tell about an unrequited feeling, the desire to find not only a woman, but also a friend.

Natalya Ivanova, the next woman in Lermontov's life, reciprocated. On the one hand, there is more happiness in the poems of this period, however, notes of deceit slip through here too. Natalya in many ways does not understand the deep spiritual organization of the poet. The themes of such works have also changed: now they are focused on feelings and passions.

The relationship with Love is reflected in a completely different way; the entire being of the poet is permeated here, nature speaks about it, even the Motherland.

Love becomes a prayer in poems dedicated to Maria Shcherbatova. Only 3 works have been written, but each of them is a masterpiece, a hymn of love. According to Lermontov, he found the very woman who understands him completely. Love in these poems is contradictory: it can heal, but also injure, execute and bring back to life.

The hard way to happiness of the heroes of "War and Peace" by Tolstoy

Considering how love is represented in fiction, attention should also be paid to the work of L. Tolstoy. His epic "War and Peace" is a work where love somehow touched each of the heroes. After all, the “family thought”, which occupies a central place in the novel, is inextricably linked with love.

Each of the images goes through a difficult path, but in the end finds family happiness. There are exceptions: Tolstoy puts a kind of equal sign between a person's ability to love selflessly and his moral purity. But even this quality needs to be reached by a series of sufferings, mistakes that will ultimately purify the soul and make it crystal, capable of loving.

Let us recall the difficult path to happiness of Andrei Bolkonsky. Carried away by the beauty of Lisa, he marries her, but, quickly cooling down, is disappointed in marriage. He understands that he chose an empty and spoiled wife. Further - war, and oak - a symbol of spiritual flowering, life. Love for Natasha Rostova is what gave Prince Bolkonsky a breath of fresh air.

Test of love in the work of I. S. Turgenev

The images of love in the literature of the 19th century are the heroes of Turgenev. The author of each of them leads through the test of this feeling.

The only one who passes it is Arkady Bazarov from Fathers and Sons. Maybe that's why he is the ideal hero of Turgenev.

A nihilist who denies everything around him, Bazarov calls love "nonsense", for him it is just an ailment that can be cured. However, having met Anna Odintsova and falling in love with her, he changes not only his attitude to this feeling, but his worldview as a whole.

Bazarov confesses his love to Anna Sergeevna, but she rejects him. The girl is not ready for a serious relationship, she cannot renounce herself for the sake of another, even a loved one. Here she fails in the test of Turgenev. And Bazarov is the winner, he became the hero that the writer was looking for for himself in "The Nest of Nobles", "Rudin", "Ace" and other works.

"The Master and Margarita" - a mystical love story

The theme of love in Russian literature of the 20th century is growing and developing, getting stronger. Not a single writer and poet of this era avoided this topic. Yes, it could be transformed, for example, into love for people (remember Gorky's Danko) or the Motherland (perhaps, this is a large part of Mayakovsky's work or works of the war years). But there is exceptional literature about love: these are soulful poems by S. Yesenin, poets of the Silver Age. If we talk about prose, this is first of all "The Master and Margarita" by M. Bulgakov.

The love that arises between the characters is sudden, it “pops out” from nowhere. The master draws attention to Margarita's eyes, so sad and lonely.

Lovers do not experience all-consuming passion, rather, on the contrary - it is a quiet, calm, domestic happiness.

However, at the most critical moment, only love helps Margarita save the Master and their feelings, even if not in the human world.

Yesenin's love lyrics

The theme of love in Russian literature of the 20th century is also poetry. Consider in this vein the work of S. Yesenin. The poet inextricably linked this bright feeling with nature, his love is extremely chaste and strongly tied to the biography of the poet himself. A striking example is the poem "Green Hairstyle". Here, all the features of L. Kashina, dear to Yesenin (the work is dedicated to her), are presented through the beauty of the Russian birch: a thin camp, pigtails-branches.

"Moscow Tavern" reveals to us a completely different love, now it is "infection" and "plague". Such images are connected, first of all, with the emotional experiences of the poet, who feels his uselessness.

Healing comes in the Bully's Love cycle. The culprit is A. Miklashevskaya, who cured Yesenin of torment. He again believed that there is true love, inspiring and reviving.

In his last poems, Yesenin condemns the deceit and insincerity of women, he believes that this feeling should be deeply sincere and life-affirming, give a person ground under his feet. Such, for example, the poem "Leaves are falling, leaves are falling ...".

about love

The theme of love in Russian literature of the Silver Age is the work of not only S. Yesenin, but also A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Blok, O. Mandelstam and many others. All of them are united very much by suffering and happiness - these are the main associates of the muse of poets and poetesses.

Examples of love in Russian literature of the 20th century are the great A. Akhmatova and M. Tsvetaeva. The latter is a “quivering doe”, sensual, vulnerable. Love for her is the meaning of life, what makes her not only create, but also exist in this world. “I like that you are not sick of me” is her masterpiece, full of light sadness and contradictions. And this is the whole Tsvetaeva. The same penetrating lyricism is saturated with the poem "Yesterday I looked into my eyes." This, perhaps, is a kind of anthem for all women in love: “My dear, what have I done to you?”.

A completely different theme of love in Russian literature is portrayed by A. Akhmatova. This is the intensity of all feelings and thoughts of a person. Akhmatova herself gave this feeling a definition - "the fifth season." But if it were not for him, the other four would not be visible. The love of the poetess is loud, all-affirming, returning to natural principles.