literature school number 28

Nizhnekamsk, 2012

1. Introduction 3

2. "Life of Boris and Gleb" 4

3. "Eugene Onegin" 5

4. Demon 6

5. The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment 7

6. Thunderstorm 10

7. " white guard"and" The Master and Margarita "12

8. Conclusion 14

9. List of used literature 15

1. Introduction

My work is about good and evil. The problem of good and evil is eternal problem which has excited and will continue to excite mankind. When fairy tales are read to us in childhood, in the end, good almost always wins in them, and the fairy tale ends with the phrase: "And they all lived happily ever after ...". We grow, and over time it becomes clear that this is not always the case. However, it does not happen that a person is absolutely pure in soul, without a single flaw. In each of us there are shortcomings, and there are many of them. But that doesn't mean we're evil. We have a lot of good qualities. So the theme of good and evil arises already in ancient Russian literature. As they say in the “Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh”: “... Think, my children, how merciful and merciful God is to us. We are sinful and mortal people, and yet, if someone harms us, we are ready, it seems, to pin him right there and take revenge; and the Lord to us, the Lord of life (life) and death, bears with us our sins, although they exceed our heads, and throughout our life, like a father who loves his child, and punishes, and again draws us to Himself. He showed us how to get rid of the enemy and defeat him - with three virtues: repentance, tears and alms ... ".

"Instruction" - not only literary work but also an important monument of social thought. Vladimir Monomakh, one of the most authoritative princes of Kyiv, is trying to convince his contemporaries of the perniciousness of internecine strife - Rus', weakened by internal hostility, will not be able to actively resist external enemies.

In my work, I want to trace how this problem has changed for different authors at different times. Of course, I will dwell in more detail only on individual works.

2. "The Life of Boris and Gleb"

We meet a pronounced opposition of good and evil in the work ancient Russian literature"The Life and Destruction of Boris and Gleb", written by Nestor, a monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery. Historical basis events is like this. In 1015, the old prince Vladimir dies, who wanted to appoint his son Boris, who was not in Kyiv at that time, as the heir. Boris's brother Svyatopolk, plotting to seize the throne, orders to kill Boris and his younger brother Gleb. Near their bodies, abandoned in the steppe, miracles begin to happen. After the victory of Yaroslav the Wise over Svyatopolk, the bodies were reburied and the brothers were proclaimed saints.

Svyatopolk thinks and acts at the instigation of the devil. The “historiographical” introduction to life corresponds to the ideas of the unity of the world historical process: the events that took place in Rus' are only a particular case of the eternal struggle between God and the devil – good and evil.

"The Life of Boris and Gleb" - a story about the martyrdom of the saints. The main theme determined artistic structure such a work, the opposition of good and evil, martyr and tormentors, dictated a special tension and "poster" directness of the culminating scene of the murder: it should be long and moralizing.

In his own way he looked at the problem of good and evil in the novel "Eugene Onegin".

3. "Eugene Onegin"

The poet does not divide his characters into positive and negative ones. He gives each of the characters several conflicting assessments, forcing them to look at the characters from several points of view. Pushkin wanted to achieve maximum lifelikeness.

The tragedy of Onegin lies in the fact that he rejected Tatyana's love, fearing to lose his freedom, and could not break with the world, realizing its insignificance. In a depressed state of mind, Onegin left the village and "began wandering." The hero, who returned from a journey, does not look like the former Onegin. He will no longer be able, as before, to go through life, completely ignoring the feelings and experiences of the people he encountered, and think only about himself. He has become much more serious, more attentive to others, now he is capable of strong feelings that completely capture him and shake his soul. And then fate again brings him to Tatyana. But Tatyana refuses him, because she was able to see that selfishness, that selfishness that lay at the basis of his feelings for her .. In Tatyana, offended feelings speak: it was her turn to reprimand Onegin for not being able to see the full depth in her in time her soul.

In Onegin's soul, there is a struggle between good and evil, but, in the end, good wins. ABOUT future fate We don't know the hero. But perhaps he would have become the Decembrists, to which the whole logic of the development of character, which had changed under the influence of a new circle of life impressions, led.

4. "Demon"

The theme runs through all the work of the poet, but I want to dwell only on this work, because in it the problem of good and evil is considered very sharply. The demon, the personification of evil, loves the earthly woman Tamara and is ready to be reborn for good for her sake, but Tamara, by her nature, is not able to return his love. The earthly world and the world of spirits cannot converge, the girl dies from one kiss of the Demon, and his passion remains unquenched.

At the beginning of the poem, the Demon is evil, but by the end it becomes clear that this evil can be eradicated. Tamara initially represents good, but she causes suffering to the Demon, since she cannot answer his love, which means that for him she becomes evil.

5. The Brothers Karamazov

The history of the Karamazovs is not just a family chronicle, but a typified and generalized image of contemporary intellectual Russia. This is an epic work about the past, present and future of Russia. From a genre point of view, complex work. It is a fusion of "life" and "novel", philosophical "poems" and "teachings", confessions, ideological disputes and judicial speeches. The main problem is the philosophy and psychology of "crime and punishment", the struggle between "God" and "devil" in the souls of people.

Dostoevsky formulated the main idea of ​​the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" in the epigraph "Truly, truly, I say to you: if a grain of wheat, falling into the ground, does not die, it will bear much fruit" (Gospel of John). This is the thought of the renewal that inevitably takes place in nature and in life, which is invariably accompanied by the dying of the old. The breadth, tragedy, and irresistibility of the process of renewing life are explored by Dostoevsky in all their depth and complexity. The thirst for overcoming the ugly and ugly in consciousness and actions, the hope for a moral rebirth and familiarization with a pure, righteous life overwhelm all the heroes of the novel. Hence the "anguish", the fall, the frenzy of the heroes, their despair.

At the center of this novel is the figure of a young commoner, Rodion Raskolnikov, who succumbed to new ideas, new theories, circulating in society. Raskolnikov is a thinking man. He creates a theory in which he tries not only to explain the world, but also to develop his own morality. He is convinced that humanity is divided into two categories: one - "they have the right", and others - "trembling creatures" that serve as "material" for history. The schismatics came to this theory as a result of observations of contemporary life, in which everything is allowed to the minority, and nothing to the majority. The division of people into two categories inevitably raises in Raskolnikov the question of what type he himself belongs to. And to clarify this, he decides on a terrible experiment, he plans to sacrifice an old woman - a pawnbroker who, in his opinion, brings only harm, and therefore deserves death. The action of the novel is built as a refutation of Raskolnikov's theory and his subsequent recovery. By killing the old woman, Raskolnikov placed himself outside society, including even his beloved mother and sister. The feeling of cut off, loneliness becomes a terrible punishment for the criminal. Raskolnikov is convinced that he was mistaken in his hypothesis. He experiences the anguish and doubts of the "ordinary" criminal. At the end of the novel, Raskolnikov takes the Gospel in his hands - this symbolizes the hero's spiritual turning point, the victory of the good in the hero's soul over his pride, which gives rise to evil.

Raskolnikov, it seems to me, is generally a very controversial person. In many episodes modern man it is difficult to understand him: many of his statements are refuted by each other. Raskolnikov's mistake is that he did not see in his idea the crime itself, the evil that he committed.

Raskolnikov's condition is characterized by the author with such words as "gloomy", "depressed", "indecisive". I think this shows the incompatibility of Raskolnikov's theory with life. Although he is convinced that he is right, this conviction is something not very sure. If Raskolnikov was right, then Dostoevsky would describe the events and his feelings not in gloomy yellow tones, but in bright ones, but they appear only in the epilogue. He was wrong in taking on the role of God, having the courage to decide for Him who should live and who should die.

Raskolnikov constantly oscillates between faith and unbelief, good and evil, and Dostoevsky fails to convince the reader even in the epilogue that the gospel truth has become Raskolnikov's truth.

Thus, Raskolnikov’s own doubts, internal struggles, disputes with himself, which Dostoevsky constantly leads, were reflected in Raskolnikov’s searches, mental anguish and dreams.

6. Thunderstorm

in his work "Thunderstorm" also touches on the theme of good and evil.

In The Thunderstorm, according to the critic, “the mutual relations of tyranny and voicelessness are brought to the most tragic consequences. Dobrolyubov considers Katerina a force that can resist the bone old world, a new force brought up by this kingdom and its amazing foundation.

The play Thunderstorm contrasts two strong and solid characters of Katerina Kabanova, a merchant's wife, and her mother-in-law Marfa Kabanova, who has long been nicknamed Kabanikha.

The main difference between Katerina and Kabanikha, the difference that separates them into different poles, is that following the traditions of antiquity for Katerina is a spiritual need, and for Kabanikha it is an attempt to find the necessary and only support in anticipation of the crash patriarchal world. She does not think about the essence of the order that she protects, she emasculated from it the meaning, content, leaving only the form, thereby turning it into a dogma. She turned the beautiful essence of ancient traditions and customs into a meaningless ritual, which made them unnatural. It can be said that the Kabanikha in The Thunderstorm (as well as the Wild One) personifies a phenomenon inherent in the crisis state of the patriarchal way of life, and not inherent in it initially. The deadening effect of boar and wild on living life manifests itself with special obviousness precisely when life forms are deprived of their former content and are already preserved as museum relics. Katerina, on the other hand, represents the best qualities of patriarchal life in their pristine purity.

Thus, Katerina belongs to the patriarchal world - all other characters belong to it. The artistic purpose of the latter is to describe the reasons for the doomedness of the patriarchal world as fully and multi-structured as possible. Thus, Varvara learned to deceive and seize the opportunity; she, like Kabanikha, follows the principle: “do whatever you want, if only it was sewn and covered.” It turns out that Katerina in this drama is good, and the rest of the characters are representatives of evil.

7. "White Guard"

The novel tells about the events of the years when Kyiv was abandoned by the German troops, who surrendered the city to the Petliurists. The officers of the former tsarist army were betrayed at the mercy of the enemy.

In the center of the story is the fate of one such officer's family. For the Turbins, a sister and two brothers, the fundamental concept is honor, which they understand as service to the fatherland. But in twists and turns civil war the fatherland ceased to exist, and the usual landmarks disappeared. Turbines are trying to find a place for themselves in the world that is changing before our eyes, to preserve their humanity, the goodness of the soul, not to become embittered. And the heroes succeed.

The novel appeals to Higher powers who are supposed to save people in a time of trouble. Alexei Turbin has a dream in which both the Whites and the Reds go to heaven (Paradise), because both are loved by God. So, in the end, good must win.

The devil, Woland, comes to Moscow with a revision. He watches the Moscow philistines and passes sentence on them. The culmination of the novel is Woland's ball, after which he learns the history of the Master. Woland takes the Master under his protection.

After reading a novel about himself, Yeshua (in the novel he is a representative of the forces of Light) decides that the Master, the creator of the novel, is worthy of Peace. The master and his beloved are dying, and Woland accompanies them to the place where they now have to live. This is a pleasing house, the very embodiment of an idyll. So a person who is tired of the battles of life gets what he aspired to with his soul. Bulgakov hints that in addition to the posthumous state, defined as "Peace", there is another higher state - "Light", but the Master is not worthy of Light. Researchers are still arguing why the Master is denied the Light. In this sense, the statement of I. Zolotussky is interesting: “It is the Master himself who punishes himself for the fact that love has left his soul. The one who leaves the house or whom love leaves does not deserve the Light ... Even Woland is lost in front of this tragedy of fatigue, the tragedy of the desire to leave the world, leave life ”

Bulgakov's novel about the eternal struggle between good and evil. This work is not dedicated to the fate of a certain person, family or even a group of people somehow connected with each other - he considers the fate of all mankind in its historical development. The time interval of almost two millennia, separating the action of the novel about Jesus and Pilate and the novel about the Master, only emphasizes that the problems of good and evil, the freedom of the human spirit, its relationship with society are eternal, enduring problems that are relevant for a person of any era.

Bulgakov's Pilate is not at all shown as a classic villain. The procurator does not want the evil of Yeshua, his cowardice led to cruelty and social injustice. It is fear that makes good, intelligent and brave people a blind weapon of evil will. Cowardice is an extreme expression of inner subordination, lack of freedom of spirit, dependence of a person. It is especially dangerous also because, once reconciled to it, a person is no longer able to get rid of it. Thus, the powerful procurator turns into a miserable, weak-willed creature. On the other hand, the vagabond philosopher is strong in his naive faith in the good, which neither the fear of punishment nor the spectacle of general injustice can take away from him. In the image of Yeshua, Bulgakov embodied the idea of ​​goodness and unchanging faith. Despite everything, Yeshua continues to believe that evil, bad people not in the world. He dies on the cross with this faith.

The clash of opposing forces is most vividly presented at the end of the novel The Master and Margarita, when Woland and his retinue leave Moscow. What do we see? "Light" and "darkness" are on the same level. Woland does not rule the world, but Yeshua does not rule the world either.

8.Conclusion

What is good and what is evil on earth? As you know, two opposing forces cannot but enter into a struggle with each other, therefore the struggle between them is eternal. As long as man exists on earth, there will be good and evil. Through evil we understand what good is. And good, in turn, reveals evil, illuminating the path to truth for a person. There will always be a struggle between good and evil.

Thus, I came to the conclusion that the forces of good and evil in the world of literature are equal in rights. They exist in the world side by side, constantly opposing, arguing with each other. And their struggle is eternal, because there is no person on Earth who has never committed a sin in his life, and there is no such person who has completely lost the ability to do good.

9. List of used literature

1. "Introduction to the temple of the word." Ed. 3rd, 2006

2. Large school encyclopedia, tomg.

3., plays, novels. Comp., intro. and note. . True, 1991

4. "Crime and Punishment": Roman - M .: Olympus; TKO AST, 1996

Good and evil... Eternal philosophical concepts that disturb the minds of people at all times. Arguing about the difference between these concepts, it can be argued that good, of course, brings pleasant experiences to people close to you. Evil, on the contrary, wants to bring suffering. But, as is often the case, it is difficult to distinguish good from evil. “How can this be,” another layman will ask. It turns out it can. The fact is that good is often embarrassed to speak about its motives for an act, and evil about its own. Good even sometimes disguises itself as a little evil, and evil can

Do the same. But it trumpets that it is a great good! Why is this happening? Just a kind person, as a rule, is modest, it is a burden for him to listen to gratitude. Here he says, having done a good deed, that it, they say, did not cost him anything at all. Well, what about evil? Oh, this is evil ... It loves to accept words of gratitude, even for non-existent good deeds.

Indeed, it is difficult to figure out where is light and where is darkness, where is real good and where is evil. But as long as a person lives, he will strive for good and for the taming of evil. You just need to learn to understand the true motives of people's actions and, of course, fight evil.

Russian literature has repeatedly addressed this problem. Valentin Rasputin did not remain indifferent to her. In the story "French Lessons" we see state of mind Lidia Mikhailovna, who really wanted to help her student get rid of constant malnutrition. Her good deed was "disguised": she played with her student for money in "chika" (the so-called game for money). Yes, it is not ethical, not pedagogical. The principal of the school, having learned about this act of Lydia Mikhailovna, dismisses her from work. But after all, the French teacher played with the student and succumbed to the boy, because she wanted him to buy food for himself with the money he won, not to go hungry and continue to study. This is truly a good deed.

I would like to recall another work in which the problem of good and evil is raised. This is the novel by M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". It is here that the author speaks of the inseparability of the existence of good and evil on earth. This is the written truth. In one of the chapters, Matthew Levi calls Woland evil. To which Woland replies: “What would your good do if evil did not exist?” The writer believes that the real evil in people is that they are by nature weak and cowardly. But evil can still be defeated. To do this, it is necessary to approve the principle of justice in society, that is, the exposure of meanness, lies and sycophancy. The standard of goodness in the novel is Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who sees only the good in all people. During interrogation by Pontius Pilate, he talks about how he is ready to bear any suffering for faith and goodness, and also about his intention to expose evil in all its manifestations. The hero does not give up his ideas even in the face of death. " Evil people not in the world, there are only unhappy people,” he says to Pontius Pilate.

Essays on topics:

1. What are good and evil? And why does a person today bring others more evil than good? Above these...
2. There is the concept of a good deed, there is the concept of mutual assistance, but there is just goodness and, as they say in some song, it's about happiness, ...

The eternal theme for every person, the most relevant in our time - "good and evil" - is very clearly expressed in Gogol's work "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka". We already meet this topic on the first pages of the story “May Night, or the Drowned Woman” - the most beautiful and poetic. The action in the story takes place in the evening, at dusk, between sleep and reality, on the verge of the real and the fantastic. The nature surrounding the heroes is amazing, the feelings experienced by them are beautiful and reverent. However, in the beautiful landscape there is something that breaks this harmony, disturbs Galya, who feels the presence of evil forces very close by, what is it? A wild evil has happened here, an evil from which even the house has changed outwardly.

The father, under the influence of his stepmother, drove his own daughter out of the house, pushed her to commit suicide.

But evil is not only in terrible betrayal. It turns out that Levko has a terrible rival. His own father. A terrible, vicious man who, being the Head, pours cold water on people in the cold. Levko cannot get his father's consent to marry Galya. A miracle comes to his aid: pannochka, a drowned woman, promises any reward if Levko helps get rid of the witch.

Pannochka turns to Levko for help, as he is kind, sympathetic to someone else's misfortune, with heartfelt emotion he listens to the sad story of pannochka.

Levko found the witch. He recognized her because "something black could be seen inside her, while the others shone." And now, in our time, these expressions are alive with us: “black man”, “black inside”, “black thoughts, deeds”.

When the witch rushes at the girl, her face sparkles with malicious joy, malevolence. And no matter how evil is disguised, a kind, pure-hearted person is able to feel it, to recognize it.

The idea of ​​the devil as the personified embodiment of the evil principle has been worrying the minds of people since time immemorial. It is reflected in many areas of human existence: in art, religion, superstition, and so on. This topic also has a long tradition in literature. The image of Lucifer - a fallen, but not repentant angel of light - as if by magical power attracts an irrepressible writer's fantasy, each time opening from a new side.

For example, Lermontov's Demon is a humane and sublime image. It causes not horror and disgust, but sympathy and regret.

Lermontov's demon is the embodiment of absolute loneliness. However, he did not achieve it himself, unlimited freedom. On the contrary, he is lonely involuntarily, he suffers from his heavy, like a curse, loneliness and is full of longing for spiritual intimacy. Cast down from heaven and declared an enemy of the celestials, he could not become his own in the underworld and did not get close to people.

The demon is, as it were, on the verge of different worlds, and therefore Tamara represents him as follows:

It wasn't an angel

Her divine guardian:

Wreath of rainbow rays

Did not decorate his curls.

It was not a hell of a terrible spirit,

Vicious Martyr - oh no!

It looked like a clear evening:

Neither day nor night - neither darkness nor light!

The demon yearns for harmony, but it is inaccessible to him, and not because in his soul pride struggles with the desire for reconciliation. In the understanding of Lermontov, harmony is generally inaccessible: for the world is initially split and exists in the form of incompatible opposites. Even ancient myth testifies to this: at the creation of the world, light and darkness, heaven and earth, firmament and water, angels and demons were separated and opposed.

The demon suffers from contradictions tearing everything around him. They are reflected in his soul. He is omnipotent - almost like God, but both of them are unable to reconcile good and evil, love and hate, light and darkness, lies and truth.

The demon yearns for justice, but it is also inaccessible to him: a world based on the struggle of opposites cannot be fair. The statement of justice for one side always turns out to be injustice from the point of view of the other side. In this disunity, which gives rise to bitterness and all other evils, lies a universal tragedy. Such a Demon is not like its literary predecessors in Byron, Pushkin, Milton, Goethe.

The image of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust is complex and multifaceted. This is Satan, an image from a folk legend. Goethe gave him the features of a concrete living individuality. Before us is a cynic and a skeptic, a witty creature, but devoid of everything holy, despising man and humanity. Speaking as a concrete person, Mephistopheles is at the same time a complex symbol. In social terms, Mephistopheles acts as the embodiment of an evil, misanthropic principle.

However, Mephistopheles is not only a social symbol, but also a philosophical one. Mephistopheles is the embodiment of negation. He says about himself: "I deny everything - And this is my essence."

The image of Mephistopheles must be considered in inseparable unity with Faust. If Faust is the embodiment of the creative forces of mankind, then Mephistopheles is a symbol of that destructive force, that destructive criticism that makes you go forward, learn and create.

In the "Unified Physical Theory" by Sergei Belykh (Miass, 1992), one can find words about this: "Good is static, peace is a potential component of energy.

Evil is movement, dynamics is the kinetic component of energy.”

The Lord defines the function of Mephistopheles in this way in the Prologue in Heaven:

Weak man: submissive to destiny,

He is glad to seek peace, because

I will give him a restless companion:

Like a demon, teasing him, let him excite him to action.

Commenting on the “Prologue in Heaven”, N. G. Chernyshevsky wrote in his notes to “Faust”: “Negations lead only to new, purer and truer convictions ... With denial, skepticism, the mind is not hostile, on the contrary, skepticism serves its goals ... "

Thus, denial is only one of the turns of progressive development.

Negation, "evil", of which Mephistopheles is the embodiment, becomes the impetus for a movement directed

Against evil.

I am part of that force

that always wants evil

and forever does good -

This is what Mephistopheles said about himself. And these words were taken by M. A. Bulgakov as an epigraph to his novel The Master and Margarita.

With the novel The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov tells the reader about the meaning and timeless values.

In explaining the incredible cruelty of the procurator Pilate towards Yeshua, Bulgakov follows Gogol.

The dispute between the Roman procurator of Judea and the wandering philosopher about whether there will be a realm of truth or not sometimes reveals, if not equality, then some kind of intellectual similarity between the executioner and the victim. At times it even seems that the first one will not commit a crime against a defenseless stubborn one.

The image of Pilate demonstrates the struggle of the individual. In a person, principles collide: personal will and the power of circumstances.

Yeshua spiritually overcame the latter. Pilate was not given this. Yeshua is executed.

But the author wanted to proclaim: the victory of evil over good cannot be the end result of social and moral confrontation. This, according to Bulgakov, is not accepted by human nature itself, should not be allowed by the entire course of civilization.

The prerequisites for such a belief were, the author is convinced, the actions of the Roman procurator himself. After all, it was he, who condemned the unfortunate criminal to death, who ordered the secret murder of Judas, who had betrayed Yeshua:

In the satanic, the human is hidden and, albeit cowardly, retribution for betrayal is being committed.

Now, after many centuries, the carriers of diabolical evil, in order to finally atone for their guilt before the eternal wanderers and spiritual ascetics, who always went to the stake for their ideas, are obliged to become creators of good, arbiters of justice.

The evil spreading in the world has acquired such a scale, Bulgakov wants to say, that Satan himself is forced to intervene, because there is no other force capable of doing this. This is how Woland appears in The Master and Margarita. It is to Woland that the author will give the right to execute or pardon. Everything bad in that Moscow bustle of officials and elementary townsfolk experiences the crushing blows of Woland.

Woland is evil, a shadow. Yeshua is good, light. In the novel, there is a constant opposition of light and shadow. Even the sun and moon become almost participants in the events ..

The sun - a symbol of life, joy, true light - accompanies Yeshua, and the moon - a fantastic world of shadows, mysteries and ghostly - the kingdom of Woland and his guests.

Bulgakov depicts the power of light through the power of darkness. And vice versa, Woland, as the prince of darkness, can feel his strength only when there is at least some light that needs to be fought, although he himself admits that light, as a symbol of goodness, has one indisputable advantage - creative power.

Bulgakov depicts light through Yeshua. Yeshua Bulgakov is not quite the gospel Jesus. He's just a wandering philosopher, a little weird and not at all evil.

"Se is a man!" Not God, not in a divine halo, but simply a man, but what a man!

All his true divine dignity is within him, in his soul.

Levi Matthew does not see a single flaw in Yeshua, therefore he is not even able to retell simple words his Teacher. His misfortune is that he did not understand that light cannot be described.

Matthew Levi cannot object to Woland’s words: “Would you be so kind to think about the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are obtained from objects and people? Don't you want to skin every living thing because of your fantasy to enjoy the full light? You are stupid". Yeshua would have answered something like this: “To have shadows, sir, we need not only objects and people. First of all, we need a light that shines even in the darkness.”

And here I recall Prishvin’s story “Light and Shadow” (the writer’s diary): “If flowers, a tree rise to light everywhere, then a person, from the same biological point of view, especially strives up, towards the light, and, of course, he is this very movement of his up, towards the light calls progress ...

Light comes from the Sun, shadow from the earth, and life generated by light and shadow takes place in the usual struggle between these two principles: light and shadow.

The sun, rising and leaving, approaching and receding, determines our order on earth: our place and our time. And all the beauty on earth, the distribution of light and shadow, lines and colors, sound, the outlines of the sky and the horizon - everything, everything is a phenomenon of this order. But: where are the boundaries of the solar order and the human?

Forests, fields, water with their vapors and all life on earth strives for light, but if there were no shadow, there could not be life on earth, everything would burn out in sunlight ... We live thanks to the shadows, but we do not thank the shadow and we call everything bad the shadow side of life, and all the best: reason, goodness, beauty - the bright side.

Everything strives for light, but if there were light for everyone at once, there would be no life: clouds cover the sunlight with their shadow, and people cover each other with their shadow, it is from ourselves, we protect our children from overwhelming light with it.

We are warm or cold - what does the Sun care about us, it fries and fries, regardless of life, but life is arranged in such a way that all living things are drawn to the light.

If there were no light, everything would be plunged into night.”

The necessity of evil in the world is equal to the physical law of light and shadows, but just as the source of light is outside, and only opaque objects cast shadows, so evil exists in the world only due to the presence in it of “opaque souls” that do not let the divine light. Good and evil did not exist in the primordial world, good and evil appeared later. What we call good and evil is the result of the imperfection of consciousness. Evil began to appear in the world when a heart appeared capable of feeling evil, that which is evil in essence. At the moment when the heart admits for the first time that there is evil, evil is born in this heart, and two principles begin to fight in it.

“A person is given the task of finding the true measure in himself, therefore, among “yes” and “no”, among “good” and “evil”, he fights with a shadow. Evil inclination - evil thoughts, deceitful deeds, unrighteous words, hunting, war. Just as for an individual the absence of peace of mind is a source of anxiety and many misfortunes, so for an entire people the absence of virtues leads to famine, to wars, to world plagues, fires and all sorts of disasters. With his thoughts, feelings and actions, a person transforms the world, makes it heaven or hell, depending on its inner level" (Yu. Terapiano. "Mazdeism").

In addition to the struggle of light and shadow, another important problem is considered in the novel "The Master and Margarita" - the problem of man and faith.

The word "faith" is heard repeatedly in the novel, not only in the usual context of Pontius Pilate's question to Yeshua Ha-Nozri: "... do you believe in any gods?" “There is only one God,” answered Yeshua, “I believe in him,” but also in a much broader sense: “To each will be given according to his faith.”

In essence, faith in the last, broader sense, as the greatest moral value, the ideal, the meaning of life, is one of the touchstones on which the moral level of any of the characters is tested. Belief in the omnipotence of money, the desire to grab more by any means - this is a kind of credo of Barefoot, the barman. Faith in love is the meaning of Margarita's life. Faith in kindness is the main defining quality of Yeshua.

It is terrible to lose faith, just as the Master loses faith in his talent, in his brilliantly guessed novel. It is terrible not to have this faith, which is typical, for example, of Ivan Bezdomny.

For believing in imaginary values, for inability and mental laziness to find one's faith, a person is punished, as in Bulgakov's novel, characters are punished with illness, fear, pangs of conscience.

But it is quite scary when a person consciously gives himself to the service of imaginary values, realizing their falsity.

In the history of Russian literature, A.P. Chekhov has firmly established the reputation of a writer, if not completely atheistic, then at least indifferent to matters of faith. It's a delusion. He could not be indifferent to religious truth. Brought up in strict religious rules, Chekhov in his youth tried to gain freedom and independence from what was arbitrarily imposed on him earlier. He also knew, like many others, doubts, and those statements of his that express these doubts were later absolutized by those who wrote about him. Any, even not quite definite, statement was interpreted in a completely in a certain sense. With Chekhov, it was all the more simple to do this because he clearly expressed his doubts, but he was in no hurry to present the results of his thoughts, intense spiritual search to the judgment of the people.

Bulgakov was the first to point out global importance ideas" and the writer's artistic thinking: "In terms of the strength of his religious quest, Chekhov leaves behind even Tolstoy, approaching Dostoevsky, who has no equal here."

Chekhov is unique in his work in that he searched for truth, God, the soul, the meaning of life, exploring not the lofty manifestations of the human spirit, but moral weaknesses, falls, impotence of the individual, that is, he set himself complex artistic tasks. “Chekhov was close to the cornerstone idea of ​​Christian morality, which is the true ethical foundation of all democracy, “that every living soul, every human existence is an independent, unchanging, absolute value that cannot and should not be considered as a means, but which has the right to charity of human attention."

But such a position, such a formulation of the question requires from a person extreme religious tension, because it carries a danger that is tragic for the spirit - the danger of falling into hopelessness of pessimistic disappointment in many life values.

Only faith, true faith, which is subjected to a serious test during Chekhov's staging of the "mystery about man", can save a person from hopelessness and despondency - but otherwise it will not reveal the truth of faith itself. The author also forces the reader to approach the line beyond which boundless pessimism reigns, impudence is powerful "in the decaying lowlands and swamps of the human spirit." In a small work, The Tale of a Senior Gardener, Chekhov argues that the spiritual level on which faith is affirmed is invariably higher than the level of rational, logical arguments on which unbelief resides.

Let's look at the content of the story. In a certain town there lived a righteous doctor who devoted his life without a trace to serving people. Once he was. found murdered, and the evidence undeniably denounced the "famous for his depraved life" varmint, who, however, denied all charges, although he could not provide convincing evidence of his innocence. And at the trial, when the chief judge was about to announce the death sentence, he unexpectedly for everyone and for himself shouted: “No! If I judge incorrectly, then let God punish me, but I swear, he is not to blame! I do not admit the thought that there could be a person who would dare to kill our friend, the doctor! Man cannot fall so deep! “Yes, there is no such person,” the other judges agreed. - No! the crowd responded. - Let him go!

The trial of the murderer is a test not only for the inhabitants of the town, but also for the reader: what will they believe - "facts" or a person who denies these facts?

Life often requires us to make a similar choice, and our fate and the fate of other people sometimes depend on such a choice.

This choice is always a test: will a person retain faith in people, and therefore in himself, and in the meaning of his life.

The preservation of faith is affirmed by Chekhov as the highest value in comparison with the desire for revenge. In the story, the inhabitants of the town preferred faith in man. And God, for such faith in man, forgave the sins of all the inhabitants of the town. He rejoices when they believe that a person is His image and likeness, and grieves when they forget about human dignity people are judged worse than dogs.

It is easy to see that the story does not deny the existence of God. Faith in man becomes for Chekhov a manifestation of faith in God. “Judge for yourselves, gentlemen: if judges and juries believe more in a person than in evidence, physical evidence and speeches, then isn’t this faith in a person in itself higher than all worldly considerations? It is not difficult to believe in God. The inquisitors, Biron, and Arakcheev also believed in him. No, you believe in a person! This faith is accessible only to those few who understand and feel Christ.” Chekhov recalls the inseparable unity of Christ's commandment: love for God and man. As mentioned earlier, Dostoevsky has no equal in the power of religious quest.

The way to achieve true happiness in Dostoevsky is to join the universal feeling of love and equality. Here his views merge with Christian teaching. But Dostoevsky's religiosity went far beyond the framework of church dogma. The Christian ideal of the writer was the embodiment of the dream of freedom, the harmony of human relations. And when Dostoevsky said: “Humble yourself, proud man!” - he did not mean humility as such, but the need for refusal

each from the selfish temptations of personality, cruelty and aggressiveness.

The work that brought the writer worldwide fame, in which Dostoevsky calls for overcoming selfishness, for humility, for Christian love for one's neighbor, for purifying suffering, is the novel Crime and Punishment.

Dostoevsky believes that only through suffering can humanity be saved from filth and get out of the moral impasse, only this path can lead it to happiness.

The focus of many researchers studying "Crime and Punishment" is the question of the motives of Raskolnikov's crime. What pushed Raskolnikov to this crime? He sees how ugly Petersburg is with its streets, how ugly the eternally drunk people are, how ugly the old pawnbroker is. All this disgrace repels the intelligent and handsome Raskolnikov and evokes in his soul "a feeling of the deepest disgust and malicious contempt." From these feelings, the “ugly dream” is born. Here Dostoevsky with extraordinary power shows the duality of the human soul, shows how in the human soul there is a struggle between good and evil, love and hatred, high and low, faith and unbelief.

The call "Humble yourself, proud man!" as well as possible suits Katerina Ivanovna. Pushing Sonya into the street, she actually acts according to Raskolnikov's theory. She, like Raskolnikov, rebels not only against people, but also against God. Only by pity and compassion could Katerina Ivanovna save Marmeladov, and then he would have saved her and the children.

Unlike Katerina Ivanovna and Raskolnikov, Sonya has no pride at all, but only meekness and humility. Sonya suffered a lot. “Suffering… is a great thing. There is an idea in suffering, ”says Porfiry Petrovich. The idea of ​​purifying suffering is persistently instilled in Raskolnikov by Sonya Marmeladova, who herself meekly carries her cross. "Suffering to accept and redeem yourself with it, that's what you need," she says.

In the finale, Raskolnikov throws himself at Sonya's feet: the man has come to terms with himself, casting aside selfish daring and passions. Dostoevsky says that Raskolnikov is waiting for a "gradual rebirth", a return to people, to life. And Sonya's faith helped Raskolnikov. Sonya did not become embittered, did not harden under the blows of an unjust fate. She kept faith in God, in happiness, love for people, helping others.

The question of God, man and faith is even more touched upon in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. In The Brothers Karamazov, the writer sums up his many years of searching, reflections on man, the fate of his homeland and all of humanity.

Dostoevsky finds truth and consolation in religion. Christ for him is the highest criterion of morality.

Mitya Karamazov was innocent of the murder of his father, despite all the obvious facts and irrefutable evidence. But here the judges, unlike Chekhov's, preferred to believe the facts. Their disbelief in man forced the judges to find Mitya guilty.

The central issue of the novel is the question of the degeneration of the individual, cut off from the people and labor, violating the principles of philanthropy, goodness, and conscience.

For Dostoevsky, moral criteria and the laws of conscience are the basis of the foundations of human behavior. The loss of moral principles or forgetfulness of conscience is the highest misfortune, it entails the dehumanization of a person, it dries up an individual human personality, it leads to chaos and destruction of the life of society. If there is no criterion of good and evil, then everything is permitted, as Ivan Karamazov says. Ivan Karamazov subjects faith, that Christian faith, faith not just in some superpowerful being, but also spiritual confidence that everything done by the Creator is the highest truth and justice and is done only for the good of man. “The Lord is righteous, my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him” (Ps. 91; 16). He is a stronghold; his works are perfect, and all his ways are righteous. God is faithful, and there is no unrighteousness in him. He is righteous and true...

Many people broke down on the question: “How can God exist if there is so much injustice and untruth in the world?” How many people come to the logical conclusion: "If so, then either God does not exist, or He is not omnipotent." It was along this knurled track that the “rebellious” mind of Ivan Karamazov moved.

His rebellion boils down to a denial of the harmony of God's world, for he denies the Creator justice, thus showing his disbelief: “I am convinced that suffering will heal and be smoothed out, that all the offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear, like a pitiful mirage, like a vile invention of a weak and small , like an atom of the human Euclidean mind, that, finally, in the world finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will happen and appear that it will be enough for all hearts, to drown all indignations, to atone for all the villains of people, all the blood they shed, enough to make it possible not only to forgive, but also to justify everything that happened to people - let it all be and appear, but I don’t accept this and don’t want to accept it! »

A person has no right to withdraw into himself, to live only for himself. A person has no right to pass by the misfortune that reigns in the world. A person is responsible not only for his actions, but also for all the evil that is happening in the world. Mutual responsibility of each to all and all to each.

Each person seeks and finds faith, truth and meaning of life, understanding of the “eternal” questions of being, if he is guided by his own conscience. From individual faiths, a common faith, the ideal of society, of time is formed!

And unbelief becomes the cause of all troubles and crimes committed in the world.

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Literature project at the interim assessment in the 2015-2016 academic year GOOD AND EVIL IN LITERATURE Completed by: Ovchukhova Natalia, student of grade 5a, MBOU "School No. 2" Teacher Shuvakina O.A., teacher of Russian language and literature

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Relevance of the project The theme of good and evil is an eternal problem that worries and will always worry humanity

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The purpose of the research project 1. To get acquainted with the works of literature, where there is good and evil, to identify the relevance of this topic. 2. Find out if there is a confrontation between good and evil in all works of Russian literature, and who wins in this fight? 3. Justify the significance of the works of writers about good and evil.

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Tasks: 1. To study and analyze works containing the problem of good and evil. 2. Examine a number of works of literature containing the problem of good and evil. 3. Conduct a classification of works in order to determine the winners in the confrontation. 4. To identify the level of interest among my peers and the attitude of adults to works in which there is a confrontation between good and evil. 5. Systematize and summarize the results.

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Hypothesis: Suppose that there would be no evil in the world. Then life would not be interesting. Evil always accompanies good, and the struggle between them is nothing but life. Fiction is a reflection of life, which means that in every work there is a place for the struggle between good and evil, and it is probably good or, conversely, evil that wins.

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Object of study: Oral folk art and literary creativity of writers Subject of study: Fairy tales, legends and works of literature

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Research methods: 1. The study of oral folk art And literary creativity writers. 2. Analysis of works and fairy tales. 3. Survey and questioning. 4. Comparison and classification of works. 5. Generalization and systematization of the obtained results.

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Research questions: Good and evil? Can there be good without evil or evil without good? How does it happen in life: good or evil wins?

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The Legend of Good and Evil Long ago, there lived a beautiful bird. Near her nest were the houses of people. Every day the bird fulfilled their cherished desires. But once happy life people and birds - the sorceress is over. Since an evil and terrible dragon flew into these places. He was very hungry, and his first prey was tapa the phoenix bird. Having eaten the bird, the dragon did not satisfy his hunger and began to eat people. And then there was a great division of people into two camps. Some people, not wanting to be eaten, went over to the side of the dragon and became cannibals themselves, while the other part of the people were constantly looking for a safe haven, suffering from the oppression of a cruel monster. Finally, the dragon, having had his fill, flew off to his gloomy kingdom, and people began to inhabit the entire territory of our planet. They did not stay under the same roof, because they could not live without a good bird, in addition, they constantly quarreled. Thus, good and evil appeared in the world.

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"Vasilisa the beautiful" Good prevailed over evil. The stepmother and her daughters turned into coal, and Vasilisa began to live happily ever after with the prince in contentment and happiness.

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"The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs" A.S. Pushkin Tale of A.S. Pushkin relies on the traditional fairy tale story about an evil stepmother and a beautiful kind stepdaughter. But Pushkin managed to fill the traditional plot with a special depth, permeated with the light of goodness. Like everything Pushkin's, this fairy tale is like a precious stone, sparkling with thousands of facets of meaning, striking us with the multicoloredness of the word and the clear, even radiance emanating from the author - not blinding, but enlightening our unseeing eyes and spiritually sleeping hearts.

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Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Snow Queen» The forces of good are personified, first of all, by Gerda, a brave girl who opposed the Snow Queen herself, powerful and invincible. No power could resist the cold look, and even more so, the kiss of the sorceress. But the kindness and courage of Gerda attracts both people and animals to her side.

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Analysis of the Legends of the "GLOBAL FLOOD" When people settled the earth, they first learned to sow bread, and then began to grow grapes and make wine from it. And when they drank wine, they became stupid and evil, offended the weak, praised themselves and deceived each other. God looked at the people, and he was very bitter. And people are getting worse and worse every year. And God was so angry that he decided to destroy all the people and all the animals that he had created.

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Analysis works of art Gerasim loved Mumu very much, he treated her like a mother to her child, and the fact that he decided to take her life speaks of the tremendous strength of the will of the hero. If she was destined to die, then it would be better for him to do it himself. Only a very courageous person can make such a decision. And the unauthorized departure of Gerasim from the city is a protest of a disenfranchised person, against humiliation. What happened to Gerasim forever deprived him of the opportunity to be happy, forever fenced him off from people. The story of I. S. Turgenev "Mumu"

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V. Kataev "Flower-Semitsvetik" This good fairy tale Valentina Kataeva teaches us: when desires appear, first think about whether what you wished now is necessary, whether the fulfillment of your desire will bring trouble, inconvenience to others. And most importantly, you must try to fulfill your desires yourself. And it is not at all necessary to have the petals of a flower - a seven-flower in order to perform reasonable actions. Enough to have kind heart to come to the aid of others in difficult times and not wait to be asked about it.

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G. Troepolsky "White Bim Black Ear" The book tells about a dog that went in search of its owner, who ended up in the hospital. As a result, she became homeless. The story and the film show the characters who reacted differently to the misfortune of the dog. Having endured many humiliations and beatings, Bim ended up in a shelter, where he died.

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The tale of K. G. Paustovsky “Warm Bread” Filka corrected his mistake and by this he proved that he was a strong and courageous person, he had both mental and physical strength to correct the evil deed that he had done, which means that he approached to the beautiful. He walked this ladder from the first to the fourth rung and thus atoned for his guilt.

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CONCLUSION: At the heart of all studied works fiction lies the idea of ​​a struggle between good and evil. In the vast majority of works, the winner in this confrontation is evil. The triumph of good is observed only in the works of oral folk art - fairy tales. WORKS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE IMAGES PERFORMING GOOD IMAGES PERFORMING EVIL THE TRIUMPH OF GOOD THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL FAIRY TALES- 3 3 3 3 0 LEGENDS - 1 1 1 0 1 WORKS OF WRITERS - 4 4 4 0 4

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Table: Comparative characteristics themes of good and evil in the works of different times. № П/П NAME OF WORKS GOOD EVIL 1 Russian folk tale"Vasilisa the Beautiful" + + 2 Author's fairy tale. A.S. Pushkin "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs" + + 3 Classical Russian literature of the 19th century. I.S. Turgenev "Mumu" + + 4 Modern Russian literature of the 20th century. 1 KG. Paustovsky "Warm Bread" 2.V.Kataev "Flower-Semitsvetik" 3.G.Troepolsky "White Bim black ear» + + + + + + 5 Legend. "Global Flood" + + 6 Foreign literature. H.K.Andersen "The Snow Queen" + +

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Plan.

Introduction

1. The concept of man in Renaissance culture

2. The problem of evil in man in the Renaissance

3. Shakespeare's views on the world and man

3.1 Good – evil (“Macbeth”, “King Lear”, “Hamlet”)

3.2 Evil

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

By the end of the XV - beginning of the XVI century. in most countries of Western Europe there is a rapid destruction of the foundations of feudal society, its foundations and traditions. The initial period of this process is characterized by a bright flowering new culture. This period is commonly referred to as the Renaissance. This name originally meant the revival of the ancient heritage, which was forgotten in the Middle Ages. In the XV - XVI centuries. interest in it is growing rapidly, it is being intensively studied, the works ancient art and the sciences are looked upon as models. This interest appeared already in Dante, testifying to the sprouts of a new culture. However, the later, figurative meaning of the same name is more important: the revival (after a long medieval stagnation) of human creative activity in a wide variety of fields - in economics and technology, in political life, in the study of the globe and nature, in poetry and art. All this vigorous activity was generated by the rapid growth of productive forces and the struggle against feudal relations, which became a brake on their development.

The revolution in the economy associated with the great geographical discoveries, the development of navigation, trade, the emergence of large-scale industry cause the growth of a new culture. Thanks to overseas travels, a person's horizons expand, broad cultural ties are established. The printing press is spreading. Acquaintance with the globe, and then the discovery by Copernicus of the law of rotation of the Earth, destroys the entire system of scholastic ideas about the world. There is an interest in the knowledge of nature, the sprouts of a scientific worldview appear.

1. The concept of man in Renaissance culture

A feature of the Renaissance is the development of the human personality, the powerful growth of human activity, initiative and talent. Engels characterizes the Renaissance as an era that “needed titans and which gave birth to titans in terms of strength of thought, passion and character, in versatility and scholarship ... Then there was almost not a single major person who would not make long journeys, would not speak four or five languages, would not shine in several areas of creativity.”

Erwin Panovsky, the largest art critic of the 20th century, speaks of the great difficulties in the periodization of the Renaissance and the definition of this period. Only briefly mentioning the various eccentric concepts of the Renaissance, E. Panovsky considers it indisputable only that the Renaissance was very closely connected with the Middle Ages, that it was faithful to the heritage of classical antiquity, that before the “great” Medici age there were several other powerful, although not such significant cultural revivals. Already one can argue about how great the role of Italy in the Renaissance really was, just as one can argue about the inclusion of the 14th century in Italy and the 15th in the northern countries within the framework of the Renaissance. But, according to E. Panovsky, it is impossible, apparently, to consider that there was nothing specific in the Renaissance, that this is just one of a number of phenomena that have been many in Europe over the past thousand years, and therefore we need to talk only about the next renaissance and capitalize it.

In fact, according to E. Panovsky, the fact that the Renaissance really was a noticeable historical threshold is evidenced by the fact that after it it became possible to talk about the Middle Ages.

The principle of the free development of the human personality becomes the ideological banner of the Renaissance. The medieval morality of obedience and asceticism becomes incompatible with the progressive development of society. In ideological life, a new direction is becoming stronger and stronger - humanism (from the Latin word humanus - human). At first, scientists who were engaged in human, that is, non-theological, sciences were called humanists. Subsequently, this word began to be understood as a worldview that proclaims the highest value of a person, affirming his right to happiness and harmonious development.

Man, his earthly life, his struggle for happiness becomes the main content of art.

Aleksey Fedorovich Losev has his own view of the free human individuality: “We should not be surprised by the fact,” he writes in his work “Early Renaissance”, “that in the early Renaissance free human individuality comes to the fore and that this individuality is usually expressed here very strongly. Already in the aesthetics of the proto-Renaissance, in the bosom of Catholic orthodoxy, we noted the gradual and steady growth of philosophical and aesthetic thinking in the direction of individual characteristics. The authors of that time, still not breaking with their former worldview - and this already applies to Thomas - are trying to formulate a free individuality for the time being only in the field of the doctrine of form, which is maximally saturated and even considered as an object of independent aesthetic admiration. In the 13th century, all this was still, however, merged with other philosophical and artistic styles. Now, since the beginning of the 15th century, a strong and free human individuality stands out very noticeably and already on a fairly solid foundation. And this kind of free human individuality will forever remain characteristic of the Renaissance, although it will be understood differently everywhere, its strength will be interpreted very whimsically, up to complete impotence, and even its independent substantial existence will also always be unstable.

Only one circumstance must be borne in mind so that all such discussions about the individualism of the Renaissance do not turn into a general phrase and do not become that banal characteristic that historians use to describe the most diverse historical epochs. This circumstance lies in the fact that the human personality that comes to the fore is necessarily conceived physically, bodily, volumetric and three-dimensional. This is important, first of all, for characterizing the art of the Renaissance itself, which brings the self-sufficing aesthetic form of Thomas Aquinas to a relief represented and depicted body. But this bodily-relief individuality, this personal-material human subjectivity, this immanent-subjective given to a person of everything around him, up to the very last secrets, orients a person and all his life well-being completely anew. A person, as it were, is renewed, younger, and begins to find the happiness of his life in carelessness, in light and aesthetic self-satisfaction, in a beautiful life, about bottomless depths and about tragic tension, which Renaissance people often do not even want to even think about. True, the revivalists begin to understand the frivolous significance of such carelessness very early, and, as we will see below, the representatives of the Italian High Renaissance, despite this self-satisfaction of life, despite this arithmetically symmetrical proportionality and harmony of free life, also feel the boundaries of such personal- material aesthetics. However, let us first look and listen to this renewal of the human personality, to this rejuvenation of it, which is known to everyone at least from the first scenes of Goethe's Faust. This is how the French historian of literature and culture F. Monnier characterizes this revivalist individualism: “Until recently, in the Middle Ages, it was forbidden, as idolatry, to build statues for contemporaries; the quattrocento does nothing else but erects altars in honor of the reborn man, whom Alberti endows with ideal dimensions and who appears to Castiglione in his elegance "a being not born, but skillfully sculpted by the own hands of some god." The beauty of man, the will of man, the superiority of man, the infinite possibility of man are not opinions, but dogmas. The century opens with the treatises of the old theologian Gianozzo Manetti “On the Dignity and Superiority of Man” and ends with the treatise “On the Dignity of Man” by the young prince Pico della Mirandola, who hoped to present Europe with a living proof of this dignity by his learning, his youth and his beauty. Pope Paul II, according to Platina, would like to be called as high priest "a handsome man" - "il formoso". Merchant Ruchelai thanks God for creating him as a man and not an animal. Tyrannos Bentivoglio declares in an inscription on the tower of his palace that he is a man "to whom, according to his merits and thanks to happiness, all desired blessings are given." “Man,” says Leon Battista Alberti, “can extract from himself whatever he wants.” “The nature of our spirit is all-encompassing,” says Matteo Palmieri. “We are born with the condition,” says Pico della Mirandola, “that we become what we want to be.”

If we take seriously such features of the Renaissance teaching about man, then we can say that in those days there was some direct deification of man. In this work, we prefer to use the more understandable term “absolutization” of the human personality with all its material corporeality. We find the same in F. Monnier: “Yes, it is true: man is God. If the Quattrocento, completely oblivious of original sin, had a religion, it was the religion of man. And this wickedness finds its justification in the fact that the modern era has created so many beautiful specimens of the human race, so many completely healthy beings, so many universal geniuses ... ".

In subsequent centuries there will be philosophers who will deduce the existence of man from the thought of man, from the idea of ​​man, from the philosophy of man. All this is completely alien to the Renaissance, which, at least in the beginning, proceeds simply from man as such, from his material existence. In later centuries, theories will arise that will bring morality to the fore and will deduce the essence of man from his moral essence. For a true revivalist, any moralism of this kind would be nothing but ridiculous. But from what, then, did the renaissance man proceed from, and on what did he try to justify himself? As we have already said, this basis was for him only a personal-material basis. But you can say otherwise. This was life for him; and since such a life was conceived in a personal-material way, it was free from all heavy and difficult commandments, was based on cheerful, if not downright frivolous carelessness, on a free and serene orientation. Let's read some more reasoning from Monnier: “Life is something mysterious that was scourged in the Middle Ages, now it is in full swing, it comes into full force, blossoms and bears fruit. Artists of the past painted "triumphs of death" on the walls of cemeteries; artist Lorenzo Costa paints on the walls of the Church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna "The Triumph of Life". “Where there is life,” says Pico della Mirandola, “there is a soul; where there is a soul, there is a mind.”

However, it is worth citing those reasonings from Monnier that specifically depict the freedom and expanse that at least the Italian revivalists created for themselves and around them. This was, of course, a very difficult illusion, from which the revivalists themselves suffered a lot, in which they repented and from which they wanted to move away, but this departure was also given to them with great difficulty and, one might say, almost never completely succeeded. “A person lives a full and wide life, with all the pores and all the senses, without haste and without nervousness, without fatigue and without grief. He gets up in the morning with pleasure, breathes in the aroma of the sky and plants with pleasure, sits on a horse with pleasure, works with a candle with pleasure, develops his limbs with pleasure, breathes, exists in the world. It seems as if he absorbs twice the amount of oxygen with each breath. Far from being repugnant to himself, he lives at peace with his environment and with himself. He believes that "there is no greater bliss on earth than to live happily." He drives away grief as a dishonor and as something not worthy of attention, using against his own suffering and against the suffering of others every kind of easy means that his strength will allow him. Remembering something pleasant, sleeping, loving, singing, playing an instrument, dancing, playing nuts, fishing with a rod, like Augustus, throwing pebbles so that they jump on the water, like Scipio did - all this is the content of one of the recipes that Leon Battista Alberti has for maintaining peace of mind. He does not suffer in the least from disunity with people; instead of revealing to him his weakness, his position gives him an opportunity to show new energy. He does not feel any sad mood because he is the only one, original, different from other beings. He is not restless, not agitated, not disorderly. In a rich and renewed organism, the blood flows without delay and without diminishing, the muscles play freely, the forces and abilities are balanced. “Action and desire are at their best; strength in harmony with will; the pulse is even, the movements are calm; efforts are made willingly, and attention is so easily aroused, so long retained, and so responsive to everything that one might say, that it is a virgin force that has never been used before.

This element of rejuvenation, which has never been repeated in the life of European mankind, the element of carefree and free orientation amid all the tragedies of life, this brightness, fullness and a certain kind of recklessness of early youth, we must take into account when characterizing the Renaissance in the first place. Immediately, however, historical justice forces us to admit that the early and irresponsible youth of the Renaissance ended rather quickly. Very soon it became clear that it was completely impossible to base oneself only on such a carefree, free personal and material basis of life. It can be said that the entire Renaissance seems to us a struggle between this carefree and free feeling of youth, on the one hand, and the constant desire to base the norms of human behavior on something else, much more solid, and not just on one isolated and illusory-free human personality. The more the Renaissance matured, the more intensively the tragedy of this illusory-free human personality was experienced.

In the struggle against the ecclesiastical worldview, humanists rely on examples of ancient literature and art. In the ancient heritage, humanists are attracted by cheerfulness, love for a person. In the statues of the ancient gods, they see the image of a beautiful, properly built and spiritualized person, very close to their ideals. Antique literature captivates humanists with a diverse display of human feelings, interests and activities. The revival of antiquity helps their struggle.

The humanistic literature of the Renaissance is entirely devoted to the theme of man and the struggle against everything that hinders his free development and happiness. Love as a wonderful human feeling becomes one of the great themes of literature. Humanists castigate the prejudices of class inequality in marriage.

The humanists of the Renaissance, for the most part, could not foresee the new, bourgeois oppression, to understand the inhumanity of the developing human society. The advanced people of the Renaissance are still free from the vices of the later bourgeoisie, for example, from the narrowness of interests, limited by the desire for profit.

The art of the Renaissance is a new step in the artistic development of mankind.

In this era, medieval isolation is overcome, when people were limited to the boundaries of an estate or city and had a very vague idea of ​​​​the outside world. The religious view of man as a sinful being, a helpless pawn in the hands of God, is also being overcome. Thus, there is a kind of discovery of the world and man.

The art of the Renaissance is striking in the scale of the images. In this scale, the joy of discovery is manifested: the world is wide and man himself is amazing.

“What a miracle of nature is man!” exclaimed Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Here is a block of stone. With strong arms

I carve the person in it.

And the stone comes to life before us,

Sparkling with warm marble eyes.

The “proud image” of man is one of the greatest achievements of Renaissance realism. This realism is sometimes called idealizing or beautiful. The desire to idealize the image is noticeable in the Madonnas of Raphael, and in the comedies of Shakespeare, and in the poetry of Petrarch. But in this idealization, the poet and artist do not lose their vital ground. They strive to see beauty and nobility in a real person. And it's not so much outer beauty how much is a manifestation of a high mood of the soul.

The striving for the ideal by no means weakens the pathos of the affirmation of everything earthly, carnal. It is in the struggle against church asceticism that the art of the Renaissance glorifies the joys of life.

The Church considered human body sinful "devil's vessel". On the contrary, Renaissance artists paint the naked body, in marble and paint they create a hymn to its beauty.

The goodness is majestic, the images of many heroes are ideal, but life itself is by no means ideal. Next to Othello is the merciless Iago. Shakespeare's villains are also grandiose in their own way - Macbeth, Richard III. It also shows the desire to create powerful images. True, it had an effect already at the last stage of the Renaissance, when the contradictions of the era were exposed and the optimism of the previous stage was largely shaken.

2. The problem of evil in man in the Renaissance

The Renaissance, or, to use foreign terminology, the Renaissance replaced the era of the Middle Ages in the history of European peoples. A new worldview has triumphed, spiritual values ​​have changed dramatically in the minds of people, what yesterday seemed important and obligatory, now looked ridiculous and useless. However, this was more about the intellectual and artistic elite. The common people lived by the cares of the day and the acquisition of their daily bread. He did not dare, and did not see any special need to question what was legalized by the authorities and a long tradition. But philosophers, poets, writers, painters, sculptors, architects with contempt rejected these ancient traditions and with extraordinary enthusiasm began to build a new culture, with great reverence exalting all that was destroyed, destroyed and cursed from the culture of the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans ten centuries before. There were talents, bright, original. Humanity seems to have woken up after a long sleep and brought to the historical foreground the giants of thought, the geniuses of artistic skill, who brought invaluable treasures to the culture of peoples.

Very well, all the problems of evil in the world and man in the Renaissance were reflected by Cornelius Agrippa in his book “Treatise on the unreliability and futility of the sciences”. This book is perhaps a little strange and paradoxical and, unfortunately, has not been translated into Russian. Therefore, I will allow myself to reflect a few lengthy extracts from it, which allow us to see many of the problems of the Renaissance.

“Grammar and rhetoric,” Agrippa wrote, “which are not sciences, but arts, which are the main instrument of the sciences, produce more harmful than useful consequences and become an instrument of errors and delusions. In medicine, in the legal sciences, in philosophy, there are controversial things, mistakes, and misconceptions everywhere. Dialectics, under the name of logic, brings only darkness and absurd contrivances of the mind into science. The arts of the sophists, the petty inventions of Raymond Lull, are nothing but fruitless bids for courage. The very observation of the facts of life and the knowledge arising from it do not give confidence in the correct understanding of things, for observation is connected with our senses, and they are often very unreliable witnesses ...

Poetry is a realm of fiction, history is full of lies. Agrippa criticizes the ancient chroniclers for fabricating the origins of European kings, leading them straight from the mythical Priam.

“Mathematics is the most correct in its conclusions, but, as Blessed Augustine affirms, it does not lead to salvation, moves away from God, and is not, as Saint Jerome affirms, the science of piety…

At the head of the sciences is arithmetic, which treats numbers and their relationships. Arithmetic is responsible for Pythagoras' mad dreams of the mysterious meaning of a number. From arithmetic comes geometry, about which I also wrote my own treatise, different from many others, but no less erroneous, no less deceitful and full of superstitious prejudices...

Musicians ascribe a divine character to harmony. Music, no doubt, is full of charm and charm, but these are just different modulations of voice and sounds. Music is associated with the arts of dance, so benevolent to love, so dear to young maidens, who, along with him, lose their honor. Military dance is a tragic art, theatrical dance is an imitative art. And everywhere false opinions, false judgments...

Geometry is the most commendable, at least it unites the people who study it, while the spirit of contradictions and disputes reigns everywhere, but disastrous arts come from it: pyrography is the art of war; painting and sculpture that fill our homes and our temples with unworthy images that lead to idolatry. Geometry leads to the study of the bowels of nature in search of precious metals and observations of the stars. May they be cursed, the first for the wealth it generates, the source of so many crimes, the second for the lies it brings into the world...

Astrologers, to satisfy impious curiosity, draw circles and figures, invent numbers, by which they claim to penetrate the secrets of nature.

I also once believed in all this, but then I realized that all this is a lie and a deceit ...

Physiognomy is full of lies, magic, even more harmful because it acts on dark people.

I studied Jewish Kabbalah for a long time and came to the conclusion that there is nothing in it but lies and superstitions.

In philosophy, there is nothing firm, definite, indisputable.

If we look at the system of government, social regimes, religions, commercial relations, the art of agriculture, warfare, medicine, jurisprudence - what confusion, what a mixture of good and bad principles we see everywhere!

There is a republican form of government, the best of all, but it is accepted only in small countries - in Venice and Switzerland - but almost everywhere the monarch rules by himself, very rarely using his huge power to do good deeds.

Religion is full of delusions. The cult of saints and their relics, the construction of temples at the expense of the poor, the abuse of holidays and ridiculous ceremonies, the scandalous life of clergymen. Public life: the luxury of courts, the arena of the most ugly crimes, the school of venality, and in the famous capital of France, the object of so much admiration, purity of morals is almost unknown, where the participation of a girl or woman in palace orgies becomes evidence of the highest honor shown to him. Trade is a complete robbery, agriculture is an object of contempt.”

Perhaps it is in these slightly pessimistic views of Agrippa Nettesheim on the evil that was in man and in the world during the Renaissance that the whole essence of human evil is expressed, which so excited and frightened, but at the same time forced people to fight it. the Renaissance. Such people, undoubtedly, were the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies, who, often in unequal “battles” with their conscience and the world around them, won or suffered defeat, thereby teaching us to love, fight and defend our rights, the rights of Man.

3. Shakespeare's views on the world and man

The essence of tragedy in Shakespeare always lies in the clash of two principles - humanistic feelings, that is, pure and noble humanity, and vulgarity or meanness, based on selfishness and selfishness.

According to Shakespeare, the fate of each person is the result of the interaction of his character and surrounding circumstances. Shakespeare with iron logic shows how the best people, the most noble, intelligent and gifted, perish under the onslaught of dark forces (Hamlet, Lear), with which easily evil sometimes takes possession of the soul of a person and what terrible consequences this leads to (Macbeth).

Here finds expression that special feeling of life, tragic and at the same time heroic, which at the end of the Renaissance arises among humanists as a result of the collapse of their ideals under the onslaught of reactionary forces. This, on the one hand, is a feeling of the collapse of medieval beliefs and institutions, of all the “sacred ties” of feudalism, which gave rise to a feeling of a gigantic catastrophe, the collapse of a great world that lived for many centuries, on the other hand, this is the consciousness that the new world, which is replacing the old, brings with it even worse forms of human enslavement, the spirit of unbridled predatory, the realm of the “chistogan”, these are the fundamental features of emerging capitalism. Hence the feeling of a global cataclysm, the collapse of all foundations, the feeling that people are wandering along the edge of an abyss into which they can and do fall off every minute. Loyalty to nature, following the natural inclinations of human nature are no longer sufficient criteria for behavior and guarantees.

happiness. Man, freed from all illusions, comes to the realization that he is only a "poor, naked, two-legged animal" (the words of Lear).

Based on this, many critics talk about the "pessimism" of the second period of Shakespeare's work. However, this term requires a reservation. Depressive pessimism, leading to despondency and refusal to fight, is alien to Shakespeare. First of all, no matter how terrible the suffering and catastrophes depicted by Shakespeare are, they are never aimless, but reveal the meaning and deep regularity of what is happening to a person. The death of Macbeth, Brutus or Coriolanus shows the fatal force of passions or delusions that grip a person when he does not find the right path. On the other hand, even the most severe tragedies of Shakespeare do not breathe hopelessness: they open up prospects for a better future and affirm the inner victory of truth over human meanness. The death of Romeo and Juliet is at the same time their triumph, since over their coffin reconciliation takes place between the warring families, who give their word to erect a monument to their love. "Hamlet" ends with the death of Claudius and the defeat of the vicious Danish court; with the accession of Fortinbras, a new era must begin, allowing hope for better life. Similarly, Macbeth ends with the death of the tyrant and the crowning of a legitimate and good ruler. In Lear, the old king dies enlightened and imbued with love for truth and people. At the cost of the suffering he endured, Lear from a “poor, naked, two-legged animal” turns into a Man, in his simple humanity greater than the former Lear, invested with a royal dignity. Shakespeare's tragedies exude cheerfulness, a courageous call to struggle, although this struggle did not always promise success. The heroic character of this pessimism is very far from fatalistic despair.

Shakespeare's work is distinguished by its scale - the extraordinary breadth of interests and scope of thought. His plays reflected a huge variety of types, positions, eras, peoples, social environment. This is the richness of fantasy, as well as the swiftness of action, the saturation of images, the strength of the portrayed passions and volitional tension. actors are typical of the Renaissance. Shakespeare depicts the flourishing of the human personality and the richness of life with all the abundance of its forms and colors, but he brought all this to a unity in which regularity prevails.

The sources of Shakespeare's dramaturgy are diverse, and, however, he mastered everything borrowed in a peculiar way. He took a lot from antiquity. His early Comedy of Errors is an imitation of Plautus' Manechmas. In "Titus Andronicus" and "Richard III" the influence of Seneca is very noticeable. The "Roman" tragedies of Shakespeare go back not only in plot, but also partly ideologically to Plutarch, who in the Renaissance was a teacher of love of freedom and civic feelings. In the works of Shakespeare, sensually cheerful and expressive images of ancient mythology are constantly encountered.

Another source for Shakespeare was the art of the Italian Renaissance. The plots of "Othello", "The Merchant of Venice" and several other comedies were borrowed by him from Italian novelists. In The Taming of the Shrew and some other comedies, one can detect the influence of the Italian commedia dell'arte. We often come across Italian costumes, proper names and all sorts of motifs in Shakespeare's plays, which originate from completely different sources. If from antiquity Shakespeare learned concreteness and clarity of images, artistic logic, distinctness of speech, then the Italian Renaissance influences contributed to the strengthening of aesthetic and pictorial features in his work, his perception of life as a whirlwind of colors and forms. Even more significantly, both of these sources strengthened the humanistic basis of Shakespeare's work.

But basically, along with these attractions, Shakespeare continues the traditions of folk English drama. This includes, for example, the mixture of the tragic and the comic that he systematically used, which was forbidden by the representatives of the learned classicist trend in the dramaturgy of the Renaissance.

In Shakespeare, we observe a motley mixture of persons and events, an unusually fast pace of action, its rapid transfer from one place to another. This liveliness, brilliance, ease of style, abundance of movement and striking effects are very characteristic of folk drama. Its highest manifestation lies in the fact that for his humanistic ideas he finds a truly folk form of expression - concrete, extremely clear and truthful in his sincere simplicity. This applies not only to the speeches of the jester in King Lear, which represent the quintessence of folk wisdom, but also to the statements of characters of refined education, such as Hamlet.

Shakespeare's realism is inextricably linked with the people. Shakespearean realism is based on a living, direct relationship to all the phenomena of life. At the same time, Shakespeare not only truthfully depicts reality, but also knows how to penetrate deeply into it, notice and reveal what is most essential in it. Shakespeare's own views on the realistic essence of art are expressed in Hamlet's conversation with the actors (act III, scene 2), where Hamlet condemns all affectation, hyperbolism, effect for the sake of effect, demanding the observance of measure and proportion, naturalness, correspondence to reality.

Shakespeare's realism is manifested in the fact that he depicts phenomena in their movement and mutual conditioning, noticing all the shades and transitions of feelings. This gives him the opportunity to draw whole people in all their complexity and at the same time in their development. In this respect, Shakespeare's character building is also profoundly realistic. Emphasizing typical features in his characters, having a general and fundamental significance, he at the same time individualizes them, endowing them with various, additional features that make them truly alive. Shakespeare's characters change and grow in struggle.

The realism of Shakespeare is also found in the accuracy of the analysis of the emotional experiences of his characters and the motivation of their actions and motives.

A sharp change in attitude is experienced by all the heroes of great tragedies. Their personal motives and specific conditions for the development of a spiritual crisis are different for them, their spiritual reactions and behavior are not the same, the degree of moral shock in all of them is extreme, and their painful experiences are not limited to personal fate and indicate a crisis state of epochal conviction. The doubts of tragic heroes are many-sided, but directed towards a certain center, focusing on the state of society and the problem of man.

3.1 Good – evil (“Macbeth”, “King Lear”, “Hamlet”)

At the very beginning, I would like to reveal a bit the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who are the main characters of one of Shakespeare's later tragedies "Macbeth". The characters of these heroes are in many ways contradictory, but in many ways they also have similarities with each other. They have their own understanding of good and evil, and the expression of good human qualities in them is also different. Unlike other Shakespearean “villains” (Iago, Edmund, Richard III), for Macbeth, villainy is not a way to overcome his own “inferiority complex”, his inferiority (Iago is a lieutenant in the service of the Moor General; Edmund is a bastard; Richard is a physical freak). But Macbeth is convinced (and rightly convinced) that he is capable of more. His desire to become king stems from the knowledge that he is worthy. However, old King Duncan stands in his way to the throne. And so the first step - to the throne, but also to his own death, first moral, and then physical - the murder of Duncan, which takes place in Macbeth's house, at night, he himself committed. And then the crimes follow one after another: true friend Banquo, wife and son of Macduff. And with each new crime in the soul of Macbeth himself, something also dies. In the end, he realizes that he has doomed himself to terrible curse- loneliness. But the predictions of the witches inspire confidence and strength in him: "Macbeth for those who are born a woman, / Invulnerable." And therefore, with such desperate determination, he fights in the final, convinced of his invulnerability to a mere mortal. But it turns out, “that he was cut before the deadline // With a knife from the womb of Macduff's mother.” And that's why he manages to kill Macbeth.

The character of Macbeth reflected not only the duality inherent in many Renaissance heroes - a strong, bright personality, forced to go to crime for the sake of incarnating himself (such are many heroes of the tragedies of the Renaissance, say Tamerlane in K. Marlowe), - but also a higher dualism, wearing truly existential. A person, in the name of the embodiment of himself, in the name of fulfilling his life purpose, is forced to transgress laws, conscience, morality, law, humanity. Therefore, Shakespeare's Macbeth is not just a bloody tyrant and usurper of the throne, who eventually receives a well-deserved reward, but in the full sense of the word a tragic character, torn by contradictions that make up the very essence of his character, his human nature.

Lady Macbeth is a no less bright personality. First of all, in Shakespeare's tragedy it is repeatedly emphasized that she is very beautiful, captivatingly feminine, bewitchingly attractive. She and Macbeth are a really wonderful couple worthy of each other. It is generally believed that it was Lady Macbeth's ambition that inspired her husband to commit the first atrocity he committed - the murder of King Duncan, but this is not entirely true. In their ambition, they are also equal partners. But unlike her husband, Lady Macbeth knows no doubts, no hesitation, no compassion: she is in the full sense of the word “iron lady”. And therefore, she is not able to comprehend with her mind that the crime committed by her (or at her instigation) is a sin. Repentance is foreign to her. She understands this, only losing her mind, in madness, when she sees blood stains on her hands, which nothing can wash away. In the finale, in the midst of the battle, Macbeth receives news of her death.

Another, no less interesting character, carrying both good and evil beginnings - main character tragedy "King Lear", the old King Lear, who has three daughters. The history of Lear is a grandiose path of knowledge that he goes through - from a father and a monarch blinded by the tinsel of his power - through his own "inspired" destruction - to understanding what is true and what is false, and what is true greatness and true wisdom . On this path, Lear finds not only enemies - first of all, his eldest daughters become them, but also friends who remain faithful to him, no matter what: Kent and Jester. Through exile, through loss, through madness - to enlightenment, and again to loss - the death of Cordelia - and finally to his own death - such is the path of Shakespeare's Lear. The tragic path of knowledge.

Perhaps the most striking and famous hero of one of Shakespeare's tragedies - "Hamlet" - is the prince Danish Hamlet. This hero has his own, special spiritual world, a world of experiences and deceit. Nietzsche wrote about the character of Hamlet and his problem in the following way: “Hamlet's tragedy, the essence of his sacramental question is in an insoluble antithesis: to know or to act. For the one who once managed to cast a true look at the essence of the world, to know, it became disgusting for him to act; for their action cannot change anything, it seems ridiculous to them to direct this world, “jumped off the hinges”, on the path of the true. Cognition kills action, action requires a veil of illusion - this is the science of Hamlet.

Hamlet is a man with a split consciousness, tormented by an insurmountable discrepancy between the ideal of man and the real man. Shakespeare himself utters these words - in another place - through the lips of Lorenzo: "So the Spirit of kindness and evil self-will split our souls in two."

Hamlet appears as the messenger of death and the dark side of this world, and Claudius - his vitality and health. This may seem like a paradox, but once you think about the phrase “in the role of the king of Denmark, Hamlet would be a hundred times more dangerous than Claudius”, and everything falls into place. It's not even about vindictiveness, but about the metaphysical essence of the phenomenon that litters the stage with a pile of corpses. Fighters against evil, multiplying it innumerably.

For Dostoevsky, Shakespeare is a poet of despair, and Hamlet and Hamletism are an expression of world sorrow, a consciousness of their uselessness, a spleen of utter hopelessness with an insatiable thirst for any kind of faith, Cain's longing, tides of bile, torment of a doubting heart in everything ... embittered both at itself and at everything that it saw around.

Dostoevsky himself had been ill with “Russian Hamletism”. That is why for him Hamlet is a noble sufferer who hates the evil of the world. With caustic sarcasm, Dostoevsky ridicules Russian hypocrites and cynics who are trying to hide under the guise of a noble prince.

The eternal theme of Hamlet, which makes him eternally topical, is the triumph of the blind force of evil.

At court such insignificant talkers as Polonius set the tone, even more insignificant people like Osric flourish; here Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are met with open arms, always ready to betray a friend, and such limited and unbalanced natures as Laertes easily become instruments of crime. The theme of the domination of evil in society, which began in the first monologue of Hamlet (the world is “an unweeded garden that grows into a seed. Only that which, by its nature, is disgusting and rude, owns it”), summed up in the monologue “To be or not to be ". Speaking of "Scourges and ridicule of life", Hamlet pushes the boundaries of what is directly depicted in the play and mentions "the injustices of the oppressor, the contempt of the proud, the pain of rejected love, delay in courts, the impudence of officials and the blows that patient dignity receives from the unworthy."

People at the head of the state personify the unity of the human and state organism. In Shakespearean tragedy, they are depicted as decaying and doomed alive. Claudius - a secret fratricide, usurper and incest - achieved everything he wanted.

Fair is four, and foul is fair: beautiful is rotten, and rotten is beautiful. There is no line between good and evil. Troilus does not know where Cressida, the angel, ends and Cressida, the lustful devil, begins. He does not know what is the essence of a man who is changeable like Proteus.

3.2 Evil

The true source of evil in one of Shakespeare's later tragedies, Macbeth, is Macbeth himself, while his wife appears in the play as a kind of catalyst for Macbeth's ambition. Lady Macbeth performs, in preparation for Duncan's assassination, essentially the same function that the witches were assigned to when they first met Macbeth; but if the “prophetic sisters” act as a symbolic-fantastic factor contributing to the transition of Macbeth from plans to criminal deeds, then Lady Macbeth influences her husband in a different way - in terms of a realistic, psychologically motivated impact.

The stage history of the tragedy about Macbeth convincingly proves the legitimacy of interpreting the image of the protagonist as a person in whom ambitious plans have matured even before the moment from which the play begins.

Macbeth perceives the prediction of the witches as two truths, foreshadowing his possession of the Scottish throne:

"Two truths were told,

Like a prologue to a solemn action

dominions”

(I, 3, 127-129).

He sees two specific truths: one of them - that Macbeth should become Tan of Cawdor - has already become a reality, the other - the prediction that he is destined to become king - is still waiting to be realized.

However, the exposition of Macbeth does not yet indicate that the hero has already matured the decision to embark on the path of crimes in the name of capturing the crown. Despite all his ambition, he still takes a wait-and-see attitude, hoping that fate (or chance) will give him the Scottish throne:

“Let fate, promising me a crown,

Marries me herself"

(1, 3, 143-144).

Such a hope was very real to Macbeth. She was, on the one hand, prepared by the reputation of Macbeth as a great warrior, and, perhaps, the savior of the fatherland, and on the other hand, by the fact that Macbeth was the closest adult relative (cousin) of the king. Therefore, Macbeth had enough reason to count on the crown.

Macbeth's proximity to the younger generation makes it possible to establish the continuity that exists between "King Lear" and the tragedy of the Scottish usurper of the throne. Macbeth, like Edmund, Goneril and Regan, is the product of new individualistic, self-serving forces that oppose the patriarchal principle. But these same circumstances help to determine the fundamental difference between "Macbeth" and all the other mature tragedies of Shakespeare.

Thus, in "Macbeth" the inevitable internal crisis, to which the bearer of an evil, selfish principle comes, is shown more consistently and more convincingly than in any other Shakespearean tragedy. And this is the most important prerequisite for the optimistic sound that fills the finale of Macbeth.

Another tragedy by Shakespeare, no less saturated with images of evil, is King Lear. In Shakespeare's writings, it has been repeatedly and quite rightly noted that the dominant place in King Lear is occupied by the picture of the clash of two camps, sharply opposed to each other, primarily in terms of morality. Given the complexity of the relationship between the individual characters that make up each of the camps, the rapid evolution of some characters and the development of each of the camps as a whole, these groups of actors entering into an irreconcilable conflict can only be given a conventional name. If we take the central plot episode of the tragedy as the basis for the classification of these camps, we will have the right to talk about the collision of the camp of Lear and the camp of Regan - Goneril; if we characterize these camps according to the characters that most fully express the ideas that guide the representatives of each of them, it would be most correct to call them the camps of Cordelia and Edmund. But, perhaps, the most arbitrary division of the characters in the play into the camp of good and the camp of evil will be the most fair. true meaning this convention can be revealed only at the end of the whole study, when it becomes clear that Shakespeare, when creating King Lear, did not think in abstract moral categories, but imagined the conflict between good and evil in all its historical concreteness.

The key problem of the whole tragedy lies precisely in the evolution of the camps that came into conflict with each other. Only with a correct interpretation of this evolution can one understand the ideological and artistic richness of the play, and, consequently, the worldview with which it is imbued. Therefore, the solution of the problem of the internal development of each of the camps should, in essence, be subordinated to the entire study of the conflict and the development of individual images.

In this section, I would like to dwell only on those characters who make up the camp of evil. Each of the characters that make up the camp of evil remains a vividly individualized artistic image; this way of characterization gives the depiction of evil a special realistic persuasiveness. But despite this, in the behavior of individual actors, one can distinguish features that are indicative of the entire grouping of characters as a whole.

The image of Oswald - however, in a crushed form - combines deceit, hypocrisy, arrogance, self-interest and cruelty, that is, all the features that, to one degree or another, determine the face of each of the characters that make up the camp of evil.

The opposite technique is used by Shakespeare when depicting Cornwall. In this image, the playwright highlights the only leading character trait - the unbridled cruelty of the duke, who is ready to betray any of his opponents to the most painful execution. However, the role of Cornwall, like the role of Oswald, does not have a self-contained value and, in essence, performs a service function. The hideous, sadistic cruelty of Cornwall is not of interest in itself, but only as a way for Shakespeare to show that Regan, whose gentle nature Lear speaks of, is no less cruel than her husband. Therefore, compositional devices are quite natural and understandable, with the help of which Shakespeare eliminates Cornwall and Oswald from the stage long before the finale, leaving only the main carriers of evil - Goneril, Regan and Edmund - on the stage at the moment of the decisive clash between the camps.

The starting point in the characterization of Regan and Goneril is the theme of ingratitude of children towards their fathers. The foregoing characterization of some of the events typical of London life in the early seventeenth century should have shown that cases of deviation from the old ethical norms, according to which the respectful gratitude of children towards their parents was a matter of course, became so frequent that the relationship of parents and heirs turned into a serious problem that worried the most diverse circles of the then English public.

In the course of revealing the theme of ingratitude, the main aspects of the moral character of Goneril and Regan are revealed - their cruelty, hypocrisy and deceit, covering up selfish aspirations that guide all the actions of these characters.

“The forces of evil,” writes D. Stumpfer, “take on a very large scale in King Lear, and there are two special variants of evil: evil as an animal principle, represented by Regan and Goneril, and evil as theoretically justified atheism, presented by Edmund. These varieties should not be mixed in any way.

Edmund is a villain, characterized in the traditional manner for Shakespeare. The principles of constructing the image of Edmund are generally the same as those used by the playwright in creating such images as, for example, Richard III and Iago; in the monologues repeatedly uttered by these characters, their deeply disguised inner essence and their villainous plans are revealed.

Edmund is a character who would never commit crimes and cruelties in order to admire the results of villainous “feats”. At each stage of his activity, he pursues quite specific tasks, the solution of which should serve to enrich and exalt him.

Understanding the motives that guide the representatives of the camp of evil is inseparable from the theme of fathers and children, the theme of generations, which, during the creation of King Lear, especially deeply occupied Shakespeare's creative imagination. Evidence of this is not only the history of Lear and Gloucester, fathers who were plunged into the abyss of disaster and finally ruined by their children. This theme is repeatedly heard in individual replicas of the characters.

The last tragedy that I would like to tell about in my work was the tragedy “Hamlet”. The brightest representative and bearer of evil in it is Claudius, King of Denmark.

Claudius is a Machiavellian, a brilliant embodiment of the ideas embodied in the treatise "The Emperor", where, for example, it is said: "those whose mode of action corresponds to the peculiarities of the time preserve their well-being." Claudius is a villain of the Renaissance, and his “mode of action” is based on will, energy and cunning and is aimed at preserving the integrity of the state. Hamlet, in his thirst for justice, lost sight of Fortinbras, who wanted to take Denmark into his hands. Fortinbras, the enemy of Hamlet's father, claims Danish territory and, after the death of all the heroes of the tragedy, receives it without any effort. Thus, Claudius even plays a positive role, if we consider him from the state point of view.

Claudius' words are one thing, deeds are another, thoughts are a third. Claudius in words is honey-sweet and sweet, in deeds he is cunning. He would have remained victorious if he remembered one remark by Machiavelli: “anyone who does not value life can make an attempt on the sovereign, so there is no sure way to avoid death at the hands of a possessed person.” Hamlet was just such a person: the desire for retribution acquired such power over him that Claudius had no chance of salvation.

Conclusion.

Why do we love Shakespeare? Because the time in which he lived is our terrible time. Terror, internecine strife, a merciless struggle for power, self-destruction, the "enclosure" of England in the 17th century - this is our "great turning point", our "perestroika", our transition to the era of primitive accumulation. However, Shakespeare has all this “hidden”, he did not like to say that his ancestors lost land, but he acquired it, he did not talk about the persecution of the peasants, he was a poet who wrote human passions.

Shakespeare is timeless and non-historical: past, present and future are one for him. For this reason, it does not and cannot become obsolete. That is why today we read everything he wrote as if it were about us.

Shakespeare is himself, but all interpretations of Shakespeare are a culture indebted to Shakespeare, which he did not suspect. Genius is a seed, a divine gene, a mystical power, a relic explosion that gives birth to huge expanding worlds, it is a cosmic irradiation, a universal field in which there are millions of non-geniuses, a field that nourishes their humanity.

The secret of Shakespeare is the secret of the limit of human possibilities, the secret of higher creativity, the secret of “God's gift”. This mystery will be unraveled for as long as mankind exists. For Shakespeare is mankind in miniature.

List of used literature.

1. Garin I. I. Prophets and poets: T. 6 / Khudozh. P. Satsky. – M.: TERRA, 1994.

2. Losev A.F. Aesthetics of the Renaissance. The historical meaning of the aesthetics of the Renaissance / Comp. A. A. Takho-Godi. – M.: Thought, 1998.

3. Urnov M. V. Milestones of tradition in English literature. – M.: Artist. lit., 1986.

4. Shvedov Yu. F. The evolution of Shakespeare's tragedy. M., “Art”, 1975.

5. Encyclopedia literary heroes. – M.: Agraf, 1997.