1. John Gordon Byron Development of the line of the protagonist in the poem "Don Juan"

Genre definition of the poem "Don Juan".

One can consider "Don Juan" against the background of an epic poem, the relationship with which the author himself always draws attention. True, the signs of kinship are purely external, formal. Byron divides the poem into songs; allows a glimpse of a high epic tone, reminds of the obligatory custom to refer to the Muse, as at the beginning of Canto III: “Oh, muse, you ... et cetera”. The custom is fulfilled, but the words themselves seem superfluous, for every diligent reader of that era easily remembered what was decent to say in such a case. And Byron gets off careless: "... and so on."

Nevertheless, he repeatedly assures that he is writing not something, but an epic poem [for example: “My poem's epic, and is meant to be ...” - I, 200]. And then he is in a hurry to explain to someone who has not yet understood why he deviated from the classical genre model in a significant way:

There's only one slight difference between

Me and my epic brethren gone before,

And here the advantage is my own, I ween

(Not that I have not several merits more,

But this will more peculiarly be seen);

They so embellish, that 't is quite a bore

Their labyrinth of fables to thread through,

Whereas this story's actually true.

To be truthful and at the same time to find a hero - it seems difficult to combine, especially since the search was undertaken not in the great past, but in the modern "Bronze Age", when

... France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier

Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier. .

Dyakonov. N. Byron: The Experience of a Psychological Portrait.
And nothing more! Modernity as the theme of an epic poem - there is an internal contradiction in this, which even before Byron was used more than once to parody the genre, in the obligatory high style for him to say about objects reduced, to emphasize their everyday life. This is what, for example, Alexander Pope did in The Abduction of the Lock [1714], the most celebrated English comic poem; her goals were not limited to parody: as often happens in art, new material asserts itself, hiding behind a comic mask.

Moreover, Don Juan cannot be considered only a parody of an epic poem; this is one of the moments of the genre conception and not the most essential one. Parody only gives an excuse, pretending that the genre has not changed, to fill it with new life material, inappropriate in the epic, and therefore perceived with irony. What begins with a parodic decline, with an ironic grin, develops into a satirical picture of morals and defines the genre - the satirical epic, or, as it is commonly called in England, epic satire.

The term is also fair and also not the only possible one. He points to one, albeit the most important, aspect of the genre form created by Byron in Don Juan - the nature of the assessment of reality, dating back to the tradition of the epic. However, if we take into account the fact that both the author's position and the meaning of the author's presence in the new work of Byron are still different than in the traditional epic poem, then we can again repeat as a genre formula - lyro epic poem.

None of the terms seems superfluous, does not cancel others, because they coexist by the right of complementarity.

Byron did not betray the once open principle of the lyric-epic narration, which, however, does not remain unchanged for him. In Don Juan, even in comparison with Child Harold's Pilgrimage, the plot has expanded. And one more difference: no matter how important the author's presence here is, the hero does not disappear, he is not obscured, without him the goal set - the search for the hero - would have lost its meaning.

The poem is written in five-foot octave. This length, requiring the obligatory so-called third rhyme in the fifth and sixth lines, gave the author complete freedom to lead the thread of the story or break it off in order to get carried away by any thought or association.

But despite these stops, retreats, breaks, the narrative unfolds into a sequential plot, filled with the details of the hero's fate and depicting the reality that the hero is facing. All this taken together distinguishes Don Juan from earlier lyric-epic poems and brings it under another genre definition, which was born in Russia thanks to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse.

The replacement of the word “poem” with the word “novel” was perceived as fundamentally significant, especially in the course of further literary development, the transition to a new period, within which a realistic novel comes to replace the previously dominant romantic poem. A change in the term, a change in the dominant genre becomes a sign of the general evolution of artistic thinking. And at the same time, Byron, like Pushkin, is not just a novel, but a novel in verse, a "devilish difference" - according to Pushkin's well-known warning.

The poetic form of the chosen narrative, in this case, provides a rich associative connection within the genre tradition: on the one hand, providing an opportunity to determine (parodically, ironically) in relation to the epic poem, and on the other, it is even freer to use the discovery of a romantic poem with its lyricism, with its freedom of the author's presence and appeal to the reader. The novel in verse under the pen of Byron and Pushkin is an open form, becoming; the form, which is created anew and presupposes each time, before the eyes of the reader, the author defines the attitude to reality, felt in all its modern novelty, which does not lend itself to ready-made artistic solutions. The author constantly reminds the reader of their possibilities, emphasizes what he takes him away from, thereby sharpening the feeling of the novelty of his own choice. In world literature, there are stable images that personify this or that type of person, which writers from different countries, different eras, different views in their own way recreate in their works. One of them is Don Juan. He was called Don Juan, or Don Juan, or, in Italy, Don Giovanni, but in any case, this name is invariably associated with the rake knight, a Kissin B. Don-Juan // Literary encyclopedia in 11 volumes, vol. 3. - M., 1929-1939.

daring violator of moral and religious norms, ready to do anything to win new and new women's hearts.

The semi-legendary Seville nobleman don Juan de Tenorio, who lived in the 14th century, is considered the prototype of Don Juan. The close associate of King Pedro the Cruel (1350-1369), who enjoyed his patronage, don Juan terrified the whole of Seville with his love affairs. In a duel, he killed Commander Don Gonzago, who defended the honor of his daughter, but soon disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It was rumored that Tenorio was killed by Franciscan monks, who then spread word of the heavenly punishment through the dead commander.The first literary Don Juan was created by the Spanish monk Gabriel Tellets, who wrote under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina, in the play "The Mischievous Man of Seville, or The Stone Guest" (published in Barcelona in 1630). From Spain, the plot moved to France, where Moliere staged his comedy Don Juan, or the Stone Guest in 1665. Then in 1736 in Italy Carlo Goldoni wrote the drama Don Giovanni Tenorio, or The Libertine. In the romantic era at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, Don Juan became the most popular hero around the world. It was then that such famous works as the novel by E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Don Juan" (1812), the poem by G. Byron "Don Juan" (1817-1824), the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin's "The Stone Guest" (1830), short stories by O. Balzac "Elixir of Longevity" (1830) and P. Merimee's "Souls of Purgatory" (1834).In the XX century, interest in him does not subside: the plays of J. B. Shaw "Man and Superman: a Philosophical Comedy" (1903), A. Blok's "Steps of the Commander" (1910-1912), N. Gumilyov's "Don Juan in Egypt" ( 1912), B. Brecht "Don Juan" (1954), J. Anouil "Ornifl" (1955), the Swiss writer Max Frisch "Don Juan, or Love for Geometry", the novel by the Spaniard G. Torrente Ballestra "Don Juan", poems A. Blok, M. Tsvetaeva and many others. The 1997 bibliographic index recorded over a thousand works of fiction about Don Juan in six major.

Bulletin of young scientists 7`2007 series: philosophical sciences 2`2003.

Boyadzhiev G.N. The genius of Moliere - introductory article // Moliere PSS in 4 volumes. - M., 1965-67. Vol. 1.

Boyadzhiev G.N. From Sophocles to Brecht in forty theatrical evenings. - M .: Education, 1988.S. 112-156.

“Don Juan is the only mythical hero in the entire history of world culture, not borrowed by the theater, but generated by the theater. He is a child of the stage, a person who plays, ”wrote the well-known literary critic V.Yu. Silyunas2.

The image of Don Juan inspired Mozart to create his masterpiece - the opera Don Giovanni (1787), Dargomyzhsky to the opera The Stone Guest (1872), Richard Strauss to the symphonic poem Don Juan. The famous seducer found his place on the movie screen, the most famous films based on the legendary plot - "Casanova" by Fellini, "Valmont" by Foreman, "Dangerous Liaisons" by Stephen Friars.

And to this day, along with Faust, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan remains one of the most famous heroes of world literature, causing heated debate, philosophical reasoning, and, of course, new poetry and prose that re-create the image of a seductive, unprincipled handsome man.

The specifics of the interpretation of the image of Don Juan by Moliere

The comedy Don Juan, or the Stone Guest was written and staged by Moliere (by the way, he himself played the role of Sganarelle in it) in 1665, very quickly, primarily in order to improve the affairs of his theater after the ban on the production of Tartuffe ... It is often said that due to haste in comedy there are many inconsistencies and flaws. Perhaps some technical flaws do exist, but this cannot be attributed to the image of the protagonist. The complex and very contradictory image of Don Juan has completeness and internal logic.

Moliere retained many traditional features in his hero. His Don Juan is a libertine who seeks to take possession of every beautiful woman he meets on his way. He has beauty and graceful manners, but at the same time is devoid of any moral principles.

But at the same time, Moliere's hero also has many very special features that distinguish him from the centuries-old line of Don Juan.

Negative traits of the hero

Don Juan is undoubtedly a bad guy. So he always appeared, so in the first place made him and Moliere.

Almost at the very beginning of the play, Sganarelle speaks of his master as follows: “... my lord Don Juan is the greatest of all villains that the earth has ever carried, a monster, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic who does not believe in heaven or in the saints, neither in God, nor in the devil, who lives like a vile cattle, like an Epicurean pig, like a real Sardanapalus, who does not want to listen to Christian teachings and considers all that we believe in as nonsense ”3 (I, 1). Indeed, all subsequent actions of the protagonist only confirm this characteristic. He is completely devoid of any internal moral principles. Don Juan did not need to seduce and kidnap dona Elvira from the monastery, marry her, and then abandon her almost immediately. He does not at all hide the reasons that prompted him to such an act: the woman was tired of him, as hundreds of others were tired of. “I have eyes in order to appreciate the charms of all women, and to each of them I bring a tribute imposed on us by nature,” he confesses to Sganarelle (I, 2). Conscience does not awaken in Don Juan even after Elvira, having humbled her passion and decided to return to the monastery, comes to him and begs for only one thing - to repent and save her soul, to put an end to her dissolute life. “Do you know, I again felt something for her, in this unusual appearance of her I found a special charm: negligence in a headdress, a languid look, tears - all this awakened in me the remnants of an extinguished fire” - that's all that can say Don Juan after her sincere words, which brought tears to Sganarelle. (IV, 9)

Don Juan is also devoid of a sense of gratitude: he pays the peasant who saved his life by trying to take his bride away from him. There is no respect for the elders in the main character, first of all, for his own father. When Don Luis tries to reason with his son, reminding him of his noble origin, of noble honor, Don Juan does not listen to him, but afterwards he says, "Oh, you die as soon as possible - this is the best thing that you can do!" (IV, 7). However, as soon as he finds himself in a difficult situation, his manner of talking to his father changes dramatically: Don Juan depicts repentance and deference to his son t atheism, making in this respect the protagonist a conductor of his own views. It is no coincidence that Don Juan's antagonist Sganarelle is naive and stupid. He defends religion, but he cannot give more weighty arguments than "the world, like a mushroom, could not grow itself in one night." Don Juan, on the other hand, very consistently defends his position, according to which he only believes that "twice two is four." “For Don Juan, the denial of God is not a daring challenge to the sky thrown by a frivolous zhuir,” wrote the famous literary critic G. Boyadzhiev, “but the final conclusion of the philosopher’s long-standing and sober thought. This understanding of the image of Moliere's Don Juan is surprisingly accurate and deep ”4.

A.A. Smirnov also draws attention to the fact that the traditional ending with the death of Don Juan has been reduced "to comically tiny dimensions," and Sganarelle's final exclamation: "My salary! .." - finally reduces it to a sham5.

However, the anti-religious element in the play does not at all mean that one should identify the atheist Don Juan with the author. After all, "a doctrine can be good, but its application is bad" 6. Perhaps the image of Don Juan is a kind of response to the attacks on Tartuffe, where a true scoundrel hypocritically disguises himself as a holy man.Relation to religion

Separately, it should be said about the attitude of Don Juan to religion. On the one hand, in the godlessness of the hero one can see only a continuation of the tradition: after all, Don Juan always died precisely for his dissolute life and contempt for divine covenants. But Moliere places a much greater emphasis on this topic, because it is no coincidence that the production of the play caused a sharp protest from the church (the comedy was played 15 times and was banned, and was published after the death of the playwright).At first glance, it may seem that Moliere denounces Don Juan's atheism, primarily through the mouth of Sganarelle. This is facilitated by the episode with the beggar (III, 2), who refuses to blaspheme for money. And at the end, as expected, Don Juan is struck by lightning.But at the Elvira from the monastery, marry her, and then abandon her almost immediately. He does not at all hide the reasons that prompted him to such an act: the woman was tired of him, as hundreds of others were tired of. “I have eyes in order to appreciate the charms of all women, and to each of them I bring a tribute imposed on us by nature,” he confesses to Sganarelle (I, 2). Conscience does not awaken in Don Juan even after Elvira, having humbled her passion and decided to return to the monastery, comes to him and begs for only one thing - to repent and save her soul, to put an end to her dissolute life. “Do you know, I again felt something for her, in this unusual appearance of her I found a special charm: negligence in a headdress, a languid look, tears - all this awakened in me the remnants of an extinguished fire” - that's all that can say Don Juan after her sincere words, which brought tears to Sganarellesame time, there is a point of view that Moliere does not deny, but, on the contrary, indirectly rehabilitates The poetic form of the chosen narrative, in this case, provides a rich associative connection within the genre tradition: on the one hand, providing an opportunity to determine (parodically, ironically) in relation to the epic poem, and on the other, it is even freer to use the discovery of a romantic poem with its lyricism, with its freedom of the author's presence and appeal to the reader. The novel in verse under the pen of Byron and Pushkin is an open form, becoming; the form, which is created anew and presupposes each time, before the eyes of the reader, the author defines the attitude to reality, felt in all its modern novelty, which does not lend itself to ready-made artistic solutions. The author constantly reminds the reader of their possibilities, emphasizes what he takes him away from, thereby sharpening the feeling of the novelty of his own choice. In world literature, there are stable images that personify this or that type of person, which writers from different countries, different eras, different views in their own way recreate in their works.

Don Juan is the greatest of all villains that the earth has ever carried, a monster, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic who does not believe in heaven or in the saints, neither in God, nor in the devil, who lives like a vile cattle, like an Epicurean pig, like a real Sardanapalus, who does not want to listen to Christian teachings and considers all that we believe in as nonsense ”3 (I, 1). Indeed, all subsequent actions of the protagonist only confirm this characteristic. He is completely devoid of any internal moral principles. Don Juan did not need to seduce and kidnap dona Elvira from the monastery, marry her, and then abandon her almost immediately. He does not at all hide the reasons that prompted him to such an act: the woman was tired of him, as hundreds of others were tired of. “I have eyes in order to appreciate the charms of all women, and to each of them I bring a tribute imposed on us by nature,” he confesses to Sganarelle (I, 2). Conscience does not awaken in Don Juan even after Elvira, having humbled her passion and decided to return to the monastery, comes to him and begs for only one thing - to repent and save her soul, to put an end to her dissolute life. “Do you know, I again felt something for her, in this unusual appearance of her I found a special charm: negligence in a headdress, a languid look, tears - all this awakened in me the remnants of an extinguished fire” - that's all that can say Don Juan after her sincere words, which brought tears to Sganarelle. Don Juan, on the other hand, very consistently defends his position, according to which he only believes that "twice two is four." “For Don Juan, the denial of God is not a daring challenge to the sky thrown by a frivolous zhuir,” wrote the famous literary critic G. Boyadzhiev, “but the final conclusion of the philosopher’s long-standing and sober thought. This understanding of the image of Moliere's Don Juan is surprisingly accurate and deep Don Juan was created by the Spanish monk Gabriel Tellets, who wrote under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina, in the play "The Mischievous Man of Seville, or The Stone Guest" (published in Barcelona in 1630). From Spain, the plot moved to France, where Moliere staged his comedy Don Juan, or the Stone Guest in 1665. Then in 1736 in Italy Carlo Goldoni wrote the drama Don Giovanni Tenorio, or The Libertine. In the romantic era at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, Don Juan became the most popular hero around the world. It was then that such famous works as the novel by E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Don Juan" (1812), the poem by G. Byron "Don Juan"

History of Foreign Literature of the 17th Century. / Ed. M.V. Razumovskaya. - M .: Higher school, 2001.S. 114-117.Kissin B. Don-Juan // Literary encyclopedia in 11 volumes, vol. 3. - M., 1929-1939Mokulsky. S.S. Moliere // Literary encyclopedia in 11 volumes, vol. 7. - M., 1929-1939.Moliere J. B. Comedy: Don Juan, or the Stone Guest / Per. with fr. A.V. Fedorov. - M .: Eksmo, 2005.S. 101-163.