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

Historicism and artistic techniques of the poem "Don Juan".

The spirit of revolutionary romanticism permeates the entire poem and determines its characteristic unity of civic pathos, lyricism and satirical denunciation.

The ideological peak of the poem is, admittedly, the "military" seventh and eighth songs. The epigraph to them could be Voltaire's classic definition: "War is a calamity and a crime, which includes all calamities and all crimes."

It is curious that these songs immediately follow the "harem" [IV-VI] songs. Again, a contrast characteristic of the poem arises: a parody of the romantic style of depicting "oriental" passions, the recognized masters of which were Byron himself in his youth and his friend Thomas Moore, immediately preceded the tragic scenes of suffering and destruction; light, unconstrained narration is replaced by denunciations of the war filled with civil rhetoric.

Addressing imaginary descendants, the poet exclaims:

But may their very memory perish too! -

Yet if perchance remembered, still disdain you 'em

More than you scorn the savages of yore.

Who painted their bare limbs, but not with gore.

Byron's high accusatory pathos is combined, as always, with caustic irony. So he pretends to be an "indomitable patriot" who cannot bring himself to say even a word of truth about his enemies and finds that

I'd rather tell ten lies than say a word

Of truth; - such truths are treason; they betray

Their country; and as traitors are abhorred, ...

The only war that Byron justifies is the war for the liberation of humanity [VIII, 4,50-51]. All the rest of the wars are waged in the name of selfish monarchs who shed blood like water in concern for power and the multiplication of their wealth. Just as the false morality and false religion of the ruling classes, Byron rejects in the name of his deeply human ethical ideals, in the same way, in a time of true .Bulletin of young scientists 7`2007 series: philosophical sciences 2`2003.

patriotism, false heroism, the romanticization of war and obsequious admiration for its inspirers, crowned despots, are ridiculed. The poet Catherine II [IX-X] is portrayed as such a despot.

The characteristic of the empress's criminal policy is combined with the guise of her immorality; political condemnation is inseparable from moral judgment. In the center of Byron's attention is the unlimited power of the autocrat and the jealous servility of her courtiers, creeping before her throne for the sake of greed. Otherwise, the depiction of the empress and the court is devoid of historical concreteness. No wonder Byron draws direct parallels between the Russian queen and the Turkish sultan, who, in turn, ironically compares with the English king George IV. The "Russian" episode of Don Juan is a generalized satirical depiction of any European court, any European high society. From the general (the image of English reality as a whole) through There are very few hints of specific Russian social conditions. .

The part devoted to England [X-XVI] is incomparably more historically and realistically true. Therefore, the poet's "revolutionary laughter" sounds especially merciless here. His satire in these songs is based on a gradually increasing concretization. From the general (the image of English reality as a whole) through the more particular (that is, the characteristics of high society), Byron moves on to the individual - sketching individuals and destinies, their interaction and conditioning by real social conditions.Byron begins with a broad, generalizing picture of bourgeois-aristocratic England, its reactionary foreign policy, corrupt government and dishonest officials, its submission to the will of the all-powerful bankers and the law of cash

How all the nations deem her their worst foe,

That worse than _worst of foes_, the once adored

False friend,…

The characteristic features of England are customs and high duties, which it collects even from the waves of the sea, its sovereigns wear crowns like stupid caps, and its true masters are financiers, owners of gigantic capital; its parliament has become a tax trap, its soldiers crush the people with the hooves of their horses, which now only receive "liquid swill" instead of the old strong beer.

After this general picture, Byron focuses his attention on the so-called upper circles of English society, which determine his policies, his laws and his morality [XI, XII songs]. Insignificance, parasitism - these are the features of the powerful, emphasized by the poet:

Don Juan saw that Microcosm on stilts,

Yclept the Great World; for it is the least,

Although the highest: but as swords have hilts

By which their power of mischief is increased,

When Man in battle or in quarrel tilts,

Thus the low world, north, south, or west, or east,

Must still obey the high [635] - which is their handle,

Their Moon, their Sun, their gas, their farthing candle. .

Byron emphasizes the injustice of social relations, in which the spiritual powerlessness and emptiness of representatives of the high society do not deprive them of the right to impose their will on the popular majority. The poet denounces the ideological means by which this injustice is affirmed and maintained. He speaks with disgust of the corrupt press, which, submitting to the government, is trying with all its might to hide the true state of affairs:

Oh! ye great authors luminous, voluminous!

Ye twice ten hundred thousand daily scribes!

Whose pamphlets, volumes, newspapers, illumine us!

Whether you're paid by government in bribes,

An even stronger tool is lies, disguised as hypocrisy and hypocrisy - “political, poetic, religious, moral,” as Byron wrote with irritation. They tirelessly extolled the imaginary holiness and moral purity of the existing foundations of society and its official leaders, and turned to the "lower" classes with moral and religious edifications that pursued only one goal - to keep the working people in submission.

Exposing the ruling oligarchy with its system of social and personal relationships, which constitutes the inner ideological core of all satire as a whole, carried out in the poem with the help of unusually diverse artistic means.

Biblical, evangelical and, in general, religious images are ironically used in Byron's poem. Challenging the prevailing hypocrisy, Byron mockingly assures that piety himself visits only during illness:

first attack at once proved the Divinity

(But that I never doubted, nor the Devil);

The next, the Virgin's mystical virginity;

The third, the usual Origin of Evil;

The fourth at once established the whole Trinity

On so uncontrovertible a level,

That I devoutly wished the three were four-- On purpose to believe so much the more.Using the phraseology of the Biblical Ten Commandments, Byron sets out A.

his literary views: “Believe in Milton, Dryden, Pop, do not make yourself an idol from Wadsworth, Coleridge and South” [I, 205].

One of Byron's stylistic innovations is the widespread use in the poetic language of more or less stable phraseological combinations of vernacular, so that their perky, casual, everyday, realistic character serves as a sobering contrast to the prevailing system of false claims. The spread and further development of a phraseological combination is often accompanied by the disclosure and emphasis of its internal form, worn out and discolored from prolonged use. Such, for example, is Byron's comment on the honorific title of honorable, which traditionally precedes the name of the younger, not entitled to the title of sons of English aristocrats:

There were four Honorable Misters, whose

Honor was more before their names than after.

The disclosure of the internal form of the term, which is not felt in ordinary use, allows us to show how the traditional designation is devoid of real content.

The variety of these combinations, on the one hand, contributes to the expansion of linguistic boundaries, and on the other hand, gives the poem even greater cognitive meaning: after all, each new verbal shade, each new concept, gives Byron's observations a special brilliance and refinement. In some cases, a standard common expression grows into a broad generalized image.

All countries have their lions, but in thee

There is but one superb menagerie.

The most "neutral" words in Byron's Poem have a generalizing meaning. Words used in the simplest, literal sense, making up a dry list, lying side by side, make up an ironic, realistic, typical drawing and overcome their lexical neutrality. Extremely indicative in this sense is the enumeration of the entertainments to which the noble visitors of the Château de Amondeville indulge. The same is the ironic catalog of the charms of the English coast - "Of white votes, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings, tithes, taxes, duns, and with double knockings" [XII,

Several specific details, expressed in the simplest precise words, add up to a generalized image of bourgeois England, strong in taxes and duties. . .

Likewise, the whole life of a noble English lord is captured and summarized in five verbs denoting concrete, by no means uplifting actions:

And having voted, dined, drunk, gamed and whored,

The family vault receives another lord.

Numerous means of expression used by Byron to create a whole series of caricatured figures can be summarized by the definition formulated by N. G. Chernyshevsky: the source of the comic is "emptiness, meaninglessness of a form devoid of content or having a claim to content disproportionate to its insignificance." To expose this disproportion, Byron often decomposes the general concept into its constituent elements:

In the great world, - which, being interpreted,

Meaneth the West or worst end of a city,

And about twice two thousand people bred

By no means to be very wise or witty,

But to sit up while others lie in bed,

And look down on the Universe with pity, -

Juan, as an inveterate patrician,

Was well received by persons of condition.

A single whole "big light", breaks down into concrete elements, which in their totality reveal the insignificant content of the imaginary sublime concept. Likewise, the life of a powerful lord, effective and meaningful in its ordinary view, is revealed in its true light with a dispassionate enumeration of its miserable components - voting, dining, drinking, playing, debauchery. Byron satirically depicts the semblance of a stormy and varied activity that representatives of the world indulge in. Men, says Byron, hunted to pass the time, shifted books from place to place, criticized paintings, condemned greenhouses, talked about newspapers and waited for dinner with their eyes fixed on their watches [XIII, 101-102]; the ladies walked, on foot or on horseback, sang or rehearsed the last foreign dances, discussed new fashions and remade their hats in the latest style [XIII, 104]; in the evenings - banquets, wine, conversations, duets, sometimes dancing, flirting,

gossip ... the hunters relived the hunt for foxes and went to bed sleep modestly, at ten in the evening [XIII, 107-108]. The more Byron emphasizes the diversity of interests that occupy high society, the clearer the picture of spiritual poverty and monotony that mechanical external diversity cannot overcome. From a few accurate, real details, a typical picture of spiritual emptiness, mental scarcity, characteristic of "commercial and very pedantic" England, is formed [XII, 68]. From subtly noticed small everyday touches, the appearance of the depressing insignificance of those classes that claim to be the leadership of society is formed.

Not limiting himself to ethical criticism of the ruling circles, Byron shows that moral baseness and hypocrisy are inseparable from political dishonesty, from violation of the elementary political rights of the people. Wellington's "savior of the nations" bathes in luxury, while the "saved nation" groans under the weight of the yoke [IX, 5]. “Ireland is dying of hunger”, but “the great George weighs seven poods” [VIII, 126].

We can talk about the New World and the Old, about its joys or sufferings, about a royalist or liberal Congress that governs it - regardless of all these various options, bankers rule the world, Congress and politics. The difference in their nationality or religion, ironically emphasized by Byron, decisively changes nothing in the severity of the imposed or yoke. The greater the heap of contrasts, the more obvious becomes a single source, a single spring of the entire existing social system.

Lofty words about pity and reverence for the dying glory and the former dignity of the homeland alternate with a low style, conveying the feelings of a person who sees that “his native country is flying to all the devils” [X, 66], and end with upbeat and pathetic words full of indignation , bitterness and regret about the shameful role of England - "the jailer of nations" [X, 68]. Thus, the poet's personal feeling makes itself felt throughout the entire length of the poem. The epic narrative is interrupted by the minute with lyrical outpourings, ridicule over traditional poetic and romantic representations are intertwined with bitter lamentations about the .

cacophony of a world in which poetry and romance are either illusory and transient, or are subjected to the destructive action of vulgarity. Extremely indicative in this sense is the enumeration of the entertainments to which the noble visitors of the Château de Amondeville indulge. The same is the ironic catalog of the charms of the English coast - "Of white votes, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings, tithes, taxes, duns, and with double knockings" [XII,

Several specific details, expressed in the simplest precise words, add up to a generalized image of bourgeois England, strong in taxes and duties. . Not limiting himself to ethical criticism of the ruling circles, Byron shows that moral baseness and hypocrisy are inseparable from political dishonesty, from

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