Critical Realism

Critical realism in literature and its basic creative principles were formed in a society whose class structure was in a classical-bourgeois form. In those conditions, there really was only this one social form. Representations of the same people about a certain "classless" society were purely theoretical. And in these conditions, belonging, the fact of attaching a person to a particular social environment, was an immutable regularity, becoming a spiritual and artistic way of perceiving and assimilating life.

At the same time, social-class certainty has come to critical realism not in the form of ordinary reproduction of this or that social type. It was not her appearance and independent process. Critical realism reflected the creative synthesis of this determinism with an interested, socially active attitude to life.

This synthesis is clearly visible in the historical connection of the individual with his social-class structure. Critical realism characterizes this relationship as hostile to the individual, hindering the person's opportunities and aspirations. The dominant environment existed, suppressing, disfiguring, destroying human ancestral qualities. Critical realism is a reflection of the suffering and extreme poverty of the working population.

The created pictures truthfully characterize the social peculiarity of that reality, which was a closed and hostile attitude towards the whole and free life of man. This principle was the basis of critical realism. Life perception, mastering the class system, which manifested hostility not only to its own movements, but also to subsequent times, was truthfully reproduced in art.

Critical realism establishes not an objective but a subjective connection between narrow social types and social development. This connection is manifested in the form of studying social circumstances, as well as in the inner striving of a person to communicate with other people normally and freely, not subject to the influence of society.

Most often in the literature of that time this aspiration was expressed in the form of love - a feeling that does not recognize any social classifications and distinctions. It could have arisen between people who have different views and occupy different positions. At the same time, the desire could be expressed in asserting oneself in the sphere of activity useful to society. Moreover, in some cases, the individual tried to strengthen the principle of disinterested, extra-social, free human relations as normal communication of people with each other.

Along with this, the literature of critical realism, all attempts by a person to live "humanly," with pure feelings and disinterested desires, leads to conflict with the system around it. Everywhere an emphasis is placed on exclusively positive human qualities: the honesty of the peasant, the decency of the bourgeois, the virtue of the intellectual, the nobility of the nobleman.

The formation of the art of critical realism took place in close connection with the general democratic movements of the peoples of Europe. Here it should be noted and the opposition of the French against the Bourbon monarchy, and subsequently against the desire of the big bourgeoisie for various forms of political and economic domination. At the same time, the struggle of the English people for democracy in the state took place, against the same bourgeois domination. It should be said about more than a century of resistance to the German nation and its struggle for bourgeois-democratic reforms. In Russia, an anti-feudal movement was formed in the early 19th century, including the revolutionary nobility, and later other social strata-workers, peasants, raznochintsy, the bourgeoisie.