The philosophical aspect of the book of literary and critical articles as a structural and semantic unity

Zakharova Elizaveta Mikhailovna ORCID: 0000-0002-2087-6072 PhD in Philology Researcher, Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature 121069, Russia, Moskva oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Povarskaya, 25 a Elizakharova2019@gmail.com Other publications by this author

 The origins of the cyclization phenomenon

The heyday of author's and collective collections of critical articles, as well as poetry books, occurred at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries..

It is important to note that the authors, as a rule, performed simultaneously in both genres. The book-forming trend was caused, on the one hand, by external literary factors, and, on the other, by the laws of poetics that this form possesses. Among the intra-literary factors that influenced the increase in the number of collections of critical texts, researchers primarily refer mainly to the features of poetics, which incorporate the patterns of the arrangement of literary and critical statements. Together with the commonality on the part of the ideological content, this became a factor of their rapprochement at the formal level.

It can be assumed that this thesis applies to the genre of literary and critical collections in general. The books of critical articles of the late XIX – early XX centuries were permeated by internal logic, which arose not least thanks to the prefaces, where the decisive voice was possessed by "the author's attitude to the perception of the internal unity of articles" ^{[5, p. 423]} A.A. Beloborodova argues that in the Silver Age the book of poems appears as an artistic whole due to the desire of the authors to "recreate various models of a multifaceted whole – the unity of the world" ^{[1, p. 15]}. In most cases, the publication of critical articles as part of books was preceded by their initial appearance in magazine headings, and then author and editorial processing for republishing under one cover. And therefore, the discovery of ontology is possible only with the reconstruction of the integrity of the book through attention to its poetics. The purpose of this work is to study the book of literary and critical articles in the philosophical aspect and describe its theoretical model based on the works of I.I. Vinogradov, I.B. Rodnyanskaya, M.N. Epstein.A book of literary and critical articles in the second half of the XX century

After the epoch of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, increased attention to the genre of the book was observed in the period of the 60-80s of the XX century. S.I. Chuprin justifies the strengthening of personalization and the writer-artistic direction in literary criticism, as well as the acquisition by its main actors of a special status in the social and cultural life of the country.

It was at this time that there was a "flourishing of author's personalities", often competing with writers: "the critic took care of transmitting his own [spiritual, literary, civic experience], saturating his works with confessional, autobiographical motives, emphasizing the deeply personal, private nature of his judgments and assessments" ^{[16, pp. 7, 21, 24]}. The genre form itself has become the object of close attention from practitioners and literary theorists. In B. Menzel 's monograph it is stated: "In Soviet times, in addition to monthly magazines and some weekly newspapers, especially the Literary Gazette, the most important type of publication was a book. In this sense, the book in Russia stood unusually high in comparison with the West. Every more or less respected critic has usually had a number of books printed over the years of his professional activity. Before perestroika, there were at least a dozen books in the lists of publications of famous critics. Literary criticism in the form of a book is collections of previously published articles and monographic studies of the work of individual authors or, however, much less often, problems of literature. Despite the relevance of the author's approaches, monographs usually claimed to be scientific and were mostly an expression of the institutional fusion of literature, criticism and literary criticism" ^{[10, pp. 129-130]}. Another part of the study points to the strengthening of syncretism in literary criticism during the collapse of the USSR. This statement is pushed, on the one hand, by the tendency in which the boundaries between criticism, science and literary creativity are blurred, and on the other, there is a more explicit appeal of representatives of different generations to the traditions of the Silver Age in criticism.

The table below contains a classification and some list of books and collections of literary and critical articles published from 1986 to 1989 by representatives of all generations:

The phenomenon of cyclization in the specified chronological period has become widespread among literary critics. However, only those collections that not only incorporated thematically similar works, but also, from the point of view of the authors, demonstrated the development of a common plot, can be considered typologically close. The genre of a literary-critical book as a structural-semantic unity, that is, a metal-literary text that allows you to detect an invariant, in addition, this group is brought closer by authorization, compositional alignment, concentration on issues of mutual influence of classical and modern literature, the presence of author's prefaces that have programmatic significance, as a rule, for the entire activity of the critic.

The most important feature of the designated period was the change of literary criticism as an institution. The transformations that have begun in society have influenced the strengthening of the share of political activity and journalism in criticism.

The event was "the actual rejection of aggressive atheism by the state. The Orthodox tradition, interrupted in 1917, was revived, destroyed churches were restored, theological schools and seminaries were opened" ^{[10, p. 645]}. The second half of the 1980s was marked by a flaring interest of readers in literary criticism. Critical thought turned its attention to "understanding the revealed layers of Russian literature, but the subject of reflection was primarily the problems of the socio-political plan, and not the literary and aesthetic one," notes M.M. Golubkov ^{[3, p. 22]}.

It is essential that in all the texts of literary critics selected for analytical consideration, one of the central ones is the plot related to literary classics, as well as its impact on the subsequent literary process. Russian Russian thinkers abroad, according to Birgit Menzel, the impossibility of open philosophizing and theology, characteristic at the same time of the thinkers of the Russian diaspora, was replaced by the construction of "a religiously and nationally grounded concept of literature and interpretation of the work of canonized Russian classics of the XIX century as a statement of enduring ethical and aesthetic values" ^{[10, p. 265]}.

The philosophical nature of literary criticismIn the period of the 60-80s of the XX century, literary criticism of the philosophical direction was revived and gradually strengthened.

The most striking, but by no means the only representatives should be considered I.I. Vinogradov, I.B. Rodnyanskaya, M.N. Epstein. The ambiguity of the term "philosophical criticism" lies, on the one hand, in the vagueness of the concept of "philosophical" in relation to literary criticism, and on the other hand, in the ambiguity of the term "direction" ^{[15, pp. 159-161]}. In this study, preference is given to the term "method" in the meaning of "a set of techniques". This solution avoids strict attachment to a certain calendar-chronological period in the typology of literary criticism. And in this regard, it can be assumed that philosophical criticism as a method did not stop in the activities of individual personalities in the national tradition until the Soviet era. It is important to note that in the few works on the general theory of the method of literary criticism, it has been customary since antiquity to single out only two approaches: the normative and the principle of analysis "about" ^{[13, pp. 165-168]}. V.N. Krylov, having designated such types of criticism as: philological, journalistic, philosophical, highlights the key features of the latter: "consideration of a literary work as a special kind of philosophical thought"; the predominance of ethics over aesthetics; belief in the high social status of literature; missionary work; a pronounced moral position of the critic; reliance on philosophical and religious-philosophical works ^[6].

Consequently, philosophical criticism by its nature is a syncretic phenomenon, because it takes in both an aesthetic and a metaphysical view of a literary work. However, the concept of "philosophical criticism" for the purposes of this work, focusing on specific texts, needs to be narrowed even more. And it seems preferable to turn to religious-idealistic criticism. The metacritical statements of these critics, as well as their following in practice mainly Dostoevsky and Solovyov, allow us to judge not only the philosophical foundations of criticism, but also the degree of approximation to this particular direction (Cf.: "This is the real task of the "word" sought by Dostoevsky – artistic and more than artistic: to give a visible image of perfection, to show the ugly incommensurability of the current state of the world and man with this attractive image and to move the conscience, fascinated by the world ideal of beauty, to the first step" ^{[2, p. 245]}). The critical method of Vinogradov and Rodnyanskaya is more closely connected with the philosophical or "about" principle, the essence of which lies in going beyond the limits of the work under consideration. In many articles, the analysis is replaced by a retelling and, in fact, an artistic arrangement of the work: "Maybe he [Pechorin], too, like his creator or the creator of "Dead Souls", invisibly stepped out into the expanses of today's streets and squares with the same confidently looking forward petrel and optimist, leaving his gloomy prototype somewhere on such the same backyard of the half-forgotten past, like Andreevsky Gogol?.." ^{[2, p. 10]}. It is also important here how Vinogradov himself formulates the super-task of his work: it is important for criticism to find in a novel of the XIX century a spiritually significant experience for people of the twentieth century, "deep spiritual content" ^{[2, p. 33]}, since this is "an attempt to precisely literary-critical and only literary-critical reading of the novel in its spiritual relevance for us" ^{[2, p. 25]}.

The formation or, more precisely, the revival of the philosophical method of literary criticism during the Soviet period was facilitated by the ideological and stylistic originality of Russian prose in the 1960s-80s ("military" and "urban" prose, the works of Yu. Trifonova, V. Makanina, V. Rasputin, V. Astafieva). It was during this period that writers drew attention to existential and moral issues. The moral content of a work of art began to be considered on a par with poetics (Cf.: "Bitov solves not an artistic, but a vital task: to blow up an indecomposable unity, directly mixing himself with the world, to experience and know his soul as separate and special with "full consciousness", to experience "an unpleasant confrontation with his own experience", and then, if possible, to rediscover being – already with grateful selflessness, alien to childish illusions" ^{[17, p. 99]}). In general, the methodology of literary criticism began to be enriched with new approaches, and the main goal was to expand knowledge about human life. Moreover, in the second half of the XX century, the trend was more clearly manifested, according to which the normative method and socialist realism went into the shadows. We can talk about the impact of artistic material on the specifics of literary-critical intonation. The literary material itself dictated the specifics of the conversation, and therefore generated philosophical criticism. In contrast to the official criticism, some authors began to concentrate on the study of the fundamental issues of life, solving universal problems.

Literary criticism 1986-1989: the problem of materialA comparison of the literary-critical systems of I.I. Vinogradov, I.B. Rodnyanskaya and M.N. Epstein reveals that the latter of these authors is fully approaching the philosophical criticism proper, striving for a separate and independent direction.

And an important role in this aspect is played by the fact that not only the characteristics of researchers, but also Epstein's self-presentation in creative activity are primarily related to the philosophical sphere. The autobiographical book "Encyclopedia of Youth" ^{[18, pp. 96-97]} contains a lot of information about the influence that Epstein experienced in his early years. Among the names that had the strongest effect are the following: A.G. Bitov, O.A. Sedakova, M.M. Bakhtin, S.S. Averintsev, Y.M. Lotman, G.D. Gachev, F.V. Nietzsche, O. Spengler, T. Mann, F. Kafka, M. Buber, P. Valery. R. Barth. Regarding the direct philosophical impact, the author notes: "The strongest was the influence of Husserl's phenomenology, Kierkegaard's and Sartre's existentialism and the Marcusian "new left" counterculture" ^{[18, pp. 96-97]}; "The revelation was R.M. Rilke and L. Wittgenstein's "Logical and Philosophical Treatise"; "From domestic thinkers - V. Soloviev and N.. Berdyaev, to a lesser extent L. Shestov, V. Rozanov, P. Florensky" ^{[18, p. 97]}.

Epstein's method of talking about literature and the problems of the humanitarian industry differs significantly from the approaches of Rodnyanskaya and Vinogradov. In Vinogradov's literary criticism, the analysis of a literary text was the primary task, as indirectly evidenced by the long-term practice of the critic in the genre of reviews (while Epstein never wrote reviews of specific works). In other formats of journal texts, Vinogradov also considered works mainly from the aesthetic side, which is traditional for literary criticism. Philosophy, as a pre-established and predetermined set of ethical and aesthetic ideas, did not become an intentionally designated goal. And therefore, the existence of a strict system of views of the author is reconstructed solely as a result of the consistent development of a set of critical texts.

The originality of Rodnyanskaya's literary-critical approach, in turn, is also determined by the hidden presence of purely philosophical views and ideas. The author, by his own admission inheriting the principles of the method of V.G. Belinsky and professionally engaged in the history of Western philosophical thought, synthesizes both lines in his own writings. And this is manifested, first of all, in the fact that for a critic who emphasizes his predominant connection with this type of analytical and creative activity, literature turns out to be such a space through which topical issues related to a person and his place in the world are revealed. (See, for example, arguments about tradition:: "Traditions arise not because it was conceived by the ancestors, but because descendants choose this way" "the peculiarity of our time is that it has discovered in itself the ability to create new and new traditions – to create by perceiving" ^{[17, p. 118]}). But at the same time, in relation to Rodnyanskaya, it is impossible to categorically assert the existence of an independent philosophical system, because the peculiarity of her method in reasoning about works of art lies in the fact that the evaluation criteria are largely influenced by following the basic provisions that define the philosophical matrix of V.S. Solovyov.

So, for Vinogradov and Rodnyanskaya, the philosophic nature of the literary-critical systems they create should be considered as an inevitable consequence of the initially chosen method of reasoning about literature. In other words, if philosophy was not an end in itself for the authors whose work began in the 1950s and 60s, then Epstein has a fundamentally different view of the question of how to build a conversation about literature. That is why, if in the first two cases it is more accurate to talk about philosophical critics, then the definition of Epstein's style and essence of activity should sound like a "critic-philosopher". The exceptional importance of philosophy as one of the main areas of Epstein's specialization is revealed, among other things, by the fact that ideas independently expressed by him, but based on a given circle of development of the history of philosophical knowledge, become the methodological basis for the works of modern researchers.

The continuity between the critics of the period under consideration becomes most clearly evident at the level of citation and dialogical connections between specific literary and critical texts. An example of such a connection is Epstein's article "The Inviting Abyss", where the focus is on Blok's creativity. The starting point of the reflections are theses about the meaning of the Block, as well as its equality to Pushkin, which is confirmed by the ideas of one of the most famous articles by Rodnyanskaya.

The analysis of the creative systems of Vinogradov, Rodnyanskaya, Epstein, as well as a consistent review of the books of literary and critical articles of each of the authors from the point of view of structural and semantic unity lead to a certain set of conclusions.

Vinogradov was indirectly connected with philosophy, introduced special methods of reviewing texts into his literary and critical texts, trying to see more in them than just a look at composition, style, plot. His literary and critical texts are full of philosophical calculations, maxims and aphorisms. He does not just analyze, assessing the merits, noting the shortcomings of a certain aesthetic product. This is precisely the transition from sociological criticism to another type of work with the text.

In turn, Rodnyanskaya's method, where literature does not exist in isolation, is determined by an even closer connection with philosophy: existential meanings are found behind the text, ideas embedded in artistic texts are generalized. For this author, discovering the artistry of a work is not an end in itself. But at the same time, the critic does not offer his own philosophical system.

Epstein looks fundamentally differently: from his point of view, he is inside philosophical knowledge, while building his own system.  This is a transition from the heir of a certain speculative concept to philosophical criticism without dependence on a particular school. Epstein independently builds his worldview system.

Thus, in the consistent strengthening of the philosophical direction of literary criticism, a three-stage system is being built:

1) Close connection with the literary text: philosophy is not an end in itself, but philosophizing in a literary-critical text is gradually being formed;

2)      The transition to philosophy in literary criticism, since the critic already has full knowledge of philosophical works, is observed in the work of Rodnyanskaya. It reveals a synthesis of philosophical, literary-critical, as well as scientific knowledge. But philosophy as a system is not formed: the critic acts as a thinker, answering to a greater extent questions of an existential nature;

3)      Gradually, the perspective aimed at discovering aesthetic merits in works of art is shifting to a fundamentally different area of thought construction: the importance of philosophizing and philosophy proper in literary and critical texts is increasing. Thus, the field of Epstein's activity is most likely to be associated not with philosophizing in literary criticism, but with a consistently and consciously constructed literary-critical philosophy.

Theoretical model of a book of literary and critical articlesThe given review of research reflections shows that, in contrast to the study of the history of a literary-critical book, the theoretical comprehension of its formal organization is less widespread.

But it is impossible not to notice that more and more often there are works in which the task of discovering a model of a metaliterary text as a structural and semantic unity is put forward to the fore. A.A. Kholikov's dissertation ^[14] comprehensively examines the complete lifetime collection of works. The proposed method and a set of tasks allow us to compare the study with the dissertation work of G.S. Prokhorov ^[11]. Based on the material of prose books, in particular those whose title complex includes the genre characteristic of the "mirror", an attempt is made to identify such features in poetics that would allow us to draw conclusions about the existence of a formal and meaningful invariant. According to the methodological proximity to these works, G.V. Zykova's study "Journal as a literary form" ^[4] also approaches, where not only the question of the nature of the relationship between journalism and fiction prose is raised, but also the poetics of discrete and assembly-based compositional form is considered.

In the field of studying the theory of criticism, one can also detect a growing interest on the part of researchers in solving general theoretical issues and striving to identify the specifics of theoretical aspects based on the work of individual authors. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of the very status of literary criticism as a phenomenon associated simultaneously with science, artistic creativity, journalism and philosophy persists, which cannot but influence the development of its theory. This area has recently begun to be replenished with new works of literary critics. Thus, M.Y. Luchnikov notes that "the concept of "literary criticism" is difficult to reflect on, "escapes" from the scientific definition. It can be stated with confidence that an active discussion of theoretical problems related to the nature and functioning of literary criticism has not yet led to the creation of any unified and authoritative theoretical model of it" ^{[9, p. 5]}. Until now, there has not been a single canonical concept for analyzing the structure of a literary and critical work.

There are significantly fewer works devoted to the classification or poetics of specific literary critical genres. While it is in this area of literary creativity that the genre paradigm not only significantly preserves continuity, but also acts as a tool that ensures the process of "pre-understanding", introduces the addressee to the textual content even before reading a review, review or literary portrait. Consequently, as a result of genre-semantic analysis, a holistic comprehension of the text, its immanent, intrinsic properties, and features imposed by external circumstances, context, is possible. The existence of the genre of an individual author's book of literary and critical articles as a structural and semantic unity indicates the presence of such formal and substantive components that allow us to talk about textual integrity and assert the existence of an invariant.

But if the recognition of a book of literary and critical articles as a genre is not in doubt, then the pluralism existing in terminology prevents the creation of a unified system of tools for analyzing formal and meaningful integrity. It is important that the diversity of points of view affects mainly fiction, and here it is customary to speak with an optional distinction about a cycle, a collection, a book, a collection of works. It seems that the book of literary and critical articles is a hybrid supergenre, which is located at the intersection of the previously named forms and therefore absorbs their most essential features. Relying on the approach of Yu.M. Lotman ^[8], as well as on the definition of N.L. Leiderman ^{[7, pp. 132-142]}, we can talk about a literary-critical book as a meta-text and consider its poetics by analogy with other prose and poetic units included in this circle. So, at this stage it seems necessary to turn to the already sufficiently developed theory of super-genre unities and to identify a number of components in the structure of the book of literary and critical articles in order to build a model of this structural and semantic unity.

If we take into account the above provisions, it turns out that the strengthening of the genre of the book of literary and critical articles, as well as the expansion of attention to it on the part of the authors, is largely due to the transformation of the institution of literary criticism itself. The commenting function has given way to interpretation and explanation, as well as building a free dialogue with a whole system of addressees: readers, opponents, authors of works of art (implicitly - with predecessors in the genre and methodology, explicitly - with opponents and readers, with whom the author, on the one hand, solidifies in the process of comprehending the text or the world of this or that on the other hand, it takes a slightly higher position, since the independent text of the critic is aimed at teaching or edifying its readership, presenting it with spiritual and moral lessons).

The image of the author has become the dominant of the critical text, which has become more saturated from the point of view of the biographies contained in it and the personal coloring is crossed out. Subjectivism has become a distinctive feature of the book, which acted both as a manifesto, postulating basic ethical and aesthetic positions for the critic, and as a summing up of what was said earlier.

Stylistically, the genre is characterized by a more vivid artistry compared to individual articles or collections, which is expressed through the properties of compositional and architectonic unity (title complexes, author's prefaces and afterwords, the given thematic arrangement of articles, as well as their transformation for inclusion in the cycle). Not only the unity of the printing design (cover, the presence of illustrations in the main text) they contribute to the unity of macro-genre critical utterance, but also the presence of a plot as the central problem situation for the book, as well as a system of leitmotives or semantic fields linking the text at the semantic level.

The distinctive feature of the books of the period 1986-1989 considered in this article in semantic terms were the "Aesopian language" conditioned by the era, indirect and direct references to the texts of Holy Scripture, concentration on issues related to the problems of Russian classical literature to solve issues of spiritual and moral order.

In general, we can talk about each of the books considered as a conscious attempt by the author to offer his own view both on problems relevant to the current state of literature and on issues of universal importance based on philosophical concepts. The study of the poetics of the macro-genre form in order to describe the theoretical model allows us to identify such leading elements as the plot, semantic fields, composition, heading complex, printing design, the image of the author and the addressee, dialogization. Determining the nature of the relationship between the selected components gives an idea not only of the motivation of the critic's techniques, but also of the phenomenon of compositional and thematic unity. The structural-hermeneutic approach should be recognized as the most methodologically acceptable way of analytical consideration of the book as a structural-semantic unity.

Due to the close interweaving of philosophy and literature in the designated time period, it is necessary to take into account this interaction, studying the literary-critical and at the same time philosophical text as literary in its basis. The study of the regularities of the poetics of the book by I.I. Vinogradov "On the living trail. Spiritual quest of the Russian classics" showed that both at the formal and at the substantive level, the personality of the critic acts as a guarantor of integrity, throughout the text acting in various manifestations of the author's image. The fundamental principle of the book by I.B. Rodnyanskaya "The Artist in search of Truth" from the point of view of the plot and compositional organization should be considered the author's decision to identify the "eternal grain" in them when working with artistic texts. By means of structural and semantic analysis, it was proved that the meanings of M.N. Epstein's monograph "Paradoxes of Novelty" are determined by genre and historical and cultural factors. On the one hand, the book continues the development of the phenomenon of structural and semantic unities. On the other hand, this critical statement is a contribution to the development of the philosophical direction of literary criticism. The general structural model of a book of literary and critical articles is a set of implicit and explicit components, where the role of the author occupies a decisive position both in the selection of formal compositional means and in the construction of semantic unity.

The works of Vinogradov, Rodnyanskaya, Epstein are close at once in genre-typological and methodological aspects. Representatives of different generations of critics simultaneously addressed issues of moral and philosophical significance in the genre of the book, which allows them to present their own conceptual view of the development of literature and its current state. The identified problems were posed by updating the works of A.S. Pushkin, M.Y. Lermontov, N.V. Gogol and other Russian classics. For this reason, it seems possible to make an assumption about the philosophical direction of criticism reviving in the late Soviet period. Further study of the book of literary and critical articles as a structural and semantic unity will be possible both by increasing the number of analyzed texts and by expanding the chronological boundaries of the study.