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Philosophical, aesthetic and moral problems of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Composition on the theme “The Picture of Dorian Gray Problematics of the work The Portrait of Dorian Gray

The problem of pure art in O. Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Oscar Wilde is a writer who gave rise to an artistic movement that is called aestheticism.

Aestheticism is a literary trend that has manifested itself most vividly in English literature. Aestheticism is based on the philosophical idea of "pure art" and "art for art's sake". The main task of the artist is the search for beauty. Beauty is elevated to the absolute, and is devoid of a moral principle. An artist is ready to sacrifice a lot for the sake of beauty and art, including life. An esthete in art creates a work for the elite, who are able to enjoy art and put it above life. Reality occupies the last place in the hierarchy of values, and art is created for its own sake. The aesthetic value of a work of art is immeasurably higher than the value of life and the surrounding world.

Throughout his life and work in the field of literature, Wilde praises the power of beauty, although all his works are exclusively praises of virtue and morality.

This paradox is especially clear in his novel, although a different theme still occupies a central place here.

This work is primarily about the power of art, about the great sacrifice for the sake of art, about the concepts of morality and its connection with art.

Not only in the time of Oscar Wilde, when aestheticism was known, but even now The Picture of Dorian Gray is far from the last place as the best novel about all aspects of art and the doctrine of beauty.

In this regard, it is necessary to solve the so-called question of "pure art". What, according to the writer, was that very true, pure art? And how it is expressed in the novel, with the help of what plot moves and images.

At the very beginning of the novel, we get acquainted with the preface, in which Oscar Wilde expresses his views on art, beauty and the artist himself. wilde pure art dorian gray

Artist-creator of beauty.<…>Those who see the ugly in the beautiful are immoral people, but immorality does not make them attractive. This is vice.

Those who see signs of beauty in beauty are moral people. They are not completely hopeless. But only the chosen ones see only beauty in beauty. There are no books moral or immoral. Books are either well written or bad. And that's the difference.<…>The moral life of man is only one aspect of the artist's work, and the morality of Art lies in the perfect application of imperfect means.<…>The artist has no ethical predilections. The ethical predilections of the artist give rise to an inexcusable mannerism of style. An artist does not have a morbid imagination. The artist has the right to depict everything.

Thought and Word are the tools with which the artist creates Art. Vice and Virtue are the material from which the artist creates Art.<…>All art is at the same time superficial and symbolic. Those who attempt to penetrate below the surface are at risk. Those who try to decipher the symbols are also at risk.

Art is a mirror, but it reflects the beholder, not life.<…>If critics disagree, then the artist is true to himself.

You can forgive a person the creation of a useful thing, if only he does not admire it. But the one who creates something useless can only be justified by immense admiration for his creation.

All Art is useless.

Before us is a manifesto of decadence and modernism. But the whole novel is a clear and explicit refutation of this manifesto. This is a novel about a man who sincerely believed in this manifesto. This is a novel about the hypocrisy of an artist who allows others to live what he writes about.

Once, in the workshop of his friend, Oscar Wilde saw a sitter who impressed him with the perfection of his appearance. The writer exclaimed: “What a pity that he will not pass old age with all its ugliness!” In response, the artist told him that it would be good to draw such strange portraits every year, so that nature would only beat off her notches on them, then the appearance of the angel that Wilde had just seen would forever remain young.

In the novel itself, there is a clear parallel between this event and the development of the plot.

The action begins in the studio of the artist Basil Hallward. There we get acquainted with the artist himself and with his friends - the young Lord Henry Wotton and the young Dorian Gray, who has been posing for Basil for a long time. And as the artist himself enthusiastically admits in a conversation with Harry, he is the ideal that every creator is looking for almost his entire life, which occurs only once and, having lost one, it is no longer possible to find someone like him.

And in fact, as Lord Watton notes, when meeting Dorian, he is simply angelically handsome. And it would be a pity if such beauty, after some few years, withered, like this irrevocably, to nowhere.

However, Hallward is not very happy that he had to introduce them. He is afraid that Henry will spoil the young man, and then completely take him away, taking him under his influence.

And he, in turn, openly and directly tells Dorian Gray about his beauty and claims how bad it would be if such a handsome young man spends the best years of his life without knowing her.

And now the portrait is finished. With his splendor, he admires not only the artist, but also Dorian himself and Lord Henry.

Thus, the portrait of a young man Dorian is a kind of ideal of beauty. “At the first glance at the portrait, he involuntarily took a step back and flushed with satisfaction. His eyes sparkled so joyfully, as if he saw himself for the first time. Dorian was struck by his portrait, and the thought that in a few years his beauty would begin to fade caused horror. He became cowardly that the years would carry away his red lips and golden luxurious hair, and he himself would become disgusting, pitiful and terrible. This thought troubled him, "as if an icy hand lay on his heart." And then Dorian thought that it would be wonderful if only the portrait grew old, and he himself remained forever young. For the fulfillment of this desire, as he surrendered, he would give everything, even his soul.

Some time passes, and Dorian falls in love with Sybil Vane, a young actress, in whom he is attracted, first of all, by her incredible talent. But in the play, to which Dorian invites his friends, she plays absolutely disgusting. Dorian comes to her backstage and tells her that it's over between them. And when he returns home and looks at the portrait, he is surprised to notice that the portrait has changed - an expression of cruelty has clearly appeared on his face. Frightened, Dorian decides to return to Sibylla the next day, but it is too late - he learns from the newspapers that Sibylla died by mistake by drinking some kind of poison in the dressing room, but it is clear that she committed suicide.

So, he once wanted the traces of suffering and heavy thoughts to be beaten off only on the canvas, but did his desire come true? It was terrible to believe in the impossible, but here before him was his portrait with a fold of cruelty near his lips: Dorian became terrified of the noticed violation of the harmony of art, which was caused by violations of the harmony of feelings. The portrait becomes a mirror of the hero's soul, his conscience. That's what the hero decides first.

But then, he quickly consoles himself by following Lord Henry's advice not to dwell on the past, but to look into the present. Basil is confused. The artist doubts him, and blames Harry's influence for everything. However, Dorian convinces him that if something bad happens, he will definitely trust him, and these words touch Hallward's soul.

What follows is the whole path of the fall and decay of the soul of Dorian Gray. With each of his offenses, which he committed on the occasion of his own whim, the portrait is more and more distorted, and Dorian is no longer able to see him or keep him in a place open to prying eyes.

He becomes a real paranoid, who every hour, every step he thinks about how no one would see his portrait. As if no one knew about what was happening in the soul of a still young aristocrat. He no longer trusts anyone, and when Basil tells him that he is going to exhibit a portrait in his exhibition of paintings, he almost goes berserk.

Instead of telling the artist the reason for his reluctance, he extracts from him the most revelation. Hallward was forced to confess to Dorian his love for him - which really surprised the young man himself. Gray himself believed that there was something tragic in friendship tinged with romantic love.

Meanwhile, the rumors were snowballing around Dorian. Already a few from high society refused to even be in the same room with him, but simply defiantly got up and left. He began to exert a bad influence on those around him, and thereby alienated others from himself.

These gossip excited Basil. The artist demanded an answer from his friend, and instead of long revelations, he showed him his portrait, once painted by Hallward. Shocked, for a long time he cannot recognize his creation in what he saw.

His further prayers and appeals to Dorian to help him atone for his guilt and repent, introduce the young man into a state of uncontrollable anger. Enraged, he kills Basil by stabbing him several times.

Nightmares haunt Gray for a long time. He blackmails his old friend Alan, and he helps him get rid of the main evidence - the corpse of the artist. The rest of his life is not going well. He was able to get rid of reminders, but by no means from memory. Having escaped retribution for Sybil from her brother James Wayne, he decides to start a new life. But all this turns out to be only the will of his vanity. Long thoughts weigh on Dorian, he relieves himself of guilt for both Basil's death and Alan's suicide, and even for leaving Hetty, a girl from the village, very similar to Sybil. And then he decides to get rid of the portrait, as the cause of his fears and a reminder of vices, in order to start all over again, being free from the past. He pierces the painting with a knife, and as a result, he dies, becoming what he really was: an ugly old man, whom even his own servants recognized only by the rings on his fingers. And the portrait remained untouched, and the same young man with the appearance of an angel looked from him - exactly as on the day when Hallward painted it.

I would like to elaborate on a few points in this novel which, in my opinion, are a particularly vivid expression of the role of art and will help answer the question of "pure art".

First of all, this is the love story of the young actress Sybil Vane and Dorian Gray.

Why did he love her? In a conversation with Henry, Dorian himself admits that he likes her game. That he admires how skillfully she plays the roles of Shakespeare's heroines. And that's why he falls in love with her. Not even in Sybil herself, but in those images that she recreates on stage, with her acting skills and soul. Meanwhile, the girl is in love with Dorian, even knowing nothing but his first name, calling him Prince Charming. Is this very Prince so beautiful? As soon as Miss Vane knows love, she realizes that she no longer needs the theater. That now she would have a real life, and not these boring scenes with ugly old actors, in which she had previously seen the ideal, because she did not know otherwise. The girl, walking with her brother, speaks admiringly about Dorian, and how dearly she loves him, how her trembling heart stops, and that, finally, she and her mother will leave this theater, in which they ended up due to debts. After all, her Prince Charming will get them out of there, he will definitely get them out!

Seeing his beloved playing out of hand on stage, Dorian is angry and disappointed. He does not understand - where did his Sybil go, that every day she was either Juliet, or Ophelia, or Desdemona? What kind of mediocre actress, but unusually beautiful is now on stage?

And here's a fiery love as it never happened. After the introduction, he demands an answer from the girl, why did she dare to disgrace him in front of her friends? In response to this, the young man heard a confession that now that she has a Prince Charming, she does not need a theater, because she knows the taste of true love. What happened to Dorian? He became angry with Sybil and left her, breaking off the engagement, and then left without even heeding her pleas for forgiveness.

What to say about his love now? He loved the art that the actress passed through herself, but not herself. And this was the cause of the conflict, and then the suicide of Sibyl Vane. Dorian does not blame himself for this, but the portrait looking at him from the wall suggests otherwise.

Not only this girl suffered because of her love for Dorian Gray. Another victim was Basil Hallward, the artist who painted his portrait, who truly considers the young man his ideal, which every creator is looking for almost throughout his life. He not only admired him, but loved him and believed in all his words until his death. His own feeling blinded the artist, building in his imagination an imaginary image of the same Dorian with whom he had once met.

The more the young man moves away from him, choosing the society of the cynical Henry Wotton, whose advice he follows, Basil loses inspiration, and the lack of former friendship weighs on him: “He understood that Dorian Gray would never again be in his life what he was before. Life itself passed between them ... ”- Oscar Wilde wrote about the experiences of Hallward in love, who undoubtedly was jealous of Dorian for Harry.

The history of the relationship between the artist and the model ends tragically. Basil dies at the hands of Dorian, who felt that he thought too much of himself, since he could tell him what to do and how to do it. This episode can be regarded as a rebellion of the ideal against its own creator. After all, it is Basil who blames Dorian Gray for everything, because he, and not someone else, created this portrait and doomed his soul to decay.

Later, Dorian considers Henry Wotton to be another culprit of his immorality, who, like an artist, praised his beauty and prompted him to wish that instead of him all sins and old age would take a portrait.

Yes, Lord Henry is immoral. He has a cynic philosophy about art, and everything the writer said in the preface is all Harry's views.

But, nevertheless, in comparison with Dorian Gray, Henry Wotton does not cause suffering to anyone with the philosophy of hedonism (the desire for pleasure). Unless his wife Victoria, when she cheats on her, but she does not suffer any harm from this, but on the contrary, she does exactly the same.

It turns out that Dorian himself is guilty of his vices? That's exactly what it is. Beauty, it was beauty that spurred him to this, although, as Basil said, a person with such a face cannot be immoral.

The final chord of the novel and at the same time its main idea is the scene of the destruction of the painting. Wanting to start a new life, Dorian Gray destroys the "diary of life's vices" that burdened him, but dies, and the portrait becomes the same, depicting a young man of angelic beauty.

It is amazing how a work of art survived both its creator and the ideal from which it was created.

Vita brevis ars longa is a Latin aphorism expressing the whole essence of this mystical moment. Life is short, but art is eternal. And many years will pass, and the creations of the greatest artists will live and be passed on from generation to generation.

The image of the portrait in the novel occupies a central place. According to the hero himself, he is his conscience, his "diary" and his soul. In addition, the picture is the personification of immortal, eternal art, which will never sink into obscurity - while human life is short and is erased from people's memory over time.

So, what is the problem of "pure art"?

First of all, one should proceed from the definition of the direction of aestheticism. The keywords that cut the ear are "art for the sake of art", "art is higher than life". The latter is especially pronounced in the novel. A portrait is like art. For the sake of it, the artist must give the most precious thing - life. Therefore, Basil perishes, perishes at the hands of his own ideal. Such is the paradox of true, "pure art." A great creation has always outlived its creator and its original.

Art not only takes life, it makes the creator an alienated outcast, cripples him both morally and physically, leaving an indelible mark. Sacrificial art - that's it, the so-called "pure art".

And the problem of "pure art" is that to pay such a great price you need great courage, a willingness to renounce everything for the sake of art and forget about life, forget about yourself and think only about your ideal.

Only a truly great artist can do this.

And everything else is no longer considered true art.

Composition

In his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde highlights important issues related to the cultural, social and interpersonal aspects of human relationships. In particular, Oscar Wilde, through the artistic images he created, reveals the relationship between art and the inner world of a person. For example, according to the artist Basil, art is a certain mirror of the human soul, it reflects the feeling, direction, and moral qualities of a person. The artist seems to put a piece of his own soul into his work, and his creation testifies to the spiritual world of the people depicted.

But the future of any creation is determined not by the creator, but by the owner of this creation. Dorian laid the burden of all the dirt of his soul on his portrait. The painting carried this burden until the death of the owner, after which it returned to its original form. In close connection with this idea, the image of Lord Henry also arises. He, too, was a kind of creator - the creator of Dorian's soul. His instrument was an erroneous philosophy, which captivated the youth's mind with unusual novelty and mystery, but at the same time gnawed from within an inexperienced and not tempted by evil heart.

Lord Henry calmed the conscience of the protagonist, made him not really care about morality, and thus Dorian Gray began his fall into the abyss. It is likely that he still had the opportunity to stop his fall when, after the suicide of Sybil Vane, he reflects with a heavy burden on his heart about his attitude towards the girl, which led to a tragic end. However, Lord Henry, terribly oversimplifying the tragedy of women's feelings, claims that by her death she only fulfilled her last role as an actress.

Step by step, Dorian Gray turns from a person who has a good and pure heart into an egoist and a criminal, which destroys his own soul. Oscar Wilde emphasizes the idea that only conscience is able to control a person's life, his actions, and even not to correct them, but to reproach them. A person lives as long as his conscience is alive, which only he himself can destroy. O. Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is unusual already in that it looks like a realistic one, but is not like that. This work is the embodiment of Wilde's aestheticism, his paradoxical thinking.

What is the novel about? First of all, about the connection between life and art and what beauty is. The writer tries to create an atmosphere of beauty, a sense of beauty through the very manner of speaking. He constantly amazes the reader by twisting the constant notions and concepts. Each of the characters is the embodiment of some side of art, beauty. Basil is the embodiment of service to art, Lord Henry is the embodiment of the philosophy of pleasure, and Dorian is a man who has decided to make his life as beautiful as art itself. But the paradox is that, declaring beauty as the essence of life, the characters do things that cannot be considered beautiful. The clearest example is Lord Henry, who with cold cynicism twists even moral truths just for the sake of playing the mind.

This is how Wilde reveals the idea that art has nothing to do with truth and morality. The writer shows where the passion for an intellectual game can lead, which has no other goal than the game itself. After all, the goal of Lord Henry is not truth and beauty, but the assertion of his own personality. Wilde showed the power of a beautiful word and the beauty of a refined thought. But at the same time, the writer demonstrated that there is an area for which paradox is death. This is the realm of morality. There are moral foundations on which humanity rests, and the paradox is inappropriate here, since it destroys them, makes good and evil relative. And this is unacceptable. This is what the work of art tells about - the portrait of Dorian Gray. The portrait gives a moral assessment of the hero, i.e. does not remain indifferent to morality. When Dorian throws himself at the portrait with a knife, he kills himself, and the portrait remains beautiful again, returning the flaws to Dorian.

What do Wilde's paradoxes testify to? Maybe that a person is ugly, but art is always beautiful? Or maybe about the fact that for the beauty of art it is necessary to atone for human sins, since morality and beauty are in harmony?

Other writings on this work

A book that made a lasting impression on me Characteristics of the image of Dorian Gray Philosophical and aesthetic problems of Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Essay

The problem of pure art in O. Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Completed by: student gr. 5 "A"

Verbets V.A.

Checked by: Shaikina I.P.

Volgograd 2010

Oscar Wilde is the writer who gave rise to the artistic movement, which is called - aestheticism.

Throughout his life and work in the field of literature, Wilde praises the power of beauty, although all his works are exclusively a praise of virtue and morality.

This paradox is especially clear in his novel, although a different theme still occupies a central place here.

This work is primarily about the power of art, about the great sacrifice for the sake of art, about the concepts of morality and its connection with art.

At the very beginning of the novel, we get acquainted with the preface, in which Oscar Wilde expresses his views on art, beauty and the artist himself. wilde pure art dorian gray

The artist is the creator of beauty.<…>Those who see the ugly in the beautiful are immoral people, but immorality does not make them attractive. This is vice.

Those who see signs of beauty in beauty are moral people. They are not completely hopeless. But only the chosen ones see only beauty in beauty. There are no books moral or immoral. Books are either well written or bad. And that's the difference.<…>The moral life of man is only one side of the artist's work, and the morality of Art lies in the perfect application of imperfect means.<…>The artist has no ethical predilections. The ethical predilections of the artist give rise to an inexcusable mannerism of style. An artist does not have a morbid imagination. The artist has the right to depict everything.

Art is a mirror, but it reflects the beholder, not life.<…>If critics disagree, then the artist is true to himself.

You can forgive a person the creation of a useful thing, if only he does not admire it. But the one who creates something useless can only be justified by immense admiration for his creation.

All Art is useless.

In the novel itself, there is a clear parallel between this event and the development of the plot.

The action begins in the studio of the artist Basil Hallward. There we get acquainted with the artist himself and with his friends - the young Lord Henry Wotton and the young Dorian Gray, who has been posing for Basil for a long time. And as the artist himself enthusiastically admits in a conversation with Harry, he is the ideal that every creator has been looking for almost all his life, which he meets only once and, having lost it, it is already impossible to find someone like him.

And in fact, as Lord Wotton notes when he meets Dorian, he is simply angelically handsome. And it would be a pity if such beauty, after some few years, withered, like this irrevocably, to nowhere.

However, Hallward is not very happy that he had to introduce them. He is afraid that Henry will spoil the young man, and then completely take him away, taking him under his influence.

And he, in turn, openly and directly tells Dorian Gray about his beauty and claims how bad it would be if such a handsome young man spends the best years of his life without knowing her.

And now the portrait is finished. With his splendor, he admires not only the artist, but also Dorian himself and Lord Henry.

He becomes a real paranoid, who every hour, every step he thinks about how no one would see his portrait. As if no one knew about what was happening in the soul of a still young aristocrat. He no longer trusts anyone, and when Basil tells him that he is going to exhibit the portrait in his art exhibition, he almost goes berserk.

Nightmares haunt Gray for a long time. He blackmails his old friend Alan, and he helps him get rid of the main evidence - the corpse of the artist. The rest of his life is not going well. He was able to get rid of reminders, but by no means from memory. Having escaped retribution for Sybil from her brother James Wayne, he decides to start a new life. But all this turns out to be only the will of his vanity. Long thoughts weigh on Dorian, he relieves himself of guilt for both Basil's death and Alan's suicide, and even for leaving Hetty, a girl from the village, very similar to Sybil. And then he decides to get rid of the portrait, as the cause of his fears and a reminder of vices, in order to start all over again, being free from the past. He pierces the painting with a knife, and as a result, he dies, becoming what he really was: an ugly old man, whom even his own servants recognized only by the rings on his fingers. And the portrait remained intact, and the same young man with the appearance of an angel looked out of it - exactly as on the day when Hallward painted it.

In this selection, we have described the main problems encountered in the texts for preparing for the Unified State Examination in the Russian language. The arguments below the problem statement headings are taken from well-known works and demonstrate each problematic aspect. You can download all these examples from the literature in table format (link at the end of the article).

In your play "Woe from Wit" A.S. Griboyedov showed a soulless world, mired in material values and empty entertainment. This is the world of Famus society. Its representatives are against education, against books and sciences. Famusov himself says: “I would like to take away all the books, but burn them.” In this stuffy swamp, turned away from culture and truth, it is impossible for an enlightened person, Chatsky, who is rooting for the fate of Russia, for its future.
M. Bitter in his play At the bottom”showed a world devoid of spirituality. Quarrels, misunderstandings, disputes reign in the rooming house. Heroes are really at the bottom of life. There is no place for culture in their everyday life: they are not interested in books, paintings, theaters and museums. Only the young girl Nastya reads in the rooming house, and she reads romance novels, which, artistically, lose a lot. The Actor often quotes lines from famous plays, as he himself used to perform on stage, and this emphasizes the gulf between the Actor himself and real art. The heroes of the play are cut off from culture, so their life is like a series of successive gray days.
In the play by D. Fonvizin "Undergrowth" landlords are ignorant townsfolk, obsessed with greed and gluttony. Mrs. Prostakova is rude to her husband and servants, is rude and oppresses everyone who is below her in social status. This noble woman is alien to culture, but she tries to impose it on her son in time with fashion trends. However, nothing comes of it, because by her example she teaches Mitrofan to be a stupid, limited and ill-mannered person who does not have to humiliate people. In the finale, the hero openly tells his mother to leave him alone, refusing to console her.
In the poem "Dead Souls" by N. V. Gogol the landlords, the backbone of Russia, appear to readers as vile and vicious people without a hint of spirituality and enlightenment. For example, Manilov only pretends that he is a cultured person, but the book on his desk is covered with dust. The box is not at all shy about its narrow outlook, openly demonstrating utter stupidity. Sobakevich focuses only on material values, spiritual ones are not important to him. And the same Chichikov does not care about his enlightenment, he is only concerned about enrichment. This is how the writer portrayed the world of high society, the world of people who, by right of class, were given power. This is the tragedy of the work.

The influence of art on man

One of the brightest books, where a work of art occupies a significant place, is a novel. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The portrait painted by Basil Hallward truly changes the life of not only the artist himself, who falls in love with his creation, but also the life of the young model, Dorian Gray himself. The picture becomes a reflection of the hero's soul: all the actions that Dorian performs immediately distort the image in the portrait. In the end, when the hero clearly sees what his inner essence has become, he can no longer continue to live in peace. In this work, art becomes a magical force that reveals to a person his own inner world, answering eternal questions.
In the essay "Straightened" G.I. Uspensky touches upon the theme of the influence of art on man. The first part of the narrative in the work is connected with the Venus de Milo, the second is connected with Tyapushkin, a modest village teacher, the ups and downs of his life and the radical change that occurred in him after the memory of Venus. The central image is the image of Venus de Milo, a stone riddle. The meaning of this image is the personification of the spiritual beauty of man. This is the embodiment of the eternal value of art, which shakes the personality and straightens it. The memory of her allows the hero to find the strength to stay in the village and do a lot for ignorant people.
In the work of I. S. Turgenev "Faust" the heroine never read fiction, although she was already in adulthood. Upon learning of this, her friend decided to read aloud to her the famous play by Goethe about how a medieval doctor was looking for the meaning of life. Under the influence of what she heard, the woman changed a lot. She realized that she lived wrong, found love and surrendered to feelings that she did not understand before. This is how a work of art can awaken a person from sleep.
In the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "Poor people" the main character lived in ignorance all his life until he met Varenka Dobroselova, who began to develop him by sending books. Prior to this, Makar had only read shoddy works with no deep meaning, so his personality did not develop. He put up with the insignificant and empty routine of his existence. But the literature of Pushkin and Gogol changed him: he became an actively thinking person who even learned to write letters better under the influence of such masters of the word.

True and false art

Richard Aldington in the novel "Death of a Hero" in the images of Shobb, Bobb and Tobb, the legislators of fashionable literary theories of modernism, showed the problem of false culture. These people are busy with empty talk, not real art. Each of them comes up with his own point of view, considers himself unique, but, in essence, all their theories are one and the same empty talk. It is no coincidence that the names of these heroes are similar, like twin brothers.
In the novel " Master and Margarita "M.A. Bulgakov showed the life of literary Moscow in the 30s. The editor-in-chief of MASSOLIT Berlioz is a chameleon man, he adapts to any external conditions, any power, system. His literary house works by order of the rulers, there are no muses for a long time and there is no art, real and sincere. Therefore, a truly talented novel is rejected by editors and not recognized by readers. The authorities said that there is no God, which means that literature says the same thing. However, culture, which is stamped to order, is only propaganda, which has nothing to do with art.
In the story of N. V. Gogol "Portrait" the artist traded true skill for the recognition of the crowd. Chartkov found the money hidden in the purchased painting, but it only inflated his ambition and greed, and over time his needs only grew. He began to work only to order, became a fashionable painter, but he had to forget about true art, there was no room left for inspiration in his soul. He realized his wretchedness only when he saw the work of a master of his craft, what once he could become. Since then, he has been buying up and destroying genuine masterpieces, finally losing his mind and ability to create. Unfortunately, the line between true and false art is very thin and easy to overlook.

The role of culture in society

He showed the problem of removal from spiritual culture in post-war times in his novel "Three Comrades" by E.M. Remarque. This topic is not given a central place, but one episode reveals the problem of a society that is mired in material concerns and has forgotten about spirituality. So, when Robert and Patricia walk through the streets of the city, they run into an art gallery. And the author, through the mouth of Robert, tells us that people stopped coming here a long time ago in order to enjoy art. Here are those who hide from the rain or heat. Spiritual culture has faded into the background in a world where hunger, unemployment, and death reign. People in the post-war period are trying to survive, and in their world, culture has lost its value, like human life. Having lost the value of the spiritual aspects of being, they went berserk. In particular, a friend of the protagonist, Lenz, dies from the antics of a rabid crowd. In a society without moral and cultural guidelines, there is no place for peace, so war easily arises in it.
Ray Bradbury in the novel "451 degrees Fahrenheit" showed the world of people who refused books. Anyone who tries to preserve these most valuable pantry cultures of mankind is severely punished. And in this world of the future, there are many people who have put up with or even support the general trend of destroying books. Thus, they themselves distanced themselves from culture. The author shows his characters as empty, meaningless townsfolk, fixated on the TV screen. They talk about nothing, do nothing. They just exist without even feeling or thinking. That is why the role of art and culture is very important in the modern world. Without them, he will become impoverished and lose everything that we value so much: individuality, freedom, love and other non-material values of the individual.

Culture of behavior

In the comedy Undergrowth "D.I. Fonvizin shows the world of ignorant nobles. This is Prostakova, and her brother Skotinin, and the main undergrowth of the Mitrofan family. These people in their every movement, word show lack of culture. The vocabulary of Prostakova and Skotinin is rude. Mitrofan is a real lazy person, accustomed to everyone running after him and fulfilling his every whim. People who are trying to teach Mitrofan something are not needed either by Prostakova or by the undergrowth himself. However, such an approach to life does not lead the heroes to anything good: in the person of Starodum, retribution comes to them, putting everything in its place. So sooner or later, ignorance will still fall under its own weight.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in a fairy tale "Wild Landlord" showed the highest degree of lack of culture, when it is no longer possible to distinguish a person from a beast. Previously, the landowner lived on everything ready thanks to the peasants. He himself did not bother himself with work or education. But time has passed. Reform. The peasants are gone. Thus, the external gloss of the nobleman was removed. His true nature begins to emerge. He grows hair, begins to walk on all fours, stops speaking articulately. So, without labor, culture and enlightenment, a person turned into an animal-like creature.

Playing the harmonica that belonged to the deceased commander, Vasily Terkin inspires the soldiers. People come alive, dance. They go to music like fire. Music helped a person to survive a lot in wartime. The songs gave moral strength, cheered up. And that meant victory.

K.G. Paustovsky "The Old Chef"

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great musician, plays the harpsichord to the dying old cook. Music allows a blind person to see and feel the best moments of his youth. A magnificent harpsichord playing paints landscapes, changes the seasons, brings the old cook back to his first meeting with his wife Martha. The power of music is amazing, magnificent. Music can turn back time and resurrect significant events for a person.

O. Wilde "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Artist Basil Hallward paints a portrait for Dorian Gray, an incredibly handsome young man. Lord Henry Wotton tells the young man that his beauty is not eternal. Then Dorian utters a wish that will change his whole life in the future: the young man wishes that the magnificent portrait would grow old instead of him. The wish comes true. Dorian Gray commits immoral acts, realizing that this will not affect him outwardly. The portrait already depicts a terrible monster resembling a young man. The magnificent portrait had a negative impact on Dorian Gray. The power of art has made this man immoral, immoral and cruel.

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