Contents introduction chapter I. Existentialism as a literary trend

CHAPTER I. EXISTENTIALISM AS A LITERARY TREND
1.1 The essence of existentialism in the literature of the twentieth century
European fiction after the Second World War was largely painted in existentialist colors. Outstanding French existentialist writers, Nobel Prize winners, Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) pose the problems of human existence, such as life, death, longing, anxiety, sadness, sadness, etc. novel "The Outsider" (1942) by A. Camus, the theme of the absurdity of life is revealed in the stream of consciousness of the internally devastated hero. In the novel The Plague (1947), in an allusive (from Latin allusio - a joke, a hint) form, he conveys his concern about the persistence of the twentieth century. danger of fascism, proves that the highest courage of a person is manifested in the struggle against the meaninglessness of being. In the philosophical book The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus affirms the freedom of man's moral choice.¹
Existentialism (from late Latin exsistentia - existence), or the philosophy of existence, in the intellectual culture of the 20th century played the same role that it played in the culture of the 18th - 19th centuries. classical German philosophy It determined the fundamental values and the theoretical horizon of the search for the foundations of being both in philosophy and in literature and partly in music. As an independent philosophical trend, existentialism arose at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia, after the First World War in Germany, during the Second World War in France, and after the war in other countries. The central concept - existence (human existence) manifests itself through care, fear, determination, conscience in "boundary situations" (struggle, suffering, death). Comprehending the essence of his existence, a person acquires true freedom, which consists in choosing oneself and consciously accepting responsibility for everything that happens in the world.
In the second half of the 20th century, European literature is not limited to one or two leading currents. It becomes more diverse in thematic and genre terms: realistic novel, psychological drama, romance, irony, detective story, fantasy, etc.
So, existentialism, the concept of which we cited above, considered a person as a finite being, “thrown into the world”, constantly in problematic and even absurd situations. At the same time, philosophy seeks to comprehend being as a kind of direct undivided integrity of subject and object. Having singled out the experience itself as the original and true being, existentialism understands it as the subject's experience of his "in the world of being", which is explained as given directly. That is, as a human existence or existence, which is hardly cognizable by scientific and philosophical methods. All this tells us that the Existence is “open”, it is directed to the other, which becomes its center of attraction. According to M. Heidegger and J. P. Sartre, true being is directed towards nothing and, perhaps, the most important thing, while being aware of its finiteness. Therefore, for example, in M. Heidegger, the description of the structure of existence is reduced to a description of such human manifestations as care, fear, determination, conscience, which are determined through the only real possibility for everyone - death. The above manifestations constitute different ways of getting in touch with this frightening nothingness, moving towards it, “running away” from it. On this basis, according to K. Jaspers, it is in the “boundary situation”, that is, in moments of the deepest upheavals, often associated with a threat to life, that a person suddenly comes to understand existence as the root of his being, his uniqueness. Before that, he did not have the opportunity to do this, as worldly, everyday "concerns" distracted him. Defining existence through its finitude, existentialism defines it as temporality, the end point of which is death. Unlike physical time - pure quantity, an infinite series of flowing moments - existential time is qualitative, finite and unique. It acts as fate and is inseparable from what constitutes the essence of existence: birth, love, repentance, death.²
Existentialists, especially M. Heidegger, emphasize the decisive significance of the future in the phenomenon of time and consider it in connection with such "existentials", that is, manifestations of true being, such as "determination", "project", "hope". Thus, the personal character of time is expressed not simply as being in the world in general (the ontological aspect). The time of the individual is historical, which is determined through its connection with human activity: search, tension, expectation. The historicity of human existence is expressed here in the fact that a person always finds himself in a certain situation in which he is "thrown" and which he has to reckon with. Belonging to a certain people, estate, the presence of certain biological, psychological and other qualities in an individual - all this is just an external, sensual-emotional expression of the initially situational nature of existence, of what it is “in the world of being”. So, Temporality, historicity and situationality of existence are modes (that is, manifestations) of its finiteness.
Another important quality of existence is transcendence, which we interpret as going beyond one's own limits. Depending on the understanding of the other world and the act of transcending itself, the form of philosophizing differs among such representatives of the doctrine as K. Jaspers, G. Marcel, M. Heidegger (his late period), who recognized the reality of the transcendent. Here, according to experts, the moment is symbolic, and even poetic, since the transcendent cannot be known, and one can only “hint” at it. In the teachings of J.P. Sartre and A. Camus, who set themselves the task of revealing the illusory nature of transcendence, a critical approach prevails.
In understanding freedom, existentialism rejects both the rationalistic tradition, which reduces the first to necessity, and the humanistic-naturalistic tradition, in which freedom is associated with the disclosure of a person’s natural inclinations, the emancipation of his “essential” forces. Freedom here is existence. For K. Jaspers, say, this means that freedom can only be found in God. According to J.P. Sartre, to be free means to be oneself, for a person is “doomed” to be free. However, everywhere we can state a certain “burdensomeness” of freedom, a person carries a heavy burden all his life in an effort to become a person. He can give up his freedom, cease to be a unique being - an existence, that is, become "like everyone else", but only at the cost of abandoning himself as a person. The world into which a person is immersed at the same time is called “man” by M. Heidegger. This is the world in general, like the very meaning of the word "man". Here everything is anonymous, there are no subjects of action, but there are only one objects. In this world, as the German thinker originally remarked, everything is “other” and everyone is “other”, a person, even in relation to himself, is “other”. This is a world in which no one decides anything, and therefore does not bear responsibility for anything, and therefore is not free and is not an existence.
For the Russian philosopher N.A. Berdyaev, this world is called the “world of objectification”, the signs of which are:
1) alienation of the object from the subject;
2) preoccupation with the unique-individual, (personal) general, impersonal-universal;
3) the dominance of necessity, determination from outside, suppression and closure of freedom;
4) adaptation to the average person, socialization of a person and his opinions. Therefore, the communication of individuals, carried out in the sphere of objectification, is not genuine, it only emphasizes the loneliness of each.³
According to A. Camus, in the face of "nothing", which makes human life meaningless, absurd, the breakthrough of one individual to another, true communication between them is impossible. And quite in the spirit of Nietzscheanism, Albert Camus, like Jean Paul Sartre, sees falsehood and hypocrisy in all forms of relationships, including love and friendship, sanctified by traditional religion and morality. J.P. Sartre opposes "bad faith", that is, distorted forms of consciousness. The denial of religious faith, together with its function of social involvement, turns into, in essence, the recognition of the reality of consciousness, disconnected from others and from itself. The only way of genuine communication that Camus recognizes lies in the unity of people who rebel against the "absurd" world, that is, against finiteness, mortality, imperfection, the meaninglessness of human existence. That which can unite a person with others is the highest pleasure, ecstasy. However, this is the ecstasy of destruction, rebellion, born of the despair of an "absurd" person.
G. Marcel gives a different solution to the problem of communication, according to which the disunity of individuals is generated by the fact that objective being is taken as the only possible one. Genuine being, according to G. Marcel, is not objective, but personal, therefore, the true attitude towards being is a dialogue of a person with another person. To state being, the thinker uses the pronoun “You”, and not “It”. Therefore, the prototype of a person's relationship to being is a personal relationship to another person, carried out in the face of God. Transcending, as a true being, is an act by which a person goes beyond the limits of his closed, egoistic "I". Love is transcendence, a breakthrough to the other, be it human or divine. And since such a breakthrough cannot be understood with the help of reason, G. Marcel refers it to the sphere of “mystery”.⁴
If I can generalize here, then the breakthrough of the “man” world is, according to existentialism, not only genuine human communication, but also what is very important for you and me - this is the sphere of artistic and philosophical creativity. However, true communication, like creativity, carries its own finiteness. K. Jaspers, for example, argues that everything in the world eventually collapses already by virtue of the very finiteness of existence. The tragedy and horror of being a true personality lies in the fact that it is she who has to live and love with a constant awareness of the fragility and finiteness of everything she loves! Thus, K. Jaspers preaches the insecurity of love itself. But here, the philosopher finds amazing positive nuances to this seemingly hopeless state of affairs! After all, in fact, it is the deeply hidden pain caused by the awareness of the finiteness of the object of love that gives our attachment a special purity and spirituality! This is another great philosophical "approach" to one of the eternal questions about the essence of love.
Based on the foregoing, it can be stated that, on the whole, moods of dissatisfaction, search, denial and overcoming still prevail in existentialism.