The Topic «Intelligentsia and War» in the Context of Fiction Cover Image

Тема «Интеллигенция и война» в контексте художественной литературы
The Topic «Intelligentsia and War» in the Context of Fiction

Author(s): Anatoliy Matveyevich Bazhenov, Tatyana Mikhailovna Martynova
Subject(s): Cultural history, Fiction, Studies of Literature, Military history, Social history, 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949)
Published by: Ивановский государственный университет
Keywords: intelligentsia; war; fiction; military action; Thirty years’ war; World War I; World War II; Patriotic war of 1812; inhumanity; inhumanity;

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the role of the artistic intelligentsia in understandding the phenomenon of war. With the help of literary images reveals the horror and inhumanity of any war. To achieve this goal, works belonging to outstanding writers are involved. These works reproduce the events of the Thirty years’ war (1618—1648), the Patriotic war of 1812, the First world war (1914—1918) and the Second world war (1939—1945). Worthy place in this series is the novel «Simplicissimus», owned by the German writer Hans Jakob Christoph Grimmelshausen. His work is a peculiar and unique canvas, full of bitterness and humor, reflecting the disasters and horrors of the Thirty years’ war. After the end of the war, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. It marked the beginning of the formation of the system of national States and the state-centrist model of the world. A special status in the study of war is occupied by the novel-epic of Leo Tolstoy «War and peace». One of the best works devoted to the First World War, is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque «On the Western front without changes». A separate story in the article is the study of the events of the Second World War by the Nobel Prize — winning writers Heinrich Bell, Gunter Grass and Svetlana Alekseevich. And the first two writers were themselves participants in the Second World War. This gave them a reason to use their own military experience, which gave more convincing coverage of the events of the war. All conclusions are confirmed by the given fragments from the works of writers. All these writers are united by the desire to reveal and show the antihuman content of military operations.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 9-19
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Russian