READERS’ CONCERNS OF AESTHETIC CRITICISM

Abstract

Contemporaries considered the main representatives of aesthetic criticism: V. P. Botkin, P. V. Annenkov and A. V. Druzhinin like-minded people. But they rarely referred to each other and did not assert their methodological unity. Druzhinin was a professional writer and wrote constantly, and Annenkov and Botkin were amateurs: living in literature, arts, they wrote occasionally. Therefore, Druzhinin’s aesthetic legacy looks confused and archaic, while Annenkov and Botkin’s aesthetic legacy looks solid and promising. However, Druzhinin’s aesthetic throwing is fraught with future discoveries, which gives them special weight and significance. Annenkov saw the “mirror” of society in literature and often wrote about social types, although his assessments were diametrically opposed to the democratic camp. Druzhinin has very few social type analyses, and Botkin has none.In the interpretation of the role of criticism in the literary process, the “priceless triumvirate” was more unanimous. All of them used the generally accepted terminology (“the purpose of poetry is poetry”, art is a school of feelings, pleasant and useful, “defeated difficulty”) and considered art the only means of moral education of a person, recognizing the educational value not in abstract thought, but in the beauty, “grace” of a work of art. Annenkov, Botkin and Druzhinin continue Pushkin’s interpretation of the “purpose of art” as “an ideal, not a moral teaching.” But their concepts foreshadow either the theory of L. Tolstoy’s infection, or the theory of art as the embodiment of Fet’s beauty. But Annenkov and Botkin believe that in the process of creativity and perception of a literary text, the reader only repeats the actions of the author and does not commit actions not programmed by the authors. Druzhinin recognizes the great independence of the reader.