CREATOR AND REVOLUTION: TO THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATIONSHIP TYPOLOGY

Abstract

The article attempts to determine types of relationship between an artist and revolution as “rapid and violent transition to a new system”. This definition was tied to the revolution after a transfer of the term from natural discourse into political one. Based on the works of prominent representatives of world literature it is traced
the basic types of perception of the revolution and its consequences; the reflection of them in the author’s artistic consciousness and sentiments of the era. Appealing to the parallels with antique mythology we determine the following types of relationships that appeared with the first revolutions in Europe (17th century): artist as Nemesis administering moral judgment (Milton); Pygmalion, who falls in love with his creation, wants to breathe life into the myth of revolution (Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot etc.); child of Saturn, devoured by Saturn-revolution (Beaumarchais); Olympian who dreams of Concordia’s triumph deriving from revolution-Castalian Spring (Hugo); adolescent Icarus who imagined himself Prometheus (Rimbaud);
Orpheus (Rainer Maria Rilke etc.). In literatures that were formed in totalitarian states, this relationship took shape in types “child of Saturn”, false Prometheus, and, Daedalus, who is an accomplice in creating pseudohumanistic ideology and, simultaneously, an artist-scientist ready to fight against it.