The word archetype is of Greek origin (analogs: prototype, protomodel, age model).

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The word archetype is of Greek origin (analogs: prototype, protomodel, age model).

Winkelmann focused on the Hellenic art of the classical era, which, in his opinion, is characterized by harmony, expediency, clarity and noble simplicity. Wipkelmann’s views were echoed in the works of many German poets, including Schiller and Goethe 123helpme.me. The second part of Goethe’s « Faust » is based on a kind of collision of ancient and Christian mythology.

Many ballads on the plots of Greek myths were written by Schiller, who at the end of his life came to the conclusion that the world will be saved by beauty. This thesis struck the soul of the young Dostoevsky, who, however, unlike Schiller, did not connect the ideal of beauty with ancient art, but Gleb Uspensky – connected: he wrote the story « Straightened » – about the shock he experienced depressed by poverty and failure. a teacher coming from Russia to Paris, where he saw a statue of Venus de Milo in the Louvre Museum.

Heinrich Heine, ignoring the fact that in ancient Greece there were cults of chthonic gods – the rulers of the realm of the dead, primarily emphasized the cheerful Hellenic worldview. He joked that the sun-shining gods of ancient Greece were forced to live in exile during the Christian era.

He believed that mermaids, foresters, housewives are descended from ancient gods and goddesses, whom the church fathers declared an evil force (the same opinion was expressed by Anatole France). Rethinking ancient myths, Heine, like Goethe, defended the human right to earthly happiness and fullness of life (« The Bride of Corinth » by Goethe, « Tannhäuser » by Heine). According to Heine, overcoming Christian asceticism is a necessary step for social liberation.

In the XIX century, when there was a struggle between the supporters of classicism and romanticism, the theorists of the latter sought primarily to draw public attention to national history. However, considering the myth as a source of national culture, as the embodiment of national wisdom, the Romantics managed to find a new approach to ancient mythology and did not avoid it in their own works, suffice it to mention Byron’s « Prometheus » or Shelley’s « Freed Prometheus ».

In the second half of XIX – early XX century. there were art theorists who, unlike Winkelmann, preferred Greek archaism to masterpieces of the classical era. They called for the search for a primitive nucleus in myths, valued the irrational in art, and compared Apollo and Dionysus, with whose name they associated the opposite worldview and creative method. There are terms: the Apollonian principle, the Dionysian principle. Concepts such as enlightened mind, balanced temperament, perfection and perfection, were associated with the Apollonian principle. Dionysus, proclaimed the antithesis of Apollo, opposed him in everything. Artists were divided into those who sought harmony, expediency, clarity, and those who focused on the Dionysian principle, identified inspiration and the so-called sacred madness, believed that chaos – eternal, and passions – stronger than reason and laws.

In the XX century. Cubo-futurist artists dared to combine their method with neoclassicism and thus tried to reveal the secret meaning of ancient Greek myths (combinations, fashionable and today, for example, they resort to graphic artist and sculptor Ernst Neizvesny).

In each epoch, in any country, the images of ancient, in particular Greek myths, getting into a new environment, undergo changes, are transformed. This has a very distinct effect on the literature of the twentieth century, when numerous prose writers, poets, and playwrights began to turn to Greek mythology again.

For many poets, ancient myths were the lens through which they perceived the present (in the twentieth century, for example, for Mandelstam, B. Ivanov, M. Voloshin).

Myths are used on various occasions. It is not uncommon for writers to see in real life variations of schemes long known in mythology. It is argued that the myth makes it possible to compare their individual experience with the achievements of mankind, with models of world experience. Myth is identified with the matrix, interpreted as a code, as a comprehensive formula, considered a kind of key to understanding not only past but also present and future, mythologizing Reality, looking for the so-called archetype in myths.

The word archetype is of Greek origin (analogs: prototype, protomodel, age model). Arche in translation means the beginning. The term archetype was coined by Freud’s student, the psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961). He offered his explanation of the coincidence of motives in the myths of different peoples (who never communicated with each other), in religious plots, poetic works (this repetition has long worried scientists).

According to Jung, in ancient times in the primitive horde formed a stereotype of reactions to certain life events, circumstances, relationships – an archetype. Jung believed that man inherited an archetype from his ancestors. It is a model of an experienced collective worldview, common to fellow tribesmen, to a nation, race, or humanity. In symbols and images, the archetype captures the mental structure, habitual behavior and worldview. He is immutable and beyond the control of the mind. Jung’s theory became popular, but not universally accepted.

Jung gravitated to idealistic philosophy. According to him, the archetype has much in common with the innate ideas of Plato. In fact, the term « archetype » was coined at the beginning of the new era by theologians who identified Platonic « ideas » and the emanation of the thoughts of the biblical creator god. They meant: there is an archetype of everything that exists, according to the archetype everything that is created is created, the original image, protomodel or archetype is the basis of all being. The age-old models can be combined in various combinations, in terms of translational motion – it is absent: everything turns, the wheel whirls. Jung admitted that he borrowed the term « archetype » from medieval theologians.

Of course, mythologizing does not coincide with the search for the archetype, according to which the plot crystallizes, unfolds and acquires the meaning of the event. This concept is broader, however, the term « mythologizing » is sometimes used so widely that it ceases to be a term: a fairy tale, allegory, metaphor – everything falls under « mythologizing ».

Ukrainian writers, turning to the myths of ancient Greece, continue the traditions of national literature.

Proven method of poetic generalization, ancient Greek myths became especially popular with the development of general education. Mythological names are widely used in the press as words or poetic paths. In literary works far from ancient themes, we come across certain inclusions – detailed, original interpreted borrowings from ancient Greek myths.

Such impregnations help to convey high pathos, achieve a comedic effect, impress the imagination with unexpected comparisons, make the image relief-plastic or evoke far-reaching associations.

« Apollonian » and « Dionysian » principles in culture and their understanding by F. Nietzsche and V. Ivanov

If we turn to Greek mythology with its relentless bloody passions, betrayals, intrigues and murders of the gods – yes, it is the murders of the immortals, because there were « the tomb of Zeus », and « the tomb of Apollo », and other « graves »! Judging by this mirror of everyday life, it is possible, seemingly without hesitation, to make a psychoanalytic diagnosis: ancient Greek culture belongs to the cruel, destructive, sadistic, or perhaps necrophilic cultures.

To accept this thesis is hindered by its obvious absurdity – we must admit that the destruction and disintegration characterize one of the most creative and fruitful civilizations in history. It is easier to say that a normal childhood was extremely gloomy and tragic, and that those bloody thorns paved the way for a smiling civilization.

The idea of ​​the Greeks as a « normal childhood of mankind » (K. Marx), a childhood that can cause us only admiration and a fond smile, was formed in late European culture. The view of Greek culture as the forerunner of cultural Europe was established after the Renaissance, and especially after Vico, who began to liken the history of world culture to the development of the human individual and distinguished in each of them childhood, adolescence and maturity.

And a few decades later, Winkelmann substantiated the idea of ​​Greek culture as a triumph of the principle of harmony, order and measure, as a culture of bright cheerfulness. This dominant idea to this day, writes Vyacheslav Ivanov, was born « from the white vision of the Greek divine marbles, from the radiant dream of Homer’s Olympus » (Ivanov 1906, p.315). With Winkelmann and Goethe begins a new phase of fascination with Greek classics. The turn in relation to antiquity begins not with the crisis of classicism, but with Nietzsche. His name marks the crossroads of European intellectual roads.

For Nietzsche, for European culture of the last quarter of the last century, the discovery of the tragedy of the « normal childhood of mankind » was an occasion to reconsider the classical and classicist metaphysics of truth and evil, break with traditional conformism, seek a new vision of subjectivity as the basis of human existence.

The tragic joy of liberation from objective circumstances independent of man had two consequences: the self-confident assertion of man in the world of values ​​created by him and the denial of death and destiny. The death of God, proclaimed by Nietzsche, was understood as the death of old Europe and the birth of a new one.

Inspired by Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, the Russian symbolist poet and scholar Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov sought answers to questions about the nature of the « Apollonian » and « Dionysian » principles in culture and the meaning of the tragedy of Jesus Christ, more broadly the tragedy of God being born and dying. It would seem that what is the problem? After all, noting that the gods of all nations die and rise, as nature dies in autumn and rises in spring, we can assume that the hidden meaning of the cult of death and birth of God in agricultural practice. But such an explanation does not reveal the human meaning of the divine tragedy.

In other words, knowledge of the cycle of death and birth in nature gives a scheme for answering a question, a sample explanation, but the meaning of the answer can be understood only when the question is clear. Both the reference to the eternal change of the seasons and the reproduction of death and birth had some meaning, the same in the sense that they « explained » to people some secret, responded to some related expectations. What expectations satisfied the myths about the tragedy of the suffering God?

Nietzsche contented himself with the presence in Greek culture of the harmonious, calm, and beautiful beginnings symbolized by Apollo, as well as the beginnings of the anxious and restlessness that arose from the empathy of the orgiastic cult of death and resurrection, symbolized by the cult of Diosio. which was the origin of the ancient Greek tragedy.