Hoffmann's Complex" in the Theater Aesthetics of the Silver Age

The aim of the article is to identify Hoffmann's complex and study its reflection in the theatrical aesthetics of the Silver Age. Hoffmann's complex includes pictorial and musical harmony (synthesis of arts); romantic irony and grotesque; a kind of solution to the problem of mechanization of life and man manifested in the symbolic images of masks, dolls, puppets and doubles, the symbolic image of eyes as the only way to recognize the authenticity of the living and the lifeless. The leading method of the research is comparative analysis, the foundations of which on the issue of Hoffmann and the Russian literature of the 19th century were laid in the works of A. Botnikova, B. Udodov, A. Mikhaleva, I. Ignatov and others. The study concluded that Hoffmann's complex and the theatrical aesthetics of the German writer influenced the reform of the Russian theater in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hoffmann's idea of the synthesis of arts, continued by R. Wagner and Vl. Solovyov, made a significant contribution to the development of a new type of drama, and was reflected in the theatrical ethical views of V. Meyerkhold, A. Bely and V. Ivanov. Hoffmann's solution to the problem of mechanization of art and man in the era of the Silver Age is manifested in the depersonalization of a human in the modern world, and finds expression in the appearance of masks, dolls and doubles, which have become an important part of the artistic world of works by A. Blok, F. Sologub, L. Andreev and others. Another embodiment of the problem of mechanization of man and culture, dating back to Hoffmann, is the tradition of mythologization in the literature of commedia dell' arte's characters that often symbolize the doubles of the lyrical hero, and became part of the artistic world of Blok, Bely and others. The only way to recognize the authenticity of the living and the lifeless in the literature of the Silver Age are eyes that reflect true essence. The symbolic image of eyes is found in the works of Blok, Andreev, Sologub and others. However, in the theatrical aesthetics, Hoffmann was one of the first to put the puppet above the actor, and also to contribute to the emergence of the principle of "conditionally" in the theater. The puppet and the doll captured Russian theater and appeared in the theory of the symbolist "theater as temple" of Bely, the communal theater of Ivanov, the theater of one will of Sologub. Hoffmann's reflections on the role of the actor and the director in the theater were highly appreciated by directors and playwrights, and formed the basis of their theatrical aesthetics. Hoffmann's irony and grotesque became an indispensable attribute of most aesthetic concepts of the Silver Age. Meyerkhold, Solovyov, Blok, N. Evreinov and others used Hoffmann's irony and grotesque in their works. To sum up, Hoffmann's complex becomes a literary technique which is formed in the works of some writers and theatre theorists (Sologub, Blok, Andreev, V. Merezhkovsky and others), but transformed in the works of others (Bely, Ivanov and others).

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