Leonid Mikhailovich Batkin(born June 29, Kharkov) - Russian historian and literary critic, cultural critic, public figure.

Education

He graduated from the Faculty of History of Kharkov State University in 1955, Candidate of Historical Sciences (1959, dissertation topic: “Dante and the political struggle in Florence at the end of the 13th - beginning of the 14th centuries).” Doctor of Historical Sciences (1992, based on a set of works on the topic “Italian Renaissance as a historical type of culture”).

Scientific and pedagogical activities

In 1956-1967 - teacher, associate professor, dismissed for “gross ideological mistakes,” including “propaganda of pure art and formalism.” During the Soviet period, he was not allowed to defend his doctoral dissertation.

Since 1968, he worked at the Institute of World History of the USSR Academy of Sciences: senior researcher, since 1992 - leading researcher. Since 1992, at the same time, chief researcher at the Institute of Higher Humanitarian Studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU). Member of the Academic Council of the Russian State University for the Humanities. Member of the international editorial board of the magazine Arbor Mundi (“World Tree”), published at the Russian State University for the Humanities.

In 1987-1989, at the same time, he taught at the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives.

Specialist in the history and theory of culture, mainly of the Italian Renaissance. Areas of scientific research - Italian Renaissance as a special type of culture; the nature and limits of personal identity in European cultural history; methodology for studying individual and unique phenomena in the history of culture.

Full member of the American Academy for Renaissance Studies. Winner of the Culture Prize of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic (for a book about Leonardo da Vinci) (1989).

Social activities

In 1979 he was a participant in the samizdat literary almanac “Metropol”. In 1988-1991 he was one of the leaders of the Moscow Tribune club. In 1990-1992 he participated in the activities of the Democratic Russia movement. Compiler of the collection “Constitutional Ideas of Andrei Sakharov” (M., 1991). In May 2010, he signed the appeal of the Russian opposition “Putin must leave.”

Adheres to liberal political views.

Awards

• Winner of the Culture Prize of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic (for a book about Leonardo da Vinci) (1989)
• Medal "In memory of the 850th anniversary of Moscow"

Scientific works

Monographs

in Russian

• Batkin L. M. Dante and his time: Poet and politics. M.: Nauka, 1965. Ed. on it. language: 1970, 1979.
• Batkin L. M. Italian humanists: lifestyle and style of thinking / Rep. ed. prof. M. V. Alpatov. - M.: Nauka, 1978. - 208 p. - (From the history of world culture). - 37,500 copies.(Edition in Italian 1990)
• Batkin L. M. Italian Renaissance in search of individuality. - M.: Nauka, 1989.
• Batkin L. M. Leonardo da Vinci and the features of Renaissance creative thinking. - M.: Art, 1990.
• Batkin L. M. Renewing History: Reflections on Politics and Culture. - M.: Moscow worker, 1991.
• Batkin L. M.“Don’t dream about yourself”: On the cultural and historical meaning of “I” in “Confession” by Bl. Augustine. - M.: RSUH, 1993.
• Batkin L. M. Passions: Selected Essays and Articles on Culture. - M.: Kursiv-A LLP, 1994.
• Batkin L. M. There's still a chance. - M.; Kharkov, 1995.
• Batkin L. M. Petrarch at the tip of his own pen: Author’s self-awareness in the poet’s letters. - M.: RSUH, 1995.
• Batkin L. M. Italian Renaissance: Problems and People. - M.: Publishing house of the Russian State University for the Humanities, 1995.
• Batkin L. M. The thirty-third letter: Reader's notes on the margins of Joseph Brodsky's poems. - M.: RSUH, 1997.
• Batkin L. M. European man alone with himself. Essays on the cultural-historical foundations and limits of personal identity: Augustine. Abelard. Eloise. Petrarch. Lorenzo the Magnificent. Machiavelli. M.: RSUH, 2000.
• Batkin L. M. The personality and passions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. - M.: RSUH, 2012.

in other languages

• Leonardo da Vinci. - Bari: Laterza, 1988.

Articles

• Batkin L. M.// Knowledge is power. - 1989. - No. 3,4.

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An excerpt characterizing Batkin, Leonid Mikhailovich

Thirdly, it was pointless to lose their troops to destroy the French armies, which were destroyed without external reasons in such a progression that without any blocking of the path they could not transfer across the border more than what they transferred in the month of December, that is, one hundredth of the entire army.
Fourthly, it was pointless to want to capture the emperor, kings, dukes - people whose captivity would greatly complicate the actions of the Russians, as the most skillful diplomats of that time admitted (J. Maistre and others). Even more senseless was the desire to take the French corps when their troops had melted halfway to Krasny, and convoy divisions had to be separated from the corps of prisoners, and when their soldiers did not always receive full provisions and the already taken prisoners were dying of hunger.
The entire thoughtful plan to cut off and catch Napoleon and his army was similar to the plan of a gardener who, driving cattle out of the garden that had trampled his ridges, would run to the gate and begin to beat this cattle on the head. One thing that could be said to justify the gardener would be that he was very angry. But this could not even be said about the drafters of the project, because they were not the ones who suffered from the trampled ridges.
But, besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon and the army was pointless, it was impossible.
This was impossible, firstly, because, since experience shows that the movement of columns over five miles in one battle never coincides with plans, the likelihood that Chichagov, Kutuzov and Wittgenstein would converge on time at the appointed place was so insignificant , that it amounted to impossibility, as Kutuzov thought, even when he received the plan, he said that sabotage over long distances does not bring the desired results.
Secondly, it was impossible because, in order to paralyze the force of inertia with which Napoleon’s army was moving back, it was necessary to have, without comparison, larger troops than those that the Russians had.
Thirdly, it was impossible because cutting off a military word has no meaning. You can cut off a piece of bread, but not an army. There is no way to cut off an army - to block its path, because there is always a lot of space around where you can go around, and there is night, during which nothing is visible, as military scientists could be convinced of, even from the examples of Krasny and Berezina. It is impossible to take prisoner without the person being taken prisoner agreeing to it, just as it is impossible to catch a swallow, although you can take it when it lands on your hand. You can take prisoner someone who surrenders, like the Germans, according to the rules of strategy and tactics. But the French troops, quite rightly, did not find this convenient, since the same hungry and cold death awaited them on the run and in captivity.
Fourthly, and most importantly, this was impossible because never since the world existed has there been a war under the terrible conditions under which it took place in 1812, and the Russian troops, in pursuit of the French, strained all their strength and did not could have done more without being destroyed themselves.
In the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoye, fifty thousand were left sick and backward, that is, a number equal to the population of a large provincial city. Half the people dropped out of the army without fighting.
And about this period of the campaign, when troops without boots and fur coats, with incomplete provisions, without vodka, spend the night for months in the snow and at fifteen degrees below zero; when there are only seven and eight hours of the day, and the rest is night, during which there can be no influence of discipline; when, not like in a battle, for a few hours only people are introduced into the realm of death, where there is no longer discipline, but when people live for months, every minute struggling with death from hunger and cold; when half the army dies in a month - historians tell us about this and that period of the campaign, how Miloradovich was supposed to make a flank march this way, and Tormasov there that way, and how Chichagov was supposed to move there that way (move above his knees in the snow), and how he knocked over and cut off, etc., etc.
The Russians, half dying, did everything that could be done and should have been done to achieve a goal worthy of the people, and they are not to blame for the fact that other Russian people, sitting in warm rooms, assumed to do what was impossible.
All this strange, now incomprehensible contradiction of fact with the description of history occurs only because the historians who wrote about this event wrote the history of the wonderful feelings and words of various generals, and not the history of events.
For them, the words of Miloradovich, the awards that this and that general received, and their assumptions seem very interesting; and the question of those fifty thousand who remained in hospitals and graves does not even interest them, because it is not subject to their study.
Meanwhile, you just have to turn away from studying reports and general plans, and delve into the movement of those hundreds of thousands of people who took a direct, immediate part in the event, and all the questions that previously seemed insoluble suddenly, with extraordinary ease and simplicity, receive an undoubted solution.
The goal of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in the imagination of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was meaningless and achieving it was impossible.
The people had one goal: to cleanse their land from invasion. This goal was achieved, firstly, by itself, since the French fled, and therefore it was only necessary not to stop this movement. Secondly, this goal was achieved by the actions of the people's war, which destroyed the French, and, thirdly, by the fact that a large Russian army followed the French, ready to use force if the French movement was stopped. Andrey Doronin
Leonid Mikhailovich Batkin. In Memoriam

Andrej Doronin. Leonid Batkin. In Memoriam

Andrey Doronin(German Historical Institute in Moscow; researcher; candidate of historical sciences) [email protected].

Andrej Doronin(Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau; researcher; PhD) andrej.doronin@dhi-moskau. org.

On November 29, 2016, at 4.00 am, Leonid Mikhailovich passed away. His departure resonates with pain in my heart.

I don’t think it’s worth explaining to UFO readers who L.M. is. Batkin. His best works, which brought him world fame and were translated in the West, are still being republished today. In 2015-2016, they were published again - in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd volumes of the planned 6-volume collection of his works, which was undertaken by the New Chronograph (I address my sincere gratitude to Leonid Sergeevich Yanovich) with financial support German Historical Institute in Moscow [Batkin 2015a; 2015b; 2016].

Leonid Mikhailovich is from the cohort of our most famous, outstanding Soviet/Russian medievalists and antiquists, historians and philologists. He was one of the last remaining with us from the generation of Vladimir Solomonovich Bibler, Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev, Georgiy Stepanovich Knabe, Eleazar Moiseevich Meletinsky, Yuri Lvovich Bessmertny, Aron Yakovlevich Gurevich, Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov and other scientists who make up the glory of Soviet / Russian science. They belonged - and this is not a tribute to a panegyric or an obituary - not only to their era and country, but to humanity. Leonid Mikhailovich counted himself among this group, remaining in a creative dialogue with his colleagues until the end of his life.

I met and became friends with Leonid Mikhailovich by chance. In 2008, one of my Berlin colleagues, a friend of mine, got the idea to translate his 1000-page “European Man Alone with Himself” into German [Batkin 2000a]. At his request, I found Leonid Mikhailovich, without knowing him personally at that time. That's how I ended up at his house. The Berlin venture predictably failed - after several unsuccessful attempts to hire a translator, the German professor embarrassedly disappeared from Leonid Mikhailovich’s sight, although he continued to gratefully remember his only meeting with him. But try to imagine “European Man”, translated into no matter what language! Behind the laconicism, literary grace and apparent lightness of Batkin’s style there is an idea that is striking in depth and elaboration: Leonid Mikhailovich repeatedly added, rewrote, and “finished” his works. As you know, no author is smarter than his translator. Where is that translator worthy of L.M. Batkina?

There are better specialists than me to engage the UFO audience in a discussion about his brilliant reading of Ficino, Dante, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci, about his “varieta”, about his search for a modern European “individualité”, about his Man alone with himself (be it Augustine, Abelard, Rousseau, Diderot, Brodsky, Mandelstam, or himself), about his method. The dispute of A.Ya., which is fundamental not only for Russian medieval studies. Gurevich with L.M. Batkin recently became the subject of a deep, focused article by M.L. Andreeva. A.L. wrote wonderfully about Batkin’s style of thinking and scientific writing, his creative originality in the preface to the 1st volume of his collected works. Dobrokhotov, and at the presentation of the 1st volume in December 2015, V.S. Krzhevov. Like them, here I want to testify to Leonid Mikhailovich my respect and admiration - I had the good fortune to be in close relations with him at the end of his life.

I was amazed that the only interesting thing for him, even in our disillusioned 21st century, after all the horrors of the 20th century, remained Man. A man surrounded by people. A person who thinks, speaks, writes, seeks dialogue, is by nature alone with himself. It was in this dialogue that Leonid Mikhailovich saw the destiny of Man as a person/individuality, giving birth to new meanings and opening up new horizons. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Joseph Brodsky, Thomas Mann, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, who admired him.

Leonid Mikhailovich did not seek refuge in " better times" Yes, in his memories he returned to the exciting atmosphere of seminars filled with disputes at the Institute of History and Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the Historical and Archival Institute or in the apartment of V.S. Bibler; talked about meetings - preludes to the Metropol almanac, about his active participation in the work of the perestroika "Moscow Tribune", about rare, but extremely important for him meetings with Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (who remained an absolute moral authority for him), etc. But he lived today, directly and acutely reacting to the most important events in the life of Russia and the world. As in Soviet times, he listened to “voices” (even in the hospital there was always a radio next to him). But in recent years, the Internet has become its conductor. He was an active user social networks. Many of his respondents (mostly strangers to him personally) were lucky enough to communicate with him at ease. Leonid Mikhailovich willingly discovered new people, new things in people, and shared this. “I listen/read with satisfaction,” Leonid Mikhailovich often said about someone.

His “academic” and civic themes were equally characterized by a personal, frankly emotional style. He insisted that the form of existence of authorship that claims to be serious can and should change over time, and that it was the Internet that provided us with a completely new field of mental activity, including the exchange of scientific and humanitarian opinions. It is not surprising that in the final volumes of his collected works he included several works published only online.

Leonid Mikhailovich did not leave school behind him, although I have more than once heard someone consider themselves one of his students. It is difficult to follow him - he was invariably new, fresh, resourceful, sparkling, provocative, variable - impossible to repeat. It would be necessary to have an equally prominent gift of thought and speech. I think he himself would not repeat what he went through. After all, there is still so much unknown and uninterpreted.

He lived definitely interesting(I think this was his motto), with dignity. Until the very end. Without complaining about the illnesses that increasingly beset him and what seemed to him, and in part actually was approaching, oblivion. “You need to keep in shape,” he told me, “some kind of meaning... It’s boring to be just an old man. Not interesting!

I thank Leonid Mikhailovich for the years of our close communication, for his wisdom and warmth, for the irreplaceable kinship of souls. He was and will remain in my life. May his memory be blessed.

With love

A.V. Doronin

Bibliography / References

[Batkin 2000] - Batkin L.M. European man alone with himself: Essays on the cultural and historical foundations and limits of personal self-awareness. M.: RSUH, 2000.

(Batkin L. M. Evropeyskiy chelovek naedine s soboy: Ocherki o kul’turno-istoricheskikh osnovaniyakh i predelakh lichnogo samosoznaniya. Moscow, 2000.)

[Batkin 2015a] - Batkin L.M. Selected works: In 6 volumes. T. I: People and problems of the Italian Renaissance. M.: New Chronograph, 2015.

(Batkin L.M. Izbrannye trudy: In 6 vols. Vol. I: Lyudi i problemy ital’yanskogo Vozrozhdeniya. Moscow, 2015.)

[Batkin 2015b] - Batkin L.M. Selected works: In 6 volumes. T. II: Leonardo da Vinci and the features of Renaissance creative thinking. M.: New Chronograph, 2015.

(Batkin L.M. Izbrannye trudy: In 6 vols. Vol. II: Leonardo da Vinchi i osobennosti renessansnogo tvorcheskogo myshleniya. Moscow, 2015.)

[Batkin 2016] - Batkin L.M. Selected works: In 6 vols. T. III: European man alone with himself. M.: New Chronograph, 2016.

(Batkin L.M. Izbrannye trudy: In 6 vols. Vol. III: Evropeyskiy chelovek naedine s soboy. Moscow, 2016.)

Leonid Mikhailovich Batkin (1932-2016) - Soviet and Russian historian and literary critic, cultural critic, public figure. Below is a fragment from his book: Batkin L.M. European man alone with himself. Essays on the cultural-historical foundations and limits of personal identity. - M.: Russian. state humate univ., 2000.

Humanists and rhetoric

Lorenzo de' Medici has an extensive (though unfinished) Commentary on Some Sonnets on Love. Here is one of the chapters, taken at random. Having exclaimed: “Oh, my most tender and beautiful hand,” the poet first explains on what basis he calls his beloved’s hand “his own”: it was given to him as a pledge of love promises and in exchange for lost freedom. And this, naturally, requires a definition of what freedom is, as well as discussions about the ancient custom of sealing an agreement with a handshake... What follows is a list of other actions performed with the hand. The hand wounds and heals, kills and revives. The role of the fingers is described separately. Then it is clarified that although all this is usually attributed to the right hand, the poet still meant Donna’s left hand, as more noble, because it is located closer to the heart. The usual transfer of all the mentioned “responsibilities” to the right hand is the result of the conditioned behavior of people, perverting in this case, as in many others, what is given to them by nature. Therefore, for “insightful minds” it is the left hand that draws Cupid’s bow, heals love wounds, etc.

Lorenzo writes dozens and dozens of pages of this kind. But - a strange thing! The author does not forget to put himself at the center of the easily flowing rhetorical speech at every suitable or, rather, not at all suitable opportunity. He fits “I”, “me”, “mine”, “me”, “me”, “mine” and again “to me” within one phrase, emphasizing, therefore, with considerable expression, with a sincerity that seems implausible, the complete intimacy of what we would prefer to evaluate as learned classicist exercises, as unbearably deliberate gallant chatter: “And since it seemed to me impossible not only to sleep, but also to live, without dreaming of my donna, I prayed that in a dream, appearing before me, she took me with her, that is, in order to see her in my dreams and so that I could be given to be in her company and hear her most tender laughter, that laughter that the Graces made their abode,” etc. (p. 217). Of course, no rhetoric excludes the possibility of including into its system a certain “I”, also rhetorical. I think that in Renaissance culture the situation was just the opposite: it was not the “I” that was an element of rhetoric, but rhetoric became an element of the previously unknown “I”, which provoked its formation.

Thoroughly saturated with ancient reminiscences, the traditional rhetorical literature of the Renaissance was nevertheless able to reveal its own unique type of spirituality as truly cultural and creative. But how? This is a chapter about the humanistic way of dealing with rhetoric, about the author's self-awareness and creative will, as it made itself felt in composition and style. The immediate material will be only some of the works of Angelo Poliziano and Lorenzo Medici, mainly the mentioned “Commentary”. It increasingly seems to me preferable to test any historical and cultural idea on a relatively small research patch, by leisurely reading a fairly indicative text, rather than by a spectacular panorama of scattered and cursory examples. As is known, the work of our two authors on the threshold of the High Renaissance, be it Lorenzo’s “Forests of Love”, or his “The Caresses of Venus and Mars”, or Polizian’s “Stanzas about the Tournament”, or the famous “Orpheus”, brought Italian poetry to its most extreme erudite and rhetorical sophistication, passing everything through a humanistic filter, including folklore and song material. You probably won’t find anything more indicative of literary artificiality in the poetics of Quattrocento.

It is only necessary to immediately abandon the assessments with which such words as “rhetoric” or “artificiality” are loaded, from the prejudice that Poliziano and the Medici created something truly poetic only outside of rhetoric, in spite of it. In any case, nothing like this could have occurred to either them or their listeners and readers of that time. It's our taste, not theirs. Humanistic speech is completely unthinkable without rhetorical figures and topoi; the question is different, how and why they were necessary for the Renaissance author. Of course: the “artificiality” of the literary constructions of Poliziano and the Medici is colored by special thematic, ideological and genre preferences, characteristic specifically of the circle of the Florentine Academy of Careggi. It is also important that our field of view will mainly include works in the “folk” language, and not in Latin. However, in general, this attitude to antiquity, to the word, to imitation and novelty, this “artificiality” (or, better, increased constructiveness) are epochal features that find correspondence in Renaissance painting (not only the final third of the 15th century) and in to the entire humanistic style of life and thinking.

Even if I am primarily concerned with the problem indicated in the title of the chapter, which widely affects the Renaissance and yet is special in itself, ultimately we will inevitably talk about things that rest on the general understanding of culture. No one would dare deny that culture is changing. But what does it mean that it is changing? We seem to have abandoned, thank God, the flat evolutionist view, according to which every phenomenon in cultural development is, first of all, a certain “stage” that turns what came before it into preparatory stages and, in turn, is doomed to become prehistory something subsequent. We now remember that the cultural past is not removed from the results of development, but continues to live among the plurality of voices of the present. This is typical for the 20th century. synchronic polyphony, this - in principle and in possibility - the transformation of all the reserves of the previous culture into a continuous present would, of course, lose creative tension and meaning if the voices did not come from dissimilar pasts and were not deeply different voices. Or, to put it more bluntly, if cultural changes did not mean qualitative discreteness and different cultures would not be typologically and radically different.

However, this (“Bakhtinian”) understanding of historicism meets with rejection, which boils down to the search for permanent structures that could be taken beyond any cultural-historical brackets. No one would dare to deny that culture is changing, but one often hears that, nevertheless, something most fundamental or, if you like, the simplest in it, its order, remains equal to itself over the course of time. If this is true, then the literature of the Italian Renaissance, presumably, should serve as very convenient confirmation of such a thought. Especially if we select for verification not Albert, especially not Machiavelli, not Leonardo’s writings, not Michelangelo’s poems, in short, not those who can be at least partially dismissed by reference to their extremeness, non-normativity, their creative extremism. But, on the contrary, let us take those who were entirely within the Renaissance, in its logical-historical center, and not on the borders (if and to the extent this is at all possible in cultural creativity).

We will begin, I repeat, to read some of the most conventionally rhetorical and stylized pages that can only be found at the heights of this literature (because in order to illuminate a literary era, in my opinion, it is still necessary, in my opinion, not tertiary background figures, but first of all the peaks, albeit in this case not too deviating from the level of the entire mountain range). These exquisite pages, like the one I have already briefly recounted, are, in truth, now capable of seeming (unlike Leonardo's fables or Machiavelli's letters) insanely boring and banal - for the same reason that they aroused unconditional recognition and pleasure in audience of the late 15th century. And the same reason seems to make literature of a certain kind, ably represented by Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano, the most unfavorable material for the interpretation of culture as eternal surprise. Because before us are authors operating with clichés. Almost any quote from them will turn out to be commonplace, often even directly borrowed from some ancient writer.

So, are Renaissance authors no different from ancient ones in the elementary foundations of literary thinking? Then it would not be worth considering them “Renaissance” (except chronologically), then there would be no fundamental grounds for assigning them to this very specific and unique type of culture. (Reminder: cultures, not just ideologies.) Statius’s “Speech on Fabius Quintilian and the Forests” by Polician praises eloquence. “She alone gathered primitive people who had previously lived in dispersion inside the city walls, reconciled those who disagreed, united them with laws, morals and all kinds of human and civic education, so that in any comfortable and prosperous city eloquence always flourished most of all and received the highest honors.”

How many times has the ancients already praised him... and now, the theme, covered with a patina, purified in the Ciceronian manner in the works of Petrarch and then becoming, as it were, obligatory for people who called themselves (in the 15th century) "oratores" - now it is being developed in once again in classically sonorous Latin, according to all the rules of ancient rhetoric, so that the subject of the argument is elevated by its means, and the means become a demonstration of the subject: the benefits of eloquence are eloquently defended. And it seems, at first glance, that with Poliziano’s rhetoric the situation is the same as it was one and a half, two thousand years before him. That this is the same rhetoric. Is it not - in addition to the verbal expressions borrowed from Marcus Tullius or Quintilian - that we observe the primordial way of thinking, influencing listeners with an energetic judiciousness of distinctions, oppositions, questions and exclamations, an inexhaustible game of rubrication?

That's right, but let's start by noting - without trying to comment yet - the following incongruity. For some reason, Poliziano himself, as already mentioned, preferred, despite all this, to always insist on the distance separating the humanists from the ancients, and in every possible way to emphasize the inimitability, primacy, and individual source of his inspiration. “Although we will never go to a forum, never to the stands, never to a court hearing, never to a national assembly - but what could be in our (scientific) leisure, in our private life, more pleasant, what is sweeter, what is more suitable for humanity (humanitati accomodates), than to use eloquence, which is full of maxims, refined with witty jokes and courtesy, and contains nothing rude, nothing absurd and uncouth." That is, the author seems to be clearly aware of the historical difference between the rhetoric that grew out of the everyday practical life of the ancient city, from the need for public speeches, and his own rhetoric, which belongs to the intracultural and ideological everyday life of the humanist and his group.

Poliziano begins the Oration by arguing against an exclusive focus on Virgil and Cicero. He takes up arms against people who believe that “with the current weakness of talents, with the poverty of education, with the poverty and downright lack of oratory skills,” there is no need to look for “new and untrodden roads” and leave the “old and tried” (p. 870). Of course, Poliziano, as a humanist should, does not doubt the need to study from antiquity. But this renowned expert in “both languages,” who translated the Iliad from Greek into Latin, could not possibly apply his gloomy assessment of the state of literary talent and education to himself. He wants to be equal to the ancients and - without which such a competition would be hopelessly lost - to remain himself. Don't lose originality!

So far we have been talking about reflection. The extracts made from the same Poliziano are quite enough to understand what he wanted - but did he and other humanists manage to achieve what they wanted? How were they able to actually reconcile study and the will to create, to make imitation inimitable, how, living in the world of classical texts, could they feel this world at the same time familiar and alive, in order to still live in their own, today’s world? Of course, the mere fact that the goal of epochal and personal self-determination was persistently facing the Renaissance author introduced unusual tension and problematicity into the learning of rhetoric lessons. However, it is not difficult to notice that even if Poliziano’s ideas challenge the traditionality and clichédness of rhetorical language, they are still expressed through this same language... And yet, somehow it turned out that, imitating Antiquity, these people created a completely new culture . What happened to rhetoric?

L. M. Batkin 1
ON THE WAY TO THE CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY

(abbreviated)

It is generally accepted that the Renaissance - and, in particular, Castiglione in his dialogues on “The Courtier” - put forward the ideal of a versatile and harmonious personality. This is highly inaccurate. Italians of the 16th century They had not yet used such familiar words personalitaў and individualitaў and were not familiar with the concepts they expressed.

The idea of ​​personality emerged only at the end of the 18th century, immediately serving as a powerful seed for romanticism. It was called upon to fill the vacuum created as a result of the final desacralization of ideas about the place of an individual person in the world. An individual, whose self-awareness was previously correlated with corporate or class status, with religious-universal responsibility and justification for a transient existence, suddenly saw himself in the middle of an unmerged, often hostile social cosmos, in the openness and unknown of history.

There was no longer any higher meaning and law above the human and earthly.

The starting point for a person and indeed integral to him in the end of modern times was only his belonging to himself, his individuality. It was in the sphere of the individual that he had to henceforth seek spiritual support. That is, to understand the momentary and special truth of one’s existence as something universally significant and priceless, to realize oneself as a “personality.”

Like a plant that can grow only in a certain landscape-climatic zone, so the radical new idea of ​​“personality” was able to develop only in the environment and in connection with a whole landscape of other new ideas, in the context of a radically changed worldview. Personality is what includes a person in endless historical communication through his own unique message. The universal meaning of individual life, thus, turns out to be identified with culture. (Despite the antiquity of the word, this, of course, is also a specifically new European concept.) Both of them, “personality” and “culture,” penetrate each other and imply the presence of another “personality”, another “culture” and the establishment of a dialogue between them: here is the uniqueness is an indispensable condition, but it arises precisely on the border with another uniqueness. Therefore, both ideas are internally associated with another unprecedented idea of ​​historicism, with the recognition of the unique originality and, consequently, the relativity of any structures and values, with a characteristic acute sense of anachronism.

So, by “personality” it seems that we can mean a concept that seeks to embrace the ideal attitudes and problems that arise as a result of the foregrounding of autonomous human individuality. When the universal appears not “above” the individual and not “in the form” of the individual, but as the most individual, special - this is personality.

Let's put it this way: personality is something that appears fleetingly and only once in the Universe, but that is why it is remarkable, taken as self-sufficient, substantial. Each personality is not a part, but a focus and refocusing of the all-human. If we agree that the idea of ​​personality is one of the most important expressions of anti-traditionalism (no matter how many elements of tradition it incorporates), a conscious breakthrough of the ancient Christian horizon, then how can we evaluate the Renaissance in this regard?

It is known that the Renaissance is the earliest stage of movement in the indicated direction, which, however, has not yet reached such a breakthrough and collapse...

Renaissance thought worked - and this is precisely where its original completeness lies - not on a ready-made idea of ​​personality, but, if you like, on its pre-determinations, which would allow the individual to establish himself in himself, in his, as they said then, “fantasy”, not breaking with traditionalist, absolute and normative guidelines (with “human nature”, “imitation of the ancients”, “perfection”, “divinity”), but strangely shifting them and changing them. Attempts to somehow reconcile the eternal and the earthly, the absolute and the separate, the norm and the incident led to the interpretation of the individual as l'uomo universale (Italian - universal man - A.P.), and this was fully reflected in the mysteriously hidden motive “ diversity” - in my opinion, the decisive cultural category of the Renaissance.

1. Batkin Leonid Mikhailovich (b. 1932) - theorist and cultural historian. The main works are devoted to the Italian Renaissance: “Italian humanists: lifestyle and style of thinking” (1978), “Italian Renaissance in search of individuality” (1989), “Leonardo da Vinci and the features of Renaissance thinking” (1990).

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