Originality of the Golden Age of Russian Literature in Reflections of the Silver Age

The article deals with the outlook of the Silver age on the phenomenon of Russian classics in comparison with previous criticism, with its love for people, social pathos and realism as the main value. It is shown that the distinguished features themselves marked out of the Russian classics as the stage of the Russian culture don't separate the representatives of two conflicting camps. The most important general motives are as follows: influence of Russian literature on the European; aspiration of literature to overstep itself – into life, in the moral sermon; literature as the reflection of the national soul; connection with a Christian ideal of the people; dramatic position of the Russian writer; insufficient attention to aesthetics. In the article is analyzed how these theses appear in different contexts of judgment (for example, in the polemic of D.S. Merezhkovsky and M.N. Michailivsky or D.S. Merezhkovsky and A.M. Skabichevsky). Comes to light that the differences depend upon radical opposition of atheistic and religious approach to the literature of the Golden Age.