The artistic world of a work: structure and problems of study. The artistic world as an independent literary category What is the artistic world in literature
Everything said above about event and plot applies equally to fiction and non-fiction texts. It is no coincidence that we tried to illustrate the main points with both examples. The specificity of an artistic plot, repeating at a different level the specificity of metaphor, consists in the simultaneous presence of several meanings for each plot element, and none of them destroys the other, even if they are completely opposite. But since such simultaneity arises only at a certain level, stratifying in others into various unambiguous systems or being “sublated” into some kind of abstract unity at a higher level, we can conclude that the “artistry” of the text arises at a certain level – the level of the author’s text.
Consider the text of Lermontov’s poem “Prayer” (1829):
Don't blame me, omnipotent
And don’t punish me, I pray,
Because the darkness of the earth is grave
With her passions I love;
For something that rarely enters the soul
Your living speeches flow;
For wandering in error
My mind is far from you;
Because lava is inspiration
It bubbles on my chest;
For the wild excitement
The glass of my eyes is darkened;
Because the earthly world is small for me,
I'm afraid to get close to you,
And often the sound of sinful songs
I, God, am not praying to you.
But extinguish this wonderful flame,
The burning fire
Turn my heart to stone
Stop your hungry gaze;
From a terrible thirst for song
Let me, creator, free myself,
Then on the narrow path of salvation
I will contact you again.
Looking at the text of the poem, it is very easy to notice that its semantic system is stratified into two layers:
The left column acts as the initial, marked member of the opposition. This is expressed, in particular, in the fact that it is precisely this that is chosen as the point of view (direction of assessment) and as the direction of action. The direction of assessment is expressed primarily in spatial categories. “I” is “far from you”, and not “you”, “far from me” with the same classification structure indicates that it is “you” that is taken as the point of semantic reference. The definition of the earthly world as “darkness” leads us to the idea of the antithetical “light” and has a classification-structural character (associated with a certain type of culture). The accompanying epithet “grave” has a double semantics. Code - entails the idea of earthly life as death as opposed to the “eternal life” of the afterlife. At the same time, it contains the spatial semantics of the “grave” - a deep and closed space (the idea that the world is an abyss compared to heaven, hell is an abyss compared to the world;
It is characteristic that in Dante the measure of sin corresponds to the measure of depth and closedness, the measure of holiness - the degree of sublimity and openness). But in this same epithet there is also a starting point, since the earthly world is an “abyss” only in relation to paradise.
There is also a certain directionality in action verbs. From left to right the active “punish” is directed, from right to left – the active “pray” is devoid of any sign of activity. But already poetry:
...the darkness of the grave earth
With her passions I love. –
change the picture. They still fit into the general system of the cultural code described above, but give the text the opposite direction: not the “omnipotent”, but the sinful “I” is chosen as the point of view. From this point of view, the “grave darkness” of the earth and its “passions” may turn out to be an object of love.
However, starting from the ninth verse, the text ceases to be deciphered in the semantic system that has worked until now. The nature of the “I” changes decisively. In the first part of the poem, this is a moving element, the value of which is determined by its relationship to the environment: belonging to “earthly” life, “I” becomes instantaneous, mortal, wandering away from the truth - insignificant; Having entered the light and truth of another world, this “I” becomes significant, but not by its significance, but by the value of the world of which it becomes a part.
The text, beginning with the ninth verse, appeals to those already standardized in the late 1820s. metaphors like “lava of inspiration” evoked in the minds of readers another, also known to him, cultural code – romantic. In this system, the main opposition was “I – not-I.”
Everything that constitutes “not-I” is mutually equalized, the earthly and unearthly worlds become synonymous:
This leads to the fact that the “I” becomes not an element in the world (environment), but a world, a space (consistently romantic structure; plot is excluded). Moreover, “I” becomes not only motionless, but also huge, equal to the whole world (“In my soul I created another world”). “I” turns out to be a space for internal events.
In the light of this system of concepts, it seems natural that the “I” grows spatially: in verses 9–10 it is likened to a volcano (including spatially, in contrast to Benediktov’s metaphor “There is a volcano in the chest of a young man”): “lava of inspiration”, "bubbling" on chest" (cf. the same type "on the chest of a giant cliff"). Verses 11 – 12 already liken the eyes (part) of the poet to a stormy ocean. And this is followed by “the earthly world is too small for me” and a simultaneous rejection of the heavenly world. If at first the “I” was part of the world opposing God, now the divine “you” is only part of the opposing “I” of the world. In this world, composed of my “I” and directed towards it, there is no other object other than “me”. It is significant that the object of prayer is not named (“I, God, am not praying to you”).
“Sinful” in this context ceases to be a condemnatory epithet, since the world of “I” is not judged by the extraneous laws of religion or morality. In the romantic system, “sinful” is the antonym of “vulgar.”
Verses 17–20 are perceived as the antithesis of the beginning: there passions are part of the darkness of the grave, here they are “wonderful flames.”
But already verse 20 contains signals of some other semantic system, alien to romanticism. They are associated with the strength of the “I’s” focus on the object. In the romantic system, the “I” has itself as its only non-vulgar object of activity. And if a “not stone” (“sensitive”) heart is possible in the romantic system (although much more often “now stone” is “faded”), then the “hungry gaze” is decisively excluded from it. Already at the dawn of romanticism, Freemasons spoke of man as a being “with eyes turned inward.” Most likely, this text will again be approached by the opposition “earthly world” (“I” am part of it) – “unearthly world”. But it is earthly life that turns out to be bright, true, activity that evokes a “terrible thirst” and attracts a “hungry gaze” and, therefore, has no signs of instantaneity, death, decay, or dimness.
Finally, the last two verses again return us (with code signals such as “bodily path” and “salvation”) to the Christian code, but at the same time “close” is perceived as the antonym of “spacious”, which is why it is not semanticized in the same way as in the Christian system (“ spacious path - the path of sin, the path of life"), but as a synonym for freedom and its reflexes in the romantic type of cultural code.
We did not consider the semantic structure of the text, but the general cultural semantic field in which this text functions. At the same time, we made sure that the text is projected not onto one, but onto three different types of semantic structure. What would it mean if the text was not artistic, but, say, scientific?
IN scientific text the introduction of a new semantic system would mean a refutation, “removal” of the old one. Scientific dialogue consists of one of the disputing positions being recognized as untrue and discarded. The other one wins.
As we have seen, the semantic field of Lermontov’s poem is constructed differently: it arises from relationship all three systems. The negating does not destroy the negated, but enters into a relation of opposition with it. Therefore, a scientific dispute is proof that the opponent’s point of view has no value. An artistic dispute is possible only with an opponent, absolute victory over whom is impossible. Precisely because the religious structure of consciousness in “Prayer” retains both attractiveness and grandeur, its refutation is poetic.
If the Prayer were a philosophical treatise, it would be divided into several polemically opposed separate parts. As a poem, it forms a single structure in which all semantic systems function simultaneously in a complex mutual “game”. This is the feature of a literary text that M. Bakhtin astutely pointed out.
Scientific truth exists in one semantic field, artistic truth exists in several simultaneously, in their mutual correlation. This circumstance sharply increases the number of significant features of each element.
We see what complex contradictions are created in the systems that arise as a result of the creolization of languages of different cultures. However, one should not think that if a text is contained in one semantic system, then it cannot create that complex play of structural elements, which provides it with the semantic capacity characteristic of art. We have seen that within the same cultural code system the same semantic elements act as synonyms at one level and as antonyms at another. The above also applies to the construction of the plot of a work of art. Let us consider the Sukhovo-Kobylin trilogy from this point of view. In "Krechinsky's Wedding" two camps are contrasted: honest people - dishonest people. Muromsky, his daughter Lidochka, Nelkin - “a landowner, a close neighbor of the Muromskys, a young man who served in military service” - are varieties of the type of honest person; Krechinsky, Rasplyuev - varieties of a dishonest person. The character of each of them is a set of differential characteristics revealed in relation to the characters of one group with them and the characters of another group. And since each of these groups is further divided into subgroups (for example, the “Krechinsky” subgroup and the “Rasplyuev” subgroup), the characteristics consist of additional differential characteristics that arise in relation to the subgroups. The second part of the trilogy - “The Case” - introduces a new opposition: private people - bureaucracy (not people). The bureaucracy consists of characters with different appearances (cf.: “Chibisov. Decent, presentable appearance. Dressed in fashion,” “Kasyan Kasyanovich Shilo. The face of a Corsican robber,” “Klokat. Dressed casually”), but united in contrast to people. These are “superiors”, “forces”, “subordination” (terminology with an element of parody of the angelic hierarchy) - and “wheels, pulleys, gears of bureaucracy” (not people, but parts of a mechanism). In this opposition, Krechinsky finds himself in the human camp and acts as an ally of the Muromtsevs. Finally, in the third part - “The Death of Tarelkin” - both members of the opposition belong to the camp of non-humans, there is a clash of scoundrels of large and small kind, but equally belonging to the inhuman, bureaucratic world. All three types of division create their own, unique, semantic distinctive features of the characters. However, each of these systems does not cancel the previous one, but functions against its background.
The serf peasant - Suchok from Turgenev's "Lgov" - appears in our minds as a certain set of semantically distinctive features. But in the antithesis of the landowner and in opposition to the peasant children, different signs are activated in his character. And the image itself lives as if included in both of these (and a number of other) plans at the same time.
A literary text is a complex system, constructed as a combination of general and local orderings of different levels. This directly affects the construction of the plot.
An essential property of a literary text is that it is in a relationship of double similarity: it is similar to the specific piece of life it depicts - part of the universal universe - and it is similar to this entire universe. After watching the film, we say not only: “Such was Ivan Petrovich,” but also: “Such are these Ivan Petrovichs,” “Such are the men,” “Such are the people,” “Such is life.”
Moreover, if in the first relation different texts are not homeomorphic, then in the second they are in the relation of similarity. But any plot text more or less easily breaks down into segments. And this circumstance entails interesting consequences.
Let's take the text that is most easily, visibly divided into segments - a theatrical production of a play. The theatrical production clearly illustrates one essential property of art - the paradoxical homeomorphism of parts and the whole.
A theatrical play reflects in its own language certain phenomena of the external world, and at the same time it represents a closed world, correlated with the external reality not in its parts, but in a universal integrity. The boundary of a very real theatrical space is the ramp, the walls of the stage box. It is a theatrical universe reflecting the real universe. This is precisely the meaning of the clearly tangible borders stage world. It gives the play universality and does not allow us to raise the question of anything lying outside the theater stage as equal to it in reality.
However, a theatrical performance is divided into distinct segments - scenes that form parts of the text of the production and at the same time take place within the same spatial boundaries as the play as a whole. Individually they are also homeomorphic to the world. But the scenes are not the last division of the text of the play: each phenomenon, introducing a new character, gives a new model of the world, but within the same spatial framework. Screen boundaries play a similar role in cinema: they establish a certain homeomorphism for all plans and points of view reflected in individual frames. If the screen is filled with close-up eyes, then we do not perceive them as part of a huge face, the boundaries of which would go beyond the spatial boundaries of the cinema. The cinematic world within this frame is the eyes. And relating in a certain way to the syntagmatics of previous frames (in this regard, the frame is perceived as a part, and the close-up does not act as a relevant feature; it is synonymous with verbal descriptions like: “looks with horror”, “looks carefully”), it is simultaneously related to a certain reality – partial (eyes) and universal (world). In the second sense, it acts as a self-sufficient whole, the meaning of which can be expressed approximately like this: “The world is the eyes.” The eyes and their expression, captured in the frame, become a model of the universe. And this is achieved by isolating a segment (frame) from the syntagmatic chain at a certain level and “close-up” - the relationship of the screen border to the content of the frame. The play is divided by scenes and phenomena into synchronous sections, each of which in a special way divides the characters into two camps (if we are dealing with a monologue scene, then the hero is opposed by an empty subset of elements, and within given the scene it fills the whole world). But each time these groups are different in composition or ratio of elements. Consequently, the boundary drawn in one way or another determines the principle of differentiation of subsets of elements, that is, it highlights their differential features. Then the play (if we ignore its syntagmatic structure) will be a collection of synchronic models of the universe.
But each division is not only a certain principle of differentiation. The overlap of these binary divisions creates bundles of differentiation. By identifying with any characters, these bundles become characters. The character of a character is a set of all the data in the text of binary oppositions to other characters (other groups), the entire set of his inclusions in groups of other characters, that is, a set of differential features. Thus, character is a paradigm.
In an invariant form, it is included in the main plot contrast. But certain particular oppositions create local orderliness and additional plot possibilities. From this point of view, the contrast between the “aesthetics of identity” and the “aesthetics of opposition” could be interpreted as the difference between texts in which local orderings highlight only one type of differential difference, coinciding with the main opposition, and texts in which local orderings highlight a certain set of differentiations .
In literary criticism, the concept of world, on the one hand, is used metaphorically without a clearly defined content. On the other hand, a direction has developed within which this word is a term. The foundations of this approach were laid by the works of Bakhtin “Problems of Dostoevsky’s creativity” 1929 “forms of time and chronotope in the novel” 1937.
Bakhtin considered the works in their eventful completeness, including here “both its external material reality and its text (the work supposedly) and the world depicted in it (that is, the artistic world of A.A.S.) and the author-creator, and the listener of the reader” ( Bakhtin "Questions of literature and aesthetics. Research different years"// Moscow, 404 pp.)
The term “Inner world of a work of art” came into scientific circulation after Likhachev’s article, in which the thesis about the presence of verbal art in a work of art was substantiated inner world, which has its own laws that are different from the laws of the real world. In another work, poetics ancient Russian literature they considered the following parameters: h.m. like time and space. A literary work is a dynamic system that is formed in the very act of perceiving the work, that is, what Bakhtin called dialogical communication, and D.S. Likhachev. co-creation of the author and reader. In this regard, when analyzing work of art the one that is considered to a greater extent artistic image, which develops as a result of familiarity with the work.
The artistic world is not a concept of the world, it is the world itself, as it is reproduced and depicted in a work of art.
As L.V. Chernets notes, the world is a side of the artistic form, mentally delimited from the verbal structure. The artistic world is a system that exists according to its own laws, but it is not autonomous. It depends on the real world. The artistic world includes people, events, things. HM. reflects the world of reality
The transformation of reality is connected with the ideas of the work, with the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The connection of the worlds does not mean their identity; to differentiate them, M.M. Bakhtin introduces the concept of Borders. Borders are a sharp, fundamental boundary, the crossing of which leads to a mixture of the laws of the real and artistic worlds.
An analysis of the world of a work of art, from the point of view of whether it is true or false to reality, is not scientific; in assessing the artistic world one must proceed from its own laws.
One of the methods for analyzing the artistic world is the study of its space-time structure. The direction became popular in the 60s. Predecessor - Bakhtin. He introduced the concept of chronotope into literary criticism. Chronotope (chrono-time, top - place) is the relationship between the temporal and spatial relations of art mastered in literature. The world of the work is considered as an interaction of chronotopes. Representatives of the Tartu-Moscow school under the leadership of Yu.M. Lotman worked within this direction. They derived functions that perform space in art world. Space is also the principle of organizing objects and characters, but in addition it is a means of expressing non-spatial relationships: good - bad, one's own - someone else's, valuable - non-valuable.
- We're on the slope... Should we go down? – Lieutenant Yurov’s voice is heard in the headphones.
“I didn’t give the order to rest,” the colonel answers dryly as he walks.
The lagging lieutenants turn out to be much better mountain climbers than they showed themselves to be marathon runners. You can clearly hear them talking through the headphones:
- Drive the hook... Here... So...
- No, no... You don’t see... The crack is weak... Drive it higher... Here...
- Yeah... Skip the rope... Play off...
Fifteen minutes earlier, Sogrin did not waste time driving in the hook so that everyone would descend under the same conditions, and the rope could then be pulled through the ring and saved. He simply had no doubt that his officers and himself would descend without any problems even without a rope. Lieutenants are more familiar with the classic descent. And it’s good that we’re not so far behind. In the event of a fight, three extra barrels can come in handy. But the colonel does not intend to wait for the stragglers. The trail is still visible, although the traitorous snowfall tends to cover it as quickly as possible. And therefore haste is necessary.
So, right along the trail, they descend into the valley. Flashlights shine openly here. In a snowstorm that has already fallen down from the pass - it really is snow on your head! – It is impossible to see the beam of a flashlight from a distance. Visibility in such conditions during the day is no more than eighty to one hundred meters, and even more so at night.
Under the beam of a flashlight there are brown spots on the brown stone. Fresh spots, they didn’t have time to freeze completely.
Sokhno is nearby, sweeps away the top layer of snow with a mitten, finds more traces of blood and an abandoned blood-soaked swab from a standard army dressing bag. Here is the infirmary, the wounded were being treated. And there is a syringe tube for paramidol. They also abandoned...
The Colonel examines the map, while the Corps de Ballet is busy following the general trail.
“They are dragging poles,” he reports, finally realizing what strange lines stretch along the human trail. – With ligaments... One side is placed on the shoulder, the other end is dragged along the ground.
“They made stretchers out of poles,” adds Sokhno, picking up shavings from the snow, “someone used an axe.”
“Ten minutes have not passed since they took off,” the colonel decides. - We caught up with the darlings. Now we’re definitely caught up. They won't leave...
In Sogrin's voice one can hear outright triumph addressed to the lieutenants. He never shows feelings with his lieutenant colonels. Over the many years of service together, they became so accustomed to each other that they learned to understand each other without words. And this is a lesson for the lieutenants - if they had walked slower, if they had kept up with the one lagging behind, then they would not have been able to catch up.
- Forward! - the command sounds.
“We’re already close,” Lieutenant Yurov reports through the Snowdrop. We went down almost to the bottom. We passed the horizontal trail.
- Go down below. You will be ahead of us... - Sogrin has already joined the next stage of the march, which promises to be the final one, and is not thinking about his own rest. “You’ll just have time to catch your breath.”
Now, maintaining the same high pace of pursuit, Sogrin doubles his caution. And that’s why he keeps binoculars to his eyes more often than he goes without them. But in the valley you can walk like this without the risk that arose at the top, here you can stumble, but when you fall you won’t fly for a long time, picking up speed in accordance with the physical law of acceleration of free fall... Both lieutenant colonels work with binoculars in exactly the same way. But the lieutenant colonels took places on the flanks and control not the road ahead, like the commander, but rocks and ledges where an ambush can be organized. The lieutenants also have binoculars, but they prefer to look at their feet. There is no automatic habit of walking blindly over such uneven areas. This takes a long time to learn.
The wind is now rolling down the slope from above, blowing away from the slopes not too much, not yet compacted snow cover, mixed with dust and small pebbles and therefore hard, painfully hitting in the face, and darker than the main mass of the blizzard.
After two hundred meters, Sogrin stops and looks through his binoculars for a long time. Sokhno and the Corps de Ballet move their binoculars lower and look in the same direction as the colonel.
“These are our good fellows,” Sokhno learns. “It’s good that they came down here, it’s dangerous for them to appear further.”
Sokhno doesn't answer. He listens and immediately extends his hand along the path the group is moving. The others listen too. Machine gun fire can be heard again from ahead. They begin with short, sharp blows, but quickly pick up the pace and merge into continuous, single bursts.
“They ran into an ambush,” says Egorov. - This was to be expected...
“No,” says the corps de ballet. “They attack the ambush from the flanks and from above. They break through. They go where they need to go, by the shortest route...
“You can’t get through the rocks with poles and a wounded man,” objects the Barber.
“They don’t even sneak through,” Sokhno grins. “They hope to destroy the ambush and then move on.” And our task is to show them an effective figure...
- Forward! - the command sounds briefly. - Two hundred meters left. We'll split up around the lieutenants.
They find three lieutenants sitting, leaning their backs against one large stone, from under which an unfrozen stream flows out in a thin stream and hides ten meters later somewhere in a deep black crack under the slope. The lieutenants also listen to the shots. Yurov and Frolov look into the snowstorm, and Sahakyan lowered his head and closed his eyes. But all three of them chew the biscuits included in the dry ration.
- Climb! - Sokhno barks. “You’ll be late for breakfast in the dining room, you lousy gourmets.”
- Could you at least conduct reconnaissance? – Sogrin asks those who have risen, but he does not expect an answer.
Lieutenants have no time for reconnaissance. They can barely stand on their feet from fatigue. Sahakyan still looks at his feet, as if he is very shy. Shy...
“There’s something there... About twenty meters,” says the Corps de Ballet, lowering the binoculars. - It seems to me that this is a wounded man lying...
The night vision device of the binoculars highlights the outline of a person lying motionless. Less than a minute - and the special forces are nearby. This is actually a wounded man, and he is already beginning to be covered with snow. However, he is sleeping and does not shake the snow off his face.
“They injected me with Paramidol,” Sokhno concludes and picks up a syringe tube from the snow. – The first tube is in the parking lot, the second is already here. So that you don't wake up for a long time...
Sogrin bends over the wounded man, shines a flashlight in his face and shakes the snow off his face. The wounded man doesn't even wake up.
- Just a boy. Good face...
And then he pulls out a general notebook from under his camouflage jacket, the corner of which he notices. He shines a flashlight, glances at a couple of pages and puts the notebook into the tablet.
- What is this? – asks the barber, noticing the colonel’s movements.
– Who told you that I am obliged to report to you? – Sogrin frowns, straightens up and looks into the snowstorm. - We divide into groups. Composition of the groups... Lieutenant colonels with Lieutenant Egorov are walking along the right slope. They take Lieutenant Fomin with them... The trail is still visible there. You won't lose... The rest are behind me to the left... Everyone's "Snowdrops" are on... Attack by agreement... Forward!
And he immediately turns left to begin climbing a steep, difficult slope in the same place where, in his opinion, the militants were climbing. As he walks, the colonel thinks. He put a diary on his tablet, where the progress of Ruslan Vakhovich Imamov’s detachment is noted day by day. Probably the same diary that the generals in civilian clothes especially spoke about during the briefing. And I thought that the wounded man with a good, honest face, on whose chest the diary lies, is the very boy who is recommended to be destroyed after the diary ends up in the hands of the special forces - Abbas Abdutabarov, a student of Colonel Imamov. For some reason, Sogrin really didn’t want to kill the helplessly sleeping boy. Moreover, for some reason he even wanted to protect him...
2
Abbas thought that the feds had suffered too many losses to organize a full-fledged barrier capable of plugging all the holes through which the militants could infiltrate. In principle, they don’t even want to leak. They set themselves a large and specific task - to destroy the barrier and carry the poles and the wounded through the resulting hole. There cannot be any other task at such a crucial moment. But the feds unexpectedly put up a big barrier. Around the platoon again! Where do they recruit people from in such a short period after several bloody battles for them?.. Other barriers must have been removed. If only I knew where they filmed... But there are no people even to conduct a full-fledged reconnaissance. And Anwar is incapacitated. He could learn a lot in a short time...
However, Abbas hates the concept of "what ifs." Ruslan Vakhovich always prefers to communicate only with reality and rely on specific facts. And the pupil is taught to operate with the same concepts. That is why Abbas does not regret what cannot be achieved, he only thinks about what can be done.
“There are not enough of us,” Dukvakha also complains. - And there is no machine gun. Something happened to my guys, no less. They should have caught up with us long ago. Probably there were more “wolfhounds” than I thought, and their commander is more cunning than me...
He is habitually focused. And when Dukwaha is focused, he doesn't try to smile, which pleases both Abbas and Roundyke alike. Abbas generally treats the emir almost like a friend.
2
The world of literary work
§ 1. Meaning of the term
The world of a literary work is the objectivity recreated in it through speech and with the participation of fiction. It includes not only material data, but also the psyche, consciousness of a person, and most importantly, himself as a mental-physical unity. The world of the work constitutes both “material” and “personal” reality. (By thing, 20th century philosophy means being passive and silent, while the personal principle is understood as an active and speaking being.) In literary works, these two principles are unequal: in the center is not “dead nature”, but living, human, personal reality (even if only potentially).
The world of a work constitutes an integral facet of its form (of course, its content). It is located, as it were, between the actual content (meaning) and the verbal fabric (text). Note that the word “world” is used in literary studies and in a different, broader meaning - “as a synonym for the creativity of a writer, the originality of a particular genre: the world of Pushkin, Lermontov, chivalric romance, science fiction, etc.” .
The concept of “the artistic world of a work” (sometimes called “poetic” or “internal”) is rooted in literary criticism different countries. In our case it was justified by D.S. Likhachev. The most important properties of the world of a work are its non-identity with primary reality, the participation of fiction in its creation, the use by writers of not only life-like, but also conventional forms of representation (see pp. 94–96). In a literary work, special, strictly artistic laws reign. “Let us deal with a completely unreal world,” wrote W. Eco, commenting on his novel “The Name of the Rose,” “in which donkeys fly and princesses come to life with a kiss. But with all the arbitrariness and unreality of this world, the laws established at its very beginning must be observed.<…>The writer is a prisoner of his own premises."
The world of a work is an artistically mastered and transformed reality. He is multifaceted. Most large units of the verbal and artistic world - the characters that make up the system, and the events that make up the plots. The world includes, further, what can rightfully be called components representation (artistic objectivity): acts of behavior of characters, features of their appearance (portraits), mental phenomena, as well as facts of life surrounding people (things presented within interiors; pictures of nature - landscapes). At the same time, artistically captured objectivity appears both as a non-verbal existence designated by words, and as speech activity, in the form of statements, monologues and dialogues belonging to someone (see pp. 196–201). Finally, a small and indivisible element of artistic objectivity is the individual details(details) of what is depicted, sometimes clearly and actively highlighted by writers and acquiring relatively independent significance. So, B.L. Pasternak noticed that in the poems of A.A. Akhmatova fascinates him with the “eloquence of details.” He gave details in poetry a certain philosophical meaning. The last lines of the poem “Let’s drop words...”(“<…>life, like the silence / Autumn, is detailed”) are preceded by a judgment about the “god of details” as the “omnipotent god of love.”
From era to era objective world works are increasingly and more persistently mastered in its smallest details. Writers and poets seem to come close to what they depict.
When come here to this proud coffin
Come curls bend and cry
Regarding these lines from Pushkin’s “The Stone Guest” by Yu.K. Olesha noted: “Tilting the curls” is the result of a keen eye for things, which was unusual for the poets of those times. This is too “close-up” for the poetic thinking of that time<…>In any case, this is the poet’s step into a different, later poetics.”
The detailing of what is depicted reached a kind of maximum in the literature of the second half of the 19th century - both in the West and in Russia. The statement of L.N. is significant. Tolstoy that the impact on the reader “is achieved only then and to the extent that the artist finds the infinitesimal moments from which a work of art is composed.”
Let us turn to the various layers (facets) of the world of a literary work.
§ 2. Character and his value orientation
In literary works, images of people, and in some cases, their likenesses: humanized animals and plants (“ Attalea princeps» V.M. Garshin) and things (a fairytale hut on chicken legs). There are different forms of human presence in literary works. This is a narrator-storyteller, a lyrical hero and character, capable of revealing a person with the utmost fullness and breadth. This term is taken from the French language and is of Latin origin. The ancient Romans used the word “persona” to designate the mask worn by an actor, and later the face depicted in a work of art. The phrases “literary hero” and “character” are now used as synonyms for this term. However, these expressions also carry additional meanings: the word “hero” emphasizes the positive role, brightness, unusualness, and exclusivity of the person portrayed, and the phrase “character” - the fact that the character manifests himself primarily in the commission of actions.
A character is either the fruit of the writer’s pure invention (Gulliver and the Lilliputians by J. Swift; Major Kovalev, who lost his nose, by N.V. Gogol)” or the result of conjecture on the appearance of a real person (whether historical figures or people biographically close to the writer, or even himself); or, finally, the result of processing and completing already known literary heroes, such as, say, Don Juan or Faust. Along with literary heroes as human individuals, sometimes group, collective characters turn out to be very significant (the crowd in the square in several scenes of “Boris Godunov” by A. S. Pushkin, testifying to and expressing the people’s opinion).
The character seems to have a dual nature. Firstly, he is the subject of the depicted action, the stimulus for the unfolding of events that make up the plot. It was from this side that V.Ya approached the character sphere. Propp in his world-famous work “The Morphology of the Fairy Tale” (1928). The scientist spoke about fairy-tale heroes as bearers of certain functions in the plot and emphasized that the persons depicted in fairy tales are significant primarily as factors in the movement of event series. A character as an actor is often referred to as actant (lat. active).
Secondly, and this is perhaps the main thing, the character has an independent significance in the composition of the work, independent of the plot (event series): he acts as a bearer of stable and stable (sometimes, however, undergoing changes) properties, traits, qualities (see. pp. 35–40 “Typical and characteristic”).
Characters are characterized by the actions they perform (almost primarily), as well as by forms of behavior and communication (for it is not only the What a person does, but also that How he behaves at the same time), features of appearance and close surroundings (in particular, things belonging to the hero), thoughts, feelings, intentions. And all these manifestations of man in literary work(as in real life) have a certain resultant - a kind of center, which M.M. Bakhtin called core personality, A.A. Ukhtomsky - dominant, determined starting intuitions person. The phrase is widely used to denote the stable core of people’s consciousness and behavior value orientation. “There is not a single culture,” wrote E. Fromm, “that could do without a system of value orientations or coordinates.” These orientations exist, the scientist continued, “in every individual.”
Value orientations (they can also be called life positions) are very heterogeneous and multifaceted. The consciousness and behavior of people can be directed towards religious and moral, strictly moral, cognitive, and aesthetic values. They are also associated with the sphere of instincts, with bodily life and the satisfaction of physical needs, with the desire for fame, authority, and power.
The positions and orientations of both real and fictional persons by writers often take the form of ideas and life programs. These are the “ideological heroes” (M. M. Bakhtin’s term) in romantic and post-romantic literature. But value orientations are often non-rational, immediate, intuitive, determined by the very nature of people and the tradition in which they are rooted. Let us remember Lermontov’s Maxim Maksimych, who did not like “metaphysical debates,” or Tolstoy’s Natasha Rostova, who “did not deign to be smart.”
The heroes of literature from different countries and eras are infinitely diverse. At the same time, in the character sphere there is a clear repetition associated with the genre of the work and, more importantly, with the value orientations of the characters. There are a kind of literary "supertypes"- supra-epochal and international. There are few such supertypes. As noted by M.M. Bakhtin and (following him) E.M. Meletinsky, for many centuries and even millennia, man dominated artistic literature adventurous-heroic who firmly believes in his own strength, in his initiative, in his ability to achieve his goal. He manifests his essence in active searches and decisive struggle, in adventures and accomplishments, and lives with the idea of his special mission, his own exclusivity and invulnerability. We find succinct and apt formulas for the life positions of such heroes in a number of literary works. For example: “When you can help yourself, / Why cry out to heaven? / We have been given a choice. Those who dare are right;/ He who is weak in spirit will not achieve his goal./ “Unachievable!” - this is what only he says / Who hesitates, hesitates and waits” (W. Shakespeare. “The end is the crown of the matter.” Translation by M. Donskoy). “Under the hood, I thought about my brave plan, preparing a miracle for the world,” Pushkin’s Grigory Otrepiev tells about himself. And in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” the devil expressed Ivan’s innermost thoughts: “Where I stand, there will immediately be first place.”
Characters belonging to the adventurous-heroic supertype strive for fame, long to be loved, have the will to “eliminate the fabulism of life,” that is, they tend to actively participate in changing situations in life, fight, achieve, and win. An adventurous heroic character is a kind of chosen one or an impostor, whose energy and strength are realized in the desire to achieve some external goals.
The scope of these goals is very wide: from ministry people, society, humanity to the point of selfishly self-willed and knowing no boundaries self-affirmation, associated with cunning tricks, deception, and sometimes with crimes and atrocities (remember Shakespeare's Macbeth and his wife).
The characters of the heroic epic gravitate towards the first “pole”. Such is the brave and prudent, generous and pious Aeneas in the world-famous poem of Virgil. Faithful to his duty to his native Troy and his historical mission, he, in the words of T. S. Elist, “from his first to his last breath” is a “man of destiny”: not an adventurer, not an intriguer, not a tramp, not a careerist - he fulfills what is destined for him fate, not by force or random decree, and certainly not out of a thirst for glory, but because he subordinated his will to some higher power<…>great goal" (meaning the founding of Rome). In a number of other epics, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, the heroic deeds of the characters are combined with their self-will and adventurism (a similar combination in Prometheus, which, however, for many centuries became a symbol of sacrificial service to people).
Much has been said about the essence of the heroic (see pp. 69–71). The concept of adventurism (adventurism) in relation to literature is much less understood. MM. Bakhtin associated the adventurous beginning with the solution of problems dictated by “eternal human nature - self-preservation, the thirst for victory and triumph, the thirst for possession, sensual love.” In addition to this, we note that adventurism may well be stimulated by a person’s self-sufficiently playful impulses (Kochkarev in N.V. Gogol’s “The Marriage”, Ostap Bender in I. Ilf and V. Petrov), as well as a thirst for power, as in Pushkin’s Grishka Otrepiev and Emelyan Pugacheva.
An adventurous-heroic supertype, embodying the striving for something new at all costs (i.e. a dynamic, fermenting, exciting principle human world), is represented by verbal and artistic works in various modifications, one not similar to the other.
Firstly, these are gods historically early myths and the folk-epic heroes inheriting their features from Arjuna (the Indian “Mahabharata”), Achilles, Odysseus, Ilya of Muromets to Till Eulenspiegel and Taras Bulba, invariably exalted and poeticized. In the same row are the central figures of medieval chivalric novels and their similarities in the literature of recent centuries, what are the characters of detective stories, science fiction, adventure works for youth, and sometimes “great” literature (remember Ruslan and the young Dubrovsky in Pushkin, the hero of the play by E. Rostand "Cyrano de Bergerac", Lancelot from "Dragon" by E. Schwartz).
Secondly, these are romantically minded rebels and spiritual wanderers in the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. - be it Goethe’s Faust, Byron’s Cain, Lermontov’s Demon, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, or (in another, down-to-earth variation) such ideological heroes as Onegin, Pechorin, Beltov, Raskolnikov, Orestes (“The Flies” by J.-P. Sartre). The named characters (Zarathustra is a significant exception) are, as it were, half-heroes, or even anti-heroes, such as, for example, the central character of Notes from Underground and F.M.’s Stavrogin. Dostoevsky. The appearance and destinies of the characters in this so-called “demonic” series reveal the futility of intellectual and other adventurism, devoid of connections with the morality and cultural tradition of a great historical time.
Thirdly, the heroic-adventurous principle is to some extent involved in romantically minded characters who are alien to any demonism, believe that their soul is beautiful, and are eager to realize their rich potential, considering themselves to be some kind of chosen ones and lights. This kind of orientation in the coverage of writers, as a rule, is internally crisis-ridden, full of sad drama, and leads to dead ends and disasters. According to Hegel, “the new knights are predominantly young men who have to fight their way through the worldly cycle that takes place instead of their ideals.” Such heroes, the German philosopher continues, “consider it a misfortune” that the facts of prosaic reality “cruelly oppose their ideals and the infinite law of the heart”: they believe that “it is necessary to make a hole in this order of things, to change, improve the world, or at least , in spite of him, to create a heavenly corner on earth." Characters of this kind (remember Goethe's Werther, Pushkin's Lensky, Goncharov's Aduev Jr., Chekhov's characters) are not heroes in the full sense of the word. Their lofty thoughts and noble impulses turn out to be illusory and futile; romantically inclined characters suffer defeats, suffer, die, or over time come to terms with the “base prose” of existence and become philistines, or even careerists. “Hero,” notes G.K. Kosikov, based on the writing experience of Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, becomes a bearer of ideal and degradation at the same time.”
Thus, the hero of romantic and post-romantic literature (both in his “demonic” and “beautiful” varieties), while maintaining his involvement in the adventurous-heroic supertype (an aura of his own exclusivity, the will to large-scale acquisitions and accomplishments), at the same time appeared as a symptom and evidence of the cultural and historical crisis and even exhaustion of this supertype.
Among the characters belonging to this supertype, fourthly, we find adventurers themselves, even less heroic than those listed above. From the tricksters of early myths, threads stretch to the characters of medieval and Renaissance short stories, as well as adventure novels. The critical reinterpretation of adventurism in the literature of the New Age is significant, most clearly in the works about Don Juan (starting with Tirso de Molina and Moliere). The images of place-seekers in high society, careerists in the novels of O. de Balzac, Stendhal, Guy de Maupassant. Hermann in Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades,” Gogol’s Chichikov, Dostoevsky’s Rakitin and Pyotr Verkhovensky, Tolstoy’s Boris Drubetskoy are in the same row. In other, also very different variations (and far from being apologetic), the type of adventurer is captured in such literary figures of our century as Felix Krul in T. Mann, the famous Ostap Bender of Ilf and Petrov, and the much less popular Komarovsky in Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
A completely different, one might say, polar to the adventurous-heroic “supertype” is revealed in medieval hagiographies and those works (including eras close to us) that, to a greater or lesser extent, directly or indirectly, inherit the hagiographic tradition or are akin to it. This supertype can rightfully be called hagiographical-idyllic. The kinship between everyday holiness and idyllic values (about them, see pp. 72–73) is clearly evidenced by the famous “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom,” where “the halo of holiness surrounds not the ascetic monastic life, but the ideal married life in the world and the wise sovereign government his principality."
Characters of this kind are not involved in any struggle for success. They reside in a reality free from the polarization of successes and failures, victories and defeats, and in times of trials they are able to show perseverance, avoiding temptations and dead ends of despair (which is confirmed by the words about one of Shakespeare’s heroes who suffered injustice: he has the gift of translating “into the meek, clear mood of fate, severity" - "As you like it"). Even being prone to mental reflection, characters of this kind (for example, Leskov's Savely Tuberozov) continue to reside in a world of axioms and indisputable truths, rather than deep-seated doubts and insoluble problems. Spiritual fluctuations in their lives are either absent or turn out to be short-term and, most importantly, completely surmountable (remember: Alyosha Karamazov’s “strange and uncertain moment” after the death of Elder Zosima), although these people are prone to repentant moods. There are hard attitudes of consciousness and behavior: what is commonly called loyalty to moral principles. Such characters are rooted in a close reality with its joys and sorrows, communication skills and everyday activities. They are open to the world around them, capable of loving and being friendly to everyone else, ready for the role of “communication and communication workers” (M.M. Prishvin). They, using the terminology of A.A. Ukhtomsky, is characterized by “dominance to another person.”
In Russian literary classics of the 19th–20th centuries. The hagiographic-idyllic supertype is presented very vividly and widely. Here is Tatyana of the eighth chapter of “Eugene Onegin”, and the “group portrait” of the Grinevs and Mironovs in “ The captain's daughter”, and Prince Guidon (“The Tale of Tsar Saltan”), who did not need to go far away in search of happiness. In post-Pushkin literature, this is Maxim Maksimych M.Yu. Lermontov, characters family chronicles of S.T. Aksakova, old-world landowners N.V. Gogol, the characters of “Family Happiness”, Rostov and Levin by L.N. Tolstoy, Prince Myshkin and Makar Ivanovich, Tikhon and Zosima by F.M. Dostoevsky. One could also name many heroes of A.N. Ostrovsky, I.A. Goncharova, N.A. Nekrasova, I.S. Turgeneva, A.P. Chekhov. In the same row - Turbines at M.A. Bulgakov, the hero and heroine of the story “Fro” by A.P. Platonova, Matryona A.I. Solzhenitsyn, a number of characters in our “village” prose (for example, Ivan Afrikanovich in “A Habitual Business” by V.I. Belov, the hero of the story “Alyosha Beskonvoyny” by V.M. Shukshin). Turning to the Russian diaspora, let's call the prose of B.K. Zaitsev and I.S. Shmelev (in particular, Gorkin from “The Summer of the Lord” and “Politics”). In the literature of other countries, such persons are deeply significant in Charles Dickens, and in our century - in the tragic novels and stories of W. Faulkner.
At the origins of the hagiographic-idyllic supertype - characters ancient Greek myth Philemon and Baucis, who were rewarded by the gods for their faithfulness in love for each other, for their kindness and hospitality: their hut turned into a temple, and they themselves were granted longevity and simultaneous death. From here the threads stretch to the idylls of Theocritus, Virgil’s “Bucolics” and “Georgics”, the idyll novel “Daphnis and Chloe” by Long, to Ovid, who directly turned to the myth of Philemon and Baucis, and - after many centuries - to I.V. Goethe (the corresponding episode of the second part of Faust, as well as the poem “Herman and Dorothea”). The origins of the “supertype” under consideration are a myth not about gods, but about people, about the human In man (but Not man-god, if we resort to vocabulary characteristic of the beginning of the Russian 20th century).
The hagiographic-idyllic supertype was also outlined by the didactic epic of Hesiod. In “Works and Days”, Homer’s apology for military prowess, booty and glory was rejected, everyday common sense and peaceful peasant labor were praised, good behavior in the family and moral order, which is based on folk tradition and experience captured in proverbs and fables, were highly valued.
The world of the characters in the series under consideration was also preceded by ancient Greek symposia, which gave rise to the tradition of friendly mental conversation. In this regard, the figure of Socrates is important as real personality and as the hero of Plato’s dialogues, where the great thinker of antiquity appears as the initiator and leading participant in peaceful and confidential conversations, often accompanied by friendly smiles. The most striking dialogue in this regard is “Phaedo” - about the last hours of the philosopher’s life.
In the formation of the hagiographic-idyllic supertype, the fairy tale also played its role with its interest in what is valuable in the implicit and formless, be it the stepdaughter Cinderella or Ivan the Fool, or the good wizard, whose features are shared by the sage-scribe Prospero from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”
Heroes of hagiographic-idyllic orientation are characterized Not alienation from reality and involvement in the environment, their behavior is creative in the presence of “kindred attention” to the world (M.M. Prishvin). Apparently, there is reason to talk about a trend in the development of literature: from positive coverage of adventurous-heroic orientations to their critical presentation and to an increasingly clear understanding and figurative embodiment of hagiographic and idyllic values. This trend, in particular, was reflected with classical clarity in the creative evolution of the speaker. Pushkin (from “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “Gypsies” to “Belkin’s Tales” and “The Captain’s Daughter”). It finds justification and explanation in the philosophizing experiments of our century. Thus, the modern German philosopher J. Habermas argues that instrumental action, oriented towards success, eventually gives way to communicative action aimed at establishing mutual understanding and striving for the unity of people.
Literary characters can appear not only as “bearers” of value orientations, but also as embodiments of unconditionally negative traits or as the focus of trampled, suppressed, failed humanity. The origins of the “negative” supertype, worthy of ridicule and denunciation, passing through the centuries, are the hunchbacked and askew, grumbling and mocking Thersites, the enemy of Achilles and Odysseus, who is described in the Iliad. This is perhaps the first in European literature antihero. This word was introduced into use by F.M. Dostoevsky: “Here on purpose all the traits for an anti-hero have been collected" ("Notes from the Underground"). Suppressed humanity is embodied in the myth of Sisyphus, doomed to an existence hopelessly painful and meaningless. Here a person has no time for value orientations! Sisyphus as an archetypal figure was considered by A. Camus in his work “The Myth of Sisyphus. An Essay on the Absurd." The named characters of ancient Greek mythology anticipate much in the literature of later and closer eras.
In reality, where there is no place for any human-worthy guidelines and goals, many characters of Russian writers of the 19th century live, in particular N.V. Gogol. Let us remember, for example, the crazy Poprishchin, or Akakiy Akakievich with his greatcoat, or Major Kovalev, who lost his nose. “The leading Gogol theme,” says S.G. Bocharov, - there was “fragmentation,” historically widely understood as the essence of the entire European modern era, which reached its culmination in the 19th century; characterization of modern life in all its manifestations as fragmented, fractional<…>extends to the person himself<…>IN Petersburg stories Gogol with the hero-official established a special scale for the image of a person. This scale is such that a person is perceived as a particle and a fractional value (if not “zero,” as the head of the department suggests to Poprishchina).” The man here, continues Bocharov, speaking about the hero of “The Overcoat,” is “a creature<…>reduced not only to the absolute minimum of human existence, value and meaning, but simply to the zero of all this”: “Akaky Akakievich is not just “ small man" He, one might say, is even “smaller” than a little man, below the very human measure.”
Many characters in “post-Gogol” literature are completely subordinated to lifeless routine, deadened stereotypes of the environment, and are subject to their own selfish motives. They either languish over the monotony and meaninglessness of existence, or they reconcile with it and feel satisfied. In their world there is present, if not reigns supreme, what Blok called “immense) gray spider-like boredom.” Such is the hero of the story “Ionych” and his numerous similarities in Chekhov, such (in a unique variation) is the atmosphere of a number of Dostoevsky’s works. Let us remember the terrible image that arose in Svidrigailov’s imagination: eternity is like a neglected village bathhouse with spiders.
A person driven (or driven himself) into a dead end of boredom was repeatedly recognized and portrayed by writers as oriented only hedonistically - towards bodily pleasures, as alien to morality, tolerant of evil and prone to its apology. “In the novels of the 18th century,” notes G.K. Kosikov (naming Charles Baudelaire’s predecessors in Western European literature - Marivaux, Lesage, Prevost, Diderot and de Sade) - hedonism and its flip side, evil) were subjected to a thorough, versatile and impressively bleak analysis.”
Speaking about Dostoevsky’s characters as those who preceded the human reality of a number of works of the 20th century. J. Kristeva, not without reason, uses such phrases as “cracked selves”, “split subjects”, bearers of “torn consciousness”. A person whose value guidelines have been shaken or are completely absent has become the subject of close attention of writers of our century. These are the horrors of F. Kafka, and the theater of the absurd, and images of participants in the mass extermination of people, and the artistic concept of man as a monster, a monstrous creature.
This is (in the most approximate outlines) the character sphere of a literary work, if you look at it from the perspective of axiology (theory of values). ..
Literature 6th grade. A textbook-reader for schools with in-depth study of literature. Part 1 Team of authors
About what the art world is
What happens to a person when he opens a book to read a fairy tale? He immediately finds himself in a completely different country, in different times, inhabited by different people and animals. I think you would be quite surprised to see the Serpent Gorynych not even on the street of your city, but in a cage at the zoo. I can imagine what would happen to you if, while walking through the forest, a frog jumped out of the swamp and turned to you with the question: “What time is it?” But in a fairy tale, the appearance of dragons and talking amphibians does not bother you at all. “Of course,” you say, “this is a fairy tale.” Yes, you're right, anything can happen in a fairy tale. But have you ever thought about the question of why storytellers have such freedom, while a writer telling, for example, about the lives of schoolchildren, strives to construct a narrative so that much is recognizable? Are there rules that determine whether a writer can use fiction and fantasy (I hope you remember what these words mean, because I introduced you to them back in the fifth grade)?
Before answering this question, I will offer you a simple task. Tell me, please, would it ever occur to you to sing loudly in math class? Start a game of blind man's buff in a metro station? Have a football match in the classroom? Of course not. And why? The reasons, if you think about it, are completely different. You can't sing because you interfere with others' work. Playing blind man's buff in the subway or at a train station is dangerous. And playing football in the classroom is simply inconvenient. In the same way, in a literary work, it has its own rules: its own space, its own time boundaries and much more, inherent only to this work.
Opening the book, you find yourself in artistic world of the work. This world obeys the will of its creator - the author, who creates it, giving free rein to his imagination, but observing the laws of verbal art. The author can control a lot. He creates a special art space, which the work is limited by. Remember, in “Mechanics of Salerno” by B. Zhitkov, the artistic space is one steamship. This space may be very similar to a specific geographical area, or have the most general characteristics of a place (a forest such as in V. Zhukovsky’s “The Tsar of the Forest” may be in Germany, Russia, or America ), or represent a completely fictional city in a fictional country (“City of Masters” by T. Gabbe).
The artistic world of the work is both similar and not similar to the real one. It has its own, special time. For example, Koschey in fairy tales can be Immortal. Time in the artistic world sometimes flies with amazing speed, sometimes it seems to stop and freeze. The heroine of the fairy tale about Finist - the Clear Falcon manages to trample seven pairs of iron shoes during her wanderings while you are reading one page of this work. And the entire content of the familiar short story “Little Frog” by E. Poe fits into a few hours. This happens because in the imaginary world there is a very special clock, the hands of which can, for example, begin to rotate in reverse side when the hero or author remembers what happened before. The time of a work of art is not subject to the laws of nature, but to the author’s intention.
The fact is that when reading a work, a person becomes, as it were, a participant in the events described, and therefore he perceives them as if they concern him personally.
The writer helps the reader penetrate into the artistic world of the work, creating artistic images, which affect not the mind, but the feelings of the reader, activate his imagination. In order for visible pictures of the artistic world to appear when reading, visual arts literature, and to make the reader feel like a participant in the events taking place, they use means of expression, awakening the reader’s personal attitude to what is happening.
The writer has many visual and expressive means at his disposal, and I will introduce you to some of them in this book. The author draws these resources from his native language, and the Russian language has rare poetic capabilities.
The lexical capabilities of the language allow the author to paint a vivid picture, convey the character of the character, and express his attitude towards this character. Think about it, an ordinary horse can be called a “steed”, “steed” or “nag”. When you hear each of these meanings, you will imagine different animals, although they will all be horses. If a character is called a “hero”, that’s one thing, but if a character is called a “klutz,” that’s something else entirely. Is it clear now what I meant when I said that a word in literature not only names an object, but also characterizes it, expresses the author’s attitude towards it?
Sometimes the author is not content with the name of an object or character, but gives it a definition. The definition can be logical, that is, simply indicate some attribute of an object or phenomenon. For example, when a horse is called “lame,” they simply indicate its physical defect, but if a horse is called “heroic,” then we're talking about not only about his strength and endurance. You imagine a beautiful animal, although you have not been given a description of it. This artistic definition is called epithet- This is a very common means of visual expression. Often in verbal art the polysemy of words is used. All words used in a figurative meaning are called paths. You yourself often use tropes in your speech, although you don’t think about it. Do you know that artistic comparison– one of the most common tropes? Do you remember in M. Yu. Lermontov’s ballad there are the words: “The French moved like clouds.” Have you noticed how accurately and figuratively the poet conveys the perception of the advancing enemy army?
Another equally common trope is called metaphor. Metaphor- This is a hidden comparison. Look at the first line of a poem by A. A. Fet that is already familiar to you:
A wavy cloud
Dust rises in the distance...
Here the dust is compared to a cloud floating across the sky, but the word indicating the comparison is omitted. In the ballad “Borodino” it is written: “We will go to break the wall.” Now you understand that this is also a metaphor.
Wind, Wind! You are powerful
You are chasing flocks of clouds...
Will you refuse me an answer?..
Personification is used very often in fairy tales. You can also find hyperbole in fairy tales. Hyperbola- This is an artistic exaggeration. Thus, a heroic horse often flies “above a standing forest, below a walking cloud.” And Gvidon from “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” by A. S. Pushkin grew “by leaps and bounds.”
There are other paths that you will also become familiar with over time, but for now I just want to ask you: when reading books, listen carefully to the narrator’s speech, try to feel the meaning of each word.
For the next lesson, try to independently select examples of the use of epithets and tropes in the literary works you have read.
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From the author's bookThe artistic world of Lermontov. The predominant motive of M. Yu. Lermontov’s creativity is fearless introspection and the associated heightened sense of personality, the denial of any restrictions, any encroachments on its freedom. It is precisely such a poet, with his head held high, that he
From the author's book From the author's bookArtistic image This paragraph substantiates the concept of “artistic image” in relation to the concepts of “hero”, “character” and “character”, showing its specificity. To conclude the conversation about epic and dramatic works let's try to enter more
From the author's bookWhat is good and what is bad? The little son came to his father and the little one asked: “What is good and what is bad?” “I have no secrets,” listen, kids,” I put my dad’s answer in the book. – If the wind tears the roofs, if the hail roars, everyone knows that this is for
From the author's bookAbout how the artistic world of a poem is created Now I will tell you how a lyric poem is structured. The artistic world of a lyric poem can be unstable, its boundaries are vaguely discernible, just as the transitions between human beings are unsteady and elusive.