Theme of a literary work. What themes and images of modern poetry are closest to you? (Based on the work of one or two poets.) (Unified State Exam in Russian) What is the theme of the work

Image is a concept central to art, literature and the science of art and literature, but at the same time it is polysemantic and difficult to define. It illustrates the connections between art and reality, the role of the artist in creating a work, the internal laws of art, and reveals certain aspects of artistic perception.

Difficulties in formulating the concept lead to the fact that a number of scientists consider it “outdated” and propose to completely abolish it as unnecessary. Meanwhile, it is impossible to remove from the language such words as “image”, “imagination”, “transformation”, etc. They have something in common, namely the “internal form” of the image (about the “internal form” see the works of A. Potebnya ).

The identity of internal form and image in art is, in essence, the same thing as the identity of form and content.
The meaning of the image is the image itself, which explains itself in the process of its creation to the author and reconstruction to the reader (this understanding is inherent in A. Bely, M. Heidegger, O. Paz). From this point of view, art does not “display” being, but directly “delivers” it. At the same time, it is also a means of cognition of both extra-artistic and aesthetic reality: that “place” (that area) where both realities “meet” and intersect with each other. In non-artistic areas of knowledge, a similar structure is a model.

In a broad sense, an artistic image can be called any form in which the artist embodied the events, objects, processes, phenomena of the flow of life perceived by him and significant to his consciousness and his perception of them. They often talk about the “reflection” of reality in art with the help of an image, about the transformation human life in the light of the author's aesthetic ideal, created with the help of fantasy and embodied in the image.

The main functions of an artistic image are aesthetic, cognitive, and communicative. With its help, an individual aesthetic reality is created. In relation to reality, the image in art does not act as its copy, does not “double” it. He transmits the author's ideal to the reader and viewer. Despite the subjectivity of the author's picture of the world, it also expresses something universal - otherwise the work of art would not find readers (viewers) other than its own creator. This “universal” is very often an artistic image.

The history of literature gives rise to new figurative systems, arising due to the emergence of new methods in art. Thus, there are images of classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism, naturalism, symbolism, expressionism, various other schools of modernism, etc.

The visual meaning of the concept we are interested in does not contradict the linguistic meaning, but exists integrally from it.

The reader’s imagination is the same reality as that which exists in the “forms of life itself.” A person cannot react to something that does not exist; any phantom that causes a reaction is present primarily in the imagination, and this, and not its absence in the real world of objects, phenomena, etc., determines its effectiveness. The term “plasticity” is applicable to what is perceived by the senses - so, music is not visible, but heard, which does not prevent us from talking about musical plasticity. Just as in a word of ordinary language the objective, “visible” principle, sound appearance and meaning coexist, so in a poetic image the “picture”, plasticity and poetic meaning of the word do not exclude each other.

The poetic image is essentially an ideogram, similar to the ancient Egyptian or Sumerian writing unit. Evoking a visual association in the minds of both the poet and the reader, it is imprinted in this association as some, albeit schematized, drawing that stimulates the perception of both concepts and images (“pictures”). At the same time, the poetic meaning and meaning of the word arises: from general literary it turns into poetic. The poetic image is not read unambiguously, but is “unraveled” and “built” anew in the mind each time.

Structure and properties of the image

The image as something “visible” is addressed to emotional perception, to feeling, and is perceived sensually. It is connected both with the phenomena of extra-artistic reality, which collide in it, becoming similar to each other, merging into an artistic whole, and with the words of the literary language, receiving new meanings. The structure of the image includes what is transformed (some everyday reality, object, phenomenon, process, etc.), what transforms (this is precisely any means of artistic speech - from comparison to symbol), and what arises as a result .

In the very general view The image has the following properties:
- it excites a direct reaction, a “feeling” of the reader (activates and “launches” aesthetic perception);
- it is concrete, “plastic” (this definition is used today in the analysis of plastic arts (painting, sculpture, etc.), rather than musical arts (music, poetry, etc.). The question of the content of the term “plasticity” in relation to the word remains unexplored : intuitively it is felt as an attribute of both musical and literary work) and precisely because of these properties it is an aesthetic phenomenon;
- the image is a mediating link between 1) external phenomena, 2) feelings and 3) human consciousness;
- therefore, it must be colorful, tangible, concrete, like an “object” of reality, and not abstractly rational.

We can talk about the difference between the image in poetry and prose. An image in prose rather recreates some phenomenon of the world, giving it integrity, treating it as artistic idea. In prose (excluding such transitional forms from poetry to prose as “poems in prose”, for example, by Turgenev and others), the transformation of reality as an absolute triumph of the author’s interpretation is impossible. Here, the individual author’s vision of the world should, for the most part, coincide with the reader’s.

Types of images

Artistic images can also be classified according to those objects that undergo aesthetic transformation and, as a result, appear in a work of art.

Verbal (linguistic) image: “The black boat alien to the charms” (K. Balmont); axis, wasp, Osip in Mandelstam's poems; “Everywhere around is neither light nor dark, / And in harmony: eye - icon - window. -/ The promise of a prophetic sign, / As if everything that happens is at stake” (V. Perelmuter). Here the main attention is paid to lexical units; the internal form of words is often updated.
- An image-personification, designation or sign, sometimes even identification, based primarily on metaphorization. Thus, “dagger” in Russian poetry traditionally means “poet”, “seagull” in Chekhov is a sign of Nina Zarechnaya (here the image turns into a symbol, but the figurative nature itself is not lost in such cases). An individual, typified human personality begins to have a figurative nature.
- An image-fragment, when a separate part or particular phenomenon acquires a characterizing, generalizing character. The main technique here is metonymy. Thus, in S. Krzhizhanovsky, “The sun burst into parallel rays into the transoms of the windows of all four floors of the Titsa store” (“Meeting”). The rays are a separate attribute of the sun, but the entire object is manifested here precisely through this attribute.
- Generalization image (for example, “image of the Motherland”, “image of freedom” in the works of such and such an author (authors)). An abstract or very broad concept that is revealed through concrete realities undergoes transformation.
- The image of the author (as the narrator or one of the heroes, characters) in the work. Here, the author’s assessments, usually implicitly present in the text, receive primary importance.
- The image of a certain person, the hero (character) of a work, who is the bearer and embodiment of certain qualities and properties. It contains uniquely individual and generalizing typical features, in other words, it is not like anyone else and is united with many really existing people. For example, the image of Tatiana in “Eugene Onegin”, Chatsky in the comedy “Woe from Wit”, etc. In this case, it consists of various components that are revealed when analyzing the work. This is appearance, character (manifested in relation to the world, in relationships with other heroes, characters), speech portrait, attitude towards human generations (for example, does the hero have children: in Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” it is important that Stolz after Oblomov’s death adopts his child), etc. The artistic details accompanying this or that hero are very important. Thus, Prince Andrei in the novel “War and Peace” is accompanied either by an old oak tree in Otradnoye or by the “sky of Austerlitz,” and this actively works to create the image of the hero.
- An image (in the proper sense, a “picture”) of the world, its state, phenomenon.

It is imperative to keep in mind that individual varieties of artistic image in most cases coexist together. They form a holistic artistic impression.

It is interesting to analyze the concept of artistic image developed in turn of XIX-XX centuries V. Bryusov, both a poet and a literary theorist. From his point of view, the metaphysical essence of poetry is realized precisely in artistic image, which acts as a synthesizing means of cognition (in contrast to the secular-scientific - analyzing). It is a kind of “synthesis of syntheses”: linking various ideas about various phenomena into a single whole, it can be considered as a special synthetic judgment about the world (“Synthetics of Poetry”, 1924).

There is an inextricable logical connection.

What is the theme of the work?

If you raise the question of the theme of the work, then intuitively every person understands what it is. He just explains it from his point of view.

The theme of a work is what underlies a particular text. It is with this basis that the most difficulties arise, because it is impossible to define it unambiguously. Some people believe that the theme of the work - what is described there - is the so-called vital material. For example, the theme of love relationships, war or death.

The topic can also be called problems of human nature. That is, the problem of personality formation, moral principles or the conflict of good and bad deeds.

Another topic can be the verbal basis. Of course, it’s rare to come across works about words, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. There are texts in which wordplay comes to the fore. Suffice it to recall the work of V. Khlebnikov “Perverten”. His verse has one peculiarity - the words in a line are read the same in both directions. But if you ask the reader what the verse was actually about, he is unlikely to answer anything intelligible. Since the main highlight of this work is the lines that can be read both from left to right and from right to left.

The theme of the work is a multifaceted component, and scientists put forward one or another hypothesis regarding it. If we talk about something universal, then the theme of a literary work is the “foundation” of the text. That is, as Boris Tomashevsky once said: “The theme is a generalization of the main, significant elements.”

If the text has a theme, then there must be an idea. An idea is a writer’s plan that pursues a specific goal, that is, what the writer wants to present to the reader.

Figuratively speaking, the theme of the work is what made the creator create the work. So to speak, the technical component. In turn, the idea is the “soul” of the work; it answers the question of why this or that creation was created.

When the author is completely immersed in the topic of his text, truly feels it and is imbued with the problems of the characters, then an idea is born - spiritual content, without which the page of the book is just a set of dashes and circles.

Learning to find

As an example, you can give a short story and try to find its main theme and idea:

• The autumn downpour did not bode well, especially late at night. All the residents of the small town knew about this, so the lights in the houses had long gone out. In all but one. It was an old mansion on a hill outside the city that was used as an orphanage. During this terrible downpour, the teacher found a baby on the threshold of the building, so there was a terrible turmoil in the house: feeding, bathing, changing clothes and, of course, telling a fairy tale - after all, this is the main tradition of the old orphanage. And if any of the residents of the city knew how grateful the child would be who was found on the doorstep, they would have responded to the soft knock on the door that sounded in every house on that terrible rainy evening.

In this small passage, two themes can be distinguished: abandoned children and an orphanage. Essentially, these are the basic facts that forced the author to create the text. Then you can see that introductory elements appear: a foundling, tradition and a terrible thunderstorm, which forced all the city residents to lock themselves in their houses and turn out the lights. Why does the author talk about them specifically? These introductory descriptions will be the main idea of ​​the passage. They can be summarized by saying that the author is talking about the problem of mercy or selflessness. In one word, he tries to convey to every reader that, regardless of weather conditions, you need to remain human.

How is a theme different from an idea?

The theme has two differences. Firstly, it determines the meaning (main content) of the text. Secondly, the theme can be revealed both in large works and in small short stories. The idea, in turn, shows the main goal and task of the writer. If you look at the presented passage, you can say that the idea is the main message from the author to the reader.

Determining the theme of a work is not always easy, but such a skill will be useful not only in literature lessons, but also in Everyday life. It is with its help that you can learn to understand people and enjoy pleasant communication.

Vladimir Vysotsky for a short bright life managed to win the hearts of millions of compatriots. The hoarse voice of the “singing” poet accompanied by the constant guitar is well remembered by older people; his work is of interest to young people as well.

Vysotsky’s songs are not only literary, but also folklore material. Their language has an amazing feature - it is understandable to everyone. And the point here is not in poverty or primitiveness; on the contrary, it is emotional and metaphorical. Vladimir Semenovich raised many relevant topics, let’s look at just a few of them.

A significant layer of Vysotsky’s creativity is made up of “everyday” lyrics, sarcastically ridiculing the bourgeois way of life and human vices. He wrote about philistineism based on his own observations and impressions.

Among the well-known works are “Morning Exercises” and “Conversation in Front of the TV.” These poems are filled with fascinating colloquial vocabulary and comic imagery.

Often the author turned to folk art, creating real masterpieces on its basis, such as the cycle “Dark Eyes”, “Ivan da Marya”, fairy tales. Vysotsky was also partial to political issues, which is why for a long time he had to create under the strict control of Soviet censorship. Despite the prohibitions, Vysotsky took on any topic that was interesting to him and sang about literally everything. His songs lack lies, falsehood and pathos, so the audience believed him, because his works were in tune with their hearts.

The poet himself valued his talent, considering it a gift from God. The ability to write songs, poems and the manner of their performance became his priceless treasure, a golden pass to immortality.

Another theme often heard in Vysotsky’s works is the problem of a broken soul. In his tragic lyrics there is always a premonition, a feeling of falling into the abyss. When writing the poem “Finicky Horses,” the author used a metaphor, comparing human life to the running of horses.

The lines of Vysotsky’s works have already dissolved in our language and have become textbooks, having passed the test of time. They continue to excite listeners and readers today: we never tire of laughing, crying, remembering distant friends and fallen soldiers. His work makes you think about life, in which the main thing is to stop the indomitable horses in time, in order to have at least a little time to stand on the edge...

In literary works the term “ subject"has two main interpretations:

1)subject– (from ancient Greek thema – that which is the basis) the subject of the image, those facts and phenomena of life that the writer captured in his work;

2) main problem posed in the work.

Often these two meanings are combined into the concept of “theme”. Thus, in the “Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary” the following definition is given: “Theme is a circle of events that form the life basis of epic and dramatic works and at the same time serving to pose philosophical, social, epic and other ideological problems" (Literary encyclopedic Dictionary. Under. ed. Kozhevnikova V.M., Nikolaeva P.A. – M., 1987, p. 347).

Sometimes the “theme” is even identified with the idea of ​​the work, and the beginning of such terminological ambiguity was obviously laid by M. Gorky: “The theme is an idea that originated in the author’s experience, is suggested to him by life, but nests in the receptacle of his impressions yet unformed.” Of course, Gorky as a writer felt, first of all, the inseparable integrity of all elements of content, but for the purposes of analysis this approach is unsuitable. A literary critic needs to clearly distinguish between the very concepts of “theme”, “problem”, “idea”, and - most importantly - the “levels” of artistic content behind them, avoiding duplication of terms. This distinction was made by G.N. Pospelov (Holistic-systemic understanding of literary works // Questions of literature, 1982, No. 3), and is currently shared by many literary scholars.

According to this tradition, the theme is understood as object of artistic reflection, those life characters and situations (relationships of characters), as well as the interaction of a person with society as a whole, with nature, everyday life, etc.), which seem to pass from reality into a work and form objective side its content. Subjects in this understanding, everything that has become the subject of the author’s interest, comprehension and evaluation. Subject acts as the link between primary reality and artistic reality(that is, it seems to belong to both worlds at once: the real and the artistic).

When analyzing the topic, attention is focused on the writer’s selection of facts of reality as the initial moment of the author’s concept works. It should be noted that sometimes unjustifiably much attention is paid to the topic, as if the main thing in a work of art is the reality that is reflected in it, whereas in fact the center of gravity of a meaningful analysis should lie on a completely different plane: not that author reflected, A how did you comprehend reflected. Exaggerated attention to the topic can turn a conversation about literature into a conversation about the reality reflected in a work of art, and this is not always necessary or fruitful. (If we consider “Eugene Onegin” or “ Dead Souls"only as an illustration of the life of the nobility early XIX century, then all literature turns into an illustration for a history textbook. Thus, the aesthetic specificity is ignored works of art, the originality of the author’s view of reality, the special substantive tasks of literature).

Theoretically, it is also wrong to give primary attention to the analysis of the topic because, as already noted, it is the objective side of the content, and, therefore, the author’s individuality, his subjective approach to reality do not have the opportunity to manifest themselves at this level of content in its entirety. The author's subjectivity and individuality at the thematic level are expressed only in selection of life phenomena, which, of course, does not yet make it possible to seriously talk about artistic originality of this particular work. To simplify somewhat, we can say that the theme of a work is determined by the answer to the question: “What is this work about?” But from the fact that the work is devoted to the theme of love, the theme of war, etc. You can not get much information about the unique originality of the text (especially since quite often a significant number of writers turn to similar topics).

In literary studies, the definitions of “philosophical lyrics”, “civil (or political)”, “patriotic”, “landscape”, “love”, “freedom-loving”, etc., which are ultimately indications of the main themes of the works, have long been established . Along with them, there are such formulations as “the theme of friendship and love”, “the theme of the Motherland”, “ military theme", "theme of the poet and poetry", etc. Obviously, there are a significant number of poems devoted to the same topic, but at the same time significantly different from each other.

It should be noted that in a specific artistic whole it is often not easy to distinguish between reflection object(topic) and image object(a specific situation drawn by the author). Meanwhile, this must be done to avoid confusion of form and content and for the accuracy of the analysis. Let's look at a typical error of this kind. The theme of the comedy by A.S. Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit” is often habitually defined as “Chatsky’s conflict with Famus society,” whereas this is not a theme, but only the subject of the image. Both Chatsky and Famusov society were invented by Griboedov, but the theme cannot be completely invented; it, as stated, “comes” into artistic reality from life reality. In order to “go” directly to the topic, you need to reveal characters, embodied in the characters. Then the definition of the topic will sound somewhat different: the conflict between the progressive, enlightened and serf-owning, ignorant nobility in Russia in the 10-20s of the 19th century.

The difference between the object of reflection and the object of the image is very clearly visible in works with conditionally-fantastic imagery. It cannot be said that in I.A.’s fable. Krylov’s “The Wolf and the Lamb” the theme is the conflict between the Wolf and the Lamb, that is, the life of animals. In the fable, this absurdity is easy to feel, which is why its theme is usually defined correctly: this is the relationship between the strong, with power, and the defenseless. But the structural relationships between form and content do not change depending on the nature of the imagery, therefore, even in works that are life-like in their form, it is necessary, when analyzing the theme, to go deeper than the depicted world, to the features of the characters embodied in the characters and the relationships between them.

When analyzing topics, topics are traditionally distinguished specific historical And eternal.

Specific historical topics- these are characters and circumstances born and conditioned by a certain socio-historical situation in a particular country; they do not recur beyond a given time and are more or less localized. These are, for example, the topic “ extra person» in Russian XIX literature century, theme of the Great Patriotic War and etc.

Eternal themes record recurring moments in the history of various national societies; they are repeated in different modifications in the lives of different generations, in different historical eras. These are, for example, themes of friendship and love, relationships between generations, the theme of the Motherland, etc.

There are often situations when a single theme organically combines both concrete historical and eternal aspects, equally important for understanding the work: this happens, for example, in “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky, “Fathers and Sons” by I.S. Turgenev, “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov, etc.

In cases where a specific historical aspect of a topic is analyzed, such an analysis should be as historically specific as possible. To specify the topic, it is necessary to pay attention to three parameters: actually social(class, group, social movement), temporal(in this case, it is desirable to perceive the corresponding era at least in its main defining trends) and National. Only an accurate designation of all three parameters will allow a satisfactory analysis of specific historical topics.

There are works in which not one, but several themes can be highlighted. Their totality is usually called subject matter. Side thematic lines usually “work” on the main one, enrich its sound, and help to understand it better. In this case, there are two possible ways to highlight the main topic. In one case, the main theme is related to the image central character, with its social and psychological certainty. Thus, the theme of an extraordinary personality among the Russian nobility of the 1830s, a theme associated with the image of Pechorin, is the main one in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", it runs through all five stories. The same themes of the novel, such as the theme of love, rivalry, and the life of a secular noble society, are in this case secondary, helping to reveal the character of the main character (that is, the main theme) in various life situations and situations. In the second case, a single theme seems to run through the fates of a number of characters - thus, the theme of the relationship between the individual and the people, individuality and “swarm” life organizes the plot and thematic lines of the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace". Here, even such an important topic as the theme of the Patriotic War of 1812 becomes a secondary, auxiliary, “working” on the main one. In this latter case, finding the main theme becomes a difficult task. Therefore, the analysis of themes should begin with the thematic lines of the main characters, finding out what exactly unites them internally - this unifying principle will be main theme works.