Tendencies in artistic imagery: life-likeness and conventionality. Artistic convention and life-likeness

Artistic fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not recognized: archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. We find judgments about artistic fiction in Aristotle’s “Poetics” (chapter 9—the historian talks about what happened, the poet talks about the possible, about what could happen), as well as in the works of philosophers of the Hellenistic era.

For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often, these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time (this was the case (92), in particular, in the drama of the Renaissance and classicism, which widely used ancient and medieval plots).

Much more than was the case before, fiction manifested itself as the individual property of the author in the era of romanticism, when imagination and fantasy were recognized as the most important facet of human existence. "Fantasy<...>- wrote Jean-Paul, - there is something higher, it is the world soul and the elemental spirit of the main forces (such as wit, insight, etc. - V.Kh.)<...>Fantasy is the hieroglyphic alphabet of nature." The cult of imagination, characteristic of the beginning of the 19th century, marked the emancipation of the individual, and in this sense constituted a positively significant fact of culture, but at the same time it also had negative consequences (artistic evidence of this is the appearance of Gogol’s Manilov, the fate of the hero of Dostoevsky’s White Nights) .

In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. According to N.S. Leskova, a real writer is a “note-taker,” and not an inventor: “Where a writer ceases to be a note-taker and becomes an inventor, all connection between him and society disappears.” Let us also recall Dostoevsky’s well-known judgment that a close eye is capable of detecting in the most ordinary fact “a depth that is not found in Shakespeare.” Russian classical literature was more a literature of conjecture than of fiction as such. At the beginning of the 20th century. fiction was sometimes regarded as something outdated and rejected in the name of recreating a real fact that was documented. This extreme has been disputed. The literature of our century - as before - relies widely on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in some cases justified and fruitful, can hardly become the main line of artistic creativity: without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular, literature are unrepresentable.

Through fiction, the author summarizes the facts of reality, embodies his view of the world, and demonstrates his creative energy. Z. Freud argued that artistic fiction is associated with unsatisfied drives and suppressed desires of the creator of the work and involuntarily expresses them.

The concept of artistic fiction clarifies the boundaries (sometimes very vague) between works that claim to be art and documentary information. If documentary texts (verbal and visual) exclude the possibility of fiction from the outset, then works with the intention of perceiving them as fiction readily allow it (even in cases where the authors limit themselves to recreating actual facts, events, and persons). Messages in literary texts are, as it were, on the other side of truth and lies. At the same time, the phenomenon of artistry can also arise when perceiving a text created with a documentary mindset: “... for this it is enough to say that we are not interested in the truth of this story, that we read it “as if it were the fruit<...>writing."

Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev called the inner world of the work: “Every work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<...>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<...>. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally reduces or expands them.”

At the same time, there are two trends in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms convention (the author’s emphasis on the non-identity, or even the opposite, between what is depicted and the forms of reality) and life-likeness (leveling out such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life). The distinction between convention and life-likeness is already present in statements by Goethe (article “On truth and verisimilitude in art”) and Pushkin (notes on drama and its improbability). But the relationships between them were especially intensely discussed at the turn of the 19th – (94) 20th centuries. L.N. carefully rejected everything implausible and exaggerated. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and His Drama.” For K.S. Stanislavsky’s expression “conventionality” was almost synonymous with the words “falsehood” and “false pathos.” Such ideas are associated with an orientation towards the experience of Russian realistic literature of the 19th century, the imagery of which was more life-like than conventional. On the other hand, many artists of the early 20th century. (for example, V.E. Meyerhold) preferred conventional forms, sometimes absolutizing their significance and rejecting life-likeness as something routine. Thus, in the article P.O. Jacobson’s “On Artistic Realism” (1921) emphasizes conventional, deforming, and difficult techniques for the reader (“to make it more difficult to guess”) and denies verisimilitude, which is identified with realism as the beginning of the inert and epigonic. Subsequently, in the 1930s – 1950s, on the contrary, life-like forms were canonized. They were considered the only acceptable ones for the literature of socialist realism, and convention was suspected of being related to odious formalism (rejected as bourgeois aesthetics). In the l960s, the rights of artistic convention were again recognized. Nowadays, the view has become firmly established that life-likeness and conventionality are equal and fruitfully interacting tendencies of artistic imagery: “like two wings on which creative imagination rests in an indefatigable thirst to find out the truth of life.”

At the early historical stages in art, forms of representation prevailed, which are now perceived as conventional. This is, firstly, the idealizing hyperbole of traditional high genres (epic, tragedy), generated by a public and solemn ritual, the heroes of which manifested themselves in pathetic, theatrically effective words, poses, gestures and possessed exceptional appearance features that embodied their strength and power, beauty and charm. (Remember the epic heroes or Gogol’s Taras Bulba). And, secondly, this is the grotesque, which was formed and strengthened as part of carnival celebrations, acting as a parody, a laughing “double” of the solemn-pathetic, and later acquired programmatic significance for the romantics. It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque. Grotesque in art is akin to paradox in (95) logic. MM. Bakhtin, who studied traditional grotesque imagery, considered it the embodiment of a festive and cheerful free thought: “The grotesque frees us from all forms of inhuman necessity that permeate the prevailing ideas about the world<...>debunks this necessity as relative and limited; grotesque form helps liberation<...>from walking truths, allows you to look at the world in a new way, feel<...>the possibility of a completely different world order.” In the art of the last two centuries, the grotesque, however, often loses its cheerfulness and expresses a total rejection of the world as chaotic, frightening, hostile (Goya and Hoffmann, Kafka and the theater of the absurd, to a large extent Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Art initially contains life-like principles, which made themselves felt in the Bible, classical epics of antiquity, and Plato’s dialogues. In the art of modern times, life-likeness almost dominates (the most striking evidence of this is the realistic narrative prose of the 19th century, especially L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov). It is essential for authors who show man in his diversity, and most importantly, who strive to bring what is depicted closer to the reader, to minimize the distance between the characters and the perceiving consciousness. At the same time, in the art of the 19th – 20th centuries. conditional forms were activated (and at the same time updated). Nowadays this is not only traditional hyperbole and grotesque, but also all kinds of fantastic assumptions (“Kholstomer” by L.N. Tolstoy, “Pilgrimage to the Land of the East” by G. Hesse), demonstrative schematization of the depicted (plays by B. Brecht), exposure of the technique (“ Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin), effects of the montage composition (unmotivated changes in the place and time of action, sharp chronological “breaks”, etc.).

Fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not realized: the archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. We find judgments about artistic fiction in Aristotle’s “Poetics” (chapter 9—the historian talks about what happened, the poet talks about the possible, about what could happen), as well as in the works of philosophers of the Hellenistic era.

For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often, these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time (this was the case, in particular, in the drama of the Renaissance and classicism, which widely used ancient and medieval plots).

Much more than was the case before, fiction manifested itself as the individual property of the author in the era of romanticism, when imagination and fantasy were recognized as the most important facet of human existence. "Fantasy<…>- wrote Jean-Paul, - there is something higher, it is the world soul and the elemental spirit of the main forces (such as wit, insight, etc. - V.Kh.)<…>Fantasy is hieroglyphic alphabet nature." The cult of imagination, characteristic of the beginning of the 19th century, marked the emancipation of the individual, and in this sense constituted a positively significant fact of culture, but at the same time it also had negative consequences (artistic evidence of this is the appearance of Gogol’s Manilov, the fate of the hero of Dostoevsky’s “White Nights”) .

In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. According to N.S. Leskova, a real writer is a “note-taker,” and not an inventor: “Where a writer ceases to be a note-taker and becomes an inventor, all connection between him and society disappears.” Let us also recall Dostoevsky’s well-known judgment that a close eye is capable of detecting in the most ordinary fact “a depth that is not found in Shakespeare.” Russian classical literature was more a literature of conjecture than of fiction as such. At the beginning of the 20th century. fiction was sometimes regarded as something outdated and rejected in the name of recreating a real fact that was documented. This extreme has been disputed. The literature of our century - as before - relies widely on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in some cases justified and fruitful, can hardly become the main line of artistic creativity: without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular, literature are unrepresentable.

Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev named internal the world of the work: “Every work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<…>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<…>. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally reduces or expands them.”

In this case, there are two trends in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms convention(the author’s emphasis on non-identity, or even opposition, between what is depicted and the forms of reality) and lifelikeness(leveling such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life). The distinction between conventionality and life-likeness is already present in the statements of Goethe (article “On truth and verisimilitude in art”) and Pushkin (notes on drama and its implausibility). But the relationship between them was especially intensely discussed at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. L.N. carefully rejected everything implausible and exaggerated. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and His Drama.” For K.S. Stanislavsky’s expression “conventionality” was almost synonymous with the words “falsehood” and “false pathos.” Such ideas are associated with an orientation towards the experience of Russian realistic literature of the 19th century, the imagery of which was more life-like than conventional. On the other hand, many artists of the early 20th century. (for example, V.E. Meyerhold) preferred conventional forms, sometimes absolutizing their significance and rejecting life-likeness as something routine. Thus, in the article P.O. Jacobson’s “On Artistic Realism” (1921) emphasizes conventional, deforming, and difficult techniques for the reader (“to make it more difficult to guess”) and denies verisimilitude, which is identified with realism as the beginning of the inert and epigonic. Subsequently, in the 1930s - 1950s, on the contrary, life-like forms were canonized. They were considered the only acceptable ones for the literature of socialist realism, and convention was suspected of being related to odious formalism (rejected as bourgeois aesthetics). In the l960s, the rights of artistic convention were again recognized. Nowadays, the view has been strengthened that life-likeness and conventionality are equal and fruitfully interacting tendencies of artistic imagery: “like two wings on which creative imagination rests in an indefatigable thirst to find out the truth of life.”

At the early historical stages in art, forms of representation prevailed, which are now perceived as conventional. This is, firstly, generated by a public and solemn ritual idealizing hyperbole traditional high genres (epic, tragedy), the heroes of which manifested themselves in pathetic, theatrically effective words, poses, gestures and had exceptional appearance features that embodied their strength and power, beauty and charm. (Remember the epic heroes or Gogol’s Taras Bulba). And secondly, this grotesque, which was formed and strengthened as part of carnival celebrations, acting as a parody, laughter “double” of the solemn-pathetic one, and later acquired programmatic significance for the romantics. It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque. Grotesque in art is akin to paradox in logic. MM. Bakhtin, who studied traditional grotesque imagery, considered it the embodiment of a festive and cheerful free thought: “The grotesque frees us from all forms of inhuman necessity that permeate the prevailing ideas about the world<…>debunks this necessity as relative and limited; grotesque form helps liberation<…>from walking truths, allows you to look at the world in a new way, feel<…>the possibility of a completely different world order.” In the art of the last two centuries, the grotesque, however, often loses its cheerfulness and expresses a total rejection of the world as chaotic, frightening, hostile (Goya and Hoffmann, Kafka and the theater of the absurd, to a large extent Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Art initially contains life-like principles, which made themselves felt in the Bible, classical epics of antiquity, and Plato’s dialogues. In the art of modern times, life-likeness almost dominates (the most striking evidence of this is the realistic narrative prose of the 19th century, especially by L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov). It is essential for authors who show man in his diversity, and most importantly, who strive to bring what is depicted closer to the reader, to minimize the distance between the characters and the perceiving consciousness. At the same time, in the art of the 19th–20th centuries. conditional forms were activated (and at the same time updated). Nowadays this is not only traditional hyperbole and grotesque, but also all kinds of fantastic assumptions (“Kholstomer” by L.N. Tolstoy, “Pilgrimage to the Land of the East” by G. Hesse), demonstrative schematization of the depicted (plays by B. Brecht), exposure of the technique (“ Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin), effects of the montage composition (unmotivated changes in the place and time of action, sharp chronological “breaks”, etc.).

ARTISTIC CONVENTION - in a broad sense, the original property of art, manifested in a certain difference, discrepancy between the artistic picture of the world, individual images and objective reality. This concept indicates a kind of distance (aesthetic, artistic) between reality and a work of art, awareness of which is an essential condition for adequate perception of the work. The term “convention” has taken root in the theory of art since artistic creativity is carried out primarily in “forms of life.” Linguistic, symbolic expressive means of art, as a rule, represent one or another degree of transformation of these forms. Usually, three types of convention are distinguished: convention, which expresses the specific specificity of art, determined by the properties of its linguistic material: paint - in painting, stone - in sculpture, word - in literature, sound - in music, etc., which predetermines the possibility of each type of art in the display of various aspects of reality and the artist’s self-expression - two-dimensional and flat images on canvas and screen, static in fine art, the absence of a “fourth wall” in the theater. At the same time, painting has a rich color spectrum, cinema has a high degree of image dynamism, and literature, thanks to the special capacity of verbal language, completely compensates for the lack of sensory clarity. This condition is called “primary” or “unconditional”. Another type of convention is the canonization of a set of artistic characteristics, stable techniques and goes beyond the framework of partial reception and free artistic choice. Such a convention can represent the artistic style of an entire era (Gothic, Baroque, Empire), express the aesthetic ideal of a specific historical time; it is strongly influenced by ethnonational characteristics, cultural ideas, ritual traditions of the people, and mythology. The ancient Greeks endowed their gods with fantastic powers and other symbols of deity. The conventions of the Middle Ages were affected by the religious-ascetic attitude towards reality: the art of this era personified the otherworldly, mysterious world. The art of classicism was required to depict reality in the unity of place, time and action. The third type of convention is the artistic device itself, which depends on the creative will of the author. The manifestations of such a convention are infinitely varied, distinguished by their pronounced metaphorical nature, expressiveness, associativity, deliberately open re-creation of “forms of life” - deviations from the traditional language of art (in ballet - a transition to a regular step, in opera - to colloquial speech). In art, it is not necessary that formative components remain invisible to the reader or viewer. A skillfully implemented open artistic device of convention does not disrupt the process of perception of the work, but, on the contrary, often activates it.

Fiction- a type of art that uses words and structures of natural language as the only material. The specificity of fiction is revealed in comparison, on the one hand, with types of art that use other material instead of verbal and linguistic (music, visual arts) or along with it (theater, cinema, song, visual poetry), on the other hand, with other types verbal text: philosophical, journalistic, scientific, etc. In addition, fiction, like other types of art, combines authored (including anonymous) works, in contrast to works of folklore that are fundamentally authorless.

The material carrier of the imagery of literary works is the word that has received written embodiment ( lat. littera - letter). A word (including an artistic one) always means something and has an objective character. Literature, in other words, belongs to the group fine arts, in a broad sense, substantive, where individual phenomena are recreated (persons, events, things, moods caused by something and impulses of people directed towards something). In this respect, it is similar to painting and sculpture (in their dominant, “figurative” variety) and differs from the non-figurative, non-objective arts. The latter are usually called expressive, they capture the general nature of the experience outside of its direct connections with any objects, facts, or events. These are music, dance (if it does not turn into pantomime - into the depiction of action through body movements), ornament, so-called abstract painting, architecture.

Literature on childbirth

E?pos(Ancient Greek ?πος - “word”, “narration”) - a narrative about events supposed in the past (as if they had happened and are remembered by the narrator). Epic works describe objective reality external to the author. The description of the characters is focused on their behavior and actions, and not on the inner world, as in the lyrics. Biography novels, very popular in the 19th century, are considered epic works. Examples include Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Stendhal's Red and Black, Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga and many others. The genre got its name from folk poems and songs composed in ancient times, also called epics.

Epic genres: fable, epic, ballad, myth, short story, story, short story, novel, epic novel, fairy tale, epic, artistic essay.

Lyrics- a type of literature that is based on an appeal to the internal sphere - to states of human consciousness, emotions, impressions, experiences. Even if there is a narrative element in the works, a lyrical work is always subjective and focused on the hero. The characteristics of a lyrical work are “conciseness”, “monologue”, “unity of the lyrical plot” and “instantaneity” (“precision”, “modernity”). Most lyrical works relate to poetry.

Lyrical genres: ode, message, stanzas, elegy, epigram, madrigal, eclogue, epitaph.

Drama- a type of literature that primarily reproduces the world external to the author - actions, relationships between people, conflicts, but unlike the epic, it has not a narrative, but a dialogical form. In dramatic works, the text on behalf of the author is episodic in nature, mostly limited to stage directions and explanations of the plot. Most dramatic works are written for subsequent production in the theater.

Dramatic genres: drama, comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy, vaudeville, farce, melodrama.

Types of text by structure

Prose

Prose is considered to be a literary text in which a separate rhythm, independent of speech, does not invade the linguistic fabric and does not affect the content. However, a number of borderline phenomena are known: many prose writers deliberately give their works some signs of poetry (one can mention the highly rhythmic prose of Andrei Bely or the rhymed fragments in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “The Gift”). The exact boundaries between prose and poetry have been an ongoing debate among literary scholars from different countries over the last century.

Prose is widely used in fiction - in the creation of novels, short stories, etc. Some examples of such works have been known for many centuries, but they have developed into an independent form of literary works relatively recently.

Novel- the most popular type of modern prose (however, a novel in verse is also known in literature) - is a fairly long narrative, covering a significant period in the life of one or more characters and describing this period in great detail. As a widespread genre, novels appeared relatively late, although already in late antiquity the ancient novel developed, in many ways close in structure and tasks to the modern one. Among the early classic examples of the European novel are Gargantua and Pantagruel (1533-1546) by François Rabelais and Don Quixote (1600) by Cervantes. In Asian literature, earlier works are close to the novel in the modern sense - for example, the Chinese classic novel “The Three Kingdoms” or the Japanese “Genji Monogatari” (“The Tale of Prince Genji”).

In Europe, early novels were not considered serious literature; their creation seemed not at all difficult. Later, however, it became clear that prose can provide aesthetic pleasure without the use of poetic techniques. In addition, the absence of rigid boundaries of poetry allows authors to focus more deeply on the content of the work, to work more fully with the details of the plot, in fact, more fully than can be expected even from narratives in poetic form. This freedom also allows authors to experiment with different styles within the same work.

Poetry

In general, a poem is a literary work that has a special rhythmic structure that does not follow from the natural rhythm of the language. The nature of this rhythm can be different depending on the properties of the language itself: for example, for languages in which the difference in vowel sounds by longitude is of great importance (such as the ancient Greek language), the emergence of a poetic rhythm based on the ordering of syllables based on longitude is natural. brevity, and for languages in which vowels differ not in length, but in the force of exhalation (the vast majority of modern European languages are structured this way), it is natural to use a poetic rhythm that organizes syllables according to stressed/unstressed. This is how different systems of versification arise.

For the Russian ear, the familiar appearance of a poem is associated with the syllabic-tonic rhythm and the presence of rhyme in the poem, but neither one nor the other is actually a necessary feature of poetry that distinguishes it from prose. In general, the role of rhythm in a poem is not only to give the text a peculiar musicality, but also to the impact that this rhythm has on the meaning: thanks to the rhythm, some words and expressions (for example, those that appear at the end of a poetic line, rhymed) are highlighted in the poetic speech , accented.

Poetic speech, earlier than prosaic speech, was recognized as a special phenomenon characteristic of a literary text and distinguishing it from ordinary everyday speech. The first known literary works - for the most part, ancient epics (for example, the Sumerian "Tale of Gilgamesh", dating back to about 2200-3000 BC) - are poetic texts. At the same time, the poetic form is not necessarily associated with artistry: the formal features of poetry help it perform a mnemonic function, and therefore, at different times in different cultures, scientific, legal, genealogical, and pedagogical works in verse were common.

Artistic methods and directions

Baroque is a movement characterized by a combination of realistic descriptions with their allegorical depiction. Symbols, metaphors, theatrical techniques, rich rhetorical figures, antitheses, parallelisms, gradations, and oxymorons were widely used. Baroque literature is characterized by a desire for diversity, a summation of knowledge about the world, inclusiveness, encyclopedicism, which sometimes turns into chaos and collecting curiosities, a desire to study existence in its contrasts (spirit and flesh, darkness and light, time and eternity).
Classicism is a movement whose main subject of creativity was the conflict between public duty and personal passions. “Low” genres—fable (J. Lafontaine), satire (Boileau), comedy (Molière)—also achieved high development.
Sentimentalism is a movement that emphasizes the reader's perception, that is, the sensuality that arises when reading them, and is characterized by a tendency toward idealization and moralizing.
Romanticism is a multifaceted movement characterized by an interest in the sublime, folklore, mysticism, travel, the elements, and the theme of good and evil.
Realism is a direction in literature that most truthfully and impartially describes the real world, focused on describing destinies, circumstances and events that are close to real.
Naturalism is a late stage in the development of realism in the literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Writers strove for the most dispassionate and objective reproduction of reality using literary “protocol” methods, to transform novels into a document about the state of society in a certain place and time. The publication of many works was accompanied by scandals, since naturalists did not hesitate to openly record the life of dirty slums, hot spots and brothels - those places that were not customary to be depicted in earlier literature. Man and his actions were understood as determined by physiological nature, heredity and environment - social conditions, everyday and material environment.
Symbolism is the direction in which the symbol becomes the main element. Symbolism is characterized by an experimental nature, a desire for innovation, cosmopolitanism and a wide range of influences. Symbolists used understatement, hints, mystery, enigma. The main mood captured by the symbolists was pessimism, reaching the point of despair. Everything “natural” appeared only as an “appearance” that had no independent artistic significance.
Avant-garde is a polysemantic term that characterizes a way of expression that is anti-traditional in form.
Modernism is a set of trends in literature of the first half of the 20th century. Associated with concepts such as stream of consciousness, lost generation.
Socialist realism is a trend in the literature of the Soviet Union and the countries of the Social Commonwealth, which was of a propaganda nature and supported by the authorities with the aim of ideologically educating the people and building communism. It ceased to exist after the fall of the Communist regime and the abolition of censorship.
Postmodernism is a direction in literature based on playing with meanings, irony, non-standard construction of texts, mixing genres and styles, and involving the reader in the creative process.

Artistic image

Speaking about the sign process in the composition of human life ( semiotics), experts identify three aspects of sign systems: 1) syntactics(relationship of signs to each other); 2) semantics(the relationship of a sign to what it denotes: the signifier to the signified); 3) pragmatics(the relationship of signs to those who operate with them and perceive them).

Signs are classified in a certain way. They are combined into three large groups:

indexical sign (sign- index) indicates an object, but does not characterize it; it is based on the metonymic principle of contiguity (smoke as evidence of a fire, a skull as a warning of danger to life);
sign- symbol is conditional, here the signifier has neither similarity nor connection with the signified, such as words of natural language (except onomatopoeic) or components of mathematical formulas;
Iconic signs reproduce certain qualities of the signified or its holistic appearance and, as a rule, are visual. In the series of iconic signs they differ, firstly, diagrams- schematic recreations of an objectivity that is not entirely specific (graphic designation of the development of industry or the evolution of fertility) and, secondly, images that adequately recreate the sensory properties of the designated single object (photographs, reports, as well as capturing the fruits of observation and fiction in works of art).

Thus, the concept of “sign” did not abolish traditional ideas about image and figurativeness, but placed these ideas in a new, very broad semantic context. The concept of a sign, vital in the science of language, is also significant for literary studies: firstly, in the field of studying the verbal fabric of works, and secondly, when referring to the forms of behavior of characters.

Fiction

Fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not realized: the archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. We find judgments about artistic fiction in Aristotle’s “Poetics” (chapter 9 - the historian talks about what happened, the poet talks about the possible, about what could happen), as well as in the works of philosophers of the Hellenistic era.

For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often, these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time (this was the case, in particular, in the drama of the Renaissance and classicism, which widely used ancient and medieval plots).

In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. According to N.S. Leskova, a real writer is a “note-taker,” and not an inventor: “Where a writer ceases to be a note-taker and becomes an inventor, all connection between him and society disappears.” Let us also recall Dostoevsky’s well-known judgment that a close eye is capable of detecting in the most ordinary fact “a depth that is not found in Shakespeare.” Russian classical literature was more a literature of conjecture than of fiction as such. At the beginning of the 20th century. fiction was sometimes regarded as something outdated and rejected in the name of recreating a real fact that was documented. This extreme has been disputed. The literature of our century - as before - relies widely on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in some cases justified and fruitful, can hardly become the main line of artistic creativity: without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular, literature are unrepresentable.

Literature as the art of words

Fiction is a multifaceted phenomenon. There are two main sides in its composition. The first is fictitious objectivity, images of “non-verbal” reality, as discussed above. The second is speech constructions themselves, verbal structures. The dual aspect of literary works has given scientists reason to say that literary literature combines two different arts: the art of fiction (manifested mainly in fictional prose, which is relatively easily translated into other languages) and the art of words as such (which determines the appearance of poetry, which is losing its translations are perhaps the most important thing).

The actual verbal aspect of literature, in turn, is two-dimensional. Speech here appears, firstly, as a means of representation (a material carrier of imagery), as a way of evaluative illumination of non-verbal reality; and secondly, as subject of the image- statements belonging to someone and characterizing someone. Literature, in other words, is capable of recreating the speech activity of people, and this particularly sharply distinguishes it from all other types of art. Only in literature, a person appears as a speaker, to which M.M. attached fundamental importance. Bakhtin: “The main feature of literature is that language here is not only a means of communication and expression-image, but also an object of image.” The scientist argued that “literature is not just the use of language, but its artistic cognition” and that “the main problem of its study” is “the problem of the relationship between depicting and depicted speech.”

Literature and synthetic arts

Fiction belongs to the so-called simple, or one-piece arts based on one a material carrier of imagery (here it is the written word). At the same time, it is closely connected with the arts. synthetic(multicomponent), combining several different carriers of imagery (these are architectural ensembles that “absorb” sculpture and painting; theater and cinema in their leading varieties); vocal music, etc.

Historically, early syntheses were “a combination of rhythmic, orchestic (dance - V.Kh.) movements with song-music and elements of words.” But this was not art itself, but syncretic creativity(syncretism is unity, indivisibility, characterizing the original, undeveloped state of something). Syncretic creativity, on the basis of which, as shown by A.N. Veselovsky, later verbal art (epic, lyric, drama) was formed, had the form of a ritual choir and had a mythological, cult and magical function. In ritual syncretism there was no separation between the actors and the perceivers. Everyone was both co-creators and participants-performers of the action being performed. Round dancing “pre-art” for archaic tribes and early states was ritually obligatory (forced). According to Plato, “everyone must sing and dance, the entire state as a whole, and, moreover, always in a variety of ways, incessantly and enthusiastically.”

As artistic creativity as such became stronger, single-component arts became increasingly important. The undivided dominance of synthetic works did not satisfy humanity, since it did not create the prerequisites for the free and wide manifestation of the individual creative impulse of the artist: each individual type of art within the synthetic works remained constrained in its capabilities. It is not surprising, therefore, that the centuries-old history of culture is associated with a steady differentiation forms of artistic activity.

At the same time, in the 19th century. and at the beginning of the 20th century, another, opposite trend repeatedly made itself felt: the German romantics (Novalis, Wackenroder), and later R. Wagner, Vyach. Ivanov, A.N. Scriabin made attempts to return art to its original syntheses. Thus, Wagner in his book “Opera and Drama” regarded the departure from early historical syntheses as the fall of art and advocated a return to them. He spoke of the enormous difference between “individual types of art,” egoistically separated, limited in their appeal only to the imagination, and “true art,” addressed “to the sensory organism in its entirety” and combining various types of art.

But such attempts at a radical restructuring of artistic creativity were not successful: single-component arts remained the undeniable value of artistic culture and its dominant feature. At the beginning of our century, it was said, not without reason, that “synthetic quests<…>They take us beyond the boundaries of not only individual arts, but also art in general.”

Literature has two forms of existence: it exists both as a single-component art (in the form of readable works), and as an invaluable component of synthetic arts. This applies to the greatest extent to dramatic works, which are inherently intended for the theater. But other types of literature are also involved in syntheses of the arts: lyrics come into contact with music (song, romance), going beyond the boundaries of book existence. Lyrical works are readily interpreted by actors-readers and directors (when creating stage compositions). Narrative prose also finds its way onto stage and screen. And the books themselves often appear as synthetic works of art: the writing of letters (especially in old handwritten texts), ornaments, and illustrations are also significant in their composition. By participating in artistic syntheses, literature provides other types of art (primarily theater and cinema) with rich food , proving to be the most generous of them and acting as a conductor of the arts.

Literature and Mass Communications

In different eras, preference was given to different types of art. In antiquity, sculpture was most influential; as part of the aesthetics of the Renaissance and the 17th century. the experience of painting dominated, which theorists usually preferred to poetry; in line with this tradition is the treatise of the early French enlightener J.-B. Dubos, who believed that “the power of Painting over people is stronger than the power of Poetry.”

Subsequently (in the 18th century, and even more so in the 19th century), literature moved to the forefront of art, and accordingly there was a shift in theory. In his Laocoon, Lessing, in contrast to the traditional point of view, emphasized the advantages of poetry over painting and sculpture. According to Kant, “of all the arts, the first place is retained by poetry" With even greater energy, V.G. elevated verbal art above all others. Belinsky, who claims that poetry is the “highest kind of art”, that it “contains all the elements of other arts” and therefore “represents the entire integrity of art.”

In the era of romanticism, music shared the role of leader in the world of art with poetry. Later, the understanding of music as the highest form of artistic activity and culture as such (not without the influence of Beggars) became incredibly widespread, especially in the aesthetics of the Symbolists. It is music, according to A.N. Scriabin and his like-minded people, is called upon to concentrate all other arts around itself, and ultimately to transform the world. The words of A.A. are significant. Blok (1909): “Music is the most perfect of the arts because it most expresses and reflects the Architect’s plan<…>Music creates the world. She is the spiritual body of the world<…>Poetry is exhaustible<…>since its atoms are imperfect - less mobile. Having reached its limit, poetry will probably drown in music.”

The 20th century (especially in its second half) was marked by serious shifts in the relationships between types of art. Art forms based on new means of mass communication emerged, strengthened and gained influence: oral speech heard on the radio and, most importantly, the visual imagery of cinema and television began to successfully compete with the written and printed word.

In this regard, concepts emerged that, in relation to the first half of the century, can be rightfully called “film-centric”, and in the second half – “telecentric”. Known for his harsh, largely paradoxical judgments, television theorist M. McLuhan (Canada) argued in his books of the 60s that in the 20th century. a second communication revolution took place (the first was the invention of the printing press): thanks to television, which has unprecedented informational power, a “world of universal immediacy” arises, and our planet turns into a kind of huge village. The main thing is that television is gaining unprecedented ideological authority: the television screen powerfully imposes one or another view of reality on the masses of viewers.

In contrast to the extremes of traditional literary centrism and modern telecentrism, it is right to say that literary literature in our time is the first among equal arts.

In its best examples, literary creativity organically combines loyalty to the principles of artistry not only with broad knowledge and deep understanding of life, but also with the direct presence of the author’s generalizations. Thinkers of the 20th century argue that poetry is related to other arts as metaphysics is to science, that it, being the focus of interpersonal understanding, is close to philosophy. At the same time, literature is characterized as “the materialization of self-consciousness” and “the memory of the spirit about itself.” The performance of non-artistic functions by literature turns out to be especially significant in moments and periods when social conditions and the political system are unfavorable for society. “A people deprived of public freedom,” wrote A.I. Herzen, “literature is the only platform from the height of which he makes the cry of his indignation and his conscience heard.”

Without in any way claiming to stand above other types of art, much less to replace them, fiction thus occupies a special place in the culture of society and humanity as a kind of unity of art itself and intellectual activity, akin to the works of philosophers, scientists, humanists, publicists.

Revolutionary, radical modernist and avant-garde (86) artistic attitudes and theoretical constructs gave rise to numerous judgments of the opposite direction, in particular talk about the crisis of art. In 1918, a brochure under this title was published by N.A. Berdyaev1. Later it was said that technology and technical intelligence emasculate the sources of art and lead to its destruction2; that the slow death of art is now taking place3. According to the world famous sociologist P.A. Sorokin, contemporary art that creates “grotesque pseudo-values” is a “museum of social and cultural pathology”; this art of “humiliation and reproach of man” “prepares the ground for its own destruction”4. V.V. dedicated a special monograph (1937) to the negative aspects of his artistic modernity. Veidle, one of the prominent humanities scholars of the Russian diaspora. He argued that today the “alienation of the artist among people,” whom he understood as a faceless mass, has sharply increased, that “culture is moving further and further away from the organic compatibility of man and nature,” that artistic activity has ceased to be nourished by the Christian faith. And he made a very harsh conclusion: “Art<...>-dead, awaiting resurrection"5.
Judgments of this kind were preceded by Hegel's polemics with the aesthetics of romanticism. The philosopher believed that romanticism was the final stage of art, beyond which the lot of the artist would be reduced to purely subjective humor, characteristic mainly of comedy. In the “subjectivization” of art, Hegel saw the danger of its decomposition, disintegration, and argued that in his era there was a transition from art to philosophical knowledge, religious ideas and the prose of scientific thinking; the form of art ceases to be the highest need of the spirit6.
Thoughts about the total crisis of art, about its dead end and dying, expressed in the footsteps of Hegel by Heidegger and Marcuse, Sorokin and Weidle, are one-sided and in many ways vulnerable (like the polar idea of the 20th century as the highest stage of the artistic day). The truth about the fate of art, in our opinion, is independent of the indicated dispute. G.G. is right. Gadamer, who said that the end of art will not come as long as man has the will to express (87) his dreams and yearnings (Traume und Sehnsuchte): “Every erroneously proclaimed end of art will become the beginning of a new art.” Without denying the seriousness of the crisis phenomena in modern art (the endless replication of all kinds of surrogates and fakes that dull the aesthetic taste of the public), the famous German scientist at the same time argued that real artists, no matter how difficult it may be, are able to successfully resist the countercultural trends of the technical era1.
Our century was marked not only by the consolidation of painful and crisis artistic phenomena, but also (this, of course, the main thing) by the majestic rise of various types of art, including literature. The experience of writers of the 20th century. needs an unbiased theoretical discussion. Nowadays it is becoming increasingly urgent to take stock of both the losses and gains that have taken place in the artistic life of our century. (88)
Chapter II. LITERATURE AS A FORM OF ART
1. Division of art into types. Fine and Expressive Arts
The distinction between types of art is carried out on the basis of elementary, external, formal characteristics of works2. Aristotle also noted that types of art differ in means of imitation (Poetics, Chapter 1). Lessing and Hegel spoke in a similar spirit. A modern art critic rightly asserts that the boundaries between types of art are determined by “forms, methods of artistic expression (in words, in visible images, in sounds, etc.)<...>These primary “cells” are where we should start. Based on them, we must understand for ourselves what kind of perspectives of knowledge are contained in them, what is the main strength of this or that art, which it has no right to sacrifice."3 In other words, the material carrier of imagery for each type of art is its own, special, specific.
Hegel identified and characterized five so-called great arts. This is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry. Along with them, there is dance and pantomime (the arts of body movement, which are also recorded in some theoretical works of the 18th-19th centuries), as well as stage direction, which became more active in the 20th century - the art of creating a chain of mise-en-scenes (in the theater) and shots (in cinema): here The material carrier of imagery is spatial compositions that replace each other over time.
Along with the (now most influential and authoritative) idea of the types of art described above, there is another, so-called “categorical” interpretation of them (going back to the aesthetics of romanticism), in which the differences between the material (89) carriers of imagery are not given much importance, but Such general everyday and general artistic categories as poetry, musicality, and picturesqueness are brought to the fore (the corresponding principles are thought of as accessible to any form of art)4.
The material carrier of the imagery of literary works is the word that has received written embodiment (Latin littera - letter). A word (including an artistic one) always means something and has an objective character. Literature, in other words, belongs to the group of fine arts, in the broad sense of the subject, where individual phenomena are recreated (persons, events, things, moods caused by something and impulses of people directed towards something). In this respect, it is similar to painting and sculpture (in their dominant “figurative” variety) and differs from the non-figurative, non-objective arts. The latter are usually called expressive; they capture the general nature of the experience outside of its direct connections with any objects, facts, or events. These are music, dance (if it does not turn into pantomime - into the depiction of action through body movements), ornament, so-called abstract painting, architecture.
2. Artistic image. Image and sign
When referring to the ways (means) by which literature and other forms of art that have figurativeness carry out their mission, philosophers and scientists have long used the term “image” (ancient Greek eidos-appearance, appearance). As part of philosophy and psychology, images are concrete representations, i.e., the reflection by human consciousness of individual objects (phenomena, facts, events) in their sensually perceived forms. They oppose abstract concepts that capture the general, repeating properties of reality, ignoring its unique and individual features. There are, in other words, sensory-figurative and conceptual-logical forms of mastering the world.
We can further distinguish between figurative representations (as a phenomenon of consciousness) and images themselves as the sensory (visual and auditory) embodiment of representations. A.A. Potebnya in his work “Thought and Language” considered the image as a reproduced representation - as a kind of sensory perceived reality1. It is this meaning of the word “image” that is vital for the theory of art, which distinguishes between scientific-illustrative, factual (90) images (informing about facts that actually took place) and artistic2. The latter (and this is their specificity) are created with the explicit participation of the imagination: they do not simply reproduce isolated facts, but condense and concentrate aspects of life that are significant for the author in the name of its evaluative comprehension. The artist’s imagination is, therefore, not only a psychological stimulus for his creativity, but also a certain reality present in the work. In the latter there is a fictitious objectivity that does not fully correspond to itself in reality.
Nowadays, the words “sign” and “sign” have taken root in literary studies. They have noticeably replaced the usual vocabulary (“image”, “imagery”). The sign is the central concept of semiotics, the science of sign systems. Structuralism, which became established in the humanities in the 1960s, and post-structuralism, which replaced it, is oriented toward semiotics.
A sign is a material object that acts as a representative and substitute for another, “pre-found” object (or property and relationship). Signs constitute systems that serve to receive, store and enrich information, that is, they have primarily a cognitive purpose.
The creators and supporters of semiotics consider it as a kind of center of scientific knowledge. One of the founders of this discipline, the American scientist C. Morris (1900 -1978) wrote: “The relationship of semiotics to sciences is twofold: on the one hand, it is a science among other sciences, and on the other hand, it is an instrument of sciences”: a means of uniting different areas of scientific knowledge and giving them “greater simplicity, rigor, clarity, the path to liberation from the “web of words” that the man of science has woven”3.
Domestic scientists (Yu.M. Lotman and his associates) placed the concept of a sign at the center of cultural studies; the idea of culture as a primarily semiotic phenomenon was substantiated. “Any reality,” wrote Yu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspensky, referring to the French structuralist philosopher M. Foucault, “involved in the sphere of culture, begins to function as a sign<...>The very attitude to the sign and iconicity constitutes one of the main characteristics of culture"1.
Speaking about the sign process as part of human life (semiotics), experts identify three aspects of sign systems: 1) syntactics (the relationship of signs to each other); 2) semantics (the relationship of a sign to what it denotes: the signifier to the signified); 3) (91) pragmatics (the relationship of signs to those who operate with them and perceive them).
Signs are classified in a certain way. They are combined into three large groups: 1) an indexical sign (index sign) indicates an object, but does not characterize it; it is based on the metonymic principle of contiguity (smoke as evidence of a fire, a skull as a warning of danger to life); 2) the sign-symbol is conditional, here the signifier has neither similarity nor connection with the signified, such as words of natural language (except onomatopoeic) or components of mathematical formulas; 3) iconic signs reproduce certain qualities of the signified or its holistic appearance and, as a rule, are visual. In the series of iconic signs, there are, firstly, diagrams - schematic recreations of an objectivity that is not entirely specific (a graphic designation of the development of industry or the evolution of the birth rate) and, secondly, images that adequately recreate the sensory properties of the designated individual object (photographs, reports, and also capturing the fruits of observation and invention in works of art)2.
Thus, the concept of “sign” did not abolish traditional ideas about image and figurativeness, but placed these ideas in a new, very broad semantic context. The concept of a sign, vital in the science of language, is also significant for literary studies: firstly, in the field of studying the verbal fabric of works, and secondly, when referring to the forms of behavior of characters.
3. Fiction. Conventionality and life-likeness
Artistic fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not recognized: archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. We find judgments about artistic fiction in Aristotle’s “Poetics” (chapter 9 - the historian talks about what happened, the poet talks about the possible, about what could happen), as well as in the works of philosophers of the Hellenistic era.
For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often, these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time (this was the case (92), in particular, in the drama of the Renaissance and classicism, which widely used ancient and medieval plots).
Much more than was the case before, fiction manifested itself as the individual property of the author in the era of romanticism, when imagination and fantasy were recognized as the most important facet of human existence. "Fantasy<...>- wrote Jean-Paul, - there is something higher, it is the world soul and the elemental spirit of the main forces (such as wit, insight, etc. - V.Kh.)<...>Fantasy is the hieroglyphic alphabet of nature."1 The cult of imagination, characteristic of the beginning of the 19th century, marked the emancipation of the individual, and in this sense constituted a positively significant fact of culture, but at the same time it also had negative consequences (artistic evidence of this is the appearance of Gogol's Manilov , the fate of the hero of Dostoevsky's "White Nights").
In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. According to N.S. Leskova, a real writer is a “note-taker,” and not an inventor: “Where a writer ceases to be a note-taker and becomes an inventor, all connection between him and society disappears.”2 Let us also recall Dostoevsky’s well-known judgment that a close eye is capable of detecting in the most ordinary fact “a depth that is not found in Shakespeare”3. Russian classical literature was more a literature of conjecture than of fiction as such4. At the beginning of the 20th century, fiction was sometimes regarded as something outdated, rejected in the name of recreating a real fact, documented. This extreme was disputed5. The literature of our century - as before - is widely based on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in a number of cases justified and fruitful6, can hardly become the main line of artistic creativity (93): without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular literature is unrepresentable.
Through fiction, the author summarizes the facts of reality, embodies his view of the world, and demonstrates his creative energy. Z. Freud argued that artistic fiction is associated with unsatisfied drives and suppressed desires of the creator of the work and involuntarily expresses them7.
The concept of artistic fiction clarifies the boundaries (sometimes very vague) between works that claim to be art and documentary information. If documentary texts (verbal and visual) exclude the possibility of fiction from the outset, then works with the intention of perceiving them as fiction readily allow it (even in cases where the authors limit themselves to recreating actual facts, events, and persons). Messages in literary texts are, as it were, on the other side of truth and lies. At the same time, the phenomenon of artistry can also arise when perceiving a text created with a documentary mindset: “... for this it is enough to say that we are not interested in the truth of this story, that we read it,” as if it were the fruit<...>writing"8.
Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev called the inner world of a work: “Every work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<...>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<...>. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally reduces or expands them"9.
At the same time, there are two trends in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms convention (the author’s emphasis on the non-identity, or even the opposite, between what is depicted and the forms of reality) and life-likeness (leveling out such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life). The distinction between convention and life-likeness is already present in statements by Goethe (article “On truth and verisimilitude in art”) and Pushkin (notes on drama and its improbability). But the relationship between them was especially intensely discussed at the turn of the 19th - (94) 20th centuries. L.N. carefully rejected everything implausible and exaggerated. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and His Drama.” For K.S. Stanislavsky's expression “conventionality” was almost synonymous with the words “falsehood” and “false pathos.” Such ideas are associated with an orientation towards the experience of Russian realistic literature of the 19th century, the imagery of which was more life-like than conventional. On the other hand, many artists of the early 20th century. (for example, V.E. Meyerhold) preferred conventional forms, sometimes absolutizing their significance and rejecting life-likeness as something routine. Thus, in the article P.O. Jacobson’s “On Artistic Realism” (1921) emphasizes conventional, deforming, and difficult techniques for the reader (“to make it more difficult to guess”) and denies verisimilitude, which is identified with realism as the beginning of the inert and epigonic1. Subsequently, in the 1930s - 1950s, on the contrary, life-like forms were canonized. They were considered the only acceptable ones for the literature of socialist realism, and convention was suspected of being related to odious formalism (rejected as bourgeois aesthetics). In the l960s, the rights of artistic convention were again recognized. Nowadays, the view has been strengthened that life-likeness and conventionality are equal and fruitfully interacting tendencies of artistic imagery: “like two wings on which creative imagination rests in an indefatigable thirst to find out the truth of life”2.
At the early historical stages in art, forms of representation prevailed, which are now perceived as conventional. This is, firstly, the idealizing hyperbole of traditional high genres (epic, tragedy), generated by a public and solemn ritual, the heroes of which manifested themselves in pathetic, theatrically effective words, poses, gestures and possessed exceptional appearance features that embodied their strength and power, beauty and charm. (Remember the epic heroes or Gogol’s Taras Bulba). And, secondly, this is the grotesque, which was formed and strengthened as part of carnival celebrations, acting as a parody, a laughing “double” of the solemnly pathetic, and later acquired programmatic significance for the romantics3. It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque. Grotesque in art is akin to paradox in (95) logic. MM. Bakhtin, who studied traditional grotesque imagery, considered it the embodiment of a festive and cheerful free thought: “The grotesque frees us from all forms of inhuman necessity that permeate the prevailing ideas about the world<...>debunks this necessity as relative and limited; grotesque form helps liberation<...>from walking truths, allows you to look at the world in a new way, feel<...>the possibility of a completely different world order."4 In the art of the last two centuries, the grotesque, however, often loses its cheerfulness and expresses a total rejection of the world as chaotic, frightening, hostile (Goya and Hoffmann, Kafka and the theater of the absurd, to a large extent Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin) .
Art initially contains life-like principles, which made themselves felt in the Bible, classical epics of antiquity, and Plato’s dialogues. In the art of modern times, life-likeness almost dominates (the most striking evidence of this is the realistic narrative prose of the 19th century, especially L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov). It is essential for authors who show man in his diversity, and most importantly, who strive to bring what is depicted closer to the reader, to minimize the distance between the characters and the perceiving consciousness. At the same time, in the art of the 19th and 20th centuries. conditional forms were activated (and at the same time updated). Nowadays this is not only traditional hyperbole and grotesque, but also all kinds of fantastic assumptions ("Kholstomer" by L.N. Tolstoy, "Pilgrimage to the Land of the East" by G. Hesse), demonstrative schematization of the depicted (B. Brecht's plays), exposure of the technique (" Eugene Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin), effects of the montage composition (unmotivated changes in the place and time of action, sharp chronological "breaks", etc.).
4. The immateriality of images in literature. Verbal plasticity
The specificity of the figurative (objective) principle in literature is largely predetermined by the fact that the word is a conventional (conventional) sign, that it does not resemble the object it denotes (B-L. Pasternak: “How enormous is the difference between a name and a thing!”1) . Verbal paintings (images), unlike paintings, sculptures, stage paintings, and screen paintings, are immaterial. That is, in literature there is figurativeness (subjectivity), but there is no (96) direct visibility of images. Turning to visible reality, writers are able to give only its indirect, mediated reproduction. Literature masters the intelligible integrity of objects and phenomena, but not their sensually perceived appearance. Writers appeal to our imagination, and not directly to visual perception.
The immateriality of verbal fabric predetermines the visual richness and diversity of literary works. Here, according to Lessing, images “can be located next to each other in extreme quantity and variety, without covering each other and without harming each other, which cannot be the case with real things or even with their material reproductions”2. Literature has infinitely wide visual (informative, cognitive) possibilities, because through words one can designate everything that is in a person’s horizons. The universality of literature has been spoken about more than once. Thus, Hegel called literature “a universal art, capable of developing and expressing any content in any form.” According to him, literature extends to everything that “in one way or another interests and occupies the spirit”3.
Being insubstantial and lacking clarity, verbal and artistic images at the same time depict a fictional reality and appeal to the reader’s vision. This side of literary works is called verbal plasticity. Paintings through words are organized more according to the laws of recollection of what is seen, rather than as a direct, instantaneous transformation of visual perception. In this regard, literature is a kind of mirror of the “second life” of visible reality, namely, its presence in human consciousness. Verbal works capture subjective reactions to the objective world to a greater extent than the objects themselves as directly visible.
For many centuries, the plastic principle of verbal art has been given almost decisive importance. Since antiquity, poetry has often been called “sounding painting” (and painting - “silent poetry”). Classicists of the 17th-18th centuries understood poetry as a kind of “pre-painting” and as a sphere of description of the visible world. One of the art theorists of the early 18th century, Keylus, argued that the strength of poetic talent is determined by the number of paintings that the poet delivers to the artist, the painter4. Similar thoughts were expressed in the 20th century. Thus, M. Gorky wrote: “Literature (97) is the art of plastic representation through words”1. Such judgments indicate the enormous importance of pictures of visible reality in fiction.
However, in literary works, the “non-plastic” principles of imagery are also inherently important: the sphere of psychology and thoughts of characters, lyrical heroes, narrators, embodied in dialogues and monologues. Over the course of historical time, it was precisely this side of the “objectivity” of verbal art that increasingly came to the fore, crowding out traditional plastic arts. On the eve of the 19th - 20th centuries, Lessing's judgments are significant, challenging the aesthetics of classicism: "A poetic painting should not necessarily serve as material for the artist's painting." And even stronger: “The outer, outer shell” of objects “may be for him (the poet - V.Kh.) only one of the most insignificant means of awakening in us interest in his images”2. Writers of our century sometimes spoke in this spirit (and even more harshly!). M. Tsvetaeva believed that poetry is “the enemy of the visible,” and I. Erenburg argued that in the era of cinema, “literature is left with the invisible world, that is, the psychological”3.
Nevertheless, “painting with words” is far from exhausted. This is evidenced by the works of I.A. Bunina, V.V. Nabokova, M.M. Prishvina, V.P. Astafieva, V.G. Rasputin. Pictures of visible reality in literature of the late 19th century. and the 20th century have changed in many ways. Traditional detailed descriptions of nature, interiors, and the appearance of heroes (to which I.A. Goncharov and E. Zola paid considerable tribute, for example) were replaced by extremely compact characteristics of the visible, the smallest details, spatially as if close to the reader, dispersed in the literary text and , most importantly, psychologized, presented as someone’s visual impression, which, in particular, is characteristic of A.P. Chekhov.
5. Literature as the art of words. Speech as a subject of image
Fiction is a multifaceted phenomenon. There are two main sides in its composition. The first is fictitious objectivity, images of “non-verbal” reality, as discussed above. The second is speech constructions themselves, verbal structures. The dual aspect of literary works has given scientists reason to say that literary literature combines (98) two different arts: the art of fiction (manifested mainly in fictional prose, which is relatively easily translated into other languages) and the art of words as such (which determines the appearance of poetry, which loses almost the most important thing in translations)4. In our opinion, fiction and the actual verbal principle would be more accurately characterized not as two different arts, but as two inseparable facets of one phenomenon: artistic literature.
The actual verbal aspect of literature, in turn, is two-dimensional. Speech here appears, firstly, as a means of representation (a material carrier of imagery), as a way of evaluative illumination of non-verbal reality; and, secondly, as the subject of the image - statements belonging to someone and characterizing someone. Literature, in other words, is capable of recreating the speech activity of people, and this particularly sharply distinguishes it from all other types of art. Only in literature does a person appear as a speaker, to which M.M. attached fundamental importance. Bakhtin: “The main feature of literature is that language here is not only a means of communication and expression-image, but also an object of image.” The scientist argued that “literature is not just the use of language, but its artistic cognition” and that “the main problem of its study” is “the problem of the relationship between depicting and depicted speech”1.
As you can see, the imagery of a literary work is two-dimensional and its text constitutes the unity of two “unbreakable lines.” This is, firstly, a chain of verbal designations of “non-verbal” reality and, secondly, a series of statements belonging to someone (narrator, lyrical hero, characters), thanks to which literature directly masters the thinking processes of people and their emotions, widely captures their spiritual ( including intellectual) communication, is not given to other, “non-verbal” arts. In literary works, characters often reflect on philosophical, social, moral, religious, and historical topics. Sometimes the intellectual side of human life comes to the fore here (the famous ancient Indian “Bhagavad Gita”, “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoevsky, “The Magic Mountain” by T. Mann).
Mastering human consciousness, fiction, according to V.A. Grekhneva, “enlarges the element of thought”: the writer “is irresistibly attracted by thought, but a thought that is not chilled and not detached (99) from experience and evaluation, but thoroughly permeated by them. Not its results revealed in the objectively calm and harmonious structures of logic, but its personal color, its living energy - first of all, this is attractive to the artist of words where thought becomes the subject of the image."2
B. Literature and Synthetic Arts
Fiction belongs to the so-called simple or one-component arts, based on one material carrier of imagery (here it is the written word). At the same time, it is closely connected with synthetic (multi-component) arts, combining several different carriers of imagery (such are architectural ensembles that “absorb” sculpture and painting; theater and cinema in their leading varieties); vocal music, etc.
Historically, early syntheses were “a combination of rhythmic, orchestic (dance - V.Kh.) movements with song-music and elements of words”3. But this was not art itself, but syncretic creativity (syncretism is unity, indivisibility, characterizing the original, undeveloped state of something). Syncretic creativity, on the basis of which, as shown by A.N. Veselovsky, later verbal art (epic, lyric, drama) was formed, had the form of a ritual choir and had a mythological, cult and magical function. In ritual syncretism there was no separation between the actors and the perceivers. Everyone was both co-creators and participants-performers of the action being performed. Round dancing "pre-art" for archaic tribes and early states was ritually obligatory (forced). According to Plato, “everyone must sing and dance, the entire state as a whole, and, moreover, always in a variety of ways, incessantly and enthusiastically”4.
As artistic creativity as such became stronger, single-component arts became increasingly important. The undivided dominance of synthetic works did not satisfy humanity, since it did not create the prerequisites for the free and wide manifestation of the individual creative impulse of the artist: each individual type of art within the synthetic works remained constrained in its capabilities. It is not surprising, therefore, that (100) the centuries-old history of culture is associated with a steady differentiation of forms of artistic activity.
At the same time, in the 19th century.