The internal structure of a literary work. Ticket

FORM OF ARTWORK. WORLD OF ARTWORK.

The world of a literary work (or the objective world, objective figurativeness) is the side of an artistic form that we can mentally distinguish from the verbal structure.

The world of a literary work is the one recreated in the work through speech and with the participation of fiction. objectivity . The world of the work constitutes both “material” and “personal” reality, i.e. includes not only material reality, but also human consciousness.

The world of a work is a system that is somehow correlated with the real world: it includes people, with their external and internal (psychological characteristics), events, nature (living and inanimate), things, it has time and space. Subjective visualization is characteristic of all types of literature, but it is most developed and most autonomous (and therefore most easily distinguished) in epic and drama, where there is a system of characters and a plot.

The world of the work is artistically mastered And transformed reality.

THE INNER WORLD OF A WORK OF ART

D.S. Likhachev. The inner world of a work of art // Questions of literature, No. 8, 1968. – pp. 74-87

“The inner world of a work of verbal art (literary or folklore) has a certain artistic integrity. The individual elements of reflected reality are connected to each other in this inner world in a certain system, artistic unity.

Every work of art (if it is only artistic!) reflects the world of reality in your creative ways. And these angles are subject to comprehensive study in connection with the specifics of the work of art and, above all, in their artistic whole. When studying the reflection of reality in a work of art, we should not limit ourselves to the question: “true or false” - and admire only fidelity, accuracy, correctness. The inner world of a work of art also has its own interconnected patterns, its own dimensions and its own meaning, like a system.

Of course, and this is very important, the inner world of a work of art does not exist on its own and not for itself. It is not autonomous. It depends on reality, “reflects” the world of reality, but the transformation of this world that a work of art allows is holistic and purposeful. Transformation of reality associated with the idea of the work, with the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The world of a work of art is the result of both a correct reflection and an active transformation of reality. In his work, the writer creates a certain space in which the action takes place. This space can be large, covering a series of strange travel stories or even extending beyond the terrestrial planet (in fantasy and romantic novels), but it can also narrow down to the tight confines of a single room. The space created by the author in his work may have unique “geographical” properties, be real (as in a chronicle or historical novel) or imaginary, as in a fairy tale. The writer in his work also creates the time in which the action of the work takes place. The work may cover centuries or just hours. Time in a work can move quickly or slowly, intermittently or continuously, be intensely filled with events or flow lazily and remain “empty,” rarely “populated” with events.

Works may also have their own psychological world, not the psychology of individual characters, but general laws of psychology that subordinate all characters, creating a “psychological environment” in which the plot unfolds. These laws may be different from the laws of psychology that exist in reality, and it is useless to look for exact correspondences in psychology textbooks or psychiatry textbooks. Thus, fairy tale heroes have their own psychology: people and animals, as well as fantastic creatures. They are characterized by a special type of reaction to external events, special argumentation and special responses to the arguments of antagonists. One psychology is characteristic of the heroes of Goncharov, another - of the characters of Proust, another - of Kafka, a very special one - of the characters of the chronicle or the lives of saints. The psychology of Karamzin's historical characters or Lermontov's romantic heroes is also special. All these psychological worlds must be studied as a whole.

D. LIKHACHEV The inner world of a work of art Source // Questions of Literature, No. 8, 1968. – P. 74-87. 1 The inner world of a work of verbal art (literary or folklore) has a certain artistic integrity. The individual elements of reflected reality are connected to each other in this inner world in a certain system, artistic unity. When studying the reflection of the world of reality in the world of a work of art, literary scholars limit themselves for the most part to paying attention to whether individual phenomena of reality are correctly or incorrectly depicted in the work. Literary scholars enlist the help of historians to determine the accuracy of the depiction of historical events, psychologists and even psychiatrists to determine the accuracy of the depiction of the mental life of the characters. When studying ancient Russian literature, in addition to historians, we often turn to the help of geographers, zoologists, astronomers, etc. And all this, of course, is quite correct, but, alas, not enough. We usually do not study the inner world of a work of art as a whole, limiting ourselves to the search for “prototypes”: prototypes of a particular character, character, landscape, even “prototypes”, events and prototypes of the types themselves. Everything is “retail”, everything is in parts! The world of a work of art therefore appears scattered in our research, and its relationship to reality is fragmented and lacks integrity. 74 At the same time, the mistake of literary scholars who note various “faithfulness” or “incorrectness” in the artist’s depiction of reality lies in the fact that, dividing the integral reality and the integral world of a work of art, they make both incommensurable: they measure the apartment area in light years. True, it has become standard to point out the difference between a real fact and an artistic fact. We can encounter such statements when studying “War and Peace” or Russian epics and historical songs. The difference between the world of reality and the world of a work of art is already realized with sufficient acuteness. But the point is not to “be aware” of something, but also to define this “something” as an object of study. In fact, it is necessary not only to state the very fact of differences, but also to study what these differences consist of, what causes them and how they organize the inner world of the work. We should not simply establish differences between reality and the world of a work of art and see only in these differences the specificity of a work of art. The specificity of a work of art by individual authors or literary movements can sometimes consist in just the opposite, that is, in the fact that there will be too few of these differences in individual parts of the inner world, and there will be too much imitation and accurate reproduction of reality. In historical source studies, once upon a time, the study of historical source was limited to the question: true or false? After A. Shakhmatov’s works on the history of chronicle writing, such a study of the source was considered insufficient. A. Shakhmatov studied the historical source as an integral monument from the point of view of how this monument transforms reality: the purposefulness of the source, the worldview and political views of the author. Thanks to this, it became possible to use even a distorted, transformed image of reality as historical evidence. This transformation itself has become important evidence in the history of ideology and social thought. The historical concepts of the chronicler, no matter how they distort reality (and there are no concepts in the chronicle that do not distort reality), are always interesting for the historian, testifying to the historical ideas of the chronicler, his ideas and views on the world. The concept of the chronicler itself became historical evidence. A. Shakhmatov made all the sources more or less important and interesting for the modern historian, and we have no right to reject any source. It is only important to understand about what time the source being studied can give its testimony: whether about the time when it was compiled, or about the time about which it writes. 75 The situation is similar in literary criticism. Each work of art (if it is only artistic!) reflects the world of reality from its own creative perspective. And these angles are subject to comprehensive study in connection with the specifics of the work of art and, above all, in their artistic whole. When studying the reflection of reality in a work of art, we should not limit ourselves to the question: “true or false” - and admire only fidelity, accuracy, correctness. The inner world of a work of art also has its own interconnected patterns, its own dimensions and its own meaning, like a system. Of course, and this is very important, the inner world of a work of art does not exist on its own and not for itself. It is not autonomous. It depends on reality, “reflects” the world of reality, but the transformation of this world that a work of art allows is holistic and purposeful. The transformation of reality is connected with the idea of the work, with the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The world of a work of art is the result of both a correct reflection and an active transformation of reality. In his work, the writer creates a certain space in which the action takes place. This space can be large, covering a series of strange travel stories or even extending beyond the terrestrial planet (in fantasy and romantic novels), but it can also narrow down to the tight confines of a single room. The space created by the author in his work may have unique “geographical” properties, be real (as in a chronicle or historical novel) or imaginary, as in a fairy tale. The writer in his work also creates the time in which the action of the work takes place. The work may cover centuries or just hours. Time in a work can move quickly or slowly, intermittently or continuously, be intensely filled with events or flow lazily and remain “empty,” rarely “populated” with events. Quite a lot of works are devoted to the issue of artistic time in literature, although their authors often replace the study of the artistic time of a work with the study of the author’s views on the problem of time and compile simple collections of statements by writers about time, without noticing or not attaching importance to the fact that these statements may be in conflict with the artistic time that the writer himself creates in his work 1. 1 For literature on artistic time and artistic space, see: D. S. Likhachev, Poetics of Old Russian Literature, “Nauka”, L. 1967, pp. 213-214 and 357 I will also indicate: Em. S t a i g s g, Die Zeit als Einbil-dungskraft des Dichters. Untersuchungen zu Gedichton Von Brentano, Goethe und Kcllor, Ziirich, 1939, 1953, 1963; H. W e i n r i s h, Tempus. Besprochene und crzahltc Welt, Stuttgart, 1964. 76 Works may also have their own psychological world, not the psychology of individual characters, but general laws of psychology that subordinate all characters, creating a “psychological environment” in which the plot unfolds. These laws may be different from the laws of psychology that exist in reality, and it is useless to look for exact correspondences in psychology textbooks or psychiatry textbooks. Thus, fairy tale heroes have their own psychology: people and animals, as well as fantastic creatures. They are characterized by a special type of reaction to external events, special argumentation and special responses to the arguments of antagonists. One psychology is characteristic of the heroes of Goncharov, another - of the characters of Proust, another - of Kafka, a very special one - of the characters of the chronicle or the lives of saints. The psychology of Karamzin's historical characters or Lermontov's romantic heroes is also special. All these psychological worlds must be studied as a whole. The same should be said about the social structure of the world of artistic works, and this social structure of the artistic world of the work should be distinguished from the author’s views on social issues and not confuse the study of this world with scattered comparisons of it with the world of reality. The world of social relations in a work of art also requires study in its integrity and independence. You can also study the world of history in some literary works: in the chronicle, in the tragedy of classicism, in historical novels of realistic directions, etc. And in this area you will discover not only accurate or inaccurate reproductions of the events of real history, but also your own laws according to which historical events, its own system of causality or “causelessness” of events - in a word, its own... inner world of history. The task of studying this world of the history of a work is as different from studying a writer’s views on history as the study of artistic time is different from studying an artist’s views on time. You can study Tolstoy's historical views as they are expressed in the famous historical digressions of his novel War and Peace, but you can also study how events unfold in War and Peace. These are two different tasks, although interrelated. However, I think that the last task is more important, and the first serves only as an aid (by no means a primary one) for the second. If Leo Tolstoy had been a historian and not a novelist, perhaps these two tasks would have changed places in terms of their significance. By the way, there is a curious pattern that emerges when studying the difference between writers’ views on history and its artistic depiction. As a historian (in his discussions on historical topics), the writer very often emphasizes the regularity of the historical process, but in his artistic practice he involuntarily highlights the role of chance in the fate of the historical and simple characters in his work. Let me remind you of the role of the hare sheepskin coat in the fate of Grinev and Pugachev in Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter”. Pushkin the historian hardly agreed with Pushkin the artist on this. 77 The moral side of the world of a work of art is also very important and, like everything else in this world, has a direct “constructive” meaning. So, for example, the world of medieval works knows absolute good, but evil in it is relative. Therefore, a saint cannot not only become a villain, but even commit a bad act. If he had done this, then he would not have been a saint from a medieval point of view, then he would only have been pretending, being a hypocrite, biding his time, etc., etc. But any villain in the world of medieval works can change dramatically and become a saint. Hence a kind of asymmetry and “unidirectionality” of the moral world of artistic works of the Middle Ages. This determines the originality of the action, the construction of plots (in particular, the lives of saints), the interested expectation of the reader of medieval works, etc. (the psychology of reader interest - the reader’s “expectation” of a continuation). The moral world of works of art is constantly changing with the development of literature. Attempts to justify evil, to find objective reasons for it, to consider evil as a social or religious protest are characteristic of the works of the romantic movement (Byron, Njegos, Lermontov, etc.). In classicism, evil and good seem to stand above the world and acquire a unique historical coloring. In realism, moral problems permeate everyday life and appear in thousands of aspects, among which social aspects steadily increase as realism develops. Etc. The building materials for constructing the inner world of a work of art are taken from the reality surrounding the artist, but he creates his own world in accordance with his ideas about what this world was, is or should be. The world of a work of art reflects reality both indirectly and directly: indirectly - through the artist’s vision, through his artistic representations, and directly, directly in those cases when the artist unconsciously, without attaching artistic significance to this, transfers phenomena of reality or ideas and concepts into the world he creates. of his era. I will give an example from the field of artistic time created in a literary work. This time of a work of art, as I have already said, can flow very quickly, “in jerks”, “nervously” (in Dostoevsky’s novels) or flow slowly and evenly (in Goncharov or Turgenev), be associated with “eternity” (in ancient Russian chronicles), capture a larger or smaller range of phenomena. In all these cases, we are dealing with artistic time - time that indirectly reproduces real time, artistically transforming it. If a writer of modern times, like us, divides the day into 24 hours, and a chronicler, in accordance with church services, into 9, then there is no artistic “assignment” or meaning in this. This is a direct reflection of the contemporary time calculation of the writer, which was transferred without changes from reality. What is important for us, of course, is the first, artistically transformed time. 78 It is this that gives the opportunity for creativity, creates the “maneuverability” necessary for the artist, allows you to create your own world, different from the world of another work, another writer, another literary movement, style, etc. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a kind of “abbreviated”, conventional option. An artist, building his world, cannot, of course, reproduce reality with the same degree of complexity inherent in reality. In the world of a literary work there is not much that exists in the real world. This is a limited world in its own way. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally shortens or expands them, makes them more colorful or more faded, organizes them stylistically, but at the same time, as already said, creates its own system, an internally closed system and having its own laws. Literature “replays” reality. This “replaying” occurs in connection with those “style-forming” trends that characterize the work of this or that author, this or that literary movement or “style of the era.” These style-forming tendencies make the world of a work of art in some respects more diverse and richer than the world of reality, despite all its conventional abbreviation. II Let's look at some examples. First of all, I would like to dwell on a Russian fairy tale. One of the main features of the inner world of a Russian fairy tale is its low resistance to the material environment. And with this are connected the features of her artistic space, and the features of her artistic time, and then - the fabulous specificity of the construction of the plot, the system of images, etc. 1 But first of all, I will explain what I mean by “environmental resistance” in the inner world of art works. Actions in a work can be fast or inhibited, slow. They can cover more or less space. Action, encountering unexpected obstacles or not encountering obstacles, can be either uneven or even and calm (calmly fast or calmly slow). In general, depending on the resistance of the environment, actions can be very diverse in nature. Some works will be characterized by the ease of fulfilling the wishes of the characters with low potential barriers, while others will be characterized by the difficulty and height of potential barriers. We can therefore talk about different degrees of predictability in individual works, which is extremely important for studying the technique of “interesting reading.” Phenomena such as turbulence, crisis of resistance, fluidity, kinematic viscosity, diffusion, entropy, etc., can constitute essential features of the dynamic structure of the internal world of a verbal work. 79 In the Russian fairy tale, environmental resistance is almost absent. The heroes move with extraordinary speed, and their path is neither difficult nor easy: “he was traveling along a wide road and ran into the golden feather of the firebird.” The obstacles that the heroes encounter along the way are only plot-related, but not natural, not natural. The physical environment of the fairy tale itself seems to know no resistance. That’s why formulas like “no sooner said than done” are so common in fairy tales. The fairy tale does not have psychological inertia. The hero knows no hesitation: he decided and did it, thought and went. All the heroes’ decisions are also quick and made without much thought. The hero sets off on a journey and achieves his goal, as if meeting no resistance: without fatigue, road inconvenience, illness, random incidents not determined by the plot, etc. The road in front of the hero is usually “straight” and “wide”; if she can sometimes be “bewitched,” it is not because of her natural state, but because someone has bewitched her. The field in a fairy tale is wide. The sea does not hinder the shipbuilders in itself - only when the hero’s enemy intervenes does a storm arise. In the fairy tale, it is not the inertia of the environment that makes itself felt, but offensive forces and, at the same time, mainly “spiritual” ones: there is a struggle of intelligence, a struggle of intentions, and the magical powers of witchcraft. Intentions do not meet resistance from the environment, but collide with other intentions, often unmotivated. Therefore, obstacles in a fairy tale cannot be foreseen - they are sudden. This is a kind of ball game: the ball is thrown, it is returned, but the flight of the ball in space does not encounter air resistance and does not know the force of gravity. Everything that happens in the fairy tale is unexpected: “they were driving, driving and suddenly”, “they were walking, walking and seeing a river” (A. N. Afanasyev, Russian Folk Tales). The action of the fairy tale seems to go towards the wishes of the hero: as soon as the hero thought about how he could get rid of his enemy, Baba Yaga meets him and gives advice (Afanasyev, “No. 212”). If the heroine needs to run, she takes a magic carpet, sits on it and flies on it like a bird (Afanasyev, No. 267). Money in a fairy tale is obtained not by labor, but by chance: someone tells the hero to dig it out from under a damp oak tree (Afanasyev, No. 259). Everything the hero does, he does on time. The heroes of the fairy tale seem to be waiting for each other. The hero needs to go to the king - he runs straight to him, and the king seems to be already waiting for him, he is in place, there is no need to ask him to receive him, or to wait (Afanasyev, No. 212). In a fight, fight, or duel, the heroes also do not offer long-term resistance to each other, and the outcome of the fight is decided not so much by physical strength as by intelligence, cunning or magic. 80 The dynamic lightness of the tale finds its counterpart in the ease with which the heroes understand each other, in the fact that animals can speak, and trees can understand the hero’s words. The hero himself not only moves easily, but also easily turns into animals, plants, and objects. The hero's failures are usually the result of his mistake, forgetfulness, disobedience, or the fact that someone deceived or bewitched him. It is extremely rare that failure is the result of the hero’s physical weakness, his illness, fatigue, or the severity of the task facing him. Everything in a fairy tale happens easily and immediately - “like in a fairy tale.” The dynamic lightness of a fairy tale leads to an extreme expansion of its artistic space. The hero travels to distant lands to the thirtieth state to accomplish a feat. He finds the heroine “at the end of the world.” The well-done Sagittarius procures a bride for the Tsar, Vasilisa the Princess, “at the very edge of the world” (Afanasyev, No. 169). Each feat is performed in a new place. Thanks to this, the action of the fairy tale is the hero’s journey through the vast world of the fairy tale. Here is “The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf” (Afanasyev, No. 168). Initially, the action of this tale takes place “in a certain ... kingdom, in a certain state.” Here Ivan Tsarevich accomplishes his first feat - he obtains a feather from the firebird. For the second feat, he goes, “without knowing where he is going.” From the place of his second feat, Ivan Tsarevich travels again “far away to the thirtieth state” to accomplish his third feat. Then he moves to accomplish his fourth feat to new distant lands. The space of a fairy tale is unusually large, it is limitless, infinite, but at the same time closely connected with the action. It is not independent, but also has no relation to real space. It's different in the chronicle. The space in the chronicle is also very large. The action in the chronicle is easily transferred from one point to another. A chronicler can report on one line of the chronicle what happened in Novgorod, on another - on what happened in Kyiv, and on the third - on events in Constantinople. But in the chronicle, geographical space is real. We even guess (although not always) in which city the chronicler writes, and we know exactly where events take place in real geographical space with real cities and villages. The space of a fairy tale does not correspond to the space in which the storyteller lives. It is completely special, different from the space of sleep. And from this point of view, the fairy-tale formula that accompanies the hero’s actions is very important: “is it close, is it far, is it low, is it high.” This formula also has a continuation, which is already related to the artistic time of the fairy tale: “soon the fairy tale is told, but not soon the deed is done.” The time of the fairy tale also does not correspond to real time. It is unknown whether the events of the fairy tale took place long ago or recently. Time in a fairy tale is special - and at the same time “soon”. An event can take place thirty years and three years, but it can also take place in one day. There isn't much difference. The heroes do not get bored, do not languish, do not grow old, do not get sick. Real time has no power over them. Only event time has power. There is only a sequence of events, and this sequence of events is the artistic time of a fairy tale. But the story can neither go back nor skip over the sequence of events. The action is unidirectional, but artistic time is closely connected with it. 81 Thanks to the peculiarities of artistic space and artistic time, a fairy tale has exceptionally favorable conditions for the development of action. Action in a fairy tale occurs more easily than in any other genre of folklore. This lightness, as is easy to see, is in direct connection with the magic of a fairy tale. Actions in a fairy tale not only do not meet resistance from the environment, they are also facilitated by various forms of magic and magical objects: a flying carpet, a self-assembled tablecloth, a magic ball, a magic mirror, a falcon's feather, a wonderful shirt, etc. In the fairy tale “Go there - not I know where, bring that - I don’t know what” (Afanasyev, No. 212) the magic ball rolls in front of the hero of the fairy tale - the archer: “where the river meets, there the ball will be thrown over a bridge; where the Sagittarius wants to rest, there the ball will spread out like a downy bed.” These magical helpers also include the so-called “helping animals” (gray wolf, little humpbacked horse, etc.), the magic word that the hero knows, living and dead water, etc. Comparing this magical relief of the heroes’ actions with the lack of environmental resistance in the fairy tale, we can notice that these two essential properties of the fairy tale are not of the same nature. One phenomenon is obviously of earlier origin, the other of more recent origin. I suppose that magic in a fairy tale is not primary, but secondary. It was not the absence of environmental resistance that was “added” to magic, but the very absence of environmental resistance required its “justification” and explanation in magic. Magic invaded the fairy tale more than any other folklore genre in order to give a “real” explanation - why the hero is transported with such speed from place to place, why certain events take place in the fairy tale that are incomprehensible to consciousness, which has already begun to look for an explanation and does not contented with noting what was happening. Paradoxical as it may seem, magic in the lubricant is an element of the “materialistic explanation” of the miraculous ease with which individual events of transformation, escapes, exploits, finds, etc. are accomplished in a fairy tale. In fact, witchcraft, enchantment, sorcery, spell , conspiracies, etc. are not miracles themselves, but only “explanations” of the wonderful lightness of the inner world of a fairy tale. The absence of environmental resistance, the constant overcoming of the laws of nature in a fairy tale is also a kind of miracle that required its own explanation... This explanation was all the “technical weapons” of the fairy tale: magical objects, helpful animals, magical properties of trees, witchcraft, etc. The primacy of absence environmental resistance and the secondary nature of magic in a fairy tale can be supported by the following consideration. The environment in a fairy tale has no resistance in its entirety. The magic in it explains only a certain, and at the same time insignificant, part of the wonderful lightness of the fairy tale. 82 If magic were primary, then the absence of environmental resistance would be encountered in a fairy tale only along the path of this magic. Meanwhile, in a fairy tale, events very often develop with extraordinary ease, “just like that,” without being explained by magic. For example, in the fairy tale “The Frog Princess” (Afanasyev, No. 267), the king orders his three sons to shoot an arrow, and “as soon as the woman brings the arrow, so does the bride.” All three sons’ arrows are brought by women: the first two are “the princess’s daughter and the general’s daughter,” and only the third arrow is brought by the princess, turned into a frog by witchcraft. But neither the king has witchcraft when he offers his sons to find brides for themselves in this very way, nor do the first two brides. Witchcraft does not “cover” or explain all the wonders of a fairy tale. All these invisible hats and flying carpets are “small” to the fairy tale. That's why they are clearly later. *** So, plot narration requires that the world of a work of art be “easy” - easy, first of all, for the development of the plot itself. Where the plot dominates, the inner world of the work is always “uncomplicated” to one degree or another. The resistance of the medium falls, time speeds up, space expands. The action metronome swings fast and wide. Let's take another example, this time from a completely different area from folklore. Dostoevsky's action, as is known, develops with extraordinary speed, proceeds energetically and lively. And in accordance with this, in the artistic world of Dostoevsky, as in a fairy tale, the coefficient of resistance turns out to be very low. But since the plots of Dostoevsky’s works pave their way in the sphere of psychological and ideological life, it is precisely this part of the inner world of Dostoevsky’s works that is characterized by the least “resistance.” If in the world of a fairy tale the freedom of the material world dominates, then in Dostoevsky the freedom of spiritual life dominates. I am deprived of the opportunity to substantiate my idea in detail in a short journal article, and therefore I ask the reader in advance to forgive me for some “sharpenings” that I will have to make. Dostoevsky’s world “works” on small connections; its individual parts are little connected with each other. Cause-and-effect, pragmatic connections are weak. This world is constantly viewed from different points of view, always in motion and always, as it were, fragmented, with frequent violations of everyday patterns. In the world of Dostoevsky's works, all kinds of deviations from the norm reign, deformation reigns, people are distinguished by strangeness, eccentricities, they are characterized by absurd actions, absurd gestures, disharmony, inconsistency. The action develops through scandals and sharp clashes between opposing entities. 83 Events happen unexpectedly, suddenly, unforeseen. Unexpected and illogical actions are committed by Stavrogin, Versilov, Myshkin, Mitya and Ivan Karamazov, Nastasya Filippovna, Aglaya, Rogozhin, Katerina Ivanovna, etc. The unexpectedness of their actions is reinforced by the deliberate obscurity of the situation, the unexplained nature of events, the cause-and-effect basis of events that remains in the deep shadow. It is not known why, for example, Alyosha comes to his father at the beginning of The Brothers Karamazov. And it is characteristic that Dostoevsky himself emphasizes that he does not find an explanation for this from the preface “From the Author” to the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”; the “author” directly says: “it would be strange to demand clarity from people in a time like ours.” Events in works are refracted through impressions about them. These impressions are obviously incomplete and subjective. The author emphasizes that he is not responsible for them. He often directly refuses to explain what is happening. Thanks to this, the action is maximally emancipated. Wed. in chapter 9, part 4 of “The Idiot”: we “ourselves, in many cases find it difficult to explain what happened,” or “if you asked us for clarification... about the extent to which the appointed wedding satisfies the actual desires of the prince... we, We admit, we would be at a great difficulty to answer.” Wed. also constant reservations like: “we know only one thing...”, “we strongly suspect...”, etc. Dostoevsky, as it were, frees himself from the need to follow the cause-and-effect series, at least in its elementary form. Freedom of narration in Dostoevsky no longer requires the absence of resistance from the material environment, as in a fairy tale, but freedom from the cause-and-effect series from the “resistance” of psychology, from elementary everyday logic. Dostoevsky follows this path to the extent that artistic verisimilitude allows him to do so. Dostoevsky is concerned and interested in the paradoxes of the psyche and the unexpected in human behavior. Fedka Katorzhny in “The Possessed” says about Peter Verkhovensky: “If it is said about a person: a scoundrel, then he knows nothing about him other than a scoundrel. Ali is said to be a fool, so the man has no title other than a fool. And maybe on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I’m only a fool, and on Thursday I’m smarter than him.” If by psychology we mean a science that studies the patterns of human mental life, then Dostoevsky is the most non-psychological writer of all existing ones. He does not need psychology, but any opportunity to free himself from it. That is why he leaves psychology for psychiatry and turns to mental illness. But Dostoevsky also needs psychiatry only in order to discover in it certain alogisms, oddities, inconsistencies, to discover what does not obey existing ideas about the mental life of a person. It so happened that much in his denial of the existing laws of mental life turned out to be prophetic, anticipating the scientific conclusions of modern psychology and psychiatry, but this happened because Dostoevsky still sought plausibility and, within the limits of plausibility, was able to go beyond the scientific concepts of his time without violating everything some basic truth of mental life. He expanded the idea of human mental life to colossal limits, but still remained within the limits of plausibility. And this “free” plausibility in his “foresights” turned out to be true. 84 Dostoevsky’s ironic attitude towards the ordinary psychology of his time is directly expressed by Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov in the chapter “Psychology at Full Speed”, which depicts a prosecutor who is carried away by psychology. Dostoevsky openly states that psychology is a “double-edged sword.” Dostoevsky's favorite heroes are eccentrics, strange people, unbalanced people who commit unexpected actions. The laws of psychology do not seem to exist for them. Dostoevsky directly connects his interest in eccentrics and oddities with the desire to understand what is happening in the world. In the note “From the Author” in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky writes: “...Everyone strives to unite particulars and find at least some common sense in the general confusion. An eccentric is in most cases particular and isolated. Is not it?" Dostoevsky denies ordinary logic in the name of some higher one: the eccentric is “not always” particular and isolated, but on the contrary, it happens that he, perhaps, sometimes carries within himself the core of the whole, and the rest of the people of his era are everything, by some influx wind, for some reason they were separated from him for a while...” (ibid.). Let us return, however, to the fragmentation of the world of Dostoevsky’s works. This fragmentation affects not only spiritual life, but also the part of the material world closest to it. Let us pay attention first of all to the faces of Dostoevsky’s heroes. These persons consist of parts that have relative independence. Stepan Trofimovich tries on smiles. Rogozhin puts on a smile. Pyotr Stepanovich makes and “remakes” his physiognomy. It is no coincidence that the faces of Dostoevsky’s heroes so often resemble masks (in Stavrogin, in Svidrigailov). Individual parts of the face are so independent that they can play a major and independent role in a person’s appearance. In “The Christmas Tree and the Wedding” it is not the sideburns that are put to the face, but “the gentleman is put to the sideburns.” Sometimes this characteristic of faces is transferred to the whole person. In "Uncle's Dream" Prince K. is composed, as it were, of elements independent from each other. This is a “dead man on springs”, a “semi-composition”, with artificial legs, eyes, teeth, hair, sideburns, whitened and pomaded. Dostoevsky plays with alogisms in his own style. In “The Possessed,” Dostoevsky characterizes General Ivan Ivanovich Drozdov as “who ate an awful lot and was terribly afraid of atheism” (Chapter VI, Part I). In “Uncle’s Dream” Maria Alexandrovna sits by the fireplace “in the most excellent mood and in a light green dress” (chap. III). 86 Dostoevsky’s usual words are “suddenly,” “even,” “however,” “somewhat,” “some,” “quite,” “as if,” “as if,” “some,” “like,” “not completely”, etc. The love for surprises, uncertainties and inexplicability leads Dostoevsky to a kind of “weaving of words”: “Lost in the resolution of these questions, I decide to bypass them without any permission” (“The Brothers Karamazov” - “From the author”). So, the inner world of Dostoevsky’s works is a world of little resistance in the spiritual and mental realm, just as the world of a fairy tale is a world of little resistance in the material environment. This world of freedom and weak ties is, from Dostoevsky’s point of view, the real, authentic world. But along with this world of isolation, there is also an environment in which everything can be foreseen and everything fits into the gray everyday patterns. In fact, the greatest psychological resistance to freedom of plot is created by characters and types. The type and character determine in advance the line of behavior of their carriers. They seem to suggest the plot and do not allow it to deviate to the side. Dostoevsky also has these types and characters, but only minor characters are embodied in them. If we take The Brothers Karamazov, then the types there are extremely few. Among them may be listed Pan Vrublevsky and his comrade. They repeat each other, like the heroes of the folk story “Thomas and Erema.” This repetition emphasizes the external constraint and conditioning of their behavior. Dostoevsky's doubles are always presented as external conditioning. In search of freedom, the hero strives to free himself from his double. Only in short episodes do the characters not seek freedom and are, as it were, dolls, puppets: “One ragamuffin was arguing with another ragamuffin, and some dead drunk was lying across the street” (“Crime and Punishment”). As for the Karamazov brothers, they do not repeat each other at all; they are characterized by internal freedom of behavior. Hence the constant surprise of their actions and thoughts. In the person of Ivan Karamazov, we even have self-aware freedom of behavior: “I, Your Excellency, am like that peasant girl... you know how it is: “If I want, I’ll jump, if I want, I won’t jump,” says Ivan Karamazov in court. It is not delirium tremens that causes this external unexpectedness of actions, but the unexpected actions themselves add up to delirium tremens. Delirium tremens is a consequence, not a cause, of unexpected behavior. This is freedom at a dead end. Freedom, which has reached a dead end, is the alter ego, the “monkey” of Ivan Karamazov - Smerdyakov, and his other double and “interlocutor” - the devil. Doubles put a limit on human freedom in the metaphysical realm. They are generated by man, created by his ideas, mostly criminal, and arise in the imagination of man. Repetition creates a pattern and fetters a person. This is why Dostoevsky values freedom so much. 86 So, the isolation of all parts of the world and the freedom associated with this isolation characterize the inner world of Dostoevsky’s works. But this freedom is not unlimited. She encounters obstacles within herself and creates an everyday environment with its types and characters, a world of necessity. *** Using various examples - from folklore and literature - I tried to show certain aspects that the study of the inner world of a verbal work can open for a researcher. Of course, while demonstrating the aspects that the study of the inner world reveals, I did not pretend in my article to give an example of the study itself. The research must be more detailed and extensive than can be shown in a short journal article. I took up only one issue - resistance to plot development. The study of the world of a work of art has a number of important aspects for literary studies. A researcher of the inner world of a work of verbal art considers the form and content of the work in inextricable unity. The artistic world of a work combines the ideological side of the work with the nature of its plot, plot, and intrigue. It has a direct bearing on the style of the language of the work. But the most important thing: the artistic world of a verbal work has an internal unity, determined by the general style of the work or author, the style of a literary movement or the “style of the era.” When studying the artistic style of a work, the author, movement, era, one should pay attention, first of all, to what is the world into which the work of art immerses us, what is its time, space, social and material environment, what are the laws of psychology and the movement of ideas in it , what are the general principles on the basis of which all these individual elements are connected into a single artistic whole. I am confident in the fruitfulness of this kind of approach to the study of literature. I myself intend to write a book about the inner world of the monuments of literature and fine arts of Ancient Rus'. This inner world stands before us in amazing richness, a variety of successive pictures and is able to explain the majesty and impressiveness of what the literature of Ancient Rus' reveals to us. Leningrad 1 I distinguish between the concepts of “language style” and artistic style as a whole (cf. about this difference in the book by A. N. Sokolov “Theory of Style”, “Iskusstvo”, M. 1968). In this case, I'm talking about the artistic style as such. 87

The inner world of a work of verbal art (literary or folklore) has a certain artistic integrity. The individual elements of reflected reality are connected to each other in this inner world in a certain system, artistic unity.

When studying the reflection of the world of reality in the world of a work of art, literary scholars limit themselves for the most part to paying attention to whether individual phenomena of reality are correctly or incorrectly depicted in the work. Literary scholars enlist the help of historians to determine the accuracy of the depiction of historical events, psychologists and even psychiatrists to determine the accuracy of the depiction of the mental life of the characters. When studying ancient Russian literature, in addition to historians, we often turn to the help of geographers, zoologists, astronomers, etc. And all this, of course, is quite correct, but, alas, not enough. We usually do not study the inner world of a work of art as a whole, limiting ourselves to the search for “prototypes”: prototypes of a particular character, character, landscape, even “prototypes”, events and prototypes of the types themselves. Everything is “retail”, everything is in parts! The world of a work of art therefore appears scattered in our research, and its relationship to reality is fragmented and lacks integrity.

At the same time, the mistake of literary critics who note various “faithfulness” or “incorrectness” in the artist’s depiction of reality lies in the fact that, dividing the integral reality and the integral world of a work of art, they make both incommensurable: they measure the apartment area in light years.

True, it has become standard to point out the difference between a real fact and an artistic fact. We can encounter such statements when studying “War and Peace” or Russian epics and historical songs. The difference between the world of reality and the world of a work of art is already realized with sufficient acuteness. But the point is not to “be aware” of something, but also to define this “something” as an object of study.

In fact, it is necessary not only to state the very fact of differences, but also to study what these differences consist of, what causes them and how they organize the inner world of the work. We should not simply establish differences between reality and the world of a work of art and see only in these differences the specificity of a work of art. The specificity of a work of art by individual authors or literary movements can sometimes consist in just the opposite, that is, in the fact that there will be too few of these differences in individual parts of the inner world, and too much imitation and accurate reproduction of reality

In historical source studies, the study of a historical source was once limited to the question: true or false? After A. Shakhmatov’s works on the history of chronicle writing, such a study of the source was considered insufficient. A. Shakhmatov studied the historical source as an integral monument from the point of view of how this monument transforms reality: the purposefulness of the source, the worldview and political views of the author. Thanks to this, it became possible to use even a distorted, transformed image of reality as historical evidence. This transformation itself has become important evidence in the history of ideology and social thought. The historical concepts of the chronicler, no matter how they distort reality (and there are no concepts in the chronicle that do not distort reality), are always interesting for the historian, testifying to the historical ideas of the chronicler, his ideas and views on the world. The concept of the chronicler itself became historical evidence. A. Shakhmatov made all the sources more or less important and interesting for the modern historian, and we have no right to reject any source. It is only important to understand about what time the source being studied can give its testimony: whether about the time when it was compiled, or about the time about which it writes.

The situation is similar in literary criticism. Each work of art (if it is only artistic!) reflects the world of reality from its own creative perspective. And these angles are subject to comprehensive study in connection with the specifics of the work of art and, above all, in their artistic whole. When studying the reflection of reality in a work of art, we should not limit ourselves to the question: “true or false” - and admire only fidelity, accuracy, correctness. The inner world of a work of art also has its own interconnected patterns, its own dimensions and its own meaning, like a system.

Of course, and this is very important, the inner world of a work of art does not exist on its own and not for itself. It is not autonomous. It depends on reality, “reflects” the world of reality, but the transformation of this world that a work of art allows is holistic and purposeful. The transformation of reality is connected with the idea of the work, with the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The world of a work of art is the result of both a correct reflection and an active transformation of reality. In his work, the writer creates a certain space in which the action takes place. This space can be large, covering a series of strange travel stories or even extending beyond the terrestrial planet (in fantasy and romantic novels), but it can also narrow down to the tight confines of a single room. The space created by the author in his work may have unique “geographical” properties, be real (as in a chronicle or historical novel) or imaginary, as in a fairy tale. The writer in his work also creates the time in which the action of the work takes place. The work may cover centuries or just hours. Time in a work can move quickly or slowly, intermittently or continuously, be intensely filled with events or flow lazily and remain “empty,” rarely “populated” with events.

Quite a lot of works are devoted to the issue of artistic time in literature, although their authors often replace the study of the artistic time of a work with the study of the author’s views on the problem of time and compile simple collections of statements by writers about time, without noticing or not attaching importance to the fact that these statements may be in conflict with the artistic time that the writer himself creates in his work 1.

1 For literature on artistic time and artistic space, see: D. S. Likhachev, Poetics of Old Russian Literature, “Nauka”, L. 1967, pp. 213-214 and 357. Additionally I will indicate: Em. S t a i g s g, Die Zeit als Einbil-dungskraft des Dichters. Untersuchungen zu Gedichton Von Brentano, Goethe und Kcllor, Ziirich, 1939, 1953, 1963; H. W e i n r i s h, Tempus. Besprochene und crzahltc Welt, Stuttgart, 1964.

The same should be said about the social structure of the world of artistic works, and this social structure of the artistic world of the work should be distinguished from the author’s views on social issues and not confuse the study of this world with scattered comparisons of it with the world of reality. The world of social relations in a work of art also requires study in its integrity and independence.

You can also study the world of history in some literary works: in the chronicle, in the tragedy of classicism, in historical novels of realistic directions, etc. And in this area you will discover not only accurate or inaccurate reproductions of the events of real history, but also your own laws according to which historical events, its own system of causality or “causelessness” of events - in a word, its own... inner world of history. The task of studying this world of the history of a work is as different from studying a writer’s views on history as the study of artistic time is different from studying an artist’s views on time. You can study Tolstoy's historical views as they are expressed in the famous historical digressions of his novel War and Peace, but you can also study how events unfold in War and Peace. These are two different tasks, although interrelated. However, I think that the last task is more important, and the first serves only as an aid (by no means a primary one) for the second. If Leo Tolstoy had been a historian and not a novelist, perhaps these two tasks would have changed places in terms of their significance. By the way, there is a curious pattern that emerges when studying the difference between writers’ views on history and its artistic depiction. As a historian (in his discussions on historical topics), the writer very often emphasizes the regularity of the historical process, but in his artistic practice he involuntarily highlights the role of chance in the fate of the historical and simple characters in his work. Let me remind you of the role of the hare sheepskin coat in the fate of Grinev and Pugachev in Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter”. Pushkin the historian hardly agreed with Pushkin the artist on this.

The moral side of the world of a work of art is also very important and, like everything else in this world, has a direct “constructive” meaning. So, for example, the world of medieval works knows absolute good, but evil in it is relative. Therefore, a saint cannot not only become a villain, but even commit a bad act. If he had done this, then he would not have been a saint from a medieval point of view, then he would only have been pretending, being a hypocrite, biding his time, etc., etc. But any villain in the world of medieval works can change dramatically and become a saint. Hence a kind of asymmetry and “unidirectionality” of the moral world of artistic works of the Middle Ages. This determines the originality of the action, the construction of plots (in particular, the lives of saints), the interested expectation of the reader of medieval works, etc. (the psychology of reader interest - the reader’s “expectation” of a continuation).

The moral world of works of art is constantly changing with the development of literature. Attempts to justify evil, to find objective reasons for it, to consider evil as a social or religious protest are characteristic of the works of the romantic movement (Byron, Njegos, Lermontov, etc.). In classicism, evil and good seem to stand above the world and acquire a unique historical coloring. In realism, moral problems permeate everyday life and appear in thousands of aspects, among which social aspects steadily increase as realism develops. Etc.

The building materials for constructing the inner world of a work of art are taken from the reality surrounding the artist, but he creates his own world in accordance with his ideas about what this world was, is or should be.

The world of a work of art reflects reality both indirectly and directly: indirectly - through the artist’s vision, through his artistic representations, and directly, directly in those cases when the artist unconsciously, without attaching artistic significance to this, transfers phenomena of reality or ideas and concepts into the world he creates. of his era.

I will give an example from the field of artistic time created in a literary work. This time of a work of art, as I have already said, can flow very quickly, “in jerks”, “nervously” (in Dostoevsky’s novels) or flow slowly and evenly (in Goncharov or Turgenev), be associated with “eternity” (in ancient Russian chronicles), capture a larger or smaller range of phenomena. In all these cases, we are dealing with artistic time - time that indirectly reproduces real time, artistically transforming it. If a writer of modern times, like us, divides the day into 24 hours, and a chronicler, in accordance with church services, into 9, then there is no artistic “assignment” or meaning in this. This is a direct reflection of the contemporary time calculation of the writer, which was transferred without changes from reality. What is important for us, of course, is the first, artistically transformed time.

It is this that gives the opportunity for creativity, creates the “maneuverability” necessary for the artist, allows him to create his own world, different from the world of another work, another writer, another literary movement, style, etc.

The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a kind of “abbreviated”, conventional version. An artist, building his world, cannot, of course, reproduce reality with the same degree of complexity inherent in reality. In the world of a literary work there is not much that exists in the real world. This is a limited world in its own way. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally shortens or expands them, makes them more colorful or more faded, organizes them stylistically, but at the same time, as already said, creates its own system, an internally closed system and having its own laws.

Literature “replays” reality. This “replaying” occurs in connection with those “style-forming” trends that characterize the work of this or that author, this or that literary movement or “style of the era.” These style-forming tendencies make the world of a work of art in some respects more diverse and richer than the world of reality, despite all its conventional abbreviation.

When studying the reflection of the world of reality in the world of a work of art, literary scholars limit themselves for the most part to paying attention to whether individual phenomena of reality are correctly or incorrectly depicted in the work. Literary scholars enlist the help of historians to determine the accuracy of the depiction of historical events, psychologists and even psychiatrists to determine the accuracy of the depiction of the mental life of the characters. When studying ancient Russian literature, in addition to historians, we often turn to the help of geographers, zoologists, astronomers, etc. And all this, of course, is quite correct, but, alas, not enough. Usually the inner world of a work of art is studied as a whole, limited to the search for “prototypes”: prototypes of a particular character, character, landscape, even “prototypes”, events and prototypes of the types themselves. Everything is “retail”, everything is in parts! The world of a work of art appears scattered, and its relationship to reality is fragmented and lacks integrity.

True, it has become standard to point out the difference between a real fact and an artistic fact. Such statements are found when studying “War and Peace” or Russian epics and historical songs. The difference between the world of reality and the world of a work of art is already realized with sufficient acuteness. But the point is not to “be aware” of something, but also to define this “something” as an object of study.

Of course, and this is very important, the inner world of a work of art does not exist on its own and not for itself. It is not autonomous. It depends on reality, “reflects” the world of reality, but the transformation of this world that a work of art allows is holistic and purposeful. The transformation of reality is connected with the idea of the work, with the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The world of a work of art is the result of both a correct reflection and an active transformation of reality. In his work, the writer creates a certain space in which the action takes place. This space can be large, cover a number of countries, or even go beyond the terrestrial planet (in fantasy and romantic novels), but it can also narrow down to the tight confines of a single room. The space created by the author in his work may have peculiar “geographical” properties, be real (as in a chronicle or historical novel) or imaginary, as in a fairy tale. The writer in his work also creates the time in which the action of the work takes place. The work may cover centuries or just hours. Time in a work can move quickly or slowly, intermittently or continuously, be intensely filled with events or flow lazily and remain “empty,” rarely “populated” with events.

You can also study the world of history in some literary works: in chronicles, in the tragedy of classicism, in historical novels of realistic directions, etc. And in this area, not only accurate or inaccurate reproductions of the events of real history will be revealed, but also its own laws according to which historical events take place, its own system of causality or “causelessness” of events - in a word, its own inner world of history. The task of studying this world of the history of a work is as different from studying a writer’s views on history as the study of artistic time is different from studying an artist’s views on time. You can study Tolstoy's historical views, as they are expressed in the famous historical digressions of his novel War and Peace, but you can also study how events unfold in War and Peace. These are two different tasks, although interrelated. However, I think that the last task is more important, and the first serves only as an aid (by no means a primary one) for the second. If Leo Tolstoy had been a historian and not a novelist, perhaps these two tasks would have changed places in terms of their significance. By the way, there is a curious pattern that emerges when studying the difference between writers’ views on history and its artistic depiction. As a historian (in his discussions on historical topics), the writer very often emphasizes the regularity of the historical process, but in his artistic practice he involuntarily highlights the role of chance in the fate of the historical and simple characters in his work.

The moral side of the world of a work of art is also very important and, like everything else in this world, has a direct “constructive” meaning. So, for example, the world of medieval works knows absolute good, but evil in it is relative. Therefore, a saint cannot not only become a villain, but even commit a bad act. If he had done this, then he would not have been a saint from a medieval point of view, then he would only have been pretending, being a hypocrite, biding his time, etc., etc. But any villain in the world of medieval works can change dramatically and become a saint. Hence a kind of asymmetry and “one direction” in the moral world of artistic works of the Middle Ages. This determines the originality of the action, the construction of plots (in particular, the lives of saints), the interested expectation of the reader of medieval works, etc. (the psychology of reader interest - the reader's "expectation" of a continuation).

The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a kind of “abbreviated”, conditional version. An artist, building his world, cannot, of course, reproduce reality with the same degree of complexity inherent in reality. In the world of a literary work there is not much that exists in the real world. This is a limited world in its own way. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally shortens or expands them, makes them more colorful or more faded, organizes them stylistically, but at the same time, as already said, creates its own system, an internally closed system and having its own laws.

The inner world of a work of art exists, of course, and this is very important, not in itself and not for itself. It is not autonomous. It depends on reality, “reflects” the world of reality, but the artistic transformation of this world that art accomplishes is holistic and purposeful. The transformation of reality is connected with the idea of the work, with the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The world of a work of art is not a phenomenon of passive perception of reality, but of its active transformation, sometimes more, sometimes less.
In his work, the writer creates a certain space in which the action takes place. This space can be large, covering a number of countries (in a travel novel) or even beyond the boundaries of the earthly planet (in fantasy and romantic novels), but it can also narrow down to the tight confines of a single room. The space created by the author in his work may have peculiar “geographical” properties; be real (as in a chronicle or historical novel) or imaginary (as in a fairy tale).
It may have certain properties, and in one way or another “organize” the action of the work. The last property of artistic space is especially important for literature and folklore. The fact is that space in verbal art is directly related to artistic time. It's dynamic. It creates an environment for movement, and it itself changes and moves. This movement (space and time are connected in movement) can be easy or difficult, fast or slow, it can be associated with a known resistance of the environment and with cause-and-effect relationships.
ARTISTIC SPACE OF FAIRY TALES
One of the main features of the inner world of a Russian fairy tale is the low resistance of the material environment in it, the “superconductivity” of its space. And another fairy-tale specificity is connected with this: the construction of a plot, a system of images, etc.
But first of all, I will explain what I mean by “environmental resistance” in the inner world of a work of art. Any action in a work of art may encounter greater or lesser resistance from the environment. In this regard, the actions in the work can be fast or inhibited, slow. They can cover more or less space. The resistance of the medium can be uniform or uneven. In this regard, the action, encountering unexpected obstacles or not encountering obstacles, can be either uneven or smooth and calm (calm-fast or calm-slow). In general, depending on the resistance of the environment, actions can be very diverse in nature.
Some works will be characterized by the ease of fulfilling the wishes of the characters with low potential barriers, while others will be characterized by the difficulty and height of potential barriers. Therefore, we can talk about different degrees of predictability of the course of events in individual works, which is extremely important for studying the conditions that determine the “interestingness of reading.” Such phenomena as “turbulence”, “crisis of resistance”, “fluidity”, “kinematic viscosity”, “diffusion”, “entropy”, etc. (I deliberately use the terms of the “exact” sciences) can constitute essential features of the dynamic structure of the internal the world of a verbal work, its artistic space, environment.
In Russian fairy tales, environmental resistance is almost absent. The heroes move with extraordinary speed, and their path is neither difficult nor easy: “he was traveling along a wide road and ran into the golden feather of the Firebird.” The obstacles that the hero encounters along the way are only plot-related, but not natural, not natural. The physical environment of the fairy tale itself seems to know no resistance. That’s why formulas like “no sooner said than done” are so common in fairy tales. The fairy tale does not have psychological inertia. The hero knows no hesitation: he decided and did it, thought and went. All the heroes’ decisions are also quick and made without much thought. The hero sets out on a journey and reaches his goal without fatigue, road inconvenience, illness, random encounters not determined by the plot, incidental encounters, etc. The road in front of the hero is usually “straight” and “wide”; if she can sometimes be “bewitched,” it is not because of her natural state, but because someone has bewitched her. The field in a fairy tale is wide. The sea itself does not hinder shipbuilders. It is only when the hero's enemy intervenes that a storm arises. Environmental resistance can only be “purposeful” and functional, plot-based.
Therefore, space in a fairy tale does not hinder the action. Any distances do not interfere with the development of a fairy tale. They only add scale, significance, and a kind of pathos to it. Space evaluates the significance of what is being done.
In the fairy tale, it is not the inertia of the environment that makes itself felt, but offensive forces and, at the same time, mainly “spiritual” ones: there is a struggle of intelligence, a struggle of intentions, and the magical powers of witchcraft. Intentions do not meet resistance from the environment, but collide with other intentions, often unmotivated. Therefore, obstacles in a fairy tale cannot be foreseen - they are sudden. This is a kind of ball game: the ball is thrown, it is returned, but the flight of the ball in space does not encounter air resistance and does not know the force of gravity. Everything that happens in the fairy tale is unexpected: “they drove and drove, and suddenly...”, “they walked, walked and saw a river...” (L. N. Afanasyev. Russian Folk Tales, No. 260). The action of the fairy tale seems to go towards the wishes of the hero: as soon as the hero thought about how he could get rid of his enemy, Baba Yaga meets him and gives advice (Afanasyev, No. 212). If the heroine needs to run, she takes a magic carpet, sits on it and flies on it like a bird (Afanasyev, No. 267). Money in a fairy tale is obtained not by labor, but by chance: someone tells the hero to dig it out from under a damp oak tree (Afanasyev, No. 259). Everything the hero does, he does on time. The heroes of the fairy tale seem to be waiting for each other. The hero needs to go to the king - he runs straight to him, and the king seems to be already waiting for him, he is in place, there is no need to ask him to receive him, or to wait (Afanasyev, No. 212). In a fight, fight, or duel, the heroes also do not offer long-term resistance to each other, and the outcome of the fight is decided not so much by physical strength as by intelligence, cunning or magic.
The dynamic lightness of the tale finds its counterpart in the ease with which the heroes understand each other, in the fact that animals can speak, and trees can understand the hero’s words. The hero himself not only moves easily, but also easily turns into animals, plants, and objects. The hero's failures are usually the result of his mistake, forgetfulness, disobedience, or the fact that someone deceived or bewitched him.
It is extremely rare that failure is the result of the hero’s physical weakness, his illness, fatigue, or the severity of the task facing him. Everything in a fairy tale happens easily and immediately - “like in a fairy tale.”
The dynamic lightness of a fairy tale leads to an extreme expansion of its artistic space. The hero travels to distant lands, to the thirtieth state, to accomplish a feat. He finds the heroine “at the end of the world.” The well-done Sagittarius procures a bride for the Tsar - Vasilisa the Princess - “at the very edge of the world” (Afanasyev, No. 169). Each feat is performed in a new place. The action of a fairy tale is the hero's journey through the vast world of a fairy tale. Here is “The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf” (Afanasyev, No. 168). Initially, the action of this tale takes place “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state.” Here Ivan Tsarevich accomplishes his first feat - he obtains the feather of the Firebird. For the second feat, he goes, “without knowing where he is going.” From the place of his second feat, Ivan Tsarevich travels again, to accomplish his third feat, “far away lands, to the thirtieth state.” Then he moves to accomplish his fourth feat to new distant lands.
The space of a fairy tale is unusually large, it is limitless, infinite, but at the same time it is closely connected with the action, not independently, but also not related to real space.
As we will see later, the space in the chronicle is also very large. The action in the chronicle is easily transferred from one geographical point to another. The chronicler in one line of his chronicle can report what happened in Novgorod, in another - about what happened in Kyiv, and in the third - about events in Constantinople. But in the chronicle, geographical space is real. We even guess (although not always) in which city the chronicler writes, and we know exactly where real events take place in real geographical space with real cities and villages. The space of a fairy tale does not correspond to the space in which the storyteller lives and where the listeners listen to the fairy tale. It is completely special, different from the space of sleep.
And from this point of view, the fairy-tale formula that accompanies the hero’s actions is very important: “is it close, is it far, is it low, is it high.” This formula also has a continuation, connected with the artistic time of the fairy tale: “soon the fairy tale is told, but not soon the deed is done.” The time of the fairy tale also does not correspond to real time. It is unknown whether the events of the fairy tale took place long ago or recently. There is a special time in the fairy tale - “quick”. An event can take place thirty years and three years, but it can also take place in one day. There isn't much difference. The heroes do not get bored, do not languish, do not grow old, do not get sick. Real time has no power over them. Only event time has power. There is only a sequence of events, and this sequence of events is the artistic time of a fairy tale. But the story cannot go back or skip over the sequence of events. The action is unidirectional, and artistic time is closely connected with it.
Thanks to the peculiarities of artistic space and artistic time, the fairy tale provides exceptionally favorable conditions for the development of action. The action in a fairy tale is carried out more easily than in any other genre of folklore.
The ease with which all actions are performed in a fairy tale is, as is easy to see, in direct connection with the magic of the fairy tale. Actions in the fairy tale not only do not meet resistance from the environment, they are also facilitated by various forms of magic and magical objects: a flying carpet, a self-assembled tablecloth, a magic ball, a magic mirror, the feather of Finist Yasna Sokol, a wonderful shirt, etc. In the fairy tale “Go there - I don’t know where, bring this - I don’t know what” (Afanasyev, No. 212) the magic ball rolls in front of the hero of the fairy tale - the archer: “...where the river meets, the ball will be thrown over a bridge; where the Sagittarius wants to rest, there the ball will spread out like a downy bed.” These magical helpers also include the so-called “helping animals” (gray wolf, little humpbacked horse, etc.), the magic word that the hero knows, living and dead water, etc.
Comparing this magical relief of the heroes’ actions with the lack of environmental resistance in the fairy tale, we can notice that these two essential properties of the fairy tale are not of the same nature. One phenomenon is obviously of earlier origin, the other of more recent origin. I suppose that magic in a fairy tale is not primary, but secondary. It was not the absence of environmental resistance that was added to magic, but the very absence of environmental resistance required its “justification” and explanation in magic.
Magic invaded the fairy tale more than any other folklore genre in order to give a “real” explanation - why the hero is transported with such speed from place to place, why certain events take place in the fairy tale that are incomprehensible to consciousness, which has already begun to look for explanations and not contented with noting what was happening.
Paradoxical as it may seem, magic in a fairy tale is an element of the “materialistic explanation” of the miraculous ease with which individual events, transformations, escapes, exploits, finds, etc. take place in a fairy tale. In fact, witchcraft, enchantment, sorcery, spells, conspiracies, etc. are not miracles themselves, but only “explanations” of the wonderful lightness of the inner world of a fairy tale. The absence of environmental resistance, the constant overcoming of the laws of nature in a fairy tale is also a kind of miracle that required its own explanation. This “explanation” was all the “technical equipment” of the fairy tale: magical objects, helpful animals, magical properties of trees, witchcraft, etc.
The primacy of the absence of environmental resistance and the secondary nature of magic in a fairy tale can be supported by the following consideration. The entire environment in a fairy tale has no resistance. The magic in it explains only a certain and at the same time insignificant part of the wonderful lightness of the fairy tale. If magic were primary, then the absence of environmental resistance would be encountered in a fairy tale only along the path of this magic. Meanwhile, in fairy tales, events very often develop with extraordinary ease “just like that”, without explanation by magic. So, for example, in the fairy tale “The Frog Princess” (Afanasyev, No. 267), the king orders his three sons to shoot an arrow, and “as soon as the woman brings the arrow, so does the bride.” All three sons’ arrows are brought by women: the first two are “the princess’s daughter and the general’s daughter,” and only the third arrow is brought by the princess, turned into a frog by witchcraft. But neither the king has witchcraft when he offers his sons to find brides for themselves in this very way, nor do the first two brides. Witchcraft does not “cover” or explain all the wonders of a fairy tale. All these invisible hats and flying carpets are “small” to the fairy tale. That's why they are clearly later.
ARTISTIC SPACE IN ANCIENT RUSSIAN LITERATURE
The space of a fairy tale is very close to the space of ancient Russian literature.
The forms of artistic space in ancient Russian literature are not as diverse as the forms of artistic time. They do not vary by genre. They generally do not belong only to literature and, in general, are the same in painting, in architecture, in chronicles, in lives, in preaching literature, and even in everyday life. The latter does not exclude their artistic character - on the contrary, it speaks of the power of aesthetic perception and aesthetic awareness of the world. The world is subordinated in the consciousness of a medieval person to a single spatial scheme, all-encompassing, indivisible and, as it were, shortening all distances, in which there are no individual points of view on this or that object, but there is a kind of supramundane awareness of it - such a religious rise above reality that allows you to see reality not only in its enormous coverage, but also in its strong reduction.
Perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate this medieval perception of space is through examples of fine art. It was already written above (pp. 604-605) that ancient Russian art did not know perspective in the modern sense of the word. For there was no individual, unified viewer's point of view on the world. There was no “window to the world” opened by Renaissance artists. The artist did not look at the world from any one, fixed position. He did not embody his point of view in the picture. Each depicted object was reproduced from the point from which it was most convenient for viewing. Therefore, in a painting (in an icon, in a fresco or mosaic composition, etc.) there were as many points of view as there were individual objects of the image in it. At the same time, the unity of the image was not lost: it was achieved by a strict hierarchy of what was depicted. This hierarchy provided for the subordination of secondary objects in the picture to the primary ones. This subordination was achieved both by the ratio of the sizes of the depicted objects and by turning the depicted objects towards the viewer. In fact, how is the relationship between the sizes of depicted objects constructed in an icon? What is closest to the viewer is what is most important - Christ, the Mother of God, saints, etc. Buildings (sometimes even those within which the depicted event should take place) and trees are depicted in retreat and in greatly reduced sizes. The reduction in size does not occur proportionally, but through a certain kind of schematization: not only the crown of the tree decreases, but also the number of leaves in this crown - sometimes to two or three.
The miniatures depict the entire city, but it is reduced to one highly schematized city tower.
The tower seems to replace the city. This is the symbol of the city. Objects of household furnishings (table, chair, bed, dishes, etc.) decrease relatively little relative to human figures: both are too closely related to each other. Horses are also depicted in real relationships with humans. Meanwhile, the size of the secondary saints (not minor in general, but in terms of their significance in the icon) decreases, and the objects associated with them (weapons, chairs, horses, etc.) are reduced strictly in proportion to them.
As a result, a certain hierarchy of image sizes is created inside the icon.
This makes the world of the icon different from the rest of the world. Therefore, an icon is a “thing”, “object”. The image on the icon is written on the object (a painting on canvas is not a thing, but an image). The icon has a thickness emphasized by the husk. The frame is not in the picture, not on the canvas, it is separate from the image, it frames the image; on the contrary, the fields in the icon are part of the icon, connected to the image. Therefore, in the icon the entire image is compact, the composition is saturated, there is no “air”, there is no free space that could connect the image on the icon with the rest of the world.
Another method of combining what is depicted into a certain whole is as follows: the objects, as I have already said, turn towards the center (located slightly in front of the icon), towards the praying person (the praying one, and not just the viewer). An icon is, first of all, an object of worship, and this should not be forgotten when analyzing its artistic system. The depicted faces seem to be turned toward the person praying. They are in contact with him: either they look directly at the person praying, as if they are “presenting” him, or they are slightly turned towards him even when, according to the meaning of the plot, they should be addressing each other (for example, in the “Candlemas” scene, in the composition “Nativity of Christ”, “Annunciation”, etc.). But this applies only to Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints. Demons never look at the viewer. They are always turned to him in profile. Judas is also turned in profile: he also should not be in contact with the person praying. Angels can also be turned in profile (in the scene of the Annunciation, the preaching Archangel Gabriel can be turned in profile to the person praying). Buildings and household items are facing the person praying. The entire composition is addressed to the one who stands in front of the icon. With all its content, the icon strives to establish a spiritual connection with the person praying, to “answer” him to his prayer. Since the person praying outside the icon serves as the center to which what is depicted on the icon is turned, the appearance of “reverse perspective” is created in the depiction of individual objects and buildings. This last term is far from accurate, since the medieval perspective was by no means preceded by any “correct”, “direct” perspective. But it conveys the external effect of depicting objects that, individually, actually reveal themselves in a way that is contrary to how it is customary in modern times: their parts that are most distant from the viewer are larger than those that are closer to him. Thus, the edge of the table closest to the viewer is usually shown smaller than the edge further away from it. The front part of the building is smaller than the back part.
(1) On the “contact” of the image with the viewer, see: Mathew G. Byzantine Aesthetics. London, 1963. P. 107.
(2) The concept of “reverse perspective” was introduced by O. Wolf. Cm.: . Die ungekehrte Perspektive und die Niedersicht. Leipzig, 1908. A. Grabar quite correctly, it seems to me, explains the “reverse perspective” from the philosophy of Plotinus, according to which the visual impression is created not in the soul, but where the object is located (Grabar A. Plotin et les origines de l "esthetique medieval. Cahiers Archeologiques, fasc. 1. Paris, 1945). A. Grabar believes that the medieval artist views the object as if it were in the place occupied by the depicted object. On perspective in Byzantine painting, see: Michelis P. A. Esthetique de l"art Byzantin. Paris, 1959. P. 179-203. The considerations we expressed about the inaccuracy of the term “reverse perspective” were received back in the first edition of this book (1967). confirmation in the very important detailed observations of B.V. Rauschenbach “Spatial constructions in ancient Russian painting” (Moscow, 1975), in particular in the special chapter of this book “Reverse perspective” (p. 50-80), the entire bibliography is also indicated there question.
Buildings, tables, chairs, beds are usually arranged in the image so that they seem to be directed towards the viewer, converging on it with their horizontal lines. Apart from people, the rest of the world of the icon is depicted a little from above, from a bird's eye view. Objects are simultaneously turned towards the person praying and, as it were, turned in front of him so that they seem to be shown slightly from above. This image from above is also emphasized by the fact that the horizon line in icons is often raised; it is for the most part higher than in modern painting. But there is no strict system in this kind of image. Each object is depicted independently of the other, from “its own,” as I said, point of view.
In illusionistic (“perspective”) painting, the picture plane is the screen onto which the world is projected. Perspective in painting destroys the materiality of the picture. This is like the “pre-invention” of the magic lantern. In “multipoint” perspective, on the contrary, the plane is material. That is why it is not on canvas, not on any other “two-dimensional” material, but on wood or a wall; that is why the plane of the image does not destroy the plane of the “thing”, “object” on which the image is placed.
Techniques for its reduction were of particular importance for the artistic perception of space in Ancient Rus'. Icons, fresco compositions, miniatures included huge spaces. In the miniatures of the Radziwill Chronicle, two cities or “the entire city, astronomical phenomena, the desert in general, two armies and the river separating them, etc., etc. are simultaneously depicted. The coverage of geographical limits is unusually wide - it is wide due to the fact that medieval man strives To embrace the world as fully and widely as possible, reducing it in one’s perception, creating a “model” of the world - a microcosm, as it were. And this is constant. A man of the Middle Ages always seems to sense the cardinal points - east, west, south and north; he feels his position relative to them. Each church had its altar facing the east. In his own house, in his own hut, he hung icons in the eastern corner - and this corner was called “red”. Even the dead were lowered into the grave facing the east. In accordance with the cardinal points, they were located in the world hell and paradise: heaven in the east, hell in the west. The system of church paintings corresponded to these ideas about the world. The church, in its paintings reproducing the structure of the universe and its history, was a microcosm. History was also located according to the countries of the world: in front, in the east, was the beginning of the world and paradise, behind, in the west, was the end of the world, its future, and the Last Judgment. The movement of history follows the movement of the sun: from east to west. Geography and history were in accordance with each other.
John, the Exarch of Bulgaria, writes about the state of a person standing in a church in prayer: “How did you soar your mind above the heavens and how you created this place that is magnificent, and sweet, and glorious, and bright, and rejoices with those saints, praising God , in those red places. And the shame (spectacle. - D.L.) is marvelous to see, and the merriment. Yes, what kind of mind is this soul in this mortal body, this brought temple has a cover over it, and above that there is air, and ether (ether - D.L.), and all the heavens. And there I think about the invisible God. How did you fly through the temple through the temple, and all that height, and the heavens, arriving before your eyes as quickly as possible..."
But the vastness of the image in a literary work, just as in the icon, required the compactness of the image, its “abbreviated™”. A writer, like an artist, sees the world in conditional relationships. This is how, for example, Christ and the universe are correlated in the words of Kirill of Turov “On Colored Week.” Cyril says about Christ: “Nowadays the way is to descend to Jerusalem, measuring heaven and earth with a span with your hand, to enter the church, inconceivably into heaven.” Kirill imagines Christ as in an icon - greater than the world around him.
Lotman has a significant article on geographical ideas in ancient Russian texts. We will not present its contents: the reader can familiarize himself with it. One of her conclusions is important for us: geographical and ethical ideas were also connected with each other. Apparently, this is explained by the fact that ideas about eternity were combined with ideas about immortality. The world therefore turned out to be populated and, I would even say, overpopulated with creatures and events (especially events of sacred history) of the past and future. In the microcosm of medieval man, the future (“the end of the world”) already exists - in the west, the sacred past still exists - in the east. Above is the sky and everything divine. These ideas about the world were reproduced in the design and paintings of temples. Standing in church, the worshiper saw the whole world around him: heaven, earth and their connections with each other. The church symbolized heaven on earth. To rise above the ordinary was the need of medieval man.
(1) The Six Days, compiled by John, Exarch of Bulgaria, according to the Charatean list of the Moscow Synodal Library of 1263. M., 1879. L. 199.
(2) Lotman Yu. M. On the concept of geographical space in Russian medieval texts // Works on sign systems. II. Tartu, 1965. pp. 210-216. (Scientific notes of Tartu University. Issue 181).
Let's turn to the literature.
Events in the chronicle, in the lives of saints, in historical stories are mainly movements in space: campaigns and moves covering vast geographical spaces, victories as a result of the transfer of troops and transitions as a result of the defeat of the army, moves to and from Russia of saints and shrines, arrivals as a result of the prince's invitation and his departures - as the equivalent of his expulsion. Occupying a position by a prince or abbot or bishop is thought of in the same way as coming and ascending to the table. When the abbot is deprived of his position, they say about him that he was “expelled” from the monastery. When a prince is appointed to reign, it is reported about him that he was “elevated” to the table. Death is also thought of as a transition to another world - to a “breed” (heaven) or hell, and birth - as an arrival into the world. Life is the manifestation of oneself in space.
This is a journey on a ship among the sea of life. When a person goes to a monastery, this “departure from the world” is presented mainly as a transition to immobility, to the cessation of all transitions, as a rejection of the eventful flow of life. The tonsure is associated with a vow to remain in a holy place until the grave. In those rare cases when the chronicle talks about a historical figure, what he thought, this is also presented in spatial forms: with the mind and thought they fly, rise to the clouds.
Thinking is compared to the flight of a bird. When Theodosius of Pechersky planned to go to Anthony of Pechersky, he rushed to his cave, “to be inspired by his mind.”
John, Exarch of Bulgaria, describes with admiration a person’s thought about the world: “In a small body there is a lofty thought, offending the whole earth and reaching higher than the heavens. Where was that mind brought? How it will come and pass from the body, the blood will pass, the air and clouds will pass away, the sun and the month, and all the belts, and the stars, etir and all the heavens. And in that hour he will find packs in his body. Will you take off like a wing? Which way will you arrive? “I can’t follow!”
(1) Six Days, compiled by John, Exarch of the Bulgarian... L. 196-196 vol.; in the same place about “soaring thoughts” on l. 199, 212, 216. Cf. in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: “...the thought will spread over the tree, like a gray fork over the ground, like a crazy eagle under the clouds,” “flying with the mind under the clouds.”
The plot of the story is very often the “arrival” and “arrival” of either the Varangian Shimon from Scandinavia (the beginning of the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon), or the craftsmen from Constantinople (the story about the construction of the Assumption Church in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery). When Vladimir Monomakh talks about his life, he talks mainly about his “paths,” hikes and hunts associated with long journeys. He strives to count all his travels and stays in different cities. Big life means big transitions.
Vladimir Monomakh begins to tell his life from the moment when his first “paths” began, from the age of 13: “First I went to Rostov, through Vyatiche, my father sent me, and he went to Kursk; and the 2nd packs went to Smolinsk with Headquarters with Gordyatich, that packs went to Berestia with Izyaslav, and then the ambassador of Smolinsk and Smolinsk died to Volodymer. That winter, after Berestia’s brother was burned on a brand, they burned Lyakhov’s brother, and the city was quiet. That died I will Pereyaslavl my father, and according to Velitsa the days from Pereyaslavl and Volodymer - on Suteisk to create peace with the Poles. From there, packs for the summer for Volodymyr again. That Svyatoslav sent me to Lyakhy; walking for the Glogows to the Czech Forest, walking into their lands for 4 months...” And this is how the whole life is described. He tries to mark each of his moves, he is proud of their speed and quantity: “And I-Shchernigov went to Kiev nestishdy (more than a hundred times - D.L.) I went to my father, during the day I moved until Vespers. And all the paths are 80 and 3 great, but I won’t remember the lesser ones.”
This describes not only the life of a prince, but also the life of a saint, unless he is a monk who has renounced life. “Blessed Boris... went off to the army and didn’t know it all. The warriors, as if they had heard blessed Boris, went howling and ran: they did not dare to stand before the blessed one. Then the blessed one arrived, having pacified the entire city, he turned back. I went to him, told him the father who had died, the brother of the eldest Svyatopolk, sitting on his father’s table.” During the campaign, Boris was killed by assassins sent by Svyatopolk. After death, his body is again, as it were, on a march: they are carrying it, bringing it to Vyshgorod. During the campaign, Gleb is killed and his body is “worn out,” “thrown down” in the desert “under treasure,” and taken “in a ship.” Their killer Svyatopolk dies in a swift flight - in the desert between “Chakha and Lyakhi”. The distances are enormous, the movements are rapid, and the speed of these movements increases even more because they are not described, they are spoken of without any details. The characters in the chronicle are transferred from place to place, and the reader forgets about the difficulties of these transitions - they are schematized, they have as few “elements” as in medieval images of trees, cities, and rivers.
(1) Laurentian Chronicle for 1097
(2) Lives of St. martyrs Boris and Gleb... P. 8.
The sense of “bird's eye view” from which the chronicler leads his narrative increases because, without any visible pragmatic connection, the chronicler often combines stories about various events in different places of the Russian land. He is constantly transferred from place to place.
It costs him nothing, after briefly reporting an event in Kyiv, to talk about an event in Smolensk or Vladimir in the next sentence. There are no distances for him. In any case, distances do not interfere with his narration.
“In the summer of 6619. I went to Svyatopolk, Volodymer, Davyd and the whole Russian land in Polovtsya, and I won, and took their children, and the city along the Danube, Surtov and Sharukan. At the same time, Podolia, Kiev, and Tsrnigov, and Smolnsk, and Novgorod burned down. That same summer, John, Bishop of Chernigov, reposed. Tomorrow, Mstislav goes to Ochela.
In the summer of 6620.
In the summer of 6621. Yaroslav went to Yatvyag, son of Svyatopolch; and the warriors will come, singing the daughter of Mstislavl. That same summer Svyatopolk passed away, and Volodymyr sat on the table in Kiev. That same summer, Davyd Igorevits died. Seven years ago, Mstislav defeated Bor Chyud. In the same summer, the church of St. Nicholas was founded in Novgorod. That same summer there was a fire, and on the same side the city of Kromnyi, from Lukin there was a fire.
In the summer of 6622. Svyatoslav Pereyaslavli passed away. That same summer, I installed Fectist as Bishop of Chernigov.
In the summer of 6623. The brothers of Vyshegorod met together: Volodimir, Olg, Davyd, and the entire Russian land, and consecrated the church on the stone of May in 1, and in 2 they transferred Boris and Gleb, indicted in 8. In the same summer there was a sign in the sun, as if they were dying . And in the fall Olga, the son of Svyatoslav, passed away on August 1. And in Novgorod, all the horses of Mstislav and his squad died. That same summer, the church of St. Theodore Tyrone was founded in Vogost, April 28.”
(1) First Novgorod Chronicle according to the Synodal list.
The enormous scope of space in the chronicle is in visible connection with the lack of a clear plot line in it. The presentation moves from one event to another, and at the same time from one geographical point to another. In this mixture of news from different geographical locations, not only a religious rise above reality appears with complete clarity, but also the consciousness of the unity of the Russian land, a unity that was almost lost in the political sphere at that time.
The Russian land of the chronicle appears before the reader as if in the form of a geographical map - medieval, of course, in which cities are sometimes replaced by their symbols - patronal churches, where Novgorod is spoken of as Sofia, Chernigov - as the Savior, etc. Rising above the mind events, the medieval scribe looks at the country as if from above. The entire Russian land fits within the author’s field of vision. Here, for example, is a description of the Russian land in the “Tale of Bygone Years”: “In the glade, a person lived in these mountains, there was a path from the Varangians to the Greeks and from the Greeks along the Dnieper, and the top of the Dnieper was dragged to Lovot, and along Lovot you went to Ylmer, the lake great, from which the lake Volkhov will flow and flow into the great lake Nevo, and from that lake the mouth will flow into the Varangian Sea. And along that sea go to Rome, and from Rome come along the same sea to Tsar-Gorod, and from Tsar-Gorod come to the Pont-Sea, into which the Dnieper River flows. The Dnieper flows from the Okovsky forest, and flows at noon, and the Dvina flows from the same forest, and goes at midnight and enters the Varangian Sea. From the same forest, the Volga flowed east, and seventy zhelez flowed into the Khvaliskoe Sea. In the same way, from Rus' you can go along the Volza to the Bolgars and to Khvalis, and on the east you can go to the lot of the Sims, and along the Dvina to the Varangians, from the Varangians to Rome, from Rome to the tribe of Khamov. And the Dnieper will flow into the Ponetsky Sea like a necklace, the hedgehog of the Russian sea, according to which Saint Ondrei, brother Petrov, taught, as he decided...” The “active” nature of this picture of the Russian land is significant. This is not a fixed map - it is a description of the future actions of historical figures, their “paths” and relationships. The main element of this description is river routes, hiking and trade routes, “event routes,” a description of the position of the Russian land among other countries of the world. This impression is strengthened by the fact that before this the chronicler gives a description of the world, talks about the settlement of peoples throughout the earth. The feeling of the whole world, its enormity, the Russian land as part of the universe does not leave the chronicler in further presentation.
It is no coincidence that the glory that surrounds the most significant princes and their deeds is imagined in a movement that embraces the entire Russian land and its neighbors. When Monomakh died, his “rumor spread throughout all countries,” and his son Mstislav “drove the Polovtsy beyond the Don and beyond the Volga, beyond the Yaik.”
(1) The Tale of Bygone Years. Ed. V. P. Adrianova-Peretz. T. 1. M.; L., 1950. S. 11-12.
(2) Ipatiev Chronicle under 1126
(3) Ibid., under 1140.
The description of the borders of the Russian land is the main element of the “Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”; the glory of Alexander Nevsky is spoken of in the life of Alexander Nevsky with a geographical scope: “His name was heard in all countries from the Sea of Varya to the Sea of Pontsk, to the country of Tivers, to the land Give the mountains of Havat to the great Rome, for fear of spreading his name before ten thousand and before a thousand thousand.”
The glory of the Tver prince Boris Alexandrovich passed “throughout the whole earth and to its end” (“Monk Thomas’s Praiseful Word about the Blessed Grand Duke Boris Alexandrovich”). Boris Alexandrovich is glorified as a builder of cities and monasteries. His ambassador, going to the Ecumenical Council, passed through the Novgorod land, and then the Pskov land, “and from there to the German land, and from there to the Kurv land, and from there to the Zhmotsky land, and from there to the Prussian land, and from there to the Slovenian land, and from there to Zhubut land, and from there to Morskaya land, and from there to Zhun land, and from there to Sveya land, and from there to Florenza.” Geography is given by listing countries, rivers, cities, border lands.
The ornate “Life of Stephen of Perm,” written by Epiphanius the Wise, uses the enumeration of the peoples living around the Perm land, and the enumeration of rivers as a kind of rhetorical decoration: “And these are the names of the places and countries, and lands, and foreigners living around Perm: Dvinyans, Ustyuzhane, Vilezhane, Vychezhane, Penezhane, Yuzhane, Syryane, Galicians, Vyatchanye, Lop, Korela, Ugra, Pechera, Gogulichi, Samoyed, Pertasy, Perm Velikaa, verb Chusovaya. There is one river, its name is Vym, and it goes around the entire land of Perm and down to Vychegda. Another river, named Vychegda, comes from the land of Perm and moves to the northern country, and with its mouth goes into the Dvina, the city of Ustyug, 50 miles away...”, etc.
(1) Mansikka V. Life of Alexander Nevsky. St. Petersburg, 1913. Appendix. P. 11.
(2) Monk Thomas A word of praise about the blessed Grand Duke Boris Alexandrovich. Message from N.P. Likhachev. St. Petersburg, 1908. P. 5.
(3) Life of Stefan of Perm... P. 9.
It is characteristic that in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” we encounter the same idea of space as in all other works of ancient Russian literature. The setting of “The Lay” is the entire Russian land from Novgorod in the north to Tmutorokan in the south, from the Volga in the east to the Ugric Mountains in the west.
The world of the “Word” is a large world of easy, uncomplicated action, a world of rapidly occurring events unfolding in a vast space. The heroes of The Lay move with fantastic speed and act almost effortlessly. The point of view dominates; from above (cf. “raised horizon” in Old Russian miniatures and icons). The author sees the Russian land as if from a great height, covers vast spaces with his mind's eye, as if “flying with his mind under the clouds”, “prowls through the fields to the mountains”.
In this lightest of worlds, as soon as the horses begin to neigh behind Sula, the glory of victory is already ringing in Kyiv; The trumpets will only begin to sound in Novgorod-Seversky when the banners are already standing in Putivl - the troops are ready to march. The girls sing on the Danube - their voices wind across the sea to Kyiv (the road from the Danube was sea); The author easily transfers the story from one place to another. The ringing of bells can be heard in the distance.
It reaches Kyiv from Polotsk. And even the sound of a stirrup can be heard in Chernigov from Tmutorokan. The speed with which the characters move is characteristic: huge animals and birds rush, jump, rush, and fly over; space; people scour the fields like wolves, are transported hanging on a cloud, soaring like eagles. As soon as you get on a horse, you can already see the Don - it definitely doesn’t exist; a multi-day and arduous trek across the waterless steppe. The prince can fly “from afar.” It can soar high, spreading in the winds. Its thunderstorms flow across the lands. Yaroslavna is compared to a bird and wants to fly over it. Warriors are as light as falcons and jackdaws. They are living shereshirs - arrows. The heroes not only move with ease, but effortlessly stab and slash enemies. They are strong like animals: aurochs, pardus, wolves. For Kurdish people there are no difficulties and no effort. They gallop with bows tensed (stretching a bow while racing is extremely difficult), their bows are open and their sabers are sharp. They rush around the field like gray wolves. They are familiar with the paths and yarugs. Vsevolod's warriors can crumble the Volga with oars and pour down the Don with their helmets.
People are not only strong like animals and light like birds, but all actions are performed in the “Word” without much physical effort, as if by themselves. The winds easily carry arrows. As soon as the fingers lay on the strings, they themselves begin to rumble with glory. In this atmosphere of ease of every action, the hyperbolic exploits of Vsevolod Bui Tur become possible.
The special dynamism of “The Word” is also associated with this “light” space. The author of the Lay prefers dynamic descriptions to static ones. It describes actions, not stationary states. Speaking about nature, he does not give landscapes, but describes the reaction of nature to events occurring among people. He describes the approaching thunderstorm, nature's help in Igor's escape, the behavior of birds and animals, nature's sadness or its joy. Nature in “The Lay” is not the background of events, not the scenery in which the action takes place - it is itself a character, something like an ancient chorus.
Nature reacts to events as a kind of “storyteller”, expresses the author’s opinion and the author’s emotions.
The “lightness” of space and environment in “The Lay” is not in every way similar to the “lightness” of a fairy tale. It is closer to the “lightness” of the icon. The space in the “Word” is artistically reduced, “grouped” and symbolized. People react to events in masses, nations act as a single whole: Germans, Venetians, Greeks and Moravians sing the glory of Svyatoslav and “repent” Prince Igor. As a single whole, like “clumps” of people on icons, the Gothic red maidens, Polovtsians, and squads act in the “Lay”. As in icons, the actions of princes are symbolic and emblematic. Igor disembarked from the golden saddle and moved into Koshchei’s saddle: this symbolizes his new state as a prisoner. On the river on Kayal, darkness covers the light - and this symbolizes defeat. Abstract concepts - grief, resentment, glory - are personified and materialized, acquiring the ability to act like people or living and inanimate nature. Resentment rises and enters like a maiden onto the land of Trojan, splashes with swan wings, lies awakens and is put to sleep, joy wilts, darkness fills the mind, it rises across the Russian land, strife is sown and grows, sadness flows, melancholy spreads.
The “light” space corresponds to the humanity of the surrounding nature. Everything in space is interconnected not only physically, but also emotionally and morally.
Nature sympathizes with the Russians. Animals, birds, plants, rivers, and atmospheric phenomena (thunderstorms, winds, clouds) take part in the destinies of Russian people. The sun shines for the prince, but the night groans for him, warning him of danger. Div shouts so that the Volga, Pomorie, Posulye, Surozh, Korsun and Tmutorokan can hear him. The grass droops, the tree bows down to the ground. Even the walls of cities respond to events.
This method of characterizing events and expressing the author’s attitude towards them is extremely characteristic of “The Lay”, giving it emotionality and at the same time a special convincingness of this emotionality. It’s like an appeal to the environment: to people, nations, to nature itself.
Emotionality, as if not the author’s, but objectively existing in the environment, is “diluted” in space, flows in it.
Thus, emotionality does not come from the author; the “emotional perspective” is multifaceted, as in icons. Emotionality seems to be inherent in the events themselves and in nature itself. She saturates everything around her. The author acts as an exponent of what is objectively existing outside his emotionality.
All this is not in the fairy tale, but much is suggested in the Lay by the chronicle and other works of ancient Russian literature.
In the 16th and 17th centuries. the perception of geographical spaces is gradually changing. Hikes and transitions are filled with travel impressions and events. Avvakum's ordeals are still associated with his travels, but the eventful side of life is no longer reduced to them. Avvakum no longer lists his journeys like Monomakh, he describes them. Avvakum's movements throughout Siberia and Russia are filled with a rich content of emotional experiences, meetings, and spiritual struggle. Avvakum compares his life to a ship that he saw in a dream, but his life is not limited to the movements of this ship in space. Avvakum's life would have been no less eventful even if he had not gone anywhere, remained in Moscow or some other point on the Russian land. He looks at the world not from a height above the clouds, but from the height of ordinary human growth: the world of Habakkuk is human in its spatial forms.
Filled with details, literary works of the 17th century. they no longer view events from the height of a religious ascent above life. In reality, small and large events, everyday life, and emotional movements become distinguishable. In literature, the individual character of not only individual people appears, regardless of their position in the hierarchy of feudal society, but also the individual character of individual localities and nature.
The artistic soaring of the authors above reality becomes slower, lower and more alert to the details of life. The artistic space ceases to be “light”, “superconducting”.
We have outlined only some questions of studying the spatial “model of the world”. There are much more of them, and these “models” need to be studied in their changes.
WHY STUDY THE POETICS OF ANCIENT RUSSIAN LITERATURE?
INSTEAD OF CONCLUSION
Perhaps the question of why it is necessary to study the poetics of ancient Russian literature, which is so far from modernity, should have been posed at the beginning of the book, and not at its end. But the fact is that at the beginning of the book the answer to it would be too long... Moreover, it leads us to another, much more complex and responsible question - about the meaning of the aesthetic development of past cultures in general.
The aesthetic study of monuments of ancient art (including literature) seems to me extremely important and relevant. We must put the cultural monuments of the past at the service of the future. The values of the past must become active participants in the life of the present, our comrades-in-arms. Issues of interpretation of cultures and individual civilizations are now attracting the attention of historians and philosophers, art historians and literary scholars all over the world.
But first, about some features of cultural development.
The history of culture stands out sharply in the general historical development of mankind. It constitutes a special, red thread in a retinue of many threads of world history. In contrast to the general movement of “civil” history, the process of cultural history is not only a process of change, but also a process of preserving the past, a process of discovering new things in the old, and accumulating cultural values. The best works of culture, and in particular the best works of literature, continue to participate in the life of humanity. The writers of the past, insofar as they continue to be read and continue to have an impact, are our contemporaries. And we need more of these good contemporaries of ours. In humanistic works, humane in the highest sense of the word, culture does not analize aging.
The continuity of cultural values is their most important property. “History is nothing more,” wrote F. Engels, “as a successive succession of individual generations, each of which uses materials, capital, productive forces transferred to it by all previous generations...” As our historical knowledge develops and deepens, and our ability to appreciate the culture of the past, humanity gains the opportunity to rely on the entire cultural heritage. F. Engels wrote that without the flourishing of culture in a slave-owning society, “all of our economic, political and intellectual development...” would have been impossible. All forms of social consciousness, ultimately determined by the material basis of culture, at the same time directly depend on the mental material accumulated by previous generations and on the mutual influence of different cultures on each other.
(1) Marx K., Engels F. Soch. Ed. 2nd. T. 3. pp. 44-45.
(2) Engels F. Anti-Dühring // Ibid. T. 20. pp. 185-186.
That is why an objective study of the history of literature, painting, architecture, and music is just as important as the preservation of cultural monuments itself. At the same time, we should not suffer from myopia in the selection of “living” cultural monuments. Expanding our horizons, and in particular aesthetic ones, is the great task of cultural historians of various specialties. The more intelligent a person is, the. The more he is able to understand and assimilate, the wider his horizons and ability to understand and accept cultural values - past and present. The less broad a person’s cultural horizons are, the more intolerant he is of everything new and “too old,” the more he is at the mercy of his usual ideas, the more slanted, narrow and suspicious he is. One of the most important evidence of cultural progress is the development of understanding of the cultural values of the past and the cultures of other nationalities, the ability to preserve, accumulate, and perceive their aesthetic value. The entire history of the development of human culture is a history not only of the creation of new ones, but also of the discovery of old cultural values. And this development of understanding of other cultures to a certain extent merges with the history of humanism. This is the development of tolerance in the good sense of the word, peacefulness, respect for man and other peoples.
Let me remind you of some facts. The Middle Ages were devoid of a sense of history; they did not understand antiquity or understood it only in their own aspect. If the Middle Ages turned to history, they dressed it up in their own contemporary clothes. The greatness of the Renaissance was associated with the discovery of the value of ancient culture, primarily its aesthetic value. The discovery of the new in the old accompanied the movement forward and the development of humanism. Creators of true value are always fair to their predecessors. One of the most prominent revivalists of Italian sculpture and its reformers, Nicolo Pisano, was in love with antiquity. Sensitivity to the artistic achievements of his predecessors characterizes Giotto, whose name is associated with the largest innovative revolution in painting of the 13th-14th centuries. It is known that subsequently, in the 18th century, the expansion in the aesthetic understanding of ancient art, associated with the activities of Winckelmann and Lessing, led not only to the collection and preservation of ancient monuments, but also to a revolution in contemporary art and to a new development of humanism and tolerance.
The movement of world culture towards a gradual expansion of understanding of the cultures of the past and foreign cultures in order to enrich the cultural present has not been uniform and easy. It met resistance and often retreated back. Early Christianity hated antiquity. Ancient sculpture was associated with paganism. It was reminiscent of the idolatry and immoral cult of the Roman emperors. The early Christians, harboring a superstitious fear of pagan gods, smashed ancient statues, justifying their barbarity by the fact that old men and women continued to worship them. The equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius survived only because it was mistaken for a statue of the holy Christian emperor Constantine the Great. How many heads of the best ancient statues were knocked off for these “ideological” reasons, how many works of literature were lost forever. The new religion, taking the place of the old one, always showed extreme intolerance towards the monuments of the old culture and carried out destructive activities. The iconoclastic movement that developed within the old Christianity also destroyed thousands of masterpieces of the old art of Byzantine painting.
In Rome, on the Capitol, where the marble temples of Jupiter and Juno were located, a quarry was built in the Middle Ages, and only the great Raphael, an innovative artist, became the first to excavate there. The crusaders, who imagined themselves to be radical reformers of life, destroyed the Halicarnassus mausoleum and built a castle from its stones to enslave the conquered country.
In the history of world culture, the cultural achievements of the 19th century are especially significant. The discovery of the richness of the spiritual life of past eras was one of the greatest achievements of the entire world culture (great credit for this belongs, in particular, to Hegel). The establishment of the common development of all mankind, the equality of the cultures of the past - all these are achievements of the 19th century, evidence of its deep historicism. The 19th century displaced ideas about the superiority of European culture over all other cultures. Of course, in the 19th century. much was still unclear, there was an internal struggle between different points of view, and the historicism of the 19th century. won not only victories, but in the 20th century. It even became possible for the revival of misanthropy and the emergence of fascism.
The humanities are now becoming more and more important in the development of world culture.
It has become banal to say that in the 20th century. distances have been reduced due to technological developments. But it may not be a truism to say that they have been further reduced between people, countries, cultures and eras thanks to the development of the humanities. This is why the humanities are becoming an important moral force in the development of humanity.
We know how humanity suffered from the fascists’ desire to exterminate foreign cultures, from the reluctance to recognize them as having any value. The destruction of cultural monuments of non-European civilizations reached terrible force during the era of colonialism. The history of world culture, even in its most external manifestations, has been devastated by the system of colonialism. The “European neighborhoods” of Hong Kong and other cities have nothing to do with the history of their countries. These are foreign bodies, reflecting the reluctance of their builders to take into account the culture of the people, their history and testifying to the desire to assert the superiority of the dominant nation over the oppressed - to establish the so-called “international” American style over the whole variety of local architectural styles and cultural traditions.
Now world science faces a huge task - to study, understand and preserve the cultural monuments of the peoples of Africa and Asia, to introduce their culture into the culture of modernity.
(1) This is well stated in the excellent article by N. I. Conrad “Notes on the meaning of history” // Bulletin of the History of World Culture. 1961, No. 2. See: Same. West and East. M., 1966.
The same task faces the cultural history of our own country's past.
What is the situation with the study of the cultural heritage of Russia during the first seven or eight centuries of its existence? The ability to appreciate and understand the monuments of the Russian past came especially late. In “Notes on Moscow Landmarks,” none other than Karamzin, speaking about the village of Kolomenskoye, does not even mention the now world-famous Church of the Ascension. He did not understand the aesthetic value of St. Basil's Cathedral and indifferently noted the destruction of the ancient monuments of Moscow. V. I. Grigorovich in 1826 in the article “On the State of the Arts in Russia” wrote: “Let those who hunt for antiquity agree with the praises attributed to some Rublev ... and other painters who lived long before the reign of Peter: I have little confidence in these praises ... art was introduced into Russia by Peter the Great.” The 19th century did not recognize the painting of Ancient Rus'. The artists of Ancient Rus' were called “bogomaz”. Only at the beginning of the 20th century, mainly thanks to the activities of I. Grabar and his circle, was the value of ancient Russian art discovered, which is now internationally recognized and has a fruitful, innovative influence on the art of many artists around the world. Now reproductions of Rublev's icons are sold in Western Europe next to reproductions of Raphael's works. Editions dedicated to masterpieces of world painting open with reproductions of Rublev’s “Trinity.”
However, having recognized the icon and partly the architecture of Ancient Rus', the Western world has not yet discovered anything else in the culture of Ancient Rus'. The culture of Ancient Rus' is therefore represented only in the forms of “silent” arts, and it is spoken of as a culture of “intellectual silence”.
(1) Northern flowers for 1826. St. Petersburg, 1826. pp. 9-11.
(2) See about this in the article by prof. James Billington “Images of Moscow” (Slavic Review. 1962, no. 3). The culture of Ancient Rus', argues J. Billington, was not continued in the culture of new Russia and turned out to be alien and incomprehensible in subsequent post-Petrine Russia, which, in particular, supposedly explains the neglect in which the monuments of its culture are located.
From here it is clear that revealing the aesthetic value of the monuments of verbal art of Ancient Rus', art that cannot in any way be recognized as “silent”, is a task of very great importance. Attempts to reveal the aesthetic value of Old Russian literature were made by F. I. Buslaev, A. S. Orlov, N. K. Gudziy, V. P. Adrianova-Peretz, I. P. Eremin, who made a huge contribution to the understanding of Old Russian literature as art. But much remains to be done in the study of her poetics.
This study must begin with the discovery of its aesthetic originality. It is necessary to start with what distinguishes ancient Russian literature from modern literature. It is necessary to dwell primarily on the differences, but scientific study must be based on the conviction of the knowability of the cultural values of the past, on the conviction of the possibility of their aesthetic development. In this aesthetic development of ancient Russian literature, of course, the study of poetics should play a leading role, but in no case should it be limited to it. Artistic analysis inevitably involves an analysis of all aspects of literature: the totality of its aspirations, its connections with reality. Any work taken from its historical surroundings loses its aesthetic value, just like a brick taken from the building of a great architect. A monument of the past, in order to become truly understood in its artistic essence, must be explained in detail; all its seemingly “non-artistic” sides. An aesthetic analysis of a literary monument of the past must be based on a huge amount of real commentary. You need to know the era, the biographies of writers, the art of that time, the laws of the historical-literary process, the literary language in its relationship to the non-literary, etc., etc. Therefore, the study of poetics should be based on the study of the historical-literary process in all its complexity and in all its diverse connections with reality. A specialist in the poetics of ancient Russian literature must at the same time be a literary historian, an expert on texts and the manuscript heritage in general.
Penetrating into the aesthetic consciousness of other eras and other nations, we must first of all study their differences among themselves and their differences from our aesthetic consciousness, from the aesthetic consciousness of modern times. We must first of all study the peculiar and unique, the “individuality” of peoples and past eras. It is in the diversity of aesthetic consciousnesses that they are especially instructive, their richness and the guarantee of the possibility of their use in modern artistic creativity. To approach old art and the art of other countries only from the point of view of modern aesthetic norms, to look only for what is close to ourselves, means to extremely impoverish the aesthetic heritage.
The human mind has a remarkable ability to penetrate and understand the minds of other people, despite all their differences. Moreover, consciousness also cognizes that which is not consciousness, which is different in nature. The unique is not therefore incomprehensible. In this penetration into someone else's consciousness is the enrichment of the knower, his movement forward, growth, development. The more human consciousness masters other cultures, the richer it is, the more flexible it is and the more effective it is.
But the ability to understand someone else’s is not an indiscriminate acceptance of this alien. Selection of the best constantly accompanies the expansion of understanding of other cultures. Despite all the differences between aesthetic consciousnesses, there is something in common between them that makes their evaluation and use possible. But the discovery of this commonality is possible only through the preliminary establishment of differences.
Nowadays, the study of ancient Russian literature is becoming more and more necessary. We are gradually beginning to realize that the solution to many problems in the history of Russian literature of its classical period is impossible without involving the history of ancient Russian literature.
Peter's reforms marked a transition from the old to the new, and not a break, the emergence of new qualities under the influence of trends hidden in the previous period - this is clear, just as it is clear that the development of Russian literature from the 10th century. and to this day it represents a single whole, no matter what turns may be encountered along the path of this development. We can understand and appreciate the significance of the literature of our days only on the scale of the entire thousand-year development of Russian literature. None of the questions raised in this book can be considered definitively resolved. The purpose of this book is to outline the paths of study, and not to close them to the movement of scientific thought. The more controversy this book generates, the better. But there is no reason to doubt that there is a need to argue, just as there is no reason to doubt that the study of antiquity should be conducted in the interests of modernity. 1979