Bakhtin questions of literature and aesthetics 1975. Book: M

The problem of a particular cultural area in its entirety - knowledge, morality, art - can be understood as a problem of the boundaries of this area.

This or that possible or actually existing creative point of view becomes convincingly necessary and necessary only in correlation with other creative points of view: only where a significant need for it, in its creative originality, is born at their boundaries, does it find its solid justification and justification; from within itself, outside of its participation in the unity of culture, it is only holofactual, and its originality can appear simply as arbitrariness and caprice.

One should not, however, imagine the area of ​​culture as a kind of spatial whole that has boundaries, but also has an internal territory. The cultural region has no internal territory: it is all located on the borders, the borders pass everywhere, through every moment of it, the systematic unity of culture goes into the atoms of cultural life, just as the sun is reflected in every drop of it. Every cultural act essentially lives on boundaries: this is its seriousness and significance; distracted from boundaries, he loses ground, becomes empty, arrogant, degenerates and dies.

In this sense we can talk about specific systematicity each cultural phenomenon, each individual cultural act, about it autonomous participation - or participatory autonomy.

Only in this concrete systematicity, that is, in direct reference and orientation in the unity of culture, does a phenomenon cease to be simply a present, naked fact, acquires significance, meaning, becomes, as it were, a kind of monad, reflecting everything in itself and reflected in everything.

In fact: not a single cultural creative act deals with matter that is completely indifferent to value, completely random and disordered - matter and chaos are generally relative concepts - but always with something already valued and somehow ordered, in relation to Why should he now responsibly take his value position. Thus, the cognitive act finds reality already processed in the concepts of pre-scientific thinking, but, most importantly, already assessed and ordered by ethical action: practical, everyday, social, political; finds it affirmed religiously and, finally, the cognitive act proceeds from the aesthetically ordered image of the object, from the vision of the object.

That which is before knowledge is, therefore, not res nullius [nobody's thing.], but the reality of ethical action in all its varieties and the reality of aesthetic vision. And the cognitive act everywhere must occupy an essential position in relation to this reality, which should not, of course, be a random collision, but can and should be systematically substantiated from the essence of knowledge and other areas.<...>(1, pp. 24-26)

Each cultural phenomenon is concretely systematic, that is, it occupies some significant position in relation to the reality of other cultural attitudes predetermined by it and thereby participates in the given unity of culture. But these relationships of cognition, action and artistic creativity to the reality they find are profoundly different.

Cognition does not accept ethical evaluation and aesthetic formslaziness of being, repels from them; in this sense, cognition, as it were, does not predetermine anything, starts from the beginning, or - more precisely - the moment of predestination of something significant apart from cognition remains outside it, moves into the realm of historical, psychological, personal biographical or other factuality, random from the point of view from the perspective of knowledge itself.

Pre-found evaluation and aesthetic design are not included within cognition. Reality, entering science, throws off all valuable clothing in order to become the naked and pure reality of knowledge, where only the unity of truth is sovereign. Positive mutual determination in the unity of culture takes place only in relation to knowledge as a whole in systematic philosophy.

There is a single world of science, a single reality of knowledge, outside of which nothing can become cognitively significant; this reality of knowledge is not complete and is always open. Everything that exists for cognition is determined by it itself and - in the task - is determined in all respects: everything that persists, as if resisting cognition in an object, has not yet been recognized in it, persists only for cognition, as a purely cognitive problem, and not at all as something extra-cognitively valuable - something good, holy, useful, etc. - knowledge does not know such value resistance.

Of course, the world of ethical action and world beauty themselves become an object of knowledge, but they are by no means contribute at the same time, their assessments and their self-legitimacy in knowledge; in order to become cognitively significant, they must completely submit to its unity and regularity.

Thus, the cognitive act has a purely negative attitude towards the pre-found reality of the act and aesthetic vision, thereby realizing the purity of its originality.

This basic character of cognition determines its following features: the cognitive act takes into account only the work of cognition that precedes it and does not take any independent position in relation to the reality of the act and artistic creativity in their historical certainty; moreover: the isolation, singularity of the cognitive act and its expression in a separate, individual scientific work are not significant from the point of view of knowledge itself: in the world of knowledge there are fundamentally no separate acts andindividual works; it is necessary to introduce other points of view in order to find an approach and make significant the historical singularity of the cognitive act and the isolation, completeness and individuality of a scientific work, meanwhile - as we will see this later - the world of art must essentially fall apart into separate, self-sufficient, individual wholes - works of art, each of which takes an independent position in relation to the reality of cognition and action; this creates the immanent historicity of the work of art.

The ethical act has a somewhat different attitude towards the pre-found reality of cognition and aesthetic vision. This attitude is usually expressed as the relation of obligation to reality; We do not intend to go into consideration of this problem here; we will only note that here the attitude is negative, although different than in the field of cognition. (1)<...>(1, pp. 27-29)

(1) The relation of ought to being is conflictual character. From within the world of knowledge itself, no conflict is possible, because in it it is impossible to encounter anything value-alien. It is not science that can enter into conflict, but a scientist, and not ex cathedra [from the height of the pulpit, authoritatively. - Ed.], but as an ethical subject for whom knowledge is act of knowing. The gap between ought and being has significance only from within ought, that is, for ethical incoming knowledge, exists only for it.

Towards the philosophical foundations of the humanities

Knowledge of a thing and knowledge of a person. They must be characterized as limits: a pure dead thing that has only an appearance, exists only for another and can be revealed completely and completely by the unilateral act of this other (the knower). Such a thing, devoid of its own inalienable and unconsumable interior, can only be an object of practical interest. The second limit is the thought of God in the presence of God, dialogue, questioning, prayer. The need for free self-revelation of the individual. There's an inner core here which it cannot be absorbed, consumed, where a distance is always maintained, in relation to which only pure unselfishness is possible; opening up for another, she always remains for herself. The question is asked here by the knower not to himself or to a third person in the presence of a dead thing, but to the knower himself. The meaning of sympathy and love. The criterion here is not the accuracy of knowledge, but the depth of penetration. Here knowledge is aimed at the individual. This is the area of ​​discoveries, revelations, learnings, messages. Both the secret and the lie (not the mistake) are important here. Immodesty and insult, etc. are important here. A dead thing does not exist in the limit, it is an abstract element (conditional); every whole (nature and all its phenomena related to the whole) is to some extent personal.

The complexity of the two-way act of cognition-penetration. The activity of the knower and the activity of the discoverer (dialogue). The ability to know and the ability to express oneself. We are dealing here with expression and cognition (understanding) of expression. Complex dialectic of external and internal. A person has not only an environment and surroundings, but also his own horizons. Interactionthe horizon of the knower and the horizon of the known. Elements expressions(body, not as a dead thing, face, eyes, etc.), in them two consciousnesses (me and the other) are crossed and combined, here I exist for the other and with the help of the other. The history of specific self-awareness and the role of the other (loving) in it. Reflection of oneself in another. Death for yourself and for others. Memory.

Specific problems of literary and art criticism related to the relationship between environment and outlook, self and other; problem zones; theatrical expression. Penetration into another (merging with him) and maintaining distance (one's place), providing an excess of cognition. Expression of personality and expression of groups, peoples, eras, history itself, with their horizons and environment. It is not a matter of individual consciousness of expression and understanding. Self-revelationand its forms of expression of peoples, history, nature, etc.

Subject of humanities - expressive and speaking being. This being never coincides with itself and therefore is inexhaustible in its meaning and significance. Mask, ramp, stage, ideal space, etc., as different forms of expression of the representativeness of being (and not singularities and thingness) and selflessness of attitude towards it. Accuracy, its meaning and limits. Accuracy presupposes the coincidence of a thing with itself. Accuracy is necessary for practical mastery. Self-revealing being cannot be forced or bound. It is free and therefore does not provide any guarantees. Therefore, here knowledge cannot give us anything and guarantee, for example, immortality, as a precisely established fact that has practical significance for our lives. “Believe what your heart says, there are no guarantees from heaven.” The being of the whole, the being of the human soul, which reveals itself freely to our act of cognition, cannot be bound by this act in any essential moment. It is impossible to transfer the categories of material knowledge to them (the sin of metaphysics). The soul freely tells us about its immortality, but prove it is not allowed. Sciences are looking for that which remains unchanged despite all changes (things or functions). The formation of being is a free formation. This freedom can be shared, but it cannot be bound by an act of cognition (of things). Specific problems of various literary forms: autobiographies, monuments (self-reflection in the minds of enemies and in the minds of descendants), etc.

Problem memory acquires one of the central places in philosophy. Some element of freedom is inherent in every expression. An absolutely involuntary expression ceases to be such. But the existence of expression is two-sided: it is realized only in the interaction of two consciousnesses (I and the other); interpenetration while maintaining distance; this is the meeting field of two consciousnesses, the zone of their internal contact.

Philosophical and ethical differences between internal self-contemplation (self for myself) and contemplation of oneself in the mirror (self for another, from the point of view of another). It is possible to contemplate and understand my appearance from a pure point of view I am for myself.

You cannot change the actual real side of the past, but the semantic, expressive, speaking side can be changed, because it is not complete and does not coincide with itself (it is free). The role of memory in this eternal transformation of the past. Cognition is an understanding of the past in its incompleteness (in its discrepancy with itself). A moment of fearlessness in knowledge. Fear and intimidation in expression (seriousness), in self-disclosure, in revelation, in the word. Corresponding moment of humility of the knower; awe.

The problem of understanding. Understanding as vision sense, but not phenomenal, but a vision of the living meaning of experience and expression, a vision of an internally meaningful, so to speak, self-conscious phenomenon.

Expression as meaningful matter or materialized meaning, an element of freedom that permeates necessity. External and internal flesh for mercy. Different layers of the soul are amenable to externalization to varying degrees. The non-external artistic core of the soul (I am for myself). Counter activity of a cognizable object.

Philosophy of expression. Expression as a meeting of two consciousnesses.

Dialogic understanding.

The shell of the soul is devoid of self-worth and is given over to the mercy and mercy of another. The ineffable core of the soul can only be reflected in the mirror of absolute compassion.<...>(2, pp. 7-9)

<Диалог и история>

Exact sciences are a monologue form of knowledge: the intellect contemplates thing and speaks out about it. There is only one subject here - the knower (contemplating) and the speaker (expressed). He is opposed only a silent thing. Any object of knowledge (including a person) can be perceived and known as a thing. But the subject as such cannot be perceived and studied as a thing, for as a subject it cannot, while remaining a subject, become mute; therefore, its knowledge can only be dialogical. Dilthey and the problem of understanding. Different types activity cognitive activity. The activity of the one who knows the silent thing and the activity of the one who knows another subject, that is dialogical activity of the knower. Dialogical activity of the cognizable subject and its degree

neither. Thing and person (subject) as limits knowledge. Degrees of thingness and personality. Eventfulness of dialogical cognition. Meeting. Evaluation as a necessary moment of dialogical cognition.

Humanities - sciences of the spirit - philological sciences (as a part and at the same time common to all of them - the word). (3, p. 363)

Place of philosophy. It begins where exact science ends and foreign science begins. It can be defined as the metalanguage of all sciences (and all types of cognition and consciousness).

Understanding as correlation with other texts and rethinking in a new context (in mine, in modern, in the future). Anticipated future context: the feeling that I am taking a new step (moved from place). Stages of the dialogical movement understanding: the starting point is the given text, the movement back is past contexts, the movement forward is the anticipation (and beginning) of the future context.

Dialectics was born from dialogue to return again to dialogue at the highest level (dialogue personalities).

Monologism of Hegel's “Phenomenology of Spirit”.

Dilthey's monologue not completely overcome.

Thought about the world and thought in the world. A thought striving to embrace the world, and a thought that feels itself in the world (as a part of it). An event in the world and involvement in it. The world as an event (and not as being in its readiness.

A text lives only in contact with another text (context). Only at the point of this contact of texts does a light flash, illuminating both back and forth, introducing the given text to the dialogue. We emphasize that this contact is a dialogical contact between texts (statements), and not a mechanical contact of “oppositions”, possible only within one text (but not text and contexts) between abstract elements (signs inside the text) and is necessary only at the first stage of understanding (understanding the meaning, not the meaning). Behind this contact is a contact of personalities, not things (in the limit). If we turn the dialogue into one continuous text, that is, we erase the sections of voices (changes of speaking subjects), which is possible in the extreme (Hegel’s monological dialectic), then the deep (infinite) meaning will disappear (we will hit the bottom, hit a dead end).

Complete, ultimate reification would inevitably lead to the disappearance of infinity and bottomlessness of meaning (all meaning).

A thought that, like a fish in an aquarium, hits the bottom and the walls and cannot swim further and deeper. Dogmatic thoughts.

Thought knows only conditional points; the thought washes away all the points made earlier.

Illumination of the text not by other texts (contexts), but not by extra-textual material (materialized) reality. This usually occurs with biographical, vulgar sociological and causal explanations (in the spirit of the natural sciences), as well as with depersonalized historicity (“history without names”).<...>(3, pp. 364-365)

The process of gradual oblivion of authors - bearers of other people's words. Other people's words become anonymous and are appropriated (in a revised form, of course); consciousness monologizes. The initial dialogical relationships to other people's words are also forgotten: they are, as it were, absorbed, absorbed into the mastered words of others (passing through the stage of “one's own or another's words”). The creative consciousness, monologizing, is replenished with anonymous people. This process of monologization is very important. Then the monologized consciousness as one and unified whole enters into a new dialogue (with new external alien voices). Monologized creative consciousness often unites and personifies other people’s words, other people’s voices that have become anonymous, into special symbols: “the voice of life itself,” “the voice of nature,” “the voice of the people,” “the voice of God,” etc. Role in this process an authoritative word, which usually does not lose its bearer and does not become anonymous.

The desire to reify non-verbal anonymous contexts (to surround oneself with non-verbal life). I alone act as a creative speaking personality, everything else outside of me is just material conditions, like atranks, challenging and defining my word. I don't talk to them - I reI'm agitating on them mechanically, how the thing reacts to external irritations. Such speech phenomena as orders, demands, commandments, prohibitions, promises (promises), threats, praise, blame, abuse, curses, blessings, etc., constitute a very important part of non-contextual reality. All of them are associated with a pronounced intonation, capable of transferring to any words and expressions that do not have the direct meaning of an order, threat, etc.

Important tone, detached from the sound and semantic elements of the word (and other signs). They define complex key of our consciousness, serving as an emotional-value context in our understanding (full, semantic understanding) of the text we read (or hear), as well as in a more complicated form during the creative creation (generation) of the text.

The challenge is to real the environment, which mechanically influences the personality, is forced to speak, that is, to reveal the potential word and tone in it, to transform it into the semantic context of the thinking, speaking and acting (including creating) personality.<...> (3,

Humboldt's main question: the plurality of languages ​​(the premise and background of the problem is the unity of the human race). This is in the field of languages ​​and their formal structures (phonetic and grammatical). In the field same as speech(within one and any language) the problem of one’s own and someone else’s word arises.

Reification and personification. The difference between reification and “alienation”.

Your own and someone else's word. Understanding as turning someone else into "my ownjoe." The principle of non-locality. Complex relationships between the understood and the understanding subjects, the created and the understanding and creatively updating chronotopes. The importance of getting to, going deep into, the creative core of the personality (at the creative core the personality continues to live, that is, immortal).

Precision and depth in the humanities. The limit of accuracy in its scientific sciences is identification (a). In the humanities, accuracy is overcoming the alienness of someone else's without turning it into something purely one's own (substitutions of all kinds, modernization, failure to recognize someone else's, etc.). (3, p. 371) My attitude to structuralism. Against being locked into the text. Mechanical categories: “opposition”, “change of codes” (the multi-style nature of “Eugene Onegin” in Lotman’s interpretation and in my interpretation). Consistent formalization and depersonalization: all relationships are logical (in the broad sense of the word) in nature. I hear it in everything vote and the dialogical relationship between them. I also perceive the principle of complementarity dialogically. High marks for structuralism. The problem of “precision” and “depth”. Penetration depth in an object(material) and depth of penetration into subject(personalism).

In structuralism there is only one subject - the subject of the researcher himself. Things turn into concepts(varying degrees of abstraction); the subject can never become a concept (he himself speaks and answers). The meaning is personalistic: it always contains a question, an appeal and an anticipation of the answer, it always contains two people (as a dialogic minimum). This personalism is not psychological, but semantic.

There is neither the first nor the last word and there are no boundaries to the dialogical context (it goes into the limitless past and into the limitless future). Even past, that is, meanings born in the dialogue of past centuries can never be stable (once and for all completed, finished) - they will always change (updating) in the process of subsequent, future development of the dialogue. At any moment in the development of the dialogue, there are huge, unlimited masses of forgotten meanings, but at certain moments in the further development of the dialogue, as it progresses, they will be remembered again and come to life in an updated (in a new context) form. Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its own celebration of rebirth. Problem big time.(3, pp. 372-373)

Bakhtin M.

Questions of literature and aesthetics. Research from different years. M., “Art. lit.", 1975

The book combines the works of M.M. Bakhtin of different years, mostly published for the first time. The works examine the problems of genre theory, primarily the theory of the novel, the study of the literary word; separate works devoted to the word in the novel, artistic time and space in the novel, comparison of the epic and the novel.

The research is conducted on the widest possible material of world literature.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This publication contains theoretical and literary studies of the outstanding philologist Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895 - 1975). These works were written by M. M. Bakhtin in different years. Some of them have been published recently in the journal “Questions of Literature” and in scientific publications; others are being published for the first time (only individual chapters from them have been published).

Preparing this book for printing was the last work of M. M. Bakhtin.

The book opens with a general theoretical work, “The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Artistic Creativity,” written in 1924 at the request of the then famous magazine “Russian Contemporary,” one of whose leaders was A. M. Gorky. The work did not see the light of day, as the magazine soon ceased to exist. When assessing this long-standing work of M. M. Bakhtin, it is necessary to remember that it was created during a period of broad and heated discussion around general methodological problems of literary criticism. The work of a young scientist -

a kind of replica in this methodological dialogue, a significant and original replica, but due to circumstances “dropped out” of the dialogue of that time. To create a more complete and objective picture of the scientific life of that time, the publication of this article by M. M. Bakhtin will be of significant importance.

In discussing the problems of the content and form of a literary work, M. M. Bakhtin took a deeply independent and scientifically fruitful position. His concept, as the published work shows, was defined in polemical repulsion from the direction in poetics that was represented by the “formal school”; In relation to this direction, the work is deeply critical. The time at which the work was written, of course, affects the terminology used by the author; but at the same time, using some of the terms used in those years, the author fills them with his original content. In general, the work “The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Artistic Creativity” retains theoretical relevance for the present time (part of this work was published in the publication of the Institute of World Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences “Context 1973”, M., “Nauka”, 1974).

Other works published in this book are focused on the study of two main problems that were the subject of special attention of M. M. Bakhtin throughout his entire creative career. This is problem novel as the most specific and leading genre of literature of modern times and the problem of literary words, especially the artistic and prosaic word. The scientific interests of M. M. Bakhtin were focused on the intersection of these two problems.

The great work “The Word in the Novel” was written in 1934 - 1935. (two chapters from this work entitled “The Word in Poetry and Prose” were published in “Questions of Literature”, 1972, No. 6). The author later returns to this topic in the report “The Word in the Novel”, read on October 14, 1940 at the Institute of World Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences (this report was published in the form of two articles - in “Questions of Literature”, 1965, No. 8, and in the collection “Russian and Foreign Literature”, Saransk, 1967; in this edition this work is entitled by the author “From the Prehistory of the Romance Word”). Somewhat later (March 24, 1941), also at IMLI, M. M. Bakhtin read the second report - “The Novel as a Literary Genre” (published in Voprosy Literatury, 1970, No. 1, under the title “Epic and Novel”; under this the title is also printed in this edition).

The theory of the novel is studied in the works of M. M. Bakhtin from different sides and in various aspects. Special study author

devoted to the problem of time and space in the novel. This is a study that the author has approved for publication in this edition. The title “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel” was associated with M. M. Bakhtin’s work on a book about one of the varieties of the European novel, the so-called “novel of education” (the manuscript of the book has not survived). M. M. Bakhtin's study of time and space in the novel, written in 1937 - 1938, anticipated the relevance that the problem of time and space in literature has now acquired in our literary criticism. While preparing the work for publication, the author wrote “Concluding Remarks” for it in 1973 (a fragment from the work “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel” was published in “Voprosy Literatury” 1974, No. 3).

The short article “Rabelais and Gogol” is a fragment from the author’s dissertation “Rabelais in the History of Realism”, which was not included in M. M. Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais (the article was published in the collection “Context 1972”, M., “Nauka”, 1973) .

Published works cover a wide range of issues of literary theory and historical poetics. At the same time, these works give an idea of ​​the unity and integrity of M. M. Bakhtin’s scientific creativity. The main themes of his work - the theory of the novel and the literary and artistic word - unite the works collected in this book. Taken together, they provide a multifaceted and at the same time imbued with a single thought study of the artistic nature of the leading genre of literature of modern times.

THE PROBLEM OF CONTENT, MATERIAL AND FORM IN WORDAL ARTISTIC CREATIVITY

This work is an attempt at a methodological analysis of the basic concepts and problems of poetics on the basis of general systematic aesthetics.

The starting point of our research was some Russian works on poetics, the main provisions of which we subject to critical examination in the first chapters; However, we do not touch upon the directions and individual works in their entirety and in their historical certainty and do not evaluate them: only the purely systematic value of the basic concepts and provisions comes to the fore for us. Our task also does not include any reviews of works on poetics of a historical or informative nature: in studies that set themselves purely systematic goals, where only theoretical provisions and evidence can be significant quantities, they are not always appropriate. We have also freed our work from unnecessary

There is no ballast of quotations and references that generally have no direct methodological significance in studies that are not historical, but in a condensed work of a systematic nature - completely unnecessary: ​​they are not needed by a competent reader and are useless for an incompetent one.

I. ART STUDY AND GENERAL AESTHETICS

Currently, extremely serious and fruitful work in the field of art history is being carried out in Russia. Russian scientific literature has been enriched in recent years with valuable works on the theory of art, especially in the field of poetics. One can even speak directly about a certain flourishing of art criticism in Russia, especially in comparison with the previous period, when the field of art was the main refuge of all sorts of scientifically irresponsible, but pretending to be profound, chatter: all those thoughts and considerations that seemed deep and vitally fruitful, but which were not could not be included in any science, that is, they could not find a place for themselves in the objective unity of knowledge, the so-called “wandering revelations” were usually expressed and brought into an external random order regarding art in general or this or that individual work. Aestheticized semi-scientific thinking, which through a misunderstanding sometimes called itself philosophical, always clung to art, feeling its blood, although not entirely legal, relationship with it.

Now the situation is changing: recognition of the exclusive rights of scientific thinking and in the field of studying art is becoming the property of even wide circles; one can almost talk about the other extreme - about the fashion for scientificism, about superficial scientificism, about the hasty and self-confident tone of scientificism where the time of real science has not yet arrived, for the desire to build science at any cost and as quickly as possible often leads to an extreme reduction in the level of problematics, to the impoverishment of the subject to be studied, and even to the substitution of this subject - in our case, artistic creativity -

something completely different. As we will see later, young Russian poetics did not always know how to avoid this. To build a science about one or another area of ​​cultural creativity, preserving all the complexity, completeness and originality of the subject 1, is an extremely difficult matter.

Despite the undeniable productivity and significance of Russian works on poetics published in recent years, the general scientific position taken by most of these works cannot be considered completely correct and satisfactory, and this applies especially to the works of representatives of the so-called formal or morphological method, but also extends to some studies that do not completely accept this method, but have some common premises with it: these are the remarkable works of Professor V. M. Zhirmunsky.

The unsatisfactory scientific position of these works on poetics is ultimately due to the incorrect or, at best, methodologically vague relationship of the poetics they construct to general systematic and philosophical aesthetics. This is a common sin of art criticism in all its fields, committed in the very cradle of this science - a negative attitude towards general aesthetics, a fundamental rejection of its leadership. The science of art is often defined by contrasting it with obviously non-scientific philosophical aesthetics. To construct a system of scientific judgments about a particular art - in this case about verbal art - regardless of questions about the essence of arts in general - this is the tendency of modern works on poetics.

If the question of the essence of art is understood as the metaphysics of art, then, indeed, we have to agree that scientificity is possible only where research is carried out independently of such questions. But now, fortunately, there is no need to seriously argue with metaphysics at all, and the independence that poetics claims takes on a completely different, sadder meaning for it, which can be

define as a claim to build a science of a separate art independently of knowledge and systematic determination of the uniqueness of the aesthetic in the unity of human culture.

Such a claim, in essence, is generally impossible to fulfill: without a systematic concept of the aesthetic, both in its difference from the cognitive and ethical, and in its connection with them in the unity of culture, it is impossible even to single out the subject to be studied by poetics - a work of art in the word - from masses of verbal works of a different kind; and this systematic concept, of course, is introduced every time by the researcher, but not at all critically.

Sometimes they claim that this concept can be found directly in the subject of study, that the student of literary theory does not need to turn to systematic philosophy for the concept of the aesthetic, that he will find it in literature itself.

Indeed, the aesthetic is somehow given in the work of art itself - the philosopher does not invent it - but only systematic philosophy with her methods. The concept of the aesthetic cannot be derived intuitively or empirically from a work of art: it will be naive, subjective and unstable; for confident and accurate self-determination, it needs mutual determination with other areas in the unity of human culture.

Not a single cultural value, not a single creative point of view can or should remain at the level of simple existence, bare factuality of a psychological or historical order; Only a systematic definition in the semantic unity of culture overcomes the facticity of cultural value. The autonomy of art is justified and guaranteed by its participation in the unity of culture, by the fact that it occupies not only a unique, but also a necessary and irreplaceable place in it; otherwise, this autonomy would be simply arbitrary; on the other hand, it would be possible to impose on art whatever it pleases.

but goals and purposes alien to his holo-factual nature: he would have nothing to object to, for bare nature can only be exploited; fact and purely factual originality have no say; to receive it, they need to become meaning; but one cannot become meaning without communing with unity, without accepting the law of unity: isolated meaning is a contradictio in adjecto 1. It is possible to overcome the methodological discord in the field of studying art not by creating a new method, another method - a participant in the general struggle of methods, only exploiting the factuality of art in its own way, but only through a systematic and philosophical substantiation of the fact and originality of art in the unity of human culture.

Poetics, deprived of the basis of systematic-philosophical aesthetics, becomes unsteady and random in its very foundations. Poetics, defined systematically, must be the aesthetics of verbal artistic creation. This definition emphasizes its dependence on a general aesthetics.

The absence of a systematic and philosophical general aesthetic orientation, the absence of a constant methodologically thought-out glance at other arts, at the unity of art - as a field of a single human culture - leads modern Russian poetics 2 to an extreme simplification of the scientific task, to superficiality and incomplete coverage of the subject to be studied: the study feels confident only where it moves on the very periphery of verbal artistic creativity, it disavows all problems that lead art onto the high road of a single human culture and are insoluble outside a broad philosophical orientation; poetics clings closely to linguistics, afraid to retreat from it more than one step (among the majority of formalists and V.M. Zhir-

1 Formal-logical contradiction in the definition with the defined (lat.).

2 Among Russian works on the poetics and methodology of the history of literature of recent times, there are, of course, those who have taken a more correct, from our point of view, methodological position; The remarkable article by A. A. Smirnov “The paths and tasks of the science of literature” (“Literary Thought”, II, 1923) deserves special attention. In the future, we fully subscribe to many of the provisions and conclusions of this article.

Munsky), and sometimes directly striving to become only a department of linguistics (in V.V. Vinogradov).

For poetics, as for any special aesthetics, where, in addition to general aesthetic principles, one has to take into account the nature of the material, in this case verbal, linguistics as an auxiliary discipline is, of course, necessary; but here it begins to occupy a leadership position that is completely inappropriate for it, almost the same one that general aesthetics should occupy.

The noted phenomenon is highly characteristic of the arts sciences, which oppose themselves to aesthetics: in most cases, they incorrectly assess the importance of material in artistic creativity, and this overestimation of the material moment is due to certain fundamental considerations.

At one time, a classic slogan was proclaimed: there is no art, there are only individual arts. This position actually put forward the primacy of material in artistic creativity, for material is precisely what divides the arts, and, if it is methodically brought to the fore in the consciousness of an aesthetician, isolates individual arts. But what is the reason for this primacy of the material and is it methodologically justified?

In its desire to build a scientific judgment about art, regardless of general philosophical aesthetics, art criticism finds material as the most stable basis for scientific discussion: after all, an orientation towards material creates a seductive proximity to positive empirical science. In fact: space, mass, color, sound - the art critic (and artist) receives all this from the corresponding departments of mathematical natural science; he receives the word from linguistics. And so, on the basis of art criticism, a tendency arises to understand the artistic form as the form of a given material, no more, as a combination within the material in its natural scientific and linguistic certainty and regularity; this would make it possible for the judgments of art criticism to be positively scientific, in other cases directly mathematically provable.

In this way, art criticism comes to the creation of a prerequisite for a general aesthetic character.

tera, psychologically and historically completely understandable on the basis of what we have said, but hardly legitimate and can be proven systematically, a premise that we, having somewhat developed what was said above, formulate as follows: aesthetic activity is aimed at the material, shapes only it: an aesthetically significant form is a form material - natural science or linguistically understood; The artists’ statements that their work has values, is aimed at the world, at reality, deals with people, with social relations, with ethical, religious and other values, and are nothing more than metaphors, because in fact the artist is offered only material: physical -mathematical space, mass, sound of acoustics, word of linguistics - and he can take an artistic position only in relation to a given, specific material.

This premise of a general aesthetic nature, which tacitly or expressly underlies so many works and entire trends in the field of sciences about individual arts, gives us the right to talk about a special general aesthetic concept, uncritically assumed by them, which we will call material aesthetics.

Material aesthetics is, as it were, a working hypothesis of areas of art criticism that claim to be independent of general aesthetics; Both the formalists and V.M. Zhirmunsky rely on it: this is the premise that unites them 1 .

It is not superfluous to note here that the so-called formal method is by no means connected either historically or systematically with formal aesthetics (Kant, Ger-

1 This premise, formulated by us with all clarity and sharpness, often takes on more relaxed forms, a characteristic variety of which is the concept of V. M. Zhirmunsky, which puts forward a thematic point; however, the theme is introduced by him only as a moment of the material (the meaning of the word), and in some arts, the material of which is devoid of this moment, the theme is absent.

Barth and others, in contrast to the aesthetics of content - Schelling, Hegel, etc.) and does not lie in its path; in general aesthetic terms, it should be defined as one of the varieties - it must be said, somewhat simplified and primitive - of the material aesthetics we have indicated, the history of which is the history of the Kunstwissenschaften 1 in their struggle for independence from systematic philosophy.

When evaluating works of art criticism, it is necessary to strictly distinguish between this general concept of material aesthetics, which is completely unacceptable, as we hope to show later, and those purely specific private statements that may still have scientific significance, regardless of the false general concept, although only in that areas where artistic creativity is determined by the nature of a given material 2.

We can say that material aesthetics - as a working hypothesis - is harmless and, with a methodologically clear understanding of the limits of its application, can even become productive when studying only the technique of artistic creativity and becomes absolutely harmful and unacceptable where they try to understand and study artistic creativity on its basis in general, in its aesthetic originality and meaning.

Material aesthetics, which is not limited in its claims only to the technical side of artistic creativity, leads to a number of fundamental errors and difficulties that are insurmountable for it. We will analyze the most important of them; Moreover, in everything that follows we will consider material aesthetics independently of the sciences of individual arts, but as an independent general aesthetic concept, which is what it actually is; as such, it must be subject to discussion and criticism: whether it can satisfy the requirements that

1 Arts Sciences (German).

2 In the works of formalists, along with completely unlawful statements - mainly of a general nature - there are many scientifically valuable observations. Such works as “Rhyme, its theory and history” by V. M. Zhirmunsky and “Russian Metrics” by B. V. Tomashevsky are fully of high scientific value. The study of the technique of works of verbal art in general first began on the basis of material aesthetics, both in Western European and Russian aesthetic literature.

absolutely obligatory in relation to any general aesthetic theory.

1) Material aesthetics is not capable of justifying artistic form.

The basic position of material aesthetics regarding form raises a number of doubts and generally appears unconvincing.

Form, understood as the form of a material only in its natural scientific - mathematical or linguistic - definition, becomes some kind of purely external, devoid of a value element, its ordering. The emotional-volitional intensity of the form, its inherent character of expressing some kind of value attitude of the author and contemplator to something other than the material, remains completely misunderstood, because this, expressed by the form - rhythm, harmony, symmetry and other formal aspects - is an emotional-volitional attitude. too intense, too active a character to be interpreted as an attitude towards the material.

Any feeling, deprived of an object that comprehends it, descends to a holo-factual mental state, isolated and non-cultural, therefore, an unrelated feeling expressed by a form becomes simply a state of a psychophysical organism, devoid of any intention that opens the circle of naked mental presence, becomes simply pleasure , which ultimately can be explained and comprehended only purely hedonistically - in this way, for example: the material in art is organized by form in such a way as to become the causative agent of pleasant sensations and states of the psychophysical organism. This conclusion is not always reached, but material aesthetics must consistently arrive.

A work of art, understood as an organized material, as a thing, can only have significance as a physical causative agent of physiological and mental states, or it must receive some utilitarian, practical purpose.

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