The image of the author in the work. Moscow State University of Printing Arts
In modern journalism, the image of the author correlates both with the characteristics of the journalist’s individual style and with the entire structure of his purely personal worldview. If in the essays of the 60s and 70s the author acted as a “behind the scenes” force or as an impartial narrator, then in the works of subsequent decades he becomes not only the ideological mouthpiece of his heroes, but also an exponent of his own opinions, assessments, judgments, positions, etc. .d. In a modern essay, the author openly reveals the peculiarities of his author’s self-awareness, boldly speaks from his own “I”, and finally, is more free in the manifestation of creative individuality. From the interaction of these and other authorial manifestations, the image of the author emerges, which, according to theorists, is the main genre-forming category.
Until recently, there was no clear terminological apparatus for defining this concept. Very often the image of the author was correlated with a certain artistic image, although there is a big difference between the function of the author in literary and journalistic works. To show these differences, consider the question of the relationship between the image of the author and a real person in literature and journalism.
The author's image in literary work, as a rule, does not coincide with the real personality of the writer. Here he acts as an artistic image created according to the laws of typification. At the same time, the author in a literary work, on the one hand, is endowed with wide possibilities in depicting heroes, and on the other, has a rich range of self-expression. It is from here that the diverse varieties and forms of authorship stem: the writer can act both as a direct participant in the event, and as an outside observer, and as a narrator, on whose behalf the reader will be told the story, and as a person “organizing the formal and content center of artistic vision” 165 . The author is the center of that “closed being”, within the boundaries of which a peculiar art world, existing according to its own laws. Creating the characters of their fictional characters, he, in principle, must know almost everything about them, or almost everything, in order to ultimately recreate full-blooded artistic images of people. This is what allowed M.M. Bakhtin to state that “the author not only sees and knows everything that each hero individually and all the heroes together sees and knows, but also more than them, and he sees and knows something that is fundamentally inaccessible to them, and in this always certain and the stable excess of the author’s vision and knowledge in relation to each character and all the moments of completion of the whole are found - both the characters and the joint event of their lives, i.e. the whole work" 166.
A participant in these events, as we have already noted, can be the author himself, endowed, like his heroes, with certain traits and characteristics. The author can enter into diverse relationships with his heroes, communicate with them, but at the same time he is always “on the border of the world he creates as an active creator of it, because his intrusion into this world destroys its aesthetic stability” 167.
The author of a journalistic work faces other functional tasks. Here, as a rule, we are dealing not with a fictitious image, but with a completely real person, i.e. with the personality of a journalist. It is this circumstance that obliges a lot when creating the image of an author in journalism. Among the tasks facing the author of a journalistic work are the following: firstly, the journalist as a carrier ideological plan the work must clearly indicate its ideological position in relation to the events described and, secondly, try to demonstrate its creative individuality.
The author’s ideological position reveals a set of principles, views and beliefs that determine the direction of the journalist’s activity and his attitude to reality. A person’s worldview “consists of elements belonging to all forms of social consciousness: scientific, moral and aesthetic views play a large role in it. Scientific knowledge, being included in the worldview system, serves the purpose of direct practical orientation of a person in the surrounding and natural reality; In addition, science rationalizes a person’s attitude to reality, freeing him from prejudices and misconceptions. Moral principles and norms serve as a regulator of people’s relationships and behavior and, together with aesthetic views, determine the attitude towards the environment, forms of activity, its goals and results” 168. The author of a journalistic work, expressing his worldview views, thereby demonstrates the peculiarities of his self-awareness. Due to the fact that “consciousness is the unity of the reflection of reality and the relationship to it” 169, in the structure of the text one can find various kinds of sensual and rational formations that arose in the author’s consciousness and were reflected by him in a certain sign system.
The individual image of the author consists of the role that he chooses for himself. M.I. Styuflyaeva, for example, identifies the following of them: the role of the author as a “mirror” of the hero, the role of the author as the lyrical hero of the work, the role of the author as an analyzing and evaluating authority 170. The phenomenon of “mirror reflection” contributes, in our opinion, to the disclosure of the author’s inner world. Reacting in a certain way on the thoughts and feelings of people, the journalist thereby reveals his own emotional reactions to what is happening. It is emotions, as M.I. rightly notes. Skulenko, “express our attitude towards the objects of knowledge, without them a person would remain indifferent to knowledge itself, and comprehension of reality would be impossible” 171.
But the hero’s cognition occurs not only on the emotional, but also on the rational levels. Author's judgments, assessments and opinions largely demonstrate the journalist's position in relation to the cognizable object. “The main purpose of value judgments is,” writes A.V. Kalachinsky - in order to, by reporting facts, influence, influence the opinions and behavior of people. Such an impact is based on the fact that a person’s attitude to reality changes not so much under the influence of the message about events as such, but because the facts receive a certain socio-political coloring in the text, thanks to assessments from certain positions” 172. A journalist, taking a certain position on a particular issue, always strives to substantiate it. The author’s journalistic openness lies in the fact that the journalist, unlike the writer, boldly shares his own reasoning with readers without any complex mediation, as is done, for example, in works of art, where the author encodes his ideas into the images of heroes.
The author of a journalistic work, trying to involve the reader in understanding the issue under study, puts forward various theses, arguments and judgments. At the same time, the journalist’s awareness of the truth of his own conclusions can be expressed in following forms: confidence in the proposed provisions; doubts about their truth; guesses about the possibility of their truth, etc. All these mental manifestations of the author act as psychological elements designed to give the author’s position a special influencing force.
The worldview is manifested in the thematic predilections of the journalist, and in determining the ideological orientation of the work, and in the choice of the object of study, etc. For example, we can recall a whole series famous journalists having their own favorite topics. For V. Peskov it is nature, for Yu. Shchekochikhin it is teenagers and representatives of crime, for Y. Golovanov it is space explorers, for A. Rubinov it is city dwellers. These authors are distinguished not only by their commitment to one topic, but also by their individual style of writing, ways of understanding reality, and creative methods of work, etc.
The individual handwriting of V. Peskov, who is a regular author of the “Window to Nature” column in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, stands out for its special lyricism. In all his works, be it an essay or a sketch, V. Peskov appears before the reader as a very sensitive and attentive person to nature. Describing the life of forest inhabitants, the journalist always shows a sympathetic interest in the animal and plant world. In his nature sketches, he is the main documentary character who enthusiastically shares his interesting observations and findings. At the same time, almost all of his works maintain an intimate tone of writing, conducive to a leisurely and thoughtful conversation with the reader.
Yu. Shchekochikhin has a different image, who for many years dealt with teenage problems and then studied the morals of the criminal world. In his forensic and research essays, the journalist appears primarily as an analyst. He does not just study the morals of teenagers or criminals, but constantly poses such pressing problems to society as the problems of drug addiction among young people, contract killings, etc. Actively engaged in journalistic investigation, Yu. Shchekochikhin was able to create the image of a “working” journalist who, in order to comprehend the truth ready to sift through piles of documents, establish connections with various sources of information, establish a hotline with readers, organize and conduct your own investigation, etc. The journalist actively immerses the reader in his own creative laboratory, so when reading his essays there is always a feeling of involvement in the case under investigation.
The well-known journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Y. Golovanov, over many years of work was able to prove himself as a very inquisitive and comprehensively erudite person. His essays have always been distinguished by his deep knowledge of issues related to space topics. The journalist was so immersed in this area, that he could freely make forecasts regarding the development of space technologies, talk on equal terms with general designers and cosmonauts, and most importantly, present to his readers a whole unknown world with its heroes, dreamers and ordinary workers. In his works, Y. Golovanov could successfully combine reportage descriptions with a deep analysis of the problems under consideration.
The former columnist had a completely different image." Literary newspaper» A. Rubinova. He was rightly called a social experimenter. In his journalistic activities, he used the most advanced technologies in collecting and processing information. It was thanks to A. Rubinov that the method of social experiment was established in modern journalism. To study a certain social problem, a journalist artificially created a certain situation in order to test his initial hypotheses or versions in practice. Using sociological methods of cognition in his work, A. Rubinov himself sometimes actively intervened in the processes and phenomena being studied, thereby in a certain way influencing the course of real events.
From the above examples, we can conclude that the creative individuality of a journalist is manifested in a special style of writing, in methods of presenting information, in thematic orientations, and in the peculiarities of the author’s worldview, and finally, in the role chosen by the journalist. On this basis, the journalistic image of the author arises. At the same time, the author’s worldview views are expressed through a system of value judgments, through moral ideas, through ideas, etc. The disclosure of the author's thoughts can proceed not only analytically, but also through artistic means. Therefore, in some cases we see the image of a reflective author, and in another - a lyrical hero.
Author– one of the key concepts literary science, defining the subject of a verbal and artistic statement. In modern literary criticism there are clear differences: 1) biographical author– a creative personality existing in a non-artistic, primary empirical reality, and 2) the author in his intratextual, artistically realized.
Creator of a work of art real face with a certain destiny, biography, complex individual traits. At different stages of culture, artistic subjectivity appears in different guises. In folklore, authorship is collective. In antiquity, individual and openly declared authorship made itself felt. In the era of classicism, the creative initiative of writers was limited by the requirements of already established genres and styles. The aesthetics of sentimentalism and romanticism pushed the principle of traditionalism into the past. Now the author demonstrates creative freedom.
The image of the author, localized in the literary text. The author of artificial reality is external to it, but constant traces of him creative personality stores the artistic world of the work, composed and organized by him.
Forms of author presence in the text depend on the gender of the work, but there are general trends. As a rule, the author's subjectivity is clearly manifested in the framework components of the text: title, epigraph, beginning and ending, dedications, author's notes (“Eugene Onegin”), preface, afterword. All this forms a kind of metatext, forming a whole with the main text.
Author presence manifests itself most poignantly in lyrics, where the statement belongs to one lyrical subject, where his experiences, attitude to the outside world and the world of his soul are depicted. Lyrical hero in a cycle of lyrical works gives an idea of the poet’s personality, of the author’s stable individual appearance, of his everyday and poetic fate. With varying degrees of completeness, the author's I can be entrusted to different heroes (role-playing lyrics). The author's intonations are clearly distinguishable in the author's digressions, which organically fit into the structure of essentially epic works. These digressions enrich the emotional and expressive limits of the narrative and significantly clarify author's position and the reader’s orientation of the work (Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”, Gogol “ Dead Souls", Tolstoy "War and Peace")
IN drama author in to a greater extent finds himself in the shadow of his heroes. But even here, his presence is seen in the title, epigraph, list of characters, stage directions, warnings (“The Inspector General” by Gogol), in the system of stage directions, in aside remarks. The author’s mouthpiece can be the heroes-reasoners (Starodum in Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor”), the chorus. The author reveals himself in the arrangement of characters, in the nature of the conflict tension.
The author appears to be more involved in the event of the work in epic. Most often, the author acts as a narrator, leading the story from a third person, in an extra-subjective, impersonal form. Since the time of Homer, the author is omniscient and can freely move from one time plane to another, from one space to another. In modern literature, this method of narration is combined with the introduction of a narrator ( battle of Borodino through the eyes of Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov). The author can entrust his plots to something he has composed, a dummy to the narrator, who narrates in the first person. But in any case, the unifying principle of the epic text is the author’s consciousness, which sheds light on the whole and on all components of the literary text. IN epic works the author's beginning appears in different ways: as the author's point of view on the recreated poetic reality, as the author's commentary on the course of the plot, as a direct, indirect or indirect characterization...
1st point of view. The author-creator helps us understand the human author. Pasternak believed that the essence of genius rests in the experience of real biography. The artist's responsibility is twofold: to art, to life. The writer is involved in extra-artistic existence through his actions, mindsets, experiences, as well as the works he creates. The surrounding society invariably leaves its mark on the writer’s views, his psychology, behavior, and artistic activity.
2nd point of view: artistic activity isolated from the spiritual and biographical experience of the creator of the work. Marcel Proust wrote about the difference between the author as a real person and the way he appears in his creations. According to him, only in the books of a writer does his true and deep self take shape, while in everyday life, where our habits and vices manifest themselves, the “external self” is characteristic. “The poet begins where the man ends.” The concept of the death of the author according to Barth: the personality of the writer (Father) is deprived of power over the work, the will of the author should be forgotten. Barthes believes that the author is a kind of semi-imaginary: he does not exist either before the text is written or after the text is completed; Only the reader has complete power over what is written. At the heart of Barthes’ concept is the idea of the reader’s limitless activity, his independence from the creator of the work.
Related information.
Philology has always been considered as the science of understanding, primarily the understanding of text. It is the text that serves as the main object of study and interpretation; it is the text that requires active perception from the reader and the researcher.
Any text is a system of signs and has such important properties as coherence and integrity.
According to Lotman, the literary text, which is the main object philological analysis, is characterized by these properties, which apply to all texts, but stands out in their composition by a number of special features.
In a literary text, unlike other texts, the intratextual reality is of a creative nature, i.e. created by the imagination and creative energy of the author, wears conditional character. The world depicted in a literary text relates to reality only indirectly; it reflects, refracts, and transforms it in accordance with the intentions of the author. Reference in a literary text is usually made to objects possible worlds, modeled in the work.
A literary text is a complex system in organization. On the one hand, this is a private system of means of a national language; on the other hand, a literary text develops its own code system, which the reader must decipher in order to understand the text.
According to Vinokur, in a literary text everything strives to become motivated by meaning. Here everything is full of internal meaning and language means itself, regardless of what things it serves as a sign. On this basis, reflection on the word, so characteristic of the language of art, is explained. Poetic word, in principle, is a reflective word. The poet seems to be looking for and discovering in a word “the closest etymological meanings,” which are valuable to him not for their etymological content, but for the possibilities of figurative application contained in them. This poetic reflection brings to life language is dead, motivates the unmotivated.
The units that form a literary text, within the framework of this particular aesthetic system, acquire additional “incrementations of meaning,” or “overtones of meaning.” This determines the integrity of the literary text.
All elements of the text are interconnected, and its levels exhibit or may exhibit isomorphism. Thus, according to R. Jacobson, adjacent units of a literary text usually exhibit semantic similarity. Poetic speech “projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection to the axis of combination.” Equivalence serves as one of the most important ways of constructing a literary text: it is found in repetitions that determine the coherence of the text, attracting the reader to its form, updating additional meanings in it and revealing the isomorphism of different levels.
A literary text is connected with other texts, refers to them or absorbs their elements. These intertextual connections influence or even determine its meaning. Taking into account intertextual connections can serve as one of the “keys” to the interpretation of a literary work. Intertextual connections reveal the subtext of the work and determine its polyphony, which is determined by the appeal to a “foreign” word with its inherent meanings and expressive-stylistic halo.
In our work we will adhere to the opinion that a literary text is a private aesthetic system linguistic means, characterized high degree integrity and structure. It is unique, inimitable and at the same time uses standardized construction techniques. It is an aesthetic object that is perceived in time and has a linear extension.
The word "author" (from the Latin author - subject of action, founder, organizer, teacher and, in particular, creator of a work) has several meanings in the field of art criticism. This is, firstly, the creator of a work of art as a real person with a certain fate, biography, and a set of individual traits. Secondly, this is the image of the author, localized in the literary text, i.e. depiction by a writer, painter, sculptor, director of himself. And finally, thirdly (which is especially important for us now), this is the artist-creator, present in his creation as a whole, immanent in the work. The author (in this meaning of the word) presents and illuminates reality (being and its phenomena) in a certain way, comprehends and evaluates them, manifesting himself as a subject of artistic activity.
The author's subjectivity organizes the work and, one might say, gives rise to it artistic integrity. It constitutes an integral, universal, most important facet of art (along with its own aesthetic and cognitive principles). The “spirit of authorship” is not only present, but dominates in any form of artistic activity: both when the work has an individual creator, and in group situations, collective creativity, and in those cases (now prevailing) when the author is named and when his name is hidden (anonymity, pseudonym, hoax).
At different stages of culture, artistic subjectivity appears in different guises. In folklore and historically early writing (as in other forms of art), authorship was predominantly collective, and its “individual component” remained, as a rule, anonymous. If the work was associated with the name of its creator ( biblical parables Solomon's and Psalms of David, Aesop's fables, Homer's hymns), then here the name "expresses not the idea of authorship, but the idea of authority." It is not associated with the idea of any proactively chosen manner (style), and even less so with the individually acquired position of the creator: “The work is more likely to be perceived as the fruit of the life of a group than as the creation of an individual”1.
But already in the art of Ancient Greece, the individual (54) authorial principle made itself felt, as evidenced by the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. Individual and openly declared authorship in subsequent eras manifested itself more and more actively and in modern times prevailed over collectivity and anonymity.
At the same time, for a number of centuries (until the 17th - 18th centuries, when the normative aesthetics of classicism was influential), the creative initiative of writers (as well as other artists) was limited and largely constrained by the requirements (norms, canons) of already established genres and styles. Literary consciousness was traditionalist. It was guided by rhetoric and normative poetics, by the “ready” word destined for the writer and already existing artistic examples.
Over the past two centuries, the nature of authorship has changed noticeably. Decisive role The aesthetics of sentimentalism and especially romanticism played a role in this shift, which greatly displaced and, one might say, pushed into the past the principle of traditionalism: “The central “character” literary process It became not a work subordinate to the canon, but its creator; the central category of poetics was not a style or genre, but an author.”2
If earlier (before the 19th century) the author represented more on behalf of an authoritative tradition (genre and style), now he persistently and boldly demonstrates his creative freedom. At the same time, the author's subjectivity is activated and receives a new quality. She becomes individually proactive, personal and, as never before, rich and multifaceted. Artistic creativity is now understood primarily as the embodiment of the “spirit of authorship” (a phrase very characteristic of romantic aesthetics).
So, the author's subjectivity is invariably present in the fruits of artistic creativity, although it is not always updated and attracts attention. The forms of the author's presence in a work are very diverse. We will turn to them.
2. IDEAL AND MEANING SIDE OF ART
The author makes himself known primarily as the bearer of one or another idea of reality. And this determines the fundamental importance in the composition of art of its ideological and semantic side, something that throughout the 19th-20th centuries. often called “idea” (from the ancient Greek idea-concept, representation).
This word has been rooted in philosophy for a long time, since antiquity. It has two meanings. Firstly, the idea is called the intelligible (55) essence of objects, which is beyond the boundaries of material existence, the prototype of a thing (Plato and his successor medieval thought), the synthesis of concept and object (Hegel). Secondly, over the past three centuries, thinkers have begun to associate ideas with the sphere of subjective experience, with the knowledge of being. Thus, the English philosopher of the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries. J. Locke in "Essay on human mind"distinguished between clear and vague ideas, real and fantastic, adequate to their prototypes and inadequate, consistent and inconsistent with reality. Here the idea is understood as the property not of objective existence, but human consciousness.
When applied to art and literature, the word "idea" is used in both meanings. In Hegelian aesthetics and the theories that follow it, the artistic idea coincides with what is traditionally called the theme (see pp. 40-42). This is the existential essence comprehended and captured by the creator of the work. But more often and more persistently the idea in art was spoken of (both in the 19th and 20th centuries) as the sphere of the author’s subjectivity, as a complex of thoughts and feelings expressed in a work that belong to its creator.
The subjective orientation of artistic works attracted attention in the 18th century. "The thesis about the primacy of ideas, thoughts in works of art<...>characterizes the aesthetics of the rationalistic Enlightenment."1 The creator of works of art at this time, and even more so at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, was perceived not simply as a master (“imitator” of nature) and not as a passive contemplator of certain intelligible entities, but as an exponent some circle of feelings and thoughts. According to F. Schiller, in art “emptiness or meaningfulness depend more on the subject than on the object”; the power of poetry lies in the fact that “the subject is put here in connection with the idea”2. The author (artist) appeared in the theories of the turn of the 18th-19th centuries as an exponent of a certain position, point of view, following Kant, who introduced the term " aesthetic idea", the sphere of artistic subjectivity began to be designated by the term idea. The expressions "poetic spirit" and "conception" were used in the same meaning. According to Goethe, "in every work of art<...>it all comes down to the concept."3.
The artistic idea (author’s concept) present in the works includes both the author’s directed interpretation and assessment of certain life phenomena (which was emphasized by educators from Diderot and Lessing to Belinsky and Chernyshevsky), and the waxing of a philosophical view of the world in its integrity , which is associated with the spiritual self-disclosure of the author (theorists of romanticism persistently spoke about this).
The thought expressed in a work is always emotionally charged. An artistic idea is a kind of fusion of generalizations and feelings, which, following Hegel, V.G. Belinsky, in his fifth article about Pushkin, called pathos (“pathos is always a passion that kindles an idea in a person’s soul”4). This is what distinguishes art from impartial science and brings it closer to journalism, essays, memoirs, as well as to everyday comprehension of life, which is also thoroughly evaluative. The specificity of artistic ideas themselves lies not in their emotionality, but in their focus on the world in its aesthetic appearance, on sensory forms of life.
Artistic ideas(concepts) differ from scientific, philosophical, journalistic generalizations also by their place and role in the spiritual life of humanity. Generalizations by artists, writers, and poets often precede a later understanding of the world. “Science only rushes after what has already turned out to be accessible to art,” Schelling asserted5. Al spoke out even more insistently and sharply in the same spirit. Grigoriev: “Everything new is brought into life only by art: it embodies in its creations what is invisibly present in the air of the era<...>senses the approaching future in advance."6 This idea, going back to romantic aesthetics, was substantiated by M.M. Bakhtin. "Literature<...>often anticipated philosophical and ethical ideologies<...>The artist has a sensitive ear for those who are born and become<...>problems." At the moment of birth, "he sometimes hears them better than the more cautious "man of science", philosopher or practitioner. The formation of thought, ethical will and feeling, their wanderings, their not yet formalized groping for reality, their dull fermentation in the depths of the so-called “social psychology” - all this not yet dissected stream of emerging ideology is reflected and refracted in the content of literary works.”7 Such a role artist - as a harbinger and prophet was realized, in particular, the socio-historical concepts of "Boris Godunov" by A. S. Pushkin and "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy, in the stories and stories (57) of F. Kafka, who spoke about the horrors of totalitarianism even before it became established, and in many other works.
At the same time, in art (primarily verbal) ideas, concepts, truths that have already (and sometimes for a very long time) been established in social experience are widely imprinted. At the same time, the artist acts as a mouthpiece of tradition; his art additionally confirms the well-known, reviving it, giving it poignancy, immediacy and new persuasiveness. A work of such meaningful content soulfully and excitingly reminds people of what, being familiar and taken for granted, turned out to be half-forgotten, erased from consciousness. Art in this side of it resurrects old truths, gives them new life. Here is the image of the folk theater in A. Blok’s poem “Balagan” (1906): “Drag along, mourning nags, / Actors, master the craft, / So that the walking truth / Makes everyone feel pain and light” (my italics. - V.Kh.) .
As you can see, art (let’s use the judgment of V.M. Zhirmunsky) shows a keen interest in what “brought with it” new era", and to everything that has long been rooted, to "established mentalities"1.
3. UNINTENTIONAL IN ART
Artistic subjectivity is far from being reduced to rational development, to the actual comprehension of reality. The author, according to A. Camus, “inevitably says more than he intended”2. P. Valery spoke with extreme harshness on this matter: “If the bird knew what it was singing about, why it was singing and what was singing in it, then it would not have sung.”3
Works of art invariably contain something beyond the views and creative intentions of their creators. According to D.S. Likhachev, in the composition of the author’s subjectivity two of its most important components are distinguishable: the layer of “active influence on the reader” (listener, viewer), i.e., the sphere of conscious and directed statements (thoughts and feelings associated with them) - and the “passive” layer (he defined by the scientist as a “worldview background”), which “comes” to the work from ideas rooted in society involuntarily, as if bypassing the author’s consciousness4. These two forms of author's subjectivity can be rightfully correlated with what the famous (58) Spanish philosopher of the first half of our century X. Ortega y Gasset designated as ideas ("fruits of intellectual activity", generated by doubts and associated with problems, discussions, disputes) and beliefs (the sphere of spiritual stability, worldview axioms: “the framework of our life”, “that solid ground” on which we live and work, “the ideas that we are”)5. Types of artistic subjectivity about which we're talking about, can be designated as reflective and non-reflective. This distinction between two spheres of the author’s consciousness was outlined by N.A. Dobrolyubov in the article " Dark Kingdom", where it was said that for the writer’s work, the most significant thing is not his theoretical views, rational and systematized, but a direct evaluative attitude to life, called worldview. Following Dobrolyubov, G.N. Pospelov considered direct ideological knowledge of life6 as a source artistic creativity.
Unreflective, unintentional, predominantly impersonal subjectivity is multifaceted. These are, first of all, those “axiomatic” ideas (including beliefs), in the world of which the creator of a work lives as a person rooted in a certain cultural tradition. This is also "psychoideology" public group, to which the writer belongs and to which was given decisive importance. the significance of literary sociologists of the 1910-1920s, led by V.F.; Pereverzev. These are, further, painful complexes repressed from the artist’s consciousness, including sexual ones, which were studied by S. Freud1. And finally, this supra-epochal “collective unconscious”, dating back to the historical archaic, can constitute the “mytho-poetic subtext” of works of art, as K.G. Jung. According to this scientist, the source of a work of art is in unconscious mythology, the images of which are the general property of mankind; creative process consists of the unconscious spiritualization of the archetype"; the work has "symbolism that goes into indiscernible depths and is inaccessible to the consciousness of modernity"2.
In art and literary criticism of our century, the non-conscious and impersonal aspects of the author's subjectivity are often brought to the fore and at the same time absolutized. The creative will, conscious intentions, and spiritual activity of the artist are passed over in silence, underestimated or ignored in essence. By limiting themselves to considering the symptoms of the author's spiritual life in his works, scientists often find themselves in the ethically unimpeachable position of a kind of spy - people spying on what the artist either does not realize or wants to hide from the witnesses. Not without reason, N. Sarraute characterized our humanitarian modernity as an era of suspicion. N.A. was right. Berdyaev, noting that at the beginning of the 20th century. (referring to supporters of the psychoanalytic approach to art: 3. Freud and his followers) “great revelations were made about man, the subconscious in him was discovered.” Scientists, the philosopher argued, “greatly exaggerated” their discovery and “recognized almost as a law that in his thoughts and in his creativity a person always hides himself and that one must think about him the opposite of what he says about himself”3. J. Mukarzhovsky, a famous Czech philologist-structuralist, in contrast to supporters of the psychoanalytic approach to art, argued that the main factor in the impression caused by a work of art is the author’s intentionality, that it is this that connects together the individual parts of the work and gives meaning to the creation4. And it’s hard to disagree with this.
Artistic subjectivity includes (in addition to the comprehension of life and spontaneous “intrusions” of mental symptoms) also the experience of the authors’ own creative energy, which has long been called inspiration.
The fact is that the author sets himself and solves problems that are actually creative. They are associated both with the work of the imagination (the creation of fictional images) and with what is called compositional and stylistic tasks (V.M. Zhirmunsky).
The solution of creative problems is in one way or another accompanied by the author’s intense concentration on them, complete immersion in them, associated with both the “torments of creativity” and, most importantly, with a joyful feeling own capabilities, abilities, talents, and with a special kind of spiritual elation, which Socrates speaks of in Plato’s dialogue “Ion”: poets “lay down their beautiful poems (60) <...>only in a state of inspiration and obsession"; the "frenzy" of the creator, who is "possessed by harmony and rhythm", is a "divine power", without which the artist’s goal cannot be achieved5.
It’s as if Pushkin is creating for Socrates,” describing the minutes and hours of creativity in the poem “Autumn”:
And I forget the world - and in sweet silence
I'm sweetly lulled to sleep by my imagination,
And poetry awakens in me:
The soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement,
It trembles and sounds and searches, as in a dream,
To finally pour out with free manifestation...
Inspiration and the experience of one’s own creative freedom take on the artist the form of close looking, feeling, listening, which is often accompanied by a feeling of one’s subordination to something external, powerful, inevitable and truly good. This idea is expressed in the poem by A.K. Tolstoy “It’s in vain, artist, you imagine that you are the creator of your creations...”
Great poets often have the idea of themselves as writing from dictation, recording only the right words, which came from somewhere outside, from some deep life principle, be it love, conscience, duty or something else, no less powerful. IN " Divine Comedy"("Purgatory". Chapter XXIV. Lines 52-58) it is said that the feathers of Dante and the poets close to him "obediently apply<...>the meaning of suggestions":
When I breathe love
Then I am attentive; she just needs
Give me some words, and I write.
But the lines of A.A. Akhmatova on how poetic languor ends:
Then I begin to understand
And just dictated lines
They go into a snow-white notebook.
("Creativity" from the series "Secret Crafts")
It is in listening and submitting to someone's voice that the poet exercises his creative freedom. One of the poems in the “Iambic” cycle by A.A. is about this. Block:
Yes. This is what inspiration dictates:
My free dream
Everything clings to where the humiliation is,
Where there is dirt, and darkness, and poverty.
The free creative aspiration of poets, as can be seen, paradoxically takes the form of an imperative, spontaneous and mysterious. According to the undeniably convincing words of R.M. Rilke, “a work of art is good when it is created out of inner necessity”1.
The stamp of creative tension invariably falls on the created work, in which, according to T.S. Eliot, sounds “the voice of a poet talking to himself,”2 or, we add, the voice of inspiration itself. About this implicit but inalienable important facet artistic subjectivity in the 20th century. wrote repeatedly. Art, in the exact words of G. G. Shpet, “includes<...>an intimate cult of creative forces"3. Representatives of German aesthetics of the era of romanticism believed that artists imitate nature primarily in its creative power. B. L. Pasternak spoke in a similar spirit in “Safety Certificate”. According to him, the basis of art is the voice of power , her presence 4. And this one actually creative aspect artistic content turns out to be important for perceivers. P. Valery wrote: “In works of art, I always look for traces of the creative effort from which they arose and which interests me primarily”5.
This facet of artistic subjectivity (non-semantic, creative, energetic) is also sometimes absolutized to the detriment of all others. Thus, in the 1919 article “The Morning of Acmeism” O.E. Mandelstam argued that an artist is a person “overwhelmed by the spirit of construction,” for whom this or that worldview is just “a tool and a means, like a hammer in the hands of a mason”1.
The creative impulse of the artist is reflected in his works in different ways. The author often demonstrates the intensity of his creative effort (remember the atmosphere of Beethoven's late sonatas or the deliberately ponderous phrases in the novels of L.N. Tolstoy). Bearing in mind this type of artistic creativity, T. Mann wrote: “Everything that dares to be called art testifies to the will to the utmost effort, the determination to go to the limit of possibilities”2.
At the same time, many high artistic creations have (62)
the color of unconstrained lightness, artistry, gaiety, “Mozartianism,” as they sometimes say, is a color so characteristic of Pushkin’s poetry. Here art discovers its connections with play.
5. ART AND PLAY
A game is an activity free from utilitarian-practical goals and, moreover, unproductive, without results, containing a goal in itself. It expresses an excess of strength and cheerfulness of spirit. The game is characterized by an atmosphere of lightness, carelessness, and carelessness. In his famous work"Homo ludens. Research experience game element in culture" the Dutch philosopher I. Huizinga wrote: "The mood of the game is detachment and delight - sacred or simply festive<...>. The action itself is accompanied by feelings of elation and tension and brings with it joy and release."3
Thinkers of the 19th-20th centuries. have repeatedly noted the enormous importance of the game beginning in human life. We have already spoken about the playful nature of Kant’s aesthetics (see pp. 23-24). In "Letters about aesthetic education"(letter 15) F. Schiller argued that a person only becomes fully himself when he plays. According to J. Huizinga, human culture came from a game. Writers and scientists (L. Tolstoy, T. Mann, V.F. Pereverzev) said that art is a play activity in its essence, that it is a unique type of game. F. Nietzsche and his followers, advocating for the maximum introduction of playful lightness into art, rejected the intense seriousness and spiritual “burdensomeness” of artistic activity. “Art cannot bear the burden of our life,” wrote X. Ortega y Gasset. “In trying to do this, it crashes, losing the graceful lightness it so needs.”<...>. If, instead of ponderous hopes for art, we take it as it is - as entertainment, play, pleasure - the creation of art will again regain its enchanting trepidation."4 In the same spirit - and with even greater harshness - representatives of modern post-structuralism speak out , for which verbal art- this is a game of rhetorical figures, a “dance of the pen.” R. Barthes, the world-famous French philologist, representative of structuralism and post-structuralism, understood writing activity and reader perception as a game with language, in which the main thing is the pleasure (63) received from the text, because in art “fragrant richness” is more important than knowledge and wisdom5 .
This kind of the absolutization of the playful principle of artistic activity is vulnerable, because it dogmatically narrows the sphere of art. A.A. Ukhtomsky, who was not only a world-famous scientist-physiologist, but also a remarkable humanist, had sufficient grounds for a sharp polemic against the understanding of art as an entertaining and pleasing game: “Art, which has become only a matter of “pleasure and relaxation,” is already harmful - it holy and endless only as long as it judges, burns, makes you burn<...>Beethoven did not create for human “pleasure,” but because he suffered for humanity and woke people up with endless sounds.”1
The game (like all other forms of culture) has certain boundaries and boundaries. The principle of play in one way or another colors the creative (including artistic) activity of a person, stimulates and accompanies it. But play as such is fundamentally different from art: if play activity is unproductive, then artistic creativity is aimed at the result - at the creation of a work as value. At the same time, the playful coloring of the artistic and creative process and the creation of art itself may not be so pronounced, or even completely absent. There is a playful element in truly artistic works, mainly as a “shell” of the author’s seriousness. One of the clearest evidence of this is Pushkin’s poetry, in particular the novel “Eugene Onegin”.
The facets of artistic subjectivity described above, which are very heterogeneous - especially in the art of the 19th-20th centuries - constitute the image of the author as a whole person, as an individual2. In the words of N.V. Stankevich, poet and romantic philosopher, the eternal and undying energy in art is the energy of the author’s personality, “whole, individual life”3. Also significant are the definition(64) of works of art as “human documents” (T. Mann)4 and the words of M.M. Bakhtin that it is important for the perceiver of a work of art to “get, go deeper into the creative core of the personality” of its creator5.
Supporters attached decisive importance to the connections between the writer’s work and his personality and fate. biographical method, first used by the French critic S.O. Sainte-Beuve, author of the monumental work “Literary-Critical Portraits” (1836-1839)6.
The activity of a writer who in one way or another “objectifies” his consciousness in a work is naturally stimulated and directed by biographical experience and life behavior. According to G.O. Vinokur, “the stylistic forms of poetry are at the same time the stylistic forms of the personal life” of the poet himself7. Writers and poets have repeatedly expressed similar thoughts. “Life and poetry are one,” asserted V.A. Zhukovsky. This formula, however, needs clarification. The author present in the work is not identical to the appearance of the real author. For example, A.A. Fet in his poems embodied other facets of his individuality than those that made themselves felt in his daily activities as a landowner. There are often very serious discrepancies and radical inconsistencies between artistic subjectivity and the life actions and everyday behavior of the writer. So, the “real” K.N. Batyushkov, sickly and unsure of himself, was strikingly different from the epicurean and passionate lover that he often portrayed himself as in poetry.
At the same time, the image of the author in the work and the appearance of the real author are inevitably connected with each other. In the article “On the Problems of Understanding Pushkin” (1937), the famous Russian philosopher S.L. Frank wrote: "For all the difference between the empirical life of the poet and his poetic creativity, his spiritual personality remains one, and his creations are just as born from the depths of this personality, as are his personal life and his views as a person. The basis of artistic creativity is, however, not personal empirical experience, but still its spiritual experience."1 V.F. Khodasevich and A.A. Akhmatova were aware of artistic creativity in a similar way (in their works about Push(65)kin)2, as well as B.L. Pasternak, who believed that the essence of genius “rests in the experience of real biography<...>its roots lie in the raw spontaneity of the moral sense."3
This is, apparently, the most worthy, optimal variant of relationship real author to your artistic activity. Here it is appropriate to recall the term responsibility, rooted in the modern humanitarian sphere. The artist's responsibility is twofold: firstly, to art, and secondly, to life. This responsibility is not a rational-moral obligation, but a clear and unshakable sense of the urgency of these very creative concepts: artistic themes and meanings, structures, words, sounds...
The author is necessarily involved in extra-artistic reality and participates in it with his works. To him, according to M.M. Bakhtin, you need an object (a found, but not a fictional character), it is important to feel a “different consciousness”, to have “artistic kindness”: a literary work is carried out in a “value context”. The author’s involvement in a “life event,” the scientist argues, constitutes the scope of his responsibility4.
In the 20th century There is also another point of view on authorship, opposite to the one outlined and justified above. According to it, artistic activity is isolated from the spiritual and biographical experience of the creator of the work. Here is one of the judgments of X. Ortega y Gasset:
"The poet begins where man ends. The fate of one is to follow his own “human” path; the mission of the other is to create the non-existent<...>Life is one thing. Poetry is something else.”5 The work from which these words are taken is called “The Dehumanization of Art” (1925).
IN last decades the idea of dehumanizing art gave rise to the concept of the death of the author. According to R. Barth, now “the myth of the writer as a bearer of values has disappeared.” Using a metaphor, the scientist calls the author the Father of the text, characterizing him as despotic and autocratic. And he claims that there is no record of paternity in the text and the personality of the writer is deprived of power over the work, that the will of the author should not be taken into account, it should be forgotten. By declaring that the Father is “dead by definition,” Barth sharply contrasts the author with a living (66) text. Now, he believes, the Author has been replaced by a Scriptor (i.e., a writer), who “carries within himself not passions, moods, feelings or impressions, but only such an immense vocabulary from which he draws his writing, which knows no stop”6 . Barthes believes that the author is a kind of semi-imaginary: he does not exist either before the text is written or after the text is completed; Only the reader has complete power over what is written.
At the heart of Barthes’s concept is the idea of the reader’s activity having no boundaries, his complete independence from the creator of the work. This idea is far from new. In Russia it goes back to the works of A.A. Potebnya (see p. 113). But it was R. Barth who took it to the extreme and pitted the reader and the author against each other as incapable of communication, pitted them against each other, polarized them, and spoke about their irreducible alienation and hostility to each other. At the same time, he interpreted the freedom and initiative of the reader as essayistic arbitrariness. In all this we find a connection between Barthes's concept and what is called postmodern sensitivity (see p. 260).
The concept of the death of the author, which undoubtedly has prerequisites and incentives in the artistic and near-artistic practice of our time, is legitimate, in our opinion, to be regarded as one of the manifestations of the crisis of culture and, in particular, humanitarian thought.
The concept of the author's death throughout recent years was repeatedly subjected to serious critical analysis. Thus, M. Freise (Germany) notes that the “anti-author” tendencies of modern literary criticism go back to the concept of the formal school, which considered the author only as a producer of a text, “wielding techniques,” a master with certain skills. And he comes to the following conclusion: with the help of the term “responsibility” it is necessary to restore the author as the center around which artistic meaning crystallizes1. According to V.N. Toporov, without the “image of the author” (no matter how deeply it is hidden), the text becomes “thoroughly mechanical” or is reduced to a “game of chance,” which is inherently alien to art2.
Let us conclude our conversation about artistic subjectivity with two quotes that would also serve as an epigraph to this chapter. N.M. Karamzin: “The Creator is always depicted in creation and often against his will”3. V.V. Veidle: “Without the desire to tell and say<...>there is no such thing as artistic creativity"4.
In the art of recent centuries (especially the 19th and 20th centuries), the author’s emotionality is uniquely individual. But it also invariably contains certain naturally recurring principles. In works of art, in other words, there are stable “alloys” of generalizations and emotions, certain types of illumination of life. These are heroism, tragedy, irony, sentimentality and a number of related phenomena. This series of concepts and terms are widely used in art criticism and literary criticism, but their theoretical status causes controversy. The corresponding phenomena in ancient Indian aesthetics were designated by the term “race”5. Modern scientists (depending on their methodological positions) call heroism, tragedy, romance, etc. either aesthetic categories (most Russian philosophers), or metaphysical categories (R. Ingarden), or types of pathos (G.N. Pospelov)6, or “modes of artistry” that embody the author’s concept of personality and characterize the work as a whole (V. I. Tyupa)7. Using the term of scientific psychology, these phenomena of human consciousness and existence can be called worldview (or worldview-significant) emotions that are present in art as the “property” of either the authors or the characters (depicted persons). Such emotions are associated with value orientations individuals and their groups. They are generated by these orientations and embody them. (68)
1. HEROIC
Heroics constitute the predominant emotional and semantic beginning of historically early high genres, primarily epics (traditional folk epic). Here the actions of people are raised up and poeticized, testifying to their fearlessness and ability for majestic achievements, their readiness to overcome the instinct of self-preservation, to take risks, hardships, dangers, and to face death with dignity. The heroic mood is associated with strong-willed composure, uncompromisingness and a spirit of inflexibility. A heroic deed in its traditional sense (regardless of the victory or death of its performer) is a person’s sure path to posthumous glory. Heroic individuality (a hero in the original strict sense of the word) evokes admiration and worship, and is depicted to the general consciousness as being on a kind of pedestal, in an aura of high exclusivity. According to S.S. Averintsev, they do not spare the heroes: they are admired, they are sung.
Heroic deeds are often self-directed demonstrations of energy and strength. These are the legendary exploits of Hercules, carried out not so much for the sake of the cowardly Eurystheus, but for their own sake. “In the world of heroic ethics,” notes Averintsev, “it is not the goal that sanctifies the means, but only the means—a feat that can sanctify any goal”1. Something like this is the antics of the mischievous Vaska Buslaev, and to some extent the actions of Taras Bulba, who cannot restrain himself in his warlike revelry. From the self-motivated heroism of the early historical eras threads stretch to the individualistic self-affirmation of the man of the New Age, the “peak” of which is the Nietzschean idea heroic path“superman”, embodied in the book “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and quite reasonably disputed subsequently.
Moscow State University prints named after Ivan Fedorov
Faculty of Publishing and Journalism
Department of Periodicals.
(extramural studies)
Test on the basics of literary theory:
“The image of the author in a work of art.” Completed by: FIDIZH – 1st year
Morozova K.O.
Moscow, 2012.
The word “author” (from the Latin auctor – subject, action, founder, organizer, teacher, and in particular, the creator of a work) has several meanings in the field of art criticism. This is, firstly, the creator of a work of art as a real person with a certain fate, biography, and a set of individual traits. Secondly, this is the image of the author, localized in the literary text, i.e. depiction by a writer, painter, sculptor, director of himself. And finally, thirdly, this is the artist-creator, present in his creation as a whole, immanent in the work. The author presents and illuminates reality in a certain way, comprehends and evaluates them, and also demonstrates his creative energy.
But what exactly is the image of the author in a work?
A.N. Sokolov in his “Theory of Style” writes: “The concept of the image of the author requires further development. How is it refracted in other arts where its “speech structure” is absent? Is it possible to find the image of the author in every literary work, or is it sometimes necessary to talk only about the expression of the author’s personality in the work, about the author’s “prism” through which what is depicted is refracted, about the position of the author? But no matter how these issues are resolved, there is no doubt that the image of the author or the author’s personality is one of the most important and defining “components” of a literary and artistic work in general.” This also includes what he calls the “stamp” of the author’s personality. “The image of the author,” explains A.N. Sokolov, is, more broadly and more precisely, an expression of the artist’s personality in his creation.
The image of the author is an image that is formed or created from the main features of the poet’s work. He embodies and sometimes also reflects elements of his artistically transformed biography. A.F. Potebnya rightly pointed out that the lyric poet “writes the history of his soul (and indirectly the history of his time).” Chekhov wrote to Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko about S. Naidenov’s play “Money”: “It is important that there is a play, and that the author is felt in it. In today's plays that we have to read, there is no author, as if they were all produced in the same factory, by the same machine; in Naynov’s plays there is an author.” V.B. Kataev, in the article “Towards the Statement of the Problem of the Image of the Author,” dispersing this problem between stylistics, sociology, psychology and literary criticism, writes: “The image of the author is in the plot, in the composition, landscape, characters, and ways of connecting them.”
Indeed, it would be wrong to see the possibility of only a linguistic description of the author’s image. Human essence the author is reflected in elements that, being expressed through language, are not linguistic. Comprehension of the human concreteness of the author’s image cannot be achieved by just describing the forms of interaction between different speech layers in a work.”
The question of internal monologue is also closely related to the problem of the image of the author and its structure. In an open form, the images of authors and storytellers are intertwined and mixed in multi-colored varieties of tales. V. Kaverin notes: “ World literature, in my opinion, has come to the period when, having discovered through Russian literature of the 19th century century internal monologue and using it in a transformed form in New American and then in English, she exhausted this discovery. The period of internal monologue has now, it seems to me, ended, and the time of Tolstoy-Flaubert has come again...
