Artistic space in literature. Philological text analysis
Artistic space and time are an integral property of any work of art, including music, literature, theater, etc. Literary chronotopes have primarily plot significance and are the organizational centers of the main events described by the author. There is also no doubt about the pictorial significance of chronotopes, since plot events in them are concretized, and time and space acquire a sensually visual character. Genre and genre varieties are determined by chronotope. All temporal-spatial definitions in literature are inseparable from each other and are emotionally charged.
Artistic time- this is the time that is reproduced and depicted in a literary work. Artistic time, unlike objectively given time, uses the diversity of subjective perception of time. A person's sense of time is subjective. It can “stretch”, “run”, “fly”, “stop”. Artistic time makes this subjective perception of time one of the forms of depicting reality. However, objective time is also used at the same time. Time in fiction is perceived through the connection of events - cause-and-effect or associative. Events in a plot precede and follow each other, are arranged in a complex series, and thanks to this, the reader is able to notice time in a work of art, even if nothing is said about time. Artistic time can be characterized as follows: static or dynamic; real - unreal; speed of time; prospective – retrospective – cyclical; past – present – future (in what time are the characters and action concentrated). In literature, the leading principle is time.
Art space is one of essential components works. Its role in the text is not limited to determining the place where the event takes place, the plot lines are connected, and the characters move. Artistic space, like time, is a special language for the moral assessment of characters. The behavior of the characters is related to the space in which they are located. The space can be closed (limited) - open; real (recognizable, similar to reality) – unreal; his own (the hero was born and raised here, feels comfortable in it, adequate to the space) - strangers (the hero is an outside observer, abandoned in a foreign land, cannot find himself); empty (minimum objects) – filled. It can be dynamic, full of varied movement, and static, “motionless,” filled with things. When movement in space becomes directed, one of the most important spatial forms appears - the road, which can become a spatial dominant that organizes the entire text. The motive of the road is semantically ambiguous: the road can be a concrete reality of the depicted space, it can symbolize the path of the character’s internal development, his fate; Through the road motif, the idea of the path of a people or an entire country can be expressed. Space can be built horizontally or vertically (emphasis on objects stretching upward or objects spreading outwards). In addition, you should look at what is located in the center of this space, and what is on the periphery, what geographical features listed in the story, what they are called (real names, fictitious names, proper names or common nouns as proper names).
Each writer interprets time and space in his own way, endowing them with his own characteristics that reflect the author’s worldview. As a result, the artistic space created by the writer is unlike any other artistic space and time, much less the real one.
So in the works of I. A. Bunin (cycle “ Dark alleys") the life of the heroes takes place in two non-overlapping chronotopes. On the one hand, a space of everyday life, rain, corroding melancholy, in which time moves unbearably slowly, unfolds before the reader. Only a tiny part of the hero’s biography (one day, one night, a week, a month) takes place in a different space, bright, saturated with emotions, meaning, sun, light and, most importantly, love. In this case, the action takes place in the Caucasus or in a noble estate, under the romantic arches of “dark alleys”.
An important property of literary time and space is their discreteness, that is, discontinuity. In relation to time, this is especially important, since literature is capable of not reproducing the entire flow of time, but selecting the most significant fragments from it, indicating gaps. Such temporal discreteness served as a powerful means of dynamization.
The nature of the conventions of time and space greatly depends on the type of literature. Conventionality is maximum in lyric poetry, since it is closer to the expressive arts. There may be no space here. At the same time, lyrics can reproduce the objective world in its spatial realities. With the predominance of the grammatical present in the lyrics, it is characterized by the interaction of the present and the past (elegy), past, present and future (to Chaadaev). The category of time itself can be the leitmotif of a poem. In drama, the conventions of time and space are established mainly on the theater. That is, all actions, speeches, and inner speech of the actors are closed in time and space. Against the backdrop of drama, the epic has broader possibilities. Transitions from one time to another, spatial movements occur thanks to the narrator. The narrator can compress or stretch time.
According to the peculiarities of artistic convention, time and space in literature can be divided into abstract and concrete. Abstract is a space that can be perceived as universal. The concrete not only ties the depicted world to certain topographical realities, but also actively influences the essence of what is depicted. There is no impassable border between concrete and abstract spaces. Abstract space draws details from reality. The concepts of abstract and concrete spaces can serve as guidelines for typology. The type of space is usually associated with the corresponding properties of time. Form of specification art. time are most often the linking of action to historical realities and the designation of cyclical time6 time of year, day. In most cases, the bad time is shorter than the real one. This reveals the law of “poetic economy.” However, there is an important exception associated with the depiction of psychological processes and subjective time of a character or lyrical hero. Experiences and thoughts flow faster than the flow of speech, which forms the basis of literary imagery. In literature, complex relationships arise between the real and the thin. time. Real time In general it can be equal to zero, for example in descriptions. Such time is eventless. But event time is also heterogeneous. In one case, literature records events and actions that significantly change a person. This is plot or plot time. In another case, literature paints a picture of a stable existence that repeats itself day after day. This type of time is called chronicle-domestic time. The ratio of eventless, eventful and chronicle-everyday time creates a tempo organization of art. time of the work. Completeness and incompleteness are important for analysis. It is also worth saying about the types of organization of artistic time: chronicle, adventure, biographical, etc.
Bakhtin identified chronotopes in his heresy:
Meetings.
Roads. On road (" high road") the spatial and temporal paths of the most diverse people intersect at one time and spatial point - representatives of all classes, conditions, religions, nationalities, ages. This is the starting point and the place where events take place. The road is especially useful for depicting an event governed by chance (but not only for this). (remember Pugachev’s meeting with Grinev in “Kap. Daughter”). Common features chronotope in different types novels: the road passes through their native country, and not in an exotic foreign world; the socio-historical diversity of this home country(therefore, if we can talk about exoticism here, then only about “social exoticism” - “slums”, “scum”, thieves’ worlds). In the latter function, “road” was also used in journalistic travel of the 18th century (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by Radishchev). This feature of the “road” distinguishes the listed types of novels from the other line of the wandering novel, represented by the ancient travel novel, the Greek sophistic novel, the novel Baroque XVII century. A “foreign world”, separated from its own country by sea and distance, has a similar function to the road in these novels.
Castle. By the end of the 18th century in England there was a new territory for the fulfillment of novel events - the “castle”. The castle is full of time from the historical past. The castle is the place of life of the rulers of the feudal era (and therefore historical figures of the past); traces of centuries and generations in the past have been deposited in it in visible form. various parts its structure, in its furnishings, in its weapons, in the specific human relations of dynastic succession. This creates a specific plot of the castle, developed in Gothic novels.
Living room-salon. From the point of view of plot and composition, meetings take place here (not random), intrigues are created, denouements are often made, dialogues take place that acquire exceptional significance in the novel, the characters, “ideas” and “passions” of the heroes are revealed. Here is the interweaving of the historical and social-public with the private and even the purely private, alcove, the interweaving of private everyday intrigue with political and financial, state secrets with alcove secrets, the historical series with the everyday and biographical. Here the visually visible signs of both historical time and biographical and everyday time are condensed, condensed, and at the same time they are closely intertwined with each other, fused into single signs of the era. The era becomes visually visible and plot-visible.
Provincial town. It has several varieties, including a very important one - idyllic. Flaubert's version of the town is a place of cyclical domestic time. There are no events here, but only repeating “occurrences.” The same everyday actions, the same topics of conversation, the same words, etc. are repeated day after day. Time here is eventless and therefore seems almost stopped.
Threshold. This is a chronotope of crisis and life turning point. In Dostoevsky, for example, the threshold and the adjacent chronotopes of the staircase, hallway and corridor, as well as the chronotopes of the street and square that continue them, are the main places of action in his works, places where events of crises, falls, resurrections, renewals, insights, decisions take place that determine a person’s entire life. Time in this chronotope is, in essence, an instant, seemingly without duration and falling out of the normal flow of biographical time. These decisive moments are included in Dostoevsky’s large, comprehensive chronotopes of mystery and carnival time. These times coexist in a peculiar way, intersect and intertwine in Dostoevsky’s work, just as they throughout long centuries coexisted in the public squares of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (essentially the same, but in slightly different forms - and in the ancient squares of Greece and Rome). In Dostoevsky, on the streets and in crowd scenes inside houses (mainly in living rooms), the ancient carnival-mystery square seems to come to life and shine through. This, of course, does not exhaust Dostoevsky’s chronotopes: they are complex and diverse, as are the traditions renewed in them.
Unlike Dostoevsky, in the works of L. N. Tolstoy the main chronotope is biographical time, flowing in the interior spaces of noble houses and estates. The renewal of Pierre Bezukhov was also long-term and gradual, quite biographical. The word “suddenly” is rare in Tolstoy and never introduces any significant event. After biographical time and space, the chronotope of nature, the family-idyllic chronotope, and even the chronotope of the labor idyll (when depicting peasant labor) are of significant importance in Tolstoy.
The chronotope, as the primary materialization of time in space, is the center of pictorial concretization, embodiment for the entire novel. All abstract elements of the novel - philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyzes of causes and consequences, etc. - gravitate towards the chronotope and through it are filled with flesh and blood, and are attached to artistic imagery. This is the pictorial meaning of the chronotope.
The chronotopes we have considered are of a genre-typical nature; they underlie certain varieties of the novel genre, which has developed and developed over the centuries.
The principle of chronotopicity of an artistic and literary image was first clearly revealed by Lessing in his Laocoon. It establishes the temporary nature of the artistic and literary image. Everything statically-spatial should not be statically described, but should be involved in the time series of events depicted and the story-image itself. Thus, in the famous example of Lessing, the beauty of Helen is not described by Homer, but her effect on the Trojan elders is shown, and this effect is revealed in a number of movements and actions of the elders. Beauty is involved in the chain of events depicted and at the same time is not the subject of a static description, but the subject of a dynamic story.
There is a sharp and fundamental boundary between the real world depicted and the world depicted in the work. It is impossible to confuse, as was done and is still sometimes done, the depicted world with the depicting world (naive realism), the author - the creator of the work with the human author (naive biographism), recreating and updating the listener-reader of different (and many) eras with a passive listener-reader of his time (dogmatism of understanding and evaluation).
We can also say this: before us are two events - the event that is told in the work, and the event of the telling itself (in this latter we ourselves participate as listeners-readers); these events occur at different times (different in duration) and in different places, and at the same time they are inextricably united in a single, but complex event, which we can designate as a work in its eventful completeness, including here its external material given, and its text, and the world depicted in it, and the author-creator, and the listener-reader. At the same time, we perceive this completeness in its integrity and inseparability, but at the same time we understand all the differences in its constituent moments. The author-creator moves freely in his time; he can begin his story from the end, from the middle and from any moment of the events depicted, without destroying the objective passage of time in the depicted event. Here the difference between depicted and depicted time is clearly manifested.
10. Simple and detailed comparison (short and not essential).
COMPARISON A comparison is a figurative allegory that establishes similarities between two life phenomena. Comparison is an important figurative and expressive means of language. There are two images: the main one, which contains the main meaning of the statement and the auxiliary one, attached to the union “how” and others. Comparison is widely used in artistic speech. Reveals similarities, parallels, and correspondences between initial phenomena. Comparison reinforces various associations that arise in the writer. Comparison performs figurative and expressive functions or combines both. A form of comparison is the connection of its two members using the conjunctions “as”, “as if”, “like”, “as if”, etc. There is also a non-union comparison (“The samovar in iron armor // Makes noise like a household general...” N.A. Zabolotsky).
11. The concept of the literary process (I have some kind of heresy, but in response to this question you can blab out everything: from the origin of literature from mythology to trends and modern genres)
The literary process is the totality of all works appearing at that time.
Factors that limit it:
The presentation of literature within the literary process is influenced by the time when a particular book is published.
The literary process does not exist outside of magazines, newspapers, and other printed publications. ("Young guard", " New world" etc.)
The literary process is associated with criticism of published works. Oral criticism also has a significant impact on LP.
“Liberal terror” was the name given to criticism in the early 18th century. Literary associations are writers who consider themselves close on certain issues. They act as a certain group that conquers part of the literary process. Literature is, as it were, “divided” between them. They issue manifestos expressing the general sentiments of a particular group. Manifestos appear at the moment of formation literary group. For literature of the early 20th century. manifestos are uncharacteristic (the symbolists first created and then wrote manifestos). The manifesto allows you to look at the future activities of the group and immediately determine what makes it stand out. As a rule, the manifesto (in the classical version, anticipating the activities of the group) turns out to be paler than literary movement which he represents.
Literary process.
With the help of artistic speech in literary works, the speech activity of people is widely and specifically reproduced. A person in a verbal image acts as a “speaker”. This applies, first of all, to lyrical heroes, characters in dramatic works and storytellers. epic works. Speech in fiction acts as the most important subject of depiction. Literature not only denotes life phenomena in words, but also reproduces speech activity itself. Using speech as the subject of depiction, the writer overcomes that schematic word pictures, which are associated with their “immateriality”. Without speech, people's thinking cannot be fully realized. Therefore, literature is the only art that freely and widely masters human thought. Thinking processes are the focus of people's mental life, a form of intense action. In the ways and means of comprehending the emotional world, literature differs qualitatively from other forms of art. Literature uses a direct depiction of mental processes with the help of the author's characteristics and statements of the characters themselves. Literature as an art form has a kind of universality. With the help of speech, you can reproduce any aspect of reality; The visual possibilities of the verbal truly have no boundaries. Literature most fully embodies the cognitive beginning of artistic activity. Hegel called literature “universal art.” But the visual and educational possibilities of literature were realized especially widely in the 19th century, when the realistic method became leading in the art of Russia and Western European countries. Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy artistically reflected the life of their country and era with a degree of completeness that is inaccessible to any other form of art. Unique quality fiction is also its pronounced, open problematic nature. It is not surprising that it is in the sphere of literary creativity, the most intellectual and problematic, that trends in art are formed: classicism, sentimentalism, etc.
its traditions, the assimilation of moral standards of behavior in society. It promotes the development of speech and thinking of students.
It is no coincidence that the fairy tale is included in the elementary school curriculum. However, the role of the teacher himself is also great here. When a fairy tale comes to class, it is always interesting and unusual. A special holiday, if we say
When a child receives a smart, talented, enthusiastic teacher with a great deal of imagination. If a teacher cares about raising a thoughtful reader with developed imagination, figurative memory and feeling poetic word, then it is necessary to bring the child closer to understanding the subtext of the fairy tale, its moral content, to help him feel how important it is to be a good, kind, attentive person, capable of listening and hearing not only himself, but also others.
Work in in this direction must be carried out regularly so that children learn to see the world through their eyes folk wisdom so that they know and respect the traditions and way of life of their people.
Bibliography
1. Gusev D. A. Pedagogical potential of folk art in the context of historical analysis of the development of educational institutions in rural areas // Humanities and education. - 2015. - No. 1 (21). - pp. 44-47.
2. Zhestkova E.A., Tsutskova E.V. Extracurricular activities on literary reading as a means of developing reading interests junior schoolchildren // Contemporary issues science and education. - 2014. - No. 6. - P. 1330.
3. Zhestkova E.A., Kazakova V.V. Teaching junior schoolchildren to write a review of a work of fiction they have read // International. magazine applied and fundamental research. - 2015. - No. 8-2 - P. 355-358.
4. Zhestkova E.A., Klycheva A.S. Spiritual and moral development of junior schoolchildren in literary reading lessons through Russian folk tale// International magazine applied and fundamental research. - 2015. - No. 1-1 - P. 126130.
5. Zhestkova E.A., Kazakova V.V. Web quest technology in literary reading lessons in elementary school // International. magazine applied and fundamental research. - 2015. - No. 9-4 - P. 723-725.
6. Luchina T.I. Moral education of modern schoolchildren // IV Silvestrovskie ped. Thurs. Spirituality and morality in the educational space in the light of the civilizational choice of the baptism of Rus': materials of pedagogy. Thurs. - Omsk, 2015. -S. 70.
O. N. Krasnikova
Space and time in the play by A.N. Ostrovsky "Mad Money"
A. N. Ostrovsky carefully worked on each of his plays; the playwright also turned to the manuscript of the comedy in question more than once. Initially the text was called “A braid on a stone”, then “All that glitters is not gold.” Only at the moment of formalizing the final position of all the characters in the comedy does the writer find a modern
the name of the play, abandoning the naive morality of the proverb in favor of a poignant social definition - “Mad Money”.
There were several versions of the manuscript with rough notes; the final, white version bears the date of completion of work on the play and the signature: “January 18, 1870. A. Ostrovsky.”
First published in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski (1870, No. 2, pp. 391-489), the play evoked very controversial responses. It was noted that the playwright's talent had already dried up, numerous reviews were superficial and unfair. The merits of the play were appreciated by critics only five years later.
Ostrovsky is often called a “everyday playwright.” Indeed, social contradictions are usually refracted in his plays in the sphere of family relations. Hence the importance of describing everyday life, every detail of it. In a family, a person pretends the least, but is recognized best. The number of masks worn by a person in his usual everyday life is minimal.
In our article we will try to consider the main categories of everyday life, namely space and time. It is important for us to establish why, in a particular chronotope, heroes behave in accordance with the roles indicated to them. Are spatial and temporal characteristics important for understanding a play? Could the play have taken place in other space-time relationships? To begin with, we will try to consider in detail the chronotope of the comedy.
“The entire organization of action time in Ostrovsky’s “plays of life” is subordinated to the search for such solutions that would allow, on the one hand, to absorb the richness and diversity of reality and, on the other hand, would respond specific features dramaturgy as a concentrated reproduction of life in the forms of life itself."
The duration of the play “Mad Money” is about three weeks, but the action in it is really extremely concentrated: between the first and last acts, Vasilkov managed to meet, woo, get consent to marriage, get married, separate from his wife and get back together with her again.”
In general, having written the first two phenomena (in the final text - part II, appearances 3 and 4), Ostrovsky felt the need to clarify the background of the action and characterize the figure of Vasilkov in more detail. He writes a new beginning - a conversation between Telyatev and Vasilkov. The text of the first action becomes the second action. Thus, the subtitle “Instead of a prologue” appears in the play, which we find in the first act and which increases the time boundaries of the text. The main dramatic action takes place in the plays of A.N. Island-
sky, usually within a few days. Let's consider the chronological milestones of this play.
The first act is essentially the reader's (or theater viewer's) introduction to the characters. All dialogues take place within one day and in one location.
The second act demonstrates the replacement of the exterior with the interior and the development of the plot occurs, apparently, the day after the completion of the first act.
In the lists of acting characters in the third act we read: “Lydia, Vasilkov’s wife.” Reflecting on the time during which Vasilkov’s matchmaking and their wedding with Lydia could have taken place, as well as the preliminary furnishing of the Cheboksarovs’ apartment, we come to the conclusion that approximately 3-5 days passed between the second and third acts.
At the beginning of the fourth act there is a clear indication of the time that has passed since moving to a new apartment, and the time of the events described is 3 days.
At the end of the fourth act (on the day described), the Cheboksarovs, on the advice of Kuchumov, return to their previous apartment.
Finally, at the beginning of the fifth act, Nadezhda Antonovna says that Kuchumov promised to bring money for the housewarming. And instead of forty thousand rubles, he gave six hundred rubles exactly a week ago.
Thus, the play takes place over a period of 2-3 weeks. As mentioned above, the action of the play is very intense. But let’s look not only at the external manifestation of the play’s time relations, but also at the feeling of time by the characters themselves.
Repeatedly, the characters in the play talk about their time, talk about the century in which they live.
Vasilkov. Moreover, it is very possible to get rich at the present time.
Glumov. All this sour talk about virtue is stupid because it is impractical. This is a practical age.
Vasilkov. Honest calculations are still modern. In the practical age, being honest is not only better, but also more profitable.
It can be noted that already in the first scene of the first act the characters talk about central problems of this play. Vasilkov and Glumov (later Telyatev) talk about the practical age. And later, in the fifth act, they will return to this topic. Crazy money just comes and goes just as quickly, it’s impossible to keep it. But real capital can only be created by a prudent, active, business-like person, in other words, a practical person, that is, a person of his age.
But along with thrifty people, at the same time there live also wasteful people, for whom only crazy money is of interest, for the sake of which there is no need to work at all. About this in
In act five Telyatev says: “Why are you scared? Take comfort! Yesterday they described furniture from two of my friends, today from you, tomorrow from me, the day after tomorrow from your Kuchumov. This is such a fad these days.”
It is interesting to trace the temporary indications found in Mr. Kuchumov’s speech. Grigory Borisovich Kuchumov constantly tries to emphasize his social position, which, in his opinion, is stable: it was yesterday, it is today, it will be tomorrow.
Kuchumov. What a kulebyak I ate today, gentlemen, it was simply delicious! Mille e tre... .
Kuchumov. Mille e tre... Yes, yes, yes! I forgot. Imagine this case: I won eleven thousand yesterday.
Kuchumov.<...>And on Sunday I’ll feed you lunch at home, I’ll give you fresh sturgeon, they brought me live sturgeon from Nizhny, great snipes and something from Burgon that you... .
He also tries to join the central theme of the play’s dialogues - reflections on modernity and the state.
Kuchumov. Interprets everything: “the present time, and the present time”<...>After all, you can get bored this way. Speak where people want to listen to you. What is the current time, is it better than the previous one? .
And the real gentleman sums up that it was much better before, but people of the practical, prudent and thrifty century “need to be driven out.”
It is also interesting to evaluate how cleverly and without a twinge of conscience Kuchumov “solves” all the financial problems of the Cheboksarovs.
Lydia.<...>But are you really sending your father money?
Kuchumov. Tomorrow. And further: “Tomorrow I am writing to your father that I am buying property from him, and will send him thirty thousand as a deposit. What is money to me! .
Kuchumov (takes his pockets). Oh my god! This only happens to me. I deliberately put my wallet on the table and forgot about it. Child, forgive me! (Kisses her hand.) I’ll bring them to you tomorrow for your housewarming. I hope you move today<...> .
About the money sent to Cheboksarov he simply says: “It didn’t arrive. (Counts on fingers.) Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. He received them last night or this morning."
In the fifth act, Lydia still believes Kuchumov’s constant “breakfasts,” although her mother is already beginning to doubt the honesty of his promises.
What is remarkable to us is how Kuchumov uses his time: he is determined to do everything possible for the Cheboksarovs. But then - in half an hour, this evening or tomorrow.
Kuchumov.<...>After all, I’m telling you, in half an hour... well... circumstances may arise there: the necessary contributions; suddenly there is not so much money in the office; Well, in a day, two... at the very least, in a week
you will have everything, it is impossible to wish for more.
But at the same time, he visits Lydia regularly, without getting confused in time space.
Lydia. I live without a husband, you come to see me every day at a certain hour; What will they think, what will they say? .
Speaking about the central character of the play, it should be noted that Vasilkov knows not only the price of labor and the cost of money, but also understands the value of time.
Vasilkov. How can they not?! After all, you can live twenty-five thousand in six months.
Vasilkov. I have an estate, I have some money, I have business; but still, I can’t live on more than seven or eight thousand a year.
Concluding the conversation about the chronological boundaries of the play and temporary references in it, let's say that this play appeared in its time and was extremely relevant for that time. But it worries people even now, because, notes theater expert and theater critic E.G. Kholodov, “the great Russian playwright, reflecting his time, managed to pose enormous universal human problems, managed to put his vision of life into a masterful artistic form.”
Now let's take a closer look at the space in which the play takes place.
In general, as you know, the play “Mad Money” belongs to the Moscow plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, which constitute the so-called Moscow text. Researchers of Ostrovsky's work note that the playwright did not blindly and dogmatically follow the rule of three unities regarding spatial restrictions. However, as is the case with time, A.N. Ostrovsky extremely concentrated the depicted space, because, firstly, he did not want to disperse the attention of the theater audience, secondly, he preferred not to amaze the viewer with surprises, but to prepare him in advance for the upcoming changes in the scene of action, and thirdly, he understood the complexity of the decorative design of the production of each plays on stage.
The space in which the playwright places his characters is, in fact, ordinary, standard. And this typical interior or exterior is intended by the “realist Ostrovsky to characterize the typical circumstances in which his heroes live.”
Let's consider the organization of the scene in the play "Mad Money".
The first act of the play is accompanied by the remark: “In Petrovsky Park, in Sachs’s garden; To the right of the spectators is the gate to the park, to the left is the coffee shop.”
Petrovsky Park is a place of constant celebration for Muscovites, where there were various entertainment venues, including a summer theater, as well as
the same orchestra, whose owner was Sachs. In Petrovsky Park, Telyatev first met Vasilkov walking along the alley. Here the characters make guesses about Vasilkov’s condition and type of activity.
If we analyze other plays by A.N. Ostrovsky, we note that the playwright often introduces readers to his characters on an open stage: in a garden, park, square or boulevard. This is done in order to introduce viewers to the social atmosphere in which his heroes live.
The second action takes place in the Cheboksarovs' house. In the remark we read: “Richly furnished living room, with paintings, carpets, draperies. Three doors: two on the sides and one entrance.”
Since the living room is the main plot space of the play under consideration, let us remember one of the main chronotopes identified by M.M. Bakhtin, namely, about the living room.
"Living room-salon." From the standpoint of plot and composition, “meetings take place here (meetings on the “road” or in an “alien world” no longer have the previously specific random nature), the beginnings of intrigues are created, resolutions often take place, here, finally, and most importantly, dialogues take place, acquiring exceptional significance in the novel, the characters, “ideas” and “passions” of the heroes are revealed.”
In the same second act, Lydia also speaks about the living room, arguing that they don’t preach in living rooms: “Agree, maman, that the living room is not an audience, not Institute of Technology, not the engineering corps."
Act three: “The same living room as in the second act, but richer furnished. To the right of the audience is the door to Vasilkov’s office, to the left to Lydia’s rooms, in the middle is the exit door.”
In the third act, another interesting topic appears for us, namely, a conversation halfway. Lydia and Vasilkov meet by chance in the middle of the road, walking towards each other. Lydia asks her husband where to go next; Vasilkov: “Let’s stop halfway for now.” And this answer from Vasilkov is extremely important to us, because the point is not only in the spatial arrangement of the heroes, but also in their
further relationships. At this moment they really take a closer look at each other.
At the end of the third act, the reader learns that Vasilkov and his young wife need to cut their budget. Therefore, he looked for a “one-story house with three windows facing the street” for the family, in which act four begins.
The space of the fourth act contrasts sharply with the living room in which the action took place earlier: “A very modest hall, which is also an office; on the sides of the window, on the back wall, to the right of the audience,
door to the front, to the left - to the inner rooms, between the doors there is a tiled stove; the furnishings are poor: a desk, an old piano.”
If Vasilkov talks about a new place “ new flat", then Lydia does not skimp on expressions. She “languishes” (as in a fortress or in prison) in this “kennel”, strives to leave this “pathetic shack” as quickly as possible. Kuchumov absolutely agrees with her. He calls the room an “inn,” a “chicken coop,” and a “hut.” Even Telyatev calls this new place a “vile apartment.”
It is interesting, however, that in the third scene of the fifth act we again return to the description of a modest dwelling.
Telyatev: Stands at the gate / Tiny house; / He looks at everyone / Through three little windows. / That's where the money is.
The interiors of the two apartments described are not just some space. It’s as if they were participants in the clashes of heroes. They are a reflection of the views of the key characters in the play on money, wealth, the habit of living in luxury and thoughtless spending.
In the fifth act, the Cheboksarovs return to their original place. “Boudoir in the Cheboksarovs’ former apartment; To the right of the audience is the door to the hall, straight to the entrance, to the left is the mirror window.”
The description of the space in which the play takes place is no less important for the playwright than the mention of places associated with the lives of the central characters.
It is interesting to consider how people who met him for the first time characterize Vasilkov. Glumov talks about Vasilkov: “He came from somewhere in Kamchatka,” later he calls him “a ship owner, he has his own ships on the Volga,” then: “Well, he’s probably a Siberian.” And finally: “Now I know, he’s an agent of some London trading house, and there’s nothing to explain.”
Telyatev tells Lydia that Vasilkov is from Chukhloma. In general, Telya-tev and Glumov certainly like this ambiguity around the name Vasilkov.
Telyatev: He visited London, Constantinople, Tetyushi, Kazan; He says that he has seen beauties, but never like you.<...>He was held captive by the Tashkent people for a very long time.
Glumov: That’s why he’s so wild, because everyone lives in the taiga, with the Buryats.
Nadezhda Antonovna also found herself in doubt about where Vasilkov came from.
Nadezhda Antonovna: Judging by your name, you were born in Greece?
Vasilkov: No, I’m in Russia, not far from the Volga.
And then Vasilkov continues that he lives in the village, “otherwise everyone is on the move.” It is extremely important for us that Savva Gen-nadich Vasilkov is a provincial from the banks of the Volga. We know that A.N. Ostrovsky repeatedly visited the banks of the Volga, studied in detail the folklore, language, traditions, life and customs of the inhabitants of this area. He considered the Volga people to be hardworking and active. It is interesting to note that Vasily (Vasilkov’s valet. Let us note, by the way, the commonality of the productive basis of the valet’s name and Vasilkov’s surname), emphasizing the commonality of their business, he says “maybe we saw need together, maybe we drowned in the river together in our business.” (hereinafter our italics are O.K.).
Despite the “provincialism” of the common people, A.N. Ostrovsky admired him, seeing in every hard worker a real Russian peasant.
So is Vasilkov. He is truly a hard worker. However, he is not just a worker. Thanks to his abilities, he was able to graduate educational institution and understand the specialty. (For example, “on the Suez Isthmus, I was interested in earthworks and engineering structures.” He is smart, prudent and hardworking. He studied his business both in Russia and abroad. He knows how to make a fortune and how to competently increase it. His money is not “mad”, it is “labor”.
And with such values of his, Vasilkov comes to the big city, to Moscow. Moscow demands fortune. It is shameful for a beggar to live here.
In the second act, Lydia says to her mother:
Lydia.<...>After all, we will not leave Moscow, we will not go to the village; but in Moscow we cannot live like beggars! .
Nadezhda Antonovna.<...>If we stay in Moscow, we will be forced to reduce our expenses; we will have to sell silver, some paintings, and diamonds.
Lydia. Oh, no, no, God forbid! Impossible, impossible! All of Moscow will know that we are ruined.
Let us note that in Lydia’s last remark Moscow is not a city, but the name of the Moscow people, the townspeople. Lydia is afraid of public opinion; she is afraid not so much of poverty as of what people will say. She doesn't care at all where the money comes from. The main thing for her is to know how to spend it.
In the third act, Vasilkov reasons: “If only you could travel around Moscow all your life, sometimes on visits, sometimes at evenings and concerts..., without doing anything; if it weren’t a shame to live like this and if there were funds for it.” For Vasilkov these are dreams. He, perhaps, would like to live like this, but for him, a person who earns his own bread, this is unacceptable.
But in the fourth phenomenon of the same action we read:
Lydia.<...>Exhausted. (Sits on a chair.) Traveled all over Moscow. That is, we conclude that Lydia lives exactly the way Vasilkov would be ashamed to live. And it’s not just young Cheboksarova who leads such a life. There are a majority of such wasters in Moscow; it is not for nothing that Telyatev says that he must soon be taken to the Resurrection Gate (where the debtor’s prison was located). And Kuchumov, who only shows off his wealth, actually lives in the care of his own wife. However, when asked to fight with Vasilkov, he replies: “No, no, no, young man! I won't fight with you; my life is too precious for Moscow to put it against yours, which may be completely useless.” Kuchumov sincerely believes that rich people who play cards and visit merchant clubs are more important for Moscow society than individuals like Vasilkov.
Vasilkov, however, also successfully lives in Moscow. But he doesn’t burn through his capital, but tries to earn it. Hence the places he visits are appropriate: the stock exchange and the meeting, where rich people talk about business.
Luxurious Moscow, which requires the waste of the capital of its residents, is presented to us by the following establishments and locations: the already mentioned Petrovsky Park (also known as Petrovka in the text of the comedy), theatre, coffee shop, merchant club, hotel, English (club), Trinity (restaurant). In the ninth scene of the third act, Glumov and Telyatev agree that home dinners are much worse than in hotels or clubs. And for uncontrollable spending there is an opportunity to get into the Resurrection Gate and the Moscow Pit.
Also interesting are the remarks of Glumov, who is going to go with his confidant to Paris. Paris, the city of dreams, appearing before us in an aura of luxury and wealth, beauty and pathos, truly beckons. But it also requires funds, like any other large city, like Moscow. But will Glumov really end up in Paris?
A few years after the publication of “Mad Money” A.N. Ostrovsky will write "The Dowry". One of her heroes invites another to go with him to Paris. He wonders what he will do there without knowledge French. And further:
Vozhevatov. What a capital (of France)! Are you out of your mind? Which Paris are you thinking about? We have a tavern on the square “Paris”, that’s where I wanted to go with you.
Tavern "Paris". Isn’t that where Glumov is planning to go? And, perhaps, Telyatev, saying goodbye to Glumov, also remembered this place: “Farewell, Glumov. Bon Voyage! Remember me in Paris:
There, at every crossroads, my shadow still wanders.
Also ephemeral, in our opinion, is America, where Kuchumov’s man is leaving with all his money. Telyatev immediately (not without irony) notes that this kind of money is not enough to get to Zvenigorod (we have already talked about Kuchumov’s financial condition earlier).
In the last line of the play, Telyatev sums up his thoughts about the lives of the people around him in Moscow: “Do you want to lend me money? Don't give it up, don't do it. They will disappear, by God, they will disappear. Moscow, Savva, is such a city that we, the Telyatevs and the Kuchumovs, will not perish in it. We will have both honor and credit even without a penny. For a long time, every merchant will consider it happiness that we have dinner and drink champagne at his expense.”
In order not to die in Moscow, you need to be able to count money. Vasilkov explains how to learn this in Lydia’s last act, offering her his help. We will not consider Vasilkov’s remark in full here. Let us note only those spatial milestones that Lydia needs to go through to change her views: the village -provincial city- Petersburg. Telyatev notes that Lydia faces “a brilliant prospect from a village basement to a St. Petersburg salon.” But, perhaps, only this way can teach an unthinking girl to value work and the means acquired by this work.
Concluding our conversation about the location of the comedy, we note that with all the variety of proposed spatial solutions, “the playwright in all cases subordinates these solutions to the task of the most complete, relaxed and at the same time internally appropriate development of a single dramatic action.”
The peculiarities of the organization of time and place of action of the play “Mad Money” are caused by the very originality of A.N.’s plays. Ostrovsky, their everyday content and everything that allows us to call them “plays of life”.
Bibliography
1. Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. Research from different years. -M.: Hood. lit., 1975. - 504 p.
2. Mosaleva G.V. “Unread” A.N. Ostrovsky: poet of iconic Russia: monograph. - Izhevsk: Udmurt. univ., 2014. - 296 p.
3. Ostrovsky A.N. Complete works: in 12 volumes / under general. ed. G.I. Vladykina and others. T. 3. Plays (1868-1871). - M.: Art, 1974. - 560 p.
4. Ostrovsky A.N. Complete works: in 12 volumes / under general. ed. G.I. Vladykina and others. T. 5. Plays (1878-1884). - M.: Art, 1975. - 543 p.
5. Kholodov E.G. Ostrovsky's mastery. - M.: Art, 1967. - 544 p.
“Each type of art is characterized by its own type of chronotope, determined by its “matter.” In accordance with this, the arts are divided into: spatial, in the chronotope of which temporal qualities are expressed in spatial forms; temporary, where spatial parameters are “shifted” to temporary coordinates; and spatiotemporal, in which chronotopes of both types are present.” 1
The nature of the conventions of time and space depends on the type of literature. In drama, the conventions of time and space are connected with an orientation towards the theater. V. E. Khalizev in his monograph on drama comes to the conclusion: “No matter how significant the role narrative fragments acquire in dramatic works, no matter how fragmented the depicted action is, no matter how the characters’ spoken statements are subordinated to the logic of their inner speech, drama is committed to closed in space and time to paintings." 2
Space and time in drama (dramatic chronotope) have a number of features. V.E. Khalizev in his work “Drama as a Phenomenon of Art” writes: “Drama and theater, as can be seen, paradoxically connect the spatial distance of the characters from the reader and viewer and their maximum, absolute “closeness” in time. The reader (not to mention the theater viewer) seems to be immersed in the depicted world" 3
For the structure of a dramatic chronotope, it is important that dramatic space is a specific, materially expressed habitat for the characters.
The duality of dramatic space “externalizes” the structure of the conflict. P. Pavi notes: “Dramatic space inevitably falls into two parts. What is meant by this schism is nothing less than conflict. Space in drama is an image of the dramatic structure of the world of the play; its model concentrates and makes visually visible the principles of organization of the “image of the world” that are most important for the author. 1
For drama, the ratio of “temporality of perception” is important work of art" and "time as the subject of the image." V.E. Khalizev notes: “Within a stage episode, the action takes place in some place adequate to the space of the stage, and over a period of time more or less corresponding to the time of reading or “watching” the given episode. The depicted time within a stage episode is not compressed or stretched; it is recorded in the text with maximum reliability.” 2
In general, the theater has many “time layers”; their interaction in the structure of the play’s chronotope plays an important meaning-forming role in the formation of the concept of the world and man in a dramatic work.
The time of the action depicted in the drama must fit within the strict time frame of the stage. Therefore, drama is considered somewhat limited in artistic possibilities (compared to epic). At the same time, the lady also has significant advantages over the creators of stories and novels. Khalizev writes about it this way: “One moment depicted in the drama is closely adjacent to another, neighboring one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode is neither compressed nor stretched. The characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals; their statements, as noted by Stanislavsky K.S., constitute a continuous, unbroken line. If with the help of narration the action is captured as something in the past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. 1
Thus, space in drama becomes not just a background against which events unfold, but an image of the world that embodies the author’s ideas. Time in the play is as close as possible to the “real”, creating the appearance of reality.
Artistic time and artistic space are the most important characteristics of an artistic image, providing a holistic perception of artistic reality and organizing the composition of the work. The art of words belongs to the group of dynamic, temporary arts (as opposed to plastic, spatial arts). But the literary and poetic image, formally unfolding in time (as a sequence of text), with its content reproduces the spatio-temporal picture of the world, moreover, in its symbolic-ideological, value aspect. Such traditional spatial landmarks as “house” (the image of a closed space), “open space” (the image of open space), “threshold”, “window”, “door” (the boundary between one and the other), have long been the point of application of meaningful forces in literary and artistic (and more broadly, cultural) models of the world (the symbolic richness of such spaces and images as the house of Gogol’s “old world landowners” or Raskolnikov’s coffin-like room in “Crime and Punishment”, 1866, F.M. Dostoevsky, like the steppe is obvious in “Taras Bulba”, 1835, by N.V. Gogol or in the story of the same name by A.P. Chekhov). Symbolic and artistic chronology(movement from spring and summer bloom to autumn sadness, characteristic of the world of Turgenev’s prose). In general, ancient types of value situations, realized in spatio-temporal images (chronotope, according to M.M. Bakhtin) - “idyllic time” in the father’s house, “adventurous time” of trials in a foreign land, “mysterious time” of descent into the underworld of disasters - so or otherwise preserved in a reduced form by classical literature of the New Age and modern literature (“station” or “airport” as places of decisive meetings and clearances, choice of path, sudden recognition, etc. correspond to the ancient “crossroads” or roadside inn; “hole” - the former “threshold” as the topos of the ritual transition).
Due to the iconic, spiritual, symbolic nature of the art of words spatial and temporal coordinates of literary reality are not fully specified, discontinuous and conditional (the fundamental non-representability of spaces, images and quantities in mythological, grotesque and fantastic works; the uneven course of plot time, its delays at points of description, retreats, parallel flow in different plot lines). However, here the temporary nature of the literary image, noted by G.E. Lessing in “Laocoon” (1766), makes itself felt - the convention in the transfer of space is felt weaker and is realized only when trying to translate literary works into the language of other arts; Meanwhile, the conventions in the transmission of time, the dialectic of the discrepancy between the time of the narrative and the time of the events depicted, compositional time with the plot, are mastered by the literary process as an obvious and meaningful contradiction.
Archaic, oral and generally early literature is sensitive to the type of temporal timing, orientation in the collective or historical account of time (so in the traditional system literary families lyrics are “present”, and epic is “long past”, qualitatively separated from the life time of the performer and listeners). The time of myth for its keeper and storyteller is not a thing of the past; the mythological narrative ends with the correlation of events with the present composition of the world or its future fate (the myth of Pandora's box, of the chained Prometheus, who will someday be freed). The time of a fairy tale is a deliberately conventional past, a fictitious time (and space) of non-existence; The ironic ending (“and I was there, drinking honey-beer”) often emphasizes that there is no way out of the time of the fairy tale at the time of its rendering (on this basis we can conclude that the fairy tale has a later origin compared to the myth).
With the collapse of archaic, ritual models of the world, marked by the features of naive realism (observance of the unities of time and place in ancient drama with its cult-mythological origins), in the spatio-temporal ideas that characterize literary consciousness, the measure of convention increases. In an epic or fairy tale, the pace of the narrative could not yet sharply advance the pace of the events depicted; an epic or fabulous action could not unfold simultaneously (“in the meantime”) on two or more sites; it was strictly linear and in this respect remained faithful to empiricism; the epic storyteller did not have a field of vision expanded in comparison with the ordinary human horizon; at each moment he was in one and only one point of the plot space. The “Copernican revolution” produced by the new European novel in spatiotemporal organization of narrative genres, was that the author, along with the right to unconventional and frank fiction, acquired the right to manage the novel’s time as its initiator and creator. When fiction removes the mask of a real event, and the writer openly breaks with the role of rhapsodist or chronicler, then there is no need for a naive-empirical concept of event time. From now on, the temporal scope can be as wide as desired, the pacing of the narrative can be as uneven as desired, parallel “theatres of action,” turning back time and exits into the future known to the narrator are acceptable and functionally important (for the purposes of analysis, explanation, or entertainment). The boundaries between the author’s condensed presentation of events, accelerating the passage of plot time, descriptions, stopping its progress for the sake of an overview of space, and dramatized episodes, the compositional time of which “keeps pace” with plot time, become much sharper and are realized. Accordingly, the difference between the unfixed (“omnipresent”) and spatially localized (“witness”) position of the narrator, characteristic mainly of “dramatic” episodes, is more acutely felt.
If in a short story of a novelistic type (the classic example is “The Queen of Spades”, 1833, A.S. Pushkin) these moments of the new artistic time and artistic space are still brought to a balanced unity and are completely subordinated to the author-narrator, talking with the reader as if “on the other side” of fictional space-time, then in the “great” novel of the 19th century such unity noticeably fluctuates under the influence of emerging centrifugal forces. These “forces” are the discovery of chronicle-everyday time and lived-in space (in the novels of O. Balzac, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov) in connection with the concept of the social environment that shapes human character, as well as the discovery of multi-subject narration and transferring the center of space-time coordinates to inner world heroes in connection with the development psychological analysis. When long-term organic processes come into the narrator’s field of view, the author risks facing the impossible task of reproducing life “from minute to minute.” The solution was to move the sum of everyday circumstances that repeatedly affect a person beyond the time of action (exposition in “Père Goriot”, 1834-35; “Oblomov’s dream” - a lengthy digression in Goncharov’s novel) or distribution throughout calendar plan works of episodes shrouded in the course of everyday life (in Turgenev’s novels, in the “peaceful” chapters of L.N. Tolstoy’s epic). Such imitation of the “river of life” itself with particular persistence requires the narrator to have a guiding supra-event presence. But, on the other hand, the essentially opposite process of “self-elimination” of the author-narrator is already beginning: space dramatic episodes increasingly organized from the “observational position” of one of the characters, events are described synchronously as they play out before the eyes of the participant. It is also important that chronicle-everyday time, unlike event time (in its origin - adventure time), does not have an unconditional beginning and an unconditional end (“life goes on”).
In an effort to resolve these contradictions, Chekhov, in accordance with his general idea of the course of life (the time of everyday life is the decisive tragic time of human existence), merged event time with everyday time to an indistinguishable unity: episodes that once happened are presented in the grammatical imperfect - as repeatedly repeated scenes of everyday life, filling a whole segment of everyday chronicle. (In this collapsing of a large “piece” of plot time into a single episode, which simultaneously serves as both a summary story about the past stage and an illustration to it, a “test” taken from everyday life, lies one of the main secrets of the famous Chekhov’s brevity.) From the crossroads classic novel of the mid-19th century, the path opposite to Chekhov’s was paved by Dostoevsky, who concentrated the plot within the boundaries of a turning point, crisis time of decisive trials, measured in a few days and hours. The chronicle gradualism here is actually devalued in the name of the decisive revelation of the heroes in their fateful moments. Dostoevsky’s intense turning point time corresponds to the space highlighted in the form of a stage, extremely involved in events, measured by the steps of the heroes - the “threshold” (doors, stairs, corridors, alleys, where you can’t miss each other), the “accidental shelter” (tavern, compartment), “ meeting hall” - corresponding to situations of crime (transgression), confession, public trial. At the same time, the spiritual coordinates of space and time embrace the human universe in his novels (the ancient golden age, the French revolution, “quadrillions” space years and versts), and these instantaneous mental snapshots of world existence prompt us to compare the world of Dostoevsky with the world of “The Divine Comedy” (1307-21) by Dante and “Faust” (1808-31) by I.V. Goethe.
In the spatio-temporal organization of a work of literature of the 20th century, the following trends and features can be noted:
- The symbolic plan of a realistic space-time panorama is emphasized, which, in particular, is reflected in the attraction to nameless or fictitious topography: the City, instead of Kyiv, in M.A. Bulgakov; Ioknapatawpha County in the southern United States, created by the imagination of W. Faulkner; the generalized “Latin American” country of Macondo in the national epic of the Colombian G. Garcia Marquez “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967). However, it is important that artistic time and artistic space in all these cases require real historical and geographical identification or at least rapprochement, without which the work is incomprehensible;
- The closed artistic time of a fairy tale or parable is often used, excluded from the historical account, which often corresponds to the uncertainty of the place of action (“The Trial”, 1915, F. Kafka; “The Plague”, 1947, A. Camus; “Watt”, 1953, S. Beckett );
- A remarkable milestone of modern literary development- addressing the character’s memory as an internal space for the unfolding of events; the intermittent, reverse and other course of plot time is motivated not by the author’s initiative, but by the psychology of remembering (this occurs not only in M. Proust or W. Woolf, but also in writers of a more traditional realistic plan, for example, in G. Böll, and in modern Russian literature from V.V. Bykov, Yu.V. Trifonov). This formulation of the hero’s consciousness makes it possible to compress the actual time of action to a few days and hours, while the time and space of an entire human life can be projected onto the screen of recollection;
- Modern literature has not lost a hero moving in the objective earthly expanse, in the multifaceted epic space of collective historical destinies - what are the heroes of “The Quiet Don” (1928-40) by M.A. Sholokhov, “The Life of Klim Samgin”, 1927-36, M. Gorky.
- The “hero” of a monumental narrative can become historical time itself in its decisive “nodes”, subordinating the fate of the heroes as private moments in an avalanche of events (A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s epic “The Red Wheel”, 1969-90).
A literary work, one way or another, reproduces the real world: nature, things, events, people in their external and internal existence. In this sphere, the natural forms of existence of the material and ideal are time and space.
If art world in a work is conditional, since it is an image of reality, then time and space in it are also conditional.
In literature, the immateriality of images, discovered by Lessing, gives them, i.e. images, the right to move instantly from one space and time to another. In a work, the author can depict events occurring simultaneously in different places and at different times, with one caveat: “In the meantime.” or “And on the other side of town.” Homer used approximately this storytelling technique.
With the development of literary consciousness, the forms of mastering time and space changed, representing an essential element of artistic imagery, and thus constituted at present one of the most important theoretical issues about the interaction of time and space in fiction.
In Russia, the problems of formal “spatiality” in art, artistic time and artistic space and their monolithic nature in literature, as well as the forms of time and chronotope in the novel, individual images of space, the influence of rhythm on space and time, etc., were consistently dealt with by P. A. Florensky , M. M. Bakhtin, Yu. M. Lotman, V. N. Toporov, groups of scientists from Leningrad, Novosibirsk, etc.20
Artistic time and space, tightly connected with each other, have a number of properties. In relation to the time depicted in a literary work, researchers use the term “discreteness”, since literature is capable of not reproducing the entire flow of time, but selecting the most significant fragments from it, indicating gaps with verbal formulas, such as “Spring has come again.”, or so, as it was done in one of the works of I. S. Turgenev: “Lavretsky spent the winter in Moscow, and in the spring of the next year the news reached him that Liza had cut her hair<.> ».
Temporal discreteness is the key to a dynamically developing plot, the psychologism of the image itself.
The fragmentation of the artistic space is manifested in the description individual parts, the most significant for the author. In I. I. Savin’s story “In the Dead House”, of the entire interior of the room prepared for the “unexpected guest”, only the dressing table, table and chair are described in detail -
symbols of the past, “calm and comfortable life,” since it is they who often attract the “tired to death” Khorov.
The nature of the conventions of time and space depends on the type of literature. Their maximum manifestation is found in lyric poetry, where the image of space can be completely absent (A. A. Akhmatova “You are my letter, dear, don’t crumple.”), manifested allegorically through other images (A. S. Pushkin “Prophet”, M. Yu Lermontov's "Sail"), opens up in specific spaces, realities surrounding the hero (for example, a typically Russian landscape in S. A. Yesenin's poem "White Birch"), or is built in a certain way through oppositions that are significant not only for romantics: civilization and nature , “crowd” and “I” (I. A. Brodsky “March is coming. I’m serving again”).
With the predominance of the grammatical present in the lyrics, which actively interacts with the future and the past (Akhmatova “The Devil did not give it away. I succeeded in everything”), the category of time can become the philosophical leitmotif of the poem (F. I. Tyutchev “Having rolled down the mountain, the stone lay down in the valley. "), is thought of as always existing (Tyutchev “Wave and Thought”) or momentary and instantaneous (I. F. Annensky “The Melancholy of Transience”) - have abstractness.
Conditional forms of existence real world- time and space -
strive to save some general properties in drama. Explaining the functioning of these forms in this type of literature, V. E. Khalizev in his monograph on drama comes to the conclusion: “No matter how significant the role narrative fragments play in dramatic works, no matter how fragmented the depicted action is, no matter how subordinate the characters’ spoken statements are subordinated logic of their inner speech, drama is committed to being closed in space and
time in paintings".
In the epic genre of literature, the fragmentation of time and space, their transitions from one state to another, become possible thanks to the narrator - an intermediary between the life depicted and the readers. The narrator, like a personified person, can “compress”, “stretch” and “stop” time in numerous descriptions and reasoning. Something similar happens in the works of I. Goncharov, N. Gogol, G. Fielding. So, the latter in “The Story of Tom
Jones, a foundling,” the discreteness of artistic time is set by the very names of the “books” that make up this novel.
Based on the features described above, time and space are represented in literature by abstract or concrete forms of their manifestations.
Abstract is an artistic space that can be perceived as universal, without any pronounced specificity. This form of recreation of universal content, extended to the entire “human race”, manifests itself in the genres of parables, fables, fairy tales, as well as in works of utopian or fantastic perception of the world and special genre modifications - dystopias. Thus, it does not have a significant impact on the characters and behavior of the characters, on the essence of the conflict, is not subject to author’s comprehension, etc. space in ballads
V. Zhukovsky, F. Schiller, short stories by E. Poe, literature of modernism.
In a work, a specific artistic space actively influences the essence of what is depicted. In particular, Moscow in the comedy A.
S. Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit”, Zamoskvorechye in the dramas of A. N. Ostrovsky and the novels of I. S. Shmelev, Paris in the works of O. de Balzac are artistic images, since they are not only toponyms and urban realities depicted in the works. Here they are a specific artistic space that develops in their works a general psychological portrait of the Moscow nobility; recreating the Christian world order; revealing different aspects of the life of ordinary people in European cities; a certain way of existence - a way of being.
Sensibly perceived (A. A. Potebnya) space as a “noble nest” is a sign of the style of I. Turgenev’s novels, generalized ideas about a provincial Russian city are poured into the prose of A. Chekhov. The symbolization of space, emphasized by a fictitious toponym, preserved the national and historical component in the prose of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The History of a City”) and A. Platonov (“City of Grads”).
In the works of literary theorists, specific artistic time is understood as either linear-chronological or cyclical.
Linear-chronological historical time has precise dating; in a work it usually correlates with a specific event. For example, in V. Hugo’s novels “The Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris", Maxim Gorky's "The Life of Klim Samgin", K. Simonov's "The Living and the Dead" real historical events directly enter into the fabric of the narrative, and the time of action is determined down to the day. In the works of B.
Nabokov’s time coordinates are vague, but according to indirect signs they correlate with the events of 1/3 of the 20th century, since they strive to reproduce the historical flavor of that bygone era, and thereby are also tied to a specific historical time.
In fiction, cyclical artistic time - the time of year, day - carries a certain symbolic meaning: day is a time of work, night is peace and pleasure, evening is calm and rest. From these initial meanings, stable poetic formulas emerged: “life is declining,” “the dawn of a new life,” etc.
The image of cyclical time initially accompanied the plot (of Homer’s poem), however, already in mythology, some time periods had a certain emotional and symbolic meaning: night is the time of dominance of secret forces, and morning is deliverance from evil spell. Traces of the mystical ideas of the people are preserved in the works of V. Zhukovsky (“Svetlana”),
A. Pushkin (“Songs Western Slavs"), M. Lermontov (“Demon”, “Vadim”), N. Gogol (“Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, “Mirgorod”), M. Bulgakov (“The Master and Margarita”).
Works of fiction are capable of capturing the individualized, from the point of view of the lyrical hero or character, emotional and psychological meaning of the time of day. Thus, in Pushkin’s lyrics, night is an expressive time of deep thoughts of the subject of experience; in Akhmatova, the same period characterizes the anxious, restless mood of the heroine; in the poem by A. N. Apukhtin, the artistic image of the morning is shown through the elegiac mode of artistry.
In Russian literature, along with the traditional symbolism of the agricultural cycle (F. Tyutchev “Winter is angry for a reason.”, I. Shmelev “Summer of the Lord”, I. Bunin “Antonov Apples”, etc.), there are also individual images of the seasons, filled with as well as individual images of the day, psychological design: the unloved spring in Pushkin and Bulgakov, joyful and long-awaited in Chekhov.
Thus, when analyzing a work of fiction, it is important for an editor, publisher, philologist, or literature teacher to determine the filling of its time and space with forms, types, and meanings, since this indicator characterizes the style of the work, the artist’s writing style, and the author’s method of aesthetic modality.
However, the individual uniqueness of artistic time and artistic space does not exclude the existence in literature of typological models in which the cultural experience of humanity is “objectified.”
Motifs of a house, road, crossroads, bridge, up and down, open space, the appearance of a horse, types of organization of artistic time: chronicle, adventure, biographical and other models that testify to the accumulated experience of human existence represent meaningful forms of literature. Each writer, endowing them with his own meanings, uses these models as “ready-made”, preserving the general meaning inherent in them.
In literary theory, typological models of a spatiotemporal nature are called chronotopes. Exploring the features of the typology of these content forms, M. Bakhtin paid close attention to their literary and artistic embodiment and the cultural issues underlying them. By chronotope, Bakhtin understood the embodiment of various value systems and types of thinking about the world. In the monograph “Questions of Literature and Aesthetics,” the scientist wrote the following about the synthesis of space and time: “In the literary and artistic chronotope, there is a fusion of spatial and temporal signs into a meaningful and concrete whole. Time here thickens, becomes denser, becomes artistically visible; space is intensified, drawn into the movement of time, plot, history. Examples of time are revealed in space, and space is conceptualized and measured by time. This intersection of rows and fusions of signs characterizes the artistic chronotope.<...>Chronotope as a formal and meaningful category determines (to a large extent) the image of a person in literature; this image is always significant
chronotopic."
Researchers identify such ancient types of value situations and chronotopes in literature as “idyllic time” in the father’s house (the parable of prodigal son, the life of Ilya Oblomov in Oblomovka, etc.); “adventurous time” of trials in a foreign land (the life of Ibrahim in Pushkin’s novel “Arap of Peter the Great”); “mysterious time” of descent into the underworld of disasters (Dante “ The Divine Comedy"), which were partially preserved in a reduced form in the literature of modern times.
For culture and literature XX-XXI V. A noticeable influence was exerted by the natural science concepts of time and space associated with A. Einstein’s theory of relativity and its philosophical consequences. Science fiction has most fruitfully mastered these ideas about space and time. In the novels by R. Sheckley “Exchange of Minds”, D. Priestley “June 31”, A. Asimov “The End of Eternity”, deep moral and ideological problems of our time are actively developed.
She reacted vividly to philosophical and scientific discoveries about time and space. traditional literature, which particularly reflected the relativistic effects of demonstrating time and space (M. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”: chapters “By Candlelight”, “Extraction of the Master”; V. Nabokov “Invitation to an Execution”; T. Mann “The Magic Mountain” ).
Time and space are imprinted in works of art in two ways: in the form of motifs and leitmotifs, acquiring a symbolic character and denoting a certain picture of the world; and also as a basis for plots.
§ 2. Plot, plot and composition in a literary work
Plot (from French sujet) is a chain of events depicted in a literary work, the life of characters in its spatio-temporal dimensions, in changing positions and circumstances.
The events recreated by the creator form the basis objective world works are an integral part of its form. As the organizing principle of most epic and dramatic works, the plot can also be significant in the lyrical genre of literature.
The understanding of plot as a set of events recreated in a work dates back to Russian literary criticism of the 19th century. :A.
N. Veselovsky, in one of the sections of the monograph “Historical Poetics,” presented a holistic description of the problem of literary plots from the point of view
from the point of view of comparative historical analysis.
At the beginning of the 20th century, V. B. Shklovsky, B. V. Tomashevsky and other representatives formal school Literary scholars made an attempt to change the proposed terminology and connected the plot of the work with its plot (from the Latin fibula - legend, myth, fable). They proposed that plot be understood as an artistically constructed distribution of events, and plot be understood as a set of events in their mutual internal connection21.
Sources of plots - mythology, historical legend, literature of past times. Traditional subjects, i.e. ancient, were widely used by classicist playwrights.
Numerous works are based on events of a historical nature, or events that took place in a reality close to the writer, his own life.
Thus, the tragic history of the Don Cossacks and the drama of the military intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century, life prototypes and other phenomena of reality were the subject of the author’s attention in the works of M. A. Sholokhov “Quiet Don”, M. A. Bulgakov “ White Guard", V.V. Nabokov's "Mashenka", Yu. N. Tynyanova's "The Death of Wazir-Mukhtar". In literature, there are also common plots that arose strictly as a figment of the artist’s imagination. This material was used to create the story “The Nose” by N.V. Gogol, the novels by A.R. Belyaev “Amphibian Man”, V.
Obruchev “Sannikov’s Land” and others.
It happens that the series of events in a work disappear into subtext, giving way to the recreation of the hero’s impressions, thoughts, experiences, and descriptions of nature. These are, in particular, the stories of I. A. Bunin “Chang’s Dreams”, L. E. Ulitskaya “Pearl Soup”, I. I. Savin.
The plot has a range of meaningful functions. Firstly, it captures the picture of the world: the writer’s vision of existence, which has a deep meaning, gives hope - a harmonious world order. In historical poetics, this type of artist’s views is defined as classical; it is characteristic of the subjects of literature of past centuries (the works of G. Heine, W. Thackeray, A. Maurois, N. Karamzin, I. Goncharov, A.
Chekhov, etc.). And on the contrary, a writer can present the world as a hopeless, deadly existence, conducive to spiritual darkness. The second way of seeing the world - non-classical - underlies many literary plots of the XX-XXI centuries. Literary heritage F. Kafka, A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, B. Poplavsky and others are marked by general pessimism and disharmony in the general state of the characters.
Secondly, the series of events in the works are designed to detect and recreate life’s contradictions - conflicts in the fate of the heroes, who, as a rule, are excited, tense, and experience deep dissatisfaction with something. By its nature, plot is involved in what is meant by the term “drama.”
Thirdly, plots organize a field of active search for characters, allow them to fully reveal themselves to the thinking reader in their actions, and evoke a number of emotional and mental responses to what is happening. The plot form is well suited for a detailed recreation of the volitional principle in a person and is characteristic of the literature of the detective genre.
Theorists, professional researchers, editors of literary and artistic publications distinguish the following types of literary plots: concentric, chronicle, and also, according to V. E. Khalizev, those that are in cause-and-effect relationships - supra-genre.
Plots in which one event situation comes to the fore (and the work is built on one storyline) are called concentric. Single-line event series were widespread in the literature of antiquity and classicism. It should be noted that the small epic and dramatic genres, which are characterized by unity of action, are also based on the indicated plot.
In literature, chronicles are stories in which events are dispersed and unfold separately from each other. According to B.
E. Khaliseva, in these plots the events do not have cause-and-effect relationships with each other and are correlated with each other only in time, as is the case in Homer’s epic “Odyssey”, Cervantes’ novel “Don Quixote”, Byron’s poem “Don Juan”.
The same scientist identifies multilinear stories as a type of chronicle, i.e. unfolding parallel to each other, somewhat independent; only occasionally contiguous plot schemes, such as, for example, in the novels by L. N. Tolstoy “Anna Karenina”, W. Thackeray “Vanity Fair”, I. A. Goncharov “Precipice”.
Particularly deeply rooted in the history of world literature are plots where events are concentrated among themselves in cause-and-effect relationships and reveal a full-fledged conflict: from the beginning of the action to its denouement. A good example is the tragedies of W. Shakespeare, the dramas of A. S. Griboyedov and A. N. Ostrovsky, the novels of I. S. Turgenev.
These types of literary plots are well described and thoroughly studied in literary studies. V. Ya. Propp in the monograph “Morphology of a Fairy Tale” using the concept of “function characters“revealed the significance of the character’s action for the further course of events22.
In one of the branches of the science of literature, narratology (from the Latin narration - narrative), a three-part plot scheme described by V. Propp: the initial “lack” associated with the hero’s desire to possess something, - the confrontation between the hero and the antihero - a happy ending, for example, “accession to the throne” is considered as a supergenre (as a characteristic of the plot) and is associated with the concept of meditation, finding measure and mean.
Researchers of structuralist orientation A. Greimas, K. Bremont believe that narrative meditation is based on a special way of thinking associated with a change in view of the essence human activity, marked with signs of freedom and independence, responsibility and irreversibility.
Thus, in the structure of the plot of the work, the series of events consist of signs of human activity, for whom the immutability of the world and the possibility of change are the key to existence. According to these researchers, narrative meditation consists of “humanizing the world,” giving it a personal and eventual dimension. Greimas believed that the world is justified by the existence of man, and man himself
included in the world.
In classical plots, where actions move from beginning to end, vicissitudes play a big role - sudden shifts in the destinies of the characters: all sorts of turns from happiness to unhappiness, from success to failure or vice versa, etc. Unexpected incidents with the characters give the work a deep philosophical meaning. As a rule, plots with abundant twists and turns embody a special idea of the power of various accidents over a person’s fate.
The twists and turns add an important element of entertainment to the work. Eventual intricacies, which arouse increased interest in reading among the contemplative reader, are characteristic of both entertainment literature and serious, “top” literature.
In the literature, along with the considered plots (concentric, chronicle, those where there is a plot, conflict, denouement), event sequences that focus on the state human world in its complexity, versatility and persistent conflict. Moreover, the hero here desires not so much to achieve some goal, but to relate himself to the surrounding disharmonious reality as its integral link. He is often focused on the tasks of understanding the world and his place in it, and is in a constant search for agreement with himself. The philosophically important “self-discoveries” of the heroes of F. Dostoevsky, N. Leskov, S. Aksakov, I. Goethe, Dante neutralize the external event dynamics of the narrative, and the twists and turns here turn out to be unnecessary.
The stable-conflict state of the world was actively mastered by literature: the works of M. de Cervantes “Don Quixote”, J. Milton “ Lost heaven”, “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum”, A. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”, A. Chekhov’s “Lady with a Dog”, the plays of G. Ibsen and others are deeply controversial, consistently reveal “layers of life” and are “doomed” to remain without resolution.
Composition (from Latin composition - composition) - the combination of parts, or components, into a whole; structure of literary and artistic form.
Depending on what level, i.e. layer, the artistic form in question, distinguish between aspects of the composition.
Since a literary work appears before the reader as a verbal text, perceived in time, having a linear extension, researchers, editors, and publishers have a need to talk about the problems of textual composition: the sequence of words, sentences, the beginning and end of the text, strong position text, etc.
In a work, behind the verbal material there is an image. Words are signs denoting objects that are collectively structured into the subject level of a work. In the figurative world of art, the spatial principle of composition is inevitable, which manifests itself in the correlation of characters as characters. In the literature of classicism and sentimentalism, the subject level of composition was revealed through the antithesis of vice and virtue: the works of J. B. Moliere “The Bourgeois in the Nobility”, D. I. Fonvizin “The Minor”, A. S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”, F. Schiller “Cunning and Love” revealed the balance between negative characters and positive ones.
IN further literature the antithesis of characters is softened by a universal human motive, and heroes, for example, in F. M. Dostoevsky, acquire a new quality - duality, combining pride and humility. All this reveals the unity of design and creative concept of the novels.
Cohesion by contrast - the grouping of persons along the course of the plot - is the sphere of the works of L. N. Tolstoy. In his novel War and Peace, the poetics of contrast extends to family nests Rostov, Bolkonsky, Kuragin, into groups divided according to social, professional, age and other characteristics.
Since the plot of a literary work organizes the world of artistic images in its temporal extent, among professional researchers the question inevitably arises about the sequence of events in the plots and techniques that ensure the unity of perception of the artistic canvas.
The classic scheme of a single-line plot: beginning, development of action, climax, denouement. A chronicle plot is composed and framed by chains of episodes, sometimes including concentric microplots that are not externally related to the main action - inserted short stories, parables, fairy tales and other literary material. This method of connecting parts of a work deepens the internal semantic connection between the inserted and main plots.
The technique of plot framing in the presence of the narrator reveals the deep meaning of the story being conveyed, as this, for example, was reflected in Leo Tolstoy’s work “After the Ball,” or emphasizes different attitude to many actions of both the hero-narrator himself and his random companions, in particular, in Nikolai Leskov’s story “The Enchanted Wanderer.”
The technique of editing (from the gr. montage - assembly, selection) came to literature from cinema. As a literary term, its meaning comes down to the discontinuity (discreteness) of the image, the breakdown of the narrative into many small episodes, the fragmentation of which also hides the unity artistic design. A montage image of the surrounding world is characteristic of the prose of A. I. Solzhenitsyn.
In a work, various silences, secrets, omissions most often act as plot inversions, preparing recognition, discovery, organizing vicissitudes that move the action itself to an interesting denouement.
Thus, composition in the broad sense of the word should be understood as a set of techniques used by the author to “arrange” his work, creating a general “pattern”, “routine” of its individual parts and transitions between them.
Literary scholars, among the main types of composition, along with the named oratorical, also note narrative, descriptive and explanatory.
Professional analysis, analysis, and editing of a literary text requires the philologist, editor and proofreader to maximize their involvement in the “corpus of the literary body” - textual, subject and plot, focusing on the problem of the integrity of the perception of a work of art.
The arrangement of characters as characters should be distinguished from the arrangement of their images and the arrangement in the text of the details that make up these images. For example, clutches by contrast can be emphasized
method of comparative characteristics, alternate description of behavior
heroes, characters in the same situation, divided into chapters, sub-chapters, etc.
Opposing groups of heroes are introduced by the creator of the work through different storylines and are described by him using the “voices” of other characters. The parallels are not immediately noticeable to the reader in the fabric of the narrative and are revealed to him only upon repeated and subsequent readings.
As you know, the narrative does not always follow the chronology of events. For an editor or philologist studying the sequence of events in works with several storylines, a problem may arise with the alternation of episodes in which certain characters are occupied.
Problems of textual composition may also be associated with the introduction of the hero’s past or past events into the main action of the work; familiarizing the reader with the circumstances preceding the plot; subsequent fates of the characters.
Smart dispersal literary material, auxiliary techniques - prologue, exposition, backstory, epilogue - expands the spatio-temporal framework of the narrative without compromising the depiction of the main action of the work, in which narration is combined with description, and scenic episodes are intertwined with psychological analysis.
The multidirectionality of the subject and textual composition is revealed by those works in which the plot, the series of events, do not have a denouement, and the conflict remains completely unresolved. In this case, the editor, textual critic, literary critic deals with the open ending of the work, since the plot is a category of the subject level in literature, and not the textual one.
A text, including an epic one, has a beginning: title, subtitle, epigraph (in narratology they are called the horizon of expectation), table of contents, dedication, preface, first line, first paragraph, and end. The specified parts of the text are frame components, i.e. frame. Any text is limited.
In drama, the text of a work is divided into acts (actions), scenes (pictures), phenomena, stage directions, main and secondary.
In lyric poetry, the parts of the text include verse, stanza, and strophoid. Here the function of frame components is performed by anacrusis (constant, variable, zero) and a clause, enriched with rhyme and especially noticeable as a verse boundary in case of transfer.
However, successful comprehension general composition of a work of art consists in tracing the interaction not only of the plot, plot, subject level of the work and components of the literary text, but also of the “point of view”.
