The world of the work. Sharaprint - cheap printing! The inner world of a work of art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The inner world of a work of art

Source // Questions of Literature, No. 8, 1968. – pp. 74-87.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of work -

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The inner world of a work of verbal art (literary or folklore) has a certain artistic integrity. The individual elements of reflected reality are connected to each other in this inner world in a certain system, artistic unity. When studying the reflection of the world of reality in the world of a work of art, literary scholars limit themselves for the most part to paying attention to whether individual phenomena of reality are correctly or incorrectly depicted in the work.

We usually do not study the inner world of a work of art as a whole, limiting ourselves to the search for “prototypes”: prototypes of a particular character, character, landscape, even “prototypes”, events and prototypes of the types themselves. Everything is “retail”, everything is in parts! The world of a work of art therefore appears scattered in our research, and its relationship to reality is fragmented and lacks integrity.

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

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

The world of a work of art is the result of both a correct reflection and an active transformation of reality.

(the inner world of a work of art does not exist on its own and not for itself. It is not autonomous. It depends on reality, “reflects” the world of reality, but the transformation of this world that a work of art allows is holistic and purposeful.)

The world of social relations in a work of art also requires study in its integrity and independence.

The inner world of history. The task of studying this world of the history of a work is as different from studying a writer’s views on history as the study of artistic time is different from studying an artist’s views on time

The moral world of works of art is constantly changing with the development of literature. (additionally)

The world of medieval works knows absolute good, but evil in it is relative. Therefore, a saint cannot not only become a villain, but even commit a bad act. But any villain in the world of medieval works can change dramatically and become a saint. Hence a kind of asymmetry and “unidirectionality” of the moral world of artistic works of the Middle Ages.

Attempts to justify evil, to find objective reasons for it, to consider evil as a social or religious protest are characteristic of works of the romantic movement.

In classicism, evil and good seem to stand above the world and acquire a unique historical coloring.

In realism, moral problems permeate everyday life and appear in thousands of aspects, among which social aspects steadily increase as realism develops. Etc.

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

The role and place of conflict in the poetics of a work

As a rule, a work contains a set of conflicts. Conflict drives the development of action. Grouping is possible taking into account the themes of the work. There are moral, philosophical, social, ideological, socio-political, family and other conflicts. There is no strict classification of conflicts.

There are local conflicts (closed within the work, where they are exhausted (“Poor Liza” by Karamzin), insoluble - stable (“Fathers and Sons” by Turgenev). The conflict is associated with the pathos of the work: tragic conflict, comic, heroic, etc. (a more understandable formulation than in the textbook)

You can consider the conflict in the work from a historical perspective (antiquity - man and fate, the Middle Ages - the divine and the devil in the human soul, etc.).

In literature, the most deeply rooted plots are those whose conflicts, in the course of the events depicted, arise, escalate and are somehow resolved - overcome and exhaust themselves.

The conflict of the tragedy "Othello" (with all its tension and depth) is local and transitory. It is within the plot.

Conflict in a work of art

Only conflict communicates the dynamic beginning of a sequence of private events and situations and creates the content of a literary text.

Conflict is a confrontation, a contradiction either between characters, or between character and circumstances, or within character - a contradiction that underlies action. Thus, conflict is the driving force of the novel. He acts as the motivating reason for all the hero’s actions.

In literary studies, a tradition has developed by conflict to necessarily mean a collision, struggle, dispute, the expression of opposing assessments and the manifestation of polar inclinations, the confrontation of warring forces, both in external space and in the space of the inner world of heroes. The character itself and the role played by the conflict in a literary text are the best evidence that the reality reflected in this text is dualistic, and its dualism is oppositional. This opposition is the main structural principle of the structure and existence of reality: spiritual and material, darkness and light, good and evil, earth and sky, friends and enemies.

However, the modern vision of conflict in a literary text allows us to assert that conflict is not necessarily only a clash, but also the nature of relationships, a state.

The conflict in each specific work is a reflection of the author's position. From this point of view, it can be valent if the author’s value-interested participation is present in it and his biases are clearly marked, and ambivalent if the author depicts the conflict from a position of maximum detached objectivity.

The conflict presupposes the presence of two opposition components. Their role can be played by various structural elements of a literary text.

The nature of the conflict, which is the source and main reason for the development of the plot, determines the increase or decrease in the tension of the narrative, the presence or absence of elements that inhibit its development (for example, descriptions, portraits or reasoning of the hero, author, narrator).

Conflict expectation is the reader's anticipation of upcoming events, which can either be destroyed as one reads, or confirmed.

Based on the idea of ​​opposition, contradiction between its constituent elements, conflict determines the nature of the relationship between the characters and images of a work of art, as well as the stages of plot development, thus being the semantic core of any text.

Ticket 25

Character, type and character in fiction. Literature as “human studies”.

Source // Questions of Literature, No. 8, 1968. – pp. 74-87.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 For literature on artistic time and artistic space, see: D. S. Likhachev, Poetics of Old Russian Literature, “Nauka”, L. 1967, pp. 213-214 and 357. Additionally I'll indicate : Em. S t a i g With G , Die Zeit als Einbil-dungskraft des Dichters. Untersuchungen zu Gedichton Von Brentano, Goethe und Kcllor, Ziirich, 1939, 1953, 1963; H.W e i n r i With h, Tempus. Besprochene und crzahltc Welt, Stuttgart, 1964.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at some examples. First of all, I would like to dwell on a Russian fairy tale.

One of the main features of the inner world of a Russian fairy tale is its low resistance to the material environment. And with this are connected the features of her artistic space, and the features of her artistic time, and then - the fairy-tale specificity of constructing a plot, a system of images, etc. 1

But first of all, I will explain what I mean by “environmental resistance” in the inner world of a work of art. Actions in a work can be fast or inhibited, slow. They can cover more or less space. Action, encountering unexpected obstacles or not encountering obstacles, can be either uneven or even and calm (calmly fast or calmly slow). In general, depending on the resistance of the environment, actions can be very diverse in nature.

Some works will be characterized by the ease of fulfilling the desires of the characters with low potential barriers, while others will be characterized by difficulty and high potential barriers. We can therefore talk about different degrees of predictability in individual works, which is extremely important for studying the technique of “interesting reading.” Phenomena such as turbulence, crisis of resistance, fluidity, kinematic viscosity, diffusion, entropy, etc., can constitute essential features of the dynamic structure of the internal world of a verbal work.

In Russian fairy tales, environmental resistance is almost absent. The heroes move with extraordinary speed, and their path is neither difficult nor easy: “he was traveling along a wide road and ran into the golden feather of the firebird.” The obstacles that the heroes encounter along the way are only plot-related, but not natural, not natural. The physical environment of the fairy tale itself seems to know no resistance. That’s why formulas like “no sooner said than done” are so common in fairy tales. The fairy tale does not have psychological inertia. The hero knows no hesitation: he decided and did it, thought and went. All the heroes’ decisions are also quick and made without much thought. The hero sets off on a journey and achieves his goal, as if meeting no resistance: without fatigue, road inconvenience, illness, random incidents not determined by the plot, etc. The road in front of the hero is usually “straight” and “wide”; if she can sometimes be “bewitched,” it is not because of her natural state, but because someone has bewitched her. The field in a fairy tale is wide. The sea does not hinder the shipmen by itself - only when the hero’s enemy intervenes does a storm arise.

In the fairy tale, it is not the inertia of the environment that makes itself felt, but offensive forces and, at the same time, mainly “spiritual” ones: there is a struggle of intelligence, a struggle of intentions, and the magical powers of witchcraft. Intentions do not meet resistance from the environment, but collide with other intentions, often unmotivated. Therefore, obstacles in a fairy tale cannot be foreseen - they are sudden. This is a kind of ball game: the ball is thrown, it is returned, but the flight of the ball in space does not encounter air resistance and does not know the force of gravity. Everything that happens in the fairy tale is unexpected: “they were driving, driving and suddenly”, “they were walking, walking and seeing a river” (A. N. Afanasyev, Russian Folk Tales). The action of the fairy tale seems to go towards the wishes of the hero: as soon as the hero thought about how he could get rid of his enemy, Baba Yaga meets him and gives advice (Afanasyev, “No. 212”). If the heroine needs to run, she takes a magic carpet, sits on it and flies on it like a bird (Afanasyev, No. 267). Money in a fairy tale is obtained not by labor, but by chance: someone tells the hero to dig it out from under a damp oak tree (Afanasyev, No. 259). Everything the hero does, he does on time. The heroes of the fairy tale seem to be waiting for each other. The hero needs to go to the king - he runs straight to him, and the king seems to be already waiting for him, he is in place, there is no need to ask him to receive him, or to wait (Afanasyev, No. 212). In a fight, fight, or duel, the heroes also do not offer long-term resistance to each other, and the outcome of the fight is decided not so much by physical strength as by intelligence, cunning or magic.

The dynamic lightness of the tale finds its counterpart in the ease with which the heroes understand each other, in the fact that animals can speak and trees can understand the hero’s words. The hero himself not only moves easily, but also easily turns into animals, plants, and objects. The hero's failures are usually the result of his mistake, forgetfulness, disobedience, or the fact that someone deceived or bewitched him. It is extremely rare that failure is the result of the hero’s physical weakness, his illness, fatigue, or the severity of the task facing him. Everything in a fairy tale happens easily and immediately - “like in a fairy tale.”

The dynamic lightness of a fairy tale leads to an extreme expansion of its artistic space. The hero travels to distant lands to the thirtieth state to accomplish a feat. He finds the heroine “at the end of the world.” The well-done Sagittarius procures a bride for the Tsar, Vasilisa the Princess, “at the very edge of the world” (Afanasyev, No. 169). Each feat is performed in a new place. Thanks to this, the action of the fairy tale is the hero’s journey through the vast world of the fairy tale. Here is “The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf” (Afanasyev, No. 168). Initially, the action of this tale takes place “in a certain ... kingdom, in a certain state.” Here Ivan Tsarevich accomplishes his first feat - he gets the feather of the firebird. For the second feat, he goes, “without knowing where he’s going.” From the place of his second feat, Ivan Tsarevich travels again “far away to the thirtieth state” to accomplish his third feat. Then he moves to accomplish his fourth feat to new distant lands.

The space of a fairy tale is unusually large, it is limitless, infinite, but at the same time closely connected with the action. It is not independent, but also has no relation to real space. It's different in the chronicle. The space in the chronicle is also very large. The action in the chronicle is easily transferred from one point to another. A chronicler can report on one line of the chronicle what happened in Novgorod, on another - on what happened in Kyiv, and on the third - on events in Constantinople. But in the chronicle, geographical space is real. We even guess (although not always) in which city the chronicler writes, and we know exactly where events take place in real geographical space with real cities and villages. The space of a fairy tale does not correspond to the space in which the storyteller lives. It is completely special, different from the space of sleep.

And from this point of view, the fairy-tale formula that accompanies the hero’s actions is very important: “is it close, is it far, is it low, is it high.” This formula also has a continuation, which is already related to the artistic time of the fairy tale: “soon the fairy tale is told, but not soon the deed is done.” The time of the fairy tale also does not correspond to real time. It is unknown whether the events of the fairy tale took place long ago or recently. Time in a fairy tale is special - and at the same time “soon”. An event can take place thirty years and three years, but it can also take place in one day. There isn't much difference. The heroes do not get bored, do not languish, do not grow old, do not get sick. Real time has no power over them. Only event time has power. There is only a sequence of events, and this sequence of events is the artistic time of a fairy tale. But the story can neither go back nor skip over the sequence of events. The action is unidirectional, but artistic time is closely connected with it.

Thanks to the peculiarities of artistic space and artistic time, a fairy tale has exceptionally favorable conditions for the development of action. Action in a fairy tale occurs more easily than in any other genre of folklore.

This lightness, as is easy to see, is in direct connection with the magic of a fairy tale. Actions in a fairy tale not only do not meet resistance from the environment, they are also facilitated by various forms of magic and magical objects: a flying carpet, a self-assembled tablecloth, a magic ball, a magic mirror, a falcon’s feather, a wonderful shirt, etc. In the fairy tale “Go there” - I don’t know where, bring that - I don’t know what” (Afanasyev, No. 212) the magic ball rolls in front of the hero of the fairy tale - the archer: “where the river meets, there the ball will be thrown over a bridge; where the Sagittarius wants to rest, there the ball will spread out like a downy bed.” These magical helpers also include the so-called “helping animals” (gray wolf, little humpbacked horse, etc.), the magic word that the hero knows, living and dead water, etc.

Comparing this magical relief of the heroes’ actions with the lack of environmental resistance in the fairy tale, we can notice that these two essential properties of the fairy tale are not of the same nature. One phenomenon is obviously of earlier origin, the other of more recent origin. I suppose that magic in a fairy tale is not primary, but secondary. It was not the absence of environmental resistance that was “added” to magic, but the very absence of environmental resistance required its “justification” and explanation in magic. Magic invaded the fairy tale more than any other folklore genre in order to give a “real” explanation - why the hero is transported with such speed from place to place, why certain events take place in the fairy tale that are incomprehensible to consciousness, which has already begun to look for an explanation and does not contented with noting what was happening.

Paradoxical as it may seem, magic in the lubricant is an element of the “materialistic explanation” of the miraculous ease with which individual events of transformation, escapes, exploits, finds, etc. are accomplished in a fairy tale. In fact, witchcraft, enchantment, sorcery, spell , conspiracies, etc. are not miracles themselves, but only “explanations” of the wonderful lightness of the inner world of a fairy tale. The absence of environmental resistance, the constant overcoming of the laws of nature in a fairy tale is also a kind of miracle that required its own explanation... This explanation was all the “technical weapons” of the fairy tale: magical objects, helpful animals, magical properties of trees, witchcraft, etc.

The primacy of the absence of environmental resistance and the secondary nature of magic in a fairy tale can be supported by the following consideration. The environment in a fairy tale has no resistance in its entirety. The magic in it explains only a certain, and at the same time insignificant, part of the wonderful lightness of the fairy tale.

If magic were primary, then the absence of environmental resistance would be encountered in a fairy tale only along the path of this magic. Meanwhile, in a fairy tale, events very often develop with extraordinary ease, “just like that,” without being explained by magic. For example, in the fairy tale “The Frog Princess” (Afanasyev, No. 267), the king orders his three sons to shoot an arrow, and “as soon as the woman brings the arrow, so does the bride.” All three sons’ arrows are brought by women: the first two are “the princess’s daughter and the general’s daughter,” and only the third arrow is brought by the princess, turned into a frog by witchcraft. But neither the king has witchcraft when he offers his sons to find brides for themselves in this very way, nor do the first two brides. Witchcraft does not “cover” or explain all the wonders of a fairy tale. All these invisible hats and flying carpets are “small” to the fairy tale. That's why they are clearly later.

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So, plot narration requires that the world of a work of fiction be “easy” - easy, first of all, for the development of the plot itself. Where the plot dominates, the inner world of the work is always “uncomplicated” to one degree or another. The resistance of the medium falls, time speeds up, space expands. The action metronome swings fast and wide.

Let's take another example, this time from a completely different area from folklore. Dostoevsky's action, as is known, develops with extraordinary speed, proceeds energetically and lively. And in accordance with this, in the artistic world of Dostoevsky, as in a fairy tale, the coefficient of resistance turns out to be very low. But since the plots of Dostoevsky’s works pave their way in the sphere of psychological and ideological life, it is precisely this part of the inner world of Dostoevsky’s works that is characterized by the least “resistance.”

If in the world of a fairy tale the freedom of the material world dominates, then in Dostoevsky the freedom of spiritual life dominates.

I am deprived of the opportunity to substantiate my idea in detail in a short journal article, and therefore I ask the reader in advance to forgive me for some “sharpenings” that I will have to make.

Dostoevsky’s world “works” on small connections; its individual parts are little connected with each other. Cause-and-effect, pragmatic connections are weak. This world is constantly viewed from different points of view, always in motion and always, as it were, fragmented, with frequent violations of everyday patterns.

In the world of Dostoevsky's works, all kinds of deviations from the norm reign, deformation reigns, people are distinguished by strangeness, eccentricities, they are characterized by absurd actions, absurd gestures, disharmony, inconsistency. The action develops through scandals and sharp clashes between opposing entities.

Events happen unexpectedly, suddenly, unexpectedly. Unexpected and illogical actions are committed by Stavrogin, Versilov, Myshkin, Mitya and Ivan Karamazov, Nastasya Filippovna, Aglaya, Rogozhin, Katerina Ivanovna, etc. The unexpectedness of their actions is reinforced by the deliberate obscurity of the situation, the unexplained nature of events, the cause-and-effect basis of events that remains in the deep shadow.

It is not known why, for example, Alyosha comes to his father at the beginning of The Brothers Karamazov. And it is characteristic that Dostoevsky himself emphasizes that he does not find an explanation for this from the preface “From the Author” to the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”; the “author” directly says: “it would be strange to demand clarity from people in a time like ours.”

Events in works are refracted through impressions about them. These impressions are obviously incomplete and subjective. The author emphasizes that he is not responsible for them. He often directly refuses to explain what is happening. Thanks to this, the action is maximally emancipated. Wed. in chapter 9, part 4 of “The Idiot”: we “ourselves, in many cases find it difficult to explain what happened,” or “if you asked us for clarification... about the extent to which the appointed wedding satisfies the actual desires of the prince... we, We admit, we would be at a great difficulty to answer.” Wed. also constant reservations like: “we know only one thing...”, “we strongly suspect...”, etc. Dostoevsky, as it were, frees himself from the need to follow the cause-and-effect series, at least in its elementary form.

Freedom of narration in Dostoevsky no longer requires the absence of resistance from the material environment, as in a fairy tale, but freedom from the cause-and-effect series from the “resistance” of psychology, from elementary everyday logic. Dostoevsky follows this path to the extent that artistic verisimilitude allows him to do so.

Dostoevsky is concerned and interested in the paradoxes of the psyche and the unexpected in human behavior. Fedka Katorzhny in “The Possessed” says about Peter Verkhovensky: “If it is said about a person: a scoundrel, then he knows nothing about him other than a scoundrel. Ali is said to be a fool, so the man has no title other than a fool. And maybe on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I’m only a fool, and on Thursday I’m smarter than him.”

If by psychology we mean a science that studies the patterns of human mental life, then Dostoevsky is the most non-psychological writer of all existing ones. He does not need psychology, but any opportunity to free himself from it. That is why he leaves psychology for psychiatry and turns to mental illness. But Dostoevsky also needs psychiatry only in order to discover in it certain alogisms, oddities, inconsistencies, to discover what does not obey existing ideas about the mental life of a person. It so happened that much in his denial of the existing laws of mental life turned out to be prophetic, anticipating the scientific conclusions of modern psychology and psychiatry, but this happened because Dostoevsky still sought plausibility and, within the limits of plausibility, was able to go beyond the scientific concepts of his time without violating everything some basic truth of mental life. He expanded the idea of ​​human mental life to colossal limits, but still remained within the limits of plausibility. And this “free” plausibility in his “foresights” turned out to be true.

Dostoevsky's ironic attitude towards the ordinary psychology of his time is directly expressed by Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov in the chapter “Psychology at Full Speed”, which depicts a prosecutor who is carried away by psychology. Dostoevsky openly states that psychology is a “double-edged sword.”

Dostoevsky's favorite heroes are eccentrics, strange people, unbalanced people who commit unexpected actions. The laws of psychology do not seem to exist for them.

Dostoevsky directly connects his interest in eccentrics and oddities with the desire to understand what is happening in the world. In the note “From the Author” in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky writes: “...Everyone strives to unite particulars and find at least some common sense in the general confusion. An eccentric is in most cases particular and isolated. Is not it?"

Dostoevsky denies ordinary logic in the name of some higher one: the eccentric is not “always” particular and isolated, but on the contrary, it happens that he, perhaps, sometimes carries within himself the core of the whole, and the rest of the people of his era are everything, by some influx wind, for some reason they were separated from him for a while...” (ibid.).

Let us return, however, to the fragmentation of the world of Dostoevsky’s works. This fragmentation affects not only spiritual life, but also the part of the material world closest to it. Let us pay attention first of all to the faces of Dostoevsky’s heroes. These persons consist of parts that have relative independence. Stepan Trofimovich tries on smiles. Rogozhin puts on a smile. Pyotr Stepanovich makes and “remakes” his physiognomy. It is no coincidence that the faces of Dostoevsky’s heroes so often resemble masks (in Stavrogin, in Svidrigailov). Individual parts of the face are so independent that they can play a major and independent role in a person’s appearance.

In “The Christmas Tree and the Wedding” it is not the sideburns that are put to the face, but “the gentleman is put to the sideburns.” Sometimes this characteristic of faces is transferred to the whole person. In "Uncle's Dream" Prince K. is composed, as it were, of elements independent from each other. This is a “dead man on springs”, a “semi-composition”, with artificial legs, eyes, teeth, hair, sideburns, whitened and pomaded.

Dostoevsky plays with alogisms in his own style. In “The Possessed,” Dostoevsky characterizes General Ivan Ivanovich Drozdov as “who ate an awful lot and was terribly afraid of atheism” (Chapter VI, Part I). In “Uncle's Dream” Maria Alexandrovna sits by the fireplace “in the most excellent mood and in a light green dress” (Chapter III).

Dostoevsky’s usual words are “suddenly”, “even”, “however”, “somewhat”, “some”, “quite”, “as if”, “as if”, “some”, “like”, “not quite” “, etc. The love of surprises, uncertainties and inexplicability leads Dostoevsky to a kind of “weaving of words”: “Lost in the resolution of these questions, I decide to bypass them without any permission” (“The Brothers Karamazov” - “From the author”).

So, the inner world of Dostoevsky’s works is a world of little resistance in the spiritual and mental realm, just as the world of a fairy tale is of little resistance in the material environment. This world of freedom and weak ties is, from Dostoevsky’s point of view, the real, authentic world. But along with this world of isolation, there is also an environment in which everything can be foreseen and everything fits into the gray everyday patterns.

In fact, the greatest psychological resistance to freedom of plot is created by characters and types. The type and character determine in advance the line of behavior of their carriers. They seem to suggest the plot and do not allow it to deviate to the side. Dostoevsky also has these types and characters, but only minor characters are embodied in them. If we take The Brothers Karamazov, then the types there are extremely few. Among them may be listed Pan Vrublevsky and his comrade. They repeat each other, like the heroes of the folk story “Thomas and Erema.” This repetition emphasizes the external constraint and conditioning of their behavior. Dostoevsky's doubles are always presented as external conditioning. In search of freedom, the hero strives to free himself from his double. Only in short episodes do the characters not seek freedom and are, as it were, dolls, puppets: “One ragamuffin was arguing with another ragamuffin, and some dead drunk was lying across the street” (“Crime and Punishment”). As for the Karamazov brothers, they do not repeat each other at all; they are characterized by internal freedom of behavior. Hence the constant surprise of their actions and thoughts. In the person of Ivan Karamazov, we even have self-aware freedom of behavior: “I, Your Excellency, am like that peasant girl... you know how it is: “If I want, I’ll jump, if I want, I won’t jump,” says Ivan Karamazov in court. It is not delirium tremens that causes this external unexpectedness of actions, but the unexpected actions themselves add up to delirium tremens. Delirium tremens is a consequence, not a cause, of unexpected behavior. This is freedom at a dead end. Freedom, which has reached a dead end, is the alter ego, the “monkey” of Ivan Karamazov - Smerdyakov, and his other double and “interlocutor” - the devil. Doubles put a limit on human freedom in the metaphysical realm. They are generated by man, created by his ideas, mostly criminal, and arise in the imagination of man. Repetition creates a pattern and fetters a person. This is why Dostoevsky values ​​freedom so much.

So, the isolation of all parts of the world and the freedom associated with this isolation characterize the inner world of Dostoevsky’s works. But this freedom is not unlimited. She encounters obstacles within herself and creates an everyday environment with its types and characters, a world of necessity.

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Using various examples - from folklore and literature - I tried to show certain aspects that the study of the inner world of a verbal work can reveal to a researcher. Of course, while demonstrating the aspects that the study of the inner world reveals, I did not pretend in my article to give an example of the study itself. The research must be more detailed and extensive than can be shown in a short journal article. I took only one issue - resistance to plot development.

The study of the world of a work of art has a number of important aspects for literary studies. A researcher of the inner world of a work of verbal art considers the form and content of the work in inextricable unity. The artistic world of a work combines the ideological side of the work with the nature of its plot, plot, and intrigue. It has a direct bearing on the style of the language of the work. But the most important thing: the artistic world of a verbal work has an internal unity, determined by the general style of the work or author, the style of a literary movement or the “style of the era.”

When studying the artistic style of a work, the author, movement, era, one should pay attention, first of all, to what is the world into which the work of art immerses us, what is its time, space, social and material environment, what are the laws of psychology and the movement of ideas in it , what are the general principles on the basis of which all these individual elements are connected into a single artistic whole.

I am confident in the fruitfulness of this kind of approach to the study of literature. I myself intend to write a book about the inner world of the monuments of literature and fine arts of Ancient Rus'. This inner world stands before us in amazing richness, a variety of successive pictures and is able to explain the majesty and impressiveness of what the literature of Ancient Rus' reveals to us.

Leningrad

1 I distinguish between the concepts of “language style” and artistic style as a whole (cf. about this difference in the book by A. N. Sokolov “Theory of Style”, “Iskusstvo”, M. 1968). In this case, I'm talking about the artistic style as such.