Fiction is one of the types of art, along with music, painting, sculpture, etc. Fiction is a product creative activity writer or poet, and, like any art, it has aesthetic, cognitive and worldview (related to the author’s subjectivity) aspects. This unites literature with other arts. A distinctive feature is that the material carrier of the imagery of literary works is the word in its written embodiment. At the same time, the word always has a figurative character, forms a certain image, which allows, according to V.B. Khalizeva, classify literature as fine arts art.

The images formed by literary works are embodied in texts. Text, especially literary text, is a complex phenomenon characterized by various properties. Literary text is the most complex of all types of text; in fact, it is completely special kind text. The text of a work of fiction is not the same message as, for example, a documentary text, since it does not describe real specific facts, although it names phenomena and objects using the same linguistic means. According to Z.Ya. Turaeva, natural language is building material for literary text. In general, the definition of an artistic text differs from the definition of a text in general by indicating its aesthetic and figurative-expressive aspects.

By definition I.Ya. Chernukhina, literary text is “...an aesthetic means of mediated communication, the purpose of which is a figurative and expressive disclosure of the topic, presented in the unity of form and content and consisting of speech units that perform a communicative function.” According to the researcher, literary texts are characterized by absolute anthropocentrism; literary texts are anthropocentric not only in the form of expression, like any texts, but also in content, in their focus on revealing the image of a person.

I.V. Arnold notes that “a literary and artistic text is an internally connected, complete whole, possessing ideological and artistic unity.” Main specific sign of a literary text, what distinguishes it from other texts is the fulfillment of an aesthetic function. At the same time, the organizing center of the literary text, as indicated by L.G. Babenko and Yu.V. Kazarin, is its emotional and semantic dominant, which organizes the semantics, morphology, syntax and style of a literary text.

The main function of fiction is through the use of linguistic and specific stylistic means contribute to the disclosure of the author's intention.

One of the most striking features of fiction is imagery. The image, which is created by various linguistic means, evokes in the reader a sensory perception of reality and, thereby, contributes to the creation of the desired effect and reaction to what is written. A literary text is characterized by a variety of forms and images. The creation of generalized images in works of art allows their authors not only to determine the state, actions, qualities of a particular character through comparing it with artistic symbol, but also makes it possible to characterize the hero, determine the attitude towards him not directly, but indirectly, for example, through artistic comparison.

The most common leading feature of the style artistic speech, closely related and interdependent with imagery, is emotional coloring statements. The asset of this style is the selection of synonyms for the purpose of emotional impact on the reader, the variety and abundance of epithets, various shapes emotional syntax. In fiction, these means receive their most complete and motivated expression.

The main category in the linguistic study of fiction, including prose, is the concept individual style writer. Academician V.V. Vinogradov formulates the concept of a writer’s individual style as follows: “a system of individual aesthetic use of means of artistic and verbal expression characteristic of a given period of development of fiction, as well as a system of aesthetic and creative selection, comprehension and arrangement of various speech elements.”

A literary text, like any other work of art, is aimed primarily at perception. Without providing the reader with literal information, a literary text evokes a complex set of experiences in a person, and thus it meets a certain internal need of the reader. A specific text corresponds to a specific psychological reaction, the order of reading corresponds to the specific dynamics of change and interaction of experiences. In an artistic text, behind the depicted pictures of real or fictional life, there is always a subtextual, interpretive functional plan, a secondary reality.

A literary text is based on the use of figurative and associative qualities of speech. The image in it is the ultimate goal of creativity, in contrast to a non-fiction text, where verbal imagery is not fundamentally necessary, and if available, it becomes only a means of transmitting information. In a literary text, the means of imagery are subordinated to the aesthetic ideal of the writer, since fiction is a form of art.

artwork embodies the individual author's way of perceiving the world. The author's ideas about the world, expressed in literary and artistic form, become a system of ideas directed to the reader. In this complex system, along with universal human knowledge, there are also unique, original, even paradoxical ideas of the author. The author conveys to the reader the idea of ​​his work by expressing his attitude to certain phenomena of the world, by expressing his assessment, and by creating a system of artistic images.

Imagery and emotionality are the main features that distinguish a literary text from a non-fiction one. One more characteristic feature literary text is personification. In the characters of works of art, everything is compressed into an image, into a type, although it can be shown quite specifically and individually. Many heroic characters in fiction are perceived as certain symbols (Hamlet, Macbeth, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust, D'Artagnan, etc.), behind their names there are certain character traits, behavior, and attitudes to life.

In fiction texts, a description of a person can be given both in the pictorial-descriptive register and in the informative-descriptive register. The author has complete freedom to choose and use various stylistic techniques and means that allow him to create a visual and figurative idea of ​​a person and express his assessment of his external and internal qualities.

When describing and characterizing the characters of a work of fiction, authors use various means of emotional assessment both from the position of the author and from the position of other characters. The author's assessment of the heroes of his works can be expressed both explicitly and implicitly; it is usually conveyed through the use of a complex of speech and stylistic means: lexical units with evaluative semantics, epithets, and metaphorical nominations.

Stylistic means of expressing expressiveness, emotionality, author’s assessment, and creating images are various stylistic devices, including trails, as well as a variety of artistic details, used in literary prose texts.

Thus, according to the results of the study literary sources we can conclude that fiction is a special type of art, and literary text is one of the most complex species text in terms of structure and style.

What is a work of art

Before moving on to the actual practice of analysis, it is necessary to understand several theoretical points.

First. On the one hand, any work of art is a complexly constructed statement, materially expressed (fixed) in a certain text. This statement is directed from the author to the reader; accordingly, it has two sides: the author’s side and the reader’s side. We use the term “reader” in the broadest sense of the word, that is, it also means a spectator in a theater or on art exhibition, and the listener piece of music, and the actual reader of a literary text.

On the other hand, any work of art is a text that is built in a certain sign system, which is more conveniently called the “language of art”).

Language of art

There is one subtlety to understand here. We easily perceive the figurative, metaphorical meaning of the expressions “the language of music” or “the language of painting”, but when it comes to the “language of literature”, we often fall into vocabulary confusion, because literature is created, apparently, in ordinary human, “colloquial” language. language. In fact, it is necessary to strictly differentiate the meanings here. Ordinary human language is only one of many elements of the “language of literature” as a sign system, moreover, it is also a transformed element, “recreated” by the creative efforts of a writer or poet.

Even on the very “lowest floor” literary work, that is, in the speech of heroes, characters often speak in ways that real people never speak. The language seems to be the same, but in reality it is different. When analyzing, we must not forget for a minute that the words of the heroes of a work of art are just a “mirror” reflection of the real speeches of some real people, relatively speaking, prototypes.

The general rule is this: any word in a work of fiction is only “similar” to the same word in human (non-fiction) language. It is a “transformed” word - insofar as it has entered the fabric of a work of art.

What do I want to say by emphasizing this idea so persistently? I want to draw attention to the fact that the sign system of a verbal (that is, literary) work is not limited only to its language. Language, in fact, is just one element of such a system. Moreover, the element is completely “artificial”, because it was “made” by the author (artist), and did not arise on its own.

In art everything is artificial, because it is made, that is why it is art.

About the signs

What is a sign? A sign is an external (visible, sensually perceived) manifestation of a certain essence, which I prefer to call meaning.

Figuratively speaking, the sign itself is dead if it is not connected with meaning.

As an example. Take a book in a language you don't know. She may be talented or mediocre - you will not be able to appreciate her, because she is not available to you. Not as a material body, but as a text, that is, a work created in a certain sign system.

Expanding the analogy, we will come to the conclusion that many texts remain inaccessible to one degree or another, since this sign system is not at all familiar to the reader or has not been fully mastered by him.

When we further speak of, say, poetry, understandable to a wide circle readers (of publicly accessible, or “folk” poetry), then from a theoretical point of view this only means that the data poetic texts created in sign systems that, for whatever reason, are accessible to most or a huge number of readers of poetry. First of all, of course, thanks to school education.

By the way, the accessibility of a text does not in any way characterize its artistic merits. That is, the degree of accessibility does not tell us anything about the degree of talent or lack of talent of its author.

Thus, as a subtotal, literary education at school or outside it implies familiarizing potential readers with existing sign systems, as well as those systems that are in the process of emergence and formation, and on this basis - developing the ability to intuitively perceive the sign systems of the future, which at the moment does not yet exist (or is in its infancy).

Conventionally (but quite accurately) speaking, literary and artistic education is the maximum expansion of the artistic horizons of future readers. It is clear that such an expansion can occur not only within the framework of any educational institution, but also - even more often - in some other ways and means, including through self-education.

I would like to note in passing that this approach makes it possible to quite strictly decide on the inclusion or non-inclusion of a particular writer in the school literature curriculum. Therefore, first of all, of course, those writers and poets who expand our horizons in the field of literary and artistic sign systems should be included in the program.

Why is the concept of text important?

So, any work of art is a text created in a certain sign system. As such, it can be separated from the author and “appropriated” by the reader.

An analogy with the sacrament of birth is probably appropriate here. You gave birth to a child - that is, you “separated” him from yourself. He is your child, your fruit, but at the same time, he is an entity separate from you, and your rights to him are limited by a number of rules and regulations.

It’s the same with a work: by separating it from himself (in the form of an act of publication, making it public), the author loses some rights to it, namely: the right to explain it. From this moment on, the work falls within the scope of the reader’s rights, the main of which is the right to understanding, to interpretation of this work. No one can deprive the reader of this right to interpretation as long as art exists, that is, creativity for the public, creativity addressed to “another” and not to oneself.

I would like to clarify here that the author, of course, also has the right to interpret his work, but not as an author, but as an ordinary (albeit qualified) reader. In rare cases, the author may even act as a critic of his works, but, firstly, even in this case he does not have any special prerogatives in relation to other readers, and secondly, such cases are quite rare, if not exceptional .

Accordingly, the author’s statements such as “what I really wanted to say is such and such,” of course, should not be ignored, but one should not give them excessive meaning either. After all, the reader did not sign up to understand the author thoroughly. If the text, and along with it the author, remains unclear, then this is also a special case that should be dealt with specifically.

Briefly, I will say that the text may not be understood as a result of the following reasons: 1) the novelty of the author’s sign system; 2) insufficient qualifications of the reader; 3) insufficient talent of the author.

Text elements

Since the text is a complexly constructed statement, it necessarily contains the following elements: topic, idea, form.

Theme is what the work is about.
The idea is what the author communicates to the reader.
Form is how a given statement is constructed.

The theme and idea are usually referred to as the content of the work. I plan to speak about the dialectic of form and content in a work of art in another article. Here it will be enough to note the following. We are accustomed to the postulate that the form is meaningful and the content is formalized, but we rarely take this statement seriously enough. Meanwhile, we must always remember that in a work no content exists apart from the form, and the analysis of a work is essentially an analysis of its form.

One more fundamental remark regarding the content and form of the text. It is clear that a work of art is created for the sake of its idea, since the text is a statement. It is important for the author to say something, to convey something with his work, and for the reader it is important to “read” something, that is, to perceive it. Less often - for the sake of form. This is when the form itself becomes the content. Probably, such cases are more common in experimental art, as well as in children's and adult folklore or its imitation. And, probably, extremely rarely - for the sake of the topic. I think that although such cases relate to cultural phenomena (for example, when a social taboo needs to be removed from some topic), they can hardly rightfully be attributed to art itself.

Message or statement?

IN English The idea of ​​a work is usually called the term “message” - message, message. So, they say: “What is the message of the story?” That is: what is the idea of ​​the story? It seems to me that the English term is more accurate. Therefore, sometimes in my analyzes I call a literary text a message. It is important to note this point here. I contrast message with communication. For communication is a two-way process: they told me - I answered; I said - they answered me. Unlike communication, communication is a one-way process: the writer said - the readers read. The exchange of opinions is certainly permissible, but it is outside the boundaries of the actual artistic creative act.

Taking into account the above, we can formulate the matter this way: a literary text is a complexly constructed statement that carries a very specific message. The task of analysis, therefore, is the most adequate reading (perception) of a given message (or idea of ​​a text). The analysis is carried out as an analysis of the form, or sign system, that the author adopted for a given work.

The integrity of a literary work as an ideological and artistic system. Its conceptuality and specific artistic completeness.

Organic unity of figurative form and emotional-generalizing content. The problem of their analytical differentiation, which arose in European aesthetics of the late 18th - early 19th centuries (F. Schiller, Hegel, Goethe). The scientific significance of such a distinction and its debatability in modern literary criticism (replacement of traditional concepts with “meaning”, “artistic semantics”, “literal content”, “text”, “discourse”, etc.). The concepts of “aesthetic idea” (I. Kant), “poetic idea” (F. Schiller), “idea of ​​beauty” (Hegel): semantic nuances of these terms, revealing the way of existence and the formative potential of artistic thought (creative concept). “Concreteness” as a general property of idea and image, content and form in a literary work. The creative nature of artistic content and form, the formation of their unity in the process of creating a work, the “transition” of content into form and form into content.

Relative independence of the figurative form, combining aesthetic expediency with “apparent randomness.” Artistic form as the embodiment and deployment of content, its “symbolic” (“metaphorical”) meaning and ordering role. Completeness of form and its “emotional-volitional tension” (M. Bakhtin).

The composition of an artistic form as a scientific problem; “internal” and “external” form (A. Potebnya). Aesthetic organization (composition) of the “artistic world” (depicted fictional reality) and verbal text. The principle of functional consideration of form elements in their meaningful and constructive role. Concept artistic technique and its functions. A formalistic interpretation of this concept, isolating the artistic form from the content. The subordination of the formal elements of the author’s creative concept. The concept of structure as the correlation of elements of the whole. The meaning of the terms “information”, “text”, “context” in the semiotic interpretation of fiction.

2. Content of the work of art

Poetic idea (generalizing emotional-figurative thought) as the basis of artistic content. The difference between a poetic idea and an analytical judgment; organic unity of the objective (subject-thematic) and subjective (ideological-emotional) sides; the convention of such a distinction within the artistic whole. The specificity of poetic thought, overcoming the one-sidedness of abstract thinking, its figurative polysemy, “openness”.

A category of artistic theme that allows one to correlate a poetic idea with its subject, with extra-artistic reality. Author's activity in choosing a topic. The connection between the subject of the image and the subject of cognition; differences between them. The combination of concrete historical and traditional, “eternal” themes in literature. The author's interpretation of the topic: identifying and understanding life's contradictions from a certain angle. Continuity of problems in literature, their artistic originality. The value aspect and emotional orientation of the poetic idea, determined by the author’s ideological and moral attitude to the depicted contradictions human life, “trial” and “sentence” of the artist. Varying degrees of expression of emotional assessment in the integrity of a work of art (depending on the programmatic and creative attitude of the author, genre and stylistic tradition). Artistic tendency and tendentiousness.

Category of pathos. The ambiguous use of the term “pathos” in the science of a writer: 1) “the poet’s love for an idea” (V. Belinsky), inspiring his creative plan; 2) the character’s passionate striving for a significant goal, prompting him to act; 3) the sublime emotional orientation of the poetic idea of ​​the work, due to the passionate and “serious” (Hegel) attitude of the poet to the subject of creativity. The connection between pathos and the category of the sublime. True and false pathos. " Pathos" and "mood" are types of poetic ideas.

Typology of poetic ideas as a theoretical and literary problem: thematic principle(social, political, religious, etc. ideas) and aesthetic principle(a figuratively embodied “system of feelings”, according to F. Schiller, conditioned by the relationship between the artist’s ideal and the reality he depicts).

Heroic in literature: depiction and admiration of the feat of an individual or a team in their struggle with natural elements, with an external or internal enemy. The development of artistic heroics from the normative glorification of the hero to his historical concretization. A combination of heroism with drama and tragedy.

Tragic in literature. The significance of ancient myths and Christian legends for understanding the essence of tragic conflicts (external and internal) and recreating them in literature. The moral significance of a tragic character and its pathos that encourages action. A variety of situations reflecting the tragic collisions of life. Tragic mood.

Idyllic is an artistic idealization of the “natural”, close to nature, way of life of “innocent and happy humanity” (F. Schiller), unaffected by civilization.

Sentimental and romantic interest in the inner world of the individual in the literature of modern times. V. Belinsky on the importance of sentimental sensitivity and romantic striving for the ideal in literature. The difference between the typological concepts of “sentimentality” and “romance” from the specific historical concepts of “sentimentalism” and “romanticism”. Sentimentality and romance in realism. Their connection with humor, irony, satire.

Critical orientation of literature. Comic contradictions are the basis of humor and satire, determining the dominance of the laughter principle in them. N. Gogol about the cognitive significance of laughter. Humor is “laughter through tears” in connection with the moral and philosophical understanding of the comic behavior of people. Using the term “humor” to mean light, entertaining laughter. The civil orientation of satirical pathos as an angry denunciation of laughter. The connection between satire and tragedy. Irony and sarcasm. Traditions of carnival laughter in literature. Tragicomic.

Compatibility and mutual transitions of types of poetic ideas and moods. Unity of affirmation and negation. The uniqueness of the idea of ​​a separate work and the breadth of its artistic content.

Epicness, lyricism, drama are the typological properties of artistic content. Lyricism as a sublime emotional mood that affirms the value of the inner world of the individual. Drama (dramatic) as a state of mind that conveys a tense experience of acute contradictions in social, moral, and everyday relations between people.

Epic as a sublimely contemplative view of the world, acceptance of the world in its breadth, complexity and integrity.

Interpretation content of a work of art (creative, critical, literary, reading) and the problem of the boundary between its reasonable and arbitrary interpretation. The context of the writer’s work, the intention and creative history of the work as guidelines for interpretation.

I THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES OF LITERARY ANALYSIS

1. A work of art and its properties

A work of art is the main object of literary study, a kind of smallest “unit” of literature. More large entities in the literary process - directions, trends, art systems– are built from individual works and represent a combination of parts. A literary work has integrity and internal completeness; it is a self-sufficient unit literary development capable of independent life. A literary work as a whole has a complete ideological and aesthetic meaning, in contrast to its components - themes, ideas, plot, speech, etc., which receive meaning and in general can exist only in the system of the whole.

A literary work as a phenomenon of art

A literary work is a work of art in the narrow sense of the word *, that is, one of the forms of social consciousness. Like all art in general, a work of art is an expression of a certain emotional and mental content, a certain ideological and emotional complex in a figurative, aesthetically significant form. Using the terminology of M.M. Bakhtin, we can say that a work of art is a “word about the world” spoken by a writer, a poet, an act of reaction of an artistically gifted person to the surrounding reality.

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* For the different meanings of the word "art" see: Pospelov G.N. Aesthetic and artistic. M, 1965. pp. 159–166.

According to the theory of reflection, human thinking is a reflection of reality, the objective world. This, of course, fully applies to artistic thinking. A literary work, like all art, is a special case of a subjective reflection of objective reality. However, reflection, especially at the highest stage of its development, which is human thinking, can in no case be understood as a mechanical, mirror reflection, as a one-to-one copy of reality. The complex, indirect nature of reflection is perhaps most evident in artistic thinking, where the subjective moment, the unique personality of the creator, his original vision of the world and the way of thinking about it are so important. A work of art, therefore, is an active, personal reflection; one in which not only the reproduction of life reality occurs, but also its creative transformation. In addition, the writer never reproduces reality for the sake of reproduction itself: the very choice of the subject of reflection, the very impulse to creatively reproduce reality is born from the writer’s personal, biased, caring view of the world.

Thus, a work of art represents an indissoluble unity of the objective and subjective, the reproduction of real reality and the author’s understanding of it, life as such, included in the work of art and cognizable in it, and author's attitude to life. These two sides of art were once pointed out by N.G. Chernyshevsky. In his treatise “Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality,” he wrote: “The essential meaning of art is the reproduction of everything that is interesting to a person in life; very often, especially in works of poetry, an explanation of life, a verdict on its phenomena, also comes to the fore.”* True, Chernyshevsky, polemically sharpening the thesis about the primacy of life over art in the fight against idealistic aesthetics, mistakenly considered only the first task - “reproduction of reality” - to be main and obligatory, and the other two - secondary and optional. It would be more correct, of course, not to talk about the hierarchy of these tasks, but about their equality, or rather, about the indissoluble connection between the objective and the subjective in a work: after all, a true artist simply cannot depict reality without comprehending and evaluating it in any way. However, it should be emphasized that the very presence of a subjective moment in a work was clearly recognized by Chernyshevsky, and this represented a step forward compared, say, with the aesthetics of Hegel, who was very inclined to approach a work of art in a purely objectivist way, belittling or completely ignoring the activity of the creator.

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* Chernyshevsky N.G. Full collection cit.: In 15 volumes. M., 1949. T. II. C. 87.

It is also necessary to realize the unity of objective image and subjective expression in a work of art. methodologically, for the sake of practical tasks of analytical work with a work. Traditionally, in our study and especially teaching of literature, more attention is paid to the objective side, which undoubtedly impoverishes the idea of ​​a work of art. In addition, a kind of substitution of the subject of research may occur here: instead of studying a work of art with its inherent aesthetic patterns, we begin to study the reality reflected in the work, which, of course, is also interesting and important, but has no direct connection with the study of literature as an art form. A methodological approach aimed at studying the mainly objective side of a work of art, wittingly or unwittingly, reduces the importance of art as an independent form of spiritual activity of people, ultimately leading to ideas about the illustrative nature of art and literature. In this case, the work of art is largely deprived of its living emotional content, passion, pathos, which, of course, are primarily associated with the author's subjectivity.

In the history of literary criticism, this methodological tendency has found its most obvious embodiment in the theory and practice of the so-called cultural-historical school, especially in European literary criticism. Its representatives looked for signs and features of reflected reality in literary works; “they saw cultural and historical monuments in works of literature,” but “the artistic specificity, all the complexity of literary masterpieces did not interest researchers”*. Some representatives of the Russian cultural-historical school saw the danger of such an approach to literature. Thus, V. Sipovsky directly wrote: “You cannot look at literature only as a reflection of reality”**.

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* Nikolaev P.A., Kurilov A.S., Grishunin A.L. History of Russian literary criticism. M., 1980. P. 128.

** Sipovsky V.V.History of literature as a science. St. Petersburg; M. . P. 17.

Of course, a conversation about literature may well turn into a conversation about life itself - there is nothing unnatural or fundamentally untenable in this, because literature and life are not separated by a wall. However, it is important to have a methodological approach that does not allow one to forget about the aesthetic specificity of literature and to reduce literature and its meaning to the meaning of illustration.

If in terms of content a work of art represents the unity of reflected life and the author’s attitude towards it, that is, it expresses some “word about the world”, then the form of the work is figurative, aesthetic in nature. Unlike other types of social consciousness, art and literature, as is known, reflect life in the form of images, that is, they use such specific, individual objects, phenomena, events that, in their specific individuality, carry a generalization. In contrast to the concept, the image has greater “visibility”; it is characterized not by logical, but by concrete sensory and emotional persuasiveness. Imagery is the basis of artistry, both in the sense of belonging to art and in the sense of high skill: thanks to their figurative nature, works of art have aesthetic dignity, aesthetic value.

So, we can give the following working definition of a work of art: it is a certain emotional and mental content, “a word about the world,” expressed in an aesthetic, figurative form; a work of art has integrity, completeness and independence.

Principles and techniques for analyzing a literary work Andrey Borisovich Esin

1 A work of art and its properties

A work of art and its properties

A work of art is the main object of literary study, a kind of smallest “unit” of literature. Larger formations in the literary process - directions, trends, artistic systems - are built from individual works and represent a combination of parts. A literary work has integrity and internal completeness; it is a self-sufficient unit of literary development, capable of independent life. A literary work as a whole has a complete ideological and aesthetic meaning, in contrast to its components - themes, ideas, plot, speech, etc., which receive meaning and in general can exist only in the system of the whole.

A literary work as a phenomenon of art

A literary work is a work of art in the narrow sense of the word, that is, one of the forms of social consciousness. Like all art in general, a work of art is an expression of a certain emotional and mental content, a certain ideological and emotional complex in a figurative, aesthetically significant form. Using the terminology of M.M. Bakhtin, we can say that a work of art is a “word about the world” spoken by a writer, a poet, an act of reaction of an artistically gifted person to surrounding reality.

According to the theory of reflection, human thinking is a reflection of reality, the objective world. This, of course, fully applies to artistic thinking. A literary work, like all art, is a special case of a subjective reflection of objective reality. However, reflection, especially at the highest stage of its development, which is human thinking, can in no case be understood as a mechanical, mirror reflection, as a one-to-one copy of reality. The complex, indirect nature of reflection is perhaps most evident in artistic thinking, where the subjective moment, the unique personality of the creator, his original vision of the world and the way of thinking about it are so important. A work of art, therefore, is an active, personal reflection; one in which not only the reproduction of life reality occurs, but also its creative transformation. In addition, the writer never reproduces reality for the sake of reproduction itself: the very choice of the subject of reflection, the very impulse to creatively reproduce reality is born from the writer’s personal, biased, caring view of the world.

Thus, a work of art represents an indissoluble unity of the objective and the subjective, the reproduction of real reality and the author’s understanding of it, life as such, included in the work of art and cognizable in it, and the author’s attitude towards life. These two sides of art were once pointed out by N.G. Chernyshevsky. In his treatise “Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality,” he wrote: “The essential meaning of art is the reproduction of everything that is interesting to a person in life; very often, especially in works of poetry, an explanation of life, a verdict on its phenomena, also comes to the fore.” True, Chernyshevsky, polemically sharpening the thesis about the primacy of life over art in the fight against idealistic aesthetics, mistakenly considered only the first task - “reproduction of reality” - to be main and obligatory, and the other two - secondary and optional. It would be more correct, of course, not to talk about the hierarchy of these tasks, but about their equality, or rather, about the indissoluble connection between the objective and the subjective in a work: after all, a true artist simply cannot depict reality without comprehending and evaluating it in any way. However, it should be emphasized that the very presence of a subjective moment in a work was clearly recognized by Chernyshevsky, and this represented a step forward compared, say, with the aesthetics of Hegel, who was very inclined to approach a work of art in a purely objectivist way, belittling or completely ignoring the activity of the creator.

It is also necessary methodologically to realize the unity of objective image and subjective expression in a work of art, for the sake of practical tasks of analytical work with the work. Traditionally, in our study and especially teaching of literature, more attention is paid to the objective side, which undoubtedly impoverishes the idea of ​​a work of art. In addition, a kind of substitution of the subject of research may occur here: instead of studying a work of art with its inherent aesthetic principles, we begin to study the reality reflected in the work, which, of course, is also interesting and important, but has no direct connection with the study of literature as an art form. A methodological approach aimed at studying the mainly objective side of a work of art, wittingly or unwittingly, reduces the importance of art as an independent form of spiritual activity of people, ultimately leading to ideas about the illustrative nature of art and literature. In this case, the work of art is largely deprived of its living emotional content, passion, pathos, which, of course, are primarily associated with the author's subjectivity.

In the history of literary criticism, this methodological tendency has found its most obvious embodiment in the theory and practice of the so-called cultural-historical school, especially in European literary criticism. Its representatives looked for signs and features of reflected reality in literary works; “we saw cultural and historical monuments in works of literature,” but “ artistic specificity, all the complexity of literary masterpieces did not interest researchers.” Some representatives of the Russian cultural-historical school saw the danger of such an approach to literature. Thus, V. Sipovsky directly wrote: “You cannot look at literature only as a reflection of reality.”

Of course, a conversation about literature may well turn into a conversation about life itself - there is nothing unnatural or fundamentally untenable in this, because literature and life are not separated by a wall. However, it is important to have a methodological approach that does not allow one to forget about the aesthetic specificity of literature and to reduce literature and its meaning to the meaning of illustration.

If in terms of content a work of art represents the unity of reflected life and the author’s attitude towards it, that is, it expresses some “word about the world”, then the form of the work is figurative, aesthetic in nature. Unlike other types of social consciousness, art and literature, as is known, reflect life in the form of images, that is, they use such specific, individual objects, phenomena, events that, in their specific individuality, carry a generalization. In contrast to the concept, the image has greater “visibility”; it is characterized not by logical, but by concrete sensory and emotional persuasiveness. Imagery is the basis of artistry, both in the sense of belonging to art and in the sense of high skill: thanks to their figurative nature, works of art have aesthetic dignity, aesthetic value.

So, we can give the following working definition of a work of art: it is a certain emotional and mental content, “a word about the world,” expressed in an aesthetic, figurative form; a work of art has integrity, completeness and independence.

Functions of a work of art

The work of art created by the author is subsequently perceived by readers, that is, it begins to live its own relatively independent life while performing certain functions. Let's look at the most important of them.

Serving, as Chernyshevsky put it, as a “textbook of life”, one way or another explaining life, a literary work performs a cognitive or epistemological function. The question may arise: why is this function necessary for literature and art, if there is a science whose direct task is to cognize the surrounding reality? But the fact is that art cognizes life from a special perspective, accessible only to it and therefore irreplaceable by any other knowledge. If the sciences dismember the world, abstract its individual aspects and each study their own subject, then art and literature cognize the world in its integrity, undividedness, and syncretism. Therefore, the object of knowledge in literature may partly coincide with the object of certain sciences, especially “human sciences”: history, philosophy, psychology, etc., but never merges with it. Specific to art and literature remains the consideration of all aspects of human life in an undivided unity, the “conjugation” (L.N. Tolstoy) of the most diverse life phenomena into a single holistic picture of the world. Literature reveals life in its natural flow; At the same time, literature is very interested in that specific everyday life human existence, in which big and small, natural and random, psychological experiences and... a torn button are mixed. Science, naturally, cannot set itself the goal of comprehending this concrete existence of life in all its diversity; it must abstract from details and individual random “little things” in order to see the general. But in the aspect of syncretism, integrity, and concreteness, life also needs to be comprehended, and it is art and literature that take on this task.

The specific perspective of cognition of reality also determines a specific way of cognition: unlike science, art and literature cognize life, as a rule, not by reasoning about it, but by reproducing it - otherwise it is impossible to comprehend reality in its syncretism and concreteness.

Let us note, by the way, that to an “ordinary” person, to an ordinary (not philosophical or scientific) consciousness, life appears exactly as it is reproduced in art - in its indivisibility, individuality, natural diversity. Consequently, ordinary consciousness most of all needs precisely the interpretation of life that art and literature offer. Chernyshevsky astutely noted that “the content of art becomes everything that interests a person in real life (not as a scientist, but simply as a person).”

The second most important function of a work of art is evaluative, or axiological. It consists, first of all, in the fact that, as Chernyshevsky put it, works of art “can have the meaning of a verdict on the phenomena of life.” When depicting certain life phenomena, the author naturally evaluates them in a certain way. The entire work turns out to be imbued with the author’s, interested-biased feeling; a whole system of artistic affirmations and negations and evaluations develops in the work. But the point is not only a direct “sentence” on one or another specific phenomena of life reflected in the work. The fact is that each work carries within itself and strives to establish in the consciousness of the perceiver a certain system of values, a certain type of emotional-value orientation. In this sense, such works in which there is no “sentence” on specific life phenomena also have an evaluative function. These are, for example, many lyrical works.

Based on the cognitive and evaluative functions, the work turns out to be able to perform the third most important function - educational. The educational significance of works of art and literature was recognized back in antiquity, and it is indeed very great. It is only important not to narrow this meaning, not to understand it in a simplified way, as the fulfillment of some specific didactic task. Most often, in the educational function of art, the emphasis is on the fact that it teaches to imitate goodies or encourages a person to take certain specific actions. All this is true, but the educational value of literature is by no means reduced to this. Literature and art perform this function primarily by shaping a person’s personality, influencing his value system, and gradually teaching him to think and feel. Communication with a work of art in this sense is very similar to communication with a good, smart person: it seems that he did not teach you anything specific, did not teach you any advice or life rules, but nevertheless you feel kinder, smarter, spiritually richer.

A special place in the system of functions of a work belongs to the aesthetic function, which consists in the fact that the work has a powerful emotional impact on the reader, gives him intellectual and sometimes sensory pleasure, in a word, is perceived personally. Special role It is this function that is determined by the fact that without it it is impossible to carry out all other functions - cognitive, evaluative, educational. In fact, if the work did not touch a person’s soul, simply put, did not like it, did not evoke an interested emotional and personal reaction, did not bring pleasure, then all the work was in vain. While it is still possible to coldly and indifferently perceive the content of a scientific truth or even a moral doctrine, then the content of a work of art must be experienced in order to be understood. And this becomes possible primarily due to the aesthetic impact on the reader, viewer, listener.

Unconditional methodical error, especially dangerous in school teaching, is therefore a widespread opinion, and sometimes even a subconscious belief, that the aesthetic function of works of literature is not as important as all others. From what has been said, it is clear that the situation is just the opposite - the aesthetic function of a work is perhaps the most important, if at all we can talk about the comparative importance of all the tasks of literature that actually exist in an indissoluble unity. Therefore, it is certainly advisable, before starting to disassemble the work “according to images” or interpret its meaning, to give the student in one way or another (sometimes it is enough good reading) feel the beauty of this work, help him experience pleasure from it, positive emotion. And that help here, as a rule, is needed, that aesthetic perception also needs to be taught - there can be no doubt about it.

The methodological meaning of what has been said is, first of all, that one should not end studying a work with an aesthetic aspect, as is done in the vast majority of cases (if at all before aesthetic analysis get around to it), and start off from him. After all, there is a real danger that without this both the artistic truth of the work and its moral lessons, and the value system contained in it will be perceived only formally.

Finally, it should be said about one more function of a literary work - the function of self-expression. This function is usually not considered to be the most important, since it is assumed that it exists only for one person - the author himself. But in reality this is not the case, and the function of self-expression turns out to be much broader, and its significance is much more significant for culture than it seems at first glance. The fact is that not only the personality of the author, but also the personality of the reader can be expressed in a work. When we perceive a work we particularly like, especially in tune with our inner world, we partly identify ourselves with the author, and when quoting (in whole or in part, out loud or to ourselves), we speak “on our own behalf.” It is a well-known phenomenon when a person expresses his psychological state or life position favorite lines, clearly illustrates what has been said. Everyone knows from personal experience the feeling that the writer, in one word or another or through the work as a whole, expressed our innermost thoughts and feelings, which we were not able to express so perfectly ourselves. Self-expression through a work of art, therefore, turns out to be the lot not of a few - authors, but of millions - readers.

But the significance of the function of self-expression turns out to be even more important if we remember that in individual works not only inner world individuality, but also the soul of the people, psychology social groups etc. In the Internationale the proletariat of the whole world found artistic expression; in the song “Get up, huge country…” that sounded in the first days of the war, our entire people expressed themselves.

The function of self-expression, therefore, should undoubtedly be ranked among the most important functions of a work of art. Without it, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to understand the real life of a work in the minds and souls of readers, to appreciate the importance and indispensability of literature and art in the cultural system.

Artistic reality. Artistic convention

The specificity of reflection and image in art and especially in literature is such that in a work of art we are presented, as it were, with life itself, the world, a certain reality. It is no coincidence that one of the Russian writers called a literary work a “condensed universe.” This kind illusion of reality - a unique property of artistic works, not inherent in any other form of social consciousness. To denote this property in science, the terms “artistic world” and “artistic reality” are used. It seems fundamentally important to find out the relationships between life (primary) reality and artistic (secondary) reality.

First of all, we note that in comparison with primary reality, artistic reality is a certain kind of convention. She created(as opposed to the miraculous reality of life), and was created for something for the sake of some specific purpose, as is clearly indicated by the existence of the functions of a work of art discussed above. This is also the difference from the reality of life, which has no goal outside itself, whose existence is absolute, unconditional, and does not need any justification or justification.

Compared to life as such, a work of art appears to be a convention and because its world is a world fictional. Even with the most strict reliance on factual material, the enormous creative role of fiction, which is an essential feature, remains artistic creativity. Even if we imagine the almost impossible option when a work of art is built exclusively on the description of what is reliable and actually happened, then here too fiction, broadly understood as a creative processing of reality, will not lose its role. It will affect and manifest itself in selection the phenomena depicted in the work, in establishing natural connections between them, in giving artistic purpose to the life material.

The reality of life is given to each person directly and does not require any special conditions for its perception. Artistic reality is perceived through the prism of human spiritual experience and is based on some conventionality. From childhood, we imperceptibly and gradually learn to recognize the difference between literature and life, to accept the “rules of the game” that exist in literature, and become accustomed to the system of conventions inherent in it. This can be illustrated with a very simple example: while listening to fairy tales, a child very quickly agrees that animals and even inanimate objects talk in them, although in reality he does not observe anything like that. An even more complex system of conventions must be adopted for the perception of “great” literature. All this fundamentally distinguishes artistic reality from life; V general view the difference boils down to the fact that primary reality is the realm of nature, and secondary reality is the realm of culture.

Why is it necessary to dwell on conventions in such detail? artistic reality and the non-identity of its reality in life? The fact is that, as already mentioned, this non-identity does not prevent the creation of the illusion of reality in the work, which leads to one of the most common mistakes in analytical work - the so-called “naive-realistic reading”. This mistake consists in identifying life and artistic reality. Its most common manifestation is the perception of epic and dramatic works, the lyrical hero in the lyrics as real-life personalities - with all the ensuing consequences. The characters are endowed with an independent existence, they are required to take personal responsibility for their actions, the circumstances of their lives are speculated upon, etc. Once upon a time, a number of Moscow schools wrote an essay on the topic “You’re wrong, Sophia!” based on Griboedov's comedy "Woe from Wit". Such an “on name” approach to the heroes of literary works does not take into account the most essential, fundamental point: precisely the fact that this same Sophia never really existed, that her entire character from beginning to end was invented by Griboyedov and the entire system of her actions (for which she can bear responsibility) responsibility to Chatsky as an equally fictitious person, that is, within the artistic world of comedy, but not to us, real people) was also invented by the author for a specific purpose, in order to achieve some artistic effect.

However, the given topic of the essay is not the most curious example of a naive-realistic approach to literature. The costs of this methodology also include the extremely popular “trials” of literary characters in the 20s - Don Quixote was tried for fighting windmills, and not the oppressors of the people, Hamlet was tried for passivity and lack of will... The participants themselves “ships” now remember them with a smile.

Let's note right away negative consequences naive-realistic approach in order to assess its harmlessness. Firstly, it leads to the loss of aesthetic specificity - it is no longer possible to study a work as a piece of art itself, that is, ultimately to extract specific artistic information from it and receive from it a unique, irreplaceable aesthetic pleasure. Secondly, as is easy to understand, such an approach destroys the integrity of a work of art and, by tearing out individual details from it, greatly impoverishes it. If L.N. Tolstoy said that “every thought, expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is terribly diminished when one is taken from the clutch in which it is located,” then how much “decreased” is the meaning of an individual character, torn from the “clutch”! In addition, focusing on the characters, that is, on the objective subject of the image, the naive-realistic approach forgets about the author, his system of assessments and relationships, his position, that is, it ignores the subjective side of the work of art. The dangers of such a methodological installation were discussed above.

And finally, the last, and perhaps most important, since it is directly related to the moral aspect of the study and teaching of literature. Approaching the hero as a real person, as a neighbor or acquaintance, inevitably simplifies and impoverishes the artistic character itself. The persons depicted and realized by the writer in the work are always, by necessity, more significant than real-life people, since they embody the typical, represent some generalization, sometimes grandiose in scale. By applying the scale of our everyday life to these artistic creations, judging them by today's standards, we not only violate the principle of historicism, but also lose all possibility grow up to the level of the hero, since we perform the exact opposite operation - we reduce him to our level. It is easy to logically refute Raskolnikov’s theory; it is even easier to brand Pechorin as an egoist, albeit a “suffering” one; it is much more difficult to cultivate in oneself a readiness for a moral and philosophical search for such tension as is characteristic of these heroes. Ease of attitude literary characters, which sometimes turns into familiarity, is absolutely not the attitude that allows you to master the full depth of a work of art, to receive from it everything that it can give. And this is not to mention the fact that the very possibility of judging a voiceless person who cannot object does not have the best effect on the formation of moral qualities.

Let us consider another flaw in the naive-realistic approach to a literary work. At one time, it was very popular in school teaching to hold discussions on the topic: “Would Onegin and the Decembrists have gone to Senate Square?” This was seen as almost the implementation of the principle of problem-based learning, completely losing sight of the fact that thereby completely ignoring a more important principle - the principle of scientific character. Judging future possible actions is possible only in relation to real person, the laws of the artistic world make the very formulation of such a question absurd and meaningless. You can't ask a question about Senate Square, if in the artistic reality of “Eugene Onegin” there is no Senate Square itself, if artistic time in this reality stopped before reaching December 1825 and even Onegin’s fate already there is no continuation, even hypothetical, like the fate of Lensky. Pushkin cut off action, leaving Onegin “in a moment that was evil for him,” but thereby finished completed the novel as an artistic reality, completely eliminating the possibility of any guesswork about “ future fate"hero. Asking “what would happen next?” in this situation it is as pointless as asking what is beyond the edge of the world.

What does this example say? First of all, that a naive-realistic approach to a work naturally leads to ignoring the author’s will, to arbitrariness and subjectivism in the interpretation of the work. How undesirable is such an effect for scientific literary criticism, there is hardly any need to explain.

The costs and dangers of the naive-realistic methodology in the analysis of a work of art were analyzed in detail by G.A. Gukovsky in his book “Studying a literary work at school.” Advocating for the absolute necessity of knowing in a work of art not only the object, but also its image, not only the character, but also the author’s attitude towards him, saturated with ideological meaning, G.A. Gukovsky rightly concludes: “In a work of art, the “object” of the image does not exist outside the image itself, and without ideological interpretation it does not exist at all. This means that by “studying” the object in itself, we not only narrow the work, not only make it meaningless, but, in essence, destroy it, as given work. By distracting the subject from its illumination, from meaning this lighting, we distort it."

Fighting against the transformation of naive-realistic reading into a methodology for analysis and teaching, G.A. Gukovsky at the same time saw the other side of the issue. The naive-realistic perception of the artistic world, in his words, is “legitimate, but not sufficient.” G.A. Gukovsky sets the task of “accustoming students to both think and talk about her (the heroine of the novel - A.E.) not only how about a person and how about image" What is the “legitimacy” of the naive-realist approach to literature?

The fact is that due to the specificity of a literary work as a work of art, we, by the very nature of its perception, cannot escape a naive realistic attitude towards the people and events depicted in it. While a literary critic perceives a work as a reader (and this, as is easy to understand, is where any analytical work begins), he cannot help but perceive the characters in the book as living people (with all the ensuing consequences - he will like and dislike the characters, arouse compassion and anger , love, etc.), and the events that happen to them are as if they really happened. Without this, we simply will not understand anything in the content of the work, not to mention the fact that the personal attitude towards the people depicted by the author is the basis of both the emotional contagion of the work and its living experience in the mind of the reader. Without the element of “naive realism” in reading a work, we perceive it dryly, coldly, and this means that either the work is bad, or we ourselves as readers are bad. If the naive-realistic approach, elevated to an absolute, according to G.A. Gukovsky destroys the work as a work of art, then its complete absence simply does not allow it to take place as a work of art.

The duality of perception of artistic reality, the dialectic of necessity and at the same time insufficiency of naive realistic reading was also noted by V.F. Asmus: “The first condition that is necessary for reading to proceed as reading a work of art is a special attitude of the reader’s mind, which is in effect throughout the reading. Due to this attitude, the reader treats what is read or what is “visible” through reading not as a complete fiction or fable, but as a unique reality. The second condition for reading a thing as an artistic thing may seem opposite to the first. In order to read a work as a work of art, the reader must be aware throughout the reading that the piece of life shown by the author through art is not, after all, direct life, but only its image.”

So, one theoretical subtlety is revealed: the reflection of primary reality in a literary work is not identical to reality itself, it is conditional, not absolute, but one of the conditions is precisely that the life depicted in the work is perceived by the reader as “real”, authentic , that is, identical to the primary reality. The emotional and aesthetic effect produced on us by the work is based on this, and this circumstance must be taken into account.

Naive-realistic perception is legitimate and necessary, since we are talking about the process of primary, reader perception, but it should not become the methodological basis of scientific analysis. At the same time, the very fact of the inevitability of a naive-realistic approach to literature leaves a certain imprint on the methodology of scientific literary criticism.

As has already been said, the work is created. The creator of a literary work is its author. In literary criticism, this word is used in several related, but at the same time relatively independent meanings. First of all, it is necessary to draw a line between the real-biographical author and the author as a category of literary analysis. In the second meaning, we understand the author as the bearer of the ideological concept of a work of art. It is connected with the real author, but is not identical to him, since the work of art does not embody the entirety of the author’s personality, but only some of its facets (albeit often the most important ones). Moreover, the author of a work of fiction, in terms of the impression made on the reader, may differ strikingly from the real author. Thus, brightness, festivity and a romantic impulse towards the ideal characterize the author in the works of A. Green, and A.S. himself. Grinevsky was, according to contemporaries, a completely different person, rather gloomy and gloomy. It is known that not all humor writers are cheerful people in life. Critics during his lifetime called Chekhov “singer of twilight”, “pessimist”, “cold blood”, which was completely inconsistent with the character of the writer, etc. When considering the category of the author in literary analysis we abstract from the biography of the real author, his journalistic and other non-artistic statements, etc. and consider the author’s personality only insofar as it manifested itself in this particular work, we analyze his concept of the world, his worldview. It should also be warned that the author should not be confused with the narrator epic work And lyrical hero in the lyrics.

The author as a real biographical person and the author as the bearer of the concept of the work should not be confused with author's image, which is created in some works of verbal art. The image of the author is a special aesthetic category that arises when the image of the creator of this work is created within the work. This can be the image of “oneself” (“Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “What is to be done?” by Chernyshevsky), or the image of a fictitious, fictitious author (Kozma Prutkov, Ivan Petrovich Belkin by Pushkin). The image of the author reveals with great clarity artistic convention, the non-identity of literature and life - for example, in “Eugene Onegin” the author can talk with the hero he created - a situation that is impossible in reality. The image of the author appears infrequently in literature; it is specific artistic device, and therefore requires indispensable analysis, since it reveals the artistic originality of a given work.

? TEST QUESTIONS:

1. Why is a work of art the smallest “unit” of literature and the main object of scientific study?

2. What are distinctive features literary work as a work of art?

3. What does the unity of objective and subjective mean in relation to a literary work?

4. What are the main features of the literary and artistic image?

5. What functions does a work of art perform? What are these functions?

6. What is the “illusion of reality”?

7. How do primary reality and artistic reality relate to each other?

8. What is the essence of artistic convention?

9. What is the “naive-realistic” perception of literature? What are its strengths and weaknesses?