The concept of the space-time continuum is essential for the philological analysis of a literary text, since both time and space serve as constructive principles for the organization of a literary work. Artistic time is a form of existence of aesthetic reality, a special way of understanding the world.
Features of time modeling in literature are determined by the specifics of this type of art: literature is traditionally viewed as a temporary art; unlike painting, it recreates the concreteness of the passage of time. This feature of a literary work is determined by the properties of linguistic means that form its figurative structure: “grammar determines for each language an order that distributes ... space in time,” transforms spatial characteristics into temporal ones.
The problem of artistic time has long occupied literary theorists, art historians, and linguists. So, A.A. Potebnya, emphasizing that the art of words is dynamic, showed the limitless possibilities of organizing artistic time in the text. He viewed the text as a dialectical unity of two compositional speech forms: description (“depiction of features that simultaneously exist in space”) and narration (“Narration transforms a series of simultaneous features into a series of sequential perceptions, into an image of the movement of gaze and thought from object to object”). . A.A. Potebnya distinguished between real time and artistic time; Having examined the relationship between these categories in works of folklore, he noted the historical variability of artistic time. Ideas by A.A. Potebny received further development in the works of philologists of the late XIX - early XX centuries. However, interest in the problems of artistic time especially revived in the last decades of the 20th century, which was associated with the rapid development of science, the evolution of views on space and time, and the acceleration of social life, with increased attention in connection with this to the problems of memory, origins, tradition, on the one hand; and the future, on the other hand; finally, with the emergence of new forms in art.
“The work,” noted P.A. Florensky - aesthetically forcibly develops... in a certain sequence.” Time in work of art- the duration, sequence and correlation of its events, based on their cause-and-effect, linear or associative relationship.
Time in the text has clearly defined or rather blurred boundaries (events, for example, can cover tens of years, a year, several days, a day, an hour, etc.), which may or, on the contrary, not be designated in the work in relation to the historical time or time set conditionally by the author (see, for example, E. Zamyatin’s novel “We”).
Artistic time is systemic in nature. This is a way of organizing the aesthetic reality of a work, its inner world, and at the same time an image associated with the embodiment of the author’s concept, reflecting precisely his picture of the world (remember, for example, M. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard”). From time as an immanent property of a work, it is advisable to distinguish the time of the passage of the text, which can be considered as the time of the reader; Thus, when considering a literary text, we are dealing with the antinomy “the time of the work - the time of the reader.” This antinomy in the process of perceiving the work can be resolved in different ways. At the same time, the time of the work is heterogeneous: thus, as a result of temporal shifts, “omissions”, highlighting central events in close-up, the depicted time is compressed, shortened, while when juxtaposing and describing simultaneous events, it, on the contrary, is stretched.
A comparison of real time and artistic time reveals their differences. The topological properties of real time in the macroworld are one-dimensionality, continuity, irreversibility, orderliness. In artistic time, all these properties are transformed. It can be multidimensional. This is due to the very nature of a literary work, which has, firstly, an author and presupposes the presence of a reader, and secondly, boundaries: a beginning and an end. Two time axes appear in the text - the “axis of storytelling” and the “axis of events described”: “the axis of storytelling is one-dimensional, while the axis of events described is multidimensional.” Their relationship destroys the multidimensionality of artistic time, makes temporal shifts possible, and determines the multiplicity of temporal points of view in the structure of the text. So, in prose work Usually, the narrator's conditional present tense is established, which correlates with the narration about the past or future of the characters, with the characteristics of situations in various time dimensions. The action of a work can unfold in different time planes (“The Double” by A. Pogorelsky, “Russian Nights” by V.F. Odoevsky, “The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov, etc.).
Irreversibility (unidirectionality) is also not characteristic of artistic time: the real sequence of events is often disrupted in the text. According to the law of irreversibility, only folklore time moves. In the literature of modern times, temporal shifts, disruption of temporal sequence, and switching of temporal registers play a large role. Retrospection as a manifestation of the reversibility of artistic time is the principle of organization of a number of thematic genres (memoirs and autobiographical works, detective novels). Retrospective in a literary text can also act as a means of revealing its implicit content - subtext.
The multidirectionality and reversibility of artistic time is especially clearly manifested in the literature of the 20th century. If Stern, according to E.M. Forster, “turned the clock upside down,” then “Marcel Proust, even more inventive, swapped the hands... Gertrude Stein, who tried to banish time from the novel, smashed her clock into pieces and scattered its fragments around the world..." It was in the 20th century. a “stream of consciousness” novel arises, a “one day” novel, a sequential time series in which time is destroyed, and time appears only as a component of a person’s psychological existence.
Artistic time is characterized by both continuity and discreteness. “Remaining essentially continuous in the sequential change of temporal and spatial facts, the continuum in textual reproduction is simultaneously divided into separate episodes.” The selection of these episodes is determined by the aesthetic intentions of the author, hence the possibility of temporal lacunae, “compression” or, on the contrary, expansion of plot time, see, for example, the remark of T. Mann: “At the wonderful festival of narration and reproduction, omissions play an important and indispensable role.”
The possibilities of expanding or compressing time are widely used by writers. So, for example, in the story by I.S. Turgenev's "Spring Waters" highlights Sanin's love story for Gemma in close-up - the most striking event in the hero's life, its emotional peak; At the same time, artistic time slows down, “stretches out”, but the course of the hero’s subsequent life is conveyed in a generalized, summary manner: And then - life in Paris and all the humiliations, all the disgusting torments of a slave... Then - the return to his homeland, a poisoned, devastated life, petty fuss , minor troubles...
Artistic time in the text appears as a dialectical unity of the finite and the infinite. In the endless flow of time, one event or a chain of events is singled out; their beginning and end are usually fixed. The ending of the work is a signal that the time period presented to the reader has ended, but time continues beyond it. Such a property of real-time works as orderliness is also transformed in a literary text. This may be due to the subjective determination of the starting point or measure of time: for example, in S. Bobrov’s autobiographical story “Boy”, the measure of time for the hero is a holiday:
For a long time I tried to imagine what a year was... and suddenly I saw in front of me a rather long ribbon of grayish-pearl fog, lying horizontally in front of me, like a towel thrown on the floor.<...>Was this towel divided for months?.. No, it was unnoticeable. For seasons?.. It’s also somehow not very clear... It was clearer something else. These were the patterns of the holidays that colored the year.
Artistic time represents the unity of the particular and the general. “As a manifestation of the private, it has the features of individual time and is characterized by a beginning and an end. As a reflection of the limitless world, it is characterized by infinity; temporary flow." As a unity of discrete and continuous, finite and infinite, and can act. a separate temporary situation in a literary text: “There are seconds, five or six of them pass at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, completely achieved... As if you suddenly feel all of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true.” The plane of the timeless in a literary text is created through the use of repetitions, maxims and aphorisms, various kinds of reminiscences, symbols and other tropes. In this regard, artistic time can be considered as a complementary phenomenon, to the analysis of which N. Bohr’s principle of complementarity is applicable (opposite means cannot be combined synchronously; to obtain a holistic view, two “experiences” separated in time are needed). The antinomy “finite - infinite” is resolved in a literary text as a result of the use of conjugate, but spaced apart in time and therefore ambiguous means, for example, symbols.
Fundamentally significant for the organization of a work of art are such characteristics of artistic time as the duration/brevity of the depicted event, the homogeneity/heterogeneity of situations, the connection of time with subject-event content (its fullness/emptiness, “emptiness”). According to these parameters, both works and fragments of text in them, forming certain time blocks, can be contrasted.
Artistic time is based on a certain system of linguistic means. This is, first of all, a system of tense forms of the verb, their sequence and opposition, transposition (figurative use) of tense forms, lexical units with temporal semantics, case forms with the meaning of time, chronological marks, syntactic constructions that create a certain time plan (for example, nominative sentences represent in the text there is a plan of the present), names of historical figures, mythological heroes, nominations of historical events.
Of particular importance for artistic time is the functioning of verb forms; the predominance of statics or dynamics in the text, the acceleration or slowdown of time, their sequence determines the transition from one situation to another, and, consequently, the movement of time. Compare, for example, the following fragments of E. Zamyatin’s story “Mamai”: Mamai wandered lost in the unfamiliar Zagorodny. The penguin wings were in the way; his head hung like the faucet of a broken samovar...
And suddenly his head jerked up, his legs began to prance like a twenty-five-year-old...
Forms of time act as signals of various subjective spheres in the structure of the narrative, cf., for example:
Gleb lay on the sand, resting his head in his hands, it was a quiet, sunny morning. He wasn't working on his mezzanine today. It's all over. Tomorrow they are leaving, Ellie is packing up, everything is re-drilled. Helsingfors again...
(B. Zaitsev. Gleb’s Journey)
The functions of types of tense forms in a literary text are largely typified. As noted by V.V. Vinogradov, narrative (“event”) time is determined primarily by the relationship between the dynamic forms of the past tense of the perfect form and the forms of the past imperfect, acting in a procedural-long-term or qualitative-characterizing meaning. The latter forms are correspondingly assigned to the descriptions.
The time of the text as a whole is determined by the interaction of three temporal “axes”:
1) calendar time, displayed predominantly by lexical units with the seme “time” and dates;
2) event time, organized by the connection of all predicates of the text (primarily verbal forms);
3) perceptual time, expressing the position of the narrator and the character (in this case, different lexical and grammatical means and temporal shifts are used).
Artistic and grammatical tenses are closely related, but they should not be equated. “Grammatical tense and the tense of a verbal work can diverge significantly. The time of action and the author’s and reader’s time are created by a combination of many factors: among them, only partly grammatical time...”
Artistic time is created by all elements of the text, while the means expressing temporal relations interact with the means expressing spatial relations. Let's limit ourselves to one example: for example, change of designs C; predicates of movement (left the city, entered the forest, arrived in Nizhneye Gorodishche, drove up to the river, etc.) in the story of A.P. Chekhov) “On the Cart,” on the one hand, determines the temporal sequence of situations and forms the plot time of the text, on the other hand, reflects the character’s movement in space and participates in the creation of artistic space. To create an image of time, spatial metaphors are regularly used in literary texts.
The most ancient works are characterized by mythological time, a sign of which is the idea of cyclical reincarnations, “world periods”. Mythological time, not in the opinion of K. Levi-Strauss, can be defined as the unity of such characteristics as reversibility-irreversibility, synchronicity-diachronicity. The present and the future in mythological time appear only as different temporal hypostases of the past, which is an invariant structure. The cyclical structure of mythological time turned out to be significantly significant for the development of art in different eras. “The exceptionally powerful orientation of mythological thinking towards establishing homo- and isomorphisms, on the one hand, made it scientifically fruitful, and on the other, determined its periodic revival in various historical eras.” The idea of time as a change of cycles, “eternal repetition”, is present in a number of neo-mythological works of the 20th century. So, according to V.V. Ivanov, this concept is close to the image of time in the poetry of V. Khlebnikov, “who deeply felt the ways of science of his time.”
In medieval culture, time was viewed primarily as a reflection of eternity, while the idea of it was predominantly of an eschatological nature: time begins with the act of creation and ends with the “second coming.” The main direction of time becomes orientation towards the future - the future exodus from time to eternity, while the metrization of time itself changes and the role of the present, the dimension of which is connected with the spiritual life of a person, significantly increases: “... for the present of past objects we have memory or memories; for the present of real objects we have a look, an outlook, an intuition; for the present of future objects we have aspiration, hope, hope,” wrote Augustine. Thus, in ancient Russian literature, time, as D.S. notes. Likhachev, not as egocentric as in the literature of modern times. It is characterized by isolation, one-pointedness, strict adherence to the real sequence of events, and a constant appeal to the eternal: “Medieval literature strives for the timeless, for overcoming time in the depiction of the highest manifestations of existence - the divine establishment of the universe.” The achievements of ancient Russian literature in recreating events “from the angle of eternity” in a transformed form were used by writers of subsequent generations, in particular F.M. Dostoevsky, for whom “the temporary was... a form of realization of the eternal.” Let us limit ourselves to one example - the dialogue between Stavrogin and Kirillov in the novel “Demons”:
There are minutes, you get to minutes, and time suddenly stops and will be forever.
Are you hoping to get to that point?
“This is hardly possible in our time,” Nikolai Vsevolodovich responded, also without any irony, slowly and as if thoughtfully. - In the Apocalypse, the angel swears that there will be no more time.
I know. This is very true there; clearly and accurately. When the whole person achieves happiness, there will be no more time, because there is no need.
Since the Renaissance, the evolutionary theory of time has been affirmed in culture and science: spatial events become the basis for the movement of time. Time, thus, is understood as eternity, not opposed to time, but moving and being realized in every instantaneous situation. This is reflected in the literature of modern times, which boldly violates the principle of irreversibility of real time. Finally, the 20th century is a period of particularly bold experimentation with artistic time. The ironic judgment of Zh.P. is indicative. Sartre: “...most of the largest modern writers - Proust, Joyce... Faulkner, Gide, W. Wolf - each in their own way tried to cripple time. Some of them deprived him of his past and future in order to reduce him to the pure intuition of the moment... Proust and Faulkner simply simply “decapitated” him, depriving him of the future, that is, the dimension of action and freedom.”
Consideration of artistic time in its development shows that its evolution (reversibility → irreversibility → reversibility) is a forward movement in which each higher stage negates, removes its lower (preceding) one, contains its richness and again removes itself in the next , third, stage.
Features of modeling artistic time are taken into account when determining the constitutive characteristics of the genus, genre, and movement in literature. So, according to A.A. Potebnya, “lyrics - praesens”, “epic - perfectum”; the principle of recreating times can distinguish between genres: aphorisms and maxims, for example, are characterized by a constant present; Reversible artistic time is inherent in memoirs and autobiographical works. The literary direction is also associated with a specific concept of the development of time and the principles of its transmission, while, for example, the measure of adequacy of real time is different. Thus, symbolism is characterized by the implementation of the idea of eternal movement-becoming: the world develops according to the laws of the “triad (the unity of the world spirit with the Soul of the world - the rejection of the Soul of the world from unity - the defeat of Chaos).
At the same time, the principles of mastering artistic time are individual, this is a feature of the artist’s idiostyle (thus, artistic time in the novels of L.N. Tolstoy, for example, differs significantly from the model of time in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky).
Taking into account the peculiarities of the embodiment of time in a literary text, considering the concept of time in it and, more broadly, in the writer’s work is a necessary component of the analysis of the work; underestimation of this aspect, absolutization of one of the particular manifestations of artistic time, identification of its properties without taking into account both objective real time and subjective time can lead to erroneous interpretations of the artistic text, making the analysis incomplete and schematic.
The analysis of artistic time includes the following main points:
1) determination of the features of artistic time in the work in question:
Unidimensionality or multidimensionality;
Reversibility or irreversibility;
Linearity or violation of time sequence;
2) highlighting the temporal plans (planes) presented in the work in the temporal structure of the text and considering their interaction;
4) identifying signals that highlight these forms of time;
5) consideration of the entire system of time indicators in the text, identifying not only their direct, but also figurative meanings;
6) determining the relationship between historical and everyday, biographical and historical time;
7) establishing a connection between artistic time and space.
Let us turn to the consideration of individual aspects of the artistic time of the text based on the material of specific works (“The Past and Thoughts” by A. I. Herzen and the story “Cold Autumn” by I. A. Bunin).
“The Past and Thoughts” by A. I. Herzen: features of temporary organization
In a literary text, a moving, often changeable and multidimensional time perspective arises; the sequence of events in it may not correspond to their real chronology. The author of the work, in accordance with his aesthetic intentions, either expands, or “thickens” time, or slows it down; it speeds up.
In a work of art, different aspects of artistic time are correlated: plot time (the temporal extent of the depicted actions and their reflection in the composition of the work) and plot time (their real sequence), the author’s time and the subjective time of the characters. It presents different manifestations (forms) of time (everyday historical time, personal time and social time). The focus of a writer or poet’s attention may be the image of time itself, associated with the motive of movement, development, formation, with the opposition of the transitory and the eternal.
Of particular interest is the analysis of the temporal organization of works in which different time plans are consistently correlated, a broad panorama of the era is given, and a certain philosophy of history is embodied. Such works include the memoir-autobiographical epic “The Past and Thoughts” (1852 - 1868). This is not only the pinnacle of A.I.’s creativity. Herzen, but also a work of “new form” (as defined by L.N. Tolstoy). It combines elements of different genres (autobiography, confession, notes, historical chronicles), combines different forms of presentation and compositional and semantic types of speech, “ tombstone and confession, past and thoughts, biography, speculation, events and thoughts, heard and seen, memories and... more memories” (A.I. Herzen). “The best... of the books devoted to a review of one’s own life” (Yu.K. Olesha), “The Past and Thoughts” is the history of the formation of a Russian revolutionary and at the same time the history of social thought of the 30-60s of the 19th century. “There is hardly another work of memoirs so imbued with conscious historicism.”
This is a work characterized by a complex and dynamic temporal organization, involving the interaction of various time plans. Its principles are defined by the author himself, who noted that his work is “and a confession around which, about which, here and there, captured memories from the past, here and there, stopped thoughts and other m" (highlighted by A.I. Herzen. - N.N.). In this author's description, which opens the work, contains an indication of the basic principles of the temporal organization of the text: this is an orientation towards the subjective segmentation of one’s past, the free juxtaposition of different time plans, the constant switching of time registers; The author’s “thoughts” are combined with a retrospective, but devoid of strict chronological sequence, story about the events of the past, and include characteristics of persons, events and facts from different historical eras. The narration of the past is supplemented by stage reproduction of individual situations; the story about the “past” is interrupted by fragments of text that reflect the immediate position of the narrator at the moment of speech or the reconstructed period of time.
This construction of the work “clearly reflected the methodological principle of “Past and Thoughts”: the constant interaction of the general and the particular, the transitions from the author’s direct thoughts to their substantive illustration and back.”
Artistic time in “The Past...” is reversible (the author resurrects the events of the past), multidimensional (the action unfolds in different time planes) and nonlinear (the story about the events of the past is disrupted by self-interruptions, reasoning, comments, and assessments). The starting point that determines the change of time plans in the text is mobile and constantly moving.
The plot time of the work - time is primarily biographical, “past”, reconstructed inconsistently - reflects the main stages in the development of the author’s personality.
The basis of biographical time is the end-to-end image of a path (road), in symbolic form embodying life path a narrator seeking true knowledge and undergoing a series of tests. This traditional spatial image is realized in a system of expanded metaphors and comparisons, regularly repeated in the text and forming a cross-cutting motif of movement, overcoming oneself, passing through a series of steps: The path we chose was not easy, we never left it; wounded, broken, we walked, and no one overtook us. I reached... not to the goal, but to the place where the road goes downhill...; ...the June of coming of age, with its painful work, with its rubble on the road, takes a person by surprise.; Like lost knights in fairy tales, we waited at a crossroads. If you go to the right, you will lose your horse, but you yourself will be safe; if you go to the left, the horse will be intact, but you yourself will die; if you go forward, everyone will leave you; If you go back, this is no longer possible, the road there is overgrown with grass for us.
These tropical series developing in the text act as a constructive component of the biographical time of the work and form its figurative basis.
Reproducing the events of the past, evaluating them (“The past is not a proof sheet... Not everything can be corrected. It remains, as if cast in metal, detailed, unchanging, dark, like bronze. People generally only forget what is not worth remembering or what they don’t understand”) and refracting through his subsequent experience, A.I. Herzen makes maximum use of the expressive capabilities of the tense forms of the verb.
The situations and facts depicted in the past are assessed by the author in different ways: some of them are described extremely briefly, while others (the most important for the author in an emotional, aesthetic or ideological sense), on the contrary, are highlighted “close-up”, while time “stops” or slows down. To achieve this aesthetic effect, imperfective past tense forms or present tense forms are used. If the forms of the past perfect express a chain of successively changing actions, then the forms of the imperfect form convey not the dynamics of the event, but the dynamics of the action itself, presenting it as an unfolding process. Performing in a literary text not only a “reproducing”, but also a “visually pictorial”, “descriptive” function, the forms of the past imperfect stop time. In the text of “Past and Thoughts” they are used as a means of highlighting in “close-up” situations or events that are especially significant for the author (the oath on Vorobyovy Mountain, the death of his father, a meeting with Natalie, leaving Russia, a meeting in Turin, the death of his wife). The choice of forms of the past imperfect as a sign of a certain author’s attitude towards the depicted performs in this case an emotional and expressive function. Wed, for example: The nurse in a sundress and a warmer still looked after us and cried; Sonnenberg, this funny figure from his childhood, waved his foulard - all around was an endless steppe of snow.
This function of the forms of the past imperfect is typical of artistic speech; it is associated with the special meaning of the imperfect form, which presupposes the obligatory presence of a moment of observation, a retrospective point of reference. A.I. Herzen also uses the expressive possibilities of the past imperfect form with the meaning of multiple or habitually repeated action: they serve for typification, generalization of empirical details and situations. Thus, to characterize life in his father’s house, Herzen uses the technique of describing one day - a description based on the consistent use of imperfective forms. “Past and Thoughts” is thus characterized by a constant change in the perspective of the image: isolated facts and situations, highlighted in close-up, are combined with the reproduction of long-term processes, periodically repeating phenomena. Interesting in this regard is the portrait of the Chaadaevs, built on the transition from the author’s specific personal observations to a typical characteristic:
I loved to look at him in the midst of this tinsel nobility, flighty senators, gray-haired rakes and honorable nonentity. No matter how dense the crowd, the eye found him immediately; summer did not distort his slender figure, he dressed very carefully, his pale, tender face was completely motionless, when he was silent, as if made of wax or marble, “a forehead like a naked skull”... For ten years he stood with folded arms , somewhere near a column, near a tree on the boulevard, in halls and theaters, in a club and - the embodiment of veto, he looked with lively protest at the whirlwind of faces spinning meaninglessly around him...
The forms of the present tense against the background of the forms of the past can also perform the function of slowing down time, the function of highlighting events and phenomena of the past in close-up, but they, unlike the forms of the past imperfect in the “picturesque” function, recreate, first of all, the immediate time of the author’s experience associated with the moment of lyrical concentrations, or (less often) convey predominantly typical situations, repeatedly repeated in the past and now reconstructed by memory as imaginary:
The peace of the oak forest and the noise of the oak forest, the continuous buzzing of flies, bees, bumblebees... and the smell... this grass-forest smell... which I so greedily sought in Italy, and in England, and in the spring, and in the hot summer, and almost never found it. Sometimes it seems to smell like him, after mown hay, in broad daylight, before a thunderstorm... and I remember a small place in front of the house... on the grass, a three-year-old boy, lying in clover and dandelions, between grasshoppers, all sorts of beetles and ladybugs, and ourselves, and youth, and friends! The sun has set, it’s still very warm, we don’t want to go home, we’re sitting on the grass. The catcher picks mushrooms and scolds me for no reason. What is this, like a bell? to us, or what? Today is Saturday - maybe... The troika rolls through the village, knocking on the bridge.
The forms of the present tense in “The Past...” are associated primarily with the subjective psychological time the author, his emotional sphere, their use complicates the image of time. The reconstruction of events and facts of the past, again directly experienced by the author, is associated with the use of nominative sentences, and in some cases with the use of forms of the past perfect in the perfect meaning. The chain of forms of the historical present and nominatives not only brings the events of the past as close as possible, but also conveys a subjective sense of time and recreates its rhythm:
My heart was beating strongly when I again saw familiar, dear streets, places, houses that I had not seen for about four years... Kuznetsky Most, Tverskoy Boulevard... here is Ogarev’s house, they stuck some kind of huge coat of arms on him, it’s someone else’s already... here is Povarskaya - the spirit is busy: in the mezzanine, in the corner window, a candle is burning, this is her room, she writes to me, she is thinking about me, the candle burns so cheerfully, it burns so much for me.
Thus, the biographical plot time of the work is uneven and discontinuous, it is characterized by a deep but moving perspective; the reconstruction of real biographical facts is combined with the transfer of various aspects of the author’s subjective awareness and measurement of time.
Artistic and grammatical time, as already noted, are closely related, however, “grammar appears as a piece of smalt in the overall mosaic picture of a verbal work.” Artistic time is created by all elements of the text.
Lyrical expression and attention to the “moment” are combined in the prose of A.I. Herzen with constant typification, with a social-analytical approach to what is depicted. Considering that “it is more necessary here than anywhere else to take off masks and portraits,” since “we are terribly falling apart from what has just passed,” the author combines; “thoughts” in the present and a story about the “past” with portraits of contemporaries, while restoring the missing links in the image of the era: “the universal without personality is an empty distraction; but a person only has full reality to the extent that he is in society.”
Portraits of contemporaries in “The Past and Thoughts” are conditionally possible; divided into static and dynamic. Yes, in the chapter III first volume presents a portrait of Nicholas I, it is static and emphatically evaluative, the speech means involved in its creation contain the common semantic feature “cold”: a cropped and shaggy jellyfish with a mustache; His beauty filled him with cold... But the main thing was his eyes, without any warmth, without any mercy, winter eyes.
The portrait description of Ogarev is constructed differently in Chapter IV of the same volume. A description of his appearance is followed by an introduction; elements of prospection related to the hero’s future. “If a pictorial portrait is always a moment stopped in time, then a verbal portrait characterizes a person in “actions and deeds” relating to different “moments” of his biography.” Creating a portrait of N. Ogarev in adolescence, A.I. Herzen, at the same time, names the features of the hero in maturity: Early on one could see in him that anointing that not many people get - for bad luck or for good luck... but probably for the purpose of not being in the crowd... unaccountable sadness and extreme meekness shone from the large gray eyes, hinting at the future growth of the great spirit; That's how he grew up.
The combination of different time points of view in portraits when describing and characterizing the characters deepens the moving time perspective of the work.
The multiplicity of time points of view presented in the structure of the text is increased by the inclusion of fragments of the diary, letters of other characters, excerpts from literary works, in particular from the poems of N. Ogarev. These elements of the text are correlated with the author's narration or the author's descriptions and are often contrasted with them as genuine, objective - subjective, transformed by time. See, for example: The truth of that time, as it was then understood, without the artificial perspective that distance gives, without the cooling of time, without the corrected illumination by rays passing through a series of other events, was preserved in the notebook of that time.
The biographical time of the author is supplemented in the work with elements of the biographical time of other heroes, while A.I. Herzen resorts to extensive comparisons and metaphors that recreate the passage of time: The years of her life abroad passed luxuriantly and noisily, but they went and plucked flower after flower... Like a tree in the middle of winter, she retained the linear outline of her branches, the leaves flew off, the bare branches chilled bonyly , but the majestic growth and bold dimensions were all the more clearly visible. The image of a clock is repeatedly used in “The Past...”, embodying the inexorable power of time: The large English table clock, with its measured*, loud spondee - tick-tock - tick-tock - tick-tock... seemed to be measuring out the last quarter of an hour of her life ...; And the spondee of the English clock continued to measure days, hours, minutes... and finally reached the fateful second.
The image of fleeting time in “The Past and Thoughts,” as we see, is associated with an orientation towards the traditional, often general linguistic type of comparisons and metaphors, which, repeated in the text, undergo transformations and affect the surrounding elements of the context; as a result, the stability of tropical characteristics is combined with their constant update.
Thus, biographical time in “Past and Thoughts” consists of plot time, based on the sequence of events of the author’s past, and elements of the biographical time of other characters, while the subjective perception of time by the narrator, his evaluative attitude to the reconstructed facts are constantly emphasized. “The author is like an editor in cinematography”: he either speeds up the time of the work, then stops it, does not always correlate the events of his life with chronology, emphasizes, on the one hand, the fluidity of time, on the other hand, the duration of individual episodes resurrected by memory.
Biographical time, despite the complex perspective inherent in it, is interpreted in the work of A. Herzen as private time, presupposing subjectivity of measurement, closed, having a beginning and an end (“Everything personal quickly crumbles away... Let “The Past and Thoughts” settle accounts with personal life and will be its table of contents"). It is included in the broad flow of time associated with the historical era reflected in the work. Thus, closed biographical time is contrasted with open historical time. This opposition is reflected in the features of the composition of “The Past and Thoughts”: “in the sixth and seventh parts there is no longer a lyrical hero; in general, the personal, “private” fate of the author remains outside the boundaries of what is depicted”, the dominant element of the author’s speech becomes “thoughts”, appearing in a monologue or dialogized form. One of the leading grammatical forms organizing these contexts is the present tense. If the plot biographical time of “The Past and Thoughts” is characterized by the use of the actual present (“the author’s current ... the result of moving the “observation point” to one of the moments of the past, the plot action”) or the historical present, then for “thoughts” and the author’s digressions, constituting the main layer of historical time, characterized by the present in an expanded or constant meaning, acting in interaction with the forms of the past tense, as well as the present of the direct author’s speech: The people, like a banner, like a battle cry, are only surrounded by a revolutionary aura when the people are fighting for independence, when he overthrows the foreign yoke... The War of 1812 greatly developed the feeling national consciousness and love for the homeland, but the patriotism of 1812 did not have an Old Believer-Slavic character. We see him in Karamzin and Pushkin...
““The past and thoughts,” wrote A.I. Herzen is not a historical monograph, but a reflection of history in a person who accidentally fell on its road.”
The life of an individual in “Bydrm and Thoughts” is perceived in connection with a certain historical situation and is motivated by it. A metaphorical image of the background appears in the text, which is then concretized, acquiring perspective and dynamics: A thousand times I wanted to convey a series of peculiar figures, sharp portraits taken from life... There is nothing gregarious in them... one common connection between them, or, better, one common misfortune; Peering into the dark gray background, you can see soldiers under sticks, serfs under rods... wagons rushing to Siberia, convicts trudged there, shaved foreheads, branded faces, helmets, epaulettes, sultans... in a word, St. Petersburg Russia.. They want to escape from the canvas and cannot.
If the biographical time of a work is characterized by a spatial image of a road, then to represent historical time, in addition to the image of the background, images of the sea (ocean) and elements are regularly used:
Impressive, sincerely young, we were easily caught up in a powerful wave... and early we swam across that line at which whole rows of people stop, fold their arms, walk back or look around for a ford - across the sea!
In history, it is easier for him [man] to be passionately carried away by the flow of events... than to peer into the ebb and flow of the waves that carry him. A man... grows by understanding his position into a helmsman who proudly cuts through the waves with his boat, forcing the bottomless abyss to serve him through communication.
Characterizing the role of the individual in the historical process, A.I. Herzen resorts to a number of metaphorical correspondences that are inextricably linked with each other: a person in history is “at once a boat, a wave and a helmsman,” while everything that exists is connected by “ends and beginnings, causes and actions.” A person’s aspirations “are clothed in words, embodied in images, remain in tradition and are passed on from century to century.” This understanding of the place of man in the historical process led to the author’s appeal to the universal language of culture, the search for certain “formulas” to explain the problems of history and, more broadly, of existence, to classify particular phenomena and situations. Such “formulas” in the text of “Past and Thoughts” are a special type of tropes, characteristic of the style of A.I. Herzen. These are metaphors, comparisons, periphrases, which include the names of historical figures, literary heroes, mythological characters, names of historical events, words denoting historical and cultural concepts. These “point quotes” appear in the text as metonymic replacements for entire situations and plots. The paths of which they are included serve to figuratively characterize phenomena of which Herzen was a contemporary, persons and events of other historical eras. See, for example: Students-young ladies - Jacobins, Saint-Just in an Amazon - everything is sharp, pure, merciless...; [Moscow] with murmuring and contempt received within its walls a woman stained with the blood of her husband [Catherine II], this Lady Macbeth without repentance, this Lucrezia Borgia without Italian blood...
Phenomena of history and modernity, empirical facts and myths, real persons and literary images, as a result, the situations described in the work receive a second plan: through the particular the general appears, through the individual - the repeating, through the transitory - the eternal.
The relationship in the structure of the work of two time layers: private time, biographical time and historical time - leads to a complication of the subjective organization of the text. The author's I consistently alternates with we, which in different contexts takes on different meanings: it points either to the author, or to persons close to him, or, with the increasing role of historical time, serves as a means of indicating the entire generation, a national collective, or even, more broadly, the human race generally:
Our historical vocation, our deed lies in this: through our disappointment, through our suffering, we reach the point of humility and submission before the truth and deliver the next generations from these sorrows...
Unity is established in the connection between generations human race, the history of which seems to the author to be a tireless striving forward, a path that has no end, but presupposes, however, the repetition of certain motives. The same repetitions of A.I. Herzen also finds in human life, the course of which, from his point of view, has a peculiar rhythm:
Yes, in life there is an addiction to the returning rhythm, to the repetition of the motive; who doesn’t know how close old age is to childhood? Take a closer look and you will see that on both sides of the full height of life, with its wreaths of flowers and thorns, with its cradles and coffins, eras are often repeated, similar in the main features.
It is historical time that is especially important for the narrative: the formation of the hero of “Past and Thoughts” reflects the formation of the era; biographical time is not only contrasted with historical time, but also acts as one of its manifestations.
Dominant images that characterize both biographical time (the image of the path) and historical time (the image of the sea, the elements) in the text interact, their connection gives rise to the movement of private cross-cutting images associated with the deployment of the dominant: I’m not coming from London. There is nowhere and no reason... It was washed here and thrown by the waves, which so mercilessly broke and twisted me and everything close to me.
Interaction in the text of different time plans, correlation in the work of biographical time and historical time, “reflection of history in man” - distinctive features memoir-autobiographical epic by A.I. Herzen. These principles of temporal organization determine the figurative structure of the text and are reflected in the language of the work.
Questions and tasks
1. Read A. P. Chekhov’s story “Student”.
2. What time plans are compared in this text?
3. Consider the verbal means of expressing temporary relations. What role do they play in creating the artistic time of a text?
4. What manifestations (forms) of time are presented in the text of the story “Student”?
5. How are time and space connected in this text? What chronotope, from your point of view, underlies the story?
Story by I.A. Bunin “Cold Autumn”: conceptualization of time
In a literary text, time is not only event-based, but also conceptual: the flow of time as a whole and its individual segments are divided, evaluated, and comprehended by the author, narrator, or characters of the work. Conceptualization of time - a special representation of it in an individual or folk painting the world, interpretation of the meaning of its forms, phenomena and signs - manifests itself:
1) in the assessments and comments of the narrator or character included in the text: And much, much has been experienced during these two years, which seem so long, when you think about them carefully, you sort through in your memory everything that is magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible neither with your mind nor with your heart what is called the past (I. Bunin. Cold Autumn);
2) in the use of tropes that characterize different signs of time: Time, a timid chrysalis, a cabbage sprinkled with flour, a young Jewish woman clinging to the watchmaker’s window - it would be better if you didn’t look! (O. Mandelstam. Egyptian stamp);
3) in subjective perception and division of the time flow in accordance with the starting point adopted in the narrative;
4) in the contrast of different time plans and aspects of time in the structure of the text.
For the temporal (temporal) organization of a work and its composition, it is usually significant, firstly, the comparison or opposition of past and present, present and future, past and future, past, present and future, and secondly, the opposition of such aspects of artistic time as duration - one-time occurrence (instantaneity), transience - duration, repeatability - the singularity of a single moment, temporality - eternity, cyclicity - the irreversibility of time. In both lyrical and prose works, the passage of time and its subjective perception can serve as the theme of the text; in this case, its temporal organization, as a rule, correlates with its composition, and the concept of time reflected in the text and embodied in its temporal images and the nature of division time series serves as the key to its interpretation.
Let us consider in this aspect the story by I.A. Bunin “Cold Autumn” (1944), part of the “Dark Alleys” cycle. The text is structured as a first-person narrative and is characterized by a retrospective composition: it is based on the heroine’s memories. “The plot of the story turns out to be built into the situation of the speech-mental action of memory (emphasized by M.Ya. Dymarsky - N.N.).. The situation of memory becomes the only main plot of the work.” Before us, therefore, is the subjective time of the heroine of the story.
Compositionally, the text consists of three parts unequal in volume: the first, which forms the basis of the narrative, is structured as a description of the heroine’s engagement and her farewell to her groom on a cold September evening in 1914; the second contains generalized information about the thirty years of the heroine’s subsequent life; in the third, extremely brief part, the relationship between “one evening” - a moment of farewell - and the entire life I have lived is assessed: But, remembering everything that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Was he really there once? Still, it was. And that’s all that happened in my life - the rest was an unnecessary dream.
The unevenness of the compositional parts of the text is a way of organizing its artistic time: it serves as a means of subjective segmentation of the time flow and reflects the peculiarities of its perception by the heroine of the story, expresses her temporal assessments. The unevenness of the parts determines the special temporal rhythm of the work, which is based on the predominance of statics over dynamics.
A close-up of the text highlights the scene of the characters’ last meeting, in which each of their remarks or remarks turn out to be significant, cf.:
Left alone, we stayed a little longer in the dining room - I decided to play solitaire - he silently walked from corner to corner, then demand]
Do you want to go for a little walk? My soul became increasingly heavier, I responded indifferently:
Okay... While getting dressed in the hallway, he continued to think about something, with a sweet smile he remembered Fet’s poems: What a cold autumn! Put on your shawl and hood...
The movement of objective time in the text slows down and then stops: the “moment” in the heroine’s memories acquires duration, and “physical space turns out to be only a symbol, a sign of a certain element of experience that captures the heroes and takes possession of them”:
At first it was so dark that I was holding on to his sleeve. Then black branches, showered with mineral-shining stars, began to appear in the brightening sky. He paused and turned towards the house:
Look how the windows of the house shine in a very special, autumn-like way...
At the same time, the description of the “farewell evening” includes figurative means that clearly have prospectivity: associated with the depicted realities, they associatively indicate future (in relation to what is being described) tragic upheavals. Thus, the epithets cold, icy, black (cold autumn, icy stars, black sky) are associated with the image of death, and in the epithet autumn the semes “departing”, “farewell” are actualized (see, for example: Somehow they shine in a particularly autumnal way windows of the house. Or: There is some rustic autumn charm in these poems). The cold autumn of 1914 is depicted as the eve of the fateful “winter” (the air is completely winter) with its cold, darkness and cruelty. The metaphor from A. Fet’s poem: ...As if a fire were rising - in the context of the whole it expands its meaning and serves as a sign of future cataclysms, which the heroine is not aware of and which her fiancé foresees:
What fire?
Moonrise, of course... Oh, my God, my God!
Nothing, dear friend. Still sad. Sad and good.
The duration of the “farewell evening” is contrasted in the second part of the story with the summary characteristics of the next thirty years of the narrator’s life, and the concreteness and “homelikeness” of the spatial images of the first part (estate, house, office, dining room, garden) are replaced by a list of names of foreign cities and countries: In winter, in hurricane, sailed with a countless crowd of other refugees from Novorossiysk to Turkey... Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Paris, Nice...
The compared time periods are associated, as we see, with different spatial images: a farewell evening - primarily with the image of a house, life expectancy - with many loci, the names of which form a disordered, open chain. The chronotope of the idyll transforms into the chronotope of the threshold, and then gives way to the chronotope of the road.
The uneven division of the time flow corresponds to the compositional and syntactic division of the text - its paragraph structure, which also serves as a way of conceptualizing time.
The first compositional part of the story is characterized by fragmented paragraph division: in the description of the “farewell evening”, various micro-themes replace each other - designations of individual events that are of particular importance for the heroine and stand out, as already noted, in close-up.
The second part of the story is one paragraph, although it tells about events that would seem to be more significant both for the heroine’s personal biographical time and for historical time (the death of parents, trading at the market in 1918, marriage, flight to the south , Civil War, emigration, death of husband). “The separateness of these events is removed by the fact that the significance of each of them turns out to be no different for the narrator from the significance of the previous or subsequent one. In a certain sense, they are all so identical that they merge in the narrator’s mind into one continuous stream: the narrative about it is devoid of internal pulsation of assessments (monotony of rhythmic organization), devoid of a pronounced compositional division into micro-episodes (micro-events) and is therefore contained in one “solid” paragraph " It is characteristic that within its framework, many events in the heroine’s life are either not highlighted at all, or are not motivated, and the facts preceding them are not restored, cf.: In the spring of the eighteenth year, when neither my father nor my mother was already alive, I lived in Moscow , in the basement of a merchant at the Smolensk market... Neither the cause of death (possibly death) of the parents, nor the events in the heroine’s life from 1914 to 1918 are mentioned in the story.
Thus, the “farewell evening” - the plot of the first part of the story - and the thirty years of the heroine’s subsequent life are contrasted not only on the basis of “moment / duration”, but also on the basis of “significance / insignificance”. Omissions of time periods add tragic tension to the narrative and emphasize man’s powerlessness before fate.
The heroine’s value attitude towards various events and, accordingly, time periods of the past is manifested in their direct assessments in the text of the story: the main biographical time is defined by the heroine as a “dream”, and the dream is “unnecessary”; it is contrasted with only one “cold autumn evening”, which has become the only content of the lived life. life and its justification. It is characteristic that the heroine’s present (I lived and still live in Nice whatever God sends...) is interpreted by her as an integral part of a “dream” and thereby acquires a sign of unreality. “Dream”-life and one evening opposed to it differ, therefore, in their modal characteristics: only one “moment” of life, resurrected by the heroine in her memories, is assessed by her as real, as a result, the traditional contrast between the past and the present for artistic speech is removed. In the text of the story “Cold Autumn,” the described September evening loses its temporal localization in the past, moreover, it opposes it as the only real point in the course of life - the heroine’s present merges with the past and acquires signs of illusoryness and illusoryness. In the last compositional part of the story, the temporal is already correlated with the eternal: And I believe, I fervently believe: somewhere there he is waiting for me - with the same love and youth as that evening. “You live, enjoy the world, then come to me...” I lived, rejoiced, and now I’ll come soon.
Involved in eternity, as we see, is the memory of the individual, establishing a connection between a single evening in the past and timelessness. Memory lives with love, which allows “to emerge from individuality into the All-Unity and from earthly existence into metaphysical true existence.”
In this regard, it is interesting to turn to the plan for the future in the story. Against the background of the forms of the past tense that predominate in the text, a few forms of the future stand out - forms of “volition” and “openness” (V.N. Toporov), which, as a rule, lack evaluative neutrality. All of them are united semantically: these are either verbs with the semantics of memory / oblivion, or verbs that develop the motive of expectation and a future meeting in another world, cf.: I will be alive, I will forever remember this day; If they kill me, you still won’t forget me right away?.. - Will I really forget him in some short time?.. Well, if they kill me, I’ll be waiting for you there. Live, enjoy the world, then come to me. “I’ve lived, I’m happy, and now I’ll be back soon.”
It is characteristic that statements containing forms of the future tense, located distantly in the text, correlate with each other as replicas of a lyrical dialogue. This dialogue continues thirty years after it began and overcomes the power of real time. The future for Bunin's heroes turns out to be connected not with earthly existence, not with objective time with its linearity and irreversibility, but with memory and eternity. It is the duration and strength of the heroine’s memories that serve as the answer to her youthful question-reasoning: And will I really forget him in some short time - after all, everything is forgotten in the end? In the memories the heroine continues to live and turns out to be more real than her present, and the deceased father and mother, and the groom who died in Galicia, and the clear stars over the autumn garden, and the samovar after the farewell dinner, and Fet’s lines read by the groom and, in turn, , also preserving the memory of the departed (There is some kind of rustic autumn charm in these verses: “Put on your shawl and hood...” The times of our grandparents...).
The energy and creative power of memory frees individual moments of existence from fluidity, fragmentation, insignificance, enlarges them, reveals in them the “secret patterns” of fate or the highest meaning, as a result, true time is established - the time of consciousness of the narrator or hero, which contrasts the “unnecessary sleep” of existence unique moments, imprinted forever in memory. The measure of human life thereby recognizes the presence in it of moments involved in eternity and freed from the power of irreversible physical time.
Questions and tasks
1. 1. Re-read I. A. Bunin’s story “In a Familiar Street.”
2. What compositional parts are the repeated quotes from the poem by Ya. P. Polonsky divided into?
3. What time periods are shown in the text? How do they relate to each other?
4. What aspects of time are particularly significant to the structure of this text? Name the speech means that highlight them.
5. How do the plans of the past, present and future correlate in the text of the story?
6. What is unique about the ending of the story and how unexpected it is for the reader? Compare the endings of the stories “Cold Autumn” and “In One Familiar Street.” What are their similarities and differences?
7. What concept of time is reflected in the story “On a Familiar Street”?
II. Analyze the temporal organization of V. Nabokov’s story “Spring in Fialta”. Prepare a message “The artistic time of V. Nabokov’s story “Spring in Fialta”.
Art space
The text is spatial, i.e. elements of the text have a certain spatial configuration. Hence the theoretical and practical possibility of spatial interpretation of tropes and figures, the structure of the narrative. Thus, Ts. Todorov notes: “The most systematic study of spatial organization in fiction was carried out by Roman Jacobson. In his analyzes of poetry, he showed that all layers of utterance... form an established structure based on symmetries, build-ups, oppositions, parallelisms, etc., which together form a real spatial structure.” A similar spatial structure also occurs in prose texts; see, for example, repetitions of various types and the system of oppositions in the novel by A.M. Remizov "Pond". Repetitions in it are elements of the spatial organization of chapters, parts and the text as a whole. Thus, in the chapter “One Hundred Mustaches - One Hundred Noses,” the phrase The walls are white and white, they shine from the lamp, as if strewn with grated glass, and the leitmotif of the entire novel is the repetition of the sentence Stone Frog (highlighted by A.M. Remizov. - N.N. ) moved her ugly webbed feet, which is usually included in a complex syntactic construction with varying lexical composition.
The study of a text as a certain spatial organization thus presupposes consideration of its volume, configuration, system of repetitions and oppositions, analysis of such topological properties of space, transformed in the text, as symmetry and coherence. It is also important to take into account the graphic form of the text (see, for example, palindromes, figured verses, the use of brackets, paragraphs, spaces, the special nature of the distribution of words in a verse, line, sentence), etc. “They often indicate,” notes I. Klyukanov, “ that poetic texts are printed differently than other texts. However, to a certain extent, all texts are printed differently than others: at the same time, the graphic appearance of the text “signals” about its genre affiliation, about its attachment to one or another type of speech activity and forces one to a certain way of perception... So - “spatial architectonics” the text acquires a kind of normative status. This norm may be violated by the unusual structural placement of graphic signs, which causes a stylistic effect.”
In a narrow sense, space in relation to a literary text is the spatial organization of its events, inextricably linked with the temporal organization of the work and the system of spatial images of the text. According to Kästner's definition, “space in this case functions in the text as an operative secondary illusion, something through which spatial properties are realized in temporal art.”
Thus, there is a distinction between broad and narrow understandings of space. This is due to the distinction between an external point of view on the text as a certain spatial organization that is perceived by the reader, and an internal point of view that considers the spatial characteristics of the text itself as a relatively closed internal world that is self-sufficient. These points of view do not exclude, but complement each other. When analyzing a literary text, it is important to take into account both of these aspects of space: the first is the “spatial architectonics” of the text, the second is the “artistic space”. In what follows, the main object of consideration is the artistic space of the work.
The writer reflects real space-time connections in the work he creates, building his own perceptual series parallel to the real one, and creates a new - conceptual - space, which becomes a form of implementation of the author's idea. To the artist, wrote M.M. Bakhtin, is characterized by “the ability to see time, to read time in the spatial whole of the world and... to perceive the filling of space not as not; a moving background... but as a whole becoming, as an event.”
Artistic space is one of the forms of aesthetic reality created by the author. This is a dialectical unity of contradictions: based on the objective connection of spatial characteristics (real or possible), it is subjective, it is infinite and at the same time finite.
In the text, when displayed, the general properties of real space are transformed and have a special character: extension, continuity - discontinuity, three-dimensionality - and its particular properties: shape, location, distance, boundaries between different systems. In a particular work, one of the properties of space can come to the fore and be specially played out, see, for example, the geometrization of urban space in A. Bely’s novel “Petersburg” and the use in it of images associated with the designation of discrete geometric objects (cube, square, parallelepiped, line, etc.): There the houses merged in cubes into a systematic, multi-story row...
Inspiration took possession of the senator’s soul when a varnished cube cut the Nevskog line: the house numbering was visible there...
The spatial characteristics of the events recreated in the text are refracted through the prism of the author’s perception (the story of the warrior, the character), see, for example:
The feeling of the city never corresponded to the place where my life took place. The emotional pressure always threw him into the depths of the described perspective. There, puffing, the clouds trampled, and, pushing aside their crowd, the floating smoke of countless furnaces hung across the sky. There, in lines, exactly along the embankments, crumbling houses plunged into the snow with their entrances...
(B. Pasternak. Safe-conduct)
In a literary text, there is a corresponding distinction between the space of the narrator (storyteller) and the space of the characters. Their interaction makes the artistic space of the entire work multidimensional, voluminous and devoid of homogeneity, while at the same time, the dominant space in terms of creating the integrity of the text and its internal unity remains the space of the narrator, whose mobility of point of view makes it possible to combine different angles of description and image. Language means serve as means of expressing spatial relationships in the text and indicating various spatial characteristics: syntactic constructions with the meaning of location, existential sentences, prepositional-case forms with local meaning, verbs of motion, verbs with the meaning of detecting a feature in space, adverbs of place, toponyms, etc. ., see, for example: Crossing the Irtysh. The steamer stopped the ferry... On the other side is the steppe: yurts that look like kerosene tanks, a house, cattle... The Kyrgyz are coming from the other side... (M. Prishvin); A minute later they passed the sleepy office, came out onto sand deep as deep as the hub, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. The gentle climb uphill among rare crooked lanterns... seemed endless... (I.A. Bunin).
“The reproduction (image) of space and indication of it are included in the work like pieces of a mosaic. By associating, they form a general panorama of space, the image of which can develop into an image of space.” The image of an artistic space can be different character depending on what model of the world (time and space) the writer or poet has (whether space is understood, for example, “in Newtonian” or mythopoetic).
In the archaic model of the world, space is not opposed to time; time condenses and becomes a form of space, which is “drawn” into the movement of time. “Mythopoetic space is always filled and always material; in addition to space, there is also non-space, the embodiment of which is Chaos...” Mythopoetic ideas about space, so essential for writers, are embodied in a number of mythologemes that are consistently used in literature in a number of stable images. This is, first of all, an image of a path (road), which can involve movement both horizontally and vertically (see works of folklore) and is characterized by the identification of a number of equally significant spatial: points, topographical objects - threshold, door, staircase, bridge, etc. These images, associated with the division of both time and space, metaphorically represent a person’s life, its certain moments of crisis, his quest on the edge of “his” and “alien” worlds, embody movement, indicate its limit and symbolize the possibility of choice; they are widely used in poetry and prose, see, for example: Not joy The news is knocking on the grave... / Oh! Wait to cross this step. While you were here, nothing died, / Step over - and the sweet was gone (V.A. Zhukovsky); I pretended to be mortal in winter / And the eternal doors closed forever, / But they still recognize my voice, / And yet they will believe me again (A. Akhmatova).
The space modeled in the text can be open or closed (closed); see, for example, the contrast between these two types of space in “Notes from the House of the Dead” by F.M. Dostoevsky: Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of day: wouldn’t you see anything? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart, day and night... In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries ; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world...
The image of a wall serves as a stable image associated with a closed, limited space in prose and poetry, see, for example, L. Andreev’s story “The Wall” or the recurring images of a stone wall (stone hole) in the autobiographical story of A.M. Remizov’s “In Captivity”, contrasted with the reversible in the text and multidimensional image of a bird as a symbol of will.
Space can be represented in the text as expanding or contracting in relation to a character or a specific object being described. So, in the story of F.M. Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Funny Man”, the transition from reality to the hero’s dream, and then back to reality, is based on the technique of changing spatial characteristics: the closed space of the hero’s “small room” is replaced by the even narrower space of the grave, and then the narrator finds himself in a different, ever-expanding space, at the end of the story, the space narrows again, cf.: We rushed through the darkness and unknown spaces. I have long ceased to see the constellations familiar to the eye. It was already morning... I woke up in the same chairs, my candle had all burned out, they were sleeping by the chestnut tree, and all around there was a silence rare in our apartment.
The expansion of space can be motivated by the gradual expansion of the hero’s experience, his knowledge of the outside world, see, for example, I. A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev”: And then ... we learned the barnyard, the stable, the carriage house, the threshing floor, Proval, Vyselki . The world kept expanding before us... The garden is cheerful, green, but already known to us... And here is the barnyard, the stable, the carriage house, the barn on the threshing floor, the Proval...
According to the degree of generalization of spatial characteristics, concrete space and abstract space (not associated with specific local indicators) are distinguished, cf.: It smelled of coal, burnt oil and that smell of alarming and mysterious space that always happens at train stations (A. Platonov). - Despite the endless space, the world was comfortable at this early hour (A. Platonov).
The space actually visible by the character or narrator is supplemented by imaginary space. The space given in the perception of a character can be characterized by deformation associated with the reversibility of its elements and a special point of view on it: Shadows from trees and bushes, like comets, fell with sharp clicks onto the sloping plain... He lowered his head down and saw that the grass ... it seemed to grow deep and far away, and that above it there was water as clear as a mountain spring, and the grass seemed to be the bottom of some light, transparent to the very depths of the sea... (N.V. Gogol. Viy).
The degree of filling of space is also significant for the figurative system of the work. So, in the story by A.M. Gorky’s “Childhood”, with the help of repeated lexical means (primarily the word cramped and derivatives from it), the “crowdedness” of the space surrounding the hero is emphasized. The sign of cramped space extends both to the outside world and to the inner world of the character and interacts with the end-to-end repetition of the text - the repetition of the words melancholy, boredom: Boring, boring in a special way, almost unbearable; the chest fills with liquid, warm lead, it presses from the inside, bursts the chest, ribs; It seems to me that I am swelling up like a bubble, and I am cramped in a small room under a mushroom-shaped ceiling.
The image of cramped space is correlated in the story with the end-to-end image of “the cramped, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which a simple Russian man lived - and still lives to this day.”
Elements of the transformed artistic space can be associated in a work with the theme of historical memory, thereby historical time interacts with certain spatial images, which are usually intertextual in nature, see, for example, the novel by I.A. Bunin's "The Life of Arsenyev": And soon I again set off on a journey. I was on the very banks of the Donets, where the prince once rushed from captivity “as an ermine into the reeds, a white nog into the water”... And from Kyiv I went to Kursk, to Putivl. “Saddle up, brother, your greyhounds, and my ti are ready, saddle up at Kursk in front...”
Artistic space is inextricably linked with artistic time.
The relationship between time and space in a literary text is expressed in the following main aspects:
1) two simultaneous situations are depicted in the work as spatially separated, juxtaposed (see, for example, “Hadji Murat” by L.N. Tolstoy, “The White Guard” by M. Bulgakov);
2) the spatial point of view of the observer (character or narrator) is at the same time his temporal point of view, while the optical point of view can be both static and moving (dynamic): ...So we got out into the wild, crossed the bridge, climbed to the barrier - and looked into the eyes of a stone, deserted road, vaguely white and running away into an endless distance... (I.A. Bunin. Sukhodol);
3) a temporal shift usually corresponds to a spatial shift (for example, the transition to the present of the narrator in “The Life of Arsenyev” by I.A. Bunin is accompanied by a sharp shift in spatial position: A whole life has passed since then. Russia, Orel, spring... And now, France , South, Mediterranean winter days. We... have been in a foreign country for a long time);
4) the acceleration of time is accompanied by a compression of space (see, for example, the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky);
5) on the contrary, time dilation can be accompanied by an expansion of space, hence, for example, detailed descriptions of spatial coordinates, scene of action, interior, etc.;
6) the passage of time is conveyed through changes in spatial characteristics: “Signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time.” So, in the story by A.M. Gorky’s “Childhood”, in the text of which there are almost no specific temporal indicators (dates, exact timing, signs of historical time), the movement of time is reflected in the spatial movement of the hero, his milestones are the move from Astrakhan to Nizhny, and then moves from one house to another , cf.: By spring, the uncles separated... and the grandfather bought himself a large, interesting house on Polevaya; Grandfather unexpectedly sold the house to the tavern owner, buying another one on Kanatnaya Street;
7) the same speech means can express both temporal and spatial characteristics, see, for example: ... they promised to write, they never wrote, everything ended forever, Russia began, exiles, the water froze in the bucket by morning, the children grew up healthy, the ship was running along the Yenisei on a bright June day, and then there was St. Petersburg, an apartment on Ligovka, crowds of people in the Tavrichesky courtyard, then the front was three years, carriages, rallies, bread rations, Moscow, “Alpine Goat”, then Gnezdnikovsky, famine, theaters, work on a book expedition... (Yu. Trifonov. It was a summer afternoon).
To embody the motif of the movement of time, metaphors and similes containing spatial images are regularly used, see, for example: A long staircase grew down from days about which it is impossible to say: “lived.” They passed close, barely touching the shoulders, and at night... it was clearly visible: all the identical, flat steps were going in a zigzag (S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky. Babaev).
Awareness of the relationship between space and time made it possible to identify the category of chronotope, reflecting their unity. “We will call the essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically mastered in literature,” wrote M. M. Bakhtin, “chronotope (which literally means “time-space”).” From the point of view of M.M. Bakhtin, chronotope is a formal-substantive category that has “significant genre significance... Chronotope as a formal-substantive category determines (to a large extent) the image of a person in literature. The chronotope has a certain structure: on its basis, plot-forming motifs are identified - meeting, separation, etc. Turning to the category of chronotope allows us to construct a certain typology of spatio-temporal characteristics inherent in thematic genres: they differ, for example, idyllic chronotope, which is characterized by the unity of place, the rhythmic cyclicity of time, the attachment of life to place - home etc., and an adventurous chronotope, which is characterized by a wide spatial background and the time of “accident”. On the basis of the chronotope, “localities” are also distinguished (in the terminology of M.M. Bakhtin) - stable images based on the intersection of temporal and spatial “rows” (castle, living room, salon, provincial town, etc.).
Artistic space, like artistic time, is historically changeable, which is reflected in the change of chronotopes and is associated with a change in the concept of space-time. As an example, let us dwell on the features of the artistic space in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern times.
“The space of the medieval world is a closed system with sacred centers and secular periphery. The cosmos of Neoplatonic Christianity is graded and hierarchized. The experience of space is colored by religious and moral tones.” The perception of space in the Middle Ages usually does not imply an individual point of view on the subject or; a series of objects. As noted by D.S. Likhachev, “events in the chronicle, in the lives of saints, in historical stories- this is mainly about moving in space: hiking and moving, covering vast geographical spaces... Life is; manifestation of oneself in space. This is a journey on a ship among the sea of life.” Spatial characteristics are consistently symbolic (top - bottom, west - east, circle, etc.). “The symbolic approach provides that rapture of thought, that pre-rationalistic vagueness of the boundaries of identification, that content of rational thinking, which elevate the understanding of life to its highest level.” At the same time, medieval man still recognizes himself in many ways as an organic part of nature, so looking at nature from the outside is alien to him. Characteristic feature folk medieval culture - awareness of the inextricable connection with nature, the absence of rigid boundaries between the body and the world.
During the Renaissance, the concept of perspective (“looking through”, as defined by A. Dürer) was established. The Renaissance managed to completely rationalize space. It was during this period that the concept of a closed cosmos was replaced by the concept of infinity, existing not only as a divine prototype, but also empirically as a natural reality. The image of the Universe is detheologized. The theocentric time of medieval culture is replaced by three-dimensional space with a fourth dimension - time. This is connected, on the one hand, with the development of an objectifying attitude towards reality in the individual; on the other hand, with the expansion of the sphere of “I” and the subjective principle in art. In works of literature, spatial characteristics are consistently associated with the point of view of the narrator or character (compare with direct perspective in painting), and the importance of the latter’s position gradually increases in literature. A certain system of speech means is emerging, reflecting both the static and dynamic point of view of the character.
In the 20th century a relatively stable subject-spatial concept is replaced by an unstable one (see, for example, the impressionistic fluidity of space in time). Bold experimentation with time is complemented by equally bold experimentation with space. Thus, novels of “one day” often correspond to novels of “closed space”. The text can simultaneously combine a bird's eye view of space and an image of the locus from a specific position. The interaction of time plans is combined with deliberate spatial uncertainty. Writers often turn to the deformation of space, which is reflected in the special nature of speech means. For example, in K. Simon’s novel “The Roads of Flanders,” the elimination of precise temporal and spatial characteristics is associated with the abandonment of personal forms of the verb and their replacement with forms of present participles. The complication of the narrative structure determines the multiplicity of spatial points of view in one work and their interaction (see, for example, the works of M. Bulgakov, Yu. Dombrovsky, etc.).
At the same time, in the literature of the 20th century. interest in mytho-poetic images and the mythopoetic model of space-time is increasing (see, for example, the poetry of A. Blok, the poetry and prose of A. Bely, the works of V. Khlebnikov). Thus, changes in the concept of time-space in science and in human worldview are inextricably linked with the nature of the space-time continuum in works of literature and the types of images that embody time and space. The reproduction of space in the text is also determined by the literary movement to which the author belongs: naturalism, for example, which strives to create the impression of genuine activity, is characterized by detailed descriptions of various localities: streets, squares, houses, etc.
Let us now dwell on the methodology for describing spatial relationships in a literary text.
Analysis of spatial relationships in a work of art assumes:
2) identifying the nature of these positions (dynamic - static; top-bottom, bird's eye view, etc.) in their connection with the time point of view;
3) determination of the main spatial characteristics of the work (location and its changes, movement of the character, type of space, etc.);
4) consideration of the main spatial images of the work;
5) characteristics of speech means expressing spatial relationships. The latter, naturally, corresponds to all the various stages of analysis noted above, and forms the basis.
Let's consider ways of expressing spatial relationships in I.A.'s story. Bunin "Easy Breathing"
The temporal organization of this text has repeatedly attracted researchers. Having described the differences between “disposition” and “composition”, L.S. Vygotsky noted: “...Events are connected and linked in such a way that they lose their everyday burden and opaque dregs; they are melodically linked to each other, and in their build-ups, resolutions and transitions they seem to unravel the threads that bind them; they are released from those ordinary connections in which they are given to us in life and in the impression of life; he renounces reality...” The complex temporal organization of the text corresponds to its spatial organization.
In the structure of the narrative, three main spatial points of view are distinguished (the narrator, Olya Meshcherskaya and the class lady). The speech means of their expression are nominations of spatial realities, prepositional case forms: with local meaning, adverbs of place, verbs with the meaning of movement in space, verbs with the meaning of a non-processual color attribute localized in a specific situation (Further, between the monastery and the prison, the cloudy slope turns white sky and the spring field turns gray); finally, the very order of the components in the composed series, reflecting the direction of the optical point of view: She [Olya] looked at the young king, painted to his full height in the middle of some brilliant hall, at the even parting in the milky, neatly crimped hair of the boss and She was silent expectantly.
All three points of view in the text are brought closer to each other by the repetition of the lexemes cold, fresh and derivatives from them. Their correlation creates an oxymoronic image of life and death. The interaction of different points of view determines the heterogeneity of the artistic space of the text.
The alternation of heterogeneous time periods is reflected by changes in spatial characteristics and changes in locales of action; cemetery - gymnasium garden - cathedral street - boss's office - station - garden - glass veranda - cathedral street - (peace) - cemetery - gymnasium garden. In a number of spatial characteristics, as we see, repetitions are found, the rhythmic convergence of which organizes the beginning and end of a work characterized by elements of a ring composition. At the same time, the members of this series enter into oppositions: first of all, “open space - closed space” is contrasted, cf., for example: a spacious county cemetery - the boss’s office or a glass veranda. Spatial images that are repeated in the text are also contrasted with each other: on the one hand, a grave, a cross on it, a cemetery, developing the motif of death (death), on the other, the spring wind, an image traditionally associated with the motifs of will, life, open space. Bunin uses the technique of comparing narrowing and expanding spaces. The tragic events in the heroine's life are associated with the shrinking space around her; see, for example: ... a Cossack officer, ugly and plebeian in appearance... shot her on the station platform, among a large crowd of people... The cross-cutting images of the story that dominate the text - images of the wind and light breathing - are associated with the expanding (in the finale to infinity) space: Now this light breath has again dissipated in the world, in this cloudy world, in this cold spring wind. Thus, consideration of the spatial organization of “Easy Breathing” confirms the conclusions of L.S. Vygotsky about the originality of the ideological and aesthetic content of the story, reflected in its construction.
So, taking into account spatial characteristics and considering artistic space is an important part of the philological analysis of the text.
Questions and tasks
1. Read I. A. Bunin’s story “In a Familiar Street.”
2. Identify the leading spatial point of view in the narrative structure.
3. Determine the main spatial characteristics of the text. How do the places of action highlighted in it relate to the two main time plans of the text (past and present)?
4. What role do its intertextual connections play in the organization of the text of the story - repeated quotes from the poem by Ya. P. Polonsky? What spatial images stand out in Polonsky’s poem and in the text of the story?
5. Indicate the means of speech that express spatial relationships in the text. What makes them unique?
6. Determine the type of artistic space in the text under consideration and show its dynamics.
7. Do you agree with the opinion of M.M. Bakhtin that “any entry into the sphere of meaning occurs only through the gates of chronotopes”? What chronotopes can you note in Bunin’s story? Show the plot-forming role of the chronotope.
Artistic space of drama: A. Vampilov “Last summer in Chulimsk”
The artistic space of drama is characterized by particular complexity. The space of a dramatic text must necessarily take into account the stage space and determine the forms of its possible organization. Stage space is understood as “the space specifically perceived by the public on stage... or on fragments of scenes of various scenographies.”
A dramaturgical text, thus, always correlates the system of events presented in it with the conditions of the theater and the possibilities of embodying the action on stage with its inherent boundaries. “It is at the level of space... that you realize the articulation between text and performance.” The forms of the stage space are determined by the author's stage directions and the spatio-temporal characteristics contained in the cue: the characters. In addition, the dramatic text always provides indications of off-stage space, not limited by the conditions of the theater. What is not shown in the drama nevertheless plays an important role in its interpretation. Thus, off-stage space “is sometimes freely used for a certain kind of absence... to deny what “is”... Figuratively, off-stage space” (emphasized by Sh. Levi - N.N.) can be represented as a black aura of the stage or a special type of emptiness that hovers over the stage, sometimes becoming something like padding material between reality as such and intratheatrical reality...” In drama, finally, due to the specifics of this type of literature, the symbolic aspect of the spatial picture of the world plays a special role.
Let us turn to A. Vampilov’s play “Last Summer in Chulimsk” (1972), which is distinguished by a complex genre synthesis: it combines elements of comedy, “moral drama,” parable and tragedy. The drama “Last Summer in Chulimsk” is characterized by the unity of the scene. It is defined by the first (“setting”) remark, which opens the play and is a detailed descriptive text:
Summer morning in the taiga regional center. An old wooden house with a high cornice, a veranda and a mezzanine. Behind the house rises a lonely birch tree, further on you can see a hill, covered with spruce below, pine and larch above. Three windows and a door open onto the veranda of the house, on which is nailed a sign “Tea House”... There are openwork carvings everywhere on the cornices, window frames, shutters, gates. Half-upholstered, shabby, black with age, this carving still gives the house an elegant look...
Already in the first part of the remark, as we see, cross-cutting semantic oppositions are formed that are significant for the text as a whole: “old - new”, “beauty - destruction”. This opposition continues in the next part of the remark, the very volume of which indicates its special significance for the interpretation of the drama:
In front of the house there is a wooden sidewalk and as old as the house (its fence is also decorated with carvings), a front garden with currant bushes along the edges, with grass and flowers in the middle.
Simple white and pink flowers grow right in the grass, sparsely and randomly, as in a forest... On one side, two boards have been knocked out of the fence, currant bushes have been broken off, the grass and flowers are dented...
The description of the house again emphasizes signs of beauty and decay, with signs of destruction dominating. In the remark - the only direct manifestation author's position in drama - speech means are highlighted, which not only denote the realities of the space recreated on stage, but also, in figurative use, indicate the characters of the play who have not yet appeared on stage, the features of their life, relationships (simple flowers growing randomly; rumpled flowers and grass). The remark reflects the spatial point of view of a specific observer, at the same time it is constructed as if the author is trying to revive pictures of the past in his memory.
The stage directions determine the nature of the stage space, which consists of a platform in front of the house, a veranda (tea room), a small balcony in front of the mezzanine, a staircase leading to it, and a front garden. High gates are also mentioned, see one of the following remarks: The bolt rattles, the gate opens, and Pomigalov, Valentina’s father, appears... Through the open gate one can see part of the yard, a canopy, a woodpile under the canopy, a fence and a gate to the garden... Highlighted details allow you to organize stage action and highlight a number of key spatial images that are clearly of an axiological (evaluative) nature. Such are, for example, the movement up and down the stairs leading to the mezzanine, the closed gate of Valentina’s house, separating it from the outside world, the window of an old house turned into a display case for a buffet, a broken front garden fence. Unfortunately, directors and theater designers do not always take into account the rich possibilities opened up by the author's stage directions. “The scenographic appearance of Chulimsk, as a rule, is monotonous... Scenographic artists... have revealed a tendency not only to simplify the scenery, but to separate the front garden from the house with a mezzanine. “Meanwhile, this “insignificant” detail, the disorganization of the house and its untidiness suddenly turn out to be one of those underwater reefs that do not allow us to get closer to the symbolism of the play, its deeper stage embodiment.”
The space of drama is both open and closed. On the one hand, the text of the play repeatedly mentions the taiga and the city, which remains unnamed; on the other hand, the action of the drama is limited to only one “locus” - an old house with a front garden, from which two roads diverge to villages with symbolic names- Loss and Keys. The spatial image of a crossroads introduces into the text the motive of choice that the heroes face. This motive, associated with the ancient type of value situation of “searching for the road,” is most clearly expressed in the final phenomenon of the first scene of the second act, while the theme of danger and “fall” is associated with the road leading to Poteryaikha, and the hero (Shamanov) is at the “crossroads” roads" makes a mistake in choosing the path.
The image of the House (at the crossroads) has traditional symbolism. In Slavic folk culture, the house is always opposed to the external (“alien”) world and serves as a stable symbol of a habitable and ordered space, protected from chaos. The house embodies the idea of spiritual harmony and requires protection. Actions taken around him are usually of a protective nature; it is in this regard that actions can be considered main character drama - Valentina, who, despite the misunderstanding of those around her, constantly repairs the fence and, as noted in the stage directions, adjusts the gate. The playwright’s choice of this particular verb is indicative: the root fret, repeated in the text, actualizes such important meanings for the Russian linguistic picture of the world as “harmony” and “order of the world.”
The image of the House expresses other stable symbolic meanings in the play. This is a micromodel of the world, and the garden, surrounded by a fence, symbolizes the feminine principle of the universe in world culture. The House, finally, evokes the richest associations with a person, not only with his body, but also with his soul, with his inner life in all its complexity.
The image of the old house, as we see, reveals the mythopoetic subtext of a seemingly everyday drama from provincial life.
In addition, this spatial image also has a temporal dimension: it connects the past and present and embodies the connection of times, which is no longer felt by most of the characters and is supported only by Valentina. “The old house is a mute witness to the irreversible processes of life, the inevitability of leaving, the accumulation of the burden of mistakes and the gains of those who live here. He is eternal. They are fleeting."
At the same time, the old house with openwork carvings is just a “point” in the space recreated in the drama. It is part of Chulimsk, which, on the one hand, is opposed to the taiga (open space), on the other, to the nameless city, with which some of the characters in the drama are connected. “...Sleepy Chulimsk, in which the working day begins by mutual agreement, a good old village where you can leave an unlocked cash register... a prosaic and implausible world, where a real revolver coexists with no less real chickens and wild boars - this Chulimsk lives in special ways passions,” above all love and jealousy. Time seemed to have stopped in the village. The social space of the play is determined, firstly, by telephone conversations with invisible superiors (the telephone acts as an intermediary between different worlds), secondly, with separate references to the city and structures for which “documents” are most important, cf.:
E R E M E V. I worked for forty years...
Dergachev. There are no documents, and there is no conversation... You are due a pension from there (pointing his finger to the sky), but here, brother, don’t wait. It won't break off for you here.
The non-stage space in Vampilov’s drama is thus the unnamed city from which Shamanov and Pashka came, and most of Chulimsk, while the realities and “loci” of the regional center are introduced into “one-sided” telephone conversations. In general, the social space of drama is quite conventional; it is separate from the world recreated in the play.
The only character in the play who is outwardly directly connected with the social principle is the “seventh secretary” Mechetkin. This is the comic hero of the drama. His “meaningful” surname is already indicative, which is clearly of a contaminated nature (it possibly goes back to the combination of the verb rushes with the word rattle). Comic effect The author’s remarks are also created that characterize the hero: He behaves strangely tensely, clearly assuming an authoritative rigor and guiding concern; Not noticing the ridicule, he swells up. Against the background of the speech characteristics of other characters, it is Mechetkin’s remarks that stand out with their bright characterological means: an abundance of cliches, “label” words, elements of “clerical stuff”; Wed: Signals are already coming at you; It stands, you know, on the road, preventing rational movement; The question is quite double-edged; The question comes down to personal initiative.
Only to characterize Mechetkin’s speech does the playwright use the technique of a linguistic mask: the hero’s speech is endowed with properties that “to one degree or another separate him from the rest of the characters, and which belong to him as something constant and indispensable, accompanying him in any of his actions or gestures.” Mechetkin is thereby separated from the other characters in the play: in the world of Chulimsk, in the space surrounding the old house with carvings, he is a stranger, a fool, a fool, a damned one (according to the assessment of the other characters, who treat him with ridicule).
An old house at a crossroads is the central image of the drama, but its characters are united by the motif of the breakdown of family ties, loneliness and the loss of a true home. This motif is consistently developed in the characters’ remarks: Shamanov “left his wife,” Valentina’s sister “forgot her own father.” Pashka does not find a home in Chulimsk (But they say that home is better... Doesn’t correspond...), Kashkina is lonely, the “boob” Mechetkin has no family, Ilya is the only one left in the taiga.
In the characters’ remarks, Chulimsk appears as a gradually emptying space: young people have left it, and the old Evenk Eremeev is leaving again for the taiga, where “there are no deer, there are no animals... there are not enough animals.” The heroes, who have lost their real home, are temporarily united by a “renovated” teahouse - the main location of the drama, the place of chance meetings, sudden recognition and everyday communication of the characters. The tragic situations recreated in the play are combined with everyday scenes in which the names of the ordered dishes and drinks are regularly repeated. “People have lunch, just have lunch, and at this time their happiness is formed and their lives are shattered...” Following Chekhov, Vampilov, in the flow of everyday life, reveals the essential foundations of existence. It is no coincidence that in the text of the drama there are almost no lexical signals of historical time, and the speech of most of the characters is almost devoid of bright characterological features (in their remarks only individual colloquial words and Siberian regionalisms are used, however, no one’s). To reveal the characters of the characters in the play, spatial characteristics are significant, first of all, the way they move in space - moving “straight through the front garden” or bypassing the fence.
Another, no less important, spatial characteristic of characters is statics or dynamics. It is revealed in two main aspects: as the stability of the connection with the “point” space of Chulimsk and as the activity / passivity of a particular hero. Thus, in the author’s remark introducing Shamanov in the first scene, his apathy, “unfeigned negligence and absent-mindedness” are emphasized, while using the key word for the phenomena of the first act in which the hero acts, the word sleep: He, as if suddenly plunging into sleep, lowers head. In the remarks of Shamanov himself in the first act, speech devices with the semes “indifference” and “peace” are repeated. The “sleep” in which the hero is immersed turns out to be a “sleep” of the soul, synonymous with the character’s internal “blindness.” In the second act, these speech means are replaced by lexical units expressing opposite meanings. Thus, in the remark indicating the appearance of Shamanov, the dynamics are already emphasized, contrasting with his previous state of “apathy”: He walks quickly, almost swiftly. Runs up to the veranda.
The transition from static to dynamic is a sign of the hero’s rebirth. As for the connection of the characters with the space of Chulimsk, its stability is characteristic only of Anna Khoroshikh and Valentina, who “has never even been to the city.” It is the female characters who act in the drama as guardians of “their” space (both external and internal): Anna is busy renovating the teahouse and trying to save her home (family), Valentina is “fixing” the fence.
The characteristics of the characters are determined by their attitude towards key image drama - to a front garden with a broken gate: most of the characters walk “straight”, “ahead”, the townsman Shamanov goes around the front garden, only the old Evenk Eremeev, connected with the open space of the taiga, tries to help fix it. In this context, Valentina’s repeated actions take on a symbolic meaning: she restores what was destroyed, establishes a connection between times, and tries to overcome disunity. Her dialogue with Shamanov is indicative:
Shamanov. ...So I still want to ask you... Why are you doing this?
VALENTINE (not right away). Are you talking about the front garden?.. Why am I fixing it?
Shamanov. Yes, why?
VALENTINE. But... Isn't it clear?
Shamanov shakes his head: it’s unclear...
VALENTINE (cheerfully). Well then, I’ll explain to you... I’m fixing the front garden so that it’s intact.
Shamanov (grinned). Yes? But it seems to me that you are repairing the front garden so that it will be broken.
VALENTINA (becoming serious). I am repairing it so that it is intact.
“One must recognize as a general and constant feature of the language of drama... symbolism, two-dimensionality (emphasized by B.A. Larin - N.N.), the dual significance of speeches. In drama there are always running themes - ideas, moods, suggestions, perceived in addition to the main, direct meaning of the speeches.
Such “two-dimensionality” is inherent in the above dialogue. On the one hand, Valentina’s words are addressed to Shamanov and the adjective whole appears in them in its direct meaning, on the other hand, they are addressed to the viewer (reader) and in the context of the entire work acquire “dual significance.” The word whole in this case is already characterized by semantic diffuseness and at the same time realizes several inherent meanings: “one from which nothing is subtracted or separated”; “undestroyed”, “whole”, “united”, “preserved”, finally, “healthy”. Integrity is opposed to destruction, disintegration human connections, disunity and “disorder” (remember the first stage direction of the drama), is associated with the state of internal health and goodness. It is characteristic that the name of the heroine, Valentina, which served as the original title of the play, has the etymological meaning of “healthy, strong.” At the same time, Valentina’s actions cause misunderstanding of the other characters in the drama; the similarity of their assessments emphasizes the tragic loneliness of the heroine in the space surrounding her. Her image evokes associations with the image of a lonely birch tree in the first stage directions of the drama - a traditional symbol of a girl in Russian folklore.
The text of the play is structured in such a way that it requires constant reference to the “spatial” stage direction that opens it, which from an auxiliary (service) element of the drama turns into a constructive element of the text: the system of images of the stage directions and the system of images of the characters form an obvious parallelism and turn out to be interdependent. Thus, as already mentioned, the image of a birch tree is correlated with the image of Valentina, and the image of “crushed” grass is associated with her image (as well as with the images of Anna, Dergachev, Eremeev).
The world in which the drama's heroes live is distinctly disharmonious. First of all, this is manifested in the organization of the play’s dialogues, which are characterized by frequent “inconsistency” of replicas, violations of semantic and structural coherence in dialogic unities. The characters in the drama either do not hear each other, or do not always understand the meaning of the remark addressed to them. The disunity of the characters is also reflected in the transformation of a number of dialogues into monologues (see, for example, Kashkina’s monologue in the first act).
The text of the drama is dominated by dialogues reflecting the conflicting relationships of the characters (dialogues-arguments, quarrels, squabbles, etc.), and dialogues of a directive nature (such, for example, Valentina’s dialogue with her father).
The disharmony of the depicted world is also manifested in the names of its characteristic sounds. The author's stage directions consistently capture the sounds that fill the stage space. As a rule, the sounds are sharp, irritating, “unnatural”: in the first act, the scandalous hubbub is replaced by the noise of a machine brake, in the second, the screech of a hacksaw, the knock of a hammer, the crackling of a motorcycle, the crackling of a diesel engine dominate. “Noise” is contrasted with the only melody in the play - Der-gachev’s song, which serves as one of the leitmotifs of the drama, but remains unfinished.
In the first act, Dergachev’s voice is heard three times: the repeated beginning of the song “It was a long time ago, fifteen years ago...” interrupts the dialogue between Shamanov and Kashkina and at the same time is included in it as one of his lines. This “replica,” on the one hand, forms the temporal refrain of the scene and refers to the hero’s past, on the other hand, it serves as a kind of answer to Kashkina’s questions and comments and replaces Shamanov’s remarks. Wed:
Kashkina. There’s just one thing I don’t understand: how did you get to such a life... I would finally explain.
"It was a long time ago
About fifteen years ago..."
In the second act, this song opens the action of each scene, framing it. So, at the beginning of the second scene (“Night”) it sounds four times, while its text becomes shorter and shorter. In this act, the song already correlates with the fate of Valentina: the tragic situation of the folk ballad precedes what happened to the heroine. At the same time, the leitmotif song expands the stage space, deepens the time perspective of the drama as a whole and reflects the memories of Dergachev himself, and its incompleteness correlates with the open ending of the play.
Thus, in the space of drama, dissonant sounds and sounds of a song of a tragic nature contrast, and it is the former that win. Against their background, rare “zones of silence” are especially expressive. Silence, contrasted with the “scandalous hubbub” and noise, is established only in the finale. It is characteristic that in the final scene of the drama, the words silence and silence (as well as those of the same root) are repeated in the stage directions five times, and the word silence is placed by the playwright in a strong position in the text - its last paragraph. The silence into which the heroes are first immersed serves as a sign of their inner concentration, the desire to peer and listen to themselves and others, and accompanies the actions of the heroine and the end of the drama.
The last play Vampilov is called “Last Summer in Chulimsk”. Such a title, which, as already noted, the playwright did not immediately settle on, suggests retrospection and highlights the point of view of an observer or participant in the events! to what once happened in Chulimsk. The answer of the researcher of creativity Vampilov to the question: “What happened in Chulimsk?” is indicative. - “Last summer a miracle happened in Chulimsk.”
The “miracle” that happened in Chulimsk is the awakening of the hero’s soul, Shamanov’s insight. This was facilitated by the “horror” he experienced (Pashka’s shot), and the love of Valentina, whose “fall” serves as a kind of atoning sacrifice and at the same time determines the tragic guilt of the hero.
The spatio-temporal organization of Vampilov’s drama is characterized by the chronotope of the threshold, “its most significant replenishment is the chronotope of crisis and life turning point,” the time of the play is the decisive moments of falls and renewal. Other characters in the drama, especially Valentina, are also associated with the internal crisis, making decisions that determine a person’s life.
If the evolution of Shamanov’s image is predominantly reflected in the contrast of speech means in the main compositional parts of the drama, then the development of Valentina’s character is manifested in relation to the spatial dominant of this image - the actions of the heroine associated with “setting up” the gate. In the second act, Vadentina for the first time tries to do like everyone else: she goes straight! through the front garden - in this case, to construct her replicas, a technique is used that can be called the “semantic echo” technique. Valentin, firstly, repeats Shamanov’s replica (from Act I): Vain labor...; secondly, in her subsequent statements they “condense”, explicate the meanings that were previously regularly expressed by the hero’s remarks in the first act: It doesn’t matter; tired of it. The “direct” movement, a temporary transition to Shamanov’s position, leads to disaster. In the finale, after the tragedy Valentina experienced, we again see a return to the dominant of this image: Strict, calm, she goes up to the veranda. Suddenly she stopped. She turned her head towards the front garden. Slowly, but decisively, he descends into the front garden. He approaches the fence, strengthens the boards... Adjusts the gate... Silence. Valentina and Eremeev are restoring the front garden.
The play ends with the motives of renewal, overcoming chaos and destruction. “...In the finale, Vampilov unites young Valentina and old man Eremeev - the harmony of eternity, the beginning and end of life, without the natural light of purity and faith unthinkable.” The ending is preceded by Mechetkin’s seemingly unmotivated story about the history of the old house, cf.:
Mechetkin (addressing either Shamanov or Kashkina). This very house... was built by the merchant Chernykh. And, by the way, this merchant was bewitched (chews), they bewitched that he would live until he completed this very house... When he completed the house, he began to rebuild it. And I've been rebuilding my whole life...
This story returns the reader (viewer) to the end-to-end spatial image of the drama. In Mechetkin’s extended remark, the figurative parallel “life is a rebuilt house” is updated, which, taking into account the symbolic meanings inherent in the key spatial image of the play, a house, can be interpreted as “life-renewal”, “life is the constant work of the soul”, finally, as “life - reconstruction of the world and oneself in it.”
It is characteristic that the words repair, repair, regularly repeated in the first act, disappear in the second: the focus is already on the “reconstruction” of the souls of the characters. It is interesting that it is the “chewing” Mechetkin who tells the story of the old house: the vanity of the comic hero emphasizes the general meaning of the parable.
At the end of the drama, the space of most of its characters is transformed: Pashka is preparing to leave Chulimsk, the old man Eremeev goes into the taiga, but Dergachev opens his house for him (There is always enough room for you), the space of Shamanov expands, who decides to go to the city and speak at the trial. Valentina may be waiting for Mechetkin's house, but her actions remain unchanged. Vampilov's drama is constructed as a play in which the internal space of the characters changes, but the external space retains its stability.
“The artist’s task,” the playwright noted, “is to knock people out of mechanicalness.” This problem is solved in the play “Last Summer in Chulimsk,” which, as you read it, ceases to be perceived as everyday and appears as a philosophical drama. This is largely facilitated by the play’s system of spatial images.
Questions and tasks
1. Read the play “Three Girls in Blue” by L. Petrushevskaya.
2. Identify the main spatial images of the drama and determine their connections in the text.
3. Indicate the linguistic means that express spatial relationships in the text of the play. Which of these means, from your point of view, are especially significant for creating the artistic space of L. Petrushevskaya’s drama?
4. Determine the role of the image of the house in figurative system dramas. What meanings does it express? What is the dynamics of this image?
5. Give a general description of the drama space. How is space modeled in the text of this play?
In ancient times, when myth was a way of explaining and understanding the surrounding reality, special ideas about time and space were formed, which subsequently had a noticeable impact on literature and art. The world in the consciousness of ancient man was divided primarily into two parts - ordinary and sacred. They were endowed with different properties: the first was considered ordinary, everyday, and the second - unpredictably wonderful. Since the actions of the mythical heroes consisted of moving from one type of space-time to another, from the ordinary to the miraculous and back, incredible adventures happened to them on their travels, since miracles can happen in an unusual world.
Illustration by G. Dore for “The Divine Comedy” by Dante A.
Illustration by G. Kalinovsky for L. Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland.”
Drawing by A. de Saint-Exupéry for the fairy tale “The Little Prince”.
“It was - it wasn’t; a long time ago; in some kingdom; set off on a journey; whether long or short; soon the tale is told, not soon the deed is done; I was there, drinking mead beer; this is the end of the fairy tale” - try to fill the gaps with the actions of any characters, and, most likely, you will end up with a complete literary work, the genre of which is already determined by the use of these words themselves - a fairy tale. Obvious inconsistencies and incredible events will not confuse anyone: this is how it should be in a fairy tale. But if you take a closer look, it turns out that the fabulous “arbitrariness” has its own strict laws. They are determined, like all fairy tale miracles, by the unusual properties of space and time in which the fairy tale unfolds. First of all, the time of a fairy tale is limited by the plot. “When the plot ends, time ends,” writes academician D. S. Likhachev. For a fairy tale, the actual passage of time turns out to be unimportant. The formula “how long, how short” indicates that one of the main characteristics of fairy-tale time is still its uncertainty. Like, in fact, the uncertainty of fairy-tale space: “go there, I don’t know where.” All the events that happen to the hero are stretched along his path in search of “that thing I don’t know what.”
The events of a fairy tale can be drawn out (“he sat in the seat for thirty and three years”), or they can accelerate to the point of instantaneity (“threw a comb and a dense forest grew”). Acceleration of action occurs, as a rule, outside of real space, in fantastic space, where the hero has magical assistants or miraculous means that help him cope with this fantastic space and the wonderful time merged with it.
Unlike fairy tales and myths, the fiction of modern times, as a rule, deals with history and describes a certain, specific era - the past or the present. But here, too, there are their own space-time laws. Literature selects only the most essential from reality and shows the development of events over time. Determining for epic work is the vital logic of the narrative, but nevertheless the writer is not obliged to consistently and mechanically record the life of his hero, even in such a progressive genre as a chronicle novel. Years can pass between the lines of a work; the reader, at the will of the author, within one phrase, is able to move to another part of the world. We all remember Pushkin’s line from “The Bronze Horseman”: “A hundred years have passed...” - but we hardly pay attention to the fact that a whole century flashed here in one moment of our reading. The same time flows differently for the hero of a work of art, for the author-storyteller and for the reader. With amazing simplicity, A. S. Pushkin writes in Dubrovsky: “Several time passed without any remarkable incident.” Here, as in the chronicles, time is event-based; it is counted from event to event. If nothing necessary for the development of the plot happens, then the writer “turns off” time, just like a chess player who has made a move turns off his watch. And sometimes he can take advantage of the hourglass, turning events around and making them move from the denouement to the beginning. The originality of a novel, story, story is largely determined by the relationship between two times: the time of telling and the time of action. The time of storytelling is the time in which the narrator himself lives, in which he conducts his story; the time of action is the time of the heroes. And we, the readers, perceive all this from our real, calendar, today. Russian classics usually talk about events that happened in the recent past. And in what exact past is not entirely clear. We can only speak with certain certainty about this time distance when we are dealing with a historical novel in which N.V. Gogol writes about Taras Bulba, A.S. Pushkin about Pugachev, and Yu.N. Tynyanov about Pushkin. A gullible reader sometimes identifies the author and the narrator, posing as an eyewitness, a witness, or even a participant in the events. The narrator is a kind of starting point. He may be separated from the author by a significant time distance (Pushkin - Grinev); it can also be located at different distances from what is being described, and depending on this, the reader’s field of vision expands or narrows.
The events of the epic novel unfold over a long period of time over a vast space; the story and story are usually more compact. One of the most common settings for the works of N.V. Gogol, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.P. Chekhov, A.M. Gorky is a small provincial town or village with an established way of life, with minor events that are repeated from time to time. day after day, and then sleepy time seems to move in a circle on a limited area.
In Soviet literature, the artistic space of works is distinguished by significant diversity. In accordance with the individual experience and preferences of certain writers, there is an attachment to a certain place of action. Thus, among representatives of the stylistic movement called village prose (V.I. Belov, V.P. Astafiev, V.G. Rasputin, B.A. Mozhaev, V.N. Krupin, etc.), the action of novels, stories , the stories are set primarily in rural areas. For writers such as Yu. V. Trifonov, D. A. Granin, G. V. Semenov, R. T. Kireev, V. S. Makanin, A. A. Prokhanov and others, the characteristic setting is the city, and therefore the works of these writers are often called urban stories, which determines the characters, situations, and mode of action, thoughts, and experiences of their characters. Sometimes it is important for writers to emphasize the specific definiteness of the space of their works. Following M. A. Sholokhov, V. A. Zakrutkin, A. V. Kalinin and other Rostov writers showed their commitment to “Don” issues in their works. For S. P. Zalygin, V. G. Rasputin, G. M. Markov, V. P. Astafiev, S. V. Sartakov, A. V. Vampilov and a number of Siberian writers, it is fundamentally important that the action of many of their works takes place in Siberia; for V.V. Bykov, I.P. Melezh, I.P. Shamyakin, A.M. Adamovich, I.G. Chigrinov, the artistic space is mainly Belarus, as for N.V. Dumbadze - Georgia, and for J . Avijusa - Lithuania... At the same time, for example, for Ch. Aitmatov there are no such spatial restrictions in artistic creativity: the action of his works is transferred from Kyrgyzstan to Chukotka, then to Russia and Kazakhstan, to America and into space, even to the fictional planet Lesnaya Grud; this gives the artist’s generalizations a universal, planetary, worldwide character. On the contrary, the moods that permeate the lyrics of N. M. Rubtsov, A. Ya. Yashin, O. A. Fokina could arise and be natural in the northern Russian, or more precisely, the Vologda village, which allows the authors to poetize their “ small homeland"with its way of life, primordial traditions, customs, folklore images and folk peasant language.
A distinctive feature noticed by many researchers of the work of F. M. Dostoevsky is the unusual speed of action in his novels. Every phrase in Dostoevsky’s works seems to begin with the word “suddenly,” every moment can become a turning point, change everything, end in disaster. In Crime and Punishment, time rushes like a hurricane, showing a broad picture of the life of Russia, while in fact the events of two weeks take place in several St. Petersburg streets and alleys, in Raskolnikov’s cramped closet, on the back stairs of apartment buildings.
The spatio-temporal characteristics of a work of art, as a rule, differ significantly from those familiar qualities that we encounter in everyday life or get acquainted with in physics lessons. The space of a work of art can curve and close on itself, it can be limited, have an end, and the individual parts of which it consists have, as we have already seen, different properties. Three dimensions - length, width and depth - are violated and confused in such a way that they combine incompatible things in the real world. Sometimes space can be inverted in relation to reality or constantly changes its properties - it stretches, contracts, distorts proportions individual parts etc.
The properties of special, as literary theorists call it, artistic time are also unpredictable; sometimes it may seem that, as in L. Carroll’s fairy tale “Alice in Wonderland,” it has “gone crazy.” A story or story without any difficulty can take us both to the times of Vladimir the Red Sun and to the 21st century. Together with the heroes of an adventure novel, we can travel the whole world or, at the will of a science fiction writer, visit the mysterious Solaris.
Drama has the most stringent laws: within one stage episode, the time required to depict the action is equal to the time that is depicted. It is not for nothing that the rules of the theorists of classicism affected primarily dramaturgy. The desire to give the stage work greater credibility and integrity gave rise to the famous law of three unities: the duration of the play should not exceed one day, the space was limited to a single place of action, and the action itself was concentrated around one character. In modern drama, the movement of characters in space and time is not limited, and only from a change of scenery (the viewer), the author's remarks (the reader), and from the characters' remarks do we learn about the changes that occurred between acts.
The most free travel in time and space is the privilege of lyrics. “Worlds are flying. The years fly by” (A. A. Blok), “the centuries flow by in moments” (A. Bely); “And time is gone, and space is gone” (A. A. Akhmatova), and the poet is free, looking out the window, to ask: “What kind of millennium is it, dear ones, in our yard?” (B. L. Pasternak). Epochs and worlds fit into a capacious poetic image. With one phrase, the poet is able to reshape space and time as he sees fit.
In other cases, artistic time requires greater certainty and specificity ( historical novel, biographical narrative, memoirs, artistic and journalistic essay). One of the significant phenomena of modern Soviet literature is the so-called military prose (works by Yu. V. Bondarev, V. V. Bykov, G. Ya. Baklanov, N. D. Kondratyev, V. O. Bogomolov, I. F. Stadnyuk, V.V. Karpova and others), largely autobiographical, turns to the time of the Great Patriotic War in order to, recreating the feat of the Soviet people who defeated fascism, to raise universal moral, social, psychological, philosophical problems, important for us today. Therefore, even limiting artistic time (as well as space) allows us to expand the possibilities of art in cognition and understanding of life.
Analysis of artistic space and time
No work of art exists in a space-time vacuum. Time and space are always present in it in one way or another. It is important to understand that artistic time and space are not abstractions or even physical categories, although modern physics answers the question of what time and space are very ambiguously. Art, on the other hand, deals with a very specific space-time coordinate system. G. Lessing was the first to point out the importance of time and space for art, which we already discussed in the second chapter, and theorists of the last two centuries, especially the twentieth century, proved that artistic time and space are not only significant, but often the determining component of a literary work.
In literature, time and space are the most important properties of the image. Different images require different space-time coordinates. For example, in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” we encounter with an unusually compressed space. Small rooms, narrow streets. Raskolnikov lives in a room that looks like a coffin. Of course, this is not accidental. The writer is interested in people who find themselves at a dead end in life, and this is emphasized by all means. When Raskolnikov finds faith and love in the epilogue, space opens up.
Each work of modern literature has its own space-time grid, its own coordinate system. At the same time, there are some general patterns of development of artistic space and time. For example, until the 18th century, aesthetic consciousness did not allow the author’s “interference” in the temporal structure of the work. In other words, the author could not begin the story with the death of the hero and then return to his birth. The time of the work was “as if real.” In addition, the author could not disrupt the flow of the story about one hero with an “inserted” story about another. In practice, this led to the so-called “chronological incompatibilities” characteristic of ancient literature. For example, one story ends with the hero returning safely, while another begins with loved ones grieving for his absence. We encounter this, for example, in Homer's Odyssey. In the 18th century, a revolution occurred, and the author received the right to “model” the narrative without observing the logic of life-likeness: a mass of inserted stories and digressions appeared, and chronological “realism” was disrupted. A modern author can build the composition of a work, shuffling episodes at his own discretion.
In addition, there are stable, culturally accepted spatiotemporal models. The outstanding philologist M. M. Bakhtin, who fundamentally developed this problem, called these models chronotopes(chronos + topos, time and space). Chronotopes are initially imbued with meanings; any artist consciously or unconsciously takes this into account. As soon as we say about someone: “He is on the threshold of something...”, we immediately understand that we are talking about something big and important. But why exactly on the threshold? Bakhtin believed that chronotope of the threshold one of the most widespread in culture, and as soon as we “turn it on”, its semantic depth opens up.
Today the term chronotope is universal and simply denotes the existing space-time model. Often in this case, “etiquette” they refer to the authority of M. M. Bakhtin, although Bakhtin himself understood the chronotope more narrowly - namely how sustainable a model that appears from work to work.
In addition to chronotopes, we should also remember the more general models of space and time that underlie entire cultures. These models are historical, that is, one replaces the other, but the paradox of the human psyche is that an “outdated” model does not disappear anywhere, continuing to excite people and giving rise to literary texts. IN different cultures There are quite a few variations of such models, but several are basic. Firstly, this is a model zero time and space. It is also called motionless, eternal - there are a lot of options here. In this model, time and space become meaningless. It is always the same there, and there is no difference between “here” and “there,” that is, there is no spatial extension. Historically, this is the most archaic model, but it is still very relevant today. Ideas about hell and heaven are based on this model, it is often “turned on” when a person tries to imagine existence after death, etc. The famous chronotope of the “golden age”, which manifests itself in all cultures, is built on this model. If we remember the ending of the novel “The Master and Margarita,” we can easily feel this model. It was in such a world, according to the decision of Yeshua and Woland, that the heroes ultimately found themselves - in a world of eternal good and peace.
Another model - cyclic(circular). This is one of the most powerful space-time models, supported by the eternal change of natural cycles (summer-autumn-winter-spring-summer...). It is based on the idea that everything is returning to normal. Space and time are there, but they are conditional, especially time, since the hero will still return to where he left, and nothing will change. The easiest way illustrate this model with Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus was absent for many years, the most incredible adventures befell him, but he returned home and found his Penelope still as beautiful and loving. M. M. Bakhtin called such a time adventurous, it exists as if around the heroes, without changing anything either in them or between them. The cyclical model is also very archaic, but its projections are clearly perceptible in modern culture. For example, it is very noticeable in the work of Sergei Yesenin, whose idea life cycle, especially in mature years, becomes dominant. Even the well-known dying lines “In this life, dying is not new, / But living, of course, is also, not newer” refer to the ancient tradition, to the famous biblical book of Ecclesiastes, entirely built on a cyclical model.
The culture of realism is mainly associated with linear a model when space seems endlessly open in all directions, and time is associated with a directed arrow - from the past to the future. This model dominates in everyday consciousness modern man and is clearly visible in a huge number of literary texts of recent centuries. Suffice it to recall, for example, the novels of L.N. Tolstoy. In this model, each event is recognized as unique, it can only happen once, and a person is understood as a constantly changing being. The linear model opened psychologism V modern sense, since psychologism presupposes the ability to change, which could not be the case either in the cyclic model (after all, the hero should be the same at the end as at the beginning), nor even more so in the zero time-space model. In addition, the linear model is associated with the principle historicism, that is, man began to be understood as a product of his era. The abstract “man for all times” simply does not exist in this model.
It is important to understand that in the minds of modern man all these models do not exist in isolation; they can interact, giving rise to the most bizarre combinations. Let's say, a person can be emphatically modern, trust the linear model, accept the uniqueness of every moment of life as something unique, but at the same time be a believer and accept the timelessness and spacelessness of existence after death. In the same way, literary texts can reflect different systems coordinates For example, experts have long noticed that in Anna Akhmatova’s work there are, as it were, two parallel dimensions: one is historical, in which every moment and gesture is unique, the other is timeless, in which every movement freezes. The “layering” of these layers is one of the hallmarks of Akhmatova’s style.
Finally, modern aesthetic consciousness is increasingly mastering yet another model. There is no clear name for it, but it would not be wrong to say that this model allows for the existence parallel times and spaces. The point is that we exist differently depending on the coordinate system. But at the same time, these worlds are not completely isolated; they have points of intersection. The literature of the twentieth century actively uses this model. Suffice it to recall M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”. The master and his lover die in different places and for different reasons: The master is in a madhouse, Margarita is at home from a heart attack, but at the same time they are they die in each other's arms in the Master's closet from Azazello's poison. Different coordinate systems are included here, but they are interconnected - after all, the death of the heroes occurred in any case. This is the projection of the model of parallel worlds. If you carefully read the previous chapter, you will easily understand that the so-called multivariate the plot—a largely twentieth-century invention of literature—is a direct consequence of the establishment of this new space-time grid.
SPECIFICITY OF THE CREATION OF ARTISTIC TIME AND SPACE IN L. ULITSKAYA’S PROSE
P.I. Mamedova
Baku Slavic University (BSU) st. Suleiman Rustama, 25, Baku, Azerbaijan, AZ1014
The specifics of creating artistic time and space in L. Ulitskaya’s story “Merry Funeral” are considered. The originality of the topos in the works of L. Ulitskaya is determined by the fact that it is represented by the space of a house (apartment), filled with numerous objects and details. At the same time, the limited enclosed space of the apartment tends to expand by including the expanses of the homeland, which the emigrants “carried away” on “their soles,” and the space of the new country in which they settled and which they “bring” along with their problems into the hero’s house. And then the space narrows to the limits of the person’s inner world. L. Ulitskaya’s works are characterized by an appeal to the character’s memory as an internal space for the temporary unfolding of events. The category of time in works is presented in two aspects: historical time (memory time) and real time.
Key words: artistic time, artistic space, structure of a work of art, women's prose, chronotope.
A literary work is a collection of a large number of elements that are inextricably linked. Sometimes it is enough to analyze one of the elements of the text to understand the characteristic features of the entire work. Such an element can be a composition, a system of images, a detail, a landscape, a color scheme, etc. But perhaps the most polysemantic, meaning-forming elements of the text are artistic time and artistic space.
In the space-time structures developed by both individual and general cultural historical consciousness, the system of spiritual ideas of man and society, the sum of their spiritual experience, is refracted. As noted by D.S. Likhachev, changes in the system of space-time ideas primarily indicate shifts occurring in culture, in the worldview and worldview of the individual, transformations of social character.
V.E. writes about the objective nature of space and time. Khalizev, specifying that they “are endless.” He points to “the universal properties of time - duration, uniqueness, irreversibility; universal properties of space - extension, unity of discontinuity and continuity." His important remark is the following: “... a person perceives them subjectively, even when he tries to capture their objective reality. Time and space in works of literature are determined by the temporal and spatial ideas of the author himself, therefore these categories appear infinitely diverse and deeply significant.”
Literary texts may contain biographical time (childhood, youth, maturity, old age), historical time (epochs, destinies of generations, major events public life), cosmic (eternity and universal history), calendar (the cycle of seasons, a series of everyday life and holidays), daily (any time within 24 hours). Also important are ideas about movement and immobility, about the correlation between the past, present, and future. Space is usually described through categories such as enclosure and openness. It can appear in reality and appear in the imagination. In addition, phenomena can be removed from the subject or brought closer to it, and a correlation between the earthly and cosmic can arise.
The development of problems of artistic space and time, being a significant part of literary analysis, has acquired new impulses in recent years. So, N.K. Shutaya emphasizes that “one of the productive areas of modern literary criticism has become the study of spatio-temporal models implemented at various levels of systematicity: within the work of one writer, within literary direction, within a certain era." Each author interprets time and space in his own way, endowing them with various characteristics that reflect his worldview and attitude. As a result, the artistic space created by a particular author becomes different from that created by another artist. That is why so many studies have recently appeared devoted to the chronotope in the works of individual authors - A. Chekhov, M. Tsvetaeva, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, etc.
Space and time are the main forms of existence; in works of art they are transformed, creating complex intermediate formations, “flowing” into one another. As noted by A.Ya. Esalnek, “space and time do not exist along with other features, but fill and penetrate all the details of the work, making them chronotopic.” Time and space form the basis of the plot, and in the twists and turns of the plot, a picture of the world is born, recreated by the author.
Researchers at modern stage studies of the categories of time and space are beginning to pay more and more attention to the specifics of their disclosure in the works of female writers, i.e. offer a gender approach. Although this type of research has not yet received unconditional support, certain comments and observations undoubtedly deserve attention. The most convincing are the conclusions voiced in the article by N. Gabrielyan “Eve means “life” (the problem of space in modern women's prose)". The author is convinced that the perception of the problem of artistic space “has to do not so much with a purely physical phenomenon, but with the attitude of consciousness,” i.e. the female author depicts a picture of the world seen from her, female, point of view.
A special complex relationship between the categories of time and space clearly characterizes the specifics of the artistic thinking of one of the brightest representatives of “women's prose” L. Ulitskaya. This specificity will be analyzed using the example of the story “Merry Funeral”.
In the artistic world, the stories intertwine and closely interact between the present and the past, as well as the geographical spaces of Russia and the USA. The work raises problems of family relationships, the meaning of life, the perception of death, art, memory, and understanding of professional duty. These problems are revealed in the images of characters created using nominal, portrait, behavioral, and speech characteristics. The writer pays special attention to the sphere of the subconscious (dreams).
The reader is struck by the paradoxical properties of the space created by the writer: it also has a tendency to expand (description of a city, then a country), as a result of which an open space appears before us. However, the action can also be confined within four walls, separating what is happening indoors from the outside world. But at the same time, echoes from the outside penetrate - along with the people who come - there too. Visitors to the apartment-studio where the terminally ill artist, who emigrated from Russia 30 years ago, is living out his last days, bring news, share details of their life, and discuss the events that happened to them. Therefore, the house turns into a “passage yard” where people “crowd” from morning to night and even stay overnight. The author notes: “The premises here were excellent for receptions, but impossible for normal life: a loft, a converted warehouse with the end cut off, into which was driven a tiny kitchen, a toilet with a shower and a narrow bedroom with a piece of window. And a huge, two-light workshop..." . From the first lines of the story, the apartment is perceived as a “small madhouse.” People appear and disappear in it; often unknown visitors appear. This is exactly the kind of apartment that seems to change its shape and size: it was a warehouse - it became a workshop, from which they fenced off a nook for the kitchen, in the bedroom - half a window, from the elevator you get into the living room, etc. - conveys the attitude of people who are deprived of ground under their feet, unsettled.
The impossibility of normal living in such an apartment is emphasized in an original way connections with the outside world. The entrance to Alik’s workshop is directly from the elevator - after all, to facilitate the movement of goods, warehouses do not have doors. Therefore, it seems that the people here are “suspended” in space. On the other hand, when they come to Alik, they seem to go straight to the top. And since he lives somewhere on the upper floors, his stay here may well be associated with heaven, and his visitors with sinners who are received by a sick person leaving this earth. And it is believed that, although he is burdened with sins, he is no longer capable of committing new ones, and therefore forgives them their past sins, forgives them - and they forgive him and say goodbye to him forever.
“Alik was spread out in a chair, and around him his friends were shouting, laughing and drinking, everyone seemed to be on their own, but everyone was turned to him, and he felt it.” We can say that Alik turns out to be the center of a certain system around which people-planets revolve. And - to some extent, God, since - in the earthly shell - he leaves the earth, but is reborn and in the image of undying universal love (spirit) returns to people. Thus,
we can talk about the “mysteriousness” of the time of the story, when the transformation of the base into the light and sublime takes place.
So, the artistic space of the apartment contains a whole world, and the relatively small living space becomes its projection. And all space-time “threads” are drawn to the image of Alik, who has taken a central position in this space. This hero connects different (geographical, real, metaphysical) spaces, since he was separated from his homeland, found himself in a foreign land (another continent), and now (due to a fatal illness) is parting with it, moving into a “different” space-time dimension. The fates of other characters in the story are inextricably linked with him. These are mainly representatives of the Russian-Jewish emigration of the “third wave”, who experienced the transition from socialism to capitalism. They are characterized by a feeling of complete unreality of what is happening, which at first frees them from ordinary human anxieties. As N.M. rightly notes. Malygina, “the author correctly captures one of the saving and incomprehensible features of the psychology of emigrants - the ability not to notice the drama of the absurd situations in which they happen to find themselves. The lack of housing and means of subsistence, the need to earn a living in the most fantastic ways are perceived by the heroes of the story as something completely natural. Ulitskaya shows that the instinct of self-preservation helps a person to abstract from what is happening.”
The characters in the story are simultaneously in the past (unfulfilled completion), present (unreal) and in the future (hopes), which, no matter what it turned out to be, still seemed better than the past - “... behind everything was too rotten.” All three times are constantly mixed in the minds of visitors and residents of the apartment. The heroes of this work by Ulitskaya are lonely, and only in the space of Alik’s apartment, where he, in fact, “arranged Russia around himself,” do they stop feeling loneliness, bringing their past and dreaming of the future. Thus, in Alik’s apartment and workshop, the disappeared space and bygone time are recreated. And all this together becomes Russia, which they left physically, but which they took with them, as it seems, forever: “And the people here, the former Russians, rejoiced in complete unanimity, and the general joy on this occasion was not expressed in the fact that they drank more usual, but that they sang old Soviet songs.”
Gathered in one place, they ended up here due to different circumstances: “The majority emigrated legally, some were defectors, the most daring fled across the border, and it was this new world in which they found themselves that brought them together, so different.” But since “they were united by one decision, one action - that they chose to part with their homeland,” everyone needed one thing: proof of the correctness of the action taken.
But it is not enough for them to rationally convince themselves of this. Dreams in which they are transported to their homeland help emigrants survive and not psychologically degrade. In psychology, this phenomenon is called regression. This is a form of psycho-
logical defense, when a person tries to mentally return to where he felt calm and confident. In a dream, a person is subconsciously transferred from the real world to the fictional world, mutual transitions occur, “tunnels” arise between spaces and times (from real space to fictitious space, from objective time to subjective time). And it begins to seem to Ulitskaya’s characters that Russia already exists only in the form of dreams: “everyone had the same dream, but in different versions,” that is, the space that actually exists somewhere in the subjective consciousness turns out to be illusory, variable.
Alik even started a notebook in which he “collected” dreams. Here is one of them: “The structure of this dream was as follows: I get home, to Russia, and there I find myself in a locked room, or in a room without doors, or in a garbage container, or other circumstances arise that do not give me the opportunity to return to America, - for example, loss of documents, imprisonment; and one Jew’s late mother even appeared and tied him with a rope...” Thus, huge Russia is narrowed down to a tiny room (container), which means spiritual mustiness, lack of freedom, from which at one time they fled from their habitable places in search of a better refuge.
Ulitskaya carefully peers into the faces and destinies of those who in one way or another played a significant role in Alik’s life. This is absolutely different women- Irina, Nina, Valentina. At the beginning of the story, they surround the dying Alik, reminiscent of Moira, cutting off the thread of his fate. Each of these women represents a certain stage in the hero’s life. These women are brought together by their love for the same man and their common emigrant fate.
Irina, Alik’s ex-wife and his mother, has the strongest character only daughter, the existence of which he learned shortly before his death. It was the only one that could take place in a foreign country. Having been a circus actress in Russia, she became a fairly successful lawyer in America. Irina, knowing that Alik and his new wife alcoholic Ninka needs money, does not leave her ex-husband in trouble, who left her with her child, explaining that without him Ninka would disappear, and Irina, brave and decisive, will be able to “arrange her own life.” She tries to help them in America too, suing the gallery for money for Alik’s paintings, and under the guise that she was able to get some of the money, she brings it to him. Alik spends most of the money on a fur coat for his wife. And although this, of course, hurts Irina, she continues to bring them money and pay their bills. Only after Alik’s death does Irina decide that she no longer has anything in common with the inhabitants of the apartment and that it is time to arrange her own life. Consequently, in the future she will have an “expanded” space, which she “earned” with her nobility.
Alik's wife Ninka is a completely different type of woman: she is feminine, indecisive, and mentally unstable. She perceives America enthusiastically, but cannot adapt to a new life in another country. Only once did Ninka make an independent decision: she decided to baptize Alik, despite the fact that Alik is a Jew and did not give consent to this
rite. But that didn't stop her. She still, albeit in a primitive way, even without a priest, with a soup bowl and a paper icon, baptizes him. And she commits this, essentially, blasphemy, driven by a good goal: she wants their souls to unite there, in another world. She sacrificially loves her husband, completely dissolving in him. Ninka still cannot come to terms with Alik’s death; for her, he continues to live in her dreams and visions, and continues to take care of her just as he did during his life. Thus, her subjective time “absorbs” the objective, “suppresses” it.
Like Nina, another of Alik’s lovers, Valentina, knows how to love sacrificially, forgiving everything. Valentina became Alik's mistress in America, meeting him almost by accident. Their meetings were short-lived and usually took place secretly, at night. She never claimed anything other than the brief moments of intimacy that he gave her, and was grateful to him for opening up a new unknown world for her. After the wake for Alik, we see Valentina in the bathroom with a short-legged, wiry Indian, and this scene seems to mark a new stage in Valentina’s life. Alik seemed to free her from himself, but she is ready to almost repeat the pattern of past relationships with a new partner, i.e. she does not feel real time, her subjective time is always the same, she does not “create” it, she does not “create” it, it dictates its conditions to her, acquiring the force of law...
Thus, all together these women peculiarly “triple” after the death of their lover the space “fixed” in the present time, “vectorally” pushing it apart, now rushing into the future (Irina), now focusing on the present (Valentina), now plunging into the past (Nina).
Many events are happening around Alik; his relatives and acquaintances are followed by a trail of stories that, it would seem, have nothing in common. These stories are not included in the general time system; they unfold (are told) sequentially, one after another, and they are all turned to the past. Their “authors” recall what happened to them there, in Russia. These stories become a bridge between the past and the present. Time, like a pendulum, swings between them, and in these transitions the scale of its reference changes. Time intervals become either short, everyday, or larger, capturing historical time, panoramicly depicting the historical process in Russia in the 70s, which is perceived by almost everyone as a country of denunciation and stu-quality, as well as later stages. Fundamentally important are the “temporary disruptions” that arise at the moment of telling the backstory of the hero’s life and which largely predetermine what is happening to people now. These inserted story-episodes, closed on themselves, embody concentric time, which, interacting with the linear time of the plot, slows it down, at the same time accelerating or lengthening it.
It is also important to emphasize that if time in the story is open, then the apartment where the action takes place is a closed space throughout the entire story. Hero chained to wheelchair never leaves
confines of your home. Only in memories does he find himself outside the apartment. The hero’s personal time slows down in all its aspects and is divided into actual and imaginary. And gradually in the story, time begins to disintegrate into “external” and “internal”, each attached to different spaces in which the hero continues or begins to exist. But a certain border is clearly felt between them - this is the border between life and non-existence, death.
The space of death appears inside the hero, coinciding with “internal” time. It forms a special game world, an imaginary space where Alik imagines himself “as a little boy, squeezed into a thick brown fur coat, wearing a tight hat over a white scarf... his mouth is tightly tied with a woolen scarf, and in the place where his lips are, a scarf wet and warm, but he needs to breathe hard, very hard, because as soon as you stop breathing, the ice crust seals this warm hole, and the scarf immediately freezes, and it becomes impossible to breathe.” Consequently, the time of the past is realized in the space of childhood that is born in the imagination (in its own way coinciding with the space of death as the beginning and the end). But it is significant that already in childhood everything that the adult Alik will feel is programmed: stuffiness, dumbness, lack of freedom. During one equal objective period of time (“external” time) in the space of death (“internal” time), the hero experiences the past and present. They merge, flow into one another, the dead come to life, people who have disappeared from life appear again, those lost in childhood are found as adults, things, without growing old or worn out, reappear in the world around them. Therefore, among the arriving guests, “Alik spotted his school physics teacher, Nikolai Vasilyevich, nicknamed Galosha, in the crowd, and was half-heartedly surprised: had he really emigrated in his old age?.. How old is he now?.. Kolka Zaitsev, a classmate who was hit by a tram, thin, in a ski jacket with pockets, tossing a rag ball with his foot... how sweet that he dragged it with him... A cousin, Musya, who died as a girl from leukemia, walked through the room with a basin in her hands, only not as a girl, but already quite an adult girl. All this was not at all strange, but in the order of things. And there was even a feeling that some long-standing mistakes and irregularities had been corrected.”
This feeling of subjective time is caused precisely by the experience of the space of death, which in turn is closely connected with the awareness of one’s finitude: “He was in oblivion, only occasionally wheezing. At the same time, he heard everything that was said around him, but as if from a terrible distance. At times he even wanted to tell them that everything was okay, but the scarf was tied tightly and he couldn’t untangle it.” But at the same time, in the space of death there is no longer the former heaviness and stuffiness: “he felt light, foggy and completely mobile.”
Death in the space that belongs to it loses its temporal dimension, becoming an entirely spatial category: it is no longer expected here and now, it no longer represents the future, it is entirely determined by space. And to move into this space means ending your life, ending it.
But - and this is surprising - after Alik’s death, which “gathers around him all the people he once loved,” the author destroys the border between life and death. The fact is that Alik cheated by “ensuring” himself eternal life here on earth: dying, he secretly recorded on tape an appeal to his friends, where he bequeathed to appreciate life and enjoy it. And at the wake, his voice sounded indicated the destruction of the border between life and death: “in a simple and mechanical way, he destroyed the eternal wall in an instant, threw a light pebble from that shore, covered with an insoluble fog, easily stepped out for a moment from the power of an irresistible law, not resorting neither to violent methods of magic, nor to the help of necromancers and mediums, shaky tables and fidgety saucers... He simply extended his hand to those he loved.”
Thus, the space of death seems to disappear as insignificant, non-existent or existing only temporarily. It is replaced by the space of love. The writer and critic O. Slavnikova precisely defined the ultimate task to which Ulitskaya’s creative logic is subordinated: to express the idea of “death as a part of life, which under no circumstances can be absolutely hostile to man.”
Thus, in the story the main space is the house (apartment), which is an outwardly closed model, but capable of expansion. This is where the preservation and transmission of family and cultural traditions and values (it’s no coincidence that Alik’s paintings, painted in his studio, end up in the museum, as if continuing his interrupted life), here everyone feels protected. Time in the story tends to move from objective to subjective, revealing the inner world of a person, becoming a laboratory of everyday experience. Also, time, recreating an important historical era - Russia of the Soviet period - acquires the features of “historically documented”. As N.M. rightly noted. Malygin, the story rather resembles an “artistic embodiment of a documentary-reliable journalistic narrative” about “paradise lost,” although, in fact, there was very little truly heavenly there.
LITERATURE
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Malygina N.M. Here and now: the poetics of disappearance // October. - 2000. - No. 9.
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See: Galkina A.B. Space and time in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky // Questions of literature. - 1996. - No. 1. URL: http://magazines.russ.rU/voplit/1996/1/galkin.html; Feshchenko O.A. The space of the house in the prose of M. Tsvetaeva // Language and culture. - Novosibirsk, 2003. иИБ: http://www.philology.ru/literature2/feshenko-03.htm; Laponina L.V. Hero and time in the prose of A.P. Chekhov // Comparative and general literary studies. - Vol. 3. - M., 2010, etc.
Ulitskaya L. Three stories. - M., 2008.
Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 1999.
Shutaya N.K. Typology of artistic time and space in the Russian novel of the 18th-19th centuries: Autotef. diss. ... Dr. Philol. Sci. - M., 2007.
Esalnek A.Ya. Theory of literature: Textbook. allowance. - M., 2010.
SPECIFICITY OF LITERARY TIME AND SPACE PRESENTATION IN L. ULITSKAYA’S PROSE
Baku Slavic University (BSU)
Suleyman Rustam str., 25, Baku, Azerbaijan, AZ10 14
The article observes on the specificity of literary time and space presentation in female prose (on the material of the novel “Funeral party” by L. Ulitskaya. The peculiarity of topos in L. Ulitskaya's work is defined by the representation of the house space ( apartment) filled with the numerous details. With this, the apartment's limited secluded space tends to widening at the expense of inclusion of the homeland"s open spaces, which emigrants had taken away on “their soles” and spaces of the new country, in which they have settled and which they “bring in” along with their problems in the hero's house. And then the space is narrowed to the bounds of the person"s inner world. An approach to the memory of a character as an internal space for the temporal development of the events is typical of L. Ulitskaya works. The category of time in literary works is represented in two aspects: historical time - memory time (reconstructed by means of familiar details) and real time (depiction by means of reliable features ).
Key words: literary time, literary space, structure of artistic work, female prose, topos.