As you know, the word is the basic unit of any language, as well as the most important component of its artistic means. The correct use of vocabulary largely determines the expressiveness of speech.
In context, a word is a special world, a mirror of the author’s perception and attitude to reality. It has its own metaphorical precision, its own special truths, called artistic revelations; the functions of vocabulary depend on the context.
Individual perception of the world around us is reflected in such a text with the help of metaphorical statements. After all, art is, first of all, the self-expression of an individual. The literary fabric is woven from metaphors that create an exciting and emotionally affecting image of a particular work of art. Additional meanings appear in words, a special stylistic coloring, creating a unique world that we discover for ourselves while reading the text.
Not only in literary, but also in oral, we use, without thinking, various techniques of artistic expression to give it emotionality, persuasiveness, and imagery. Let's figure out what artistic techniques there are in the Russian language.
The use of metaphors especially contributes to the creation of expressiveness, so let's start with them.
Metaphor
It is impossible to imagine artistic techniques in literature without mentioning the most important of them - the way of creating a linguistic picture of the world based on meanings already existing in the language itself.
The types of metaphors can be distinguished as follows:
- Fossilized, worn out, dry or historical (bow of a boat, eye of a needle).
- Phraseologisms are stable figurative combinations of words that are emotional, metaphorical, reproducible in the memory of many native speakers, expressive (death grip, vicious circle, etc.).
- Single metaphor (eg homeless heart).
- Unfolded (heart - “porcelain bell in yellow China” - Nikolay Gumilyov).
- Traditionally poetic (morning of life, fire of love).
- Individually-authored (sidewalk hump).
In addition, a metaphor can simultaneously be an allegory, personification, hyperbole, periphrasis, meiosis, litotes and other tropes.
The word “metaphor” itself means “transfer” in translation from Greek. In this case, we are dealing with the transfer of a name from one object to another. For it to become possible, they must certainly have some similarity, they must be adjacent in some way. A metaphor is a word or expression used in a figurative meaning due to the similarity of two phenomena or objects in some way.
As a result of this transfer, an image is created. Therefore, metaphor is one of the most striking means of expressiveness of artistic, poetic speech. However, the absence of this trope does not mean the lack of expressiveness of the work.
A metaphor can be either simple or extensive. In the twentieth century, the use of expanded ones in poetry is being revived, and the nature of simple ones is changing significantly.
Metonymy
Metonymy is a type of metaphor. Translated from Greek, this word means “renaming,” that is, it is the transfer of the name of one object to another. Metonymy is the replacement of a certain word with another based on the existing contiguity of two concepts, objects, etc. This is the imposition of a figurative word on the direct meaning. For example: “I ate two plates.” Mixing of meanings and their transfer are possible because objects are adjacent, and the contiguity can be in time, space, etc.
Synecdoche
Synecdoche is a type of metonymy. Translated from Greek, this word means “correlation.” This transfer of meaning occurs when the smaller is called instead of the larger, or vice versa; instead of a part - a whole, and vice versa. For example: “According to Moscow reports.”
Epithet
It is impossible to imagine the artistic techniques in literature, the list of which we are now compiling, without an epithet. This is a figure, trope, figurative definition, phrase or word denoting a person, phenomenon, object or action with a subjective
Translated from Greek, this term means “attached, application,” that is, in our case, one word is attached to some other.
The epithet differs from a simple definition in its artistic expressiveness.
Constant epithets are used in folklore as a means of typification, and also as one of the most important means of artistic expression. In the strict sense of the term, only those whose function are words in a figurative meaning, in contrast to the so-called exact epithets, which are expressed in words in a literal meaning (red berries, beautiful flowers), belong to tropes. Figurative ones are created when words are used in a figurative sense. Such epithets are usually called metaphorical. Metonymic transfer of name may also underlie this trope.
An oxymoron is a type of epithet, the so-called contrasting epithets, forming combinations with defined nouns of words that are opposite in meaning (hateful love, joyful sadness).
Comparison
Simile is a trope in which one object is characterized through comparison with another. That is, this is a comparison of different objects by similarity, which can be both obvious and unexpected, distant. It is usually expressed using certain words: “exactly”, “as if”, “similar”, “as if”. Comparisons can also take the form of the instrumental case.
Personification
When describing artistic techniques in literature, it is necessary to mention personification. This is a type of metaphor that represents the assignment of properties of living beings to objects of inanimate nature. It is often created by referring to such natural phenomena as conscious living beings. Personification is also the transference of human properties to animals.
Hyperbole and litotes
Let us note such techniques of artistic expression in literature as hyperbole and litotes.
Hyperbole (translated as “exaggeration”) is one of the expressive means of speech, which is a figure with the meaning of exaggerating what is being discussed.
Litota (translated as “simplicity”) is the opposite of hyperbole - an excessive understatement of what is being discussed (a boy the size of a finger, a man the size of a fingernail).
Sarcasm, irony and humor
We continue to describe artistic techniques in literature. Our list will be complemented by sarcasm, irony and humor.
- Sarcasm means "tearing meat" in Greek. This is evil irony, caustic mockery, caustic remark. When using sarcasm, a comic effect is created, but at the same time there is a clear ideological and emotional assessment.
- Irony in translation means “pretense”, “mockery”. It occurs when one thing is said in words, but something completely different, the opposite, is meant.
- Humor is one of the lexical means of expressiveness, translated meaning “mood”, “disposition”. Sometimes entire works can be written in a comic, allegorical vein, in which one can feel a mocking, good-natured attitude towards something. For example, the story “Chameleon” by A.P. Chekhov, as well as many fables by I.A. Krylov.
Species artistic techniques the literature does not end there. We present to your attention the following.
Grotesque
The most important artistic techniques in literature include the grotesque. The word "grotesque" means "intricate", "bizarre". This artistic technique represents a violation of the proportions of phenomena, objects, events depicted in the work. It is widely used in the works of, for example, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The Golovlevs,” “The History of a City,” fairy tales). This is an artistic technique based on exaggeration. However, its degree is much greater than that of a hyperbole.
Sarcasm, irony, humor and grotesque are popular artistic techniques in literature. Examples of the first three are the stories of A.P. Chekhov and N.N. Gogol. The work of J. Swift is grotesque (for example, Gulliver's Travels).
What artistic technique does the author (Saltykov-Shchedrin) use to create the image of Judas in the novel “Lord Golovlevs”? Of course it's grotesque. Irony and sarcasm are present in the poems of V. Mayakovsky. The works of Zoshchenko, Shukshin, and Kozma Prutkov are filled with humor. These artistic techniques in literature, examples of which we have just given, as you can see, are very often used by Russian writers.
Pun
A pun is a figure of speech that represents an involuntary or deliberate ambiguity that arises when used in the context of two or more meanings of a word or when their sound is similar. Its varieties are paronomasia, false etymologization, zeugma and concretization.
In puns, the play on words is based on homonymy and polysemy. Anecdotes arise from them. These artistic techniques in literature can be found in the works of V. Mayakovsky, Omar Khayyam, Kozma Prutkov, A. P. Chekhov.
Figure of speech - what is it?
The word “figure” itself is translated from Latin as “appearance, outline, image.” This word has many meanings. What does this term mean in relation to artistic speech? Syntactic means of expression related to figures: questions, appeals.
What is a "trope"?
“What is the name of an artistic technique that uses a word in a figurative sense?” - you ask. The term “trope” combines various techniques: epithet, metaphor, metonymy, comparison, synecdoche, litotes, hyperbole, personification and others. Translated, the word "trope" means "turnover". Literary speech differs from ordinary speech in that it uses special phrases that embellish the speech and make it more expressive. Different styles use different means of expression. The most important thing in the concept of “expressiveness” for artistic speech is the ability of a text or a work of art to have an aesthetic, emotional impact on the reader, to create poetic pictures and vivid images.
We all live in a world of sounds. Some of them cause us positive emotions, others, on the contrary, excite, alarm, cause anxiety, calm or induce sleep. Different sounds evoke different images. Using their combination, you can emotionally influence a person. Reading works of literature and Russian folk art, we perceive their sound especially keenly.
Basic techniques for creating sound expressiveness
- Alliteration is the repetition of similar or identical consonants.
- Assonance is the deliberate harmonious repetition of vowels.
Alliteration and assonance are often used simultaneously in works. These techniques are aimed at evoking various associations in the reader.
Technique of sound recording in fiction
Sound recording is an artistic technique that is the use of certain sounds in a specific order to create a certain image, that is, the selection of words that imitate sounds real world. This technique in fiction is used both in poetry and prose.
Types of sound recording:
- Assonance means “consonance” in French. Assonance is the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in a text to create a specific sound image. It promotes expressiveness of speech, it is used by poets in the rhythm and rhyme of poems.
- Alliteration - from This technique is the repetition of consonants in literary text to create some sound image, in order to make poetic speech more expressive.
- Onomatopoeia - transmission in special words, reminiscent of the sounds of phenomena in the surrounding world, auditory impressions.
These artistic techniques in poetry are very common; without them, poetic speech would not be so melodic.
Method in the broad sense of the word, its connection with creativity
All great writers are original and their words are unique. But at the same time, they often come close to each other not only ideologically, but also in the most general principles of depicting life. This kind of closeness is easily found between Shelley and Byron, Dickens and Thackeray, between Nekrasov and Shchedrin, Bryusov and Blok. They are close to each other and ideologically (a sharply critical look at modern society, protecting the interests of the people), and aesthetically (similar ways of constructing an image). The ideological and aesthetic community characteristic of a number of writers and directly expressed in their work is called the artistic method.
The “methodology” characteristic of a number of artists can only be judged by the results of their creative work. Only through a comparative analysis of many works of critical realists can one notice those similar features that make it possible to bring together the works of Balzac, Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, to see something in common in their ideological aspirations and creative principles.
It should be emphasized that the method is not a set of frozen laws and rules. It does not exist in the abstract, but, being historically conditioned, lives in creativity itself, is born and improved in the process of artistic comprehension of reality. Critical realism was not formulated by anyone when it found its artistic flesh in the works of Pushkin and Gogol. A realistic approach to depicting life paved its way in the fight against the rationalistic dogma of classicism, against the didacticism of the Enlightenment, and against the abstract sensitivity of sentimentalists. With every decade, he entered deeper and deeper into the consciousness of advanced writers and only then received theoretical justification in the aesthetics of Belinsky.
In exactly the same way, socialist realism was put forward by life itself. First embodied in the works of M. Gorky, it lived and developed in the works of writers of the post-October period (Mayakovsky, Furmanov, Gladkov, Fadeev, Sholokhov, etc.), and was theoretically “legalized” only in 1934.
It is impossible to see in the method a category that “dwells” somewhere above literature and art in the form of once and for all theoretically polished provisions, having studied and mastered which, the writer acquires a magical gift for creating perfect artistic values. The method is not developed in advance, much less decreed from above, as detractors trumpet it socialist realism. It arises in artistic practice itself and develops along with the development of literature and society. Its enrichment is due to the fact that life constantly poses new tasks for writers and forces them to look for the best artistic solutions.
Worldview and artistic thinking are components of the method
The method consists of two components - the ideological beliefs of the author and his artistic thinking. Moreover, each of them has, so to speak, its own sphere of influence, manifests itself differently in creativity, although, ultimately, they act in creative process coherently, as a whole. Artistic thinking, expressed in the writer’s ability to think in images, is reflected primarily in the creation of an artistic form. The author’s ideological views most reveal themselves in the content of the work, but also have a strong influence on its construction.
Worldview is the basis of the method. It serves as a compass for the artist in his work, giving him the opportunity to understand reality and its complex processes. But at the same time, the ideological factor, no matter how great its significance, does not provide all aspects of artistic activity. The deepest ideological plan will not turn into a phenomenon of art if he does not get his decoration. If ideologicalness, figuratively speaking, constitutes the soul of a work, then artistic thinking forms its flesh, its visible, tangible features.
All true artists deal with reality. But they solve the problem of its artistic development in different ways. Some of them strive to capture the objective appearance of the person depicted, others - to express their attitude towards him. This is easy to see if you compare the first stanza of the seventh chapter of “Eugene Onegin” (“Driven by the spring rays...”) with Zhukovsky’s poem “Spring Feeling” (1816). A. S. Pushkin created an objective picture of the awakening spring nature: forests still transparent, as if covered with green fluff, valleys drying and putting on their colorful attire, rustling herds, a bee flying out of a “wax cell” to collect “field tribute,” etc. Pushkin does not openly express his “spring” experiences; his lyrical self seems to have dissolved in the artistic fabric of the work.
V. A. Zhukovsky takes a completely different path. For him, the main thing is to express his mood generated by spring. In essence, his poem has no external picturesqueness; it is all aimed at revealing the inner world of the author. This is a landscape not of nature, but of the soul.
Light, light breeze, Why is it blowing so sweetly? Why are you playing, why are you brightening, Enchanted stream? What is the soul full of again? What has awakened in her again? What has returned to her with you, Migratory Spring?
The first type of artistic thinking, characteristic of Pushkin and all realist writers, is objective at its core, and is usually called realistic; the second type, manifested in the poetry of Zhukovsky and other romantics, is characterized by the absorption of the objective by the subjective, and is conventionally called romantic.
The starting point in elucidating the epistemological nature of various types of artistic thinking is Lenin’s theory of reflection; it provides the key to revealing the features of a realistic or romantic depiction of life. Artistic knowledge is contradictory in its essence. While absorbing the features of “objective reality,” it also includes tendencies to “depart” from reality. An artistic image contains both objective and subjective elements. In it, not only the objective truth, the logic of life, but also the subjective views of the writer, his perception of certain life phenomena are embodied.
Realistic and romantic types of thinking
A realist focuses his work on real life. Depicting society, he deeply explores the social relationships of people. His generalizations are the result of studying a certain social environment. Realistic art is objective in its essence and has enormous educational significance. The works of a realist truthfully reveal human characters generated by social and historical circumstances and act as “documents of the era.” Such objective principles of depicting reality unite all writers of a realistic orientation: they are characteristic of Cervantes, and of Fielding, and of Gogol, and of Sholokhov.
Romantics, in their aesthetic manifestos and program speeches, emphasize the subjective nature of art, defend the right of the “genius” to freely handle life’s material, to violate its objective proportions, to change life in accordance with their ideals. The subjective approach to reality is the most characteristic feature of romanticism, characteristic of all romantic writers, regardless of their ideological positions. It manifests itself in Novalis, the early Heine, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Shelley, Byron, and the Russian Decembrist poets, despite all the differences in their socio-political convictions.
Consequently, realistic and romantic types of thinking express two facets of an essentially unified process of artistic cognition and therefore, as a rule, in literature they accompany each other. It is almost impossible to find them in an absolutely pure form, since forced separation leads to the destruction of the artistic image (various forms of modernism can serve as an example). Even the most objective “realist” is unable to reflect reality with apathetic indifference, like a mirror, just as the most subjective “romantic” is unable to escape from objective reality: it, to one degree or another, invades his creations.
However, in realistic and romantic art, subjectivity lives different lives. In realism, it manifests itself, firstly, in the presence of an aesthetic ideal, in that form of striving for beauty, without which genuine artistic activity impossible, and secondly, as the author’s assessment of the phenomena depicted. Subjective authorial impulses do not violate the objective logic of the image here. In romanticism, the subjective principle expresses itself more widely. It permeates the entire fabric of the work, reflected in the principles of generalization, in all elements of the construction of the artistic form (in plot, composition, visual means, etc.).
The type of artistic thinking has stability, but within it artistic thought does not stand still. Its development is connected with the philosophical, sociological views of the writer. The fact that, for example, Homer or Sophocles were dominated by mythological ideas about the world affected their depiction of human characters. Their characters are still static, devoid of internal inconsistency. In the works of Shakespeare, who freed man from the will of the gods, the picture is already different. Here the hero finds himself under the influence of real circumstances and is responsible for his own destiny. He wages a continuous struggle with the reality around him, deeply experiences his sorrows and joys. His inner life moving, and this allows you to saturate the drama with intense psychologism.
In the same way, the artistic thought of realist writers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries bears the imprint of its era, but in the principles of constructing an image one cannot notice a significant difference between them. The development of literature is manifested not in the evolution of types of artistic thinking, but in the breadth and depth of reflection of life, which is directly related to changes in society itself and writers’ increasing understanding of the laws of the social process. Recognition of the variability of types of artistic thinking logically leads to the denial of general, typological features in realistic and romantic art different eras and peoples. Realists of different times differ significantly from each other in the nature of their ideological views, but they are still close to each other in their realistic vision of the world. If such a typological community did not exist between writers of a realistic orientation, then the continuity of traditions would be interrupted, and it would be impossible to talk about any general principles of realistic knowledge of life.
The role of artistic thinking in the creative process should not be exaggerated. It is only a necessary prerequisite, a necessary condition for achieving artistic truthfulness, but does not determine the degree of penetration of the writer into the depth of life, the breadth of his generalizations - all those qualities that give the writer’s work the features of greatness and immortality. “Speaking of Shakespeare,” wrote Belinsky, “it would be strange to admire his ability to present everything with amazing fidelity and truth, instead of being surprised at the meaning and meaning that his creative mind gives to the images of his fantasy.”
* (V. G. Belinsky. Poly. collection soch., vol. 6, pp. 424-425.)
It is well known that writers belonging to the same type of artistic thinking and possessing equal talent; achieve different results in their creative practice. The greatest successes are achieved by those who penetrate deeper into the mysteries of life and better understand the trend of social development.
Interaction of artistic thinking with worldview. Definition of artistic method
Artistic thinking is historically combined with various forms of ideology. Romantics and realists, similar in their talent and creative approach to life, can express the views of different classes of society. For example, the enlighteners of the 18th century. - Diderot and Lessing - were associated with the progressive bourgeoisie, which acted in the fight against feudalism on behalf of the people; L. Tolstoy reflected the sentiments of the patriarchal peasantry; M. Gorky was a spokesman for the interests of the proletariat, but they were all supporters of realistic principles of depicting reality.
One type of artistic thinking, combined with different worldviews, can form several artistic methods. On the basis of the realistic approach to the depiction of reality, Renaissance realism, educational realism, critical realism, and socialist realism arose as separate methods. Romantic thinking gave birth not only to romanticism of the late 18th - early 19th centuries, but also to various forms of decadent art that developed during the era of imperialism (symbolism, acmeism, surrealism, etc.).
The artistic method carries stable (typological) and historically changing features. For example, critical realism has features that make it similar to educational and socialist realism - this is, first of all, general principles building an image, but at the same time it differs significantly from them in its ideological orientation. If critical realists pursue critical, accusatory goals with their work, then educators and socialist-minded writers consider reality from the point of view of educational and socialist ideology.
Transitions from one method to another within the realistic type of thinking constitute the history of realism, which, taking into account the common principles of depicting life, characteristic of realists different eras, focuses on the ideological and aesthetic originality of their work, on the new things that they brought to art, to realistic ways of struggling for the realization of human ideals.
Artistic method is one of the most important categories of aesthetics. Hence the close attention of philosophers and literary scholars to him. The essence of artistic methodology is illuminated in many works of Soviet researchers. There are often inaccuracies in the interpretation of this issue. There are two main ones: some theorists reduce the method to a form of artistic reproduction of life, others identify it with the worldview position of the writer.
The artistic method is an aesthetic and deeply meaningful category. It cannot be reduced either to formal methods of constructing an image, or to the ideology of the writer. It represents a set of ideological and artistic principles of depicting reality in the light of a certain aesthetic ideal. Worldview organically enters into the method when it merges with the artist’s talent, with his poetic thinking, and does not exist in the work only in the form of a socio-political tendency.
Literary direction, movement, school
Writers who are related in the method of their creativity are not always truly aware of their closeness. Many of them created with a certain degree of unconsciousness, without being aware of their creative attitudes. Only at a late stage of historical development, when aesthetic theory achieved great success, did literary movements begin to be created, uniting groups of writers similar in the type of their artistic thinking, but not always coinciding in their ideological views. So, for example, the romanticism of the late 18th-first quarter of the 19th century. extremely contradictory in its ideological nature, it united writers who were different in their social views, but nevertheless related in their aesthetic aspirations. Romantics (both progressive and conservative), whether against imitation of foreign models, defended the principles of original art. All of them asserted the primary role of “genius,” inspiration and fantasy in the creative process, and fought against the rationalistic dogma and normative aesthetics of the classicists.
We can talk about direction where writers realize theoretical foundations their activities, proclaim it in their manifestos, program speeches, and defend them in the fight against adherents of other aesthetic convictions. There were realists, for example, both in the Middle Ages (authors of fabliaux, Schwanks, short stories, etc.) and in the Renaissance (Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, etc.), but realism as a direction first began to take shape in the Enlightenment. XVIII literature century, when the principles of realistic art were formulated in the works of Diderot, Lessing and other educators. In the same way, romantics have always existed, but romanticism with its program, both slogans, was formed only at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries.
In certain circumstances, within the framework of one literary movement, groups of writers are often formed, related both in aesthetic and socio-political views. This ideological and aesthetic community is usually called a literary movement. So, for example, in French romanticism there were, on the one hand, V. Hugo, J. Sand, who stood on progressive positions, and on the other, Chateaubriand, Vigny, Lamartine, who adhered to conservative political convictions. This kind of differentiation can be made in the romantic literature of any country.
Between representatives of different movements within the same direction there is usually a struggle that involves not narrow issues of poetics and stylistics, but fundamental problems of aesthetics, relating primarily to the content of art, its ideals and social purpose. The performances of the Decembrist poets, who fought for the art of high civic ideas and feelings, against the elegiac poetry of Zhukovsky, or the struggle of Byron and Shelley against Coleridge and especially Southey, are well known.
A literary movement, which includes the closest creative followers of an outstanding writer, is usually called a literary school. Its representatives are like-minded on all significant issues artistic creativity. Such unity of views on the tasks of art was distinguished, for example, by supporters of the “natural school” (Turgenev, Panaev, Grigorovich, V. Sollogub, etc.), a realistic movement that arose in Russia in the 40s of the 19th century. Developing the traditions of their teacher Gogol, they fought for the critical orientation of literature, for its democratization, for artistic research public relations, for the depiction of a person, moreover representing the “mass”, in unity with the social environment.
Literary works that arose on the basis of the same type of artistic thinking, in the same or even different ideological atmosphere, contain a number of common features that are manifested in the principles of creating an artistic form. This aesthetic community is called style.
Style in the broad sense of the word
It is well known that the works of Byron and Shelley on the one hand, and Wordsworth and the sense of the word Coleridge on the other, differ significantly from each other in their ideological orientation, the content of their social and aesthetic ideals. But at the same time, they also have something in common, which makes itself felt in similar ways of constructing images, in the similarity of poetic language, etc.
Byron and Shelley and the poets of the “Lake School” are united by a type of artistic thinking that specifically reveals itself in the well-known stylistic unity of these romantics with different worldviews. Style is an expression of the closeness of writers in their artistic aspirations, often far from each other in their ideological positions. It is the stylistic commonality that allows us to talk about romanticism as a certain typological phenomenon.
How exactly does this stylistic similarity manifest itself? It is not typical for a romantic to strive to create objectively, in accordance with the internal qualities of the phenomena depicted. For him, something else is much more important - to express the world of his subjective feelings and ideals.
In the works of writers of a romantic mood there is no objective depiction of character. A romantic image is always closely fused with the author’s soul and bears the imprint of his personal perception of life. Subjective colors are also visual arts in romantic literature - metaphors, comparisons, epithets, etc.
The artistic thinking of the romantics is characterized by a tendency towards contrasts, towards depicting exceptional heroes with unusually strong passions and acting in unusual life circumstances. The romantic style is replete with symbols, alogisms, hyperboles and other conventional forms of poetic imagery.
In the same way, realists, for all their individual differences have a lot in common in their work. All of them depict a person not in the abstract, but in unity with the social environment, considering him as a product of certain social circumstances. Their heroes are not mouthpieces of ideas, but human individuals, with their own behavior, their own appearance, their own habits, their own gait, their own language, etc. Events in realistic works do not develop according to a pre-conceived pattern, they happen as they happen in reality - unintentionally, often by accident. The actions of the characters here are objectively motivated, explained by the logic of character development and living conditions.
Individual method and individual style
The words “method” and “style,” in addition to their broad meaning, which was discussed above, also have a narrower meaning, expressing the originality of the worldview and artistic thinking of a particular author. It is well known that Pushkin, Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, as representatives of the method of critical realism and the realistic style, have not only common points. At the same time, they differ significantly from each other, being unique artistic individuals. What is the difference between method and style in their broad and narrow sense? When identifying the “methodological” and stylistic commonality inherent in a number of writers, be they realists or romantics, only the type of their worldview and type of thinking are taken into account. And this is quite natural, since if the generalization captures their individual characteristics, then there can be no talk of any typological similarity between them. When A. S. Pushkin, I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy are brought under one “methodological roof,” only typical features in their ideology and in the principles of depicting reality are taken into account. Everything individual in their creativity is omitted, since it leads to their separation, and not to unification.
For critical realists of the 19th-20th centuries. Characterized by a sharp critical look at contemporary society, sympathy for the people, and the height of the moral and aesthetic ideal. As artists of words, they create their works, based on life, deeply and objectively revealing extremely complex connections a person with a social environment. These are the typical features of the worldview and artistic thinking of writers that allow us to classify them as masters of the method of critical realism.
However, each of the critical realists also has his own, unique view of the world, of social, moral issues, etc. In the same way, each of them, while maintaining a typological community, is very unique in the reproduction of reality.
A.S. Pushkin, exposing the “wild nobility,” believed in the progressiveness of the enlightened nobility, which, in his opinion, was called upon to lead the people’s struggle for their emancipation. Pushkin has a strong belief in the power of reason, moral example, and words. He is a typical exponent of the ideas of noble revolutionaries.
I. S. Turgenev is close to Pushkin both in his denial of serfdom and in his recognition of the civilizing role of advanced people from the nobility. He largely retains a bright outlook on life, on the future of Russia, and believes in the transformative role of beauty and moral principles. But at the same time, Turgenev’s worldview, especially in his later years, is complicated by anxious thoughts about the tragic fate of man, of all living things on earth.
L.N. Tolstoy is the most merciless critic of the feudal and bourgeois system. Having switched to the position of the patriarchal peasantry, he tears off “all and every mask” from his contemporary society, rejecting the culture of the masters, the official church, and legal institutions. However, Tolstoy's criticism is weakened by the idea of non-resistance to evil through violence, and by disbelief in the fruitfulness of revolutionary methods of changing life.
In the same way, in the artistic depiction of reality there are significant differences between Pushkin, Turgenev and L. Tolstoy. It is known that “Belkin’s Tales” seemed “bare” to Tolstoy, not psychologically complex enough. Turgenev, in turn, did not accept Tolstoy’s psychologism, his desires to study the psychological process (“dialectics of the soul”). Turgenev himself revealed the psychology of his heroes mainly through actions. These writers did not agree on everything and how to create an image. Turgenev concentrated the traits of many people into one character. L. Tolstoy usually chose one person, most often familiar to him, as a prototype. Many of his heroes embody the moral quests and characteristics of the author himself. The comparison of Pushkin, Turgenev and L. Tolstoy in order to identify the uniqueness of their views and artistic thinking could be continued, because the ideological and artistic positions of these writers, despite all their typological commonality, are deeply individual and unique.
Soviet artists are no exception in this case. They cope with each other only in the type of their worldview and in the general principles of depicting reality dictated by the artistic method, diverging at the same time in their commitment to depicting various spheres of life. Quite naturally, they differ from each other Soviet writers according to the characteristics and degree of one’s talent, depth of understanding social processes and human characters. Differences of this kind are explained by many reasons (level of talent and ideology, knowledge of the world, mental make-up, etc.), but the very fact of their existence is beyond any doubt. Is the work of prose writers Fadeev and Paustovsky, poets Mayakovsky, Tvardovsky, Mezhelaitis, playwrights Pogodin, Arbuzov and Vishnevsky identical? Each of them, being a Marxist-Leninist, still has his own favorite areas of life, his own angle of view, which leaves an imprint on artistic features their works.
Thus, the individual methodology of a writer is a richer phenomenon than a method in a broad sense. By absorbing the typology of worldview and artistic thinking inherent in the authors of one literary movement, it at the same time includes everything individual in their worldview and way of reproducing life. The individual method ensures polyphony and multicolored artistic creativity. Without individual originality, literature and art would be tediously monotonous and would eventually lose their emotional impact.
The individual methods of our writers are the source of the multicoloredness of socialist realism. It is in the peculiarities of worldview and reflection of life, characteristic of socialist realists, that one should look for the reason for the ideological and artistic diversity realistic art of our days. It is extremely diverse not only in form, but also in content. His works do not at all repeat one another, as detractors of socialist culture abroad say.
Consequently, the individual method is based on the entire richness of the writer’s worldview, which, along with typological features, contains a number of individually unique features. The stable typological certainty inherent in the views of this or that author is precisely expressed in the style of his work. In stylistic analysis, the focus of the researcher’s attention is not the artist’s ideological platform, not the content of his ideals, but only the very principle of his approach to solving certain social and aesthetic issues *.
* (For more details on this, see the work of A. N. Sokolov “Theory of Style” (M., 1968, p. 105, etc.))
Style is an artistic expression of a type of worldview, which is manifested in the way of constructing an image, all elements of an artistic form. The stylistic “handwriting” is determined not by the talent of the performance, but by the special point of view from which the writer views social and aesthetic problems. They quite rightly speak, for example, about a realistic or romantic type of composition, about a realistic or romantic character one or another genre (novel, poem, story, etc.), poetic language, etc. Style indicates by what principle - realistic, romantic - an art form is created, but it does not at all reflect its ideological orientation - that what purposes does it serve? All these questions are directly under the jurisdiction of the method, the basis of which is the views of the writer, considered in all the richness of their individually unique and typological features.
Style of the work
The writer's worldview, as a rule, is highly complex and often contradictory. Being, for example, realistic in its core, it may include romantic elements and, conversely, realistic tendencies may be present in romantic views. In this regard, in the work of the same writer, works that differ in style coexist. For example, N.V. Gogol creates “Old World Landowners” in a realistic style and “Taras Bulba” in a romantic sense. Both stories are included in the same collection. The first denies the vulgar existence of the “sky smokers”; the second, in the name of higher patriotic goals, idealizes the life of the Cossack freemen fighting the Polish lords. However, in this case, both works are the fruit of the same worldview. The same diversity of styles is found in the works of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Garshin and a number of other writers. They wrote things that were not only realistic, but also romantic in content. The romantic worldview clearly appears in “Three Meetings”, “Ghosts” by Turgenev, in “The Dream of a Funny Man” by Dostoevsky, in some of Garshin’s stories, etc. It happens that even one work contains different stylistic layers - realistic, where life is depicted as it really is, and romantic, where romantic natures live or the author’s dreams of “another world” come true. Many romantic novels and poems are built on the principle of antithesis, for example, “The Miller of Anjibo” by J. Sand (the village bourgeois Bricolin, - romantic dreamers Marcel Blanchemony and Henri Lemore), etc. But they are all designed in the spirit of the romantic concept of reality.
Therefore, several styles can exist within one method. This is explained by the contradictory nature of the artist’s worldview, the tasks that he sets for himself in each specific case, the peculiarities of his mental make-up and other reasons.
Artistic method- this is a way of mastering and displaying the world, a set of basic creative principles for the figurative reflection of life. The method can be spoken of as the structure of the writer’s artistic thinking, which determines his approach to reality and its reconstruction in the light of a certain aesthetic ideal. Through method we comprehend those creative principles, thanks to which the writer reproduces reality: selection, evaluation, typification (generalization), artistic embodiment characters, life phenomena in historical refraction. The method is manifested in the structure of thoughts and feelings of the characters literary work, in the motivations of their behavior, actions, in the relationship of characters and events, in accordance life path, the fate of the characters and the socio-historical circumstances of the era.
Artistic method is a system of principles for selecting life material, its evaluation, principles and prevailing forms of artistic generalization and rethinking. It characterizes a complex of factors: holistic ideological, evaluative, individually unique, social attitude the artist to reality, to consciously or spontaneously reflected needs, ideological and artistic traditions. The artistic method largely determines the specificity of the artistic image.
Artistic style- A system of linguistic means and ideas characteristic of a particular literary work, genre, author or literary movement (Gogol’s style. Romantic style). In this style, it affects the imagination and feelings of the reader, conveys the thoughts and feelings of the author, uses all the wealth of vocabulary, possibilities of different styles, is characterized by imagery, emotionality of speech. In a work of art, the word not only carries certain information, but also serves to have an aesthetic impact on the reader with the help artistic images. The brighter and more truthful the image, the stronger its impact on the reader. In their works, writers use, when necessary, not only words and forms literary language, but also outdated dialect and colloquial words. The means of artistic expression are varied and numerous. These are tropes: comparisons, personification, allegory, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, etc. And stylistic figures: epithet, hyperbole, litotes, anaphora, epiphora, gradation, parallelism, rhetorical question, silence, etc. Trope(from ancient Greek τρόπος - turnover) - in a work of art, words and expressions used in a figurative meaning in order to enhance the imagery of the language, the artistic expressiveness of speech.
Literary direction is a set of fundamental spiritual and aesthetic principles of many writers, as well as a number of groups and schools. There are the following literary trends:
1. Baroque(port. perola barrocco - an irregularly shaped pearl).
Appears with gray 16th - 17th centuries in the art of many European countries (especially Italy and Spain). Most of all it manifests itself in the manner of writing or a pictorial image. The following important features of the Baroque are highlighted:
ornateness,
Pomposity,
Decoration,
Tendency to allegory, allegorism,
Complex metaphors
A combination of comic and tragic
An abundance of stylistic decorations in artistic speech.
A prominent representative of the Baroque was P. Calderon. In Russia, the features of this style appeared in the poetry of S. Polotsky, S. Medvedev, K. Istomin. The main works of the Baroque: E. Tesauro “Aristotle’s Spyglass”, B. Gracian “Wit, or the Art of a Sophisticated Mind”.
2.Classicism-(Latin classicus - exemplary) literary movement that developed in European literature XVII century, which is based (according to S.P. Belokurova (3)):
1. Recognition of ancient art as the highest example, ideal, and works of antiquity as an artistic norm.
2. The principle of rationalism and “imitation of nature.”
3. Cult of reason.
4. Active appeal to social and civil issues.
5. Emphasized objectivity of the narrative.
6. Strict hierarchy of genres
3.Sentimentalism- (from the French sentiment - feeling, sensitivity) - a literary movement of the second half of the 18th century. - beginning XIX century (3). The main genres are sentimental novel, story, diary, travel, letter, elegy, message.
In the works of this direction, the human personality was interpreted as responsive, capable of compassion, humane, kind, possessing high moral principles. The largest representatives in European literature are L. Stern ("Sentimental Journey through France and Italy"), J.-J. Rousseau ("Julia, or the New Heloise"), S. Richardson ("Ppamela, or Virtue Rewarded", "Clarissa, or the Story of a Young Lady"), I.-V. Goethe (“The Sorrows of Young Werther”) and others; in Russian literature of the second half of the 18th century. - M.N. Muravyov, N.M. Karamzin, V.V. Kapnist, N.A. Lvov, A.N. Radishchev, early V.A. Zhukovsky.
With his own syllable in an important mood, it used to be that a fiery creator showed us his hero as a model of perfection.
("Eugene Onegin" Chapter 3 Stanza 11)
4. Romanticism(from the French roman - a work in Romance languages). Romanticism dates back to the first third of the 19th century. Germany became the birthplace of romanticism (brothers F. and A. Schlegel, L. Tieck, Novalis). Romanticism is characterized by “attention to the individual as a spiritual being, possessing a sovereign inner world, independent of the conditions of existence and historical circumstances” (1).
5. Realism- "(from Latin realis - material) - an artistic method in literature and art, following which the writer depicts life in accordance with objective reality" (3). The focus of realism is facts, events, people and things, patterns that operate in life, the relationship between man and the environment, the hero and the time in which he lives. The writer does not break away from reality, selects the inherent life traits and thereby enriches the reader with knowledge of life.
6. Symbolism"- (fr. symbolisme< от греч. symbolon - знак, опознавательная примета) - явление художественной культуры последней thirds of the XIX- beginning twentieth century, which contrasted itself with realism and made the basis of its artistic system the philosophical concept of the fundamental unknowability of the world and man by means scientific experience, logical analysis and realistic depiction" (3). As D.S. Merezhkovsky noted, the three main elements of symbolism are mystical content, symbols, expansion of artistic impressionability.
7. Modernism- (from the French moderne - modern, newest). Modernism is characterized by “anti-historicism of thinking (history is replaced by a certain model of the world in which nothing changes, by the mythologization of the past, present and future), interest in man in general, and not in man as a product of his era (the specific historical situation in the works of modernism does not have meaning, for “a person, like a horse, always walks with his eyes closed in the same circles” (D. Joyce)), lack of social typification.”
8. Postmodernism(from the French post - after and moderne - modern, newest) - a direction in the literature of the 20th century. This direction is characterized by the perception of the world as chaos, the display of the unconscious, random in the behavior of the characters, an abundance of irony (Irony) and parody. A feature of postmodernism works is that they often consist of words and situations that the author presents to the reader in a parody. For example, these include the works of V. Pelevin and D. Prigov.
A literary movement is a collection of creative individuals who are characterized by ideological and artistic affinity and programmatic and aesthetic unity. Simply put, a literary movement is a type of literary movement. For example, in Russian romanticism there are such movements as “philosophical”, “psychological” and “civil”, and in Russian realism some distinguish “psychological” and “sociological” movements, etc. etc...
From the point of view of literary understanding“Style is an individually outlined and closed, purposeful system of means of verbal and aesthetic expression and embodiment artistic reality. A broad literary definition of an artist’s style as “the main ideological and artistic features inherent in his work (ideological positions, range of characters and plots, originality of language). According to the views of G.N. Pospelov, style includes three main elements: language, composition, details of the subject figurativeness. Language is the most obvious, tangible element of style. This includes rhythm, intonation, vocabulary and tropes. . From the point of view of linguistic understanding: Style is a variety of language, assigned in a given society by tradition to one of the most general spheres of social life and partially differs from other varieties of the same language in all basic parameters - vocabulary, grammar, phonetics;
Related information.
The artistic method (literally “methodos” from the Greek - the path of research) is a set of the most general principles of the aesthetic development of reality, which is consistently repeated in the work of one or another group of writers, forming a direction, trend or school. There are objective difficulties in isolating the method. “The artistic method is an aesthetic and deeply meaningful category. It cannot be reduced either to formal methods of constructing an image, or to the ideology of the writer. It represents a set of ideological and artistic principles for depicting reality in the light of a certain aesthetic ideal. Worldview organically enters into the method when it merges with the artist’s talent, with his poetic thinking, and does not exist in the work only in the form of a socio-political tendency” (N.A. Gulyaev). The method is not just a system of some views, at least the most aesthetic ones. In a very conventional way, we can talk about a method as a view, but not an abstract, initial one, but one that has already found itself in a certain material of a given art. This is an artistic thought or artistic concept of these phenomena in connection with the general concept of life. Method is a category mainly of artistic creativity, and therefore of artistic consciousness. Method is a consistently implemented method of reflection, presupposing the unity of the artistic re-creation of the material of reality, realized on the unity of the imaginative vision of life, subordinated to the goals of revealing and understanding the leading trends of the writer’s contemporary life and the embodiment of his social ideals.
The category of method is connected with the category of type of creativity, on the one hand, and the category of style, on the other. Already in the 5th century BC. e. Sophocles aphoristically outlined two opposing types of artistic thinking: “He (Euripides) depicts people as they really are, and I as they should be.” Under style Usually it is understood as the individual uniqueness of creative handwriting, the set of preferred techniques, the unity of individual and typical features of creativity common to many individuals. The most active style-forming factors in the artistic structure of a work relate to the plane of expression. But at the same time, style is also “a directly perceived, complete unity of different aspects and elements of works, corresponding to the content expressed in it” (G.N. Pospelov). The difference between style and other categories of poetics, in particular from the artistic method, is in its immediate concrete implementation: stylistic features seem to appear on the surface of the work as a visible and tangible unity of all the main aspects of the artistic form.
Style “absorbs the content and form of art without a trace, unites and guides everything in a work, from the word to the central thought” (Benedetto Croce). The linguistic approach to style assumes that the main object of study is language, language as the first and clearly distinguishable appearance and materiality of a literary work. This means that internal linguistic laws come to the fore. Style, artistic fabric are considered as a combination of different styles existing in addition to it in the language and pre-given ones - clerical-bureaucratic, epistolary, archaic, business, style of scientific presentation, etc. But this approach does not explain the change in literary styles. Moreover, the style of a work of art cannot be reduced to a mechanical combination. Style is a stable community of figurative system, means of artistic expression, characterizing the originality of a writer’s work, a separate work, a literary movement, or national literature. Style in a broad sense is a cross-cutting principle of constructing an artistic form, giving a work tangible integrity, a uniform tone and color.
What are the mechanisms of style formation? D.S. Likhachev proceeds from the fact (“Man in the Literature of Ancient Rus'”) that artistic style combines both the general perception of reality characteristic of the writer and the writer’s artistic method, determined by the tasks that he sets for himself. That is, style is not what the writer chose in his work, but how he expressed it, from what angle.
It is impossible to explain style without considering its connection with artistic method. The concept of artistic method expresses the fact that historical reality determines not only the content of art, but also its innermost aesthetic laws. The creative method aesthetically summarizes people's practical attitude to their historical tasks and their understanding of life, and creates that special relationship between ideals and reality that determines the structure of artistic images. Thus, the mythological view of nature and social relations underlay Greek fantasy and Greek art. The creative method of classical art required that the artist guess the perfect in the imperfect, so that he would show realized all the harmonious fullness of the possibilities of the human spirit. The creative method of classical art indicated to the artist a more or less constant angle of obligatory elevation of the image above reality, a more or less established direction in the artistic expression of a life phenomenon. Thus, he gave the beginning of the style. The relationship between ideal and reality, inherent in classical art, turned out to be the key to understanding the classical style with its clarity and transparency, normativity, beauty, strict order, with its inherent harmonious balance of parts and peace of internal completeness, the obvious connection of form and function, the paramount importance of rhythm, with his naive laconicism and amazing sense of proportion.
Style is a pattern in the construction, connection and similarity of forms, allowing these forms to express not only the particular content of a given work, but also to reproduce the most general signs of man’s relationship to nature and society. Style is the general character of expressiveness of various forms. Style is a connection of forms that reveals the unity of artistic content (Gothic style, Baroque style, false classical style, Rococo style, etc.). There are large styles, the so-called styles of the era (Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism), styles of various directions and trends and custom styles artists.
The style was a pointed writing stick with a ball at the other end, which was used to erase what was written. Hence the catchphrase: “Turn your style more often!”
“Style is a person” (J. Buffon).
“Style embalms a literary work” (A. Daudet).
“Style may be defined as follows: the appropriate words in the appropriate place” (J. Swift).
“Style is the face of the mind, less deceptive than the real face. Imitating someone else's style is like wearing a mask. The pomposity of style is like grimacing” (A. Schopenhauer).
The very relationship between method and style turns out to be different at different stages of artistic development. As a rule, in the early periods of the development of art, the style was unified, comprehensive, strictly subordinated to religious and dogmatic norms; with the development of aesthetic sensibility, the need for each era to have a singular style (the style of the era, the aesthetic code of culture) noticeably weakens.
In pre-realistic art we observe the predominance of a general style, and in realistic art we observe the predominance of individual styles. In the first case, the method seems to merge with a certain style, and in the second, the more abundant and dissimilar the styles that grow on its basis, the more fully it is implemented. In the first case, the method brings about uniformity, in the second, a variety of styles. The dominance of the general style corresponds to the relatively simple artistic content. In ancient society, relationships between people were still clear and transparent. The same mythological motifs and subjects are repeated in all types of art. The scope of artistic content remains quite narrow. The difference of personal points of view fits within the boundaries of a single aesthetic tradition. All this leads to the unification of artistic content, which determined the formation of a common style.
The dominance of a general style is decisively connected with the predominance of idealization as a method of artistic generalization, and the dominance of individual styles with typification. Idealization more easily connects heterogeneous phenomena into a single style. In classical art the form is inevitably more coherent, rigid, and stable than in a realistic image. The general style subordinates the individuality of the artist. Only those personal talents that meet the requirements of the general style are given scope and can develop. Thus, discussing the general style of Old Russian literature, D.S. Likhachev writes that the features of folk collectivism are still alive in ancient Russian literature. This is literature in which the personal element is muted. Many works incorporate previous works and follow traditions of literary etiquette created by several authors, which were subsequently corrected and supplemented by correspondence. Thanks to this feature, the literature of Ancient Rus' contains a monumental epic principle. This monumentality is enhanced by the fact that works in Ancient Rus' are devoted mainly to historical themes. They contain less fictional, imaginary, designed for entertainment and entertainment. The seriousness of this literature is also due to the fact that its main works are civic in the highest sense of the word. The authors perceive their writing as service to the Motherland. The higher the ideals of ancient Russian authors, the more difficult it was for them to come to terms with the shortcomings of reality (historical monumentalism).
In the classicism of the 17th–18th centuries, the obligatory nature of the general style is supported by the established and indisputable authority of antiquity, the recognition of the decisive importance of its artistic images as objects of imitation. Religious-mythological authoritarianism is replaced by aesthetic authoritarianism (rules). It is necessary to consider whether a given work belongs to the general style and then to discover those modifications, enrichments, and innovations that depend on the individual style. The general style subjugates the artist and determines his aesthetic taste. Realism changes the very type of aesthetic taste and includes its ability to develop naturally. The realistic method is associated with a new era in which people's relationships take on an extremely confusing appearance.
In the capitalist era, a complex mechanism of social, political and ideological relations is developed, things are personified, people are reified. The cognitive capabilities of art are expanding. Analysis is deeply embedded in the description, the scope of artistic content becomes wider, and a huge area of life prose opens up. The artist no longer works with the life process, which was previously reworked by folk fantasy and included a collective assessment of the phenomena of reality. From now on, he must independently find an image of reality. Thanks to this, even a small change in the angle of view, the position of the observer, is enough for the artistic content to change dramatically and significantly. Previously, this change led to the formation of personal shades within the boundaries of a single style; now it has become the basis for the emergence of individual styles. The diversity of assessments, aspects, views, approaches, and degrees of historical activity among artists is of great importance. Individual attitude to reality and individual forms of expression.
– Selection
Art Direction – Grading
– Generalization
– Artistic embodiment
Classicism– artistic style and aesthetic direction in European literature in the art of the 17th – early. XVIII centuries, one of the important features of which was the appeal to the images and forms of ancient literature and art as an ideal aesthetic standard. As an integral artistic system, classicism was formed in France during the period of strengthening and flourishing of absolutism. Classicism receives a complete systematic expression in “The Poetic Art” (1674) by N. Boileau, who summarizes the artistic experience of French literature of the 17th century. The aesthetics of classicism are based on the principles of rationalism, corresponding to the philosophical ideas of Cartesianism. They affirm the view of a work of art as an artificial creation - consciously created, intelligently organized, logically constructed. Having put forward the principle of “imitation of nature,” the classicists consider its indispensable condition to be strict adherence to the unshakable rules, which are drawn from ancient poetics (Aristotle, Horace) of art and determine the laws of artistic form, transforming life material into a beautiful, logically harmonious and clear work of art.
The artistic transformation of nature, the transformation of nature into beautiful and ennobled is at the same time an act of its highest knowledge - art is called upon to reveal the ideal pattern of the universe, often hidden behind the external chaos and disorder of reality. The mind, comprehending the ideal pattern, acts as an “arrogant” principle in relation to individual characteristics and the living diversity of life. The classic image gravitates towards the model, it is a special mirror, where the individual turns into the generic, the temporary into the eternal, the real into the ideal, history into myth, it is the triumph of reason and order over the chaos and fluid empirics of life. This also corresponded to the social and educational function of art, to which the aesthetics of classicism attached great importance.
The aesthetics of classicism establishes a strict hierarchy of genres, which are divided into “high” (tragedy, epic, ode, their sphere is public life, historical events, myths, their heroes - monarchs, generals, mythological characters, religious devotees) and “low” (comedy , satire, fable), depicting the private everyday life of people of the middle classes. Each genre has strict boundaries and clear formal characteristics; no mixing of the sublime and the base, the tragic and the comic, the heroic and the ordinary is allowed. The leading genre of classicism was tragedy, addressed to the most important social and moral problems of the century. Social conflicts appear in it reflected in the souls of the heroes, faced with the need to choose between moral duty and personal passions. In this collision, a polarization of human public and private existence emerged, which also determined the structure of the image.
Romanticism – one of the largest trends in European and American literature of the late 18th – first half of the 19th centuries, which gained worldwide significance and distribution. Romanticism was the highest point of the anti-Enlightenment movement. Its main socio-ideological prerequisites are disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and in bourgeois civilization in general. Rejection of the bourgeois way of life, protest against the vulgarity and prosaicness, lack of spirituality and selfishness of bourgeois relations, which found initial expression in sentimentalism and pre-romanticism, acquired particular poignancy among the romantics. The reality of history turned out to be beyond the control of “reason,” irrational, full of secrets and unforeseen events, and the modern world order turned out to be hostile to human nature and his personal freedom.
Disbelief in social, industrial, political and scientific progress, which brought new contrasts and antagonisms, as well as “fragmentation”, leveling and spiritual devastation of the individual, disappointment in society, which was foreshadowed, justified and preached by the best minds (as the most “natural” and “reasonable” ") of Europe, gradually grew to cosmic pessimism. Taking on a universal, universal character, it was accompanied by moods of hopelessness, despair, and “world sorrow” (“the disease of the century,” inherent in the heroes of Chateaubriand, Musset, and Byron). The theme of the “terrible world” “lying in evil” (with its blind power of material relations, the irrationality of destinies, the melancholy of the eternal monotony of everyday life) has passed through the entire history of romantic literature, embodied most clearly in the “drama of rock”, in the works of J. Byron, E. . Hoffman, E. Poe and others. At the same time, romanticism is characterized by a sense of belonging to a rapidly developing and renewing world, inclusion in the flow of life, in the world historical process, a sense of hidden wealth and limitless possibilities of existence. “Enthusiasm”, based on faith in the omnipotence of the free human spirit, a passionate, all-encompassing thirst for renewal is one of the characteristic features of the romantic worldview (see the work of N.Ya. Berkovsky “Romanticism in Germany” about this, pp. 25–26).
The depth and universality of disappointment in reality, in the possibilities of civilization and progress is polar opposite to the romantic craving for the “infinite”, for absolute and universal ideals. The romantics dreamed not of a partial improvement of life, but of a holistic resolution of all its contradictions. The discord between ideal and reality, characteristic of previous movements, acquires extraordinary sharpness and intensity in romanticism, which is the essence of the so-called romantic two worlds. Rejecting the everyday life of modern civilized society as colorless and prosaic, the romantics strove for everything unusual. They were attracted to science fiction folk legends, folk art, past historical eras, exotic pictures of nature, life, way of life and customs of distant countries and peoples. They contrasted base material practice with sublime passions (the romantic concept of love) and the life of the spirit, the highest manifestations of which for the romantics were art, religion, and philosophy.
The Romantics discovered the extraordinary complexity, depth and antinomy of the human spiritual world, the inner infinity of human individuality. For them, a person is a small universe, a microcosm. Intense interest in strong and vivid feelings, in the secret movements of the soul, in its “night” side, a craving for the intuitive and unconscious are the essential features of the romantic worldview. Equally characteristic of the romantics is the defense of freedom, sovereignty, the self-worth of the individual, increased attention to the individual, the unique in man, and the cult of the individual. An apology for the individual served, as it were, as self-defense against the merciless march of history and the growing leveling of man himself in bourgeois society.
The requirement for historicism and folk art (mainly in the sense of faithfully recreating the color of place and time) is one of the enduring achievements of the romantic theory of art. The endless variety of local, epochal, national, historical, individual characteristics had a certain philosophical meaning in the eyes of the romantics: it was a discovery of the wealth of a single world whole - the universe. In the field of aesthetics, romanticism contrasted the classicist “imitation of nature” with the creative activity of the artist with his right to transform the real world: the artist creates his own special world, more beautiful and true, and therefore more real than empirical reality, since art itself is the highest reality . The Romantics fiercely defended the creative freedom of artists and rejected normativity in aesthetics, which, however, did not exclude the creation of their own romantic canons.
From the point of view of the principles of artistic representation, the Romantics gravitated towards fantasy, satirical grotesque, demonstrative conventionality of form, fragmentation, fragmentation, peak composition; they boldly mixed the ordinary and the unusual, the tragic and the comic.
Realism, an artistic direction in art, following which the artist depicts life in images that correspond to the essence of the phenomena of life itself and are created through the typification of facts of reality. Affirming the importance of realism as a means for a person to understand himself and the world around him, realism strives for a deep comprehension of life, for a broad coverage of reality with its inherent contradictions, and recognizes the artist’s right to illuminate all aspects of life without restrictions. The art of realism shows the interaction of man with the environment, the impact of social conditions on human destinies, the influence of social circumstances on the morals and spiritual world of people. In a broad sense, the category of realism serves to determine the relationship of literary works to reality, regardless of the writer’s affiliation with one movement or another. The origins of realism in Russia were I.A. Krylov, A.S. Griboyedov, A.S. Pushkin (in Western literature, realism appeared somewhat later; its first representatives were Stendhal and Balzac).
Main features of realism. 1. The principle of life's truth, which guides the realist artist in his work, striving to give the most complete reflection of life in its typical properties. The fidelity of the depiction of reality, reproduced in the forms of life itself, is the main criterion of artistry. 2. Social analysis, historicism of thinking. It is realism that explains the phenomena of life, establishes their causes and consequences on a socio-historical basis. In other words, realism is unthinkable without historicism, which presupposes an understanding of a given phenomenon in its conditionality, development and connection with other phenomena. Historicism is the basis of the worldview and artistic method of a realist writer, a kind of key to understanding reality, allowing one to connect the past, present and future. In the past, the artist looks for answers to pressing issues of our time, and interprets modernity as the result of previous historical development. IN realistic literature The inner world and behavior of the characters, as a rule, bear the indelible mark of time. The writer often shows the direct dependence of their social, moral, religious ideas on the conditions of existence in a given society, and pays great attention to the social and everyday background of the time. At the same time, in mature realistic art, circumstances are depicted only as a necessary prerequisite for revealing the spiritual world of people. 3. Critical portrayal of life. Writers deeply and truthfully show the negative phenomena of reality and focus on exposing them. But at the same time, realism is not without life-affirming pathos, because it is based on positive ideals - sympathy for the masses, the search for a positive hero in life, faith in the inexhaustible possibilities of man. 4. The depiction of typical characters in typical circumstances, that is, the characters are depicted in close connection with the social environment that raised them and formed them in certain socio-historical conditions. 5. The relationship between the individual and society is the leading problem posed by realistic literature. The drama of these relationships is important for realism. As a rule, the focus of realistic works is on extraordinary individuals, dissatisfied with life, breaking out from their environment, but this does not mean that realists are not interested in invisible people, merging with their environment, representatives of the masses (the type of little man in Gogol and Chekhov). 6. The versatility of the characters’ characters: their actions, deeds, speech, lifestyle and inner world, the “dialectic of the soul,” which is revealed in the psychological details of its emotional experiences. Thus, realism expands the possibilities of writers in the creative exploration of the world, in the creation of a contradictory and complex personality structure as a result of subtle penetration into the depths of the human psyche. 7. Expressiveness, brightness, imagery, accuracy of the Russian literary language, enriched with elements of colloquial speech that realist writers draw from the common language. 8. A variety of genres (epic, lyre-epic, dramatic, satirical). 9. Reflection of reality does not exclude fiction and fantasy, although these artistic means do not determine the main tone of the work.
Each writer has specific creative features (in the choice of topics, the depiction of individuals, individual social groups, in the originality of artistic techniques and the language of the work). For example, the manner of expressing thoughts of A.S. Pushkin and L.N. Tolstoy is hard to confuse. This is where the concept came from author's style(the style is a pointed stick and a spatula at the other end for writing on a waxed tablet).
Style is called the ideological and artistic originality of the writer’s work, which is manifested in the peculiarities of the themes, ideological meaning, system of images, methods of their construction, in the composition and language of the work. This unity of the main ideological and artistic features (themes, ideas, characters, plot, language), revealed throughout the writer’s entire creative work, is determined by the era, life experience, views of the artist and the characteristics of his talent. The style of one and the same author can develop and change over time (A.S. Pushkin’s early and late years differ significantly from each other both in their creative method - a romantic and a realist, and in the form of their works - a poet and a prose writer).
In the style of a number of writers one can find the same features - general topics, close in social status and the views of the heroes (for example, the theme of “superfluous” people in the first half of the 19th century in Russia, about the tragic fate of young nobles who were misunderstood by society).
This way it is formed literary school, direction, group, movement- unity of form and content, unity of method, bringing writers closer to each other. Depending on the specifics of the historical situation, it receives a certain political overtones and political purposefulness (for example, the natural school of N.V. Gogol’s followers in Russia).
A higher level of generality is creative artistic method. Artistic method is the principles common to writers for selecting life phenomena and depicting them. It depends primarily on changes public life(realism, classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, modernism, postmodernism).
Literary process - the process of interaction of styles, trends, methods, directions of fiction in the same historical period. The oldest and most famous method of depicting reality in fiction is realism. It was from him literary process began in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, with the formation of the so-called ancient realism, then in the Middle Ages we can talk about medieval realism, the Renaissance gives impetus to the development of revival ideas in the realistic work of that period. The Age of Enlightenment, for the first time, allows us to talk about the emergence of a mature literary movement with clearly formulated laws of creativity - classicism.
Classicism(from Latin classicus - first-class) - a movement in the literature of Western Europe and Russia (17-18 centuries) after the end of the religious wars. Classicism arose as an imitation of examples of ancient (classical) art. Its representatives are Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Sumarokov, Kheraskov, Kantemir, Lomonosov, Trediakovsky, Derzhavin. They tried to draw attention to the sense of duty and patriotism of the heroes in depicting life conflicts.
Classicism is an example of literature created according to normative principles. Basic ideas classicism is associated with the idea of progressive absolutist royal power, which expressed in France, where classicism originated, civil, national ideals, the idea of civil reason, which the hero should prefer to other human feelings. The rational-civil thinking of classicism was associated with journalisticism, didacticism, and journalistic sentiments expressed in the works.
Classicism was associated with noble, aristocratic, court culture. This led to a certain class limitation - the depiction of the people, folk life, nature was not allowed, the subjects were taken mainly from ancient Greek or Roman history.
All works were clearly divided into high and low, just like genres, the rule of “three unities” was introduced - the unity of time (the entire conflict must be resolved within 24 hours), place (the action took place in one place), action (one plot , heroes are carriers of one quality, the role of actors). All this led to a violation of the truth of life, the creation of conventional, far-fetched images, schematic characters, and complex language.
Russian classicism fought for the originality of Russian culture, the purity of the Russian language, and reflected significant moments in the development of Russia.
Sentimentalism(from the French sentimental - sensitive) - a literary movement in Russian and Western literature of the late 18th - early 19th centuries, which initially arose in England and reflected the struggle of the bourgeoisie with the feudal lords. Sentimentalism contained a protest against the corrupt morals of the noble aristocracy; it was opposed to the life of artisans, merchants, peasants, and sympathy for people oppressed by feudal lords.
As a direction, it was completely opposed to the rationality of the works of classicism, contained a protest against the abstract ideals of reason, contrasting them with sincere feelings, trying to depict the peculiarities of human psychology.
The glorification of patriarchal principles and feelings led to the idea that people can only be natural in nature. City and urban culture were opposed to nature, the countryside and endowed with all the negative traits (depravity, greed, lack of moral principles). In turn, the village, depicted idyllically and patriarchally, was presented only with positive side without any criticism.
Sentimentalism was also characterized by other features. For example, the desire for historicism, the glorification of the past of one’s country, the characters of the heroes were portrayed mainly through emotional and psychological characteristics with the elimination of any real situation, outside of real events.
A special style of sentimentalism has developed in the language system - a style of intonation-sensitive nature (with an abundance of appeals and exclamations); the authors completely abandon the “high style” of classicism, but create their own artificially sensitive language.
In Russian literature, sentimentalism had a different social basis at the end of the 18th century (Karamzin, Bogdanovich, Dmitriev, Shalkov, early Zhukovsky) - expressed the sentiments of the nobility in the era of the increasing bourgeois development of Russia and the intensifying liberation peasant movement. The characteristic features of this Russian trend are a false image of the peasantry, villages, idealization serfdom. The desire to silence the fact of the exploitation of serfs, the conventional image of the Russian village as a place of play for happy villagers, the image of a father-patron and benefactor - a landowner, filled with concern for his serfs ("You will be my child forever, I will be your father forever") - all this characteristic features Russian sentimentalism.
There were also positive moments. For the first time, serfs and their feelings were depicted along with the feelings of landowners (“And peasant women know how to love” - N.M. Karamzin). This had a huge impact on the development of Russian literature, as attention was paid to feelings ordinary people, a depiction of human psychology.
Romanticism- a creative method that appeared in Western Europe in the late 18th - early 19th centuries - is usually considered as a reaction to bourgeois revolutions in England and France, as he expressed the dissatisfaction of wide public circles with the new bourgeois reality. Instead of the kingdom of freedom, equality and brotherhood, for which enormous sacrifices were made, the spirit of profit, the power of money, and new oppression of the individual begin to dominate in bourgeois society. Therefore, the main principle of this movement is the opposition to the real life of another world created by the creative imagination of the writer. For romantic work Characteristic: an extraordinary hero, overwhelmed by violent passions, extraordinary circumstances in which the action takes place, a veil of understatement and mystery that envelops the hero’s past.
There are two main directions of romanticism: passive (conservative) and revolutionary (progressive).
Conservative romanticism(Novalis, Uhland, Chateaubriand, Vigny, Wordsworth, Heine, Schiller, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Delvig) sought to take the reader into the world of dreams, fantasy, mysticism or the historical past (the Middle Ages). In the works of these romantics, there were two types of heroes: dreamers, living only in the world of their personal feelings and souls, and active natures, striving to revive knightly feelings and noble principles of life.
Revolutionary romanticism(Byron, Hugo, Pushkin, Lermontov, Ryleev, Odoevsky)) depicted the protest, passions of an exceptional person who does not resign himself to circumstances surrounding reality, struggling, striving for freedom, action, for a future free life.
In Russian literature, romanticism, which arose at the very beginning of the 19th century (especially widespread after the Patriotic War of 1812), reflected the dissatisfaction of the Russian nobility with the two main troubles of that time: autocracy and serfdom.
Realism- involves showing reality, the real life of a person, a truthful historically specific image of a person and society, an image of connections and interactions between a person and society (“the truthfulness of the image of typical characters in typical circumstances” - F. Engels).
Typical heroes reflect the characters and collective features of many people, social groups (or heroes and images reflecting typical trends in the development of society). Typical circumstances- a description of the features of life, the mores of that society and at the historical moment when the heroes were formed.
This is the oldest and most powerful creative method of depicting reality known in the history of literature. Selected elements of realism already met in ancient literature 5th-3rd centuries BC Despite the fact that her hero has not yet stood out from the crowd, he thinks like the whole society (Achilles in Homer).
Next, in Renaissance(13-16 centuries), during the growth of public self-awareness, the hero has already stood out from society, he has a sense of justice and responsibility (Hamlet, Don Quixote), although he is still guided not by class, but by moral criteria (defenders of humanity from imperfections).
In the era Enlightenment(18th century) the critical principle of realism was strengthened. The young revolutionary bourgeoisie opposes feudalism and church ideology with criticism of law, morality, and religion (Voltaire, Diderot, D.I. Fonvizin). The shortcomings of society were explained by the shortcomings of the system of political mores and moral views.
Critical realism began to take shape in the works of Balzac and Pushkin due to the dissatisfaction of romantic ideas about ways to change life and disappointment with bourgeois reality. Analytical aspiration and strengthening of the critical principle were associated with the exposure and denial of the foundations of feudal and bourgeois society through the depiction of man in his various connections with society. A person was portrayed in this way as a part and product of the environment (character, views, behavior, lifestyle are formed by society), but at the same time they strived for the future, for the ideal.
In the history of realism, it happened that, along with a historically incorrect, abstract understanding of the characters' characters, a correct, concrete, realistic reproduction of them was carried out (N.V. Gogol " Dead souls") - it is necessary to distinguish between the artist’s worldview and his theoretical views.
Modernism(from the French moderne - new, modern) - various trends in modern literature 20th century ( symbolism, acmeism, futurism, imagism), opposing themselves to realism. They are not satisfied with the basic principle of realism - a reflection of objective reality; they consider it a naturalistic copying of life.
The basis of art should be the production of the hero’s inner self, his inner world, to the outside. Features of modernism- the most open and free self-disclosure of the authors, their persistent desire to update the artistic language, focus more on the universal and culturally-historically distant, rather than on the close reality.
Postmodernism as a literary movement formed in the second half of the 20th century and represents an attempt by modern authors, led by J. Derrida, to philosophically comprehend the history of literature and culture in general from the position deconstruction(that is, rejection) of everything stable, stable, unconditional that is in it. Concept simulacrum and the postmodern concept of the total disorder of the world sometimes finds forms of expression akin to the mythological archaic, which makes it possible to transform plots, images, circumstances into new works, using them in accordance with modern conditions.