Ways to portray a character
In order to analyze the methods of depicting a character in specific works, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the methods of depicting him.
Let's look at ways to portray a character. L.A. Kozyro, in his textbook for students “The Theory of Literature and the Practice of Reading Activity”, denotes two characteristics that make up the image of a character. These are external and internal characteristics.
IN literary work psychologism is a set of means used to display inner world hero - for detailed analysis his thoughts, feelings and experiences.
This method of depicting a character means that the author sets himself the task of showing the character and personality of the hero directly from the psychological side, and making this way of understanding the hero the main one. Often, methods of depicting the hero’s inner world are divided into “from the inside” and “from the outside.”
The inner world of the character “from the inside” is depicted using internal dialogues, his imagination and memories, monologues and dialogues with himself, sometimes through dreams, letters and personal diaries. The image “from the outside” consists of describing the character’s inner world through the symptoms of his psychological state that manifest themselves externally.
Most often this portrait description the hero - his facial expressions and gestures, speech patterns and manner of speaking, this also includes detail and description of the landscape as an external element reflecting the internal state of a person. Many writers use descriptions of everyday life, clothing, behavior and housing for this type of psychologism.
Psychologism is a set of means used to depict the inner world of a character, his psychology, state of mind, thoughts, experiences.
Epic and dramatic works have broad learning potential inner life person. A carefully individualized reproduction of the experiences of characters in their interrelation and dynamics is designated by the term psychologism.
External characteristics serve as a means of: a) objectification of the image-character and b) expression of the subjective author's attitude to him.
Sorokin V.I. The Tory of Literature lists twelve different means of depicting a character.
If the reader has no idea of the character's appearance, it becomes very difficult to perceive the character as a living being. Therefore, the reader’s acquaintance with a character begins, as a rule, with a description of his face, figure, hands, gait, manner of holding himself, dressing, etc., that is, with a portrait description of the character.
Each talented writer has his own style of depicting portraits of heroes. A portrait depends not only on the author’s style, but also on the environment that the writer depicts, that is, it indicates the social affiliation of the character. Thus, in A.P. Chekhov’s story “Children,” the portrait of the “cook’s son” Andrei contrasts with the images of well-fed, well-groomed noble children: “The fifth partner, the cook’s son Andrei, a dark-skinned, sickly boy, in a cotton shirt and with a copper cross on his chest, stands motionless and dreamily looks at the numbers.”
A portrait helps to reveal intellectual capabilities, moral qualities, the psychological state of the character.
Portrait characteristics are used to create not only the image of a person, but also the image of an animal. But we are interested precisely in the ways of depicting the image of a person.
A portrait as a means of creating a character’s image is not present in every work. But even a single portrait detail helps create an image.
A literary portrait is understood as an image in a work of art of a person’s entire appearance, including the face, physique, clothing, demeanor, gestures, and facial expressions.
When creating an image-character, many writers describe his appearance. They do this in different ways: some depict in detail the portrait of the hero in one place, collected; others in different places of the work note individual features of the portrait, as a result of which the reader ultimately gets a clear idea of its appearance. Some writers use this technique almost always, others rarely, this is due to the peculiarity of the artist’s individual manner, the genre of the work, and many other conditions of creativity, but always the writer, when describing the appearance of the character, strives to emphasize such details that allow him to more vividly imagine both the external and internal appearance of the hero - to create a living, visually tangible image and to identify the most significant character traits of a given character, and express the author’s attitude towards him.
It is noted that every portrait is characterological to one degree or another - this means that by external features we can at least briefly and approximately judge the character of a person. In this case, the portrait can be provided with an author’s commentary, revealing the connections between the portrait and the character.
The correspondence of portrait features to character traits is a rather conditional and relative thing; it depends on the views and beliefs accepted in a given culture, on the nature of artistic convention. In the early stages of cultural development, it was assumed that spiritual beauty corresponded to a beautiful external appearance; negative characters portrayed as ugly and disgusting. Subsequently, the connections between the external and the internal in a literary portrait become significantly more complicated. In particular, already in the 19th century, an inverse relationship between portrait and character became possible: goodie can be ugly, but a negative one can be beautiful.
Thus, we see that a portrait in literature has always performed not only a depictive, but also an evaluative function.
Kozyro L.A. in his work he names three types of portrait - portrait description, portrait-comparison, portrait-impression.
Portrait description is the simplest and most frequently used form of portrait characterization. It consistently, with varying degrees of completeness, gives a kind of list of portrait details.
Kozyro L.A. gives an example: “Chechevitsyn was the same age and height as Volodya, but not so plump and white, but thin, dark, covered with freckles. His hair was bristly, his eyes were narrow, his lips were thick, in general he was very ugly, and if he had not been wearing a school jacket, then in appearance he could have been mistaken for the cook’s son” (A. P. Chekhov. “Boys” ) .
Sometimes the description is provided with a general conclusion or author's commentary regarding the character of the character revealed in the portrait. Sometimes the description emphasizes one or two leading details.
Portrait comparison is more complex look portrait characteristics. It is important not only to help the reader more clearly imagine the hero’s appearance, but also to create in him a certain impression of the person and his appearance.
An impression portrait is the most complex type of portrait. The peculiarity is that there are no portrait features and details as such here at all or very few; all that remains is the impression made by the hero’s appearance on an outside observer or on one of the characters in the work.
Often a portrait is given through the perception of another character, which expands the functions of the portrait in the work, since it also characterizes this other character.
It is necessary to distinguish between static (remaining unchanged throughout the entire work) and dynamic (changing throughout the text) portraits.
A portrait can be detailed and sketchy, representing only one or several of the most expressive details.
We agree with the conclusion of L.A. Kozyro that a portrait in a literary work performs two main functions: pictorial (makes it possible to imagine the person depicted) and characterological (serves as a means of expressing the content of the image and the author’s attitude towards it).
The next characteristic that scientists note is the objective (material) environment that surrounds the character. It also helps characterize the character from the outside.
Character is revealed not only in his appearance, but also in what things he surrounds himself with and how he relates to them. This is what writers use to artistically characterize a character... Through objective characterization, the author also creates an individual character, a social type, and expresses an idea.
Hero image work of art consists of many factors - this is character, appearance, profession, hobbies, circle of acquaintances, and attitude towards oneself and others. One of the main ones is the character’s speech, which fully reveals both the inner world and way of life.
One should be careful not to confuse concepts when analyzing the speech of characters. Often, the speech characteristics of a character are understood as the content of his statements, that is, what the character says, what thoughts and judgments he expresses. In fact, speech characteristics are something else.
You need to look not at “what” the characters say, but at “how” they say it. Look at the manner of speech, its stylistic coloring, the nature of the vocabulary, the construction of intonation-syntactic structures, etc.
Speech is the most important indicator of a person’s national and social affiliation, evidence of his temperament, intelligence, talent, degree and nature of education, etc.
A person’s character is also clearly manifested in his speech, in what and how he says. The writer, when creating a typical character, always endows his heroes with an individualized speech characteristic of them.
Kozyro L.A. says that actions and actions are the most important indicators of a character’s character, his worldview, everything spiritual world. We judge people primarily by their deeds.
Sorokin V.I. calls this means “hero behavior.”
A person’s character is manifested especially clearly, of course, in his actions... A person’s character is especially clearly manifested in difficult situations in life, when he finds himself in an unusual, difficult situation, but a person’s everyday behavior is also important for characterization - the writer uses both cases.
The author of a work of fiction draws the reader's attention not only to the essence of the character's actions, words, experiences, thoughts, but also to the manner of performing actions, i.e., to forms of behavior. The term behavior of a character is understood as the embodiment of his inner life in the totality of external features: in gestures, facial expressions, manner of speaking, intonation, in body positions (postures), as well as in clothes and hairstyle (including cosmetics). A form of behavior is not just a set of external details of an action, but a kind of unity, totality, integrity.
Forms of behavior give a person’s inner being (attitudes, attitudes, experiences) clarity, certainty, and completeness.
Sometimes a writer, when creating an image of a character, reveals his character not only indirectly, by depicting his portrait, actions, experiences, etc., but also in a direct form: he speaks on his own behalf about the essential traits of his character.
Self-characterization is when the character himself talks about himself, about his qualities.
Mutual characterization is the evaluation of one character on behalf of other characters.
A characterizing name when the character’s name reflects his qualities and characteristics.
In the work of Sorokin V.I. this means is designated as a “characterizing surname.”
All this related to external characteristics. Let's look at methods of internal characterization.
The method of revealing the image-character is the direct depiction of his inner world. Reconstructing a character's spiritual life is called psychological analysis. For each writer and in each work, psychological analysis takes its own unique forms.
One of these techniques is an internal monologue, which records the flow of thoughts, feelings, and impressions currently possessing the hero’s soul.
The most important method of psychological characterization of a character for many writers is the description of what is depicted from the point of view of this character.
Chekhov “Grisha”: “Grisha, a small, plump boy, born two years and eight months ago, is walking with his nanny along the boulevard…. Until now, Grisha knew only a quadrangular world, where in one corner there was his bed, in another - his nanny's chest, in the third - a chair, and in the fourth - a burning lamp. If you look under the bed, you will see a doll with a broken arm and a drum, and behind the nanny’s chest there are a lot of different things: spools of thread, pieces of paper, a box without a lid and a broken clown. In this world, in addition to the nanny and Grisha, there is often a mother and a cat. Mom looks like a doll, and the cat looks like dad’s fur coat, only the fur coat doesn’t have eyes or a tail. From the world called the nursery, a door leads into a space where they dine and drink tea. There is Grisha’s chair on high legs and a clock hanging there that exists only to swing a pendulum and ring. From the dining room you can go into a room where there are red chairs. Here there is a dark spot on the carpet, for which Grisha is still shaking their fingers. Behind this room there is another one, where they are not allowed and where dad flashes - a highly mysterious person! The nanny and mother are clear: they dress Grisha, feed him and put him to bed, but why dad exists is unknown.”
Very great value For the depiction of a living person, it is necessary to show what he thinks and feels at different moments - the writer’s ability to “move into the soul” of his hero.
A character's worldview is one of the means of characterizing a character.
Portrayal of Attitudes and Beliefs characters- one of the most important means of artistic characterization in literature, especially if the writer depicts the ideological struggle in society.
Exists hidden analysis the spiritual life of the heroes, when it is not their psyche that is revealed directly, but how it is expressed in the actions, gestures, and facial expressions of people.
F. Engels noted that “... a personality is characterized not only by what it does, but also by how it does it.” To characterize the characters, the writer uses the image characteristic features her actions.
Highlight the biography of the hero. It can be framed, for example, as a backstory.
For the purpose of artistic characterization, some authors set out the life story of the characters or tell individual moments from this story.
It is important not only what kind of artistic means the author uses to create an image-character, but also the order of their inclusion in the text. All of these artistic means allow the reader to draw conclusions about the author’s attitude towards the hero.
Creatively working artists find many different techniques to show the appearance and inner world of a person. They use all the different means for this, but each in their own way, depending on the individual style of creativity, on the genre of the work, on the dominant literary direction at the time of its activity and on many other conditions.
The image of a character consists of external and internal characteristics.
The main external characteristics include:
Portrait characteristic
Description of the subject situation
· Speech characteristics
· Self-characteristics
Mutual characteristic
· Characteristic name
To the main internal characteristics include:
· Internal monologue description of the person portrayed from the point of view of this character
· Character's worldview
Character's imagination and memories
Character's dreams
· Letters and personal diaries
This list does not exhaust the abundance of means that writers use for artistic characterization.
Conclusion to chapter 1
Thus, after reviewing the scientific literature on the research topic, the following conclusions were made.
1. An artistic image is a part of reality, recreated in a work with the help of the author’s imagination; it is the final result aesthetic activity.
2. An artistic image has its own specific features: integrity, expressiveness, self-sufficiency, associativity, concreteness, clarity, metaphor, maximum capacity and ambiguity, typical meaning.
3. In literature, there are images-characters, images-landscapes, images-things. At the level of origin, two large groups of artistic images are distinguished: original and traditional.
4. A character is a character in a work of art with his characteristic behavior, appearance, and worldview.
5. In modern literary criticism, the phrases “character” and “literary hero” are often used in the same meaning as “character.” But the concept of “character” is neutral and does not contain an evaluative function.
6. By degree of generalization artistic images divided into individual, characteristic, typical.
7. In works of art, a special system is formed between characters. The character system is a strict hierarchical structure. The character system is a certain ratio of characters.
8. There are three types of characters: main, secondary, episodic.
· according to the degree of participation in the plot and, accordingly, the amount of text that this character is given
· according to the degree of importance of a given character for revealing aspects of artistic content.
10. The image of a character consists of external and internal characteristics.
11. The main external characteristics include: portrait characteristics, description of the subject situation, speech characteristics, description of the “character’s behavior”, author's description, self-characterization, mutual characteristic, characterizing name.
12. The main internal characteristics include: internal monologue, a description of what is being portrayed from the point of view of this character, the character’s worldview, the character’s imagination and memories, the character’s dreams, letters and personal diaries.
13. Highlight the biography of the hero. It can be framed, for example, as a backstory.
Character(from the Greek character - trait, feature) - the image of a person in a literary work, which combines the general, repetitive and individual, unique. The author's view of the world and man is revealed through character.The principles and techniques for creating character differ depending on tragic, satirical and other ways of depicting life, from literary kind works and genre.
It is necessary to distinguish literary character from character in life. When creating a character, a writer can reflect the features of the real, historical person. But he inevitably uses fiction, “invents” the prototype, even if his hero is a historical figure.
Artistic character - this is an image of a person presented in a literary work with sufficient completeness, in the unity of the general and the individual, the objective and the subjective; the totality of external and internal, individuality and personality of the hero, described in detail by the author, and therefore allowing readers to perceive the character as a living person; artistic description a person and his life in the context of his personality.
Artistic character - at the same time both an image of a person and an author’s thought, an idea of him.
Artistic character is the “engine” of the plot, and the principles of its construction are closely related to the genre and composition of the entire work. Literary character includes not only the artistic embodiment of the personal qualities of the heroes, but also the specific author’s manner of constructing it. It is the evolution of character that determines the plot itself and its construction.
The following types of literary characters are distinguished: tragic, satirical, romantic, heroic and sentimental. Examples, for example, heroic character in literature are Ostap and Taras Bulba in “Taras Bulba” and Kalashnikov in “The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov...”.
Turning to the analysis of ways to create character is subordinated to comprehending the idea of a work of art, the essence of the writer’s attitude to life.
Basic ways to create character:
1.The most significant technique for illuminating a character from the outside is author's characteristics and mutual characteristics.
In mutual characterizations, the hero is shown through the perception of other characters, as if from different angles. The result of this is a fairly complete coverage of the character, highlighting its various sides.
2.Portrait characteristics (gestures, facial expressions, appearance, intonation).
By literary portrait we mean a description of the hero’s appearance: physical, natural and, in particular, age properties (facial features and figures, hair color), as well as everything in a person’s appearance that is formed by the social environment, cultural tradition, individual initiative (clothing and jewelry, hairstyle and cosmetics). We note that a portrait can also capture body movements and poses characteristic of a character, gestures and facial expressions, facial and eye expressions. The portrait thus creates a stable, stable set of features " outer man" A literary portrait illustrates those aspects of the hero’s nature that seem most important to the author.
Preference is always given to portraits that reveal the complexity and diversity of the characters’ appearances. Here, depiction of appearance is often combined with the writer’s penetration into the hero’s soul and with psychological analysis.
The hero's portrait can be given at the moment of the character's first appearance, i.e. expositionally, may be repeated several times throughout the entire work (leitmotif device).
3.Speech The character also acts as a means of typification, reveals the character and helps to understand the author’s attitude towards the character.
4.Interior, i.e. everyday surroundings of the hero. The interior is an image of the conditions in which the character lives and acts. The interior as a means of characterizing a character was practically not used in the literature of classicism and romanticism. However, realist writers realized how much a thing can tell about its owner. You can highlight the interior, which influences the development of the action and the actions of the characters. With its help, a certain atmosphere is created as a whole.
The interior can characterize social status person: wealth-poverty, aristocracy - philistinism, education - philistinism. Helps reveal character traits: independence – desire to imitate; presence of taste - bad taste; practicality - mismanagement. Can reveal the sphere of interests and views: Westernism - Slavophilism; love of reading - indifference to it; type of activity – inactivity. The interior can be presented in detail and as expressive details.
5.Actions and deeds characters also contribute to the creation of their image.
Observing the actions of the heroes, we note that the literary trends existing in a certain era also dictate unique behavioral forms. Thus, in the era of sentimentalism, loyalty to the laws of one’s own heart is proclaimed, melancholic sighs and copious tears are generated.
6.Scenery- a description, a picture of nature, part of the real environment in which the action takes place. Landscape can emphasize or convey state of mind characters: in this case, the internal state of a person is likened to or contrasted with the life of nature. Depending on the subject of the image, the landscape can be rural, urban, industrial, sea, river, historical (pictures of the ancient past), fantastic (the appearance of the future world), astral (the supposed, conceivable heavenly). Can be described by both the hero and the author. We highlight a lyrical landscape that is not directly related to the development of the plot. It expresses the author's feelings.
IN various works we find the functions of the landscape. We note that it may be necessary for the development of action and may accompany the development external events, play a role in the spiritual life of the characters, play a role in his characterization.
7.Artistic detail. In the texts of works of art we find expressive detail that carries a significant semantic and emotional load. An artistic detail can reproduce the details of the setting, appearance, landscape, portrait, interior, but in any case it is used to visually represent and characterize the characters and their habitat. Details may reflect a broad generalization; some details may acquire symbolic meaning.
8.Psychologism is an artistic expression of keen interest in changes in consciousness, in all kinds of shifts in a person’s inner life, in the deep layers of his personality. Mastering self-awareness and the “dialectics of the soul” is one of the remarkable discoveries in the field of literary creativity.
Inner speech is the most effective method of character self-disclosure. This technique is one of the most important, since the author gives preference to depicting the inner life of a person, and plot collisions are relegated to the background. One of the types of inner speech is "inner monologue" . The reader “looks” into the hero’s inner world, using it to reveal the character’s feelings and thoughts. When the author gives his hero a certain character, psychological characteristics, he thus sets the development of the action. “Inner monologue” and “stream of consciousness” can be expressed through non-direct speech. This is also one of the ways of transmitting inner speech.
You can depict the inner life of a hero in various ways. These are descriptions of his impressions of the environment, and compact designations of what is going on in the hero’s soul, and characteristics of his experiences, and internal monologues of characters, and images of dreams that reveal his subconscious - what is hidden in the depths of the psyche and unknown to him. Inner speech is a form of realization of self-awareness; a means of verbal self-disclosure of the hero; statements or monologues uttered by a character “to himself” and addressed to himself. May be a response to something seen or heard.
A striking example of illuminating a character “from the inside”, through diaries, is a novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "Hero of Our Time". The image of Pechorin is revealed in the novel from different sides, but the leading compositional principle of the novel is the principle of concentrated deepening into the world of the hero’s emotional experiences. Characteristic feature Pechorin is a reflective consciousness, which is a consequence of the gap between the desired and the actual. This reflection is most deeply visible in Pechorin’s diary. Pechorin comprehends and condemns his actions. Pechorin's journal provides an opportunity to see his personality from the inside.
Indicate the term that denotes the way of depicting the inner, spiritual life of the character (“He blushed to the point of tears and, frowning, walked again”).
Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks 1–7, 13, 14.
“Welcome, Your Excellency,” she said. - Would you like to eat or would you like a samovar?
The visitor glanced briefly at her rounded shoulders and light legs in worn red Tatar shoes and answered abruptly, inattentively:
Samovar. Is the mistress here or are you serving?
Mistress, Your Excellency.
So you're holding it yourself?
That's right. Herself.
So what? Are you a widow, are you running the business yourself?
Not a widow, Your Excellency, but you have to live somehow. And I love to manage.
Yes, yes. This is good. And how clean and pleasant your place is.
The woman looked at him inquisitively all the time, squinting slightly.
“And I love cleanliness,” she answered. “After all, I grew up under the masters, but I don’t know how to behave decently, Nikolai Alekseevich.”
He quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed.
Hope! You? - he said hastily.
“I, Nikolai Alekseevich,” she answered.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” he said, sitting down on the bench and looking straight at her. - Who would have thought! How many years have we not seen each other? Thirty-five years old?
Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich. I’m forty-eight now, and you’re nearly sixty, I think?
Like this... My God, how strange!
What's strange, sir?
But everything, everything... How don’t you understand!
His fatigue and absent-mindedness disappeared, he stood up and walked decisively around the room, looking at the floor. Then he stopped and, blushing through his gray hair, began to say:
I haven't known anything about you since then. How did you get here? Why didn't you stay with the masters?
The gentlemen gave me my freedom soon after you.
Where did you live afterwards?
Long story, sir.
You say you weren't married?
No, I wasn't.
Why? With such beauty as you had?
I couldn't do this.
Why couldn't she? What do you want to say?
What's there to explain? I suppose you remember how much I loved you.
He blushed to the point of tears and, frowning, walked off again.
“Everything passes, my friend,” he muttered. - Love, youth - everything, everything. The story is vulgar, ordinary. Over the years everything goes away. How does it say this in the book of Job? “You will remember how water flowed through.”
What God gives to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Everyone's youth passes, but love is another matter.
He raised his head and, stopping, smiled painfully...
(I. A. Bunin, “Dark Alleys”)
Indicate the type of literature to which I. A. Bunin’s work “Dark Alleys” belongs.
Explanation.
Epic (in Greek means narrative, story) is one of the three genera into which literature is divided (epic, lyric, drama).
Epic in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
Epic - (Greek epos - word - narrative), 1) the same as epic, as well as ancient historical and heroic songs (for example, epics)... 2) A literary genre (along with lyrics and drama), a narrative about events assumed in the past (as if accomplished and remembered by the narrator).
http://tolkslovar.ru/ie1934.html
Answer: epic.
Answer: epic
In the given fragment of the story, the characters exchange remarks. What is this type of artistic speech called?
Explanation.
Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people. In a literary work, especially in drama, dialogue is one of the main forms of speech characteristics of characters. Polylogue (Greek, lit. 'speech of many') - a conversation of many participants. In this case, it is assumed that the role of the speaker passes from one person to another, otherwise the conversation turns into a monologue.
Answer: dialogue.
Answer: dialogue|polylogue
Establish a correspondence between the three characters in the works of I.A. Bunin, associated with the love theme, and the corresponding titles of the works. For each position in the first column, select the corresponding position from the second column. Write your answer in numbers in the table.
Write down the numbers in your answer, arranging them in the order corresponding to the letters:
| A | B | IN |
Explanation.
She is the heroine of the story “Clean Monday”.
The rich man's daughter is the protagonist of the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco."
Olya Meshcherskaya is the heroine of the story “Easy Breathing”.
Answer: 341.
Answer: 341
Tatiana Statsenko
So the task is for 2015. Our task is to give you the opportunity to practice and expand your knowledge of literature. Not all works are included in the codifier. There are questions that require the student’s ability to navigate literary processes- for this you need to know works not only from the school curriculum - or from the works of the school curriculum you need to be able to draw general conclusions about other works. You need to be prepared for this. And next year’s codifier “Easy Breathing” may appear. Good luck.
Lev Nioradze 10.03.2019 14:29
Hello! I entered the answer 143, your system counted it as incorrect, giving 341 as correct. I think it's a computer error, please fix it.
Tatiana Statsenko
We have everything right. The answer should be this: 341, it cannot be anything else, because the correspondences must be given exactly.
In the above fragment, the characters have different assessments of the place of love in a person’s life. What term denotes the opposition of various life phenomena in a work of art?
Explanation.
Antithesis is a opposition, a turn in which sharply opposing concepts and ideas are combined. The contrast is a stark contrast.
Answer: antithesis.
Answer: antithesis|contrast
What is the name of an artistic technique based on the use of identical words in a phrase (“But that’s it, that’s it... How don’t you understand!”)?
Explanation.
We are talking about repetition or lexical repetition.
Repetition enhances emotional and figurative expressiveness artistic speech. The highlighted repeated words carry a certain semantic meaning.
Answer: repetition or lexical repetition.
Answer: repetition|lexical repetition
Indicate a literary movement that is based on an objective view of reality and the principles of which are embodied in “Dark Alleys.”
Explanation.
Realism - from the Latin realis - real. The main feature of realism is considered to be a truthful depiction of reality. The definition given by F. Engels: “... realism presupposes, in addition to the truthfulness of details, the truthful reproduction of typical characters in typical circumstances.”
Answer: realism.
Answer: realism
What is the drama of the above episode from the story of I. A. Bunin?
Explanation.
General Nikolai Alekseevich, already an old man, arrives at the postal station and meets here his beloved, whom he has not seen for about 35 years. He will not recognize hope right away. Now she is the owner of the inn where their first meeting once took place. The hero finds out that all this time she loved only him. At one time, class prejudices prevented the future general from marrying a commoner. But love did not leave the heart of the main character and prevented him from becoming happy with another woman, raising his son with dignity, and Nadezhda continued to love him. The drama of this episode is that nothing can be corrected, nothing can be returned and “rewritten from scratch.”
Each type of literature has its own possibilities for revealing the inner world of a person. Thus, in lyrics, psychologism is expressive in nature; In it, as a rule, it is impossible to “look from the outside” at a person’s mental life. Lyrical hero either directly expresses his feelings and emotions, or engages in psychological introspection, reflection, or, finally, indulges in lyrical reflection and meditation. The subjectivity of lyrical psychologism makes it, on the one hand, very expressive and deep, and on the other hand, it limits its capabilities in understanding the inner world of a person. In part, such restrictions also apply to psychologism in drama, since the main way of reproducing the inner world in it is the monologues of the characters, which are in many ways similar to lyrical statements. Other methods of revealing a person’s mental life in drama began to be used quite late, in the 19th century. and especially in the 20th century. These are techniques such as gestural and facial behavior of characters, features of mise-en-scène, intonation pattern of a role, creation of a certain psychological atmosphere with the help of scenery, sound and noise design, etc. However, under all circumstances, dramaturgical psychologism is limited by the conventions inherent in this literary genre.
The greatest potential for depicting the inner world of a person has the epic genre of literature, which has developed a very perfect structure of psychological forms and techniques.
Psychologism as conscious aesthetic principle, the dominant style in the work of specific writers is realized in certain forms. As a result of observations of extensive art material many researchers come to the conclusion that, with all their diversity, they can nevertheless be brought into some kind of system.
Modern literary criticism identifies three main forms of manifestation of psychologism in literature. Two of these forms were designated by I. Strakhov, who argued that the main forms of psychological analysis can be divided into portrayal of characters from the inside, that is, through artistic knowledge of the inner world of the characters, which is expressed through inner speech, images of memory and imagination, as well as psychological analysis "from the outside", expressed in psychological interpretation writer of expressive features of speech, speech behavior, facial expressions and other means of manifestation of the psyche.
A. B. Esin suggests calling the first form of psychological image “ direct", and the second " indirect”, since in it we learn about the hero’s inner world not directly, but through external symptoms of a psychological state.
L. Ya. Ginzburg also talks about two main methods of psychological analysis - direct (in the form of the author’s reflections, introspection of the characters) and indirect (through the depiction of gestures and actions that the reader must interpret).
With some differences in details, researchers, however, actually speak of two dominant forms of psychologism in the literature:
1. A depiction of a person’s inner life “from the outside”, from the point of view of an outside observer, through a description, characterization of the external manifestations of certain emotions, states - facial expressions, gestures, actions, psychological portrait and landscape, etc. The reader must comprehend, compare the facts offered to him and draw conclusions about what is happening in the soul of the hero of the work - indirect form.
2. The hero is revealed “from the inside” - through an internal monologue, confession, diaries, letters, in which he himself talks about his condition, or through direct author’s comments, reflections on the character’s feelings - straight form.
In essence, both forms are analytical. In the first case, analysis turns out to be the prerogative of the reader's consciousness. Of course, this is only possible under the condition that the writer himself, in the process of writing the work, has done a tremendous amount of research work, penetrating into the hidden recesses of the souls of his characters, hidden from external view, and finding their adequate external manifestations. In fact, analysis in this form is present implicitly, as if behind the text of the work of art itself. In the second case, the analysis is presented explicitly, manifested in the very fabric of the artistic narrative.
A. B. Esin points out the possibility of another, third way to inform the reader about the thoughts and feelings of a character - with the help of naming, an extremely brief designation of those processes that take place in his inner world, and proposes to call this form of psychologism “ summarily denoting". The researcher states: “<…>the same psychological state can be reproduced using different forms psychological image. You can, for example, say: “I was offended by Karl Ivanovich because he woke me up” - this will be a summary form. You can depict external signs of resentment: tears, frowning eyebrows, stubborn silence - this is an indirect form. But you can, as Tolstoy did, reveal a psychological state using a direct form of psychological image.” The “summary-designating” form does not imply analytical efforts on the part of the reader - the feeling is precisely named and designated. There are no attempts here by the author to artistically comprehend the laws of the internal process, to trace its stages.
P. Skaftymov wrote about this method, comparing the features of the psychological image in Stendhal and L. Tolstoy: “Stendhal mainly follows the path of verbal designation of feelings. Feelings are named, but not shown." Tolstoy, according to the scientist, traces the process of feeling through time and thereby recreates it with greater liveliness and artistic power.
A. B. Esin believes that we can talk about psychologism as a special, qualitatively defined phenomenon that characterizes the originality of the style of a given work of art or writer only when a “direct” form of depicting mental movements and thought processes, including those that do not or do not always find external expression. At the same time, the “summary-designating form” does not leave literature, but enters into interaction with “direct” and “indirect”, which enriches and deepens each of them.
The same three-stage division of forms of psychological analysis is adhered to by psychologist Vida Gudonienė, who noted that the direct form of psychologism is achieved through self-disclosure - the flow of thoughts and feelings in the conscious and subconscious literary hero(through internal monologue, diary entries, dreams, confessions of the character and such a technique as “stream of consciousness”). Indirect psychologism is a description of facial expressions, speech, gestures and other signs of the external manifestation of the hero’s psychology. The summary-designating form of psychological analysis according to V. Gudonen appears in a literary work in the case when the author not only names the character’s feelings, but also speaks about them in the form of indirect speech, using such means as portraits and landscapes.
Each form of psychological image has different cognitive, visual and expressive capabilities.
In addition to forms, they are subject to the task of deep mastery and reproduction of the inner world. techniques And ways images of a person, everything artistic media at the disposal of the writer. All scientists studying the problems of psychologism, to one degree or another, touched upon the issues of using techniques, methods, artistic means revealing the inner world of the characters, but considered these issues at an empirical rather than a systemic general theoretical level.
The difficulty of systematizing the techniques and methods of psychologism in literature is evidenced by the attempt to study this problem in the works of Esin. He notes that there are many methods of psychological depiction: this is the organization of the narrative, the use of artistic details, and ways of describing the inner world, etc.
To evaluate psychological analysis, it is also extremely important to take into account how the narration is conducted in a literary work, that is, what narrative-compositional form the work has.
According to Esin, the story of a person’s inner life can be told both from first, and from third party Moreover, the first form is historically earlier (until the end of the 18th century it was considered the most widespread and appropriate). These forms have different capabilities. First-person narration creates a greater illusion of credibility of the psychological picture, since the person talks about himself. In some cases, such a story takes on the character of a confession, which enhances the artistic impression. This narrative form is used mainly when there is one main character, whose consciousness and psyche are followed by the author and the reader, and the other characters are secondary, and their inner world is practically not depicted (“Confession” by J.-J. Rousseau, the autobiographical trilogy of L. N. Tolstoy, “The Teenager” by F. M. Dostoevsky etc.).
Third person narration has its advantages in depicting the inner world. This is exactly the form that allows the author, without any restrictions, to introduce the reader into the inner world of the character and show it in detail and deeply. With this method of narration, for the author there are no secrets in the hero’s soul: he knows everything about him, can trace in detail the internal processes, explain the cause-and-effect relationship between impressions, thoughts, and experiences. The narrator can comment on the course of psychological processes and their meaning as if from the outside, talk about those mental movements that the hero himself does not notice or which he does not want to admit to himself. At the same time, the narrator can psychologically interpret the external behavior of the hero, his facial expressions, body movements, changes in the portrait, etc.
Third-person narration provides very wide opportunities for incorporating a variety of psychological depiction techniques into a work: internal monologues, intimate and public confessions, excerpts from diaries, letters, dreams, visions, etc. can easily and freely fit into such a narrative element.
Third person narration deals most freely with artistic time: it can dwell for a long time on the analysis of fleeting psychological states and very briefly inform about long periods that do not carry a psychological load and have, for example, the nature of plot connections. This makes it possible to increase the “specific weight” of the psychological image in common system narrative, switch the reader's interest from the details of the action to the details of mental life. In addition, the psychological image in these conditions can reach extreme detail and exhaustive completeness: a psychological state that lasts minutes, or even seconds, can stretch out into several pages in the narration about it; Perhaps the most striking example of this is the episode of Praskukhin’s death noted by N.G. Chernyshevsky in Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories.
Finally, third-person psychological narration makes it possible to depict the inner world of not one, but several characters, which is much more difficult to do with another method.
A special narrative form, which was often used by psychological writers of the 19th–20th centuries, is improperly direct inner speech. This is a speech that formally belongs to the author (narrator), but bears the imprint of stylistic and psychological characteristics hero's speech. The words of the hero are woven into the words of the author (narrator), without standing out in any way in the text.
With this technique, words appear in the text of the work that are characteristic of the thinking of the hero, and not the narrator, the structural speech features of internal speech are imitated: double train of thoughts, fragmentation, pauses, rhetorical questions (all this is characteristic of internal speech), the hero’s direct address to himself is used . The form of inappropriately direct inner speech, in addition to diversifying the narrative, makes it more psychologically rich and intense: the entire speech fabric of the work turns out to be “saturated” with the inner word of the hero.
Third-person narration with the inclusion of direct internal speech of the characters somewhat distances the author and reader from the character, or, perhaps, more precisely, it is neutral in this regard and does not imply any specific author’s and reader’s position. The author's commentary on the character's thoughts and feelings is clearly separated from the internal monologue. Thus, the position of the author is quite sharply separated from the position of the character, so that there can be no question of the individuality of the author (and, further, the reader) and the hero being combined. Improperly direct inner speech, which seems to have dual authorship - the narrator and the hero - on the contrary, actively contributes to the emergence of the author's and reader's empathy for the hero. The thoughts and experiences of the narrator, hero and reader seem to merge, and the character’s inner world becomes clear.
Techniques of psychological depiction include psychological analysis And introspection. Their essence is that complex mental states are decomposed into elements and thereby explained and become clear to the reader.
Psychological analysis is used in third-person narration, introspection is used in both first- and third-person narration, as well as in the form of indirect internal speech.
An important and frequently encountered technique of psychologism is internal monologue– direct recording and reproduction of the hero’s thoughts, more or less imitating the real psychological patterns of inner speech. Using this technique, the author seems to “overhear” the hero’s thoughts in all their naturalness, unintentionality and rawness. The psychological process has its own logic, it is whimsical, and its development is largely subject to intuition, irrational associations, seemingly unmotivated convergence of ideas, etc. All this is reflected in internal monologues.
In addition, the internal monologue usually reproduces the speech style of a given character, and therefore his manner of thinking. The scientist notes such features of the internal monologue as subordination to intuition, irrational associations, its ability to reproduce the character’s speech style, and his manner of thinking.
D. Urnov considers a monologue as a statement of the hero addressed to himself, directly reflecting the internal psychological process.
T. Motyleva notes that the internal monologue of many writers became a way to reveal the essential in a person, that essential thing that sometimes is not expressed loudly and hides from human gaze.
Close to the internal monologue is such a technique of psychologism as “ stream of consciousness", this is an internal monologue taken to its logical limit. “Stream of consciousness” represents the ultimate degree, the extreme form of internal monologue. This technique creates the illusion of an absolutely chaotic, disordered movement of thoughts and feelings. L. Tolstoy was one of the first to use it in his work.
In the works of a number of writers of the 20th century. (many of whom came to this technique on their own) it became the main, and sometimes the only form of psychological image. Classic in this regard is the novel by J. Joyce “Ulysses”, in which the stream of consciousness has become the dominant element of the narrative (for example, in the final chapter “Penelope” - Molly Bloom’s monologue - there are not even punctuation marks).
Simultaneously with the quantitative growth (increasing the proportion in the structure of the narrative), the principle of the stream of consciousness also changed qualitatively: in it, moments of spontaneity, rawness, and illogicality of human thinking intensified. The latter circumstance sometimes made individual fragments of works simply incomprehensible. In general, the active use of the stream of consciousness was an expression of the general hypertrophy of psychologism in the work of many writers of the 20th century. (M. Proust, W. Wolfe, early Faulkner, later N. Sarraute, F. Mauriac, and in Russian literature- F. Gladkov, I. Ehrenburg, partly A. Fadeev, early L. Leonov, etc.).
With increased attention to the forms of psychological processes in the works of these writers, the moral and philosophical content was largely lost, so in most cases, sooner or later there was a return to more traditional methods of psychological depiction; Thus, the emphasis moved from the formal to the substantive side of psychologism.
Another technique of psychologism is "dialectics of the soul" This term was first applied to the early works of L. Tolstoy by N. Chernyshevsky, who saw the essence of this principle in the writer’s ability to show how some feelings and thoughts develop from others; “...how a feeling, directly arising from a given situation or impression, subject to the influence of memories and the strength of impressions represented by the imagination, passes into other feelings, again returns to the previous starting point and again and again wanders, changing along the entire chain of memories; how a thought, born of the first sensation, leads to other thoughts, is carried away further and further, merges dreams with actual sensations, dreams of the future with reflection on the present.” The “dialectics of the soul” is understood as a depiction of the very process of mental life; the processes of formation of thoughts, feelings, experiences of the characters, their interweaving and influence on each other are specifically and fully reproduced. Special attention from now on, attention is paid not only to consciousness, but also to the subconscious, which often moves a person, changes his behavior and train of thoughts. But if you show such a chaotic inner world of a person, you may encounter an absolute misunderstanding of it. Therefore, to streamline this flow of thoughts and states of the hero, Tolstoy applies the principle of analytical explanation. The writer breaks down all complex psychological states into components, but at the same time preserves in the reader a feeling of unity, simultaneity of these components of the phenomenon.
One of the techniques of psychologism is artistic detail. In the system of psychologism, almost any external detail is somehow correlated with internal processes, and in one way or another serves the purposes of psychological depiction.
With the non-psychological principle of writing, external details are completely independent, within artistic form they are completely self-sufficient and directly embody the features of a given artistic content. Psychologism, on the contrary, makes external details work to depict the inner world. External details in psychologism, of course, retain their function of directly reproducing vital characteristics, directly expressing artistic content. But they also acquire another important function - to accompany and frame psychological processes. Objects and events enter the stream of thoughts of the characters, stimulate thought, are perceived and emotionally experienced.
External details (portrait, landscape, the world of things) have long been used to psychologically depict mental states in the system of an indirect form of psychologism.
Thus, portrait details (such as “he turned pale,” “blushed,” “he hung his head violently,” etc.) conveyed the psychological state “directly”; in this case, naturally, it was understood that this or that portrait detail was unambiguously correlated with this or that mental movement. Subsequently, details of this kind acquired greater sophistication and were deprived of psychological unambiguity, enriched with overtones, and revealed the ability to “play” on the discrepancy between the external and internal, to individualize the psychological image in relation to an individual character. The portrait characteristic in the system of psychologism is enriched with the author's commentary, clarifying epithets, psychologically deciphered, and sometimes, on the contrary, encrypted so that the reader himself works to interpret this facial or gestural movement.
Among the artistic details with the help of which the external manifestations of the hero’s inner life are shown, A. B. Esin includes facial expressions, plasticity, gestures, speech to the listener, physiological changes, etc. Reproduction of external manifestations of experience is one of the oldest forms of mastering the inner world, but in the system of non-psychological writing, it is capable of giving only the most schematic and superficial drawing of the state of mind, while in the psychological style, details of external behavior, facial expressions, and gestures become an equal and very productive form of deep psychological analysis. This happens for the following reasons.
Firstly, the external detail loses its monopoly position in the system of means of psychological depiction. This is no longer its only or even its main form, as in non-psychological styles, but one of many, and not the most important: leading place takes up internal monologue and the author's narration about hidden mental processes. The writer always has the opportunity to comment on a psychological detail and explain its meaning.
Secondly, the individualization of psychological states mastered in literature leads to the fact that their external expression also loses its stereotyping, becomes unique and inimitable, his for every person and for every shade of condition. It’s one thing when literature depicts the same schematic manifestations of feelings and emotions for everyone and does not go further, and quite another when it depicts, say, a carefully individualized external facial touch, not in isolation, but in combination with other forms of analysis that penetrate depth, into the hidden and not receiving external expression.
External details are used only as one type of psychological image - primarily because not everything in a person’s soul can be expressed in his behavior, voluntary or involuntary movements, facial expressions, etc. Such moments of inner life as intuition, guesswork , suppressed volitional impulses, associations, memories cannot be depicted through external expression.
Details landscape also very often have a psychological meaning. It has long been noticed that certain states of nature are somehow correlated with certain human feelings and experiences: the sun - with joy, rain - with sadness, etc. Therefore, landscape details from the earliest stages of the development of literature were successfully used to create in a work of a certain psychological atmosphere or as a form of indirect psychological depiction, when the hero’s state of mind is not described directly, but is, as it were, “transmitted” to the nature around him, and often this technique is accompanied by psychological parallelism or comparison. In the further development of literature, this technique became more and more sophisticated; the possibility was mastered not directly, but indirectly, of correlating mental movements with one or another state of nature. At the same time, the character’s state may correspond to it, or, on the contrary, may contrast with it.
An external detail may by itself, without correlation and interaction with the hero’s inner world, mean nothing at all, have no independent meaning - a phenomenon completely impossible for a non-psychological style. Thus, the famous oak tree in “War and Peace” as such does not represent anything and does not embody any character. Only by becoming the impression of Prince Andrei, one of the key moments in his thoughts and experiences, does this external detail acquire artistic meaning.
External details may not directly enter into the process of the characters’ inner life, but only indirectly relate to it. Very often, such a correlation is observed when using a landscape in the system of psychological writing, when the character’s mood corresponds to a particular state of nature or, conversely, contrasts with it.
Unlike portrait and landscape, details "material" world began to be used for the purposes of psychological depiction much later - in Russian literature, in particular, only towards the end of the 19th century. Chekhov achieved rare psychological expressiveness of this type of detail in his work. He "pays primary attention to those impressions, which his heroes receive from their environment, from the everyday conditions of their own and other people’s lives, and depicts these impressions as symptoms of the changes that occur in the minds of the heroes.”
Finally, another method of psychologism, somewhat paradoxical at first glance, is default method. It consists in the fact that at some point the writer says nothing at all about the hero’s inner world, forcing the reader to conduct a psychological analysis himself, hinting that the hero’s inner world, although it is not directly depicted, is still quite rich and deserves attention. A striking example- an excerpt from Raskolnikov’s last conversation with Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. This is the culmination of the dialogue: the investigator has just directly announced to Raskolnikov that he considers him the murderer; The nervous tension of the stage participants reaches its highest point:
“It wasn’t me who killed,” Raskolnikov whispered, like frightened little children when they are captured at the scene of a crime.
“No, it’s you, Rodion Romanych, you, and there’s no one else,” Porfiry whispered sternly and with conviction.
They both fell silent, and the silence lasted even strangely long, about ten minutes. Raskolnikov leaned his elbows on the table and silently ran his fingers through his hair. Porfiry Petrovich sat quietly and waited. Suddenly Raskolnikov looked contemptuously at Porfiry.
– Again, you’re up to the old standards, Porfiry Petrovich! All for the same tricks of yours: how can you not get tired of this, really?”
It is obvious that in these ten minutes that the heroes spent in silence, psychological processes did not stop. And, of course, Dostoevsky had every opportunity to depict them in detail: to show what Raskolnikov thought, how he assessed the situation, and what psychological state he was in. But there is no psychological image as such here, and yet the scene is obviously saturated with psychologism.
The technique of silence became most widespread in the works of Chekhov, and after him in the works of many other writers of the 20th century, both domestic and foreign.
In the literature of the 20th century. The “point of view” of the narrator and the relationship between the points of view of the subjects of the narrative (i.e., the narrator and the character himself - the hero) become especially significant and significant from the psychological side. The very category of “point of view” underlies the two dominant types of psychologism – objective and subjective (relating respectively to the external and internal psychological point of view).
The external point of view implies that, for the narrator, the character's inner world and behavior are the immediate objects of psychological analysis. This type of psychologism involves a third-person narration, in which the techniques of central consciousness and multiple reflections of the personality of literary characters operate. The technique of central consciousness (widely used by I. S. Turgenev) implies narration and assessment of the material by a literary hero who is not the center of the novel’s action, but who has the intellectual and sensory abilities for a deep and thorough analysis of what this hero has seen and experienced. The technique of multiplicity of reflection, in contrast to the technique of central consciousness, is directly related to the presence of several points of view aimed at one object. This achieves the versatility and objectivity of the created image of the literary character's personality.
Let us turn to the second type of psychological point of view - the internal one, which implies that the subject and object of psychological analysis represent a single whole and are therefore fused together. That is, this type of psychological analysis involves first-person narration. Accordingly, such techniques as diary entries of literary characters, their internal monologue, confession, as well as the “stream of consciousness” of the characters can be used here.
In the 19th–20th centuries. the situation in the literature is changing somewhat as the tendency towards distrust of the author’s authoritarianism is strengthening. This process marked the transition of literature to the subjectivization of narration in a literary work and the widespread use by writers of such a technique as psychological subtext.
Psychological subtext is a unique form of dialogue between the author and the reader, when the latter must independently conduct a psychological analysis of a literary character, based on the author’s hints - the narrator is helped in this by rhythm, silence, gradation, as well as repetitions of words and constructions. The use of psychological subtext was characteristic of such domestic masters as A. P. Chekhov and I. S. Turgenev, and among foreign authors it is necessary to mention W. Wolfe and E. Hemingway. The subjectivization of the narrative, in turn, led to the appearance in it of a metaphorical image of the state of the world, “poetically generalized, emotionally rich, expressively expressed.” To create a metaphorical image of the state of the world in the narrative, writers introduce double characters into their literary work and use such a method of psychological analysis as a dream. The technique of duality in the psychological aspect was discovered through the literature of romanticism, in which authors could depict two intertwined realities, one of which was directly connected with the main “I” of the character, and the other reality belonged to the “double” of the literary hero created by the writer. And dreaming as a technique of psychologism was a kind of bridge between these worlds. IN romantic literature the dream helped the writer create an atmosphere of mystery and mysticism in his work. In modern literature, sleep acquires a special psychological load. Dreams reflect the unconscious and semi-conscious desires and impulses of the character, conveying the intensity of the experiences of his inner world, which contributes to the self-knowledge and introspection of the literary hero. At the same time, dreams, being caused not by events preceding the hero’s life, but by the psychological shocks he experienced, no longer correlate with the plot outline of the work, but with the inner world of a particular character. According to I. V. Strakhov, dreams in a literary work are the writer’s analysis of “the psychological states and characters of the characters.”
All of the above forms and methods of creating psychologism are used by writers both in adult and in children's (teenage) literature.
For many years, the ongoing debate around the question of whether there is specificity in children's literature and whether it is necessary has been resolved in favor of recognizing the specificity. The specificity of a children's work lies not only in the form, but, above all, in the content, in a special reflection of reality. For children, as V. G. Belinsky pointed out, “the subjects are the same as for adults,” but the approach to the phenomena of reality, due to the peculiarities of a child’s worldview, is selective: what is closer to a child’s inner world is seen by them in close-up, what is interesting to an adult, but less close to the child’s soul, seen as if at a distance. A children's writer depicts the same reality as an “adult,” but brings to the fore what the child sees in close-up. Changing the angle of view on reality leads to a shift in emphasis in the content of the work, and the need for special stylistic techniques arises. Children's writer It is not enough to know the aesthetic ideas of children, their psychology, the peculiarities of children’s worldview at various age stages, it is not enough to have “childhood memory.” He is required to have high artistic skill and a natural ability as an adult, having deeply known the world, to see it every time from a child’s point of view, but at the same time not to remain captive of the child’s worldview, but to always be ahead of it in order to lead the reader along.
Thus, psychologism is realized in a work in a direct, indirect or summary-generalizing form with the help of specific techniques: indirect inner speech, psychological analysis and introspection, internal monologue, as well as its most vivid form - the “stream of consciousness”, the “dialectic” technique souls", artistic detail, technique of silence, psychological overtones, duality or dreams.
General forms and psychologistic techniques are used individually by every writer, including the author of works for children and adolescents. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all psychologism. His different types master and reveal the inner world of a person from different sides, enriching the reader each time with a new psychological and aesthetic experience.
The forest, piercingly brunette, outlined the water, behind it the water rose like an oblique greenish sheet. Pantelei Prokofievich fingered the handles of the scoop with stubby fingers.
- Turn it into the water! Hold it, otherwise it will cut with a saw!
- I suppose!
A large yellow-red carp rose to the surface, foamed the water and, bending its blunt forehead, again plunged into the depths.
- It’s pressing, my hand is already numb... No, wait!
- Hold it, Grishka!
- I'm holding it!
- Look under the longboat, don’t let him go!.. Look!
Taking a breath, Grigory led the carp, which was lying on its side, to the longboat. The old man was about to reach out with a ladle, but the carp, straining last strength, again went into the depths.
- Raise his head! Let the wind take a breath, it will calm down. Having led out, Grigory again pulled the exhausted carp to the longboat. Yawning with his mouth wide open, he poked his nose into the rough side and stood, shimmering with the moving orange gold of his fins.
- I fought back! - Panteley Prokofievich grunted, prying it with a ladle.
We sat for another half hour. The battle of the carp died down.
- Get out, Grishka. The last one must have been harnessed, we can’t wait.
We got together. Grigory pushed off from the shore. We've made it halfway. Grigory saw from his father’s face that he wanted to say something, but the old man silently looked at the farmstead’s courtyards scattered under the mountain.
“You, Grigory, that’s what...” he began hesitantly, fiddling with the strings of the bag lying under his feet, “I notice that you are, in no way, with Aksinya Astakhova...”
Gregory blushed deeply and turned away. The collar of the shirt, cutting into the muscular neck, burned by the sun, squeezed out a white stripe.
“Look, guy,” the old man continued harshly and angrily, “I’m going to talk to you in the wrong way.” Stepan is our neighbor, and I won’t allow you to spoil him with his woman. Here things can get really serious, but I warn you in advance: if I notice, I’ll screw it up!
Pantelei Prokofievich clenched his fingers into a knotted fist, squinting his bulging eyes, watching as the blood drained from his son’s face.
“Slanders,” Grigory muttered, as if out of water, and looked straight at his father’s bluish bridge of his nose.
- Keep quiet.
– There are few things people say...
- Tsk, son of a bitch!
Grigory lay down over the oar. The longboat came in leaps and bounds. The water lurking behind the stern danced in curlicues.
Both were silent until the pier. Already approaching the shore, my father reminded:
- Don’t forget, but no, to close all the games from now on. So that I don’t take a step off the base. That's it!
Grigory remained silent. Adjacent to the longboat, he asked:
- Should I give the fish to the women?
“Bring it to the merchants and sell it,” the old man softened, “you’ll get some money for tobacco.”
Grigory walked behind his father, biting his lips. “Take a bite, dad, even if I’m hobbled, I’ll go away to the game,” he thought, angrily gnawing at his father’s steep back of his head with his eyes.
(M. A. Sholokhov, “Quiet Don”.)