characteristic features of the essay. The meaning of the word essay in the dictionary of literary terms

Essay - 1. A small literary work, short description life events (usually socially significant). Documentary, journalistic, everyday essay.2. General statement of a question. Essay on Russian history. (Dictionary)

Essay - 1. In fiction, one of the varieties of the story, is highly descriptive, mainly affects social problems .. A journalistic, including documentary, essay sets out and analyzes various facts and phenomena of social life, usually accompanied by a direct interpretation by their author. (Encyclopedic Dictionary)

So, based on the definitions of dictionaries, we can conclude that characteristic feature essay is documented, the reliability of facts, events, about which in question. It is called real names and the names of the persons portrayed, real, not fictional places of events, the real situation is described, the time of action is indicated. In the essay, as in work of art, are used figurative means, elements of artistic typification are introduced.

The essay is the most characteristic genre for journalism, built according to the laws of dramaturgy and based on facts, it is as close as possible to artistic genres. The depth of the author's understanding - distinguishing feature essay. He not only describes, comments or analyzes the fact, but also melts it into the creative consciousness of the author. The personality of the author is no less important in an essay than a fact or event. This may include creative portrait. Right choice expressive means is of fundamental importance. TO expressive means include: style, language, selection of images, comparisons and epithets, composition, etc.

Portrait essay. The hero of a portrait essay is a specific person with certain advantages and disadvantages. In a portrait essay, the author gives not only a portrait in the narrow sense of the word, but also a description of the environment in which the hero of the essay lives and works, talks about his work, interests, hobbies, and his relationships with others. All this together helps to reveal the inner world of the hero of the essay. Real portrait essay arises as a result artistic analysis the personality of the hero, based on the study of its various aspects (moral, intellectual, creative, etc.), i.e. as a result of revealing the character of the hero.

Problem essay. In the center of the problematic essay are socially significant issues: political, economic, moral and ethical, etc. The author of the essay tries to intervene in solving important problems, enters into polemics with his opponents.

Portrait sketches can be used in this genre, but the main thing here is not the character of this or that person, but his attitude to these issues, different points of view, different views. In this essay, you can also find travel notes, sketches. But they also serve as a confirmation of the author's position in the dispute, the expression of a certain point of view, one of the means of proof. An essay of this type is polemical in nature.

In its logical construction, a problematic essay may be similar to such a representative of analytical genres as an article. The reason for this similarity is, first of all, the dominance of the research principle in the course of displaying the problem situation. As in the article, in the problematic essay the author finds out the causes of a particular problem, tries to determine its further development, and identify solutions.

At the same time, a problematic essay can always be quite easily distinguished from a problematic article. Most important difference lies in the fact that in a problem essay the development of a problem situation is never presented, so to speak, "in its naked form", i.e. in the form of statistical patterns or generalized judgments, conclusions, etc., which is characteristic of an article as a genre. The problem in the essay acts as an obstacle that quite specific people with their advantages and disadvantages are trying to overcome. On the surface of this or that activity that the essayist explores, the problem very often manifests itself through a conflict (or conflicts), through clashes of people's interests. By investigating these conflicts, their development, he can get to the heart of the problem.

At the same time, observation of the development of the conflict in the essay is usually accompanied by all sorts of experiences, both on the part of the heroes of the essay and on the part of the author himself. Trying to comprehend the essence of what is happening, a journalist often draws all sorts of associations, parallels, deviations from the topic. In an essay, this is a common thing, while in a problematic article they are out of place. It is impossible to write a problematic essay without understanding the field of activity that is affected by it. Only a deep insight into the essence of the matter can lead the author to an accurate understanding of the problem that underlies the situation under study, and describe it in an appropriate way in his essay.

A travel essay is a description of certain events, incidents, meetings with different people that the author encounters in the course of his creative journey(trips, business trips, etc.) Of course, a good travel essay cannot be a simple enumeration or presentation of everything that the author saw during his trip. And the publication for which the essay is being prepared can hardly afford to publish everything that a journalist sees. One way or another, the essayist has to select the most interesting, the most important. What is considered the most interesting and important depends on the idea that he develops during the journey. Of course, the idea may arise long before the creative trip. The source material for it can be both past personal observations of a journalist, and newly received information from the same newspapers, magazines, radio and television. But it is possible that the journalist will receive a certain task from his editor, or the idea will arise under the influence of some other factors (say, as a result of the journalist's participation in some political action). As in the course of preparing any serious and voluminous material (and travel essays are exactly like that), in the course of preparing an essay, already at the stage of collecting information, this plan can be adjusted or even radically changed - it all depends on the nature of the information that will get at the disposal of the journalist.

It is on this fully formed idea or, as it is called in another way, the main idea of ​​the future work that all the facts and impressions collected by the author during a creative trip should work.

Thus, the essay is one of the most important and difficult genres of artistic journalism. Its peculiarity lies in the combination of two components: artistic and analytical. It is important for the author of the essay not only to explore his subject, but to comprehend it artistically, to emphasize the problematic nature of the situation with visual and figurative means, to show the general in a particular case. It is the artistry of the essay that is the necessary condition for its effectiveness.

Artistic and visual means play a huge role in the essay. The strength of the essayist lies in the wide and skillful use of landscape, portrait, dialogue, description, speech characteristics.

What is the purpose of the essay in the text? There are four main points here.

First, an important characteristic of texts this genre- documentary. The essayist seeks to present in detail what happened, without missing a single significant detail.

Secondly, the subject of the essay is a typical case, classical in the conditions of the present. That is, a case that vividly characterizes and illustrates the stage of social development.

Thirdly, this typical case is a manifestation of an explicit or hidden conflict (contradiction). Drama - intrinsic trait essay.

Fourthly, the image is of great importance in the essay. Emotional, dramatic and organically rich, it is a "generalization of life and an assessment of life phenomena."

V.A. Bogdanov, relying on the typology of V.G. Belinsky, claims that Leskov "found his real form in the genre of the essay. He can depict reality, seen and studied by him, if you like - to create, but from ready-made material given by reality. He must always adhere to the soil of reality."

The main feature of the essay is writing from nature. Fiction plays a much smaller role in the essay than in other literary genres. Typification in the essay is achieved, in addition to choosing typical phenomena, the selection of traits that are especially typical for the phenomenon. The essayist artistically embodies real historical persons and events in the word, forming an opinion about them on the basis of a systematic study of the object. Judgment is achieved through analysis, and the conclusion and conclusion are its logical completion.

The composition of the essays is very different: they can consist of episodes depicting meetings, conversations, relationships between characters, connected only by an external causal sequence; from descriptions of the conditions and circumstances of the life of society and nature; from discussions about them.

Leskov uses the principles of the poetics of "little things" in his essays. He introduces many details into his narrative, which, at first glance, do not carry any accusatory charge, but have only a "situational" meaning. However, gradually these details capture the reader's attention more and more and turn out to be no less significant than the major events driving the plot.

To give unity to such heterogeneous components, the activity of the author's generalizing thought, the expressiveness and coloring of his speech are important; big role can play the introduction of the narrator, conveying his observations, impressions, describing meetings and conversations with the main characters.

The essay is actually artistic, creatively typifying characters in a "moralistic" aspect.

There is an essay that is predominantly journalistic, expressing a topical interest in a certain state or development trends. social life and reproducing its real typical features, and often significant individual facts, but without their emotional implementation and sharpening (speculation). Such essays often contain general discourses of the author or characters, analyzing and evaluating the depicted life (for example, G.I. weekdays" by V.V. Ovechkin, clarifying the contradictions of collective farm life in a difficult post-war decade). But there is an essay and a purely documentary, extremely accurately reproducing real facts and phenomena, often, however, accompanied by a direct journalistic interpretation or assessment of the author-narrator; such an essay is usually considered as a genre of journalism. Some researchers recognize only a documentary essay as a true essay, and a specific genre feature essay - documentary.

The heyday of essay writing in history national literature arises when in society, in connection with the crisis public relations or with the emergence of a new way of life, “moralistic” interests sharply increase.

In the works of researchers of the genre there is no single definition of an essay. Etymologically, the origin of the word "essay" is associated with the semantics of verbs "delineate – outline."

You can use the following definition: Feature article- a short narrative work, the main purpose of which is a figurative illustration or figurative information" .

To the begining

§1. Genre specifics

The main difference between the essay as an artistic and journalistic genre and the genres of informational and analytical is as follows: it incorporates certain features of two areas - journalism and artistic speech. This means that both journalistic and artistic elements should be indicated as genre-forming features of the essay, focusing on the fact that at all stages of creating a text (according to the rhetorical model), the dual nature of the essay will necessarily be taken into account. The stylistic features of the essay include:

1. Author's "I". The journalistic element is created by the direct reflections of the author, the direct intervention of the author in the narrative, and often the author acts as actor one way or another associated with the depicted hero.

2. Optimization- this is a set of "stylistic devices by which the author comes into contact with his reader, making him a participant in his message, his feelings, bringing him as close as possible to what he wants to have him a participant in, straining his interest and in his own elegant way playing with this interest" ( L. Bulakhovsky).

3. Sketchiness(essay). Essay, first of all, is expressed in a certain "sketch", "freedom" of presentation, some kind of deliberate roughness of form. In the very nature of the essay there is a tendency to single out the most typical, main, bright, the desire to outline the main contours of the event, to sketch a portrait of the hero.

Due to the limited size of an essay, especially a newspaper one, the essayist cannot carefully write out events and characters. The very nature of the essay contains the concept of some fluency, the need to grasp the type of person, to sketch at least some dotted lines of his character, distinctive features.

4. Documentation. The publicist deals with different people, problems that can be expressed in specific data-calculations, specific terms, scientific formulas, specific names of names, localities, etc. As a rule, in 99 cases out of 100 the essay in the newspaper is documentary. When creating an essay, the author relies on facts to fully reveal the topic.

5. Topicality. The essay appears in the newspaper almost daily. Hence its essential sign - topicality, "momentary" response to an important event, problem.

Closely related to this feature is another one - the relative brevity of the text. Essay - a genre published on the pages of newspapers and magazines, i.e. genre limited in scope. Therefore, a large amount of accumulated material requires a concise, specific presentation.

6. Hero typing. This is, first of all, the selection of the most essential that exists in life, reality. The essay is always based on concrete life facts, but the fact in its singularity and uniqueness interests the essayist as a manifestation of the general, typical. A real life fact can be replenished with additional information, details in the depiction of the essayist - in this way, elements of artistic generalization are manifested.

Choosing to depict a person with all manifestations of human activity, a problem, a journey, a conflict, the author takes into account two planes of a newspaper essay: typical and unique, while narrating, preserving the individuality of a person, her activities, her social relationships, he seeks to reveal the typical, socially conditioned.

Typification is closely related to another property of the essay - figurativeness.

7. Imagery. To show a hero, an event is possible only if the means of artistic representation are used, creating an image. The author of the essay creates a generalized collective image, reflecting typical features in it, but "the fact in the essay is important both in itself and as a starting point." He, as in any work of art, is the material for creating images. The facts in the essay are comprehended through images.

So, since the essay has as its main subject human individuality with its deeds, connections, joys and anxieties, it is possible to show the hero under the condition of an artistic image, creating an image and using the figurative means of language.

8. Associativity. Describing a phenomenon, the essayist often compares it with another that happened at a completely different time, in a different place. Communication of events - in author's associations.

9. A certain amount of fiction. Factual reliability, targeting of the essay form the basis of the fact, therefore the essayist's right to fiction is limited by the factual basis of the essay. Still, there is a certain amount of fiction in the essay. The author enhances some forms of fiction, emphasizes some features of the hero in his portrait at the expense of others.

So, it is generally accepted that the essay combines the features of two styles: artistic and journalistic.

Thus, an essay can be defined as an artistic and journalistic genre in which the core of the material is the author's "I", the thematic center is a person and everything connected with him and his activities. This combination of two styles is reflected in the genre diversity of the essay.

It is customary to distinguish the following types of genre: sketch, portrait sketch, problem and travel.

Almost all of them have the properties listed above. Their main difference lies in the choice and development of the theme.

TRAVEL ESSAY

Travel essay- the most "ancient" variety of the essay genre. Its purpose is already reflected in the title - to state the path, the route traveled by the author. Its distinctive feature is a certain predetermination, the predetermination of the plot. Road observations, meetings, events witnessed by the author, impressions of new countries, localities, cities, a wide panorama - this is the richest material that opens up to the author of a travel essay.

Y. Smuul, V. Peskov, A. Agranovsky, M. Sturua and others are considered famous essayists who worked in the travel essay genre. Each of these authors, creating original, individual texts, nonetheless certainly took into account the main features of this genre.

One of the features of the travel essay is the gradual development of the image: the author moves from village to village, from city to city, from country to country, gradually accumulating impressions and facts. It can also be impressions from one city, from one route, acquaintance with which occurs gradually.

Consider the features of a travel essay on the example of text IN.Peskov"Breadwinner of the North" ( KP. 1999).

V. Peskov

FEEDER OF THE NORTH

The tundra is inhospitable and joyless in winter. Frost and wind reign on the endless plain. No manifestation of life! Seems like an uninhabited planet. But what is it there near the horizon? A cloud of steam, and something dark underneath. Binoculars, burning the face with eyepieces, bring the picture closer - you suddenly see a stunted dense forest stirring in the wind. Ba! Yes, those are horns. It's a herd of deer! The mobile brown mass is approaching.

You suddenly see a shepherd with a dog that does not allow the herd to spread out over the white expanse. Nearby, a cluster of animals looks like one organism. But you distinguish the details and suddenly see a deer next to you, not at all like those handsome and proud men who roar through the forests in autumn. Squat, with a blunt head, which is decorated with horns, exorbitantly large, and some skinny. And it turns out: with horns - females. (In other deer, females do not have antlers.) Males have shed their antlers after pre-winter wedding fights, but females will wear them all winter. For what? The shepherd must have known. But he shrugs.

Dispersed, the deer began to feed. God, with what difficulty they got food here! They dug snow with their hooves, dipped their hairy muzzles into the pits and found something there on the slightly bare ground. The frost was about thirty with a prickly wind. The helicopter pilot signaled us to hurry. After giving the shepherd a supply of cigarettes and some of the shoulder bags, we got up and already saw a herd from above. Trying not to scare him, we made a circle. Still, it was clear: the sound and something moving at the top frightened the deer. They tried to huddle together, apparently, they felt: it was safer that way. In memory and on the film there was a black scattering of poppy seeds on the tablecloth.

In the North, life is hard for everyone. And in the summer, when the midge eats, and in the winter, when everything is wrapped in snow and when the wind and frost know no mercy. But life, when you look closely, still warms here in winter. Thievishly looking around, the fox ran. The raven, creaking with a pen, flew low somewhere on urgent business. Partridges took off and immediately disappeared into a whitish masking haze. Deer in sight. Although undersized, they look like a challenge to cold, space, and obvious starvation. It is in this region that they are adapted to live. Stay south of the tundra for the summer, the deer would not have endured the heat, unless the mountains would have replaced the saving North for them. Where he was born, there he was fit!

A deer is born in cold weather. It is terrible to see: from the mother's womb, he falls directly into the snow. Of course, the mother deer is looking for thawed patches in the snow for childbirth, but not everywhere in April there are thawed patches, and the frosts are still strong. Fate, as it were, immediately declares to the baby: such is life, if you survive, you will become an adult deer, if you don’t survive, the foxes will pick it up. Most survive, otherwise the deer family would have dried up long ago, despite the fact that only one baby is brought by a mother-important.

The deer is immediately adapted to survival. Very warm coat saves from the cold. Very thick, nourishing milk from a caring mother. And almost immediately after birth, the deer is ready to stand on its feet, to walk, and soon to run after the herd.

An adult deer, too, is perfection itself in opposing the North. The hairs in its fur have air passages. This increases thermal insulation. The deer has almost no sweat glands. And he does not suffer from the cold. It suffers from overheating - it is hot in the tundra in summer. In such cases, the reindeer herd rushes to the sea to the cold saving breeze or looks for the remains of snow, on which it rolls, cooling. Only now, having gathered together everything I know about deer, I suddenly found the key to their strange behavior in Alaska, where oil is produced. There, for some reason, they gather near various iron buildings, barracks and towers.

Why are they attractive to them? We could not get an answer to this question from the oilmen. And now I suddenly realized: a shadow! A saving shadow, which, except near these buildings, cannot be found in the tundra. Reliable fur for winter becomes a hindrance in summer.

Winter snow for deer is a small obstacle. The hooves are split and wide apart. In addition, the rear "toes" of the hooves are flush with the front ones. And hair grows between the hooves, creating a supporting stiff brush. The weight load on the snow in the reindeer is four times weaker than in the elk. In the snow, a deer feels about the same as people on skis.

Finding food is hard work. We have to break the snow. Deer can do this with their hooves. But you also need to stick your muzzle into a prickly, hard hole. The deer is also ready for this - the head, lips and space between the nostrils are covered in this eater with protective hair that protects from wounds. Half a meter of snow is not a hindrance to a deer. Now, if deeper, then we should no longer talk about life, but about survival. And the thaw is deadly for the herd, when the inevitable after frost grabs the snow with an impenetrable hard bark. But the deer leave the extreme oceanic tundra by winter.

With the first cold weather, the reindeer begin their great nomadic pastures, follow the beaten paths of thousands of years, on which mountains and rivers meet. In Alaska, an old riverman-captain said: “There was time - for a day, or even more, they stopped steamboats to let the deer overcome the Yukon.” And now there are still places where many thousands of herds of deer pass. In Alaska, at the exit to the tundra from the mountains, we hoped to shoot this spectacle. We're late! They saw only the ground stamped with hooves, lost antlers, shreds of wool and ribs of deer killed by wolves.

In summer, the scourge of deer is gadflies and midges. From these bloodsuckers they rush to the saving wind by the ocean. The feeding midge makes them run almost continuously. And, despite the abundance of food, deer with a short summer say goodbye skinny. They begin to fatten quickly when the midge disappears and when mushrooms grow in the tundra - the biggest delicacy and the most nutritious food for the indigenous northerners. They give preference to the same mushrooms as people - boletus, boletus, boletus. Some of the deer become drug addicts, addicted to fly agaric mushrooms. Such a beast is constantly on the move, constantly excited. This is a hindrance to his wild relatives and a bore to the shepherds of the economic herds.

And the main food of deer is peculiar - moss lichen, low-nutrient, devoid of salts and protein vegetation. And only on it do deer hold on, eating reindeer moss in winter and summer, refusing in captivity from more satisfying food. Konstantin Simonov in his diaries gives a funny story of the colonel about reindeer transport in the war. “Unpretentious animal deer! They are so unpretentious that they do not eat anything but their reindeer moss. And where will you get it, this reindeer moss?” In addition to lean reindeer moss and mushrooms, deer in the tundra also eat bird eggs, as well as mice. Thirst for salt makes them drink the bitter-salty ocean water, and in winter run to the shepherd, if he has gone to urinate, they grab the urine-soaked snow.

After wintering in a less windy forest-tundra, in spring the reindeer begin their return trip to their beloved North. Behind them are constantly moving wolves - constant "shepherds" of wild reindeer herds. The wolf will not catch up with a healthy deer. But in a large herd there will always be a sick or weakened one. These end always the same.

Deer are also attacked by bears and wolverines. But there are few of these animals in the tundra, and their speed of running with salt is incomparable. But these animals are always ready to profit from the herd.

Hunt for wild deer and people. This hunt is not easy. The deer is sensitive (it detects danger a kilometer away) and trusts its instinct. In Alaska, we observed a lost week-old fawn. He recklessly rushed towards us, but his innate instinct told him - not that! Roaming helplessly through the valley, he suddenly sensed his mother's footprint and rushed to her by the smell of the footprint, like a rope.

Local hunters approach wild deer for a shot, hiding behind a group of domestic ones, or, moving against the wind, carry their antlers in front of them. And in recent years - the motor! Snowmobile and helicopter. With this power, the deer heart (mystery: it contains a bone) cannot compete. For this reason, as well as from anxiety (how many newcomers are in the tundra!) And the destruction of pastures by technology, the number of deer in this century has decreased by fifteen (!) times.

Wild reindeer are strikingly different from domestic reindeer in size, body and vigor, although they live in approximately equal conditions. But the wild is free, and his subdued fellow serves people without receiving anything in return. Hence the silliness short stature and quiet sadness in large almond-shaped eyes. But different positions do not prevent deer from feeling very close kinship. Wild male choirs often take stag deer out of the domestic herd, and they very soon lose their desire to return to human control. Reindeer were "semi-tamed" thousands of years ago.

Exceptionally adapted to live on the edge of the possible, he made possible life in the North and people. Without the deer, many small peoples of the North could not exist. Everything, literally everything for the life of these people is given by deer. Deer are food: meat and milk. Deer skins are clothes, shoes, blankets, bags, belts and covers for dwellings. Deer is a transport in the endless tundra. Deer blood is a remedy for scurvy. Deer veins are split into threads, antlers and bones were used in the economy when the tundra did not yet know iron. The life of the "reindeer peoples" is poor, primitive. But without a deer, it would be impossible in the North. Only the deer, specialized for life in very harsh conditions, pulled the chain of human life, also specialized, in extremely harsh conditions.

In each zone of the Earth, man has adapted, placed animals at his service. In the middle belt, this is a horse, in the deserts - a camel, in the mountains - llamas and mules, in tropical zones - buffaloes and elephants. But none of these animals in terms of the benefits brought to people can be compared with the reindeer. The deer in the North is life itself.

Genre features

The travel essay intertwines the features of all the varieties of the genre noted above: in it difficult problems of life are posed and ways to solve them are outlined. For example: “the number of wild deer in this century has decreased fifteen (!) times”; it incorporates a sketch (a picture from nature), in which the author depicts what he saw from beginning to end, including a portrait sketch; it captures both the characters of the characters and the circumstances in which they act. For example: "Straightaway adapted deer to survival. Very warm coat saves from the cold. Very thick, nourishing milk from a caring mother. And almost immediately after birth, the deer is ready to stand on its feet, walk, and soon run after the herd.”

In the essay, with special power and brightness, the personality of the author. The author's position, reasoning and evaluations not only help to understand what is depicted, but also connect heterogeneous pictures into a single narrative, i.e. they are the main condition for the movement of the plot. So, in the essay by V. Peskov, his impressions and assessments make it possible to present the pictures more vividly and move from one moment of the story to another: “They tried to huddle together, apparently, they felt: it’s safer that way. A black scattering of poppies on the tablecloth remained in memory and on film.

Travel writing has a lot of potential. It perfectly combines the means of portrait and event essays. For example, considering the life of wild deer, V. Peskov, choosing a successive change of episodes from the life of animals, constantly gives descriptions of deer: “The feeding midge makes them run almost continuously. And, despite the abundance of food, deer with a short summer say goodbye skinny.”

The author is one of the heroes of the story, he acts as a living witness, in some cases, the discoverer. For example: “Only now, having gathered together everything that I know about deer, I suddenly found the key to their behavior in Alaska, where oil is produced ... And now I suddenly realized: a shadow! A saving shadow, which, except near these buildings, cannot be found in the tundra.

They play an important role in the travel essay. details, details- those elements of the image, without which neither the image of a person, nor the situation, nor the picture of the action arises. Let us dwell in detail on those moments, thanks to which the originality of the travel essay genre is created, illustrating them with examples from the same essay by V. Peskov “Breadwinner of the North”.

This is, first of all, landscape fragments to help describe the situation. The landscape is used as a means of determining the time of action; as a way of describing the conditions in which events take place; as an opportunity to convey the mood of the hero.

These are the main functions of landscape microtexts, which are an integral part of the travel essay. So, in the essay “The Breadwinner of the North”, V. Peskov uses several landscape microtexts to describe the winter time, including the following: “But life, when you look closely, is warm here even in winter. Thievishly looking around, the fox ran. The raven, creaking with a pen, flew low somewhere on urgent business. Partridges took off and immediately disappeared into a whitish masking haze.

The living conditions are also repeatedly described by the author with the help of small microtexts or inclusions of descriptions of details (V. Peskov masterfully masters precisely the detail): “But the deer leave the extreme oceanic tundra by winter. With the first cold weather, the deer begin their great nomadic pastures, go along the beaten paths of millennia ... "

Another function of the landscape is to be one of the means of revealing the character of the hero. This possibility is especially clearly traced in the travel essays of V. Peskov, in whose works the main role is given to animal characters, and their description accompanies almost every semantic segment of the text, sometimes representing a whole microtext, sometimes being only separate inclusions in another segment according to the semantic purpose. . For example: “But it is necessary to put into a prickly, hard hole also muzzle. The deer is also ready for this – the head, lips and space between the nostrils are covered in this eater by a protective hair that protects from wounds. Half a meter of snow is not a hindrance to a deer.”

So, pay attention that the microtext-landscape is one of the elements that make up the author's handwriting.

In addition, the presence of such landscape sketches in the travel essay corresponds to the specifics of the genre. With the help of landscapes, the author depicts what he saw, and the details of what he saw form the outline of the essay. In a portrait essay, one description can become the main one, in a travel essay, a scattering of observations throughout the entire text helps to recreate a single picture.

One of these functions is a detailed description of the route and everything seen on it, that is, the description of a person is not an end in itself, but is subject to the general intention of the author.

There are no individual micro-portraits of a person in the analyzed text. But the description of deer can be attributed to the portrait sketch: “But you distinguish the details and suddenly you see a deer next to you, not at all like those handsome and proud ones that roar through the forests in autumn. Squat, with a blunt head, which is decorated with horns, exorbitantly large, but somehow skinny, and it turns out: with horns – females."

Isn't it a wonderful portrait? A portrait that conveys both the desire of the author to describe his heroes, and his feelings at the sight of them. V. Peskov not only admires himself, but also invites readers to this.

Features of the introduction of certain microtexts are associated with the individuality of the author, the manifestation of his author's "I", which is an essential stylistic feature of the genre.

Among all the genres of journalism, the essay is the most personal genre. Its most common feature is the activity of the author's "I", a high degree of his participation in the development, in the movement of the essay plot. The author's "I" of V. Peskov is felt in almost every line of the text: "I unexpectedly found the key to their strange behavior in Alaska"; “In Alaska, at the exit to the tundra from the mountains, we hoped to shoot this spectacle” and etc.

The functions of the author's "I" are diverse. Let us recall the informational genres, where the author acts primarily as a witness. In the essay, along with the function of the author-witness, one can single out the functions of the author-researcher and the author-lyrical hero, which also affects the content (semantic, structural and linguistic) of the text. The functions of the author's "I" are clearly shown in the table.