Foreign literature XX century. 1940–1990: textbook Loshakov Alexander Gennadievich
Topic 12 Julian Barnes: Variations on a Theme of History (Practice)
Julian Barnes: Variations on a Theme of History
(Practical lesson)
The title of the work is A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. the World in 10 1/2 Chapters", 1989), which brought world recognition to the English writer Julian Barnes (Julian Barnes, b. 1946), is very unusual and ironic. It seems to suggest to the reader that he will be dealing with yet another, far from the canon, from the thoughtful version of world history.
The novel consists of separate chapters (short stories), which, at first glance, are in no way connected with each other: their plots and problems differ, their style and time frames are contrasting and heterogeneous. If the first chapter (“Free rider”) presents events from biblical times, then the next (“Guests”) takes the reader to the twentieth century, and the third (“Religious Wars”) returns to 1520.
One gets the impression that the author arbitrarily, on a whim, extracts some of its fragments from history in order to compose one or another story on their basis. Sometimes, without an obvious logical connection, heterogeneous time layers are combined within the same chapter. So, in "Three simple stories” (Chapter Seven), after telling about the incredible events in the life of the passenger of the Titanic, Lawrence Beasley, the author proceeds to reflect on the fact that history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce, and then asks: “What exactly did Jonah lose in the womb whale?" This is followed by stories about the prophet Jonah and about the ship filled with deportees from Nazi Germany Jews. Barnes plays with temporary plans, while he introduces a new narrator into each of the chapters (as a rule, this is a mask under which the author's face is hidden).
Thus, the fragmentary nature of the work of J. Barnes is obvious. Moreover, fragmentation is deliberately accentuated by the author. The absence of a coherent narrative, plot, so-called heroes - all these signs indicate that genre definitionnovel In this case, it's very arbitrary. A. Zverev, in particular, writes about this: “No matter how broadly the possibilities of the novel are understood and no matter how mobile its framework looks, “History of the World in 10% of Chapters” will still not fit in them. There is a set of features that make up the novel, and although any of them can be interpreted as optional, nevertheless, having lost all of them, the novel ceases to be itself" [Zverev 1994: 229].
In the treatise "Postmodern destiny" J.-F. Lyotard, characterizing the art of postmodernism, noted that it “is looking for new ways of depicting, but not in order to get aesthetic pleasure from them, but in order to convey with even greater sharpness the feeling of what cannot be imagined. A postmodern writer or artist is in the position of an artist: the text he writes, the work he creates, in principle, does not obey pre-established rules, they cannot be judged by the well-known criteria of evaluation. These rules and categories are the subject of the search, which leads the work of art itself. The postmodern text, as it were, collects the disintegrating fragments of the Text of Culture, using the principle of montage or collage, thereby striving to recreate the integrity of culture, to give it some meaningful form.
"History of the World." is an innovative work, and its innovative character is in full agreement with the basic principles of postmodernism aesthetics. One must think that the genre form of Barnes's work can be defined through the concept hypertext. As V.P. Rudnev points out, hypertext is constructed in such a way that it “turns into a system, a hierarchy of texts, simultaneously constituting a unity and a multitude of texts”, the hypertext structure itself is capable of provoking the reader “to embark on hypertext swimming, that is, from one reference move on to another” [Rudnev 1997: 69–72]. The hypertext form is able to ensure the integrity of the perception of disparate fragments of the text, it allows you to fix escaping meanings, “the presence of absence” (Derrida) in the form of flexible connections-transitions, link them into something integral, without following the principle of linearity, strict sequence. The non-linear nature of the structure of the hypertext (hypernovel) provides qualitatively new characteristics of the work and its perception: the same text can have several plots and endings, respectively, each of the implementations of possible linkage options composite parts text will determine new moves of interpretation, generate semantic polyphony. At present, the issue of artistic hypertext remains debatable, requiring serious scientific study.
Barnes experiments not only with the actual genre form of the novel, but also with such a variety of it as historical narrative. J. Barnes is close to the thoughts of R. Bart that “a work, by virtue of its structure, has many meanings”, that while reading it “turns into a question posed to the language itself, whose border we strive to measure and probe the borders” , as a result of which it "turns out to be a method of grandiose, endless inquiry about words" [Bart 1987: 373]. Because of this, "history," according to Barthes, "ultimately is nothing but the history of an object, which in its essence is the embodiment of a phantasmatic principle" [Bart 1989: 567]. History is fundamentally open to interpretation and therefore to falsification. These provisions found an artistic refraction in the structure of Barnes' "History of the World ...".
In an unnumbered semi-chapter called "Intermedia", the writer discusses the history of mankind and how it is perceived by the reader: "History is not what happened. History is just what historians tell us. There were de tendencies, plans, development, expansion, the triumph of democracy.<…>And we who read history<…>we stubbornly continue to look at it as a series of salon portraits and conversations, whose participants easily come to life in our imagination, although it is more like a chaotic collage, the colors on which are applied more with a paint roller than with a squirrel brush; we invent our own version to get around the facts that we do not know or do not want to accept; take a few real facts and build on them new plot. The play of imagination moderates our confusion and our pain; we call it history."
Thus, Barnes's book can also be defined as a variation on the theme of history, a kind of ironic rethinking of the previous one. historical experience humanity. Objective truth, according to the writer, is unattainable, since “every event gives rise to many subjective truths, and then we evaluate them and compose a story that allegedly tells about what happened “in reality”. The version we have composed is false, it is an elegant, impossible fake, like those medieval paintings composed of separate scenes that depict all the passions of Christ at once, forcing them to coincide in time.
Barnes, like the French philosopher J.-F. Lyotard, who "was the first to speak of 'postmodernism' in relation to philosophy" [Garaji 1994: 55], is skeptical of the traditional notions that the progressive movement of history is based on the idea of progress, that the very course of history is determined by logically explicable interrelated successive events. . The results and fruits of this development, not only material, but also spiritual, intellectual, according to the philosopher, “constantly destabilize the human essence, both social and individual. It can be said that today humanity has found itself in a position where it has to catch up with the process of accumulating more and more new objects of practice and thought that is ahead of it” [Lyotar 1994: 58]. And just like Lyotard, Barnes is convinced that the "nightmare of history" must be subjected to careful analysis, because the past shines through, is found in the present, as well as the present - in the past and future. The heroine of the chapter "Survivor" says: "We have abandoned the lookouts. We do not think about saving others, but simply sail forward, relying on our machines. Everyone downstairs drinking beer... Anyway<…>find new land using a diesel engine would be a sham. We must learn to do things the old way. The future lies in the past."
In this regard, one must think, it would be appropriate to refer to the interpretation of intertextuality by R. Bart: the text is woven into the endless fabric of culture, is its memory and “remembers” not only the culture of the past, but also the culture of the future. “The phenomenon that is commonly called intertextuality should include texts that arise later works: text sources exist not only before the text, but also after it. This is the point of view of Lévi-Strauss, who very convincingly showed that the Freudian version of the Oedipus myth is itself an integral part of this myth: when reading Sophocles, we should read it as a quotation from Freud, and Freud as a quotation from Sophocles.
Thus, postmodernism interprets culture as a fundamentally polysemiotic, achronic phenomenon, and writing is not only and not so much as a “secondary” recording system, but as a myriad of interacting, mutually reversible, moving “cultural codes” (R. Barth) [Kosikov 1989: 40]. At the same time, perceiving the world as chaos, in which there are no common criteria for value and semantic orientation, “postmodernism embodies a fundamental artistic and philosophical attempt to overcome the antithesis of chaos and cosmos, fundamental for culture, to reorient the creative impulse towards the search for compromise between these universals” [Lipovetsky 1997: 38–39].
These provisions turn out to be actualized by such features of Barnes' novel as the play by the subjects of the narration (the objectified type of narration dominating in the text from the third person can be replaced by the form from the first person even within the same chapter), the mixture of styles (business, journalistic, epistolary in different genre forms) and modal plans (a serious tone easily turns into irony, sarcasm, the technique of allusion and grotesque thought, rude parody, invective vocabulary, etc.) are skillfully used), intertextuality and metatextuality techniques. Each chapter represents one or another version of a certain historical event, and a number of such versions are fundamentally open character. In this kind of “unsystematic” one can see “a direct consequence of the idea of the world, of history as meaningless chaos” [Andreev 2001: 26].
Nevertheless, the picture of reality embodied in Barnes's novel is complete in its own way. The wholeness is given to it both by the all-consuming “corrective” irony (“perhaps the most constant for Barnes – even the most seemingly “serious” – is the author’s mockery” [Zatonsky 2000: 32]), and plot ties, the role of which is played by repetitive motifs, themes , images. Such, for example, is the image-mythologeme "Ark / Ship". In the first, sixth and ninth chapters, the image of Noah's Ark is given directly, while in the remaining chapters its presence is revealed with the help of intertextual devices.
Here is a successful journalist Franklin Hughes (“Guests”), a participant in a sea cruise, watches as passengers board the ship: Americans, British, Japanese, Canadians. Basically, these are official married couples. Their procession elicits an ironic comment from Franklin: "A pair of each creature." But unlike the biblical Ark, which gives salvation, the modern ship turns out to be a floating prison for passengers (it was captured by Arab terrorists), carrying a deadly threat. The heroine of the fourth chapter (“Survivor”) recalls the emotion that Christmas cards with the image of reindeer harnessed in pairs evoked in her as a child. She always thought that "every couple is a husband and wife, happy spouses like the beasts that sailed on the Ark." Now, as an adult, she is insanely afraid of a possible nuclear catastrophe (the precedent for such a catastrophe has already been, albeit far, in Russia, “where there are no good modern power plants, like in the West”) and tries to escape by taking a pair of cats with her . The boat on which the young woman sets off on what she thinks is a saving journey is something like the Ark sailing away from a nuclear catastrophe.
Both these and other episodes of Barnes' novel reflected such features of the post-colonial, post-imperialist model of the world as the crisis of progressive thinking caused by the realization of the possible self-destruction of humanity, the denial of the absolute value of the achievements of science and technology, industry and democracy, the assertion of a holistic view of the world and, accordingly, primordial, more important than any interests of the state, human rights [Mankovskaya 2000: 133–135].
It is precisely these aspects of the postmodernist paradigm that are consonant with J. Barnes as Octavio Paz, a world-renowned modern Mexican poet and thinker, discusses: “The destruction of the world is the main product of technology. The second is the acceleration of historical time. And in the end, this acceleration leads to the denial of change, if by change we mean the evolutionary process, that is, progress and constant renewal. The time of technology accelerates entropy: the civilization of the industrial age produced more destruction and dead matter in one century than all other civilizations (since the Neolithic revolution) combined. This civilization strikes at the very heart of the idea of time, developed by the modern era, distorts it, brings it to the point of absurdity. Technique not only personifies a radical critique of the idea of change as progress, but also puts a limit, a clear limitation on the idea of time without end. historical time was practically eternal, at least by human standards. It was thought that millennia would pass before the planet finally cooled down. Therefore, a person could slowly complete his evolutionary cycle, reaching the heights of strength and wisdom, and even seize the secret of overcoming the second law of thermodynamics. modern science refutes these illusions: the world can disappear at the most unforeseen moment. Time has an end, and this end will be unexpected. We live in an unstable world: today change is not the same as progress, change is synonymous with sudden annihilation” [Pas 1991: 226].
History and modernity in Barnes' novel appear, in the words of N. B. Mankovskaya, as "a post-catastrophic, apocalyptic era of death not only of God and man, but also of time and space." In the half-chapter "Intermedia" we find the following reasoning: ". love is the promised land, the ark on which a friendly family is saved from the Flood. She may be an ark, but anthrophobia thrives on this ark; and it is commanded by a crazy old man who, at the slightest thing, uses a staff of gopher wood and can throw you overboard at any moment. The list of such examples could be continued.
The image of the Flood (the motif of sailing on the waters), as well as the image of the Ark (Ship), is a key one in the "History of the World". The “through” character of the novel is the larvae of the woodworm (wood beetles), on behalf of which the interpretation (version) of the story of Noah's salvation is given in the first chapter in a very caustic tone. Since the Lord did not take care of the salvation of the larvae, they entered the Ark secretly (the chapter is called "Stowaway"). The larvae, consumed by resentment, have their own vision of biblical events, their own assessment of their participants. For example: “Noah was not a good man.<…>He was a monster - a self-righteous patriarch who cringed to his God for half a day, and played back at us for the rest of the day. He had a staff made of gopher wood, and he used it ... in general, the stripes of some animals remained to this day. It was through the fault of Noah and his family, as the larvae assure, that many died, including the most noble species of animals. After all, from Noah’s point of view, “we were just a floating cafeteria. On the Ark, they did not understand who was clean and who was unclean; first lunch, then mass, that was the rule. The actions of God do not seem fair to the larvae either: “We constantly struggled with the riddle of why God chose a man as his protégé, bypassing more worthy candidates.<…>If he had opted for a gorilla, there would have been several times less rebelliousness - so perhaps there would not have been a need for the Flood itself.
Despite such a sarcastic rethinking of the Old Testament, the writer cannot be suspected of anti-religious propaganda: "... he is completely and completely occupied with the history of our world, which is why he begins with an event that is universally recognized as its source." That this is a myth is not important, because in Barnes's eyes, the flood "of course, is only a metaphor, but it allows - and this is the essence - to outline the image of the fundamental imperfection of existence" [Zatonsky 2000: 33-34].
The flood, conceived by God, turned out to be absurd, and all further history repeats in various forms the absurd cruelty embodied in the myth. But further recklessness is already committed by the person himself, whose satirical portrait (let us note that this is also a kind of figurative cohesion) is given in different guises: in the guise of Noah, terrorist fanatics, bureaucrats ...
It is obvious that the belief in historical progress is not characteristic of the English writer: “So what? Have people increased ... mind? Have they stopped building new ghettos and practicing the old bullying in them? Stop making old mistakes, or new mistakes, or old mistakes on new way? And does history really repeat itself, the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce? No, it's too majestic, too contrived. She just burps and we smell the raw onion sandwich she ate centuries ago again.” major vice Barnes sees life not in violence or injustice, but in the fact that earthly life, its historical movement meaningless. History simply mimics itself; and the only point of support in this chaos is love. Of course, “love will not change the course of world history (all this chatter is good only for the most sentimental); but it can do something much more important: teach us not to give in to history.” However, completing his reflections on love, the author catches on and returns to an ironic tone: “At night we are ready to challenge the world. Yes, yes, it is in our power, history will be defeated. Excited, I buck my foot…”
A careful reading of The History of the World by J. Barnes convinces us that the novel contains all the formative elements of postmodernism: advertised fragmentation, new understanding, decanonization and deheroization of mythological and classical plots, travesty, stylistic diversity, paradox, citation, intertextuality, metatextuality, etc. The writer refutes the existing criteria of artistic unity, behind which lies the linearity and hierarchy of perception of reality unacceptable for postmodernists. However, would it be legitimate to define this work only as a postmodernist text? An affirmative answer to this question is contained in the articles [Zverev 1994: 230; Frumkina 2002: 275]. More convincing and justified is L. Andreev's point of view, according to which Barnes' novel is an example of a "realist-postmodernist" synthesis, since it combines various postmodernist ideas and techniques with traditional narrative principles, with "social concern", with "concrete historical justification" [Andreev 2001].
PRACTICE PLAN
1. J. Barnes as a postmodernist writer. The innovative nature of his works.
2. The question of the genre form of the "History of the World ..".
3. The meaning of the title, the subject and problems of the work.
4. The composition of the work as a reflection of the postmodern model of the world. Fragmentation as a constructive and philosophical principle of postmodern art.
5. Features of the narrative structure of the work. Playing with subjects of speech and modal planes.
6. Images of the characters of the "History of the World ...". principles of their creation.
7. Techniques for organizing space and time in the novel and in each of its parts.
8. The ideological and compositional function of leitmotifs - hypertext "staples".
9. Intertextuality in the "History of the World ...".
10. "History of the World in 10% of Chapters" as a "realistic-postmodernist" work.
11. “History of the world…” by J. Barnes and the postmodern novel (I. Calvino, M. Pavic, W. Eco).
Issues for discussion. Tasks
1. According to J. Barnes, his "History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" is not a collection of short stories, it "was conceived as a whole and executed as a whole." Is this thesis of Barnes correct? Is it possible to say that the novel presents in its own way a complete picture of the world? Justify your answer.
2. In postmodern works, quotation, intertextuality is expressed in various imitations, stylizations of literary predecessors, ironic collages of traditional writing techniques. Are these phenomena inherent in Barnes' book? Illustrate your answer with examples.
3. Is it possible to say that in the novel by J. Barnes such a stylistic device as pastiche is found? Justify your answer.
4. The novel by J. Barnes opens with the chapter "Free rider", obviously written on the basis of a biblical myth and endowed with a special ideological and compositional function.
How is the myth rethought in this chapter and what is its role in expressing conceptual and subtextual information in the novel? Why is the interpretation of the events leading up to the Flood, and the assessment of what is happening on Noah's Ark, entrusted to a woodworm? What characteristic does the Almighty and Man receive from the mouth of the larva (in this case, in the images of Noah and his family)?
How does the theme “Man and History” develop in the subsequent chapters (novellas) of the book?
5. Re-read the chapter "Shipwreck". Which philosophical problems affected by it? Expand the ideological and artistic role of allusions, quotations, symbolic and allegorical images. What historical, cultural and literary associations does the content of this chapter evoke?
6. How does the comic tradition of Fielding, Swift, Stern appear in Barnes' book?
7. What interpretation does Barnes give to Theodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa (Scene of the Shipwreck) in The Shipwreck? What is the meaning of this interpretation?
8. In Barnes's book, Miss Ferguson (1839) and astronaut Spike Tigler (1977) set off in search of Noah's Ark a hundred years apart. What semantic role does the method of plot parallelism play? Correlate the content of these episodes with the writer's reasoning about the history of the world, about love, faith in the half-chapter "Intermedia".
9. Reread the tenth chapter of Barnes's book. Why is it called "Dream"? How does this chapter relate to the Survivor chapter? What is heaven and hell in artistic concept history of the world according to Barnes? Analyze the ways and means that implement the formal semantic (intratextual) connection between the chapter "Dream" and the semi-chapter "Intermedia".
10. According to I. P. Ilyin, almost all artists attributed to the trend of postmodernism “simultaneously act as theorists own creativity. Not to a small extent, this is also due to the fact that the specificity of this art is such that it simply cannot exist without the author's commentary. Everything that is called the "postmodern novel" by J. Fowles, J. Barnes, H. Cortazar and many others is not only a description of events and the image of the persons participating in them, but also lengthy discussions about the very process of writing this work» [Ilyin 1996: 261]. Obviously, the half-chapter "Intermedia" is this kind of autocommentary (metatext). Expand the ethical and aesthetic issues of this chapter, its role in the formal and semantic organization of the entire text of the work, in creating its integrity.
Texts
Barnes J. History of the world in 10% chapters. ( Magazine option) / Per. from English. V. Babkova // Foreign literature. 1994. № 1. Barnes J. History of the world in 10% chapters / Per. from English. V. Babkova. M.: AST: LUX, 2005.
Critical works
Zatonsky D.V. Modernism and postmodernism. Thoughts on the eternal rotation of fine and non-fine arts. Kharkiv; M.: Folio, 2000. S. 31–40.
Zverev A. Afterword to the novel by J. Barnes "History of the World in 10% of Chapters" // Foreign Literature. 1994. No. 1. S. 229–231. Kuznetsov S. 10% of comments on the novel by Julian Barnes // Foreign Literature. 1994. No. 8. The phenomenon of Julian Barnes: Round table // Foreign Literature. 2002. No. 7. S. 265–284.
additional literature
Andreev L. Artistic synthesis and postmodernism // Questions of literature. 2001. No. 1. S. 3-25. Dubin B. Man of two cultures // Foreign Literature. 2002. No. 7. S. 260–264.
Ilyin I.P. Postmodernism // Modern foreign literary criticism (countries Western Europe and USA): concepts, schools, terms: an encyclopedic reference book. M., 1996. Ilyin I.P. Postmodernism: a dictionary of terms. M., 2001.
Reference materials
[The pages dedicated to the famous painting by Théodore Géricault] “are something like an aesthetic treatise, talking about the eternal problem of truth in art, as understood by postmodernism. And here the same dialectic of the inessential and the main acquires key importance. To a viewer who knows the real course of events, it will seem that Gericault considered the extermination of the weakened to be insignificant on the raft in order to save water and food for those able to fight the elements, and even forgot about the cannibalism that accompanied the tragic voyage. At least, all this was not significant enough for Géricault to create the plot of the famous canvas, and at first impression the picture is imbued with false heroism, while tragedy would be appropriate, since a catastrophe of the human spirit occurs. But if you take a closer look, appreciating the unstressed, small features of the composition, it turns out that it is precisely the catastrophe that is captured on this canvas, not just a shipwreck, but an existential drama of those that only great art can embody.
It is clear that such an interpretation of the romantic masterpiece is arbitrary, as it represents its rethinking through the prism of postmodernist beliefs. However, all this analysis speaks very expressively about Barnes himself. Gericault, according to his concepts, did everything to avoid political connotations, banal hysteria, primitive symbolism, and he succeeded in many ways, but as if contrary to his own attitudes, which forced him to separate the main from the secondary in any plot, and this was done in accordance with conventional wisdom. ideas of the era. The postmodern artist rids himself of such difficulties by simply refusing to make divisions of this kind themselves. And if, nevertheless, by necessity doing them, then just under the sign of preference for everything secondary, insignificant, private.
Now the bizarre construction of the "History of the World in 10% of Chapters" becomes clearer. In essence, Barnes in this book is primarily engaged in refuting the existing criteria of artistic unity, behind which lies the same unacceptable for him, as for all postmodernists, hierarchy of perception of reality, supposedly interesting and important only in some of its strictly sorted manifestations and not at all exciting in everyone else. Without recognizing this approach itself, Barnes, of course, does not recognize the artistic unity built on such a basis. And where you expect some uniformity,<…>he offers a mixture of all this, doing it consciously, one might even say, fundamentally.
From the Afterword by A. Zverev to the novel by J. Barnes "History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" // Foreign Literature. 1994. No. 1. S. 229–231.
Previously, in "intricate" things, the ball was ruled by the psychology of the hero - rash, pathological, seemingly not recognizing any laws over himself, nicknamed the "stream of consciousness". “Logic” is back in vogue now; however, very unusual, no less strange than the geometry of Lobachevsky or the binary system of calculus. Because we are talking about "logical"<…>approach to illogical reality; and such an approach, oddly enough, is closer to a world in which both heaven and hell seem to be empty.
Ultima ratio confirms this Barnesian idea in the tenth and final chapter, which, however, is framed as something hypothetical through and through. No wonder it is called “Dream” and begins with the words: “I dreamed that I woke up. This is the strangest dream, and I just had it again." A wonderful room, an attentive maid, a wardrobe full of any clothes, breakfast is served in bed. Then you can flip through newspapers containing only good news, play golf, have sex, even meet famous people. However, satiety sets in pretty soon, and you begin to want to be sentenced. It's kind of like longing for Last Judgment, but, alas, longing unrealizable. True, a certain official carefully considers your case and invariably comes to the conclusion: "You are all right." After all, “there are no problems here,” because this, you guessed it, is Paradise. Of course, completely modernized and therefore, as it were, really deprived of God. But for those who desire it, God still exists. There is also Hell: “But it's more like an amusement park. You know, skeletons that pop up in front of you, branches in your face, harmless bombs, you name it. Only to give the visitors a pleasant fright.”
But perhaps the most important thing is that a person does not go to Heaven or Hell on merit, but only at will. That is why the system of punishments and rewards becomes so meaningless, and the afterlife so aimless, that in the end everyone has a desire to die for real, to disappear, to sink into oblivion. And, like all local desires, it can also be fulfilled.
One gets the impression that Barnes' "history of the world" has been reduced to some kind of idyll: where are the seas of blood? where are the atrocities? where is the cruelty? where is the betrayal? For Barnes, the essence of everything, however, is not so much in the presence of Evil (it seems elementary!), but in the fact that any crime can be justified by some lofty goal, sanctified by historical necessity. That is why our author seeks, first of all, to peel out the meaninglessness, to defend the aimlessness of the existing world order.
The last chapter is crowned by a dialogue between our dreamer and his maid (or rather, guide) Margaret:
“It seems to me,” I spoke again, “that Paradise is great idea, even, perhaps, an impeccable idea, but it is not for us. This is not how we are arranged ... Then why is all this? Why Ray? Why this dream of Paradise? ..
“Maybe you need it,” she suggested. “Maybe you wouldn’t live without such a dream… Always getting what you want, or never getting what you want—after all, the difference isn’t that great.
From book: Zatonsky D.V. Modernism and postmodernism: Thoughts on the eternal rotation of fine and non-fine arts. Kharkiv; M., 2000. S. 31–40; 36–37.
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From the author's book From the author's book"Real-miraculous" in the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Practical lesson) PRACTICAL LESSON PLAN1. Magic realism as a way of seeing reality through the prism of mythological consciousness.2. The problem of the genre form of the novel "One Hundred Years
From the author's book From the author's book From the author's bookJulian Barnes Julian Barnes b. 1946 ENGLAND, ENGLAND 1998 Russian translation by S. Silakova
A. V. Lunacharsky in 1912 published an article "Thirty-six plots", which provides a list of Georges Polti. It's about some magic number"36" is a limit that, according to literary critics, cannot be exceeded when listing the themes of the plots of plays, tragedies, novels. The whole variety of plot variations ultimately comes down to 36 types, which was compiled by J. Polti. Sometimes they refer to Aristotle, who allegedly first established this "limit of tragedies."
The fifth and final stage of amplification can be realized with this famous list. Any "semantic circle" of exhaustive combinations of possible actions obtained in a live dialogue with the client can be reduced with the help of Husserl's "phenomenological reduction" to one single topic of the list.
The tragic myth is the logical skeleton of life and the forces acting in it! The tragedy describes not the characters of people, not their lyrical moods, but the personified Forces of Life. Knowing the "scheme of collision" of these forces, one can see how fate leads the hero and how the hero freely chooses his fate. To illustrate the work with the list of J. Polti, I would like to take my favorite Verdi opera Aida.
Example 5.6. "Operatic".
The tragedy of Aida and Radames is the Crime of Love. Aida, the captive queen of Ethiopia, fell in love with the enemy, and Radames, the commander of Egypt, betrayed the Motherland for the sake of her beloved, refused the hand of the daughter of Pharaoh Amneris, and also refused to flee with Aida to Ethiopia, which led to the death of both him and Aida. Crime - vicissitudes, pathos. The strongest intensity of feelings during the trial and execution of Radames. Fear and compassion are caused by the act of Radames, who voluntarily surrendered to the priests, acted according to his conscience, but against love. Even more fear and compassion is caused by the act of Aida - she could hide in the confusion, taking advantage of the surrender of Radames, but she voluntarily went to death for the sake of love, forgetting about her father, about the Motherland (queen!), About her young life.
And here they are together in a stone coffin, in a dungeon from which they will not get out, where they will die a painful death. But for them there is no death! They are happy, finding themselves in each other's arms. The most beautiful melody of the last duet of Aida and Radames, framed by the dreary farewell moans of Amneris, completes the tragedy. Catharsis, purification. Everything is ruined for this beautiful young couple. Only one thing remains - Beauty in everything: beautiful true love, a beautiful end to life, or rather, a short, but absolutely happy Life Together, Absolute Intimacy, in a coffin, however, not violated by anyone, even protected by all the military and spiritual power of Egypt! Beautiful death. Beautiful Life after Death in words given: “O terra addio…” (Oh, earth, goodbye…).
last picture: there are only two on the stage, they are sitting embracing, their thoughts “on the wings of love” are carried away to freedom. There is nothing more valuable in life than love! All values, except love, are transient, they accompany a person only to the grave, and love even after. Conclusion: love is stronger than death, it exceeds death.
The name Hades contains both the word "Hades" (God of death, "invisible", Lord of the kingdom of the dead), and the additional "Aaa ..." - openness, space, air, space, "fly away" ... Almost like the Russian "Aida ... in ... "(Voznesensky, "Let's go to the cinema!"). Aida takes Radames out of the bitter labyrinth of painful contradictions - love, betrayal, duty, personal life, power, submission, a bright future, punishment by death, justice and injustice ... Only love can lead a man out of this labyrinth.
Let's remember how famous novels end:
"Crime and Punishment" - spring came, Sonya's love poured out on Rodion Raskolnikov and "casuistry honed like a razor" became unnecessary.
"The Master and Margarita" - "Leave them alone," said Woland. And for the Master and Margarita, the long-awaited dawn came, and they went together to their eternal home…»
“Cliff” by I. A. Goncharov - far from Russia, the eternal wanderer Paradise ends his life in love: “Everyone stood behind him and warmly called to him - his three figures: his Vera, his Marfenka, grandmother. And behind them stood and more strongly attracted him to her - another, gigantic figure, another great "grandmother" - Russia.
You can multiply these examples, but it's already clear: love connects two terrible extremes, bridges the huge gap between Life and Death. In Greek mythology, the god Hermes had the ability to "send" the souls of the dead to realm of the dead, which is why he was called "psychopomp" - the carrier of souls. K. Jung attributed this function of the Conductor between consciousness and the unconscious to the archetypes Anima (for men) and Animus (for women). Anima is the soul of a man, his Eternal Beloved, his Hades. The right death is the one in which his beloved comes to the doomed to death and stays with him forever, embarks on the path to the eternal home, like Margarita. The right death is that which is not in a hurry to snatch the condemned to death from the embraces of her Beloved - Radames or the Master.
Aida is a “psychopomp”, but on the contrary, she brings the thought out of the realm of Hades that got there during the life of the owner, brings the Mind into a state of “self-pressure”, self-awareness, self-sufficiency. In this state, there are no concepts of "death" and "life". “Leave them alone” and only love will remain.
The curve of the meaning of the drama "Crime of Love" in classic plots can go as follows famous topics:
- Love Crime - Romeo and Juliet
- Involuntary Crime - Radames and Aida
- Love is a Crime - Tristan and Isolde
- Death by the Repartition of Love - Ophelia and Hamlet
- Love as lawlessness (above the law) - Christ and the New Testament
- Love is like lawlessness (below the law) - a cadet from the Barber of Siberia.
- Lawlessness of Power ("Love for the people")
- Love is like crazy together
- The Secret Relationship of Love and Death
- Asociality of Love - hippies
- Laughter destruction of the world - sex carnival
- The cruelty of the world love couple.
Love and law are antinomies; they cannot be combined in such a way that one dissolves into the other. If love passes into the law (legal channel), then it weakens, withers and comes to naught. If the law passes into love, then the law itself becomes unnecessary. The world is cruel to a loving couple, so the couple isolates themselves from the world so as not to conflict with the world. If he does not have time to retire, then there comes a crime of love!
main idea, which is born from the stringing of various plots of the drama "The Crime of Love", the following: love is always "lawless", that is, it does not obey any laws, outside the law, above (like Christ) or below. Love expresses the personal principle in a person, since personality is something that does not obey the laws of society, the universe, nature. As a person, a person is always One and does not enter into any system. Personality is the center of the world, "everything revolves" around it, the law and power of life come from it - Dynamos, the prime mover of life (the ancient Greeks, Aristotle), the source of physiological activity (N.A. Bernstein), etc.
Being a personalistic factor, love puts a person in front of a dilemma: "to transgress or not to transgress." If you “do not transgress”, then you will have to fight with love, run away from it, even at the cost of your own life, and this is a crime against yourself!
Which of the Russian poets of the XIX-XX centuries. created ironic variations on classic stories and in what way can they be compared with the poem of V. S. Vysotsky?
Reflecting on the stated problem, use the works of K.S. Aksakova, N.A. Nekrasov, T. Yu. Kibirova.
Emphasize that parodies and ironic variations occupy a special place among comic genres.
Note that parodies of Pushkin's and Lermontov's works were in great vogue among the poets' contemporaries. Earlier, A.S. Pushkin himself and K.N. Batyushkov made parodies of the work of V.A. Zhukovsky "A singer in the camp of Russian soldiers". Derzhavin's odes were subjected to parodic rethinking. K. S. Aksakov became the author of a dramatic parody of Pushkin's poem "Oleg near Constantinople."
V. N. Almazov created rehashings of A. S. Pushkin (“Grooms”), N.A. Nekrasov ("The Storm"). A contemporary of N.A. Dobrolyubov D. Minaev parodied the poems of N.F. Shcherbina, N.P. Ogaryova, L.A. Meya, A.A. Maykov. Ogaryov himself is known for his variation of Pushkin's work "There once was a poor knight in the world ..." (at Ogaryov - fashionable). As the creator of verbal parodies, one should also mention Kozma Prutkov - the "brainchild" of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers.
Remember the famous rehash of the “Cossack lullaby” by M. Yu. Lermontov, written by N.A. Nekrasov ("Lullaby"), in which a grotesque image of an official is created. In contrast to the ironic variation of Vysotsky, the poet of the 19th century chooses a different image for ridicule, giving it a satirical edge. Genre and compositional features are comically transformed. Vysotsky's legendary heroes receive a different assessment, in contrast to Pushkin's ballad. The focus is now not on the tragedy of the prince, but on the eternal conflict between man and the state.
Point out that the representative of conceptualism T. Yu. Kibirov creates, unlike Vysotsky, parodies based on citation. There are in his arsenal parodies of Pushkin's poems, "Summer reflections on the fate of fine literature", verbal, syntactic, rhythmic, conceptual imitations of B.L. Pasternak, A.A. Voznesensky, S. V. Mikhalkov, A. P. Mezhirov, V. V. Nabokov, Yu. K. Olesha.
In the conclusions, explain the difference between parodic variations and rehashes, reveal the originality of the ironic poem by V. S. Vysotsky.
1. The AMP studies the structure and structure of musical works in their connection with the content of music. These include: the doctrine of the expressive means of music: the musical syntax; about the topic. A special section of the AMP is the doctrine of the main types of structure of works, i.e. about forms in the narrow sense. The AMP studies mainly European professional music of the 17th-19th (20th) centuries. Thus, it is assumed that non-European music, folklore, sacred, light and pop music, jazz, ancient music, ultra-modern music are not studied. European professional music is based on a piece of music - this is a special phenomenon of European musical culture. Its main properties: authorship, musical notation, originality, individuality, artistic value, special laws of internal organization and perception (the presence of a composer, performer, listener). Music as an art form has its own specifics. 1 of the ways to classify the arts is as follows: 1) By the method of disclosing the content: fine, expressive, verbal (verbal); 2) by way of existence: temporary, spatial; 3) in the direction of the senses: visual, auditory, visual-auditory. Of all the arts, only music is expressive, temporal, auditory at the same time. Every art form has form and content. The content in any art is primarily a person and the world around him. Form is how content elements are organized. In a broad sense, form in music is the content of all means of expression any work. Form in the narrow sense is a type of structure of a work (three-part form, rondo, variations). It has long been noticed that music has a huge impact on a person (the myth of Orpheus). Music was often attributed to divine saints. The secret of the impact of music is largely related to its auditory nature. Vision, hearing(96%), smell, touch, taste (4%). Vision and hearing provide more than 96% of information about the world. But the world is perceived differently by hearing than by sight. Even the emotional reactions of people to visual and auditory impressions are in many ways opposite. Visual impressions are richer than auditory ones, but auditory impressions are more active, more easily overtake a person and are always associated with action, movement. The sound is able to bypass the word immediately convey strong emotions, as if to infect with this emotion. The power of music to convey emotions, words are a signal-suggestive effect. Suggestion-suggestion. This effect is common to humans and animals. It operates on a biological subconscious level. In addition to it, music affects through the cultural social. human experience. The sound of organ, harpsichord, brass, etc. immediately evoke corresponding associations. Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4, part 2 - even rhythm embodies a state of rest, there are no jumps, the theme of "Sinbad's ship", 2 part of "Scheherazade". Image and expression 2 main ways of revealing content in art. An image is a reproduction of external visible objects or phenomena. In the image there is always a convention, a kind of deception. To portray means to present something that is not really there. Expression is the disclosure of the inner with the help of the outer. It is less specific than the image, but the element of convention is less. The word-expression itself is a directed movement from within outwards. Harmony and thematism form the basis of the system of musical forms.
2 . Expressive means of music - the mechanism of influence of music is associated with the specifics of the elements of music: 1) Sound pitch: melody - a monophonic sequence of sounds of different heights; harmony - the combination of sounds into chords and the connection of chords with each other; register - part of the range, i.e. complete set of sounds, voice or instrument. High light register - the beginning of the orchestral introduction to Wagner's opera "Lohengrin", a very low register - Ravel's introduction to the second piano concerto, Grieg "Peer Gynt" "In the cave of the mountain king". 2) Temporary: meter - uniform alternation of strong and weak beats, rhythm - the ratio of sounds in duration, tempo - speed, speed of sounding music, agogics - leading, small deviations from the tempo for expressive purposes. 3) Associated with the nature of the sound: timbre - the color of the sound, dynamics - loudness, sound strength, articulation - the way sound is produced. A separate expressive means does not have one constant meaning, but has a whole range of expressive possibilities (in this sense, an expressive means is like a word of a language). Example: ascending part 4 - fanfare, expressive character. There must be ambiguity, i.e. emphasis on the 2nd beat (anthem of the Russian Federation, Chopin etude in E major, op. 10 No. 3, Schumann's play "Dreams" from the cycle "Children's Scenes"). Any expressive effect is achieved with the help of not one, but a number of expressive means (Beethoven's finale of the 5th symphony, main theme; the dynamics of fortissimo, the major mode, the timbre of brass wind instruments, the chord warehouse-mass character, the movement of the melody along the triad, marching are important here). This and the transition from part 3 to the final with a huge crescendo - jubilation, victory. In this case, the means reinforce each other, act in the same direction. The multidirectional action of expressive means is much less common, when they seem to contradict each other. Schumann "I'm Not Angry" from the "Love of a Poet" cycle. Major mode, unhurried tempo is combined here with harshness and dissonance of harmony, i.e. a feeling of bitterness and resentment seems to be hidden in the soul. Mussorgsky vocal cycle"Without the sun" from 7, 4 in major (but gloomy, dark). The contradiction of expressive means often arises in music. Example: Schubert "Trout" - a great contradiction between the meaning of the text and the nature of the music in the last two lines of the poem "He took it off with a smile, I gave vent to tears." Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, 1 hr. A secondary theme in the reprise is that the bright image seems to be distorted and poisoned due to chromatic overtones in the bass. Handel oratorio "Samson" funeral march of Samson. Musical style is a system of musical thinking, manifested in the choice of a certain range of expressive means. Style is the common in the different. Can be understood more broadly: national style in art, music; style of a certain historical period- the style of the Viennese classics; the style of one composer. And more narrowly - the style of the composer's late or early work; style of one piece. Scriabin "The Poem of Fire" "Prometheus Accord". Musical genres - types, types of musical works that have historically developed in connection with various social functions of music, certain types of its content, life preferences, conditions of performance and perception. Genre (from lat. rod.) is a special morphological category in music. There are genres that are more precise and specific in content (waltz, march), on the other hand, a march can be defined even more precisely: wedding, mourning, military, children's; hip: Viennese, Boston, etc. Suite, symphony, quartet, concerto genres are not very common, broad in meaning. For a deeper understanding of the content of music, it is important to be able to correctly define the genre. Example: Beethoven " Moonlight Sonata» Part 1 - in the melody, which does not enter immediately, there are obvious features of a funeral march. Chopin Prelude in C minor (funeral march). All genres develop from applied (utilitarian) to artistic (aesthetic).
3. Every art form has form and content. The content in any art is primarily a person and the world around him. Form is how content elements are organized. In a broad sense, the form in music is the content of all expressive means of any work. Form in the narrow sense is a type of structure of a work (three-part form, rondo, variations). In the most general terms, the movement of music is carried out in 2 main ways: - repetition (similarity); - contrasts (dissimilarity). Similarity and contrast are abstract concepts that can really exist only within certain limits: in practice, complete similarity is impossible, as well as complete contrast. Mozart Symphony "Jupiter" (contrast). Similarity and contrast in music are some extreme points, between which there are countless combinations and intermediate options. Repetition happens: exact, Beethoven Sonata No. 18; modified or varied, Beethoven Symphony No. 5 (beginning). Contrast can be: fundamental fundamental, Mozart Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" (beginning); complementary, Haydn or Mozart (mature) symphony or sonata 1 movement; derivative, Beethoven Sonata No. 1 1 part, main topic, side topic. Derived contrast is a special dialectical correlation of 2 topics, in which the 2nd topic is both contrasting with the first and related to it. Beethoven Sonata No. 1, 1st movement, main part, side part. The themes are contrasting in several ways (stroke, tonality, direction), but they have a common rhythm and melody. Classification of musical forms: 1) Simple forms: period (simple one-part), simple two-part, simple three-part. 2) Complex forms: complex two-part, arched (concentric) ABCBA. 3) Variations: sustained bass, sustained melody, simple variations, double, strict, free. 4) Rondo. 5) Sonata form. 6) Rondo sonata. 7) Cyclic forms: sonata-symphonic cycle, suite, special types of cycles. 8) Free and mixed forms. 9) Polyphonic forms (fugue, invention - fiction). 10) Vocal forms. 11) Large musical stage forms: opera, ballet, cantata and oratorio.
4. A theme is a musical idea that is distinguished by a rather structurally well-defined individuality and characterization, and which underlies development. Thema (Greek) - underlying or subject. A term from rhetoric, where it meant the subject of discussion. Subjectum (lat.) - subject. Sujet (French) - theme. Usually the theme is stated at the beginning of the work, and then repeated exactly or with changes. Usually there are several themes in a work. Sometimes (in thumbnails) there is only one theme. Chopin Prelude in A major. Bach HTK prelude in C major. There is also non-thematic material in the work, which sets off the themes and links them together. It is also called general forms of movement. The theme is a historical concept, i.e. it is not yet in the music of the Middle Ages, and on the other hand, it may disappear in the music of the 20th century. The theme can be different in scale (the leitmotif of the fate of Wagner "Colsoni Belunga", Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini" - written on the basis of Dante's "Divine Poem". Themes in polyphony and homophony are significantly different: in polyphony, the theme is monophonic and imitated in different voices; in homophony - melody + accompaniment. In addition, the theme can be a figuration (from Latin figuratio - shaping, figurative image) in music, the complication of musical fabric with melodic or rhythmic elements. Chopin Fantasia-Impromptu in C sharp minor. Chopin Etude in F minor op. 25 #2. According to the figurative content, the themes are homogeneous (Mozart Symphony No. 40, 1 part main part) and contrasting (Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C major “Jupiter”, 1 part main part). Thematism - This is a collection of topics that are united on some basis. For example: heroic, lyrical, romance, pop, etc. levels of musical organization. There are three levels of organization in a piece of music: textural, syntactic, and compositional. They differ in the psychology of perception and in their properties. The texture level is like a vertical cut in a short interval of sound (texture is the structure of the musical fabric). Rumors mainly operate here: the number of votes is analyzed; articulation; dynamics; harmony (1-2 chords). Syntactic level - syntax in music is small relatively final parts (mostly sentences and periods). At the syntactic level, these medium-sized constructions are heard. Here there is a feeling of movement of music, there is an inertia of perception. The support here is speech experience, as well as associations with various types of movement. Compositional level - the level of the work as a whole, or its large finished parts. This includes the mechanisms of operational and long-term memory, logical thinking skills. The associative base is the plot, dramaturgy, the unfolding of events.
5. The syntactic level in music implies the inertia of the perception of the sensation of movement in music. A huge role here is played by the meter - the alternation of supporting and non-supporting shares. The division into support and non-support have great importance throughout a person's life. In music, support and non-support exist not only at the level of beats, but also at the level of 2,4,8 bars, as well as within each beat. In European music, square constructions play a huge role, i.e. 4,8, 16 bars. In square constructions, the iambic principle is very important:
a combination of one, two unstressed - foot. Arsis (position, lifting of the foot) -> Thesis (lowering of the foot)
The first measure of 8 is heard as light, the second as heavy, and then the inertia of perception. Thus, odd bars will be light, and even bars will be heavy, but the severity of odd bars is different:
The functions of even measures are as follows: the second measure is a simple stop, caesura; 4 measure - half-cadence; 6 measure - waiting for the continuation; 8 measure - cadence. One of the first to use this punctuation system was the outstanding German theorist Hugo Riemann. Squareness can be violated in different ways: - Tchaikovsky's extension "January at the Fireside": 1234 5677a7b8
Beethoven Sonata No. 7: 1233a4 5678
Compression - skipping the initial or one of the middle bars, or combining 2 bars into one: Mozart Overture to the "Marriage of Figaro" ch. subject: 234 5678
Truncation - omission of the last measure: Verdi's "Duke's Song" from "Rigaletto" 1234 567
Scale-syntactic structures. At the syntactic level, several stable types are distinguished - scale-syntactic structures: 1) - Periodicity- a sequence of the same number of cycles in structure:
Children's song "There is a horned goat" from 100 songs of R.-K.; - paraperiodicity: aa1 vv1: “There was a birch in the field”, R.-K. “Ay, there is a little linden in the field” from “The Snow Maiden”, “Sadko”, “Lullaby of the Volkhava”: aa1vv1ss1dd1d2d3 ... quarter periodicity. 2) Summation - a sequence of several smaller constructions and one larger one: 1 + 1 + 2: “Hey, let's go”, Glinka “Waltz-Fantasy” main theme: 3 + 3 + 6. 3) Crushing - a sequence of one larger construction and several smaller ones: 2 + 1 + 1: Dunaevsky "Merry Wind", Tchaikovsky "Children's Album" "Waltz". 4) Crushing with closure: 2+2+1+1+2: Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 1st movement secondary theme, Beethoven Symphony No. 9 The theme of joy from the finale: 4+4+1+1+2+4.
6. A period is the smallest of the musical forms, containing one, relatively complete musical thought (from the ancient Greek circle, bypass). The period contains one topic. In the Russian theory of music, a period is understood only as a stable expositional presentation of a theme. The period cannot be in development, although a superficial resemblance is possible. In the form of a period, an independent work of small scale is often written. For example: many preludes by Chopin, Lyadov, Scriabin. A period is often part of a larger whole. The period is characterized from 3 points of view: thematic content; harmonic content; structures. Based on these principles, they distinguish: 1) a period of a single structure and a period of several (usually 2) sentences; 2) the period of repeated and non-repeated structure (the beginning of sentences are similar or not); 3) the period is square and non-square; 4) the period is single-tone and modulating. Examples: 1) Beethoven Sonata No. 6 2nd movement main theme, Tchaikovsky Fantasy Overture "Romeo and Juliet" (love theme), Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 first movement side part. 2) Chopin Prelude in A major, Waltz in C sharp minor (repeated structure); Shostakovich Gavotte from the cycle "Dances of the Dolls", Wagner Overture to the opera "Tannhäuser" (Pilgrim Chorale). 3) Tchaikovsky "The Seasons" "April", "January" (4 + 6). The period may not be closed, i.e. not have a final cadence and move into an unstable developmental presentation. Tchaikovsky "The Seasons" "February" ("Shrovetide"). Sometimes a period can be internally complicated: each of its two sentences is internally divided into 2 more sentences. If the cadences that complete both large sentences are similar, then the period is called repeated, if not similar, then complex or double. Tchaikovsky Sentimental Waltz, Chopin Etude in A minor op.10 No. 2, Chopin Fantasy in F minor. In the music of the Baroque era, a period of the unfolding type is often found. It has 3 semantic parts: core, deployment, cadence. Bach Italian concerto main theme; French and English suites are the opening themes of the alemande and the chimes (however, the usual period is found in the sarabandes, gavottes, minuets).
7. Simple forms. A simple 2-part form, the first part of which is a period, and the second does not exceed the period. In terms of complexity, this form is next after the period (AB). 1 hour - can be a period of any type and size. 2h. - more diverse and can be correlated differently with the 1st. Types of ratio of parts: 1) Chorus - chorus (singer - 1 hour, chorus - chorus). A couplet song, where the lyrics change in the chorus, but remain in the chorus. 2) Pair of periodicities (аа1вв1). "Ay, there is a linden in the field." 3) Theme - acting out (typical for instrumental music). Tchaikovsky's "Children's Album" The Organ Grinder Sings. Chopin waltz in A major op.34 No. 1, waltz in C sharp minor op. 64 No. 2. Lyadov Musical snuffbox trio. 4) The ratio typical for instrumental music: 1st period - exposition, 2nd period - development and completion. Beethoven Sonata No. 23 "Appassionata" 2h. variation theme. This simple two-part form can be reprise and non-reprise. Reprisal - where at the end of 2 hours. a fragment of the initial period is reproduced. Tchaikovsky Variations for Piano in F Major Theme. Grieg ballad in the form of variations of the theme. Mozart Symphony No. 40 final. Non-reprise: Beethoven sonata No. 23 theme, sonata No. 25 finale.
8. A simple three-part form - this is a form of three parts, 1st of which is a period, and the rest are no more than a period. A (exposure, initial period), B (middle), C (reprise). Parts of the form can be repeated in the following way:
There are two types of middle: developing (based on the material of the initial period); contrast (on new material) is very rare. Beethoven Sonata No. 20 2nd movement main theme. The middle in scale can be equal to the initial period, and also can be more or less than it. The musical material in the middle is presented unstable, i.e. there is usually no single key here, sequences are used, small, fractional constructions, squareness is violated, if it was. A rare example of a 3-part form with a contrasting middle Grieg nocturne op.54 No. 4 (lyrical pieces, notebook No. 5).
Rachmaninoff Prelude in C sharp minor op.3 No. 1 (dynamized reprise). A reprise in a simple 3-part form can be exact (da capo from Italian from the head) and inaccurate (varied, abbreviated or extended, tonal change, dynamized). Rachmaninoff Prelude in G minor op.23 (complex 3-part form A (ava) B A). Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" "Two Jews, rich and poor" (by the author of "Goldenberg and Shmul (e)") is a unique case of reprise that connects two themes - the initial theme and the theme of the contrasting middle (synthetic reprise is very rare). Both themes retain their character and tone.
9. complex forms. Complex (composite) are called forms that are composed of simple ones. These forms are larger, more structurally developed, as a rule, multi-tonal. This includes: complex 2-part and complex 3-part forms. A complex 3-part form is a reprise form, each part of which exceeds a period:
Two main varieties: with a trio; with an episode. A complex three-part with a trio is a form where the middle part is written in a stable simple 2- or 3-part form. An episode is a piece of new material that does not contain a simple oral form. Reminds me of the development of sonata form. A complex three-part with a trio is found in dance music, as well as in minuets and scherzos, sonata-symphony cycles. The name "trio" indicates that the middle part was once actually performed by 3 musicians: tutti - trio - tutti. The tonalities of the middle part are usually different. This is the mode of the same name, parallel, subdominant. middle part usually wears a strong contrast. The tempo may change (usually slower). But when moving to a general reprise, the contrast is usually smoothed out:
The reprise can be exact (da capo) or modified. Less often, with a change of pace. Perhaps the introduction and code. The code may repeat the material of the middle part - a trio or an episode.
10. Special varieties of a complex three-part form: 1) Double three-part form: ABA1B1A (2). The 2nd part of the trio is repeated with transposition. Chopin Mazurka in B major op.56 №1 H Es H G H – equidistant. Chopin Nocturne in G major op.37 No. 2, Chopin Sonata No. 3 in B minor 4th movement. 2) 3-5-part form is a complex 3-part form with exact repetition of both parts:
Glinka "March of Chernomor" - there are no links between the parts. Beethoven Symphony No. 7 Scherzo 3rd movement; symphony no. 4 minuet 3 part. 3) Difficult 3-part with 2 trios. AWASA. Outwardly, the scheme of this form coincides with the scheme of the rondo. The difference is the absence of transitions and connections in a complex 3-part and their presence in a rondo. Mozart Haffner Symphony, Haffner Serenade. This form is associated with the tradition of light entertainment music. I.S. Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 1: Minuet - Trio1 - Minuet - Polonaise - Trio2 - Minuet. Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night's Dream Wedding March Theme - trio1 - Theme (abbreviated) - trio2 - theme - coda. 4) complex 3-part with 2 trios in a row. ABSA. Beethoven Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" 3rd movement. The village orchestra "A Merry Gathering of Villagers" is depicted. Chopin Polonaise in G sharp minor op.44. Sometimes there is a complication of a complex 3-part form, in which its parts are not written in simple forms, but in more developed ones. Beethoven Symphony No. 9 Scherzo 2h. A (sonata form) B (trio) A (sonata form). Borodin Symphony No. 2 "Bogatyrskaya" scherzo movement 2. A (sonata form without development) B (trio) A (sonata form without development). Quite often there are cases of a form intermediate between a simple and complex 3-part form:
11. A complex two-part form is a non-reprise form in which at least one of the parts is written in a stable form that exceeds the period. AB. The specificity of the form is in its openness, some incompleteness -> the form requires special conditions of existence, under which no reprise is needed. This is possible in vocal music, in opera, where there is a text and a plot. An opera aria often has the 1st introductory section, and the 2nd - the main one, according to the recitative + aria scheme. But it happens that both sections are approximately equal in value, the image develops, and a return to the original state is not required. Glinka Cavatina and Antonida's Rondo "Ivan Susanin". Concentric - a multi-dark form, refers to complex forms. ABCBA or ABCDBA. Aria "The Swan-Birds" "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" R.-K. ABCDWA. In the center, the swan-bird reveals the secret of its origin (D). "Sadko" 2 picture the theme of swans and ducks, the vocalization of the sea princess Volkhova, a lyrical duet and then the events repeat. Schubert "Shelter" from "Swan Song". Hindemith "Hin und zuruck" ("There and back") 17-part concentric form, where the plot is comedic conditioned.
12. Variation form. Its varieties. Variations are form, comp. From the presentation of the topic and a number of its modified repetitions. AA1A2A3A4…. Another name for the variational form is the variational cycle. Variato - weak. Change. Variation is one of the most important principles of development in music, understood extremely broadly. The specificity of variations is in the simultaneous action of two opposite principles of conservation and change. That is the similarity of variations with the couplet form in vocal music. a separate work or part of a section. There are several types variational form: by the main voice (for sustained melody, for sustained bass); by means of variation (strict, free, polyphonic); by number of topics (simple, double). The theme of variations can be. own or borrowed. The number of variations is practically unlimited, i.e. this form is open, but usually there are no more than 32 variations. Example: Beethoven 32 variations; Handel Passacaglia g-moll: the most stable is harmony, var 1: the principle of duration reduction; var 2: voice transmission from pr.r. to the lion R.; 3 var. Handel has a very important heroism: dotted rhythm, dynamics, dense texture. Var 7: again the initial character; var 11 - Albertian basses, harmonies break: mind appears53. There are 15 variations in total.
13. Variations onbassoostinato. Variations on the basso ostinato is such a form, which is based on the constant carrying out of the theme in the bass and the constant renewal of the upper voices. In the 17th - early 18th centuries, this was the most common type of variation. In the classical era, found in Beethoven. Symphony No. 9, coda 1st movement. Partly variations on the basso ostinato are Beethoven's famous 32 variations in C minor. Romantics have Brahms. Finale of Symphony No. 4. Interest in basso ostinato variations reappears in the 20th century. All major composers use them. Shostakovich has an example of such variations even in the opera (intermission between the 4th and 5th scenes of the opera "Katerina Izmailova"). The two main instrumental genres of such variations in the Baroque era are the passacaglia and the chaconne. In vocal music, it is used in choirs (J.S. Bach. Crucifixus from the Mass in B minor) or in arias (Purcell. Dido's Aria from the opera "Dido and Aeneas"). The theme is a small (2-8 measures, usually 4) monophonic sequence melodic to varying degrees. Usually her character is very generalized. Many themes represent a downward movement from degree I to degree V, often chromatic. There are themes that are less generalized and more melodically designed (Bach. Passacaglia to minor for organ). In the process of variation, the theme can move into upper voices (Bach. Passacaglia to minor for organ), figuratively change and even transpose into a different key (Buxtehude. Passacaglia in D minor for organ). Due to the brevity of the theme, there is often a combination of variations in pairs (according to the principle of a similar texture of the upper voices). The boundaries of variations do not always clearly coincide in all voices. With Bach, several variations in one texture often form a single powerful development, their boundaries disappear. If this principle is carried out throughout the whole work, the whole can hardly be called variations, since it is impossible to recognize as variations in the conduct of the bass in the lower voice without taking into account the upper ones. There is a kind of counterpoint form. Cycle completion can go beyond variation. Thus, the organ passacaglia of Bach ends with a great fugue.
14. Strict ornamental variations. This type of variation is very common among the Viennese classics. Another name for variations is figurative variations. The number of variations is not large, often no more than 5-6. Topic maybe. own or borrowed. Usually a little individual. So that it can be interesting to develop. The essence of this type of variation is that the melody theme is surrounded by figuration (detention, passing sounds, etc.). The most important principle of development is the reduction of durations - diminution. This principle usually wears out quickly, and in order to prolong it, the transfer of the topic from voice to voice is usually used. Another very important means is a temporary change of mode. Due to this, a grouping of variations resembling a tripartite pattern is formed. Ornamental variations are usually strict variations: they preserve the form of the theme, number of measures, harmonic foundations, general tempo and meter. Example: Beethoven Sonata No. 23 Appassionat: the melody is not the main thing, the main thing is the chords and rhythm. It develops from the bottom up. 2 beginnings, one restraining, the other breaking out. B1 - alternately; B2 - melodiousness, spread out chords, no point. Rhythm. B3 - reduction of durations, the theme is preserved, syncopations B4 - the theme sounds, no repetitions, dialogue of registers, performs the function of a reprise, codes, themes, transition to the finale. The impetus for development lies in the theme. Which is realized in 2c and 3c and summed up in 4c. Sonata A-dur 1h. Mozart 6 variations: non-chord sounds, melismas. Reminds me of the sonata cycle model 1h - 1-4v, 2h - 5v, 3h. - 6th century; 1-2c - dimenutia, 3c - minor, 4 - transfer of hands, 5 - adagio, 6 - final.
Plot Analysis- one of the most common and fruitful ways of interpreting a literary text. At a primitive level, it is accessible to almost any reader. When, for example, we try to retell a book we liked to a friend, we actually begin to isolate the main plot links. However, professional analysis of the plot is a task of a completely different level of complexity. A philologist, armed with special knowledge and mastering the methods of analysis, will see much more in the same plot than an ordinary reader.
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce students to the basics of a professional approach to storytelling.
Classic plot theory. Plot elements.
Plot and plot. Terminological apparatus
Classic plot theory , V in general terms formed back in Ancient Greece, comes from the fact that the main components of plot construction are events And actions. Events woven into actions, as Aristotle believed, are plot- the basis of any epic and dramatic work. We immediately note that the term plot does not occur in Aristotle, it is the result of a Latin translation. Aristotle in the original myth. This nuance was then played bad joke with literary terminology, since the differently translated "myth" has led in modern times to terminological confusion. Below we will dwell in more detail on the modern meanings of the terms. plot And plot.
Aristotle associated the unity of the plot with unity and completeness. actions, but not hero, in other words, the integrity of the plot is ensured not by the fact that we meet one character everywhere (if we talk about Russian literature, then, for example, Chichikov), but by the fact that all the characters are drawn into a single action. Insisting on the unity of action, Aristotle singled out eyeballs And interchange How necessary elements plots. The tension of action, in his opinion, is supported by several
special tricks: peripeteia(a sharp turn from bad to good and vice versa), recognition(in the broadest sense of the word) and related misrecognition errors, which Aristotle considered an integral part of the tragedy. For example, in the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus Rex" the intrigue of the plot is supported misrecognition Oedipus father and mother.In addition, ancient literature as the most important reception construction of the plot often used metamorphosis(transformations). The plots of Greek myths are filled with metamorphoses, and one of the most significant works has such a name. ancient culture- a cycle of poems by the famous Roman poet Ovid, which is a poetic transcription of many plots of Greek mythology. Metamorphoses retain their significance in plots latest literature. Suffice it to recall the stories of N. V. Gogol "The Overcoat" and "The Nose", the novel by M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita", etc. Lovers of modern literature can recall the novel by V. Pelevin "The Life of Insects". In all these works, the moment of transformation plays a fundamental role.
The classical theory of the plot, developed and refined by the aesthetics of modern times, remains relevant today. Another thing is that time, of course, made its own adjustments to it. In particular, the term is widely used collision, introduced in the 19th century by G. Hegel. collision is not just an event; it is an event that breaks some routine. “At the basis of the collision,” writes Hegel, “is a violation that cannot be preserved as a violation, but must be eliminated.” Hegel astutely noted that for the formation of a plot and the development of plot dynamics, it is necessary violation. This thesis, as we shall see later, plays important role in the latest plot theories.
Aristotle's scheme of "tie - denouement" received further development in German literary criticism of the 19th century (first of all, this is associated with the name of the writer and playwright Gustav Freitag) and, having gone through a series of clarifications and terminological treatments, received the classical scheme of plot structure known to many from school: exposition(background to start action) – plot(start of main action) – action development – climax(higher voltage) - denouement.
Today, any teacher uses these terms, called plot elements. The name is not very successful, because with other approaches in as plot elements I perform completely different concepts. However, it is generally accepted in the Russian tradition, so it hardly makes sense to dramatize the situation. We just need to remember that when we say plot elements, then depending on the general concept of the plot, we mean different things. This thesis will become clearer as we become familiar with alternative plot theories.
It is customary to distinguish (quite conditionally) mandatory and optional elements. TO compulsory include those without which the classic plot is completely impossible: plot - development of action - climax - denouement. TO optional- those that are not found in a number of works (or in many). This is often referred to exposure(although not all authors think so), prologue, epilogue, afterword and etc. Prologue- this is a story about events that ended before the start of the main action and shed light on everything that happens. Classical Russian literature did not use prologues very actively, so it is difficult to find an example known to everyone. For example, Goethe's Faust begins with the prologue. The main action is due to the fact that Mephistopheles leads Faust through life, achieving the famous phrase "Stop, a moment, you are beautiful." In the prologue we are talking about the other: God and Mephistopheles make a bet about a man. Is it possible for a person who will not give his soul for any temptations? The honest and talented Faust is chosen as the subject of this wager. After this prologue, the reader understands why Mephistopheles knocked on Faust's closet, why he needs the soul of this particular person.
Much more familiar to us epilogue- a story about the fate of the characters after the denouement of the main action and / or the author's thoughts about the problems of the work. Let us recall "Fathers and Sons" by I. S. Turgenev, "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy - there we will find classic examples of epilogues.
The role of inserted episodes, author's digressions, etc., is not entirely clear. Sometimes (for example, in O. I. Fedotov's textbook) they are included in the concept of plot, more often they are taken out of its boundaries.
In general, it should be recognized that the plot diagram for all its popularity, it has many flaws. First, not all works
built according to this scheme; secondly, she does not runs out of plot analysis. The famous philologist N. D. Tamarchenko remarked, not without irony:“In fact, this kind of “elements” of the plot can only be isolated in crime literature” .At the same time, within reasonable limits, the use of this scheme is justified; it represents, as it were, a first look at the development of the storyline. For many dramatic plots, where the development of the conflict is of fundamental importance, this scheme is all the more applicable.
Modern "variations" on the theme of the classical understanding of the plot, as a rule, take into account a few more points.
Firstly, Aristotle's thesis about the relative autonomy of the plot from the character is called into question. According to Aristotle, the plot is determined by events, and the characters themselves play in it, at best, a subordinate role. Today this thesis is in doubt. Let's compare the definition of action given by V. E. Khalizev: “Actions are manifestations of emotions, thoughts and intentions of a person in his actions, movements, spoken words, gestures, facial expressions”. It is clear that with such an approach we can no longer separate the action and the hero. Ultimately, the action itself is determined by character.
This is an important change of emphasis, changing the angle of view in the study of the plot. To feel this, let's ask a simple question: "What is the main spring of the development of action, for example, in F. M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment"? Interest in the event of the crime is brought to life by the character of Raskolnikov, or, on the contrary, the character of Raskolnikov requires just such a plot disclosure?
According to Aristotle, the first answer dominates, modern scientists are more likely to agree with the second. The literature of modern times often "hides" external events, transferring the center of gravity to psychological nuances. The same V.E. Khalizev in another work, analyzing Pushkin's "Feast in plague time”, noticed that in Pushkin, instead of the dynamics of events, internal action dominates.
In addition, the question remains debatable of what the plot is made up of, where is the minimum “piece of action” that is subject to plot analysis. More traditional is the point of view, which indicates that the actions and actions of the characters should be at the center of the plot analysis. In its extreme form, it was once expressed by A. M. Gorky in “Conversation with the Young” (1934), where the author identifies three major foundations of the work: language, theme / idea and plot. Gorky interpreted the latter as "connections, contradictions, sympathies, antipathies and, in general, the relationship of people, the history of growth and organization of a particular nature." Here, the emphasis is clearly placed on the fact that the plot is based on the formation of character, therefore plot analysis turns, in fact, into an analysis of the supporting links in the development of the character of the hero. Gorky's pathos is quite understandable and historically explainable, but theoretically such a definition is incorrect. Such an interpretation of the plot is applicable only to a very narrow circle of literary works.
The opposite point of view was formulated in the academic edition of the theory of literature by V. V. Kozhinov. His concept took into account many of the latest theories for that time and consisted in the fact that the plot is "a sequence of external and internal movements of people and things." The plot is everywhere where movement and development are felt. At the same time, the smallest “piece” of the plot becomes gesture, and the study of the plot is the interpretation of the system of gestures.
The attitude towards this theory is ambiguous, because, on the one hand, the theory of gestures allows you to see the non-obvious, on the other hand, there is always a danger of “grinding” the plot too much, losing the boundaries of big and small. With this approach, it is very difficult to separate the plot analysis from the stylistic one, since we are actually talking about the analysis of the verbal fabric of the work.
At the same time, the study of the gestural structure of the work can be very useful. Under gesture it should be understood any manifestation of character in action. The spoken word, deed, physical gesture - all this becomes the subject of interpretation. Gestures can be dynamic(that is, the actual action) or static(that is, the absence of action on some changing background). In many cases, it is the static gesture that is most expressive. Let us recall, for example, Akhmatova's famous poem Requiem. As you know, the biographical background of the poem is the arrest of the son of the poetess L. N. Gumilyov. However, this tragic fact of biography is reinterpreted by Akhmatova on a much larger scale: socio-historical (as an accusation against the Stalinist regime) and moral and philosophical (as an eternal repetition of the motive of an unjust trial and maternal grief). Therefore, the second plan is constantly present in the poem: the drama of the thirties of the twentieth century “shines through” with the motive of the execution of Christ and the grief of Mary. And then the famous lines are born:
Magdalena fought and sobbed.
Beloved student turned to stone.
And to where silently Mother stood,
So no one dared to look.
The dynamics here are created by the contrast of gestures, of which the Mother's silence and immobility are the most expressive. Akhmatova here plays up the paradox of the Bible: none of the Gospels describes the behavior of Mary during the torture and execution of Christ, although it is known that she was present at the same time. According to Akhmatova, Maria silently stood and watched her son being tortured. But her silence was so expressive and eerie that everyone was afraid to look in her direction. Therefore, the authors of the Gospels, having described in detail the torment of Christ, do not mention his mother - that would be even more terrible.
Akhmatova's lines are a brilliant example of how deep, tense and expressive talented artist static gesture.
So modern modifications classical theory In one way or another, the authors of the plot recognize the connection of the plot with the character, while the question remains open about the “elementary level” of the plot – whether it is an event / deed or a gesture. Obviously, you should not look for definitions "for all occasions." In some cases, it is more correct to interpret the plot through a gestural structure; in others, where the gestural structure is less expressive, one can abstract from it to one degree or another, concentrating on larger plot units.
Another not very clear point in the assimilation of the classical tradition is the ratio of the meanings of the terms plot And plot. At the beginning of our conversation about the plot, we already said that this problem is historically connected with the errors in the translation of Aristotle's Poetics. As a result, the terminological “dual power” arose. At one time (approximately until the end of the 19th century), these terms were used as synonyms. Then, as the analysis of the plot became more and more subtle, the situation changed. Under plot began to understand events as such, under plot- their actual representation in the work. That is, the plot began to be understood as a “realized plot”. The same plot could be produced in different plots. It suffices to recall how many works, for example, are built around the plot series of the Gospels.
This tradition is associated primarily with the theoretical searches of Russian formalists of the 10s - 20s of the twentieth century (V. Shklovsky, B. Eichenbaum, B. Tomashevsky and others). However, it must be admitted that their work did not differ in theoretical clarity, so the terms plot And plot often changed places, which completely confused the situation.
The traditions of the Formalists were directly or indirectly accepted by Western European literary criticism, so today in different manuals we find different, sometimes opposite, understandings of the meaning of these terms.
Let's focus on the most basic ones.
1. Plot and plot- synonymous concepts, any attempts to breed them only unnecessarily complicate the analysis.
As a rule, it is recommended to abandon one of the terms, most often the plot. This point of view was popular among some Soviet theorists (A. I. Revyakin, L. I. Timofeev, and others). IN late period similar conclusions were reached by one of the "troublemakers" - V. Shklovsky, who at one time insisted on
separation of plot and plot. However, among modern specialistsHowever, this point of view is not dominant.2. plot- these are "pure" events, without fixing any connection between them. As soon as events become connected in the mind of the author, the plot becomes a plot. “The king died and then the queen died” is the plot. "The king died and the queen died of grief" - this is the plot. This point of view is not the most popular, but it is found in a number of sources. The disadvantage of this approach is the non-functionality of the term "plot". In fact, the plot seems to be just a chronicle of events.
3. Plot – the main event series of the work, the plot is its artistic processing. By expression Y. Zundelovich, "the plot is the canvas, the plot is the pattern." This point of view is very common both in Russia and abroad, which is reflected in a number of encyclopedic publications. Historically, this point of view goes back to the ideas of A. N. Veselovsky (late 19th century), although Veselovsky himself did not dramatize the terminological nuances, and his understanding of the plot, as we will see below, differed from the classical one. From the Formalist school, such a conception was primarily adhered to by J. Zundelovich and M. Petrovsky, in whose works plot And plot have become different terms.
At the same time, despite a solid history and authoritative sources, such an understanding of the term in both Russian and Western European literary criticism is not decisive. The opposite point of view is more popular.
4. plot- This the main event series of the work in its conditionally life-like sequence(i.e. hero at first is born Then something is happening to him finally, the hero dies). Plot- This the entire series of events in the sequence as it is presented in the work. After all, the author (especially after the 18th century) may well begin the work, for example, with the death of the hero, and then tell about his birth. Fans of English literature may recall the famous novel by R. Aldington "Death of a Hero", which is built in exactly this way.
Historically, this concept goes back to the most famous and authoritative theoreticians of Russian formalism (V. Shklovsky, B. Tomashevsky, B. Eikhenbaum, R. Yakobson, etc.), it was reflected in the first edition " Literary Encyclopedia» ; it is this point of view that is presented in the article by V. V. Kozhinov, which has already been examined, and is held by many authors of modern textbooks; it is also most frequently found in Western European dictionaries.
In fact, the difference between this tradition and the one we described before it is not fundamental, but formal. The terms just mirror the meaning. It is more important to understand that both concepts fix plot-plot inconsistencies, which gives the philologist a tool for interpretation. Suffice it to recall, for example, how the novel by M. Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time" is constructed. The plot arrangement of the parts clearly does not coincide with the plot, which immediately raises questions: why is that? what is the author trying to achieve? and so on.
In addition, B. Tomashevsky noticed that there are events in the work, without which the logic of the plot collapses ( related motives- in his terminology), but there are those that "can be eliminated without violating the integrity of the causal-temporal course of events" ( free motives). For the plot according to Tomashevsky, only related motives are important. The plot, on the other hand, actively uses free motives; in modern literature they sometimes play a decisive role. If we recall the already mentioned story by I. A. Bunin “The Gentleman from San Francisco”, then we can easily feel that there are few plot events there (arrived - died - taken away), and the tension is maintained by nuances, episodes that, as it may seem, are not play a decisive role in the logic of the story.
