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 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- style 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. In any kind of art there is a 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 party, side party. 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 thought that is distinguished by a rather structurally well-formed individuality and characteristic, 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 is a set of themes 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 - stop. 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 by 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 measures 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 Russian theory In music, a period is understood only as a stable exposition 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 shapes. 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 is a form of three parts, the 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 shapes. 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 written not 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. 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 on basso ostinato. 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.
Plots of world literature (36 plots)
Literature is primarily an art, but at the same time it is information, albeit a very specific one. And the information volume of the world literature is constantly increasing, growing to more and more impressive sizes. But, unlike science and technology, from ideology, in fiction new information does not cancel or replace the previous one. (All masterpieces of world literature in summary. Plots and characters. Russian literature XIX century: Encyclopedic edition. - M.: Olimp; Publishing house ACT, 1996. - 832 p., p.11)
Thus, the volume of world literature, which grows over time, does not change in its essence - repetitive plots are used that reflect the main storylines people's lives.
Each new era adds only an update in style and some character traits this era, including minor changes in the use of language and preferences.
Systematization, schematization, cataloging of the world's book treasures occupied analysts of all eras ... back in the 9th century, it was started by the Patriarch Photius of Constantinople, who compiled the Myriobiblion (translated as "Many Books" or as "Library") - a collection of brief descriptions of the works of Greek and Byzantine authors, including ecclesiastical, secular, historical, medical literature. It is noteworthy that the idea of such a universal, comprehensive library became relevant again a thousand and a hundred years later. In the works of Hermann Hesse, and especially in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, the image of "the world as a library" appears. (All the masterpieces of world literature in brief. Plots and characters. Russian literature of the 19th century: Encyclopedic edition. - M .: Olymp; Publishing house ACT, 1996. - 832 pp. 12)
The famous writer Jorge Luis Borges stated that there are only four plots and, accordingly, four heroes, whom he described in his short story "Four Cycles".
1. The oldest story is the story of a besieged city, which is stormed and defended by heroes. The defenders know that the city is doomed and resistance is futile. This is the story of Troy, and main character- Achilles knows that he will die without seeing victory. A rebel hero, the very fact of whose existence is a challenge to the surrounding reality. In addition to Achilles, the heroes of this plot are Siegfried, Hercules, Sigurd and others.
2. The second story is about the return. The story of Odysseus, who wandered the seas for ten years in an attempt to return home. The hero of these stories is a man rejected by society, endlessly wandering in an attempt to find himself - Don Quixote, Beowulf.
3. The third story is about the search. This story is somewhat similar to the second, but in this case the hero is not an outcast and does not oppose himself to society. The most famous example of such a hero is Jason, sailing for the Golden Fleece.
4. The fourth story is about the suicide of God. Atys maims and kills himself, Odin sacrifices himself to Odin, to himself, hanging on a tree for nine days, nailed with a spear, Roman legionnaires crucify Christ. The hero of the "death of the gods" - losing or gaining faith, in search of faith - Zarathustra, Bulgakov's Master, Bolkonsky.
Another famous author Christopher Booker, in his book "The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories" ("Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories"), described seven basic plots, on the basis of which, in his opinion, all the books in the world are written.
1. "From rags to riches" - the name speaks for itself, the most striking example, familiar to everyone since childhood - Cinderella. Heroes - ordinary people, discovering something unusual in themselves, thanks to their own efforts or by coincidence, they find themselves “on top”.
2. "Adventure" - a difficult journey in search of an elusive goal. According to Booker, both Odysseus and Jason fall into this category, in addition, both "King Solomon's Mines" and "Around the World in Eighty Days" fall into this category.
3. "There and back." At the heart of the plot is the attempt of the hero, torn from the familiar world, to return home. This is Robinson Crusoe, and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, and many others.
4. "Comedy" - This is not just a general term, it is a certain kind of plot that develops according to its own rules. All Jane Austen novels fall into this category.
5. "Tragedy" - the climax is the death of the protagonist due to any character flaws, usually love passion or a thirst for power. These are, first of all, "Macbeth", "King Lear" and "Faust".
6. "Resurrection" - the hero is under the power of a curse or dark forces, and a miracle brings him out of this state. A striking example this story is also familiar to everyone since childhood - Sleeping Beauty, awakened by the kiss of the prince.
7. "Victory over the monster" - from the name it is clear what the plot is - the hero fights the monster, defeats him and receives a "prize" - treasures or love. Examples: Dracula, David and Goliath.
About a hundred years ago, the playwright Georges Polti compiled his list of subjects from thirty-six points (by the way, the number thirty-six was first proposed by Aristotle and much later supported by Victor Hugo). Thirty-six plots and themes of Polti cover mainly dramaturgy and tragedies. There were disputes around this list, it was repeatedly criticized, but no one tried to protest the number 36 itself.
1. PLEASE. Elements of the situation: 1) the persecutor, 2) the persecuted and begging for protection, help, shelter, forgiveness, etc., 3) the force on which it depends to provide protection, etc., while the force that does not immediately decide to defend , hesitant, unsure of herself, which is why she has to beg (thus increasing the emotional impact of the situation), the more she hesitates and does not dare to help. Examples: 1) a fleeing person begs someone who can save him from enemies, 2) begs for shelter in order to die in it, 3) a shipwrecked person asks for shelter, 4) asks for someone in power for dear, close people, 5) asks for one relative for another relative, etc.
2. SALVATION. Elements of the situation: 1) unhappy, 2) threatening, persecuting, 3) savior. This situation differs from the previous one in that there the persecuted resorted to the hesitant power, which had to be pleaded, but here the savior appears unexpectedly and saves the unfortunate without hesitation. Examples: 1) the denouement of the famous tale of the Bluebeard. 2) saving a person sentenced to death or generally in mortal danger, etc.
3. REVENGE PURSUING CRIME. Elements of the situation: 1) avenger, 2) guilty, 3) crime. Examples: 1) blood feud, 2) revenge on a rival or rival or lover, or mistress on the basis of jealousy.
4. REVENGE OF A CLOSE PERSON FOR ANOTHER CLOSE PERSON OR RELATED PEOPLE. Elements of the situation: 1) living memory about the offense inflicted on another close person, harm, about the victims suffered by him for the sake of his loved ones, 2) a vengeful relative, 3) guilty of these insults, harm, etc. - a relative. Examples: 1) revenge on the father for the mother or mother for the father, 2) revenge on the brothers for their son, 3) father for the husband, 4) husband for the son, etc. A classic example: Hamlet's revenge on his stepfather and mother for his murdered father .
5. Haunted. Elements of the situation: 1) a crime committed or a fatal mistake and the expected punishment, retribution, 2) hiding from punishment, retribution for a crime or mistake. Examples: 1) persecuted by the authorities for politics (for example, Schiller's "Robbers", the history of the revolutionary struggle in the underground), 2) persecuted for robbery (detective stories), 3) persecuted for a mistake in love ("Don Juan" by Moliere, alimentary stories and etc.), 4) a hero pursued by a superior force (“Chained Prometheus” by Aeschylus, etc.).
6. SUDDEN DISASTER. Elements of the situation: 1) the victorious enemy, appearing personally; or a messenger bringing terrible news of defeat, collapse, etc., 2) a ruler defeated by a winner or slain by news, a powerful banker, an industrial king, etc. Examples: 1) the fall of Napoleon, 2) Zola's "Money", 3 ) "The End of Tartarin" by Anphonse Daudet, etc.
7. Victim (i.e., someone, the victim of some other person or people, or the victim of some circumstances, some kind of misfortune). Elements of the situation: 1) one who can influence the fate of another person in the sense of his oppression or some kind of misfortune. 2) weak, being a victim of another person or misfortune. Examples: 1) ruined or exploited by someone who was supposed to care and protect, 2) previously loved or close, convinced that he was forgotten, 3) unfortunate, who have lost all hope, etc.
8. REBELLION, REBELLION, REBELLION. Elements of the situation: 1) tyrant, 2) conspirator. Examples: 1) the conspiracy of one (“The Fiesco Conspiracy” by Schiller), 2) the conspiracy of several, 3) the indignation of one (“Egmond” by Goethe), 4) the indignation of many (“William Tell” by Schiller, “Germinal” by Zola)
9. A BOLD ATTEMPT. Elements of the situation: 1) the daring one, 2) the object, that is, what the daring one decides on, 3) the opponent, the opposing person. Examples: 1) the abduction of an object ("Prometheus - the thief of fire" by Aeschylus). 2) enterprises associated with dangers and adventures (Jules Verne's novels, and adventure stories in general), 3) a dangerous enterprise in connection with the desire to achieve a beloved woman, etc.
10. KIDNAPPING. Elements of the situation: 1) the kidnapper, 2) the kidnapped person, 3) protecting the kidnapped person and being an obstacle to the kidnapping or counteracting the kidnapping. Examples: 1) abduction of a woman without her consent, 2) abduction of a woman with her consent, 3) abduction of a friend, comrade from captivity, prison, etc. 4) abduction of a child.
11. MYSTERY (i.e., on the one hand, asking a riddle, and on the other, asking, striving to solve the riddle). Elements of the situation: 1) asking a riddle, hiding something, 2) trying to solve the riddle, find out something, 3) the subject of a riddle or ignorance (mysterious) Examples: 1) under pain of death, you need to find some person or object, 2 ) to find the lost, lost, 3) under pain of death to solve the riddle (Oedipus and the Sphinx), 4) to force a person to reveal what he wants to hide by all sorts of tricks (name, gender, state of mind, etc.)
12. ACHIEVING SOMETHING. Elements of the situation: 1) striving to achieve something, pursuing something, 2) the one on which the achievement of something depends on consent or help, refusing or helping, mediating, 3) there may be a third party that opposes the achievement. Examples: 1) try to get from the owner a thing or some other blessing in life, consent to marriage, position, money, etc. by cunning or force, 2) try to get something or achieve something with the help of eloquence (directly addressed to the owner of the thing or - to the judge, arbitrators, on whom the award of the thing depends)
13. HATE TO RELATED. Elements of the situation: 1) hater, 2) hated, 3) cause of hatred. Examples: 1) hatred between relatives (for example, brothers) out of envy, 2) hatred between relatives (for example, a son who hates his father) for reasons of material gain, 3) hatred of a mother-in-law for a future daughter-in-law, 4) mother-in-law for a son-in-law, 5) stepmothers to the stepdaughter, etc.
14. COMPETITION OF RELATED. Elements of the situation: 1) one of the relatives is preferred, 2) the other is neglected or abandoned, 3) the subject of rivalry (at the same time, apparently, ups and downs are possible at first, the preferred one turns out to be neglected and vice versa) Examples: 1) rivalry between brothers (“Pierre and Jean "Maupassant), 2) rivalry of sisters, 3) father and son - because of a woman, 4) mother and daughter, 5) rivalry of friends ("Two Veronets" by Shakespeare)
15. ADULTER (i.e., adultery, adultery), LEADING TO MURDER. Elements of the situation: 1) one of the spouses who violates marital fidelity, 2) the other of the spouses is deceived, 3) adultery (that is, someone else is a lover or mistress). Examples: 1) kill or let your lover kill her husband (“Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” by Leskov, “Teresa Raken” by Zola, “The Power of Darkness” by Tolstoy) 2) kill a lover who entrusted his secret (“Samson and Delilah”), etc. .
16. MADNESS. Elements of the situation: 1) a person who has fallen into madness (insane), 2) a victim of a person who has fallen into madness, 3) a real or imaginary reason for madness. Examples: 1) in a fit of madness, kill your lover (Elise the Prostitute by Goncourt), a child, 2) in a fit of madness, burn, destroy your own or someone else's work, a work of art, 3) in a drunken state, betray a secret or commit a crime.
17. FATAL NEGLIGENCE. Elements of the situation: 1) careless, 2) a victim of carelessness or a lost object, this is sometimes joined by 3) a good adviser warning against carelessness, or 4) an instigator, or both. Examples: 1) due to negligence, be the cause of one’s own misfortune, dishonor oneself (“Money” by Zola), 2) due to negligence or gullibility, cause misfortune or death of another person close (Biblical Eve)
18. INWITNESS (out of ignorance) CRIME OF LOVE (in particular, incest). Elements of the situation: 1) lover (husband), mistress (wife), 3) recognition (in the case of incest) that they are in a close degree of kinship, which does not allow love relationships in accordance with the law and current morality. Examples: 1) find out that he married his mother (“Oedipus” by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Corneille, Voltaire), 2) find out that his mistress is a sister (“Messinian bride” by Schiller), 3) a very banal case: find out that the mistress - Married.
19. UNWINNING (out of ignorance) KILLING OF A RELATED. Elements of the situation: 1) killer, 2) unrecognized victim, 3) exposure, recognition. Examples: 1) involuntarily contribute to the murder of his daughter, out of hatred for her lover ("The King is having fun" Hugo, a play based on which the opera "Rigoletto" was made, 2) not knowing his father, kill him ("The freeloader" by Turgenev with the fact that the murder replaced by an insult), etc.
20. SELF-SACRIFICE IN THE NAME OF THE IDEAL. Elements of the situation: 1) a hero sacrificing himself, 2) an ideal (word, duty, faith, conviction, etc.), 3) a sacrifice. Examples: 1) sacrifice your well-being for the sake of duty (“Resurrection” by Tolstoy), 2) sacrifice your life in the name of faith, conviction ...
21. SELF-SACRIFICE FOR THE RELATED. Elements of the situation: 1) the hero sacrificing himself, 2) the loved one for whom the hero sacrifices himself, 3) what the hero sacrifices. Examples: 1) sacrifice your ambition and success in life for the sake of a loved one (“The Zemgano Brothers” by Goncourt), 2) sacrifice your love for the sake of a child, for the life of a loved one, 3) sacrifice your chastity for the life of a loved one or loved one (“Tosca” by Sordu ), 4) to sacrifice life for the life of a loved one, etc.
22. SACRIFICE EVERYTHING - FOR THE SAKE OF PASSION. Elements of the situation: 1) a lover, 2) an object of fatal passion, 3) something that is sacrificed. Examples: 1) a passion that destroys the vow of religious chastity (“Mistake of Abbé Mouret” by Zola), 2) a passion that destroys power, power (“Antony and Cleopatra” by Shakespeare), 3) a passion quenched at the cost of life (“Egyptian Nights” by Pushkin) . But not only a passion for a woman, or a woman for a man, but also a passion for running, card game, guilt, etc.
23. SACRIFICE A LOVED PERSON BECAUSE OF NECESSITY, INEVITABILITY. Elements of the situation: 1) a hero who sacrifices a loved one, 2) a loved one who is sacrificed. Examples: 1) the need to sacrifice a daughter for the sake of public interest (“Iphigenia” by Aeschylus and Sophocles, “Iphigenia in Tauris” by Euripides and Racine), 2) the need to sacrifice loved ones or their adherents for the sake of their faith, conviction (“93 year” Hugo), etc. d.
24. COMPETITION OF UNEQUAL (and also almost equal or equal). Elements of the situation: 1) one opponent (in case of unequal rivalry - inferior, weaker), 2) another opponent (higher, stronger), 3) the subject of rivalry. Examples: 1) the rivalry between the winner and her prisoner (Mary Stuart by Schiller), 2) the rivalry between the rich and the poor. 3) rivalry between a person who is loved and a person who does not have the right to love (“Esmeralda” by V. Hugo), etc.
25. ADULTER (adultery, adultery). Elements of the situation: the same as in adultery leading to murder. Not considering adultery capable of creating a situation - by itself, Polti considers it as a special case of theft aggravated by betrayal, while pointing out three possible cases: 1) the lover (tsa) is more pleasant than firm than the deceived spouse ), 2) the lover is less attractive than the deceived spouse, 3) the deceived spouse takes revenge. Examples: 1) Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Kreutzer Sonata by L. Tolstoy.
26. CRIME OF LOVE. Elements of the situation: 1) in love (th), 2) beloved (th). Examples: 1) a woman in love with her daughter's husband ("Phaedra" by Sophocles and Racine, "Hippolytus" by Euripides and Seneca), 2) the incestuous passion of Dr. Pascal (in novel of the same name Zola), etc.
27. LEARNING ABOUT THE DISHONOR OF A LOVED OR RELATED (sometimes associated with the fact that the one who found out is forced to pronounce a sentence, punish a loved one or a loved one). Elements of the situation: 1) recognizer, 2) guilty loved one or close, 3) guilt. Examples: 1) learn about the dishonor of his mother, daughter, wife, 2) discover that a brother or son is a murderer, a traitor to the motherland and be forced to punish him, 3) be forced by virtue of an oath to kill a tyrant - to kill his father, etc. .
28. OBSTACLE OF LOVE. Elements of the situation: 1) lover, 2) mistress, 3) obstacle. Examples: 1) a marriage frustrated by social or property inequality, 2) a marriage frustrated by enemies or accidental circumstances, 3) a marriage frustrated by enmity between parents on both sides, 4) a marriage frustrated by dissimilarities in the characters of lovers, etc.
29. LOVE FOR THE ENEMY. Elements of the situation: 1) the enemy who aroused love, 2) the one who loves the enemy, 3) the reason why the beloved is the enemy. Examples: 1) the beloved is an opponent of the party to which the lover belongs, 2) the beloved is the murderer of the father, husband or relative of the one who loves him (“Romeo and Juliet”,), etc.
30. AMBITION AND LOVE OF POWER. Elements of the situation: 1) an ambitious person, 2) what he wants, 3) an adversary or rival, i.e., a counteracting person. Examples: 1) ambition, greed leading to crimes (“Macbeth” and “Richard 3” by Shakespeare, “The Rougon Career” and “Earth” by Zola), 2) ambition leading to rebellion, 3) ambition that is opposed by a loved one, friend, relative, own supporters, etc.
31. FIGHTING THE GOD (fight against God). Elements of the situation: 1) man, 2) god, 3) reason or subject of struggle. Examples: 1) fighting with God, arguing with him, 2) fighting with those who are faithful to God (Julian the Apostate), etc.
32. UNCONSCIOUS JEYALY, ENVY. Elements of the situation: 1) jealous, envious, 2) the object of his jealousy and envy, 3) the alleged rival, applicant, 4) a reason for delusion or his culprit (traitor). Examples: 1) jealousy is caused by a traitor who is motivated by hatred (“Othello”) 2) a traitor acts out of profit or jealousy (“Cunning and Love” by Schiller), etc.
33. JUDICIAL MISTAKE. Elements of the situation: 1) the one who is mistaken, 2) the victim of the mistake, 3) the subject of the mistake, 4) the true criminal Examples: 1) a judicial error was provoked by an enemy (“The Womb of Paris” by Zola), 2) a judicial error was provoked by a loved one, the brother of the victim (“Robbers” by Schiller), etc.
34. CONCUSES OF CONSCIENCE. Elements of the situation: 1) the guilty, 2) the victim of the guilty (or his mistake), 3) looking for the guilty, trying to expose him. Examples: 1) remorse of the killer (“Crime and Punishment”), 2) remorse due to a mistake of love (“Madeleine” by Zola), etc.
35. LOST AND FOUND. Elements of the situation: 1) lost 2) found, 2) found. Examples: 1) "Children of Captain Grant", etc.
36. LOSS OF LOVED ONES. Elements of the situation: 1) deceased loved one, 2) lost loved one, 3) responsible for the death of a loved one. Examples: 1) powerless to do something (save his loved ones) - a witness to their death, 2) being bound by a professional secret (medical or secret confession, etc.), he sees the misfortune of loved ones, 3) foresee the death of a loved one, 4) find out about the death of an ally, 5) in despair at the death of a loved one, lose all interest in life, sink, etc.
Disputes about how many and what plots exist in literature are still ongoing. Different options are offered, different figures, but researchers cannot come to a consensus. In principle, each person can find his own versions of this list and, if desired, getting rid of everything superfluous, leaving only the “skeleton”, find confirmation of his version in all works of world literature.
In our studies, with the help of factor analysis, out of 36 plots, only 5 were singled out:
1. Adultery (adultery, treason) with revenge
2. Restoration of justice
3. Search, achievement.
4. Sacrifice in the family and for the sake of the family
5. Sacrifice for an idea.
At least 4 of them are very similar to the stories proposed by Borges.
From the point of view of psychology, the preference or choice of a particular plot in literature or in cinema seems to be a reflection of the minimum state of a person and, as a maximum, his psychological (values, goals, norms, interests, abilities) and psychophysiological (features of perception, information processing depending on the physiological type functioning, from the type of the leading nervous system, the way of responding) of the type of person, the continuation of which is his worldview, which includes "addiction" to certain storylines of life, and literature in particular. In addition, it is interesting to consider the plots that are repeated in all works, as a symbolic reflection of the genetic programs laid down and evaluated in the non-specific part of the nervous system.
Therefore, your preference for plots in connection with psychophysiological data seems interesting.
Analysis.
In this case, this questionnaire should be considered by you as a reflection of your interests in storylines. Your task is to consider the plots closest and most rejected by you in connection with your type of activation. In data analysis, when describing your type, include a description of subjects that are not of interest to you and that are of interest to you, with clarification possible causes this and the connections between them, and also try to generalize the storylines and connect them with your type of activation and other psychological data, that is, explain these relationships.
Julian Barnes: Variations on a Theme of History
(Practical lesson)
The name of the work "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters", 1989, brought to the English writer Julian Barnes (Julian Barnes, b. 1946) world recognition, 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 the possible options for linking the compositional parts of the text will determine new interpretations, 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 beginning" [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 half-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 readers of history 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 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... In any case, finding new ground with 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 Levi-Strauss, who quite convincingly showed that the Freudian version of the Oedipus myth is itself integral part this myth: when we read 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 is a different version of a certain historical event, and a number of such versions are fundamentally open. 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 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 those animals 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 update. 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? Have you stopped making old mistakes, or new mistakes, or old mistakes in a 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.” Barnes sees the main vice of being not in violence or injustice, but in the fact that earthly life, its historical movement is meaningless. History simply mimics itself; And single point support in this chaos - 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. All that is called postmodern novel"J. Fowles, J. Barnes, H. Cortazar and many others, is not only a description of the 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. No. 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 // Contemporary Foreign Literary Studies (Western European countries and the 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 kind of homogeneity, 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 a “logical” approach to an 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 a great idea, maybe even a perfect 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.
From the book Literature of Suspicion: Problems modern novel author Viar DominicVariations on the Theme of the Novel Even if our knowledge of literature and its history, techniques and forms is too extensive today for anyone to afford naive texts, many continue to pretend that nothing happened. They fight for a return to the classic romance
From the book History of Russian Literature of the 18th Century author Lebedeva O. B.Practical lesson No. 1. The reform of Russian versification Literature: 1) Trediakovsky VK A new and short way to compose Russian verse // Trediakovsky VK Selected works. M.; L., 1963.2) Lomonosov M. V. Letter on the rules of Russian poetry // Lomonosov M.
From the book Foreign Literature of the 20th Century. 1940–1990: textbook author Loshakov Alexander GennadievichPractical lesson No. 2. Genre varieties of the ode in the work of M. V. Lomonosov Literature: 1) Lomonosov M. V. Odes of 1739, 1747, 1748. "Conversation with Anacreon" "Poems composed on the road to Peterhof ...". " Night darkness... ". "Morning reflection on God's majesty" "Evening
From the book Foreign Literature of the 20th Century: Practical Exercises the author Team of AuthorsPractical lesson No. 3. Genres of Russian comedy of the 18th century. Literature: 1) Sumarokov A.P. Tresotinius. Guardian. Cuckold by imagination // Sumarokov A.P. Dramatic works. L., 1990.2) Lukin V. I. Mot, corrected with love. Shchepetilnik // Russian literature of the 18th century. (1700-1775). Comp. V.A.
From the author's bookPractical lesson No. 4. Poetics of the comedy by D. I. Fonvizin “Undergrowth” Literature: 1) Fonvizin D. I. Undergrowth // Fonvizin D. I. Sobr. cit.: In 2 vols. M.; L., 1959. T. 1.2) Makogonenko G.P. From Fonvizin to Pushkin. M., 1969. S. 336-367.3) Berkov P. N. The history of Russian comedy of the XVIII century. L., 1977. Ch. 8 (§ 3).4)
From the author's bookPractical lesson No. 5 "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" A. N. Radishchev Literature: 1) Radishchev A. N. Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow // Radishchev A. N. Works. M., 1988.2) Kulakova L. I., Zapadav V. A. A. N. Radishchev. "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow". A comment. L., 1974.3)
From the author's bookTopic 2 "And what is, in essence, the plague?": novel-chronicle "Plague" (1947) by Albert Camus (Practical lesson) PLAN OF PRACTICAL LESSON1. Moral and philosophical code of A. Camus.2. Genre originality of the novel "The Plague". The genre of the novel-chronicle and the parable beginning in the work.3. Story
From the author's bookTopic 3 Short stories by Tadeusz Borowski and Zofia Nałkowska (Practical lesson) Poetics, capable of expressing the fundamental and deep meanings of being, including the “super-meanings” (K. Jaspers) of existential (actually human) existence in the world, is
From the author's bookTopic 5 Per Fabian Lagerkvist's Philosophical Parable "Barabbas" (Practical Lesson) journalistic works, which became
From the author's book From the author's bookTopic 7 Anthony Burgess' dystopia A Clockwork Orange (Practice) The novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) brought world fame to its creator - the English prose writer Anthony Burgess (Anthony Burgess, 1917-1993). But the Russian-speaking reader got the opportunity
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
Theme with variations
If you've ever watched the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray (or Beware the Doors Are Closing!, The Butterfly Effect, Back to the Future...), then you already know what a theme with variations is.
In these films, with each twist in the plot, the images of the characters or the circumstances in which these characters find themselves are modified, but at the same time something always remains unchanged.
Wherever the action takes place - in the present, past or future - a trailer with manure still overturns on Marty McFly's enemies; the heroine Gwyneth Paltrow in both scenarios meets her future boyfriend; weather reporter Phil Connors wakes up again and again in his hotel room in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day, February 2, and most of the events that await him on this day, he has already learned by heart, although thanks to his intervention they “sound” every time in a new way.
Approximately according to the same principle (not literally, of course:) musical variations are built, only in them the musical theme undergoes transformations. In each variant (=variation), it is colored with new colors, and ideally, it also turns with new facets, acquires new features (in this case, it is not possible to follow its metamorphoses).
Pieces written in the form of a theme with variations are just a godsend for i-virtuosos, who find it profitable to shine by presenting to the listener everything they are capable of at once (, various brilliant ...)
Although, of course, the task before the performer here is not only technical. After all, good variations also imply a variety of artistic, images, characters, moods: here you need to be a violinist, an artist and an artist at the same time, to be able to transform.
Variations of Paganini, Ernst, Khandoshkin
Paganini was very fond of variations. Already in its first solo concert, which he gave at the age of 11, he played, among other things, his own variations on the revolutionary song "Carmagnola". Later, Paganini composed many variations on romantic themes: among them are “The Witch” on a theme from the ballet “The Wedding of Benevento” by Süssmayr, “Prayer” on one string on a theme from the opera “Moses” by Rossini, “At the hearth I no longer feel sad” on a theme from the opera “Cinderella” by Rossini, “ Trembling of the Heart" on a theme from the opera "Tancred" by Rossini, "How the Heart Stops" on a theme from the opera "The Beautiful Miller's Woman" by Paisiello. The most “armor-piercing” Paganinian variations in terms of technique are on the theme of the English anthem “God Save the Queen!”
The famous 24th Paganini, by the way, also consists entirely of variations. The theme of the caprice - impudent, rebellious - undoubtedly should have been to the taste of the Carbonari at one time. It is followed by variations that reveal the potential of the theme with different parties. The first - sparkling volatile beads fall in cascades, the second - a gloomy minor lace with sharp ones is woven, the third - a lyrical sad melody performed by deep ones. And then seven more variations, including variations, and with the left hand, and the final of and broken lines, forming, as it were, several “terraces”. All this should not just be played, but so that the listener feels as if he is being led through the enfilades of the same building: there must be development, forward movement and a convincing conclusion.
Another famous virtuoso of past eras, Heinrich Ernst, also could not pass by the genre of theme with variations. He left us the "Last Rose of Summer", which now (together with "God Save the Queen!") scare beginner violinists, and the audience at the same time. This piece, which is extremely difficult to perform, is based on the theme of the Scottish song of the same name, with lyrics by Thomas More. Those who are not enthusiastic about the technical "bells and whistles" of "Rose" vindictively call her stupid in content and poor in music. But they are unfair to Rosa. After all, the main thing for variations in it is - lovely theme. There is also a plot that is quite capable of fueling the imagination. If you read carefully, and then work on the image, phrasing, while listening to the same song in other traditions (performed by Clannad, for example ... or opera diva Lily Pons, or Deanna Durbin...) - then the game with this piece will be completely different. But in order for it to give pleasure, it is necessary, of course, to emphasize the theme, to play it with a beautiful sound, despite all the and wrapped around it. That is, you still need it sing…
The "Russian Paganini" Khandoshkin was also a fan of virtuoso variations. As a theme, he took Russian folk songs, which acquired under his fingers a new, seemingly unusual brilliance and color. The song “There was a birch in the field” sounded temperamentally and almost rebelliously - we probably would not have guessed about its nature without Khandoshkin.
Philosophical variations
Not only the most virtuosic, but also the deepest in content violin works (Corelli's Folia, Bach's Chaconne) are written in the form of variations.
The philosophical potential of variations is great because, after all, life itself is multivariate. And although in reality we have to choose only one of the existing options (that is, we are deprived of the opportunity to see life in all its diversity), in music you can do otherwise. Watching how the same topic develops in different planes, we can come to a lot of interesting thoughts and even - who knows? - perhaps it is better to understand the structure of all living things.
Writer Kurt Vonnegut managed to fit all the works of world literature and cinema into eight simple plots. In general, all stories tell us about how people get out of holes, meet their other half, or lose everything they could get in this life. This Saturday marks the 8th anniversary of the writer's death.
This Saturday marks 8 years since the death of the famous American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Many people know him from his novels and short stories which gained great popularity.
The writer himself not only created stories, but also analyzed how others do it. His master's thesis in anthropology, which he wrote at the University of Chicago, was devoted to how the plots of stories develop in different cultures. In his opinion, all stories can be classified according to the schedule of the main character's fate line, which fluctuates from failure to success. These stories can tell a lot about the culture in which they were written.
Partially, Vonnegut presented his theory in the book "A Man Without a Country", adding there several graphs, on which vertical line denoted the movement from failure to success, and horizontal - from the beginning to the end of the story.
Based on Vonnegut's lectures, designer Maya Eilam made detailed illustrations of the development of 8 plots outlined by the writer, with examples from literature and cinema. They are published by the famous American economist Barry Ritzholtz.
Major plots in literature
The most popular and beloved stories by readers and viewers are "Man in a Full Ass" and "Boy Meets Girl". At the same time, their variations can be very different, that is, for example, in the second story, a guy and a girl do not necessarily have to appear. The main thing is the path that the main character takes in different circumstances.
Of the films and books popular in Russia, the plot of "The Man in the Full Ass" includes "Robinson Crusoe" and, with some stretch, "Crime and Punishment", as well as the films "The Lord of the Rings" and "Sanctum", and from the recent "Interstellar".
Cinematography is also very fond of this plot. It was also used in classic cinema, for example, in " Caucasian captive", as well as in Hollywood films like The Notebook or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Vonnegut sees a slightly different story in stories about the creation of the world and religious stories. On the one hand, these stories tell about how God endows a person with numerous gifts. On the other hand, the Bible talks about the fall that follows these gifts and deprives mankind of all the benefits that belonged to him.
The subjects of the Old Testament include such literary works like "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish", "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel", as well as a huge number of dystopian novels that depict an ideal world that turns out to be imperfect. At some stretch, this category includes tragedies where things start out more or less well and then fall apart.
Movies about the apocalypse can also be included in this category, for example, popular series « the walking Dead»: the normal world can be considered a paradise that the heroes lost due to the epidemic. Now films about the end of the world are becoming more and more popular.
The plot of the New Testament, according to Vonnegut, is more like modern stories, and what he especially admired is reminiscent of the tale of Cinderella. Here, just as in stories about the creation of the world, a person is endowed with great gifts, then falls, but then gains even greater gifts and eternal good. According to Vonnegut himself, the Cinderella story is so popular that anyone who creates another retelling of it earns millions.
In the cinema, this plot is quite actively exploited, for example, in the film “Bruce Almighty”, the hero of Jim Carrey is endowed with the abilities of God, but then he spoils everything himself, however, then he corrects his mistakes.
This can also include famous movie"Pretty Woman" with Julia Roberts, which has become a cult in Russia. The beloved by many "Moscow does not believe in tears" falls into the same category.
Some pieces are more complex. So, in Kafka's Metamorphoses, the fate of the protagonist develops from bad to worse, and in Shakespeare's Hamlet it is not completely clear whether what happens to the hero is good or bad.
According to Vonnegut, the genius of Hamlet lies precisely in its vagueness: “Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely do this, being too caught up in their own ups and downs. The truth is that we know so little about life that we are not even able to determine what is good for us and what is bad.
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