Listen to conversations. You can include snippets of these conversations in your story.

Listen to the song and pay attention to its words. What feelings does it evoke in you? Happiness? Sadness? Just describe your experiences or come up with a character for the lyrics of the song.

Sometimes it's enough just to write the title of your future story, and the words will flow by themselves. As a result, you can get an excellent essay.

Write in the fanfiction genre (amateur literary compositions based on popular novels, films, television series). Make up a story about the crazy antics of your favorite character, actor, or musician. You can write your version of the creation of a particular song. There are many fanfiction sites where you can publish your writing and get feedback from readers.

Check out the logs. In some libraries you can borrow old editions of publications. Just flip through the pages and view their content. Found a scandalous story? Take it as the basis of your story. Does the magazine have subscriber Q&A pages? Make one of the described problems your character's dilemma.

Look at photos of strangers. Try to imagine what their names are, who they are, what their life path is. Describe them in your story.

Base your essay on your own life experiences. Or write an autobiography!

If you write not on a computer, but with a pen on paper, use quality supplies. It will be difficult for you to realize your creativity with a poor pen and crumpled paper.

Write about the fulfillment of your wildest dreams and fantasies. Don't worry, names can be changed!

Create an association map. It will help organize information about characters and events, especially if your visual perception predominates.

Watch music videos at www.youtube.com. Describe your opinion about what is happening, your thoughts and feelings about it.

If you keep or kept a diary, flip through your old entries. Look for topics and ideas for your essay.

Practice freewriting. This will take you about 10 minutes a day. Just write down whatever comes to mind without distraction for 10 to 20 minutes. You do not need to correct errors and correct the text. Even if something like "I don't know what to write" comes to your mind, just keep writing until inspiration strikes.

A great way to find new ideas is to write with your family or friends when you have nothing else to do. Take a piece of paper and write three lines on it on any topic. For example: "Once upon a time there was a small bird. She loved to fish because she loved to eat." Then fold the sheet so that only the last line is visible - "she loved to eat" - and pass it to the next person. He will write, for example: "... she loved to eat nuts under the summer breeze. And suddenly a huge monster appeared ...". Keep writing until you have covered the entire sheet. Reading the resulting text will give you a lot of fun.

Hello author! Analyzing any work of art, a critic/reviewer, and just an attentive reader, starts from four basic literary concepts. The author relies on them when creating his work of art, unless, of course, he is a standard graphomaniac, who simply writes everything that comes to mind. You can write rubbish, template or more or less original without understanding these terms. But here is a text worthy of the reader's attention - it is rather difficult. So let's go over each of them. I'll try not to load.

Translated from Greek, the theme is that which is the basis. In other words, the theme is the subject of the author's image, those phenomena and events to which the author wants to draw the reader's attention.

Examples:

The theme of love, its origin and development, and possibly its end.
The theme of fathers and children.
The theme of the confrontation between good and evil.
The theme of betrayal.
The theme of friendship.
The theme of the formation of character.
Space exploration theme.

Topics change depending on the era in which a person lives, but some topics that worry humanity from era to era remain relevant - they are called "eternal topics". Above, I listed 6 "eternal themes", but the last, seventh - "the conquest of space" - has become relevant for mankind not so long ago. However, apparently, it will also become an "eternal theme".

1. The author sits down for a novel and writes everything that comes to mind, without thinking about any topics of literary works.
2. The author is going to write, say, a science fiction novel and starts from the genre. He does not care about the topic, he does not think about it at all.
3. The author coldly chooses a topic for his novel, scrupulously studies and thinks it over.
4. The author is concerned about some topic, questions about it do not let him sleep at night, and during the day he mentally returns to this topic every now and then.

The result will be 4 different novels.

1. 95% (the percentages are approximate, they are given for a better understanding and nothing more) - it will be an ordinary graphomaniac, slag, a meaningless chain of events, with logical errors, cranberries, blunders where someone attacked someone, although there was none there is no reason for that, someone fell in love with someone, although the reader does not understand at all what he / she found in her / him, someone quarreled with someone for no reason (In fact, of course, it’s understandable - so the author needed it in order to continue to freely sculpt his writings)))), etc. etc. There are many such novels, but they are rarely printed, because few people can master them even with a small volume. Runet is littered with such novels, I think that you have watched them more than once.

2. This is the so-called "stream literature", it is printed quite often. Read and forget. For once. Will pull with beer. Such novels can captivate if the author has a good imagination, but they do not touch, do not excite. A certain man went there, found something, then became powerful, and so on. A certain young lady fell in love with a handsome man, from the very beginning it was clear that in the fifth or sixth chapter there would be sex, and in the final they would get married. A certain "nerd" became the chosen one and went to distribute whips and gingerbread left and right, to all those who he did not like and liked. Etc. In general, everything ... such. There are plenty of such novels both on the Web and on bookshelves, and, most likely, while reading this paragraph, you remembered a couple of three, or maybe a dozen or more.

3. These are the so-called "handicrafts" of high quality. The author is a pro and skillfully leads the reader from chapter to chapter, and the ending surprises. However, the author does not write about what he sincerely cares about, but he studies the moods and tastes of readers and writes in such a way that the reader is interested. Such literature is much rarer than the second category. I will not name the authors here, but you are probably familiar with suitable crafts. These are fascinating detective stories and exciting fantasy and beautiful love stories. After reading such a novel, the reader is often satisfied and wants to continue to get acquainted with the novels of his favorite author. They are rarely re-read, because the plot is already familiar and understandable. But if the characters fell in love, then re-reading is quite possible, and reading the author’s new books is more than likely (if he has them, of course).

4. And this category is rare. Novels, after reading which people walk for several minutes, or even hours, as if knocked down, under the impression, often ponder what was written. They can cry. They can laugh. These are novels that stagger the imagination, which help to cope with life's difficulties, to rethink this or that. Almost all classical literature is like that. These are novels that people put on a bookshelf in order to re-read and rethink what they read after some time. Novels that have an impact on people. Novels that are remembered. This is Literature with a capital letter.

Naturally, I'm not saying that choosing and working on a theme is enough to write a strong novel. Moreover, I will say frankly - not enough. But in any case, I think it is clear how important the topic is in a literary work.

The idea of ​​a literary work is inextricably linked with its theme, and that example of the influence of a novel on the reader that I described above in paragraph 4 is unrealistic if the author paid attention only to the topic, but forgot to even think about the idea. However, if the author is concerned about the topic, then the idea, as a rule, is comprehended and worked out by him with the same attention.

What is the idea of ​​a literary work?

The idea is the main idea of ​​the work. It shows the attitude of the author to the theme of his work. It is in this display by artistic means that the difference between the idea of ​​a work of art and a scientific idea lies.

"Gustave Flaubert vividly expressed his ideal of the writer, noting that, like the Almighty, the writer in his book should be nowhere and everywhere, invisible and omnipresent. There are several important works of fiction in which the presence of the author is unobtrusive to the extent that Flaubert wanted it, although he himself failed to achieve his ideal in Madame Bovary, but even in works where the author is ideally unobtrusive, he is nonetheless scattered throughout the book and his absence turns into a kind of radiant presence.As the French say, "il brille par son absence "("shines with its absence")" © Vladimir Nabokov, "Lectures on Foreign Literature".

If the author accepts the reality described in the work, then such an ideological assessment is called an ideological statement.
If the author condemns the reality described in the work, then such an ideological assessment is called an ideological denial.

The ratio of ideological affirmation and ideological negation in each work is different.

It is important not to go to extremes here, and this is very, very difficult. The author who forgets about the idea at the moment, the emphasis on artistry will lose the idea, and the author who forgets about artistry, since he is completely absorbed in the idea, will write journalism. This is neither good nor bad for the reader, because it is a matter of the reader's taste - to choose how to relate to this, however, fiction is precisely what fiction is and precisely what literature is.

Examples:

Two different authors describe the NEP period in their novels. However, after reading the novel by the first author, the reader is filled with indignation, condemns the events described and concludes that this period was terrible. And after reading the novel by the second author, the reader would be delighted, and would draw conclusions that the NEP is a wonderful period in history and will regret that he does not live in this period. Of course, in this example, I am exaggerating, because the clumsy expression of the idea is a sign of a weak novel, poster, popular print - which can cause rejection in the reader, who considers that the author is imposing his opinion on him. But I exaggerate in this example for a better understanding.

Two different authors wrote stories about adultery. The first author condemns adultery, the second understands the reasons for their occurrence, and the main character, who, being married, fell in love with another man, justifies. And the reader is imbued with either the ideological negation of the author, or his ideological affirmation.

Without an idea, literature is waste paper. Because the description of events and phenomena for the sake of describing events and phenomena is not only boring reading, but also tritely stupid. "Well, what did the author mean by that?" - the dissatisfied reader will ask and shrugging his shoulders, he will throw the book into a landfill. Junk, because.

There are two main ways of presenting an idea in a work.

The first - by artistic means, very unobtrusively, in the form of an aftertaste.
The second - through the mouth of the character-resonator or direct author's text. Head-on. In this case, the idea is called a trend.

It is up to you to choose how to present an idea, but a thoughtful reader will surely understand whether the author gravitates toward tendentiousness or artistry.

Plot.

The plot is a set of events and relationships between characters in a work, unfolding in time and space. At the same time, the events and relationships of the characters are not necessarily presented to the reader in a causal or temporal sequence. A simple example for better understanding is a flashback.

Attention: the plot is based on the conflict, and the conflict unfolds due to the plot.

No conflict, no plot.

This is very important to understand. Many "stories" and even "novels" on the Web do not have a plot, as such.

If the character went to the bakery and bought bread there, then came home and ate it with milk, and then watched TV - this is a plotless text. Prose is not poetry, and without a plot, it is usually not accepted by the reader.

And why is such a "story" not a story at all?

1. Exposure.
2. Tie.
3. Development of action.
4. Climax.
5. Decoupling.

It is not at all necessary for the author to use all the elements of the plot; in modern literature, authors often do without exposition, for example, but the main rule of fiction is that the plot must be completed.

More about plot elements and conflict in another topic.

Do not confuse plot with plot. These are different terms with different meanings.
The plot is the content of events in their sequential connection. Causal and temporal.
For a better understanding, I explain: the author conceived the story, in his head the events are arranged in order, first this event happened, then that, this follows from here, and this from here. This is the plot.
And the plot is how the author presented this story to the reader - he kept silent about something, rearranged the events somewhere, and so on. etc.
Of course, it happens that the plot and the plot coincide when the events in the novel line up strictly according to the plot, but the plot and the plot are not the same thing.

Composition.

Oh, this composition! The weak point of many novelists, and often writers of short stories.

Composition is the construction of all elements of a work in accordance with its purpose, character and content, and largely determines its perception.

Difficult, right?

I'll say it easier.

Composition is the structure of a work of art. The structure of your story or novel.
This is such a big house, consisting of various parts. (for men)
This is such a soup, in which there are just no products! (for women)

Each brick, each soup component is an element of the composition, an expressive means.

The character's monologue, description of the landscape, lyrical digressions and inserted novels, repetitions and point of view on the depicted, epigraphs, parts, chapters and much more.

The composition is divided into external and internal.

The external composition (architectonics) is the volumes of the trilogy (for example), parts of the novel, its chapters, paragraphs.

The internal composition is portraits of characters, descriptions of nature and interiors, point of view or change of points of view, accents, flashbacks and much more, as well as extra-plot components - a prologue, inserted short stories, author's digressions and an epilogue.

Each author strives to find his own composition, to get closer to his ideal composition for a particular work, however, as a rule, in terms of composition, most texts are rather weak.
Why so?
Well, firstly, there are a lot of components, many of which are simply unknown to many authors.
Secondly, it is banal due to literary illiteracy - thoughtlessly placed accents, overdoing it with descriptions to the detriment of dynamics or dialogues, or vice versa - continuous jumping-running-jumping of some cardboard Persians without portraits or continuous dialogue without attribution or with it.
Thirdly, because of the inability to capture the volume of the work and isolate the essence. In a number of novels, without prejudice (and often for the benefit) of the plot, whole chapters can be thrown out. Or, in some chapter, a good third is given information that does not play on the plot and characters of the characters - for example, the author is fond of describing the car up to the description of the pedals and a detailed story about the gearbox. The reader is bored, he scrolls through such descriptions ("Listen, if I need to get acquainted with the device of this car model, I will read the technical literature!"), And the author believes that "This is very important for understanding the principles of driving the car of Peter Nikanorych!" and thereby makes a generally good text dull. By analogy with soup - it is worth overdoing it with salt, for example, and the soup will become too salty. This is one of the most common reasons why executives are encouraged to first practice on small form before taking on novels. However, practice shows that quite a few chief writers seriously believe that literary activity should begin with a large form, because it is exactly what publishing houses need. I assure you, if you think that all you need to write a readable novel is the desire to write it, you are greatly mistaken. You have to learn how to write novels. And learning is easier and with greater efficiency - on miniatures and stories. Despite the fact that the story is a different genre, you can perfectly learn the internal composition by working in this genre.

Composition is a way to embody the author's idea, and a compositionally weak work is the author's inability to convey the idea to the reader. In other words, if the composition is weak, the reader simply will not understand what the author wanted to say with his novel.

Thank you for attention.

© Dmitry Vishnevsky

This book contains 2000 original ideas for short stories and novels.

When analyzing a literary work, the concept of “idea” is traditionally used, which most often means the answer to a question allegedly posed by the author.

The idea of ​​a literary work - this is the main idea that summarizes the semantic, figurative, emotional content of a literary work.

Artistic idea of ​​the work - this is the content-semantic integrity of a work of art as a product of emotional experience and development of life by the author. This idea cannot be recreated by means of other arts and logical formulations; it is expressed by the entire artistic structure of the work, by the unity and interaction of all its formal components. Conditionally (and in a narrower sense) the idea stands out as the main idea, ideological conclusion and “life lesson”, naturally arising from a holistic comprehension of the work.

An idea in literature is a thought contained in a work. There are a lot of ideas expressed in the literature. Exists logical ideas and abstract ideas . Logical ideas are concepts that are easily transmitted without figurative means, we are able to perceive them with the intellect. Logical ideas are inherent in documentary literature. But artistic novels and stories are characterized by philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyzes of causes and effects, that is, abstract elements.

But there is also a special kind of very subtle, barely perceptible ideas of a literary work. artistic idea is an idea embodied in a figurative form. It lives only in figurative implementation and cannot be expressed in the form of a sentence or concepts. The peculiarity of this thought depends on the disclosure of the topic, the worldview of the author, transmitted by the speech and actions of the characters, on the depiction of pictures of life. It is in the linking of logical thoughts, images, all significant compositional elements. An artistic idea cannot be reduced to a rational idea that can be concretized or illustrated. The idea of ​​this type is inseparable from the image, from the composition.

The formation of an artistic idea is a complex creative process. In literature, it is influenced by personal experience, the writer's worldview, and understanding of life. An idea can be nurtured for years and decades, and the author, trying to realize it, suffers, rewrites the manuscript, looking for suitable means of implementation. All themes, characters, all events selected by the author are necessary for a more complete expression of the main idea, its nuances, shades. However, it is necessary to understand that an artistic idea is not equal to an ideological concept, the plan that often appears not only in the head of the writer, but also on paper. Exploring non-artistic reality, reading diaries, notebooks, manuscripts, archives, literary critics restore the history of the idea, the history of creation, but often do not discover the artistic idea. Sometimes it happens that the author goes against himself, yielding to the original idea for the sake of artistic truth, an inner idea.

One thought is not enough to write a book. If everything that I would like to talk about is known in advance, then you should not turn to artistic creativity. Better - to criticism, journalism, journalism.

The idea of ​​a literary work comes out of the visual image

The idea of ​​a literary work cannot be contained in one phrase and one image. But writers, especially novelists, sometimes try to formulate the idea of ​​their work. Dostoevsky about The Idiot he wrote: "The main idea of ​​the novel is to portray a positively beautiful person." For such a declarative ideology Dostoevsky scolded: here he "distinguished himself", for example, Nabokov. Indeed, the phrase of the great novelist does not clarify why, why he did it, what is the artistic and vital basis of his image. But here it is hardly possible to stand on the side Nabokov, the mundane writer of the second row, never, unlike Dostoevsky that does not set itself creative supertasks.

Along with the attempts of the authors to determine the so-called main idea of ​​their work, opposite, although no less confusing, examples are known. Tolstoy to the question “what is War and Peace”? answered as follows: "War and peace" is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed. Unwillingness to translate the idea of ​​your work into the language of concepts Tolstoy demonstrated once again, speaking of the novel "Anna Karenina": "If I wanted to say in words everything that I had in mind to express in a novel, then I would have to write the very one that I wrote first" (from a letter to N. Strakhov).

Belinsky very accurately pointed out that “art does not allow abstract philosophical, and even more rational ideas: it allows only poetic ideas; and the poetic idea is<…>not a dogma, not a rule, this is a living passion, pathos.

V.V. Odintsov expressed his understanding of the category “artistic idea” more strictly: “The idea of ​​a literary work is always specific and is not derived directly not only from the individual statements of the writer lying outside of it (the facts of his biography, social life, etc.), but also from the text - from replicas of goodies, journalistic inserts, remarks of the author himself, etc.”

Literary critic G.A. Gukovsky also spoke about the need to distinguish between rational, that is, rational, and literary ideas: “By an idea, I mean not only a rationally formulated judgment, statement, not even just the intellectual content of a work of literature, but the entire sum of its content, which constitutes its intellectual function, its goal and task. And he further explained: “To understand the idea of ​​a literary work means to understand the idea of ​​each of its components in their synthesis, in their systemic interconnection.<…>At the same time, it is important to take into account the structural features of the work - not only the words-bricks that make up the walls of the building, but the structure of the combination of these bricks as parts of this structure, their meaning.

The idea of ​​a literary work is an attitude to the depicted, the fundamental pathos of the work, a category that expresses the author's tendency (inclination, intention, preconceived idea) in the artistic coverage of this topic. In other words, idea -it is the subjective basis of a literary work. It is noteworthy that in Western literary criticism, based on other methodological principles, instead of the category “artistic idea”, the concept of “intention”, some kind of premeditation, the author’s tendency to express the meaning of the work, is used.

The grander the artistic idea, the longer the work lives. The creators of pop literature, who write outside of great ideas, will soon be forgotten.

V.V. Kozhinov called the artistic idea the semantic type of the work, which grows out of the interaction of images. An artistic idea, unlike a logical idea, is not formulated by the author's statement, but is depicted in all the details of the artistic whole.

In epic works, the idea may be partly formulated in the text itself, as was the case in the narrative. Tolstoy: "There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth." More often, especially in lyrics, the idea permeates the structure of the work and therefore requires a lot of analytical work. A work of art as a whole is much richer than a rational idea, which critics usually isolate, and in many lyrical works, it is simply impossible to single out an idea, because it practically dissolves in pathos. Therefore, one should not reduce the idea of ​​a work to a conclusion or a lesson, and in general it is imperative to look for it.

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General concept of the theme of a literary work

The concept of a topic, as well as many other terms of literary criticism, contains a paradox: intuitively, a person, even far from philology, understands what is at stake; but as soon as we try to define this concept, to attach to it some more or less strict system of meanings, we are faced with a very difficult problem.

This is due to the fact that the topic is a multidimensional concept. In a literal translation, “theme” is what is laid at the foundation, which is the support of the work. But therein lies the difficulty. Try to unequivocally answer the question: “What is the basis of a literary work?” Once such a question is asked, it becomes clear why the term "theme" resists clear definitions. For some, the most important thing is the material of life - something what is depicted. In this sense, we can talk, for example, about the topic of war, about the topic of family relationships, about love adventures, about battles with aliens, etc. And each time we will go to the level of the topic.

But we can say that the most important thing in the work is what the most important problems of human existence the author poses and solves. For example, the struggle between good and evil, the formation of personality, the loneliness of a person, and so on ad infinitum. And this will also be a theme.

Other answers are possible. For example, we can say that the most important thing in a work is language. It is language, words, that are the most important theme of the work. This thesis usually makes students more difficult to understand. After all, it is extremely rare that a work is written directly about words. It happens, of course, and this, it is enough to recall, for example, the well-known poem in prose by I. S. Turgenev "Russian language" or - with completely different accents - V. Khlebnikov's poem "Change", which is based on a pure language game, when the string is read the same from left to right and right to left:

Horses, trampling, monk,

But not speech, but he is black.

Let's go, young, down with copper.

Chin is called the sword backwards.

Hunger, how long is the sword?

In this case, the linguistic component of the theme clearly dominates, and if we ask the reader what this poem is about, we will hear a completely natural answer that the main thing here is the language game.

However, when we say that a language is a topic, we mean something much more complex than the examples just given. The main difficulty is that a phrase said differently also changes the “piece of life” that it expresses. In any case, in the mind of the speaker and listener. Therefore, if we accept these "rules of expression", we automatically change what we want to express. To understand what is at stake, it suffices to recall a well-known joke among philologists: what is the difference between the phrases “the young maiden trembles” and “the young maiden trembles”? You can answer that they differ in the style of expression, and this is true. But for our part, we will put the question differently: are these phrases about the same thing, or do “young maid” and “young maid” live in different worlds? Agree, intuition will tell you that in different. These are different people, they have different faces, they speak differently, they have a different social circle. All this difference was suggested to us only by the language.

These differences can be felt even more clearly if we compare, for example, the world of "adult" poetry with the world of poetry for children. In children's poetry, horses and dogs do not "live", horses and dogs live there, there is no sun and rain, there is sun and rain. In this world, the relationship between the characters is completely different, everything always ends well there. And it is absolutely impossible to depict this world in the language of adults. Therefore, we cannot take the "language" theme of children's poetry out of the brackets.

As a matter of fact, the different positions of scientists who understand the term “theme” in different ways are connected precisely with this multidimensionality. Researchers single out one or the other factor as a determining factor. This is reflected in the tutorials as well, which creates unnecessary confusion. Thus, in the most popular textbook on literary criticism of the Soviet period - in the textbook by G. L. Abramovich - the topic is understood almost exclusively as a problem. Such an approach is, of course, vulnerable. There are a huge number of works where the basis is not a problem at all. Therefore, the thesis of G. L. Abramovich is rightly criticized.

On the other hand, it is hardly correct to separate the topic from the problem, limiting the scope of the topic exclusively to the “circle of life phenomena”. This approach was also characteristic of Soviet literary criticism of the mid-twentieth century, but today it is an obvious anachronism, although echoes of this tradition are sometimes still felt in secondary and higher schools.

The modern philologist must be clearly aware that any infringement of the concept of "theme" makes this term non-functional for the analysis of a huge number of works of art. For example, if we understand the topic exclusively as a circle of life phenomena, as a fragment of reality, then the term retains its meaning in the analysis of realistic works (for example, the novels of L. N. Tolstoy), but becomes completely unsuitable for the analysis of the literature of modernism, where the usual reality is deliberately distorted, or even completely dissolves in the language game (recall the poem by V. Khlebnikov).

Therefore, if we want to understand the universal meaning of the term "theme", we must talk about it in a different plane. It is no coincidence that in recent years the term "theme" is increasingly interpreted in line with structuralist traditions, when a work of art is viewed as an integral structure. Then the "topic" becomes the supporting links of this structure. For example, the theme of a snowstorm in Blok's work, the theme of crime and punishment in Dostoevsky, etc. At the same time, the meaning of the term "theme" largely coincides with the meaning of another basic term in literary criticism - "motive".

The theory of motive, developed in the 19th century by the outstanding philologist A. N. Veselovsky, had a huge impact on the subsequent development of the science of literature. We will dwell on this theory in more detail in the next chapter, for now we will only note that motives are the most important elements of the entire artistic structure, its “bearing pillars”. And just as the supporting pillars of a building can be made of different materials (concrete, metal, wood, etc.), the structural supports of text can also be different. In some cases, these are life facts (without them, for example, no documentary is fundamentally impossible), in others - problems, in the third - author's experiences, in the fourth - language, etc. In a real text, as in real construction, it is possible and most often there are combinations of different materials.

Such an understanding of the theme as the verbal and subject support of the work removes many misunderstandings associated with the meaning of the term. This point of view was very popular in Russian science in the first third of the twentieth century, then it was subjected to sharp criticism, which was more ideological than philological in nature. In recent years, this understanding of the topic has again found an increasing number of supporters.

So, the theme can be correctly understood if we return to the literal meaning of this word: that which is laid at the foundation. The theme is a kind of support for the entire text (event, problem, language, etc.). At the same time, it is important to understand that the different components of the concept of "theme" are not isolated from each other, they represent a single system. Roughly speaking, a work of literature cannot be "disassembled" into vital material, problems and language. This is only possible for educational purposes or as an aid to analysis. Just as in a living organism the skeleton, muscles and organs form a unity, in works of literature the different components of the concept of “theme” are also united. In this sense, B. V. Tomashevsky was absolutely right when he wrote that “the theme<...>is the unity of the meanings of the individual elements of the work. In reality, this means that when we talk, for example, about the theme of human loneliness in M. Yu. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", we already have in mind the series of events, the problematics, the structure of the work, and the linguistic features of the novel.

If we try to somehow streamline and systematize all the almost infinite thematic wealth of world literature, we can distinguish several thematic levels.

See: Abramovich G. L. Introduction to literary criticism. M., 1970. S. 122–124.

See, for example: Revyakin A. I. Problems of studying and teaching literature. M., 1972. S. 101–102; Fedotov O. I. Fundamentals of the theory of literature: In 2 hours. Part 1. M., 2003. P. 42–43; Without a direct reference to the name of Abramovich, such an approach is also criticized by V. E. Khalizev, see: Khalizev V. E. Theory of Literature. M., 1999. S. 41.

See: Shchepilova L.V. Introduction to literary criticism. M., 1956. S. 66–67.

This trend manifested itself among researchers directly or indirectly associated with the traditions of formalism and - later - structuralism (V. Shklovsky, R. Yakobson, B. Eichenbaum, A. Evlakhov, V. Fischer, etc.).

For details on this, see, for example: Revyakin A. I. Problems of studying and teaching literature. M., 1972. S. 108–113.

Tomashevsky B. V. Theory of Literature. Poetics. M., 2002. S. 176.

Thematic levels

First, these are the topics that touch on the fundamental problems of human existence. This, for example, is the theme of life and death, the struggle with the elements, man and God, etc. Such topics are usually called ontological(from the Greek ontos - the essence + logos - teaching). Ontological issues dominate, for example, in most of the works of F. M. Dostoevsky. In any particular event, the writer strives to see a "glimpse of the eternal", projections of the most important issues of human existence. Any artist who raises and solves such problems finds himself in line with the most powerful traditions that in one way or another influence the solution of the topic. Try, for example, to depict the feat of a person who gave his life for other people in an ironic or vulgar style, and you will feel how the text will begin to resist, the topic will begin to demand a different language.

The next level can be formulated in the most general form as follows: "Man in Certain Circumstances". This level is more specific; ontological issues may not be affected by it. For example, a production theme or a private family conflict may turn out to be completely self-sufficient in terms of the theme and not claim to solve the “eternal” questions of human existence. On the other hand, the ontological basis may well “shine through” through this thematic level. Suffice it to recall, for example, the famous novel by L. N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina", where the family drama is comprehended in the system of eternal human values.

Next, one can highlight subject-pictorial level. In this case, ontological issues may fade into the background or not be updated at all, but the linguistic component of the topic is clearly manifested. The dominance of this level is easy to feel, for example, in a literary still life or in playful poetry. This is how, as a rule, poetry for children is constructed, charming in its simplicity and clarity. It is pointless to look for ontological depths in the poems of Agnia Barto or Korney Chukovsky, often the charm of the work is explained precisely by the liveliness and clarity of the thematic sketch being created. Let us recall, for example, the cycle of poems by Agnia Barto “Toys” known to everyone since childhood:

The hostess abandoned the bunny -

A bunny was left in the rain.

Couldn't get off the bench

Wet to the skin.

What has been said, of course, does not mean that the subject-pictorial level always turns out to be self-sufficient, that there are no deeper thematic layers behind it. Moreover, the art of modern times tends to ensure that the ontological level "shines through" through the subject-pictorial. It is enough to recall the famous novel by M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" to understand what is at stake. For example, the famous Woland ball, on the one hand, is interesting precisely for its picturesqueness, on the other hand, almost every scene in one way or another touches on the eternal problems of man: this is love, and mercy, and the mission of man, etc. If we compare the images of Yeshua and Behemoth, we can easily feel that in the first case the ontological thematic level dominates, in the second - the subject-pictorial level. That is, even within one work you can feel different thematic dominants. So, in the famous novel by M. Sholokhov "Virgin Soil Upturned" one of the most striking images - the image of grandfather Shchukar - mainly correlates with the subject-pictorial thematic level, while the novel as a whole has a much more complex thematic structure.

Thus, the concept of "theme" can be considered from different angles and have different shades of meaning.

Thematic analysis allows the philologist, among other things, to see some regularities in the development of the literary process. The fact is that each era actualizes its range of topics, "resurrecting" some and as if not noticing others. At one time, V. Shklovsky remarked: "each era has its own index, its own list of topics forbidden due to obsolescence." Although Shklovsky primarily had in mind the linguistic and structural "supports" of the themes, without too much actualization of life's realities, his remark is very prescient. Indeed, it is important and interesting for a philologist to understand why certain topics and thematic levels turn out to be relevant in a given historical situation. The "thematic index" of classicism is not the same as in romanticism; Russian futurism (Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, etc.) actualized completely different thematic levels than symbolism (Blok, Bely, etc.). Having understood the reasons for such a change in indices, a philologist can say a lot about the features of a particular stage in the development of literature.

Shklovsky V. B. On the theory of prose. M., 1929. S. 236.

External and internal theme. Intermediary sign system

The next step in mastering the concept of "theme" for a novice philologist is to distinguish between the so-called "external" and "internal" themes of the work. This division is conditional and is accepted only for the convenience of analysis. Of course, in a real work there is no "separately external" and "separately internal" theme. But in the practice of analysis, such a division is very useful, since it allows you to make the analysis concrete and conclusive.

Under "external" topic usually understand the system of thematic supports directly presented in the text. This is vital material and the plot level associated with it, the author's commentary, in some cases - the title. In modern literature, the title is not always associated with the external level of the topic, but, say, in the 17th - 18th centuries. tradition was different. There, the title often included a brief summary of the plot. In a number of cases, such "transparency" of titles makes the modern reader smile. For example, the famous English writer D. Defoe, the creator of The Life and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, used much more lengthy titles in his subsequent works. The third volume of "Robinson Crusoe" is called: "Serious reflections of Robinson Crusoe throughout his life and amazing adventures; with the addition of his visions of the angelic world. And the full title of the novel “The Joys and Sorrows of the Famous Mole Flanders” takes up almost half of the page, since it actually lists all the adventures of the heroine.

In lyrical works, in which the plot plays a much smaller role, and often does not exist at all, “direct” expressions of the author's thoughts and feelings, devoid of metaphorical veil, can be attributed to the field of the external theme. Let us recall, for example, the textbook famous lines of F. I. Tyutchev:

Russia cannot be understood with the mind,

Do not measure with a common yardstick.

She has a special personality.

One can only believe in Russia.

There is no discrepancy here between about what it is said that what it is said not to be felt. Compare with Block:

I can't pity you

And I carefully carry my cross.

What kind of sorcerer do you want

Give me the rogue beauty.

These words cannot be taken as a direct declaration, there is a gap between about what it is said that what said.

The so-called "thematic image". The researcher who proposed this term, V. E. Kholshevnikov, commented on it with a quote from V. Mayakovsky - “felt thought”. This means that any object or situation in the lyrics serve as a support for the development of the author's emotions and thoughts. Let us recall the textbook famous poem by M. Yu. Lermontov “Sail”, and we will easily understand what is at stake. At the “external” level, this is a poem about a sail, but the sail here is a thematic image that allows the author to show the depth of human loneliness and the eternal throwing of a restless soul.

Let's sum up the intermediate result. The external theme is the most visible thematic level directly presented in the text. With a certain degree of conventionality, we can say that the external theme refers to what about what says in the text.

Another thing - internal theme. This is a much less obvious thematic level. To understand internal topic, it is always necessary to abstract from what was said directly, to catch and explain the internal connection of the elements. In some cases, this is not so difficult to do, especially if the habit of such recoding has been developed. Let's say, behind the external theme of I. A. Krylov's fable "The Crow and the Fox", we would easily feel the internal theme - the dangerous weakness of a person in relation to flattery addressed to him, even if Krylov's text did not begin with open morality:

How many times have they told the world

That flattery is vile, harmful; but everything is not for the future,

And in the heart the flatterer will always find a corner.

A fable in general is a genre in which the external and internal thematic levels are most often transparent, and the morality that connects these two levels makes the task of interpretation completely easier.

But in most cases, it's not that simple. The internal theme loses its obviousness, and the correct interpretation requires both special knowledge and intellectual effort. For example, if we think about the lines of Lermontov’s poem “It stands alone in the wild north ...”, then we easily feel that the internal theme is no longer amenable to an unambiguous interpretation:

Stands alone in the wild north

On the bare top of a pine tree,

And dozing, swaying, and loose snow

She is dressed like a robe.

And she dreams of everything that is in the distant desert,

In the region where the sun rises

Alone and sad on a rock with fuel

A beautiful palm tree is growing.

We can see the development of the thematic image without difficulty, but what is hidden in the depths of the text? Simply put, what are we talking about here, what problems are the author worried about? Different readers may have different associations, sometimes very far from what is actually in the text. But if we know that this poem is a free translation of a poem by G. Heine, and we compare Lermontov's text with other translation options, for example, with a poem by A. A. Fet, we will get much more weighty grounds for an answer. Compare with Fet:

In the north, a lonely oak

It stands on a steep hillock;

He slumbers, sternly covered

And snow and ice carpet.

In his dream he sees a palm tree

In a far eastern country

In silent, deep sadness,

One, on a hot rock.

Both poems were written in 1841, but what a difference between them! In Fet's poem - "he" and "she", yearning for each other. Emphasizing this, Fet translates "pine" as "oak" - in the name of preserving the love theme. The fact is that in German "pine" (more precisely, larch) is a masculine word, and the language itself dictates the reading of the poem in this vein. However, Lermontov not only “crosses out” the love theme, but in the second edition in every possible way enhances the feeling of endless loneliness. Instead of a “cold and bare peak”, “the wild north” appears, instead of “a distant eastern land” (cf. Fet), Lermontov writes: “in a distant desert”, instead of a “hot rock” - “a combustible cliff”. If we summarize all these observations, we can conclude that the inner theme of this poem is not the longing of separated, loving people, like in Heine and Fet, not even the dream of another wonderful life - Lermontov is dominated by the theme of “the tragic insurmountability of loneliness with a common affinity of fate, ”as R. Yu. Danilevsky commented on this poem.

In other cases, the situation can be even more complicated. For example, the story of I. A. Bunin "The Gentleman from San Francisco" is usually interpreted by an inexperienced reader as the story of the ridiculous death of a wealthy American, whom no one feels sorry for. But a simple question: “And what did this gentleman do to the island of Capri and why only after his death, as Bunin writes, “peace and tranquility again settled on the island””? - confuses students. The lack of analysis skills, the inability to “link” various fragments of the text into a single whole picture affects. At the same time, the name of the ship - “Atlantis”, the image of the Devil, the nuances of the plot, etc. are missed. If we connect all these fragments together, it turns out that the inner theme of the story will be the eternal struggle of two worlds - life and death. The gentleman from San Francisco is terrible by his very presence in the world of the living, he is foreign and dangerous. That is why the living world calms down only when it disappears; then the sun comes out and illuminates "the unsteady massifs of Italy, its near and distant mountains, the beauty of which is powerless to express the human word."

It is even more difficult to talk about an internal theme in relation to works of a large volume that raise a whole range of problems. For example, to discover these internal thematic springs in L. N. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" or in M. A. Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Flows the Don" is only possible for a qualified philologist who has both sufficient knowledge and the ability to abstract from the specific vicissitudes of the plot. Therefore, it is better to learn independent thematic analysis on works of relatively small volume - there, as a rule, it is easier to feel the logic of the interconnections of thematic elements.

So, we conclude: internal theme is a complex complex consisting of problems, internal connections of plot and language components. Correctly understood internal theme allows you to feel the non-randomness and deep connections of the most heterogeneous elements.

As already mentioned, the division of thematic unity into external and internal levels is very arbitrary, because in a real text they are merged. It is more of an analysis tool than the actual structure of the text as such. However, this does not mean that such a technique is any kind of violence against the living organics of a literary work. Any technology of knowledge is based on some assumptions and conventions, but this helps to better understand the subject being studied. For example, an x-ray is also a very conditional copy of the human body, but this technique will allow you to see what is almost impossible to see with the naked eye.

In recent years, after the appearance of the research by A. K. Zholkovsky and Yu. The researchers proposed to distinguish between the so-called "declared" and "elusive" themes. "Elusive" topics are touched upon in the work most often, regardless of the author's intention. Such, for example, are the mythopoetic foundations of Russian classical literature: the struggle between space and chaos, the motives of initiation, etc. In fact, we are talking about the most abstract, supporting levels of the internal theme.

In addition, the same study raises the question of intraliterary topics. In these cases, thematic supports do not go beyond the literary tradition. The simplest example is a parody, the theme of which, as a rule, is another literary work.

Thematic analysis involves understanding the various elements of the text in their relationship to the external and internal levels of the topic. In other words, the philologist must understand why the outer plane is the expression this internal. Why, when reading poems about a pine tree and a palm tree, we sympathize human loneliness? This means that there are some elements in the text that ensure the “translation” of the external plan into the internal one. These elements can be called intermediaries. If we can understand and explain these intermediary signs, the conversation about thematic levels will become substantive and interesting.

In the strict sense of the word mediator is the entire text. In essence, such an answer is impeccable, but methodologically it is hardly correct, since for an inexperienced philologist the phrase "everything in the text" is almost equal to "nothing." Therefore, it makes sense to concretize this thesis. So, what elements of the text can be first of all paid attention to when conducting a thematic analysis?

First of all, it is always worth remembering that no text exists in a vacuum. It is always surrounded by other texts, it is always addressed to a particular reader, and so on. Therefore, often the "intermediary" can be found not only in the text itself, but also outside it. Let's take a simple example. The famous French poet Pierre Jean Beranger has a funny song called "The Noble Friend". It is a monologue of a commoner, to whose wife a rich and noble count is clearly not indifferent. As a result, some favors fall to the hero. How does the hero perceive the situation?

Last, for example, winter

Appointed by the Minister of Ball:

The count comes for his wife, -

As a husband, and I got there.

There, squeezing my hand with everyone,

Called my friend!

What happiness! What an honor!

After all, I'm a worm compared to him!

Compared to him,

With a face like this

With his Excellency himself!

It is easy to feel that behind the external theme - the enthusiastic story of a small person about his "benefactor" - there is something completely different. The entire poem by Beranger is a protest against slave psychology. But why do we understand it this way, because there is not a word of condemnation in the text itself? The fact of the matter is that in this case, a certain norm of human behavior acts as an intermediary, which turns out to be violated. The elements of the text (style, plot fragments, willing self-deprecation of the hero, etc.) reveal this unacceptable deviation from the reader's idea of ​​a worthy person. Therefore, all elements of the text change polarities: what the hero considers a plus is a minus.

Secondly, the title can act as an intermediary. This does not always happen, but in many cases the title is involved in all levels of the topic. Let us recall, for example, Gogol's Dead Souls, where the outer row (Chichikov's purchase of dead souls) and the inner theme (the theme of spiritual dying) are linked by the title.

In some cases, misunderstanding of the connection between the title and the internal theme leads to reading oddities. For example, the modern reader quite often perceives the meaning of the title of Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" as "war and peacetime", seeing here the antithesis device. However, Tolstoy's manuscript does not say "War and Peace", but "War and Peace". In the nineteenth century, these words were perceived as different. "Mir" - "the absence of a quarrel, enmity, disagreement, war" (according to Dahl's dictionary), "Mir" - "a substance in the universe and a force in time // all people, the whole world, the human race" (according to Dahl). Therefore, Tolstoy had in mind not the antithesis of war, but something completely different: “War and the human race”, “War and the movement of time”, etc. All this is directly related to the problems of Tolstoy's masterpiece.

Thirdly, the epigraph is a fundamentally important intermediary. The epigraph, as a rule, is chosen very carefully, often the author refuses the original epigraph in favor of another, or even the epigraph does not appear from the first edition. For a philologist, this is always “information for thought”. For example, we know that Leo Tolstoy originally wanted to preface his novel Anna Karenina with a completely “transparent” epigraph condemning adultery. But then he abandoned this plan, choosing an epigraph with a much more voluminous and complex meaning: "Vengeance is mine and I will repay." Already this nuance is enough to understand that the problems of the novel are much broader and deeper than the family drama. Anna Karenina's sin is just one of the signs of the colossal "unrighteousness" in which people live. This change of emphasis actually changed the original idea of ​​the whole novel, including the image of the main character. In the first versions, we meet with a woman of repulsive appearance, in the final version - this is a beautiful, intelligent, sinful and suffering woman. The change of epigraphs was a reflection of the revision of the entire thematic structure.

If we remember N.V. Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General", then we will inevitably smile at its epigraph: "There is nothing to blame on the mirror, if the face is crooked." It seems that this epigraph has always existed and is a genre remark of a comedy. But in the first edition of The Inspector General there was no epigraph; Gogol introduces it later, surprised by the incorrect interpretation of the play. The fact is that Gogol's comedy was originally perceived as a parody of some officials, on some vices. But the future author of Dead Souls had something else in mind: he made a terrible diagnosis of Russian spirituality. And such a “private” reading did not satisfy him at all, hence the peculiar polemical epigraph, in a strange way echoing the famous words of the Governor: “Who are you laughing at! Laugh at yourself!" If you carefully read the comedy, you can see how Gogol emphasizes this idea at all levels of the text. universal lack of spirituality, and not at all the arbitrariness of some officials. And the story with the epigraph that appeared is very revealing.

Fourth, you should always pay attention to proper names: the names and nicknames of the characters, the scene, the names of objects. Sometimes the thematic clue is obvious. For example, N. S. Leskov’s essay “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” already in the very title contains a hint at the theme of Shakespearean passions, so close to the writer’s heart, raging in the hearts of seemingly ordinary people of the Russian hinterland. "Talking" names here will be not only "Lady Macbeth", but also "Mtsensk district". "Direct" thematic projections have many names of heroes in the dramas of classicism. We feel this tradition well in A. S. Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”.

In other cases, the connection of the hero's name with the internal theme is more associative, less obvious. For example, Lermontov's Pechorin already refers to Onegin with his last name, emphasizing not only similarities, but also differences (Onega and Pechora are northern rivers that gave names to entire regions). This similarity-difference was immediately noticed by the insightful V. G. Belinsky.

It may also be that it is not the name of the hero that is significant, but his absence. Recall the story I. A. Bunin mentioned, "The Gentleman from San Francisco." The story begins with a paradoxical phrase: “A gentleman from San Francisco - no one remembered his name either in Naples or Capri ...” From the point of view of reality, this is completely impossible: the scandalous death of a supermillionaire would have preserved his name for a long time. But Bunin has a different logic. Not only the gentleman from San Francisco, none of the passengers on the Atlantis is ever named. At the same time, the old boatman who appeared episodically at the end of the story has a name. His name is Lorenzo. This, of course, is not accidental. After all, a name is given to a person at birth, it is a kind of sign of life. And the passengers of Atlantis (think about the name of the ship - "non-existent land") belong to another world, where everything is the other way around and where names should not be. Thus, the absence of a name can be very revealing.

Fifth, it is important to pay attention to the stylistic pattern of the text, especially when it comes to fairly large and diverse works. Style analysis is a self-sufficient subject of study, but this is not the point here. We are talking about a thematic analysis, for which it is more important not to scrupulously study all the nuances, but rather “change of timbres”. It is enough to recall the novel by M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" to understand what is at stake. The life of literary Moscow and the history of Pontius Pilate are written in completely different ways. In the first case, we feel the pen of the feuilletonist, in the second we have before us the author, impeccably accurate in psychological details. There is no trace of irony and ridicule.

Or another example. The story of A. S. Pushkin "The Snowstorm" is the story of two novels of the heroine, Marya Gavrilovna. But the inner theme of this work is much deeper than the plot intrigue. If we carefully read the text, we will feel that the point is not that Marya Gavrilovna "accidentally" fell in love with the person with whom she was "accidentally" and mistakenly married. The fact is that her first love is completely different from the second. In the first case, we clearly feel the author's soft irony, the heroine is naive and romantic. Then the style drawing changes. Before us is an adult, interesting woman, very well distinguishing "bookish" love from real. And Pushkin very accurately draws the line separating these two worlds: "That was in 1812." If we compare all these facts, we will understand that Pushkin was not worried about a funny incident, not an irony of fate, although this is also important. But the main thing for the mature Pushkin was the analysis of "growing up", the fate of romantic consciousness. Such an exact date is not accidental. 1812 - the war with Napoleon - dispelled many romantic illusions. The private fate of the heroine is significant for Russia as a whole. This is precisely the most important internal theme of the Snowstorm.

At sixth, in thematic analysis, it is fundamentally important to pay attention to how different motives relate to each other. Let us recall, for example, A. S. Pushkin's poem "Anchar". Three fragments are clearly visible in this poem: two are approximately equal in length, one is much smaller. The first fragment is a description of the terrible tree of death; the second is a small plot, a story about how the lord sent a slave for poison to certain death. This story is actually exhausted with the words "And the poor slave died at the feet / of the Invincible lord." But the poem does not end there. Last stanza:

And the prince fed that poison

Your obedient arrows

And with them death sent

To neighbors in alien lands, -

this is a new piece. The internal theme - the sentence of tyranny - receives a new round of development here. The tyrant kills one in order to kill many. Like anchar, he is doomed to carry death within himself. Thematic fragments were not chosen by chance, the last stanza confirms the legitimacy of conjugation of the two main thematic fragments. An analysis of the options shows that Pushkin chose his words most carefully. at the borders fragments. Far from immediately, the words “But a man / He sent a man to the Anchar with an authoritative look” were found. This is not accidental, since it is here that the thematic support of the text is.

Among other things, thematic analysis involves the study of the logic of the plot, the correlation of different elements of the text, etc. In general, we repeat, the entire text is a unity of external and internal topics. We paid attention only to some components that an inexperienced philologist often does not update.

For an analysis of the titles of literary works, see, for example. in: Lamzina A. V. Title // Introduction to Literary Studies ” / Ed. L. V. Chernets. M., 2000.

Kholshevnikov V. E. Analysis of the composition of a lyrical poem // Analysis of one poem. L., 1985. S. 8–10.

Lermontov Encyclopedia. M., 1981. S. 330.

Zholkovsky A.K., Shcheglov Yu.K. On the concepts of "theme" and "poetic world" // Uchenye zapiski Tartu gos. university Issue. 365. Tartu, 1975.

See, for example: Timofeev L.I. Fundamentals of the theory of literature. M., 1963. S. 343–346.

The concept of the idea of ​​a literary text

Another basic concept of literary criticism is idea artistic text. The distinction between the theme of an idea is very arbitrary. For example, L. I. Timofeev preferred to talk about the ideological and thematic basis of the work, without too actualizing the differences. In O. I. Fedotov's textbook, the idea is understood as an expression of the author's tendency; in fact, it is only about the author's attitude towards the characters and the world. “An artistic idea,” the scientist writes, “is subjective by definition.” In the authoritative manual on literary criticism edited by L. V. Chernets, built according to the dictionary principle, the term “idea” did not find a place at all. This term is not updated in the voluminous reader compiled by N. D. Tamarchenko. Even more wary is the attitude towards the term "artistic idea" in Western criticism of the second half of the 20th century. Here, the tradition of the very authoritative school of “new criticism” (T. Eliot, K. Brooks, R. Warren, and others) affected, whose representatives sharply opposed any analysis of the “idea”, considering it one of the most dangerous “heresies” of literary criticism. . They even coined the term "heresy of communication", implying the search for any social or ethical ideas in the text.

Thus, the attitude to the term "idea", as we see, is ambiguous. At the same time, attempts to “remove” this term from the lexicon of literary critics seem not only wrong, but also naive. Talking about an idea implies interpretation figurative meaning works, and the vast majority of literary masterpieces are permeated with meanings. That is why works of art continue to excite the viewer and reader. And no loud statements by some scientists will change anything here.

Another thing is that one should not absolutize the analysis of an artistic idea. Here there is always a danger of "breaking away" from the text, of diverting the conversation into the mainstream of pure sociology or morality.

This is exactly what literary criticism of the Soviet period sinned, hence gross errors arose in the assessments of this or that artist, since the meaning of the work was constantly “checked” with the norms of Soviet ideology. Hence the accusations of lack of ideas addressed to outstanding figures of Russian culture (Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Shostakovich, etc.), hence the naive attempts from a modern point of view to classify the types of artistic ideas (“idea - question”, “idea - answer”, “false idea”, etc.). This is also reflected in the textbooks. In particular, L. I. Timofeev, although he speaks of conditionality by classification, nevertheless specifically highlights even the “idea is a mistake”, which is completely unacceptable from the point of view of literary ethics. The idea, we repeat, is the figurative meaning of the work, and as such it can be neither “correct” nor “erroneous”. Another thing is that this may not suit the interpreter, but personal assessment cannot be transferred to the meaning of the work. History teaches us that the assessments of interpreters are very flexible: if, say, we trust the assessments of many of the first critics of A Hero of Our Time by M. Yu. Lermontov (S. A. Burachok, S. P. Shevyrev, N. A. Polevoy, etc. ), then their interpretation of the idea of ​​Lermontov's masterpiece will seem, to put it mildly, strange. However, now only a narrow circle of specialists remembers such assessments, while the semantic depth of Lermontov's novel is beyond doubt.

Something similar can be said about Leo Tolstoy's famous novel Anna Karenina, which many critics hastened to dismiss as "ideologically alien" or not deep enough. Today it is obvious that the criticisms were not deep enough, but everything is in order with Tolstoy's novel.

Such examples could go on and on. Analyzing this paradox of contemporaries’ misunderstanding of the semantic depth of many masterpieces, the well-known literary critic L. Ya. Ginzburg perspicaciously noted that the meanings of masterpieces correlate with “modernity of a different scale”, which a critic who is not endowed with brilliant thinking cannot accommodate. That is why the evaluative criteria of an idea are not only incorrect, but also dangerous.

However, all this, we repeat, should not discredit the very concept of the idea of ​​a work and interest in this side of literature.

It should be remembered that an artistic idea is a very voluminous concept and one can speak of at least several of its facets.

First, this author's idea, that is, those meanings that the author himself more or less consciously intended to embody. Not always the idea is expressed by a writer or a poet. logically, the author embodies it differently - in the language of a work of art. Moreover, writers often protest (I. Goethe, L. N. Tolstoy, O. Wilde, M. Tsvetaeva - just some of the names) when they are asked to formulate the idea of ​​the created work. This is understandable, because, let us repeat the remark of O. Wilde, “the sculptor thinks with marble”, that is, he does not have an idea “torn off” from stone. Similarly, the composer thinks in sounds, the poet in verses, and so on.

This thesis is very popular among both artists and specialists, but at the same time there is an element of unconscious craftiness in it. The fact is that the artist almost always in one way or another reflects both on the concept of the work and on the already written text. The same I. Goethe repeatedly commented on his "Faust", and L. N. Tolstoy was generally inclined to "clarify" the meanings of his own works. Suffice it to recall the second part of the epilogue and afterword to War and Peace, the afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata, and others. problem of the author's idea.

Confirming the author's idea by actually analyzing the literary text (with the exception of comparing options) is a much more difficult task. The fact is that, firstly, in the text it is difficult to distinguish between the position of the real author and the image that is created in this work (in modern terminology, it is often called implicit author). But even direct assessments of the real and implicit author may not coincide. Secondly, in general, the idea of ​​the text, as will be shown below, does not copy the author's idea - something is "spoken out" in the text that the author might not have had in mind. Thirdly, the text is a complex entity that allows for various interpretations. This volume of meaning is inherent in the very nature of the artistic image (remember: the artistic image is a sign with an incremental meaning, it is paradoxical and opposes unambiguous understanding). Therefore, every time it must be borne in mind that the author, creating a certain image, could put in completely different meanings that the interpreter saw.

The foregoing does not mean that it is impossible or incorrect to talk about the author's idea in relation to the text itself. It all depends on the subtlety of the analysis and the tact of the researcher. Convincing are parallels with other works of this author, a finely selected system of circumstantial evidence, the definition of a system of contexts, etc. In addition, it is important to consider what facts of real life the author chooses to create his work. Often this very choice of facts can become a weighty argument in a conversation about the author's idea. It is clear, for example, that of the innumerable facts of the civil war, writers who sympathize with the Reds will choose one, and those who sympathize with the Whites will choose another. Here, however, it must be remembered that a great writer, as a rule, avoids a one-dimensional and linear factual series, that is, the facts of life are not an "illustration" of his idea. For example, in M. A. Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Flows the Don, there are scenes that the writer, who sympathizes with the Soviet government and the Communists, would seem to have had to omit. For example, one of Sholokhov's favorite heroes, communist Podtelkov, in one of the scenes, cuts down captured whites, which shocks even the worldly-wise Grigory Melekhov. At one time, critics strongly advised Sholokhov to remove this scene, so much so that it did not fit into linearly understood idea. Sholokhov at one moment heeded these advice, but then, in spite of everything, he reintroduced it into the text of the novel, since volumetric the author's idea without it would be flawed. The talent of the writer resisted such bills.

But in general, the analysis of the logic of facts is a very effective argument in talking about the author's idea.

The second facet of the meaning of the term "artistic idea" is text idea. This is one of the most mysterious categories of literary criticism. The problem is that the idea of ​​the text almost never completely coincides with the author's. In some cases, these coincidences are striking. The famous "Marseillaise", which became the anthem of France, was written as a marching song of the regiment by officer Rouger de Lille without any pretensions to artistic depth. Neither before nor after his masterpiece, Rouget de Lisle created anything like it.

Leo Tolstoy, creating "Anna Karenina", conceived one thing, but it turned out another.

This difference will be even clearer if we imagine that some mediocre graphomaniac tries to write a novel full of deep meanings. In a real text, there will be no trace of the author's idea, the idea of ​​the text will turn out to be primitive and flat, no matter how much the author wants the opposite.

The same discrepancy, although with other signs, we see in geniuses. Another thing is that in this case the idea of ​​the text will be incommensurably richer than the author's. This is the secret of talent. Many meanings that are important for the author will be lost, but the depth of the work does not suffer from this. Shakespeare scholars, for example, teach us that the brilliant playwright often wrote "on the topic of the day", his works are full of allusions to the real political events of England in the 16th - 17th centuries. All this semantic "secret writing" was important for Shakespeare, it is even possible that it was these ideas that provoked him to create some tragedies (most often, Richard III is remembered in connection with this). However, all the nuances are known only to Shakespeare scholars, and even then with great reservations. But the idea of ​​the text does not suffer from this. In the semantic palette of the text there is always something that does not obey the author, which he did not mean and did not think about.

That is why the point of view, which we have already spoken about, that the idea of ​​the text exclusively subjective, that is, always associated with the author.

In addition, the idea of ​​the text related to the reader. It can be felt and detected only by the perceiving consciousness. And life shows that readers often actualize different meanings, see different things in the same text. As they say, how many readers, so many Hamlets. It turns out that one cannot fully trust either the author's intention (what he wanted to say) or the reader (what he felt and understood). Then is there any point in talking about the idea of ​​the text?

Many modern literary scholars (J. Derrida, J. Kristeva, P. de Mann, J. Miller, and others) insist on the fallacy of the thesis about any semantic unity of the text. In their opinion, the meanings are reconstructed every time a new reader encounters the text. All this resembles a children's kaleidoscope with an infinite number of patterns: everyone will see their own, and it's pointless to say which of the meanings is in fact and which perception is more accurate.

Such an approach would be convincing, if not for one "but". After all, if there is no objective semantic depth of the text, then all texts will be fundamentally equal: the helpless rhymer and the brilliant Blok, the naive text of a schoolgirl and Akhmatova's masterpiece - all this is absolutely the same, as they say, whoever likes what. The most consistent scientists of this trend (J. Derrida) just conclude that all written texts are equal in principle.

In fact, this levels out talent and crosses out the entire world culture, because it was built by masters and geniuses. Therefore, such an approach, while seemingly logical, is fraught with serious dangers.

Obviously, it is more correct to assume that the idea of ​​a text is not a fiction, that it exists, but exists not in a frozen form once and for all, but in the form of a meaning-generating matrix: meanings are born whenever the reader encounters a text, but this is not a kaleidoscope at all, here has its own boundaries, its own vectors of understanding. The question of what is constant and what is variable in this process is still very far from being resolved.

It is clear that the idea perceived by the reader is most often not identical to the author's. In the strict sense of the word, there is never a complete coincidence; we can only talk about the depth of discrepancies. The history of literature knows many examples when reading even a qualified reader turns out to be a complete surprise for the author. Suffice it to recall the violent reaction of I. S. Turgenev to the article by N. A. Dobrolyubov “When will the real day come?” The critic saw in Turgenev's novel "On the Eve" a call for the liberation of Russia "from the internal enemy", while I. S. Turgenev conceived the novel about something completely different. The case, as you know, ended in a scandal and Turgenev's break with the editors of Sovremennik, where the article was published. Note that N. A. Dobrolyubov rated the novel very highly, that is, we cannot talk about personal grievances. Turgenev was outraged precisely by the inadequacy of the reading. In general, as studies of recent decades show, any literary text contains not only a hidden author's position, but also a hidden intended reader's position (in literary terminology, this is called implicit, or abstract, reader). This is a kind of ideal reader, under which the text is built. In the case of Turgenev and Dobrolyubov, the discrepancies between the implicit and the real reader turned out to be colossal.

In connection with all that has been said, one can finally raise the question of objective idea works. The legitimacy of such a question has already been substantiated when we spoke about the idea of ​​the text. The problem is, what take it as an objective idea. Apparently, we have no other choice but to recognize as an objective idea some conditional vector value, which is formed from the analysis of the author's idea and the set of perceived ones. Simply put, we must know the author's intention, the history of interpretations, of which our own is also a part, and on this basis, find some of the most important points of intersection that guarantee against arbitrariness.

There. pp. 135–136.

Fedotov OI Fundamentals of the theory of literature. Ch. 1, M., 2003. S. 47.

Timofeev L. I. Decree. op. S. 139.

See: Ginzburg L. Ya. Literature in search of reality. L., 1987.

This thesis is especially popular among the representatives of the scientific school called "receptive aesthetics" (F. Vodicka, J. Mukarzhovsky, R. Ingarden, especially H. R. Jauss and W. Iser). These authors proceed from the fact that a literary work receives its final existence only in the reader's mind, so the reader cannot be taken "out of the brackets" when analyzing the text. One of the basic terms of receptive aesthetics is "waiting horizon"- just designed to structure these relationships.

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Zholkovsky A.K., Shcheglov Yu.K. On the concepts of "theme" and "poetic world" // Uchenye zapiski Tartu gos. university Issue. 365. Tartu, 1975.

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