Typification and its forms methods. I

The appeal to the folk hero and the gradual transformation of this hero into the main face of literature is rooted in the processes that began in the 1940s. At this time, the study of society through its types, through representatives of all social environments, in their totality constituting its living structure, became the slogan of young realistic literature, the “natural school”.

At the beginning of the development of the "natural school", the peasant and the "little man" - a poor official, a socially and politically suppressed representative of the urban lower classes - appeared in literature only as types characterizing the structure of society and its functions directed to the individual.

In the literature of the “natural school”, the class position of the hero, his professional affiliation and the social function that he performs, decisively prevailed over his individual character. After all, the impersonality of the hero was determined by the relations prevailing in society, and the type interested writers as an expression of the general in the particular. Thus, the hero became an official, a janitor, an organ grinder, a baker and lost his personality traits. Even if he was given a name, it was a tribute to the literary tradition or an expression of the stereotype of the hero - an ordinary carrier of socially typical traits, who was not perceived as an individual.

At the same time, the underpinning of this objective and, as it were, scientific description of society in the literature of the 1940s was a deep dissatisfaction with modern social orders, the ideal of universal brotherhood, and indignation against social injustice drawn from personal experience.

A person was still outlined satirically as a social mask, although the writer was imbued with the desire to protect a person from the tyranny of the environment, to revive, awaken a personality in him. Such was the approach to the type and its literary and social significance in the progressive fiction of the early 1940s. This feature of typification in the works of the natural school of the first half of the 40s gave rise to Samarin, who appeared in 1847 with a critical article “On the historical and literary opinions of Sovremennik”, to accuse the writers of this trend of not discovering “any sympathy for the people”, that in their works folk types are as impersonal as representatives of the upper classes. The natural school does not give individual personalities at all, “these are all types, that is, proper names with patronymics: Agrafena Petrovna, Mavra Terentyevna, Anton Nikiforovich, and all with swollen eyes and pendulous cheeks,” Samarin argued.

Samarin caught, although he exaggerated, some of the weaknesses of the fiction of the natural school of the early 40s. The accusations of sketchy sketchiness, of a schematic and sometimes standard interpretation of the method of social typification had well-founded grounds. However, the critic was decidedly wrong on the most important points of his analysis. Seeing in the activities of the natural school the subordination of art to politics, public “issues”, thus seeing the beginning of a stormy intrusion of political interests into literature (here one cannot deny him insight), Samaria accused the natural school of slandering reality, denigrating modern society, denying it “free ”, an objective approach to life and in sympathy for the people. This distorted the very essence of the literary movement.

The inevitability for each member of the class of a “typical” path, typical tragedies, the transformation of social oppression into fate, depriving a person of the natural right to live, develop and act in accordance with nature, the deformation of even nature itself, the very natural desires - this is what constituted the dramatic collisions of the essays of the natural school and expressed writers' sympathy for the oppressed classes. No less than the pathos of denial, the natural school was characterized by the pathos of study, research. The writers of this trend brought artistic typification closer to the methods of scientific systematization. In this sense, they strove for the accuracy of descriptions, the reproduction of facts, the introduction of new materials into literature, expanding the reader's information about modern life and the range of literary generalizations. Defending the writers of the natural school, in particular Grigorovich, from the attacks of Samarin, Belinsky referred to the data of statistical studies and thus likened the truthfulness and objectivity of literature to scientific accuracy, and typicality to statistically established prevalence. Of course, we should not forget that he did this in response to accusations of slandering reality. The convergence of the typification method with the scientific methodology of statistics was possible in relation to the physiological essay of the 1940s due to another, very significant feature of it.

Writers of this direction for the first time looked at society from the "quantitative" side. Considering a person as a representative of a certain social group, they were not indifferent to whether this group is large or small, whether it constitutes a numerous "species" or "class" of humanity. It was essential for them that the majority of humanity is suffering, oppressed and destitute, that the “little man”, whose every habit, every gesture, every desire corresponds to the same properties of other representatives of his own group, is the bearer of mass traits, the man of the “crowd ". In the literature of the 1940s, the collective, the crowd, became the hero for the first time. This feature of physiological essays was associated with the most significant shifts in the psychology of thinkers and figures of the era, in their self-consciousness and approach to reality, and had a significant impact on the development of realistic literature. Each ordinary person of the “crowd” is given as much moral strength, energy and initiative as society allows these qualities in each unit of a collective of many thousands of people of the lower class.

In D. V. Grigorovich’s “Literary Memoirs” there is one episode in which, through a small, seemingly quite insignificant stroke, impulses are transmitted that prompted young realist writers to go beyond such sketchy typification and look for new ways of depicting reality and generalizing its phenomena. Having finished his essay “Petersburg Organ Grinders”, where the organ grinders were characterized by “ranks”, in accordance with the “capitals” that they invest in their microscopic “enterprise”, and where individual representatives were not at all isolated from their environment, their “workshop”, Grigorovich, who at that time was taking his first steps in literature and collaborating in Nekrasov's almanacs, read his essay to Dostoevsky, as young as himself. “He, apparently, was satisfied with my essay ... he did not like only one expression ...,” Grigorovich later recalled. - I wrote this: when the hurdy-gurdy stops playing, the official from the window throws a nickel, which falls at the organ grinder's feet. “Not that, not that,” Dostoevsky suddenly spoke irritably, “not at all! It turns out too dry for you: the nickel fell at your feet ... I should have said: the nickel fell on the pavement, ringing and bouncing ... ". This remark - I remember very well - was a whole revelation for me. Yes, indeed: ringing and bouncing it comes out much more picturesque, finishes the movement. Artistic feeling was in my nature; expression: the nickel fell not just, but ringing and bouncing - these two words are enough for me to understand the difference between a dry expression and a lively, artistic and literary device.

This case most clearly shows that there are no "artistic devices" that do not carry a semantic and ideological load. It is easy to see that the fall of the nickel in Grigorovich's original text was depicted by a man looking out of the window, while Dostoevsky saw him, if not through the eyes of an organ grinder, then at least as if from the crowd surrounding him, and the very attention to the fall of the nickel and its ringing conveyed an attitude towards copper coin of the poor, who perceives this fall as a significant moment worthy of close interest. Dostoevsky's "irritated" words "not that, not that, not at all" did not refer to the lack of a literary device in the essay, but to the well-known dryness of the author's attitude to the experiences of his poor characters. This subconsciously irritated perception by Dostoevsky of the depiction of man in the essays of the natural school soon found quite conscious expression in the novel Poor Folk, where, through the mouth of his hero Makar Devushkin, he expressed the resentment that destitute people, favorite characters of essays, can quite reasonably harbor towards humane writers who describe who study them as an object, without respect for their vulnerable and wounded soul, without trembling before their suffering.

Dostoevsky's new view of the principles of portraying "poor people" was historically logical. He struck his contemporaries, but was immediately perceived by young realists as a position close to them, and a few years later Grigorovich, developing completely independently and organically, wrote The Village and Anton Goremyka, in which Tolstoy saw the image of a Russian peasant "in full growth , not only with love, but with respect and even awe" (66, 409).

In the stories of the natural school in the second half of the 1940s, that new literary type was finally formed, which was destined to become one of the fundamental types of Russian literature, to go through a significant number of works of Russian realists, to change, to experience polemical blows, to survive critical analysis. This is the "little man" type, which can be put on a par with world supertypes.

We call such a literary type a supertype, since, having arisen in the work of one writer, in one of his works, he then subordinates for some time the thoughts of the writers of a whole generation, "moves" from work to work, changing his individual features, some details of his fate and position, but retaining the general meaning of its characteristics. The mere fact that subsequently, for decades, referring to the image of a person crushed by poverty and social oppression, writers invariably started from this type created by Gogol in The Overcoat and developed by the natural school, speaks of the closeness of the form of his literary existence to the specific function that some world types in the history of art, and especially in literature.

Thus, abandoning the "strong", "personal" heroes created by the previous literary development and genetically, and partly ideologically connected with the pan-European processes, proclaiming the fundamental equality of all people - as carriers of social traits, as creatures of the environment - before the court of a writer who studies social mores, the natural school put forward its supertype, its hero, who mastered the minds and began to wander through the pages of books and through epochs. This hero was an anti-romantic, anti-demonic common man. But he did not become him until all that pathos of protest, humanism and protection of individual rights was invested in his image, which was introduced by the creative genius of mankind before that into the images of Hamlet, Don Quixote, Faust, Childe Harold, Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin . From Dostoevsky's first, instinctive exclamation: "It's not right, it's not right" - and his advice to look at a falling coin through the eyes of an organ grinder passionately waiting for it, a direct path leads to the era of the dominance of the "little man" in literature, increased interest in the personality of a poor official, and then peasant. If in the early 40s the natural school, not without some reason, was accused of neglecting individuality, personality and of a monotonous satirical approach to all classes of society, then in the early 50s A. Grigoriev considered one of the main "vices" of this literary trend the mere fact that the writers took upon themselves the expression of the "petty claims" of the heroes of the "stinking corners", elevated their demands "to the level of right" and were imbued with "exceptional, painful sympathy" for them. It is no longer the absence of the hero's individuality, but its excess that was imputed to the writer.

A. Grigoriev proclaims Dostoevsky the head of this trend, but immediately mentions I. S. Turgenev, calling him “the gifted author of the Hunter’s Notes” and stating that he only “paid tribute” to the painful direction of the natural school in The Bachelor.

However, there is an organic relationship between the method of generalization, typification of the little man in the works of the natural school and the depiction of the people in the "Notes of a Hunter". The first sketch of the Hunter's Notes, which, like a grain, contained the most important ideas expressed later in the book, draws two characters, two peasants, outlined with the utmost concreteness, socially and ethnographically accurately and at the same time representing the main types of humanity.

In the essay "Khor and Kalinich" all the tasks that the authors of physiological essays set themselves were solved. It also gave accurate descriptions of the way of life and the appearance of the characters, so characteristic of a physiological essay; the heroes were drawn as representatives of their estate - the serfs, and this was and remained the main content of the essay. However, the writer went beyond this content. His heroes turned out to be not impersonal bearers of the features of the environment, but bright individuals capable of representing the whole people in its highest features. It is fundamentally important that at the same time they remain "little people", ordinary peasants who share the fate of all serfs. The essay opens with a typically “physiological” comparison of the peasants of the Oryol and Kaluga provinces, but not this ethnographic comparison, but the combination and opposition of the two main psychological types of creative natures becomes the plot of the essay. Interesting is the inner closeness and deep inner difference between the principle of such opposition in Gogol's "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich Quarreled" and in Turgenev's essay. Gogol does not get tired of talking about the opposites of his heroes. This opposition is grotesquely expressed even in their appearance, but the comparison reveals the imaginary nature of their differences. In essence, in the human, moral sense, as well as in the social sense, they are the same, they are variants of the same type, not only similar, but completely coinciding, identical. The heroes of Turgenev are personalities, and their names are not only not similar, but grammatically formed according to a different principle (Khor is a figurative comparison that has become a nickname, Kalinich is a patronymic that has become a name). Representing radical opposite types, they together (they are connected by tender friendship) constitute a unity, whose name is humanity. In a physiological essay on peasants, Turgenev found a new typological principle, outlined the characters that were destined to form the inner core of many great psychological images of the novels of the 60s. These are types of a skeptical thinker, capable of acting rationally in the practical sphere, but disappointed and looking at life through harsh personal experience, and an eternal child, a poet-prophet, direct, close to nature.

From the very beginning of the story about the heroes, without breaking away from concreteness, the writer raises their characters to a high, non-domestic rank. He emphasizes that his heroes are the serfs of the landowner Polutykin, and gives their master a characterization quite in the spirit of satirical "physiological" portraits. It is known that, on the whole, the opposition of landowner Russia and peasant Russia runs through the book “Notes of a Hunter”, but in the essay “Khor and Kalinich”, as in some other essays, it is only an external, first shell; the world of the people is so elevated above the world of masters that, in social and everyday terms, it constitutes a single society with it - serf Russia, it is drawn as the core and root of the life of the country. With regard to the strength and significance of the characters, the peasant and the gentleman depicted in the "Notes of a Hunter" cannot be measured by the same scale. The landowner Polutykin is not associated with either Khorem or Kalinich. How the characters in the story are compared with each other Khor and Kalinich - two peasants. At the same time, the writer feels the need to go beyond the depicted world and find a scale for evaluating his characters. This scale turns out to be the highest images kept by mankind as ideals. “On the threshold of the hut, an old man met me - bald, short, broad-shouldered and dense - Khor himself ... The warehouse of his face resembled Socrates: the same high, knobby forehead, the same small eyes, the same snub-nosed nose" (IV, 12) , - this is how the writer “represents” Khor, and the description of appearance, usual in a physiological essay, becomes a means of elevating the hero, including him in a number of characters worthy of the memory of mankind. This approach to peasant heroes is carried through the entire essay. In his magazine text, the comparative characterization of the two peasants naturally ended with an analogy: “in a word, Khor was more like Goethe, Kalinich was more like Schiller” (IV, 394). The “signal” given at the beginning of the essay of a high poetic order, in which the story is about the peasants, - the comparison of Khor with Socrates - seemed to the writer a sufficient tuning fork, especially since the essay contained one more episode that reminded the reader of the “scale” of the character of the hero. In Chora and Kalinich, as well as later in the entire book Notes of a Hunter, the peasant acts as a representative of the nation, its highest features, the embodiment of the national character. “Khor was a positive, practical, administrative head, rationalist” (IV, 14), the author declares, and on the basis of observations on the character of the peasant, he concludes: “From our conversations, I made one conviction. . that Peter the Great was predominantly a Russian man, Russian precisely in his transformations. The Russian man is so sure of his strength and strength that he is not averse to breaking himself: he is little concerned with his past and boldly looks forward” (IV, 18). Thus, again there is a comparison of Khor with a great man who has become a legend. The peasant, with his personality, his individual traits, not only resembles Peter, but also serves as a justification for his activity, testifies to its historical fruitfulness.

Kalinich is drawn without the help of such comparisons, but this is the character of the “paired” Horyu, opposite to him in his psychological make-up, but equal in scale and constituting an organic unity with him. Having crossed out the comparison of Kalinich with Schiller, the writer, as it were, opened up space for independent reader associations, and in the reader’s imagination, tuned in a sublime way, analogies arise - folk poetic images from legends, ancient parables, hagiographic literature. The idealist Kalinich appears as a hunter-poet wandering through peasant and landowner Russia, surrounded by the comfort of a clean and poor hut, hung with bunches of medicinal herbs, he gives the traveler water to drink and feeds him with honey. Kalinich comes to a friend - Khoryu - with a bunch of field strawberries, as an ambassador of nature, and nature, recognizing his relationship with herself, endows him with mysterious power: he speaks blood and diseases, pacifies people and calms animals, "his bees never died" , with him love and peace enter the house. Poor, having nothing and not caring about the blessings of the earth, he can bestow well-being on the rich: “Khori asked him to bring a newly bought horse into the stable, and Kalinich with conscientious importance fulfilled the request of the old skeptic. Kalinich stood closer to nature; Ferret - to people, to society ... ”(IV, 15).

Kalinich is endowed with kindness, "favor" and gifted with the ability to believe. Turgenev emphasizes this peculiarity of his: "Kalinych did not like to reason and believed everything blindly." This feature of the folk hero would subsequently form the basis of the images of Turgenev's idealists, donquixotes, and at the same time force the writer to delve into the problem of people's "hobbies" for the prophets, the origins of the ability of poetically enthusiastic natures from the people to unconsciously obey the suggestions of someone else's will. Kalinich, unlike Khory, who “saw through” the master, idealizes the landowner, loves and respects him.

Khor "elevates" to "an ironic point of view on life", but he admits that the impractical Kalinych has some kind of secret. Thus, Kalinych's faith puts an end to Khory's skepticism. One of the signs of Kalinich's "mystery", his kinship with the elements, with nature, with the eternal, is his vagrancy. Distinguishing between skeptics in the peasant world, who are practically thinking and prone to analysis, and poets capable of boundless passion and blind faith, Turgenev also divides this world into “wanderers” and “homebodies”. Depicting Russia age-old, serf, attached to the earth, taken into account by the revision tales and doomed by legislative measures to live motionless, Turgenev at the same time draws an unceasing movement, convection taking place in the masses.

He sees the historically emerging new forms of life and activity of the people's environment. The lively peasants of the non-chernozem provinces, released for quitrent, go to the cities, the most resourceful of them become peddlers, and then buy the canvas from their own peasant brother, robbing it, or wait in the wings to “go out to the merchants” at any cost (“Resident” yard"). Grigorovich also noticed these processes, which were very important for the historical life of pre-reform Russia, and, depicting them in his “peasant” stories and novels (“The Village”, “Anton-Goremyka”, “The Four Seasons”, “Fishermen”), interpreted them as one of the main evils of the modern village. However, in Notes of a Hunter, Turgenev is mainly interested not in this movement, characteristic of the new time, but in the eternal movement, without which the most sedentary and patriarchal life does not exist. Such a movement is carried out only by certain representatives of the people endowed with a special character and is associated with “secret”, latent, unknown, and perhaps incomprehensible, as it seems to Turgenev at this stage, processes taking place in the mass of the people.

Turgenev created a whole gallery of images of people from the people who, surrounded by an environment firmly connected by the modern system of relations (serfdom), live, as it were, outside of it. These are seekers, vagabonds, travelers (Kalinych, Stepushka, Kasyan, etc.). They express the dream of the masses, its poetic consciousness. In Notes of a Hunter, Turgenev does not yet consider the people as the bearer of an original worldview. However, his attention to "special people" from the people, to "strange people" anticipated that interest in popular ideological searches and in the forms of worldview of the masses, which was fully manifested in the literature of the 60s and constituted one of its characteristic features.

The image of the people in the "Notes of a Hunter" was not only a step forward in relation to Russian literature of the 40s, but also opened a new page in European literature.

Turgenev attached the property of mystery not only to the poetic, wandering character of a man from the people, but also to the peasantry as a whole. Without extending the idea of ​​the unknown as a whole to the Russian national character (cf. the later theory of the mystery of the Slavic soul), Turgenev at the same time permeates his image of the people with a sense of great richness and mystery of the spiritual world of the common man, which finds expression in the diversity of folk characters and "surprise" their manifestations. The hunter, delving into the life of the village, makes amazing discoveries at every step, any of his clashes with the peasants leaves the feeling that he has come into contact with a secret, could not answer the question he faced, did not understand the motives that these people are driven by. So, describing in detail in the story "Yermolai and the Miller's Woman" the disposition of the carefree and good-natured Yermolai, the observant "hunter" suddenly notices in him unexpected flashes of demonism, manifestations of some kind of gloomy ferocity. Like the flights of a bird, the sudden transitions from village to village of this seemingly prosaic person are inexplicable and mysterious. In the story "Raspberry Water" two yard people and a random passing peasant spent half an hour at a source with a poetic name in the author's company. How significant are their simple, everyday conversations, how original characters! One of them, with a few cursory lines, creates the image of his old master-count, and behind his words rises the bygone era of the heyday of the lord's nests, insane luxury and cruel arbitrariness of the 18th century. The feeling that his memory is full of the secrets of that bygone era, the secrets only kept by such old servants, makes the young hunter direct "The Fog" (as this courtyard is called) to stories about antiquity. An aura of mystery envelops even the simple-hearted figure of Stepushka, all the time busy with worries about food, and the peasant Vlas, who, talking about his grief - the death of his son and the hopeless situation in which the whole family finds itself, having lost its main earner - places hope on the fact that the owner The Count can take nothing more from him. Delicately hiding his despair from the audience, Vlas laughs.

"Notes of a hunter" in the image of the people was a significant step forward in relation not only to Gogol's "Dead Souls", but even to his "Overcoat". If in "The Overcoat" a poor official - a "little man" - is called the "brother" of a thinking and socially more prosperous person, and in the fantastic ending of the story he was just on the shoulder of a general's overcoat, that is, in essence, according to his human data, he turned out to be equal to the general, then Turgenev's gentlemen Polutykin, Count Valerian Petrovich, Penochkin, Zverkov are not up to the shoulder of the Armenians Khory and Kalinich, Yermolai or Biryuk, Kasyan or Yasha-Turk. The motif of misunderstanding by the bars of the peasants runs through the whole book. At the same time, in the Notes of a Hunter, authoritative reviews of peasants about one or another landowner, about a steward, assessments of the moral essence of people's behavior, arguments about Russian life and the life of other peoples are constantly heard. The author refers to the opinion of the peasants as a decisive argument in favor of any point of view and, wishing to give his judgment greater weight, reinforces it with a sentence heard from the lips of the peasants.

In this respect, Turgenev's position in his stories of the late 1940s and early 1950s differs sharply from that of Grigorovich. The whole pathos of the first peasant stories of Grigorovich consisted in the fact that the peasant, being equal to the landowner in his ability to feel, in his thirst for happiness and in all spiritual qualities, finds himself in the position of an animal deprived of rights, driven, intimidated and falling from overwork. Of course, Grigorovich also depicted the peasant with sympathy, and his persecutor, whether it be a landowner, a manager or a miller-fist, with antipathy, but both the peasant and the landowner represented in his stories primarily their position. The main thing in the characterization of both Akulina (“The Village”) and Anton (“Anton-Goremyk”) was the persecution of the hero, his meekness, which functionally had the meaning that confirmed the unjustified cruelty to him. The suffering of the peasant is a direct consequence of his serfdom. The ruin, torment and death of Anton, all the flagrant injustice that falls upon him, is an image of serfdom.

The folk heroes of Turgenev are the bearers of the best features of the national character. In them, as the writer shows, one can find the key to the most important universal problems, and they are put in the position of “property” of one or another, for the most part, an insignificant, stupid and vulgar gentleman. Every time when phrases like “Yermolai belonged to one of my neighbors...” appear in the writer’s text, it strikes the reader, strikes not because the hero of the story experiences resentment and oppression, although manifestations of social injustice, arbitrariness, violence in the book a lot is shown, but due to the discrepancy between the manner of depicting the hero and the fact of his “belonging” to the owner, his existence in the state of things. The figures of the peasants, shown by Turgenev in all the complex wealth and in all the inexhaustibility of the possibilities of the human personality, acting as representatives of the nation with all the mystery of its future destinies, by their very essence and the very tone of their depiction, much more eloquently affirmed the inhumanity, moral injustice and historical doom of serfdom than any fiery publicistic tirades or pictures of violence.

In the stories of the 1940s and 1950s, Turgenev removed the halo of mystery from the inner world of the intellectual hero, whose infinite complexity was approved by Lermontov, he reduced him to the scale of a provincial little man, whose claims are limitless. At the same time, he gave a mysteriousness to the peasant, who had previously been portrayed in literature as a "little man." Continuing the work of Lermontov in his novels, analyzing the inner world of an intellectual, he at the same time showed the inner richness of the spiritual world of a common man. But he portrayed this latter synthetically, without penetrating into its psychological “mechanism”. The peasant, like nature, appeared to Turgenev as a force that determines the life of the country, an attractive and beautiful force, but integral and not amenable to analysis.

In this regard, Turgenev to the peasantry was affected by the peculiarity of the writer's personality. Everything intimately close and completely understandable to him quickly lost its power over him, and he, easily alienated from such phenomena and characters, subjected them to a strict, impartial judgment, and often painted satirically. And so it happened that Turgenev, who wrote a poetic confession in imitation of Lermontov's "Duma" and openly referred himself to the category of "superfluous people" in this confession, became the first accuser of this category of thinking intelligentsia and did it precisely in "Notes of a Hunter". He owns, without sympathy, the painted images of “weak” people who are able to obey the will of the “demonic woman” (“Spring Waters”) and who are not able to appreciate the significance and necessity of life risk (“Asya”), an artist for whom art is the main life interest (“ On the eve"), and the bearer of the traditions of noble culture, its ethical precepts, its understanding of spiritual secrets (Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov in "Fathers and Sons"). At the same time, Turgenev is especially lyrical and most sympathetically fanned in his works are socially and psychologically more distant images from the author: a democrat, a materialist and a supporter of “positive knowledge” (Bazarov), dreamy girls going on a feat of self-denial in the name of an idea or faith , peasants.

In the "Notes of a Hunter" the focus of the poetic line of the book (there is a satirical line in the book, which is no less significant in it) is the story "Bezhin Meadow". Here the author-"hunter" is surrounded by a mysterious nocturnal nature, living its own life, independent of him, a man.

The society in which he finds himself is doubly alien to him. The "Hunter" is surrounded by peasants, for whom he is a stranger - the master, and these peasants are children who are also alienated from him as an adult. The narrator keenly feels his alienation both from nature and from the people with whom he met on a warm night under a mysterious summer sky. Everything that could cause a feeling of loneliness and longing in another, in Turgenev the lyricist arouses a thirst for merging with others, love for everything that is not like him, the desire to unite with the universe. The “Hunter” listens with excitement to the conversations of peasant boys, delving into the legends they tell, and sensitively perceiving the poetry of the setting and conversation. The inability to join the naive faith in the miraculous of the participants in the conversation does not lead him. to complete denial of what he is listening to. Transmitting the artless conversation of peasant children, the primitive simplicity of signs and beliefs that frighten them, the writer states that the mysterious incident of the night, interpreted by the boys as a gloomy prophecy, really preceded the death of one of them. Remaining a skeptic, completely alien to the ancient semi-pagan superstitions of peasant children, he admits that in some system of views their faith may be rational.

In the story "Mumu" Turgenev creates an epic image of a serf - Gerasim. The hero is depicted as a person of exceptional spiritual integrity, endowed with the features of an ideal human nature: physical strength, kindness, fortitude, moral purity, the ability to find joy in work. Gerasim can be considered a model of a folk hero in Turgenev, and due to the fact that the property of a certain mystery, which the writer gave to the peasants in his stories and stories, is most clearly expressed in him. He is deaf and dumb, and this physical defect of his has a symbolic meaning. The inner world of this hero is closed to others, and his actions seem mysterious. He does everything as if "suddenly". The logic of his motives remains a mystery and can only be guessed at. Unexpectedly for those around him, he is imbued with love for a downtrodden, unremarkable girl, then for a dog, and, forced to renounce both of these attachments, does this each time sharply, decisively and cruelly. Just as suddenly and decisively, his complete and meek obedience to the mistress is replaced by "rebellion", refusal to obey, leaving.

We noted above that in the "Notes of a Hunter" Turgenev expressed the idea of ​​the people as the "psyche" of the life of the nation. However, the peasants in his stories never go beyond the narrow sphere of personal existence. Khory's mind, his ability to criticize, his revolutionary rationalism only lead to the fact that the old man manages to create for himself a relative well-being, very shaky, since it is based on the fact that the "master", realizing that it is not in his advantage to ruin the peasant, does not Khorya is crowding, letting him get up. Khor does not even want to pay off to freedom, realizing that under serfdom and under modern administration, having paid off, he remains powerless and, without gaining true independence, loses the protection of the master, who, out of his own benefit, is able to stand up for him before the officials.

Thus, the "Notes of a Hunter" - a book about the people and their enormous opportunities - is at the same time a story about unfulfilled hopes, ruined forces. In this regard, Turgenev, by his own admission, in the story "Inn" "took a step forward" after "Notes of a hunter" and "Mumu" (Letters, II, 97).

Both in Mumu and in the Inn, two worlds are opposed to each other - the world of the peasants and the "society" of the landowners. In both stories, the hero-peasant responds to the arbitrariness of the landowner by leaving. However, the difference, and a significant one, between these two works is that Akim's departure is associated with certain moral views that take on a religious form. The fact that the hero has a kind of "theoretical", principled answer to the evil of life and its "insoluble" questions is the most important feature that portends new interpretations of the folk theme in the 60s.

The other side of these new interpretations is anticipated by DV Grigorovich's novel The Fishermen. Grigorovich, who wrote this novel after the appearance of most of the stories in the Hunter's Notes, made an attempt to create in the person of Gleb Savinych an epically large image of a folk hero. A. I. Herzen considered Grigorovich’s positive contribution to Russian literature to be that his novel is devoid of an idyllic touch, that he realistically depicts the harsh life of the people and at the same time creates an ideal embodiment of a strong folk character that has developed under the conditions of communal ownership of the land, a representative of the “cyclopean race of peasant-fishermen” (XIII, 180). Herzen attached particular importance to the fact that “the novel The Fishermen brings us to the beginning of the inevitable struggle (evolutionary struggle) between the “peasant” and “urban” elements, between the peasant farmer and the peasant factory worker” (XIII, 178).

Grigorovich was one of the first to notice in the 40s and reflected in his stories the penetration of bourgeois relations into the serf village, the beginning of the proletarianization of the village, its stratification. True, Turgenev also ended the story “The Burmister” with authoritative, as always for him, peasants’ judgments that the villages of the landowner Penochkin only in form belong to the master, but in fact they are the undivided patrimony of the steward Sofron, a local kulak. In The Inn, Turgenev also contrasted the mistress with two folk characters at once - the kind owner Akim, who got hold of ingenuity, courtesy and patience, and the cynical, predatory Naum, who lives like a wolf. Turgenev convincingly shows that serfdom is not a hindrance for such businessmen as Naum, but always turns against the working peasant and brings down the full force of his punitive mechanism on an honest man respected by the people. Thus, Turgenev, as it were, "split" the people's world, presenting different ethical and psychological types belonging to the environment of the peasantry.

In "The Fishermen" by Grigorovich, the people's world as a single moral patriarchal environment is merged and embodied in the image of Gleb Savinych. In Turgenev's Inn, the vulgarization of people from among the people was largely determined by the influence of serfdom; Grigorovich is completely distracted from the existence of serfdom. He depicts the life of fishermen free from serfdom and sets himself the task of showing the processes that take place in the folk environment as such in the epic canvas of a folk novel. He draws the drama of the usual course of the daily life of the people - labor, struggle with nature. Grigorovich pays great attention to the problem of the struggle for existence, which became the most important in the literature of "folk realism" in the 1960s. With peasant labor, with its traditional features, the writer connects patriarchal forms of life and nepotism.

It seems to him that, just as the epic of the struggle of the peasant with nature and communication with it is eternal and unchanging, as the labor experience accumulated by generations of peasants is eternal and enduringly valuable, so are the forms of the family life of the people and the harsh relations created by them, without which it is impossible to continue eternal relationship between man and nature. The history of the family and the fate of the patriarchal forms of life of the people - this is what D. V. Grigorovich puts as the basis for the construction of his novel, this is what he thinks is a problematic worthy of forming the basis of a novel from folk life. As a force that undermines patriarchal-family relations, in the novel there is the "disobedience" of the younger generation, which does not understand the highest moral and practical meaning of the authority of the elders, as well as the corrupting influence of the city, the factory. The writer, as it were, forgets about what he himself observed back in the 1940s and showed in the stories of that time the process of penetration of the kulak - the merchant and the buyer - into the village. Now he considers the factory, which activates the evil will of "restless" natures, to be the main source of influence of money-grubbing and immoralism on the peasantry. Grigorovich finds two mutually polar types among the people: meek and predatory. Both of these characters are organically inherent in her, although the meek character, which carries the principles of nepotism, creation, work and devotion to the earth, is the indigenous and basic folk type. If Gleb Savinych embodies the unity of the patriarchal way of life, the historically established common features of the peasant, then many heroes of the novel express the antagonism of the forces of creation and destruction within the patriarchal world; their characterization is given through mutual comparison and opposition, and the plot of the novel is based on their collisions. The identification of two antagonistic types among the people formed the basis of the narrative in Grigorovich's novel The Fishermen. Grigorovich used this method of depicting folk characters here for the first time; subsequently, it became widespread both in works depicting folk life and in theoretical and critical articles. Grigorovich's attempt to consider the history of the peasant family in time, to see the conflicts inherent in the people's environment in its original development, free from the influence of serfdom, was also of great importance for the formation and formation of literature depicting the people.

At the same time, Grigorovich's perception of peasant life as patriarchal life and his nomination of the patriarchal peasant as the main character in literature depicting the people influenced the attitude of criticism towards the folk novel. Based mainly on the experience of Turgenev and Grigorovich, P. V. Annenkov, in his article “On Novels and Stories from Common Life” (1854), argued that novels and stories from folk life are a genre that is not destined to develop and progress. He believed that Turgenev and Grigorovich had basically exhausted the possibilities of this genre, since the patriarchal peasant - whole, not amenable to psychological analysis - cannot provide sufficient material for the deployment of that broad and multifaceted narrative that corresponds to the current stage in the development of a major genre in literature. .

Thus, Annenkov agreed with Grigorovich that the hero of modern literature depicting the people should be, first of all, the patriarchal peasant, and did not share Turgenev's ideas about the secret that lies behind the external integrity and impenetrability of the peasant's personality. P. V. Annenkov was not satisfied with some aspects of Turgenev’s approach to the image of the people in the “Notes of a Hunter”. In the mid-1950s, along with the revival of public life, the essay revived and again acquired enormous literary significance, seemingly irrevocably ousted from literature by the story. It again became a tool for studying society and one of the literary forms of depicting the people. P. V. Annenkov not only drew attention to the new flourishing of the essay, but attached special importance to it, contrasting, with a positive sign, the essay manner of depicting the people with the “lyrical” manner of Grigorovich and Turgenev.

He immediately noted the emergence and strengthening of a new “essay school”, calling it the “Dal school” and referring P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky to it. In a letter to Turgenev in January 1853, he made it clear that the features of the work of "documentary" writers - knowledge of folk life in all its details, ethnographic accuracy of descriptions and emotional restraint of the author - are more consistent with plots from the modern life of the peasantry than Turgenev's lyrical style.

In this letter to Turgenev, P. V. Annenkov anticipated some of the thoughts of Chernyshevsky’s article “Is it the beginning of a change?”, Written in general from completely different positions. Indeed, if the lyrical and poetic style of depicting the people - the style of Turgenev and Grigorovich - did not lose its significance in the 60s, then the need for a different approach to folk life and its conflicts soon gave rise to a powerful literary movement that left its mark on the entire development of Russian art of subsequent period. Chernyshevsky considered the appearance of a collection of works by N. Uspensky, in which the sketchy manner of depicting reality, prevailed, as a sign of the beginning of the formation of a new stage in realistic literature.

The essay became not only the central phenomenon of artistic prose of the 60s and 70s, but in many respects it opposed itself to the psychological and philosophical story and novel. By the very fact of his enormous success with the reader and his influence on literature, he, as it were, cast doubt on the absolute literary significance of the psychological and philosophical story, as well as the plot story from the life of the noble intelligentsia. The problem of the essay and the essay, based on the material of real life, a story from folk life stood as one of the main problems for contemporaries who comprehended the patterns of development of the literary process in the second half of the 19th century.

For Leo Tolstoy, one of the most active creators of psychological and philosophical stories and novels, understanding the significance of the folk principle in the life of society and the artistic embodiment of the folk theme were the basis of worldview and creativity. However, as a theoretician who reflects on the laws of contemporary art and criticizes its models, he did not escape the opposition of two streams of literature and two approaches to the depiction of life, which merged in his writing practice. Arguing with Goncharov’s statement, which he undoubtedly heard in the 1950s and 1960s and in its theoretical part repeating verbatim the provisions of P.V. an intelligent, educated, but completely urban man, an esthetician, told me that after Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” there was nothing to write about the life of the people. Everything is exhausted. The life of the working people seemed to him so simple that after Turgenev’s folk stories there was nothing to describe there ... And this opinion that the life of the working people is poor in content, and our life, idle people, is full of interest, is shared by very many people of our circle » (30, 86-87). Tolstoy himself in "Sevastopol Tales" made both the people and the truth of the story about him his hero. The sketchy authenticity of the facts depicted in the Sevastopol Tales and the introduction of new layers of life material into literature, characteristic of the genre of the essay, were combined in this book by Tolstoy with psychologism, clarity of plot and compositional organization and attention to the fates of individual, mutually opposed heroes. These last features of the work make it related to the story, and it is precisely because of the artistic features of the Sevastopol Tales that they can be considered the writer’s first approach not only to the most important historical and philosophical problems, but also to literary problems, which he then resolved in the novel War and Peace. ".

"Sevastopol stories", in terms of genre close to both the essay and the story, bore the imprint of "eyewitness stories", sweeping aside false and inaccurate reports about the Sevastopol defense and conveying their direct observations. In this cycle of Tolstoy, within the limits of the work of one writer, a general trend in the development of genres in the literature of the mid-19th century was manifested: evolution from essay to story, from story to story (or cycle of stories and essays) and then - from stories or cycle - to the novel, which led to the flourishing of the genre of the novel in the 1950s and 1960s. It should be noted, however, that when embarking on his great novel epic, Tolstoy himself was not completely free from the influence of the point of view formulated by Annenkov.

In one of the draft versions of the text of War and Peace, Tolstoy claimed that “the life of merchants, coachmen, seminarians, convicts and peasants” seems to him “monotonous, boring”, and all their actions stem from “the same springs: envy of happier estates, greed and material passions " (13, 239). Tolstoy in this reasoning challenged all democratic tendencies in the literature of the 1960s. Suffice it to recall that the life of merchants was one of the main objects of depiction in the work of Ostrovsky, that the hero of the story "Mumu" by Turgenev was the coachman, and the peasant stories from the "Notes of a Hunter" and Grigorovich's stories and novels, which depicted folk life, were at that time recognized as classic . If Tolstoy stated: “I just can’t understand ... what a seminarian thinks when he is led to be whipped for the hundredth time” (13, 239), then Pomyalovsky in his Essays on Bursa just shows what a child, doomed to be a seminarian, thinks under such circumstances. If Tolstoy finds the life of convicts "monotonous, boring", and their motives exclusively vile, then Dostoevsky in "Notes from the House of the Dead" showed how meaningful is not boring, but terrible life of hard labor and how diverse are the types of people who find themselves in this terrible place, how their characters are complex and their feelings are contradictory.

Tolstoy, as it were, defiantly took the position of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, the hero of Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons", who asserted the principle of aristocracy in a dispute with the democrat Bazarov: "I am an aristocrat because," writes Tolstoy, in love for the elegant, expressed not only in Homer, Bach and Raphael, but also in all the little things of life. In the text crossed out further, Tolstoy explained in what “little things in life” aristocracy manifests itself: “in love for clean hands, for a beautiful dress, an elegant table and a carriage” ( 13, 239).

Kirsanov argued about Rafael, about the meaning of art in general and about aristocracy in the novel "Fathers and Sons" with Bazarov. Bazarov, in turn, found Kirsanov's panache, the sleekness of his nails, the care with which he was shaved and cut, his starched collars and elegant clothes ridiculous. Commitment to elegance in everyday life as a trait inherent in Kirsanov, Turgenev opposed the external "cynicism", Bazarov's slovenliness, ascetically indifferent to the external "form" of life.

In this digression, which was later not included in the final text of the novel, Tolstoy also touched upon the main theme of democratic, raznochintsy literature: the theme of the struggle for existence. He expressed contempt for the material interests that enslaved people of the lower classes, and deliberately offended the democratic intelligentsia with the remark: “I am an aristocrat because I was so happy that neither I, nor my father, nor my grandfather knew the need and the struggle between conscience and need, had the need to never envy or bow to anyone, did not know the need to educate themselves for money and for a position in the world, etc. of the trials that people in need undergo ” (13, 239).

Tolstoy here touched upon the object of special pride of the raznochintsy - their inherent consciousness that work, professional skill makes them necessary and independent people, that they themselves are the creators of their own happiness. Tolstoy sees their professionalism in a different light, for him it is inseparable from slavish dependence and compromise. He does not hide the fact that his arguments are of an acutely polemical nature, that he opposes the opinion of the majority of the public. Thus, this is Tolstoy's usual way of thinking in controversy, the overthrow of "axioms". When comprehending Tolstoy's aristocratic declarations, it should be taken into account that in the middle of the 19th century, in the context of the rapid development of capitalism and the lack of understanding by the majority of the country's population of what kind of life "fits" in the place of the usual forms of life, the orientation towards the "aristocratic principle" did not always mean reactionary, and especially retrograde tendencies. In Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons, Kirsanov argued that the principle of aristocratism had already played a historically positive role and could play it in the future. Bazarov objected to Kirsanov with ironic remarks, the meaning of which boils down to the fact that Russia will have to solve the problems of its future on its own and on new historical paths. Bazarov was well aware that his opponent was a staunch Angloman, speaking about the importance of the aristocracy, he was guided by the historical experience of England. Attempts to comprehend the history of the advanced European countries - England and France - and in the light of their political experience to determine the paths of social progress in Russia, the prospects for its development and the dangers threatening it were made by thinking people of the 40s. Recognizing the inevitability and historical progressiveness of the growth of industry and at the same time fearing the attitudes and customs that the bourgeoisie carries, V. G. Belinsky turned to the experience of England, where "the middle class is counterbalanced by the aristocracy." “The time of the aristocracy in England will end, the people will counterbalance the middle class; otherwise England will present perhaps an even more disgusting spectacle than what France now presents,” he wrote in December 1847 (XII, 451).

Leo Tolstoy was much more wary and uncompromisingly following the signs of Russia's capitalist development than Belinsky, and the symptoms of the growth of bourgeois relations in Russian society in the early 1960s were more visible and obvious than in the late 1940s. Often Tolstoy saw bourgeois elements in democratic thought and saw the bourgeois essence of liberal concepts. This side of his approach to contemporary ideological disputes and currents often pushed him along the path of putting forward the "principle of aristocracy", which, to use Belinsky's expression, "counterbalances" the ideals of the bourgeoisie - the "middle class". Tolstoy's inherent thirst for a dispute, a critical assessment of all the political concepts of our time, is a typical feature of the thinker of the 60s. Fighting furiously against the "epidemic" of concepts that had become a commonplace, ready to "spite everyone" to welcome Askochensky, Tolstoy remained a modern-minded person, absorbed in the interests of modernity.

The controversy with such a strong opponent as the whole of society and its generally recognized ideas was an important incentive for Tolstoy in developing his original ideas and concepts. In a dispute with the triumphant, democratic worldview that is coming to the forefront of Russian social thought, he puts forward “aristocratism as a principle” (in the terminology of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov), and then in a dispute with the idea of ​​aristocracy, at the other end of the chain of his thoughts, the idea of ​​the people as the main acting forces of history, an idea that became the core of the novel "War and Peace". No wonder the "aristocratic" reasoning was very soon removed from the text of the novel by the writer, removed as "forests", the need for which disappeared after the main ideas of the narrative were revealed. At the same time, it is impossible to present the matter as if the democratic ideal in War and Peace completely abolishes the ideal ideas connected with the "aristocratic principle". If the historical concept of Tolstoy and the image of Pierre Bezukhov express the democratic features of his worldview and sympathy, then the ideal of aristocracy is embodied in the image of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and the entire Bolkonsky family.

This combination of mutually exclusive and arguing tendencies was a peculiar phenomenon even in the most complex, "dialectical" novels of the 60s. In Tolstoy, the democratic solution of the most important problems of history and ethics clearly prevailed. However, the preservation of the "aristocratic principle" as a kind of result of the cultural and ethical conquests of a large historical period gave originality to his democratism.

At the same time, it should be noted that Turgenev also felt duality while working on the novel “Fathers and Sons”, and this duality of approach (“secret”, but strong attraction to Bazarov and lyrical sympathy for the outgoing noble culture) was the source of the ambivalence of the images of the novel and the possibility of their opposite reading.

If in "Sevastopol Tales" Tolstoy exposed the false ideas about the defense of Sevastopol, generated by official reports and odic descriptions of it in literature, then in "War and Peace" he entered into an irreconcilable struggle with the interpretation given by historians to the events of 1805-1815. Relying on extensive documentary material, Tolstoy seeks to restore the events of the past in all their authenticity, the authenticity that he saw through the eyes of an artist. It should not be forgotten that the events that he painted in the epic were not so distant past, that the return of the Decembrists from exile was a fact of a very close past, that for the first time they started talking about the Decembrists and the Alexander era and began to write, studying it from memories living people. The discussion of these events was an integral part of the spiritual life of society in the 60s.

Not only the first half of the 19th century, but also the 18th century. re-evaluated. The fall of serfdom aroused intense interest in the period of its heyday. Numerous works about this era have appeared. Controversy with the image of the XVIII and early XIX century. in the fiction of the 60s is also contained in draft editions of War and Peace. The Decembrist movement, depicted at the end of the novel and which gave the first impetus to the writer's idea, was considered by him as a product of the people's war of 1812, as a historical phenomenon, organically connected with the development of the spiritual culture of Russian society and with the ideological searches of the best representatives of the nobility for several decades.

The hero, in whom Tolstoy embodied the best, ideal carrier of the noble culture of the early 19th century, which organically grew out of the enlightenment of the 18th century, is Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in the novel War and Peace. Tolstoy measures the dignity of a person by his attitude towards the people and the connections that can arise between him and ordinary people: peasants, soldiers. Prince Andrei, with all his aristocracy, is loved by soldiers. They call him "our prince", see him as an intercessor, endlessly trust him. A modest and brave man, Captain Tushin, speaks of him: “darling”, “dear soul”, words that no one in high society would have said about the proud and arrogant Bolkonsky. To the soldiers, to Tushin, as well as to Pierre, Prince Andrei is addressed by his best qualities: his inherent chivalrous nobility, kindness and sensitivity. “I know that your road is the road of honor,” Kutuzov says to Bolkonsky, and the soldiers subordinate to Bolkonsky instinctively feel the same. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, in his spiritual make-up and worldview, belongs to those thinkers who naturally came to Decembristism at the end of the first quarter of the 19th century. As you know, the soldiers of the regiments in which the Decembrists were officers loved their commanders and followed them.

Let us point out in this connection that in the scientific literature of recent years the opinion has been widely spread that L. Tolstoy condemns the aristocracy of Prince Andrei, that Bolkonsky cannot merge with the mass of soldiers, and that even his death is a senseless and useless consequence of pride or devotion to the noble code of honor. Meanwhile, it was in the episode of Bolkonsky's wounding that Tolstoy directly showed the conscious familiarization of his hero, the officer in command of the soldiers, with their position. Prince Andrei with his regiment stands in reserve, in an open area. His regiment is subjected to hurricane bombardment and suffers huge losses. Under these conditions, Bolkonsky is mortally wounded without "bowing" to the grenade. ““I can’t, I don’t want to die, I love life, I love this grass, earth, air ...” He thought this and at the same time remembered that they were looking at him” (11, 251). His modest feat is necessary to strengthen the courage of the soldiers in the position in which they are. After all, if an officer lies down in front of a grenade on the ground, the soldier must be placed in the trenches, which, by the way, was first carried out in Sevastopol during the campaign in which L. Tolstoy took part.

Describing Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, the father of Prince Andrei, as a typical representative of the noble culture of the 18th century, L. Tolstoy permeated the story about him with memoir-essay elements and polemical pathos. He sought to recreate a typical and living image of a man of the 18th century, freeing him from the stereotypes of the 60s narratives, and restored this type according to family legends, as if turning them into "witnesses" of his truth.

In the draft texts of the novel, where the controversy with modern literature is more explicit and frank, Tolstoy gives a direct authorial assessment of Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky and, characteristically, relies on the opinion of the peasants (here he also calls his hero Volkhonsky). “No matter how much I would not like to upset the reader with an unusual description for him, no matter how much I would like to describe the opposite of all the descriptions of that time, I must warn that Prince Volkhonsky was not a villain at all, he did not spot anyone, did not lay wives in the walls, did not eat for four, did not have seraglios, was not preoccupied with simply slandering people, hunting and debauchery, but on the contrary, he could not stand all this and was an intelligent, educated and ... decent person ... He was, in a word, exactly the same person like us people, with the same vices, passions, virtues and with the same and as complex as ours, mental activity, ”he declares (13, 79).

First of all, attention is drawn to the fact that Tolstoy is sure that his objective, truthful portrait of an aristocrat of the 18th century. will deceive the expectation of most readers accustomed to the standard of reproof. Tolstoy speaks, as usual, against the prevailing opinions and positions that have become axioms in the eyes of his contemporaries.

Speaking of the devotion of the peasants to the prince, he does not delude himself and notes that this devotion was of a slavish nature and was based on the fact that the prince is proud, powerful and alien to them, and not on his true human virtues. And here Tolstoy believes that he offends the democrats, who believe in the moral independence of the people and their internal independence from the masters. However, the matter was not so simple. Let us recall the characteristic exchange of remarks between Kirsanov and Bazarov in one of their disputes:

"- No no! Pavel Petrovich exclaimed with a sudden impulse. No, the Russian people are not what you imagine them to be. He reveres traditions, he is patriarchal, he cannot live without faith...

"I won't argue against that," interrupted Bazarov, "I'm even ready to agree that you're right about that... And yet it doesn't prove anything... You blame my direction, and who told you that it it is by chance that it is not caused by the very popular spirit in whose name you are advocating so” (VIII, 243-244).

Thus, Bazarov does not deny the prevalence of patriarchal views and habits among the people, but he considers them to be illusions that must be fought and which the people will defeat, relying on their own revolutionary potential.

He took a very similar position in the article “Is it the beginning of a change?” Chernyshevsky, who gave a special, epoch-making significance to the work of the writer, who portrayed not strong, original people from the people's environment, but "routine" characters and cases showing the backwardness and darkness of the peasant masses. In addition to the fact that N. Uspensky, belonging to a democratic environment, knew its life well and introduced fresh material into literature, he turned out to be close to Chernyshevsky in that his works were imbued with the pathos of exposing all forms of idealization of the past and present in the modern life of the people. N. Uspensky mercilessly destroyed the illusion of the inviolability of patriarchal forms of life, rejected the idea of ​​the significance of the patriarchal character of a person from the people, important not only for such writers as Grigorovich, but also for Herzen. Chernyshevsky equated patriarchy and routine and declared that the fight against the routine, conservative worldview among the people is a task of paramount importance. The subtext of Chernyshevsky's article was also his polemic with the view of Turgenev, who saw the unknown, the mystery behind many "strange" manifestations of people's life. Chernyshevsky attached great importance to N. Uspensky's ability to depict those features of social mores that are manifested both in the life of the peasantry and in the life of other classes, as well as the writer's ability to reveal the relationships and processes that encompass the whole society and influence the characters of people from the people.

Among the works of N. Uspensky, which attracted Chernyshevsky's special attention, was the story "The Old Woman", depicting an incident from the life of a peasant family, similar to the situation, which then formed the basis of one of the central episodes of Chernyshevsky's own novel "Prologue" and the plot of his own story "Natalya Petrovna Svirskaya. In the "Prologue" such a family and social situation develops among the highest officials, in "Natalia Petrovna Svirskaya" - in the circle of the provincial nobility. Comparing in his article the behavior of the peasant family, depicted by N. Uspensky in the story "The Old Woman", with the mores of representatives of the higher strata of society, the critic notes the corrupting influence of false relationships on the whole life of modern people.

Chernyshevsky emphasizes that routine views are not typical for most people, especially for the whole people: “Our society is made up of people of very different ways of thinking and feeling. In it there are people of a vulgar outlook and a noble outlook, there are conservatives and progressives, there are impersonal people and independent people. All these differences are found in every village, and in every village" (VII, 863)," he writes, and recalls that by the "dozen", "colorless", "impersonal" representatives of the peasantry one cannot judge our people, what they want and what they deserve” (VII, 863). At the same time, he sets before literature and before all the defenders of the people in general the task of combating social prejudices and passivity, brought up in the people by centuries of slavery. It should be noted that the stake on the awakening of political initiative and the spiritual independence of the people is expressed in the article through criticism of the humanism of the literature of the 40s - Gogol, Turgenev, Grigorovich. This criticism in many of its aspects coincides with the criticism of Saint-Simonism in Chernyshevsky's article "The July Monarchy".

Tolstoy's criticism in the above draft text from "War and Peace" is not directed against the writers of the nobility, his predecessors in the development of the folk theme and in the depiction of serf relations. Tolstoy himself later admitted that Grigorovich and Turgenev revealed to him "that the Russian peasant is our breadwinner and - I want to say: our teacher ... can and should be written to his full height, not only with love, but with respect and even awe" (66, 409). In addition to the recognition of the special merits of these writers in the development of folk themes, in which Tolstoy was aware, by his own admission, already at the age of sixteen, the criticism that was heard against them from such authoritative judges as Annenkov and Chernyshevsky could not set Tolstoy on polemical in relation to these his predecessors. Tolstoy did not argue here with the young democrat writers of everyday life either. These writers had only just begun to appear in literature, and the work of the first of them, noted by Chernyshevsky as a sign of a new literary period, the work of N. Uspensky, was sympathetic to Tolstoy. Tolstoy's sharp polemics are directed against the accusatory direction, which enjoyed great success and prestige in the early 60s, more precisely against Melnikov-Pechersky. It was Saltykov-Shchedrin and Melnikov-Pechersky, as the most powerful representatives of the accusatory trend, that seemed to the writers who appeared in Sovremennik in the late 1940s and early 1950s as stealers of the public's attention, giving literature an interest alien to it in magazine topicality, utilitarian practicality (direct exposure of abusive officials) and sensationalism. Tolstoy wanted to oppose this trend with genuine fiction, for which he even intended to publish a magazine.

Melnikov-Pechersky entered fiction as an experienced person, an experienced official who knew the professional secrets of the bureaucracy, and as a historian familiar with the documents of official archives. Documentary, sketchy accuracy, sometimes bordering on the publication of documents, was his profession de foi. From this principled position, he approached the depiction of the mores of the 18th century, claiming a frank, bold conversation with the reader and sensational revelations. The image of the life of the XVIII century. Melnikov-Pechersky devoted two stories: "Grandmother's Tales" and "Old Years". L. Tolstoy argued with the last of them, opposing his hero, an aristocrat of the 18th century. - a proud feudal lord, but a humane and enlightened man, a patriot and a freethinker - painted by Pechersky Prince Zaborovsky, a tyrant-sadist, who imprisoned peasants to death, had a seraglio of serf women and immured his son's wife alive.

Melnikov-Pechersky portrayed the serf peasantry as a mute, downtrodden environment lacking initiative. As a typical nobleman of the XVIII century. in his story, a courtier acted, relying not on military exploits, his own and his ancestors, like Tolstoy’s Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky (Volkhonsky), an associate of Suvorov and a friend of Kutuzov, but on the ability to “beat up” with temporary workers, to use intrigues to achieve their career goals. This is not only not a man of honor, but in fact a dark rogue, to whom the brilliance of feudal power and the support of the bureaucratic oligarchy make it possible to act evil with impunity.

Accordingly, the entire XVIII century. was interpreted in the story "Old Years" as an age of excessively permitted torture of the people and robbery, the age of the unbridled characters of the landowners and the complete slavery of the people. Not only the attitude towards serfdom, but also the attitude towards the people determined the historical concept of the author, his assessment of the whole period of Russian history.

Truly depicting the bloody fun and deeds of the nobility, creating vivid images of serf-owners and their serfs, Melnikov-Pechersky was unable in his work to give a realistic image of the serf people as a whole, to reflect the true attitude of the peasantry towards the masters. The great movements of the people that characterized the 18th century, which ultimately led to the great peasant war - the Pugachev uprising - did not seem essential to him. A supporter of the state school in historical science, Melnikov believed that the activity of the state apparatus determines the life of the people, the history of the country and the fate of the individual. The "instability" of state power in the 18th century, according to the writer, exempted vicious natures from responsibility, unleashed predatory instincts and contributed to the ever greater suppression of the unresponsive and voiceless people. In his stories, the people are portrayed as a historically passive force, entirely dependent on the internal political state of the state, on government orders. In the second half of the 60s, while working on the novels "In the Forests" and "On the Mountains", the writer moved away from this concept, in any case, at that time he saw initiative characters among the people. The religious movement of the schism and the traditional stability of the Old Believer life were perceived by him at this stage of his work as manifestations of the originality, spiritual independence of the peasant population of large regions of Russia. The writer's hero was the intelligent, independent—albeit stubbornly conservative—Potap Maksimych Chapurin, a wealthy peasant, a merchant in terms of capital and business scope, a peasant in terms of family life, self-awareness and habits. The idea of ​​the originality of folk life, which penetrated the work of Melnikov-Pechersky, the appearance in his works of bright, individual characters of the Volga peasants, and the approach he developed to the life of ordinary people as a historical being, had an impact on the genre nature of his narrative. From an essay, a story and a short story, the writer moved on to a novel and then a cycle of novels.

A detailed and comprehensive description of the problems and stylistic features of the Russian physiological essay is contained in the monograph by A. G. Tseitlin "The Formation of Realism in Russian Literature" (M., 1965, pp. 90-273).

Yu. F. Samarin. Works. T. I. M., 1900, pp. 86, 88-89.

For naturalistic tendencies in realistic literature of the 1940s, see: V. V. Vinogradov. The evolution of Russian naturalism. L., 1929, p. 304; V. I. Kuleshov. Natural school in Russian literature. M., 1965, pp. 100-108; Yu. V. Mann. Philosophy and poetics of the "natural school". - In the book: Problems of the typology of Russian realism. M., 1969, pp. 274, 293-294.

G. A. Gukovsky. Gogol's realism. M.-L., 1959, pp. 457-461.

D. V. Grigorovich. Full coll. op. in 12 volumes. St. Petersburg, 1896, vol. XII, pp. 267-268. — Further references to this edition are given in the text.

A. Grigoriev. Works. T. I. St. Petersburg, 1876, p. 32.

Valuable materials on the perception of the "Notes of a Hunter" in the West are contained in the article by M.P. Alekseev "The World Significance of the "Notes of a Hunter"". - In the book: "Notes of a hunter" by I. S. Turgenev. Eagle, 1955, pp. 36-117.

It is characteristic that later in the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky put into the mouth of the German Herzenshtube the statement: “The Russian very often laughs where he should cry” (F. M. Dostoevsky. Collected works in 10 volumes. M., 1956 -1958, vol. X, p. 212. - Further references to this edition are given in the text).

See: B.F. Egorov. P. V. Annenkov - writer and critic of the 1840s - 1850s. Uch. app. Tart. state university Issue. 209. Works on Russian and Slavic Philology, XI, 1968, pp. 72-73.

P. Biryukov. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Biography. T. 1. M., 1906, p. 397.

How significant and underestimated in critical literature is the image of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, “defeated” and overshadowed by the huge figure of Bazarov, one can get an idea if we remember that this hero embodies comme il faut and the guards-noble ideal, who, however, is able to bring his great ambition and all the career considerations that are important to him in the sacrifice of an all-consuming passion and, together with the loss of his beloved woman, to lose all meaning of existence, some of his features anticipate Vronsky from L. Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina".

E. N. Kupreyanova. "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy. - In the book: History of the Russian novel. T. 2. M.-L., 1964, p. 313.

S. Bocharov. L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace". M., 1963, p. 107.

The figurative specificity of literature as a form of social consciousness and cognition of reality (prof. Gulyaev N.A.)

As already noted, the artist is directly involved in the process of cognitive activity. He cannot study and depict reality, being distracted from human likes and dislikes. Hence, as a consequence, the partiality of artistic knowledge follows. The artist approaches the study of his subject not as a contemplative, but as an active fighter for his ideals.

If the writer does not have an ideal, then he turns from the master of reality into its slave, loses his bearings in the complex labyrinth of facts. A. N. Tolstoy wrote: “I cannot open my eyes to the world before all my consciousness is embraced by the idea of ​​the world - then the microdistrict appears before me meaningful and purposeful. I, a Soviet writer, am embraced by the idea of ​​reorganization and construction of a new world "That's what I open my eyes with. I see the images of the world, I understand their meaning, their mutual connection, their relation to me and my relation to them" * .

* (Alexey Tolstoy. Sobr. op. In 10 volumes. T. 10. M., 1961, p. 257.)

Artistic image, its connection with the human

To artistically cognize nature and society means to show their positive or negative role in human life, thereby causing a desire to affirm or deny them. The result of cognition, his thoughts and feelings that have arisen in the process of creative activity, the writer expresses in a specific form - in artistic images that contain both objective and subjective principles.

The artistic image is not a photographic snapshot of reality, but its creative reproduction, it necessarily contains a subjective moment - the attitude of the author to the depicted. The humanist writer affirms progressive ideas with his work, serves goodness and justice. Without striving for beauty, art loses its spirituality, turns into a graveyard of words, colors or sounds. V. G. Belinsky wrote: "... A work of art is dead if it depicts life only to depict life, without any powerful subjective impulse, which has its origin in the prevailing thought of the era, if it is not a cry of suffering or a dithyramb of delight , if it is not a question or an answer to a question" * .

* (V.G. Belinsky. Poly. coll. cit., vol. 6, p. 271.)

Art is not a mechanical imitation of nature. An imitator, at best, only doubles the subject of the image, but does not create new aesthetic values. In his work there is no correlation of what is depicted with human life, there is no human meaning.

An artistic image becomes aesthetically significant when it contains human content, when it is enlightened by thought, reveals reality in its relation to man. Of course, this question should not be taken lightly. Not every image, taken in isolation, shows its humanistic function. But if it is considered as part of the figurative system of the work, then its humanistic orientation emerges with all distinctness.

Direct acquaintance with Plyushkin N.V. Gogol prepares with a detailed description of the fortress village and the master's garden. Chichikov enters Plyushkin's property along the pavement, where "logs, like piano keys, rose up and down", he sees roofs full of holes, like a sieve, huts with windows stuffed with rags, odons of bread, on the tops of which "all sorts of rubbish grew ". Chichikov drives past the master's garden, which struck the imagination with its neglect: overgrown paths, shaky arbors, here and hops, "choking the elder bushes below", and a birch with a broken off top, and an aspen with withered leaves, and much more.

Of course, in these images, considered separately, the humanistic content is not yet revealed, but in the general ideological design, each of them carries a certain load. Gogol with magnificent skill creates a picture of desolation, in which Plyushkin is guilty. And this exposes Plyushkin as a dead soul, bringing death to both nature and society.

To portray this or that phenomenon truthfully means to present it in comparison with the ideal. Artistic truth cannot be neutral, it always contains a great humanistic content, tunes a person's thoughts and feelings to a certain aesthetic "wave". N. V. Gogol and other classics of the XIX century. achieved great artistic power due to the fact that they were not objectivist-dispassionate. In their works, revealing the truth of life, they showed the deviation of their contemporary society from the "human norm".

Art as an aesthetic phenomenon begins where figurativeness does not turn into an end in itself, but becomes a means of expressing humanistic ideas. An artistic image is a specific form of cognition of reality. Its specificity lies in the fact that, in addition to its life specificity, it organically includes an aesthetic assessment of life, reflecting each phenomenon in its relation to a person. The artistic image is the writer's weapon in the struggle for the ideal. With its help, he defends the beautiful and debunks the ugly, emotionally affects the reader, educates him aesthetically, arousing in him a feeling of anger against everything that hinders the establishment of beauty on earth.

Aesthetic idea, its originality and connection with the image

The artistic image would lose all its basic qualities if it were not the bearer of the aesthetic idea that gives it life. Moreover, each image of the work expresses something of its own, individual and at the same time is subject to a single ideological concept. A true work of art resembles a perfect organism, in which each organ is unique and necessarily participates in the life of the whole.

The unified image of Plyushkin's fortified village, as we have seen, is made up of a multitude of individual micro-images, which, in turn, serve as necessary links in the creation of Plyushkin's image. But Plyushkin himself, along with Manilov, Sobakevich, Nozdrev and other heroes of the poem, is also only a link in the grandiose image of serf Russia, in which "dead souls" rule.

A work of art is often a complex interweaving of aesthetic ideas. But in this diversity the strictest laws of interaction rule. Each image, remaining itself, is in voluntary agreement with adjacent images and with the work as a whole. The general ideological concept of the author performs organizational functions. Without its organizing principle, individual images would turn into links independent of each other and would lose their aesthetic significance.

The image is the real flesh of the aesthetic idea. Any forcible separation of them leads to the loss of artistry. The artist tends to think in images. But this does not mean at all that he creates his works without any difficulty, only by sudden insight. The image does not appear instantly, it becomes clearer with all its facets in the course of creative activity, when the author manages to reflect not only the objective content of life, but also express his feelings and thoughts about it.

The aesthetic idea is the fruit not only of the mind, but also of the artist's feelings. Having been born, it takes possession of his whole being, becoming a poetic passion, pathos, without which Belinsky could not imagine artistic creativity. “An idea read or heard and, perhaps, understood as it should, but not carried through one’s own nature, not given the imprint of your personality,” the critic wrote, “is dead capital not only for poetic, but also for any literary activity” * .

* (V.G. Belinsky. Poly. coll. cit., vol. 10, p. 312.)

The writer can only "infect" the reader with his excitement when he himself deeply experiences it. And without aesthetic impact, art is dead. It transfers all its spiritual wealth to people mainly through experience. This is the channel through which aesthetic ideas penetrate into the consciousness of a person, spiritually educate him.

Being by its nature an aesthetic reality, that is, a reflection of reality in the light of the ideal, the image sets in motion the deepest feelings and thoughts. It is understandable to everyone, but in some it causes a positive emotional reaction, in others - a negative one. And this is natural, since the figurative system of the work expresses the class, party positions of the writer, his attitude to the fundamental issues of life.

For example, the literary struggle around Gogol's Dead Souls, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time, and Turgenev's novels took fierce forms. Critics of conservative and progressive directions gave them mutually exclusive assessments. The works of Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov, Gorky and other classical writers evoked the same discordant reaction.

The strength of the impact of art largely depends on its concreteness. However, it would be wrong to think that only images that reflect the material phenomena of reality (nature, things, the appearance of a person, etc.) have concrete certainty, plastic expressiveness. Outstanding poets achieve plasticity also in the transfer of human experiences. For example, in the lyrical works of A. S. Pushkin, Belinsky found "plastic relief of expression" * , an organic combination of "elegantly humane feeling with plastically elegant form" **. A. V. Lunacharsky, emphasizing the emotional and intellectual richness of Pushkin's poetry, noted that in it "emotions and thoughts are almost always enclosed in an image that captivates with its concreteness and plasticity" ***.

* (V.G. Belinsky. Poly, coll. cit., vol. 7, p. 323.)

** (V.G. Belinsky. Poly, coll. cit., vol. 7, p. 340.)

*** (A.V. Lunacharsky. Classics of Russian literature. M., 1937, p. 155.)

At the same time, visualization alone does not yet ensure artistry. Many works, especially those of a naturalistic nature, are very illustrative and concrete in life, but they are not capable of delivering great joy. Reliability in the transfer of external and internal forms of life does not yet constitute the whole of art. Artistic truth is impossible without aesthetic ideas.

A true artist always affirms the beautiful, always stands guard over human interests. Only depending on historical and other circumstances, he solves his problem in different ways: either by denying the ugly, or by revealing the beautiful aspects of reality.

When there is no struggle for the beautiful, the disintegration of artistic creativity begins, its decadent degeneration. Art, by virtue of its humanistic nature, is one of the means of spiritual communication between people. The more significant the aesthetic thought, the skill of its embodiment, the higher the feeling it awakens, and the higher the social role of writing.

If the idea embodied by the writer is not aesthetic in its essence, then it turns out to be false. Its falsity shows itself in the fact that it comes into conflict both with the objective content of life and with a healthy aesthetic sense. Complete artistic bankruptcy, for example, is suffered by the defenders of capitalism, who strive in their writings to turn the colonizers and entrepreneurs into friends of the people. Something that is inhuman in nature cannot be aesthetically beautiful.

Image as a special form of generalization

The artistic image by its very nature carries a generalization. The writer is always one way or another based on reality, but he should not become a slave to the facts. Artistic creativity is unthinkable without the selection of material, its processing in accordance with the idea that develops in the work.

When this or that phenomenon of life makes a certain impression on the artist, he looks closely at it, singles out the most significant features that struck his imagination, discards everything accidental that prevents him from clearly expressing the essence of the reality revealed to him and revealing his author's intention. With the help of his own imagination, he, as it were, complements the features that caught his eye. This, in general terms, is the most characteristic way of creating an artistic image.

I. S. Turgenev said: “I meet, for example, in my life some Fekla Andreevna, some Peter, some Ivan, and imagine that suddenly in this Fekla Andreevna, in this Peter, in this Ivan it strikes me something special, something that I have not seen or heard from others. I peer into him, he or she makes a special impression on me; I think about it, then this Fekla, this Peter, this Ivan move away, disappear no one knows where, but the impression they produced, remains, matures. I compare these faces with other faces, introduce them into the sphere of various actions, and now a whole special world is created for me ... " * .

* (Russian writers about literary work. Vol. 2, p. 755.)

The artistic image is ultimately a phenomenon of life, but melted down in the crucible of the writer's creative consciousness, re-created in accordance with his aesthetic ideal, freed from unimportant layers. Therefore, a work of art often affects a person more strongly than the reality that has become the subject of an artistic image. It contains only the necessary, serving high aesthetic goals.

The artist in the process of creative work makes a kind of discovery of the world. Thanks to his powers of observation and aesthetic sensitivity, he discovers and generalizes in images such aspects of life that often escape the gaze of an inexperienced observer. Thus, in the images of Onegin, Oblomov, Klim Samgin and Semyon Davydov, the essence and social significance of a certain type of people who existed in society are expressed in a uniquely sensual form.

Art, by focusing on the beautiful or the ugly, makes people more receptive to beauty.

M. Gorky once remarked: "... John Ruskin proclaimed a profound truth, saying that sunsets in England became more beautiful after Turner's paintings." In this case, the great writer emphasized the ability of artistic creativity to develop the aesthetic tastes of a person, to facilitate his access to the aesthetic riches of nature.

The realist artist has the gift of grasping the essential in a multitude of homogeneous facts. The possibility of such a generalization is suggested to him by reality itself. The phenomena of nature and society, with all their individual characteristics, have similar, related features. It is not difficult, for example, to find what is common (for a certain geographical area) in the onset of spring, autumn, winter, summer, sunrise and sunset, etc., although every year it makes its own amendments to these patterns. People also, with all their originality, bear the imprint of their profession, nationality, and their social status. Therefore, the writer, as a rule, depicting the individual, can correct the failures of observation by life itself: cut off everything insignificant from the depicted, strengthen it with characteristic details borrowed from phenomena of the same circle with him, and create a concrete picture filled with a generalizing meaning. Generalization through the individual, which receives its life in an individual artistic image, is called typification.

Typification and its forms

Finding the common in the individual is most characteristic of realistic art. Not all writers go this way. The classicists, for example, usually went from the general, using the singular only as an illustration of a certain moral and political thesis developed in the work. Such a technique often led to the schematization of characters, to the loss of their individual characteristics.

The realistic principles of generalization triumphed when art was realized as a reflection of reality, and the artistic image as the embodiment in the individual of the typical features of life itself.

Summarizing the achievements of realist writers, Belinsky wrote: “Now, by the “ideal” * they mean not an exaggeration, not a lie, not a childish fantasy, but a fact of reality, such as it is, but a fact not written off from reality, but carried through the poet’s fantasy, illumined by the light of a general (and not exceptional, particular and accidental) meaning, elevated to the pearl of creation, and therefore more like itself, ... than the most slavish copy in reality is true to its original" ** .

* (The word "ideal" in this case has the same meaning as "type".)

** (V.G. Belinsky. Poly. coll. cit., vol. 6, p. 526.)

Typification, as a rule, is accompanied by a thickening of the reproduced phenomena, an intensification of their characteristic features, which gives them greater emotional expressiveness. Such a method follows from the very nature of artistic creation, which is a struggle for the affirmation of the beautiful or the denial of the ugly.

“Art aims,” wrote M. Gorky, “to exaggerate the good, so that it becomes even better, to exaggerate the bad — hostile to man, disfiguring him — so that it arouses disgust, ignites the will to destroy the shameful abominations of life created by the vulgar, greedy philistinism. At its core, art is a struggle for or against, indifferent art - there is not and cannot be, for man is not a photographic apparatus, he does not "fix" reality, but either affirms or changes it, destroys it" * .

* (M. Gorky. Sobr. cit., vol. 27, pp. 444-445.)

Therefore, typification is impossible without fiction. Poetic condensation takes place even where the characters do not outwardly stand out from their environment. In them, the leading character traits are usually condensed in comparison with their life prototypes. Both Oblomov, and Bazarov, and Pavel Vlasov, and Levinson, and Grigory Melekhov were "familiar strangers" for their time. They are put forward by life, but in them, as in a focus, the properties of many people of their social circle are refracted.

As you know, there are other ways to create a typical image. Sometimes, in society itself, such individuals are found that seem to have concentrated in themselves the most characteristic features of people of a certain social stratum in a certain historical era (Chapaev, N. Ostrovsky, Meresyev, etc.).

Reflection in the figurative form of a single one leads to the creation of an atypical image. Lefort in A. Tolstoy's novel "Peter the Great" is not typical for the inhabitants of the German settlement, who were not disinterested assistants to the young tsar in his reforms. A. Volodin's play "The Appointment" depicts an unusually kind boss, Lyamin. Taking advantage of the weakness of his character, the subordinates at first completely stopped work, and then, ashamed, zealously set to work. It is possible that such a case took place in life, but Volodin tries to present this single one as typical, which met with the objection of criticism.

It happens that the writer, sharpening the image, goes to the violation of external plausibility. In an effort to most expressively show the essence of the depicted phenomenon, he often resorts to hyperbole, to the grotesque. Thus, in the "History of a City" by Saltykov-Shchedrin, the image of the mayor Brudasty with an organ in his head appears. Of course, this is implausible, but it is artistically justified. The satirist wanted to emphasize the stiffness, the automatism of the actions of the reactionary bureaucrat, who, having lost everything human, acquired the resemblance to a clockwork doll, with an automaton that can pronounce only two words.

Responding to critics who noted the implausibility of the image of Brodystoy, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote: “But why take it so literally? !", but in the fact that there are people whose whole existence is exhausted by these two words" * . In the conditions of autocratic Russia, according to the satirist, zealous administrators like Brodasty were typical, and thus their appearance in literature was justified.

* (M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin on literature and art. M., 1953, p. 405.)

Considering the work of Gogol, Belinsky noted that the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls did not write off his heroes from nature: it was not so easy to find a completely “ready-made” Khlestakov or Plyushkin in life. But on the other hand, Gogol, according to the critic, met quite a few officials and landowners "with the possibility of becoming them" * . Gogol, in the process of creative work, sharpened the characteristic and possible features inherent in the real-historical Khlestakov and Plyushkin, and created artistic types of great generalizing power.

* (See: V. G. Belinsky. Poly. coll. cit., vol. 2, p. 245.)

There is an opinion that typification is inherent only in realistic art. This is not true. Typical images are also created by writers of the romantic type of thinking. However, typicality is established in romanticism differently than in realism. The positive hero here does not correlate with the environment that gave birth to him, but with the spiritual world of the author himself and those social forces that he represents. Of course, Mpyri is not typical as a monastic novice, but he seems to concentrate in himself the freedom-loving dreams of Lermontov and his contemporaries, who are close to the poet in terms of thoughts and feelings. The positive characters in the utopian novels of J. Sand, of course, are absolutely atypical as nobles, but their moods are characteristic both for the writer herself and for all supporters of French utopian socialism.

Character and circumstances

The typical in literature cannot be reduced to an expression of the essence of some social characteristics of a person. An artistic image - a character - is not only the personification of a certain social force, but also a very specific, "living" human personality. The totality of the main features that determine the individual characteristics of the hero is usually called character. For example, Oblomov Goncharova is not just the embodiment of nobility. He is a gentleman with an individual human appearance, with his own habits, inclinations, etc. The general and the individual are in him in an organic synthesis, which allows us to speak of Oblomov as a masterfully outlined artistic type. Singling out only social qualities in characters leads to schematism and undermines the basis of the specifics of art.

The October Revolution and the Civil War in Russia are reflected by A. Tolstoy in the epic "Walking Through the Torments" through the complex interweaving of the fates of many heroes, each of whom is a representative of a certain social group and at the same time a unique human individuality. Here are Katya and Dasha Bulavins, and the engineer Telegin, and the nobleman Roshchin, and the lawyer Smokovnikov, and many others. All these fictitious persons are drawn into the maelstrom of real historical events. A. Tolstoy creates an impressive picture, as it were, of living hysteria.

The same social essence can be combined with different characters. In Fadeev's "Young Guard" all the Young Guards are similar in their ideological convictions. They were brought up by the Communist Party and the Young Communist League, and are boundlessly devoted to the socialist Motherland. But this general appears in their individual refraction. Each of them has its own unique appearance, represents a specific human personality, manifests itself in different ways in the fight against the enemy. Therefore, Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Sergei Tyulenin are typical artistic images.

Character most fully reveals its content when it is placed in the circumstances corresponding to it. A talented writer usually subjects his characters to various tests, which make it possible to reveal their social essence, their individual characteristics.

Circumstances are the environment, social conditions, specific life relationships in which a person has to act. When depicting them, art also very often resorts to sharpening. It discards everything insignificant, highlights the most characteristic. The writer chooses from the mass of events such a situation that allows him to show with the greatest clarity all the hidden thoughts and feelings of the characters.

However, circumstances cannot be constructed arbitrarily, that is, they cannot be artificially adjusted to the "growth" of the intended characters. Their choice artistically justifies itself when it corresponds not only to the author's intention, but also to the objective laws of real life.

Consequently, literature is a reflection of reality in artistic images. Imagery is the essence of its specificity. Moreover, the specificity of its form is determined by the characteristics of its subject. The writer learns nature and society in relation to man. He himself is directly involved in the process of cognition and reveals not the natural, but the aesthetic, human essence of things and phenomena, gives them his assessment. Therefore, artistic creativity is always subjectively colored, enlightened by an aesthetic ideal, it represents a struggle for the establishment of beauty on earth.

The creation of an ideological and thematic basis, the translation of this basis into images and forms, is possible only with the decisive role in this process of what is called in literary criticism the concepts of “typization” and “individualization”. Therefore, these categories legitimately act as the most important laws of thinking in images. Typification and individualization refer to the process of artistic synthesis, the growth of scaffolds in the field of knowledge of literature with the help of abstract thinking. The result of typification and individualization are images - types.

Essence of typification and individualization. A well-established judgment about the nature of artistic generalization is considered a significant definition of these categories: the most characteristic is borrowed from the fund of similar realities. The fact of typification gives the work an aesthetic perfection, since one phenomenon is able to reliably display a whole series of repetitive pictures of life.

Specific linkages between the individual and the typical distinguish the nature of each artistic method. One of the most important planes where differences are constantly unfolding is associated with romanticism and realism. The principles of artistic generalization become the keys with which one can enter the world of art. When the nature of the typical and the individual is determined, it should be remembered that the ways and means of artistic generalization follow from the nature of the thoughts developed by the writer, from the ideological predestination that this particular picture has.

Take, for example, the battle scenes from War and Peace. Each battle has its own internal logic, a special selection of those phenomena and processes that make up and are determined by the course of the development of the battle. And the choice of the writer falls on the epic depiction of the battle of armies through the prism of the finest details. It is possible to correlate the Borodino and Shengraben battles, and a sharply distinctive principle can be seen between them. Differences are observed in what the artist's attention is drawn to and what he has fixed. On the pages of the novel there is a household battle, here the way of the ordinary mass under Shengraben is depicted. The soldiers look at the kitchen with greedy eyes. They are interested in stomachs. When Borodino is portrayed, there are no battles there, there is no army either, the people are active there: “They want to attack with all the people.” All the soldiers refused the vodka prescribed before the battle, this is a generalization of the event. So detailing and generalization play their essential role in typification and individualization. The carriers of the generalization are the characters, images and the details that link them. It is necessary to analyze not only pictures, episodes, but also the totality of the smallest details. When it comes to one hero, you should think about the other, and what role he plays in the fate of the first. The typical and the individual recreate the world according to the laws of beauty.

The image contains a picture, an image, the unity of generalization (typification) and concretization (individualization). So, the image of any character necessarily represents a certain collectiveness and uniqueness of the personality in all its specificity, in all its inherent features. When the images of Gobsek, Papa Grande, Plyushkin, Bubble, Glytaya, Corey Ishkamb are considered, they all sum up one generalization - the tragic type of miser, which is indicated even by their "talking" names (Gobsek is a live-throat; Bubble is immense stinginess; Glytay - greedily and hastily swallows; Ishkamba - stomach). Each of these images embodies its own unique distinctive features: features of appearance, personal habits, character stock. Just as there are no two undoubtedly identical people, so there are no two completely similar, to the point of complete similarity, images. For example, in many French novels of the 19th century, images of the so-called “Napoleonic warehouse” function, they are very similar, contain the same generalization. Before the researcher appears the type of Napoleon of peacetime, when he is replaced by a millionaire, Rothschild. And yet, these characters are different, they are distinguished by their unusualness. The individualization of artistic creativity is as close as possible to reality itself, to life. In science, reality is reflected only in pure generalizations, abstractions, abstractions.

So, the general definition of an image boils down to the following: an image that has the properties of generalization or typification, and on the other hand, the specificity (concretization) of a single, individual fact. Without the unity of concretization (individualization) and generalization (typification), the image itself does not become the essence of artistic creation, a phenomenon of art. One-sided typification is called schematism, in art it is absolutely impossible, destructive for it; and just as inadmissible, pernicious limited concretization. When literary scholars are faced with a slight individualization or a very weak general conclusion, incommensurable with the real side of the image, they call it factography. Here the particulars are extremely declarative. Real events snatched from reality itself will lead the author to an artistic failure. Let's remember the admonition of the classic: I look at the fence - I write the fence, I see a crow on the fence - I write a crow on the fence.

Literary critics in such cases speak not only about the schematism of the reconstruction of pictures, but also note the flaw, the vulnerable side of factography. In other words, this is an extreme shortcoming, deforming the image and artistry. In a truly artistic depiction, there should be no one-sidedness of generalization and concretization. Typifying moments must be in balance with specific, factual aspects, only then does an image appear, a full-fledged artistic image.

Question 30. Style as a category of form. The relationship between the concepts of "method" and "style". With a holistic analysis of the form in its substantive conditionality, the category that reflects this integrity, style, comes to the fore. Style in literary criticism is understood as the aesthetic unity of all elements of the artistic form, which has a certain originality and expresses a certain content. In this sense, style is an aesthetic, and therefore, an evaluative category. When we say that a work has a style, we mean that in it the artistic form has reached a certain aesthetic perfection, has acquired the ability to aesthetically influence the perceiving consciousness. In this sense, style is opposed, on the one hand, to stylelessness (the absence of any aesthetic meaning, aesthetic inexpressiveness of the artistic form), and on the other hand, epigone stylization (negative aesthetic value, a simple repetition of already found artistic effects).

The aesthetic impact of a work of art on the reader is due precisely to the presence of style. Like any aesthetically significant phenomenon, style can cause aesthetic controversy; Simply put, style can be liked or disliked. This process takes place at the level of primary reader's perception. Naturally, aesthetic evaluation is determined both by the objective properties of the style itself and by the characteristics of the perceiving consciousness, which, in turn, are determined by a variety of factors: the psychological and even biological properties of the individual, upbringing, previous aesthetic experience, etc. As a result, various properties of style excite in the reader either positive or negative aesthetic emotion: someone likes the harmonious style and dislikes disharmony, someone prefers brightness and colorfulness, and someone prefers calm restraint, someone likes simplicity in style. and transparency, to someone on the contrary, complexity and even intricacies. This kind of aesthetic assessments at the level of primary perception are natural and legitimate, but they are not sufficient to comprehend the style. It should be borne in mind that any style, whether we like it or not, has an objective aesthetic significance. The scientific comprehension of style is intended, first of all, to reveal and reveal this significance; show the unique beauty of a variety of styles. A developed aesthetic consciousness differs from an undeveloped one primarily in that it is able to appreciate the beauty and charm of the largest possible number of aesthetic phenomena (which, of course, does not exclude the presence of individual style preferences). Work on style in teaching literature should develop in this direction: its task is to expand the aesthetic range of students, to teach them to aesthetically perceive both the harmony of Pushkin's style and the disharmony of Blok's style, the romantic brightness of Lermontov's style and the restrained simplicity of Tvardovsky's style, etc.

Style is a pair category, dialectically connected with the category "creative method", because the set of ideological and aesthetic principles that style expresses is the basis of the creative method. If the artist’s constructive-sign activity is carried out through style, then the cognitive-value relation of art to reality is embodied in the method. Both sides are inextricably linked. The ideological and aesthetic principles in a work can be realized only through a certain figurative system, a system of figurative and expressive means, that is, style, while style, like the entire expressive system, is not an end in itself, but a means by which the artist expresses his attitude to comprehended reality ... Translated from the Greek "method" (Method) literally means "the path to something" - a way to achieve a goal, a certain way ordered activity. In the special philosophical sciences, the method is interpreted as a means of cognition, a way of reproducing the object being studied in thinking. All methods of cognition are based on this or that reality. In art, we are dealing with a creative method. In our aesthetic literature, there is sometimes an opinion that the concept of "method" does not have a long history, but the category arose even in the early stages of the development of aesthetic thought. If the ancient philosophers did not yet use the term "method", they nevertheless actively sought solutions to methodological problems. Aristotle, for example, puts forward the idea of ​​different modes of imitation depending on different objects; each of the imitations will have differences corresponding to the subject of imitation: "Since the poet is an imitator, like a painter or some other artist, he must certainly imitate one of the three: either he must depict things as they were or are, or as they are spoken and thought of, or as they ought to be." Of course, these arguments are not yet a doctrine of the method, but in them one can find the logic of the method, understood as an effective mechanism of creativity. The Hegelian concept of the artistic method requires special study. Unlike Kant, who did not accept the artistic method at all, opposing art to science, Hegel spoke of two ways of artistic representation - subjective and objective.

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The analytical article examines the forms of artistic typification in modern Ossetian prose. The main attention is paid to the movement of characters, which takes place in different time plans, where the connection of times becomes an important plot and compositional element and a means of artistic representation. The intersection of different time plans (modernity and the past, distant and recent) becomes essential for a more prominent identification of the main links in the development of society, taking place along an ascending line. Forms of artistic typification when recreating life and characters directly depend on the worldview and creative position of the author. The ideological and artistic commonality of many works about modernity is undeniable. One can distinguish the authenticity, accuracy of the depiction of everyday relationships, work life, the art of psychological analysis, the ability to recognize the good and the beautiful in the ordinary course of modern life, in the characters of heroes, etc. These qualities of realism and artistic typification are inherent in the works of Nafi Dzhusoyta, Grisha Bitsoev, Ruslan Totrov, Vaso Maliev, Georgy Tedeev, Gastan Agnaev, Meliton Kaziev, Yuri Gabaraev and other prose writers. Their work convinces us that artistic psychologism, as the art of the analytical depiction of character, is gaining more and more weight in the poetics of realism.

concept of man and society

artistic typification

personality history

typical character

psychological plan

concrete analysis

mindflow

epic and lyrical elements

poetics of realism

aesthetic ideal

1. Agnaev G. Temyr's youngest daughter: novel, elegy, stories. - Vladikavkaz: Ir, 2013. - S. 6-222.

2. Bitsoev G. Evening Star: A Novel. Tale. - Vladikavkaz: Ir, 2003. - 336 p.

3. Guchmazty A. Grace of your soul // Sing in Ossetian, guys: novel, stories. - Vladikavkaz: Ir, 1993. - 424 p.

4. Maliev V.G. House of Surme: novel / translation from Ossetian. - Ordzhonikidze: Ir, 1986. - 288 p.

7. Mamsurov D. Akhsarbek: a novel. - Ordzhonikidze: Ir, 1974; Mamsurov D. Poem about heroes: a novel. - M .: Soviet writer, 1981.

8. Marzoev S.T. Fate // Herald: works. - Ordzhonikidze: Ir, 1986. - S. 363-432.

9. Tedeev G. Difficult road of ascent // Literary Ossetia. - 1987. - No. 69. - S. 69-70.

In modern Ossetian prose, those forms of generalization are affirmed that are based on the historicism of thinking, research, and analysis of reality. Fiction is being created in national literature concept of man and society. Its most important aspect is personality history, character, through which we learn our time, the people, their spiritual and moral ideals.

However, has the current Ossetian literature retained the function of artistic typification and generalization? Does it explain to us the patterns of historical development, or, on the contrary, does it record violent breaks in the natural course of events? What ideals does it preach, and does it correspond to the ideals that grow from the very reality in which we all live and survive? These complex questions entail others: does the current literature still dominate thoughts, does the Ossetian writer claim to be a teacher of life? To answer this, one should present a picture of the modern literary process in its main tendencies.

The typical character is rooted in real life or in the past, because Ossetian literature is firmly connected with reality: from "Janaspi" Arsen Kotsoev, "Honor of the Ancestors" Tsomaka Gadieva, "Broken Chain" Baron Botsiev, "Sound of the Storm" Kosta Farnieva for the novel "Poet about Heroes" Dabe Mamsurova, "Forward" Tatari Epkhiev, other modern novels and stories about Ossetian life. The conditions for the existence of character are specific, depicted accurately and reliably: this is the situation on the battlefield, the collectivization of agriculture, the industrialization of the country, the daily environment of a person - that is, world shown in time and space. If we recall the books of Kudzag Dzesov, Maxim Tsagaraev, Alyksi Bukulov, Nafi Dzhusoyta, Sergei Marzoev and Vladimir Gagloev, we can easily be convinced of this.

The movement of characters proceeds in different time plans: the connection of times becomes an important plot and compositional element and a means of artistic representation. Being of characters is understood as multidimensional with past and present. We find a similar principle of representation in the military prose of Totyrbek Jatiev ( "Saber Ring", "Dika"), Sergey Kaitov ( "That Was My Son", "Second Father"), Georgy Dzugaev ( "On the Edge of a Knife"), Michala Basieva ( "Pedigree), Akhsarbek Aguzarov ( "Son of a blacksmith"), David Darchiev ( "Duty"), Vasily Tsagolov ( "And the Dead Rise"). However, this principle should not be absolutized as self-valuable and universal. Undoubtedly, in the future - new forms and means of representation. Sergei Morzoev, for example, prefers the sequence of character development over time, occasionally using prehistory as a digression (“ Kakhtisar", "Hammer and Anvil"). It is more important for the author to give the greatest freedom of action to his heroes in those conditions, twists of fate, dramatic situations that formed the whole era of the war and post-war years. Such are the organically developing characters of Akhsar Tokhov, Ivan Bogucharov, Sakhandzheri Mamsurov, Andrey Gromov, Tsyppu Baimatov, and the foreign specialist Scholz.

Dabe Mamsurov in his novels depicts characters that were formed in the pre-war years (for example, Gappo, Khariton, Batyrbek, Goska and others); finding themselves in conditions of breaking the old foundations, unprecedentedly difficult and tragic, these characters are tested for strength. And those who have a deeper ideological conviction survive these tests. In this case, the principle detection, recognition of the essence of character in unusual conditions. “Vasily Tsagolov in his works depicts the tragic clash of youth, youth with war and death. In this confrontation, the humanity of the heroes wins, armed with conviction, high concepts of their duty and a deep patriotic feeling.

Attention should also be paid to the artistic and philosophical interpretation of the concept of fate in Ossetian prose, which is often included in the title of a work of art. For example, in the story of Sergei Morzoyta "Fate" and from Gastan Agnaev, who continued his tradition "Ghost" the fate of a person becomes a comprehensive symbol of the history of the people, freely expressing their will, acting consciously. The fate of a person and character in these works are inseparable concepts. The significance of a single human life is recognized in historical situations in "moments of fate" inevitability, the predestination of which, however, is removed by the activity of the hero, overcoming the tragic circumstances of a national and personal misfortune. On the wide canvas of the trilogy by Elioz Bekoev "Fatimat", in the novels of Hafez "Good afternoon people" and "The Hermit" by Meliton Gabulov convincingly shows the growth of the plot and conflict situations. In all cases, individual fate is interpreted as a kind of historical unity of the person and the event, as the life created by the hero.

Psychological analysis becomes dominant in the system of visual means, as the most flexible means of a multi-linear, three-dimensional image of the spiritual world, inner motives, dialectics of the soul and life of the heart. Carefully preserving the individuality, originality of spiritual life, the writer reveals its complexity among people of different social groups and classes - a collective farmer, a worker, a military man, a scientist, a doctor, an intellectual. These are the results of those dramatic historical changes that transformed the spiritual world of people. There is no need to enumerate the new qualities of the psychologism of the hero's personality. A specific analysis will lead to an understanding of the essence of the issue. Here it is necessary to highlight the general trends in the development of psychologism in Ossetian prose. First of all, it is the strengthening of the role narrator acting as a hero or author. Sometimes already in one work there is a relocation of two plans of narration: personal-individual and objective.

In accordance with this, there is an interaction of different psychological plans or even systems, each of which differs internally (perception, point of view, type of thinking, change of moods and feelings) and external speech structure. There is a democratization of the narrative manner, a wide penetration into the author's narrative of various forms of folk colloquial speech, due to a certain socio-psychological warehouse and moral state of the character. We find similar forms of psychologism in the works of Nafi Dzhusoita, Sergei Marzoita, Ruslan Totrov, Grisha Bitsoev, Gastan Agnaev. In the novels of Nafi Dzhusoyta, the author's narrative speech in many cases is as close as possible to folk colloquial speech, sometimes merges with it, retaining, however, the author's stylistic originality. Specific analysis of his novels "Tears of Syrdon" and "Snowfall" we are deeply convinced of this.

In the works of the memoir plan, the objective principle is strengthened, since the authors strive to embody what is generally significant and experienced by many. In the works of the memoir-biographical genre, on the contrary, the personal point of view, the pathos of private being, dominates, self-analysis, self-knowledge, and at times the stream of consciousness prevails. Lyricism acquires the qualities and form of artistic psychologism when it expresses the peculiarities of the perception of reality, the tension of emotions, a romantic-elevated mood, and a special temperament. However, the origins of lyricism are explored in concreteness: it can be the public interest of the writer and his patriotic feeling, a sense of belonging to high experiences. The horizons of vision, the strength and significance of emotional experiences, the significance of moral experience - all this can explain the origin of lyricism and its qualities (See: "Scars on the Heart" Kudzaga Dzesova, "My memories" Andrey Guluev, "Yesterday and today" Dabe Mamsurova, "Memories" Alexandra Tsarukaeva, "Memories of youth" Izmail Aylarova, The first days in the native land» Gogi Bekoeva, "Roots and Branches" Zaura Kabisova, "Heart bleeds" Gersan Kodalaev).

Lyricism as a certain emotional and psychological state and quality of perception, attitude to reality, is characteristic of epic and lyrical works (diary, travel notes, notebooks), is embodied in a certain stylistic and stylistic manner (pathetics, attention to the state of the narrative, etc.). The story of Gastan Agnaev "Autumn long roads"- synthesizes elements of epic and lyric poetry. The knowledge of the beautiful in a person, the comprehension of bitterness, familiarizing him with the moral and creative foundations of folk life - this is the direction of psychological analysis in "Autumn long roads", where lyricism is due to various circumstances, but invariably becomes an expression of moods, states of mind, heartfelt excitement of the hero. These problems, besides us, are actively developed in the works of I.V. Mamieva. In her research, she also touches upon the issues of artistic typification and typology.

Of course, in the works of the epic plan (tales, novels about the war, the city, the countryside) other principles of psychologism are also used, since the pathos of objectivity dominates in them. Pay attention to art synthesis of events and characters, giving direction to psychological analysis and determining its specificity in this case. For example, the psychologism of Vaso Maliev in the novel "House of Surme" is based on a deep understanding of the drama of reality, complicated by the conditions of the war and post-war difficulties, so harsh and unprecedented, modern realities, complicated by the problems of the individual and society, that extraordinary, strong characters, only involved in a common cause and living with one goal, could withstand them. The drama of common life is reproduced in clashes of opinions and points of view, revealing common experiences. Against this background, the complex and contradictory world of feelings and experiences of Surme, Tsaray, Aslanbek, Saban, Zalina, the Olympics, etc. clearly emerges.

In recent years, there has been a sharper trend towards a socio-philosophical understanding of the fate of Ossetian society at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, in its present, past and future; novels about it "Grace of your soul"- Alyosha Guchmazty, "Faded Dreams" - Izatbeg Tsomartov, "Evening Star"- Grisha Bitsoeva and "Younger daughter of Temyr"- Gastana Agnaeva, where a turning point in the life and worldview of the heroes occurs on the eve of the collapse of a great country. The former confusion of our literature before this fateful event, the state of indistinctness and hushing up, passed with time. The clarity of the historical fact manifested (through the artistic consciousness) has come. However, we recognize that, despite all the ideological and artistic changes, the current Ossetian literature has lost the status of reverence in the reader's mind. The years of the "great turning point" also affected the literary consciousness of the people. With the current complexity, sometimes strained to the point of anguish, life, the desire of the national reader to withdraw into himself is quite understandable.

On the other hand, let's ask ourselves the question of what is a creative worker ousted from social life capable of, who, in theory, is called upon to reflect, strengthen, sing? Needless to say, a socially unprotected writer inevitably turns into a protest writer. And instead of works that give aesthetic pleasure in our literature, the wave of protest texts is increasing, negatively covering the existing state of affairs in society and the country. What are the possible points of contact between literature and power - those communication paths, the need for which is now really ripe? It's no secret that we live in a difficult time of change. Genuine paths of national self-consciousness - and this is the only condition to avoid unnecessary moves! - inevitably run through our serious, honest literature, requiring in-depth analytical reading.

The experience of Ossetian prose represented by the work of Kudzag Dzesov, Dabe Mamsurov, Elioz Bekoev, Gafez, Georgy Dzugaev, Maxim Tsagaraev, Sergei Kaitov, Nafi Dzhusoyta, Sergei Marzoita, Grisha Bitsoev, Ruslan Totrov, Vaso Maliev, Georgy Tedeev, Gastan Agnaev and other prose writers convinces us that artistic psychologism as the art of the analytical depiction of character is gaining more and more weight in the poetics of realism. Of course, in the future it will be necessary to pay attention to other forms of artistic typification. In particular, on the stylistic qualities of works that actively contribute to revealing the essence of character, convincing the position of the author and his aesthetic ideal (composition, visual means, detail, objectivity, etc.).

Reviewers:

Fidarova R.Ya., Doctor of Philology, Chief Researcher of the Department of Literature and Folklore, FSBSI “SOIGSI named after IN AND. Abaev VSC RAS ​​and the Government of North Ossetia-A, Vladikavkaz;

Bekoev V.I., Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, North Ossetian State University named after K.L. Khetagurov, Vladikavkaz.

Bibliographic link

Khoziev I.Kh., Gazdarova A.Kh. FORMS OF ARTISTIC TYPING IN MODERN OSSETIAN PROSE // Modern problems of science and education. - 2015. - No. 1-1 .;
URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=17741 (date of access: 01.02.2020). We bring to your attention the journals published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural History"

Collection output:

TO THE PROBLEM OF "TYPOLOGY" AND "TYPING" IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Bulycheva Vera Pavlovna

Lecturer at the Department of English for Economic Specialties Astrakhan State University, Astrakhan

For linguistics, the problem of typology is not new. The term " typology”was considered in the works of ancient rhetoricians, and the list of works devoted to the study typologies, has hundreds of titles. Like some other fundamental concepts, the term typology is broad and multifaceted, within the framework of different sciences it is understood differently, which makes it extremely difficult to define it. For example, in philosophy typology(from Greek - imprint, form, pattern and - word, teaching) - this is “a method of scientific knowledge, which is based on the division of systems of objects and their grouping using a generalized, idealized model or type”, in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary - this is “ the scientific method, the basis of which is the dismemberment of systems of objects and their grouping with the help of a generalized model or type; is used for the purpose of a comparative study of essential features, relationships, functions, relationships, levels of organization of objects.

Only in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary do we find information about linguistic typology - this is "a comparative study of the structural and functional properties of languages, regardless of the nature of the genetic relationship between them"

Perhaps, precisely because of the complexity of the concept itself, the term "typology" is absent in a number of specialized terminological dictionaries. Therefore, we believe that the term "typology" is primarily a general scientific term, and not a literary one.

Much more often in literary criticism we meet the term “typification”, although this term is also absent in terminological dictionaries in philology. Typification is “the development of standard designs or technological processes based on technical characteristics common to a number of products (processes). One of the methods of standardization".

Image-characters, like all other types of imagery, are, as it were, a clot of what the writer sees around him. Such a condensation of essential phenomena in an image is typification, and an image-character that reflects the leading features of an era, group, social stratum, and the like is usually called a literary type.

There are three types of literary types: epochal, social, universal.

Epochal types condense in themselves the properties of people of a certain historical period of time. It is no coincidence that there is an expression "children of their time." Thus, the literature of the 19th century developed and showed in detail the type of superfluous person who manifested itself in such different images: Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov - they all belong to different generations of people, but combines them into a common type of dissatisfaction with oneself and life, the inability to realize oneself, to find application his abilities, but it manifests itself every time in accordance with the requirements of the time and individuality: Onegin is bored, Pechorin is chasing life, Oblomov is lying on the couch. Epochal types most clearly express temporal signs in people.

Social types concentrate the features and qualities of people of certain social groups. It is by these indicators that we can determine in which environment a given type arose. So, Gogol in "Dead Souls" very convincingly showed the type of landowners. Each of them, according to the author's intention, is characterized by a unique enlarged character trait: Manilov is a dreamer, Korobochka is a clubhead, Nozdre is a historical person, Sobakevich is a fist, Plyushkin is a hole in humanity. Together, all these qualities recreate the general type of landowner.

Social types allow you to recreate the bright typical properties of people of a certain social group, emphasizing its most natural qualities, indicators by which we can judge the state of society, its hierarchical structure and draw appropriate conclusions about the relationship between social groups of a particular period.

Human types concentrate in themselves the properties of people of all times and peoples. This type is synthetic, since it manifests itself in both epochal and social types. This concept is multidimensional, independent of temporary or social connections and relationships. Such qualities as, for example, love and hatred, generosity and greed, characterize people from the moment of their awareness of themselves to our times, that is, these categories are constant, but filled in the process of historical development with a peculiar content. More precisely, these universal human categories are manifested individually each time, for example, Pushkin in The Miserly Knight, Gogol in Plyushkin, Molière in Tartuffe portrayed the type of a miserly person, but he found his embodiment in each writer.

Creating typical characters, the writer each time makes his judgment on the depicted. His sentence can sound in various forms, for example, in the form of satire - direct mockery, which we already hear in the title of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tale "The Wild Landowner"; irony - hidden mockery, when the direct content of the statement contradicts its inner meaning, for example, in Krylov's fable "The Fox and the Donkey" the fox says: "From clever you're shaking your head." The writer's sentence can also be expressed in the form of pathos, that is, an enthusiastic depiction of positive phenomena, for example, the beginning of Mayakovsky's poem "Good":

I am the globe

Almost walked all over!

And life is good!

The nature of the author's assessment depends on the artist's worldview and in some cases can be erroneous, which leads to errors in typing, as a result, atypical characters appear. Their main reasons are: the writer's shallow understanding of the problem and the crisis of worldview, for example, in the 20s of the twentieth century, many writers portrayed the participation of children and adolescents in the terrible events of the civil war in a heroic-adventure, romantic way, and readers got the impression of the war as a chain deeds, beautiful deeds, victories. For example, in Pyotr Blyakhin's "Red Devils" teenagers do things that are atypical for their age and life experience, that is, the characters are created by the writer, but they are not typical. An important factor in the emergence of such characters is the crisis of worldview. Sometimes a writer lacks artistic skill, usually this happens with young, novice writers, whose first works remain in the category of students, for example, A.P. Gaidar wrote the first story, Days of Defeats and Victories, for which he received serious comments from the editor: vagueness, unconvincing images. It was never published, and the following story brought fame to the author.

It happens that the author has not found a full-fledged art form to express his life impressions and observations, for example, A.I. Kuprin planned to write a big novel about the life of the military, for which he collected a lot of autobiographical material, but while working on it, he felt that he was drowning in this volume and his plan was not realized in the intended form of the novel. Kuprin turned to Gorky, who advised him on the story. The necessary form was found and "Duel" appeared.

Sometimes the writer simply did not work enough to improve the created image.

In all these cases, the image contains either much less, or not at all what the author wanted to say. It follows from what has been said that an image and a type are in the following relationship: a type is always an image, but an image is not always a type.

Working on the image, trying to embody in it the essential patterns of time, society and all people, the writer typifies the most diverse phenomena in it:

mass. The fact of the widespread occurrence of this or that phenomenon indicates its typicality for a certain group of people or society as a whole, therefore literary types are most often created by the writer by generalizing the mass, for example, the type of a small person in the literature of the 19th century;

Rare single phenomena can also be typified. Any new phenomenon at the time of its inception is not numerous, but if it contains the prospect of further spread, then such a phenomenon is typical, and by drawing it, the writer predicts social development, for example, Gorky's songs about the falcon and the petrel were written before 1905, but they became symbols of upcoming events, which soon acquired a wide scope;

An artist can even depict a typical character by generalizing exceptional features in it, for example, A. Tolstoy, in the image of Peter the Great in the novel of the same name, recreated the typical properties of a sovereign and a person, despite the fact that the personality of Peter I is an exceptional phenomenon in history. In recreating this image, Tolstoy follows Pushkin's tradition, according to which Peter was endowed with the best qualities of his people. Exceptional in him are not qualities, but their depth and composure in one person, which makes him an exception to the rule. So, the typification of the exceptional is the condensation in one image of a large number of positive and negative qualities, which distinguishes it from all. These qualities, as a rule, are possessed by prominent historical figures, brilliant people in various fields of science and art, political criminals;

· phenomena of a negative order are also typified in the image, thanks to which a person masters the concept of the negative. Examples are the various negative actions of children in Mayakovsky's poem "What is good ...";

· typification of the positive takes place when the ideal is directly realized and ideal characters are created.

So, typification is the law of art, and the literary type is the ultimate goal that every artist strives for. It is no coincidence that the literary type is called the highest form of the image.

When working on a text, creating their artistic pictures, writers take material from life, but process it in different ways. In accordance with this, two ways of creating a literary type are distinguished in the science of literature.

1. Collective, when the writer, observing the different characters of people and noticing their common features, reflects them in the image (Don Quixote, Pechorin, Sherlock Holmes).

2. Prototype. A method of typification in which the writer takes as a basis a really existing or existing person, in which the properties and qualities inherent in a certain group of people manifested themselves especially clearly, and on its basis creates his own image. Nikolenka Irtemyev, A. Peshkov, Alexei Meresyev are depicted in this way. Using direct material to create an image, the artist not only copies it, but also, as in the first case, processes it, that is, discards the insignificant and emphasizes the most characteristic or important. If in the case of a collective image the path is from the general to the specific, then in the case of the prototype it is from the specific to the general.

The difference in these two methods is that in the second case, the artist invents less, but the creative processing of life material takes place here too, so the image is always richer than the prototype, that is, the writer thickens the raw life material and brings his assessment to the image.

Along with typing methods, artists use typing techniques or means of creating an image to create an image. Basic techniques 12 .

Of course, this number does not exhaust all the richness and diversity of the poetics of a literary text. Let us dwell on the characteristics of fixed assets:

1. portrait characteristic - a typing technique in which a person's appearance is described, for example, "Lensky is rich, good-looking";

2. subject-household characteristic - a typification technique, which consists in depicting the environment that a person has surrounded himself with, for example, Onegin's office;

3. biography - a typification technique that reveals the history of a person's life, its individual stages. As a rule, a biography is introduced by writers in order to show exactly how a given human type was formed, for example, Chichikov’s biography in the first volume of Dead Souls is placed at the end, and it is from it that the reader concludes how the type of entrepreneur was formed in Russia;

4. manners and habits - a typing technique that reveals stereotypical forms of human behavior that have been formed on the basis of general rules (manners) and unique personality traits (habit), for example, Gogol in Dead Souls emphasizes the desire of provincial ladies to resemble secular women Moscow and St. Petersburg: “No lady will say that this glass or this plate stinks, but they say “behaves badly.” We can give an example of a habit by remembering Manilov's favorite pastime - smoking a pipe and laying ashes on the windowsill;

5. behavior - a typing technique through which the artist shows the actions, actions of a person.

Having laid a shelf with a detachment of books,

Read-read - and all to no avail;

6. depiction of emotional experiences - a typification technique, through which the writer shows what a person thinks and feels at different moments: “Oh, I, as a brother, would be glad to embrace the storm”;

7. attitude towards nature - a typification technique, with the help of which a person directly evaluates one or another natural phenomenon, for example:

I don't like spring

In the spring I am sick;

8. worldview - a typing technique that reveals a person's system of views on nature, society and himself, for example, representatives of various beliefs - the nihilist Bazarov and the liberal Kirsanov;

Forgive me, I love so much

My dear Tatyana;

10. characterizing surname - a typing technique when a person is endowed with a surname that indicates the most important, dominant feature of the personality, speaks for itself, for example, Prostakova, Skotinin;

11. speech characteristic - a typification technique that includes a combination of lexical-phraseological, figurative, intonation properties of a person, for example, in Krylov's fable, the monkey says to the bear: “Look, my dear godfather, what kind of mug is that,” - this speech the characteristic is a clear evidence of the monkey's ignorance;

12. mutual characteristics - a typing technique in which the participants in the action evaluate each other, for example, Famusov says about Lisa: “Oh, the spoiled potion”, and Lisa about Famusov: “Like all Moscow, your father is like this: I would like a son-in-law with stars and with rank."

Methods and techniques of typing make up the form or composition of the image. In order to analyze the content of the image, the writer puts it into a certain form, that is, he builds the image using the methods and techniques of its characterization. Since content and form cannot be separated from each other, and the image is the main significant category of a literary text, the law of the unity of content and form applies to the entire work.

Bibliography:

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