Artistic image system of images means of creating an image. Artistic image of the work

Every book has been told by someone. It's so obvious that we almost never remember it. Meanwhile, the one who tells, narrates, expounds, is always in front of the reader. He can come close to the author, merge with him, or he can completely separate from him, become a completely different person.

You have probably heard different people tell the same story. In this case, the story not only sounds different, but in each new retelling takes on a new meaning. The plot (see Plot and plot) is preserved - the tone is updated. And the narrator, the narrator is the bearer of the tone.

Russian classic writers revealed a wide range of storytelling possibilities: from the “framing” conditional narrator I. S. Turgenev to the grimacing masks of N. V. Gogol; from the ingenuous Pyotr Andreevich Grinev (“The Captain’s Daughter”) to the nervous, bile-choking “paradoxicalist” (“Notes from the Underground” by F. M. Dostoevsky), from the cold of the passionate Pechorin’s “magazine” (“A Hero of Our Time”) to the epic in its simplicity of narration by Ivan Severyanych Flyagin (“The Enchanted Wanderer” by N. S. Leskov). Next to these virtuosos, I. A. Goncharov, L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov at first glance seem completely indifferent to the problem of the storyteller, but this is a false impression: they also have the image of a storyteller, and this, perhaps, more subtle and complex cases. The didactic, mentoring beginning of Tolstoy and the educational beginning of Chekhov create the effect of a direct conversation with the reader. It seems that they, like Turgenev in many cases, neglect the shades of artistic meaning that arise from the interaction of the narrator's image with the images of the heroes of the work. But they do not neglect at all, but completely absorb and subjugate these shades, thus creating a multi-layered, deep semantic perspective of the work. A vivid image of the narrator rises before readers in the trilogy of L. N. Tolstoy: "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth". Chekhov, being a great and subtle master of the “objective” story, left us unsurpassed in its classical clarity examples of narration entrusted to the narrator: “A Boring Story”, “Ariadne”, “The Man in a Case”, “A House with a Mezzanine”.

Choosing between a first-person or third-person story is the first step for any writer. It is known that Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" was first begun as Raskolnikov's internal monologue, and the transition to a third-person story gave the story a new meaning. After all, it is no coincidence that Dostoevsky's narrators are not active characters in the plot, but, as a rule, third-party witnesses of what is happening. True, each of the main characters at least once has to act as a storyteller, a kind of author of inserted plots, as a rule, ideologically meaningful and artistically completed. Let us recall, for example, Myshkin's stories about the death penalty and poor Marie, Ivan Karamazov's The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, Versilov's dream about the golden age... But still, the hero-narrator bears the main narrative load. The ways of entering the narrator are diverse (diaries, letters, memoirs, notes, tales, etc.).

Any “found” manuscripts, letters, notes, diaries are brought closer to documentary, archival, non-fictional (imaginary, of course), like the air the writer needs to create the impression of authenticity, truthfulness of what is depicted and told. Sometimes it is necessary to create just the opposite impression: the mystery, the ambiguity of what is being told (this is achieved, for example, by R. L. Stevenson in The Possessor of Balantre). Sometimes the narrator is simple-hearted, naive, and the meaning of his own story is not entirely clear to him. As a result, the reader himself is involved in the process of comprehension. He is forced by the creative will of the author not to passive perception, but to active participation in the storytelling event. Often this method is used in detective stories.

The creation of the image of the narrator is associated with the use of such stylistic forms as skaz and stylization, using the so-called verbal mask (for example, N.V. Gogol - Rudy Panko in "Evenings ...", M. Gorky - the old woman Izergil in the story of the same name, M. Yu. Lermontov - Maxim Maksimych, M. M. Zoshchenko - an unnamed narrator: "Aristocrats", "Baths", etc.). Often the verbal mask is in deep contrast with the true face of the author, as with Zoshchenko, but the artistic effect is all the stronger. It is absolutely unacceptable to identify the real author with the images of the narrator, the narrator. With such an identification, the effect of volume, inherent in the real art of the word, disappears, the work loses depth, the meaning narrows, and the content of the story becomes impoverished.

The first most interesting experience of creating the image of the author in Russian literature belongs to A. S. Pushkin. In his novel "Eugene Onegin" the image of the author is almost equivalent to Onegin, Tatyana and Lensky. Pushkin pushes the boundaries of literature. He teaches freedom and the necessity of transitions from real life to art. In other words, by creating the image of the author, Pushkin laid the foundations of realism in Russian literature. He demonstrates (and again in our literature for the first time) the diversity of ways of the author's existence within the work and the possibilities arising from this diversity. This discovery of his, like many others, was assimilated, understood, developed and enriched by subsequent literature.

Portrait it can be expositional - a detailed description, as a rule, at the beginning of the story, and dynamic - the details of the external appearance are, as it were, scattered throughout the work.

Psychologism can be direct - internal monologues, experiences, and indirect - facial expressions, gestures.

In addition to these criteria, the image of the character includes surrounding area.

Landscape is an image of open space. It is often used to describe the internal state of the hero (N. Karamzin "Poor Lisa") and to deepen understanding of the nature of the created character (the Kirsanov brothers in I. Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons").

Interior- image of a closed space. It can have a psychological function that allows us to assess the preferences and characteristics of the character, the interior helps us to know the social status of the hero, as well as to identify the mood of the time period in which the action takes place.

Actions and behavior character (sometimes, at first glance, contradicting his character) also affect the creation of a full-fledged image. For example, Chatsky, who does not notice Sophia's hobbies, at the beginning of the work is incomprehensible to us and even ridiculous. But in the future, we understand that the author thus reveals one of the main features of the hero - arrogance. Chatsky has such a low opinion of Molchalin that the current outcome of events cannot even enter his head.

And the last (but not least) criterion that affects the creation of the character’s image is detail.

Artistic detail(from French detail - detail, trifle) - an expressive detail of a work, carrying a significant semantic and ideological-emotional load, characterized by increased associativity.

This artistic technique is often reproduced throughout the entire work, which allows, upon further reading, to associate the detail with a certain character (“radiant eyes” of Princess Mary, “marble shoulders” of Helen, etc.)

A.B. Esin highlights the following types of parts: plot, descriptive, psychological.
The dominance of one of the listed types in the text sets a certain style for the entire work. “Plot” (“Taras Bulba” by Gogol), “descriptiveness” (“Dead Souls”), “psychologism” (“Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky). However, the predominance of one group of details does not exclude others within the same work.

L.V. Chernets, speaking about the details, writes: “Any image is perceived and evaluated as a kind of integrity, even if it was created with the help of one or two details.”

List of sources used

1. Dobin, E.S. Plot and reality; Art details. - L .: Soviet writer, 1981. – 432 p.
2. Esin, A.B. Psychologism of Russian classical literature: a study guide. – M.: Flinta, 2011. – 176 p.
3. Kormilov, S.I. Interior // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts / Ch. ed. A.N. Nikolyukin. – M.: 2001. – 1600 p.
4. Skiba, V.A., Chernets, L.V. Artistic Image // Introduction to Literary Studies. - M., 2004. – p.25-32
5. Chernets, L.V., Isakova, I.N. Theory of Literature: Analysis of a work of art. - M., 2006. - 745 p.
6. Chernets, L.V. Character and character in a literary work and its critical interpretations // Principles of analysis of a literary work. - M.: MGU, 1984. - 83 p.

The problem of imagery and its place in a work of art is one of the urgent problems of stylistics. Interest in it is due to the text-forming potential inherent in the phenomenon itself. The term "image" in the broad sense of the word means a reflection of the external world in the mind of a person. The artistic image is its special variety, which has its own specific features. They consist in the fact that, while giving a person a new knowledge of the world, the artistic image simultaneously conveys a certain attitude towards what is reflected. “The artistic image is a form of reflection of reality by art, a concrete and at the same time generalized picture of human life, transformed in the light of the artist’s aesthetic ideal, created with the help of creative imagination. The image is one of the means of knowing and changing the world, a synthetic form of reflection and expression of feelings, thoughts, aspirations, aesthetic emotions of the artist”

The image has great power. And this reality, so necessary for art, comes from its main property, namely, the ability to reproduce past sensations and perceptions in memory. The image in a work of art, attracting memories in sensory - visual, auditory, tactile, temperature and other sensations obtained from experience and associated with psychological experiences, concretizes the transmitted information, makes the perception of a literary work as a whole vivid and vivid. The image is characterized by concreteness and emotionality. It is distinguished by the ability to convey that special vision of the world that is contained in the text, akin to the author or the character and gives them a certain characteristic.

The imagery of a truly artistic work is distinguished by its spoiledness, individuality and typical characteristics. Images of characters, events, nature acquire authenticity and vitality due to specific, individual properties. It happens that the writer devotes his entire attention to the latter. The reader constantly compares the images that unfold before us with himself, with the people around him. Through the image, not only the author's experience, but also his own, appears before the reader.

The artistic image in its entirety is known retrospectively, because it is not localized in a single, clearly defined area, but is born gradually, permeates the entire fabric of the work.

The development, movement, grouping of images, in fact, constitute the structure of a work of art. It is here that the course of the author's thought towards the final conclusion, the author's position, his point of view, is most clearly manifested. Depending on it, the choice and arrangement of images takes place, conflicts are formed between them, the movement of the plot is created, the idea of the work is determined.

The images of literature are always the creation of the creative thought and imagination of the artist. Literature embodies the individuality of phenomena in its images so that they become even more typical, so that they embody their essential features even more vividly, distinctly, and completely. She creatively typifies life. Another distinctive feature of artistic images is their distinctly tangible emotionality. Creating an image of the typical, the authors express their emotional attitude to reality in them by selecting and arranging the individual details of the artistic images depicted by the details. Artistic images are distinguished by emotional expressiveness of details.

The third distinctive feature of the images of works of art is that they always remain the main and self-sufficient means of expressing the content of these works. They do not supplement pre-given or supposed generalizations of life as illustrative examples, but contain generalizations of life only in themselves, express them in their own "language" and do not require additional explanations.

It is worth emphasizing the fallacy of the widespread school notion that images in a novel are necessarily images of characters. Images can be associated with the weather, landscape, events, interior. All images in a literary work constitute a hierarchical figurative system of artistic images. All of them together act as a macro image, i.e. a self-literary work, which is understood as a holistic way of life created by the author.

The main hierarchical figurative system is a verbal image or micro-image, i.e. epithets, metaphors, comparisons, etc. Together with other elements, they make up images - characters, images - events, images of nature.

Functions of landscape in a work of art

The landscape can have an independent task and be an object of knowledge, it can also be a background or a source of emotions. The mental reproduction of a landscape or events in nature that evoke some kind of emotional state can again raise the same emotions. The landscape can be in harmony with the state of the hero or, on the contrary, contrast with him. The landscape is associated with the time of day and year, weather, lighting and other objects of reality, which by its nature is capable of evoking emotionally colored associations. As an example, we can recall rainy weather in many works by R. Hemingway, or snow in the poems of R. Frost, or fire by S. Bronte. Images can be both static and dynamic (typhoon, volcanic eruption, blizzard).

On the contrast, opposition, or, on the contrary, the merging of nature with the world of the soul, the entire landscape lyrics are built. The landscape in the poems of great poets always acquires a generalizing meaning.

The interrelation of man and nature is achieved with the greatest force through the perception of the character in the aspect of his concrete individual consciousness. In this case, the landscape is involved in an internal psychological action and becomes a means of revealing the state of mind of a person. Such a landscape can be called a "psychological" landscape of mood, in contrast to a purely described landscape.

Landscape plays a significant role as a means of characterizing a literary hero. The hero's attitude to nature, his reaction to one or another of her paintings largely determine the personality traits of this character, his worldview and character. The nature of the landscape, against which the hero of the work is depicted, can help to understand the image of this hero.

The appeal to nature of various artists turns out to be very meaningful. And what a different meaning each time put into this kind of appeal! After all, the artist not only places the viewer in front of the landscape, but also speaks to the viewer, makes him a private participant of his own strong feelings and living thoughts, captivates him with his delight, directs him to everything beautiful, tears him away from everything low and gives him more than pleasure, he ennobles and teaches him. These words belong to the English philosopher and publicist of the last century, John Ruskin. Very accurate words, if we keep in mind such great masters of landscape as Dickens, Turgenev, Chekhov.

Briefly:

The artistic image is one of the aesthetic categories; image of human life, description of nature, abstract phenomena and concepts that form a picture of the world in the work.

The artistic image is a conditional concept, it is the result of poetic generalizations, it contains the author's fiction, imagination, fantasy. It is formed by the writer in accordance with his worldview and aesthetic principles. There is no single point of view on this issue in literary criticism. Sometimes one work or even the entire work of the author is considered as an integral artistic image (the Irishman D. Joyce wrote with such a program setting). But most often the work is studied as a system of images, each element of which is connected with the others by a single ideological and artistic concept.

Traditionally, it is customary to distinguish between the following levels of figurativeness in the text: images-characters, images of wildlife(animals, birds, fish, insects, etc.), landscape images, object images, verbal images, sound images, color images(for example, black, white and red in the description of the revolution in A. Blok's poem "The Twelve"), scent images(for example, the smell of fried onions, rushing through the courtyards of the provincial town of S. in Chekhov's "Ionych"), signs, emblems, as well as symbols, allegories and so on.

A special place in the system of images of the work is occupied by the author, narrator and narrator. These are not identical concepts.

Image of the author- the form of existence of the writer in a literary text. It brings the entire character system together and speaks directly to the reader. We can find an example of this in A. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin".

The image of the narrator in the work is generalized-abstract, this person, as a rule, is devoid of any portrait features and manifests himself only in speech, in relation to what is being reported. Sometimes it can exist not only within the framework of one work, but also within the literary cycle (as in I. Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter). In a literary text, the author reproduces in this case not his own, but his, the narrator's, manner of perceiving reality. He acts as an intermediary between the writer and the reader in the transmission of events.

The image of the narrator is the character on whose behalf the speech is being made. Unlike the narrator, the narrator is given some individual features (portrait details, biography facts). In works, sometimes the author can narrate on a par with the narrator. There are many examples of this in domestic literature: Maxim Maksimych in M. Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time", Ivan Vasilyevich in L. Tolstoy's story "After the Ball", etc.

An expressive artistic image can deeply excite and shock the reader, and have an educational impact.

Source: Schoolchildren's Handbook: Grades 5-11. — M.: AST-PRESS, 2000

More:

An artistic image is one of the most ambiguous and broad concepts that is used by theorists and practitioners of all types of art, including literature. We say: the image of Onegin, the image of Tatyana Larina, the image of the Motherland or a successful poetic image, meaning the categories of poetic language (epithet, metaphor, comparison ...). But there is one more, perhaps the most important meaning, the broadest and most universal: the image as a form of expression of content in literature, as the primary element of art as a whole.

It should be noted that the image in general is an abstraction that acquires concrete outlines only as an elementary component of a certain artistic system as a whole. The whole work of art is figurative, and all its components are figurative.

If we turn to any work, for example, to Pushkin's "Demons", the beginning of "Ruslan and Lyudmila" or "To the Sea", we read it and ask ourselves the question: "Where is the image?" - the correct answer will be: “Everywhere!”, because imagery is a form of existence of a work of art, the only way of its being, a kind of “matter” of which it consists, and which, in turn, breaks down into “molecules” and “atoms” ".

The artistic world is primarily a figurative world. A work of art is a complex single image, and each of its elements is a relatively independent, unique particle of this whole, interacting with it and with all other particles. Everything and everything in the poetic world is imbued with imagery, even if the text does not contain a single epithet, comparison or metaphor.

In Pushkin's poem "I loved you ..." there is not one of the traditional "decorations", i.e. tropes, habitually referred to as "artistic images" (the extinguished linguistic metaphor "love ... has faded away" does not count), therefore it is often defined as "ugly", which is fundamentally wrong. As R. Yakobson superbly showed in his famous article "Poetry of Grammar and the Grammar of Poetry", using exclusively the means of poetic language, using only the skillful contrasting of grammatical forms, Pushkin created an exciting artistic image of the feelings of a lover who deifies the subject of his love and sacrificing his happiness for him. The components of this complex figurative whole are private images of a purely speech expression, revealed by an insightful researcher.

In aesthetics, there are two concepts of the artistic image as such. According to the first of them, the image is a specific product of labor, which is called upon to "objectify" a certain spiritual content. Such an idea of the image has the right to life, but it is more convenient for spatial arts, especially for those that have applied value (sculpture and architecture). According to the second concept, the image as a special form of theoretical exploration of the world should be considered in comparison with concepts and ideas as categories of scientific thinking.

The second concept is closer and more understandable to us, but, in principle, both suffer from one-sidedness. Indeed, do we have the right to identify literary creativity with a kind of production, ordinary routine work that has quite definite pragmatic goals? Needless to say, art is hard, exhausting work (let us recall Mayakovsky's expressive metaphor: "Poetry is the same extraction of radium: / In the year of extraction - a gram of labor"), which does not stop day or night. The writer sometimes creates literally even in a dream (as if the second edition of the Henriade appeared to Voltaire in this way). There is no leisure. There is no personal privacy either (as O Henry perfectly portrayed in the story "Confessions of a Humorist").

Is art work labor? Yes, of course, but not only labor. It is torment, and incomparable pleasure, and thoughtful, analytical research, and unrestrained flight of free fantasy, and hard, exhausting work, and an exciting game. In a word, it is art.

But what is the product of literary labor? How and with what can it be measured? After all, not with liters of ink and not kilograms of worn out paper, not embedded in the Internet sites with texts of works that now exist in a purely virtual space! The book, which is still a traditional way of fixing, storing and consuming the results of a writer's work, is purely external, and, as it turned out, not at all an obligatory shell for the figurative world created in its process. This world is both created in the consciousness and imagination of the writer, and is transmitted, respectively, into the field of consciousness and imagination of readers. It turns out that consciousness is created through consciousness, almost like in Andersen's witty fairy tale "The King's New Clothes".

So, the artistic image in literature is by no means a direct "objectification" of the spiritual content, any idea, dream, ideal, as it is easily and clearly presented, say, in the same sculpture (Pygmalion, who "objectified" his dream in ivory, it remains only to beg the goddess of love Aphrodite to breathe life into the statue in order to marry her!). Literary work does not carry direct materialized results, some tangible practical consequences.

Does this mean that the second concept is more correct, insisting that the artistic image of a work is a form of exclusively theoretical exploration of the world? No, and here there is a well-known one-sidedness. Figurative thinking in fiction, of course, is opposed to theoretical, scientific, although it does not exclude it at all. Verbal-figurative thinking can be represented as a synthesis of philosophical or, rather, aesthetic understanding of life and its object-sensory design, reproduction in the material specifically inherent in it. However, there is no clear definition, canonical sequence, sequence of both, and cannot be, if, of course, we mean true art. Comprehension and reproduction, interpenetrating, complement each other. Comprehension is carried out in a concrete-sensory form, and reproduction clarifies and refines the idea.

Cognition and creativity are a single holistic act. Theory and practice in art are inseparable. Of course, they are not identical, but they are one. In theory, the artist asserts himself practically; in practice, theoretically. For each creative individuality, the unity of these two sides of one whole manifests itself in its own way.

So, V. Shukshin, “exploring”, as he put it, life, saw it, recognized it with the trained look of an artist, and A. Voznesensky, who appeals to “intuition” in knowledge (“If you look for India, you will find America!”), With an analytical look architect (education could not but affect). The difference was also reflected in terms of figurative expression (naive sages, “freaks”, animated birch trees in Shukshin and “atomic minstrels”, culture tragers of scientific and technological revolution, “triangular pear” and “trapezoidal fruit” in Voznesensky).

Theory in relation to the objective world is a "reflection", while practice is the "creation" (or rather, "transformation") of this objective world. The sculptor "reflects" a person - for example, a sitter, and creates a new object - a "statue". But the works of material arts are obvious in the most direct sense of the word, which is why it is so easy to trace the most complex aesthetic patterns in their example. In fiction, in the art of words, everything is more complicated.

Knowing the world in images, the artist plunges into the depths of the subject, like a naturalist in a dungeon. He cognizes its substance, fundamental principle, essence, extracts from it the very root. The secret of how satirical images are created was wonderfully revealed by Hans Schnier, a character in Heinrich Böll's novel Through the Eyes of a Clown: "I take a piece of life, raise it to a power, and then extract the root from it, but with a different number."

In this sense, one can seriously agree with the witty joke of M. Gorky: “He knows reality as if he himself did it! ..” and with Michelangelo’s definition: “This is the work of a man who knew more than nature itself,” which leads to V. Kozhinov in his article.

The creation of an artistic image is least of all reminiscent of looking for beautiful clothes for an initially ready-made primary idea; planes of content and expression are born and ripen in it in full harmony, together, simultaneously. Pushkin's expression "the poet thinks in verse" and practically the same version of Belinsky in his 5th article on Pushkin: "The poet thinks in images". “By verse we mean the original, immediate form of poetic thought” authoritatively confirm this dialectic.

Help answer 2 questions on EXHIBITION No. Boris Lvovich Vasiliev 1. Determine the topic of the story. What is the meaning of the author in the title? Can it be argued that there is hidden irony in the title, a bitter smile? 2. How is the image of Igor created in the story? Tell us as much as possible about his character?

Answers:

1. The theme of memory. In the story, Boris Vasiliev denounces the inhuman corrupting power of formalism. For Anna Fedotovna, letters are a memory of her son, a whole life, but for young pioneers they are just a forgotten exhibit. 2. The image of Igor in the story is created from an adult man who went to the front to a little boy, fatherless as only his mother Anna Fedorovna knew him - helpless, crawling, stomping, running away to Spain or solving tasks that she did not understand - in the end he would certainly stand in front of her slowly descending the first flight of stairs. And every evening she saw his narrow back and heard the same phrase: - I'll be back, mom. Igor's character: Igor grew up quiet, gladly obeyed his friend Volodya. (Igorek fled to Spain. Boys doomed to fatherlessness grow up either desperate naughty or quiet, and her son tended to the latter type). From a letter from his friend, we see that Igor has always been an example for the entire detachment. ("Your Igor, dear Anna Fedotovna, has always been an example for our entire department ... "

Portal for the student. Self-training

List of sources used

Functions of landscape in a work of art

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