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, which 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 language metaphor "love ... 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, discovered 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 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 true, 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 by Shukshin and “atomic minstrels”, culture tragers of scientific and technological revolution, “triangular pear” and “trapezoidal fruit” by 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 - say, 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 remarkably revealed by the character of Heinrich Böll's novel “Through the Eyes of a Clown” Hans Schnier: “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 least of all resembles the search 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.
Still from the film "The Master and Margarita", directed by Yuri Kara, 1994.
Analysis of the image of the hero
Consider what means are involved in creating the images of the heroes of the second chapter of the novel The Master and Margarita.
Suggested image analysis plan hero for in-depth study of school literature. Change this plan depending on your tasks and class level. Download the hero image analysis plan
1. General information.
How is the character introduced into the story?
Background.
Position in the work (hero-narrator, 3rd person).
If the narrator, show the narrator's perspective (narrator, participant in events, reflective narrator).
Is there a prototype? How is the hero different from the prototype?
Degree of participation in events (main character, secondary character).
2. Evaluation of the hero from different points of view:
What does the hero say about himself?
How do other characters feel about the hero? What do they say about him?
How do you feel about the hero? (reader position)
3. Portrait
- clothing
- internal monologues
- dialogues with other characters
6. Actions:
- What is the hero doing?
- How does he explain his motives?
- Is the behavior typical of its time?
- What place does the hero occupy in the system of characters? (Does he participate in the conflict? Are there heroes opposed to this hero? Are there any twin heroes?)
- What are the motives of the story associated with the hero?
- Features of classicism / romanticism / realism.
- How is the character related to the idea of the work?
- Why did the author need this hero in this work?
9. Evaluation of the hero in literary criticism of different years.
10. General conclusion.
Questions for analyzing the images of heroes
Image of Yeshua
(a) What do we learn about Yeshua before he appears?
b) Analyze the portrait of the hero. What can we tell about him by his appearance?
c) Read Yeshua's lines in the scene with Mark Ratslayer. What do the author's remarks in this dialogue say about the prisoner?
d) Analyze the Ha-Nozri language as a separate text. Suggest your interpretation.
e) What do we learn about Yeshua from the denunciation?
f) What does the arrested person say about himself?
g) Why does Pilate call Yeshua a vagabond, a liar, a robber? What makes you call him a strange robber? How and why does Pilate's attitude towards Yeshua change in the future?
h) How does Yeshua's fearlessness manifest itself?
j) Why did Yeshua not take the opportunity to be saved?
k) What can we say about Yeshua's philosophy? What words convey these meanings in the novel?
l) Compare Yeshua and the gospel Jesus Christ. How did Bulgakov change and interpret the biblical legend?
m) See how the image of Yeshua is connected with the motif of the sun.
o) Compare the image of Yeshua with his prototype, using historical and religious literature.
Image of Pontius Pilate
a) Read the beginning of the chapter. How is the portrait of the hero set?
b) Choose from the text the most important in your opinion details of the character's behavior. Pay attention to body language, tone of conversation.
c) How does Bulgakov describe the details of the procurator's clothes and house? What do these details tell us?
d) What does Pilate say about himself?
e) What does Yeshua say about him?
f) Why did the procurator call M. Krysoboy? Why didn't you look after him when he took Yeshua away?
g) What can we say about Pontius Pilate from his dialogue with Yeshua and Kaifa?
h) Consider how the character's internal monologues are introduced.
How do they change the created image?
i) How does Pilate appear in the first part of the chapter? (to the words "everything about him...").
j) How does Pilate try to help Yeshua? Why is he doing this?
k) Why does Pilate break into a cry, asserting the inviolability of the emperor's power?
l) Summarize the previous 3 questions. How is the image of the hero created by describing his behavior?
m) How does the motif of illness help in creating the image of Pilate?
o) Compare Bulgakov's Pontius Pilate with the prototype using historical literature.
Tags: image of the hero, Bulgakov, Pontius Pilate, Yeshua, analysis plan, text analysis
Julia Fishman
Publication Certificate No. 890397 dated 19 Nov 2016
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.
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 burden. 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.
Image system. Means of creating an artistic image
I. SYSTEM OF IMAGES (CHARACTERS)- the totality and principles of organizing the images of the author, characters, narrator, narrator.
AUTHOR-NARRATOR- in an epic work, a way of presenting artistic material from a third person. The author-narrator is impersonal, but omniscient: "It is necessary to assume that the author is an omniscient being and does not sin" (Dostoevsky).
NARRATOR- the person on whose behalf the story is told in a work of art. The narrator can be one of the characters or the author, if he participates in the action and expresses an emotional and evaluative attitude to what is happening.
CHARACTER, HERO- the character of the work.
OUTSCENE CHARACTER- a person mentioned in a dramatic work, but not appearing on the stage.
CHARACTER- the image of the character, presented with sufficient completeness.
TYPE OF- the image of a character, which is natural for a given era, people, social group, age, psychological or ideological warehouse.
LYRICAL HERO- the hero as close as possible to the author, on whose behalf the narration is conducted in a lyrical poem.
2. ARTISTIC MEANS OF CREATING IMAGES
Types of speech as an artistic means of creating images
NARRATORY- a story about something.
REASONING- a conclusion, a series of thoughts presented in a logically consistent form.
DESCRIPTION- image of something (word drawing):
A. LANDSCAPE- description of nature.
The role of landscape in a work of art
- The background of the story, the events taking place.
- Lyrical background is a way of emotional impact on the reader.
- The psychological background is one of the ways to reveal the psychology of the characters.
- Symbolic background - a way of symbolic reflection of the reality depicted in the work.
- One way to create artistic time.
B. INTERIOR- description of the room.
B. PORTRAIT- a description of the person's appearance.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PICTURE- a portrait that reveals the character's character through appearance.
DIRECT SPEECH (SPEECH CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HERO)
A. DIALOGUE - a conversation between actors.
B. MONOLOGUE- a detailed, significant statement of the character, addressed to himself or to other characters, but, unlike dialogue, does not depend on their replicas.
B. REPLICA- a relatively small statement of the character.
D. INTERNAL MONOLOGUE, INTERNAL SPEECH- the thoughts of the character, conveyed by him or the author.
Other artistic means of creating images
B. CHARACTERISTICS OF OTHER CHARACTERS
B. AUTO CHARACTERISTICS
2. ARTISTIC DETAILS- an expressive detail that has a significant semantic and emotional load: household, portrait, landscape, psychological details.
3. SUBTEXT- the inner, hidden meaning of the text. Subtext is contained, in particular, in almost all types of allegory.
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