Special place in literary work belongs to the content layer itself. It is legitimate to characterize it not as another (fourth) side of the work, but as its substance. Artistic content is a unity of objective and subjective principles. This is the totality of what came to the author from outside and was known to him (about topics art, see p. 40–53), and what he expresses and comes from his views, intuition, personality traits (on artistic subjectivity, see pp. 54–79).

The term "content" (artistic content) is more or less synonymous with the words "concept" (or "author's concept"), "idea", "meaning" (according to M.M. Bakhtin: "the last semantic instance"). W. Kaiser, characterizing the subject layer of the work (Gnhalt), his speech (Sprachliche Formen) and composition (Afbau) as the main concepts of analysis, named content (Gehalt) concept of synthesis. The artistic content is indeed the synthesizing beginning of the work. This is its deep foundation, which is the purpose (function) of the form as a whole.

Artistic content is embodied (materialized) not in some individual words, phrases, phrases, but in the aggregate of what is present in the work. We agree with Yu.M. Lotman: “The idea is not contained in any, even well-chosen quotations, but is expressed in the entire artistic structure. The researcher who does not understand this and looks for an idea in individual quotations is like a person who, having learned that a house has a plan, would begin to break down the walls in search of a place where this plan is walled up. The plan is not walled up in the walls, but implemented in the proportions of the building. The plan is the idea of ​​the architect, the structure of the building is its implementation.

Topic. First, the most essential components are called themes. artistic structure, aspects of form, basic techniques. In the literature, these are keywords, what they fix. In this terminological tradition, the topic approaches (if not identified) with motive. This is an active, highlighted, accentuated component of the artistic fabric. Another meaning of the term "theme" is essential for understanding the cognitive aspect of art: it goes back to the theoretical experiments of the last century and is not connected with the elements of the structure, but directly with the essence of the work as a whole. The theme as the foundation of artistic creation is everything that has become the subject of the author's interest, comprehension and evaluation (the theme of love, death, revolution). The theme is a certain setting to which all the elements of a work are subject, a certain intention realized in the text.

Artistic themes are complex and multifaceted. On the theoretical level it is legitimate to consider it as a combination of three principles. These are, firstly, ontological and anthropological universals, secondly, local (sometimes very large-scale) cultural and historical phenomena, and thirdly, phenomena individual life(first of all - the author's) in their intrinsic value.

Pathos follows from the artist's worldview, from his lofty social ideals, from his desire to resolve the acute social and moral problems of our time (according to Belinsky). paramount task he saw criticism in the fact that, analyzing the work, to determine its pathos. But not every work of art has pathos. It does not exist, for example, in naturalistic works that copy reality and are devoid of deep problems. Author's attitude to life does not rise in them to pathos.

The content of pathos in a work with a historically truthful ideological orientation has two sources. It depends both on the artist's worldview and on the objective properties of those phenomena of life (those characters and circumstances) that the writer cognizes, evaluates and reproduces. Due to their significant differences, the pathos of affirmation and the pathos of negation in literature also reveals several varieties. The work can be heroic, tragic, dramatic, sentimental and romantic, as well as humorous, satirical and other types of pathos.

In a work of art, depending on its subject matter, one type of pathos sometimes dominates or a combination of its different types is found.

Heroic pathos contains a statement of the greatness of the feat of an individual and the whole team, of great importance it for the development of the people, nation, humanity. The subject of heroic pathos in literature is the heroism of reality itself - the active activity of people, thanks to which great nationwide progressive tasks are carried out.

drama in literature, like heroism, it is generated by the contradictions of the real life of people - not only public, but also private. Such situations in life are dramatic when especially significant social or personal aspirations and demands of people, and sometimes their very life, are under the threat of defeat and death from external forces independent of them. Such provisions cause corresponding experiences in the soul of a person - deep fears and suffering, strong agitation and tension. These experiences are either weakened by the consciousness of being right and the determination to fight, or they lead to hopelessness and despair.

Tragedy real life situations and the experiences they cause should be considered in terms of similarity and at the same time in contrast to drama. Being in a tragic situation, people experience deep spiritual tension and agitation, causing them suffering, often very severe. But this agitation and suffering are generated not only by collisions with some external forces, endangering the most important interests, sometimes the very life of people and causing resistance, as happens in dramatic situations. The tragedy of the situation and experiences lies mainly in the internal contradictions and struggle that arise in the minds, in the soul of people.

satirical pathos- this is the strongest and sharpest indignantly mocking denial of certain watchmen public life. satirical score social characters convincing and historically true only when these characters are worthy of such an attitude, when they have such properties that evoke a negative, mocking attitude of writers. Only in this case, the mockery expressed in artistic images works, will cause understanding and sympathy among readers, listeners, viewers. Such an objective property human life what provokes a mocking attitude towards her is her comedy.

humorous attitude to life for a long time they could not distinguish from a satirical attitude. Only in the era of romanticism did literary critics and representatives of aesthetic and philosophical thought recognize it as a special kind of pathos. Humor, like satire, arises in the process of generalizing emotional comprehension of comic internal inconsistency. human characters- inconsistencies between the real emptiness of their existence and subjective claims to significance. Like satire, humor is a mocking attitude towards such characters by people who can comprehend their internal inconsistency. Humor is, in fact, laughter at relatively harmless comic contradictions, often combined with pity for people who display this comicality.

Sentimental pathos- this is spiritual tenderness, caused by the awareness of moral virtues in the characters of people who are socially humiliated or associated with an immoral privileged environment. In literary works, sentimentality has both de and n about-affirming orientation.

Just as the tragedy of situations and experiences should be considered in relation to drama, so romantic pathos must be considered in relation to the sentimental - by similarity and at the same time by contrast. General properties romance and sentimentality are due to the fact that their basis is high level development of the emotional self-awareness of the human personality, the reflectivity of its experiences. Sentimentality is a reflection of tenderness, addressed to the obsolete, fading way of life with its simplicity and moral integrity of relationships and experiences. Romance- this is a reflective spiritual enthusiasm, addressed to one or another sublime "superpersonal" ideal and its incarnations.

1. Artistic form and composition.

As part of the form that carries the content, there are traditionally distinguished three sides, must be present in any literary work.

• subject(subject-pictorial) Start, all those individual phenomena and facts that are designated with the help of words and in their totality constitute world artwork(there are also expressions "poetic world", " inner world"works, "immediate content").
• The actual verbal fabric of the work: artistic speech , often referred to as " poetic language”, “stylistics”, “text”.
• Correlation and arrangement in the product of units of subject and verbal "series", i.e. composition. This literary concept is akin to such a category of semiotics as structure (the ratio of elements of a complexly organized subject).

The distinction in the work of its three main aspects goes back to ancient rhetoric. It has been repeatedly noted that the speaker needs to: 1) find material (ie, choose a subject that will be presented and characterized by speech); 2) somehow arrange (build) this material; 3) to embody it in such words that will make the proper impression on the listeners. Accordingly, the ancient Romans used the terms inventory(invention of objects), dispositio(their location, construction), elocutio(decoration, which meant a bright verbal expression).

Theoretical literary criticism, characterizing a work, in some cases focuses more on its subject-verbal composition (R. Ingarden with his concept of "multi-level"), in others - on compositional (structural) moments, which was typical for formal school and even more for structuralism. In the late 1920s, G.N. Pospelov, far ahead of the science of his time, noted that the subject of theoretical poetics has double character: 1) "separate properties and aspects" of works (image, plot, epithet); 2) "connection and relationships" of these phenomena: the structure of the work, its structure. meaningful meaningful form, as you can see, is multifaceted. At the same time, subject-verbal compound works and his construction(compositional organization) are inseparable, equivalent, equally necessary.

1. The artistic world of the work. Components and subject details of the image: landscape, interior. Character. Psychologism. Character's speech as an object artistic image. Character system.

The world of a literary work far from identical writer's world, which includes, first of all, the circle of ideas, ideas, meanings expressed by him. Like speech fabric and composition, the world of the work is the embodiment, the carrier artistic content(meaning), necessary means his message to the reader. It is recreated in him through speech and with the participation of fiction objectivity. It includes not only material things, but also the psyche, the consciousness of a person, and most importantly, the person himself as a mental and bodily unity. The world of the work constitutes both “material” and “personal” reality. In literary works, these two principles are unequal: in the center is not “dead nature”, but a living, human, personal reality (if only potentially).

The world of the work is an integral facet of its form (of course, content). It is, as it were, between the actual content (meaning) and the verbal fabric (text).

In the composition of a literary work, 2 semantics are distinguishable: the actual linguistic, linguistic, constituting the area of ​​objects designated by words, and the deep, actually artistic, which is the sphere of the entities comprehended by the author and the meanings imprinted by him.

The concept of " art world works” (sometimes referred to as “poetic” or “internal”) was substantiated by D.S. Likhachev. The most important properties of the world of a work are its non-identity with primary reality, the participation of fiction in its creation, the use by writers not only of life-like, but also conditional forms Images. In a literary work, special, strictly artistic laws reign.

The world of a work is an artistically mastered and transformed reality. He is multifaceted. Most large units verbal and artistic world - the characters that make up the system, and the events that make up the plots. The world includes, further, what it is right to call components figurativeness (artistic objectivity): acts of behavior of characters, features of their appearance (portraits), phenomena of the psyche, as well as facts of the life around people (things presented within the framework of interiors; pictures of nature - landscapes). At the same time, the artistically imprinted objectivity appears both as an extra-verbal being indicated by words, and as speech activity, in the form of statements, monologues and dialogues belonging to someone. Finally, a small and indivisible link of artistic objectivity is a single details(details) of what is depicted, sometimes clearly and actively highlighted by writers and acquiring a relatively independent significance.

ARTISTIC WORKS - a product of art. creativity, in which the spiritual and content of its creator, the artist, is embodied in a sensual-material form and which meets certain criteria aesthetic value; main custodian and source of information in the field of art and culture. P. x. it can be single and ensemble, deployed in space and developing in time, self-sufficient or requiring performing arts. In the system of culture, it functions thanks to its material-subject carrier: the typographic text of the book, the painting canvas with its physical and chemical and geometric properties, cinematic tape; in performing iek-vah - to the orchestra, actor, etc. Actually P. x. is constructed on the basis of the primary pictorial series: sounding or imaginary speech, a combination of shapes and color planes in the visual arts, a moving image projected onto a film and television screen, an organized system of musical sounds, etc. Although, unlike a natural object, the creation of P. x . determined by the purpose of man, it occurs on the border with nature, because it uses natural materials(Material of art), and in some forms of art P. arises in the process of rearrangement and emphasis natural objects(landscape) or in an ensemble with them (, memorial and monumental and landscape gardening). Being a product of specific creative activity, P. x. at the same time, it borders on the world of utilitarian and practical things (decorative and applied art), documentary and scientific sources, and other cultural monuments, for example. " historical novel there is, as it were, a point at which history as a science merges with art” (Belinsky). P. x. borders, however, not only on "practically useful", but also "on unsuccessful attempts art" (Tolstoy). It must satisfy at least minimum requirements artistry, that is, to stand on a step closer to perfection. Tolstoy divided P. x. into three types - P. outstanding: 1) “by the significance of its content”, 2) “by the beauty of the form”, 3) “by its sincerity and truthfulness”. The coincidence of these three moments gives rise to. Artistic the merits of P. arts are determined by the talent of their creator, the originality and sincerity of the idea (in the art of constantly renewing cultures), the most complete embodiment of the possibilities of the canon (in the art of traditional cultures), and a high degree of skill. The artistry of P. art is manifested in the completeness of the realization of the idea, the crystallization of its aesthetic expressiveness, in the content of the form, adequate to the general author's concept and individual nuances of figurative thought (Artistic Concept), in integrity, which is expressed in proportionality that meets the principle of unity in diversity , or in an emphasis towards either unity or diversity. Organism, apparent unintentionality of the present P. x. prompted Kant and Goethe to compare it with a product of nature, romantics - with the universe, Hegel - with man, Potebnya - with the word. Artistic the integrity of the P. of the claim, its completeness is by no means always adequate to the technical, quantifiable side constituent parts, its external completeness. And then the sketch is in a meaningful-hu-doge. relation is so precise that it outweighs in its significance and expressive power the detailed and outwardly large-scale P. x. (for example, V. Serov, A. Scriabin, P. Picasso, A. Matisse). In Soviet fine art, there are also detailed, outwardly finished paintings, and those in which there is a tendency to expressiveness, elevating a fragment to the status of an artist. integrity. However, in all cases, genuine P. x. there is a certain organization, orderliness, conjugation of aesthetic ideas into a whole. In the process of development of one or another type of art-wa art, a function can also be acquired technical means, with the help of to-rykh P. x. delivered, transmitted to the public accepting the claim (for example, in cinema). In addition to the materially fixed plan P. x. carries encoded information of an ideological, ethical, socio-psychological order, which in its structure acquires an artist. value. Despite relative stability, P.'s content x. updated under the influence social development, art changes. tastes, trends and styles. Contacts in the field of art. the contents are not fixed with unambiguous certainty, as is the case in a scientific text, they are relatively mobile, thereby P. x. is not closed in the system once and for all given meanings and meanings, but allows different readings. P. x., intended for performance, already in its textual structure suggests the versatility of artistic and semantic shades, the possibility of different artistic. interpretation. This is also the basis for the creation in the process of cultural inheritance of a new artist. integrity through creative borrowing from the treasury of aesthetic discoveries of past eras, transformed and modernized by the power of civic pathos and talent of new generations. artists. However, it is important to distinguish the fruits of such creative borrowings from epigone handicrafts, where only external features one or another manner, captured in P. x. other masters, but the emotional-figurative fullness of the original is lost. The formal and soulless reproduction of plots and art. techniques does not give rise to a new organic and creatively suffered artist. integrity, but its eclectic likeness. As a cultural phenomenon, P. x. usually considered aesthetic theory as part of a particular system: for example, in the complex of art. values ​​of one or more types of art, united by a typological community (genre, style,), or within the framework of a socio-aesthetic process that includes three links: - P. x. -. Features of psychophysiological perception of P. x. are investigated by the psychology of art, and its existence in society - by the sociology of art.

Aesthetics: Dictionary. - M.: Politizdat. Under total ed. A. A. Belyaeva. 1989 .

See what "WORK OF ART" is in other dictionaries:

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Piece of art- spiritually material reality, which meets artistic and aesthetic criteria, which arose as a result of the creative efforts of an artist, sculptor, poet, composer, etc. and represents a value in the eyes of certain communities. ... ... Aesthetics. encyclopedic Dictionary

A work of art is a product of artistic creativity, in which the spiritual and meaningful intention of its author is embodied in a sensual-material form and which meets the criteria of aesthetic value.

This definition fixes two most important features of a work of art: a product of creative activity in the field of art and a characteristic of the level of ideological and aesthetic perfection.

Works of art exist in the form of static or dynamic things and processes: music - in songs, romances, operas, concerts, symphonies; architecture - in buildings and structures; fine art - in paintings, statues, graphics. Artistic works are the material products of artistic creativity. The process of working on them is connected with the emotions, tastes, imagination, fantasy of the artist. In the period of the birth of creativity, a work of art is associated with the artistic consciousness of the creator. Completed works can exist independently of the consciousness of people, i.e. objectively. Consequently, according to the mode of existence, works of art are material products of artistic creativity and consciousness.

However, such a position is associated with a materialistic interpretation and analysis of works of art. The Polish esthetician R. Ingarden, a student of the founder of phenomenology, E. Husserl, declares a work of art only a property of consciousness, or an intentional object. He sees the source of the existence of a work of art in acts of consciousness. According to phenomenological aesthetics, a piece of music cannot exist as an object. real world. It is considered as a pure act of consciousness, devoid of attributes and the status of objectivity, real existence.

However, with all the differences in the individual consciousness of people, the characteristics of creativity, perception, interpretation, works of art exist objectively. Any work of art, being the result of intense physical labor materializes in specific material-material forms. It would be impossible to imagine the aesthetic meaning and significance of a work of art if it were not fixed with the help of certain sign means in this or that material. Hence their materialization, reification in a work of art.

Art is such a sphere of human activity, which is addressed to his emotional, aesthetic side of personality. through auditory and visual images, through and tense mental and mental work there is a kind of communication with the creator and those for whom it was created: the listener, reader, viewer.

Term meaning

A work of art is a concept associated primarily with literature. This term means not just any coherent text, but carrying a certain aesthetic load. It is this nuance that distinguishes such a work from, for example, a scientific treatise or a business document.

Artwork is imaginative. It does not matter whether this is a multi-volume novel or just a quatrain. Imagery is understood as the saturation of the text with expressive-pictorial. At the level of vocabulary, this is expressed in the use by the author of such tropes as epithets, metaphors, hyperboles, personifications, etc. At the level of syntax, a work of art can be saturated with inversions, rhetorical figures, syntactic repetitions or joints, and so on.

It is characterized by a second, additional, deep meaning. The subtext is guessed by a number of signs. Such a phenomenon is not characteristic of business and scientific texts, the task of which is to provide any reliable information.

A work of art is associated with such concepts as the theme and idea, the position of the author. Theme is what given text: what events are described in it, what era is covered, what subject is being considered. So, the subject of the image in landscape lyrics- nature, its states, complex manifestations life, a reflection of the mental states of a person through the states of nature. The idea of ​​a work of art is the thoughts, ideals, views that are expressed in the work. So, the main idea of ​​the famous Pushkin's "I remember a wonderful moment ..." is to show the unity of love and creativity, understanding love as the main driving, reviving and inspiring principle. And the position or point of view of the author is the attitude of the poet, writer to those ideas, heroes that are depicted in his creation. It may be controversial, it may not coincide with the main line of criticism, but it is precisely this that is the main criterion in evaluating the text, identifying its ideological and semantic side.

A work of art is a unity of form and content. Each text is built according to its own laws and must comply with them. So, in the novel, problems of a social nature are traditionally raised, the life of a class or society is depicted. social order, through which, as in a prism, the problems and spheres of life of society as a whole are reflected. In the lyrical poem, the intense life of the soul is reflected, emotional experiences. According to the definition of critics, in a real work of art nothing can be added or subtracted: everything is in place, as it should be.

The aesthetic function is realized in a literary text through the language of a work of art. In this regard, such texts can serve as textbooks, since give examples of magnificent prose unsurpassed in beauty and charm. It is no coincidence that foreigners who want to learn the language of a foreign country as best as possible are advised to read, first of all, time-tested classics. For example, the prose of Turgenev and Bunin are wonderful examples of mastery of all the richness of the Russian word and the ability to convey its beauty.

Nowadays, anyone who would like to understand the nature of art comes across many categories; their number is growing. This is the plot, plot, circumstances, character, style, genre, etc. The question arises: is there no such category that would unite all others - without losing their special meaning? It is enough to put it down to immediately answer: of course, there is, this is a work of art.

Any review of the problems of theory inevitably returns to it. A work of art brings them into one; from it, in fact - from contemplation, reading, acquaintance with it - all the questions that a theoretician or a person simply interested in art can ask are raised, but to him - resolved or unresolved - these questions return, connecting their distant content revealed by analysis with the same general, albeit now enriched, impression.

In a work of art, all these categories are lost in each other - for the sake of something new and always more meaningful than themselves. In other words, the more there are and the more complex they are, the more urgent and important becomes the question of how an artistic whole, complete in itself, but infinitely unfolded into the world, develops and lives with their help.

It is separated from everything that the categories designate on a fairly simple basis: "complete in itself" remains, although old, but perhaps the most accurate definition for this distinction. The fact is that the plot, character, circumstances, genres, styles, etc. -

these are still only the "languages" of art, the image itself is also a "language"; a work is a statement. It uses and creates these "languages" only to the extent and in those qualities that are necessary for the completeness of its thought. A work cannot be repeated, as its elements are repeated. They are only historically changing means, a substantive form; a work is a formalized and not subject to change content. It balances and disappears any means, because they are here to prove something new, not amenable to any other expression. When this new takes and re-creates exactly as many “elements” as are necessary to substantiate it, then the work will be born. It will grow on different sides of the image and, having used it main principle; here art will begin and the finite, isolated existence of various means, which is so beneficial and convenient for theoretical analysis, will cease.

We must agree that, in answering the question about the whole, the theory itself will have to undergo some switching. That is, since a work of art is first of all unique, it will have to generalize, yielding to art, in a manner unusual for itself, within one whole. To talk about a work in general, as one talks, for example, about the structure of an image, would mean to move away from its special theme and place among theoretical problems into something else, for example, into the study of relations different parties this "general" figurative structure among themselves. The work is solely according to its task; in order to understand this task, its role among other categories of art, it is obviously necessary to take one of all the works.

What to choose? There are thousands of works - perfect and artistic - and most of them are not even known to any individual reader. Each of them, like a person, carries a root relationship with all others, the original knowledge that the machine does not have and which is "programmed" by the entire self-developing nature. Therefore, we can confidently take any and recognize in it this unique unity, which is only gradually revealed in the repetition of scientific, provable quantities.

Let's try to consider for this purpose the story of L. Tolstoy "Hadji Murad". This choice is, of course, arbitrary; however, several arguments can be made in its defense.

First, we are dealing here with undeniable artistry. Tolstoy is known primarily as an artist, possessing an incomparable material-figurative-bodily power, that is, the ability to capture any detail of the “spirit” in the external movement of nature (compare, for example, Dostoevsky, who is more inclined, as one critic well said, to "hurricane of ideas").

Secondly, this artistry is the most modern; it has only just managed to become a classic and is not as distant from us as the systems of Shakespeare, Rabelais, Aeschylus or Homer.

Thirdly, this story was written at the end of the journey and, as often happens, it carries within itself its concise conclusion, the result - with a simultaneous exit into the future art. Tolstoy did not want to publish it, among other things, because, as he said, "it is necessary that something be left after my death." It was prepared (as an "artistic testament" and turned out to be unusually compact, containing, as in a drop, all the grandiose discoveries of Tolstoy's "past"; this is a concise epic, a "digest" made by the writer himself - a circumstance very beneficial for theory.

Finally, it so happened that in a short introduction, at the entrance to his own building, Tolstoy, as if on purpose, scattered several stones - the material from which it was indestructibly shifted. It is strange to say, but all the beginnings of art really lie here, and the reader can freely survey them: please, the secret is revealed, perhaps in order to see how great it really is. But nevertheless they are named and shown: both the nascent idea, and the first small image that will grow, and the way of thinking in which it will develop; and all three main sources of nutrition, supplies, from where it will gain strength - in a word, everything that will begin to move towards the unity of the work.

Here they are, these beginnings.

“I returned home through the fields. Was the most middle

for the summer. The meadows were cleared, and they were just about to mow the rye.”

These are the first three sentences; Pushkin could have written them - simplicity, rhythm, harmony - and this is no longer accidental. This is indeed the idea of ​​the beautiful that comes from Pushkin in Russian literature (in Tolstoy, of course, it arises spontaneously and only as the beginning of his idea); here she will undergo a terrible test. “There is a lovely selection of colors for this time of year,” Tolstoy continues, “red, white, pink, fragrant, fluffy porridge,” etc. An exciting description of colors follows - and suddenly: the image of a black “dead field”, raised steam - all this must perish . “What a destructive, cruel creature, man, how many various living beings, plants have been destroyed for half the maintenance of his life.” This is no longer Pushkin - "And let the young life play at the coffin entrance" - no. Tolstoy but he agrees. just like Dostoevsky with his “only tear of a child”, like Belinsky, who returned to Yegor Fedorovich Hegel his “philosophical cap”, does not want to buy progress at the cost of the death and death of the beautiful. He believes that a person cannot come to terms with this, he is called upon to overcome it at all costs. Here begins his own idea-problem, which sounds in "Resurrection": "No matter how hard people try ..." and in "The Living Corpse": "Three people live ..."

And now this idea meets with something that seems ready to confirm it. Looking at the black field, the writer notices a plant that nevertheless stood before man - read: before the destructive forces of civilization; this is a "Tatar" bush by the road. “What, however, is the energy and strength of life,” and in the diary: “I want to write. Defends life to the last” 1 . At this moment, the "general" idea becomes a special, new, individual idea of ​​the future work.

II. In the process of its inception, it is therefore immediately artistic, that is, it appears in the form

1 Tolstoy L.I. Full. coll. soch., v. 35. M., Goslitizdat, 1928 - 1964. p. 585. All subsequent references are to this edition by volume and page.

original image. This image is a comparison of the fate of Hadji Murad, known to Tolstoy, with the "Tatar" bush. From here the idea takes on a social direction and is ready, with the passion characteristic of the late Tolstoy, to fall upon the entire ruling apparatus of the oppression of man. She takes as her main artistic problem the most acute of all possible positions of her time - the fate of the whole personality in the struggle of systems alienated from it, in other words, the problem that in the most various changes then passed through the literature of the 20th century in its highest forms. However, here it is still only a problem in the bud; the work will help her to become complete and convincing. In addition, in order to develop into art, and not into a logical thesis, it needs various other “substances” - what kind?

III. “And I remembered one old Caucasian story, some of which I saw, some I heard from eyewitnesses, and some I imagined. This story, as it has developed in my memory and imagination, is what it is.

So, they are singled out, and it is only necessary to put signs to distinguish between these isolated sources of art: a) life, reality, fact - what Tolstoy calls "heard from eyewitnesses", that is, this includes, of course, documents, surviving objects, the books and letters he re-read and revised; b) the material of consciousness - "memory" - which is already united according to its own internal personal principle, and not according to some disciplines - military, diplomatic, etc.; c) "imagination" - a way of thinking that will lead the accumulated values ​​to new, still unknown ones.

We just have to look at last time to these sources and say goodbye to them, because we will not see them again. The next line - and the first chapter - already begins the work itself, where there are no traces of a separate memory, or references to an eyewitness, or imagination, - "it seems to me that it could be so," but just some person rides a horse on a cold November evening with whom we have to get to know, who does not suspect that we are following him and what he reveals to us with his behavior

great problems of human existence. And the author, who appeared at the beginning, also disappeared, even - paradoxically - the work that we took in our hands also left: there was a window into life, opened wide by a single effort of idea, fact and imagination.

Having crossed the threshold of a work, we thus find ourselves inside a wholeness that is so hostile to dismemberment that even the very fact of reasoning about it contains a contradiction: in order to explain such a unity, it seems to be more correct to simply rewrite the work, and not to reason and investigate that only again brings us back to the scattered, albeit aimed at conjugation "elements".

True, there is one natural way out.

After all, the integrity of the work is not some kind of absolute point, devoid of dimensions; a work has extension, its own artistic time, order in alternation and transition from one "language" to another (plot, character, circumstances, etc.), and more often - in the change of those special life-like positions that these "languages" combined. Mutual arrangement and connection within the work, of course, pave and trace many natural roads to its unity; an analyst can also pass them. They, in addition; as a general phenomenon, have long been examined and are called composition.

Composition is the disciplining force and organizer of the work. She is instructed to ensure that nothing escapes to the side, into its own law, namely, it is mated into a whole and turns in addition to his thought: she controls artistry in all joints and in general. Therefore, it usually does not accept either logical derivation and subordination, or a simple life sequence, although it is very similar to it; its purpose is to arrange all the pieces so that they close into the full expression of the idea.

The construction of "Hadji Murad" grew out of Tolstoy's many years of observation of his own and other people's work, although the writer himself opposed this work, far from moral self-improvement, in every possible way. Painstakingly and slowly, he turned over and rearranged the heads of his "burdock", trying to find a match.

perfect frame of the work. “I will do it on the sly,” he said in a letter to M. L. Obolenskaya, having previously announced that he was “on the edge of the grave” (vol. 35, p. 620) and that therefore it was ashamed to deal with such trifles. In the end, he nevertheless managed to achieve a rare order and harmony in the huge plan of this story.

Thanks to his originality, Tolstoy for a long time was incomparable with the great realists of the West. He alone walked the path of entire generations from the epic scope of the Russian Iliad to a new acutely conflicted novel and a compact story. As a result, if you look at his works in general course realist literature, then, for example, the novel "War and Peace", which stands out as one of the highest achievements of the 19th century, may seem like an anachronism on the part of purely literary technique. In this work, Tolstoy, according to B. Eikhenbaum, who exaggerates somewhat, but on the whole is right, refers "with complete contempt for the harmonious architectonics" 1 . The classics of Western realism, Turgenev and other writers in Russia had by that time managed to create a special dramatized novel with one central character and a clearly defined composition.

Balzac's programmatic remarks about the "Parma Monastery" - a work very beloved by Tolstoy - make one feel the difference between a professional writer and such seemingly "spontaneous" artists as Stendhal or Tolstoy of the first half of his creative path. Balzac criticizes the looseness and disintegration of the composition. In his opinion, the events in Parma and the story of Fabrizio are developed into two independent themes of the novel. Abbot Blanes is out of action. Against this, Balzac objects: “The ruling law is the unity of the composition; unity may be in a common idea or plan, but without it, ambiguity will reign” 2 . One must think that if he had War and Peace in front of him, the head of the French realists, having expressed admiration, perhaps no less than for Stendhal's novel, would not fail to make similar reservations.

1 Eichenbaum B. Young Tolstoy, 1922, p. 40.

2 Balzac on art. M. - L., "Art", 1941, p. 66.

It is known, however, that towards the end of his life, Balzac begins to retreat from his rigid principles. A good example is his book "Peasants", which loses its proportion due to psychological and other digressions. A researcher of his work writes: "Psychology, as a kind of commentary on the action, shifting attention from the event to its cause, undermines the powerful structure of the Balzac novel" 1 . It is also known that in the future the critical realists of the West gradually decompose the clear-cut forms of the novel, filling them with sophisticated psychologism (Flaubert, later Maupassant), subordinating documentary materials to the action of biological laws (Zola), etc. Meanwhile, Tolstoy, as Rosa Luxemburg well said , "going indifferently against the current" 2, strengthened and purified his art.

Therefore, while - as a general law - the works of Western novelists late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century is moving further and further away from a coherent plot, blurring in fractional psychological details, Tolstoy, on the contrary, relieves his “dialectic of the soul” from uncontrolled generosity in shades and reduces the former multi-darkness to a single plot. At the same time, he dramatizes the action of his great works, chooses the conflict that explodes more and more each time, and does this at the same depths of psychology as before.

There are great general changes in the formal structure of his creations.

The dramatic succession of paintings is grouped around an ever smaller number of basic images; family and love couples, of which there are so many in War and Peace, are first reduced to two lines of Anna - Vronsky, Kitty - Levin, then to one: Nekhlyudov - Katyusha, and, finally, in Hadji Murad they disappear completely, so that Nekrasov's well-known reproach to "Anna Karenina" for excessive attention to adultery, and in itself unfair, could no longer be addressed to this thoroughly social story. This epic drama focuses on one person, one big

1 Reizov B.G. Creativity of Balzac. L., Goslitizdat, 1939, p. 376.

2 About Tolstoy. Collection. Ed. V. M. Friche. M. - L., GIZ, 1928, p. 124.

an event that rallies everything else around itself (such is the regularity of the path from War and Peace to Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Living Corpse, and Hadji Murad). At the same time, the scale of the problems raised does not fall and the volume of life captured in artistic scenes does not diminish - due to the fact that the significance of each person is increased, and the fact that the inner connection of their relations to each other as units is more strongly emphasized. common thought.

Our theoretical literature has already talked about how the polarities of Russian life in the 19th century influenced artistic consciousness, putting forward new type artistic assimilation of contradictions and enriching the forms of thinking in general 1 . Here we must add that the very principle of polarity was innovatively extended in Tolstoy to the end of his way of the form of composition. It can be said that thanks to him, in "Resurrection", "Hadji Murad" and other later works of Tolstoy, the general laws of the distribution of the image within the work were more clearly revealed and sharpened. The magnitudes reflected in each other lost their intermediate links, moved away from each other to enormous distances - but each of them began to serve as a semantic center for all the others.

You can take any of them - the smallest event in the story - and we will immediately see that it deepens and becomes clearer when we get acquainted with every detail that is far from it; at the same time, each such detail receives a new meaning and evaluation through this event.

For example, the death of Avdeev - killed in a random shootout of soldiers. What does his death mean for various human psychologies, laws and social institutions, and what do they all mean for him, peasant son, - unfolds like a fan of details that flashed just as "accidentally" as his death.

“I just started to load, I hear - it chimed ... I look, and he fired a gun,” repeats the soldier who was paired with Avdeev, obviously shocked by the ordinariness of what could happen to him.

1 See: G. D. Gachev, The Development of Figurative Consciousness in Literature. - Theory of literature. Main problems in historical coverage, vol. 1. M., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1962, p. 259 - 279.

“- Te-te,” Poltoratsky clicked his tongue (company commander. - P.P.). - Well, does it hurt, Avdeev? .. ”(To the sergeant major. - P.P.):“- Well, all right, you make arrangements,” he added, and, “waving his whip, rode at a big trot towards Vorontsov.”

Zhurya Poltoratsky for arranging a skirmish (it was provoked in order to present Baron Frese, demoted for a duel), Prince Vorontsov casually inquires about the event:

“- I heard a soldier was wounded?

Yes very sorry. The soldier is good.

It seems hard - in the stomach.

Do you know where I'm going?"

And the conversation turns to more important subject: Vorontsov is going to meet Hadji Murad.

“Who is assigned what,” say the patients in the hospital where they brought Petrukha.

Immediately, “the doctor dug for a long time with a probe in the stomach and felt for a bullet, but could not get it. Bandaging the wound and sealing it with a sticky plaster, the doctor left.

The military clerk informs his relatives about Avdeev's death in the wording that he writes according to tradition, hardly thinking about its content: he was killed, "defending the tsar, the fatherland and the Orthodox faith."

Meanwhile, somewhere in a remote Russian village, although these relatives are trying to forget him (“the soldier was a cut piece”), they still remember him, and the old woman, his mother, even decided to somehow send him a ruble with a letter: “ And also, my dear child, you are my little dove Petrushenka, I cried my eyes out ... "The old man, her husband, who took the letter to the city," ordered the janitor to read the letter to himself and listened attentively and approvingly.

But, having received the news of death, the old woman "wailed while there was time, and then set to work."

And Avdeev's wife, Aksinya, who mourned in public "Pyotr Mikhailovich's blond curls", "in the depths of her soul ... she was glad of Peter's death. She was again a belly from the clerk with whom she lived.

The impression is completed by a magnificent military report, where Avdeev’s death turns into some kind of clerical myth:

“On November 23, two companies of the Kurinsky regiment set out from the fortress for logging. In the middle of the day, a significant crowd of highlanders suddenly attacked the cutters. The chain began to retreat, and at this time the second company struck with bayonets and knocked over the mountaineers. In the case, two privates were lightly wounded and one was killed. The highlanders lost about a hundred people killed and wounded.

These amazing trifles are scattered in different parts of the work and each stand in the natural continuation of its own, different event, but, as we see, they are composed by Tolstoy in such a way that now one or the other whole is closed between them - we took only one!

Another example is a raid on a village.

Cheerful, just escaped from St. Petersburg, Butler eagerly absorbs new impressions from the proximity of the highlanders and the danger: “It’s either the case, or the case, rangers, rangers!” - sang his songwriters. His horse walked with a cheerful step to this music. The company's shaggy, gray Trezorka, like a chief, with a twisted tail, with a preoccupied look, ran in front of Butler's company. My heart was cheerful, calm and cheerful.”

His boss, the drunken and good-natured Major Petrov, views this expedition as a familiar, everyday affair.

“So that's it, sir, father,” said the major in the interval of the song. - Not like you have in St. Petersburg: alignment to the right, alignment to the left. But work hard, and go home.

What they "worked" on is evident from the next chapter, which talks about the victims of the raid.

The old man, who rejoiced when Hadji Murad ate his honey, has now just “returned from his bee-house. The two stacks of hay that were there were burned ... all the beehives with bees were burned.

His grandson, “that handsome boy with sparkling eyes, who enthusiastically looked at Hadji Murad (when Hadji Murad visited their house. - P.P.), was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered with a cloak. He was pierced in the back with a bayonet ... ”, etc., etc.

Again the whole event is restored, but through what a contradiction! Where is the truth, who is to blame, and if so, how much, for example, the thoughtless campaigner Petrov, who cannot be otherwise, and the young Butler, and the Chechens.

Isn't Butler a man, and aren't people his songwriters? Questions arise here by themselves - in the direction of the idea, but none of them finds a frontal, one-sided answer, bumping into another. Even in one “local” unity, the complexity of artistic thought makes everything dependent on each other, but at the same time, as it were, it accelerates and kindles the need to embrace, understand, balance this complexity in the whole truth. Feeling this incompleteness, all “local” unities move towards the whole that the work represents.

They intersect in all directions in thousands of points, add up to unexpected combinations and gravitate towards the expression of one idea - without losing their "self".

All large categories of the image behave in this way, for example, characters. They, of course, also participate in this intersection, and the main compositional principle penetrates into their own core. This principle consists in, unexpectedly for logic, to place any uniqueness and opposites on some axis passing through the center of the image. The external logic of one sequence breaks down, colliding with another. Between them, in their struggle, artistic truth is gaining strength. The fact that Tolstoy took special care of this is evidenced by entries in his diaries.

For example, on March 21, 1898: “There is such an English peepshow toy - one thing or another is shown under a glass. This is how you need to show a person X (aji) -M (urat): a husband, a fanatic, etc.

Or: May 7, 1901: “I saw in a dream the type of old man that Chekhov anticipated in me. The old man was especially good because he was almost a saint, and meanwhile a drinker and a scolder. For the first time, I clearly understood the power that types gain from boldly applied shadows. I will do it on X (adji) -M (urate) and M (arye) D (mitrievna) ”(v. 54, p. 97).

Polarity, that is, the destruction of the external sequence for the sake of internal unity, led the characters of the late Tolstoy to a sharp artistic "reduction", that is, the removal of various intermediate links, along which in another case

go reader's thought; this reinforced the impression of extraordinary courage and truth. For example, Comrade Prosecutor Breve (in "Resurrection") graduated from high school with a gold medal, received a prize at the university for an essay on servitudes, is successful with the ladies, and "as a result of this he is extremely stupid." The Georgian prince at dinner at Vorontsov's is "very stupid", but he has a "gift": he is "an unusually subtle and skillful flatterer and courtier."

In the versions of the story there is such a remark about one of the murids of Hadji Murad, Kurban; “Despite his obscurity and not a brilliant position, he was devoured by ambition and dreamed of overthrowing Shamil and taking his place” (vol. 35, p. 484). In the same way, by the way, one “bailiff with a large bundle, in which there was a project on a new method of conquering the Caucasus”, was mentioned, etc.

Any of these particular units was noticed and singled out by Tolstoy from outwardly incompatible, assigned to different rows of signs. The image expanding its space breaks and breaks these rows one by one; polarities grow larger; the idea receives new evidence and confirmation.

It becomes clear that all its so-called contrasts are, on the contrary, the most natural continuation and steps towards the unity of artistic thought, its logic. They are "contrasts" only if we assume that they are supposedly "shown"; but they are not shown, but proved, and in this artistic proof not only do they not contradict each other, but they are simply impossible and meaningless one without the other.

Only for this they constantly reveal themselves and move the story to a tragic end. They are especially felt in places of transition from one chapter or scene to another. For example, Poltoratsky, who returns in an enthusiastic mood from the charming Marya Vasilyevna after a small talk and says to his Vavila: “What did you think of locking up?! Bolvan!. Here I'll show you..." - there is the most convincing logic of the movement of this general thought, as well as the transition from the wretched hut of the Avdeevs to the Vorontsovs' palace, where "the head waiter solemnly poured steaming soup from a silver bowl", or from the end of the story of Hadji Murad Loris - Melikov: “I am tied, and the end of the rope is with Shamil in

hand" - to Vorontsov's exquisitely cunning letter: "I did not write to you with the last mail, dear prince ...", etc.

From the compositional subtleties, it is curious that these contrasting pictures, in addition to the general idea of ​​​​the story - the story of "burdock" - also have special transitions that form in them themselves, which transfer the action, without breaking it, to the next episode. Thus, Vorontsov's letter to Chernyshev introduces us to the emperor's palace with an inquiry about the fate of Hadji Murad, which, that is, fate, depends entirely on the will of those to whom this letter was sent. And the transition from the palace to the chapter on the raid follows directly from Nicholas' decision to burn and ravage the villages. The transition to the family of Hadji Murad was prepared by his conversations with Butler and the fact that the news from the mountains was bad, etc. In addition, scouts, couriers, messengers rush from picture to picture. It turns out that the next chapter necessarily continues the previous one precisely because of the contrast. And thanks to the same idea of ​​the story, while developing, it remains not abstract scientific, but humanly alive.

In the end, the range of the story becomes extremely large, because its grandiose initial thought: civilization - man - the indestructibility of life - requires exhausting all "earthly spheres". The idea “calms down” and reaches its climax only when the entire plan corresponding to itself passes: from the royal palace to the court of the Avdeevs, through ministers, courtiers, governors, officers, translators, soldiers, along both hemispheres of despotism from Nikolai to Petrukha Avdeev, from Shamil to Gamzalo and Chechens, prancing with the singing of "La ilaha il alla." Only then does it become a work. Here it also achieves general harmony, proportionality in complementing each other with different sizes.

In two key places of the story, that is, at the beginning and at the end, the movement of the composition slows down, although the swiftness of the action, on the contrary, increases; the writer plunges here into the most difficult and complex work of setting up and unleashing events. The unusual fascination with details is also explained by the importance of these supporting paintings for the work.

The first eight chapters cover only what happens during one day during the release of Had-

Zhi-Murata to the Russians. In these chapters, a method of opposition is revealed: Hadji Murad in a sakla at Sado (I) - soldiers in the open (II) - Semyon Mikhailovich and Marya Vasilievna Vorontsov behind heavy curtains at the card table and with champagne (III) - Hadji Murad with nukers in the forest (IV) - Poltoratsky's company on logging, Avdeev's injury, Hadji Murad's exit (V) - Hadji Murad visiting Marya Vasilievna (VI) - Avdeev in the Vozdvizhensky hospital (VII) - Avdeev's peasant yard (VIII). The connecting threads between these contrasting scenes are: the envoys of the naib to Vorontsov, the notice of the military clerk, the letter of the old woman, etc. The action fluctuates, now running a few hours ahead (the Vorontsovs go to bed at three o'clock, and the next chapter begins late in the evening), then returning back.

Thus, the story has its own artistic time, but its connection with the external, given time is also not lost: for the convincing impression that the action takes place on the same night, Tolstoy, barely noticeable to the reader, several times “glances” at the star sky. The soldiers have a secret: " bright stars, which, as it were, ran along the tops of the trees while the soldiers walked through the forest, now stopped, shining brightly between the bare branches of the trees. After some time, they also said: "Again everything was quiet, only the wind stirred the branches of the trees, now opening, then closing the stars." Two hours later: “Yes, the stars have begun to go out,” said Avdeev.

On the same night (IV), Hadji Murad leaves the village of Mekhet: "There was no month, but the stars shone brightly in the black sky." After he rode into the forest: "... in the sky, although faintly, the stars shone." And finally, in the same place, at dawn: "... while they were cleaning weapons ... the stars faded." The most precise unity is also maintained in other ways: the soldiers secretly hear the very howl of the jackals that woke Hadji Murad.

For the external connection of the last paintings, the action of which takes place in the vicinity of Nukha, Tolstoy chooses nightingales, young grass, etc., which are described in the same detail. But this "natural" unity we will find only in the framing chapters. In quite different ways, the transitions of the chapters, which are told, are carried out.

about Vorontsov, Nikolai, Shamil. But even they do not violate the harmonic proportions; not without reason Tolstoy shortened the chapter about Nikolai, throwing out a lot of impressive details (for example, the fact that his favorite musical instrument was a drum, or the story about his childhood and the beginning of his reign) in order to leave only those signs that most closely correlate in their inner essence with another pole of absolutism, Shamil.

Creating a holistic thought of the work, the composition brings into unity not only the major definitions of the image, but also coordinates with them, of course, and speech style, syllable.

In "Hadji Murad" this affected the choice by the writer, after long hesitation, of which of the forms of narration would be best for the story: on behalf of Leo Tolstoy or a conditional narrator - an officer who served at that time in the Caucasus. The diary kept these doubts of the artist: “H(adji)-M(urata) thought a lot and prepared materials. I can’t find all the tone ”(November 20, 1897). The initial version of "Repey" is presented in such a way that although it does not contain a direct story in the first person, the presence of the narrator is invisible, as in " Caucasian prisoner»; in the style of speech, an outside observer is felt, who does not pretend to psychological subtleties and great generalizations.

“In one of the Caucasian fortresses lived in 1852 the military commander, Ivan Matveyevich Kanatchikov, with his wife Marya Dmitrievna. They didn’t have children…” (vol. 35, p. 286) and further in the same vein: “As Marya Dmitrievna planned, she did everything” (vol. 35, p. 289); about Hadji Murad: “He was tormented by terrible longing, and the weather was suitable for his mood” (vol. 35, p. 297). About halfway through the work on the story, Tolstoy already simply introduces an officer-witness reinforcing this style with meager information about his biography.

But the plan grows, new big and small people are involved in the case, new scenes appear, and the officer becomes helpless. A huge influx of paintings is cramped in this limited field of vision, and Tolstoy parted with him, but not without pity: “It used to be

the message was written like an autobiography, now written objectively. Both have their advantages” (vol. 35, p. 599).

Why, after all, did the writer tend to the advantages of the “objective”?

The decisive thing here was - this is obvious - the development of an artistic idea, which required "divine omniscience." The humble officer could not grasp all the causes and consequences of Hadji Murad's entry to the Russians and his death. This big world could only correspond to the world, knowledge and imagination of Tolstoy himself.

When the composition of the story was freed from the plan “with an officer”, the structure of individual episodes within the work also shifted. Everywhere the conditional narrator began to fall out and the author took his place. Thus, the scene of the death of Hadji Murad changed, which, even in the fifth edition, was transmitted through the lips of Kamenev, was interspersed with his words and interrupted by the exclamations of Ivan Matveyevich and Marya Dmitrievna. In the last version, Tolstoy discarded this form, leaving only: “And Kamenev told,” and in the next sentence, deciding not to trust this story to Kamenev, he prefaced Chapter XXV with the words: “It was like this.”

Having become a “small” world, the style of the story freely accepted and expressed the polarity with which the “big” world developed, that is, a work with its many sources and colorful material. Soldiers, nukers, ministers, peasants spoke to Tolstoy themselves, without regard for external communications. It is interesting that in such a construction it turned out to be possible - as it always succeeds in a truly artistic creation - to direct towards unity that which, by its nature, is called upon to isolate, separate, consider in an abstract connection.

For example, Tolstoy's own rationalism. The word "analysis", so often used next to Tolstoy, is, of course, not accidental. Looking closely at how people feel in him, one can notice that these feelings are conveyed by ordinary dissection, so to speak, by translation into the realm of thought. From this it is easy to conclude that Tolstoy was the father and forerunner of modern intellectual literature; but of course this

far from the truth. It is not a matter of which of the forms of thought lies on the surface; an outwardly impressionistic, scattered style can be essentially abstract-logical, as was the case with the expressionists; on the contrary, Tolstoy's strict rationalistic style turns out to be not at all strict and reveals in every phrase an abyss of incompatibilities that are compatible and reconcilable only in the idea of ​​the whole. Such is the style of Hadji Murad. For example: “The eyes of these two people, having met, said to each other a lot that cannot be expressed in words, and certainly not at all what the translator said. They directly, without words, expressed the whole truth about each other: Vorontsov's eyes said that he did not believe a single word of everything that Hadji Murad said, that he knew that he was the enemy of everything Russian, that he would always remain so and now submits only because he is forced to do so. And Hadji Murad understood this, and nevertheless assured him of his devotion. The eyes of Hadji Murad said that this old man should have thought about death, and not about war, but that, although he is old, he is cunning, and one must be careful with him.

It is clear that rationalism here is purely external. Tolstoy does not even care about the apparent contradiction: first he claims that the eyes said "the inexpressible in words", then he immediately begins to report what exactly they "said". But all the same, he is right, because he himself really speaks not in words, but in positions; his thought comes in flashes of those collisions that are formed from the incompatibility of words and thoughts, feelings and behavior of the interpreter, Vorontsov and Hadji Murad.

The thesis and thought can stand at the beginning - Tolstoy loves them very much - but real thought, artistic, will somehow become clear in the end, through everything that has been, and the first thought will turn out to be only a pointed moment of unity in it.

Actually, we observed this principle already in the beginning of the story. This little exposition, like the prologue in a Greek tragedy, announces in advance what will happen to the hero. There is a legend that Euripides explained such an introduction by the fact that he considered it unworthy for the author to intrigue the viewer with an unexpected

action gate. Tolstoy also neglects this. His lyrical page about burdock anticipates the fate of Hadji Murad, although the movement of the conflict in many versions did not go after the “plowed field”, but right from the moment of the quarrel between Hadji Murad and Shamil. The same "introduction" is repeated in small expositions of some scenes and images. For example, before the end of the story, Tolstoy again resorts to the technique of the "Greek choir", notifying the reader once again that Hadji Murad was killed: Kamenev brings his head in a sack. And in the construction of secondary characters, the same bold tendency is revealed. Tolstoy, not fearing to lose attention, immediately declares: this person is stupid, or cruel, or "does not understand life without power and without humility," as it is said about Vorontsov Sr. But this statement becomes undeniable for the reader only after several completely opposite (for example, the opinion of this person about himself) scene-pictures.

In the same way as rationalism and "thesis" introductions, numerous documentary information entered the unity of the story. They did not need to be specially hidden and processed, because the sequence and connection of thoughts were not kept by them.

Meanwhile, the history of the creation of "Hadji Murad", if traced by variants and materials, as A. P. Sergeenko did, 1 really resembled the history of a scientific discovery. Dozens of people worked in different parts of Russia, looking for new data, the writer himself re-read piles of material for seven years.

In the development of the whole, Tolstoy moved in "leaps", from the accumulated material to the new chapter, excluding the scene in the Avdeevs' courtyard, which he, as an expert on peasant life, wrote immediately and did not remake again. The rest of the chapters demanded the most varied "inlays".

A few examples. The article by A.P. Sergeenko contains a letter from Tolstoy to the mother of Karganov (one of the characters in Hadji Murad), where he asks that “dear Anna Avesealomovna” tell him some

1 Sergeenko A.P. "Hadji Murad". The history of writing (Afterword) - Tolstoy L. N. Full. coll. cit., v. 35.

other facts about Hadji Murad, and in particular ... “whose horses were on which he wanted to run. His own or given to him. And were these horses good, and what color. The text of the story convinces us that these requests stemmed from an indomitable desire to convey all the variety and variegation required by the plan through accuracy. So, during the exit of Hadji Murad to the Russians, “Poltoratsky was given his little karak Kabardian”, “Vorontsov rode his English, blooded red stallion”, and Hadji Murad “on a white-maned horse”; another time, at a meeting with Butler, near Hadji Murad there was already “a red-brown handsome horse with a small head, beautiful eyes”, etc. Another example. In 1897, Tolstoy writes while reading "Collection of information about the Caucasian highlanders": "They climb onto the roof to see the procession." And in the chapter about Shamil we read: "All the people of the large village of Vedeno stood on the street and on the roofs, meeting their lord."

Accuracy in the story is found everywhere: ethnographic, geographical, etc., even medical. For example, when Hadji Murad's head was cut off, Tolstoy remarked with invariable calmness: "Scarlet blood gushed from the arteries of the neck and black blood from the head."

But just this accuracy - last example is especially expressive - it is taken in the story, as it turns out, in order to push the polarities further and further, isolate, remove every little thing, show that each of them is in its own, as if tightly closed from the others, box that has a name, and along with it, the profession, the specialty for the people involved in it, while in fact its true and highest meaning is not at all there, but in the sense of life - at least for the person who stands at the center of them. The blood is scarlet and black, but these signs are especially meaningless before the question: why was it shed? And - was the man who defended his life to the last not right?

Scientific and precise, thus, also serve the artistic unity; Moreover, in it, in this whole, they become channels for spreading the idea of ​​unity outside, to all spheres of life, including ourselves. A concrete, historical, limited fact, document becomes indefinitely close

for all. The boundaries between time- and place-specific art and life itself broad sense are crumbling.

In fact, few people think when reading that "Hadji Murad" is a historical story, that Nikolai, Shamil, Vorontsov and others are people who lived without a story, on their own. No one is looking for a historical fact - whether it was, was not, than confirmed - because these people are told many times more interesting than could be extracted from the documents that history has left. At the same time, as mentioned, the story does not contradict any of these documents. He simply looks through them or guesses them in such a way that extinct life is restored between them - it runs like a stream along a dried-up channel. Some facts, external, known, entail others, imaginary and deeper, which, even when they happened, could not be verified or left for posterity - it seemed that they had irretrievably gone in their precious single content. Here they are restored, returned from non-existence, become a part of contemporary life for the reader - thanks to the life-giving activity of the image.

And - a wonderful thing! - when it happens that these new facts somehow manage to be verified from the fragments of the past, they are confirmed. Unity, it turns out, reached out to them. One of the miracles of art is performed (miracles, of course, only from the point of view of logical calculation, which does not know this inner relationship with the whole world and believes that before unknown fact one can reach only by the sequence of the law) - from the transparent void one can suddenly hear the noise and cries of a bygone life, as in that scene at Rabelais, when the battle “frozen” in antiquity thawed out.

Here is a small (at first extraneous) example: Nekrasov's sketch of Pushkin. As if an album sketch - not a portrait, but so, a fleeting idea - in the verses "About the Weather".

The old messenger tells Nekrasov about his ordeals:

I've been babysitting with Sovremennik for a long time:

He wore it to Alexander Sergeyich.

And now it's the thirteenth year

I wear everything to Nikolai Alekseich, -

Lives on Li gene...

He visited, according to him, many writers: Bulgarin, Voeikov, Zhukovsky ...

I went to Vasily Andreevich,

Yes, I didn’t see a penny from him,

Not like Alexander Sergeyich -

He often gave me vodka.

But he reproached everything with censorship:

If red meets crosses,

So it will let you proofread:

Get out, please, you!

Watching a man get killed

Once I said: “It will do, and so!”

This is blood, she says, shed, -

My blood - you are a fool! ..

It is difficult to convey why this little passage so suddenly illuminates Pushkin's personality for us; brighter than a dozen historical novels about him, including very smart and scholarly ones. In a nutshell, of course, we can say: because he is highly artistic, that is, he captures, according to the facts known to us, something important from Pushkin's soul - the temperament, passion, loneliness of his genius in the literary and bureaucratic fraternity (not to mention light) , hot temper and innocence, suddenly breaking into a bitter mockery. However, all the same, listing these qualities does not mean explaining and unraveling this image; he was created by an artistic, integral thought that restored the life-like trifle, the detail of Pushkin's behavior. But what? Having examined it, then suddenly we can come across a fact saved in Pushkin's correspondence - a completely different time and a different situation, from his youth - where the expressions and spirit of speech completely coincide with Nekrasov's portrait! Letter to P. A. Vyazemsky dated February 19, 1825: “Tell Mukhanov from me that it is a sin for him to joke magazine jokes with me. Without asking, he took the beginning of the Gypsies from me and dissolved it around the world. Barbarian! it's my blood, it's money! now I have to print out Tsyganov, and not the time at all” 1 .

In "Hadji Murad" this principle of artistic "resurrection" was expressed, perhaps, more fully than anywhere else in Tolstoy. This work is in the most precise sense - a reproduction. His realism re-creates what has already been, repeats the course of life in such moments that give the focus of everything that was in something personal, free, individual: you look - this fictional past turns out to be a fact.

Here is Nikolai, who is taken from documentary data and dispersed, so to speak, from there into such self-propulsion that a new document, not “laid” into him at first, is restored in him. We can check this through the same Pushkin.

Tolstoy has one of the persistent external leitmotifs - Nikolai "frowns." This happens to him in moments of impatience and anger, when he dares to be disturbed by something that he has resolutely condemned: irrevocably, for a long time and therefore has no right to exist. An artistic find in the spirit of this personality.

"What's your last name? - asked Nikolai.

Brzezovsky.

Of Polish origin and a Catholic,” answered Chernyshev.

Nicholas frowned.

Or: “Seeing the uniform of the school, which he did not like for freethinking, Nikolai Pavlovich frowned, but high growth and the student's diligent drawing and saluting, with the pupil's pointedly protruding elbow, softened his displeasure.

What's the last name? - he asked.

Polosatov! Your Imperial Majesty.

Well done!"

And now let's look at Pushkin's random testimony, which has nothing to do with the story of Hadji Murad. Nikolai was "photographed" in it in 1833, that is, twenty years before the time that Tolstoy described, and without the slightest desire to "deep" into the image.

“Here’s the thing,” Pushkin writes to MP Pogodin, “according to our agreement, for a long time I was going to seize the time,

to ask the sovereign for you as an employee. Yes, everything somehow failed. Finally, at Shrovetide, the tsar once spoke to me about Peter I, and I immediately presented to him that it was impossible for me to work alone on the archives and that I needed the help of an enlightened, intelligent and active scientist. The sovereign asked who I needed, and at your name he almost frowned (he confuses you with Polevoy; excuse me generously; he is not a very firm writer, though a fine fellow, and a glorious king). I somehow managed to introduce you, and D. N. Bludov corrected everything and explained that only the first syllable of your surnames is common between you and Polevoy. To this was added the favorable opinion of Benckendorff. Thus the matter is harmonious; and the archives are open to you (except the secret one)" 1 .

Before us, of course, is a coincidence, but what is the correctness of repetitions - in what is unique, in life's little things! Nikolai stumbled upon something familiar - immediate anger ("frowned"), it is now difficult for him to explain anything ("I somehow," writes Pushkin, "managed to recommend you ..."); then some deviation from the expected still "softens his displeasure." Perhaps in life there was no such repetition, but in art - from a similar position - it resurrected and from an insignificant stroke became important point artistic thought. It is especially pleasing that this "movement" into the image took place with the help, albeit without the knowledge, of two geniuses of our literature. In undeniable examples, we observe the process of spontaneous generation of an image in a primary conjugating trifle and, at the same time, the power of art, capable of restoring a fact.

And one more thing: Pushkin and Tolstoy, as one can guess here, are united in the most general artistic approach to the subject; art as a whole, as can be understood even from such a small example, rests on the same foundation, has a single principle - with all the contrast and difference in styles, manners, historical trends.

As for Nicholas I, Russian literature had a special account for him. Still not written

1 Pushkin A. S. Full. coll. cit., vol. X, p. 428.

although sparsely known, the history of the relationship of this person with Russian writers, journalists, publishers and poets. Nikolai dispersed most of them, gave them to the soldiers or killed them, and pestered the rest with police guardianship and fantastic advice.

The well-known Herzen list is far from complete in this sense. It lists only the dead, but there are not many facts about the systematic strangulation of the living - about how Pushkin's best creations were put aside on the table, mangled by the highest hand how Benckendorff was set on even against such an innocent, in the words of Tyutchev, "dove" like Zhukovsky, and Turgenev was put under arrest for a sympathetic response to the death of Gogol, etc., etc.

Leo Tolstoy, with his Hadji Murad, repaid Nikolai for everyone. It was, therefore, not only artistic, but also historical revenge. However, in order for it to come true so brilliantly, it still had to be artistic. It was precisely art that was needed to revive Nicholas for a public trial. This was done by satire - another of the unifying means of this artistic whole.

The fact is that Nikolai in Hadji Murad is not just one of the polarities of the work, he is a real pole, an ice cap that freezes life. Somewhere on the other end there should be its opposite, but only, as the plan of the work finds out, there is the same hat - Shamil. From this ideological and compositional discovery in the story, a completely new type of realistic satire, apparently unique in world literature, is born - a through parallel exposure. By mutual similarity, Nikolai and Shamil destroy each other.

Even the simplicity of these creatures turns out to be false.

“In general, there was nothing shiny, gold or silver on the imam, and his tall ... figure ... produced the same impression of greatness,

“... returned to his room and lay down on the narrow, hard bed, which he was proud of, and covered himself with his cloak, which he considered (and so he said)

which he desired and knew how to produce among the people.

ril) as famous as Napoleon's hat..."

Both of them are aware of their insignificance and therefore hide it even more carefully.

"... despite the public recognition of his campaign as a victory, he knew that his campaign was unsuccessful."

"... although he was proud of his strategic abilities, in the depths of his soul he was aware that they were not."

The majestic inspiration, which, according to despots, should shock subordinates and inspire them with the idea of ​​communication between the ruler and the supreme being, was noticed by Tolstoy back in Napoleon (leg trembling is a “great sign”). Here it rises to a new point.

“When the advisers talked about this, Shamil closed his eyes and fell silent.

The advisers knew that this meant that he was now listening to the voice of the prophet speaking to him.

“Wait a bit,” he said, and closing his eyes, lowered his head. Chernyshev knew, having heard this more than once from Nikolai, that when he needed to decide important question, he only needed to concentrate, for a few moments, and then what inspiration came over him ... "

A rare ferocity distinguishes decisions taken through such inspirations, but even this is sanctimoniously presented as mercy.

“Shamil fell silent and looked at Yusuf for a long time.

Write that I took pity on you and will not kill you, but gouge out your eyes, as I do to all traitors. Go."

“Deserves the death penalty. But, thank God, we do not have the death penalty. And it's not for me to enter it. Pass 12 times through a thousand people.

Both of them use religion only for strengthening power without caring in the least about the meaning of commandments and prayers.

“First of all, it was necessary to perform the midday prayer, for which he now had not the slightest disposition.”

“... he read the usual, since childhood prayers: “Theotokos”, “I believe”, “Our Father”, without attributing any meaning to the spoken words.

They correlate in many other details: the empress “with a shaking head and a frozen smile” plays under Nicholas essentially the same role as “a sharp-nosed, black, unpleasant face and unloved, but older wife” will enter under Shamil; one attends the dinner, the other brings it, these are their functions; therefore, Nikolai's entertainment with the girl Kopervain and Nelidova only formally differ from Shamil's legalized polygamy.

Messed up, merged into one person, imitating the emperor and higher ranks, all kinds of courtiers, Nikolai is proud of his cloak - Chernyshev did not know galoshes, although without them his legs would feel cold. Chernyshev has the same sleigh as the emperor, the adjutant wing on duty, just like the emperor, combing his temples to his eyes; Prince Vasily Dolgorukov’s “stupid face” is decorated with imperial sideburns, mustaches and the same temples. Old Vorontsov, like Nikolai, says "you" to young officers. With another

On the other hand, Chernyshev flatters Nikolai in connection with the affair of Hadji Murad (“He realized that it was no longer possible for him to hold on”) in exactly the same way as Manana Orbeliani and other guests - Vorontsov (“They feel that they now (this now meant: with Vorontsov) cannot withstand"). Finally, Vorontsov himself even somewhat resembles the imam: "... his face smiled pleasantly and his eyes squinted ..."

" - Where? - Vorontsov asked, screwing up his eyes ”(squinted eyes were always a sign of secrecy for Tolstoy, remember, for example, what Dolly thought about why Anna squinted), etc., etc.

What does this similarity mean? Shamil and Nikolai (and with them the “half-frozen” courtiers) prove by this that, unlike other diverse and “polar” people on earth, they do not complement each other, but duplicate, like things; they are absolutely repeatable and therefore, in essence, do not live, although they stand on the official heights of life. This special kind compositional unity and balance in the work thus means the most profound development of her idea: "a minus by a minus gives a plus."

The character of Hadji Murad, irreconcilably hostile to both poles, ultimately embodying the idea of ​​people's resistance to all forms of an inhuman world order, remained Tolstoy's last word and his testament to the literature of the 20th century.

"Hadji Murad" belongs to those books that should be reviewed, and not written literary works about them. That is, they need to be treated as if they had just left. Only conditional critical inertia still does not allow doing so, although each edition of these books and each encounter with them by the reader is an incomparably stronger intrusion into the central questions of life than - alas - sometimes happens among contemporaries catching up with each other.

“... Perhaps,” Dostoevsky once wrote, “we will say unheard-of, shameless insolence, but let them not be embarrassed by our words; after all, we are talking only one assumption: ... well, if the Iliad is more useful than the works of Marko Vovchka, and not only

before, and even now, with contemporary issues: more useful as a way to achieve the known goals of these same questions, to solve desktop problems? one

In fact, why not, at least for the sake of the smallest, harmless projecting, our editors not try - at the moment of unsuccessful searches for a strong literary response - to publish a forgotten story, story or even an article (these are just requested) on some similar modern issue by a real deep writer from past?

That sort of thing is probably justified. As for the literary analysis of classical books, then he, in turn, can try to keep these books alive. For this it is necessary that the analysis of the various categories from time to time return to the whole, to the work of art. Because only through a work, and not through categories, can art act on a person with the quality that only it can act - and nothing else.

1 Russian writers on literature, vol. II. L., "Soviet writer", 1939, p. 171.