Functions of the artistic detail

A detail can perform important ideological and semantic functions and give an emotional load to the entire text. The functions of details can be psychological, plot and descriptive. An artistic detail is not only able to convey the necessary information. With the help of a detail in a literary work, you can get the most vivid idea of ​​the character, his appearance, psychological state, or the environment surrounding the hero.

Detail can also act as a means of figurative expression. For example:

The forest stood motionless, quiet in its dull pensiveness, just as sparse, half-naked, entirely coniferous. Only here and there were frail birch trees with rare yellow leaves. (V.P. Astafiev)

In this sentence, for example, epithets are an artistic detail, with the help of which a picture of an uncomfortable forest is drawn. The role of their use is to emphasize the frightened, tense state of the literary hero. Here, for example, what kind of Vasyutka in Astafiev's story sees nature when it realizes its loneliness.

"... Taiga... Taiga... Without end and edge, it stretched in all directions, silent, indifferent ...".

“From above, it seemed like a huge dark sea. The sky did not break off immediately, as it happens in the mountains, but stretched far, far away, closer and closer to the tops of the forest. The clouds overhead were rare, but the farther Vasyutka looked, the thicker they became, and finally the blue openings disappeared altogether. Clouds of pressed cotton wool lay on the taiga, and it dissolved in them.

The landscape indicates the boy's great inner anxiety, and also describes the cause of this anxiety. He sees a "silent" and "indifferent" taiga, similar to a dark sea, a low sky descending almost to the very forest. Combinations in the text of epithet and comparison (“compressed cotton wool”), personification and metaphor (“lay down”, “dissolved”), which is an artistic detail, help the reader to better imagine the heavy sky hanging over the dark taiga and at the same time conveys the idea that nature is indifferent to the fate of man. And here the function of the detail is semantic.

Consider another example of a detail from the text of the writer V.P. Astafyeva: “With a beating heart, he ran to the tree to feel the notch with drops of resin with his hand, but instead he found a rough fold of bark.” This descriptive and plot detail reinforces the drama of the situation in which the hero of the story finds himself.

Also, in the text of a work of art, there may be a sound descriptive detail or a metaphorical detail. For example, this is a description of a helpless fly stuck in the net of a web from the same work:

“An experienced hunter - a spider stretched a web over a dead bird. The spider is no longer there - it must have gone to spend the winter in some kind of hollow, and abandoned the trap. A well-fed, large spit fly caught in it and beats, beats, buzzes with weakening wings. Something began to disturb Vasyutka at the sight of a helpless fly stuck in a net. And then it seemed to hit him: why, he got lost!

For the same purpose, to convey the internal discomfort of his hero, the writer uses the method of internal monologue more than once in the text, and this is also a striking artistic detail. For instance:

"F-fu-you, damn it! Where are the grips? - Vasyutka's heart sank, perspiration appeared on his forehead. - All this capercaillie! Rushed like a goblin, now think about where to go, - Vasyutka spoke aloud to drive away the approaching fear. - Nothing, I'll think about it and find a way. So-so ... The almost bare side of the spruce - it means that the north is in that direction, and where there are more branches - the south. Ta-ak ... ".

The smallest unit of the objective world of a work is traditionally called artistic detail , which is in good agreement with the etymology of the word: “detail” (fr. detail) - “a small component of something (for example, a car)”; "detail", "particular". Fundamental is the assignment of the detail to the metaverbal, objective world of the work:“The figurative form of a literary work includes three sides: a system of details of subject representation, a system of compositional techniques and a verbal (speech) structure ...”; “...Usually, artistic details include mainly subject details in the broadest sense: details of everyday life, landscapes, portraits ...<...> Poetic devices, tropes and stylistic figures are usually not classified as artistic details.." 3 . When analyzing a work, it is important to distinguish between verbal and meta-verbal, actually subject levels (for all their natural connection).

The detailing of the objective world in literature is not only interesting, important, desirable, it inevitable; in other words, this is not a decoration, but the essence of the image. After all, the writer is not able to recreate the subject in all its features (and not just mention it), and it is the detail, the totality of details that “replace” the whole in the text, causing the reader to associate with the author. The author relies on the imagination, the experience of the reader, who mentally adds the missing elements. R. Ingarden calls this “removal of places of incomplete certainty” specification works by the reader. What is not included in the text is obvious and not essential for understanding the whole (in this case, the image of the heroine). In the story of A.P. Chekhov's Kiss, a stranger who mistakenly kissed Ryabovich in a dark room, remains unrecognized by him. The signs that he remembered are too vague: “Ryabovich stopped in thought ... At that time, unexpectedly for him, hurried steps were heard in the rustling of a dress, a woman’s breathless voice whispered “finally!”, And two soft, odorous, undoubtedly female hands seized him neck a warm cheek was pressed against his cheek and at the same time there was a sound of a kiss. But at once the kisser gave a little cry and, as it seemed to Ryabovitch, jumped away from him in disgust. Who exactly was she It doesn't matter in the context of the story. After all, this is an unintentional episode from a lonely life, which only emphasized the futility of the hero's dream of happiness and love, and not an entertaining story with dressing up.

Often, in one form or another, the idea is expressed about the gradual development of the mastery of detail in the history of literature and about the special virtuosity of modern writing in this regard (meaning, of course, the authors of the "first row"). So, Y. Olesha, who highly appreciated the language of the new art - cinema, found a “close-up” in Pushkin, considering it a breakthrough in the poetics of the future: “... there are some lines that the poet of that era seems simply incomprehensible to have:

From point of view theoretical poetics, clarifying the properties of the artistic image as such, the taste for detail, for fine (not clumsy) work unites artists, no matter what time they live (what kind of detail is another question). Therefore, to confirm the theses, you can cite a variety of material. A.A. Potebnya, developing the theory of the image by analogy with the “internal form” of the word, turned to Ukrainian folklore and Russian classics of the 19th century. (“From Notes on the Theory of Literature”). V.B. Shklovsky discovered the methods of “estrangement” and “difficult form” (which he considered the attributes of poetic language) in the novels and stories of L.N. Tolstoy and in folk riddles, fairy tales (“On the theory of prose”). In both of these works, there is no detail as a term, but the problem itself is in the focus of attention.

In the works of folklorists, antiques, and medievalists, no less is said about detailing than in studies of, say, the work of L.N. Tolstoy, N.V. Gogol, A.P. Chekhov, I.A. Bunina, V.V. Nabokov. Thus, F. I. Buslaev notes the predilection of the heroic epic for trifles: “The singer’s always calm and clear gaze stops with equal attention both on Olympus, where the gods sit, and on the bloody battle that decides the fate of the world, and on little things that are barely noticeable when describing household utensils or weapons. Epic poetry is unhurried and teaches “patience with its constant repetitions, which seemed to be just as impossible and unnatural to miss as to throw out of life a day of waiting before joy, or - from the path of monotony; different field in front of a beautiful view” 2 . To Homer, “every little thing ... is precious. He often resorts to such descriptions, not embarrassed by the fact that they j delay the development of the action. As a result, a deliberate delay is obtained - retardation...<...>The most... remarkable is the description of the scar on Odysseus's leg in the XIX song of the Odyssey. Surprising is the wealth of not only comparisons that introduce new images (in particular, descriptions of nature), but also epithets, with all the inclination of the epic to constant epithets. Homer's Achilles is not only "swift-footed": he was "assigned 46 epithets, Odysseus - 45" 3 . The poetics of the heroic epic is completely different from the individual styles of the "slow" novels - Ortega y Gasset's favorite reading (where a completely different, psychological detailing, retardation perform other functions). But everywhere before us is the language of art - detail language.

The classification of details repeats the structure of the objective world, which is composed of “different-quality components” - events, actions of characters, their portraits, psychological and speech characteristics, landscape, interior, etc. At the same time, in given some kind (kinds) of details may be absent in the work, which emphasizes the conventionality of its world.

In literary description stylerelated details are often combined. A successful experience of such a typology was proposed by A.B. Yesin, who singled out three large groups: details plot, descriptive, psychological. The predominance of one type or another gives rise to a corresponding property, or dominant, style:“plotting” (“Taras Bulba” by Gogol), “descriptiveness” (“Dead Souls”), “psychologism” (“Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky); these properties "may not exclude each other within the same work."

So the details can be given in opposition, "dispute" with each other. But they can, on the contrary, form an ensemble, creating in aggregate a single and holistic impression - for example, luxury items that adorned the "study / Philosopher at eighteen" (in the first chapter of "Eugene Onegin"). E.S. Dobin proposed a typology of details based on the criterion: singularity/many, and used different terms to designate the distinguished types: "Detail affects a lot. Detail tends to be singular. It replaces a number of details. Let us recall Karenin's ears, the curls of hair on Anna's neck, the short upper lip with mustaches of the little princess, Andrei Bolkonsky's wife, the radiant eyes of Princess Marya, Captain Tushin's invariable pipe, the significant wrinkles on the forehead of the diplomat Bilibin, etc. The detail is intense. The details are extensive." Further, the researcher stipulates that the difference between detail and detail is “only in the degree of conciseness and compaction” and that it is “not absolute”, there are “transitional forms” 1 .

Transitional forms are, of course, in any classification, but they are not its essence. In our opinion, the very attraction to "singularity" or to "multitude" requires explanation, is a consequence of the different functions of detail and detail (in Dobin's terms). If you think about the examples of “details” given by him, a pattern can be traced: not just characteristic features that represent the whole through its part (the principle of synecdoche) are highlighted. Named something that hints at a certain contradiction in the subject, which, it would seem, is completely optional for: him - therefore, the detail is both noticeable and not lost in the multitude of “details”. And it is expressive, that is, if it is read correctly, the reader joins the author's system of values.

Detail that contributes to the image dissonance, or, to use Shklovsky's well-known term, "strange" detail, has a huge cognitive meaning. It seems to invite the reader to take a closer look at the subject, not to skim over the surface of phenomena. Falling out of the row, out of the ensemble, she attracts attention- like two armchairs in the Manilovs' living room, upholstered "just with matting" and betraying a non-owner in him, a person playing the role of a host: Manilov "for several years every time warned his guest with the words:" Do not sit on these chairs, they are not yet ready " . Introducing a "strange" detail, writers often resort to hyperbole. The visibility of a detail, to some extent contrasting with the general background, contributes to composition techniques: repetitions, close-ups, editing, retardations, etc.. Repeating and acquiring additional meanings, item becomes motive (leitmotif ), often grows up in symbol . If at first it surprises, then, appearing in new "clutches", already explains character. In The Idiot by Dostoevsky, the reader (as well as General Yepanchin) may at first find it strange that Myshkin is able to imitate handwriting. However, after reading the entire novel, it becomes clear that Myshkin's main talent is understanding different characters, different styles of behavior, and reproducing writing styles (in the old sense of the word) - a hint of this.

The symbolic detail can be placed in title works(usually small forms): "Gooseberry" A.P. Chekhov, "Easy breathing" by I.A. Bunin, "Snow" K.G. Paustovsky. the detail(as understood by Dobin) closer to sign, than to a symbol, its appearance in the text evokes, first of all, the joy of recognition, arousing a stable chain of associations. Details-signs are designed for a certain horizon of the reader's expectations, for his ability to decipher this or that cultural code. So, the reader of "Eugene Onegin", getting together with Tatyana into the "fashionable cell" of her idol, can confidently judge Onegin's hobbies and mindsets based on the decoration of his office. A few strokes-signs replace a long description: "... and Lord Byron's portrait, / And a column with a cast-iron doll / Under a hat, with a cloudy brow, / With hands clenched in a cross."

When a historian of literature reconstructs life, everyday life, tastes of a society that is already far from us, such signs are systematized, this is the “bread” of commentators. And, perhaps more than the classics, the details-marks delivers fiction, keeping pace with its time (and not overtaking it), quickly responding to the topic of the day, fashion in all areas, "cultural news".

Narrative and its functions in the work. The story and the problem of the author.

Personal narrative and its varieties, their artistic possibilities. Correlation and division in the personal narrative of the position of the narrator and the author.

17. Impersonal storytelling. Correlation in the impersonal narrative of the "author's zone" and the "heroes' zone". The peculiarity and difference between indirect and improperly direct speech.

A set of statements that have pictorial tasks is a narrative. Description and reasoning have become integral parts of the narrative. In a broad sense, narration is a combination of those statements, speech subjects by the narrator, narrator, who carry out the functions of mediation between the depicted world and the addressee of the work as a single artistic statement. Types of Narratives: Personal and Impersonal. Personal: on behalf of the lyrical hero (confession), on behalf of the narrator's hero. Impersonal- on behalf of the narrator and the novel. Esin distinguishes the narration from the 1st person and from the 3rd person. From the 1st person - enhances the illusion of the authenticity of what is being told, focuses on the image of the narrator, the author is almost always hidden, his non-identity with the narrator appears clearly. From the 3rd person - a freer narration, an aesthetically neutral form, Yesin distinguishes not actually direct speech (the narration on behalf of a neutral narrator, but it is fully or partially sustained in the hero’s speech manner, not being his direct speech). This is resorted to when they want to create the inner world of the hero through his speech. The words characteristic of the hero, his speech manner are used.

2 types of storytelling subjects: narrator and narrator. Personified (a certain portrait, biography, you can say who he is, participates in the action or observes) - if from 1 person, then he is a narrator; non-personalized narrator - remotely depicts events, impersonal. The narrator is a speaker, not identified, not named, dissolved in the text. The narrator is a speaker who openly organizes the entire text with his personality. (Korman)

The author is not a narrator, even if there is an image of the author. The image is always artistically conditional. Any image of a narrator or narrator is a speech mask. The narrator - the subject of the image, is associated with a certain socio-cultural and linguistic environment. From this position, he portrays other characters. The narrator behind the speech manner hides the character, way of thinking, worldview. The position of the author may or may not coincide with the position of the narrator.


1. The narrator is on the border of the fictional world with reality, the narrator is inside the depicted reality.

2. Where there is a narrator, the event seems to tell itself. Where there is a narrator, the events are the subject of the depiction.

3. The narrator has a comprehensive outlook (it seems that the story is more objective), the narrator does not, we look at events through the eyes of the characters, more subjectively. The narrator has a specific way of speaking, whether or not attached to the story.

4. No one sees the narrator inside the depicted world. The narrator is necessarily included in the horizons of either the narrator or the characters.

5. The narrator, in his horizons, is close to the author, the creator, the narrator is close to the characters.

6. The narrator is a carrier of the generally accepted speech manner, the narrator is not.

Within the framework of the text of one work, the ways of narration may change. In any case, the sequence of ways of narration is subject to the artistic task of the author and has a certain artistic meaning.

Improperly direct speech- this is "a fragment of a narrative text that conveys words, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or only the semantic position of one of the characters depicted, and the transmission of the narrator's text is not marked either by graphic signs (or their equivalents) or introductory words (or their equivalents)", otherwise speaking, is neither punctuated nor syntactically highlighted.

The technique of improperly direct speech was first used in Russian literature by A. S. Pushkin, after which he gained development in fiction. At the syntactic level, improperly direct speech does not stand out from the author's speech, but retains the lexical, stylistic and grammatical elements inherent in the speaker's speech. , thought. Improper-direct speech is combined with the author's: in improper-direct speech, the author speaks or thinks for the character. Example: But here is his room. Nothing and no one, no one looked. Even Nastasya did not touch. But, Lord! How could he leave all these things in this hole just now? He rushed to the corner, put his hand under the wallpaper and began to pull out things and load his pockets with them. F. Dostoevsky. Non-proper direct speech refers to the author, all pronouns and forms of the person of the verb are presented from the position of the author (as in indirect speech), but, on the other hand, there is a significant lexical, syntactic and stylistic specificity inherent in direct speech.

There are groups of works where the non-author's word reigns supreme. These are styling, intentionally and obviously imitating the features and properties of any folklore or literary style. Recall Lermontov's "Song about<„.>merchant Kalashnikov”, ballads by A.K. Tolstoy, the story "The Fiery Angel" by V.Ya. Bryusov, focused on the style of Western European medieval prose.

tale, also operating with a non-author's word, unlike stylizations and parodies, is focused on oral, everyday, colloquial speech. Here we have "an imitation of a 'live' conversation that is being born, as it were, this very minute, here and now, at the moment of its perception" 2 . Most importantly, a tale, much more than traditional forms of written narration, draws our attention to the speaker - storyteller highlighting his figure, his voice, his inherent vocabulary and phraseology. “The principle of the tale requires,” noted B.M. Eikhenbaum, “so that the narrator’s speech is colored not only with intonational-syntactic, but also with lexical shades” 3 . Samples of the tale - “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” by N.V. Gogol, much in the prose of V.I. Dahl, N.S. Leskov.

SKAZ - a form of presentation of folklore works, specific in its intonation and style; hence, S. is understood as such a character of presentation in literary works, which reproduces the speech of works of oral literature, and in a broader sense - oral speech in general and even unusual forms of written speech.

The most common forms of. - this is: a) imitation of a fabulous, epic and song warehouse. Wed “Beyond the Volga in the forests, in Black Ramen, there lived a peasant, a rich peasant. That peasant had a daughter. The daughter grew up, filled with beauty ( Melnikov-Pechersky, "In the woods" - fabulous S.); b) imitation of the local and professional dialects of the peasantry: “He was tired of this to death, he was angry like a fierce snake; but in the evenings he went to Prokudin's. The highways began to pour hemp, and Prokudin poured carts from his heels ( Leskov, "The Life of a Woman"); c) imitation of the vernacular and professional dialects of the urban population, mainly of those groups of it that do not fully speak the literal language: “I thank him and say that I have no desires and will not come up with anything, except for one, if his mercy will , to tell me..." ( Leskov, "Darner"); d) imitation of outdated and unusual forms of written speech: “And in such a similar worldly spirit, as I presented to you, we lived for almost three years. Everything was arguing for us, all successes were poured out on us as if from the horn of Amalthea, when suddenly we saw that there are two vessels of God’s chosen ones in our midst for our punishment ”( Leskov, "The Sealed Angel" - S. Old Russian instructive books).

As is clear from the examples given, the character of S. is achieved in written speech by the selection vocabulary various types of oral speech (and in the last of the above cases - archaic vocabulary, alien to the modern lit-th language) and specific forms syntax and morphology allowed only in oral speech (or in ancient writing): imitations of folklore genres are characterized, for example. rhythmization, recitative or melodious warehouse, transferring into written speech typical of folklore figures, imitation of vernacular - the introduction of a significant number dialectisms, grammatical violation. building written speech - the incompleteness of sentences, their inconsistency, an abundance of exclamatory and interrogative turns.

In rare cases, S. is maintained throughout the entire work: more often the author alternates it with the usual lit-th presentation, motivating this by the need to shorten the story.

The introduction of S. forms is usually motivated by the author's will, which characterizes the situation and the narrator (cf. the construction of most of Leskov's stories - "The Warrior", "The Midnight Office", "The Enchanted Wanderer", "The Stupid Artist", etc. Cf. "Framing"). Another very common form of S.'s introduction is the monologic nature of the narrative - Ich-Erzählung, diary, letter (cf. the construction of Dostoevsky's novels and stories - Notes from the Underground, Demons, etc.). Sometimes the introduction of S. characterizes the experiences and train of thought of one of the characters. Compare: “Manef’s mother is standing in a prayer room in front of the icons, crying with bitter, burning tears ... The vain, sinful world again spoke to Manef’s soulful ears” - S. follows about a rich peasant and his beautiful daughter as a presentation of the heroine’s memories ( Melnikov-Pechersky, "In forests"). Here S.'s introduction is one of cases of so-called. "direct indirect speech" (style indirect libre) - characteristics of the thoughts of the character, stated on behalf of the author.

S. become truly artistic forms when the entire content of the work is presented from that angle of view, which is characteristic and possible for an imaginary narrator; such are the images emerging from S. of the simple-hearted, seedy landowner Belkin, the talkative Ukrainian beekeeper Rudy Pank, the curious “progressive” - the inhabitant of the provincial towns of Dostoevsky, the St. d.

Allowed in the literary styles of classicism only in direct speech to characterize comic characters, S. is widely used in the literary styles of romanticism (the predominance of folklore and ancient written S., as well as peasant S.) and realism of the 19th century. (the inclusion of everyday vernacular of the city and the widespread use of territorial peasant dialects in the regional literature). In modern Soviet literature, the forms of S. achieve, on the one hand, greater sophistication (the tale of Babel, Tynyanov, Sholokhov, and many others), but on the other hand, they sometimes appear insufficiently substantiated, acquiring the character of an aimless destruction of the norms of the literary language and causing a protest from the best masters of the word (M. Gorky's speeches against the damage to the lit-th language in 1934).

Skaz narration (skaz) is conducted in a manner that differs sharply from the author's, and focuses on the forms of oral speech. The tale became widespread in Russian literature of the 19th century, starting from the 30s. For example, Pushkin's slightly parodic Tales of Belkin gives a sympathetically ironic characterization not only of the actors, but also of the narrators. A similar form of narration was used by Gogol and Leskov. Skaz allows writers to capture various types of speech thinking more freely and more widely, to resort to parodies. It is built in the order of speaking, focused on the modern live, sharply different from the author's, monologue speech of the narrator, who came out of some exotic (everyday, national, folk) environment for the reader. In the tale, colloquial speech, dialectisms, as well as professional speech are widely used. The most common are two forms of narration: the first, conducted in the first person of a well-defined narrator. It is especially close to the lively intonation of oral speech. the second form dispenses with the introduction of a real narrator. Problems of the author: The appeal to the tale is most often associated with the desire of writers to break the established conservative literary tradition, to bring a new hero and new life material onto the stage. (Tales of Bazhov)

19. The subject world of a work of art: landscape, interior, portrait, thing.

Let's start with the properties of the depicted world. The depicted world in a work of art means that conditionally similar to the real world picture of reality that the writer draws: people, things, nature, actions, experiences, etc. In a work of art, a model of the real world is created, as it were. This model in the works of each writer is unique; the depicted worlds in different works of art are extremely diverse and can be more or less similar to the real world. But in any case, it should be remembered that before us is an artistic reality created by the writer, which is not identical with the primary reality.

Let us now turn to a concrete consideration of the varieties of artistic details.

Portrait. A literary portrait is understood as the depiction in a work of art of the entire appearance of a person, including here the face, and physique, and clothing, and demeanor, and gestures, and facial expressions. The portrait usually begins the reader's acquaintance with the character. Every portrait in one way or another characterological- this means that by external features we can at least briefly and approximately judge the character of a person. At the same time, the portrait can be provided with an author's commentary that reveals the connections between the portrait and character (for example, a commentary on the portrait of Pechorin), or it can act on its own (Bazarov's portrait in Fathers and Sons). In this case, the author, as it were, relies on the reader to draw conclusions about the character of a person himself. Such a portrait requires closer attention. In general, a full-fledged perception of a portrait requires a somewhat enhanced work of the imagination, since the reader must, according to a verbal description, imagine a visible image.

Correspondence of portrait features to character traits is a rather conditional and relative thing; it depends on the views and beliefs accepted in a given culture, on the nature of artistic convention. In the early stages of the development of culture, it was assumed that spiritual beauty also corresponds to a beautiful external appearance; positive characters were often depicted as beautiful and in appearance, negative ones as ugly and disgusting. In the future, the connections between the external and the internal in a literary portrait become significantly more complicated. In particular, already in the XIX century. a completely inverse relationship between portrait and character becomes possible: a positive hero can be ugly, and a negative hero can be beautiful. An example is Quasimodo V. Hugo and Milady from The Three Musketeers by A. Dumas. Thus, we see that the portrait in literature has always performed not only a depicting, but also an evaluative function.

If we consider the history of literary portraiture, we can see that this form of literary depiction moved from a generalized-abstract portrait characteristic to an ever greater individualization. In the early stages of the development of literature heroes are often endowed with a conditionally symbolic appearance; so, we can hardly distinguish by the portrait of the heroes of Homer's poems or Russian military stories. Such a portrait carried only very general information about the hero; this happened because literature had not yet learned at that time to individualize the characters themselves. Over time the portrait became more and more individualized, that is, it was filled with those unique features and traits that no longer allowed us to confuse one hero with another and at the same time indicated not the social or other status of the hero, but individual differences in characters. Renaissance literature already knew a very developed individualization of the literary portrait (don Quixote and Sancho Panza are an excellent example), which was further strengthened in literature.

An individualized detail, being assigned to a character, can become his permanent sign, a sign by which the given character is identified; such, for example, are the brilliant shoulders of Helen or the radiant eyes of Princess Mary in War and Peace.

The simplest and at the same time the most commonly used form of portraiture is portrait description . It consistently, with varying degrees of completeness, gives a kind of list of portrait details, sometimes with a generalizing conclusion or the author's commentary on the nature of the character that appeared in the portrait; sometimes with a special emphasis on one or two leading details. Such, for example, is the portrait of Bazarov in Fathers and Sons, the portrait of Natasha in War and Peace.

Another, more complex type of portraiture is portrait-comparison . In it, it is important not only to help the reader to more clearly imagine the appearance of the hero, but also to create in him a certain impression of the person, his appearance.

Finally, the most difficult kind of portrait is impression portrait . Its originality lies in the fact that there are no portrait features and details as such at all, only the impression made by the appearance of the hero on an outside observer or on one of the characters in the work remains. So, for example, Chekhov characterizes the appearance of one of his heroes as follows: “His face seems to be pinched by a door or nailed down with a wet rag” (“Two in One”). It is almost impossible to draw an illustration based on such a portrait characteristic, but Chekhov does not need the reader to visualize all the portrait features of the hero, it is important that a certain emotional impression is achieved from his appearance and it is quite easy to draw a conclusion about his character.

Scenery. Landscape in literature is the image in the work of living and inanimate nature. Far from every literary work we meet with landscape sketches, but when they appear, they usually perform essential functions. The first and simplest function of the landscape is to mark the scene. However, as simple as this function may seem at first glance, its aesthetic impact on the reader should not be underestimated. Often the place of action is of fundamental importance for this work. So, for example, many Russian and foreign romantics used the exotic nature of the East as a scene of action: bright, colorful, unusual, it created a romantic atmosphere of the exceptional in the work, which was necessary.

Often, the attitude towards nature shows us some significant aspects of the character or worldview of the character. Thus, Onegin's indifference to the landscape shows us the extreme degree of disappointment of this hero. The discussion about nature, taking place against the backdrop of a beautiful, aesthetically significant landscape in Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons", reveals the differences in the characters and worldview of Arkady and Bazarov.

The city often becomes the scene of action in modern literature. Moreover, in recent times, nature as a place of action is more and more inferior in this capacity to the city, in full accordance with what is happening in real life. The city as a scene has the same functions as the landscape; even an inaccurate and oxymoron term appeared in the literature: "urban landscape". Just like the natural environment, the city has the ability to influence the character and psyche of people. In addition, the city in any work has its own unique image, and this is not surprising, since each writer not only creates a topographical scene, but, in accordance with his artistic tasks, builds a certain image cities. Thus, Petersburg in Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" is, first of all, "restless", vain, secular. But at the same time, it is a complete, aesthetically valuable integral city that you can admire. And finally, St. Petersburg is a receptacle of high noble culture, primarily spiritual.

Returning to the actual literary depiction of nature, it must be said about one more function of the landscape, which can be called psychological. For a long time it has been noticed that certain states of nature in one way or another correlate with certain human feelings and experiences: the sun - with joy, rain - with sadness; cf. also expressions like "spiritual storm". Therefore, landscape details from the earliest stages of the development of literature have been successfully used to create a certain emotional atmosphere in the work (for example, in The Tale of Igor's Campaign, a joyful ending is created using the image of the sun) and as a form of indirect psychological depiction, when the state of mind of the characters is not directly described. , but as it were transmitted to the nature around them, and often this technique is accompanied by psychological parallelism or comparison (“It’s not the wind that bends the branch, It’s not the oak forest that makes noise. more sophisticated, it becomes possible not directly, but indirectly to correlate spiritual movements with one or another state of nature. At the same time, the mood of the character can correspond to him, or vice versa - to contrast with him.

Special mention should be made of the rare case where nature becomes, as it were, the protagonist of a work of art. Here we do not mean fables and fairy tales, because the animal characters taking part in them are, in fact, only masks of human characters. But in some cases, animals become real characters in the work, with their own psychology and character. The most famous works of this kind are the stories of Tolstoy "Kholstomer" and Chekhov's "Kashtanka" and "White-browed".

World of things. In the early stages of development, the world of things did not receive a wide reflection, and the material details themselves were little individualized. The thing was depicted only insofar as it turned out to be a sign of a person's belonging to a certain profession or a sign of social status. The indispensable attributes of the royal dignity were the throne, crown and scepter, the things of a warrior are, first of all, his weapons, the things of a farmer - a plow, a harrow, etc. This kind of thing we'll call accessory, still did not correlate in any way with the character of a particular character, that is, the same process was going on here as in portrait detailing: the individuality of a person is not yet; was mastered by literature, and consequently, there was still no need to individualize the thing itself. With the passage of time, although an accessory item remains in literature, it loses its significance and does not carry any significant artistic information.

Another function of the material detail develops later, starting approximately from the Renaissance, but becomes the leading one for this type of detail. The detail becomes a way of characterizing a person, an expression of his individuality.

A material detail can sometimes extremely expressively convey the psychological state of a character; Chekhov especially liked to use this technique of psychologism. Here is how, for example, the logical state of the hero in the story “Three Years” is depicted with the help of a simple and ordinary real detail of psychosis: “At home, he saw an umbrella on a chair, forgotten by Yulia Sergeevna, grabbed it and kissed it greedily. The umbrella was silk, no longer new, intercepted with an old rubber band; the pen was made of simple, white bone, cheap. Laptev opened it above him, and it seemed to him that around him he even smelled of happiness.

A real detail has the ability to both characterize a person and express the author's attitude to the character at the same time. Here, for example, is a real detail in Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" - an ashtray in the form of a silver bast shoes, standing on the table of Pavel Petrovich living abroad. This detail not only characterizes the ostentatious love of people of the character, but also expresses a negative assessment of Turgenev. The irony of the detail is that the rudest and at the same time perhaps the most essential item of a peasant's life here is made of silver and serves as an ashtray. By studying the world of things as such, the material environment of a person, one can understand a lot - not about the life of this or that person, but about way of life in general.

The smallest unit of the objective world of a work is traditionally called artistic detail , which is in good agreement with the etymology of the word: “detail” (fr. detail) - “a small component of something (for example, a car)”; "detail", "particular". Fundamental is the assignment of the detail to the metaverbal, objective world of the work:“The figurative form of a literary work includes three sides: a system of details of subject representation, a system of compositional techniques and a verbal (speech) structure ...”; “...Usually, artistic details include mainly subject details in the broadest sense: details of everyday life, landscapes, portraits ...<...> Poetic devices, tropes and stylistic figures are usually not classified as artistic details.." 3 . When analyzing a work, it is important to distinguish between verbal and meta-verbal, actually subject levels (for all their natural connection).

The detailing of the objective world in literature is not only interesting, important, desirable, it inevitable; in other words, this is not a decoration, but the essence of the image. After all, the writer is not able to recreate the subject in all its features (and not just mention it), and it is the detail, the totality of details that “replace” the whole in the text, causing the reader to associate with the author. The author relies on the imagination, the experience of the reader, who mentally adds the missing elements. R. Ingarden calls this “removal of places of incomplete certainty” specification works by the reader. What is not included in the text is obvious and not essential for understanding the whole (in this case, the image of the heroine). In the story of A.P. Chekhov's Kiss, a stranger who mistakenly kissed Ryabovich in a dark room, remains unrecognized by him. The signs that he remembered are too vague: “Ryabovich stopped in thought ... At that time, unexpectedly for him, hurried steps were heard in the rustling of a dress, a woman’s breathless voice whispered “finally!”, And two soft, odorous, undoubtedly female hands seized him neck a warm cheek was pressed against his cheek and at the same time there was a sound of a kiss. But at once the kisser gave a little cry and, as it seemed to Ryabovitch, jumped away from him in disgust. Who exactly was she It doesn't matter in the context of the story. After all, this is an unintentional episode from a lonely life, which only emphasized the futility of the hero's dream of happiness and love, and not an entertaining story with dressing up.

Often, in one form or another, the idea is expressed about the gradual development of the mastery of detail in the history of literature and about the special virtuosity of modern writing in this regard (meaning, of course, the authors of the "first row"). So, Y. Olesha, who highly appreciated the language of the new art - cinema, found a “close-up” in Pushkin, considering it a breakthrough in the poetics of the future: “... there are some lines that the poet of that era seems simply incomprehensible to have:

From point of view theoretical poetics, clarifying the properties of the artistic image as such, the taste for detail, for fine (not clumsy) work unites artists, no matter what time they live (what kind of detail is another question). Therefore, to confirm the theses, you can cite a variety of material. A.A. Potebnya, developing the theory of the image by analogy with the “internal form” of the word, turned to Ukrainian folklore and Russian classics of the 19th century. (“From Notes on the Theory of Literature”). V.B. Shklovsky discovered the methods of “estrangement” and “difficult form” (which he considered the attributes of poetic language) in the novels and stories of L.N. Tolstoy and in folk riddles, fairy tales (“On the theory of prose”). In both of these works, there is no detail as a term, but the problem itself is in the focus of attention.

In the works of folklorists, antiques, and medievalists, no less is said about detailing than in studies of, say, the work of L.N. Tolstoy, N.V. Gogol, A.P. Chekhov, I.A. Bunina, V.V. Nabokov. Thus, F. I. Buslaev notes the predilection of the heroic epic for trifles: “The singer’s always calm and clear gaze stops with equal attention both on Olympus, where the gods sit, and on the bloody battle that decides the fate of the world, and on little things that are barely noticeable when describing household utensils or weapons. Epic poetry is unhurried and teaches “patience with its constant repetitions, which seemed to be just as impossible and unnatural to miss as to throw out of life a day of waiting before joy, or - from the path of monotony; different field in front of a beautiful view” 2 . To Homer, “every little thing ... is precious. He often resorts to such descriptions, not embarrassed by the fact that they j delay the development of the action. As a result, a deliberate delay is obtained - retardation...<...>The most... remarkable is the description of the scar on Odysseus's leg in the XIX song of the Odyssey. Surprising is the wealth of not only comparisons that introduce new images (in particular, descriptions of nature), but also epithets, with all the inclination of the epic to constant epithets. Homer's Achilles is not only "swift-footed": he was "assigned 46 epithets, Odysseus - 45" 3 . The poetics of the heroic epic is completely different from the individual styles of the "slow" novels - Ortega y Gasset's favorite reading (where a completely different, psychological detailing, retardation perform other functions). But everywhere before us is the language of art - detail language.

The classification of details repeats the structure of the objective world, which is composed of “different-quality components” - events, actions of characters, their portraits, psychological and speech characteristics, landscape, interior, etc. At the same time, in given some kind (kinds) of details may be absent in the work, which emphasizes the conventionality of its world.

In literary description stylerelated details are often combined. A successful experience of such a typology was proposed by A.B. Yesin, who singled out three large groups: details plot, descriptive, psychological. The predominance of one type or another gives rise to a corresponding property, or dominant, style:“plotting” (“Taras Bulba” by Gogol), “descriptiveness” (“Dead Souls”), “psychologism” (“Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky); these properties "may not exclude each other within the same work."

So the details can be given in opposition, "dispute" with each other. But they can, on the contrary, form an ensemble, creating in aggregate a single and holistic impression - for example, luxury items that adorned the "study / Philosopher at eighteen" (in the first chapter of "Eugene Onegin"). E.S. Dobin proposed a typology of details based on the criterion: singularity/many, and used different terms to designate the distinguished types: "Detail affects a lot. Detail tends to be singular. It replaces a number of details. Let us recall Karenin's ears, the curls of hair on Anna's neck, the short upper lip with mustaches of the little princess, Andrei Bolkonsky's wife, the radiant eyes of Princess Marya, Captain Tushin's invariable pipe, the significant wrinkles on the forehead of the diplomat Bilibin, etc. The detail is intense. The details are extensive." Further, the researcher stipulates that the difference between detail and detail is “only in the degree of conciseness and compaction” and that it is “not absolute”, there are “transitional forms” 1 .

Transitional forms are, of course, in any classification, but they are not its essence. In our opinion, the very attraction to "singularity" or to "multitude" requires explanation, is a consequence of the different functions of detail and detail (in Dobin's terms). If you think about the examples of “details” given by him, a pattern can be traced: not just characteristic features that represent the whole through its part (the principle of synecdoche) are highlighted. Named something that hints at a certain contradiction in the subject, which, it would seem, is completely optional for: him - therefore, the detail is both noticeable and not lost in the multitude of “details”. And it is expressive, that is, if it is read correctly, the reader joins the author's system of values.

Detail that contributes to the image dissonance, or, to use Shklovsky's well-known term, "strange" detail, has a huge cognitive meaning. It seems to invite the reader to take a closer look at the subject, not to skim over the surface of phenomena. Falling out of the row, out of the ensemble, she attracts attention- like two armchairs in the Manilovs' living room, upholstered "just with matting" and betraying a non-owner in him, a person playing the role of a host: Manilov "for several years every time warned his guest with the words:" Do not sit on these chairs, they are not yet ready " . Introducing a "strange" detail, writers often resort to hyperbole. The visibility of a detail, to some extent contrasting with the general background, contributes to composition techniques: repetitions, close-ups, editing, retardations, etc.. Repeating and acquiring additional meanings, item becomes motive (leitmotif ), often grows up in symbol . If at first it surprises, then, appearing in new "clutches", already explains character. In The Idiot by Dostoevsky, the reader (as well as General Yepanchin) may at first find it strange that Myshkin is able to imitate handwriting. However, after reading the entire novel, it becomes clear that Myshkin's main talent is understanding different characters, different styles of behavior, and reproducing writing styles (in the old sense of the word) - a hint of this.

The symbolic detail can be placed in title works(usually small forms): "Gooseberry" A.P. Chekhov, "Easy breathing" by I.A. Bunin, "Snow" K.G. Paustovsky. the detail(as understood by Dobin) closer to sign, than to a symbol, its appearance in the text evokes, first of all, the joy of recognition, arousing a stable chain of associations. Details-signs are designed for a certain horizon of the reader's expectations, for his ability to decipher this or that cultural code. So, the reader of "Eugene Onegin", getting together with Tatyana into the "fashionable cell" of her idol, can confidently judge Onegin's hobbies and mindsets based on the decoration of his office. A few strokes-signs replace a long description: "... and Lord Byron's portrait, / And a column with a cast-iron doll / Under a hat, with a cloudy brow, / With hands clenched in a cross."

When a historian of literature reconstructs life, everyday life, tastes of a society that is already far from us, such signs are systematized, this is the “bread” of commentators. And, perhaps more than the classics, the details-marks delivers fiction, keeping pace with its time (and not overtaking it), quickly responding to the topic of the day, fashion in all areas, "cultural news".

The picture of the depicted world is made up of individual artistic details. By artistic detail we will understand the smallest pictorial or expressive artistic detail: an element of a landscape or portrait, a separate thing, an act, a psychological movement, etc. Being an element of an artistic whole, the detail itself is the smallest image, a micro-image. At the same time a detail almost always forms part of a larger image; it is formed by details, folding into “blocks”: for example, the habit of not waving your arms when walking, dark eyebrows and mustaches with blond hair, eyes that did not laugh - all these micro-images add up to a “block "a larger image - a portrait of Pechorin, which, in turn, merges into an even larger image - a holistic image of a person.

For ease of analysis, artistic details can be divided into several groups. Details come first external And psychological. External details, as it is easy to guess from their name, draw us the external, objective existence of people, their appearance and habitat. External details, in turn, are divided into portrait, landscape and real. Psychological details depict the inner world of a person for us, these are separate mental movements: thoughts, feelings, experiences, desires, etc.

External and psychological details are not separated by an impenetrable boundary. So, an external detail becomes psychological if it conveys, expresses certain mental movements (in this case we are talking about a psychological portrait) or is included in the course of the hero’s thoughts and experiences (for example, a real ax and the image of this ax in Raskolnikov’s mental life).

By the nature of the artistic impact, they differ details-details And symbol details. Details act in mass, describing an object or phenomenon from all conceivable sides, a symbolic detail is single, trying to grasp the essence of the phenomenon at once, highlighting the main thing in it. In this regard, the modern literary critic E. Dobin proposes to separate details and details, believing that the detail is artistically higher than the detail. However, this is hardly the case. Both the principle of using artistic details are equivalent, each of them is good in its place. Here, for example, is the use of detail-detail in the description of the interior in Plyushkin's house: “On the bureau ... lay a lot of all sorts of things: a bunch of finely written pieces of paper, covered with a green marble press with an egg on top, some old book bound in leather with a red edge, a lemon , all dried up, no more than a hazelnut, a broken armchair, a glass with some kind of liquid and three flies, covered with a letter, a piece of sealing wax, a piece of a rag raised somewhere, two feathers stained with ink, dried up, as in consumption, a toothpick , completely yellowed. Here Gogol needs just a lot of details in order to reinforce the impression of senseless stinginess, pettiness and wretchedness of the hero's life. Detail-detail also creates a special persuasiveness in the descriptions of the objective world. With the help of details-details, complex psychological states are also transmitted, here this principle of using a detail is indispensable. The symbolic detail has its advantages, it is convenient to express the general impression of an object or phenomenon in it, with its help the general psychological tone is well captured. The detail-symbol often conveys with great clarity the author's attitude to the depicted - such, for example, is Oblomov's dressing gown in Goncharov's novel.

Let us now turn to a concrete consideration of the varieties of artistic details.

Let's start with the properties of the depicted world. The depicted world in a work of art means that conditionally similar to the real world picture of reality that the writer draws: people, things, nature, actions, experiences, etc.

In a work of art, a model of the real world is created, as it were. This model in the works of each writer is unique; the depicted worlds in different works of art are extremely diverse and can be more or less similar to the real world.

But in any case, it should be remembered that before us is an artistic reality created by the writer, which is not identical to the primary reality.

The picture of the depicted world is made up of individual artistic details. By artistic detail we will understand the smallest pictorial or expressive artistic detail: an element of a landscape or portrait, a separate thing, an act, a psychological movement, etc.

Being an element of the artistic whole, the detail itself is the smallest image, a micro-image. At the same time, the detail almost always forms part of a larger image; it is formed by details, folding into “blocks”: for example, the habit of not waving your arms when walking, dark eyebrows and mustaches with fair hair, eyes that did not laugh - all these micro-images add up to a “block” of a larger image - a portrait of Pechorin, which , in turn, merges into an even larger image - a holistic image of a person.

For ease of analysis, artistic details can be divided into several groups. First of all, external and psychological details stand out. External details, as it is easy to guess from their name, draw us the external, objective existence of people, their appearance and habitat.

External details, in turn, are divided into portrait, landscape and real. Psychological details depict the inner world of a person for us, these are separate mental movements: thoughts, feelings, experiences, desires, etc.

External and psychological details are not separated by an impenetrable boundary. So, an external detail becomes psychological if it conveys, expresses certain mental movements (in this case we are talking about a psychological portrait) or is included in the course of the hero’s thoughts and experiences (for example, a real ax and the image of this ax in Raskolnikov’s mental life).

By the nature of the artistic impact, details-details and details-symbols are distinguished. Details act in mass, describing an object or phenomenon from all conceivable sides, a symbolic detail is single, trying to grasp the essence of the phenomenon at once, highlighting the main thing in it.

In this regard, the modern literary critic E. Dobin proposes to separate details and details, believing that the detail is artistically higher than the detail. However, this is hardly the case. Both the principle of using artistic details are equivalent, each of them is good in its place.

Here, for example, is the use of detail-detail in the description of the interior in Plyushkin's house: “At the bureau ... lay a lot of all sorts of things: a bunch of finely written pieces of paper, covered with a green marble press with an egg on top, some old book bound in leather with a red edge , a lemon, all dried up, no larger than a hazelnut, a broken armchair, a glass with some liquid and three flies, covered with a letter, a piece of sealing wax, a piece of a rag raised somewhere, two feathers stained with ink, dried up, as in consumption , toothpick, completely yellowed.

Here Gogol needs just a lot of details in order to reinforce the impression of senseless stinginess, pettiness and wretchedness of the hero's life.

Detail-detail also creates a special persuasiveness in the descriptions of the objective world. With the help of details-details, complex psychological states are also transmitted, here this principle of using a detail is indispensable.

The symbolic detail has its advantages, it is convenient to express the general impression of an object or phenomenon in it, with its help the general psychological tone is well captured. The detail-symbol often conveys with great clarity the author's attitude to the depicted - such, for example, is Oblomov's dressing gown in Goncharov's novel.

Let us now turn to a concrete consideration of the varieties of artistic details.

Esin A.B. Principles and methods of analysis of a literary work. - M., 1998