Artistic space and artistic time. Artistic time and artistic space in a work

Artistic space and time (chronotope)- space and time depicted by the writer in a work of art; reality in its space-time coordinates.

Artistic time- this is the order, the sequence of action in thin air. work.

Space is a collection of little things in which an artistic hero lives.

Logically connecting time and space create a chronotope. Every writer and poet has his own favorite chronotopes. Everything is subject to this time, both heroes and objects and verbal actions. And yet, the main character always comes to the fore in the work. The greater the writer or poet, the more interesting they describe both space and time, each with their own specific artistic techniques.

The main features of space in literary work:

  1. It does not have immediate sensory authenticity, material density, or clarity.
  2. It is perceived by the reader associatively.

The main signs of time in a literary work:

  1. Greater specificity, immediate authenticity.
  2. The writer’s desire to bring fiction and real time closer together.
  3. Concepts of movement and stillness.
  4. Correlation between past, present and future.
Images of artistic time a brief description of Example
1. Biographical Childhood, youth, maturity, old age "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth" L.N. Tolstoy
2. Historical Characteristics of the change of eras, generations, major events in the life of society "Fathers and Sons" by I.S. Turgenev, “What to do” N.G. Chernyshevsky
3. Space The idea of ​​eternity and universal history "The Master and Margarita" M.A. Bulgakov
4. Calendar

Change of seasons, everyday life and holidays

Russian folk tales
5. Daily allowance Day and night, morning and evening "The Bourgeois in the Nobility" J.B. Moliere

Category of artistic time in literature

In different systems of knowledge, there are various ideas about time: scientific-philosophical, scientific-physical, theological, everyday, etc. The multiplicity of approaches to identifying the phenomenon of time has given rise to ambiguity in its interpretation. Matter exists only in movement, and movement is the essence of time, the comprehension of which is largely determined by the cultural make-up of the era. Thus, historically, in the cultural consciousness of mankind, two ideas about time have developed: cyclical and linear. The concept of cyclical time dates back to antiquity. It was perceived as a sequence of similar events, the source of which was seasonal cycles. Characteristic features were considered completeness, repetition of events, the idea of ​​return, and indistinguishability between beginning and end. With the advent of Christianity, time began to appear to human consciousness in the form of a straight line, the vector of movement of which is directed (through the relationship to the present) from the past to the future. Linear type time is characterized by one-dimensionality, continuity, irreversibility, orderliness, its movement is perceived in the form of duration and sequence of processes and states of the surrounding world.

However, along with the objective, there is also a subjective perception of time, which, as a rule, depends on the rhythm of the events taking place and on the characteristics emotional state. In this regard, objective time is identified, which relates to the sphere of objectively existing outside world, and perceptual - to the sphere of perception of reality by an individual person. Thus, the past seems longer if it is rich in events, while in the present it is the other way around: the more meaningful its filling, the more imperceptible its progress. The waiting time for a desirable event is tediously lengthening, and the waiting time for an undesirable event is painfully shortening. Thus, time, having an impact on mental condition of a person, determines his course of life. This happens indirectly, through experience, thanks to which a system of units of measurement of time periods (second, minute, hour, day, day, week, month, year, century) is established in the human mind. In this case, the present acts as a constant point of reference, which divides the course of life into the past and the future. Literature, compared to other forms of art, can most freely handle real time. Thus, at the will of the author, a shift in time perspective is possible: the past appears as the present, the future as the past, etc. Thus, subject to the artist’s creative plan, the chronological sequence of events can reveal itself not only in typical, but also, in conflict with the real flow of time, in individual author’s manifestations. Thus, the modeling of artistic time may depend on genre-specific features and trends in literature. For example, in prose works usually the present tense of the narrator is conventionally established, which correlates with the narration about the past or future of the characters, with the characteristics of situations in various time dimensions. The multidirectionality and reversibility of artistic time is characteristic of modernism, in the depths of which the novel of the “stream of consciousness”, the novel of “one day” is born, where time becomes only a component of human psychological existence.

In individual artistic manifestations, the passage of time can be intentionally slowed down by the author, compressed, collapsed (actualization of instantaneity) or completely stopped (in the depiction of a portrait, landscape, in the author’s philosophical reflections). It can be multidimensional in works with intersecting or parallel storylines. Fiction, which belongs to the group of dynamic arts, is characterized by temporal discreteness, i.e. the ability to reproduce the most significant fragments, filling the resulting “voids” with formulas such as: “several days have passed,” “a year has passed,” etc. However, the idea of ​​time is determined not only artistic design the author, but also the picture of the world within which he creates. For example, in ancient Russian literature, as noted by D.S. Likhachev, there is not such an egocentric perception of time as in the literature of the 18th - 19th centuries. “The past was somewhere ahead, at the beginning of events, a number of which did not correlate with the subject who perceived it. "Backward" events were events of the present or future." Time was characterized by isolation, unidirectionality, strict adherence to the real sequence of events, constant appeal to the eternal: “Medieval literature strives for the timeless, to overcome time in the image higher manifestations being - the divine establishment of the universe." Along with event time, which is an immanent property of the work, there is author time. “The author-creator moves freely in his time: he can begin his story from the end, from the middle and from any moment of the events depicted, without destroying the objective flow of time.”

The author's time changes depending on whether he takes part in the events depicted or not. In the first case, the author’s time moves independently, having its own storyline. In the second, it is motionless, as if concentrated at one point. The time of the event and the time of the author may diverge significantly. This happens when the author either overtakes the flow of the narrative or lags behind, i.e. follows on the heels of events. There may be a significant time gap between the time of the story and the time of the author. In this case, the author writes either from memories - his own or someone else's.

IN literary text Both writing time and perception time are taken into account. Therefore, the author’s time is inseparable from the reader’s time. Literature as a form of verbal and figurative art presupposes the presence of an addressee. Usually, reading time is an actual (“natural”) duration. But sometimes the reader can directly become involved in the artistic fabric of the work, for example, acting as the “narrator’s interlocutor.” In this case, the reader's time is depicted. “Reading time depicted can be long or short, consistent or inconsistent, fast or slow, intermittent or continuous. It is mostly depicted as the future, but it can be present and even past.”

The nature of performing time is quite peculiar. It, as Likhachev notes, merges with the time of the author and the time of the reader. Essentially, it is the present, i.e. the time of performance of a particular work. Thus, in literature one of the manifestations of artistic time is grammatical time. It can be represented using tense forms of the verb, lexical units with temporal semantics, case forms with the meaning of time, chronological marks, syntactic constructions that create a certain time plan (for example, nominative sentences represent the plan of the present in the text).

Bakhtin M.M.: “Signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time.” The scientist distinguishes two types of biographical time. The first, under the influence of Aristotle’s doctrine of entelechy (from the Greek “completion”, “fulfillment”), calls “characterological inversion”, based on which the completed maturity of character is the true beginning of development. Image human life is given not within the framework of analytical enumeration of certain traits and characteristics (virtues and vices), but through the disclosure of character (actions, deeds, speech and other manifestations). The second type is analytical, in which all biographical material divided into: public and family life, behavior in war, attitude towards friends, virtues and vices, appearance, etc. The biography of a hero according to this scheme consists of events and incidents at different times, since a certain trait or character property is confirmed most striking examples from life, not necessarily having a chronological sequence. However, the fragmentation of the time biographical series does not exclude the integrity of character.

MM. Bakhtin also identifies folk-mythological time, which is a cyclical structure that goes back to the idea of ​​eternal repetition. Time is deeply localized, completely inseparable “from the signs of native Greek nature and the signs of “second nature”, i.e. will accept native regions, cities, states.” Folk-mythological time in its main manifestations is characteristic of an idyllic chronotope with a strictly limited and closed space.

Artistic time is determined genre specifics works, artistic method, the author's ideas, as well as those in line with which literary movement or directions this work was created. Therefore, the forms of artistic time are characterized by variability and diversity. “All changes in artistic time add up to a certain general line of its development associated with common line development of verbal art in general” The perception of time and space is comprehended in a certain way by a person precisely with the help of language.

In ancient times, when myth was a way of explaining and understanding the surrounding reality, special performances about time and space, which subsequently had noticeable influence on literature and art. Peace in the mind ancient man was divided primarily into two parts - ordinary and sacred. They were endowed with different properties: the first was considered ordinary, everyday, and the second - unpredictably wonderful. Because actions mythical heroes consisted in their movement from one type of space-time to another, from the ordinary to the miraculous and back, insofar as they happened to them on their travels incredible adventures, since miracles can happen in an unusual world.

Illustration by G. Doré for “ Divine Comedy» Dante A.

Illustration by G. Kalinovsky for L. Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland.”

Drawing by A. de Saint-Exupéry for the fairy tale “The Little Prince”.

“It was - it wasn’t; a long time ago; in some kingdom; set off on a journey; whether long or short; soon the tale is told, not soon the deed is done; I was there, drinking mead beer; this is the end of the fairy tale” - try to fill the gaps with the actions of any characters, and, most likely, you will end up with a complete literary work, the genre of which is already determined by the use of these words themselves - a fairy tale. Obvious inconsistencies and incredible events will not confuse anyone: this is how it should be in a fairy tale. But if you take a closer look, it turns out that the fabulous “arbitrariness” has its own strict laws. They are determined, like all fairy tale miracles, by the unusual properties of space and time in which the fairy tale unfolds. First of all, the time of a fairy tale is limited by the plot. “When the plot ends, time also ends,” writes academician D. S. Likhachev. For a fairy tale, the actual passage of time turns out to be unimportant. The formula “how long, how short” indicates that one of the main characteristics of fairy-tale time is still its uncertainty. Like, in fact, the uncertainty of fairy-tale space: “go there, I don’t know where.” All the events that happen to the hero are stretched along his path in search of “that thing I don’t know what.”

The events of a fairy tale can be drawn out (“he sat in the seat for thirty and three years”), or they can accelerate to the point of instantaneity (“threw a comb and a dense forest grew”). Acceleration of action occurs, as a rule, outside of real space, in fantastic space, where the hero has magical assistants or miraculous means that help him cope with this fantastic space and the wonderful time merged with it.

Unlike fairy tales and myths, the fiction of modern times, as a rule, deals with history and describes a certain, specific era - the past or the present. But here, too, there are their own space-time laws. Literature selects only the most essential from reality and shows the development of events over time. The vital logic of the narrative is decisive for an epic work, but nevertheless, the writer is not obliged to consistently and mechanically record the life of his hero, even in such a progressive genre as a chronicle novel. Years can pass between the lines of a work; the reader, at the will of the author, within one phrase is able to move to another part of the world. We all remember Pushkin’s line from “ Bronze Horseman": “A hundred years have passed..." - but we hardly pay attention to the fact that a whole century flashed here in one moment of our reading. The same time flows differently for the hero of a work of art, for the author-storyteller and for the reader. With amazing simplicity, A. S. Pushkin writes in Dubrovsky: “Several time passed without any remarkable incident.” Here, as in the chronicles, time is event-based; it is counted from event to event. If nothing necessary for the development of the plot happens, then the writer “turns off” time, just like a chess player who has made a move turns off his watch. And sometimes he can take advantage of hourglass, turning events around and forcing them to move from the denouement to the beginning. The originality of a novel, story, story is largely determined by the relationship between two times: the time of telling and the time of action. The time of storytelling is the time in which the narrator himself lives, in which he conducts his story; the time of action is the time of the heroes. And we, the readers, perceive all this from our real, calendar, today. Russian classics usually talk about events that happened in the recent past. And in what exact past is not entirely clear. We can only speak with certain certainty about this time distance when we are dealing with a historical novel in which N.V. Gogol writes about Taras Bulba, A.S. Pushkin about Pugachev, and Yu.N. Tynyanov about Pushkin. A gullible reader sometimes identifies the author and the narrator, posing as an eyewitness, a witness, or even a participant in the events. The narrator is a kind of starting point. He may be separated from the author by a significant time distance (Pushkin - Grinev); it can also be located at different distances from what is being described, and depending on this, the reader’s field of vision expands or narrows.

The events of the epic novel unfold over a long period of time over a vast space; the story and story are usually more compact. One of the most common settings for the works of N.V. Gogol, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.P. Chekhov, A.M. Gorky is a small provincial town or village with an established way of life, with minor events that are repeated from time to time. day after day, and then sleepy time seems to move in a circle on a limited area.

In Soviet literature art space works are distinguished by significant diversity. In accordance with the individual experience and preferences of certain writers, there is an attachment to specific place actions. Thus, among representatives of the stylistic movement called village prose (V.I. Belov, V.P. Astafiev, V.G. Rasputin, B.A. Mozhaev, V.N. Krupin, etc.), the action of novels, stories , the stories unfold primarily in rural areas. For writers such as Yu. V. Trifonov, D. A. Granin, G. V. Semenov, R. T. Kireev, V. S. Makanin, A. A. Prokhanov and others, the characteristic setting is the city, and therefore the works of these writers are often called urban stories, which determines the characters, situations, and mode of action, thoughts, and experiences of their characters. Sometimes it is important for writers to emphasize the specific definition of the space of their works. Following M. A. Sholokhov, V. A. Zakrutkin, A. V. Kalinin and other Rostov writers showed their commitment to “Don” issues in their works. For S. P. Zalygin, V. G. Rasputin, G. M. Markov, V. P. Astafiev, S. V. Sartakov, A. V. Vampilov and a number of Siberian writers, it is fundamentally important that the action of many of their works takes place in Siberia; for V.V. Bykov, I.P. Melezh, I.P. Shamyakin, A.M. Adamovich, I.G. Chigrinov, the artistic space is mainly Belarus, as for N.V. Dumbadze - Georgia, and for J . Avijusa - Lithuania... At the same time, for example, for Ch. Aitmatov there are no such spatial restrictions in artistic creativity: the action of his works is transferred from Kyrgyzstan to Chukotka, then to Russia and Kazakhstan, to America and into space, even to the fictional planet Lesnaya Grud; this gives the artist’s generalizations a universal, planetary, worldwide character. On the contrary, the moods that permeate the lyrics of N. M. Rubtsov, A. Ya. Yashin, O. A. Fokina could arise and be natural in the northern Russian, or more precisely, the Vologda village, which allows the authors to poetize their “ small homeland"with its way of life, primordial traditions, customs, folklore images and folk peasant language.

A distinctive feature noticed by many researchers of the work of F. M. Dostoevsky is the unusual speed of action in his novels. Every phrase in Dostoevsky’s works seems to begin with the word “suddenly,” every moment can become a turning point, change everything, end in disaster. In Crime and Punishment, time rushes like a hurricane, showing a broad picture of the life of Russia, while in fact the events of two weeks take place in several St. Petersburg streets and alleys, in Raskolnikov’s cramped closet, on the back stairs of apartment buildings.

The spatiotemporal characteristics of a work of art, as a rule, differ significantly from those familiar qualities that we encounter in Everyday life or we meet in physics lessons. The space of a work of art can bend and close on itself, can be limited, have an end, and the individual parts of which it consists have, as we have already seen, various properties. Three dimensions - length, width and depth - are violated and confused in such a way that they combine incompatible things in the real world. Sometimes space can be inverted in relation to reality or constantly changes its properties - it stretches, contracts, distorts proportions individual parts and so on.

The properties of special, as literary theorists call it, artistic time are also unpredictable; sometimes it may seem that, as in L. Carroll’s fairy tale “Alice in Wonderland,” it has “gone crazy.” A story or story without any difficulty can take us both to the times of Vladimir the Red Sun and to the 21st century. Together with the heroes of an adventure novel, we can travel the whole world or, at the will of a science fiction writer, visit the mysterious Solaris.

Drama has the most stringent laws: within one stage episode, the time required to depict the action is equal to the time that is depicted. It is not for nothing that the rules of the theorists of classicism affected primarily dramaturgy. The desire to give the stage work greater credibility and integrity gave rise to the famous law of three unities: the duration of the play should not exceed one day, the space was limited to a single place of action, and the action itself was concentrated around one character. In modern drama, the movement of characters in space and time is not limited, and only from a change of scenery (the viewer), the author's remarks (the reader), and from the characters' remarks do we learn about the changes that occurred between acts.

The most free travel in time and space is the privilege of lyrics. “Worlds are flying. The years fly by” (A. A. Blok), “the centuries flow by in moments” (A. Bely); “And time is gone, and space is gone” (A. A. Akhmatova), and the poet is free, looking out the window, to ask: “What kind of millennium is it, dear ones, in our yard?” (B. L. Pasternak). In a capacious poetic image eras and worlds fit. With one phrase, the poet is able to reshape space and time as he sees fit.

In other cases, artistic time requires greater certainty and specificity ( historical novel, biographical narrative, memoirs, artistic and journalistic essay). One of the significant phenomena of modern Soviet literature is the so-called military prose (works by Yu. V. Bondarev, V. V. Bykov, G. Ya. Baklanov, N. D. Kondratyev, V. O. Bogomolov, I. F. Stadnyuk, V.V. Karpova and others), largely autobiographical, refers to the time of the Great Patriotic War in order to, recreating the feat Soviet people who defeated fascism, put on an exciting modern reader universal human moral, social, psychological, philosophical problems, important to us today. Therefore, even limiting artistic time (as well as space) allows us to expand the possibilities of art in cognition and understanding of life.

Time and space (chronotope) serve as constructive principles for organizing a literary work. Because the art world in the work is conditional, to the extent that time and space are in it too conditional . In literature, the immateriality of images, discovered by Lessing, gives them, i.e. images, the right to move instantly from one space and time to another. In a work, the author can depict events occurring simultaneously both in different places and in different time, with one caveat: “Meanwhile...” or “And on the other side of the city...”.

In Russia, the problems of formal “spatiality” in art, artistic time and artistic space and their monolithic nature in literature, as well as forms of time, chronotope in the novel, individual images of space, the influence of rhythm on space and time, etc. were consistently dealt with by P.A. Florensky, M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, V.N. Toporov, groups of scientists from Leningrad, Novosibirsk, etc.

Time in a work of art - the duration, sequence and correlation of its events, based on their cause-and-effect, linear or associative relationship. Time in the text has clearly defined or rather blurred boundaries, which may or, on the contrary, not be indicated in the work in relation to historical time or time conventionally established by the author.

A comparison of real time and artistic time reveals their differences. The topological properties of real time in the macroworld are one-dimensionality, continuity, irreversibility, orderliness. In artistic time, all these properties are transformed. It may be multidimensional. Two axes can appear in a text - the axis of storytelling and the axis of described events. This makes time shifts possible. Unidirectionality and irreversibility are also not characteristic of artistic time: the real sequence of events is often disrupted in the text. Therefore artistic time multidirectional And reversible . One of the techniques is retrospection, turning to events of the past. In relation to the time depicted in a literary work, researchers use the term discreteness , since literature turns out to be capable of not reproducing the entire flow of time, but selecting the most significant fragments from it, indicating gaps with verbal formulas, such as “Spring has come again...”, or as is done in one of the works of I.S. Turgenev: “Lavretsky spent the winter in Moscow, and in the spring next year news reached him that Lisa had cut her hair<…>" The selection of episodes is determined by the aesthetic intentions of the author, hence the possibility of compressing or expanding plot time.

The nature of the conventions of time and space depends from the type of literature. Their maximum manifestation is found in the lyrics , where the image of space can be completely absent (A.A. Akhmatova “You are my letter, dear, don’t crumple ...”), manifest allegorically through other images (A.S. Pushkin “Prophet”,
M.Yu. Lermontov “Sail”), open up in specific spaces, realities surrounding the hero (for example, a typically Russian landscape in the poem by S.A. Yesenin “ White birch"), or is built in a certain way through oppositions that are significant not only for romantics: civilization and nature, “crowd” and “I” (I.A. Brodsky “March is coming. I am serving again...”). With the predominance of the grammatical present in the lyrics, which actively interacts with the future and past (A.A. Akhmatova “The Devil did not give it away. I succeeded in everything...”), the category of time can become philosophical leitmotif poems (F.I. Tyutchev “Having rolled down the mountain, the stone lay in the valley ...”), is thought of as always existing (F.I. Tyutchev “Wave and Thought”) or momentary and instantaneous (I.F. Annensky “The Longing of Transience” ) – to possess abstractness .

Conditional forms of existence real world– time and space – some strive to preserve general properties in drama . Explaining the functioning of these forms in this type of literature, V.E. Khalizev, in a monograph on drama, comes to the conclusion: “No matter how significant the role narrative fragments acquire in dramatic works, no matter how fragmented the depicted action is, no matter how the characters’ spoken statements are subordinated to the logic of their inner speech, drama is committed to being closed in space and time. paintings" (Khalizev, V.E. Drama as a kind of literature / V.E. Khalizev. - M., 1986. - P. 46.). IN epic In this type of literature, the fragmentation of time and space, their transitions from one state to another become possible thanks to the narrator - an intermediary between the life depicted and the readers. The narrator and storytellers can “compress”, “stretch” and “stop” time in numerous descriptions and discussions. Something similar happens in the works of I. Goncharov, N. Gogol,
G. Fielding.

In a work of art, different aspects of artistic time are correlated: plot time and fable time, author’s time and the subjective time of the characters. It presents different manifestations(forms) of time – everyday and historical time, personal time and social time. The focus of the writer’s attention may be the image of time itself, associated with the motive of movement, development, formation, with the opposition of the passing and the eternal.

Literary works are permeated with temporal and spatial ideas, infinitely diverse and deeply significant. There are images of time here biographical (childhood, youth, maturity, old age), historical (major events in the life of society), space (idea of ​​eternity and universal history), calendar (change of seasons, everyday life and holidays), daily allowance (day and night, morning and evening), as well as the idea of ​​movement and stillness, the relationship between past, present and future.

In a literary text, time is not only event-based, but also conceptual: the flow of time as a whole and its individual segments are divided, evaluated, and comprehended by the author, narrator, or characters.

The conceptualization of time is manifested:

1) in the assessments and comments of the narrator or character;

2) in the use of tropes that characterize different signs of time;

3) in subjective perception and division of the time flow in accordance with the starting point adopted in the narrative;

4) in the contrast of different time plans and aspects of time in the structure of the text.

Art space a text is a spatial organization of its events, a system of spatial images inextricably linked with the temporal organization of the work.

The space modeled in the text can be open And closed . For example, the contrast between these two types of space in the poem by A.S. Pushkin's "Prisoner". Space can be represented in text as expanding or tapering in relation to the character.

By degree of generality spatial characteristics differentiate specific space and space abstract (not related to specific local indicators). Abstract is an artistic space that can be perceived as universal, without any pronounced specificity. This form of recreation of universal content, extended to the entire “human race”, manifests itself in the genres of parables, fables, fairy tales, as well as in works of utopian or fantastic perception of the world and special genre modifications - dystopias. Thus, it does not have a significant impact on the characters and behavior of the characters, on the essence of the conflict; the space in the ballads of V. Zhukovsky, F. Schiller, the short stories of E. Poe, and the literature of modernism is not subject to the author’s comprehension.

The specific artistic space in a work actively influences the essence of what is depicted. In particular, Moscow in the comedy by A.S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”, Zamoskvorechye in dramas by A.N. Ostrovsky and novels by I.S. Shmeleva, Paris in the works of O. de Balzac are artistic images, since they are not only toponyms and urban realities depicted in the works. Here they are a specific artistic space that develops a common psychological picture Moscow nobility; recreating Christian world order; revealing different aspects of life inhabitants of European cities; definite way of life existence - a way of being. Sensibly perceived (A.A. Potebnya) space acts as “noble nests” style sign novels by I. Turgenev, generalized ideas about a provincial Russian city are developed in the prose of A. Chekhov. Symbolization space, emphasized by a fictitious toponym, preserved the national and historical component in prose
M. Saltykova-Shchedrin (“The History of a City”), A. Platonova (“City of Grads”).

Analysis of spatial relationships in a work of art assumes:

2) identifying the nature of these positions (dynamic - static) in their connection from a time point of view;

3) determination of the main spatial characteristics of the work (location of action and its changes, movement of the character, type of space, etc.);

4) consideration of the main spatial images of the work;

5) characteristics of speech means expressing spatial relationships.

Awareness of the relationship between space and time made it possible to identify the category of chronotope (M. Bakhtin), reflecting their unity. In the monograph “Questions of Literature and Aesthetics,” M. Bakhtin wrote the following about the synthesis of space and time: “In the literary and artistic chronotope, there is a merging of spatial and temporal signs into a meaningful and concrete whole. Time here thickens, becomes denser, becomes artistically visible; space is intensified, drawn into the movement of time, plot, history. Examples of time are revealed in space, and space is conceptualized and measured by time. This intersection of series and mergers of signs is characterized artistic chronotope. <…>Chronotope as a formal and meaningful category determines (to a large extent) the image of a person in literature; this image is always essentially chronotopic.”

Let us consider the ways of expressing spatial relationships in I. Bunin’s story “Easy Breathing” (the experience of consideration by N.A. Nikolina).

In the structure of the narrative, three main spatial points of view are distinguished - the narrator, Olya Meshcherskaya and the class lady. All points of view in the text are brought closer to each other by repetition of lexemes cold, fresh and derivatives from them. Their correlation creates an oxymoronic image of life and death. The alternation of heterogeneous time periods is reflected in changes in spatial characteristics and a change in the scene of action.

Cemetery – gymnasium garden – cathedral street– boss’s office – station – garden – glass veranda – Cathedral Street – Cemetery – Gymnasium Garden . Repetitions organize the beginning and end of the work and form a circular composition of the plot. At the same time, the elements of this series enter into antonymic relationships. First of all, open space and closed space are contrasted. Spatial images are also contrasted with each other: a grave, a cross on it, a cemetery (they develop the motive of death) - the spring wind (an image traditionally associated with the motives of will, life, open space).

Bunin uses the technique of comparing narrowing and expanding spaces. The tragic events in the heroine’s life are associated with the shrinking space around her (see, for example: ... a Cossack officer, ugly and plebeian in appearance... shot her on the station platform, among a large crowd of people...). The cross-cutting images of the story that dominate the text are images of the wind and easy breathing– are associated with expanding (in the finale to infinity) space ( now this easy breath scattered again in the world, in this cloudy world, in this cold spring wind).

“Each type of art is characterized by its own type of chronotope, determined by its “matter.” In accordance with this, the arts are divided into: spatial, in the chronotope of which temporal qualities are expressed in spatial forms; temporary, where spatial parameters are “shifted” to temporary coordinates; and spatiotemporal, in which chronotopes of both types are present.” 1

The nature of the conventions of time and space depends on the type of literature. In drama, the conventions of time and space are connected with an orientation towards the theater. V. E. Khalizev in his monograph on drama comes to the conclusion: “No matter how significant the role narrative fragments acquire in dramatic works, no matter how fragmented the depicted action is, no matter how the characters’ spoken statements are subordinated to the logic of their inner speech, drama is committed to closed in space and time to paintings." 2

Space and time in drama (dramatic chronotope) have a number of features. V.E. Khalizev in his work “Drama as a Phenomenon of Art” writes: “Drama and theater, as can be seen, paradoxically connect the spatial distance of the characters from the reader and viewer and their maximum, absolute “closeness” in time. The reader (not to mention the theater viewer) seems to be immersed in the depicted world" 3

For the structure of a dramatic chronotope, it is important that dramatic space is a specific, materially expressed habitat for the characters.

The duality of dramatic space “externalizes” the structure of the conflict. P. Pavi notes: “Dramatic space inevitably falls into two parts. What is meant by this schism is nothing less than conflict. Space in drama is an image of the dramatic structure of the world of the play; its model concentrates and makes visually visible the principles of organization of the “image of the world” that are most important for the author. 1

For drama, the relationship between “the temporality of the perception of a work of art” and “time as the subject of the image” is important. V.E. Khalizev notes: “Within a stage episode, the action takes place in some place adequate to the space of the stage, and over a period of time more or less corresponding to the time of reading or “watching” the given episode. The depicted time within a stage episode is not compressed or stretched; it is recorded in the text with maximum reliability.” 2

In general, the theater has many “temporal layers”; their interaction in the structure of the play’s chronotope plays an important meaning-forming role in the formation of the concept of the world and man in a dramatic work.

The time of the action depicted in the drama must fit within the strict time frame of the stage. Therefore, drama is considered somewhat limited in artistic possibilities (compared to epic). At the same time, the lady also has significant advantages over the creators of stories and novels. Khalizev writes about it this way: “One moment depicted in the drama is closely adjacent to another, neighboring one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode is neither compressed nor stretched. The characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals; their statements, as noted by Stanislavsky K.S., constitute a continuous, unbroken line. If with the help of narration the action is captured as something in the past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. 1

Thus, space in drama becomes not just a background against which events unfold, but an image of the world that embodies the author’s ideas. Time in the play is as close as possible to the “real”, creating the appearance of reality.

Artistic image

Artistic image- this is fundamental in artistic creativity way perception and reflection of reality, a form of knowledge of life and expression of this knowledge specific to art.

Artistic image is not only an image of a person (the image of Tatyana Larina, Andrei Bolkonsky, Raskolnikov, etc.) - it is a picture of human life, in the center of which stands a specific person, but which includes everything that surrounds him in life. Thus, in a work of art a person is depicted in relationships with other people. Therefore, here we can talk not about one image, but about many images.

Any image is an inner world that has come into the focus of consciousness. Outside of images there is no reflection of reality, no imagination, no knowledge, no creativity. The image can take sensual and rational forms. The image can be based on a person’s fiction, or it can be factual. Artistic image objectified in the form of both the whole and its individual parts.

Artistic image can expressively influence feelings and mind.

It provides the maximum capacity of content, is capable of expressing the infinite through the finite, it is reproduced and evaluated as a kind of whole, even if created with the help of several details. The image may be sketchy, unspoken.

Imaging Tools

1. Epigraph to a literary work may indicate the main character trait of the hero.

3. Hero's Speech. Inner monologues, dialogues with other characters in the work characterize the character, reveal his inclinations and preferences.

4. Actions, the actions of the hero.

5. Psychological analysis character: detailed, detailed recreation of feelings, thoughts, motives - the inner world of the character; here the depiction of the “dialectics of the soul” (the movement of the hero’s inner life) is of particular importance.

6. The character's relationships with other characters in the work.

7. Portrait of a hero. Image appearance hero: his face, figure, clothes, behavior.

Portrait types:

  • naturalistic (portrait copied from real life) existing person);
  • psychological (through the hero’s appearance, the hero’s inner world and character are revealed);
  • idealizing or grotesque (spectacular and bright, replete with metaphors, comparisons, epithets).

8. Social environment, society.

9. Scenery helps to better understand the thoughts and feelings of the character.

10. Artistic detail : description of objects and phenomena of the reality surrounding the character (details that reflect a broad generalization can act as symbolic details).

11. The background of the hero's life.

Art space

Image of space

“House” is an image of a closed space.

“Space” is an image of open space, “peace”.

“Threshold” is the boundary between “home” and “space”.

Space - a constructive category in the literary reflection of reality, serves to depict the background of events. May appear different ways, be stated or undesignated, specified or implied, limited to the only place or presented in a wide range of scope and relationships between the selected parts.

Art space (real, conditional, compressed, volumetric, limited, boundless, closed, open,

Artistic time

This the most important characteristics artistic image, providing a holistic perception of reality and organizing the composition of the work. An artistic image, formally unfolding in time (like a sequence of text), with its content and development reproduces the spatio-temporal picture of the world.

Time in a literary work. A constructive category in a literary work that can be discussed from different points of view and appear with varying degrees of importance. The category of time is associated with literary kind. Lyrics, which supposedly present an actual experience, and drama, which plays out before the eyes of the audience, showing the incident at the moment of its occurrence, usually use the present tense, while the epic is mainly a story about what has passed, and therefore in the past tense. The time depicted in the work has boundaries of extension, which can be more or less defined (cover a day, a year, several years, centuries) and designated or not designated in relation to historical time (in fantastic works the chronological aspect of the image may be completely indifferent or the action takes place in the future). IN epic works the time of the narration, associated with the situation and the personality of the narrator, is distinguished, as well as the time of the plot, i.e., the period closed between the earliest and latest incident, generally related to the time of reality shown in the literary reflection.

Artistic time: correlated with the historical, not correlated with the historical, mythological, utopian, historical, “idyllic” (time in the father’s house, “good” times, time “before” (events) and, sometimes, “after”); “adventurous” (tests outside the father’s home and in a foreign land, time active actions and fateful events, intense and eventful / N. Leskov “The Enchanted Wanderer”); “mysterious” (the time of dramatic experiences and the most important decisions in human life / the time spent by the Master in the hospital - Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”).

Poetics of artistic time

(excerpt from an article by D.S. Likhachev)

X artistic time is ... time that is reproduced and depicted in a work of art. It is the study of this artistic time that has highest value to understand the aesthetic nature of verbal art.

Artistic time is a phenomenon of the artistic fabric of the work itself, subordinating its artistic tasks both grammatical tense and the writer’s philosophical understanding of it.

Artistic time, in contrast to objectively given time, uses the diversity of subjective perception of time. A person’s sense of time is known to be extremely subjective. It can “stretch” and it can “run”. A moment can “stop” and a long period"flash by" A work of art makes this subjective perception of time one of the forms of depicting reality. However, objective time is also used at the same time.

(…) Time in fiction is perceived due to the connection of events - cause-and-effect or psychological, associative. Time in a work of art is not so much calendar references as the correlation of events. Events in a plot precede and follow each other, are arranged in a complex series, and thanks to this, the reader is able to notice time in a work of art, even if it does not specifically say anything about time. Where there are no events, there is no time.

1) “fail to keep up” with rapidly changing events;

2) calmly contemplate them.

The author can even stop it for a while, “turn it off” from the work (philosophical digressions in “War and Peace”). These reflections take the reader into another world, from where the reader looks at events from the height of philosophical reflection (in Tolstoy) or from the height of eternal nature (in Turgenev). The events in these digressions seem small to the reader, the people seem like pygmies. But now the action continues, and people and their affairs again acquire normal size, and time picks up its normal pace.

The entire work can have several forms of time, develop at a pace, be thrown from one flow of time to another, forward and backward. The grammatical tense and the tense of a verbal work can diverge significantly. All details of the narrative have the function of time.

Did you like the article? Share with your friends!