The conventions of art in literature briefly. Cinematic convention. Dominant woman: convention or condition of the game

In literature there are conventional and life-like images.

Life-like is a reality that is mirror-like to life.

Conditional are violations, deformations, they have two levels - the depicted and the implied. Life-like - character and type, conventional - symbol, allegory, grotesque.

Life-like images are maximally identical to reality

Word in work of art behaves differently than in ordinary speech - the word begins to realize an aesthetic function in addition to the communicative one. The purpose of ordinary speech is communication, transmission of information. The aesthetic function is different, it does not just convey information, but creates a certain mood, conveys spiritual information, an idea. The word itself manifests itself differently. Context, compatibility, rhythmic beginning (especially in poetry) are important. A word in a work of art does not have a specific meaning as in everyday speech. Example: crystal vase and crystal time by Tyutchev. The word does not appear in its meaning. Crystal time - description of sounds in autumn.

Conventional images include:

allegory

The grotesque is often used for satire or to indicate tragic principles.

Grotesque is a symbol of disharmony.

The form of the grotesque: a shift in proportions, a violation of scale, the inanimate displaces the living.

The grotesque style is characterized by an abundance of alogisms and a combination of different voices. Allegory and symbol - two levels: depicted and implied.

The allegory is unambiguous - there are instructions and decoding:

1) imaginary

2) implied

The symbol is multi-valued, inexhaustible. In a symbol, both what is depicted and what is implied are equally important.

There are no indications in the symbol.

With a symbol, multiple interpretations are possible, and with an allegory, unambiguity is possible.

The literature of our century - as before - relies widely on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in some cases justified and fruitful6, can hardly become the mainstay of artistic creativity: without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular, literature are unrepresentable.

Through fiction, the author summarizes the facts of reality, embodies his view of the world, and demonstrates his creative energy. Freud argued that artistic fiction is associated with the unsatisfied drives and suppressed desires of the creator of the work and involuntarily expresses them.

Concept fiction clarifies the boundaries (sometimes very vague) between works that claim to be art and documentary information. If documentary texts (verbal and visual) exclude the possibility of fiction from the outset, then works with the intention of perceiving them as fiction readily allow it (even in cases where the authors limit themselves to recreating actual facts, events, and persons). Messages in literary texts are, as it were, on the other side of truth and lies. At the same time, the phenomenon of artistry can also arise when perceiving a text created with a documentary mindset: “... for this it is enough to say that we are not interested in the truth of this story, that we read it “as if it were the fruit<...>writing."

Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev named inner world works: “Each work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<...>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<...>. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally reduces or expands them.

At the same time, there are two trends in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms conventionality (the author’s emphasis on non-identity, or even opposition, between what is depicted and the forms of reality) and life-likeness (leveling such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life.

In the early historical stages in art, forms of representation prevailed, which are now perceived as conventional. This is, firstly, the idealizing hyperbole of traditional high genres (epic, tragedy), generated by a public and solemn ritual, the heroes of which manifested themselves in pathetic, theatrically effective words, poses, gestures and had exceptional appearance features that embodied their strength and power, beauty and charm. (Remember epic heroes or Gogol's Taras Bulba). And, secondly, this is the grotesque, which was formed and strengthened as part of carnival celebrations, acting as a parody, a laughing “double” of the solemnly pathetic, and later acquired programmatic significance for the romantics12. It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque. Grotesque in art is akin to paradox in logic. MM. Bakhtin, who studied traditional grotesque imagery, considered it the embodiment of a festive and cheerful free thought: “The grotesque frees us from all forms of inhuman necessity that permeate the prevailing ideas about the world<...>debunks this necessity as relative and limited; grotesque form helps liberation<...>from walking truths, allows you to look at the world in a new way, feel<...>the possibility of a completely different world order"13. In the art of the last two centuries, the grotesque, however, often loses its cheerfulness and expresses a total rejection of the world as chaotic, frightening, hostile (Goya and Hoffmann, Kafka and the theater of the absurd, to a large extent Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Art initially contains life-like principles, which made themselves felt in the Bible, classical epics of antiquity, and Plato’s dialogues. In the art of modern times, life-likeness almost dominates (the most striking evidence of this is realistic narrative prose XIX century, especially L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov). It is essential for authors who show man in his diversity, and most importantly, who strive to bring what is depicted closer to the reader, to minimize the distance between the characters and the perceiving consciousness. However, in art XIX-XX centuries conditional forms were activated (and at the same time updated). Nowadays this is not only traditional hyperbole and grotesque, but also all kinds of fantastic assumptions (“Kholstomer” by L.N. Tolstoy, “Pilgrimage to the Land of the East” by G. Hesse), demonstrative schematization of the depicted (plays by B. Brecht), exposure of the technique (“ Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin), effects of montage composition (unmotivated changes in place and time of action, sharp chronological “breaks”, etc.)

Artistic convention

One of the fundamental principles of creating a work of art. Denotes non-identity artistic image object of the image. There are two types of artistic conventions. The primary artistic convention is related to the material itself used this type art. For example, the possibilities of words are limited; it does not make it possible to see color or smell, it can only describe these sensations:

Music rang in the garden

With such unspeakable grief,

Fresh and sharp smell of the sea

Oysters on ice on a platter.

(A. A. Akhmatova, “In the Evening”)
This artistic convention is characteristic of all types of art; the work cannot be created without it. In literature, the peculiarity of artistic convention depends on literary kind: external expression of actions in drama, description of feelings and experiences in lyrics, description of the action in epic. The primary artistic convention is associated with typification: depicting even real person, the author seeks to present his actions and words as typical, and for this purpose changes some of the properties of his hero. Thus, the memoirs of G.V. Ivanova“Petersburg Winters” evoked many critical responses from the heroes themselves; for example, A.A. Akhmatova she was indignant that the author had invented dialogues between her and N.S. that never happened. Gumilev. But G.V. Ivanov wanted not only to reproduce real events, but to recreate them in artistic reality, to create the image of Akhmatova, the image of Gumilyov. The task of literature is to create a typified image of reality in its acute contradictions and features.
Secondary artistic convention is not characteristic of all works. It presupposes a conscious violation of verisimilitude: Major Kovalev’s nose, cut off and living on its own, in “The Nose” by N.V. Gogol, the mayor with a stuffed head in “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin. A secondary artistic convention is created through the use of religious and mythological images (Mephistopheles in “Faust” by I.V. Goethe, Woland in “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov), hyperboles (incredible strength heroes of the folk epic, the scale of the curse in “Terrible Vengeance” by N.V. Gogol), allegories (Grief, Dashing in Russian fairy tales, Stupidity in “Praise of Stupidity” Erasmus of Rotterdam). A secondary artistic convention can also be created by a violation of the primary one: an appeal to the viewer in final scene“The Inspector General” by N.V. Gogol, an appeal to the discerning reader in the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky“What to do?”, variability of the narrative (several options for the development of events are considered) in “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by L. Stern, in the story by H.L. Borges"The Garden of Forking Paths", violation of cause and effect connections in the stories of D.I. Kharms, plays by E. Ionesco. Secondary artistic convention is used to draw attention to the real, to make the reader think about the phenomena of reality.

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .

See what “artistic convention” is in other dictionaries:

ARTISTIC CONVENTION in a broad sense is the original property of art, manifested in a certain difference, discrepancy artistic painting the world, individual images with objective reality. This concept indicates a kind of... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

artistic convention- an integral feature of any work, associated with the nature of art itself and consisting in the fact that the images created by the artist are perceived as non-identical to reality, as something created by the creative will of the author. Any art... ...

CONDITIONALITY- artistic, multifaceted and polysemantic concept, the principle of artistic representation, generally denoting the non-identity of the artistic image with the object of reproduction. In modern aesthetics, a distinction is made between primary and secondary...

convention in art- 1) non-identity of reality and its image in literature and art (primary convention); 2) conscious, open violation of plausibility, a technique for detecting illusoryness art world(secondary convention). Category: Aesthetic…

artistic truth- display of life in works of art in accordance with its own logic, penetration into the inner meaning of what is depicted. Rubric: Aesthetic categories in literature Antonym/correlative: subjective in art, convention in art... ... Terminological dictionary-thesaurus on literary criticism

CONDITIONALITY- one of the essential properties of art, emphasizing the difference of art. prod. from the reality reproduced in them. In epistemological terms, U. is considered as a general characteristic of an artist. reflection, indicating the non-identity of the image and its object.... ... Aesthetics: Vocabulary

fantasy- (from the Greek phantastike the art of imagining) view fiction, based on a special fantastic type of imagery, which is characterized by: a high degree of convention (see artistic convention), violation of norms, logical connections... Dictionary of literary terms

FICTION- ARTISTIC FICTION, the activity of the writer’s imagination, which acts as a formative force and leads to the creation of plots and images that have no direct correspondence in previous art and reality. Discovering creative energy... ... Literary encyclopedic dictionary

In literature and other arts, the depiction of implausible phenomena, the introduction of fictional images that do not coincide with reality, a clearly felt violation by the artist of natural forms, causal relationships, and laws of nature. Term F.... ... Literary encyclopedia

Kuzma Petrov Vodkin. “Death of a Commissar”, 1928, State Russian Music... Wikipedia

Books

Western European literature of the twentieth century. Textbook, Shervashidze Vera Vakhtangovna. IN textbook highlights key phenomena in Western European literature 20th century - radical renewal artistic language, a new concept of reality, a skeptical attitude towards...

Image and sign in a work of art, the relationship between these concepts. Aristotle's theory of mimesis and theory of symbolization. Life-like and conditional types of image. Types of conventions. Fiction. Coexistence and interaction of conventions in twentieth-century literature.

Subject of discipline“Theory of Literature” - the study of the theoretical principles of fiction. The purpose of the discipline is to provide knowledge in the field of literary theory, to introduce students to the most important and relevant methodological and theoretical problems, teach the analysis of literary and artistic works. Objectives of the discipline- study of the basic concepts of literary theory.

Art has as its goal the creation of aesthetic values. Drawing its material from a variety of spheres of life, it comes into contact with religion, philosophy, history, psychology, politics, and journalism. Moreover, it embodies even the most sublime objects in sensual form<…>", or in artistic images (Old Greek eidos - appearance, appearance).

Artistic image, general property all works of art, the result of the author’s comprehension of a phenomenon, a process of life, in a way characteristic of a particular type of art, objectified in the form of both the whole work and its individual parts.

Like a scientific concept, an artistic image performs a cognitive function, but the knowledge it contains is largely subjective, colored by how the author sees the depicted object. Unlike a scientific concept, an artistic image is self-sufficient; it is a form of expression of content in art.

Basic properties of an artistic image- objective-sensory character, integrity of reflection, individualization, emotionality, vitality, special role of creative fiction - differ from such properties of the concept as abstractness, generality, logicality. Because the artistic image has multiple meanings, it cannot be fully translated into the language of logic.

An artistic image in the broadest sense ndash; integrity literary work, in the narrow sense of the word ndash; character images and poetic imagery, or tropes.

An artistic image always carries a generalization. Images of art are concentrated embodiments of the general, typical, in the particular, individual.

In modern literary criticism the concepts of “sign” and “sign” are also used. A sign is the unity of the signifier and the signified (meaning), a kind of sensory-objective representative of the signified and its substitute. Signs and sign systems are studied by semiotics, or semiology (from the Greek semeion - “sign”), the science of sign systems based on phenomena that exist in life.

In the sign process, or semiosis, three factors are distinguished: sign (sign means); designatum, denotation- the object or phenomenon that the sign indicates; interpretant - the influence by virtue of which the corresponding thing turns out to be a sign for the interpreter. Literary works are also considered from the aspect of iconicity.

In semiotics there are: indexicals- a sign that denotes but does not characterize a single object; the action of the index is based on the principle of contiguity between the signifier and the signified: smoke is an index of fire, a footprint in the sand is an index of human presence; signs-symbols are conventional signs in which the signifier and the signified have no similarity or contiguity; these are words in natural language; iconic signs- denoting objects that have the same properties as the signs themselves, based on the actual similarity of the signifier and the signified; “Photography, star map, model - iconic signs<…>" Among the iconic signs, diagrams and images are distinguished. From a semiotics point of view, artistic image is an iconic sign whose designatum is value.

The main semiotic approaches are applicable to signs in a work of art (text): identifying semantics - the relationship of a sign to the world of extra-sign reality, syntagmatics - the relationship of a sign to another sign, and pragmatics - the relationship of a sign to the group using it.

Domestic structuralists interpreted culture as a whole as a sign system, a complexly structured text, breaking up into a hierarchy of “texts within texts” and forming complex interweavings of texts.

Art ndash; this is an artistic exploration of life. The principle of cognition is placed at the forefront of the main aesthetic theories - the theory of imitation and the theory of symbolization.

The doctrine of imitation is born in the works of the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. According to Aristotle, “the writing of epics, tragedies, as well as comedies and dithyrambs,<…>, - all this as a whole is nothing more than imitation (mimesis); They differ from each other in three ways: either by different means of imitation, or by different objects, or by different, non-identical methods.” The ancient theory of imitation is based on the fundamental property of art - artistic generalization, it does not imply naturalistic copying of nature, a specific person, a specific fate. By imitating life, the artist learns about it. Creating an image has its own dialectic. On the one hand, the poet develops and creates an image. On the other hand, the artist creates the objectivity of the image in accordance with its “requirements”. This creative process is called process of artistic cognition.

The theory of imitation retained its authority until the 18th century, despite the identification of imitation with a naturalistic image and the excessive dependence of the author on the subject of the image. In the XIX-XX centuries. strengths imitation theories entailed creative luck realist writers.

A different concept of cognitive principles in art - symbolization theory. It is based on the idea of artistic creativity as the recreation of certain universal essences. The center of this theory is doctrine of symbol.

Symbol (Greek symbolon - sign, identifying mark) - in science the same as a sign, in art - an allegorical multi-valued artistic image, taken in the aspect of its iconicity. Every symbol is an image, but not every image can be called a symbol. The content of a symbol is always significant and generalized. In a symbol, the image goes beyond its own limits, since the symbol has a certain meaning that is inseparably fused with the image, but is not identical to it. The meaning of a symbol is not given, but given; a symbol in its direct form does not speak about reality, but only hints at it. “Eternals” are symbolic literary images Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Don Juan, Hamlet, Falstaff, etc.

The most important characteristics of a symbol: the dialectical relationship of identity and non-identity in a symbol between the signified and the signified, the multi-layered semantic structure of the symbol.

The symbol is close to allegory and emblem. In allegory and emblem, the figurative-ideological side is also different from the subject, but here the poet himself draws the necessary conclusion.

The concept of art as symbolization appears in ancient aesthetics. Having adopted Plato’s judgments about art as an imitation of nature, Plotinus argued that works of art “do not simply imitate the visible, but go back to the semantic essences of which nature itself consists.”

Goethe, for whom symbols meant a lot, connected them with the vital organic nature of the principles expressed through symbols. Reflections on symbol occupy a particularly large place in the aesthetic theory of German romanticism, in particular in F.W. Schelling and A. Schlegel. In German and Russian romanticism, the symbol expresses primarily a mystical otherworldliness.

Russian symbolists saw unity in the symbol - not only of form and content, but also of a certain higher, Divine project that lies at the basis of being, at the source of all things - this is the unity of Beauty, Good and Truth, discerned by the Symbol.

The concept of art as symbolization in to a greater extent than the theory of imitation, is focused on the generalizing meaning of imagery, but it threatens to lead away artistic creativity from the multicolored life into the world of abstractions.

A distinctive feature of literature, along with its inherent imagery, is also the presence of artistic fiction. In works of different literary movements, movements and genres, fiction is present to a greater or lesser extent. Both forms of typification existing in art are associated with fiction - life-like and conventional.

Since ancient times, in art there has been a life-like method of generalization, which presupposes compliance with the physical, psychological, cause-and-effect and other laws known to us. Classic epics, the prose of Russian realists and the novels of French naturalists are distinguished by their similarity to life.

The second form of typification in art is conditional. There is primary and secondary convention. The discrepancy between reality and its image in literature and other forms of art is called primary convention. This includes artistic speech, organized according to special rules, as well as the reflection of life in the images of heroes, different from their prototypes, but based on life-likeness. Secondary convention ndash; allegorical way generalizations of phenomena based on the deformation of life reality and the denial of life-likeness. Artists of words resort to such forms of conditional generalization of life as fantasy, grotesque in order to better comprehend the deep essence of what is being typified (the grotesque novel by F. Rabelais “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, “Petersburg Tales” by N.V. Gogol, “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Grotesque ndash; “an artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things.”

Traits secondary convention also available in figurative and expressive techniques(tropes): allegory, hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, personification, symbol, emblem, litotes, oxymoron, etc. All these paths are built on a general principle conditional relationship between direct and figurative meanings . All these conventional forms are characterized by a deformation of reality, and some of them are characterized by a deliberate deviation from external plausibility. Secondary conventional forms have other important features: the leading role of the aesthetic and philosophical principles, the depiction of those phenomena that do not have a real life specific analogy. Secondary conventions include the most ancient epic genres verbal art: myths, folklore and literary fables, legends, fairy tales, parables, as well as genres of literature of the New Age - ballads, artistic pamphlets (Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift), fairy tales, scientific and socio-philosophical fiction, including utopia and its variety is dystopia.

Secondary convention has long existed in literature, but at different stages of the history of world art of speech it played a different role.

Among the conventional forms in works ancient literature came to the fore idealizing hyperbole, inherent in the depiction of heroes in the poems of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and satirical grotesque, with the help of which the images of the comedic heroes of Aristophanes were created.

Typically, techniques and images of secondary convention are intensively used in complex, transitional eras for literature. One of these eras falls on the end of the 18th - first third of the 19th centuries. when pre-romanticism and romanticism arose.

Romantics creatively processed folk tales, legends, traditions, widely used symbols, metaphors and metonymies, which gave their works philosophical generality and increased emotionality. In a romantic literary direction a fantastic movement arose (E.T.A. Hoffman, Novalis, L. Tick, V.F. Odoevsky and N.V. Gogol). The conventionality of the artistic world among romantic authors is an analogue of the complex reality of an era torn apart by contradictions (“Demon” by M.Yu. Lermontov).

Realist writers also use techniques and genres of secondary convention. In Saltykov-Shchedrin, the grotesque, along with a satirical function (images of mayors), also has a tragic function (image of Judushka Golovlev).

In the 20th century the grotesque is reborn. IN this period There are two forms of grotesque - modernist and realistic. A. France, B. Brecht, T. Mann, P. Neruda, B. Shaw, Fr. Dürrenmatt often creates conditional situations and circumstances in his works and resorts to shifting temporal and spatial layers.

In the literature of modernism, secondary convention takes on leading significance (“Poems about To the beautiful lady» A.A. Block). In the prose of Russian symbolists (D.S. Merezhkovsky, F.K. Sologub, A. Bely) and a number of foreign writers (J. Updike, J. Joyce, T. Mann) a special type of myth novel appears. In drama Silver Age stylization and pantomime, “comedy of masks” and techniques of ancient theater are being revived.

In the works of E.I. Zamyatin, A.P. Platonov, A.N. Tolstoy, M.A. Bulgakov, scientistic neo-mythologizing predominates, due to the atheistic picture of the world and associated with science.

Fiction in Russian literature of the Soviet period often served as an Aesopian language and contributed to the criticism of reality, which manifested itself in such ideologically and artistically capacious genres as dystopian novel, legend story, fairy tale story. The genre of dystopia, fantastic in nature, was finally formed in the 20th century. in the works of E.I. Zamyatin (novel “We”). Memorable works of the dystopian genre were also created by foreign writers- O. Huxley and D. Orwell.

At the same time, in the 20th century. Fairy-tale fiction also continued to exist (“The Lord of the Rings” by D.R. Tolkien, “ The Little Prince» A. de Saint-Exupéry, dramaturgy by E.L. Schwartz, creativity of M.M. Prishvina and Yu.K. Olesha).

Life-likeness and convention are equal and interact on different stages the existence of verbal art and methods of artistic generalization.

1. Davydova T.T., Pronin V.A. Theory of literature. - M., 2003. P.5-17, chapter 1.

2. Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. - M., 2001. Stb.188-190.

3. Averintsev S.S. Symbol // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. M., 2001. Stb.976-978.

4. Lotman Yu.M. Semiotics // Literary encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1987. P.373-374.

5. Rodnyanskaya I.B. Image // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. Stb.669-674.

For students should get acquainted with the concepts of image and sign, the main provisions of the Aristotelian theory of imitation of art of reality and Plato’s theory of art as symbolization; know what artistic generalization is in literature and what types it is divided into. Need to have an idea about life-likeness and secondary convention and its forms.

Students must have clear ideas:

about imagery, sign, symbol, paths, genres of secondary convention.

The student must acquire skills

use of scientific, critical and reference literature, analysis of life-likeness and secondary conventions (fantasy, grotesque, hyperbole, etc.) in literary and artistic works.

1. Give examples of artistic image in the broad and narrow meanings of the term.

2. Present the classification of signs in the form of a diagram.

3. Give examples of literary symbols.

4. Which of the two theories of art as imitation does O. Mandelstam criticize in the article “The Morning of Acmeism”? Give reasons for your point of view.

5. What types of artistic conventions are divided into?

6. How literary genres Is there a secondary convention?

No matter how periodically the interest in the problem of genres intensifies, it has never been the center of attention of film studies, finding itself, at best, on the periphery of our interests. The bibliography speaks about this: not a single book has been written either here or abroad on the theory of film genres. We will not find a section or at least a chapter on genres not only in the already mentioned two books on the theory of film dramaturgy (V.K. Turkin and the author of this study), but also in the books of V. Volkenshtein, I. Weisfeld, N. Kryuchechnikov, I. Manevich, V. Yunakovsky. As for articles on the general theory of genres, literally the fingers of one hand are enough to list them.

Cinema began as a chronicle, and therefore the problem of photogeny, the naturalness of cinema, and its documentary nature absorbed the attention of researchers. However, nature not only did not exclude genre sharpening, it presupposed it, as was already shown by Eisenstein’s “Strike”, built on the principle of “montage of attractions” - the action in the style of a chronicle was based on episodes sharpened to the point of eccentricity.

In this regard, documentarian Dziga Vertov argued with Eisenstein, believing that he was imitating the documentary style in feature films. Eisenstein, in turn, criticized Vertov for allowing play in the chronicle, that is, cutting and editing the chronicle according to the laws of art. Then it turned out that they were both striving for the same thing, both different sides breaking down the wall of old, melodramatic art to come into direct contact with reality. The directors' dispute ended with Eisenstein's compromise formula: "Beyond the game and the non-game."

On closer examination, documentary and genres are not mutually exclusive - they turn out to be deeply connected with the problem of method and style, in particular, the individual style of the artist.

Indeed, already in the very choice of the genre of the work, the artist’s attitude to the event depicted, his outlook on life, his individuality is revealed.

Belinsky, in his article “On the Russian Tale and Gogol’s Stories,” wrote that the author’s originality is a consequence of the “color of the glasses” through which he looks at the world. “Such originality in Mr. Gogol consists of comic animation, always prompted by a feeling of deep sadness.”

Eisenstein and Dovzhenko dreamed of producing comic films, and showed remarkable abilities in this (meaning “The Berry of Love” by Dovzhenko, the script of “M.M.M.” by Eisenstein and the comedy scenes of “October”), but the epic was still closer to them.

Chaplin is a comedy genius.

Explaining his method, Chaplin wrote:

Belinsky VT. Collection cit.: In 3 volumes. T. 1.- M.: GIHL.- 1948, - P. 135.

A.P. Dovzhenko told me that after “Earth” he was going to write a script for Chaplin; He intended to convey the letter to him through S.M. Eisenstein, who was then working in America. - Note. auto

“In the movie The Adventurer, I very successfully sat myself on the balcony, where I was eating ice cream with a young girl. On the floor below I placed a very respectable and well-dressed lady at a table. While eating, I drop a piece of ice cream, which, melted, flows down my pantaloons and falls on the lady’s neck. The first burst of laughter comes from my awkwardness; the second, and much stronger, causes ice cream to fall on the neck of a lady, who begins to scream and jump... No matter how simple it may seem at first glance, two properties of human nature are taken into account here: one is the pleasure that the public experiences when seeing wealth and brilliance is in humiliation, another is the desire of the audience to experience the same feelings that the actor experiences on stage. The public - and this truth must be learned first of all - is especially pleased when all sorts of troubles happen to the rich... If I, say, dropped ice cream on the neck of a poor woman, say some modest housewife, it would not cause laughter, but sympathy to her. Besides, the housewife has nothing to lose in terms of her dignity and, therefore, nothing funny would happen. And when ice cream falls on the rich woman’s neck, the public thinks that this is how it should be.”

Everything is important in this little treatise on laughter. This episode evokes two responses—two bursts of laughter—from the viewer. The first explosion is when Charlie himself is confused: the ice cream gets on his trousers; hiding his confusion, he tries to maintain external dignity. The viewer, of course, laughs, but if Chaplin had limited himself to this, he would have remained just a capable student of Max Linder. But, as we see, already in his short films (original studies of future films) he is groping for a deeper source of humor. A second, stronger burst of laughter occurs in the said episode when the ice cream falls on the rich lady's neck. These two comic moments are connected. When we laugh at the lady, we express sympathy for Charlie. The question arises, what does Charlie have to do with it, if everything happened because of an absurd accident, and not by his will - after all, he does not even know what happened on the floor below. But that’s the whole point: thanks to his ridiculous actions, Charlie is both funny and... positive. We can also do evil through absurd actions. Charlie, with his absurd actions, unknowingly changes circumstances the way they should change, thanks to which the comedy achieves its goal.

"Charles Spencer Chaplin. - M.: Goskinoizdat, 1945. P. 166.

Funny is not the coloring of the action, funny is the essence of the action of both the negative character and the positive one. Both are revealed through the funny, and this is the stylistic unity of the genre. The genre thus reveals itself as an aesthetic and social interpretation of a topic.

It is this idea that Eisenstein emphasizes to the utmost when, in his classes at VGIK, he invites his students to stage the same situation, first as a melodrama, then as a tragedy, and finally as a comedy. The following line of an imaginary scenario was taken as the theme for the mise-en-scène: “A soldier returns from the front. He discovers that during his absence his wife had a child from someone else. Throws her away."

Giving this task to students, Eisenstein emphasized three points that make up the director’s ability: to see (or, as he also said, “to fish out”), to select and to show (“to express”). Depending on whether this situation was staged in a pathetic (tragic) plan or a comic one, different content and different meaning were “drawn” out of it - therefore, the mise-en-scène turned out to be completely different.

However, when we say that a genre is an interpretation, we do not at all claim that the genre is only an interpretation, that the genre begins to manifest itself only in the sphere of interpretation. Such a definition would be too one-sided, since it would make the genre too dependent on performance, and only on it.

However, the genre depends not only on our attitude to the subject, but, above all, on the subject itself.

In the article “Questions of Genre” A. Macheret argued that genre is “a method of artistic sharpening”, genre is “a type of artistic form”.

Macheret's article was important: after a long silence, it attracted the attention of criticism and theory to the problem of genre, and drew attention to the meaning of form. However, the vulnerability of the article is now obvious - it has reduced the genre to a form. The author did not take advantage of one of his very correct remark: the Lena events can only be a social drama in art. A fruitful idea, however, the author did not use it when he came to the definition of the genre. Genre, in his opinion, is type artistic form; genre - degree of sharpening.

Eisenstein S.M. Favorite Prod.: In 6 vols. T. 4, - 1964.- P. 28.

Macheret A. Questions of genre // Art of cinema.- 1954.- No. 11 -P. 75.

It would seem that this definition completely coincides with the way Eisenstein approached the genre interpretation of mise-en-scène, when, while teaching students the techniques of directing, he “sharpened” the same situation into either comedy or drama. The difference, however, is significant. Eisenstein was talking not about the script, but about the line of the script, not about the plot and composition, but about the mise-en-scène, that is, about the techniques of performing a particular: the same thing, it can become both comedic and dramatic, but what exactly it becomes is always depends on the whole, on the content of the work and its idea. When starting classes, Eisenstein in his introductory speech speaks about the correspondence of the chosen form to the internal idea. This thought constantly tormented Eisenstein. At the beginning of the war, on September 21, 1941, he writes in his diary: “... in art, first of all, the dialectical course of nature is “reflected”. More precisely, the more vital (vital. - S.F.) art, the closer it is to artificially recreating in itself this basic natural position in nature: the dialectical order and course of things.

And if there (in nature) it lies in the depths and basis - not always visible through the veils! - then in art its place is mainly in the “invisible”, in the “unreadable”: in structure, in method and in principle... "

It is amazing how much artists who worked in very different times and in very different arts agree on this idea. Sculptor Burdell: “Nature must be seen from the inside: to create a work, you should start from the skeleton of a given thing, and then give the skeleton an external design. It is necessary to see this skeleton of a thing in its true aspect and in its architectural expression."

As we see, both Eisenstein and Burdell talk about an object that is true in itself, and the artist, in order to be original, must understand this truth.

Questions of film dramaturgy. Vol. 4.- M.: Art, 1962.- P. 377.

Masters of art about art: In 8 vols. T. 3.- M.: Izogiz, 1934.- P. 691.

However, maybe this only applies to nature? Perhaps we are talking about a “dialectical move” inherent only to it?

In Marx we find a similar thought regarding the course of history itself. Moreover, we are talking specifically about the nature of such opposite phenomena as the comic and the tragic - they, according to Marx, are shaped by history itself.

“The last phase of the world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, who were already once - in a tragic form - mortally wounded in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, had to die again - in a comic form - in Lucian's Discourses. Why is this the course of history? This is necessary so that humanity can cheerfully part with its past.”

These words are often quoted, so they are remembered separately, out of context; It seems that we are talking exclusively about mythology and literature, but it was, first of all, about real political reality:

“The struggle against German political reality is a struggle against the past of modern peoples, and the echoes of this past still continue to weigh on these peoples. It is instructive for them to see how the ancien regime (old order - S.F.), which experienced its tragedy among them, plays out its comedy in the person of a German native of the other world. The history of the old order was tragic while it was the power of the world existing from time immemorial; freedom, on the contrary, was an idea that overshadowed individuals - in other words, while the old order itself believed, and had to believe, in its legitimacy. While the ancien regime, as an existing world order, struggled with a world still in its infancy, on the side of this ancien regime there was not a personal, but a world-historical error. That is why his death was tragic.

Marx K., Engels F. Soch. T. 1.- P. 418.

On the contrary, the modern German regime - this anachronism, this blatant contradiction of generally accepted axioms, this insignificance of the ancien regime exposed to the whole world - only imagines that it believes in itself, and demands that the world imagine it too. If he really believed in his collected essence, would he hide it under the appearance of someone else's essence and seek his salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is rather just a comedian of such a world order, the real heroes of which have already died!

Marx’s thinking is modern both in relation to the reality we have experienced and in relation to art: aren’t the words that we just read the key to the painting “Repentance” and to its main character, the dictator Varlam. Let us repeat them: “If he really believed in his own essence, would he hide it under the appearance of someone else’s essence and seek his salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is rather just a comedian of such a world order, the real heroes of which have already died.” The film “Repentance” could have been staged as a tragedy, but its content, already compromised in itself, at this transitional moment in history required the form of tragic farce. Less than a year after the premiere, the director of the film, Tengiz Abuladze, remarked: “Now I would direct the film differently.” What does “now” mean and what does “differently” mean? We will turn to these questions later when the time comes to say more about the picture, but now we will return to general idea art that reflects the dialectical course of not only nature, but also history. “World history,” Engels writes to Marx, “is the greatest poetess.”

History itself creates the sublime and the funny. This does not mean that the artist just has to find a form for the finished content. The form is not a shell, much less a case into which the content is placed. The content of real life in itself is not the content of art. Content is not ready until it has taken shape.

Marx K., Engels F. Ibid.

Thought and form do not just connect, they overcome each other. Thought becomes form, form becomes thought. They become one and the same. This balance, this unity is always conditional, because the reality of a work of art ceases to be a historical and everyday reality. By giving it form, the artist changes it in order to comprehend it.

However, have we not strayed too far away from the problem of genre, getting carried away by discussions about form and content, and now starting to talk about convention? No, now we have only come closer to our subject, for we have the opportunity, finally, to get out of the vicious circle of genre definitions that we cited at the beginning. Genre - interpretation, type of form. Genre - content. Each of these definitions is too one-sided to be true enough to give us a convincing idea of what defines a genre and how it is shaped through the process of artistic creation. But to say that genre depends on the unity of form and content is to say nothing. The unity of form and content is a general aesthetic and general philosophical problem. Genre is a more specific issue. It is connected with a very specific aspect of this unity - with its conditionality.

The unity of form and content is a convention, the nature of which is determined by the genre. Genre is a type of convention.

Convention is necessary, since art is impossible without restrictions. The artist is limited, first of all, by the material in which he reproduces reality. Material is not itself a form. The material overcome becomes both form and content. The sculptor strives to convey the warmth of the human body in cold marble, but he does not paint the sculpture so that it resembles a living person: this, as a rule, causes disgust.

The limited nature of the material and the limited circumstances of the plot are not an obstacle, but a condition for creating an artistic image. While working on a plot, the artist creates these limitations for himself.

The principles of overcoming this or that material determine not only the specifics of a given art - they feed the general laws of artistic creativity, with its constant desire for imagery, metaphor, subtext, background, that is, the desire to avoid a mirror image of an object, to penetrate beyond the surface of a phenomenon into depth, in order comprehend its meaning.

Convention frees the artist from the need to copy an object and makes it possible to reveal the essence hidden behind the shell of the object. Genre, as it were, regulates convention. Genre helps to reveal the essence, which does not coincide with the form. The conventions of the genre, therefore, are necessary to express the unconditional objectivity of the content, or at least the unconditional feeling of it.