In addition to external connections, temporal and causal, there are internal, emotional and semantic connections between the events depicted. They
basically constitute the sphere of composition of the plot. Thus, the proximity of the chapters of "War and Peace", dedicated to the dying of the old Bezukhov and the cheerful name day in the Rostovs' house, outwardly motivated by the simultaneity of these events, carries a certain content load. This compositional technique sets the reader in the mood of Tolstoy's reflections on the inseparability of life and death.
In many works, the composition of plot episodes is of decisive importance. Such, for example, is T. Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. Consistently, without any chronological permutations, depicting the course of Hans Castorp's life in a tuberculosis sanatorium, this novel at the same time contains a meaningful and complex system of comparisons between the events, facts, and episodes depicted. No wonder T. Mann advised people interested in his work to read The Magic Mountain twice: for the first time - to understand the relationship of the characters, that is, the plot; in the second - to delve into the internal logic of the links between the chapters, that is, to understand the artistic meaning of the composition of the plot.
The composition of the plot is also a certain order of telling the reader about what happened. In works with a large amount of text, the sequence of plot episodes usually reveals the author's idea gradually and steadily. In novels and stories, poems and dramas, truly artistic, each subsequent episode opens up something new for the reader - and so on until the finale, which is usually, as it were, a pivotal moment in the composition of the plot. "The force of impact (artistic) refers to the end", - noted D. Furmanov (82, 4, 714). All the more responsible is the role of the final effect in small one-act plays, short stories, fables, ballads. The ideological meaning of such works is often revealed suddenly and only in the last lines of the text. This is how the short stories of OTenry are built: often their finals turn inside out what was said earlier.
Sometimes the writer seems to intrigue his readers: for some time he keeps them in the dark about the true essence of the events depicted. This compositional technique is called by default and the moment when you read finally, together with the heroes, he learns about what happened earlier, - recognition(the last term belongs to
lived by Aristotle). Recall the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus the King", where neither the hero, nor the spectator and readers for a long time realize that Oedipus himself is guilty of the murder of Laius. In modern times, such compositional techniques are used mainly in adventurous picaresque and adventure genres, where, as V. Shklovsky put it, the “secret technique” is of paramount importance.
But realist writers sometimes keep the reader in the dark about what happened. By default, Pushkin's story "The Snowstorm" is built. Only at the very end does the reader learn that Maria Gavrilovna is married to a stranger, who, as it turns out, was Burmin.
Silence about events can give the image of action a lot of tension. So, reading "War and Peace" for the first time, for a long time, together with the Bolkonsky family, we believe that Prince Andrei died after the battle of Austerlitz, and only at the moment of his appearance in the Bald Mountains we learn that this is not so. Such silences are very characteristic of Dostoevsky. In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, the reader believes for some time that Fyodor Pavlovich was killed by his son Dmitry, and only Smerdyakov's story puts an end to this delusion.
Chronological permutations of events become an important means of plot composition. Usually they (like defaults and recognitions) intrigue the reader and thus make the action more entertaining. But sometimes (especially in realistic literature) rearrangements are dictated by the desire of the authors to switch readers from the external side of what happened (what will happen to the characters next?) to its deep background. Thus, in Lermontov's novel A Hero of Our Time, the composition of the plot serves to gradually penetrate into the secrets of the protagonist's inner world. First, we learn about Pechorin from the story of Maxim Maksimych ("Bela"), then from the narrator-author, who gives a detailed portrait of the hero ("Maxim Maksimych"), and only after that Lermontov introduces Pechorin's diary (the stories "Taman", "Princess Mary", "The Fatalist"). Thanks to the sequence of chapters chosen by the author, the reader's attention is transferred from the adventures undertaken by Pechorin to the riddle of his character, "unraveled" from story to story.
For realistic literature of the XX century. characterized by works with detailed background stories of heroes,
given in independent plot episodes. In order to more fully discover the successive links of eras and generations, in order to reveal the complex and difficult ways of forming human characters, writers often resort to a kind of “montage” of the past (sometimes very distant) and the present of characters: the action is periodically transferred from one time to another. This kind of “retrospective” (turning back to what happened earlier) composition of the plot is characteristic of the work of G. Green and W. Faulkner. It is also found in some dramatic works. Thus, the heroes of Ibsen's dramas often tell each other about long-standing events. In a number of modern dramas, what the characters remember is depicted directly: in stage episodes that interrupt the main line of action (Death of a Salesman by A. Miller).
Internal, emotional and semantic connections between plot episodes sometimes turn out to be more important than plot connections, causal and temporal ones. The composition of such works can be called active, or, using the term of cinematographers, "montage". An active, montage composition allows writers to embody deep, not directly observable connections between life phenomena, events, and facts. It is typical for the works of L. Tolstoy and Chekhov, Brecht and Bulgakov. The role and purpose of this kind of composition can be characterized by Blok’s words from the preface to the poem “Retribution”: “I am used to comparing facts from all areas of life that are accessible to my vision at a given time, and I am sure that all of them together always create a single musical pressure” (32, 297).
The composition of the plot in the system of artistic means of the epic and drama, therefore, has a very responsible place.
CHARACTER STATEMENTS
The most important side of the subject depiction of the epic and drama is the statements of the characters, that is, their dialogues and monologues. In epics and novels, stories and short stories, the speech of heroes occupies a very significant, and even most, part. In the dramatic kind of literature, however, it dominates unconditionally and absolutely.
Dialogues and monologues are expressively significant statements, as if emphasizing, demonstrating their "author's" affiliation. Dialogue is invariably associated with mutual, two-way communication, in which the speaker takes into account the direct reaction of the listener, the main thing is that activity and passivity pass from one participant in communication to another. For dialogue, the oral form of contact is most favorable, its relaxed and non-hierarchical nature: the absence of social and spiritual distance between the speakers. Dialogic speech is characterized by the alternation of brief statements of two (sometimes more) persons. The monologue, on the contrary, does not require anyone's immediate response and proceeds independently of the reactions of the perceiver. This is not interrupted by "foreign" speech speaking. Monologues can be "solitary and", taking place outside the direct contact of the speaker with someone: they are pronounced (out loud or to oneself) in solitude or in an atmosphere of psychological isolation of the speaker from those present. But converted monologues are much more common, designed to actively influence the minds of listeners. Such are the speeches of speakers, lecturers, teachers in front of students 1 .
In the early stages of the formation and development of verbal art (in myths, parables, fairy tales), the statements of characters usually were practically significant remarks: the depicted people (or animals) briefly informed each other about their intentions, expressed their desires or requirements. Casually spoken dialogue was present in comedies and farces.
However, in the leading, high genres of pre-realistic literature, the oratorical, declamatory, rhetorical and poetic speech of the characters prevailed, lengthy, solemn, outwardly effective, mostly monologue.
Here are the words Hecuba addresses in the Iliad to his son Hector, who briefly left the battlefield and came to his house:
Why do you come, my son, leaving the fierce battle?
It is true, the hated men of the Achaeans are cruelly pressing,
Ratouya close to the wall? And your heart rushed to us:
Do you want, from the castle of Trojan, to raise your hands to the Olympian?
But wait, my Hector, I'll take out the wine
Zeus the father to pour and other deities of the ages.
Afterwards, you yourself, when you want to drink, will be strengthened;
For a husband, exhausted by labor, wine renews his strength;
But you, my son, are weary, striving for your citizens.
And Hector answers even more extensively, why he does not dare to pour wine to Zeus "with an unwashed hand."
Such conditionally declamatory, rhetorical, pathetic speech is especially characteristic of tragedies: from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller, Sumarkov, Ozerov. It was also characteristic of the characters of a number of other genres of pre-realistic eras. As part of this speech, monologic beginnings, as a rule, took precedence over dialogic ones: rhetoric and recitation pushed into the background, and even nullified easy colloquialism. Speech, ordinary, unvarnished, was used mainly in comedies and satires, as well as in works of a parodic nature.
At the same time, the so-called monophony prevailed in literature: the characters expressed themselves in the speech manner required by the literary (primarily genre) tradition 1 .
The character's statement still to a small extent became his speech characteristic. The variety of speech manners and styles in pre-realistic eras was captured only in a few outstanding works - in " Divine Comedy» Dante, stories by Rabelais, plays by Shakespeare, Don Quixote by Cervantes. According to the observations of one of the well-known translators, the novel "Don Quixote" is heterogeneous and polyphonic: "... here is the language of the peasants, and the language of the then "intelligentsia", and the language of the clergy, and the language of the nobility, and student jargon, and even "thieves' music" (68, 114).
Realistic creativity of the XIX-XX centuries. inherent
1 Note that in modern literary criticism, dialogical speech is often understood broadly, as any implementation of contact, so that it is given universality. At the same time, monologue speech is considered to be of secondary importance and practically non-existent in its pure form. This kind of sharp and unconditional preference for dialogical speech takes place in the works of M. M. Bakhtin.
1 “The speech of the character,” writes D.S. Likhachev about Old Russian literature, “is the speech of the author for him. The author is a kind of puppeteer. The doll is devoid of its own life and its own voice. The author speaks for her with his voice, his language and his usual style. The author, as it were, restates what the character said or could say ... This achieves a peculiar effect of the dumbness of the characters, despite all their outward verbosity ”(in collection: XVIII century in world literary development. M., 1969. C .313).
heteroglossia. Here, as never before, the socio-ideological and individual characteristics of the speech of the characters, who acquired their own "voices", began to be widely mastered. Wherein inner world character is revealed not only by the logical meaning of what was said, but also by the very manner, the very organization of speech.
He thinks: “I will be her savior. I will not tolerate that the corrupter tempts the young heart with fire and sighs and praises; So that the despicable, poisonous worm Sharpened the stem of the lily; So that the two-morning flower Withered still half-opened. All this meant, friends: I'm shooting with a friend.
These lines from "Eugene Onegin" perfectly characterize the structure of the soul of Lensky, who raises his experiences to a romantic pedestal and is therefore prone to emphatically sublime, conditionally poetic speech, syntactically complicated and replete with metaphorical turns. These features of the hero's statement are especially striking thanks to the naturally free, worldly artless, completely "unliterary" commentary of the narrator ("All this meant, friends: || I'm shooting with a friend"). And Lensky's romantically spectacular monologue is stamped with irony.
Writers of the XIX-XX centuries. (and this is their greatest artistic achievement) with unprecedented breadth introduced into their works a relaxed colloquial speech, mainly dialogic. A lively conversation in its social diversity and richness of individual expressive principles and aesthetic organization was reflected in "Eugene Onegin", in the narrative works of Gogol, Nekrasov, Leskov, Melyshkov-Pechersky, in the dramaturgy of Griboyedov, Pushkin, Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky.
The speech of the characters often conveys their unique psychological states; utterances, in the words of G. O. Vinokur, are built on “clumps of colloquial expression” (39, 304). "Loquacity of the heart" (an expression from the novel "Poor People") is characteristic not only of Dostoevsky's heroes. This spiritual ability of a person has been mastered by many realist writers.
“In order to think “figuratively” and write like this, it is necessary that
the heroes of the writer each spoke their own language, characteristic of their position ... - said N. S. Leskov. - A person lives with words, and you need to know at what moments of psychological life which of us will find what words ... I carefully and for many years listened to the pronunciation and pronunciation of Russian people at different levels of their social status. They all talk to me in your own wayhim, and not in a literary way” (82, 3, 221). This tradition was inherited by many Soviet writers: “in their own way, and not in a literary way,” the heroes of Sholokhov and Zoshchenko, Shukshin and Belov speak.
The plot of the novel "Rudin" and its development in time. Features of the construction of Turgenev's novels in comparison with Goncharov. The plot development of the novel "Rudin" is distinguished by laconicism, accuracy and simplicity. The action is within a short period of time. First main character, Dmitry Nikolaevich Rudin, appears on the estate of the wealthy lady Darya Mikhailovna Lasunskaya. Meeting with him becomes an event that attracted the most interested attention of the inhabitants and guests of the estate. New relationships are formed, which are abruptly interrupted. Two months later, the development of the plot continues and again fits in less than two days. Dmitry Rudin declares his love to Natalya Lasunskaya, the daughter of the owner of the estate. This meeting is tracked down by Pandalevsky and informs her mother. The scandal that has flared up makes it necessary to have a second date at Avdyukhin Pond. The meeting ends with a break in love. That same evening, the hero leaves.
In the background, in parallel, another love story unfolds in the novel. The neighboring landowner Lezhnev, Rudin's comrade at the university, declares his love and receives the consent of the young widow Lipina. Thus, all events take place within four days!
The composition includes elements designed to reveal the nature and historical significance of Rudin's image. This is a kind of prologue, the first day of the story. During this day, the appearance of the main character is carefully prepared. The novel does not end with the separation of Rudin from Natalya Lasunskaya. It is followed by two epilogues. They give an answer to the question of what happened to the hero next, how his fate turned out. We will meet Rudin twice more - in the Russian outback and in Paris. The hero is still wandering around Russia, from one postal station to another. His noble impulses are fruitless; he is superfluous in the modern order of things. In the second epilogue, Rudin dies heroically at the barricade during the Paris uprising of 1848.
Such plot brevity and temporary "stinginess" is generally characteristic of Turgenev's novel genre. Goncharov unfolded the chain of events in his novels with epic slowness. Unlike him, Turgenev selects the most important, culminating moments in the life of the characters for the image.
The choice of the protagonist by the two novelists is also fundamentally different. We can call Goncharov's characters the sons of their century. For the most part, they are ordinary people who are influenced by the era, like Peter and Alexander Aduev. The best of them dare to resist the dictates of time (Oblomov, Raisky). This happens, as a rule, within the limits of personal existence. On the contrary, Turgenev, following Lermontov, is looking for a hero of his time. About the central character of Turgenev's novels, one can say that he influences the era, leads him, captivating his contemporaries with his ideas, passionate sermons. His fate is extraordinary, and his death is symbolic. Such people, personifying the spiritual quest of a whole generation, the writer was looking for every decade. It can be said that this was the pathos of Turgenev's novelistic work. Dobrolyubov admitted that "if Mr. Turgenev has already touched on any issue," then soon he "will appear sharply and clearly before the eyes of everyone."
Exposition of the novel. The first, expositional chapter, at first glance, has little to do with further development actions. And Rudin does not appear in it yet. One beautiful summer morning, the landowner Lipina hurries to the village. She is driven by a noble desire - to visit a sick old peasant woman. Alexandra Pavlovna did not forget to bring tea and sugar, and in case of danger she intends to take her to the hospital. She visits a peasant woman in a village that does not even belong to her. Worried about the future fate of her little granddaughter, the patient bitterly says: “Our gentlemen are far away ...” The old woman is sincerely grateful to Lipina for her kindness, for her promise to take care of the girl. Another thing is that it's too late to take the old woman to the hospital. “It’s all one to die… Where is she in the hospital! they will raise her, she will die! - remarks a neighboring peasant.
Nowhere else in the novel does Turgenev touch on the fate of the peasants. But the picture of the fortified village was imprinted in the mind of the reader. Meanwhile, the noble heroes of Turgenev have nothing in common with the characters of Fonvizin. They do not have the coarse features of the Prostakovs and Skotinins, and even the narrow-mindedness of the inhabitants of the lordly Oblomovka. These are educated carriers of a refined culture. They have a strong moral sense. They are aware of the need to help the peasants, to care for the welfare of their serfs. On their estate they take practical steps, philanthropic attempts. But the reader has already seen that this is not enough. What should be done? In response to this question, the main character appears in the novel.
Read also other articles on the topic “Analysis of the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Rudin".
The plot and composition of a literary work
Abramovich G. L. " Introduction to Literary Studies"Textbook for students of pedagogical institutes according to special No. 2101 "Russian language and literature." M., Education, 1979 Published with some abridgements OCR Detskiysad.Ru The artistic embodiment of a holistic picture of life, a complex combination of persons, events, relationships, circumstances, thoughts, feelings is carried out by numerous and varied means. These means of some writers are in many respects different from the means used by others (we will talk about this when touching on the problem of style). However, there is something in common that is inherent in all writers and follows from the general features of literature. First, to use Gorky's expression, the "primary element" of literature is the same for all writers - the language by which verbal images are created that so powerfully appeal to our imagination. Secondly, the reconstruction of life in its processes, action, which, as Lessing showed, is the specificity of literature as a temporary art, also brings to the fore the plot, that is, the movement of events (in epic and dramatic works) or thoughts, feelings and experiences. (in lyric), which reveals human characters, destinies, contradictions, social conflicts. Thirdly, the need for the embodiment of the ideological and artistic design to turn either to the speech of the characters, then to descriptions, then to the author's narrative, then to dialogues, then to monologues, then to the author's lyrical outpourings, then to the confession-heroes, letters, diaries etc. determines in each work its construction, or, as it is called in the language of literary theory, composition. Finally, fourthly, the embodiment of the artist's creative idea is always associated with specific generic and specific forms of this embodiment, its genre features. All these moments are very individually refracted in the work of this or that writer. General concept of the plot . Most often, the plot acts as a system of events in the work. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of narrative works artistically explore important social conflicts and reflect them in the integral moving picture of life that the writer creates. We recalled Lessing, who said that poetry depicts life in motion. Let us also recall the wonderful words of M. Gorky, leading to an understanding of the role of the plot. “A writer must understand,” wrote M. Gorky, “that he not only writes with a pen, but draws with words and draws not as a master of painting, depicting a person motionless, but trying to depict people in continuous movement, in action, in endless clashes with each other , in the struggle of classes, groups, units. The disclosure in the plot of a social conflict in its dynamics, development, resolution, and consequences is, of course, of great importance, since it contributes to understanding the tendencies of social development, its laws. In this regard, we should note some points that are essential for understanding the multifaceted role of the plot in a literary work. First, we must bear in mind that the artist's penetration into the meaning of the conflict presupposes, as the English writer Jack Lindsay rightly puts it, "penetration into the souls of people who are participants in this struggle." Hence the great cognitive significance of the plot, which M. Gorky pointed out in his time. The plot, Gorky wrote, is "connections, contradictions, sympathies, antipathies and, in general, the relationship of people - the history of growth and organization of one or another character, type." Secondly, it is impossible not to see that the writer, as the same Lindsay said about this, “willy-nilly gets involved in the mind and heart in the conflicts that make up the content of his work.” Thus, the logic of the development of events by the writer affects his understanding and assessment of the depicted conflict, his social views, which he somehow conveys to readers, inspiring them with the necessary, from his point of view, attitude towards this conflict. Thus, for example, by depicting an acute social conflict in Resurrection, L. Tolstoy solved the most important issue of his time from the standpoint of the Russian working people. Gorky's portrayal in The Philistines, Mothers, and Enemies of the great struggle between labor and capital was given from the standpoint of the revolutionary proletariat, whose interests coincided with the interests of all working people. Thirdly, every great writer focuses his attention on the conflicts that are important for his time and people. For example, in the novel "Mother" by M. Gorky portrayed the beginning of the revolutionary struggle of the Russian working class, led by the Communist Party, against the power of capital. The historical denouement of the struggle depicted in the novel "Mother" will occur ten years after Gorky wrote his brilliant work. But by the system of events in the novel, by outlining the formation of the characters' characters, the writer was able to show in which direction social development was going, and to make clear the coming victory of the socialist revolution. What we have said does not mean that writers must necessarily depict contemporary social conflicts. They can find plots for their works in the past. Numerous historical novels, novellas, short stories, plays clearly testify to this. But even in these cases, the task of reproducing the conflict remains the same: to respond to the contemporary social demands of the writer. In "Russian Women" Nekrasov sang the feat of the wives of the Decembrists. He turned to events from which he was already separated by a considerable time in order to inspire his contemporaries with the heroic example of his predecessors. So, the plots of the works of great writers have a deep socio-historical meaning. Therefore, when considering them, it is necessary first of all to determine what kind of social conflict underlies the work and from what positions it is depicted. Speaking about the relationship between the social conflict underlying the plot and the plot itself, one should not allow simplification and identify them. It must be borne in mind that this or that conflict can be revealed in a variety of manifestations and, thus, in different plots. For example, the conflict between the democratic, progressive forces of Russia at the end of the 50s of the last century with the then dominant circles was reflected in different ways in Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm, Turgenev's The Eve, and Nekrasov's first poems. Of great importance is the artistic skill of the writer in the very construction of the plot. The plot will only fulfill its purpose when, firstly, it is internally complete, that is, it reveals the causes, nature and development of the depicted conflict, and secondly, when it attracts the interest of readers and makes them think about the meaning of each episode, every detail in the movement of events. Great writers, striving for completeness and dramatic plots, never, however, resorted to external, artificial effects. Their goal has always been the truth of life, its artistic study, and by no means empty entertainment. To fully represent the depicted conflict and its participants, they created images of numerous characters and led them through a variety of tests. It suffices to point out, for example, such epic novels as L. Tolstoy's War and Peace and M. Sholokhov's Quiet Flows the Don. As for the creation of artistic entertainment of the plot, the means here are very diverse for different artists. Some writers choose the most poignant propositions, which in themselves attract the attention of readers. We can see this, for example, in Shakespeare's tragedies, Dickens' novels, Gogol's stories. Others arouse special interest of readers, riveting their attention to the initially unmotivated actions of the characters and thereby forcing them to think about the corresponding character traits of these persons and the motives of their actions. For example, Dostoevsky liked to do this, showing in a number of cases the actions of individual characters that were still unclear in terms of motives and only later explaining the reasons that caused them. We find examples of this in The Humiliated and Insulted, and in Crime and Punishment, and in his other works. With the help of such a device, the writer not only did not allow the reader's interest to weaken, but, on the contrary, achieved an ever greater tension of this interest. We have characterized in general terms the plot characteristic of works in which a certain system of events develops. Such works include all dramatic works and most epic ones. There is no system of events in those epic works that are either devoted to describing pictures of nature (for example, Turgenev’s Forest and Steppe), or to the movement of experiences, thoughts, feelings in their only internal correlation with the outside world and, ultimately, with the events that took place in it ( for example, individual psychological novels by Edgar Allan Poe or "eventless" stories by Hemingway). As a rule, lyrical works do not have a system of events. This does not mean, however, that they are plotless. The great lyric poet reveals in his work the movement of thoughts, feelings, experiences in the inner world in their strength and passion, in their struggle and development, which determines the well-known plot of the lyrical work. Let us cite, for example, a few quatrains from Tyutchev's poem: She sat on the floor And sorted through a pile of letters, And, like cooled ashes, She took them in her hands and threw them away. She took familiar sheets And looked at them so wonderfully, As souls look from a height At the body they abandoned ... Oh, how much life was there, Irrevocably experienced! Oh, how many sorrowful minutes, Love and joy killed! loving woman revealed by the poet. Plot and image system . It is in the plot that the writer has the opportunity to reveal in development and versatility the characters and circumstances he depicts, to reveal those connections and contradictions between people that M. Gorky spoke about. The image of all this contributes to the comprehension of the questions posed in the work, the ideas expressed in it. L. Tolstoy in the novel "War and Peace" brought out many characters, each of which is a typical generalization and at the same time is a unique individuality. We have before us a truly immense human ocean of thoughts, feelings, actions, aspirations, hopes, positions. Nevertheless, all this grandiose variety of human characters is enclosed by a brilliant artist in a certain (though, of course, extremely extensive) framework, and appears in the necessary internal connections. Incarnating in his great epic "the thought of the people", L. Tolstoy depicts each character in "War and Peace" in his attitude to the Patriotic War of 1812 and thus to the life and destinies of the Russian people. In the novel, two main groups of people confront each other: the masses and secular society. Tolstoy draws the Russian peasantry, inspired by a single desire - to defeat the French invasion, to drive the enemy from their native land. The writer depicts Russian soldiers, the same peasants who fought to the death, defending the freedom and independence of their homeland. He also shows the partisan peasants who helped the Russian army in defeating the enemy. Finally, he speaks about the countless Karps and Vlass, who were not seduced by the money offered by the French command for food and fodder, and did not bring either one or the other to Moscow occupied by the French, thereby dooming the French army to starvation and extinction. Different, Tolstoy emphasizes, was the behavior of representatives of secular society both at the front and in the rear. This, as L. Tolstoy calls it, "the party of crosses and rubles" considered the war only as a means of enrichment, promotion and receiving awards. The secular elite, who gathered in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Sherer, was exclusively occupied with selfish, selfish plans and calculations. Important and significant for the visitors of this salon was considered not what was then the only and common interest of the Russian people, but what belonged to their personal interests. Such is the antithesis that is clarified in the development of the plot of the novel. L. Tolstoy showed in the course of the action that only those people who live in common hopes and aspirations with the people have great moral wealth. And, on the contrary, people who are far from the interests and feelings of the people, who care only about themselves, their careers, their comfort and their peace, are inhuman and ugly. He included Kutuzov, who carried the "people's feeling" in all its purity, Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova and Marya Bolkonskaya, ready in decisive moments, together with all the people, for a feat and self-sacrifice. To the second Tolstoy attributed Napoleon with his extreme individualism and egocentrism, careerist Boris Drubetskoy, money-grubber Prince Vasily Kuragin and his children, narcissistic Berg and many others. The antithesis between the Russian and French armies carried out by the writer is also extremely significant. Drawing the Russian army, Tolstoy showed that all its best representatives, from Kutuzov to a simple soldier, felt a sense of national dignity offended by the invasion of foreigners and were filled with firm determination to defend their native fields, houses, land - their homeland. Tolstoy did not find such a popular feeling in the French army. This army was brought to Russia to seize foreign lands, to plunder other people's property, and therefore it did not know any common, popular goal that could solder and inspire its ranks. Because of this, Tolstoy explained, "the strongest enemy in spirit" laid a hand on her. So, the system of images in the novel "War and Peace", which plays an important role in the implementation of the "folk thought" of the writer, is revealed in the plot movement of the novel. As a result, it is clarified that the true hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, as well as the historical life of people in general, is the people and that only those people who live in common high interests and thoughts with them are beautiful and humane. Connections and interactions of images in a literary work are different. In the above example of Tolstoy's great novel, the role of such connections and interactions in revealing his main idea - "folk thought", as the writer himself called it, was discussed. However, this by no means exhausts the understanding of the system of images, which can be characterized by many means of contrasting, rapprochement, shading of some images by others in order to most deeply and accurately elucidate the characteristic, special, individual in a particular person, phenomenon, event, position. In L. Tolstoy one can find a huge variety of invariably subtle and penetrating correlations of some images with others, correlations that determine desired angle view of what is depicted. This is always connected with problems of the writer's artistic method and style (see the chapter "Writer's style and artistic method" for relevant examples from "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina" and the story "After the Ball"). exposition. The elements of the plot as a complex whole usually include exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement in classical literary works. In some works there is also a prologue and an epilogue. Each of these elements (where it exists) performs its own special purpose in the work and should be specially considered. In many works, writers talk about the initial position of the characters, about the conditions for their formation and growth, about the established or emerging features of their characters that took place before the course of events unfolding in the plot. All this is necessary for the writer in order to show the regularity of the subsequent behavior of the characters in the event of a conflict. The image of the conditions for the formation of actors before the emergence of conflicts and the traits of their characters that have developed under these conditions is called an exposition. The purpose of the exposition is to motivate the subsequent behavior of the characters. The exposition is not always given at the beginning of the work. Sometimes - at the very end of the story (for example, information about Chichikov given at the end of the first volume of "Dead Souls"). Such information relating to different characters or to the same character is scattered in various places in the work (for example, exposition information about most of the characters in L. Tolstoy's "War and Peace"). But in all cases, the exposition performs the same role: it introduces the environment in which the characters of the characters were formed, and motivates their subsequent behavior. In Turgenev's novel "The Nest of Nobles" expositional information about the heroes of the novel takes up entire chapters. From them, readers will learn about the original appearance of Lavretsky and Lisa Kalitina. Gradually, the character of an enthusiastic dreamer emerges, striving for a great, lofty cause, but not prepared by the conditions of life and education received either to fight obstacles or to a sober assessment of reality. Therefore, at the very first independent step (marriage to Varvara Pavlovna), Lavretsky also suffers his first life catastrophe. The writer reports initial information about Lisa. The influence exerted on her by the ecstatically religious Agafya as early as her childhood displaced those influences that came from the drawing room of Maria Dmitrievna Kalitina. Only two paths were open before Liza: prayers, dreams of selflessness for the benefit of people, or an easy, secular life, outfits, salon empty talk. In the conditions in which Lisa was brought up, she did not know and could not know anything else. She chose the first path pointed out to her by Agafya. Thus, in the exposition of the novel, Turgenev showed the best people from the nobility of his day, so unlike the insignificant ordinary representatives of this class, and yet either broken by life circumstances, like Lavretsky, or leaving for the sphere of illusory existence, like Liza Kalitina. The exposition of the novel already to a large extent prepared the understanding of the possible fate of Lavretsky and Liza. In a dramatic work, expositional data can either be directly communicated by separate actors(for example, in A. N. Ostrovsky’s comedy “Poverty is not a vice”, we learn about the initial situation in the Tortsovs’ house and the lifestyle of Gordey Karpych Tortsov from the memoirs of Pelageya Yegorovna), or may arise in the minds of readers and viewers indirectly - based on understanding the author’s environment in which a particular conflict then unfolds. The latter is most characteristic of dramatic works that reproduce the event not as a past, but as a happening. For example, in Gogol's The Inspector General, the life of the inhabitants of the town shown by the writer, full of petty passions, stupidity, greed, envy, inflated pretentiousness, gross ignorance and despotism, makes clear the conditions for the formation of the characters of all kinds of Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, Lyapkin-Tyapkin, Strawberry, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, and the motives for their subsequent behavior in the event of a conflict. The exposition, like all other elements of the plot, should be considered in its meaningful purpose. Only then will its analysis enrich the understanding of the work, establish a connection between the characters and circumstances shown by the writer. Of course, one cannot confine oneself to a formal indication of the moments that preceded the emergence of the conflict. In practice, this leads to gross distortions. Thus, when examining Chekhov's story "The Death of a Clerk", they sometimes say that the exposition is Chervyakov's stay in the theater until the moment of his ill-fated sneezing, since it is only from this moment that the movement of events begins. This is not true. In a short story, representing in one or two episodes some significant phenomenon of social life, the exposition is usually implied, and not given in its direct expression. Thus, in The Death of an Official, the meaning of the events depicted cannot be sufficiently understood if one does not take into account the situation of a small official in Russia in the 80s of the 19th century. Only by comprehending this situation, we will comprehend the very essence of the tragicomedy depicted by Chekhov. It is pointless to look for any special exposition in this story. The plot and development of the action . The plot is an image of emerging contradictions that begin the development of events in the work. Revealing the contradiction that has arisen, the plot leads readers to an understanding of the theme of the work. In The Nest of Nobles, the plot is formed by the love for each other that has flared up in the hearts of Lavretsky and Liza, the dreams of the heroes of the novel about possible happiness and about a high life purpose. These feelings and dreams come into conflict with the views and institutions that are unshakable for the inhabitants of the “noble nests”. Thus, the beginning of the novel poses the question to readers: can Lavretsky and Liza be the creators of their own happiness and will they be able to become useful members of society? In The Inspector General, the plot is the forthcoming revision of the world of bribe-takers, embezzlers, careerists, loafers depicted in the comedy. In accordance with this, the plot includes a letter received by the mayor, which informs about the imminent arrival of the auditor, and the mayor’s dream, which intensifies the anxious expectation of impending retribution, and the story of the city gossips about “incognito from the capital”, which brought anxiety to the limit. Here, the plot of the work raises the question: can and should this world exist, where the Skvoznik-Dmukhanovskys rule themselves, set the tone for the Lyapkins-Tyapkins society, and are the executors of the will of the authorities, the Svistunovs and Derzhimorda? Of great substantive importance is the development of events, the beginning of which was laid by the outset. As already mentioned, in the development of events, the connections and contradictions between people reproduced by the artists are revealed, various features of human characters are revealed, the history, formation and growth of the characters are transmitted. If the plot leads the reader to an understanding of the problem posed in the work, then the development of the action gives an idea of the possible ways to solve it. In The Nest of Nobles, the development of the action reveals the spiritual richness of the characters. Great feelings and lofty thoughts about the future excite Lavretsky and Liza. These feelings and thoughts are especially pronounced when, after the publication of false news about the death of Varvara Pavlovna, Lavretsky and Lisa decide to go hand in hand along the path of life, find a business that people need and help each other to carry it out. The reader gets the impression that these people are capable of living and acting, that Lavretsky will be able to renounce his sad past and start a new life, and Liza will be able to part with the ghostly world of religious dreams and enter the sphere of real life interests. But this impression is deceptive. Getting acquainted with the development of action in "The Noble Nest", we begin to understand the sad truth. In the plot, the question posed by Turgenev about the ability or inability of the heroes of the novel to fight the obstacles that stand in their way has already become clear. The development of the action shows that Lavretsky and Liza feel a surge of strength only when the obstacles that stand in their way are removed. Since Varvara Pavlovna has died, Lavretsky does not need to go against the views on marriage that have developed in secular society, while Liza can now not consider her feelings for Lavretsky sinful. What the heroes of the novel would do if the barrier separating them had not collapsed remains unclear. The development of the action in The Inspector also clarifies the characters of the characters. Threatened with the destruction of their habitual and beneficial structure of life, they all try to bribe Khlestakov, who they take for the auditor, to arrange it in their favor. In the process of this self-defense, the characters of the characters are revealed in all their diversity. And here, in the development of the action, a possible way of solving the problem posed by the author is outlined: the world of the Skvoznik-Dmukhanovskys, Zemlyaniki, Lyapkins-Tyapkins, Derzhimord can be preserved only under the condition of a fake, fake revision. In the works we consider as examples, the history of the formation of characters in the development of the action is not shown (for both writers, what they said in the exposition was enough). But in a number of works such a task is resolved (the images of Natasha Rostova, Nyer Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky in L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace"; the image of Klim Samgin in "The Life of Klim Samgin" by M. Gorky; the image of the narrator in "The Tale of Childhood", "Freemen" and "Dashing Year" by F. Gladkov, etc.). This possibility of depicting characters in their development and growth is important because, firstly, it allows the author to show the change in people depending on the new conditions of life affecting them, and secondly, to show the impact of people themselves on their environment. Climax and denouement. The climax is the moment of highest tension in the development of the action. The meaningful purpose of the culmination lies in the greatest sharpening of the problem of the work. In The Nest of Nobles, the climax is the arrival of Varvara Pavlovna to Lavretsky. In this case, readers seem to return to the beginning of the novel again. However, it is not. It's been a long time. The feeling of the heroes of the novel, which was still unclear at the beginning, managed to take shape and become stronger. Lavretsky and Liza became necessary to each other. They no longer allow the thought of separation. Being the moment of the highest tension of the action, the climax usually entails an immediate denouement. Readers of the Noble Nest are also waiting for her. How will the heroes of the novel, who love each other so much, understand so clearly that the petty and insignificant life of the inhabitants of the “noble nest” is impossible for them, what will they do? The climax in The Inspector General is Khlestakov's matchmaking and the celebration of his engagement to Marya Antonovna. The auditor, the inhabitants of the town believe, has become his own man. This means that the original situation has been preserved: you can continue to rob, take bribes, gossip. The feeling of triumph, caused by confidence in the preservation of old forms of life, brings the actors of the comedy together in the mayor's house, despite their envy and hostility towards each other. The viewer, however, knows that Khlestakov is not a real auditor, that the victory of the mayor and his environment is imaginary. The means and possibilities of self-defense of this old world have been exhausted, and its collapse is inevitable. The denouement resolves the depicted conflict or leads to an understanding of certain possibilities for its resolution. The denouement in the "Noble Nest" is Lavretsky's satisfaction of Varvara Pavlovna's demands and the departure of Lisa Kalitina to the monastery. The heroes of the novel cannot overcome obstacles: they, in the words of Dobrolyubov, bow down "under the blows of fate." Once again, Lavretsky plunges into dreary loneliness and never finds a real business for himself. Renounces life, leaves people Liza. Thus, in the denouement, with greater or lesser clarity, the writer gives a solution to the problem he has posed. Even the best people from the nobility, Turgenev shows in the novel, they are not capable of fighting, they are deprived of the will to live. They cannot play a leading role in society. The denouement of the "Inspector" is the discovery of Khlestakov's true position and the subsequent news of the arrival of a real auditor. Such a life cannot, must not exist: it is ugly and unjust. This idea is especially emphasized by the silent scene that ends the denouement of The Inspector General. Not only officials freeze in horror, but also Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, who have nothing to do with official service. Everyone feels that with a real revision, the world of violence, robbery, rudeness, meanness and vulgarity cannot be maintained. Thus, Gogol's depiction of the life of the bureaucratic-landlord circles of a provincial Russian town rises to the level of denunciation of the entire system of life in the then autocratic-police Russia. Prologue and epilogue . In some works, there are also such elements of the plot as a prologue and an epilogue. The prologue is a kind of introduction to the main plot development. Anticipating this development, the prologue reveals the root causes (sometimes very distant in time) of the events shown in the work. These first causes to a large extent clarify the main meaning of the further situations and incidents arising from them. For example, in the spring fairy tale by A. N. Ostrovsky “The Snow Maiden”, the prologue introduces us to an event that took place fifteen years before the settlement of the Snow Maiden in the kingdom of the Berendeys. We learn how the Snow Maiden gets to Bobyl, we get acquainted with her dual nature - the "Frost of the offspring", who does not know love; and at the same time, the daughter of Spring-Krasna, yearning, although unconsciously, for the will, communication with people, Lel's songs, the beauty of life. The possibility of a tragic collision, which led to the death of the Snow Maiden at the end of the play, is already felt in the prologue. The work usually opens with a prologue. However, there are times when a writer deviates from this canon and moves the prologue to another place, sometimes even to the very end of the work. The bandura player's song that concludes Gogol's story "Terrible Revenge" tells about the tragedy that took place in ancient times, the characters of which were Ivan and Petro, about the death of Ivan and his "terrible revenge". It was these events that turned out to be the root cause of all the misfortunes that occurred in the family of Danila and Katerina, and all the crimes of the terrible sorcerer - the last of the perfidious Peter's family. That is why the song of the bandura player is the prologue in "Terrible Revenge", although outwardly it takes the place of the epilogue. The writer resorts to the epilogue when he believes that the denouement of the work has not yet fully explained the direction of the further development of the people depicted and has not clearly defined their fate. In the epilogue, the writer, in addition, seeks to make the author's sentence over the depicted especially tangible. An epilogue is a depiction of the final consequences arising from the events shown in the work. In The Nest of Nobles, from the epilogue, we learn that Lavretsky, who wandered aimlessly in foreign lands, returned to his homeland a number of years after the events described in the novel. In the Kalitins' house, he is met by a new generation that has already grown up. And against the background of this rising, young and joyful life, Lavretsky's "lonely old age" and "useless life" appear with tragic clarity. The scene of the last meeting of the heroes of the novel in the monastery is also drawn in the epilogue. This scene conveys with particular force the tragedy experienced by Lavretsky and Lisa: the tragedy of unfulfilled expectations, lost hopes, broken love - the tragedy of passivity and social impotence. Summing up the final result of the life of his heroes, Turgenev shows what they eventually come to, and makes readers even more aware of both the wonderful human inclinations that were in Lavretsky and Lisa, and the ugliness of those living conditions under which these inclinations were not received and could not get the desired development. These are the most important elements of the plot. But they are not necessarily always present in all works. Sometimes there are some, there are no others, only third ones are implied. For example, in such a famous writer as Hemingway, we find it difficult to single out in individual stories not only the exposition, but even such elements as the plot and denouement. The movement of events in such stories (for example, "On the Big River") is so even and uniform that it does not allow us to consider it (the movement of events) in the usual categories of plot. Composition . Composition is the construction of a work of art. It contributes to the creation of a single, integral picture of life, or, in other words, the creation of a work as a whole. Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons depicted the clash between democratic children and noble fathers that began in Russia in the second half of the 1950s. The position of the writer himself in assessing the collision he depicted was very complex. On the one hand, Turgenev saw that the progressive role of the nobility had been exhausted and that it was no longer able to be the advanced class of society. The future, as the writer understood it, belongs to people like Bazarov - raznochintsy-democrats, with their seething energy, ability to work and action, unspent power. On the other hand, he did not find high positive ideals in Bazarov, could not agree with his “nihilism”, considered that people like his hero were only on the threshold of the future, but for now they were doomed to death. The artistic embodiment of this idea of Turgenev required numerous figurative and expressive means, including, of course, compositional ones. It was important for Turgenev to show the social image of Bazarov. And we have a story about Bazarov's parents, a description of their home, lifestyle, father's activities, a portrait of Yevgeny Bazarov himself, Bazarov's dialogues with heroes from the nobility, revealing his social views, attitude to natural sciences, to medicine and much more. Turgenev needed to reveal the inconsistency of Bazarov's nihilism. To do this, the writer takes his hero through the test of love and beauty as the highest values of life, from Turgenev's point of view. This again entails recourse to many different compositional means. A story from the past of Pavel Petrovich is introduced into the narrative of the present - a story about his love for Princess R. The "nihilist" Bazarov contemptuously calls this story "romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art." Turgenev then depicts the relationship between Bazarov and Anna Sergeevna Odintsova in such a way as to get a roll call with the nature of the relationship between the elder Kirsanov and Princess R. And Bazarov, not finding reciprocity, loses his taste for life, feels strange fatigue, works only by inertia, mechanically, which leads him to an untimely end. Unexpectedly for Bazarov, "romanticism" declared its rights in himself. In order to present the life program of Bazarov, his onslaught on the culture, principles and way of life of the landlord class, and at the same time to equally tangibly reveal the life program of Bazarov's opponents, Turgenev replaces the author's narration and description with sharply dramatic scenes: with passionate dialogues, poisonous remarks - for the whole this verbal duel, which later culminates in a real duel. Lyrical digressions . Lyrical digressions are a direct expression by the author of an epic work of his thoughts and feelings. Such digressions occur precisely only in epic works; in dramatic works, the author's speech, as a rule, is completely absent, while the lyric is entirely a direct expression of the author's holistic experience. The compositional role of lyrical digressions is very diverse. Sometimes a lyrical digression dedicated to a character merges with the thoughts and feelings of another character, but nevertheless it is given in such a way that the reader perceives it as a direct expression of the author's thoughts and feelings. Such is the lyrical digression in Fadeev's Young Guard, dedicated to the working mother. Mother Mother! I remember your hands from the moment I became aware of myself in the world. During the summer, they were always covered with a tan, it no longer departed in the winter - it was so gentle, even, only a little bit darker on the veins. Or maybe they were even rougher, your hands, because they had so much work in life - but they always seemed so tender to me and I loved kissing them right on their dark veins ... But most of all, I remembered forever how gently they stroked, your hands, a little rough and so warm and cool, how they stroked my hair, and neck, and chest, and when I was half-conscious lying in bed. And whenever I opened my eyes, you were always near me, and the night-light burned in the room, and you looked at me with your sunken eyes, as if from darkness, yourself all quiet and bright, as if in robes. I kiss your clean, holy hands! .. This digression sounds like a hymn to a mother woman, her great maternal love and her labor exploits. It helps to more fully and vividly present the significance of the Soviet woman-mother in the life of our country and in shaping the characters of her sons. Sometimes the writer resorts to lyrical digressions to communicate the nature and objectives of his work. A classic example of this kind of lyrical digression is Gogol's famous discourse in Dead Souls about two types of writers. It was important for the writer to explain to readers the social significance and patriotic meaning of his satire, which met the interests of the democratic circles of Russia and seemed unacceptable to the guardians of the autocratic-feudal system. introductory episodes. Introductory episodes are those that are not directly related to the plot line of the story. This compositional tool is used by writers either to expand and deepen the content of a work, or to indicate its ideological meaning. Chekhov's story "The Gooseberry" tells of a certain Nikolai Ivanovich Chimshe-Gimalaysky, who, under the influence of the laws of public life that prevailed in landowner-bourgeois Russia, becomes a self-satisfied owner, an ardent conservative, an egoist. However, Chekhov inserts into his story about Chimsha-Himalayan episodes that are not directly related to the main narrative. One episode tells about a miserly merchant who did not want anyone to be able to use his wealth after his death. The merchant, sensing the approach of death, turned all his fortune into large bank notes, ordered a plate of honey to be served, tore these tickets to shreds, mixed them with honey and ate them. Another episode is dedicated to a hawker who was left without a leg and was worried not about his injury, but about twenty rubles hidden in a boot from a cut off leg. It is not difficult to understand the meaning of these episodes in the story "Gooseberry". The famous "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" is inserted into Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". Outwardly, it is connected with the plot of the poem: the story of Captain Kopeikin is told by the postmaster, who suggests that Captain Kopeikin is Chichikov. However, this is only an excuse to convey the story of Captain Kopeikin. The story tells about one of the invisible heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812. Captain Kopeikin fought valiantly and lost an arm and a leg during the battles. Disabled war invalid who has no means of subsistence and is unable due to his injuries earn his life, he is counting on the help of the government. Kopeikin seeks an appointment with the minister and tries in vain to receive an allowance. The Minister postpones the decision of the issue from week to week, and the starving Kopeikin becomes more and more persistent petitioner. The minister is angry: some insignificant, as he thinks, captain is bothering him with his requests and complaints. An order was given to send Captain Kopeikin from the capital along the stage with escorts. The story ends with a message about the appearance of a gang of robbers, headed by the unfortunate, offended Kopeikin. Although this episode is not directly related to Chichikov's adventures, its significance in the poem is enormous. Showing in "Dead Souls" the selfish, self-serving life of landowners and officials, busy arranging their affairs and completely indifferent to the fate of the people, Gogol "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" emphasized that such an attitude towards the people, even to those of its representatives who gloriously served their to the fatherland, characterizes not only ordinary landowners and officials, but also the highest government circles of Russia, its dignitaries. Thus, the content of the poem deepened and the formidable nature of Gogol's satire, which castigated the inhumanity of social relations in contemporary Russia, was revealed. Just like lyrical digressions, introductory episodes are sometimes used to clarify the idea, the pathos of the work. We have already said that in a lyrical digression about two types of writers, Gogol explained the nature of his satire. However, the writer felt that the patriotic meaning of his satire might not be sufficiently understood by readers. In an effort to clarify, at the end of the first volume of "Dead Souls" the writer introduced the episode with Kifa Mokievich and Mokni Kifovich and spoke directly about its innermost meaning, in this case he directly explained the meaning of this episode. This is how two inhabitants of a peaceful corner spent their lives, who unexpectedly, as if from a window, looked out at the end of our poem, looked out in order to modestly answer the accusation from some ardent patriots, who for the time being calmly engaged in some kind of philosophy or increments about amounts gently by them. beloved fatherland, thinking not about not doing evil, but about not only saying that they are doing evil ... Who, if not the author, should tell the holy truth? Artistic framing and artistic preview . In order to make the meaning of certain phenomena and characters depicted especially clear, writers sometimes resort to artistic framing, that is, to create pictures and scenes that are similar in essence to the phenomena and characters depicted. For example, in the story "Hadji Murad" L. N. Tolstoy creates a more complete picture of the fate of the hero of the story by introducing a scene with a burdock. Beginning his story, the writer talks about how he once returned home through the fields, picking up a bouquet of different flowers. Gathering flowers, he "noticed in the ditch a wonderful crimson burdock in full bloom," which was called "Tatar" in central Russia. I, - Tolstoy reports, - took it into my head to pick this burdock and put it in the middle of the bouquet. I climbed down into the ditch and, having chased away the hairy bumblebee that had dug into the middle of the flower and sweetly and languidly fallen asleep there, I began to pluck the flower. But it was very difficult: not only did the stem prick from all sides, even through the handkerchief with which I wrapped my hand, it was so terribly strong that I fought with it for about five minutes, tearing the fibers one at a time. When I finally tore off the flower, the stem was already all in tatters, and the flower no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. In addition, he, in his rudeness and coarseness, did not fit the delicate flowers of the bouquet. I regretted that in vain I had ruined a flower that was good in its place, and I threw it away. “What, however, is the energy and strength of life,” I thought, recalling the efforts with which I tore off the flower. “How intensely he defended and sold his life dearly.” Further, L. N. Tolstoy says in the story that the burdock he picked reminded him of a long-standing Caucasian story with Hadji Murad, who discovered inexhaustible strength and energy, fighting for his life until his last breath. This analogy is especially felt by the reader in the scene of the death of the hero of the story. Hadji Murad, already mortally wounded, felt that life was slipping away from him. And meanwhile, - writes Tolstoy, - his strong body continued to do what it had begun. He gathered his last strength, rose from behind the blockage and fired a pistol at a running man and hit him. The man fell. Then he completely got out of the pit and with a dagger went straight, limping heavily, towards the enemies. Several shots rang out, he staggered and fell. Several policemen with a triumphant squeal rushed to the fallen body. But what seemed to them a dead body suddenly stirred. First, a bloody, shaved head without a hat rose, then the torso rose, and, grabbing a tree, he got up all over. He seemed so terrible that those who ran up stopped. But suddenly he trembled, recoiled from the tree, and from all his height, like a mowed burdock, fell on his face and did not move any more. In some works, the artistic framing leads directly to the main essence of the depicted type of person. For example, in Chekhov's "The Man in the Case" the description of the headman's wife, Mavra, who is afraid of everything, surrounding herself with some kind of shell separating her from people, prepares the formulation of the problem of the formation of "case" characters in the then "state-owned", as Chekhov called it, Russia. Sometimes the writer precedes for a better understanding of these or other episodes close in inner meaning to the image of future events. For example, in the second part of Tatyana's dream, the poet shows the murder of Lensky by Onegin, which will soon happen in reality. Revealing the motives for the murder, Pushkin in both cases emphasizes the same reason - Onegin's egoism. In Tatyana's dream, the arrival of Lensky with Olga prevents Onegin from being alone with Tatyana. On one bowl scales- a temporary obstacle that prevents the hero of the novel from fulfilling his desire, on the other - the life of Lensky. The first for Onegin is more important than the second. At Tatyana's name day, Onegin, furious that, having believed Lensky, he was not among the Larins' home circle, but surrounded by people with whom he broke all ties, and was forced to be bored and languish for several hours, takes revenge on the poet. He angrily jokes about his friend's love for Olga, which makes up all his happiness for the enthusiastic dreamer. And here, on one side of the scale, Onegin's forced short-term boredom, and on the other, Lensky's life. The anticipation in Tatyana's dream of events that take place later in reality makes one especially keenly feel the essential feature of Onegin that is revealed in them. We find a similar technique in other works of Pushkin (for example, Grinev's dream in The Captain's Daughter). Landscape . In many works, the landscape plays an important ideological and compositional role. This, of course, is not about those works where nature is the direct subject of the image and, as such, is considered in internal correlation with the ideological, moral and aesthetic views of the writer. Here we have in mind the works in which landscapes serve an official purpose, participating, along with other visual means, in revealing the writer's ideological intent. Let us turn, for example, to Tolstoy's story "Lucerne". In the center of the story is an episode with a beggar tramp - a cripple singer, who sang and played the guitar for about half an hour for the rich people who had gathered in Lucerne and settled in the most fashionable hotel in the city, who - about a hundred people - standing on balconies and at the windows, in "respectful silence" listened to the wonderful singing. However, when later this singer turned to the audience three times with a request to give him something, no one gave anything, and many laughed at him. In connection with this episode, the writer shows the true face of contemporary bourgeois civilization (the story was written in 1857), moreover, “where,” as Tolstoy angrily writes, “civilization, freedom and equality are brought to the highest degree, where travelers gather, the most civilized people of the most civilized nations” (i.e., in Switzerland, which was then considered one of the most democratic countries). In fact, as described in Lucerne, there could be no question of any true freedom and true equality: the benefits of civilization belonged only to exceptionally rich people who were used to living for themselves, protecting their peace, taking care of comfort their lives, remaining deaf and indifferent to the fate of the poor, not recognizing their right to human dignity and happiness. In order for such an inhuman life to appear in all its ugly unnaturalness, insulting the feelings of beauty and goodness inherent in the masses of people and the desire to “huddle together”, the great artist brings what he depicts into contact with the living charm of the nature of Lucerne. This is how Tolstoy portrays the majestic beauty of nature when the narrator, Prince Nekhlyudov, opens a window overlooking the lake in his room at the Schweitzerhof Hotel: It was seven o'clock in the evening. It had been raining all day, and now it was rampant. Blue as burning sulfur, the lake, with dots of boats and their disappearing traces, motionless, smooth, as if convexly spread in front of the windows between various green shores, went forward, shrinking between two huge ledges, and darkening, rested and disappeared into piled up on each other other valleys, mountains, clouds and ice floes. In the foreground are wet, light green, receding banks with reeds, meadows, gardens, and summer cottages; further on, dark green overgrown ledges with the ruins of castles; at the bottom there is a crumpled white-purple mountain distance with bizarre rocky and white-matte snowy peaks; and everything flooded with a delicate, transparent azure of air and illuminated by the hot rays of sunset breaking through from the torn sky. Not on the lake, nor on the mountains, nor in the sky is there a single solid line, not a single solid color, not a single identical moment, everywhere there is movement, asymmetry, quirkiness, an endless mixture and variety of shadows and lines, and in everything there is calmness, softness, unity and the need for beauty. The harmony and beauty of the picture so sharply opposes the disunity of people in bourgeois society, so vividly sets off the ugliness of imaginary equality, the imaginary freedom of the people of this society, that Tolstoy's condemnation of the paths of progress and civilization under the conditions of bourgeois domination received its deep and unforgettable expression. Of course, not every landscape is directly involved in the disclosure of the entire ideological and artistic whole. It can be correlated with individual episodes, phenomena, persons, and only ultimately contribute to the creation of the whole, interacting with all other elements of a literary work. In Dostoevsky's novel Poor People, Varenka recalls the dying moments of the student Pokrovsky: He asked to raise the curtain at the window and open the shutters. He must have wanted to look at last time for a day, into the light of God, into the sun ... but the beginning day was sad and melancholy, like the fading poor life of a dying man. There was no sun. Clouds covered the sky with a misty veil; it was so rainy, gloomy, sad. Fine rain crushed into glasses and washed them with jets of cold, dirty water; it was dim and dark. The rays of the pale day barely passed into the room and barely challenged the trembling light of the lamp, heated in front of the image. A kind of psychological accompaniment is created to the sad story of this particular character, but at the same time, the "seal of the whole" lies on this landscape, correlating it with the general coloring of the life of poor people. Interior . Of great ideological and compositional significance is the situation directly surrounding the characters. And its image, as well as pictures of nature, can be correlated with the general meaning of the work, and with its individual aspects. Gogol in "Old World Landowners" showed the "unusually solitary life" of his heroes. Everything in this life is closed within their home and its immediate surroundings. "Not a single desire," writes Gogol, "flies over the palisade surrounding a small courtyard, over the fence of a garden filled with apples and plums, over the village huts surrounding it." This extraordinary solitude is also evidenced by the circulation of life only along the "trodden path from the barn to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the manor's chambers." To show what characterized this extraordinary solitude, generated by the natural way of farming, Gogol, along with a description of the lifestyle of Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna, draws the attention of readers to the furnishings of their rooms, to the things around them. Thanks to this, the interests, thoughts, feelings of Tovstogubs become clear. Everything that the old men considered necessary for them was concentrated inside their estate: in the barn, pantry, kitchen, garden, in Pulcheria Ivanovna's room with her chests and chests, boxes and boxes, bags, bundles and bundles. Subsistence farming determined their needs: "... the blessed land produced everything in such abundance, Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna needed so little ...". Therefore, only what is inside this sphere of life familiar to them acquires serious, the only important meaning for them, and hence it occupies a large place in the story. The rooms of the house with stoves and a stove bench, singing doors, Afanasy Ivanovich's sheepskin coat, products of "old tasty cuisine" are described in detail. The external world in relation to the "extraordinary solitude" mentioned in the story is alien and uninteresting to Pulcheria Ivanovna and Afanasy Ivanovich. This external world is shown by Gogol not only literally, that is, not only outside the Tovstogub estate, but, strange as it may seem, inside it. The outside world in the literal sense is a village and a forest, which Pulcheria Ivanovna went to revise, limiting herself as a result to strengthening the protection of her favorite cherries in her own garden. These are the guests, listening to whose stories Afanasy Ivanovich looked like a child examining the signet of your watch. Pulcheria Ivanovna, receiving guests, rejoiced at the opportunity to show off her homemade treats. The outside world inside the estate is God knows where, taken from and hanging on the wall in an absurd selection of portraits of Peter III, the favorite of King Louis XIV, the Duchess of Lavalier, and some bishop. This is a carpet with birds that look like flowers and flowers that look like birds. Senseless, familiar spots that do not attract anyone's attention. Of interest to the Tovstogubs are only dishes prepared by Pulcheria Ivanovna, household utensils, a perforated chair, Pulcheria Ivanovna’s dressing gown and Afanasy Ivanovich’s sheepskin coat, geese, which Afanasy Ivanovich looks at from the window for hours, “singing” doors with their various creaks, etc. etc. n These descriptions visually represent the sphere of life old world landowners, their inner appearance, their destiny. Often the image of the situation has a more local meaning: it is the key to the individual characters shown by the writers.
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The novel consists of five independent stories, arranged in an order that violates the chronology of events. The stories are united by a common hero and a common title.
Lermontov came close to the most difficult task: to show in a real situation a man of his time - thinking and feeling, talented, but crippled by the environment, unable to find a worthy application of his “immense forces”. It was important for the author to explain the appearance of a person of such a type as Pechorin, to reveal his inner world with the greatest depth, to give complete description hero. This main task is also helped by the composition of the novel, which is entirely subordinate to the author's thought.
The composition of "A Hero of Our Time" is complex and original. Recall that the composition in Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" was subject to two storylines: Onegin - Tatyana, Onegin - Lensky. Pechorin's clash with other characters forms several storylines based on different conflicts: intimate, psychological, moral, philosophical, character conflicts: Pechorin and Bela, Pechorin and Mary, Pechorin and Vera, Pechorin and Werner, Pechorin and Grushnitsky, Pechorin and Maxim Maksimych, Pechorin and the "water society". These storylines, varying in length over time, are complemented by a hidden subtext (the conflict between Pechorin and the “those in power”, by whose will he ended up in the Caucasus, the “law and order” of which the hero does not accept). The combination of storylines forms the multifaceted structure of the novel.
How does the plot relate to the composition of the work? From what has been said above, it is clear that the concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot.
The plot fits into the overall composition of the work, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it, depending on the intentions of the author. There is also an internal composition of the plot, to which we now turn.
Depending on the ratio of the plot and plot in a particular work, one speaks of different types and plot composition techniques. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in a direct chronological sequence without any changes, which we saw in Chekhov's story "The Death of an Official". Such a composition is also called a direct or plot sequence.
More complicated is the technique in which we learn about an event that happened before the rest at the very end of the work - this technique is called default.
This technique is very effective, because it allows you to keep the reader in ignorance and tension until the very end, and at the end to amaze him with the unexpectedness of the plot twist. Thanks to these properties, the technique of default is almost always used in works of the detective genre, although, of course, not only in them.
Another method of violating the chronology or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection, when, in the course of the development of the plot, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, at the time preceding the plot and the beginning of this work.
So, in Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" in the course of the plot, we encounter two significant flashbacks - the prehistory of the life of Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov.
It was not Turgenev's intention to start the novel from their youth, and it would clutter up the composition of the novel, but it seemed necessary to the author to give an idea of the past of these heroes - it was the technique of retrospection that came in handy here.
Finally, the plot sequence can be broken in such a way that events of different times are given mixed up; the narrative constantly returns from the moment of the ongoing action to different previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past.
This composition of the plot is often motivated by the memories of the characters. It is called free composition and is used to some extent by different writers quite often: for example, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorky and many other writers.
However, it happens that free composition becomes the main and defining principle of plot construction, in this case, as a rule, we are talking about free composition proper.
It should be noted that this phenomenon is characteristic mainly for the XX century. and reflects the writers' sharpened and deepened understanding of the connections between the past and the present.
AT domestic literature as an example of free composition, one can point to Tvardovsky's poem "Beyond the distance - distance", the novels of Y. Bondarev, Ch. Aitmatov; in foreign literature, W. Faulkner especially loved this form.
Esin A.B. Principles and methods of analysis of a literary work. - M., 1998