Artistic form and content

Image as a unity of content and form

Image as a unity of the emotional and rational (feelings and reason)

Any artist affirms his works with a certain attitude to life. The question posed affirmed a certain idea. Every work contains a certain thought, a rational principle. Rational beginning - rationally - justified, emotional and mental experience, emotional excitement (joy, sorrow).

In art, the idea is, first of all, artistic idea it first evokes a certain feeling in us, and on this basis they awaken a thought, only rejoicing, indignant, at the experience we begin to reason. This feature of the influence of art is explained by the fact that in an artistic image, the rational is always inextricably linked with emotions. Sensory perception of the world is characteristic only of man. The very possibility of artistic thinking is connected with this, only thanks to this work of art awakening the emotional attitude, the idea contained in it, excites our thinking.

Viewer – image – emotion – thought.

Artist – thought – emotion – image.

This is one of the most important laws of creativity and a necessary condition for the artistry of a work. Content and form are aesthetic categories that express the relationship in art between the internal spiritual ideological and figurative principle and its external direct embodiment. In a work of art, content and form are so close that separating form from content means destroying content, and separating content from form means destroying form. The relationship between content and form is characterized by two points.

1. The form of a work of art grows from the content and is intended to serve as its expression.

An artistic image serves to indicate the connection between reality and art and is a product of the artist’s thoughts. A genuine work of art is always distinguished by great depth of thought, the significance of the problem posed, and an interesting form.

In the artistic image, as an important means of reflecting reality, the criteria (signs) of truthfulness and realism are concentrated, connecting the real world and the world of art. An artistic image gives us, on the one hand, a reproduction of the reality of thoughts, feelings, actions, and on the other hand, it does this with the help of means characterized by convention. Truthfulness and conventionality exist together in the image. Due to this, can art in general and choreography in particular exist if everything is conditionally generalized into it? Due to the inherent artistic thinking and perception of a person, which is based on the sensory perception of the world. The main characteristic of this thinking Associativity.

Association– (from Latin connection) a psychological connection that arises between two or more psychological formations, perceptions, ideas, ideas. The mechanism of association comes down to the emergence of a connection between one sensation and others.

These associative connections are based on already established ideas about objects and phenomena; they are always subjective on already established ideas about phenomena. Hence the difficulty of perceiving the unfamiliar.

A choreographer needs to be able to:

- to combine subjective perceptions of the world into one specific concrete image understandable to everyone.

- have a figurative-metaphorical type of thinking and develop it in the viewer.

Metaphor – (from the Greek language transfer) is an artistic technique based on figurative rapprochement, similarity, of the phenomena of reality. Figurative meaning phenomena of one object, sensations on another through awareness of their differences.

- a choreographer needs to have a figurative-metaphorical type of thinking, that is, cultivate in himself a corresponding search for content from reality, create metaphorical imagery in a work.

Transferring the characteristics of one object to another creates a new idea, a metaphorical image is created.

I look, see, think, and think with the help of associations in the connection of chains - I begin to understand the content embedded in the work, to decipher its image, metaphor.

The imagery collapses and disappears:

- the artist copies a fact of reality (naturalism);

- formalism, when the artist completely evades the pictorial facts of reality, when the artist does not evaluate the content.

Artistic content

Artistic content- this is a truthfully expressed ideological and emotional attitude of the artist to reality in its aesthetic meaning, causing a positive impact on the feelings and mind of a person, contributing to his spiritual development.

1. Theme (from the Greek word subject) is the widest range of issues, problems of life phenomena that are described in the work. The theme answers the question: what is the work about?

Theme of struggle;

Good and Evil;

Historical;

Nature;

Children's room.

2. Idea (from the Greek view, image, holistic meaning of the finished work). Ta the main idea, which the author wanted to inspire, convey to the viewer and answers the question WHAT WOULD THE AUTHOR WANT TO SAY TO THE VIEWER?

In order to correctly formulate the idea, you need to pose the question in plot dramaturgy: “I want to tell the viewer that...”, in plotless dramaturgy, “I want to show the viewer an image...”.

3. Plot(from the French subject) the connection of events in the plot reveals the movement of characters and feelings of a specific action and relationship of the characters.

Art form is an external expression of artistic content, a harmonious combination of parts and the whole, elements and structure.

Harmony(from the Greek consonance, agreement) an aesthetic category denoting a high level of ordered diversity.

The element of form is composition (from the Latin composition, connection).

Principles, i.e. the rules for constructing a form are the relationship and organization of the parts of a work, the subordination of the parts to the whole and the expression of the whole through the parts (a house made of cubes). The form embodies the connection into a characteristic image with the help of certain visual and expressive means that each type of art has.

The main stages of the formation of an artistic image are:

1. Image, idea- here the artist’s insight occurs when the future work is presented to him in its main features. The further course of the creative process largely depends on the idea.

2. Image of the work– this is the concretization of an image, a plan in the material. The work gains real existence.

3. Image of perception- this is the perception of a work of art by the viewer, the main goal of which is to understand and reveal the ideological content of the work. Perception is a co-creation between the viewer and the artist.

An artistic image is the main result that can deeply excite a person and at the same time have enormous educational significance on him.

The artistic image is indicated by the synthesis of the following components:

1. Music;

2. Composition;

3. Design.

Without an image there is no dance; if an artistic image does not arise, all that remains is just a set of movements.

In a work, what is perceived and appeals to the reader’s inner vision is usually called form. It traditionally distinguishes three aspects: the objects in question; words denoting these objects; composition, i.e. arrangement of objects and words relative to each other.

In the pair under consideration, the leading principle belongs to the content. It is understood as the basis of the subject, its defining side, while the form refers to the organization and appearance of the work, its defining side.

The category of content was introduced into philosophy and aesthetics by G. W. F. Hegel. He intended her to act as the “ideal” of the dialectical concept of the development of unity and the struggle of opposites. In “Aesthetics,” the great thinker proved that in a work of art, opposites are reconciled, and he saw the ideal under the content of art, and its sensual, figurative embodiment under the form.

At the same time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel saw in the predetermination of any work a harmonious combination of content and form into a free whole.

Similar statements are found in the views of V. G. Belinsky. According to the leading critic of that time, in the poet’s work the idea is not an abstract thought, but a “living creation” in which there is no boundary between idea and form, but both are “a whole and single organic creation.”

Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky deepened the views of his idealist predecessor and improved the previous understanding of the unity of content and form in the theoretical and aesthetic searches of the 19th century. He drew the attention of researchers to cases of disharmony of form and content. Poems can serve as an example of a critic's fair observation

V. Venediktov, A. Maykov, K. Balmont, which differed in form and were inferior in content.

In the history of aesthetic thought, conclusions about the priority of form over content have been preserved. Thus, F. Schiller’s views on the properties of form were supplemented by V. B. Shklovsky, a prominent representative of the school of Russian formalists. This scientist saw in the contents literary work a non-artistic category, and therefore assessed the form as the only bearer of artistic specificity.

Close attention to the form of a literary work gave rise to the research concepts of V.V. Vinogradov, V.M. Zhirmunsky, Yu.N. Tynyanov, B.M. Eikhenbaum, B.V. Tomashevsky, V.Ya. Propp, R.O. Jacobson, L. S. Vygotsky.

Specifying the area of ​​humanitarian research of these scientists, in particular, we note that an outstanding figure in the psychological direction in literary criticism, Vygotsky, using the example of an analysis of I. A. Bunin’s short story

"Easy Breathing" showed clear advantages of composition and selection

artistic vocabulary over the content of the entire work.

However, in the short story, in reflections on harmony and beauty, the genre features of the cemetery elegy are embodied with its characteristic philosophical questions about life and death, moods of sadness about the disappeared, and the elegiac structure of artistry.

This point of view is more fully represented in the work of modern researchers T. T. Davydova and V. A. Pronin on the theory of a literary work. Thus, the form does not destroy the content, but reveals its content.

A deeper understanding of the problem of the unity of content and form will also help by referring to the concept of “internal form”, developed in Russian literary criticism by A. A. Potebnya and G. O. Vinokur.

In the understanding of scientists, the internal form of a work is made up of events, characters and images that indicate its content and, consequently, its artistic idea14.

Thus, the content components of a work of art are theme, characters, circumstances, problem, idea; formal - style, genre, composition, artistic speech, rhythm; content-formal - plot, plot and conflict.

As didactic material For students, in which a literary work is considered from the point of view of the unity of content and form, there is a fragment of the literary work of M. Girshman “The Beauty of a Thinking Man ("An alarming day is welcome to the crowd, but scary..." by E. A. Baratynsky)", placed in Appendix of this manual.

§ 3. Analysis of a literary work as an artistic whole

Before considering the issue of analyzing a literary work as an artistic whole, let us turn to an important statement in the theory of literature by G. N. Pospelov in his work “Holistic-systemic understanding of literary works”: “Analysis of content<...>should consist in, through a careful examination of everything directly depicted, to deepen to an understanding of the emotional and generalized thoughts of the writer expressed in it, his ideas”15. Here the scientist gives specific recommendations to the researcher, insists on his careful, sensitive attitude towards all the material of the artistic creation.

V. E. Khaliseva, they serve the mental delimitation of the external from the internal, essence and meaning from their embodiment, from their ways of existence, and respond to the analytical impulse of human consciousness.

Consequently, the very act of studying, parsing, analyzing, and describing works of art is a responsible step in the work of a philologist, editor, and critic.

Each scientific school has its own attitudes and perspectives for understanding literary works and texts. However, in literary theory, there are some universal approaches (principles and methods of analysis) to works of literature, among which the following concepts have been established that describe the methodology and technique of studying works: scientific description and analysis, interpretation, contextual consideration.

The initial task of the researcher is description. At this stage of work, observation data is recorded and stated: speech units, objects and their actions, compositional connections.

The description of a literary text is inextricably linked with its analysis (from the gr. analysis - decomposition, dismemberment), i.e. correlation, systematization, classification of elements of a work.

When describing and analyzing a literary and artistic form, the concept of motive is important. In literary criticism, a motif is understood as a component of works that has increased significance - semantic richness. The main properties of a motif are its isolation from the whole and its repeatability in a variety of variations.

In the Appendix of this manual, as literary material that provides an educational perspective for further study of the motif, a fragment of the work of I. V. Silantyev is presented.

Analysis aimed at identifying the relationship of the elements of form to the artistic whole seems more promising. Here, comprehension of the function of techniques (from the Latin functio - execution, accomplishment) comes down to the study of artistic expediency, constructiveness, structure and content.

Artistic expediency, and in the works of Yu. N. Tynyanov it is called constructiveness, answers the questions: why is this or that technique used, what artistic effect is achieved by it. Constructiveness is intended to correlate each element of a literary work as a system with other elements and the entire system as a whole.

Structural analysis, developed by Yu. M. Lotman and his students, considers the work as a structure, divides it into levels and studies their unique identity as part of the artistic whole.

This manual contains fragments of literary articles by Yu. M. Lotman in the Appendix. Representing samples of level analysis of a work, acting as a methodology for conducting analysis, they serve additional material for students studying professional review of literary texts.

Interpretations, or literary explanations, are immanent to the work: the composition of the work itself carries the norms of its interpretation.

This research approach to the study of a literary text is based on hermeneutics - the theory of interpretation of texts, the doctrine of understanding the meaning of a statement and knowing the personality of the speaker. At this stage of development of scientific thought, hermeneutics is the methodological basis of humanitarian knowledge.

Immanent literary interpretations always carry relative truths, since artistic content cannot be completely exhausted by any single interpretation of a work.

The interpreter's immanent reading must be reasoned and clear: the editor, philologist, and literary historian must take into account the complex, multifaceted connections of each text element with the entire artistic whole.

A professional explanation of the content of the work is usually accompanied by contextual analysis. For a literary researcher, the term “context” (from the Latin coYvxYz - connection) means a wide area of ​​connections between a work of art and facts external to it, both literary (textual) and non-fictional (non-textual).

The contexts of a writer’s creativity are divided into immediate and distant contexts. The immediate contexts of a literary work consist of its creative history, captured in drafts, preliminary versions varying in time; biography of the author, his personality traits and character traits; diverse environment - literary, family, friendly.

If a philologist turns to a literary text from the position of remote contextual study, then his reasoning reveals various phenomena of the socio-cultural modernity of the author; "big historical time"(Bakhtin), to which the writer was involved; literary traditions and the subject of artistic adherence to them or repulsion; non-literary experience of past generations and its place in the fate of the writer, other issues.

In a number of remote contexts of a literary work, supra-stoic principles of existence are distinguished - archetypes, or archetypal images, going back to the mythopoetic idea of ​​the world. In the Appendix of this manual, a fragment of I. A. Esaulov’s work on the Easter archetype in the works of B. Pasternak is presented as literary material that opens up the prospect of research for students.

Principles and techniques for analyzing a literary work Andrey Borisovich Esin

Artwork as structure

Even at first glance, it is clear that a work of art consists of certain sides, elements, aspects, etc. In other words, it has a complex internal composition. Moreover, the individual parts of the work are connected and united with each other so closely that this gives grounds to metaphorically liken the work to a living organism. The composition of the work is thus characterized not only by complexity, but also by orderliness. A work of art is a complexly organized whole; From the awareness of this obvious fact follows the need to understand the internal structure of the work, that is, to isolate its individual components and realize the connections between them. Refusal of such an attitude inevitably leads to empiricism and unsubstantiated judgments about the work, to complete arbitrariness in its consideration and ultimately impoverishes our understanding of the artistic whole, leaving it at the level of primary reader perception.

In modern literary criticism, there are two main trends in establishing the structure of a work. The first comes from the identification of a number of layers or levels in a work, just as in linguistics in a separate utterance one can distinguish the phonetic, morphological, lexical, and syntactic levels. At the same time, different researchers have different ideas about both the set of levels itself and the nature of their relationships. So, M.M. Bakhtin sees primarily two levels in a work - “fable” and “plot”, the depicted world and the world of the image itself, the reality of the author and the reality of the hero. MM. Hirschman proposes a more complex, basically three-level structure: rhythm, plot, hero; in addition, “vertically” these levels are permeated by the subject-object organization of the work, which ultimately creates not a linear structure, but rather a grid that is superimposed on the work of art. There are other models of a work of art that present it in the form of a number of levels, sections.

A common disadvantage of these concepts can obviously be considered the subjectivity and arbitrariness of identifying levels. Moreover, no one has yet attempted justify division into levels by some general considerations and principles. The second weakness follows from the first and consists in the fact that no division by level covers the entire richness of the elements of the work, or even gives a comprehensive idea of ​​its composition. Finally, the levels must be thought of as fundamentally equal - otherwise the very principle of structuring loses its meaning, and this easily leads to the loss of the idea of ​​​​a certain core of a work of art, connecting its elements into a real integrity; connections between levels and elements turn out to be weaker than they really are. Here we should also note the fact that the “level” approach very little takes into account the fundamental difference in quality of a number of components of the work: thus, it is clear that an artistic idea and an artistic detail are phenomena of a fundamentally different nature.

The second approach to the structure of a work of art takes such general categories as content and form as the primary division. This approach is presented in its most complete and well-reasoned form in the works of G.N. Pospelov. This methodological tendency has much fewer disadvantages than the one discussed above; it is much more consistent with the actual structure of the work and is much more justified from the point of view of philosophy and methodology.

We will begin with the philosophical justification for distinguishing content and form in the artistic whole. The categories of content and form, excellently developed in Hegel's system, became important categories of dialectics and were repeatedly successfully used in the analysis of a wide variety of complex objects. The use of these categories in aesthetics and literary criticism also forms a long and fruitful tradition. Nothing prevents us, therefore, from applying such well-proven philosophical concepts to the analysis of a literary work; moreover, from the point of view of methodology, this will only be logical and natural. But there are also special reasons to begin the dissection of a work of art by highlighting its content and form. A work of art is not a natural phenomenon, but a cultural one, which means that it is based on a spiritual principle, which, in order to exist and be perceived, must certainly acquire some material embodiment, a way of existing in a system of material signs. Hence the naturalness of defining the boundaries of form and content in a work: the spiritual principle is the content, and its material embodiment is the form.

We can define the content of a literary work as its essence, spiritual being, and form as the way of existence of this content. Content, in other words, is the writer’s “statement” about the world, a certain emotional and mental reaction to certain phenomena of reality. Form is the system of means and techniques in which this reaction finds expression and embodiment. Simplifying somewhat, we can say that content is what What the writer said with his work, and the form - How he did it.

The form of a work of art has two main functions. The first is carried out within the artistic whole, so it can be called internal: it is a function of expressing content. The second function is found in the impact of the work on the reader, so it can be called external (in relation to the work). It consists in the fact that form has an aesthetic effect on the reader, because it is the form that acts as the bearer of the aesthetic qualities of a work of art. Content in itself cannot be beautiful or ugly in a strict, aesthetic sense - these are properties that arise exclusively at the level of form.

From what has been said about the functions of form, it is clear that the question of convention, so important for a work of art, is resolved differently in relation to content and form. If in the first section we said that a work of art in general is a convention in comparison with primary reality, then the degree of this convention is different for form and content. Within a work of art the content is unconditional; in relation to it, one cannot ask the question “why does it exist?” Like the phenomena of primary reality, in the artistic world content exists without any conditions, as an immutable given. It cannot be a conditional fantasy, an arbitrary sign, by which nothing is implied; in a strict sense, the content cannot be invented - it directly comes into the work from primary reality (from the social existence of people or from the consciousness of the author). On the contrary, the form can be as fantastic and conditionally implausible as desired, because by the convention of the form something is meant; it exists “for something” - to embody content. Thus, the Shchedrin city of Foolov is a creation of the author’s pure fantasy; it is conventional, since it never existed in reality, but autocratic Russia, which became the theme of “The History of a City” and is embodied in the image of the city of Foolov, is not a convention or a fiction.

Let us note to ourselves that the difference in the degree of convention between content and form provides clear criteria for classifying a particular element of a work as form or content - this remark will be useful to us more than once.

Modern science proceeds from the primacy of content over form. In relation to a work of art, this is true for both the creative process (the writer looks for an appropriate form, albeit for a vague but already existing content, but in no case vice versa - he does not first create a “ready-made form”, and then pour some content into it) , and for the work as such (the features of the content determine and explain to us the specifics of the form, but not vice versa). However, in a certain sense, namely in relation to the perceiving consciousness, it is the form that is primary, and the content secondary. Since sensory perception always precedes the emotional reaction and, moreover, the rational understanding of the subject, moreover, it serves as the basis and basis for them, we perceive in a work first its form, and only then and only through it - the corresponding artistic content.

From this, by the way, it follows that the movement of analysis of a work - from content to form or vice versa - is not of fundamental importance. Any approach has its justifications: the first - in the determining nature of the content in relation to the form, the second - in the patterns of reader perception. A.S. said this well. Bushmin: “It is not at all necessary... to begin the study with the content, guided only by the one thought that the content determines the form, and without having other, more specific reasons for this. Meanwhile, it is precisely this sequence of consideration of a work of art that has turned into a forced, hackneyed, boring scheme for everyone, having become widespread both in school teaching and in textbooks, and in scientific literary works. The dogmatic transfer of the correct general position of literary theory to the methodology of specific study of works gives rise to a sad template.” Let us add to this that, of course, the opposite pattern would be no better - it is always mandatory to begin the analysis with the form. It all depends on the specific situation and specific tasks.

From all that has been said, a clear conclusion arises that in a work of art both form and content are equally important. The experience of the development of literature and literary criticism also proves this position. Decreasing the importance of content or completely ignoring it leads in literary criticism to formalism, to meaningless abstract constructions, leads to forgetting the social nature of art, and in artistic practice, which is guided by such concepts, it turns into aestheticism and elitism. However, no less Negative consequences also has a disdain for the artistic form as something secondary and, in essence, optional. This approach actually destroys the work as a phenomenon of art, forcing us to see in it only this or that ideological, and not an ideological and aesthetic phenomenon. In a creative practice that does not want to take into account the enormous importance of form in art, flat illustrativeness, primitiveness, and the creation of “correct” but not emotionally experienced declarations about a “relevant” but artistically unexplored topic inevitably appear.

By highlighting form and content in a work, we thereby liken it to any other complexly organized whole. However, the relationship between form and content in a work of art also has its own specifics. Let's see what it consists of.

First of all, it is necessary to firmly understand that the relationship between content and form is not a spatial relationship, but a structural one. The form is not a shell that can be removed to reveal the kernel of the nut - the contents. If we take a work of art, then we will be powerless to “point with our finger”: here is the form, but here is the content. Spatially they are merged and indistinguishable; this unity can be felt and shown at any “point” of the literary text. Let’s take, for example, that episode from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, where Alyosha, when asked by Ivan what to do with the landowner who hunted the child with dogs, answers: “Shoot!” What does this “shoot!” represent? - content or form? Of course, both are in unity, in unity. On the one hand, this is part of the speech, verbal form of the work; Alyosha's replica occupies a certain place in the compositional form of the work. These are formal matters. On the other hand, this “shooting” is a component of the character of the hero, that is, the thematic basis of the work; the remark expresses one of the turns in the moral and philosophical quest of the heroes and the author, and of course, it is an essential aspect of the ideological and emotional world of the work - these are meaningful moments. So in one word, fundamentally indivisible into spatial components, we saw content and form in their unity. The situation is similar with a work of art in its entirety.

The second thing that should be noted is the special connection between form and content in the artistic whole. According to Yu.N. Tynyanov, relations are established between artistic form and artistic content that are unlike the relations of “wine and glass” (glass as form, wine as content), that is, relations of free compatibility and equally free separation. In a work of art, the content is not indifferent to the specific form in which it is embodied, and vice versa. Wine will remain wine whether we pour it into a glass, cup, plate, etc.; content is indifferent to form. In the same way, milk, water, kerosene can be poured into the glass where the wine was - the form is “indifferent” to the content that fills it. Not so in a work of fiction. There the connection between formal and substantive principles reaches its highest degree. This is perhaps best manifested in the following pattern: any change in form, even a seemingly small and particular one, inevitably and immediately leads to a change in content. Trying to find out, for example, the content of such a formal element as poetic meter, poeticists conducted an experiment: they “transformed” the first lines of the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin” from iambic to trochaic. This is what happened:

Uncle of the most honest rules,

He seriously fell ill

Made me respect myself

I couldn't think of anything better.

The semantic meaning, as we see, remained practically the same; the changes seemed to concern only the form. But it is clear to the naked eye that one of the most important components of the content has changed - the emotional tone, the mood of the passage. It went from being epically narrative to playfully superficial. What if we imagine that the entire “Eugene Onegin” is written in trochee? But this is impossible to imagine, because in this case the work is simply destroyed.

Of course, such an experiment with form is a unique case. However, in the study of a work, we often, completely unaware of it, carry out similar “experiments” - without directly changing the structure of the form, but only without taking into account certain of its features. So, studying in Gogol’s “ Dead souls“mainly Chichikov, landowners, and “individual representatives” of the bureaucracy and the peasantry, we study barely a tenth of the “population” of the poem, ignoring the mass of those “minor” heroes who in Gogol are not secondary, but are interesting to him in their own right to the same extent as Chichikov or Manilov. As a result of such an “experiment on form,” our understanding of the work, that is, its content, is significantly distorted: Gogol was not interested in the history of individual people, but in the way of national life; he created not a “gallery of images,” but an image of the world, a “way of life.”

Another example of the same kind. In the study of Chekhov's story “The Bride,” a fairly strong tradition has developed of viewing this story as unconditionally optimistic, even “springtime and bravura.” V.B. Kataev, analyzing this interpretation, notes that it is based on “incomplete reading” - the last phrase of the story in its entirety is not taken into account: “Nadya... cheerful, happy, left the city, as she believed, forever.” “The interpretation of this is “as I believed,” writes V.B. Kataev, - very clearly reveals the difference in research approaches to Chekhov’s work. Some researchers prefer, when interpreting the meaning of “The Bride,” to consider this introductory sentence as non-existent.”

This is the “unconscious experiment” discussed above. The structure of the form is distorted “a little bit” - and the consequences in the field of content are not long in coming. A “concept of unconditional optimism, “bravura” of Chekhov’s work emerges recent years”, whereas in fact it represents “a delicate balance between truly optimistic hopes and restrained sobriety regarding the impulses of the very people about whom Chekhov knew and told so many bitter truths.”

In the relationship between content and form, in the structure of form and content in a work of art, a certain principle, a pattern, is revealed. We will talk in detail about the specific nature of this pattern in the section “Holistic consideration of a work of art.”

For now, let us note only one methodological rule: For an accurate and complete understanding of the content of a work, it is absolutely necessary to pay as close attention as possible to its form, down to its smallest features. In the form of a work of art there are no “little things” that are indifferent to the content; according to the well-known expression, “art begins where it begins “a little bit.”

The specificity of the relationship between content and form in a work of art has given rise to a special term specifically designed to reflect the continuity and unity of these aspects of a single artistic whole - the term “content form”. This concept has at least two aspects. The ontological aspect asserts the impossibility of the existence of a contentless form or unformed content; in logic, such concepts are called correlative: we cannot think of one of them without simultaneously thinking of the other. A somewhat simplified analogy can be the relationship between the concepts of “right” and “left” - if there is one, then the other inevitably exists. However, for works of art, another, axiological (evaluative) aspect of the concept of “meaningful form” seems more important: in this case, we mean the natural correspondence of form to content.

A very deep and largely fruitful concept of meaningful form was developed in the work of G.D. Gacheva and V.V. Kozhinov “Content literary forms" According to the authors, “any artistic form is “...” nothing more than hardened, objectified artistic content. Any property, any element of a literary work that we now perceive as “purely formal” was once directly meaningful." This meaningfulness of the form never disappears; it is actually perceived by the reader: “turning to the work, we somehow absorb into ourselves” the meaningfulness of the formal elements, their, so to speak, “ultimate content.” “It’s precisely about content, about a certain sense, and not at all about the meaningless, meaningless objectivity of the form. The most superficial properties of form turn out to be nothing more than a special kind of content that has turned into form.”

However, no matter how meaningful this or that formal element is, no matter how close the connection between content and form, this connection does not turn into identity. Content and form are not the same thing; they are different aspects of the artistic whole, highlighted in the process of abstraction and analysis. They have different tasks, different functions, and, as we have seen, different measures of convention; There are certain relationships between them. Therefore, it is unacceptable to use the concept of substantive form, as well as the thesis about the unity of form and content, in order to mix and lump together formal and substantive elements. On the contrary, the true content of a form is revealed to us only when the fundamental differences between these two sides of a work of art are sufficiently realized, when, therefore, the opportunity opens up to establish certain relationships and natural interactions between them.

Speaking about the problem of form and content in a work of art, one cannot help but touch upon, at least in general terms, another concept that actively exists in modern science about literature. We are talking about the concept of “inner form”. This term actually presupposes the presence “between” the content and form of such elements of a work of art, which are “form in relation to elements of a higher level (image as a form expressing ideological content), and content in relation to lower levels of structure (image as the content of compositional and speech form)". Such an approach to the structure of the artistic whole looks dubious, primarily because it violates the clarity and rigor of the original division into form and content as, respectively, the material and spiritual principles in the work. If some element of an artistic whole can be both meaningful and formal at the same time, then this deprives the very dichotomy of content and form of meaning and, importantly, creates significant difficulties in further analysis and comprehension of the structural connections between the elements of the artistic whole. One should, of course, listen to the objections of A.S. Bushmina against the category of “internal form”; “Form and content are extremely general correlative categories. Therefore, the introduction of two concepts of form would require correspondingly two concepts of content. The presence of two pairs of similar categories, in turn, would entail the need, according to the law of subordination of categories in materialist dialectics, to establish a unifying, third, generic concept of form and content. In a word, terminological duplication in the designation of categories produces nothing but logical confusion. And in general definitions external And internal, allowing the possibility of spatial delimitation of form, vulgarize the idea of ​​the latter.”

So, in our opinion, a clear contrast between form and content in the structure of the artistic whole is fruitful. Another thing is that it is immediately necessary to warn against the danger of dividing these sides mechanically, roughly. There are artistic elements in which form and content seem to touch, and very subtle methods and very close observation are needed in order to understand both the fundamental non-identity and the close relationship between the formal and substantive principles. The analysis of such “points” in the artistic whole is undoubtedly the most difficult, but at the same time the greatest interest both in terms of theory and in the practical study of a particular work.

? CONTROL QUESTIONS:

1. Why is knowledge of the structure of a work necessary?

2. What is the form and content of a work of art (give definitions)?

3. How are content and form interconnected?

4. “The relationship between content and form is not spatial, but structural” - how do you understand this?

5. What is the relationship between form and content? What is “content form”?

Chapter 12: Editing and the Final Form of a Work Writing and Editing Writing is not a one-time process. There are two types of activities associated with working on a story, and confusing one with the other can lead to unpleasant consequences. In phase