Typing

the process of artistic generalization of life phenomena (human characters, circumstances, actions, events), in which the most significant, socially significant features of reality, the patterns of development of the individual and society are revealed.

"Creative "thinking" of characters lies in the fact that the writer not only singles out the aspects that are essential for him, but also strengthens, develops these aspects in the actions, statements of the characters newly created for this ... This is the process of creative typification of social characters in works of art" (G.N. Pospelov).

Terminological dictionary-thesaurus on literary criticism. From allegory to iambic. - M.: Flinta, Nauka. N.Yu. Rusova. 2004

See what "typing" is in other dictionaries:

TYPING- TYPING, typing, pl. no, female (book). 1. Subsuming under some type (see type in 1, 2 and 3 values), classification by type. Typification of publishing houses. 2. Transformation into a type (see type in 3 meanings), embodiment in typical forms (lit., art.). ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

typing- standardization, distribution, specialization, typing, classification, classification Dictionary of Russian synonyms. typing noun. standardization Dictionary of Russian synonyms. Context 5.0 Informatics. 2012 ... Synonym dictionary

typing- and, well. typiser. 1. Embodiment by means of art of the general, typical in the particular, individual, in specific artistic images, forms. Typing skill. ALS 1. I then go to the other extreme: I want to be a photographer. No typing... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

TYPING- development of typical designs or technological processes based on technical characteristics common for a number of products (processes). One of the ways to standardize... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

typing- TYPE, roar, rue; this; owls. and nesov., that. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

TYPING- English. typing; German Typisierung. One of the methods of standardization, classification. Antinazi. Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2009 ... Encyclopedia of Sociology

TYPING- giving standard forms, the use of typical techniques, methods, and solutions common to many objects of processes. Raizberg B.A., Lozovsky L.Sh., Starodubtseva E.B. Modern economic dictionary. 2nd ed., rev. M .: INFRA M. 479 s .. 1999 ... Economic dictionary

typing- one of the ways to create images of the imagination, especially complex, bordering on the creative process. For example, when depicting a particular episode, an artist puts in it a lot of similar ones, making him, as it were, their representative. Dictionary of practical ... Great Psychological Encyclopedia

typing- In construction, a technical direction in design and construction, which consists in choosing the best structures, components and space-planning solutions for multiple use as standard in terms of technical and economic indicators ... ... Technical Translator's Handbook

Typing- - development of standard designs or technological processes based on technical characteristics common to a number of products (processes). [Terminological dictionary for concrete and reinforced concrete. Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Research Center" Construction "NIIZHB them. A. A. Gvozdeva, ... ... Encyclopedia of terms, definitions and explanations of building materials

TYPING- development of standard designs or technological processes based on their common technical characteristics (processes) ... Great Polytechnic Encyclopedia

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Whenever it comes to the typical in life and literature, there is an idea of ​​the phenomena that are repetitive, the most common, those that in everyday speech are designated for simplicity by some conditional, often literary, name: Plyushkin, Bazarov, Kabanikha, Samgin, Nagulnov , Terkin - or collectively: Manilovism, Oblomovism, Foolovists, etc. However, let's think about it: do we really often meet people in life about whom we can say: “The spitting image of Sobakevich!” or: “Exactly like Pavka Korchagin!”? Not at all often; perhaps even this is a rare success - to see in the surrounding reality a type that has received a permanent residence in the history of literature; the situation reflected in the plot of a novel, story or fable; an act associated with one or another character in a work of art, i.e., typical in life.

In other words, emerging as an artistic and aesthetic reflection of the phenomena of life, typical in literature (and other forms of art) is irreducible back to its actual or potentially possible prototypes.

The lyrical hero of "Eugene Onegin" - the main face of Pushkin's novel in verse - not only embodied the unique spiritual image of the poet himself, but also appeared as a generalized image of a representative of a whole generation of advanced noble intelligentsia of the 1820s. Bazarov combined the portrait, social, psychological, intellectual features of many people seen by I. S. Turgenev: doctors, naturalists, writers - up to N. A. Dobrolyubov and N. G. Chernyshevsky. However, in the public consciousness of the 1860s. (and later) he entered as a symbolic figure of a "nihilist", a democrat-raznochinets, a "realist". Gorkovsky Pavel Vlasov is larger than the real personality of the Bolshevik Pyotr Zalomov, whose life facts are used by the writer in his work on the story "Mother", - this is a generalized image of a revolutionary worker during the first Russian revolution.

The fantastic head-boss Pobedonosikov from the play by V. V. Mayakovsky “The Bathhouse”, by the very essence of the grotesque-satirical typification chosen by the artist, cannot have real prototypes. However, the generalizing possibilities of this image, which denounces “compromise” and bureaucracy as typical and socially dangerous phenomena of Soviet reality in the 1920s, are very great. This was pointed out in 1922 by V. I. Lenin, noting Mayakovsky’s poem “The Sitting Ones” directed against bureaucracy as a fundamental political success of the poet, who talentedly revealed a new variety of an unusually tenacious “type of Russian life” - Oblomov.

Typifying the phenomena of reality (not only the characters of people, but also circumstances, actions, whole events and processes), the writer classifies various facts of life, compares them, combines them with each other. At the same time, the artist consciously emphasizes, sometimes exaggerates some features of the phenomena he has selected, omitting and obscuring others, and thereby makes the phenomena typical. Due to artistic typification, the writer manages to identify the most significant, socially significant features in contemporary social life and phenomena that are historically distant from him, to determine the patterns of development of the individual and society, culture and morality, to penetrate into the depths of the human soul. It is the ability to typify reality, to present a picture of the world in a "folded", generalized form that allows the art of the word, like some other types of art, to be a "textbook of life" for many generations of people (N. G. Chernyshevsky).

The first artistically perfect types of heroes, as noted by A. M. Gorky, appeared in ancient mythology and folklore. Hercules and Prometheus, Mikula Selyaninovich and Svyatogor, Doctor Faust and Vasilisa the Wise, Ivan the Fool and Petrushka - each of them captures a bunch of worldly wisdom and historical experience of the people. In their own way, the heroes of ancient and medieval literature were typical, the images created by the writers of the Renaissance - J. Boccaccio and F. Rabelais, W. Shakespeare and M. Cervantes - and the enlighteners - D. Defoe, J. Swift, L. Stern, Voltaire and D. Diderot.

The birth of realism as a creative method that allows the artist to deeply comprehend the objective reality of the world has led to an increase in the role of the typical in fiction. According to F. Engels, “realism implies, in addition to the truthfulness of details, “the truthful reproduction of typical characters in typical circumstances.” And further: "Characters ... are quite typical in the extent to which they act," and circumstances - to the extent that they "surround them (that is, characters) and force them to act."

So, according to Engels, the originality of realistic typification is manifested in the dynamic interaction of three closely related elements: 1) typical circumstances surrounding the characters and forcing them to act; 2) typical characters acting under the influence of circumstances; 3) actions performed by characters under the pressure of circumstances and revealing, firstly, the degree of typicality of both characters and circumstances, and secondly, the ability of these characters not only to obey given circumstances, but also partially change these circumstances by their actions.

Thus, the typical in a realistic work is revealed not in the static relationship of unchanging characters and circumstances, but in the process of their dialectical self-development, i.e., in the realistic plot itself.

How bravely Tolstoy's favorite heroes - Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova and Anna Karenina, Levin and Nekhlyudov - rush towards circumstances that are sometimes catastrophic and disastrous for them! How decisively they interfere with their actions in the measured course of events, either accelerating them, or slowing them down, or trying to direct them in the direction they want. And how boldly tempt the surrounding circumstances, and with them their own fate, Dostoevsky's heroes - Raskolnikov, Myshkin, Arkady Dolgoruky, Stavrogin, the Karamazov brothers! It seems that a little more - and these circumstances, in themselves unpredictable, will break, tremble, crushed by the energy of action, thoughts and feelings of individuals frantic in their searches. But the ties that bind typical characters and typical circumstances in a realistic narrative are indissoluble; the struggle between them does not stop, and the actions of the characters in a realistic plot are truly equal to the opposition of inexorable circumstances.

Romantic typification is another matter. Let us recall the cunning, never desponding and overcoming any difficulties, d'Artagnan and the mysterious, omnipotent Count of Monte Cristo; Jean Valjean, noble and majestic in happiness and misfortune, or Lermontov's Demon, disappointed in the world. All these are exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances, conquering any circumstances with their actions.

To what extent can we talk about the reflection of unusual, unique phenomena by realist artists? Of course, in the extent to which these phenomena are understood as internally regular, as potentially developing, that is, typical, despite their singularity. So, taking shape at the turn of the 1850s and 1860s. in Russia, the social type of a raznochinets revolutionary, a democrat, was replacing the "superfluous" person who was leaving the historical stage. The singularity of the new hero of Russian reality was emphasized, each in his own way, by I. S. Turgenev in Bazarov (a lonely, tragically doomed person), N. G. Chernyshevsky in Rakhmetov (“a special person”), N. A. Nekrasov in Grisha Dobrosklonov ( to whom fate prepared, in addition to the name of the people's intercessor, "consumption and Siberia"). Looking from different ideological and aesthetic points of view at the same social type at the time of its inception and formation, realist writers came to the creation of various artistic types, each of which reflected some regularity in the objective socio-historical development of Russian society at a turning point for him stage.

How to make a report on a literary topic

Getting started on the report, study the material on this topic. For example, if you are preparing a report on the dramaturgy of A. M. Gorky, determine which plays you want to include in it, re-read these plays, and then familiarize yourself with the scientific literature.

In the Literary Encyclopedia, an article about Gorky is followed by a list of books about him. In any large monograph listed there, it is easy to find links to books devoted to the analysis of the plays you need. However, wherever it comes to dramaturgy, it is better to use the "Theatrical Encyclopedia": in the bibliographic section, placed at the end of the article about this writer, you will find the title of works about his plays.

After you get acquainted with scientific materials, proceed to develop a report plan. If it is dedicated to a historically significant phenomenon, for example, the Decembrist poets, then first characterize the poets as a whole, tell about the historical environment in which the common features of their work were formed, then proceed to characterize individual poets, showing how they differed from each other. Summing up, tell us about their influence on Russian literature and social thought. However, a report on the same topic can be structured differently. Start with statements about the Decembrist poets of our contemporaries, thereby emphasizing the enduring significance of their work. Then, having explained which particular poems of these poets are closest to us and why, proceed to the analysis of the work of individual authors.

In the same way, a report on the life of a writer does not have to begin at all in a stereotyped way: he was born then, etc. You can start a story about a writer with some bright, memorable episode associated with him, and only then move on to presenting his biography.

Having determined for yourself the nature of the construction of the message, write the entire report or make a detailed summary of it, without rewriting citations. In the text of the report, make only references to their source. And during the report, you should have books on which you will quote, or extracts made from books that you could not take with you. Do not read a pre-written text: after all, a living word is always more interesting. Therefore, a summary is needed: it will be the “cheat sheet” that will remind the speaker of his own text. At home, you can rehearse the report to check whether you fit in the time allotted for it, and to make sure that you pronounce the text according to the outline confidently, expressively, without getting confused or straying. Do not be afraid to get carried away, deviate somewhat from the prepared text - the summary will help you not to forget the main provisions of the work if, during the presentation, its parts are rearranged.

At the end of the report, be sure to indicate what literature you used.

It is good if the report is accompanied by a demonstration of books of different editions, albums with reproductions, film fragments or transparencies, as well as listening to tape recordings or records.

Collection output:

TO THE PROBLEM OF "TYPOLOGY" AND "TYPING" IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Bulycheva Vera Pavlovna

Lecturer at the Department of English for Economic Specialties Astrakhan State University, Astrakhan

For linguistics, the problem of typology is not new. The term " typology”was considered in the works of ancient rhetoricians, and the list of works devoted to the study typologies, has hundreds of titles. Like some other fundamental concepts, the term typology is broad and multifaceted, within the framework of different sciences it is understood differently, which makes it extremely difficult to define it. For example, in philosophy typology(from Greek - imprint, form, pattern and - word, teaching) - this is “a method of scientific knowledge, which is based on the division of systems of objects and their grouping using a generalized, idealized model or type”, in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary - this is “ the scientific method, the basis of which is the dismemberment of systems of objects and their grouping with the help of a generalized model or type; is used for the purpose of a comparative study of essential features, relationships, functions, relationships, levels of organization of objects.

Only in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary do we find information about linguistic typology - this is "a comparative study of the structural and functional properties of languages, regardless of the nature of the genetic relationship between them"

Perhaps, precisely because of the complexity of the concept itself, the term "typology" is absent in a number of specialized terminological dictionaries. Therefore, we believe that the term "typology" is primarily a general scientific term, and not a literary one.

Much more often in literary criticism we meet the term “typification”, although this term is also absent in terminological dictionaries in philology. Typification is “the development of standard designs or technological processes based on technical characteristics common to a number of products (processes). One of the methods of standardization".

Image-characters, like all other types of imagery, are, as it were, a clot of what the writer sees around him. Such a condensation of essential phenomena in an image is typification, and an image-character that reflects the leading features of an era, group, social stratum, and the like is usually called a literary type.

There are three types of literary types: epochal, social, universal.

Epochal types condense in themselves the properties of people of a certain historical period of time. It is no coincidence that there is an expression "children of their time." Thus, the literature of the 19th century developed and showed in detail the type of superfluous person who manifested itself in such different images: Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov - they all belong to different generations of people, but combines them into a common type of dissatisfaction with oneself and life, the inability to realize oneself, to find application his abilities, but it manifests itself every time in accordance with the requirements of the time and individuality: Onegin is bored, Pechorin is chasing life, Oblomov is lying on the couch. Epochal types most clearly express temporal signs in people.

Social types concentrate the features and qualities of people of certain social groups. It is by these indicators that we can determine in which environment a given type arose. So, Gogol in "Dead Souls" very convincingly showed the type of landowners. Each of them, according to the author's intention, is characterized by a unique enlarged character trait: Manilov is a dreamer, Korobochka is a clubhead, Nozdre is a historical person, Sobakevich is a fist, Plyushkin is a hole in humanity. Together, all these qualities recreate the general type of landowner.

Social types allow you to recreate the bright typical properties of people in a certain social group, emphasizing its most natural qualities, indicators by which we can judge the state of society, its hierarchical structure and draw appropriate conclusions about the relationship between social groups of a particular period.

Human types concentrate in themselves the properties of people of all times and peoples. This type is synthetic, since it manifests itself in both epochal and social types. This concept is multidimensional, independent of temporary or social connections and relationships. Such qualities as, for example, love and hatred, generosity and greed, characterize people from the moment of their awareness of themselves to our times, that is, these categories are constant, but filled in the process of historical development with a peculiar content. More precisely, these universal human categories are manifested individually each time, for example, Pushkin in The Miserly Knight, Gogol in Plyushkin, Molière in Tartuffe portrayed the type of a miserly person, but he found his embodiment in each writer.

Creating typical characters, the writer each time makes his judgment on the depicted. His sentence can sound in various forms, for example, in the form of satire - direct mockery, which we already hear in the title of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tale "The Wild Landowner"; irony - hidden mockery, when the direct content of the statement contradicts its inner meaning, for example, in Krylov's fable “The Fox and the Donkey”, the fox says: “From clever you're shaking your head." The writer's sentence can also be expressed in the form of pathos, that is, an enthusiastic depiction of positive phenomena, for example, the beginning of Mayakovsky's poem "Good":

I am the globe

Almost walked all over!

And life is good!

The nature of the author's assessment depends on the artist's worldview and in some cases can be erroneous, which leads to errors in typing, as a result, atypical characters appear. Their main reasons are the writer's shallow understanding of the problem and the crisis of worldview, for example, in the 20s of the twentieth century, many writers portrayed the participation of children and adolescents in the terrible events of the civil war in a heroic-adventure, romantic way, and readers got the impression of the war as a chain deeds, beautiful deeds, victories. For example, in Pyotr Blyakhin's "Red Devils" teenagers do things that are atypical for their age and life experience, that is, the characters are created by the writer, but they are not typical. An important factor in the emergence of such characters is the crisis of worldview. Sometimes a writer lacks artistic skill, usually this happens with young, novice writers, whose first works remain in the category of students, for example, A.P. Gaidar wrote the first story, Days of Defeats and Victories, for which he received serious comments from the editor: vagueness, unconvincing images. It was never published, and the following story brought fame to the author.

It happens that the author has not found a full-fledged art form to express his life impressions and observations, for example, A.I. Kuprin planned to write a big novel about the life of the military, for which he collected a lot of autobiographical material, but while working on it, he felt that he was drowning in this volume and his plan was not realized in the intended form of the novel. Kuprin turned to Gorky, who advised him on the story. The necessary form was found and "Duel" appeared.

Sometimes the writer simply did not work enough to improve the created image.

In all these cases, the image contains either much less, or not at all what the author wanted to say. It follows from what has been said that an image and a type are in the following relationship: a type is always an image, but an image is not always a type.

Working on the image, trying to embody in it the essential laws of time, society and all people, the writer typifies the most diverse phenomena in it:

mass. The fact of the widespread occurrence of this or that phenomenon indicates its typicality for a certain group of people or society as a whole, therefore literary types are most often created by the writer by generalizing the mass, for example, the type of a small person in the literature of the 19th century;

Rare single phenomena can also be typified. Any new phenomenon at the time of its inception is not numerous, but if it contains the prospect of further spread, then such a phenomenon is typical, and by drawing it, the writer predicts social development, for example, Gorky's songs about the falcon and the petrel were written before 1905, but they became symbols of upcoming events, which soon acquired a wide scope;

An artist can even depict a typical character by generalizing exceptional features in it, for example, A. Tolstoy, in the image of Peter the Great in the novel of the same name, recreated the typical properties of a sovereign and a person, despite the fact that the personality of Peter I is an exceptional phenomenon in history. In recreating this image, Tolstoy follows Pushkin's tradition, according to which Peter was endowed with the best qualities of his people. Exceptional in him are not qualities, but their depth and composure in one person, which makes him an exception to the rule. So, the typification of the exceptional is the condensation in one image of a large number of positive and negative qualities, which distinguishes it from all. These qualities, as a rule, are possessed by prominent historical figures, brilliant people in various fields of science and art, political criminals;

· phenomena of a negative order are also typified in the image, thanks to which a person masters the concept of the negative. Examples are the various negative actions of children in Mayakovsky's poem "What is good ...";

· typification of the positive takes place when the ideal is directly realized and ideal characters are created.

So, typification is the law of art, and the literary type is the ultimate goal that every artist strives for. It is no coincidence that the literary type is called the highest form of the image.

When working on a text, creating their artistic pictures, writers take material from life, but process it in different ways. In accordance with this, two ways of creating a literary type are distinguished in the science of literature.

1. Collective, when the writer, observing the different characters of people and noticing their common features, reflects them in the image (Don Quixote, Pechorin, Sherlock Holmes).

2. Prototype. A method of typification in which the writer takes as a basis a really existing or existing person, in which the properties and qualities inherent in a certain group of people manifested themselves especially clearly, and on its basis creates his own image. Nikolenka Irtemyev, A. Peshkov, Alexei Meresyev are depicted in this way. Using direct material to create an image, the artist not only copies it, but also, as in the first case, processes it, that is, discards the insignificant and emphasizes the most characteristic or important. If in the case of a collective image the path is from the general to the specific, then in the case of the prototype it is from the specific to the general.

The difference in these two methods is that in the second case, the artist invents less, but the creative processing of life material takes place here too, so the image is always richer than the prototype, that is, the writer thickens the raw life material and brings his assessment to the image.

Along with typing methods, artists use typing techniques or means of creating an image to create an image. Basic techniques 12 .

Of course, this number does not exhaust all the richness and diversity of the poetics of a literary text. Let us dwell on the characteristics of fixed assets:

1. portrait characteristic - a typing technique in which a person's appearance is described, for example, "Lensky is rich, good-looking";

2. subject-household characteristic - a typification technique, which consists in depicting the environment that a person has surrounded himself with, for example, Onegin's office;

3. biography - a typification technique that reveals the history of a person's life, its individual stages. As a rule, a biography is introduced by writers in order to show exactly how a given human type was formed, for example, Chichikov’s biography in the first volume of Dead Souls is placed at the end, and it is from it that the reader concludes how the type of entrepreneur was formed in Russia;

4. manners and habits - a typing technique that reveals stereotypical forms of human behavior that have been formed on the basis of general rules (manner) and unique personality traits (habit), for example, Gogol in Dead Souls emphasizes the desire of provincial ladies to resemble secular women Moscow and St. Petersburg: “No lady will say that this glass or this plate stinks, but they say “behaves badly.” We can give an example of a habit by remembering Manilov's favorite pastime - smoking a pipe and laying ashes on the windowsill;

5. behavior - a typing technique through which the artist shows the actions, actions of a person.

Having laid a shelf with a detachment of books,

Read-read - and all to no avail;

6. depiction of emotional experiences - a typification technique, through which the writer shows what a person thinks and feels at different moments: “Oh, I, like a brother, would be glad to embrace the storm”;

7. attitude towards nature - a typification technique, with the help of which a person directly evaluates one or another natural phenomenon, for example:

I don't like spring

In the spring I am sick;

8. worldview - a typing technique that reveals a person's system of views on nature, society and himself, for example, representatives of various beliefs - the nihilist Bazarov and the liberal Kirsanov;

Forgive me, I love so much

My dear Tatyana;

10. characterizing surname - a typing technique when a person is endowed with a surname that indicates the most important, dominant feature of the personality, speaks for itself, for example, Prostakova, Skotinin;

11. speech characteristic - a typification technique that contains a combination of lexical-phraseological, figurative, intonational properties of a person, for example, in Krylov's fable, the monkey says to the bear: “Look, my dear godfather, what kind of mug is that,” this speech the characteristic is a clear evidence of the monkey's ignorance;

12. mutual characteristics - a typing technique in which the participants in the action evaluate each other, for example, Famusov says about Lisa: “Oh, the spoiled potion”, and Lisa about Famusov: “Like all Moscow, your father is like this: I would like a son-in-law with stars and with rank."

Methods and techniques of typing make up the form or composition of the image. In order to analyze the content of the image, the writer puts it into a certain form, that is, he builds the image using the methods and techniques of its characterization. Since content and form cannot be separated from each other, and the image is the main significant category of a literary text, the law of the unity of content and form applies to the entire work.

Bibliography:

1. BES. 2000. [Electronic resource] - Access mode. - URL: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enc3p/293094 , http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enc3p/293062
2. Efimov V.I., Talanov V.M. Human values ​​[Electronic resource] - Access mode. - URL: http://razumru.ru/humanism/journal/49/yef_tal.htm (accessed 04/30/2013).
3. New Philosophical Encyclopedia: In 4 vols. M.: Thought. Edited by V.S. Stepin. 2001 [Electronic resource] - Access mode. - URL: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enc_philosophy/4882 (Accessed 30.04.2013).
4. Chernaya N.I. Realistic conventionality in modern Soviet prose. Kyiv: Nauk Dumka, 1979. - 192 p.

The creation of an ideological and thematic basis, the translation of this basis into images and forms, is possible only with the decisive role in this process of what is called in literary criticism the concepts of “typification” and “individualization”. Therefore, these categories legitimately act as the most important laws of thinking in images. Typification and individualization refer to the process of artistic synthesis, the growth of scaffolds in the field of knowledge of literature with the help of abstract thinking. The result of typification and individualization are images - types.

Essence of typification and individualization. A well-established judgment about the nature of artistic generalization is considered a significant definition of these categories: the most characteristic is borrowed from the fund of similar realities. The fact of typification gives the work an aesthetic perfection, since one phenomenon is able to reliably display a whole series of repetitive pictures of life.

Specific linkages between the individual and the typical distinguish the nature of each artistic method. One of the most important planes where differences are constantly unfolding is associated with romanticism and realism. The principles of artistic generalization become the keys with which one can enter the world of art. When the nature of the typical and the individual is determined, it should be remembered that the ways and means of artistic generalization follow from the nature of the thoughts developed by the writer, from the ideological predestination that this particular picture has.

Take, for example, the battle scenes from War and Peace. Each battle has its own internal logic, a special selection of those phenomena and processes that make up and are determined by the course of the development of the battle. And the choice of the writer falls on the epic depiction of the battle of armies through the prism of the finest details. It is possible to correlate the Borodino and Shengraben battles, and a sharply distinctive principle can be seen between them. Differences are observed in what the artist's attention is drawn to and what he has fixed. On the pages of the novel there is a household battle, here the way of the ordinary mass under Shengraben is depicted. The soldiers look at the kitchen with greedy eyes. They are interested in stomachs. When Borodino is portrayed, there are no battles there, there is no army either, the people are active there: “They want to attack with all the people.” All the soldiers refused the vodka prescribed before the battle, this is a generalization of the event. So detailing and generalization play their essential role in typification and individualization. The carriers of the generalization are the characters, images and the details that link them. It is necessary to analyze not only pictures, episodes, but also the totality of the smallest details. When it comes to one hero, you should think about the other, and what role he plays in the fate of the first. The typical and the individual recreate the world according to the laws of beauty.

The image contains a picture, an image, a unity of generalization (typification) and concretization (individualization). So, the image of any character necessarily represents a certain collectiveness and uniqueness of the personality in all its specificity, in all its inherent features. When the images of Gobsek, Papa Grande, Plyushkin, Bubble, Glytaya, Corey Ishkamb are considered, they all sum up one generalization - the tragic type of a miser, as even their "talking" names indicate (Gobsek is a live-throat; Bubble is immense stinginess; Glytay - greedily and hastily swallows; Ishkamba - stomach). Each of these images embodies its own unique distinctive features: features of appearance, personal habits, character stock. Just as there are no two undoubtedly identical people, so there are no two completely similar, to the point of complete similarity, images. For example, in many French novels of the 19th century, images of the so-called “Napoleonic warehouse” function, they are very similar, contain the same generalization. Before the researcher appears the type of Napoleon of peacetime, when he is replaced by a millionaire, Rothschild. And yet, these characters are different, they are distinguished by their unusualness. The individualization of artistic creativity is as close as possible to reality itself, to life. In science, reality is reflected only in pure generalizations, abstractions, abstractions.

So, the general definition of an image boils down to the following: an image that has the properties of generalization or typification, and on the other hand, the specificity (concretization) of a single, individual fact. Without the unity of concretization (individualization) and generalization (typification), the image itself does not become the essence of artistic creation, a phenomenon of art. One-sided typification is called schematism, in art it is absolutely impossible, destructive for it; and just as inadmissible, pernicious limited concretization. When literary scholars are faced with a slight individualization or a very weak general conclusion, incommensurable with the real side of the image, they call it factography. Here the particulars are extremely declarative. Real events snatched from reality itself will lead the author to an artistic failure. Let's remember the admonition of the classic: I look at the fence - I write the fence, I see a crow on the fence - I write a crow on the fence.

Literary critics in such cases speak not only about the schematism of the reconstruction of pictures, but also note the flaw, the vulnerable side of factography. In other words, this is an extreme shortcoming, deforming the image and artistry. In a truly artistic depiction, there should be no one-sidedness of generalization and concretization. Typifying moments must be in balance with specific, factual aspects, only then does an image appear, a full-fledged artistic image.

Question 30. Style as a category of form. The relationship between the concepts of "method" and "style". With a holistic analysis of the form in its substantive conditionality, the category that reflects this integrity, style, comes to the fore. Style in literary criticism is understood as the aesthetic unity of all elements of the artistic form, which has a certain originality and expresses a certain content. In this sense, style is an aesthetic, and therefore, an evaluative category. When we say that a work has a style, we mean that in it the artistic form has reached a certain aesthetic perfection, has acquired the ability to aesthetically influence the perceiving consciousness. In this sense, style is opposed, on the one hand, to stylelessness (the absence of any aesthetic meaning, aesthetic inexpressiveness of the artistic form), and on the other hand, epigone stylization (negative aesthetic value, a simple repetition of already found artistic effects).

The aesthetic impact of a work of art on the reader is due precisely to the presence of style. Like any aesthetically significant phenomenon, style can cause aesthetic controversy; Simply put, style can be liked or disliked. This process takes place at the level of primary reader's perception. Naturally, aesthetic evaluation is determined both by the objective properties of the style itself and by the characteristics of the perceiving consciousness, which, in turn, are determined by a variety of factors: the psychological and even biological properties of the personality, upbringing, previous aesthetic experience, etc. As a result, various properties of style arouse either positive or negative aesthetic emotion in the reader: someone likes a harmonious style and dislikes disharmony, someone prefers brightness and colorfulness, and someone prefers calm restraint, someone likes simplicity in style. and transparency, to someone on the contrary, complexity and even intricacies. This kind of aesthetic assessments at the level of primary perception are natural and legitimate, but they are not sufficient to comprehend the style. We must bear in mind that any style, whether we like it or not, has an objective aesthetic value. The scientific comprehension of style is intended, first of all, to reveal and reveal this significance; show the unique beauty of a variety of styles. A developed aesthetic consciousness differs from an undeveloped one primarily in that it is able to appreciate the beauty and charm of the largest possible number of aesthetic phenomena (which, of course, does not exclude the presence of individual style preferences). Work on style in teaching literature should develop in this direction: its task is to expand the aesthetic range of students, to teach them to aesthetically perceive both the harmony of Pushkin's style and the disharmony of Blok's style, the romantic brightness of Lermontov's style and the restrained simplicity of Tvardovsky's style, etc.

Style is a pair category, dialectically connected with the category "creative method", because the set of ideological and aesthetic principles that style expresses is the basis of the creative method. If the constructive-sign activity of the artist is carried out through style, then the cognitive-value relation of art to reality is embodied in the method. Both sides are inextricably linked. The ideological and aesthetic principles in a work can be realized only through a certain figurative system, a system of figurative and expressive means, that is, style, while style, like the entire expressive system, is not an end in itself, but a means by which the artist expresses his attitude to comprehended reality ... Translated from the Greek "method" (Method) literally means "the path to something" - a way to achieve a goal, a certain way ordered activity. In the special philosophical sciences, the method is interpreted as a means of cognition, a way of reproducing the object being studied in thinking. All methods of cognition are based on this or that reality. In art, we are dealing with a creative method. In our aesthetic literature, there is sometimes an opinion that the concept of "method" does not have a long history, but the category arose even in the early stages of the development of aesthetic thought. If the ancient philosophers did not yet use the term "method", they nevertheless actively sought solutions to methodological problems. Aristotle, for example, puts forward the idea of ​​different modes of imitation depending on different objects; each of the imitations will have differences corresponding to the subject of imitation: "Since the poet is an imitator, like a painter or some other artist, he must certainly imitate one of the three: either he must depict things as they were or are, or as they are spoken and thought of, or as they ought to be." Of course, these arguments are not yet a doctrine of method, but in them one can find the logic of the method, understood as an effective mechanism of creativity. The Hegelian concept of the artistic method requires special study. Unlike Kant, who did not accept the artistic method at all, opposing art to science, Hegel spoke of two ways of artistic representation - subjective and objective.

On the typical in realistic fiction Alexander Revyakin

Forms of manifestation of the typical in fiction

Each artistic method has its own typification principles. And, in turn, any representative of one or another artistic method, in accordance with his individual style and the socio-aesthetic goals set in the work, can use a variety of methods and forms of artistic typification.

A realist writer can create a typical artistic image by selecting the most typical, in some way remarkable, individual characters and phenomena that are interesting for the reproduced social environment.

Individuals, typical in their essence, are portrayed primarily in documentary genres. Essays are a striking example of this approach to creating an image.

Individual people are depicted in historical works. In Soviet literature, there are a number of significant works dedicated to the brilliant founder and leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet state V.I. Lenin (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” by V. Mayakovsky, “The Man with a Gun” and “Kremlin Chimes” by N. Pogodin), outstanding patriots Soviet country (“Chapaev” by D. Furmanov, “Zoya” by M. Aliger, “Young Guard” by A. Fadeev, “Pavlik Morozov” by S. Shchipachev, “Alexander Matrosov” by S. Kirsanov).

In all such works, the typical essence of a real, living, concrete person is manifested so fully and vividly that he becomes the only source for creating an artistic image. But it goes without saying that this person is revealed in a work of art not photographically, but in creative enrichment, in “thinking” and not in isolation, but in inherent connections and relationships.

A realist writer can also create a typical artistic image by embodying a separate typical character, which will only form the basis of the image. So, for example, many images were created in "Notes of a Hunter" and in the novels "On the Eve", "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev, as well as in the novel "What is to be done?" Chernyshevsky. Such are Pavel Korchagin in the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky and Meresyev in “The Tale of a Real Man” by B. Polevoy.

All these images are not reduced to the essence, to the life experience of their real prototypes. N. Ostrovsky, having based the image of Pavel Korchagin on his own life path, supplemented and enriched it with observations of other people he met. B. Polevoy, having made the life story of the pilot Maresyev the basis of the image of Meresyev, used his observations on other Soviet people as well.

Typical artistic images are also created as broadly collective, in the sense that these images do not have strictly defined real prototypes. The writer creatively forms collective images based on the study of tens and hundreds of representatives of a certain class, that is, by collecting and generalizing traits, signs, and characteristics scattered in many real people. This is the most common way of creating an image in literature. It is about him that M. Gorky speaks, explaining the process of artistic typification:

“The art of verbal creativity, the art of creating characters and “types,” requires,” he writes, “imagination, conjecture, “fiction.” Having described one shopkeeper, official, worker he knows, the writer will take a more or less successful photograph of just one person, but it will only be a photograph devoid of social and educational significance, and it will give almost nothing to expand, deepen our knowledge about a person, about life. . But if the writer manages to distract from each of the twenty to fifty, out of a hundred shopkeepers, officials, workers, the most characteristic class features, habits, tastes, gestures, beliefs, speech patterns, etc., - to distract and combine them in one shopkeeper, official , working, with this technique the writer will create a "type", it will be art.

By collecting and combining typical features scattered in people of one social group, one class, for example, the images of the Aduevs from the novel "Ordinary History" and Oblomov from the novel of the same name by Goncharov, Mayakin and Foma Gordeev from the novel "Foma Gordeev" by M. Gorky were created, Andrei Lobanov from the novel "Searchers" by D. Granin and many others.

It should be noted that the same writer can use a variety of typing paths. Moreover, in one and the same work of art, as, for example, in "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy or "Cement" by F. Gladkov, there may be characters based on certain real prototypes and created on the basis of the synthesis of many people.

“I have,” said L. Tolstoy, “there are faces written off and not written off from living people.”

All the main characters of the novel "Cement" by Gladkov are synthetic, collective, but the images of Sergei and Lukhava, as the author himself notes, were created by him on the basis of the characters of certain people who existed.

At one time, in literary criticism, the understanding of the typical as mass, widespread was in circulation. This view was based on formal logic, which in its definitions is guided only by "what is most common or what most often catches the eye, and is limited to this."

The perception of the typical only as mass led to a purely quantitative characterization of the typical, in which precisely that which constitutes the main sign of typicality was emasculated - the quality, the essentiality of a concrete historical phenomenon.

Based on a purely quantitative, formal-logical understanding of the problem of the typical, it was impossible to correctly understand the social-typical essence of such images as Plyushkin (“Dead Souls” by Gogol), Elena Stakhova (“On the Eve” by Turgenev), Rakhmetov (“What to do?” Chernyshevsky ), Anna Karenina ("Anna Karenina" by L. Tolstoy), Foma Gordeev ("Foma Gordeev") and Yegor Bulychev ("Egor Bulychev and Others" by M. Gorky). And all these and similar images are deeply typical.

The understanding of the typical only as mass directed Soviet writers on the wrong path. It led them on the path of preferring the ordinary, the ordinary to the unusual, depriving them of the possibility of a correct image of both the new and the old being born, and the old.

Typical can be not only the most common, often repeated, ordinary, but also not very common, unusual, out of the ordinary, exceptional.

In Soviet reality, individualists, money-grubbers, careerists, slanderers, idlers, traitors are the bearers of the remnants of capitalism, the remnants of private property psychology and morality, the accursed legacy of the past. This is what is overcome and outlived, what is doomed to final disappearance. But this particular thing, supported and warmed up from outside by the enemies of socialism, is a certain force that is actively manifesting itself, clinging to life, hindering communist construction.

The fight against the negative social phenomena that still exist in our reality, against the unhealthy moods of the ideologically unstable elements of our society, is of great social and political importance. Meanwhile, in the field of fiction, this struggle was weakened in the postwar period.

Proceeding from a deeply erroneous understanding of the development of Soviet reality under the conditions of the victory of socialism as occurring without contradictions, reducing all contradictions only to the struggle between “good and excellent”, some critics and writers came to the assertion and defense of the “conflict-free theory” in Soviet literature.

The defenders of the “non-conflict theory” have forgotten the elementary truth that the law of the objective development of life is internal contradictions, the struggle between the old and the new, between the dying and the emerging. No one can cancel this law of objective development.

The “non-conflict theory” logically led to the rejection of consistently negative, satirical images, to the recognition of their atypicality in the conditions of the victory of socialism, to the elimination of satire, which is a gross mistake.

Proceeding from the "conflict-free theory", perceiving the negative phenomena of our reality as random, deeply private, individual, some critics and writers inevitably came to smooth out the contradictions of reality, to varnish it, to a distorted reproduction of typical phenomena, to substituting the typical for the subjective.

Soviet literature, reflecting the victorious development of socialist reality, is called upon to reproduce its contradictions and shortcomings. But in exposing negative characters and phenomena, Soviet writers proceed from the recognition of the correctness of the leading tendencies of socialist reality and are guided by the task of further strengthening the socialist state.

In the fight against the false understanding of the typical only as mass and as statistically average in criticism and literature, there has been an erroneous tendency to interpret the typical only as unusual, out of the ordinary, exceptional. In this regard, in the speeches of some writers, there was a demand to create the image of an “ideal hero”, devoid of any contradictions and shortcomings.

Realistic typification, striving to reveal and embody the fullness of life's regularities, can manifest itself in a wide variety of forms.

Artistic and typical images can be both massive and exceptional. But at the same time, it should be noted that the exceptional cannot be typical if it remains single, if it does not have similar phenomena, isolated from the environment. The exceptional becomes typical only if it expresses an essential phenomenon that was once mass (obsolete phenomena), or one that reappears and must become mass. In other words, the typical, which reveals itself in the form of an exceptional, is not only a qualitative, but to some extent also a quantitative phenomenon.

Typical phenomena are not equivalent either in their socio-psychological essence or in their socio-historical role.

It would be a mistake to limit typical images to only large, large, strong characters. Any character is typical, in which the socio-psychological, ideological essence of a certain social group, this or that class, a certain nation and era is manifested. Typical are Chatsky and Molchalin (“Woe from Wit” by Griboedov), and Shvandya and Dunka (“Love Yarovaya” by K. Trenev), and Oleg Koshevoy and Stakhovich (“Young Guard” by A. Fadeev), and Martynov and Borzov (“District Weekdays” and “Difficult Spring” by V. Ovechkin), but the degree and socio-historical significance of their typicality are not the same.

The leading, defining in Soviet literature are such images as Chapaev (“Chapaev” by D. Furmanov), Davydov (“Virgin Soil Upturned” by M. Sholokhov), Pavel Korchagin (“How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky), Meresyev and Vorobyov (“ The Tale of a Real Man” by B. Polevoy), Voropaev and Podnebesko (“Happiness” by P. Pavlenko), Young Guards (“Young Guard” by A. Fadeev).

In typical artistic images, proportions, correlations of the individual, particular and general can be very different.

Artistically typing, the writer can reveal the character as a deepening of some of his leading features (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin), in the dialectics of his soul (L. Tolstoy, Sholokhov), strictly subordinating individual features to the embodiment of his socially typical features (A.N. Ostrovsky), in complex chiaroscuro, in contradiction between the social-typical and individual (Chekhov), etc.

Depending on the individual style and goals, some writers turn their primary attention when depicting a character to any one of its sides: moral (Gogol), socio-psychological (Turgenev), psychological (Dostoevsky), socio-economic (G. Uspensky), socio-political (Saltykov-Shchedrin), etc.

Other writers strive to reproduce the characters in the fullness of their inherent properties (Goncharov, L. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, Sholokhov).

If the writer is original, then he is national. Belinsky rightly wrote that “only the sphere of mediocrity is distinguished by an impersonal community, for which there is no space, no time, no nation, no color, no tone, which in all countries and at all times, from the beginning of the world to our days, is expressed with the same language and the same words.

The national character of a truly typical character manifests itself, of course, not only in the content of the character, but in one way or another in the form of its expression.

Each social class has its own ideas, feelings, aspirations and interests. But at the same time, classes are not isolated from each other, but in a complex relationship. Representatives of any class have certain character traits that can be inherent in all people. Class differentiation does not cancel the universal, but is its concrete, socio-historical expression.

This is reflected in the literature as well. A typical artistic character is always social in the sense that it embodies certain essential social, class feelings, ideas, aspirations. But it would be wrong to see in any artistic type a direct and consistent representative of a certain class, fenced off from other classes by a Chinese wall. The artistic image, being a class image, bears in one way or another the features of similarity and commonality with any other classes, certain signs and features inherent in all people.

The relationship between typical artistic characters and the classes to which they belong can be quite complex.

“In each of us,” Dobrolyubov wrote, “a significant part of Oblomov sits ...”.

The presence of well-known remnants of Oblomovism, expressed in the inability to place forces and organize verification of the actual execution of the case, in a waste of time on fruitless meeting fuss, in groundless planning, Lenin also noted in the activities of other Soviet people and institutions.

Foma Gordeev from the novel of the same name by M. Gorky is no longer a defender of the interests of the class to which he belongs by origin and position. And therefore M. Gorky, in the process of his work on this image, argued that he was not typical as a merchant. “... In parallel with the work on “Thomas,” he wrote, “I am drawing up a plan for another story -“ The Career of Mishka Vyagin ”. This is also a story about a merchant, but about a typical merchant, about a petty, smart, energetic swindler, who, from the ship's crooks, rises to the post of mayor. Thomas is not typical as a merchant, as class representative, he is only a healthy person who wants a free life, who is cramped within the framework of modernity. It is necessary to put another figure next to him so as not to violate the truth of life.

Preserving the truth of life, M. Gorky opposed Mayakin to Foma Gordeev. But Foma Gordeev, not being typical as a defender of the selfish, predatory interests of the bourgeoisie, turns out to be a typical spokesman for the intellectual fermentation that began in its midst, tendencies of decay, forebodings of its historical end. Thomas is typical as a merchant who thought about the fate of his class, dissatisfied with its exploitative, anti-popular social practice, and therefore “breaks out” from his environment. The writer points to this typical image of Foma Gordeev, reporting that in order to create it, he “had to see more than a dozen merchant sons who were not satisfied with the life and work of their fathers; they vaguely felt that there was little meaning in this monotonous, “painfully poor life.” From people like Foma, condemned to a boring life and offended by boredom, thoughtful people, drunkards, "life-burners", hooligans came out in one direction, and "white crows" flew off in the other, like Savva Morozov, at whose expense Lenin's " Spark".

In the image of Grigory Melekhov from the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" by M. Sholokhov, the dual, contradictory essence of the middle peasant Cossacks (partly a worker, partly an owner), his fluctuations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, is clearly revealed. But the fate of Grigory Melekhov and his social apostasy do not reflect the usual path of broad sections of the middle peasants of the Cossacks to Soviet power, but the path of only a certain, insignificant part of it. And at the same time, remaining a spokesman for the social essence of the middle peasantry and the life path of only some of it, the image of Grigory Melekhov reflects the historical fate, tragedy, the collapse of all petty-bourgeois individualism in the conditions of post-October reality. This is an image of great generalizing power.

The image of Grigory Melekhov attracted and will attract the sympathy of readers with his amazingly bright life truth - human sincerity, great love, talent, rich but wasted forces, greedy desire for truth, for justice, in search of which, under the influence of class prejudices, he does so much errors. And this path of delusion leads him to a break with the people, to spiritual collapse, to the tragedy of loneliness.

In life there may be human characters in which the features of certain social groups and classes are embodied, but at the same time they embody one or another nationwide, national and universal signs with particular clarity.

We see the same thing in literature. Any artistic image is social, that is, it has the features of a particular social group, a particular class. But at the same time, many images with such certainty and clarity reflect national or universal signs that we call them universal and universal.

National images reflect the best properties of the nation, most fully revealed, as a rule, in the behavior of its working, progressive social groups. Such, for example, is Chapaev from the novel of the same name by D. Furmanov and Nikita Vershinin from V. Ivanov's Armored Train.

National traits - hatred of violence and arbitrariness, moral purity, a hot, open, direct heart are inherent in Katerina from "Thunderstorm", Parasha from "Hot Heart" and Larisa from Ostrovsky's "Dowry". The members of the Rostov family from L. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" possess the humanity, cordiality, kindness inherent in the people.

Anna Karenina from the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy also has features of a folk character. By birth and upbringing, by habits of idleness and luxury, by tastes and manners, Anna Karenina is a representative of high society. But at the same time, she is not typical of him, as is typical, for example, Betsy Tverskaya. Anna's loveliness, kindness, honesty, sincerity, her serious attitude to love, her inherent spiritual beauty, her ardent hatred of deceit and lies, her desire to overcome the prejudices of her environment make her a black sheep in aristocratic society. Anna is alien to careerism, hypocrisy, ambition, slander, passion for easy love affairs, common in this society.

But, being an exception in secular society, Anna Karenina expresses the typical features of the nationwide, nationwide character of a Russian woman, so clearly revealed in the images of Tatyana Larina (“Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin), Lyubonka Kruciferskaya, (“Who is to blame?” Herzen), Katerina Kabanova ( "Thunderstorm" Ostrovsky) and Vera Pavlovna Lopukhova ("What to do?" Chernyshevsky).

It is the nationwide, nationwide features that make Anna Karenina one of the most attractive images of progressive Russian and world literature.

While retaining socio-historical concreteness, universal images express socio-psychological traits, aspirations and ideals that are to some extent characteristic of many people of this era, and due to this they acquire a nominal value. Such are Shakespeare's heroes Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello, such is Cervantes' Don Quixote, Moliere's Tartuffe, the Marquis Posa from Schiller's Don Carlos tragedy, Chatsky Griboyedov, Khlestakov and Gogol's Plushkin.

Romeo and Juliet, in their internal appearance, behavior and manners, are representatives of wealthy Italian families of the Middle Ages. The depth of love, the strength of their fidelity to each other is not typical for people of the class to which they belong. The love and fidelity of Romeo and Juliet reflect the feelings and ideas of the masses, the advanced social groups of any nation. And so these images became common nouns and turned into universal ones.

The struggle of Chatsky (the hero of Woe from Wit) against the old, obsolete society, his fiery love for freedom, so dear to the progressive classes of all nations, gave this image a universal sound.

Belinsky, characterizing the universal essence of Don Quixote, wrote:

“Every person is a little Don Quixote; but most of all, Don Quixotes are people with a fiery imagination, a loving soul, a noble heart, even with a strong will and mind, but without reason and tact of reality ... This is an eternal type ... ".

If the images of Romeo, Juliet, Don Quixote and Chatsky clearly expressed the positive aspirations and feelings of people, manifested at various stages of the development of human society, then the images of Tartuffe, Khlestakov and Plyushkin clearly captured the negative, which to one degree or another was and remains peculiar to the people of the most varied classes of any nation, either as essential traits or as survivals.

Chernyshevsky, noting the "general humanity" of Khlestakov, said:

“Khlestakov is extremely original; but how few people in whom there is no Khlestakovism!

M. Gorky, pointing to the universal character of some images of Russian and Western European literature, wrote: “We already call every liar - Khlestakov, sycophant - Molchalin, hypocrite - Tartuffe, jealous - Othello, etc. ".

Soviet literature, designed to educate people in the spirit of a new, truly universal morality, creates images that have bright positive universal qualities. One of these images is the image of Pavel Korchagin from the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky.

The vulgarizers and simplisticists tried to oppose socialist realism to all previous progressive literature, and by doing so they inflicted enormous harm on Soviet literature. Meanwhile, socialist realism is a continuation of the best traditions of all previous progressive world literature, in particular and especially critical realism, on a qualitatively new basis.

Continuing and deepening the achievements of previous progressive literature, socialist realism reproduces the phenomena of reality not only in their concrete historical essence, in social conditioning, but also in their revolutionary development, that is, in the process of their maturation and formation, in the struggle between the new and the old, in the tendencies their further changes, etc. Proceeding from the Marxist-Leninist understanding of social development, the literature of socialist realism clearly sees the driving forces of society, is clearly aware of where life is going, what is being created and what is being destroyed in it, what are the leading development trends.

Revolutionary romanticism and critical realism, as the most progressive literary trends of the past, achieved tremendous success in depicting the leading, essential, typical aspects and phenomena of life, but they did not rise to a typical depiction of the patterns of the era in their entirety, in general, to an objective scientific, consistent understanding. its driving forces and tendencies.

The method of socialist realism, based on the Marxist-Leninist worldview, presupposes the depiction of the characters and phenomena of reality in the fullness of their interrelations, with all their inherent contradictions, as a particular expression of the general laws of the era, in the perspective of their further development.

The method of socialist realism makes it possible to see and reproduce in all their truth not only phenomena and characters that have already been determined, but also those that are just emerging, new, in the making, growing, those that are not yet solid at the moment, but will necessarily become so tomorrow. .

Foreign bourgeois criticism, waging a furious offensive against socialism, has recently intensified its criticism of Soviet literature. Using the erroneous tendencies of some Soviet writers (varnishing, the "theory of non-conflict", the cult of personality, schematism), these critics seek to discredit the very method of socialist realism. But by presenting the erroneous tendencies of some Soviet writers as the essence of the method of socialist realism, bourgeois critics thereby reveal their true aims (the struggle against socialism) and the deceitful, dishonest, crudely falsified methods of their struggle.

In terms of its possibilities, the method of socialist realism surpasses the artistic methods of previous literature. Under equal conditions of talent and skill, he provides the most truthful, deep, consistently realistic depiction of reality.

At the same time, it should be noted that the consistent and truthful reproduction of characters and phenomena, inherent in the method of socialist realism, does not limit it only to methods of direct realistic typification. In order to faithfully reproduce life, socialist realists can use all the richness of artistic forms and turn to the satirical grotesque, romance, allegory, symbolism, etc.