Primary and secondary convention in literature. Artistic convention

Artistic convention is one of the fundamental principles of creation artwork. Denotes non-identity artistic image image object. Exist two types artistic convention. The primary artistic convention is associated with the material itself, which is used by this species art. For example, the possibilities of the word are limited; it does not give the possibility to see color or smell, it can only describe these sensations:

The music rang in the garden

With such unspeakable grief

Fresh and pungent smell of the sea

Oysters on ice on a platter.

(A. A. Akhmatova, "In the Evening")

This artistic convention is characteristic of all types of art; the work cannot be created without it. In literature, the peculiarity of artistic convention depends on the literary genre: the external expressiveness of actions in drama, description of feelings and experiences in lyrics, description of the action in epic. The primary artistic convention is associated with typification: depicting even real person, the author seeks to present his actions and words as typical, and for this purpose he changes some properties of his hero. So, the memoirs of G.V. Ivanova"Petersburg Winters" evoked many critical responses from the characters themselves; e.g. A.A. Akhmatova was indignant at the fact that the author had invented never-before dialogues between her and N.S. Gumilyov. But G.V. Ivanov wanted not only to reproduce real events, but to recreate them in artistic reality, create the image of Akhmatova, the image of Gumilyov. The task of literature is to create a typified image of reality in its sharp contradictions and peculiarities.

Secondary artistic convention is not characteristic of all works. It involves a deliberate violation of plausibility: the nose of Major Kovalev cut off and living on its own in N.V. Gogol, the mayor with a stuffed head in the "History of one city" M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Secondary artistic convention is created hyperbole(the incredible power of the heroes of the folk epic, the scale of the curse in N.V. Gogol's Terrible Revenge), allegories (Woe, Likho in Russian fairy tales). A secondary artistic convention can also be created by a violation of the primary one: an appeal to the viewer in the final scene of N.V. Chernyshevsky“What is to be done?”, the variability of the narrative (several options for the development of events are considered) in “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by L. Stern, in the story of H. L. Borges"Garden of Forking Paths", violation of cause and effect connections in the stories of D.I. Kharms, plays by E. Ionesco. Secondary artistic convention is used to draw attention to the real, to make the reader think about the phenomena of reality.

ARTISTIC CONVENTION

An integral feature of any work, connected with the nature of art itself and consisting in the fact that the images created by the artist are perceived as not identical to reality, as something created by the creative will of the author. Any art conditionally reproduces life, but the measure of this U. x. may be different. Depending on the ratio of likelihood and fiction (see artistic fiction), primary and secondary W. x. For primary W. x. a high degree of plausibility is characteristic, when the fictitiousness of the depicted is not declared and is not emphasized by the author. Secondary U. x. - this is a demonstrative violation by the artist of plausibility in the depiction of objects or phenomena, a conscious appeal to fantasy (see fantasy), the use of the grotesque a, symbols, etc., in order to give certain life phenomena a special sharpness and convexity.

Dictionary of literary terms. 2012

See also interpretations, synonyms, word meanings and what is ARTISTIC CONVENTION in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

  • CONVENTION in encyclopedic dictionary:
    , -i, f. 1. ohm. conditional. 2. A purely external rule fixed in social behavior. Trapped in conventions. Enemy of all...
  • ARTISTIC
    ARTISTIC ACTIVITIES, one of the forms of Nar. creativity. Collectives X.s. originated in the USSR. All R. 20s the Tram movement was born (see ...
  • ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
    ART INDUSTRY, production of industries. methods decor.-applied thin. products serving for thin. home decoration (interior, clothes, jewelry, dishes, carpets, furniture ...
  • ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
    "ART LITERATURE", state. publishing house, Moscow. Main in 1930 as State. publishing house literature, in 1934-63 Goslitizdat. Sobr. op., fav. prod. …
  • ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
    ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS, a sport, women's competition in performing combinations from gymnastics to the music. and dance. exercises with an object (ribbon, ball, ...
  • CONVENTION in the Full accentuated paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
    conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditional, ...
  • CONVENTION in the Thesaurus of Russian business vocabulary:
  • CONVENTION in the Russian Thesaurus:
    Syn: treaty, agreement, custom; …
  • CONVENTION in the dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian language:
    virtuality, assumption, relativity, rule, symbolism, conventionality, ...
  • CONVENTION in the New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language Efremova:
    1. g. Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (1 * 2.3). 2. g. 1) Distract. noun by value adj.: conditional (2*3). 2) ...
  • CONVENTION in the Complete Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language:
    convention...
  • CONVENTION in the Spelling Dictionary:
    conditionality, ...
  • CONVENTION in the Dictionary of the Russian Language Ozhegov:
    a purely external rule fixed in social behavior In captivity of conventions. Enemy of all conventions. conventionality<= …
  • CONVENTION in the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language Ushakov:
    conventions, 1. only units Distraction noun to conditional in 1, 2 and 4 meanings. Conditional sentence. Conditionality of a theatrical production. …
  • CONVENTION in the Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova:
    convention 1. g. Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (1 * 2.3). 2. g. 1) Distract. noun by value adj.: conditional (2*3). …
  • CONVENTION in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language Efremova:
    I distraction noun according to adj. conditional I 2., 3. II f. 1. distraction noun according to adj. conditional II 3. …
  • CONVENTION in the Big Modern Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
    I distraction noun according to adj. conditional I 2., 3. II f. 1. distraction noun according to adj. conditional II 1., ...
  • FANTASY in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    in literature and other arts - the depiction of implausible phenomena, the introduction of fictitious images that do not coincide with reality, a clearly felt violation by the artist ...
  • ARTISTIC ACTIVITIES
    amateur performance, one of the forms of folk art. It includes the creation and performance of works of art by the forces of amateurs performing collectively (circles, studios, ...
  • AESTHETICS in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary:
    a term developed and specified by A.E. Baumgarten in the treatise "Aesthetica" (1750 - 1758). The Novolatin linguistic education proposed by Baumgarten goes back to the Greek. …
  • POP ART in the Dictionary of Postmodernism:
    (POP-ART) ("mass art": from English, popular - folk, popular; retrospectively associated with pop - suddenly appear, explode) - the direction of the artistic ...
  • TRIPLE ARTICULATION OF CINEMATOGRAPHIC CODE in the Dictionary of Postmodernism:
    - a problematic field that was constituted in the discussions of film theorists and semiotics of the structure-list orientation in the mid-1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the reversal (or return) of film theory...
  • TROITSKY MATVEY MIKHAILOVICH in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia:
    Troitsky (Matvei Mikhailovich) - a representative of empirical philosophy in Russia (1835 - 1899). The son of a deacon of a rural church in the Kaluga province; graduated ...
  • FANTASY in the Dictionary of Literary Terms:
    - (from the Greek phantastike - the art of imagining) - a type of fiction based on a special fantastic type of imagery, which is characterized by: ...
  • TROUBADOURS in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    [from the Provencal trobar - “to find”, “to invent”, hence “to create poetic and musical works”, “to compose songs”] - medieval Provencal lyric poets, songwriters ...
  • VERSIFICATION in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    [otherwise — versioning]. I. General concepts. The concept of S. is used in two meanings. Often it is considered as a doctrine of the principles of poetic ...
  • RENAISSANCE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    - Renaissance - a word, in its special sense, was first put into circulation by Giorgio Vasari in the Lives of the Artists. …
  • IMAGE. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    1. Statement of the question. 2. O. as a phenomenon of class ideology. 3. Individualization of reality in O. . 4. Typification of reality...
  • LYRICS. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    The division of poetry into three main types is traditional in the theory of literature. Epos, L. and drama seem to be the main forms of any poetic ...
  • CRITICISM. THEORY. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    The word "K." means judgment. It is no coincidence that the word "judgment" is closely related to the concept of "judgment". Judging is, on the one hand, ...
  • KOMI LITERATURE. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    The Komi (Zyryan) alphabet was created at the end of the 14th century by the missionary Stefan, Bishop of Perm, who in 1372 compiled a special Zyryan alphabet (Perm ...
  • CHINESE LITERATURE in the Literary Encyclopedia.
  • PROMOTIONAL LITERATURE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
    a set of artistic and non-artistic works, to-rye, influencing the feeling, imagination and will of people, induce them to certain actions, action. The term...
  • LITERATURE in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
    [lat. lit(t)eratura lit. - written], written works of public importance (eg, fiction, scientific literature, epistolary literature). More often under the literature ...
  • ESTONIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    Soviet Socialist Republic, Estonia (Eesti NSV). I. General information The Estonian SSR was formed on July 21, 1940. From August 6, 1940 in ...
  • SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    (Shakespeare) William (April 23, 1564, Stratford-on-Avon - April 23, 1616, ibid.), English playwright and poet. Genus. in the family of a craftsman and merchant John ...
  • ART EDUCATION in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    education in the USSR, the system of training masters of fine, decorative, applied and industrial art, architects-artists, art historians, artists-teachers. In Russia, it originally existed in the form of ...
  • FRANCE
  • PHOTO ART in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    a kind of artistic creativity, which is based on the use of the expressive possibilities of photography. The special place of F. in artistic culture is determined by the fact that ...
  • UZBEK SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
  • TURKMEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
  • THE USSR. BROADCASTING AND TELEVISION in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    and television Soviet television and radio broadcasting, as well as other media and propaganda, have a great influence on ...
  • THE USSR. LITERATURE AND ART in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    and art Literature Multinational Soviet literature represents a qualitatively new stage in the development of literature. As a certain artistic whole, united by a single socio-ideological ...
  • THE USSR. BIBLIOGRAPHY in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
  • ROMANIA in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    (România), Socialist Republic of Romania, SRR (Republica Socialista România). I. General information R. is a socialist state in the southern part of Europe, in ...
  • RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERAL SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, RSFSR in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
  • LITHUANIA SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
    Soviet Socialist Republic (Lietuvos Taribu Socialist Republic), Lithuania (Lietuva). I. General information The Lithuanian SSR was formed on July 21, 1940. From 3 ...

No matter how periodically the interest in the problem of genres becomes aggravated, it has never been in the center of attention of film studies, being at best on the periphery of our interests. This is evidenced by the bibliography: not a single book has yet been written on the theory of film genres either here or abroad. We will not find a section or even a chapter on genres not only in the already mentioned two books on the theory of film dramaturgy (by V.K. Turkin and the author of this study), but also in the books of V. Volkenstein, I. Weisfeld, N. Kryuchechnikov, I. Manevich, V. Yunakovsky. As for articles on the general theory of genres, it would take literally the fingers of one hand to list them.

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

In connection with this, documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov argued with Eisenstein, believing that he was imitating the documentary style in feature films. Eisenstein, in turn, criticized Vertov for allowing play in the chronicle, that is, cutting and editing the chronicle according to the laws of art. Then it turned out that both of them strive for the same thing, both break the wall of the old, melodramatic art from different sides in order to come into direct contact with reality. The directors' dispute ended with Eisenstein's compromise formula: "Beyond the playful and non-fictional."

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

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

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

Eisenstein and Dovzhenko dreamed of staging comic films, showed remarkable abilities in this (meaning Dovzhenko's "Berry of Love", Eisenstein's "M.M.M." script and the comedy scenes of "October"), but the epic was closer to them.

Chaplin is a comedy genius.

Explaining his method, Chaplin wrote:

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

A.P. Dovzhenko told me that after "Earth" he was going to write a script for Chaplin; he intended to send a letter to him through S.M. Eisenstein, who was then working in America. - Note. ed.

“In the movie Adventurer, I very successfully put myself on the balcony, where I eat ice cream with a young girl. One floor below, I placed a very respectable and well-dressed lady at a table. Eating, I drop a piece of ice cream, which, having melted, flows through my pantaloons and falls on the lady's neck. The first outburst of laughter causes my embarrassment; the second, and much stronger, causes ice cream that falls on the neck of a lady who starts screaming and jumping ... No matter how simple it may seem at first glance, two properties of human nature are taken into account here: one is the pleasure that the public experiences when seeing wealth and brilliance in humiliation, another is the desire of the audience to experience the same feelings that an actor experiences on stage. The public - and this truth must be learned first of all - is especially pleased when all sorts of troubles happen to the rich ... If, say, I dropped ice cream on the neck of a poor woman, let's say some modest housewife, this would not cause laughter, but sympathy To her. Moreover, the housewife has nothing to lose in terms of her dignity and, consequently, nothing funny would have happened. And when ice cream falls on the neck of a rich woman, the public thinks that it should be so, they say.

Everything is important in this little treatise on laughter. Two responses - two explosions of laughter causes this episode in the viewer. The first explosion is when Charlie himself is confused: ice cream gets on his trousers; hiding his confusion, he tries to maintain his outward dignity. The viewer, of course, laughs, but if Chaplin had limited himself to this, he would have remained just a capable student of Max Linder. But, as we see, already in his short films (a kind of sketches for future paintings), he gropes for a deeper source of funny. The second, stronger burst of laughter occurs in this episode when ice cream falls on the neck of a rich lady. These two comic moments are connected. When we laugh at a lady, we express sympathy for Charlie. The question arises, what does Charlie have to do with it, if everything happened because of an absurd accident, and not by his will, because he does not even know what happened on the floor below. But this is the whole point: thanks to the ridiculous actions of Charlie, he is both funny and ... positive. By absurd deeds, we can do evil. Charlie, by his ridiculous actions, without knowing it, changes the circumstances in the way they should change, thanks to which the comedy achieves its goal.

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

The funny is not the coloring of the action, the funny is the essence of the action of both the negative character and the positive one. The one and the other are clarified by means of the funny, and this is the stylistic unity of the genre. The genre thus reveals itself as an aesthetic and social interpretation of a theme.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And if even there (in nature) it lies in depth and foundation - not always visible through the covers! - then in art its place is mainly - in the “invisible”, in the “unreadable”: in the system, in the method and in principle ... ".

It is striking how much the artists who worked in the most different times and in the most different arts agree in this thought. Sculptor Bourdelle: “Nature must be seen from the inside: in order to create a work, one should start from the skeleton of this thing, and then give the skeleton an external design. It is necessary to see this skeleton of a thing in its true aspect and in its architectural expression.

As we can see, both Eisenstein and Bourdelle speak of an object that is true in itself, and an artist, in order to be original, must understand this truth.

Questions of cinematography. Issue. 4.- M.: Art, 1962.- S. 377.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 1.- S. 418.

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

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

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

Marx K., Engels F. Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

The principles of overcoming this or that material determine not only the specifics of this art - they nourish the general laws of artistic creativity, with its constant striving for figurativeness, metaphor, subtext, the second plan, that is, the desire to avoid a mirror reflection of the subject, to penetrate beyond the surface of the phenomenon in depth in order to comprehend its meaning.

Conventionality frees the artist from the need to copy the object, makes it possible to expose the essence hidden behind the shell of the object. The genre seems to regulate convention. Genre helps to show the essence, which does not coincide with the form. The convention of the genre, therefore, is necessary in order to express the unconditional objectivity of the content, or at least the unconditional feeling of it.