Ways to portray a character

In order to analyze the methods of depicting a character in specific works, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the methods of depicting him.

Let's look at ways to portray a character. L.A. Kozyro, in his textbook for students “The Theory of Literature and the Practice of Reading Activity,” identifies two characteristics that make up the image of a character. These are external and internal characteristics.

In a literary work, psychologism is a set of means used to display the inner world of the hero - for a detailed analysis of his thoughts, feelings and experiences.

This method of depicting a character means that the author sets himself the task of showing the character and personality of the hero directly from the psychological side, and making this way of understanding the hero the main one. Often, methods of depicting the hero’s inner world are divided into “from the inside” and “from the outside.”

The character’s inner world “from the inside” is depicted using internal dialogues, his imagination and memories, monologues and dialogues with himself, sometimes through dreams, letters and personal diaries. The image “from the outside” consists of describing the character’s inner world through the symptoms of his psychological state that manifest themselves externally.

Most often, this is a portrait description of the hero - his facial expressions and gestures, speech patterns and manner of speaking; this also includes a detail and description of the landscape as an external element reflecting the internal state of a person. Many writers use descriptions of everyday life, clothing, behavior and housing for this type of psychologism.

Psychologism is a set of means used to depict the inner world of a character, his psychology, state of mind, thoughts, experiences.

Epic and dramatic works have wide possibilities for mastering the inner life of a person. A carefully individualized reproduction of the experiences of characters in their interrelation and dynamics is designated by the term psychologism.

External characteristics serve as a means of: a) objectifying the image-character and b) expressing the author’s subjective attitude towards him.

Sorokin V.I. The Tory of Literature lists twelve different means of depicting a character.

If the reader has no idea of ​​the character's appearance, it becomes very difficult to perceive the character as a living being. Therefore, the reader’s acquaintance with a character begins, as a rule, with a description of his face, figure, hands, gait, manner of holding himself, dressing, etc., that is, with a portrait description of the character.

Each talented writer has his own style of depicting portraits of heroes. A portrait depends not only on the author’s style, but also on the environment that the writer depicts, that is, it indicates the social affiliation of the character. Thus, in A.P. Chekhov’s story “Children,” the portrait of the “cook’s son” Andrei contrasts with the images of well-fed, well-groomed noble children: “The fifth partner, the cook’s son Andrei, a dark-skinned, sickly boy, in a cotton shirt and with a copper cross on his chest, stands motionless and dreamily looks at the numbers.”

A portrait helps to reveal the intellectual capabilities, moral qualities, and psychological state of the character.

Portrait characteristics used in creating not only the image of a person, but also the image of an animal. But we are interested precisely in the ways of depicting the image of a person.

A portrait as a means of creating a character’s image is not present in every work. But even a single portrait detail helps create an image.

A literary portrait is understood as an image in a work of art of a person’s entire appearance, including the face, physique, clothing, demeanor, gestures, and facial expressions.

When creating an image-character, many writers describe his appearance. They do this in different ways: some depict in detail the portrait of the hero in one place, collected; others in different places of the work note individual features of the portrait, as a result of which the reader ultimately gets a clear idea of ​​​​its appearance. Some writers use this technique almost always, others rarely, this is due to the peculiarity of the artist’s individual manner, the genre of the work, and many other conditions of creativity, but always the writer, when describing the appearance of the character, strives to emphasize such details that allow him to more vividly imagine both the external and internal appearance of the hero - to create a living, visually tangible image and to identify the most significant character traits of a given character, and express the author’s attitude towards him.

It is noted that every portrait is characterological to one degree or another - this means that by external features we can at least briefly and approximately judge the character of a person. In this case, the portrait can be provided with an author’s commentary, revealing the connections between the portrait and the character.

The correspondence of portrait features to character traits is a rather conditional and relative thing; it depends on the views and beliefs accepted in a given culture, on the nature of artistic convention. In the early stages of cultural development, it was assumed that beauty appearance spiritual beauty also corresponds; negative characters were portrayed as ugly and disgusting. Subsequently, the connections between the external and the internal in a literary portrait become significantly more complicated. In particular, already in the 19th century, an inverse relationship between portrait and character became possible: positive hero can be ugly, but a negative one can be beautiful.

Thus, we see that a portrait in literature has always performed not only a depictive, but also an evaluative function.

Kozyro L.A. in his work he names three types of portrait - portrait description, portrait-comparison, portrait-impression.

Portrait description is the simplest and most frequently used form of portrait characterization. It consistently, with varying degrees of completeness, gives a kind of list of portrait details.

Kozyro L.A. gives an example: “Chechevitsyn was the same age and height as Volodya, but not so plump and white, but thin, dark, covered with freckles. His hair was bristly, his eyes were narrow, his lips were thick, in general he was very ugly, and if he had not been wearing a school jacket, then in appearance he could have been mistaken for the cook’s son” (A. P. Chekhov. “Boys” ) .

Sometimes the description is provided with a general conclusion or an author's comment regarding the character of the character revealed in the portrait. Sometimes the description emphasizes one or two leading details.

Portrait comparison is more complex look portrait characteristics. It is important not only to help the reader more clearly imagine the hero’s appearance, but also to create in him a certain impression of the person and his appearance.

An impression portrait is the most complex type of portrait. The peculiarity is that there are no portrait features and details here as such, or very few; all that remains is the impression made by the hero’s appearance on an outside observer or on one of the characters in the work.

Often a portrait is given through the perception of another character, which expands the functions of the portrait in the work, since it also characterizes this other character.

It is necessary to distinguish between static (remaining unchanged throughout the entire work) and dynamic (changing throughout the text) portraits.

A portrait can be detailed and sketchy, representing only one or several of the most expressive details.

We agree with the conclusion of L.A. Kozyro that a portrait in a literary work performs two main functions: pictorial (makes it possible to imagine the person depicted) and characterological (serves as a means of expressing the content of the image and the author’s attitude towards it).

The next characteristic that scientists note is the objective (material) environment that surrounds the character. It also helps characterize the character from the outside.

Character is revealed not only in his appearance, but also in what things he surrounds himself with and how he relates to them. This is what writers use to artistically characterize a character... Through objective characterization, the author also creates an individual character, a social type, and expresses an idea.

Hero image work of art consists of many factors - this is character, appearance, profession, hobbies, circle of acquaintances, and attitude towards oneself and others. One of the main ones is the character’s speech, which fully reveals both the inner world and way of life.

One should be careful not to confuse concepts when analyzing the speech of characters. Often, the speech characteristics of a character are understood as the content of his statements, that is, what the character says, what thoughts and judgments he expresses. In fact speech characteristic- something else.

You need to look not at “what” the characters say, but at “how” they say it. Look at the manner of speech, its stylistic coloring, the nature of the vocabulary, the construction of intonation-syntactic structures, etc.

Speech is the most important indicator of a person’s national and social affiliation, evidence of his temperament, intelligence, talent, degree and nature of education, etc.

A person’s character is also clearly manifested in his speech, in what and how he says. The writer, when creating a typical character, always endows his heroes with an individualized speech characteristic of them.

Kozyro L.A. says that actions and actions are the most important indicators of a character’s character, his worldview, everything spiritual world. We judge people primarily by their deeds.

Sorokin V.I. calls this means “hero behavior.”

A person’s character is manifested especially clearly, of course, in his actions... A person’s character is especially clearly manifested in difficult situations in life, when he finds himself in an unusual, difficult situation, but the everyday behavior of a person is also important for characterization - the writer uses both cases.

The author of a work of fiction draws the reader's attention not only to the essence of the character's actions, words, experiences, thoughts, but also to the manner of performing actions, i.e., to forms of behavior. The term behavior of a character is understood as the embodiment of his inner life in the totality of external features: in gestures, facial expressions, manner of speaking, intonation, in body positions (postures), as well as in clothes and hairstyle (including cosmetics). A form of behavior is not just a set of external details of an action, but a kind of unity, totality, integrity.

Forms of behavior give a person’s inner being (attitudes, attitudes, experiences) clarity, certainty, and completeness.

Sometimes a writer, when creating an image of a character, reveals his character not only indirectly, by depicting his portrait, actions, experiences, etc., but also in a direct form: he speaks on his own behalf about the essential traits of his character.

Self-characterization is when the character himself talks about himself, about his qualities.

Mutual characterization is the evaluation of one character on behalf of other characters.

A characterizing name when the character’s name reflects his qualities and characteristics.

In the work of Sorokin V.I. this means is designated as a “characterizing surname.”

All this related to external characteristics. Let's look at methods of internal characterization.

The method of revealing the image-character is the direct depiction of his inner world. Reconstructing a character's spiritual life is called psychological analysis. For each writer and in each work, psychological analysis takes its own unique forms.

One of these techniques is an internal monologue, which records the flow of thoughts, feelings, and impressions currently possessing the hero’s soul.

The most important method of psychological characterization of a character for many writers is the description of what is depicted from the point of view of this character.

Chekhov “Grisha”: “Grisha, a small, plump boy, born two years and eight months ago, is walking with his nanny along the boulevard…. Until now, Grisha knew only a quadrangular world, where in one corner there was his bed, in another - his nanny's chest, in the third - a chair, and in the fourth - a burning lamp. If you look under the bed, you will see a doll with a broken arm and a drum, and behind the nanny’s chest there are a lot of different things: spools of thread, pieces of paper, a box without a lid and a broken clown. In this world, in addition to the nanny and Grisha, there is often a mother and a cat. Mom looks like a doll, and the cat looks like dad’s fur coat, only the fur coat doesn’t have eyes or a tail. From the world called the nursery, a door leads into a space where they dine and drink tea. There is Grisha’s chair on high legs and a clock hanging there that exists only to swing a pendulum and ring. From the dining room you can go into a room where there are red chairs. Here there is a dark spot on the carpet, for which Grisha is still shaking their fingers. Behind this room there is another one, where they are not allowed and where dad flashes - a person in highest degree mysterious! The nanny and mother are clear: they dress Grisha, feed him and put him to bed, but why dad exists is unknown.”

Showing what he thinks and feels at different moments is very important for depicting a living person - the writer’s ability to “move into the soul” of his hero.

A character's worldview is one of the means of characterizing a character.

Depicting the views and beliefs of characters is one of the most important means of artistic characterization in literature, especially if the writer depicts the ideological struggle in society.

There is a hidden analysis of the spiritual life of the heroes, when it is not their psyche that is revealed directly, but how it is expressed in the actions, gestures, and facial expressions of people.

F. Engels noted that “... a personality is characterized not only by what it does, but also by how it does it.” To characterize the characters, the writer uses images of the characteristic features of her actions.

Highlight the biography of the hero. It can be framed, for example, as a backstory.

For the purpose of artistic characterization, some authors set out the life story of the characters or tell individual moments from this story.

It is important not only what kind of artistic means the author uses to create an image-character, but also the order of their inclusion in the text. All of these artistic means allow the reader to draw conclusions about the author’s attitude towards the hero.

Creatively working artists find many different techniques to show the appearance and inner world of a person. They use all the different means for this, but each in their own way, depending on the individual style of creativity, on the genre of the work, on the dominant literary direction at the time of its activity and on many other conditions.

The image of a character consists of external and internal characteristics.

The main external characteristics include:

Portrait characteristic

Description of the subject situation

· Speech characteristics

· Self-characteristics

Mutual characteristic

· Characteristic name

The main internal characteristics include:

· Internal monologue description of the person portrayed from the point of view of this character

· Character's worldview

Character's imagination and memories

Character's dreams

· Letters and personal diaries

This list does not exhaust the abundance of means that writers use for artistic characterization.

Conclusion to chapter 1

Thus, after reviewing the scientific literature on the research topic, the following conclusions were made.

1. An artistic image is a part of reality, recreated in a work with the help of the author’s imagination; it is the final result of aesthetic activity.

2. The artistic image has its own specific features these are integrity, expressiveness, self-sufficiency, associativity, concreteness, clarity, metaphor, maximum capacity and ambiguity, typical meaning.

3. In literature, there are images-characters, images-landscapes, images-things. At the level of origin, two large groups of artistic images are distinguished: original and traditional.

4. A character is a character in a work of art with his characteristic behavior, appearance, and worldview.

5. In modern literary criticism, the phrases “character” and “literary hero” are often used in the same meaning as “character.” But the concept of “character” is neutral and does not contain an evaluative function.

6. By degree of generalization artistic images divided into individual, characteristic, typical.

7. In works of art, a special system is formed between characters. The character system is a strict hierarchical structure. The character system is a certain ratio of characters.

8. There are three types of characters: main, secondary, episodic.

· according to the degree of participation in the plot and, accordingly, the amount of text that this character is given

· according to the degree of importance of a given character for revealing aspects of artistic content.

10. The image of a character consists of external and internal characteristics.

11. The main external characteristics include: portrait characteristic, description of the subject situation, speech characteristic, description of the “hero’s behavior”, author’s characteristic, self-characteristic, mutual characteristic, characterizing name.

12. The main internal characteristics include: internal monologue, a description of what is being portrayed from the point of view of this character, the character’s worldview, the character’s imagination and memories, the character’s dreams, letters and personal diaries.

13. Highlight the biography of the hero. It can be framed, for example, as a backstory.

Psychologism of the work
1. Naming technique. Title of the work. Talking names of heroes
2. Acceptance of characteristics. Direct author's characterization, self-characterization of the hero, characterization by other characters
3. Method of description. Portrait.
4. Characteristics of the hero through his actions, deeds, demeanor, thoughts.
5. Speech features of the characters
6. Portrayal of the hero in the character system
7. Technique for using artistic details
8. Reception of images of nature (landscape) and the environment (interior)

The worst reproach an author can receive from a reader is that his characters are cardboard. This means: the author did not bother (or did not care enough) about creating the character’s inner world, which is why he turned out flat = one-dimensional.

To be fair, it should be noted that in some cases the hero does not need versatility. For example, in purely genre works - loveburger, detective, action - the villain must only be a villain (cruelly sparkling eyes, gnashing teeth and hatching dark plans), and virtue must triumph in everything - both in the appearance of the heroine, and in her thoughts, and in habits.
But if the author is planning a serious thing, wants to hook the reader not only on an eventual, but also on an emotional level, it is impossible to do without elaborating the hero’s inner world.

This article describes the basic techniques that will allow you to transfer a hero from cardboard to a 3D model.

First, a little about PSYCHOLOGISM as a set of means used in a literary work to depict the inner world of a character, his thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Methods of depicting a character’s inner world can be divided into images “from the outside” and images “from the inside.”
The image “from the inside” is carried out through internal monologue, memories, imagination, psychological introspection, dialogue with oneself, diaries, letters, dreams. In this case, first-person narration provides enormous opportunities.

The image “from the outside” is a description of the hero’s inner world not directly, but through external symptoms of a psychological state. The world surrounding a person shapes and reflects a person’s mood, influencing a person’s actions and thoughts. These are details of everyday life, housing, clothing, and the surrounding nature. Facial expressions, gestures, speech to the listener, gait - all these are external manifestations of the hero’s inner life. A method of psychological analysis “from the outside” can be a portrait, a detail, a landscape, etc.

And now, actually, the techniques.

1. NAMING RECEPTION

Perhaps the simplest (meaning, the most obvious, lying on the surface) technique is NAMING.

NAME OF THE WORK

The title of the work itself may indicate the characteristics of the characters.
A classic example is “Hero of Our Time.”

The Hero of Our Time, my dear sirs, is certainly a portrait, but not of one person: it is a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development. You will tell me again that a person cannot be so bad, but I will tell you that if you believed in the possibility of the existence of all tragic and romantic villains, why don’t you believe in the reality of Pechorin? (Lermontov. Hero of our time)

SPEAKING NAMES OF HEROES

The technique can be used, as they say, head-on - as, for example, in classic Russian comedies. So, Fonvizin had Pravdin, Skotinin, Starodum. Griboedov has Molchalin, Skalozub.
The same technique can be used more cunningly - through associations and allusions.

For example, let’s take Gogol’s “The Overcoat”. The main character's name was Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin. Let us remember how the author describes the history of the origin of the hero’s name.

Akaki Akakievich was born against the night, if memory serves, on March 23rd. The deceased mother, an official and a very good woman, arranged to properly baptize the child. Mother was still lying on the bed opposite the door, and on her right hand stood her godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin, who served as the head of the Senate, and the godfather, the wife of a quarterly officer, a woman of rare virtues, Arina Semyonovna Belobryushkova. The mother in labor was given the choice of any of the three, which one she wanted to choose: Mokkia, Sossia, or name the child in the name of the martyr Khozdazat. “No,” thought the deceased, “the names are all the same.” To please her, they turned the calendar in a different place; Three names came out again: Triphilius, Dula and Varakhasiy. “This is a punishment,” said the old woman, “what are all the names; I, truly, have never heard of such ones. Let it be Varadat or Varukh, or else Triphilius and Varakhasiy.” They turned the page again and out came: Pavsikakhy and Vakhtisy. “Well, I already see,” said the old woman, “that, apparently, this is his fate. If so, let him be better called, like his father. The father was Akaki, so let the son be Akaki.” (Gogol. Overcoat)

This is what is called the top layer. Let's dig deeper.
The name “Akaky” translated from Greek means “not bad”, “humble”. Initially, Gogol gave him the surname “Tishkevich” - as if he doubled the characteristic feature of his hero. Then he changed his last name to “Bashmakevich” - apparently in order to awaken sentimental feelings. And when the story was finished, the hero already bore the surname Bashmachkin.
The combination of first and last name acquired a clear parody sound. Why was this necessary? And this was precisely the means of creating the character’s inner world. “Akaky Akakievich Bashmachnikov” - here the homeliness (absurdity?) of the hero is emphasized and - most importantly - in Gogol’s (= signature) style it becomes a sign of future tragic events.

Another example from the classics.
"Tatyana!...Dear Tatiana." For Pushkin's contemporaries, this name was associated with the appearance of a peasant woman.
Pushkin writes: “For the first time, with such a name, We willfully consecrate the tender pages of a novel.” By calling the heroine simple, the author thereby emphasizes the main characteristic feature - the naturalness of her nature - remember, “Tatiana, Russian in soul...”?

But in “Mazepa” Pushkin changes the name of the historical heroine. In fact, Kochubey’s daughter’s name was Matryona (from Latin “venerable”). But the simple Matryona clearly reduced the pathos, so there was a replacement with the more sonorous Maria.

Playing with the names of the characters is a very promising technique that can even be developed into a separate storyline.

Pelevin. Generation "P"

Take, for example, the very name “Babylen”, which was awarded to Tatarsky by his father, who united in his soul the faith in communism and the ideals of the sixties. It was composed of the words “Vasily Aksenov” and “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”. Tatarsky’s father, apparently, could easily imagine a faithful Leninist, gratefully comprehending over Aksenov’s free page that Marxism originally stood for free love, or a jazz-obsessed esthete, whom a particularly drawn-out saxophone roulade would suddenly make him understand that communism would win. But this was not only Tatarsky’s father - this was the entire Soviet generation of the fifties and sixties, which gave the world an amateur song and ended up in the black void of space as the first satellite - a four-tailed spermatozoon of a future that never came.
Tatarsky was very shy about his name, introducing himself whenever possible as Vova. Then he began to lie to his friends that his father called him that because he was interested in Eastern mysticism and meant ancient city Babylon, whose secret doctrine he, Babylen, was to inherit. And my father created the fusion of Aksenov with Lenin because he was a follower of Manichaeism and natural philosophy and considered himself obliged to balance the light principle with the dark one. Despite this brilliant development, at the age of eighteen Tatarsky happily lost his first passport, and received a second one for Vladimir.
After that, his life developed in the most ordinary way.
<…>
“Vladimir Tatarsky,” said Tatarsky, standing up and shaking his plump, limp hand.
“You are not Vladimir, but Vavilen,” said Azadovsky. - I know about it. Only I’m not Leonid. My dad was an asshole too. Do you know what he called me? Legion. I probably didn’t even know what this word meant. At first I was grieving too. But then I found out what was written about me in the Bible, and I calmed down.
<…>
Farseykin shrugged:
- The Great Goddess is tired of the misalliance.
- How do you know?
- At a sacred fortune telling in Atlanta, the oracle predicted that Ishtar would have a new husband in our country. We had problems with Azadovsky for a long time, but for a long time we could not understand who this new guy was. All that was said about him was that he was a man with the name of the city. We thought and thought and searched, and then suddenly they brought it from the first department your personal case. By all accounts, it turns out that this is you.
- I???
Instead of answering, Farseikin made a sign to Sasha Blo and Malyuta. They approached Azadovsky’s body, took him by the legs and dragged him from the altar room to the locker room.
- I? - repeated Tatarsky. - But why me?
- Don't know. Ask yourself that. For some reason the goddess didn’t choose me. What would it sound like - a person who left a name...
- Who left his name?
- In general, I am from the Volga Germans. It’s just that when I graduated from university, an assignment from television came to a chock - a correspondent in Washington. And I was a Komsomol secretary, that is, first in line for America. So they changed my name at Lubyanka. However, it doesn't matter.

And another example of how, with the help of the hero’s name, the author emphasizes his character (and at the same time the idea of ​​the work)

K. M. Stanyukovich. Serge Ptichkin.
The hero of the story with all his might, without hesitation in choosing means, tries to get to the top and make a career.

When the boy's former vague dreams began to take on a more real form, young man His last name began to irritate me even more.
And he often thought:
“Father should have been called Ptichkin! And how did the mother, a girl from an old noble family, decide to marry a man with the surname Ptichkin? What the hell is this name! Well, at least Korshunov, Yastrebov, Sorokin, Voronov, Vorobyov... even Ptitsyn, and then suddenly... Ptichkin! And when he dreamed of a future glorious career, these dreams were poisoned by the memory that he was... Mr. Ptichkin.
Even if he rendered some extraordinary services to the fatherland... like Bismarck... he would still never be made a count or prince.
“Prince Ptichkin... This is impossible!” – the young man repeated with anger at his last name.
True, he liked to explain on occasion (which he soon did with the Batishchevs) that the Ptichkin family was a very old noble family and that one of the ancestors, the Swedish knight Magnus, was nicknamed “Bird” for his extraordinary horse riding, back at the beginning of the 15th century moved from Sweden to Russia and, having married the Tatar princess Zuleika, laid the foundation for the Ptichkin family. But all these heraldic explanations, composed in addition in the fifth grade of the gymnasium, when they were studying Russian history, did little to console the noble descendant of the Swedish knight Bird.

In the end, the hero achieves what he wants - a prominent position, a million-dollar fortune, but...

In general, Serge Ptichkin is happy. He has a lovely apartment, carriages with rubber tires, excellent horses, a foolish wife in love, a very prominent career ahead...
There is only one thing that still torments him, and that is his last name.
- Ptichkin... Ptichkin! - he sometimes repeats with anger in his luxurious office. - And you had to be born with such a stupid surname!

2. RECEPTION – CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HERO

SELF-CHARACTERISTICS OF A HERO

I was twenty-five years old then,” N.N. began, things of a long time ago, as you can see. I had just broken free and went abroad, not in order to “finish my education,” as they used to say then, but I simply wanted to look at God’s world. I was healthy, young, cheerful, I had no money transferred, worries had not yet started - I lived without looking back, did what I wanted, prospered, in a word. It never occurred to me then that man is not a plant and cannot flourish for long. Youth eats gilded gingerbread, and thinks that this is their daily bread; and the time will come - and you’ll ask for some bread. But there is no need to talk about this.
I traveled without any purpose, without a plan; I stopped wherever I liked, and immediately went further as soon as I felt a desire to see new faces - namely, faces. I was occupied exclusively by people; I hated curious monuments, wonderful collections, the very sight of a footman aroused in me a feeling of melancholy and anger; I almost went crazy in Dresden's Grüne Gelb. Nature had an extraordinary effect on me, but I did not like its so-called beauties, extraordinary mountains, cliffs, waterfalls; I didn’t like her to get involved with me, to disturb me. But faces, living human faces - people’s speech, their movements, laughter - that’s what I couldn’t do without. In the crowd I always felt especially at ease and joyful; I had fun going where others went, screaming when others screamed, and at the same time I loved watching those others scream. It amused me to watch people... but I didn’t even watch them - I looked at them with some kind of joyful and insatiable curiosity. (Turgenev. Asya)

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HERO BY OTHER CHARACTERS

I tried to explain to Captain Bruno why all this surprised me, and he was silent for a minute or two.
“It’s not surprising,” he said at last, “that I was kind to Strickland, because we, although we perhaps did not suspect it, had common aspirations.”
- What, pray tell, could there be a common desire for such different people, how are you and Strickland? - I asked, smiling.
- Beauty.
“The concept is quite broad,” I muttered.
- You know that people obsessed with love become blind and deaf to everything in the world except their love. They are no more their own, like slaves chained to benches on a galley. Strickland was possessed by a passion that tyrannized him no less than love.
- How strange that you say this! - I exclaimed. “I have long thought that Strickland was possessed by a demon.”
- His passion was to create beauty. She gave him no rest. She was driven from country to country. The demon in him was merciless - and Strickland became an eternal wanderer, tormented by divine nostalgia. There are people who thirst for the truth so passionately that they are ready to shake the foundations of the world just to achieve it. Strickland was like that, only truth was replaced by beauty. I felt only deep compassion for him.
- And this is also strange. A man whom Strickland had brutally insulted once told me that he felt deep pity for him. - I was silent for a bit. “Have you really found an explanation for a man who always seemed incomprehensible to me?” How did you come up with this idea?
He turned to me with a smile.
“Didn’t I tell you that I, in my own way, was an artist?” I was consumed by the same desire as Strickland. But for him the means of expression was painting, and for me life itself. (Maugham. Moon and penny)

3. RECEPTION – DESCRIPTION OF THE HERO (PORTRAIT)

A literary portrait is an artistic depiction of a character’s appearance: face, figure, clothing, demeanor, etc.

Portraits of characters can be detailed, detailed, or fragmentary, incomplete; can be presented immediately in the exposition or when the character is first introduced into the plot, or gradually, with the unfolding of the plot using expressive details.

Types of portraits:

Naturalistic (portrait copied from a real person)

Many subsequently said that Chekhov had blue eyes. This is a mistake, but a mistake strangely common to everyone who knew him. His eyes were dark, almost brown, and the rim of his right eye was much more colored, which gave A.P.’s gaze, with some turns of his head, an expression of absent-mindedness. Upper eyelids somewhat hung over the eyes, which is so often observed in artists, hunters, sailors - in a word, in people with concentrated vision. Thanks to his pince-nez and his manner of looking through the bottom of his glasses, raising his head slightly upward, the face of A.P. often seemed harsh. But it was necessary to see Chekhov in other moments (alas, so rare in last years), when he was overcome by merriment and when, with a quick movement of his hand, he threw off his pince-nez and rocked back and forth in his chair, bursting into a sweet, sincere and deep laugh. Then his eyes became semicircular and radiant, with kind wrinkles at the outer corners, and his whole body then resembled that well-known youthful portrait, where he is depicted almost beardless, with a smiling, short-sighted and naive look, somewhat from under his brows. And so - amazingly - every time I look at this photograph, I cannot get rid of the thought that Chekhov’s eyes were really blue. (Kuprin. In memory of Chekhov)

Psychological (the hero’s inner world and character are revealed through the hero’s appearance)

Idealizing or grotesque (spectacular and vivid, replete with metaphors, comparisons, epithets)

In general, for all authors, the appearance of the heroes has always been fundamental to understanding their character. Depending on traditions, features of the literary movement, norms of the corresponding genre, individual style, authors present portrait descriptions of characters in different ways, paying more or less attention to their appearance.
However, there are authors for whom appearance is the starting point for creating images - as, for example, for Dickens.

With amazing farsightedness he distinguished small external signs, his gaze, without missing anything, captured, like a good camera lens, movements and gestures in a hundredth of a second. Nothing escaped him... He reflected the object not in its natural proportions, like an ordinary mirror, but like a concave mirror, exaggerating character traits. Dickens always emphasizes the idiosyncratic characteristics of his characters - not limiting himself to an objective image, he exaggerates and creates caricatures. He strengthens them and elevates them into a symbol. The portly Pickwick personifies spiritual gentleness, the skinny Jingle - callousness, the evil one turns into Satan, the good one - into perfection incarnate. His psychology begins with the visible, he characterizes a person through purely external manifestations, of course through the most insignificant and subtle, visible only to the keen eye of the writer... He notices the smallest, completely material manifestations of spiritual life and through them, with the help of his wonderful caricature optics, visually reveals the whole character. (c) Stefan Zweig.

4. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HERO THROUGH HIS ACTIONS, DEEDS, BEHAVIOR, THOUGHTS

The main means of creating character is the PICTURE OF THE CHARACTER'S ACTIONS.
The comparison of the character’s internal experiences and his actions works well here. A classic example is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

5. As a separate technique for recreating the inner world of a character, one can highlight his SPEECH FEATURES.

Socrates has good saying: “Speak so that I can see you.”
The speech of a Persian characterizes him in the best possible way, reveals his inclinations and preferences.

6. Also, as a separate technique, one can highlight the PICTURE OF THE HERO IN THE SYSTEM OF CHARACTERS.

The hero does not hang in a vacuum - he is surrounded by other Persians (supporters, opponents, neutrals). Reflected in their remarks, assessments, actions, etc., the hero acquires additional dimension. In principle, this technique is similar to No. 4 and No. 2 (characterization of the hero by other characters).
By comparing with other characters (and contrasting them!), the author has the opportunity to immerse the reader even deeper into the inner world of his hero.

8. HOW TO USE ART DETAILS

Let me remind you that an artistic detail is a detail that the author has endowed with a special semantic and emotional load.
The inner world of the hero as a whole and/or at a specific moment can be shown with the help of everyday details that may correspond or, conversely, sharply contradict the psychological state of the hero.

Thus, everyday life can absorb the hero - a series of landowners in “Dead Souls” or the same “Jumping Girl” by Chekhov.
Olga Ivanovna “in the living room she hung all the walls entirely with her own and other people’s sketches, framed and unframed, and near the piano and furniture she arranged a beautiful crowd of Chinese umbrellas, easels, colorful rags, daggers, busts, photographs”; in the dining room she “pasted the walls with popular prints , hung up bast shoes and sickles, put scythes and rakes in the corner, and it turned out to be a dining room in Russian taste.” In the bedroom, “to make it look like a cave, she draped the ceiling and walls with dark cloth, hung a Venetian lantern over the beds, and placed a figure with a halberd at the door.”

Note the deliberately long chain of details. The goal is not to depict the picture\ background\ circumstances of the heroine’s life, but to immediately show the prevailing traits of her character - vanity, pettiness, imaginary aristocracy. No wonder Chekhov “finishes off” the heroine, describing how, due to a lack of money and a desire to show off, Olga Ivanovna and her dressmaker show miracles of ingenuity - “From an old repainted dress, from worthless pieces of tulle, lace, plush and silk, they simply came out miracles, something charming, not a dress, but a dream.”

But in Bulgakov’s “The White Guard” the details of everyday life take on a completely different meaning. Things in the world of heroes are spiritualized, become symbols of the eternal - “The watch, fortunately, is completely immortal, the Saardam carpenter is immortal, and the Dutch tile, like a wise rock, is life-giving and hot in the most difficult times” (c)

“The main thing is to find the detail... it will illuminate the characters for you, from them you will go, and both the plot and thoughts will grow. From details to characters. From characters to generalizations and ideas” (c) M. Gorky in a letter to A. Afinogenov.

9. RECEPTION OF DEPRESENTATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE CHARACTER’S LIFE

The image of nature (landscape) and the environment (interior) are indirect characteristics of the character’s inner world and character.

Above there was only the sky and a cloud in its center, looking like a slightly smiling flat face with eyes closed. And below for a long time there was nothing but fog, and when it finally cleared, Marina was so tired that she could barely stay in the air. From above, not many traces of civilization were visible: several concrete piers, boardwalks over the beach, boarding house buildings and houses on distant slopes. Still visible was the antenna bowl looking up at the top of the hill and a trailer standing next to it, one of those trailers that are called by the rich word “cabin.” The trailer and the antenna were closest to the sky from which Marina was slowly descending, and she saw that the antenna was rusty and old, the door of the trailer was boarded up crosswise, and the glass in its window was broken. There was an air of sadness from all this, but the wind carried Marina past, and she immediately forgot about what she had seen. Having spread her translucent wings, she made a farewell circle in the air, took one last look at the endless blue above her head and began to choose a place to land.
<…>
The first object she encountered in her new world turned out to be a large plywood board, where the unfulfilled Soviet future and its beautiful inhabitants were drawn. Marina stared for a minute at their faded Nordic faces, above which hung cheesecakes that looked like cheesecakes from “The Book.” about tasty and healthy food" space stations, and then turned her gaze to the poster covering half the stand, handwritten on whatman paper with a wide poster pen:
<…>
The last clumps of fog were shaking in the bushes behind the poster, but the sky overhead was already clear, and the sun was shining with all its might. At the end of the embankment there was a bridge over a sewage stream flowing into the sea, and behind it there was a stall from which music could be heard - exactly the kind that should be playing on a summer morning over the beach. To the right of Marina, on a bench in front of the shower pavilion, an old man with a mane of yellowish-gray hair was dozing, and a few meters to the left, near a scale that looked like a small white gallows, a woman in a medical gown was waiting for clients.
<…>
The world around was beautiful. But what exactly this beauty consisted of was difficult to say: in the objects that made up the world - in trees, benches, clouds, passers-by - there seemed to be nothing special, but everything together formed a clear promise of happiness, an honest word that gave life for some unknown reason. Marina heard a question inside her, expressed not in words, but in some other way, but which undoubtedly meant:
“What do you want, Marina?”
And Marina, after thinking, answered something cunning, also inexpressible in words, but she put all the stubborn hope of her young body into this answer.
“These are the songs,” she whispered, took a deep breath of the sea-scented air and walked along the embankment towards the shining day. (Pelevin. Life of insects)

Creating the inner world of a character is a rather painstaking process. Write quickly good story No one succeeded, not even the very luminaries.

A good work differs from a bad one by carefully thinking through the details, which ultimately come together into a single whole.

Try and think it over, I mean. Right now, without leaving the monitor, analyze the thing you are writing at the moment.

Follow the steps in this article.

Did you connect the description of the hero’s appearance with his character?

Were the readers allowed to see the hero through the eyes of the supporting characters?

Were they given the floor to evaluate the actions/character traits of the heroes?

What function do descriptions serve in your text? (only allow the reader to navigate the area or harmonize/contrast with the emotional state of the hero)

Something like this))

© Copyright: Copyright Competition -K2, 2014
Certificate of publication No. 214060102041

Each type of literature has its own possibilities for revealing the inner world of a person. Thus, in lyrics, psychologism is expressive in nature; In it, as a rule, it is impossible to “look from the outside” at a person’s mental life. The lyrical hero either directly expresses his feelings and emotions, or engages in psychological introspection, reflection, or, finally, indulges in lyrical reflection and meditation. The subjectivity of lyrical psychologism makes it, on the one hand, very expressive and deep, and on the other hand, it limits its capabilities in understanding the inner world of a person. In part, such restrictions also apply to psychologism in drama, since the main way of reproducing the inner world in it is the monologues of the characters, which are in many ways similar to lyrical statements. Other methods of revealing a person’s mental life in drama began to be used quite late, in the 19th century. and especially in the 20th century. These are techniques such as gestural and facial behavior of characters, features of mise-en-scène, intonation pattern of a role, creation of a certain psychological atmosphere with the help of scenery, sound and noise design, etc. However, under all circumstances, dramaturgical psychologism is limited by the conventions inherent in this literary genre.

The greatest potential for depicting the inner world of a person has the epic genre of literature, which has developed a very perfect structure of psychological forms and techniques.

Psychologism as a conscious aesthetic principle, a stylistic dominant in the work of specific writers, is realized in certain forms. As a result of observations of extensive art material many researchers come to the conclusion that, with all their diversity, they can nevertheless be brought into some kind of system.

Modern literary criticism identifies three main forms of manifestation of psychologism in literature. Two of these forms were designated by I. Strakhov, who argued that the main forms of psychological analysis can be divided into portrayal of characters from the inside, i.e. by artistic knowledge the inner world of the characters, which is expressed through internal speech, images of memory and imagination, as well as on psychological analysis "from the outside", expressed in the writer’s psychological interpretation of the expressive features of speech, speech behavior, facial expressions and other means of manifestation of the psyche.

A. B. Esin suggests calling the first form of psychological image “ straight", and the second " indirect”, since in it we learn about the hero’s inner world not directly, but through external symptoms of a psychological state.

L. Ya. Ginzburg also talks about two main methods of psychological analysis - direct (in the form of the author’s reflections, self-analysis of the characters) and indirect (through the depiction of gestures and actions that the reader must interpret).

With some differences in details, researchers, however, actually speak of two dominant forms of psychologism in the literature:

1. A depiction of a person’s inner life “from the outside”, from the point of view of an outside observer, through a description, characterization of the external manifestations of certain emotions, states - facial expressions, gestures, actions, psychological picture and landscape, etc. The reader must comprehend, compare the facts offered to him and draw conclusions about what is happening in the soul of the hero of the work - indirect form.

2. The hero is revealed “from the inside” - through an internal monologue, confession, diaries, letters, in which he himself talks about his condition, or through direct author’s comments, reflections on the character’s feelings - straight form.

In essence, both forms are analytical. In the first case, analysis turns out to be the prerogative of the reader's consciousness. Of course, this is only possible under the condition that the writer himself, in the process of writing the work, has done a tremendous amount of research work, penetrating into the hidden recesses of the souls of his characters, hidden from external view, and finding their adequate external manifestations. In fact, analysis in this form is present implicitly, as if behind the text of the work of art itself. In the second case, the analysis is presented explicitly, manifested in the very fabric of the artistic narrative.

A. B. Esin points out the possibility of another, third way to inform the reader about the thoughts and feelings of the character - with the help of naming, extremely short designation those processes that take place in his inner world, and proposes to call this form of psychologism “ summarily denoting". The researcher states: “<…>the same psychological state can be reproduced using different forms of psychological representation. You can, for example, say: “I was offended by Karl Ivanovich because he woke me up” - this will be a summary form. You can depict external signs of resentment: tears, frowning eyebrows, stubborn silence - this is an indirect form. But you can, as Tolstoy did, reveal a psychological state using a direct form of psychological image.” The “summary-designating” form does not imply analytical efforts on the part of the reader - the feeling is precisely named and designated. There are no attempts here by the author to artistically comprehend the laws of the internal process, to trace its stages.

P. Skaftymov wrote about this method, comparing the features of the psychological image in Stendhal and L. Tolstoy: “Stendhal mainly follows the path of verbal designation of feelings. Feelings are named, but not shown." Tolstoy, according to the scientist, traces the process of feeling through time and thereby recreates it with greater liveliness and artistic power.

A. B. Esin believes that one can speak about psychologism as a special, qualitatively defined phenomenon that characterizes the originality of the style of a given work of art or writer only when a “direct” form of depicting mental movements and thought processes appears in literature and becomes dominant, in including those that do not or do not always find external expression. At the same time, the “summary-designating form” does not leave literature, but enters into interaction with “direct” and “indirect”, which enriches and deepens each of them.

Psychologist Vida Gudonienė adheres to the same three-stage division of forms of psychological analysis, noting that the direct form of psychologism is achieved through self-disclosure - the flow of thoughts and feelings in the consciousness and subconscious of a literary character (through an internal monologue, diary entries, dreams, confessions of the character and such a technique as “ mindflow") . Indirect psychologism is a description of facial expressions, speech, gestures and other signs of the external manifestation of the hero’s psychology. The summary-designating form of psychological analysis according to V. Gudonen appears in a literary work in the case when the author not only names the character’s feelings, but also talks about them in the form indirect speech, using media such as portrait and landscape.

Each form of psychological image has different cognitive, visual and expressive capabilities.

In addition to forms, they are subject to the task of deep mastery and reproduction of the inner world. techniques And ways images of a person, everything artistic media at the disposal of the writer. All scientists studying the problems of psychologism, to one degree or another, touched upon the issues of using techniques, methods, artistic means revealing the inner world of the characters, but considered these issues at an empirical rather than a systemic general theoretical level.

The difficulty of systematizing the techniques and methods of psychologism in literature is evidenced by the attempt to study this problem in the works of Esin. He notes that there are many methods of psychological depiction: this is the organization of the narrative, the use of artistic details, and ways of describing the inner world, etc.

To evaluate psychological analysis, it is also extremely important to take into account how the narration is conducted in a literary work, that is, what narrative-compositional form the work has.

According to Esin, the story of a person’s inner life can be told both from first, and from third party Moreover, the first form is historically earlier (until the end of the 18th century it was considered the most widespread and appropriate). These forms have different capabilities. First-person narration creates a greater illusion of credibility of the psychological picture, since the person talks about himself. In some cases, such a story takes on the character of a confession, which enhances the artistic impression. This narrative form is used mainly when the work has one main character, whose consciousness and psyche are followed by the author and the reader, and the other characters are secondary, and their inner world is practically not depicted (“Confession” by J.-J. Rousseau, autobiographical trilogy L. N. Tolstoy, “Teenager” by F. M. Dostoevsky, etc.).

Third person narration has its advantages in depicting the inner world. This is precisely the form that allows the author, without any restrictions, to introduce the reader into the inner world of the character and show it in detail and deeply. With this method of narration, for the author there are no secrets in the hero’s soul: he knows everything about him, can trace in detail the internal processes, explain the cause-and-effect relationship between impressions, thoughts, and experiences. The narrator can comment on the course of psychological processes and their meaning as if from the outside, talk about those mental movements that the hero himself does not notice or which he does not want to admit to himself. At the same time, the narrator can psychologically interpret the external behavior of the hero, his facial expressions, body movements, changes in the portrait, etc.

Third-person narration provides very wide opportunities for incorporating a variety of psychological depiction techniques into a work: internal monologues, intimate and public confessions, excerpts from diaries, letters, dreams, visions, etc. can easily and freely fit into such a narrative element.

Third person narration deals most freely with artistic time: it can dwell for a long time on the analysis of fleeting psychological states and very briefly inform about long periods that do not carry a psychological load and have, for example, the nature of plot connections. This makes it possible to increase the “specific weight” of the psychological image in common system narrative, switch the reader's interest from the details of the action to the details of mental life. In addition, the psychological image in these conditions can reach extreme detail and exhaustive completeness: a psychological state that lasts minutes, or even seconds, can stretch out into several pages in the narration about it; Perhaps the most striking example of this is the episode of Praskukhin’s death noted by N.G. Chernyshevsky in Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories.

Finally, third-person psychological narration makes it possible to depict the inner world of not one, but several characters, which is much more difficult to do with another method.

A special narrative form, which was often used by psychological writers of the 19th–20th centuries, is improperly direct inner speech. This is a speech that formally belongs to the author (narrator), but bears the imprint of the stylistic and psychological features of the hero’s speech. The words of the hero are woven into the words of the author (narrator), without standing out in any way in the text.

With this technique, words appear in the text of the work that are characteristic of the thinking of the hero, and not the narrator, the structural speech features of internal speech are imitated: double train of thoughts, fragmentation, pauses, rhetorical questions (all this is characteristic of internal speech), the hero’s direct address to himself is used . The form of inappropriately direct inner speech, in addition to diversifying the narrative, makes it more psychologically rich and intense: the entire speech fabric of the work turns out to be “saturated” with the inner word of the hero.

Third-person narration with the inclusion of direct internal speech of the characters somewhat distances the author and reader from the character, or, perhaps, more precisely, it is neutral in this regard and does not imply any specific author’s and reader’s position. The author's commentary on the character's thoughts and feelings is clearly separated from the internal monologue. Thus, the position of the author is quite sharply separated from the position of the character, so that there can be no question of the individuality of the author (and, further, the reader) and the hero being combined. Improperly direct inner speech, which seems to have dual authorship - the narrator and the hero - on the contrary, actively contributes to the emergence of the author's and reader's empathy for the hero. The thoughts and experiences of the narrator, hero and reader seem to merge, and the character’s inner world becomes clear.

Techniques of psychological depiction include psychological analysis And introspection. Their essence is that complex mental states are decomposed into elements and thereby explained and become clear to the reader.

Psychological analysis is used in third-person narration, introspection is used in both first- and third-person narration, as well as in the form of indirect inner speech.

An important and frequently encountered technique of psychologism is internal monologue– direct recording and reproduction of the hero’s thoughts, more or less imitating the real psychological patterns of inner speech. Using this technique, the author seems to “overhear” the hero’s thoughts in all their naturalness, unintentionality and rawness. The psychological process has its own logic, it is whimsical, and its development is largely subject to intuition, irrational associations, seemingly unmotivated convergence of ideas, etc. All this is reflected in internal monologues.

In addition, the internal monologue usually reproduces the speech style of a given character, and therefore his manner of thinking. The scientist notes such features of the internal monologue as subordination to intuition, irrational associations, its ability to reproduce the character’s speech style, and his manner of thinking.

D. Urnov considers a monologue as a statement of the hero addressed to himself, directly reflecting the internal psychological process.

T. Motyleva notes that the internal monologue of many writers became a way to reveal the essential in a person, that essential thing that sometimes is not expressed loudly and hides from human gaze.

Close to the internal monologue is such a technique of psychologism as “ mindflow", this is an internal monologue taken to its logical limit. “Stream of consciousness” represents the ultimate degree, the extreme form of internal monologue. This technique creates the illusion of an absolutely chaotic, disordered movement of thoughts and feelings. L. Tolstoy was one of the first to use it in his work.

In the works of a number of writers of the 20th century. (many of whom came to this technique on their own) it became the main one, and sometimes the only form psychological image. Classic in this regard is the novel by J. Joyce “Ulysses”, in which the stream of consciousness has become the dominant element of the narrative (for example, in the final chapter “Penelope” - Molly Bloom’s monologue - there are not even punctuation marks).

Simultaneously with the quantitative growth (increasing the proportion in the structure of the narrative), the principle of the stream of consciousness also changed qualitatively: in it, moments of spontaneity, rawness, and illogicality of human thinking intensified. The latter circumstance sometimes made individual fragments of works simply incomprehensible. In general, the active use of the stream of consciousness was an expression of the general hypertrophy of psychologism in the work of many writers of the 20th century. (M. Proust, W. Wolfe, early Faulkner, later N. Sarraute, F. Mauriac, and in Russian literature- F. Gladkov, I. Ehrenburg, partly A. Fadeev, early L. Leonov, etc.).

With increased attention to the forms of psychological processes in the works of these writers, the moral and philosophical content was largely lost, so in most cases, sooner or later there was a return to more traditional methods of psychological depiction; Thus, the emphasis moved from the formal to the substantive side of psychologism.

Another technique of psychologism is "dialectics of the soul" For the first time this term was used early creativity L. Tolstoy was applied by N. Chernyshevsky, who saw the essence of this principle in the writer’s ability to show how some feelings and thoughts develop from others; “...how a feeling, directly arising from a given situation or impression, subject to the influence of memories and the strength of impressions represented by the imagination, passes into other feelings, again returns to the previous starting point and again and again wanders, changing along the entire chain of memories; how a thought, born of the first sensation, leads to other thoughts, is carried away further and further, merges dreams with actual sensations, dreams of the future with reflection on the present.” The “dialectics of the soul” is understood as a depiction of the very process of mental life; the processes of formation of thoughts, feelings, experiences of the characters, their interweaving and influence on each other are specifically and fully reproduced. Special attention from now on, attention is paid not only to consciousness, but also to the subconscious, which often moves a person, changes his behavior and train of thoughts. But if you show such a chaotic inner world of a person, you may encounter an absolute misunderstanding of it. Therefore, to streamline this flow of thoughts and states of the hero, Tolstoy applies the principle of analytical explanation. The writer breaks down all complex psychological states into components, but at the same time preserves in the reader a feeling of unity, simultaneity of these components of the phenomenon.

One of the techniques of psychologism is artistic detail. In the system of psychologism, almost any external detail is somehow correlated with internal processes and in one way or another serves the purposes of psychological depiction.

With the non-psychological principle of writing, external details are completely independent; within the limits of the artistic form, they are completely self-sufficient and directly embody the features of a given artistic content. Psychologism, on the contrary, makes external details work to depict the inner world. External details in psychologism, of course, retain their function of directly reproducing life characteristics, directly expressing artistic content. But they also acquire another the most important function– accompany and frame psychological processes. Objects and events enter the stream of thoughts of the characters, stimulate thought, are perceived and emotionally experienced.

External details (portrait, landscape, the world of things) have long been used to psychologically depict mental states in the system of an indirect form of psychologism.

Thus, portrait details (such as “he turned pale,” “blushed,” “he hung his head violently,” etc.) conveyed the psychological state “directly”; in this case, naturally, it was understood that this or that portrait detail was unambiguously correlated with this or that mental movement. Subsequently, details of this kind acquired greater sophistication and lost psychological unambiguity, becoming enriched with overtones, and revealed the ability to “play” on the discrepancy between the external and internal, to individualize the psychological image in relation to an individual character. The portrait characteristic in the system of psychologism is enriched with the author's commentary, clarifying epithets, psychologically deciphered, and sometimes, on the contrary, encrypted so that the reader himself works to interpret this facial or gestural movement.

Among the artistic details with the help of which the external manifestations of the hero’s inner life are shown, A. B. Esin includes facial expressions, plasticity, gestures, speech to the listener, physiological changes, etc. Reproduction of external manifestations of experience is one of ancient forms mastering the inner world, but in the system of non-psychological writing it is capable of giving only the most schematic and superficial drawing of the state of mind, in the psychological style the details external behavior, facial expressions, and gestures become an equal and very productive form of deep psychological analysis. This happens for the following reasons.

Firstly, the external detail loses its monopoly position in the system of means of psychological depiction. This is no longer its only or even its main form, as in non-psychological styles, but one of many, and not the most important: the leading place is occupied by the internal monologue and the author’s narration about hidden mental processes. The writer always has the opportunity to comment on a psychological detail and explain its meaning.

Secondly, the individualization of psychological states mastered in literature leads to the fact that their external expression also loses its stereotyping, becomes unique and inimitable, his for every person and for every shade of condition. It’s one thing when literature depicts the same schematic manifestations of feelings and emotions for everyone and does not go further, and quite another when it depicts, say, a carefully individualized external facial touch, not in isolation, but in combination with other forms of analysis that penetrate depth, into the hidden and not receiving external expression.

External details are used only as one type of psychological image - primarily because not everything in a person’s soul can be expressed in his behavior, voluntary or involuntary movements, facial expressions, etc. Such moments of inner life as intuition, guesswork , suppressed volitional impulses, associations, memories cannot be depicted through external expression.

Details landscape also very often have psychological meaning. It has long been noticed that certain states of nature are somehow correlated with certain human feelings and experiences: the sun - with joy, rain - with sadness, etc. Therefore, landscape details from the earliest stages of the development of literature were successfully used to create in a work of a certain psychological atmosphere or as a form of indirect psychological depiction, when the hero’s state of mind is not described directly, but is, as it were, “transmitted” to the nature around him, and this technique is often accompanied by psychological parallelism or comparison. In the further development of literature, this technique became more and more sophisticated; the opportunity was mastered not directly, but indirectly to correlate emotional movements with one or another state of nature. At the same time, the character’s state may correspond to him, or, on the contrary, may contrast with him.

An external detail may by itself, without correlation and interaction with the hero’s inner world, mean nothing at all, have no independent meaning - a phenomenon completely impossible for a non-psychological style. Thus, the famous oak tree in “War and Peace” as such does not represent anything and does not embody any character. Only becoming the impression of Prince Andrei, one of key points in his thoughts and experiences, this external detail takes on artistic meaning.

External details may not directly enter into the process of the characters’ inner life, but only indirectly relate to it. Very often, such a correlation is observed when using a landscape in the system of psychological writing, when the character’s mood corresponds to a particular state of nature or, conversely, contrasts with it.

Unlike portrait and landscape, details "material" world began to be used for the purposes of psychological depiction much later - in Russian literature, in particular, only towards the end of the 19th century. Chekhov achieved rare psychological expressiveness of this type of detail in his work. He "pays primary attention to those impression, which his heroes receive from their environment, from the everyday conditions of their own and other people’s lives, and depicts these impressions as symptoms of the changes that occur in the minds of the heroes.”

Finally, another method of psychologism, somewhat paradoxical at first glance, is default method. It consists in the fact that at some point the writer says nothing at all about the hero’s inner world, forcing the reader to conduct a psychological analysis himself, hinting that the hero’s inner world, although it is not directly depicted, is still quite rich and Deserves attention. A striking example is an excerpt from Raskolnikov’s last conversation with Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. This is the culmination of the dialogue: the investigator has just directly announced to Raskolnikov that he considers him the murderer; nervous tension stage participants reaches its climax:

“It wasn’t me who killed,” Raskolnikov whispered, like frightened little children when they are captured at the scene of a crime.

“No, it’s you, Rodion Romanych, you, sir, and there’s no one else,” Porfiry whispered sternly and with conviction.

They both fell silent, and the silence lasted even strangely long, about ten minutes. Raskolnikov leaned his elbows on the table and silently ran his fingers through his hair. Porfiry Petrovich sat quietly and waited. Suddenly Raskolnikov looked contemptuously at Porfiry.

– Again, you’re up to the old standards, Porfiry Petrovich! All for the same tricks of yours: how can you not get tired of this, really?”

It is obvious that in these ten minutes that the heroes spent in silence, psychological processes did not stop. And, of course, Dostoevsky had every opportunity to depict them in detail: to show what Raskolnikov thought, how he assessed the situation, and what psychological state he was in. But there is no psychological image as such here, and yet the scene is obviously saturated with psychologism.

The technique of silence became most widespread in the works of Chekhov, and after him in the works of many other writers of the 20th century, both domestic and foreign.

In the literature of the 20th century. The “point of view” of the narrator and the relationship between the points of view of the subjects of the narrative (i.e., the narrator and the character himself - the hero) become especially significant and significant from the psychological side. The very category of “point of view” underlies the two dominant types of psychologism – objective and subjective (relating respectively to the external and internal psychological point of view).

The external point of view implies that, for the narrator, the character's inner world and behavior are the immediate objects of psychological analysis. This type of psychologism involves a third-person narration, in which the techniques of central consciousness and multiple reflections of the personality of literary characters operate. The technique of central consciousness (widely used by I. S. Turgenev) implies narration and assessment of the material by a literary hero who is not the center of the novel’s action, but who has the intellectual and sensory abilities for a deep and thorough analysis of what this hero has seen and experienced. The technique of multiplicity of reflection, in contrast to the technique of central consciousness, is directly related to the presence of several points of view aimed at one object. This achieves the versatility and objectivity of the created image of the individual. literary character.

Let's turn to the second type psychological point view - to the internal one, which implies that the subject and object of psychological analysis represent a single whole and are therefore fused together. That is, this type of psychological analysis involves first-person narration. Accordingly, such techniques as diary entries of literary characters, their internal monologue, confession, as well as the “stream of consciousness” of the characters can be used here.

In the 19th–20th centuries. the situation in the literature is changing somewhat as the tendency towards distrust of the author’s authoritarianism is strengthening. This process marked the transition of literature to the subjectivization of narration in a literary work and the widespread use by writers of such a technique as psychological subtext.

Psychological subtext is a unique form of dialogue between the author and the reader, when the latter must independently conduct a psychological analysis of a literary character, based on the author’s hints - the narrator is helped in this by rhythm, silence, gradation, as well as repetitions of words and constructions. The use of psychological subtext was characteristic of such domestic masters as A.P. Chekhov and I.S. Turgenev, and among foreign authors it is necessary to mention W. Wolfe and E. Hemingway. The subjectivization of the narrative, in turn, led to the appearance in it of a metaphorical image of the state of the world, “poetically generalized, emotionally rich, expressively expressed.” To create a metaphorical image of the state of the world in the narrative, writers introduce double characters into their literary work and use such a method of psychological analysis as a dream. The technique of duality in the psychological aspect was discovered through the literature of romanticism, in which authors could depict two intertwined realities, one of which was directly connected with the main “I” of the character, and the other reality belonged to the “double” of the literary hero created by the writer. And dreaming as a technique of psychologism was a kind of bridge between these worlds. IN romantic literature the dream helped the writer create an atmosphere of mystery and mysticism in his work. In modern literature, sleep acquires a special psychological load. Dreams reflect the unconscious and semi-conscious desires and impulses of the character, conveying the intensity of the experiences of his inner world, which contributes to the self-knowledge and introspection of the literary hero. At the same time, dreams, being caused not by events preceding the hero’s life, but by the psychological shocks he experienced, no longer correlate with the plot outline of the work, but with the inner world of a particular character. According to I. V. Strakhov, dreams in a literary work are the writer’s analysis of “the psychological states and characters of the characters.”

All of the above forms and methods of creating psychologism are used by writers both in adult and in children's (teenage) literature.

For many years, the ongoing debate around the question of whether there is specificity in children's literature and whether it is necessary has been resolved in favor of recognizing the specificity. Specifics children's work lies not only in the form, but, above all, in the content, in a special reflection of reality. For children, as V. G. Belinsky pointed out, “the subjects are the same as for adults,” but the approach to the phenomena of reality, due to the peculiarities of a child’s worldview, is selective: what is closer to the child’s inner world is seen by them in close-up, what is interesting to an adult, but less close to the child’s soul, seen as if at a distance. A children's writer depicts the same reality as an “adult,” but brings to the fore what the child sees in close-up. Changing the angle of view on reality leads to a shift in emphasis in the content of the work, and the need for special stylistic techniques arises. It is not enough for a children's writer to know the aesthetic ideas of children, their psychology, characteristics children's worldview on various age stages, it is not enough to have “childhood memory”. He is required to have high artistic skill and a natural ability as an adult, having deeply known the world, to see it every time from a child’s point of view, but at the same time not to remain captive of the child’s worldview, but to always be ahead of it in order to lead the reader along.

Thus, psychologism is realized in a work in a direct, indirect or summary-generalizing form with the help of specific techniques: indirect inner speech, psychological analysis and introspection, internal monologue, as well as its most vivid form - the “stream of consciousness”, the “dialectic” technique soul”, artistic detail, technique of omission, psychological subtext, duality or dreams.

General forms and techniques of psychologism are used individually by each writer, including the author of works for children and adolescents. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all psychologism. Its different types master and reveal the inner world of a person from different sides, enriching the reader each time with a new psychological and aesthetic experience.

What is the name of the method of depicting the inner life of a character (“he felt that something seemed to fall on him and pressed him,” “he came out, he swayed. His head was spinning. He did not feel whether he was standing”)?

Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks 1–9.

-...Nil Pavlych, and Nil Pavlych! How did he, the gentleman who was reported just now, shoot himself on Petersburgskaya?

“Svidrigailov,” someone from the other room answered hoarsely and indifferently.

Raskolnikov shuddered.

- Svidrigailov! Svidrigailov shot himself! - he cried.

- How! Do you know Svidrigailov?

- Yes... I know... He arrived recently...

- Well, yes, he recently arrived, lost his wife, a man of bad behavior, and suddenly shot himself, and so scandalously that it is impossible to imagine... he left a few words in his notebook that he was dying in his right mind and asked not to blame anyone for his death . This one, they say, had money.

How do you want to know?

– I... know... my sister lived in their house as a governess...

- Ba, ba, ba... Yes, you can tell us about him. And you had no idea?

– I saw him yesterday... he... drank wine... I didn’t know anything.

Raskolnikov felt as if something had fallen on him and crushed him.

“You seem to have turned pale again.” We have such a stale spirit here...

“Yes, I have to go,” Raskolnikov muttered, “I’m sorry, I bothered you...

- Oh, for mercy's sake, as much as you like! The pleasure was delivered and I am pleased to say...

Ilya Petrovich even extended his hand.

- I just wanted... I went to Zametov...

“I understand, I understand, and it was a pleasure.”

“I... am very glad... goodbye, sir...” Raskolnikov smiled.

He came out, he rocked. His head was spinning. He couldn't feel if he was standing. He began to walk down the stairs, resting his right hand against the wall. It seemed to him that some janitor, with a book in his hand, pushed him, climbing up to meet him in the office, that some little dog was baying and barking somewhere on the lower floor, and that some woman threw a rolling pin at it and screamed. He went downstairs and went out into the yard. Here in the courtyard, not far from the exit, stood Sonya, pale and completely dead, and looked at him wildly, wildly. He stopped in front of her. Something sick and exhausted was expressed in her face, something desperate. She clasped her hands. An ugly, lost smile squeezed out on his lips. He stood there, grinned, and turned upstairs, back to the office.

Ilya Petrovich sat down and rummaged through some papers. Standing in front of him was the same man who had just pushed Raskolnikov while climbing the stairs.

- A-ah-ah? You again! Did you leave anything?.. But what happened to you?

Raskolnikov, with pale lips and a fixed gaze, quietly approached him, walked up to the table itself, rested his hand on it, wanted to say something, but could not; Only some incoherent sounds were heard.

- You feel sick, chair! Here, sit on the chair, sit down! Water!

Raskolnikov sank into a chair, but did not take his eyes off the face of the very unpleasantly surprised Ilya Petrovich. Both looked at each other for a minute and waited. They brought water.

“It’s me...” Raskolnikov began.

– Drink some water.

Raskolnikov drew back the water with his hand and said quietly, deliberately, but clearly:

It was I who then killed the old official woman and her sister Lizaveta with an ax and robbed them.

Ilya Petrovich opened his mouth. They came running from all sides.

Raskolnikov repeated his testimony.

(F. M. Dostoevsky, “Crime and Punishment”)

Name the genre to which F. M. Dostoevsky’s work “Crime and Punishment” belongs.

Explanation.

Crime and Punishment is a novel.

The novel is a work of large epic form, covering a wide range of phenomena of private and public life, depicting in the process of development numerous human characters in their contradictory relationships.

Answer: novel.

Answer: novel

Indicate the stage of development of action reflected in this fragment in an epic or dramatic work, where the resolution of its conflict is described or the fundamental insolvability of this conflict is revealed.

Explanation.

Denouement is the end of an action or the end of a conflict in a work. Raskolnikov's confession is the denouement.

Answer: denouement.

Answer: decoupling

Source: Unified State Examination in Literature 04/01/2016. Early wave

What is the name of the form of communication between the characters, represented by a conversation between two characters and which is the main one in this fragment?

Explanation.

Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people.

Answer: dialogue.

Answer: dialogue

Source: Unified State Examination in Literature 04/01/2016. Early wave

Establish a correspondence between the characters acting and mentioned in this fragment and the individual events of the work: for each position in the first column, select the corresponding position from the second column.

Write down the numbers in your answer, arranging them in the order corresponding to the letters:

Explanation.

Sonya - begins to live “with a yellow ticket”;

Raskolnikov - sees a symbolic dream about a horse;

Psychologism- this is a way (method) of depicting the mental life of a character in a work; recreation and depiction of a person’s inner life in a work of art. IN journalism psychologism- this is a method of understanding personality in accordance with the “algorithms” of science and at the same time an aesthetic principle for depicting character, which involves the use of a system of artistic means.

THINGS TO REMEMBER:

To touch to the subtle mental organization of the personality, the journalist must understand the subjective world of the hero, understand his state of mind, look into his sensory-emotional sphere. Only in this case is it possible to identify the spiritual origins of a particular person’s behavior.

To write a full essay, a journalist needs to tune in to the “wave” of his hero’s emotions and thoughts. This mood prompts a special tone of writing: lyricism and confessionalism. In this sense, the essay is one of the most intimate genres of journalism. However, a complete and voluminous disclosure of a person’s inner world, as, for example, is done in a literary work, is impossible in an essay.

The process of self-disclosure, self-analysis of the hero can be described in an essay through monologue or dialogue . In both cases we will be dealing with various manifestations of his self-awareness.

A) The hero in the monologue completely immersed in himself: he sees and hears only himself; expresses only his own point of view on things; his consciousness does not come into contact with other consciousnesses. Therefore, the hero’s world, as a rule, appears to readers one-sidedly. But this is a process of internal self-disclosure of a person and a kind of introspection, confession. Hto more fully convey the range of human feelings, journalists use “hidden” methods of psychological characterization of the hero. As a rule, they include author's reactions, remarks, comments etc., i.e. everything that can indirectly characterize a person’s internal psychological state. For this, the external manifestations of the hero of the work are also used.

B) Things are different Vdialogue. In the process of dialogue, subjects of communication not only share useful information, but can also reason, argue, discuss about a specific subject of discussion, thereby revealing not only the features of their thinking, but also views, ideas, ideas, etc. In dialogue, both the author and the hero of the work act as independent subjects of communication. They are free to express their opinions, points of view and assessments. They can borrow various positions on certain issues, to freely express their ideological views. In addition, the author can recreate in the work the socio-psychological atmosphere that arose during the dialogue, thereby adding new touches to the psychological characteristics hero of the essay.

One of the ways to penetrate into the inner world of a person is analysis of the motivational sphere. In this case, various personality traits are studied; the degree to which a person is aware of his own actions; level of psychological maturity of the individual; dynamics of the motivational structure of the individual depending on the circumstances, situation and temporary state of mind; reaction to socially obligatory, declared and promoted goals, values, norms of behavior, lifestyle, etc. Analysis of the motivational sphere is correlated with ideals (an ideal is the dominant image of what is desired), attitudes, beliefs, values, interests and desires of an individual. When analyzing the motives of a person’s behavior, it is important to identify not only dominant motives, correlated, for example, with the goals of human activity, but also hidden ones, which are revealed in extreme conditions.

Essayist, analyzing a personality from the point of view of its ideological positions, can trace the stages of the formation of human beliefs, describe the transformations that occur in the mind of an individual when choosing this or that idea, and finally, show those external influences that play a decisive role in the ideological position of the individual.

Translated from Greek "character"- this is “minting”, “sign”. In the process of life, a person acquires various characterological traits that become his distinctive properties. In an essay, the character of the human personality can be presented in all its diversity. This is achieved not only by highlighting some individual traits or aspects of character, as is done, for example, in science, but by showing a person in all his internal and external relationships with the social environment. From the analysis of individual human actions or actions, a journalist can approach their synthesis in the character of the individual.

Distinguish three basic forms of psychological representation, to which all specific techniques for reproducing the inner world of literary heroes come down to:

- direct (open psychologism) - conveys the inner life of the character “from the inside” with the help of the hero’s psychological introspection (remember Pechorin, who analyzes the smallest movements of his soul). Means of open psychologism- internal monologue, dialogue, letters, confession, diaries, dreams, visions, improperly direct speech, “stream of consciousness” as the ultimate form of internal monologue, “dialectics of the soul.”

- indirect(hidden psychologism) - aimed at depicting the hero’s inner world “from the outside”, through psychological analysis. Means of hidden psychologism- portrait, landscape, interior, commentary, silence, artistic detail.

- summarily denoting (feelings are named but not shown).

Psychologism is inherent, as a rule, major journalistic works. His stylistic features coincide in many ways with the features of journalism in general: the desire for imagery and expressiveness; search for new language means; open expression of the author's position; the huge role of keywords characteristic of a certain era or ideological direction; widespread use of established speech patterns.

However, psychologism is present not only in the language and style of the work. In recent decades, media products made without the use of high technology have not aroused interest among the mass reader – the consumer. The forms of psychologism have changed. The state of the hero can be indicated by a gesture, photograph, music, graphics, etc. Thanks to high-quality slides, photographs and other forms of presentation of material, the reader is influenced on a non-verbal level. One photograph in a modern feature article in a mass magazine can say more about the hero, show his inner world and inner experiences more clearly than a journalist can do on a verbal level.

Large role in the process of perception and sensation playsrecognition, which is also used in psychologism. Perception has the property of selectivity, that is, it is easier and faster to perceive what is familiar or even close. Its characteristic feature is constancy. For example, the reader associates the expression “gates of the Arctic” with the far north.

The principle of psychologism allows not only to reveal the inner world of the hero, to give psychological or life advice, but also to present moral object lessons.