Does a person always know about his destiny? Does he always understand why he lives in the world? These philosophical questions have always worried and continue to worry people. Only some, from their youth, painfully search for their path in life by trial and error, while others, having lived most of their lives, suddenly clearly understand that they have been doing the wrong thing all this time. However, not everyone finds the courage to radically change something.
As a result, poets create philosophical lyrics and are tormented by eternal questions: to be or not to be? who to love? who to feel sorry for? Or admit to the whole world:
How few roads have been traveled
How many mistakes have been made!
However, prose, despite its eventfulness, is also “predisposed” to philosophizing. A striking proof of this can be a miniature of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin "Book", the analysis of which will be presented below. The hero of the work, looking up from reading the book, suddenly realizes that he has spent half his life in “a non-existent world, among people who have never been, imaginary”, that is, among the books that I am accustomed to reading every day since childhood.
The hero realizes that he has been in captivity for many years "book obsession", and at this time “field, estate, village, men, horses, flies, bumblebees, birds, clouds - everything lived its own, real life”. Quite often in literature one encounters such an antithesis between the fictional and the real, the book and the real world. However, with such a opposition, the hero must make a choice for himself, sometimes very painful, between these two worlds.
The hero of Bunin’s story made this choice a long time ago. Yes, there are those who are happy to simply live in the world, that is “does something most incomprehensible in the world”. Life is a great miracle. Everything in it is arranged very wisely. There is a man who digs the ground and plants plants so that they bear fruit or, as in this work, serve as a memory of the untimely departed, because the man returns from the graveyard, where he planted a jasmine bush "on your girl", obviously, on the grave of his daughter who died early.
There are also those in life who are destined to change the life of an entire state, as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin did, in the year of whose death - in 1924 - this story was written by Bunin, who had long left Soviet Russia so as not to remain in the country of victorious socialism.
Yes, life is diverse in its manifestations, and it’s great that everyone living on this earth is able to feel “something unusually simple and at the same time unusually complex, something deep, wonderful, inexpressible that exists in life and in myself”. Of course, the hero understands that all this will never be properly written about in books. After all, it is impossible to accurately convey the life of a field, an estate, a village, men, horses, bumblebees, birds, clouds - everything that surrounded the writer himself and his hero.
But every moment a person lives is unique, and later it is difficult to experience something similar again. It is art in different ways: music, painting, words that allows us to capture this moment in order to be able to convey and explain to those living after us what it is. Therefore, God acted wisely when he created composers, artists, writers - those for whom “eternal torment is to remain silent forever, not to speak about what is truly yours and the only real one”, which required “expression, that is, trace, embodiment and preservation, at least in a word”.
This kind of reflection on the significance of one’s business often occurs to people in adulthood, when there is something to look back on and evaluate what has already been done. It is not without reason that it was in recent years that I. S. Turgenev wrote his wonderful “Poems in Prose,” full of philosophical reflections on life and eternity, love and death. Perhaps the story “The Book” can also be considered a work of this kind. There is no plot in it, but the eternal torment of the creator, who cannot help but express his feelings, is clearly expressed.
- Analysis of the story “Easy Breathing”
- “Sunstroke”, analysis of Bunin’s story
Brown Anastasia, FR-401
Analysis of the story by I.A. Bunin "Muse".
The story was written on October 17, 1938, included in the collection “Dark Alleys”. With World War II approaching, Bunin personally encountered the Nazis in 1936 while traveling in Germany: in Lindau he was arrested and subjected to an unceremonious and humiliating search. Although there are no direct references to these events in Bunin's works, they significantly influenced the general mood of his work. The feeling of catastrophic existence, loneliness, the impossibility of happiness, characteristic of Bunin’s prose before, has only intensified in these years.
Like all the works in the “Dark Alleys” series, the story “Muse” reveals the theme of love. The main stylistic principle of the story is antithesis. He manifests himself on all levels.
The narration is told from the 1st person in the form of a memoir, which means that a view of events is given through the prism of the narrator’s perception, therefore, this is a subjective view. Bunin chooses this form of narration to show the image of the narrator from the inside: which of the events of those distant years were most important to him, what feelings they evoked.
There are two central images in the work: the narrator and the conservator Muse Graf. There is also “someone Zavistovsky”, but his image is secondary and in many ways parallel to the image of the narrator.
The narrator is a weak, weak-willed person who has no purpose in life. He abandoned his estate in the Tambov province to study painting, then just as easily abandoned his hobby when the Muse appeared in his life. He studied with a mediocre but famous artist, and although he was aware of the vulgarity of his nature, he still continued his studies. He spent his free time in the company of bohemians, all of whose bohemianism is immediately removed by the remark that they were equally committed to “billiards and crayfish with beer.” This means, at least during his youth, he was not much different from all these ordinary people.
The image of Zavistovsky echoes the image of the narrator; he is “lonely, timid, narrow-minded.” That is, just like the narrator, a person who does not particularly stand out from others. But there is something about both of them that attracted the Muse's attention to them. Zavistovsky is “not a bad musician,” Muse says about the narrator: “You are quite beautiful,” in addition, she probably heard about his painting activities.
These two images are contrasted with the image of the main character. The external image of the Muse does not correspond to the expectations that her name generates. This is “a tall girl in a gray winter hat, a gray straight coat, gray boots, ..., eyes the color of acorns,” she has “rusty hair.” There is neither lightness nor ephemerality in her appearance: “... her knees lay round and plump,” “convex calves,” “elongated feet”; “She sat comfortably on the sofa, apparently not planning to leave soon.” She is direct and categorical. In her addresses to the narrator, imperative intonations predominate: “accept”, “remove”, “give”, “order” (whereas in the narrator’s speech we see the passive voice, impersonal constructions “very flattered”, “nothing interesting about me, it seems.” No"). This is a strong, decisive, rather eccentric nature. She cannot be called tactful and sensitive to the feelings of others. The author does not say anything about her inner world; we can only guess about what caused her offensive tactics. But most likely this is how her desire for happiness is expressed, although the methods for achieving it are somewhat naive. The muse says to the narrator: “But in fact, you are my first love.”
Such antagonism between the male and female worlds is characteristic of Bunin’s work. The peculiarities of Bunin's perception of these worlds are reflected in the joking words of the heroine of the story "Smaragd": "... the worst girl is still better than any young man."
The significance of the appearance of this unusual girl in the narrator’s life is indicated by both the composition of the story and the organization of artistic time and space.
One of the characteristic features of Bunin's work is the laconicism of the narrative. The events described on several pages of the story take a year. The narrator begins the story with winter, when he “was no longer in his early youth and decided to study painting.” He evaluates this period with the words: “I lived an unpleasant and boring life!” The space is closed in type: an artist’s house, cheap restaurants, “Capital” rooms.
Next comes the “suddenly” characteristic of Bunin’s work, when the hero’s life changes due to some unexpected event: the Count Muse knocks on the narrator’s door. This happens in early spring. Two phrases serve as a kind of marker for changes in the mood of the narrative:
Winter period of life: “It remains in my memory: the light constantly pours outside the windows, the trams rattle dully and ring along the Arbat, in the evening there is a sour stink of beer and gas in the dimly lit restaurant...”
The beginning of spring: “... through the open windows of the double frames there was no longer a whiff of sleet and rain in the dampness of winter, horseshoes were clicking on the pavement in an unwinter manner, and as if the horse-cars were ringing more musically, someone knocked on the door of my hallway.”
Here there is a kind of enlargement of the frame, focusing on one of the key moments of the hero’s life, the narrative develops in jerks, it seems that the hero’s heart is beating: “I shouted: who is there?”, “I waited...”, “I stood up.” , opened..." This is expressed grammatically by the transition from past tense to present: "... a tall girl is standing at the threshold." About this moment the narrator says: “Where does such happiness suddenly come from!” And again the phrase as a marker of mood and feeling: “As if in a dream, I heard the monotonous ringing of horse-drawn horses, the clatter of hooves...” This constant mention of street sounds may indicate the connection of the hero’s life with the space of the city.
Further May, summer is approaching. The hero, at the request of the Muse, moves to a dacha near Moscow. Now he is surrounded by the world of nature, silence and tranquility. This is an open space. Even inside the house in which the hero lives is spacious: there is almost no furniture in it. Bunin uses the technique of natural parallelism: when the Muse arrives at the hero’s dacha, it is usually clear and sunny, everything around breathes freshness. After he sees off the Muse, the sky darkens, it rains, and a thunderstorm rages.
June. The muse moves to the narrator.
Autumn. Here, as a harbinger of trouble, Zavistovsky appears.
And now attention is again focused on an important, decisive moment in the hero’s life. Winter again: “Before Christmas, I once went to the city. I returned by moonlight.” Again the narrative develops in jerks, like a restless heartbeat: “suddenly fell asleep,” “suddenly woke up,” “but she left me!”, “maybe she came back?”, “no, she didn’t come back,” etc. Bunin greatly emphasizes the hero’s despair at the level of the character of filling the space: “alley of bare trees”, “poor house”, “door in shreds of upholstery”, “burnt-out stove”. The muse, with her characteristic categoricalness, says: “The matter is over and clear, the scenes are useless.” Here the absolute end of their relationship is highlighted grammatically, which the hero himself noticed: “You are already speaking to me on “you”, you could at least not speak to him on “you” in front of me.”
Figurative system:
Man Woman
Composition:
There are 2 key moments in the construction of the text: meeting the Muse and parting with her; and 2 connecting links between these moments: life before meeting the Muse, and life before parting with her. The elements of these pairs are opposed. Also, these pairs themselves are opposed to each other in terms of the nature of the description and emotional intensity.
meeting - parting
life before meeting - life before parting
Time:
The story can be divided into 4 parts. The story takes a year. The description of two days, when key events in the hero’s life take place, is equal in volume to the description of the rest of the time. Since the narrative is given in the form of a memory, we conclude that this is psychological, subjective time. This means that these two days were the most emotionally filled, the most important for the hero. These days are, as it were, relived by the hero: this is evidenced by both the emotional intensity of the narrative and the transition to the present tense at the grammatical level.
The development of the relationship between the Muse and the narrator correlates with the seasons. Winter (the hero's life before meeting the Muse), spring-summer (life with the Muse), autumn (Zavistovsky appears), winter (Muse goes to Zavistovsky).
The same pattern can be noted in relation to times of day. The meeting of the hero and the Muse takes place during the day, and their separation occurs at night.
Space:
The periods in the hero's life when the Muse is near him are contrasted with those when she is not near him. This girl seems to free him from the closed space of the city with its constant noise, second-rate restaurants, and frees him from vulgar, empty people. At her request, he moves to a dacha near Moscow. Now he is surrounded by an open space, free from everything unnecessary, and it is easier to breathe in it.
So, we have already determined the theme of the story - love. Now let's see how Bunin reveals this topic. According to Bunin, love is tragic, it is fleeting, but leaves a deep mark on the heart. This story reveals such a facet of love as its similarity to inspiration. It visits the artist against his will, and can leave as suddenly as it came. Here this idea is personified in the Muse Count. We can only guess about the logic of her actions; she comes to bad artists, mediocre musicians, and colors their lives, making them more beautiful and spiritual. But a person in the union of the Muse acts as a passive principle, as an object, and not as a subject. And so, when she leaves him, and she inevitably leaves him, he experiences excruciating grief, but realizes his powerlessness to change anything.
Analysis of Bunin's works
Content
Introduction
A unique master of words, an expert and connoisseur of his native nature, who knew how to touch the subtlest and secret strings of a person’s soul, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born in 1870 in Voronezh, into an impoverished noble family. He spent his early childhood on a small family estate (the Butyrki farm in Yeletsky district, Oryol province). The literary abilities of young Bunin, who was particularly impressionable from childhood, manifested themselves very early - in his adolescence he began writing poetry and did not give up poetry until the end of his life. This, in our opinion, is another of the rare features of I.A. Bunin as a writer: writers, moving from poetry to prose, leave poetry almost forever. But Ivan Bunin’s prose is also deeply poetic in its essence. An internal rhythm beats in it, feelings and images reign.
The creative path of I.A. Bunin is distinguished by its duration, almost unparalleled in the history of literature. Having presented his first works in the late eighties of the 19th century, when the classics of Russian literature M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G.I. Uspensky, L.N. lived and worked. Tolstoy, V.G. Korolenko, A.P. Chekhov, Bunin completed his activities in the early 1950s of the twentieth century. His work is highly complex. It experienced the beneficial influence of major contemporary writers, although it developed in its own independent ways. Bunin's works are a fusion of Tolstoy's ability to penetrate deeply into the very essence of the life depicted, to see in the phenomena of the surrounding reality not only a ceremonial form, but the true essence, their often unattractive underside; Gogol’s solemn, upbeat prose, his lyrical digressions and descriptions of nature.
Bunin is one of the talented writers of the realistic direction of Russian literature. With his work he completed the “noble” line in Russian literature, represented by such names as S.T. Aksakov, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy.
Bunin also knew the other side of noble life in the post-reform period - the poverty and lack of money of the nobles themselves, the stratification and unrest of the village, the bitter feeling of being unable to influence the situation. He is convinced that a Russian nobleman has the same way of life and the same soul as a peasant. Many of his novels and short stories were devoted to the study of this common “soul”: “Village” (1910), “Sukhodol” (1912), “Merry Yard” (1911), “Zakhar Vorobyov” (1912), “Thin Grass” (1913 ), “I'm Still Silent” (1913), in which there is a lot of almost Gorky-esque bitter truth.
Like many of his contemporaries, the writer reflected on Russia’s place between East and West, on the volcanic element of the eastern nomad sleeping in the Russian soul. I.A.Bunin traveled a lot: the Middle East, Africa, Italy, Greece. The stories “Shadow of the Bird”, “Sea of the Gods”, “Country of Sodom” and others in the collection “Grammar of Love” are about this.
All of Bunin's works - regardless of the time of their creation - are encompassed by an interest in the eternal mysteries of human existence, a single circle of lyrical and philosophical themes: time, memory, heredity, love, death, human immersion in the world of unknown elements, the doom of human civilization, unknowability on the final earth truth. The themes of time and memory set the perspective for all of Bunin's prose.
In 1933, Bunin became the first Russian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature - “for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated in prose the typical Russian character.”
His work is of particular interest to literary scholars. More than a dozen works have been written. The most complete study of the writer’s life and work is given in the following works by V.N. Afanasyev (“I.A. Bunin”), L.A. Smirnova (“I.A. Bunin. Life and Creativity”), A. Baboreko (“ I.A. Bunin. Materials for a biography (from 1970 to 1917)"), O.N. Mikhailova ("I.A. Bunin. Essay on creativity", "Strict talent"), L.A. Kolobaeva ("Prose I .A.Bunin”), N.M.Kucherovsky (“I.A.Bunin and his prose (1887-1917)”), Yu.I. Aikhenvald (“Silhouettes of Russian Writers”), O.N. Mikhailov (“Literature of Russian Abroad”), I.A. Karpov (“Prose of Ivan Bunin”) and others.
The work is devoted to the study of the poetics of stories by I.A. Bunina.
Subject The thesis is the poetics of I. B. Bunin's stories.
An object- stories by I.B. Bunin.
Relevance The work lies in the fact that the study of the poetics of stories allows us to most fully reveal their originality.
Purpose thesis is a study of the originality of the poetics of I.A. Bunin’s stories.
Tasks thesis:
- Characterize the spatio-temporal organization of I. Bunin’s stories.
To identify the role of subject detail in the literary texts of I.A. Bunin.
Structure of the thesis: introduction, two chapters, conclusion, bibliography.
CHAPTER 1. LITERARY SPACE AND TIME IN I.A.’S STORIES BUNINA
1.1. Categories of artistic space and time
The concept of the space-time continuum is essential for the philological analysis of a literary text, since both time and space serve as constructive principles for the organization of a literary work. Artistic time is a form of existence of aesthetic reality, a special way of understanding the world.
Features of time modeling in literature are determined by the specifics of this type of art: literature is traditionally viewed as a temporary art; unlike painting, it recreates the concreteness of the passage of time. This feature of a literary work is determined by the properties of linguistic means that form its figurative structure: “grammar determines for each language an order that distributes ... space in time” 1, transforms spatial characteristics into temporal ones.
The problem of artistic time has long occupied literary theorists, art historians, and linguists. Thus, A.A. Potebnya, emphasizing that the art of words is dynamic, showed the limitless possibilities of organizing artistic time in the text. He viewed the text as a dialectical unity of two compositional speech forms: description (“depiction of features that simultaneously exist in space”) and narration (“Narration transforms a number of simultaneous features into a series of sequential perceptions, into an image of the movement of gaze and thought from object to object” 2 ).
A.A. Potebnya distinguished between real time and artistic time; Having examined the relationship between these categories in works of folklore, he noted the historical variability of artistic time. The ideas of A.A. Potebnya were further developed in the works of philologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, interest in the problems of artistic time especially revived in the last decades of the 20th century, which was associated with the rapid development of science, the evolution of views on space and time, the acceleration of the pace of social life, and, in connection with this, increased attention to the problems of memory, origins, tradition , On the one side; and the future, on the other hand; finally, with the emergence of new forms in art.
“The work,” noted P.A. Florensky, “is aesthetically forced to develop... in a certain sequence” 3. Time in a work of art is the duration, sequence and correlation of its events, based on their cause-and-effect, linear or associative relationship.
Time in the text has clearly defined or rather blurred boundaries (events, for example, can cover tens of years, a year, several days, a day, an hour, etc.), which may or, on the contrary, not be designated in the work in relation to the historical time or time set by the author conditionally. 4
Artistic time is systemic in nature. This is a way of organizing the aesthetic reality of a work, its inner world, and at the same time an image associated with the embodiment of the author’s concept, reflecting precisely his picture of the world with a reflection of the name day of the world (for example, M. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard”).
From time as an immanent property of a work, it is advisable to distinguish the time of the passage of the text, which can be considered as the time of the reader; Thus, when considering a literary text, we are dealing with the antinomy “the time of the work - the time of the reader.” This antinomy in the process of perceiving a work can be resolved in different ways. At the same time, the time of the work is heterogeneous: thus, as a result of temporal shifts, “omissions”, highlighting central events in close-up, the depicted time is compressed and shortened, while when juxtaposing and describing simultaneous events, it, on the contrary, is stretched.
A comparison of real time and artistic time reveals their differences. The topological properties of real time in the macroworld are one-dimensionality, continuity, irreversibility, orderliness. In artistic time, all these properties are transformed. It can be multidimensional. This is due to the very nature of a literary work, which has, firstly, an author and presupposes the presence of a reader, and secondly, boundaries: a beginning and an end. Two time axes appear in the text - the “axis of storytelling” and the “axis of described events”: “the axis of storytelling is one-dimensional, while the axis of described events is multidimensional” 5. Their relationship gives rise to the multidimensionality of artistic time, makes temporal shifts possible, and determines the multiplicity of temporal points of view in the structure of the text. Thus, in a prose work, the narrator’s conditional present tense is usually established, which correlates with the narration about the past or future of the characters, with the characteristics of situations in various time dimensions.
The action of a work can unfold in different time planes (“The Double” by A. Pogorelsky, “Russian Nights” by V.F. Odoevsky, “The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov, etc.).
Irreversibility (unidirectionality) is also not characteristic of artistic time: the real sequence of events is often disrupted in the text. According to the law of irreversibility, only folklore time moves. In the literature of modern times, temporal displacements, disruption of temporal sequence, and switching of temporal registers play an important role. Retrospection as a manifestation of the reversibility of artistic time is the principle of organization of a number of thematic genres (memoirs and autobiographical works, detective novels). Retrospective in a literary text can also act as a means of revealing its implicit content - subtext.
The multidirectionality and reversibility of artistic time is especially clearly manifested in the literature of the 20th century. If Stern, according to E.M. Forster, “turned the clock upside down,” then “Marcel Proust, even more inventive, swapped the hands... Gertrude Stein, who tried to banish time from the novel, smashed her clock into pieces and scattered its fragments around the world..." 6. It was in the 20th century. a “stream of consciousness” novel arises, a “one day” novel, a sequential time series in which time is destroyed, and time appears only as a component of a person’s psychological existence.
Artistic time is characterized by both continuity and discreteness. “Remaining essentially continuous in the sequential change of temporal and spatial facts, the continuum in textual reproduction is simultaneously divided into separate episodes” 7.
The selection of these episodes is determined by the aesthetic intentions of the author, hence the possibility of temporal lacunae, “compression” or, on the contrary, expansion of plot time, see, for example, T. Mann’s remark: “At the wonderful festival of narration and reproduction, omissions play an important and indispensable role.”
The possibilities of expanding or compressing time are widely used by writers. So, for example, in I. S. Turgenev’s story “Spring Waters” the story of Sanin’s love for Gemma stands out in close-up - the most striking event in the hero’s life, its emotional peak; At the same time, artistic time slows down, “stretches out,” but the course of the hero’s subsequent life is conveyed in a generalized, summary manner: “And then - life in Paris and all the humiliations, all the disgusting torments of a slave... Then - the return to the homeland, a poisoned, devastated life, petty fuss, minor troubles..."
Artistic time in the text appears as a dialectical unity of the finite and the infinite. In the endless flow of time, one event or a chain of events is singled out; their beginning and end are usually fixed. The ending of the work is a signal that the time period presented to the reader has ended, but time continues beyond it. Such a property of real-time works as orderliness is also transformed in a literary text. This may be due to the subjective determination of the starting point or measure of time: for example, in the autobiographical story “Boy” by S. Bobrov, the measure of time for the hero is a holiday: “For a long time I tried to imagine what a year is... and suddenly I saw in front of me was a rather long ribbon of pearl-gray fog, lying horizontally in front of me, like a towel thrown on the floor.<...>Was this towel divided for months?.. No, it was unnoticeable. For seasons?.. It’s also somehow not very clear... It was clearer something else. These were the patterns of the holidays that colored the year” 8.
Artistic time represents the unity of the particular and the general. “As a manifestation of the private, it has the features of individual time and is characterized by a beginning and an end. As a reflection of the limitless world, it is characterized by the infinity of the time flow” 9. A single temporary situation in a literary text can also act as a unity of discrete and continuous, finite and infinite: “There are seconds, five or six of them pass at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, completely achieved... It’s as if you suddenly feel the whole nature and suddenly say: yes, it’s true” 10. The plane of the timeless in a literary text is created through the use of repetitions, maxims and aphorisms, various kinds of reminiscences, symbols and other tropes. In this regard, artistic time can be considered as a complementary phenomenon, to the analysis of which N. Bohr’s principle of complementarity is applicable (opposite means cannot be combined synchronously; to obtain a holistic view, two “experiences” separated in time are needed). The antinomy “finite - infinite” is resolved in a literary text as a result of the use of conjugate, but spaced apart in time and therefore ambiguous means, for example, symbols.
Fundamentally significant for the organization of a work of art are such characteristics of artistic time as the duration/brevity of the depicted event, the homogeneity/heterogeneity of situations, the connection of time with subject-event content (its fullness/emptiness, “emptiness”). According to these parameters, both works and fragments of text in them, forming certain time blocks, can be contrasted.
Artistic time is based on a certain system of linguistic means. This is, first of all, a system of tense forms of the verb, their sequence and opposition, transposition (figurative use) of tense forms, lexical units with temporal semantics, case forms with the meaning of time, chronological marks, syntactic constructions that create a certain time plan (for example, nominative sentences represent in the text there is a plan of the present), names of historical figures, mythological heroes, nominations of historical events.
Of particular importance for artistic time is the functioning of verb forms; the predominance of statics or dynamics in the text, the acceleration or slowdown of time, their sequence determines the transition from one situation to another and, consequently, the movement of time. Compare, for example, the following fragments of E. Zamyatin’s story “Mamai”: “Mamai wandered lost in the unfamiliar Zagorodny. The penguin wings were in the way; the head hung like a faucet on a broken samovar... And suddenly the head jerked up, the legs began to prance like a twenty-five year old...” Forms of time act as signals of various subjective spheres in the structure of the narrative, cf., for example: “Gleb was lying on the sand, resting his head in his hands It was a quiet, sunny morning. He wasn't working on his mezzanine today. It's all over. Tomorrow they are leaving, Ellie is packing up, everything is re-drilled. Helsingfors again..." 11.
The functions of types of tense forms in a literary text are largely typified. As V.V. Vinogradov notes, narrative (“event”) time is determined primarily by the relationship between the dynamic forms of the past tense perfective and the forms of the past imperfect, acting in a procedurally long-term or qualitatively characterizing meaning. The latter forms are correspondingly assigned to the descriptions.
The time of the text as a whole is determined by the interaction of three temporal “axes”: calendar time, displayed mainly by lexical units with seme time and dates; event time, organized by the connection of all predicates of the text (primarily verbal forms); perceptual time, expressing the position of the narrator and the character (in this case, different lexical and grammatical means and temporal shifts are used).
Artistic and grammatical tenses are closely related, but they should not be equated. “Grammatical tense and the tense of a verbal work can diverge significantly. Action time and author's and reader's time are created by a combination of many factors: among them, grammatical time is only partly..." 12.
Artistic time is created by all elements of the text, while the means expressing temporal relations interact with the means expressing spatial relations. Let us limit ourselves to one example: for example, the change of constructions with predicates of movement (left the city, entered the forest, arrived in Nizhneye Gorodishche, drove up to the river, etc.) in the story by A.P. Chekhov's "On the Cart", on the one hand, determines the temporal sequence of situations and forms the plot time of the text, on the other hand, reflects the movement of the character in space and participates in the creation of artistic space. To create an image of time, spatial metaphors are regularly used in literary texts.
The category of artistic time is historically changeable. In the history of culture, different temporal models succeed each other.
The most ancient works are characterized by mythological time, a sign of which is the idea of cyclical reincarnations, “world periods”. Mythological time, according to C. Levi-Strauss, can be defined as the unity of such characteristics as reversibility-irreversibility, synchronicity-diachronicity. The present and the future in mythological time appear only as different temporal hypostases of the past, which is an invariant structure. The cyclical structure of mythological time turned out to be significantly significant for the development of art in different eras. “The exceptionally powerful orientation of mythological thinking towards the establishment of homo- and isomorphisms, on the one hand, made it scientifically fruitful, and on the other, determined its periodic revival in various historical eras” 13. The idea of time as a change of cycles, “eternal repetition”, is present in a number of neo-mythological works of the 20th century. Thus, according to V.V. Ivanov, the image of time in the poetry of V. Khlebnikov, who “deeply felt the ways of science of his time” 14, is close to this concept.
In medieval culture, time was viewed primarily as a reflection of eternity, while the idea of it was predominantly of an eschatological nature: time begins with the act of creation and ends with the “second coming.” The main direction of time becomes orientation towards the future - the future exodus from time into eternity, while the metrization of time itself changes and the role of the present, the dimension of which is connected with the spiritual life of a person, significantly increases: “... for the present of past objects we have memory or memories; for the present of real objects we have a look, an outlook, an intuition; for the present of future objects we have aspiration, hope, hope,” wrote Augustine. Thus, in ancient Russian literature, time, as D.S. Likhachev notes, is not as egocentric as in the literature of modern times. It is characterized by isolation, one-pointedness, strict adherence to
real sequence of events, constant appeal to the eternal: “Medieval literature strives for the timeless, to overcome time in the depiction of the highest manifestations of existence - the divine establishment of the universe” 15. The achievements of ancient Russian literature in recreating events “from the angle of eternity” in a transformed form were used by writers of subsequent generations, in particular F.M. Dostoevsky, for whom “the temporal was... a form of realization of the eternal” 16. An example of this is the dialogue between Stavrogin and Kirillov in the novel “Demons”:
- ...There are minutes, you reach minutes, and time suddenly stops and will be forever.
- Do you hope to reach such a moment?
-Yes.
“This is hardly possible in our time,” Nikolai Vsevolodovich responded, also without any irony, slowly and as if thoughtfully. - In the Apocalypse, the angel swears that there will be no more time.
I know. This is very true there; clearly and accurately. When the whole person achieves happiness, there will be no more time, because there is no need 17
.
Since the Renaissance, the evolutionary theory of time has been affirmed in culture and science: spatial events become the basis for the movement of time. Time, thus, is understood as eternity, not opposed to time, but moving and being realized in every instantaneous situation. This is reflected in the literature of modern times, which boldly violates the principle of irreversibility of real time.
Finally, the 20th century was a period of particularly bold experimentation with artistic time. The ironic judgment of J.P. Sartre is indicative: “...most of the largest modern writers - Proust, Joyce... Faulkner, Gide, W. Wulf - each in their own way tried to cripple time. Some of them deprived him of his past and future in order to reduce him to the pure intuition of the moment... Proust and Faulkner simply “decapitated” him, depriving him of the future, that is, the dimension of action and freedom.”
Consideration of artistic time in its development shows that its evolution (reversibility - irreversibility - reversibility) is a forward movement in which each higher stage negates, removes its lower (preceding) one, contains its richness and again removes itself in the next, third , steps.
Features of modeling artistic time are taken into account when determining the constitutive characteristics of the genus, genre, and movement in literature. Thus, according to A.A. Potebnya, “lyrics are praesens,” “epic perfectum” 18; the principle of recreating time can differentiate genres: aphorisms and maxims, for example, are characterized by the present constant; Reversible artistic time is inherent in memoirs and autobiographical works. The literary direction is also associated with a certain concept of the development of time and the principles of its transmission, while, for example, the measure of adequacy to real time is different. Thus, symbolism is characterized by the implementation of the idea of perpetual motion - becoming: the world develops according to the laws of the “triad” (unity of the world spirit with the Soul of the world - rejection of the Soul of the world from unity - defeat of Chaos).
At the same time, the principles of mastering artistic time are individual; this is a feature of the artist’s idiostyle (thus, artistic time in the novels of L.N. Tolstoy, for example, differs significantly from the model of time in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky).
Taking into account the peculiarities of the embodiment of time in a literary text, considering the concept of time in it and, more broadly, in the writer’s work is a necessary component of the analysis of the work; underestimation of this aspect, absolutization of one of the particular manifestations of artistic time, identification of its properties without taking into account both objective real time and subjective time can lead to erroneous interpretations of the artistic text, making the analysis incomplete and schematic.
The analysis of artistic time includes the following main points: 1) determination of the features of artistic time in the work under consideration: one-dimensionality or multidimensionality; reversibility or irreversibility; linearity or disruption of time sequence; 2) highlighting the temporal plans (planes) presented in the work in the temporal structure of the text and considering their interaction; 3) determining the relationship between the author's time (narrator's time) and the subjective time of the characters; 4) identifying signals that highlight these forms of time; 5) consideration of the entire system of time indicators in the text, identifying not only their direct, but also figurative meanings; 6) determining the relationship between historical and everyday time, biographical and historical; 7) establishing a connection between artistic time and space.
The text is spatial, i.e. elements of the text have a certain spatial configuration. Hence the theoretical and practical possibility of spatial interpretation of tropes and figures, the structure of the narrative. Thus, Ts. Todorov notes: “The most systematic study of spatial organization in fiction was carried out by Roman Jacobson. In his analyzes of poetry, he showed that all layers of the utterance... form an established structure based on symmetries, build-ups, oppositions, parallelisms, etc., which together form a real spatial structure” 19. A similar spatial structure also occurs in prose texts; see, for example, repetitions of various types and a system of oppositions in A.M. Remizov’s novel “The Pond.” Repetitions in it are elements of the spatial organization of chapters, parts and the text as a whole. Thus, in the chapter “One Hundred Mustaches - One Hundred Noses,” the phrase “The walls are white and white, they shine from the lamp, as if strewn with grated glass,” is repeated three times, and the leitmotif of the entire novel is the repetition of the sentence, “Stone frog (highlighted by A.M. Remizov.) moved her ugly webbed paws,” which is usually included in a complex syntactic construction with varying lexical composition.
The study of a text as a certain spatial organization thus presupposes consideration of its volume, configuration, system of repetitions and oppositions, analysis of such topological properties of space, transformed in the text, as symmetry and coherence. It is also important to take into account the graphic form of the text (see, for example, palindromes, figured verses, the use of brackets, paragraphs, spaces, the special nature of the distribution of words in a verse, line, sentence), etc. “It is often pointed out,” notes I. Klyukanov, “that poetic texts are printed differently than other texts. However, to a certain extent, all texts are printed differently than others: at the same time, the graphic appearance of the text “signals” its genre affiliation, its attachment to one or another type of speech activity and forces a certain image of perception... So - “spatial architectonics” the text acquires a kind of normative status. This norm may be violated by the unusual structural placement of graphic signs, which causes a stylistic effect.”20 In a narrow sense, space in relation to a literary text is the spatial organization of its events, inextricably linked with the temporal organization of the work and the system of spatial images of the text. According to Kästner’s definition, “space in this case functions in the text as an operative secondary illusion, something through which spatial properties are realized in temporal art.” Thus, there is a distinction between broad and narrow understandings of space. This is due to the distinction between an external point of view on the text as a certain spatial organization that is perceived by the reader, and an internal point of view, considering the spatial characteristics of the text itself as a relatively closed internal world that is self-sufficient. These points of view do not exclude, but complement each other. When analyzing a literary text, it is important to take into account both of these aspects of space: the first is the “spatial architectonics” of the text, the second is the “artistic space”. In what follows, the main object of consideration is the artistic space of the work.
The writer reflects real space-time connections in the work he creates, building his own perceptual series parallel to the real one, and creates a new - conceptual - space, which becomes a form of implementation of the author's idea. An artist, wrote M.M. Bakhtin, is characterized by “the ability to see time, to read time in the spatial whole of the world and... to perceive the filling of space not as a stationary background... but as a becoming whole, as an event” 21.
Artistic space is one of the forms of aesthetic reality created by the author. This is a dialectical unity of contradictions: based on the objective connection of spatial characteristics (real or possible), it is subjective, it is infinite and at the same time finite.
In the text, when displayed, the general properties of real space are transformed and have a special character: extension, continuity-discontinuity, three-dimensionality - and its particular properties: shape, location, distance, boundaries between different systems. In a particular work, one of the properties of space can come to the fore and be specially played out; see, for example, the geometrization of urban space in A. Bely’s novel “Petersburg” and the use in it of images associated with the designation of discrete geometric objects (cube, square, parallelepiped , line, etc.): “There the houses merged in cubes into a systematic, multi-story row... Inspiration took possession of the senator’s soul when a varnished cube cut the Nevsky line: the house numbering was visible there...”
The spatial characteristics of the events recreated in the text are refracted through the prism of the perception of the author (narrator, character), see, for example: “...The feeling of the city never corresponded to the place where my life took place in it. The emotional pressure always threw him into the depths of the described perspective. There, puffing, the clouds trampled, and, pushing aside their crowd, the floating smoke of countless furnaces hung across the sky. There, in lines, exactly along the embankments, the entrances to the decaying houses were dipped into the snow...” (B. Pasternak. Safe-conduct).
In a literary text, there is a corresponding distinction between the space of the narrator (storyteller) and the space of the characters. Their interaction makes the artistic space of the entire work multidimensional, voluminous and devoid of homogeneity, while at the same time, the dominant space in terms of creating the integrity of the text and its internal unity remains the space of the narrator, whose mobility of point of view makes it possible to combine different angles of description and image. Language means serve as means of expressing spatial relationships in the text and indicating various spatial characteristics: syntactic constructions with the meaning of location, existential sentences, prepositional-case forms with local meaning, verbs of motion, verbs with the meaning of detecting a feature in space, adverbs of place, toponyms, etc. , see, for example: “Crossing the Irtysh. The steamer stopped the ferry... On the other side there is a steppe: yurts that look like kerosene tanks, a house, cattle... The Kyrgyz are coming from the other side...” (M. Prishvin); “A minute later they passed the sleepy office, came out into the sand deep, up to the nave, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. The gentle climb up the mountain among rare crooked lanterns... seemed endless” (I.A. Bunin).
The reproduction (image) of space and an indication of it are included in the work like pieces of a mosaic. By associating, they form a general panorama of space, the image of which can develop into an image of space” 22. The image of artistic space can have a different character depending on what model of the world (time and space) the writer or poet has (whether space is understood, for example, “in Newtonian” or mythopoetic).
In the archaic model of the world, space is not opposed to time; time condenses and becomes a form of space, which is “drawn” into the movement of time. “Mythopoetic space is always filled and always material; in addition to space, there is also non-space, the embodiment of which is Chaos...” 23. Mythopoetic ideas about space, so important for writers, are embodied in a number of mythologemes, which are consistently used in literature in a number of stable images. This is, first of all, an image of a path (road), which can involve movement both horizontally and vertically (see works of folklore) and is characterized by the identification of a number of equally significant spatial points, topographical objects - a threshold, a door, a staircase, a bridge, etc. These images, associated with the division of both time and space, metaphorically represent a person’s life, its certain moments of crisis, his quest on the edge of “his” and “alien” worlds, embody movement, point to its limit and symbolize the possibility of choice; they are widely used in poetry and prose, see for example : “It’s not joy - the news is knocking on the grave... / Oh! Wait to cross this step. / While you were here, nothing died, / Step over, and the darling was gone.”(V.A. Zhukovsky); "I pretended to be mortal in winter / And the eternal doors closed forever, / But still they recognize my voice, / And they will still believe him again.”(A. Akhmatova).
The space modeled in the text can be open and closed (closed), see, for example, the contrast between these two types of space in “Notes from the House of the Dead” by F.M. Dostoevsky: “Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of day: wouldn’t you see anything? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart, day and night... In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world..."
The image of a wall serves as a stable image associated with a closed, limited space in prose and poetry, see, for example, L. Andreev’s story “The Wall” or the repeated images of a stone wall (stone hole) in A. M. Remizov’s autobiographical story “In Captivity” ”, contrasted with the reversible and multidimensional image of the bird as a symbol of will in the text.
Space may be represented in the text as expanding or contracting in relation to a character or a specific object being described. Thus, in F. M. Dostoevsky’s story “The Dream of a Funny Man,” the transition from reality to the hero’s dream, and then back to reality, is based on the technique of changing spatial characteristics: the closed space of the hero’s “small room” is replaced by the even narrower space of the grave, and then the narrator finds himself in a different, ever-expanding space, but at the end of the story the space narrows again, cf.: We rushed through darkness and unknown spaces. I have long ceased to see the constellations familiar to the eye. It was already morning... I woke up in the same chairs, my candle had all burned out, they were sleeping by the chestnut tree, and there was a rare silence all around in our apartment.”
The expansion of space can be motivated by the gradual expansion of the hero’s experience, his knowledge of the outside world, see, for example, I. A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev”: “A then... we recognized the barnyard, stables, carriage house, threshing floor, Proval, Vyselki. The world kept expanding before us... The garden is cheerful, green, but already known to us... And here is the barnyard, the stable, the carriage house, the barn on the threshing floor, the Proval...”
According to the degree of generalization of spatial characteristics, concrete space and abstract space (not associated with specific local indicators) are distinguished, cf.: “ It smelled of coal, burnt oil and that smell of an alarming and mysterious space, what always happens at train stations(A. Platonov) - Despite the endless space, the world was comfortable at this early hour"(A. Platonov).
The space actually visible by the character or narrator is supplemented by imaginary space. The space given in the perception of a character can be characterized by deformation associated with the reversibility of its elements and a special point of view on it: “The shadows from the trees and bushes, like comets, fell with sharp clicks onto the sloping plain... He lowered his head down and saw that the grass... seemed to grow deep and far away and that on top of it there was water as clear as a mountain spring, and the grass seemed like the bottom of some light sea, transparent to the very depths..."(N.V. Gogol. Viy).
The degree of filling of space is also significant for the figurative system of the work. Thus, in the story “Childhood” by A.M. Gorky, with the help of repeated lexical means (primarily the word “cramped” and derivatives from it), the “crowdedness” of the space surrounding the hero is emphasized. The sign of cramped space extends both to the outside world and to the inner world of the character and interacts with the end-to-end repetition of the text - repetition of the words “melancholy”, “boredom”: “ Boring, boring in a special way, almost unbearable; the chest fills with liquid, warm lead, it presses from the inside, bursts the chest, ribs; It seems to me that I am swelling up like a bubble, and I am cramped in a small room, under a coffin-shaped ceiling.” The image of cramped space is correlated in the story with the end-to-end image of “a cramped, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which a simple Russian man lived and still lives.”
Elements of the transformed artistic space can be associated in a work with the theme of historical memory, thereby historical time interacts with certain spatial images, which are usually intertextual in nature, see, for example, I. A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev”: “And soon I began to wander again. I was on the very banks of the Donets, where the prince once threw himself from captivity “as an ermine into the reeds, a white nog into the water”... And from Kyiv I went to Kursk, to Putivl. “Saddle up, brother, your greyhounds, and my ti are ready, saddled at Kursk in front...”
Artistic space is inextricably linked with artistic time. Their relationship in an artistic text is expressed in the following main aspects:
1) two simultaneous situations are depicted in the work as spatially separated, juxtaposed (see, for example, “Hadji Murat” by L.N. Tolstoy, “The White Guard” by M. Bulgakov);
2) the spatial point of view of the observer (character or narrator) is at the same time his temporal point of view, while the optical point of view can be either static or moving (dynamic): “...So we finally got out into freedom, crossed the bridge, went up to the barrier - and looked into the eyes of a stone, deserted road, vaguely whitening and running into the endless distance...”(I.A. Bunin. Sukhodol);
3) a temporal shift usually corresponds to a spatial shift (for example, the transition to the present of the narrator in “The Life of Arsenyev” by I.A. Bunin is accompanied by a sharp shift in spatial position: “A whole life has passed since then. Russia, Orel, spring... And now, France, the South, Mediterranean winter days. We... have been in a foreign country for a long time”;
4) the acceleration of time is accompanied by a compression of space (see, for example, the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky);
5) on the contrary, time dilation can be accompanied by an expansion of space, hence, for example, detailed descriptions of spatial coordinates, scene of action, interior, etc.;
6) the passage of time is conveyed through changes in spatial characteristics: “Signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time” 24. Thus, in the story “Childhood” by A.M. Gorky, in the text of which there are almost no specific temporal indicators (dates, exact timing, signs of historical time), the movement of time is reflected in the spatial movement of the hero, his milestones being the move from Astrakhan to Nizhny, and then moving from one house to another, cf.: “By spring, the uncles separated... and my grandfather bought himself a large, interesting house on Polevaya; Grandfather unexpectedly sold the house to the tavern owner, buying another one on Kanatnaya Street”;
7) the same speech means can express both temporal and spatial characteristics, see, for example: “...they promised to write, they never wrote, everything ended forever, Russia began, exiles, the water froze in the bucket by morning, children grew up healthy, the steamer was running along the Yenisei on a bright June day, and then there was St. Petersburg, an apartment on Ligovka, crowds of people in the Tavrichesky courtyard, then the front was three years, carriages, rallies, bread rations, Moscow, “Alpine Goat”, then Gnezdnikovsky, famine , theaters, work on a book expedition...” (Yu. Trifonov. It was a summer afternoon).
To embody the motif of the movement of time, metaphors and comparisons containing spatial images are regularly used, see, for example: “A long staircase grew up going down from days about which it is impossible to say: “ Lived." They passed close by, barely touching your shoulders, and at night... you could clearly see: all the identical, flat steps were going in a zigzag."(S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky. Babaev).
Awareness of the relationship between space and time made it possible to identify the category of chronotope, reflecting their unity. “We will call the essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically mastered in literature,” wrote M.M. Bakhtin, “a chronotope (which literally means “time-space”) 25. From the point of view of M.M. Bakhtin, chronotope is a formal-substantive category that has “significant genre significance... Chronotope as a formal-substantive category determines (to a large extent) the image of a person in literature 26. The chronotope has a certain structure: on its basis, plot-forming motifs are identified - meeting, separation, etc. Turning to the category of chronotope allows us to construct a certain typology of spatio-temporal characteristics inherent in thematic genres: there are, for example, an idyllic chronotope, which is characterized by the unity of place, the rhythmic cyclicity of time, the attachment of life to a place - home, etc., and an adventurous chronotope, which is characterized by a wide spatial background and time of “case”. On the basis of the chronotope, “localities” are also distinguished (in the terminology of M.M. Bakhtin) - stable images based on the intersection of temporal and spatial “series” ( castle, living room, salon, provincial town etc.).
Artistic space, like artistic time, is historically changeable, which is reflected in the change of chronotopes and is associated with a change in the concept of space-time. As an example, let us dwell on the features of the artistic space in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern times.
“The space of the medieval world is a closed system with sacred centers and secular periphery. The cosmos of Neoplatonic Christianity is graded and hierarchized. The experience of space is colored by religious and moral tones” 27. The perception of space in the Middle Ages does not usually involve an individual point of view on an object or series of objects. As D.S. Likhachev notes, “events in the chronicle, in the lives of saints, in historical stories are mainly movements in space: campaigns and crossings, covering vast geographical spaces... Life is a manifestation of oneself in space. This is a journey on a ship in the midst of the sea of life." 28 Spatial characteristics are consistently symbolic (top-bottom, west-east, circle, etc.). “The symbolic approach provides that rapture of thought, that pre-rationalistic vagueness of the boundaries of identification, that content of rational thinking, which elevate the understanding of life to its highest level” 29. At the same time, medieval man still recognizes himself in many ways as an organic part of nature, so looking at nature from the outside is alien to him. A characteristic feature of medieval folk culture is the awareness of an inextricable connection with nature, the absence of rigid boundaries between the body and the world.
During the Renaissance, the concept of perspective (“looking through”, as defined by A. Dürer) was established. The Renaissance managed to completely rationalize space. It was during this period that the concept of a closed cosmos was replaced by the concept of infinity, existing not only as a divine prototype, but also empirically as a natural reality. The image of the Universe is detheologized. The theocentric time of medieval culture is replaced by three-dimensional space with a fourth dimension - time. This is connected, on the one hand, with the development of an objectifying attitude towards reality in the individual; on the other hand, with the expansion of the sphere of “I” and the subjective principle in art. In works of literature, spatial characteristics are consistently associated with the point of view of the narrator or character (compare with direct perspective in painting), and the importance of the latter’s position gradually increases in literature. A certain system of speech means is emerging, reflecting both the static and dynamic point of view of the character.
In the 20th century a relatively stable subject-spatial concept is replaced by an unstable one (see, for example, the impressionistic fluidity of space in time). Bold experimentation with time is complemented by equally bold experimentation with space. Thus, novels of “one day” often correspond to novels of “closed space”. The text can simultaneously combine a bird's eye view of space and an image of the locus from a specific position. The interaction of time plans is combined with deliberate spatial uncertainty. Writers often turn to the deformation of space, which is reflected in the special nature of speech means. So, for example, in K. Simon’s novel “The Roads of Flanders” the elimination of precise temporal and spatial characteristics is associated with the abandonment of personal forms of the verb and their replacement with forms of present participles. The complication of the narrative structure determines the multiplicity of spatial points of view in one work and their interaction (see, for example, the works of M. Bulgakov, Yu. Dombrovsky, etc.).
At the same time, in the literature of the 20th century. there is increasing interest in mythopoetic images and the mythopoetic model of space-time 30 (see, for example, the poetry of A. Blok, the poetry and prose of A. Bely, the works of V. Khlebnikov). Thus, changes in the concept of time-space in science and in human worldview are inextricably linked with the nature of the space-time continuum in works of literature and the types of images that embody time and space. The reproduction of space in the text is also determined by the literary movement to which the author belongs: naturalism, for example, which strives to create the impression of genuine activity, is characterized by detailed descriptions of various localities: streets, squares, houses, etc.
Let us now dwell on the methodology for describing spatial relationships in a literary text.
Analysis of spatial relationships in a work of art assumes:
1) determination of the spatial position of the author (narrator) and those characters whose point of view is presented in the text;
2) identifying the nature of these positions (dynamic - static; top - bottom, bird's eye view, etc.) in their connection with the time point of view;
3) determination of the main spatial characteristics of the work (location of action and its changes, character movements, type of space, etc.);
4) consideration of the main spatial images of the work; 5) characteristics of speech means expressing spatial relationships. The latter, naturally, corresponds to all possible stages of analysis noted above and forms their basis.
SPATIO-TEMPORAL ORGANIZATIONSTORIES by I.A. Bunin “Epitaph”, “NEW ROAD”",
« gentleman from San Francisco"
A work of art is a system in which, as in any other system, all elements are interconnected, interdependent, functional and form integrity, unity.
Every system is characterized by hierarchy and multi-level nature. Individual levels of the system determine certain aspects of its behavior, and holistic functioning is the result of the interaction of its parties, levels, and hierarchies. Consequently, it is possible to single out one or another level of the system only conditionally and with the aim of establishing its internal connections with the whole, a more in-depth knowledge of this whole.
In a literary work, we distinguish three levels: ideological-thematic, plot-compositional and verbal-rhythmic.
To comprehend the artistic whole of I.A. Bunin’s stories
“Epitaph” and “New Road” choose a plot-compositional analysis, in particular the spatio-temporal organization of the works. It should be noted that we relate plot and composition to the generic concept of structure, which we will write as the organization of all components of a work into a system, establishing relationships between them. We share the point of view of V.V. Kozhinov on the plot set out in the academic theory of literature. V.V. Kozhinov’s definition of composition as the interaction of forms of constructing a work, the relationship of only such components as narration, development, dialogue, monologue. We, like V.V. Kozhinov, follow A. Tolstoy in defining composition: “Composition is, first of all, establishing the artist’s center of vision.” The task of composition is to identify forms, a method of connection between parts of the whole, thereby identifying the author’s explanation of the real world Composition is the next stage of concretization of the whole after the plot. It connects the action with the characters from whom grow the heroes who bear the point of view on the depicted action, and the point of view of the heroes correlates with the author - the bearer of the concept of the whole. The internal organization of the work is in accordance with this concept and is the establishment of the artist's center of vision. “Establishing the center,” thus, we understand more broadly than the establishment of a certain perspective. And composition, from our point of view, establishes a connection not only with descriptions, narration, dialogue and monologue, but with all elements and levels of the work. Composition is “the composition, connection, arrangement, construction of elements of the same type and different types among themselves and their relationship with the whole, not only the external layout of the work,” but also “the finest correlation and coordination of deep direct and feedback connections,” a law, a method of connecting text parts (parallel, philosophical correlation, repetition, contrast, nuanced differences, etc. (a means of expressing the connection between the elements of the work (correlation of voices, system of images, combination of several storylines, spatio-temporal organization of the work, etc.).
The originality of the plot and compositional organization of Bunin's stories at the turn of the century is the weakening of the plot. At the center of Bunin's lyrical stories are the feelings and thoughts of the narrator. They become the driving force behind the plot and compositional structure of the work. The self-propelling logic of objective reality is being replaced by the logic of the movement of feelings and thoughts. The logic of thought, the narrator’s contemplation of the world, memories arising by association, landscape paintings and details, and not events, determine their plot.
The integrity of a literary work, like any integrity, is like an ordered dynamic system. Its structure also differs in internal order. “Art compensates for the weakening of structural connections at some levels by organizing them more rigidly at others.” The weakening of the plot in Bunin's prose enhances the significance of the associative connections of the elements of the work, one of the forms of which is spatio-temporal relations.
The temporal and spatial relationships of the components as a whole consolidate the spatio-temporal movement of figurative thought in the work and are plot-forming means. Space and time are also types of functional relationships between different levels of a work, i.e. means of the overall compositional organization of the work.
Time and space also perform an important plot-compositional function in the works we have chosen for analysis.
These works by Bunin express the writer’s attitude to the onset of something new in the life of Russia. What is new in the stories is assessed from the point of view of the value of Russia’s past, which is dear to Bunin due to the connection between man and nature.
The relationship between the present and the past is the main form of constructing the story “Epitaph”.
At the center of the lyrical story “Epitaph” is the consciousness of the hero-narrator, who is extremely close to the author; there are no other subjects of speech in the story, therefore the subjective time of the story is one. However, artistic time in “Epitaph” is multifaceted. The initial time position of the story "Epitaph" is the present. Observing the present gives rise to memories of the past and thoughts about the future. The present fits into the general flow of time. Thinking about the future gives perspective to the flow of time and creates chronic openness.
The hero does not withdraw into himself, he strives to understand the movement of time.
The course of history is restored by the thoughts and memories of the hero. Retrospection acts as a necessary link in the movement of the plot. In a few minutes of reflection and recollection, a detailed picture of the changing seasons and the life of the village during these periods of time and over decades is restored.
Memory is overcoming momentary time, falling out of non-stop time; it “stretches” real momentary time in a work, but restores movement in the past. And specific paintings and images illustrate this movement of time, this temporal extension. A montage of paintings of a steppe village at different times shows the change in life on the steppe.
When remembering, the impressions of childhood and the point of view of an already adult hero-narrator are combined, therefore an appreciation of the past appears, the past becomes aesthetically significant, it seems to be happiness. The beauty of life in the steppe and villages in the past is emphasized by images of white-trunked birch, golden loaves, the multi-colored palette of the steppe, and details from the festive and working life of a peasant.
This assessment of the past structurally results in the fact that the description of the past makes up the majority of the story, the ancient steppe and the village are presented in all seasons.
It turns out that cyclical time (time of year, stages, months and days within one season; the change of day and night) is also important for emphasizing the moving historical process. The dynamic, sharply paced nature of the seasons also serves the same purpose. The significance of semantic changes and temporal transitions is also emphasized by the grammatical forms of the verb. In the fourth part, if the story is conditionally divided into four parts, - thinking about the future - verbs of the future tense; in the third part - a story about the present - present tense verbs; in the first and second parts of the story, memories of the time of prosperity of the steppe and its changes in subsequent years are verbs of the past tense, as well as the present, since memories reproduce the life of the past as vividly as if everything was happening in the present, and because maxims are included in the memories about something common to all eras, such as: “Life does not stand still, the old goes away,” etc.
To emphasize not only the natural prosperity in the past, but also general well-being, cyclical time is combined with everyday, life time.
Cyclical time demonstrates the relentless movement of time, not only change, but also renewal of life. And the hero recognizes the pattern of the emergence of something new. (The need for something new is also motivated by the fact that nature has become impoverished, peasants are begging and are forced to leave their homes in search of happiness).
In "Epitaph", in addition to cyclical and autobiographical time, past, present and future, there are several temporal layers of past time; historical time after the abolition of serfdom, (at the same time the time of the hero’s childhood), the time preceding this era, when someone “was the first to come to this place, put a cross with a roof on his tithe, called the priest and consecrated the “Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos”, time life in the village and the years following the hero’s childhood to the present day.All these time layers are combined.
Although the real train of thought, as noted above, was from the present to the past and future, the principle of temporal sequence is maintained in the construction of the story; first the past is described, then the present and, finally, thoughts about the future. This construction also emphasizes the course of historical development, the prospect of movement. The story is an epitaph for the past, but not for life. However, if real time flows continuously, in the artistic time of the story there are temporary gaps between the first and second pictures of the past, as well as between the past and the present. This feature of the artistic time of “Epitaph” was determined by the genre of the work itself.
The artistic space of the story also serves to embody the author’s idea. In the first part of the story, the connection between the village and the city, with the world is cut off (“The path to the city is overgrown”). The circle of observations is completed by the child’s acquaintance with the steppe, the village and its environs. In the second part, the space opens up. "Childhood has passed. We were drawn to look beyond what we saw beyond the outskirts of the village." Then the space expanded even more: with the impoverishment of the steppe, people began to leave along the road to the city, to distant Siberia. The path to the city has been trodden again, and inside the village the paths are overgrown. In the third part of the “Epitaph”, people come from the city to the village to build a new life here, i.e. The connections between the steppe and the world are strengthening, paths are being trodden in the opposite direction, from city to village, to the land that bears wealth, the progenitor of life. The ending of the story does not sound hopeless. And yet the progressiveness of the new for Bunin is doubtful. New people trample the steppe, looking for happiness in its depths. How will they sanctify the steppe in the future?
An even more decisive onset of the new is told in the story “The New Road.”
A symbol of the onset of a new industrial structure, both concretely historical and future, new in general history, is a train moving into the depths of a vast forest region.
The story is divided into three parts. Each part describes the hero’s observations from the window of her surrounding world, the interior space of the carriage and the platform. And through the ever-increasing sparseness of enclosed spaces (car and platform) and the ever-increasing density and enormity of the landscape, an idea is given of the further advance of the train into the wilderness of the country.
Nature resists the advance of the train, because the new, according to Bunin, brings the death of beauty and the rejection of man from it. “These birches and pines are becoming more and more unfriendly, they frown, gathering in crowds denser and denser...” The future and nature are in conflict.
The story also contrasts beggars, but beautiful in their purity, pristineness, kinship with their native land, men and people who come to the wilderness of forests with railways: a dandy telegraph operator, a footman, young ladies, a young thief-lottery operator, a merchant. The latter are depicted with obvious antipathy of the author.
The men, like the forests, reluctantly give in to the new way of life. The new fights, advances like a conqueror, “like a giant dragon.” The train rushes forward confidently, “threateningly warning someone with a trembling roar.” The story ends with a statement of this evil onset of the new. The coloring of the picture is ominous: "... but the train stubbornly moves forward. And smoke, like the tail of a comet, floats above it in a long whitish ridge, full of fiery sparks and colored from below with a bloody reflection of the flame." The emotional coloring of the words shows the author’s attitude towards the onset of a new, capitalist way of life.
The hero, sympathizing with the poor and tortured people and doomed to
destruction of the “beautiful”, “virginly rich” land, realizing
that the beauty of the past is being destroyed, thinking about what is common
he was left with “this wilderness” and its people how to help them.
And he doubts whether he can “understand their sorrows, help
to them, he apparently did not so much from the recognition of his powerlessness and not from
"confusion before the process of real life" and fear
before it, as critics of the beginning of the century and some modern literary critics believed, how much of it comes from a clear awareness of the irreversibility of time, the impossibility of returning the past, the inexorability of the onset of the new.
The impression of the decisive onset of the new is reinforced in the story by the way the speed of the train is depicted. The minutes of the train's departure from St. Petersburg are filled with detailed descriptions. The image time here is almost equal to the image time. It creates the illusion that the train's departure is actually being delayed. The slow motion of a moving train is recreated through detailed observation of people and objects moving along the platform. Lasting time is also emphasized by adverbs indicating the duration of the movement of objects, the sequence of actions. For example: “Then the station manager quickly comes out of the office. He had just had an unpleasant argument with someone and therefore, sharply commanding: “Third,” he threw the cigarette so far that it bounced on the platform for a long time, scattering red sparks in the wind." Further, on the contrary, the speed of the train’s movement is emphasized. The movement of the train , the non-stop movement of time is recreated by changing the time of day, objects “running” towards, expansion and rapid change of space. Artistic time no longer creates the illusion of real time. It is reduced due to only fragmentary pictures of observations, acceleration of the change of day and night, etc.
The very description from the point of view of a traveling traveler also becomes a sign of a temporary flow, a continuous movement from the past to the new.
It should be said about one more unique feature of the spatial composition of this story; The plot space, due to the train moving forward, is linearly directed. As in other works of the turn of the century associated with the advancement of the subject of the narrative ("Silence", "In August", "Holy Mountains", "Autumn", "Pines"), it consistently changes; one panorama gives way to another, thereby developing the artistic idea of the work. The artistic whole of the stories "Epitaph" and "New Road", revealed through the analysis of the spatio-temporal organization of the works, expresses the writer's attitude to the historical process. Bunin recognized the historical process, the invincibility of the development of life in general and historical life in particular, and felt its temporal direction. But I didn’t understand the progressive significance of this. He did not believe that this development led to the better, since he poeticized the past as a time of the unity of man with nature, its wisdom and beauty, he saw that the capitalist way of life separates man from nature, he saw the destruction of noble nests and peasant households and did not accept this new way of life, although he stated his victory. This is the uniqueness of Bunin's historicism.
The story "Mr. from San Francisco" occupies a special place in Bunin's work. It is no coincidence that it was and is included in the school curriculum; it is usually highlighted by researchers of Bunin’s creativity. And, perhaps, partly due to these circumstances, he was unlucky in literary interpretation. For ideological and sociological criticism, the preferred explanation of the story was based on its underlying figurative plan: the ironic coverage of the hero, a rich American, was interpreted as an exposure of the bourgeois order of life, with its wealth and poverty, social inequality, the psychology of complacency, etc. But such an understanding of the story narrows and impoverishes its artistic meaning.
“The Gentleman from San Francisco” is not similar to Bunin’s previous stories in tone (there is no lyricism in it), in material and theme - this is a story no longer about a Russian village, a peasant and a gentleman, not about love and nature. The World War (the story was written in 1915) distracted the writer from his usual themes and passions (as in the story “Brothers”). The writer goes beyond Russian boundaries and addresses people peace, New World, finding in it "the pride of the New Man with an old heart".
It is about this “old heart,” that is, about man in his deepest essence, about the general foundations of human existence, the foundations of civilization, that we are talking about in “The Gentleman from San Francisco.”
The story "Mr. from San Francisco", which differs from Bunin's other works of the 10s, nevertheless uses a situation common to many of them that tests the hero - death and the attitude towards it. In this case, a completely ordinary case is taken - the death of an old man, although unexpected, instantaneous, overtaken by a gentleman from San Francisco during his trip to Europe.
Death in this story is not actually a test of the hero’s character, a test of his readiness or confusion in the face of the inevitable, fear or fearlessness, strength or powerlessness, but a kind of stripper the hero's being, which after the fact casts its merciless light on his previous way of life. The “strange thing” of such a death is that it did not enter the consciousness of the gentleman from San Francisco at all. He lives and acts as, indeed, most people do, Bunin emphasizes, as if death does not exist in the world at all: “... people are still most amazed and for nothing don't want to believe death". With all the details, the hero’s plan is described with taste - an exciting travel route designed for two years: “The route was worked out by a gentleman from San Francisco and was extensive. In December and January, he hoped to enjoy the sun of Southern Italy, ancient monuments, tarantella, serenades of traveling singers and what people of his age feel especially subtly - the love of young Neapolitan women, even if not entirely disinterested; he thought to hold the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where the most selective society flocks at this time...” (I.A. Bunin “Mr. from San Francisco” p. 36). However, all these magnificent plans were not destined come true.
The writer reflects on the phenomenon of an irreparable, it seems even fatal, discrepancy between human plans and their implementation, conceived and actually developed - a motif in almost all of Bunin’s work, starting from early stories like “Kastryuk” (“An, it didn’t turn out as expected...” ) or "On the Farm" before the novel "The Life of Arsenyev" and "Dark Alleys".
Another strange thing about the death of the gentleman from San Francisco, the “terrible incident” on the ship Atlantis, is that this death is devoid of tragedy, even any faint shadow of it. It is no coincidence that the author gives a description of this “incident” from the outside, through the eyes of strangers to the hero and completely indifferent people (the reaction of his wife and daughter is outlined in the most general plan).
The anti-tragic nature and insignificance of the hero’s death are revealed by Bunin in an emphatic, contrasting manner, with a very high degree of sharpness for him. The main event of the story, the death of the hero, is assigned not to the ending, but to its middle, to the center, and this determines the two-part composition of the story. It is important for the author to show the assessments of the hero by those around him both before and after his death. And these assessments are radically different from each other. The climax (the death of the hero) divides the story into two halves, separating the sparkling background of the hero's life in the first part from the dark and ugly shadows of the second.
In fact, the gentleman from San Francisco appears to us at the beginning in the role of significant person both in one’s own consciousness and in the perception of others, although expressed by the author with a slight ironic tinge. We read: “He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, preventing his slightest desire, guarded his cleanliness and peace, carried his things, called porters for him, delivered his chests to hotels. It was like this everywhere, it was like this in sailing, it should have been like this in Naples.” Or here is a picture of the hero’s meeting in Capri: “The island of Capri was damp and dark that evening. But then he came to life for a minute, lighting up in some places. At the top of the mountain, on the platform of the funicular, there was again a crowd of those whose duty it was to receive the gentleman from San Francisco with dignity.
There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention<...>
The gentleman from San Francisco... was immediately noticed. He and his ladies were hastily helped out, they ran ahead in front of him, showing the way, he was again surrounded by boys and those stalwart Capri women who carry the suitcases and chests of respectable tourists on their heads.” In all this, of course, the magic of wealth is manifested, which always accompanies the gentleman from San Francisco.
However, in the second part of the story, all this seems to crumble into dust, reduced to the level of some kind of nightmarish, offensive humiliation. The author of the story draws a series of expressive details and episodes that reveal an instant decline in any significance and value of the hero in the eyes of others (an episode with the mimicry of the master’s manners by the servant Luigi, who was so obsequious “to the point of idiocy”, the changed tone of the conversation between the hotel owner and the wife of the gentleman from San Francisco - "no longer polite and no longer in English"). If previously the gentleman from San Francisco occupied the best room in the hotel, now he was given “the smallest, worst, dampest and coldest room,” where he “lay on a cheap iron bed, under coarse woolen blankets.” Bunin then resorts to almost grotesque images (that is, images with a degree of fantastic exaggeration), which are usually not characteristic of him. For the gentleman, there is not even a coffin from San Francisco (a detail, however, motivated by the specific conditions: on a small island it is difficult to get one), and his body is placed in... a box - “a long soda water box.” Then the author, as before, slowly, with many details, but already humiliating for the hero, describes How Now the hero, or rather, his remains, is traveling. At first - on a funny, strong horse, inappropriately “dressed up in Sicilian style”, rattling “all sorts of bells", with a drunken cab driver, who is consoled by the “unexpected income”, “which gave him some kind gentleman from San Francisco, shaking his dead head in a box behind him...", and then - on the same careless "Atlantis", but already "at the bottom of the dark hold". The hold, presented in images reminiscent of the underworld - with the hard labor of sailors, with "hellish furnaces", gigantic , like a "monster", a shaft that rotates "with suppressing the human soul rigor"
The artistic meaning of such paintings, with a change in the attitude of those around them towards the hero, lies not only in social terms - in the debunking of the evil of wealth with its consequences: inequality of people (upper decks and hold), their alienation from each other and insincerity, imaginary respect for man and memory of him. Bunin’s idea in this case is deeper, more philosophical, that is, associated with an attempt to discern the source of the “wrongness” of life in the very nature of man, in the vice of his “heart,” that is, in the deep-rooted ideas of humanity about the values of existence.
How does the writer manage to fit such a global artistic problem into the tight framework of a story, that is small genre limited, as a rule, to a single moment, an episode from the life of the hero?
This is achieved by extremely laconic artistic means, concentration of details, “condensation” of their figurative meaning, rich in associations and symbolic ambiguity, with their apparent “simplicity” and unpretentiousness. Here is a description everyday life"Atlantis", full of external splendor, luxury and comfort, a description of the journey of the hero, conceived with the intention of seeing the world and "enjoying" life, with a gradual, mostly indirect, lateral illumination of what this pleasure results in.
The figure of the gentleman from San Francisco is extremely outlined externally, without psychologism, without detailed characteristics of the hero’s inner life. We see how he gets dressed, getting ready for dinner, we recognize many of the details of his suit, we observe the process of dressing himself: “Having shaved, washed, well, inserted a few teeth, he, standing in front of the mirror, moistened and tidied up the remnants of pearl hair around with brushes in a silver frame. dark-yellow skull, pulled a creamy silk leotard over a strong, senile body with a waist that was getting fatter from increased nutrition, and black silk socks and ballroom shoes over dry legs with flat feet; shirt bulging out..."
In such descriptions there is something exaggerated, slightly ironic, coming from the author’s view of the hero: “And then he became again right to the crown get ready: turn on electricity everywhere, filled all the mirrors with the reflection of light and shine, furniture and open chests, began to shave, wash and call every minute...”
Let us note in passing that in both examples the detail with “mirrors” is emphasized, enhancing the effect of the play of reflections, light and shine around the hero. By the way, the technique of introducing a mirror as a “reflection of reflections” to create the impression of a certain ghostliness of a character began to be especially widely used by symbolist poets in Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries (in the stories of F. Sologub, V. Bryusov, Z. Gippius, the latter owns the collection stories called "Mirrors", 1898).
The description of the hero's appearance is not psychological. Even the portrait of the hero is devoid of individual features, any uniqueness of his personality. In the image of the hero's face, in fact, no face as something special about a person. Only “something Mongolian” is highlighted in it: “There was something Mongolian in his yellowish face with a trimmed silver mustache, his large teeth glittered with gold fillings, and his strong bald head was old ivory.”
Bunin’s deliberate refusal from psychologism in the story is emphasized and motivated: “What did the gentleman from San Francisco feel and think on this so significant evening for him? He, like anyone who has experienced a rocking motion, only really wanted to eat, dreamed with pleasure about the first spoon of soup, about the first sip of wine, and performed the usual toilet routine even in some excitement, which left no time for feelings and reflections.”
As we see, there is no place for inner life, the life of the soul and mind, there is no time left for it, and it is replaced by something - most likely a habit of “business.” Now this is an ironically presented “toilet matter”, but before, apparently, all my life it was work (work, of course, to get rich). “He worked tirelessly...” - this remark is essential for understanding the fate of the hero.
However, the internal, psychological states of the hero still find their expression in the story, albeit indirectly, in the form of a narration from the author, where at some moments the character’s voice is heard and his point of view on what is happening is guessed. For example, dreaming about his journey, he thinks about people: “... he thought of holding the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where the most people flock at this time selective society". Or about a visit to San Marino, “where a lot of people gather at noon first class people and where one day the daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco almost felt ill: it seemed to her that he was sitting in the hall prince". Words from the hero’s vocabulary are deliberately introduced into the author’s speech here - “selected society”, “people of the very first class”, which betray in him vanity, complacency, “pride” of a man of the New World and disdain for people. Let us also remember his arrival in Capri: “There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention,- several Russians who settled in Capri, slovenly and absent-minded, with glasses, beards, with raised collars of old coats, and a company of long-legged, round-headed German youths...”
We discern the same voice of the hero in the narration, neutral in form, in the third person, when talking about the impressions of the gentleman from San Francisco about the Italians: “And the gentleman from San Francisco, feeling as it should be for him - quite an old man , - I was already thinking with melancholy and anger about all these greedy, garlic-smelling little people called Italians..."
Particularly indicative are those episodes where the hero’s perception of ancient monuments and museums of the country, the beauty of which he dreamed of enjoying, is outlined. His tourist day included "inspection deathly pure and smoothly, pleasantly, but boring, like snow, illuminated museums or cold, wax-smelling churches in which it's the same everywhere...". As we see, everything in the hero’s eyes is colored by a veil of senile boredom, monotony and even deadness and is not at all like the expected joy and enjoyment of life.
Such sentiments of the Master are intensifying. And it seems that he deceives everything is here, even nature: “The morning sun every day deceived: from midday it invariably turned gray and began to rain, but it became thicker and colder, then the palm trees at the hotel entrance shone with tin, the city seemed particularly dirty and cramped; mud, in the rain with black open heads, ugly short-legged ones, and there’s nothing to say about the dampness and the stench of rotten fish from the foaming sea near the embankment.” Coming into contact with the nature of Italy, the hero does not seem to notice it, does not feel its charm and is unable to do so, as the author makes it clear to us. The writer in the first part, where the narrative is colored discolored perception of the hero, deliberately excludes the image of a beautiful country, its nature from the author’s own point of view. This image appears after the death of the hero, in the second part of the story. And then pictures appear, full of sun, bright, joyful colors and enchanting beauty. For example, where the city market, a handsome boatman, and then two Abruzzese highlanders are described: “They walked - and the whole country, joyful, beautiful, sunny, stretched out beneath them: both the rocky humps of the island, which almost entirely lay at their feet, and that fabulous the blue in which he swam, and shining morning steam over the sea to the east, under the dazzling sun, which was already warming hotly, rising higher and higher, and foggy - azure, still e the unsteady massifs of Italy in the morning, its near and distant mountains, the beauty of which human words are powerless to express».
This contrast of the author’s perception, filled with lyricism, a sense of admiration for the fabulous beauty of Italy, and the joyless, bloodless picture of it, given through the eyes of the hero, sets off all the inner dryness of the gentleman from San Francisco. Let us also note that during the voyage on the Atlantis across the ocean, there are no internal contacts between the hero and the natural world, which is so majestic and grandiose at these moments that the author constantly makes us feel it. We never see the hero admiring the beauty, grandeur of the ocean or frightened by its squalls, showing any reactions to the surrounding natural elements, however, like all the other passengers. “The ocean that walked outside the walls was terrible, but they didn’t think about it...” Or again: “The ocean roared behind the wall like black mountains, the blizzard whistled strongly in the heavy gear, the steamer trembled all over, overpowering it too<...>, and here, in the bar, they carelessly threw their feet on the arms of the chairs, sipped cognac and liqueurs..."
In the end, one gets the impression of complete artificial isolation, artificial intimacy space, in which the hero and all the other characters flashing here reside. The role of artistic space and time in the figurative whole of the story is extremely significant. It skillfully interconnects categories eternity(the image of death, the ocean as an eternal cosmic element) and temporality, that author's account of time, which is scheduled by days, hours and minutes. Here is the image before us day on the Atlantis, with the movement of time punctually marked inside it: “... got up early<...>putting on flannel pajamas, drinking coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then sat in the baths, did gymnastics, stimulating appetite and good health, performed their daily toilets and went to the first breakfast; until eleven o'clock one was supposed to cheerfully walk along the decks, breathing in the cold freshness of the ocean, or play sheffleboard and other games to whet the appetite again, and at eleven- refresh yourself with sandwiches with broth; having refreshed themselves, they read the newspaper with pleasure and calmly waited for the second breakfast, even more nutritious and varied than the first; next two hours devoted to rest; all the decks were then filled with long reed chairs, on which travelers lay, covered with blankets; at five o'clock They, refreshed and cheerful, were given strong fragrant tea and cookies; at seven they announced with trumpet signals what was the main goal of this entire existence, crown him... And then the gentleman from San Francisco hurried to his rich cabin to get dressed.”
Before us is an image of the day, given as an image of everyday enjoyment of life, and in it the main event, the “crown”, is lunch. Everything else looks like just preparation for it or completion (walks, sports games serve as a means to stimulate appetite). Further along the story, the author does not skimp on details with the list of dishes for lunch, as if following Gogol, who in “Dead Souls” unfolded a whole ironic poem about the food of the heroes - a kind of “grub-hell”, in the words of Andrei Bely.
Picture of the day with a highlight in it physiology of everyday life ends with a naturalistic detail - the mention of heating pads for “warming stomachs”, which in the evenings were carried by the maids “to all rooms.
Despite the fact that in such an existence everything is unchanged (here, on Atlantis, nothing happens except for the famous “incident”, forgotten after fifteen minutes), the author throughout the entire narrative keeps precise timing of what is happening, literally minute by minute. Let's take a closer look at the text: "In ten minutes a family from San Francisco boarded a large barge, in fifteen stepped on the stones of the embankment..."; "A In a minute The French head waiter knocked lightly on the door of the gentleman from San Francisco..."
This technique - precise, minute-by-minute timing of what is happening (in the absence of any action) - allows the author to create an image of an automatically established order, a mechanism of life spinning idle. Its inertia continues after the death of the gentleman from San Francisco, as if swallowed by this mechanism and immediately forgotten: "In a quarter of an hour in the hotel everything somehow came into order." The image of automatic regularity is varied by the author several times: "... life... flowed measuredly"; "Life in Naples immediately flowed according to routine...".
And all this leaves an impression automaticity the life presented here, that is, ultimately a certain lifelessness.
Noting the role of artistic time, you should pay attention to one date indicated at the very beginning of the story, in the plot of the plot - fifty-eight years, the age of the hero. The date is connected with a very significant context, a description of the image of the hero’s entire previous life and leads to the beginning of the plot.
He was firmly convinced that he had every right to rest, to pleasure, to an excellent trip in all respects. For such confidence, he had the argument that, firstly, he was rich, and secondly, had just started life, despite his fifty-eight years. Until this time he did not live, but only existed, true, very well, but still pinning all his hopes on the future. He worked tirelessly - the Chinese, whom he hired thousands of to work for him, knew well what this meant! - and finally saw that a lot had already been done, that he was almost equal to those whom he had once taken as a model, and decided to take a break. The people to whom he belonged were in the habit of starting enjoying life from a trip to Europe, India, Egypt. So - first with a hint, a general plan, and during the course of the story with its entire figurative structure - the essence, the origin of the vice of the “old heart” of a man of the New World, a gentleman from San Francisco, is indicated. The hero, who finally decided to start living and see the world, never managed to do this. And not only because of death and not even because of old age, but because he was not prepared for this with his entire previous existence. The attempt was doomed from the very beginning. The source of the trouble is in the very way of life to which the gentleman from San Francisco is devoted and in which imaginary values and the eternal pursuit of them replace life itself. Every person on earth faces a certain trap: business and money for the sake of existence, and existence for the sake of business and money. This is how a person finds himself in a closed, vicious circle, when means replace the goal - life. The future is delayed and may never come. This is exactly what happened with the gentleman from San Francisco. Until he was fifty-eight years old, “he did not live, but existed,” obeying once and for all the established, automatic order, and therefore he did not learn live- enjoy life, enjoy free communication with people, nature and the beauty of the world.
The story of the gentleman from San Francisco, as Bunin shows it, is quite ordinary. Something similar, the artist wants to tell us, happens to most people who value wealth, power and honor above all else. It is no coincidence that the writer never calls his hero by first name, last name or nickname: all this is too individual, and the story described in the story can happen to anyone.
The story “Mr. from San Francisco” is essentially the writer’s reflection on the values prevailing in the modern world, the power of which over a person and deprives him of real life, the very ability to live it. This devilish mockery of man evokes not only irony in the artist’s mind, it is felt more than once in the story. Let us recall the episodes where dinner is shown as the “crown” of existence, or the description with what exaggerated solemnity the hero dresses - “just like a crown,” or when something actorly slips through him: “... as if stage a gentleman from San Francisco went among them." The author's voice is heard more than once tragically, with bitterness and bewilderment, almost mystical. The image of the ocean, the background of the entire narrative, grows into the image of the world's cosmic forces, with their mysterious and incomprehensible devilish game that lies in wait for all human thoughts. At the end of the story, a conventional, allegorical image of the Devil appears as the embodiment of such evil forces: “ The countless fiery eyes of the ship were barely visible behind the snow to the Devil, who was watching from the rocks of Gibraltar, from the rocky gates of two worlds, the ship leaving into the night and blizzard. The devil was huge, like a cliff, but the ship was also huge, multi-tiered, multi-pipe, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart».
This is how the artistic space and time of the story expand to a global, cosmic scale. From the point of view of the function of artistic time, we need to think about one more episode in the work. This is an off-plot (not related to the main character) episode, where we are talking about a certain person who lived “two thousand years ago”; “who had power over millions of people”, “unspeakably vile”, but whom, however, humanity “remembered forever” - a kind of whim of human memory, apparently created by the magic of power (another idol of humanity, besides wealth). This very detailed episode, seemingly random and not at all obligatory, addressed to a legend from the history of the island of Capri, nevertheless plays a significant role in the story. Two thousand year old the remoteness of the history of Tiberius (apparently, it is he who is being talked about when tourists visit Mount Tiberio is mentioned), the introduction of this real historical name into the narrative switches our imagination to the distant past of mankind, expands the scale of the artistic time of Bunin’s story and makes us all see what is depicted in it in the light of the “big time”. And this gives the story an unusually high degree of artistic generality. The “small” prose genre, as it were, transcends its boundaries and acquires a new quality. The story becomes philosophical.
etc.................