Contents Introduction

2.2. Contrast as a principle of building the artistic content of the novel

The artistic image is one of the most important categories of aesthetics that determine the essence of art, its specificity. Art itself is often understood as thinking in images and contrasted with conceptual thinking, which arose at a later stage of human development. The idea that originally people thought in concrete images (otherwise they simply could not), and that abstract thinking arose much later, was developed by J. Vico in the book "The Foundations of a New Science on the General Nature of Nations" (1725). "The poets," wrote Vico, "used to form a poetic (imaginative. Ed.) speech, forming frequent ideas ... and subsequently the peoples formed a prosaic speech, combining in each separate word, as if in one generic concept, those parts that have already constituted a poetic speech. For example, from the following poetic phrase: "The blood boils in my heart"; the peoples made a single word "anger".

Archaic thinking, or rather, the figurative reflection and modeling of reality has been preserved to the present time and is the main one in artistic creation. And not only in creativity. Visual thinking is the basis of human perception of the world, in which reality is fantastically reflected. In other words, each of us brings to the picture of the world he represents some of his imagination. It is no accident that the researchers of deep psychology from Z. Freud to E. Fromm so often pointed to the proximity of dreams and artistic works.

So, the artistic image is a concrete-sensual form of reproduction and transformation of reality. The image conveys reality and at the same time creates a new fictional world, which we perceive as existing in reality. The image is multifaceted and multifaceted, including all moments of organic interconversion of the real and spiritual; through the image that connects the subjective with the objective, the essential with the possible, the individual with the common, the ideal with the real, the consent of all these opposing spheres of being, their comprehensive harmony, is generated. "

Speaking of artistic images, they mean images of heroes, actors of the work and, of course, primarily of people. And it is right. However, in the concept of art image often included are various objects or phenomena depicted in the work. Some scholars protest against such a broad understanding of the artistic image, considering it incorrect to use concepts like the "image of a tree" (larch in "Farewell to the Mother" by V. Rasputin or the oak in "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy), "the image of the people" (in the same Tolstoy novel-epic). In such cases, it is suggested to talk about a figurative detail, which can be a tree, and about the idea, topic or problem of the people. Even more difficult is the picture of animals. In some famous works ("Kashtanka" and "Belolobiy" by A. Chekhov, "Holstomer" by L. Tolstoy), the animal appears as a central character, whose psychology and perception of the world are reproduced in great detail. And yet there is a fundamental difference between the image of a person and the image of an animal, which does not allow, in particular, to seriously analyze the latter, for in the artistic image there is a deliberateness (the inner world of the animal is characterized by concepts related to human psychology).

Obviously, with good reason in the concept of "artistic image" can only include images of person-characters. In other cases, the use of this term implies a certain amount of conventionality, although the "broad" its use is entirely acceptable.

For domestic literary criticism, "the approach to the image as a living and integral organism, most capable of comprehending the full truth of being, is especially characteristic ... In comparison with Western science, the concept of" image " in United States and Soviet literary criticism itself is more "figurative", polysemantic, having a less differentiated sphere of use. & lt; ... & gt; The entirety of the meanings of the United States concept image is shown only by a whole series of Anglo-American terms ... - symbol, copy, fiction, figure, icon ...

By the nature of generalization, artistic images can be divided into individual, characteristic, typical, image-motives, topos and archetypes.