Lecture
The idea is usually named as the third structural component of content, alongside thematics and problematics. In fact, however, this final «tier» of content is not reducible to the idea alone but turns out to be far more complex, which is why we introduce the term «ideational world» of a work. It is appropriate to include in it, besides the idea itself, the system of authorial evaluations, the authorial ideal, and the pathos of the work.
If thematics is the sphere of the reflection of reality, and problematics is the sphere of posing questions, then the ideational world is the sphere of artistic resolutions – a kind of «completion» of artistic content. It is the sphere in which the author's attitude toward the world and its individual manifestations, the authorial position, becomes clear; here a particular system of values is affirmed, denied, or rejected by the author.
Authorial evaluations. The first and most obvious manifestation of the authorial position is the system of authorial evaluations. No artistic image is a mechanical copy; an active, partial, selective authorial attitude toward what is depicted is invested in it. Quite often the system of authorial evaluations in a literary work is clear without special analysis. In realistic works, however, we more often encounter a complex authorial evaluation of a given character – an evaluation that includes both the positive and the negative. This happens because the characters themselves are ambiguous, containing opposing tendencies that cannot be assessed with a simple plus or minus sign. Such are the characters (and, accordingly, the evaluations of the characters) of Onegin and Lensky, Pechorin, Raskolnikov, Andrei Bolkonsky, Lopakhin, and many other literary figures. In these cases it is especially dangerous to divide characters into the strictly positive and the strictly negative – such an inclination leads to a substantial distortion of the author's thought and, ultimately, of the whole content of the work. It is no less dangerous to attempt to dissect a character so that it falls apart into a group of positive and a group of negative traits – a procedure frequently applied in school practice to the most complex and ambiguous characters, such as Pechorin, Bazarov, and Raskolnikov. In this case the error is less obviously expressed, but no less dangerous: the living individuality created by the author is turned into a scheme in which positive and negative traits are «mixed» in some proportion or other. Meanwhile, a realistic character is a complex unity that does not lend itself to mechanical decomposition, and often one and the same trait, depending on circumstances, the form of its manifestation, and so on, turns now its positive, now its negative side toward us. A character cannot be mechanically broken down into «bad» and «good» qualities, as if the whole matter were simply to get rid of the bad while keeping the good – and before us stands an ideal hero. In the artistic world, as in life, everything is far more complicated, and shortcomings often turn out to be an extension of virtues, or their modification.
The authorial ideal. The foundation for the system of authorial evaluations is the authorial ideal – the writer's conception of the highest norm of human relations, of a person embodying the author's dreams of what a personality ought to be. It must be said at once that the authorial ideal is only rarely embodied in a work directly and immediately. Far more often the authorial ideal, as part of the ideational world of the work, has to be «reconstructed» by the reader, by comparing positive and negative evaluations, since by no means every positive hero is the authorial ideal. This circumstance must always be kept in mind when analyzing the ideational world of a work – «evaluated positively» does not automatically mean «ideal.»
Quite often (especially in works of critical realism) the authorial ideal is constructed by contraries – it is directly opposite to the reality depicted in the work. Thus, if Saltykov-Shchedrin satirically depicts in his «History of a Town» the arbitrary rule of autocracy and the low social activity of the «average townsman,» it is clear that his ideal is a democratic order with a high level of social self-awareness among all citizens of a free society. But in any case, regardless of the direct or indirect form of its expression, the authorial ideal remains an important aspect of the ideational world of the work.
The artistic idea. Another component of the ideational world of the work is the artistic idea – the main generalizing thought, or a system of such thoughts (in the latter case one sometimes speaks of the ideational resonance of the work). Sometimes the idea, or one of the ideas, is directly formulated by the author himself in the text of the work – for example, in Leo Tolstoy's «War and Peace»: «There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.» Sometimes the author, as it were, «entrusts» the right to voice the idea to one of the characters, thereby expressing the authorial idea. Here, however, one must be especially careful and attentive in determining the idea: quite often a character voices merely his own thoughts, for which the author bears no responsibility whatsoever. It should be remembered that only in comparatively rare cases does the author entrust the hero with formulating one of the ideas of the work; this generally requires a great closeness between the author and his hero, a kind of autobiographical quality. A hero's statement can only lay claim to the status of an authorial idea when the entire figurative structure of the work does not contradict it, when there is no doubt whatsoever that the author consciously leaves the hero with the last word, one that is not refuted by other characters, by an authorial digression, by the further development of events, and so on. In doubtful cases it is better to refrain from identifying the positions of the author and the hero, and instead to carry out further analytical work.
For a correct understanding of the artistic idea and its significance within the ideational world of the work, the analysis of this aspect of artistic content must be carried out in close connection with the analysis of the other components of the ideational world of the work, above all with the analysis of pathos.
Belinsky's last remark suggests to us a very important methodological consideration: one should not reduce the idea of a literary work to a moral «lesson» extracted from it, formulating it as an imperative demand addressed to the reader: «Be like Pavka Korchagin,» «do not be like Plyushkin,» and so on. Such formulations, in the overwhelming majority of cases, are extremely far from the actual idea of the work, nor do they properly fulfill educational tasks – instead they successfully simplify and «desiccate» the work, reducing it to a dull and dreary moralizing.
The relationship among theme, problem, and idea. One of the most common practical difficulties arising in the analysis of content is the failure to distinguish, or the conflation of, theme, problem, and idea. It must be remembered that artistic logic is, in large part, a sequence in the movement of authorial and readerly thought from theme through problem to idea. At the level of thematics we are dealing exclusively with the object of reflection, with the material for the subsequent posing of a problem. The theme as such contains no problematicity and no evaluation; the theme is a kind of statement of fact: «the author has reflected such-and-such characters in such-and-such situations.» The level of problematics is the level of posing questions, discussing one system of values or another, establishing significant connections among the phenomena of reality – it is that aspect of artistic content where the reader is invited by the author into active dialogue. Finally, the sphere of ideas is the sphere of resolutions and conclusions; an idea always denies or affirms something. The theme in itself is neutral; the problematics reveals the author's approach to the theme and juxtaposes different life values; the idea affirms one system of values and denies another.
Pathos. Finally, the last element entering into the ideational world of a work is pathos, which can be defined as the leading emotional tone of the work, its emotional disposition. A synonym for the term «pathos» is the expression «emotional-evaluative orientation.» To analyze the pathos of a literary work means to establish its typological variety, the type of emotional-evaluative orientation, of attitude toward the world and toward the human being within the world.
Epic-dramatic pathos represents a deep and unconditional acceptance of the world as a whole and of oneself within it, which constitutes the essence of the epic worldview. At the same time, this is not a thoughtless acceptance of a cloudlessly harmonious world: being is recognized in its original and unconditional conflictedness (dramatism), but this conflictedness itself is perceived as a necessary and just aspect of the world, for conflicts arise and are resolved, and they ensure the very existence and dialectical development of being. Epic-dramatic pathos is maximal trust in the objective world in all its real many-sidedness and contradictoriness. Note that this type of pathos is rarely represented in literature, and even more rarely does it appear in pure form. Among works based largely on epic-dramatic pathos one may name Homer's «Iliad» and «Odyssey,» and Rabelais's novel «Gargantua and Pantagruel.»
The objective basis of the pathos of the heroic is the struggle of individuals or communities for the realization and defense of ideals that are necessarily recognized as lofty. Here the actions of people are inevitably bound up with personal risk, personal danger, and the real possibility of losing something of essential value to a person – up to and including life itself. Another condition for the manifestation of the heroic in reality is the free will and initiative of the person: forced actions, as Hegel already pointed out, cannot be heroic. The writer's ideational-emotional apprehension of the objectively heroic gives rise to the pathos of the heroic. The desire to remake a world whose order seems unjust, or the wish to defend an ideal world (or one close to the ideal and seeming to be such) – this is the emotional basis of the heroic. We encounter the heroic in «The Song of Roland» and in «The Tale of Igor's Campaign,» in Gogol's «Taras Bulba» and Voynich's «The Gadfly,» in Gorky's novel «Mother,» in Sholokhov's stories, and in many other works.
Bordering on the heroic as a pathos based on the sublime are other kinds of pathos that likewise have a sublime character – above all the tragic and the romantic. The romantic is akin to the heroic in its striving toward a sublime ideal. But whereas the heroic is the sphere of active deed, the romantic is the sphere of emotional experience and yearning that does not pass over into action. The objective basis of the romantic consists of such situations in personal and social life where the realization of a sublime ideal is either impossible in principle or unrealizable at a given historical moment. On such an objective basis, however, not only the pathos of the romantic but also the tragic, irony, and satire may in principle arise, so that what is decisive in the romantic is nonetheless the subjective moment – the experience of an irremovable rift between dream and reality.
Many works in the history of literature are marked by the pathos of the romantic. The romantic should not be confused with Romanticism as a literary movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; it is found across the most varied historical epochs, as Belinsky himself pointed out. Evidently romantic pathos arose as early as ancient lyric poetry; among works closer to our own time we may point to Gogol's «Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,» Lermontov's «Mtsyri,» Turgenev's «First Love,» Gorky's «Old Woman Izergil,» and the early work of Blok and Mayakovsky.
The pathos of the romantic may also appear in literature in combination with other kinds of pathos, in particular with irony (Blok), with the heroic (Mayakovsky's «Good!»), with satire (Nekrasov).
The pathos of the tragic is the recognition of loss, and specifically of irreparable loss – of some important life values: human life, social, national, or personal freedom, the possibility of personal happiness, the values of culture, and so forth. For a long time literary scholars and aestheticians have considered the objective basis of the tragic to be the insoluble character of a given life conflict. In principle this is correct, but not entirely precise, for the insolubility of a conflict is, strictly speaking, a relative matter and not necessarily tragic. The first condition of the tragic is the lawfulness of this conflict – a situation in which its lack of resolution cannot be accepted. Second, by the insolubility of a conflict we mean the impossibility of its favorable resolution – it is inevitably bound up with sacrifices, with the destruction of certain indisputable humanistic values. A tragic situation in life can also arise by chance, as the result of an unfavorable coincidence of circumstances, but such situations are of little interest to literature. Literature is more drawn to the lawfully tragic, arising from the very essence of characters and situations. The most fruitful tragic conflict for art is one in which the irresolvable contradictions lie within the hero's own soul, when the hero finds himself in a situation of free choice between two equally necessary but mutually exclusive values.
In sentimentality – another type of pathos – we observe, as in the romantic, a predominance of the subjective over the objective. Sentimentality, literally translated from the French, means sensibility; it represents one of the first manifestations of humanism, though a rather peculiar one. In particular situations, almost every person happens to display sentimentality – thus most normal people cannot pass indifferently by the suffering of a child, a helpless person, or even an animal. Sentimentality as the capacity to «pity» quite often combines subject and object within itself (a person pities himself; this feeling, apparently, is familiar to everyone from childhood and found ideal artistic embodiment in Tolstoy's «Childhood»). But even when sentimental pity is directed at phenomena of the surrounding world, the personality reacting to it – touched, compassionate – always remains at the center. At the same time, sympathy for another in sentimentality is in principle inactive; it serves as a kind of psychological substitute for real help (such, for example, is the artistically expressed sympathy for the peasant in the work of Radishchev and Nekrasov).
Turning to a consideration of the next typological varieties of pathos – humor and satire – let us note that they rest on a common comic basis. The objective basis of the comic can be defined as the contradiction between ideal and reality, between norm and actuality. It should only be noted that the subjective apprehension of such a contradiction will not always and not necessarily occur in a comic key.
Satirical depiction appears in a work when the object of satire is perceived by the author as irreconcilably opposed to his ideal, standing in an antagonistic relation to it. Satire is directed at those phenomena that actively hinder the establishment or existence of the ideal, and are sometimes directly dangerous to its existence.
Sometimes the object of satire turns out to be so dangerous to the existence of the ideal, and its activity so dramatic or even tragic in its consequences, that its apprehension no longer provokes laughter – such a situation arises, for example, in Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel «The Golovlyov Family.» Here the connection between satire and the comic is broken, and so such a negating pathos, not bound up with mockery, should evidently be considered a special, independent type of ideational-emotional attitude toward life, designated by the term «invective.»
The pathos of invective is possessed, for example, by Lermontov's poem «Farewell, unwashed Russia…» It expresses a sharply negative attitude toward the autocratic-police state, but there is no mockery, no comic effect, no calculation on laughter. The work does not employ a single element of properly satirical poetics aimed at producing a comic effect: there is no hyperbolism, no grotesque, no absurd, illogical situations or verbal constructions. In form and content it is a short lyrical monologue expressing a very serious feeling of the poet – a feeling of hatred for «the land of slaves, the land of masters.»
Certain difficulties for typology arise in distinguishing satire from humor. In broad literary-critical usage these two kinds of pathos are distinguished, respectively, as «merciless mockery» and «gentle raillery.» This is true to a certain extent, but insufficient, since what is fixed here is more a quantitative than a qualitative difference, and it remains unclear why in one case the laughter is annihilating, while in the other it is not.
In order to determine the qualitative distinctiveness of humorous pathos, one must take into account that humor is the expression of a fundamentally different value orientation than satire and invective. In a certain sense it is directly opposed to them in its underlying premises. Humor overcomes the objective comicality of reality (its inherent contradictions and incongruities) by accepting them as an inevitable and, moreover, necessary part of life, as a source not of anger but of joy and optimism. Humor, unlike satire and invective, is above all not a negating but an affirming pathos, although, of course, it may well also reveal the untenability of this or that phenomenon, thereby performing a negating function. But in relation to being in its wholeness, humor affirms.
Unlike satire, the subject of a humorous world-perception does not separate himself from the rest of the world, and consequently sees not only the shortcomings and contradictions of reality, but his own as well. The ability and readiness to laugh at oneself is the most important subjective precondition of humor.
Thus humor, at its deepest foundation, is an expression of optimism, of psychological health, of the acceptance of life – it is no accident that one often speaks of life-affirming humor. This is fully manifested in such works as Rabelais's «Gargantua and Pantagruel,» Tvardovsky's «Vasily Tyorkin,» and others. However, on the same general ideational-emotional basis just discussed, other variants of humorous pathos may also arise. The range of humorous laughter is exceptionally broad, as is the range of situations that arouse humorous pathos. Humor occupies a significant place in such works as Cervantes's «Don Quixote,» Gogol's «Old-World Landowners» and «Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,» in the comedies of Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, in the stories and tales of Leskov, Chekhov, Sholokhov, Shukshin, and others. Even in such seemingly unsuitable genres as tragedy, humor sometimes plays an important role – let us recall, for example, Shakespeare's tragedies «Hamlet» and «King Lear»: in the first, the bearers of a humorous world-perception are the gravediggers, in the second, the Fool.
The consideration of the varieties of pathos is usually concluded with humor, yet it seems necessary to introduce into this typology one more variety – irony. The concept of irony has not been sufficiently developed in contemporary literary scholarship. Most often irony is somehow identified with one of the varieties of humor or satire, differing from them only in the form in which mockery is expressed. In this form, singling out irony as an independent type is, of course, unjustified. And yet irony has its own «field of activity,» one that does not coincide with the «field of activity» of humor and satire. The ironic vision of the world is marked by a profound distinctiveness. The chief subjective basis of irony is skepticism, of which humor and satire are usually devoid.
Besides its subjective aspect, irony as pathos also has an objective specificity. Unlike all other kinds of pathos, it is directed not at the objects and phenomena of reality as such, but at their ideational or emotional interpretation within one philosophical, ethical, or artistic system or another. The pathos of irony lies in the fact that it «disagrees» with a given evaluation (more often a lofty one) of a character, or a situation, or of life as a whole.
Irony rests on a discrepancy between a phenomenon and a judgment about it, mockingly and skeptically debunking this judgment, but not in favor of an opposite judgment – which is what distinguishes irony from any other pathos that combines negation with the affirmation of its opposite.
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