Lecture
(Esin) The natural forms of existence of the depicted world (as, indeed, of the real world as well) are time and space. Time and space in literature represent a kind of convention, the nature of which determines the various forms of spatio-temporal organization of the artistic world.
Among the other arts, literature handles time and space with the greatest freedom (only the art of cinema can compete with it in this respect). In particular, literature can depict events occurring simultaneously in different places: for this, the narrator need only introduce into the narrative a formula such as «Meanwhile, over there, such-and-such was happening» or something similar. Just as easily, literature moves from one temporal layer to another (especially from the present to the past and back); the earliest forms of such temporal switching were the recollections and stories of some hero – we already encounter these in Homer.
Another important property of literary time and space is their discreteness (discontinuity). This is especially important with regard to time, since literature does not reproduce the entire temporal flow but selects from it only artistically significant fragments, marking the «empty» intervals with formulas such as «whether it was long or short», «several days passed», and the like. Such temporal discreteness serves as a powerful means of dynamizing first the plot, and later psychological depth as well.
The fragmentary nature of artistic space is partly connected with the properties of artistic time, and partly has an independent character of its own. Thus, the instantaneous shift of spatio-temporal coordinates, natural to literature (for example, the transfer of the action from Petersburg to Oblomovka in Goncharov's novel «Oblomov») makes a description of the intervening space (in this case, the road) unnecessary. The discreteness of spatial images proper consists in the fact that in literature a given place may not be described in every detail, but merely indicated through individual markers – the ones most significant to the author and carrying a high semantic load. The remaining (as a rule, larger) part of the space is «completed» in the reader's imagination.
The character of the conventionality of literary time and space depends to the greatest degree on the literary genre. In lyric poetry this conventionality is at its maximum; in lyric works, in particular, the image of space may be altogether absent. In other cases spatial coordinates are present only formally, being conventionally allegorical. At the same time, however, lyric poetry is also capable of reproducing the material world with its spatial coordinates, which possess great artistic significance.
Lyric poetry handles artistic time just as freely. We often observe in it a complex interplay of temporal layers: past and present, or past, present and future. Lyric poetry also sometimes shows the complete absence of a significant image of time, as, for example, in Lermontov's poem «Both Boring and Sad» or Tyutchev's «The Wave and the Thought» – the temporal coordinate of such works can be defined by the word «always». Conversely, there is also a very acute perception of time by the lyric hero, characteristic, for example, of the poetry of I. Annensky, as even the titles of his works suggest: «The Instant», «The Anguish of Fleetingness», «The Minute», not to mention deeper images. Yet in all cases lyric time possesses a high degree of conventionality, and often abstractness as well.
The conventionality of dramatic time and space is connected mainly with drama's orientation toward stage production. Of course, every playwright has his own construction of the spatio-temporal image, but the general character of the conventionality remains unchanged: «However significant a role narrative fragments may acquire in dramatic works, however fragmented the depicted action may become, however much the characters' spoken utterances may be subordinated to the logic of their inner speech, drama remains committed to pictures enclosed in space and time.» The epic genre possesses the greatest freedom in its handling of artistic time and space; it is here that the most complex and interesting effects in this area are observed.
According to the features of artistic conventionality, literary time and space can be divided into abstract and concrete. This division is especially important for artistic space. We shall call abstract that space which possesses a high degree of conventionality and which, in the limit, can be perceived as a «universal» space, with the coordinates «everywhere» or «nowhere». It has no pronounced particularity and therefore exerts no influence whatsoever on the artistic world of the work: it does not determine a person's character and behavior, is not connected with the particulars of the action, sets no emotional tone, and so on. Thus, in Shakespeare's plays the setting of the action is either purely fictitious («Twelfth Night», «The Tempest») or exerts no influence on the characters and circumstances («Hamlet», «Coriolanus», «Othello»). Concrete space, on the contrary, does not merely «tie» the depicted world to particular topographical realities, but actively influences the entire structure of the work. In particular, Russian literature of the 19th century is characterized by the concretization of space, the creation of images of Moscow, Petersburg, the provincial town, the country estate, and so on, as discussed above in connection with the category of literary landscape.
In the 20th century another tendency clearly emerged: a peculiar combination, within the bounds of a single artistic work, of concrete and abstract space, their mutual «flowing into one another» and interaction. Here the concrete setting of the action is given a symbolic meaning and a high degree of generalization. Concrete space becomes a universal model of existence. At the origins of this phenomenon in Russian literature stood Pushkin («Eugene Onegin», «The History of the Village of Goryukhino»), Gogol («The Government Inspector»), and later Dostoevsky («Demons», «The Brothers Karamazov»); Saltykov-Shchedrin («The History of a Town»), Chekhov (practically his entire mature body of work). In the 20th century this tendency finds expression in the work of Andrei Bely («Petersburg»), Bulgakov («The White Guard», «The Master and Margarita»), and Yerofeev («Moscow–Petushki»).
Corresponding properties of artistic time are usually connected with abstract or concrete space. Thus, the abstract space of the fable combines with abstract time: «The powerful is always to blame for the powerless...», «And in the heart the flatterer will always find a corner...», and so on. In this case the most universal patterns of human life are being explored – timeless and spaceless ones. And conversely: spatial concreteness is usually complemented by temporal concreteness, as, for example, in the novels of Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, and others.
The forms of concretizing artistic time are, first, the «anchoring» of the action to real historical landmarks, and second, the precise definition of «cyclical» temporal coordinates: the seasons and the times of day.
The depiction of the time of day has long had a definite emotional meaning in literature and culture. Thus, in the mythology of many countries, night is the time of the undivided dominion of secret and, most often, evil forces, while the approach of dawn, heralded by the crowing of the rooster, brought deliverance from unclean spirits. Clear traces of these beliefs can easily be found in literature down to the present day (Bulgakov's «The Master and Margarita», for example).
The season of the year was assimilated into human culture from the most ancient times and was associated mainly with the agricultural cycle. In almost all mythologies autumn is a time of dying, and spring a time of rebirth. This mythological pattern passed into literature, and its traces can be found in the most diverse works. However, more interesting and artistically significant are the individual images of the season in each writer, imbued, as a rule, with psychological meaning. Here we already observe complex and non-obvious correlations between the season and the state of the soul, giving a very wide emotional range (Pushkin's «I do not love spring...» versus Yesenin's «I love spring most of all...»). The correlation of a character's or lyric hero's psychological state with one season or another sometimes becomes a relatively independent object of reflection in itself – here one may recall Pushkin's sensitive feeling for the seasons («Autumn»), Blok's «Snow Masks», and the lyrical digression in Tvardovsky's poem «Vasily Tyorkin»: «And in which season // Is it easier to die in war?» The same season is individualized differently by different writers and carries different psychological and emotional weight: compare, for example, Turgenev's summer in the countryside with the Petersburg summer in Dostoevsky's «Crime and Punishment»; or Chekhov's almost always joyful spring («May could be felt, dear May!» – «The Bride») with the spring in Bulgakov's Yershalaim («Oh, what a terrible month Nisan is this year!»).
The intensity of artistic time is expressed in how saturated it is with events (here, by «events» we mean not only external ones, but internal, psychological ones as well). Three variants are possible here: an average, «normal» degree of event-fullness of time; increased intensity of time (the number of events per unit of time increases); and decreased intensity (event-saturation is minimal). The first type of organization of artistic time is represented, for example, in Pushkin's «Eugene Onegin» and the novels of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gorky. The second type is found in the works of Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov. The third is found in Gogol, Goncharov, Leskov, and Chekhov.
An increased saturation of artistic space is, as a rule, combined with a decreased intensity of artistic time, and vice versa: decreased spatial fullness is combined with heightened temporal saturation.
In literature, rather complex relationships often arise between real time and artistic time. Thus, in some cases real time may in fact equal zero: this is observed, for example, in various kinds of descriptions. Such time is called eventless. But even eventful time, in which at least something happens, is internally heterogeneous. In one case we are presented with events and actions that substantially change either a person, or people's relationships, or the situation as a whole – such time is called plot-time. In another case, a picture is drawn of a stable existence, that is, of actions and deeds repeated day after day, year after year. In the system of such artistic time, often called «chronicle-and-everyday» time, practically nothing changes. The dynamics of such time is maximally conventional, and its function is to reproduce a stable way of life – what is reproduced is not dynamics but statics, not something that happened once, but something that always happens.
The ability to determine the type of artistic time in a given work is a very important skill. The ratio of eventless («zero») time, chronicle-and-everyday time, and eventful plot-time largely determines the tempo organization of the work, which, in turn, conditions the character of aesthetic perception and forms the reader's subjective sense of time. (Bakhtin) We shall call the essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically assimilated in literature, the chronotope (which, literally translated, means «time-space»). We understand the chronotope as a formal-substantive category of literature (we do not touch here upon the chronotope in other spheres of culture). In the literary-artistic chronotope there occurs a fusion of spatial and temporal markers into a meaningful and concrete whole. Here time thickens, condenses, and becomes artistically visible; space, in turn, becomes intensified, drawn into the movement of time, of plot, of history. The markers of time are revealed in space, and space is understood and measured through time. It is by this intersection of series and fusion of markers that the artistic chronotope is characterized.
The chronotope has essential generic significance in literature. It can be said directly that genre and generic varieties are determined precisely by the chronotope, and in literature the leading element within the chronotope is time. The chronotope, as a formal-substantive category, also determines (to a significant degree) the image of the human being in literature; this image is always essentially chronotopic.
As we have already said, the assimilation of the real historical chronotope in literature proceeded in a complicated and discontinuous manner: only certain particular aspects of the chronotope, accessible under given historical conditions, were assimilated, and only certain forms of artistic reflection of the real chronotope were worked out. These generic forms, productive at first, became fixed by tradition and continued to persist stubbornly in subsequent development even when they had already completely lost their realistically productive and adequate significance. Hence the coexistence in literature of phenomena that are profoundly non-contemporaneous with one another, which greatly complicates the historical-literary process.
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