27. Psychologism in literature

«I feel sad,» «he's out of sorts today,» «she grew embarrassed and blushed» — any such phrase in a literary work informs us, in one way or another, about the feelings and experiences of a fictional person — a literary character or a lyrical hero. But this is not yet psychologism. The distinctive depiction of a person's inner world by properly artistic means, the depth and acuity of the writer's penetration into the hero's soul, the ability to describe in detail various psychological states and processes (feelings, thoughts, desires, and the like), to note nuances of experience — these, in general terms, are the marks of psychologism in literature.

Psychologism, thus, represents a stylistic unity, a system of means and devices directed at the full, deep, and detailed disclosure of the heroes' inner world. In this sense one speaks of a «psychological novel,» a «psychological drama,» «psychological literature,» and of a «writer-psychologist.»

Psychologism, as the capacity to penetrate a person's inner world, is inherent to some degree in every art. However, it is literature above all that possesses unique possibilities for mastering states and processes of the soul, owing to the nature of its imagery. The primary element of literary imagery is the word, and a substantial part of the soul's processes (in particular, the processes of thought, of experience, of conscious feeling, and even, to a great extent, volitional impulses and emotions) proceed in verbal form — which is precisely what literature captures. Other arts either are altogether incapable of recreating them, or make use of indirect forms and devices of depiction for this purpose. Finally, the nature of literature as a temporal art likewise allows it to carry out psychological depiction in an adequate form, since a person's inner life is, in most cases, a process, a movement. The combination of these features gives literature truly unique possibilities in depicting the inner world. Literature is the most psychological of the arts, with the possible exception of the synthetic art of cinema — which, however, also relies on the literary screenplay.

Each kind of literature has its own possibilities for disclosing a person's inner world. Thus, in lyric poetry psychologism is expressive in character; in it, as a rule, a «view from outside» onto a person's inner life is impossible. The lyrical hero either directly expresses his feelings and emotions, or engages in psychological self-analysis, in reflection (for example, N.A. Nekrasov's poem «For that I deeply despise myself...»), or, finally, gives himself over to lyrical meditative reflection (for example, in Pushkin's poem «'Tis time, my friend, 'tis time! The heart craves peace...»). The subjectivity of lyrical psychologism makes it, on the one hand, very expressive and profound, and, on the other, limits its possibilities for the cognition of a person's inner world. To some extent such limitations also apply to psychologism in drama, since the principal means of reproducing the inner world in it are the monologues of the dramatis personae, which in many respects resemble lyrical utterances.

The greatest possibilities for depicting a person's inner world, however, belong to the epic kind of literature, which has developed within itself a highly refined structure of psychological forms and devices, as we shall see further on.

Yet these possibilities open to literature for mastering and recreating the inner world are not realized automatically, and far from always. For psychologism to arise in literature, a sufficiently high level of development of the culture of society as a whole is required, but, above all, it is necessary that in that culture the unrepeatable human personality be recognized as a value. This is impossible under conditions where a person's worth is wholly determined by his social, class, or professional standing, and a personal view of the world is left out of account, indeed presumed as though it did not exist, because the ideological and moral life of society is entirely governed by a system of unconditional and infallible moral and philosophical norms. In other words, psychologism does not arise in cultures founded on authoritarianism. In authoritarian societies (though not in all of them, and chiefly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) psychologism is possible mainly within a countercultural system.

Literature has worked out a system of means, forms, and devices of psychological depiction — in a certain sense individual to each writer, yet at the same time common to all writer-psychologists. Analysis of this system is of paramount importance for understanding the distinctive character of psychologism in any given work.

There exist three basic forms of psychological depiction, to which, in the end, all the concrete devices for recreating the inner world can be reduced. Let us call the first form of psychological depiction direct, and the second indirect, since it conveys the hero's inner world not immediately but through external symptoms. The first form will be discussed further on; for now let us give an example of the second, indirect form of psychological depiction, which was especially widely used in literature at early stages of its development:

But the writer has yet a third possibility, one more way of conveying to the reader the thoughts and feelings of a character: by means of naming — the most concise designation of the processes taking place in the inner world. Let us call this form the summarily designating form. A.P. Skaftymov wrote of this method, comparing the peculiarities of psychological depiction in Stendhal and Tolstoy: «Stendhal proceeds chiefly by way of the verbal designation of feeling. Feelings are named, but not shown»¹. Tolstoy, by contrast, traces the process of a feeling unfolding over time and thereby recreates it with greater vividness and artistic force.

There is a multitude of devices of psychological depiction: various ways of organizing the narrative, the use of artistic detail, methods of describing the inner world, and others. Only the principal devices are examined here.

One of the devices of psychologism is artistic detail. External details (portrait, landscape, the world of things) have long been used for the psychological depiction of states of the soul within the system of the indirect form of psychologism. Thus portrait details (of the type «he turned pale,» «she blushed,» «he hung his unruly head,» and the like) conveyed the psychological state «directly»; it was, of course, understood in doing so that this or that portrait detail corresponded unambiguously to this or that movement of the soul.

Landscape details, too, very often carry psychological meaning. It has long been observed that certain states of nature correlate, one way or another, with certain human feelings and experiences: the sun with joy, rain with sadness, and so on (compare also metaphors of the type «a storm of the soul»). Unlike portrait and landscape, details of the «world of things» came to be used for purposes of psychological depiction much later — in Russian literature, in particular, only toward the end of the nineteenth century. A rare psychological expressiveness of this kind of detail was achieved in his work by Chekhov. He «pays chief attention to those impressions which his heroes receive from the environment around them, from the everyday circumstances of their own and others' lives, and depicts these impressions as symptoms of the changes taking place in the heroes' consciousness»¹. A heightened perception of ordinary things is characteristic of the best heroes of Chekhov's stories, whose character is disclosed chiefly through psychological means: «At home he saw on a chair the umbrella Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten, seized it, and kissed it hungrily. The umbrella was of silk, no longer new, held together by an old elastic band; the handle was of plain white bone, cheap. Laptev opened it over himself, and it seemed to him that the very air around him smelled of happiness» («Three Years»).

Finally, one more device of psychologism, somewhat paradoxical at first glance — the device of silence (reticence). It consists in the writer, at a certain moment, saying nothing at all about the hero's inner world, forcing the reader to carry out the psychological analysis himself, hinting that the hero's inner world, though not directly depicted, is nonetheless rich enough and deserves attention. The general forms and devices of psychologism discussed here are used individually by every writer. There is therefore no single psychologism common to all. Its various types master and disclose the human inner world from different angles, enriching the reader each time with new psychological and aesthetic experience.