Categories of time and space in fiction and non-fiction text

To establish the deep (meaningful) differences between artistic and non-artistic text, you can refer to the presentation of such categories as time and space. The specificity here is obvious; it is not without reason that there are relevant terms in philology: artistic time and artistic space [1].

It is known that the feeling of time for a person in different periods of his life is subjective: it can stretch or shrink. Such subjectivity of sensations is used differently by the authors of artistic texts: an instant can last a long time or even completely stop, and large time periods can be flashed overnight. Artistic time is a sequence in describing events that are subjectively perceived. This perception of time becomes one of the forms of the image of reality, when the temporal perspective changes according to the will of the author. And the time perspective may shift, the past is thought of as the present, and the future may appear as the past, etc.

For example, in K. Simonov's poem “Wait for Me” [2] subjective shifts in time are used: the feeling of expectation is transferred to the plan of the past. The beginning of the poem is built as a repeated appeal calling for waiting ( wait for me, and I will return, just wait. Wait when ...). This “wait, when” and simply “wait” is repeated ten times. Thus, the prospect of a future that is not yet accomplished is outlined. However, at the end of the poem, a statement of the event is given as accomplished:

Wait for me and I will come back

To all deaths out of spite.

Who did not expect me, let him

Says: "Lucky."

Do not understand not waiting for them,

As in the middle of the fire

Waiting for your

You saved me.

How I survived will know

Only we are with you, -

You just knew how to wait

Like no one else.

So the prospect of the future was abruptly broken, and the theme “Wait and I will return” turned into an affirmation of the result of this expectation given in the past tense forms: lucky, saved, survived, knew how to wait. The use of the category of time, thus, turned into a certain compositional device, and the subjectivity in the presentation of the time plan was reflected in the fact that the expectation moved into the past. Such a shift makes it possible to feel confident in the outcome of events, the future, as it were, is predetermined, inevitable.

The category of time in the artistic text is also complicated by two-sidedness - this is the time of the narration and the time of the event. Therefore, time shifts are quite natural. Deleted events can be depicted as directly occurring, for example, in the retelling of a character. Temporary bifurcation [3] is a typical method of narration, in which the stories of various people, including the author of the text, intersect.

But such a split is possible without the intervention of the characters in the coverage of past and present events. For example, in “The Last Spring” by I. Bunin there is an episode-picture drawn by the author:

No, it's spring.

Today drove again . And silent all the way - fog and spring nap. There is no sun, but there is already a lot of spring light behind the fog, and the fields are so white that it is difficult to watch. In the distance, curly lilac forests are barely drawn .

A small village in a yellow calf jacket with a gun crossed the village. Completely wild hunters. He looked at us, not bowing, and went straight through the snow, towards the line that was darkening in the hollow. The gun is short, with truncated trunks and a homemade lodge, painted with red lead. Behind indifferently runs a large male dog.

Even wormwood sticking out along the road, out of the snow, in hoarfrost; but spring, spring. Blissfully dozing, sitting on snowy dung heaps, scattered across the field, hawk, gently merge with snow and fog, with all this thick, soft and light white, than the happy pre-spring world is full of.

The narrator tells here about the past (albeit not far in time - now ) trip. However, imperceptibly, unobtrusively, the narrative is translated into a plan of the present. The picture-event of the past reappears before our eyes and seems to be frozen in stillness. Time stopped.

Space, as well as time, can be shifted by the author’s will. Art space is created through the use of the image angle; this occurs as a result of a mental change in the place from which the observation is being conducted: the general, small plan is replaced by a larger one, and vice versa.

If, for example, take a poem by M. Yu. Lermontov "Parus" and consider it in terms of spatial sensations, it turns out that the distant and close combined in one point: first, the sail is seen at a great distance, it is even weakly discernible due to fog (near the fog would not hurt).

White sail is lonely

In the mist of the sea blue! ..

(By the way, in the original version the remoteness of the observed object was directly stated: The sail is distant. )

Further, the plan is gradually enlarged, the author seems to be approaching the sail:

Waves play - the wind whistles,

And the mast bends and lurks ...

In the foggy distance it would be difficult to discern the details of a sailboat, and even less to see how the mast bends, and to hear how it squeaks. And finally, at the end of the poem, we, together with the author, moved to the sailboat itself, otherwise we could not see what was under it and above it:

Beneath it is a stream of light azure,

Above him is a golden ray of sunshine ...

This is how the image is noticeably enlarged and the image detailing is enhanced in this connection.

In a literary text, spatial concepts can generally be transformed into concepts of another kind. According to M. Yu. Lotman, artistic space - is a model of the world of this author, expressed in the language of his spatial representations.

Spatial concepts in a creative, artistic context can only be external, verbal, but convey a different content, not spatial. For example, for B. Pasternak, the “horizon” is both a temporary concept (future), and emotional-evaluative (happiness), and a mythological “way to heaven” (that is, to creativity). The horizon is the place where the earth converges with the sky, or the sky “descends” to the earth, then the poet is inspired, he feels creative delight. This means that this is not a real horizon as a spatial concept, but something else related to the state of the lyrical hero, and in this case it may shift and be very close:

In a thunderstorm purple eyes and lawns

And it smells like raw horizontally, -

it smells very close ...

Space and time are the basic forms of being, life, just like such realities, they are recreated in non-artistic texts, in particular, in scientific ones, and in artistic texts they can be transformed, passing one into the other.

A. Voznesensky wrote:

What an asymmetrical time!

The last minutes are shorter

The last separation is longer.

And further:

Die - in space,

Live - in time.

The category of time has a peculiar form of expression not only in an artistic text. Non-fiction text is also notable for its “attitude” to time. Texts such as legislative, instructional, reference, focus on the "timeless" expression of thought. The verb forms of tense used here do not mean at all what they are meant to mean, in particular, the present tense forms convey the meaning of the constancy of a sign, characteristic or constancy of the action performed. Such meanings are abstracted from specific verb forms. There is no time at all here. So, for example, descriptive material is given in encyclopedias:

Jay The jay stands out in the “black family” of the corvidae by the beauty of the variegated plumage. This is a very intelligent, agile and noisy forest bird. When she sees a person or a predatory beast, she always makes a noise, and her loud cries of “gee-gee-gee” are heard in the forest. In open spaces, the jay flies slowly and hard. In the forest, she deftly flies from branch to branch, from tree to tree, tacking between them. On the ground moves by jumping <...>.

Singing jay well imitates the voices of other birds (especially predatory) and the most diverse sounds <...>.

Only during the nesting season the jays seem to disappear - their cries are not heard, birds are not seen flying or climbing everywhere. Jays fly at this time silently, hiding behind the branches, and quietly fly up to the nest.

After the departure of chicks, at the end of May - in June, the jays gather in small flocks and again noisily wander through the forest (Encyclopedia for Children. T. 2).

Instructional text type (for example, prescription, recommendation), is built entirely on the language stereotype, where the temporary values ​​are completely eliminated: Should proceed from ...; Must be borne in mind ...; You must specify on ...; Recommended ...; etc.

There is a peculiar use of verb forms of time and in a scientific text, for example: “An event is defined by the place where it occurred and the time when it occurred. It is often useful for reasons of clarity to use an imaginary four-dimensional space ... In this space, an event is depicted as a full stop. These points are called world points ”(LD Landau, EM Lifshitz. Field Theory). The verb forms of the tense indicate in this text the meaning of constancy.

So, the artistic and non-artistic texts, although they are sequences of statements combined into interphrase unity and fragments, are fundamentally different in their nature - functionally, structurally, and communicatively. Even the semantic "behavior" of a word is different in artistic and non-artistic contexts. In non-artistic texts, the word is focused on the expression of the nominative-objective meaning and uniqueness, whereas the artistic text actualizes the hidden meanings of the word, creating a new vision of the world and its assessment, multiplicity, and meaningful extensions. The non-artistic text is oriented towards the reflection of reality strictly limited by the laws of logical causation, the artistic text as belonging to art is free from these limitations.

The artistic and non-artistic text is fundamentally different in its orientation towards different aspects of the reader’s personality, his emotional and intellectual structure. The artistic text primarily affects the emotional structure (of the soul), is associated with the reader's personal sensations - hence expressiveness, emotiveness, mood for empathy; non-artistic text appeals more to the mind, the intellectual structure of the individual - hence the neutrality of expression and detachment from the personal-emotional beginning [4].