Prose (lat. prfsa) - oral or written language without division into commensurate segments - poetry. In contrast to poetry, its rhythm is based on the approximate correlation of syntactic structures (periods, sentences, columns). Sometimes the term is used as a contrast fiction in general (poetry) scientific or journalistic literature, that is, not related to art.
In ancient Greek literature, any literary language was called poetry. However, the very concept of artistry in Greek culture was inextricably linked with rhythm, and, consequently, most literary works had a poetic form. Later, rhythmically organized speech began to be called verse, as opposed to speech not associated with rhythm. The ancient Romans, successors of Greek culture, began to call it prose.
In Ancient Greece, along with poetry, there was also artistic prose: myths, legends, fairy tales, comedies. These genres were not considered poetic, since myth for the ancient Greeks was not an artistic, but a religious phenomenon, legend - historical, fairy tale - everyday, comedy was considered too mundane.
Non-fiction prose included oratorical, political, and later scientific works. Thus, in ancient world, Ancient Rome and then in medieval Europe prose was in the background, representing everyday or journalistic literature, as opposed to highly artistic poetry.
By the second half of the Middle Ages, the situation began to gradually change. Along with the decomposition of first ancient and then feudal society, the poem, tragedy, and ode gradually decompose. In connection with the development of the commercial bourgeoisie, its cultural and ideological growth, based on culture big cities Prose genres are increasingly growing and developing. A story, a short story appear, and after them a novel develops. Old poetic genres, which played a major role in the literature of feudalism and slave society, are gradually losing their main, leading value, although they by no means disappear from literature. However, new genres, which play a major role first in bourgeois styles, and then in the entire literature of capitalist society, clearly gravitate toward prose. Fiction begins to challenge poetry's leading place, stands next to it, and even later, by the era of the heyday of capitalism, even pushes it aside. By the 19th century, prose writers, short story writers and novelists, became the most prominent figures in fiction, giving society those large typical generalizations that the creators of poems and tragedies gave in the era of the triumph of poetry.
Despite the fact that the concept of genre determines the content of a work, and not its form, most genres gravitate towards either poetic writing (poems, plays) or prose (novels, stories). Such a division, however, cannot be taken literally, since there are many examples when works of various genres were written in forms unusual for them. Examples of this are novels and short stories by Russian poets, written in poetic form: “Count Nulin”, “House in Kolomna”, “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “Treasurer”, “Sashka” by Lermontov. In addition, there are genres that are equally often written both in prose and in poetry (fairy tale).
Literary genres traditionally classified as prose include:
A biography is an essay that sets out the history of the life and activities of a person. Description of a person's life; genre of historical, artistic and scientific prose. Modern biography(for example, the series "Life wonderful people") reveals historical, national and social conditioning, psychological type personality, its cause-and-effect relationships with the sociocultural world.
A manifesto is a programmatic statement in prose form associated with aesthetic principles certain literary direction, movements, schools, groups. The term became widespread in the 19th century and is quite broad in its meaning, as a result of which it is conditional and applicable to a whole range of literary phenomena - from detailed declarations to serious aesthetic treatises, articles, and prefaces. In some cases, the aesthetic statements of writers and literary critics have the character of literary manifestos, having a direct impact on the historical and literary process, despite the fact that some declarations in the form of a manifesto turn out to be short-lived and have little impact. Sometimes literary manifestos and real content literary school do not match. In general, manifestos represent one or another living result public life, reflecting both ideological and aesthetic searches and the process of formation new literature. prose literary syntactic short story
A short story is a literary small narrative genre, comparable in volume to a short story (which sometimes gives rise to their identification), but differing from it in genesis, history and structure.
Essay is a type small form epic literature, different from its other form, the story, by the absence of a single, quickly resolved conflict and the great development of descriptive images. Both differences depend on the specific issues of the essay. It touches not so much on the problems of developing the character of an individual in its conflicts with the established social environment, but rather on the problems of the civil and moral state of the “environment.” The essay can relate to both literature and journalism.
A story is a work of epic prose, close to a novel, gravitating towards a sequential presentation of the plot, limited to a minimum storylines. Depicts a separate episode from life; It differs from the novel in less completeness and breadth of pictures of everyday life and morals. It does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate place between the novel, on the one hand, and the story or short story, on the other. It gravitates toward a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. In Ancient Rus', “story” meant any prose narrative, as opposed to poetic.
The parable is short story in verse or prose in an allegorical, edifying form. The reality in the parable is revealed outside of chronological and territorial signs, without indicating specific historical names characters. A parable must include an explanation of the allegory so that the meaning of the allegory is clear to the reader. Despite its similarity to a fable, the parable claims to be a universal generalization, sometimes not paying attention to particular issues.
The story is a small epic genre form fiction is small in terms of the volume of life phenomena depicted, and hence in terms of the volume of its text.
A novel is a large narrative work with a complex and developed plot.
An epic is an epic work of monumental form, distinguished by national issues. In historical and literary science since the 19th century, the term epic is often used in an expanded sense, covering any major work that has signs of an epic structure.
Essay - prose composition small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and considerations on a specific occasion or issue and obviously not claiming to be a defining or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.
The difference between prose and poetry lies in the language itself. In poetry, the language is figurative, in prose it is abstract. The poetic word is more intense and carries a greater emotional load. The prosaic word is more reserved. He is characterized by a less strong moralistic pathos, pathos and lyricism. In addition, poetry has one of the most powerful means of influencing the reader - rhythm. Prose work it is not available. It is rhythmic organization that is an integral property of poetry. Based on this, we can conclude that the poetic word is more distant and sublime from everyday speech than prosaic language.
A literary text is called a secondary modeling system, since it combines reflection objective world and the author's fiction. The language of a literary text is only a building material. For literary text - special sign system, common for different languages. This language is characterized by ambiguity of semantics and multiple interpretations. In a literary text they add up special relationship between three basic quantities - the world of reality, the world of concepts and the world of meanings. If for a text as a product of speech the formula “reality - meaning - text” is universal, then in a literary text, according to linguist G.V. Stepanov, this formula is modified into another triad: “reality - image - text”. This reflects such deep characteristics of a literary text as a combination of reflection of objective reality and fantasy, a combination of truth and fiction. Literary texts have their own typology, focused on gender-genre characteristics.
A literary text is constructed according to the laws of associative-figurative thinking. In an artistic text, life material is transformed into a kind of “small universe”, seen through the eyes of a given author, and behind the depicted pictures of life there is always a subtextual, interpretative functional plan, “secondary reality”. It has a communicative and aesthetic function. A literary text is based on the use of figurative and associative qualities of speech. Image here final goal creativity. In a literary text, the means of imagery are subordinated aesthetic ideal artist (fiction - a type of art)
It will be convenient to use the following definitions as the basis for the concept of text.
- 1. Expressiveness. The text is fixed in certain signs and in this sense is opposed to extra-textual structures. For fiction, this is primarily the expression of the text by signs of natural language. Expressiveness as opposed to inexpressiveness forces us to consider the text as the implementation of a certain system, its material embodiment. Text always has systemic and non-systemic elements. True, the combination of the principles of hierarchy and multiple intersections of structures leads to the fact that the non-systemic can turn out to be systemic from the point of view of another, and recoding the text into the language of artistic perception of the audience can transfer any element into the class of systemic ones.
- 2. Limited. The text is inherently limited. In this regard, the text opposes, on the one hand, all materially embodied signs that are not part of its composition, according to the principle of inclusion - non-inclusion. On the other hand, it is opposed to all structures with an undistinguished sign of a boundary - for example, both the structure of natural languages and the boundlessness ("openness") of them speech texts. However, in the system of natural languages there are also constructions with a clearly defined category of limitation - this is the word and especially the sentence. It is no coincidence that they are especially important for constructing a literary text. Linguist A.A. once spoke about the isomorphism of a literary text to a word. Potebnya. The text has a single text value and in this respect can be considered as an indivisible signal. The concept of border is defined differently in texts various types: This is the beginning and end of texts with a structure that unfolds over time. The limitation of constructive (artistic) space from non-constructive space becomes the main means of the language of sculpture and architecture. The hierarchical nature of the text, the fact that its system breaks up into a complex structure of subsystems, leads to the fact that a number of elements belonging to internal structure, turns out to be borderline in subsystems different types(borders of chapters, stanzas, verses, hemistiches). The boundary, showing the reader that he is dealing with a text and evoking in his consciousness the entire system of corresponding artistic codes, is structurally in a strong position. Since some of the elements are signals of one boundary, and others - of several, coinciding in a common position in the text (the end of the chapter is also the end of the book), since the hierarchy of levels allows us to talk about the dominant position of certain boundaries (the boundaries of the chapter hierarchically dominate over the border of a stanza, the border of a novel is above the border of a chapter), the possibility of structural commensurability of the role of certain delimitation signals opens up. In parallel with this, the saturation of the text internal borders(the presence of “hyphenations”, strophic or astrophic structure, division into chapters, etc.) and the marking of external boundaries (the degree of marking of external boundaries can be reduced to the point of simulating a mechanical break of the text) also create the basis for the classification of types of text construction.
- 3. Structure. The text does not represent simple sequence signs in the space between the two outer boundaries. The text is inherent internal organization, transforming it at the syntagmatic level into a structural whole. Therefore, in order to recognize a certain set of natural language phrases as an artistic text, one must make sure that they form a certain structure of a secondary type at the level of artistic organization.
It should be noted that the structure and limitations of the text are related. In order to reveal the essence of artistic prose text as a communicative unit, it is necessary to first turn to such fundamental concepts as text, literary text and prose text.
Terminologically, the problem is complicated by the fact that the same concept of “text” covers different objects: text as a product of natural language (primary modeling system) and text as a work artistic creativity(secondary modeling system). Natural language is called the primary modeling system, since with the help of language a person cognizes the world around us and gives names to phenomena and objects of reality.
Thus, for a literary text, the figurative-emotional, inevitably subjective essence of facts and phenomena is important. For an artistic text, the form itself is meaningful, it is exceptional and original, it contains the essence of artistry, since the “form of life-likeness” chosen by the author serves as material for expressing another, different content, for example, a description of a landscape may not be necessary in itself, it is only transfer form internal state author, characters. Due to this different, different content, a “secondary reality” is created. The internal figurative plane is transmitted through the external subject plane. This creates a two-dimensional and multi-dimensional text.
Literary prose is mainly presented in two types: classical and ornamental. Classical prose is based on a culture of semantic-logical connections, on maintaining consistency in the presentation of thoughts. Classical prose is predominantly epic and intellectual; unlike poetry, its rhythm is based on the approximate correlation of syntactic structures; This is speech without division into commensurate segments. Ornamental prose is based on an associative-metaphorical type of connection. This is “decorated” prose, prose with a “system of rich imagery”, with metaphorical beauties. Such prose often draws its visual resources from poetry. Authors of ornamental prose most often look like original experimenters literary form: now this is an appeal to active word creation, now to the excessive archaism of syntax and vocabulary, now to the grotesqueness of the image, now to the imitation of the skaz form. In any case, this is an exaggerated sense of form when a word becomes the subject of a linguistic experiment. Ultimately, the system of linguistic capabilities itself is tested when prefixes and suffixes are used in combination with different roots, without taking into account existing normative word-formation models. The heightened imagery of ornamental prose, reaching the point of embellishment, creates the impression of super-figurative speech, speech that is highly picturesque, pictorial in the literal sense of the word. However, this is not just decoration, “packaging” of thought, rather it is a way of expressing the essence of artistic thinking, aesthetic modeling of reality.
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Exercise No. 1: Warming up the body.
Exercise No. 2: Body on stake.
Exercise No. 3: Hygienic facial massage.
Exercise #4: Grimaces. Looking in the mirror, make grimaces, conveying various emotions (anger, fear, surprise, joy) with your facial expressions. It is necessary that all parts of the face are involved. When grimacing, you need to look for new facial expressions.
Exercise #5: Correct breathing. We inflate a balloon in the stomach and deflate it (inhale - the balloon inflates, exhale - the balloon deflates). Here we breathe with our bellies. We open and close the umbrella (inhale - the umbrella opens, exhale - the umbrella closes). Here we breathe with our ribs.
Exercise #6: Jaw warm-up. We throw the jaw two fingers down; rotate the lower jaw in a circle (clockwise and counterclockwise); we move the lower jaw to the right, to the left; actively “gnawing nuts”; We bring the lower jaw forward as much as possible and move it back;
Exercise No. 7: Warm up lips. Lips into a tube and a smile; rotate lips clockwise and counterclockwise; duck exercise; exercise "fish"; we start the motor with our lips; upper lip move to the right, bottom to the left (and vice versa);
Exercise #8: Warm up the tongue. The tongue is in the house and is trying to get out; sword tongue; pull the tongue up, down, left, right as much as possible; “the cat is washing itself”; “horses”: clicking our tongue; we click our tongues and grimace; we bite our tongue until it hurts;
Exercise #9: Exercises to develop breathing activity. “Pump”: Stand straight, feet shoulder-width apart, lean forward and grasp the handle of an imaginary pump with both hands. We begin to pump air: straightening up, inhale, bending over, exhale. Now with sound: bending over, we seem to emit the sound “ffffu” from our mouth.
"Polite bow." Position one: stand on your toes, arms to the sides (inhale). Position two - we gradually begin to lean forward, squeezing our hands on our chest in an oriental manner. Bending over, we pronounce the word “Hello!” stretched out on the “s” sound. (make sure that the last sound is pronounced clearly - save a full portion of air for it)
Exercise No. 10: Exercise for training organized exhalation. " Flower shop". Initial position- standing. Exhale to the sound “pfff” and draw in your stomach. When you inhale, imagine that you are smelling a flower, then exhale slowly and smoothly at the sound “pfff”. Inhalation is short, exhalation is long.
Exercise #11: Exercises for the warm type of exhalation. “Flower”, “Chicken”, “Warming our hands”, “Let’s melt the cold wall”. The combination I E A O U Y is used.
Exercise #12: Onomatopoeia. “Pumping up the ball” (sh-s), “Sawing a tree” (z-sh), “Mowing the grass” (z-s), “Mosquito spray” (psh-psh);
Exercise #13: Throat opening exercise. “Snake”, “Light Bulb”;
Exercise #14: An exercise to find the right tone. “Bells”, “Trumpets”, “Candy”;
Exercise #15: Voice power exercise. “How our guys went for a walk along the street”;
Exercise #16: Voice timbre exercise. “I paint the cornice up and down with paint”, “Our fourteenth TU is gaining height”, “Floors”;
Exercise No. 17: Diction. “CHHSHCHZBPTKI”, tongue twisters;
Exercise #18: Intonation.
The fly sat on the jam,
That's the whole poem.
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As we found out, the ability to act with words is acquired in the process of live communication, in which words become a necessary means of influencing partners. In this case, verbal actions are not separated from physical ones; they flow out of them and merge with them.
From the first steps of working on a word, it is important for students to feel the inextricable connection between verbal action and physical action, and for this it is necessary to give them exercises where this connection would be revealed especially clearly. Let, for example, a student, playing the role of a commander, give his comrades the command “Stand to attention!” and at the same time he will try to fall apart in his chair and weaken his muscles; and when giving the command “Forward!” to throw the platoon on the attack, he himself will back away. With such a discrepancy between physical actions and the word, the team will not achieve the goal. In these unnatural conditions, a rather negative, comic effect can be achieved. A similar technique was once used in the production of “Wampuka,” a parody of an opera performance known in its time. The ensemble sang: “Run, hurry, hurry, hurry!”, remaining in motionless poses, which caused laughter in the audience.
For a word to become an instrument of action, the entire physical apparatus must be configured to perform this action, and not just the muscles of the tongue. When a gentleman invites a lady to dance, his whole body at that moment is already preparing for the dance. If, when pronouncing the words “let me invite you,” his back is lowered and his legs are relaxed, then one can doubt the sincerity of his intention. When a person verbally declares something, makes various verbal decisions, but his logic physical behavior contradicts this, we can say with confidence that his words will remain only declarations and will not be translated into action.
Sensitive organic connection words with action Gogol created a magnificent example of such a contradiction in the image of Podkolesin. The play begins with Podkolesin deciding to get married and scolding himself for procrastination and slowness. From the text of the play we learn that he is waiting for a matchmaker today, has ordered a wedding tailcoat for himself, has ordered that his boots be polished, in a word, he is preparing, it would seem, for decisive action. But, according to the author’s remark, Podkolesin spends almost the entire first act lying on the sofa in a dressing gown and smoking a pipe, and this passive pose calls into question his decision. We begin to understand that Podkolesin is only going to marry in words, but in fact he does not intend to change at all familiar image life. If words contradict a person’s actions, behavior will always be decisive for understanding him true intentions And state of mind. In ordinary cases, verbal action merges with physical action and is completely based on it. Moreover, physical action not only accompanies, but always precedes the utterance of words. You cannot even say “hello” without first seeing or feeling the person to whom the greeting is addressed, that is, without first performing a basic physical action. When words on stage precede actions, a gross violation of the law occurs. organic nature and verbal action gives way to mechanical speech.
It would seem that it is not so difficult to go on stage and, turning to your partner, say the words: “Lend me a ruble.” But if you put yourself in real life situation, which forces you to make such a request, everything will turn out to be much more complicated. Let’s say I return home after a vacation and a few minutes before the train departs, it suddenly turns out that I don’t have enough rubles for a ticket and I’m forced to turn to someone for help. strangers. Before opening my mouth and uttering the first word, I will have to perform many very active physical actions: choose among those around me the most the right person, to whom one could turn with such a sensitive request, find a moment for conversation, sit down with him, attract his attention, try to win him over, inspire his trust, etc. But when, after all these mandatory preparatory physical actions, I If I move on to words, then not only words, but my whole body, eyes, facial expressions, posture, gestures will express the request. In order for a student to firmly grasp the logic of physical actions that prepares and accompanies the utterance of given words, in order to force him to act not in a theatrical conventional way, but in a true life way, it is necessary to at least occasionally confront him with life itself. Let his comrades observe from the side how he will act in order to borrow a ruble from a stranger. And if stranger really believes him and takes part in his fate, then this sure sign that he acted correctly and convincingly.
You can come up with many similar examples when a given text, for example, “let me meet you” or “let me get your autograph,” etc., should evoke all the complexity of the organic process and convince the student that it is impossible to pronounce it in real life conditions, without first performing a series of preparatory, mandatory physical actions.
This kind of exercise, transferred from the school classroom to a real-life setting, makes a great impression and is firmly etched in the memory. They make one deeply aware of the logic of physical actions that precedes the utterance of words. It will certainly reveal the stages of the organic process of interaction that are already familiar to us: choosing an object, attracting its attention, attaching to it, influencing it, perception, evaluation, etc. In life, this organic process develops involuntarily, but it easily eludes us in stage. So that words do not get ahead of thoughts and the impulses from which they are born, the logic of actions must be implemented anew each time.
Another outstanding Russian physiologist I.M. Sechenov argued that there cannot be a thought that is not preceded by one or another “external sensory stimulation.” These sensory stimulations, impulses for uttering words, give us physical actions. They are connected with the work of our first signal system, on which the second signal system, which deals with the word, relies. The first signaling system refers to the entire complex of external stimuli that are perceived by our senses (except for words). These irritations are not only perceived by us, but are also stored in our memory as impressions, sensations and ideas about environment. Physiologists call this the first signal system of reality, common to humans and animals. But unlike animals, man also invented verbal signals, created speech, which forms the second signaling system of reality.
“Numerous irritations with words,” says I. P. Pavlov, “on the one hand, removed us from reality, and therefore we must constantly remember this so as not to distort our relationship to reality. On the other hand, it was the word that made us human...
However, there is no doubt that the basic laws established in the work of the first signaling system must also govern the second, because this is the work of the same nervous tissue.”
While affirming the organic behavior of an actor on stage as the most important basis of our art, we, following the advice of the great scientist, must constantly remember that verbal action is always based on physical action. Without this condition, people can easily turn, as Pavlov put it, “into idle talkers, talkers.”
The value of Stanislavsky’s method of physical and verbal action lies precisely in the fact that it opens up available to us practical ways mastering the word on stage from the side of the first signal system. In other words, establishing a connection with the objects of life around us, which are the source of our sensations, is the primary physical process with which Stanislavsky recommends starting creativity.
This fundamental position also determines the sequence of work to master stage speech. It begins with the study of those verbal actions that, without exciting a complex thought process, are addressed directly to the will and emotions of the partner. These include verbal signals that reflexively influence human behavior, similar to those drill commands discussed at the beginning of the chapter. These actions are more in the plane of the first than the second signaling system. The best for that proof is in trained animals that carry out verbal commands, although thinking is inaccessible to them. The fundamental difference between such a verbal signal and an automatic sound or light signal is only that the trainer’s order is not only a familiar sound combination that causes a reflex reaction; This sound combination is reinforced by physical action, colored by one or another intonation, from affectionate to threatening, which additionally affects the animal.
At first, you should use simple verbal formations in the exercises, designed to immediately change the partner’s behavior. We call this form of verbal action the simplest.
In life itself, verbal signals of this kind are encountered at every step. So, squeezing through a crowd on a crowded bus, we turn to the person in front of us with the words “permit” or “excuse me,” so that he moves aside and gives way. We use the simplest verbal signals to attract the attention of the object from whom we intend to achieve something.
To force a pedestrian who is a troublemaker to stop, the policeman whistles and thereby evokes the corresponding conditioned reflex. But such a signal does not have an exact address. The shout of a gunman sitting with a microphone in a police car is a different matter; From a crowd of people, he must select and attract the attention of a traffic rule violator and force him to change his route. “A citizen with a red handbag,” he addresses. Or: "Citizen in a Green Hat." Etc. The work of a weapon operator is an example of the simplest verbal influence, which includes choosing an object, attracting attention, and influencing it in order to force the offender to immediately change his behavior.
Attracting the attention of an object with a call, shout, joke, threat, etc. often becomes the initial stage of verbal communication. For example various exercises it is important to grasp how this simple verbal action is modified depending on the external circumstances accompanying it and the relationship with the object. This action will become more active the more resistance it causes; but activity will also be expressed in different ways.
It is advisable to build exercises on oppositions. It is important to feel the difference in how I will attract the attention of a person older or younger in age or position, unfamiliar or, on the contrary, loved one, who either strives to communicate with me or resists it. Let students observe in life and reproduce in class how a petitioner who is dependent on a partner, or, on the contrary, an independent one, attracts attention when he turns to a person who owes him something. How does a street seller attract buyers? And how does an actor behave after a successfully played role, or a student who has done well in an exam, eager to hear your praise; or a lover, expecting a decisive answer or wanting to overcome the cold attitude towards him? How to attract your partner's attention to tell him a secret, while distracting others? Etc. Depending on the circumstances, our appeal to the persons whose attention we want to attract will be infinitely varied.
Let's move on now to more difficult exercises. A young man tries to reconcile with the girl he insulted. (The reasons and details of the quarrel must be precisely specified.) At the beginning, the exercise is performed without words, using physical actions. To justify such a mimic dialogue, one can assume that there are third parties in the room, busy with their own affairs, and it is necessary to explain to each other in such a way as not to attract their attention. Under these conditions, he can, for example, approach a girl, touch her arm or shoulder, drawing attention to himself, and move closer to her in order to achieve reconciliation. She may* reject his attempt, pull away, or turn away! from him, showing with all her appearance that she does not agree to reconciliation. He will insist on his own, trying to soften her with the help of new additions, facial expressions, gestures, force her to look at himself, smile, etc.
If, when repeating the exercise, “eliminate strangers” and bring partners face to face, then a text corresponding to their relationship will appear, created improvisationally. As a result, a dialogue might look something like this:
He (entering the room). Listen, Tanya, can I talk to you?
She. No, it's no use.
He. Why?
She. The conversation will lead nowhere.
He. Well, it’s enough for you to get angry over trifles.
She. Leave me alone. Leave.
The execution of the dialogue will primarily depend on the degree of offense he caused her. Here it is more advantageous to vary the circumstances with each repetition, so that the outcome of the conversation is not predetermined and the relationship is determined during the course of the dialogue itself. Depending on the background of their relationship, on how he enters the room, how he fits in, starts the conversation and what meaning he puts into the first remark, her answer will largely depend, which should not be prepared in advance in terms of intonation . It is possible that her last response, “go away,” if her partner manages to soften her and appease her with his behavior, will sound like “stay.”
In exercises of this kind, only the text is recorded, everything else is improvisation. This helps to accomplish the main pedagogical task: learn to control your partner’s behavior using actions and words.
Using the same example, you can set a number of new tasks for performers that will help them master verbal influence on a partner. So, for example, a girl is given a task secret from her partner - to stop him at the door and not let him approach her until the end of the dialogue, or, conversely, to force him to move two or three steps closer, or to come very close to her. You can secretly give him the opposite task, for example, to kiss his partner at the end of the dialogue, which will further intensify their verbal and physical struggle.
You can create other simple, concise dialogues that would provide an opportunity to practice simple influence at a partner in order to bring him closer or move him away from you, force him to look him in the eye, force him to smile, laugh, piss him off or calm him down, persuade him to sit down, get up, run, encourage or cool him, etc., each time achieving a change in behavior partner.
It is a mistake to understand the “method of physical actions” as exclusive concern for one’s actions - as long as I act correctly, and let the partners be responsible for themselves. If we follow Stanislavsky, then the primary concern of the actor is to monitor the behavior of his partner in order to best influence him in accordance with my interests.
When words miss the mark and do not satisfy the sense of truth, you need to temporarily abandon words and return to physical interaction. If the remarks are full of verbs in the imperative mood, for example: “come here”, “sit on this chair”, “calm down”, etc., they can always be translated into the language of glances, facial expressions, and gestures. When, with the help of physical actions, communication between partners is restored, it is not difficult to return again to the text, which this time will become the exponent of the action.
The simplest verbal actions easily turn into physical actions and vice versa. Only when referring to more complex forms of verbal interaction, when speech is based on active work imagination and is aimed primarily at restructuring the consciousness of the partner, words can no longer be completely replaced by wordless actions. However, looking ahead, we emphasize that strengthening the process physical interaction necessary for all types and at all stages of verbal communication. Speech cannot be organic if it is divorced from the soil that gave birth to it.
He sees the advantage of the new method in the fact that the analysis of the play ceases to be purely thought process, it takes place in the plane of real life relationships. This process involves not only the actor’s thought, but also all the elements of his spiritual and physical nature. Faced with the need to act, the actor himself, on his own initiative, begins to find out the content of the stage episode and the entire complex of proposed circumstances that determine the line of his behavior in this episode.
In the process of effective analysis, the actor penetrates deeper and deeper into the content of the work, continuously replenishing his ideas about the life of the characters and expanding his knowledge of the play. He begins not only to understand, but also to really feel the emerging through line of his behavior in the play and the final goal to which he strives. This leads him to a deep organic comprehension of the ideological essence of the play and the role.
With this method of approaching a role, the process of cognition not only does not separate from the creative processes of its experience and embodiment, but forms with them a single organic process of creativity, in which the entire being of the human artist participates. As a result, analysis and creative synthesis are not artificially divided into a number of successive periods, as was the case before, but are in close interaction and interrelation. The line between the previously existing conventional division of an actor’s stage well-being into internal, psychological, and external, physical is also being erased. Merging together, they form what Stanislavsky calls r_e_a_l_n_y_m o_sh_u_sh_e_n_i_e_m z_i_z_n_i p_p_e_s_s and r_o_l_i, which is an indispensable condition for creating a living realistic image.
The new method of work outlined in this essay is a further development of those techniques that were first reflected in the director's plan for "Othello" and in the chapter "Creating the life of the human body" ("Work on the role" based on the material of "Othello"). The not entirely defined concept of “life of the human body” receives a more specific disclosure and theoretical justification in this manuscript. Stanislavsky here deciphers the concept of “life of the human body” as the embodied logic of the physical behavior of the actor, which, when correctly implemented at the moment of creativity, inevitably entails the logic of thoughts and the logic of feelings.
If previously Stanislavsky suggested that in the process of stage creativity the actor rely on the score of volitional tasks, the desires and aspirations emerging in him, now he invites him to take a more stable and reliable path of creating the logic of physical actions. He argues that the logic and sequence of carefully selected and recorded physical actions, resulting from an accurate account of the proposed circumstances of the role, form a solid basis, a kind of rails along which the person will move. creative process.
To master the entire complexity of the inner life of the image, Stanislavsky turned to the logic of physical actions, accessible to control and influence from our consciousness. He came to the conclusion that the correct implementation of the logic of physical actions in certain proposed circumstances, according to the law of the organic connection of the physical and mental, reflexively evokes experiences similar to the role. It is no coincidence that during the period of creating his new method, Stanislavsky showed a keen interest in the doctrine of reflexes of Sechenov and Pavlov, in which he found confirmation of his quest in the field of acting. In his notes from 1935-1936 there are extracts from I.M. Sechenov’s book “Reflexes of the Brain” and notes about the experiments of I.P. Pavlov.
Stanislavsky illustrates his new method with the example of Tortsov's work with his students on the first scene of the second act of Gogol's The Inspector General. Tortsov seeks from students the utmost concreteness and organicity of physical actions arising from the circumstances of the role’s life. Introducing more and more new proposed circumstances that deepen and aggravate stage actions, Tortsov selects the most typical of them, which most clearly and deeply convey inner life roles. Acting on their own behalf, but at the same time implementing the logic of the role’s behavior in the proposed circumstances of the play, the actors imperceptibly begin to cultivate new qualities in themselves, characteristic features that bring them closer to the images. The moment of transition to specificity occurs involuntarily. Students watching Tortsov’s experience of working on the role of Khlestakov suddenly notice that his eyes become stupid, capricious, naive, a special gait appears, a manner of sitting down, straightening his tie, admiring his shoes, etc. “The most surprising thing is,” writes Stanislavsky - that he himself did not notice what he was doing."
In this essay, Stanislavsky persistently emphasizes that the actor’s work using the new method should be based on deep practical mastery of the elements of the “system” set out in the first and second parts of “The Actor’s Work on Oneself.” He assigns a special role in the practical mastery of the method to exercises on so-called pointless actions; they accustom the actor to the logic and sequence of performing physical actions, make him again aware of those simple organic processes that have long been automated in life and are performed unconsciously. This type of exercise, according to Stanislavsky, develops the most important professional qualities in actors, such as attention, imagination, sense of truth, faith, endurance, consistency and completeness in performing actions, etc.
Stanislavsky's manuscript "Working on a Role" based on the material from "The Inspector General" contains answers to many fundamental questions that arise when studying the so-called method of physical actions, but does not give a comprehensive idea of the entire process of working on a role using this method. The manuscript represents only the first, introductory part of the work conceived by Stanislavsky, dedicated to the question of the real feeling of the life of the play and the role of the actor in the process of work. Here, for example, the question of the cross-cutting action and the super-task of the role and performance, to which Stanislavsky attached crucial in stage art. There is also no answer here to the question about verbal action and the transition from one’s own, improvised text to the author’s text, about the creation of an expressive form stage work and so on.
Based on a number of data, it can be judged that in subsequent chapters or sections of his work Stanislavsky intended to dwell in detail on the process of organic communication, without which there is no genuine action, and on the problem of verbal expressiveness. Speaking in 1938 about plans for his future work, he outlined as a priority task the development of the problem of verbal action and a gradual transition to the author's text.
Stanislavski considered verbal action as the highest form of physical action. The word interested him as the most perfect means of influencing a partner, as the richest element of actor’s expressiveness in its capabilities. However, for Stanislavsky there was no expressiveness outside of action: “A_k_t_i_v_n_o_s_t_b, p_o_d_l_i_n_n_o_e, p_r_o_d_u_k_t_i_v_n_o_e, ts_e_l_e_s_o_o_b_r_a_z_n_o_e d_e_y_s_t_v_i_e - with "_a_m_o_e g_l_a_v_n_o_e in t_v_o_r_ch_e_s_t_v_e, with_t_a_l_o b_y_t_t, and in r_e_ch_i," he wrote. Collected works , vol. 3, p. 92.). In order to make a word effective, to learn how to influence a partner with it, one cannot limit oneself only to the transmission of naked logical thought; effective speech is based, as Stanislavsky teaches, on conveying specific visions or figurative ideas to the partner. The technique of creating a “film of visions” is the most important prerequisite for transforming someone else’s, author’s text into your own, living text on stage, becoming an instrument of active influence and struggle.
Stanislavsky’s teaching on verbal action was reflected in the second part of “The Actor’s Work on Himself,” but he did not have time to fully answer this question in relation to the actor’s work on the role. In the same way, a number of other issues related to the problem of creating a stage image remained undeveloped from the perspective of the new method. In what direction Stanislavsky intended to further develop his work can be judged by the outline plan for working on the role, written by him shortly before his death and published in this volume.
This plan is interesting as Stanislavsky’s only attempt of its kind to chart the entire path of working on the role using a new method. The beginning of the summary coincides with what Stanislavsky set out in the manuscript “Working on a Role” based on the material from “The Inspector General”. The moments he listed here, connected with the clarification of the plot of the play, with the discovery and internal justification of the physical actions of the role, with the gradual clarification of both the actions themselves and the proposed circumstances that determine them, characterize his new method of effective analysis.
The subsequent part of the summary reveals the further path of the actor’s work on the role, which was not reflected in the manuscript. After the actor has gone through the physical actions of the role, really felt himself in the life of the play and found his own attitude to its facts and events, he begins to feel a continuous line of his aspirations (the end-to-end action of the role), directed towards a specific goal (overarching goal). At the initial stage of work, this final goal is more anticipated than realized, therefore Stanislavsky, directing the attention of the actors to it, warns them against the final formulation of the super task. He proposes to first define only a “temporary, rough super task”, so that the entire further creative process is aimed at deepening and concretizing it. Stanislavsky here opposes the formal, rational approach to defining the super task, which is often declared by the director before starting work on the play, but does not become the inner essence of the actor’s creativity.
Having set his sights on the ultimate task, the actor begins to more accurately probe the line of end-to-end action and for this he divides the play into the largest pieces, or, rather, episodes. To determine the episodes, Stanislavski asks actors to answer the question of what the main events take place in the play, and then, putting themselves in the position of the character, find their place in these events. If it is difficult for an actor to immediately master a large piece of action, Stanislavsky suggests moving to a smaller division and determining the nature of each physical action, that is, finding those essential constituent elements that make up the living, organic action of an actor on stage.
After each role action has been tested and studied, it is necessary to find a logical, consistent connection between them. The creation of a logical and consistent line of organic physical action should form a solid basis for all further work. Stanislavsky recommends deepening, carefully selecting and polishing the logic of actions by introducing more and more new, clarifying proposed circumstances and bringing the selected actions to a feeling of complete truth and faith in them.
Only after the actor has firmly established himself in the logic of his stage behavior, Stanislavsky suggests moving on to mastering the author’s text. This way of working, from his point of view, protects the actor from mechanical memorization and babbling of words. Turning to the author's text during this period of work becomes an urgent need for the actor, who now needs words to implement the logic of organic actions he has already outlined. This creates the best conditions for turning other people's copyrighted words into own words an actor who begins to use them as a means of influencing partners.
Stanislavsky outlines the path of gradual mastery of the text, highlighting a special moment of turning to speech intonation, which he conventionally calls “tatting.” The meaning of this technique is that the actor’s words are temporarily taken away in order to direct all his attention to creating the most expressive, colorful and varied speech intonation that conveys the subtext of the role. Stanislavsky demands that throughout the work “the verbal text remains subordinate” to the internal line of the role, “and not blurted out independently, mechanically.” He attaches great importance to strengthening the line of thought and creating a “film of visions of inner vision” (figurative representations), which directly affect the expressiveness of stage speech. Stanislavsky proposes to focus all attention on verbal action for a certain period, for which purpose readings of the play at the table with “the most accurate transfer to partners of all the developed lines, actions, details and the entire score.” Only after this does the process of gradual merging of physical and verbal actions occur.
The summary pays special attention to the issue of finding and finally establishing the most expressive and convenient mise-en-scenes for actors, which were prompted by the logic of their stage behavior.
In this summary, Stanislavsky proposes to conduct a series of conversations in the final period of work on the play on the ideological, literary, historical and other lines of the play in order, based on the work done, to more accurately determine its ultimate task and adjust the line of through action.
If, by the time work on a role is completed, external characterization is not created by itself, intuitively, as a result of a faithfully experienced life of the role, Stanislavsky offers a number of conscious techniques for “grafting” characteristic traits into oneself that contribute to the creation of a typical external image of the role. This rough outline of work on the role cannot be considered as a document expressing Stanislavsky’s final views on the new method of work. In my teaching practice recent years he did not always strictly adhere to the scheme of work outlined here and introduced a number of clarifications and amendments to it, which were not reflected in this summary. For example, when working with students of the Opera and Drama Studio on Shakespeare’s tragedies “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet,” at the first stage he attached great importance to establishing the process of organic communication between partners; He did not consider the moment of transition from action with his own words to the author’s text to be finally established. But, despite the adjustments he made later, this document is valuable in that it most fully expresses Stanislavsky’s views on the process of creating a role as they developed towards the end of his life.
In addition to three stage works on the work on the role and the play (on the material of “Woe from Wit”, “Othello”, “The Government Inspector”), Stanislavsky’s archive contains a number of other manuscripts, which he considered as material for the second part of the “system”. They highlight various issues of stage creativity that were not reflected in his main works on working on the role.
In addition to the manuscript “The History of One Production. (Pedagogical Novel),” which was mentioned above, of great interest in this regard is the manuscript in which Stanislavsky raises the question of false innovation in the theater and sets out his views on the problem of form and content in the performing arts. This manuscript, intended for the book “An Actor’s Work on a Role,” was apparently written in the early 1930s, during the period of Stanislavsky’s acute struggle with formalist trends in the Soviet theater. Stanislavsky here comes to the defense of the playwright and actor, protecting them from arbitrariness and violence on the part of the director and artist - the formalists. He rebels against the vicious methods of work of the director and artist, in which the playwright’s plan and the actor’s creativity are often sacrificed for the sake of demonstrating external, far-fetched principles and techniques. Such “innovative” directors and artists, according to Stanislavsky, use the actor “not as a creative force, but as a pawn,” which they arbitrarily move from place to place, without requiring internal justification for the actor’s mise-en-scène.
Stanislavsky pays special attention to the artificial sharpening that was fashionable in those years, the hyperbolization of the external stage form, called “grotesque” by the formalists. He draws a line between genuine realistic grotesquery, which, from his point of view, is the highest level theatrical arts, and false grotesque, that is, all sorts of aesthetic-formalistic antics, mistakenly taken for grotesque. In Stanislavsky’s understanding, the true grotesque is “a complete, bright, accurate, typical, all-exhaustive, most simple external expression of the large, deep and well-experienced inner content of the artist’s work... For the grotesque, one must not only feel and experience human passions in all of them constituent elements, we must also condense and make their identification more visual, irresistible in expressiveness, daring and bold, bordering on exaggeration." According to Stanislavsky, "genuine grotesque is the best," and "false grotesque is the worst" art. He calls not to confuse fashionable formalistic pseudo-innovation, which leads to violence against the creative nature of the actor, with real progress in art, which is achieved only in a natural, evolutionary way.
Among the preparatory materials for the book “An Actor’s Work on a Role,” two draft manuscripts dating back to the late 20s and early 30s deserve attention. These manuscripts are devoted to the question of the role of the conscious and unconscious in the work of an actor. During these years, attacks on Stanislavsky's "system" from a number of art "theorists" intensified. Stanislavsky was accused of intuitionism, underestimating the role of consciousness in creativity, attempts were made to connect his “system” with the reactionary subjective-idealistic philosophy of Bergson, Freud, Proust, etc. Explaining his point of view on the nature of creativity, Stanislavsky gives a clear answer to the accusations brought against him . He opposes both the one-sided rationalistic approach to the actor’s creativity, characteristic of representatives of vulgar sociology, and against the idealistic understanding of art associated with the denial of the role of consciousness in creativity.
Stanislavsky assigns consciousness an organizing and directing role in creativity. Emphasizing that not everything in the creative creative process is amenable to the control of consciousness, Stanislavsky clearly outlines the scope of his activity. In his opinion, the creative goal, tasks, proposed circumstances, the score of the actions performed, that is, everything that the actor does on stage, should be conscious. But the moment of performing these actions, which occurs each time under the unique conditions of the flow of “life today”, with the complex interweaving of various actor’s feelings and unforeseen accidents affecting these feelings, cannot be recorded once and for all; this moment, according to Stanislavsky, must be improvisational to some extent in order to preserve the spontaneity, freshness and uniqueness of the creative process. This is where Stanislavsky’s formula arises: “what is conscious, what is unconscious.” Moreover, the unconsciousness of “k_a_k” not only does not mean, from Stanislavsky’s point of view, spontaneity and arbitrariness in the creation of a stage form, but, on the contrary, is the result of the artist’s great conscious work on it. The artist consciously creates conditions under which “subconsciously,” involuntarily, feelings arise in him that are similar to the experiences of the character. Essential Elements stage form ("how") are organically connected with the content, with the motives and objectives of actions ("what") - which means they are a consequence of the artist's conscious mastery of the logic of the character's behavior in the proposed circumstances of the play.
Finally, the unconsciousness of “how” does not exclude a certain amount of consciousness that controls the actor’s play both in the process of preparing the role and at the moment of public creativity.
In one of the manuscripts published in this volume, Stanislavsky makes a very important admission for understanding his “system” that when developing his doctrine of acting creativity, he consciously focused attention on issues of experience. He argues that this most important area of artistic creativity has been the least studied and therefore often served as a cover for all sorts of amateurish idealistic judgments about creativity as inspiration “from above,” as a miraculous insight of the artist, not subject to any rules or laws. But the primary attention to issues of experience did not mean for Stanislavsky an underestimation of the role of intellect and will in the creative process. He emphasizes that the mind and will are the same full members of the “triumvirate”, as is the feeling that they are inseparable from each other and any attempt to diminish the importance of one at the expense of the other inevitably leads to violence against the creative nature of the actor.
In his contemporary theater, Stanislavsky saw the predominance of a rationalistic, rational approach to creativity due to the derogation of the emotional principle in art. Therefore, in order to equalize the legal rights of all members of the “triumvirate,” Stanislavsky, by his own admission, turned his main attention to the most lagging of them (feeling).
In the manuscript “Stamp Displacement,” he notes a new important feature of the method he proposes. According to him, strengthening the logic of the physical actions of the role leads to the displacement of craft cliches that constantly lie in wait for the actor. In other words, a method of work that directs the actor on the path of living organic creativity is the best antidote to the temptation to play with images, feelings and states, characteristic of artisan actors.
The manuscript “Justification of Actions” published in this volume and an excerpt from the dramatization of the program of the Opera and Drama Studio are interesting as examples reflecting Stanislavsky’s pedagogical practice in recent years. In the first of them, Stanislavsky shows how from performing the simplest physical action given by the teacher, the student, by justifying it, comes to clarify his stage task, the proposed circumstances, and finally, the end-to-end action and the super-task for the sake of which the given action is performed. Here the idea is once again emphasized that the point is not in the physical actions themselves as such, but in their internal justification, which gives life to the role.
The second of these manuscripts is a rough outline of a dramatization of a drama school program devoted to an actor's work on a role. It is a direct continuation of the dramatization published in the third volume of the Collected Works. The path of work on “The Cherry Orchard” outlined here is based on the practical experience of the educational production of this play, which was carried out at the Opera and Drama Studio in 1937-1938 by M. P. Lilina under the direct supervision of K. S. Stanislavsky. The summary provides a visual illustration of some stages of the work that were not covered in the manuscript “Working on a Role” based on the material from “The Inspector General”. Here are examples of sketches of the role's past life, techniques for creating a line of thoughts and visions that lead actors to action with words are revealed. From this summary it becomes clear that the actor's work on the role is not limited to establishing a line of physical actions, but that at the same time continuous lines of thoughts and visions must be created. Merging into one organic whole, the lines of physical and verbal actions form a common line of end-to-end action, striving for the main goal of creativity - the super task. Consistent, deep mastery of the end-to-end action and ultimate task of the role is the main content of the preparatory creative work of the actor.
The materials published in this volume on the actor’s work on the role reflect Stanislavsky’s thirty-year journey of intense research and reflection in the field of method of stage work. Stanislavsky considered it his historical mission to pass the baton of living realistic art traditions from hand to hand to the young theatrical generation. He saw his task not as resolving everything completely. difficult questions stage creativity, but to point out the right path along which actors and directors can endlessly develop and improve their skills. Stanislavsky constantly said that he had laid only the first bricks of the future building of theater science and that, perhaps, the most important discoveries in the field of laws and techniques of stage creativity will be made by others after his death.
Constantly studying, revising, developing and improving the methods of creative work, he never rested on his achievements in understanding both the art itself and the creative process that creates it. His desire for constant updating stage techniques and acting technique does not give us the right to assert that he came to the final solution to the problem of stage creativity and would not have gone further if death had not cut short his quest. The very logic of the development of Stanislavsky’s ideas presupposes further efforts of his students and followers to improve what was proposed them method of work.
Stanislavsky's unfinished work on "The Actor's Work on a Role" represents the first serious attempt to systematize and generalize the accumulated experience in the field of theatrical methodology, both his own and the experience of his great predecessors and contemporaries.
In the materials brought to the attention of the reader, one can find many contradictions, inconsistencies, provisions that may seem controversial, paradoxical, requiring deep understanding and testing in practice. On the pages of published manuscripts, Stanislavsky often polemicizes with himself, rejecting in his later works much of what he asserted in his early works.
A tireless researcher and keen artist, he often fell into polemical exaggerations, both in affirming his new creative ideas and in denying old ones. With the further development and testing of his discoveries in practice, Stanislavsky overcame these extremes and preserved that valuable thing that constituted the essence of his creative quest and pushed art forward.
The stage technique was created by Stanislavsky not in order to replace the creative process, but in order to equip the actor and director with the most advanced working techniques and direct them along the shortest path to achieving an artistic goal. Stanislavsky constantly emphasized that art is created by the creative nature of the artist, which no technique, no method, no matter how perfect they may be, can compete with.
Recommending new stage techniques, Stanislavsky warned against formal, dogmatic application of them in practice. He spoke about the need for a creative approach to his “system” and method, excluding pedantry and scholasticism that are inappropriate in art. He argued that the success of applying the method in practice is possible only if it becomes personal method the actor and director who use it, and will receive its refraction in their creative individuality. We should also not forget that although the method represents “something general,” its application in creativity is a purely individual matter. And the more flexible, richer and more varied, that is, the more individual, its application in creativity, the more fruitful the method itself becomes. The method does not erase the individual characteristics of the artist, but, on the contrary, provides wide open space to identify them on the basis of the laws of organic human nature.
The basis of K. S. Stanislavsky’s teaching on verbal action is the purposefulness of speech and the goal that prompts the reader to active verbal action. “Speaking means acting,” Stanislavsky pointed out. In order to excite listeners, give them pleasure, convince them of something, direct their thoughts and feelings in the direction the speaker wants, the sounding word must be alive, effective, active, haunting specific goal. The goal that encourages the reader or speaker to take active verbal action was called by K. S. Stanislavsky an effective task. An effective (creative, performing) task is a means to encourage creative work in the process of preparing a work for performance. The effective task is directly related to the ideological and aesthetic intention of the author of the work and is subordinate to the super task - the main purpose of reading, for the sake of which this literary work is performed. The super task expresses the desire to evoke in listeners the most sublime, noble feelings- love for the homeland, woman, mother, respect for work - or feelings of contempt for laziness, betrayal, lies.
The definition of the ultimate task of performance begins with a motive that evokes the desire to talk about what I read and felt (“Why do I want to tell, what goal am I pursuing with my performance, what makes me talk about it and in this way, what do I want to achieve from listeners "),
A literary critic studies the action in order to understand the character of the character and the ideological orientation of the work. The performer also considers all this from the position of the narrator, for whom it is important to reveal this character to the listeners. There is an active, detailed disclosure of the subtext of the work. However, the specific plan of action has not yet been specified, but exists in the form of a general plan. Only then, when the logic of actions, feelings, circumstances is clarified, does a secondary concretization of the effective task (super task) occur.
Vision plays a decisive role in the effectiveness of expressive reading. How brighter than the picture, drawn by the performer in his own imagination, the deeper his emotion when describing these pictures, the easier it is for him to complete the task - to “draw” these pictures to the listeners with the words of the text. A bright, impressive vision brings the images of a work to life, helps to better understand the author’s text, make it “your own” and thus have a stronger impact on listeners. Imagination actively participates in the creation of a bright, impressive vision, helps the reader complete the pictures, characters, events outlined by the author and living reality. Ideas are transmitted in the process of expressive reading through a variety of associations associated with the personal impressions and life experience of the reader. Some emerging associations entail others, which is due to the vital connections of the phenomena of reality. Associations lead the reader’s imagination and at the same time limit this imagination, preventing him from breaking away from living reality. Vivid, impressive visions and associations are associated not only with visual, but also with auditory, olfactory, and taste perceptions. For development active imagination the reader must “accept” the circumstances proposed by the author. K. S. Stanislavsky considered this technique very useful and effective, repeatedly emphasizing “ magical power» phrases “if”.
When working on visions, the reader’s attention is focused on completing the task - to “see” the reality reflected by the author as correctly as possible. When the task becomes the transfer of visions to listeners, then attention is directed not to once again “consider” the life reflected in the text, but in accordance with the intended purpose of reading, realized in a specific verbal action, to convey, “implement” these visions into the consciousness of the listeners, to “infect” them with these visions.
Vivid, impressive visions and associations help to reveal the subtext - everything that is hidden behind the words, namely, thoughts that are often not expressed. words, secret intentions, desires, dreams, various feelings, passions and, finally, specific external and internal actions heroes in whom all this is united, synthesized and embodied.
Revealing the subtext and reviving it in visions occurs when the performer is inspired by the task for which he is reading a given literary work. The reader’s individuality, his lively, active attitude towards the work is revealed in the bright, original subtext. But it should be remembered that incorrect revelation of the subtext entails a distortion of the ideological and aesthetic essence of the work.
A necessary component of the effectiveness of expressive reading is communication between the performer and the listeners. The fuller and deeper this communication is, the more convincing and brighter the words of the author’s text sound when reading. Developing the ability to install internal contact communication with listeners during the performance of a particular literary work actually begins already in the process of working on the purposeful pronunciation of a literary text. Genuine and full-fledged communication organically arises as the performer’s need to share with the audience those thoughts, feelings and intentions that he accumulated in the process of working on a literary work.
Communication is necessarily interaction with listeners, determined by an effective task, and not just a verbal address to the audience. Even at the very beginning of the work, when reading a text from a book, the performer’s attention is constantly directed to the mental message of the content of the text to the listeners.
Most of the works studied at school are read in direct communication with the audience. This type of reading is the most effective and targeted, as it teaches you to master the audience, makes speech lively, natural, and intelligible.
In the process of performing some works, the reader tries to understand them, strives to clarify some question, come to a certain conclusion, and convince himself of the correctness of a certain idea. At the same time, the performer does not forget about the listener, he influences him, but not directly, but indirectly - this is self-communication.
When communicating with an imaginary listener, the performer addresses the absent interlocutor, trying to influence him. If during self-communication the performer seems to be talking to himself, then when communicating with an imaginary listener he is talking to someone who is not in front of him now. During communication with an imaginary listener, works written in the form of a direct address by the author to a specific person or object are read. For example, the poems by A. S. Pushkin “In the depths Siberian ores...”, N. A. Nekrasova “In Memory of Dobrolyubov”.
Thus, to read a literary work expressively means to be able to act with words in the reading process, that is: 1) pronounce the text of a literary work purposefully, defining effective tasks, a super task and the activity of their implementation; 2) “revive” in your imagination the reality depicted in the work and convey your “visions” to listeners; 3) be able to awaken an emotional response in listeners to the content of a literary text; 4) identify subtext; 5) establish contact with the audience during the reading process.
Mastery and knowledge of a work of art and its creative embodiment in sounding word requires performance analysis. As a creative, purposeful process, performance analysis covers several stages of working on a text to prepare it for expressive reading: 1) selection of literary analysis data - information about the era, life, worldview of the artist, his place in the socio-political and literary struggle; 2) work on the language of the work - identifying difficult vocabulary, words and expressions that are incomprehensible to national students, analysis of the language, means of artistic expression, the individual linguistic manner of the writer, the language of the characters; 3) penetration into the life depicted by the writer, a vivid vision of the life phenomena depicted by him, the relationships of the characters, facts, events, penetration into the thoughts and feelings of the writer, determination of the effective tasks and super-tasks of reading, subtext, proposed circumstances, type of communication; 4) deep work over logic; 5) work on reading technique.
It is also possible to combine self-communication and communication with an imaginary listener in reading one work. Thus, reading A. S. Pushkin’s poem “To Chaadaev” begins with self-communication, and ends with communication with an imaginary listener (“Comrade, believe!”).
Literary research is carried out at the modern level of science. Works by M. M. Bakhtin, Yu. T. Tynyanov, Yu. M. Lotman, Yu. V. Mann, M. B. Khrapchenko, A. V. Chicherin, P. G. Pustovoit, D. S. Likhachev and others researchers help to consider each work of art in the context of the writer’s entire work, his worldview, historical era. This makes it possible to correctly understand the content of a literary work and give it a correct aesthetic assessment. In the process of working on the language, individual style writer, difficult for national students vocabulary, the teacher should use articles on linguistic analysis literary text, possess linguistic and historical commentary.
Over the past decades, issues of linguistic and linguistic-stylistic analysis of works of art have been successfully developed; The teacher will find the necessary material in the works of V.V. Vinogradov, N.M. Shansky, L.Yu. Maksimov, L.A. Novikov, L.G. Barlas and other philologists.
When preparing to read a specific literary work, emphasis is placed on certain stages of analysis. So, if the reader knows quite fully the biography of the writer, the era in which he lived, is well versed in the content of the work, he understands all the words in pronunciation, then he will pay the main attention to effective analysis, that is, he will determine the super task of reading - the main goal, for the sake of which will be read to the listeners this work, effective (performing) tasks of each part of the text; will find vivid, accurate visions and associations based on the life and events of a literary work; will believe in the proposed circumstances; will take the position of a participant, a witness to the events taking place; will be imbued with the thoughts and feelings of the author and his characters; will reveal his attitude to the content of the work; will master the logic and technique of speech to effectively convey the text to listeners, purposefully influencing their thoughts, feelings, will, imagination.
In the book: Nikolskaya S. T. et al. Expressive reading: Textbook. manual for pedagogical students. in-tov /S. T. Nikolskaya, A. V. Mai-orova, V. V. Osokin; Ed. N. M. Shansky.—L.: Enlightenment. Leningr. department, 1990.— P.13.