The terms plot and composition. Composition and plot of a work of art

In literary studies, they say different things about composition, but there are three main definitions:

1) Composition is the arrangement and correlation of parts, elements and images of a work (components artistic form), the sequence of introducing units of the depicted and speech means text.

2) Composition is called construction work of art, the correlation of all parts of a work into a single whole, determined by its content and genre.

3) Composition - the construction of a work of art, a certain system of means of revealing, organizing images, their connections and relationships that characterize life process, shown in the work.

All these scary literary concepts, in essence, is a fairly simple decoding: composition is the arrangement of novel passages in a logical order, in which the text becomes integral and acquires internal meaning.

How, following instructions and rules, we collect from small parts a construction set or a puzzle, this is how we assemble text passages, be they chapters, parts or sketches, into a whole novel.

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The composition of a work can be external and internal.

External composition of the book

External composition (aka architectonics) is a breakdown of the text into chapters and parts, highlighting additional structural parts and an epilogue, introduction and conclusion, epigraphs and lyrical digressions. Another external composition is the division of the text into volumes (separate books with a global idea, a branched plot and large quantities heroes and characters).

External composition is a way of dosing information.

A novel text written on 300 pages is unreadable without a structural breakdown. At a minimum, he needs parts, at a maximum - chapters or meaningful segments, separated by spaces or asterisks (***).

By the way, short chapters are more convenient for perception - up to ten pages - after all, we, as readers, having overcome one chapter, no, no, let’s count how many pages are in the next - and then read or sleep.

Internal composition of the book

Internal composition, unlike external composition, includes many more elements and techniques for arranging text. All of them, however, come down to a common goal - to arrange the text in a logical order and reveal author's intention, but they go to it in different ways - plot, figurative, speech, thematic, etc. Let's analyze them in more detail.

1. Plot elements of the internal composition:

prologue - introduction, most often - backstory. (But some authors use a prologue to take an event from the middle of the story, or even from the ending - an original compositional move.) The prologue is an interesting, but optional element as external composition, and external;
exposition - the initial event in which the characters are introduced and a conflict is outlined;
plot - events in which the conflict begins;
development of actions - course of events;
climax – highest point tension, clash of opposing forces, peak of emotional intensity of the conflict;
denouement - the result of the climax;
epilogue - summary of the story, conclusions on the plot and assessment of events, outlines later life heroes. Optional element.

2. Figurative elements:

images of heroes and characters - advance the plot, are the main conflict, reveal the idea and the author's intention. The system of characters - each image separately and the connections between them - important element internal composition;
images of the setting in which the action develops are descriptions of countries and cities, images of the road and accompanying landscapes, if the heroes are on the way, interiors - if all the events take place, for example, within the walls of a medieval castle. Images of the setting are the so-called descriptive “meat” (the world of history), atmosphere (the feeling of history).

The figurative elements work mainly for the plot.

So, for example, the image of a hero is assembled from details - an orphan, without family or tribe, but with magical power and the goal is to learn about your past, about your family, and find your place in the world. And this goal, in fact, becomes a plot goal - and a compositional one: from the search for the hero, from the development of the action - from progressive and logical progress - the text is formed.

And the same goes for images of the environment. They both create the space of history and at the same time limit it to certain boundaries - medieval castle, city, country, world.

Specific images complement and develop the story, making it understandable, visible and tangible, just like correctly (and compositionally) arranged household items in your apartment.

3. Speech elements:

dialogue (polylogue);
monologue;
lyrical digressions(the author’s word that does not relate to the development of the plot or images of the characters, abstract thoughts on a specific topic).

Speech elements are the speed of text perception. Dialogues are dynamic, and monologues and lyrical digressions (including descriptions of action in the first person) are static. Visually, a text that has no dialogue appears cumbersome, inconvenient, and unreadable, and this is reflected in the composition. Without dialogues, it is difficult to understand - the text seems drawn out.

A monologue text, like a bulky sideboard in a small room, relies on many details (and contains even more), which are sometimes difficult to understand. Ideally, so as not to burden the composition of the chapter, monologue (and any descriptive text) should take no more than two or three pages. And in no case are there ten or fifteen, just few people will read them - they will skip them, look diagonally.

Dialogue, on the other hand, is emotional, easy to understand, and dynamic. At the same time, they should not be empty - just for the sake of dynamics and “heroic” experiences, but informative, and revealing the image of the hero.

4. Inserts:

retrospective - scenes from the past: a) long episodes revealing the image of the characters, showing the history of the world or the origins of the situation, can take several chapters; b) short skits(flashbacks) – from one paragraph, often extremely emotional and atmospheric episodes;
short stories, parables, fairy tales, tales, poems are optional elements that interestingly diversify the text (a good example of a compositional fairy tale is Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”); chapters of another story with the composition “a novel within a novel” (“The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov);
dreams (dreams-premonitions, dreams-predictions, dreams-riddles).

Inserts are out plot elements, and remove them from the text - the plot will not change. However, they can frighten, make you laugh, disturb the reader, suggest the development of the plot if there is a complex series of events ahead. The scene should flow logically from the previous one, each next chapter should be connected with the events of the previous one (if there are several storylines- this means that the chapters are held together by the events of the lines);

— arrangement and design of text in accordance with the plot (idea)- this is, for example, a form of diary, course work student, novel within a novel;

— theme of the work- a hidden, end-to-end compositional device that answers the question - what is the story about, what is its essence, what main idea the author wants to convey to readers; V in practical terms decided through choice significant details in key scenes;

— motive- these are stable and repeating elements that create cross-cutting images: for example, images of the road - the motive of travel, the adventurous or homeless life of the hero.

Composition is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon, and it is difficult to understand all its levels. However, you need to understand it in order to know how to structure the text so that it is easily perceived by the reader. In this article we talked about the basics, about what lies on the surface. And in the following articles we will dig a little deeper.

Stay tuned!

Daria Gushchina
writer, science fiction author
(VKontakte page

The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the overall composition of the works, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it, depending on the intentions of the author.

Depending on the relationship between plot and plot in specific work talk about different types and techniques plot composition. The simplest case is when events are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called straight or plot sequence.

The composition of the plot also includes a certain order of telling the reader about what happened. In works with a large volume of text, the sequence of plot episodes usually reveals the author's thoughts gradually and steadily. In novels and stories, poems and dramas, each subsequent episode reveals to the reader something new for him - and so on until the ending, which is usually, as it were, a supporting moment in the composition of the plot.

It should be noted that the time span in works can be quite wide, and the pace of the narrative can be uneven. There are differences between a concise author's presentation that speeds up the run plot time and “dramatized” episodes, compositional the time of which goes hand in hand with the plot time.

In some cases, writers depict parallel theaters of action (that is, they draw two storylines running parallel to each other). Thus, the juxtaposition of the chapters of “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy, dedicated to the death of old Bolkonsky and cheerful name days in the Rostov house, externally motivated by the simultaneity of these events, carries a certain content load. This technique tunes readers into the mood of Tolstoy’s thoughts and the inseparability of life and death.

Writers do not always tell events in direct sequence. Sometimes they seem to intrigue readers, keeping them in the dark about the true essence of events for some time. This compositional technique is called by default. This technique is very effective because it allows you to keep the reader in the dark and in tension until the very end, and at the end surprise you with the unexpectedness of the plot twist. Due to these properties, the technique of silence is almost always used in adventure-punctual works and works detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Realist writers also sometimes keep the reader in the dark about what happened. So, for example, the story of A.S. is built on default. Pushkin "Blizzard". Only at the very end of the story does the reader learn that Marya Gavrilovna was married to a stranger, who, as it turns out, was Burmin. In the novel “War and Peace,” the author for a long time makes the reader, along with the Bolkonsky family, think that Prince Andrei died during the Battle of Austerlitz, and only when the hero appears in Bald Mountains does it become clear that this is not so.

An important means plot composition become chronological rearrangements events. Often these rearrangements are dictated by the desire of the authors to switch the attention of readers from the external side of what happened (what will happen to the characters next?) to its internal, deep background. So, in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" the composition of the plot serves to gradually penetrate into the secrets of the protagonist's inner world. First, readers learn about Pechorin from the story of Maxim Maksimych (“Bela”), then from the narrator, who gives a detailed portrait of the hero (“Maksim Maksimych”), and only after that Lermontov introduces the diary of Pechorin himself (the stories “Taman”, “Princess Mary” , "Fatalist"). Thanks to the sequence of chapters chosen by the author, the reader’s attention is transferred from the adventures undertaken by Pechorin to the mystery of his character, which is “solved” from story to story, right up to “The Fatalist”.

Another technique for violating chronologies or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection, when, as the plot develops, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, to the time preceding the plot and beginning of this work. This kind of “retrospective” (turning back to what happened before) plot composition presupposes the presence in the works of detailed backstories of the characters, given in independent plot episodes. In order to more fully discover the successive connections of eras and generations, in order to reveal the complex and difficult ways In the formation of human characters, writers often resort to a kind of “montage” of the past (sometimes very distant) and the present of the characters: the action is periodically transferred from one time to another. So, in “Fathers and Sons” I.S. Turgenev, as the plot progresses, readers are faced with two significant retrospections - the background stories of the lives of Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. Starting the novel with their youth was not Turgenev’s intention, and it would have cluttered the composition of the novel, and giving an idea of the past of these heroes seemed nevertheless necessary to the author - that’s why he used the technique of retrospection.

The plot sequence can be disrupted in such a way that events at different times are given intermixed; the narrative constantly returns from the moment of the action to various previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past. This plot composition is often motivated by the memories of the characters. It is called free composition and is used to one degree or another by different writers often. However, it happens that free composition becomes the main and determining principle of plot construction; in this case, it is customary to talk about the free composition itself (“Shot” by A.S. Pushkin).

Internal, emotional-semantic, that is, compositional, connections between plot episodes sometimes turn out to be functionally even more important than the actual plot, causal-temporal connections. The composition of such works can be called active, or, to use the term of filmmakers, “ assembly room" An active, montage composition allows writers to embody deep, not directly observable connections between life phenomena, events, and facts (an example is M.A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”). The role and purpose of this kind of composition can be described in the words of A.A. Blok from the preface to the poem “Retribution”: “I am used to comparing facts from all areas of life accessible to my vision at a given time, and I am sure that all of them together always create a single musical pressure” (Complete collected op. in the 8th vol. T.3 – M., 1960, p.297).

In addition to the plot, in the composition of the work there are also so-called extra plot elements, which are often no less, or even more important, than the plot itself. If the plot of the work is dynamic side his compositions, then extra-plot elements - static.

Extra-plot These are elements that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the heroes remain in their previous positions. Distinguish three main varieties extra-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes (otherwise they are also called inserted novellas or inserted plots).

Description- this is an image of the external world (landscape, portrait, world of things) or a stable way of life, that is, those events and actions that occur regularly, day after day and, therefore, are also not related to the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of extra-plot elements; they are present in almost every epic work.

Author's digressions- these are more or less detailed author’s statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; however, these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationship between them. Author's digressions are an optional element in the composition of a work, but when they do appear there (“Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin, “ Dead Souls"N.V. Gogol, "The Master and Margarita" by M.A. Bulgakov and others), they play, as a rule, the most important role and serve to directly express the writer’s position.

Inserted episodes- these are relatively complete fragments of action in which other characters appear, the action is transferred to another time and place, etc. Sometimes inserted episodes even begin to play in the work big role than the main plot, as in “ Dead souls» N.V. Gogol.

In some cases, psychological depiction can also be considered extra-plot elements if state of mind or the hero’s reflections are not the consequence or cause of plot events, they are excluded from the plot chain (for example, most of Pechorin’s internal monologues in “A Hero of Our Time”). However, as a rule, internal monologues and other forms of psychological depiction are somehow included in the plot, since they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.

When analyzing the overall composition of a work, you should first of all determine the relationship between the plot and extra-plot elements, determining which of them is more important, and based on this, continue the analysis in the appropriate direction. Thus, when analyzing “Dead Souls” N.V. Gogol, extra-plot elements should be given primary attention.

At the same time, it should be taken into account that there are also cases when both the plot and extra-plot elements are equally important in a work - for example, in “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin. In this case, the interaction of plot and extra-plot text fragments takes on special significance: as a rule, extra-plot elements are placed between plot events not in an arbitrary, but in a strictly logical order. So, the retreat of A.S. Pushkin’s “We all look at Napoleons...” could appear only after readers had sufficiently learned Onegin’s character from his actions and only in connection with his friendship with Lensky; The digression about Moscow is not only formally timed to coincide with Tatiana’s arrival in the old capital, but also correlates in a complex way with the events of the plot: the image of “native Moscow” from her historical roots contrasted with Onegin’s lack of rootedness in Russian life, etc. In general, extra-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.

Summarizing all that has been said, it is necessary to point out that in the most general form two types of composition can be distinguished - they can be conventionally called simple And complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to combining parts of the work into a single whole, and this combination is always carried out in the simplest and most simple way. naturally. In the area of plotting, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the area of narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire text, in the area of substantive details - a simple list of them without highlighting particularly important ones, supporting, symbolic details and so on.

With a complex composition, in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements, a special artistic sense. For example, a consistent change of narrators and a violation of the chronological sequence in “A Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov focus attention on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin’s character and allow one to “get closer” to it, gradually unraveling the character. In Chekhov’s story “Ionych”, immediately after the description of the Turkins’ “salon”, where Vera Iosifovna is reading her novel, and Kotik is hitting the piano keys with all his might, it is no coincidence that there is a mention of the knocking of knives and the smell of fried onions - this compositional comparison of details contains special meaning, the author's irony is expressed. An example of a complex composition of speech elements can be identified in “A History of One Kind” by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin: “It seemed that the cup of disasters had been drunk to the bottom. But no: there’s still a whole tub at the ready.” Here the first and second sentences collide compositionally, creating a contrast between the solemn, high style (and corresponding intonation) of the metaphorical phrase “the cup of disasters has been drunk to the bottom” and colloquial vocabulary and intonation (“but no”, “tub”). As a result, the comic effect necessary for the author arises.

Simple and complex types of composition are sometimes difficult to identify in a particular work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be, to a certain extent, purely quantitative: we can talk about greater or lesser complexity of the composition of a particular work. There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of fables by I.A. Krylova is simple in all respects, and “Ladies with a Dog” by A.P. Chekhov or “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov is complex in all respects. But here, for example, is this story by A.P. Chekhov's "House with a Mezzanine" is quite simple in terms of plot and narrative composition and complex in the field of composition of speech and details. All this makes the question of the type of composition quite complex, but at the same time very important, since simple and complex types of composition can become style dominants work and, thus, determine its artistic originality.

Exposition - time, place of action, composition and relationships of characters. If the exposure is placed in beginning of the piece, it is called direct, if in the middle it is called delayed.

Omen- hints that foreshadow further development plot.

The plot is an event that provokes the development of a conflict.

Conflict is the opposition of heroes to something or someone. This is the basis of the work: no conflict - nothing to talk about. Types of conflicts:

person (humanized character) versus person (humanized character);
man against nature (circumstances);
man against society;
man versus technology;
man versus supernatural;
man against himself.

Rising Action- a series of events that originates from a conflict. The action builds up and reaches its peak at the climax.

Crisis - the conflict reaches its peak. The opposing sides meet face to face. The crisis occurs either immediately before the climax or simultaneously with it.

The climax is the result of a crisis. This is often the most interesting and significant moment in the work. The hero either breaks down or grits his teeth and prepares to go to the end.

Descending action- a series of events or actions of heroes leading to a denouement.

Denouement - the conflict is resolved: the hero either achieves his goal, is left with nothing, or dies.

Why is it important to know the basics of plotting?

Because over the centuries of the existence of literature, humanity has developed a certain scheme for the impact of a story on the psyche. If the story does not fit into it, it seems sluggish and illogical.

In complex works with many storylines, all of the above elements may appear repeatedly; Moreover, the key scenes of the novel are subject to the same laws of plot construction: let us remember the description of the Battle of Borodino in War and Peace.

Plausibility

Transitions from initiation to conflict to resolution must be believable. For example, you cannot send a lazy hero on a journey just because you want to. Any character must have a good reason to act one way or another.

If Ivanushka the Fool mounts a horse, let him drive strong emotion: love, fear, thirst for revenge, etc.

Logic and common sense are necessary in every scene: if the hero of the novel is an idiot, he, of course, can go into a forest infested with poisonous dragons. But if he man of sense, he will not meddle there without a serious reason.

God ex machina

The denouement is the result of the characters' actions and nothing else. In ancient plays, all problems could be resolved by a deity lowered onto the stage on strings. Since then, the absurd ending, when all conflicts are eliminated with a wave of the wand of a sorcerer, angel or boss, is called “god ex machina.” What suited the ancients only irritates the moderns.

The reader feels deceived if the characters are simply lucky: for example, a lady finds a suitcase with money just when she needs to pay interest on a loan. The reader respects only those heroes who deserve it - that is, they did something worthy.

Composition (Latin Compositio - composition, combination, creation, construction) is the plan of a work, the relationship of its parts, the relationship of images, paintings, episodes. A work of fiction should have as many characters, episodes, scenes as necessary to reveal the content. A. Chekhov advised young writers to write in such a way that the reader, without the author’s explanation, could understand what was happening from the conversations, actions, and actions of the characters.

An essential quality of a composition is accessibility. A work of art should not contain unnecessary pictures, scenes, or episodes. L. Tolstoy compared a work of art to a living organism. “In a real work of art - poetry, drama, painting, song, symphony - you cannot take one verse, one bar out of its place and put it on another without violating the meaning of this work, just as it is impossible not to violate the life of an organic being if you take it out one organ from its place and insert into another "." According to K. Fedin, composition is "the logic of the development of the theme." When reading a work of art, we must feel where, at what time, the hero lives, where the center of events is, which of them. the most important and which ones are less important.

A prerequisite for composition is perfection. L. Tolstoy wrote that the main thing in art is not to say anything superfluous. A writer must depict the world using as few words as possible. No wonder A. Chekhov called brevity the sister of talent. The talent of a writer is found in the mastery of composition of a work of art.

There are two types of composition - event-plot and non-story, non-story or descriptive. The event type of composition is characteristic of most epic and dramatic works. The composition of epic and dramatic works has hourly space and cause-and-effect forms. The event type of composition can have three forms: chronological, retrospective and free (montage).

V. Lesik notes that the essence of the chronological form of an event composition “lies in the fact that events... come one after another in chronological order- the way they happened in life. There may be temporary distances between individual actions or pictures, but there is no violation of the natural sequence in time: what happened earlier in life is presented earlier in the work, and not after subsequent events. Consequently, there is no arbitrary movement of events, no violation of the direct movement of time."

The peculiarity of a retrospective composition is that the writer does not adhere to a chronological sequence. The author can talk about the motives, reasons for events, actions after they have been carried out. The sequence in the presentation of events may be interrupted by the memories of the characters.

The essence of the free (montage) form of event composition is associated with violations of cause-and-effect and spatial relationships between events. The connection between episodes is often associative-emotional rather than logical-semantic in nature. The montage composition is typical of 20th century literature. This type of composition was used in Yu. Japanese's novel "Riders". Here the storylines are connected at the associative level.

A variation of the event type of composition is event-narrative. Its essence lies in the fact that the same event is told by the author, narrator, storyteller, and characters. The event-narrative form of the composition is characteristic of lyrical-epic works.

The descriptive type of composition is characteristic of lyrical works. “The basis for the construction of a lyrical work,” notes V. Lesik, “is not the system or development of events..., but the organization of lyrical components - emotions and impressions, the sequence of presentation of thoughts, the order of transition from one impression to another, from one sensory image to another "." IN lyrical works impressions, feelings, experiences of the lyrical hero are described.

Yu. Kuznetsov in the "Literary Encyclopedia" distinguishes plot-closed and open composition. The plot is closed, characteristic of folklore, works of ancient and classic literature (threefold repetition, a happy ending in fairy tales, alternating choir performances and episodes in ancient Greek tragedy). “The composition is open in plot,” notes Yu. Kuznetsov, “devoid of a clear outline, proportions, flexible, taking into account the genre-style opposition that arises in specific historical conditions literary process. In particular, in sentimentalism (Sternivska composition) and in romanticism, when open works became the negation of closed ones, classicistic...”

What does the composition depend on, what factors determine its features? The originality of the composition is primarily due to the design of the work of art. Panas Mirny, having familiarized himself with the life story of the robber Gnidka, set himself the goal of explaining what caused the protest against the landowners. First, he wrote a story called “Chipka,” in which he showed the conditions for the formation of the hero’s character. Subsequently, the writer expanded the concept of the work, demanding a complex composition, and this is how the novel “Do oxen roar when the manger is full?” appeared.

Features of the composition are determined literary direction Classicists demanded three unities from dramatic works (unity of place, time and action). Events in a dramatic work were supposed to take place over the course of a day, grouped around one hero. The Romantics portrayed exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances. Nature was often shown during natural disasters (storms, floods, thunderstorms); they often occurred in India, Africa, the Caucasus, and the East.

The composition of a work is determined by its genus, type and genre; lyrical works are based on the development of thoughts and feelings. Lyrical works are small in size, their composition is arbitrary, most often associative. In a lyrical work, the following stages of development of feeling can be distinguished:

a) the initial moment (observation, impressions, thoughts or state that became the impetus for the development of feelings);

b) development of feelings;

c) climax (the highest tension in the development of feelings);

In the poem by V. Simonenko “Swans of Motherhood”:

a) the starting point is to sing a lullaby to your son;

b) development of feelings - the mother dreams about the fate of her son, how he will grow up, go on a journey, meet friends, his wife;

c) climax - mother’s opinion about possible death son in a foreign land;

d) summary - You don’t choose your homeland; what makes a person is love for their native land.

Russian literary critic V. Zhirmunsky identifies seven types of composition of lyrical works: anaphoristic, amoebaic, epiphoristic, refrain, ring, spiral, junction (epanastrophe, epanadiplosis), pointe.

Anaphoristic composition is typical for works that use anaphora.

You have renounced your native language. You

Your land will stop giving birth,

Green branch in a pocket on a willow tree,

It fades from your touch.

You have renounced your native language. Zaros

Your path disappeared into a nameless potion...

You don't have tears at funerals,

You don't have a song at your wedding.

(D. Pavlychko)

V. Zhirmunsky considers anaphor to be an indispensable component of amoebaic composition, but in many works it is absent. Characterizing this type of composition, I. Kachurovsky notes that its essence is not in anaphora, “but in the identity of the syntactic structure, replica or counter-replica of two interlocutors, or in a certain pattern of roll call of two choirs." " I. Kachurovsky finds an illustration of the amoebaic composition in the work of the German romantic Ludwig Uland:

Have you seen the tall castle,

A castle over the sea shire?

The clouds float quietly

Pink and gold above it.

Into the mirror-like, peaceful waters

He would like to bow down

And rise into the evening clouds

Into their radiant ruby.

I saw a tall castle

Castle over the sea world.

Hail the deep fog

And a month stood over him.

(Translation by Michael Orestes)

The amoebaine composition is most common in the tenzons and pastorals of the troubadours.

Epiphoristic composition is characteristic of poems with epiphoristic endings.

Breaks, kinks and fractures...

They broke our spine in circles.

Understand, my brother, finally:

Before heart attacks

We had them - don’t touch them!

Heart attacks of souls... heart attacks of souls!

There were ulcers, like infections,

There were images to the point of disgust -

This is disgusting, my brother.

So leave it, go and don’t touch it.

We all have a crazy mind:

Heart attacks of souls... heart attacks of souls!

In this bed, in this bed

In this scream to the ceiling,

Oh, don't touch us, my brother,

Don't touch paralytics!

We all have a crazy mind:

Heart attacks of souls... heart attacks of souls!

(Yu. Shkrobinets)

A refrain composition consists of the repetition of a group of words or lines.

How quickly everything in life goes by.

And happiness will only flicker with its wing -

And he's no longer here...

How quickly everything in life goes by,

Is this our fault? -

It's all the metronome's fault.

How quickly everything in life goes by...

And happiness will only flicker with its wing.

(Lyudmila Rzhegak)

I. Kachurovsky considers the term “ring” to be unfortunate. “Where better,” he notes, “is a cyclic composition. Scientific name This product has an anadiplastic composition. Moreover, in cases where anadiplosis is limited to any one stanza, this refers not to composition, but to stylistics." Anadiplosis as a compositional means can be complete or partial, when part of the stanza is repeated, when the same words are in a changed order , when some of them are replaced by synonyms. The following options are also possible: not the first stanza is repeated, but the second, or the poet gives the first stanza as the final one.

Evening sun, thank you for the day!

Evening sun, thank you for being tired.

The forests are silent, enlightened

Eden and cornflower in golden rye.

For your dawn, and for my zenith,

and for my burnt zeniths.

Because tomorrow wants greens,

For what oddzvenity managed to do yesterday.

Heaven in the sky, for children's laughter.

For what I can and for what I must,

Evening sun, thank you all,

who did not defile the soul in any way.

For the fact that tomorrow awaits its inspiration.

That somewhere in the world blood has not yet been shed.

Evening sun, thank you for the day,

For this need, words are like prayers.

(P. Kostenko)

The spiral composition creates either a “chain” stanza (terzina), or stropho-genres (rondo, rondel, triolet), i.e. acquires stanza-creative and genre characteristics.

I. Kachurovsky considers the name of the seventh type of composition indecent. A more acceptable name, in his opinion, is epanastrophe, epanadiplosis. A work where the repetition of rhyme when two adjacent stanzas collide has a compositional character is E. Pluzhnik’s poem “Kanev”. Each twelve-Shova stanza of the poem consists of three quatrains with rhymes that move from quatrain to quatrain, the last verse of each of these twelve verses rhymes with the first poem as follows:

And the time and fatness will begin in their homes

Electricity: and the newspaper rustled

Where once the prophet and poet

The great spirit behind the darkness has dried up

And will be reborn in millions of masses,

And not only from the portrait,

The competition of immortals is a symbol and sign,

Apostle of truth, peasant Taras.

And since my dozen phrases

In the boring collection of an anchorite,

As the times to come show off,

On the shores lies indifferent Lethe...

And the days will become like the lines of a sonnet,

Perfect...

The essence of the pointe composition is that the poet leaves the interesting and essential part of the work for last. It could be unexpected turn thoughts or conclusion from the entire previous text. The means of pointe composition is used in the sonnet, last poem which should be the quintessence of the work.

Exploring lyrical and lyrical-epic works, I. Kachurovsky found three more types of composition: simplocial, gradational and main.

I. Kachurovsky calls a composition in the form of a simplocal simplocial.

Tomorrow on earth

Other people walking

Other people love -

Kind, affectionate and evil.

(V. Simonenko)

Gradational composition with such types as descending climax, growing climax, broken climax is quite common in poetry.

The gradation composition was used by V. Misik in the poem “Modernity”.

Yes, perhaps, even during Boyan’s time

It's spring time

And the rains fell on the youth,

And the clouds moved in from Tarashche,

And the hawks flew over the horizon,

And the cymbals echoed loudly,

And in Prolis the cymbals are blue

We peered into the heavenly strange clarity.

Everything is as it was then. Where is it, modernity?

It is in the main thing: in you.

The main composition is typical for wreaths of sonnets and folk poetry. Epic works tell the story of people's lives over a period of time. In novels and stories, events and characters are revealed in detail and comprehensively.

Such works may have several storylines. IN small works(stories, novellas) there are few plot lines, few characters, situations and circumstances are depicted laconically.

Dramatic works are written in the form of dialogue, they are based on action, they are small in size, because most of them are intended to be staged. IN dramatic works there are stage directions that perform a service function - they give an idea of the scene of the action, characters, advice to artists, but are not included in the artistic fabric of the work.

The composition of a work of art also depends on the characteristics of the artist’s talent. Panas Mirny used complex plots, digressions historical nature. In the works of I. Nechuy-Levitsky, events develop in chronological order, the writer draws detailed portraits of heroes and nature. Let's remember "Kaidashev's family". In the works of I.S. Turgenev, events develop slowly, Dostoevsky uses unexpected plot moves and accumulates tragic episodes.

The composition of the works is influenced by folklore traditions. The fables of Aesop, Phaedrus, Lafontaine, Krylov, Glebov “The Wolf and the Lamb” are based on the same folklore story, and after the plot - morality. In Aesop's fable it sounds like this: “The fable proves that even a just defense has no power for those who undertake to do injustice.” Phaedrus ends the fable with the words: “This tale was written about people who seek to destroy the innocent by deception.” The fable “The Wolf and the Lamb” by L. Glebov begins, on the contrary, with a moral:

It has been going on in the world for a long time,

The lower he bends before the highest,

And more than a smaller party and even beats

The structure of the plot, its functions. Composition of the plot. Plot and plot.

Plot (from fr.
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sujet) - a chain of events depicted in a literary work, that is, the life of the characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in successive positions and circumstances. The events recreated by writers form (along with the characters) the basis objective world work and thereby an integral “link” of its form. The plot is the organizing principle of most dramatic and epic (narrative) works. It must also be significant in the lyrical genre of literature.

Plot elements: The main ones include exposition, plot, development of action, vicissitudes, climax, denouement. Optional: prologue, epilogue, background, ending.

We will call the plot the system of events and actions contained in the work, its chain of events, and precisely in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. The last remark is important, since quite often events are not told in chronological order, and the reader can find out what happened earlier later. If we take only the main ones, key episodes plot, which are absolutely necessary for its understanding, and if we arrange them in chronological order, we will get plot - plot outline or, as they sometimes say, “straightened plot”. Fables in various works

are very similar to each other, but the plot is always uniquely individual.
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There are two types of plots. In the first type, the development of the action occurs intensely and as quickly as possible, the events of the plot contain the main meaning and interest for the reader, the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the denouement carries a huge meaningful load. This type of plot is found, for example, in “The Stories of Belkin” by Pushkin, “On the Eve” by Turgenev, “The Gambler” by Dostoevsky, etc. Let's call this type of plot dynamic. – In another type of plot - let's call it, in contrast to the first, adynamic the development of the action is slow and does not strive for a denouement, the events of the plot do not contain special interest, the elements of the plot are not clearly expressed or are completely absent (the conflict is embodied and moves not with the help of plot, but with the help of other Dynamic scenes, usually, built on local conflicts, adynamic - on substantial. This pattern does not have the character of a strict one hundred percent dependence, but still in most cases this relationship between the type of conflict and the type of plot takes place.

Concentric plot – one event (one event situation) comes to the fore. Characteristic of small epic forms, dramatic genres, literature of antiquity and classicism. (Telegram by K. Paustovsky, Notes of a Hunter by I. Turgenev) Chronicle story - events do not have cause-and-effect relationships with each other and are correlated with each other only in time (Don Quixote by Cervantes, Odyssey by Homer, Don Juan by Byron).

Plot and composition. The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into general composition works, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it based on the intentions of the author. There is also an internal composition of the plot, which we now turn to consider.

Taking into account the dependence of the relationship between plot and plot in a particular work, we talk about different types and techniques of plot composition. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called straight or plot sequence. A more complex technique is in which we learn about the event that happened earlier than the others at the very end of the work – this technique usually called by default. This technique is very effective, since it allows you to keep the reader in the dark and in tension until the very end, and at the end, surprise him with the surprise of the plot twist. Thanks to these properties, the technique of silence is almost always used in works of the detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Another method of violating chronology or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection , when, as the plot develops, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, to the time preceding the plot and beginning of this work. free composition and to some extent is used by different writers quite often: for example, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. At the same time, it happens that free composition becomes the main and determining principle of plot construction in in this case As a rule, we are actually talking about free composition.

Extra-plot elements. In addition to the plot, in the composition of the work there are also so-called extra-plot elements, which are often no less, or even more important, than the plot itself. If the plot of a work is the dynamic side of its composition, then extra-plot elements are static; Non-plot elements are those that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the characters remain in their previous positions. There are three main types of extra-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes (otherwise they are also called inserted novellas or inserted plots). Description - this is a literary depiction of the external world (landscape, portrait of the world of things, etc.) or a stable way of life, that is, those events and actions that occur regularly, day after day and, therefore, are also not related to the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of extra-plot elements; they are present in almost every. epic work Author's digressions – these are more or less detailed author's statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; Moreover, these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationships between them. Author's digressions are an optional element in the composition of the work, but when they do appear there (Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, etc.), they usually play vital role and are subject to mandatory analysis. Finally, insert episodes – these are relatively complete fragments of action in which other characters act, the action is transferred to another time and place, etc.

Sometimes inserted episodes begin to play an even greater role in the work than the main plot: for example, in Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. In some cases, extra-plot elements can also include psychological image , if the hero’s state of mind or thoughts are not the consequence or cause of plot events, they are excluded from the plot chain. In this case, as a rule, internal monologues psychological image one way or another are included in the plot, since they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.

In general, extra-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.

The reference points of the composition. Composition of any literary work is constructed in such a way that from beginning to end the reader's tension does not weaken, but intensifies. In a work of small volume, the composition most often represents a linear development in an ascending manner, directed towards the finale, the ending, in which the point is located highest voltage. In larger works, the composition alternates between rises and falls of tension with general development ascending. We will call the points of greatest reader tension the reference points of the composition.

The simplest case: the reference points of the composition coincide with the elements of the plot, primarily with the climax and denouement. We encounter this when the dynamic plot is not just the basis of the composition of the work, but essentially exhausts its originality. The composition in this case contains virtually no extra-plot elements and uses minimal compositional techniques. An excellent example of such a construction is an anecdote story, such as Chekhov’s story “The Death of an Official” discussed above.

In the event that the plot traces different turns of the external fate of the hero with the relative or absolute static character of his character, it is useful to look reference points in the so-called vicissitudes - sharp turns in the fate of the hero. It was precisely this construction of reference points that was typical, for example, for ancient tragedy, devoid of psychologism, and was later and is used in adventure literature.

Almost always, one of the reference points falls on the ending of the work (but not necessarily on the denouement, which may not coincide with the ending!). In small, mostly lyrical works, this, as has already been said, is often the only supporting point, and everything previous only leads to it, increases the tension, ensuring its “explosion” at the end.

In major works of art, the ending also, as a rule, contains one of the supporting points. It is no coincidence that many writers have said that over last sentence they work especially carefully, and Chekhov pointed out to aspiring writers that it should sound “musical.”

Sometimes - although not that often - one of the reference points of the composition is, on the contrary, at the very beginning of the work, as, for example, in Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection”.

The reference points of a composition can sometimes be located at the beginning and end (usually) of parts, chapters, acts, etc. Types of composition. In the very general view two types of composition can be distinguished – let’s call them conventionally simple and complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to combining parts of a work into a single whole, and this unification is always carried out in the simplest and most natural way. In the area of plotting, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the area of narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire work, in the area of substantive details - a simple list of them without highlighting particularly important, supporting, symbolic details, etc.

With a complex composition, a special artistic meaning is embodied in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements. So, for example, the sequential change of narrators and the violation of the chronological sequence in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time” focus attention on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin’s character and allow us to “get closer” to it, gradually unraveling the character.

There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of, say, Krylov’s fables or Gogol’s story “The Stroller” is simple in all respects, but Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” or “The Lady with the Dog” by Chekhov is complex in all respects. All this makes the question of the type of composition quite complex, but at the same time very important, since simple and complex types of composition can become stylistic dominants of the work and, thus, determine its artistic originality.