Styles in literature. Briefly about the artistic style of speech

Literary styles

in rhetoric: everyday-colloquial, documentary-business, artistic, scientific, journalistic, church-religious functional styles; in them, in turn, stand out genre styles, or styles of types of literature: style of homiletics, academic oratorical prose, historical prose, lyric poetry.

Rhetoric: Dictionary-reference book // Lingua-universum. - 2011.- No. 1. T.V. Foaling. 2011.

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• Literary languages ​​and linguistic styles, R. A. Budagov, The theory of literary languages ​​is an area that is still little studied. Despite the many studies devoted to various topics of individual literary languages, their general theory and history... Category: General linguistics Series: Philologist's Library Publisher:

There are many varieties of text styles in Russian. One of them is the artistic style of speech, which is used in the literary field. It is characterized by an impact on the reader’s imagination and feelings, the transmission of the author’s own thoughts, the use of rich vocabulary, and the emotional coloring of the text. In what area is it used, and what are its main features?

The history of this style dates back to ancient times. Throughout time, a certain characteristic of such texts has developed, distinguishing them from other different styles.
With the help of this style, authors of works have the opportunity to express themselves, convey to the reader their thoughts and reasoning, using all the richness of their language. Most often it is used in written speech, and in oral speech it is used when already created texts are read, for example, during the production of a play.

The purpose of artistic style is not to directly convey certain information, but to affect the emotional side of the person reading the work. However, this is not the only task of such a speech. Achieving established goals occurs when the functions of a literary text are fulfilled. These include:

• Figurative-cognitive, which consists of telling a person about the world and society using the emotional component of speech.
• Ideological and aesthetic, used to describe images that convey to the reader the meaning of the work.
• Communicative, in which the reader connects information from the text with reality.

Such functions of a work of art help the author to give meaning to the text so that it can fulfill all the tasks for which it was created for the reader.

Area of ​​use of the style

Where is the artistic style of speech used? The scope of its use is quite wide, because such speech embodies many aspects and means of the rich Russian language. Thanks to this, such text turns out to be very beautiful and attractive to readers.

Genres of artistic style:

• Epic. It describes storylines. The author demonstrates his thoughts, the external worries of people.
• Lyrics. This example of artistic style helps to convey the author's inner feelings, experiences and thoughts of the characters.
• Drama. In this genre, the presence of the author is practically not felt, because much attention is paid to the dialogues taking place between the heroes of the work.

Of all these genres, subspecies are distinguished, which in turn can be further divided into varieties. Thus, the epic is divided into the following types:

• Epic. Most of it is devoted to historical events.
• Novel. Usually it has a complex plot, which describes the fate of the characters, their feelings, and problems.
• Story. Such a work is written in a small size; it tells about a specific incident that happened to the character.
• Tale. It is medium in size and has the qualities of a novel and a short story.

The artistic style of speech is characterized by the following lyrical genres:

• Oh yeah. This is the name of a solemn song dedicated to something.
• Epigram. This is a poem that has satirical notes. An example of artistic style in this case is “Epigram on M. S. Vorontsov”, which was written by A. S. Pushkin.
• Elegy. Such a work is also written in poetic form, but has a lyrical orientation.
• Sonnet. This is also a verse that consists of 14 lines. Rhymes are built according to a strict system. Examples of texts of this form can be found in Shakespeare.

The types of drama include the following genres:

• Comedy. The purpose of such a work is to ridicule any vices of society or a particular person.
• Tragedy. In this text, the author talks about the tragic life of the characters.
• Drama. This type of the same name allows you to show the reader the dramatic relationships between the heroes and society as a whole.

In each of these genres, the author tries not so much to tell about something, but simply to help readers create an image of the characters in their heads, feel the situation being described, and learn to empathize with the characters. This creates a certain mood and emotions in the person reading the work. A story about some extraordinary incident will amuse the reader, while a drama will make you empathize with the characters.

The main features of artistic stylistics of speech

The characteristics of an artistic style of speech have developed over the course of its long development. Its main features allow the text to fulfill its tasks by influencing people's emotions. The linguistic means of a work of art are the main element of this speech, which helps to create a beautiful text that can captivate the reader while reading. Expressive means such as:

• Metaphor.
• Allegory.
• Hyperbola.
• Epithet.
• Comparison.

Also, the main features include the speech polysemy of words, which is quite widely used when writing works. Using this technique, the author gives the text additional meaning. In addition, synonyms are often used, thanks to which it is possible to emphasize the importance of the meaning.

The use of these techniques suggests that when creating his work, the author wants to use the entire breadth of the Russian language. Thus, he can develop his own unique language style, which will distinguish him from other text styles. The writer uses not only purely literary language, but also borrows means from colloquial speech and vernacular.

Features of the artistic style are also expressed in the elevation of emotionality and expressiveness of texts. Many words are used differently in works of different styles. In literary and artistic language, some words denote certain sensory ideas, and in the journalistic style these same words are used to generalize certain concepts. Thus, they complement each other perfectly.

Linguistic features of the artistic style of the text include the use of inversion. This is the name of a technique in which the author arranges words in a sentence differently than is usually done. This is necessary in order to give more meaning to a particular word or expression. Writers can change the order of words in different ways, it all depends on the overall intent.

Also in the literary language there may be deviations from structural norms, which are explained by the fact that the author wants to highlight some of his thoughts, ideas, and emphasize the importance of the work. To do this, the writer can afford to violate phonetic, lexical, morphological and other norms.

The features of the artistic style of speech allow us to consider it the most important over all other types of text styles, because it uses the most diverse, rich and vibrant means of the Russian language. It is also characterized by verb speech. It consists in the fact that the author gradually indicates each movement and change of state. This works well to activate the tension of the readers.

If you look at examples of styles of different directions, then identifying the artistic language will definitely not be difficult. After all, a text in an artistic style, in all of the above listed features, is noticeably different from other text styles.

Examples of literary style

Here's an example of the art style:

The sergeant walked along the yellowish construction sand, hot from the scorching afternoon sun. He was wet from head to toe, his whole body was covered with small scratches left by the sharp barbed wire. The aching pain drove him crazy, but he was alive and walked towards the command headquarters, which was visible about three hundred meters in the distance.

The second example of artistic style contains such means of the Russian language as epithets.

Yashka was just a little dirty trickster, who, despite this, had enormous potential. Even in his distant childhood, he masterfully picked pears from Baba Nyura, and twenty years later he switched to banks in twenty-three countries of the world. At the same time, he managed to masterfully clean them up, so that neither the police nor Interpol had the opportunity to catch him at the crime scene.

Language plays a huge role in literature, since it is it that acts as a building material for the creation of works. The writer is an artist of words, forming images, describing events, expressing his own thoughts, he makes the reader empathize with the characters, plunge into the world that the author created.

Only an artistic style of speech can achieve such an effect, which is why books are always very popular. Literary speech has unlimited possibilities and extraordinary beauty, which is achieved thanks to the linguistic means of the Russian language.

STYLE(from the Greek stilos - a pointed stick for writing, manner of writing, handwriting), the choice of a certain number of speech norms, characteristic means of artistic expression, revealing the author's vision and understanding of reality in the work; the ultimate generalization of similar formal and substantive features, characteristic features in various works of the same period or era (“style of the era”: Renaissance, Baroque, classicism, romanticism, modernism).

The emergence of the concept of style in the history of European literature is closely connected with the birth of rhetoric - the theory and practice of eloquence and rhetorical tradition. Style implies learning and continuity, following certain speech norms. Style is impossible without imitation, without recognizing the authority of the word, sanctified by tradition. In this case, imitation was presented to poets and prose writers not as blind following or copying, but as a creatively productive competition, rivalry. Borrowing was a merit, not a vice. Literary creativity for eras in which the authority of tradition is undoubted meant say the same thing in a different way, within the finished form and given content, find your own. Thus, M.V. Lomonosov in Ode on the day of Elizabeth Petrovna's accession to the throne(1747) transposed into an odic stanza a period from the speech of the ancient Roman orator Cicero. Let's compare:

“Our other joys are set limits by time, place, and age, and these activities nourish our youth, delight our old age, adorn us in happiness, serve as refuge and consolation in misfortune, delight us at home, do not interfere with us on the way, they are with us at rest, and in a foreign land, and on vacation.” (Cicero. Speech in defense of Licinius Archius. Per. S.P.Kondratieva)

Sciences nourish youths,
Joy is served to the old,
In a happy life they decorate,
Take care in case of an accident;
There's joy in troubles at home
And long journeys are not a hindrance.
Science is used everywhere
Among the nations and in the desert,
In the noise of the city and alone,
Sweet in peace and in work.

(M.V. Lomonosov. Ode on the day of Elizabeth Petrovna's accession to the throne)

Individual, non-general, original appear in style from antiquity to modern times as the paradoxical result of devout adherence to the canon, conscious adherence to tradition. The period from antiquity to the 1830s in the history of literature is usually called “classical”, i.e. one for whom it was natural to think in terms of “models” and “traditions” (classicus in Latin means “model”). The more the poet sought to speak on universally significant (religious, ethical, aesthetic) topics, the more fully his author’s, unique individuality was revealed. The more intentionally the poet followed stylistic norms, the more original his style became. But it never occurred to the poets and prose writers of the “classical” period to insist on their uniqueness and originality. Style in modern times is transformed from individual evidence of the general into the identification of an individually comprehended whole, i.e. the writer’s specific way of working with words comes first. Thus, style in modern times is such a specific quality of a poetic work that is noticeable and obvious in the whole and in everything individual. Such an understanding of style was clearly established in the 19th century. - the century of romanticism, realism and modernism. The cult of the masterpiece - the perfect work and the cult of genius - the all-pervasive author's artistic will are equally characteristic of the styles of the nineteenth century. In the perfection of the work and the omnipresence of the author, the reader sensed the opportunity to come into contact with another life, “get used to the world of the work,” identify with some hero and find himself on equal terms in dialogue with the author himself. I wrote expressively about the feeling behind the style of a living human personality in the article Preface to the works of Guy de Maupassant L.N. Tolstoy: “People who are not very sensitive to art often think that a work of art is one whole because everything is built on the same premise, or the life of one person is described. It's not fair. This is only how it seems to a superficial observer: the cement that binds every work of art into one whole and therefore produces the illusion of a reflection of life is not the unity of persons and positions, but the unity of the original moral attitude of the author to the subject. In essence, when we read or contemplate a work of art by a new author, the main question that arises in our soul is: “Well, what kind of person are you?” And how are you different from all the people I know, and what can you tell me new about how we should look at our life?" Whatever the artist depicts: saints, robbers, kings, lackeys, we seek and see only the soul of oneself artist."

Tolstoy here formulates the opinion of the entire literary nineteenth century: romantic, realistic, and modernist. He understands the author as a genius who creates artistic reality from within himself, deeply rooted in reality and at the same time independent of it. In the literature of the nineteenth century, the work became the “world,” while the pillar became the only and unique one, just like the “objective” world itself, which served as its source, model and material. The author's style is understood as a unique vision of the world, with its own inherent features. Under these conditions, prosaic creativity acquires special significance: it is in it that, first of all, the opportunity to say a word about reality in the language of reality itself is manifested. It is significant that for Russian literature the second half of the 19th century. - This is the heyday of the novel. Poetic creativity seems to be “overshadowed” by prosaic creativity. The first name that opens the “prosaic” period of Russian literature is N.V. Gogol (1809–1852). The most important feature of his style, repeatedly noted by critics, is secondary, once-mentioned characters, enlivened by clauses, metaphors and digressions. At the beginning of the fifth chapter Dead souls(1842) a portrait of the still unnamed landowner Sobakevich is given:

“Approaching the porch, he noticed two faces looking out of the window almost at the same time: a woman’s in a cap, narrow, long like a cucumber, and a man’s, round, wide like Moldavian pumpkins, called gourds, from which balalaikas are made in Rus', two-stringed, light balalaikas, the beauty and fun of an agile twenty-year-old guy, flashing and dandy, winking and whistling at the white-breasted and white-sewn girls who had gathered to listen to his low-stringed strumming.”

The narrator compares Sobakevich's head with a special kind of pumpkin, the pumpkin reminds the narrator of balalaikas, and the balalaika in his imagination evokes a village youth amusing pretty girls with his play. A turn of phrase “creates” a person out of nothing.

The stylistic originality of the prose of F. M. Dostoevsky (1821–1881) is associated with the special “speech intensity” of his characters: in Dostoevsky’s novels the reader is constantly faced with detailed dialogues and monologues. Chapter 5 contains 4 parts of the novel Crime and Punishment(1866) the main character Raskolnikov, at a meeting with investigator Porfiry Petrovich, reveals incredible suspiciousness, thereby only strengthening the investigator in the idea of ​​his involvement in the murder. Verbal repetition, slips of the tongue, interruptions of speech especially expressively characterize the dialogues and monologues of Dostoevsky’s characters and his style: “You, it seems, said yesterday that you would like to ask me... formally about my acquaintance with this... murdered woman? - Raskolnikov began again - “Well, why did I insert Seems? – flashed through him like lightning. - Well, why am I so worried about putting this in? Seems? – another thought immediately flashed through him like lightning. And he suddenly felt that his suspiciousness, from one contact with Porfiry, from just two glances, had already grown in an instant to monstrous proportions...”

The originality of the style of L.N. Tolstoy (1828–1910) is to a very large extent explained by the detailed psychological analysis to which the writer subjects his characters and which manifests itself in an extremely developed and complex syntax. In Chapter 35, Part 2, Volume 3 War and Peace(1863–1869) Tolstoy depicts Napoleon’s mental turmoil on the Borodino field: “When he was turning over in his imagination this whole strange Russian company, in which not a single battle was won, in which neither banners, nor guns, nor corps were taken in two months troops, when he looked at the secretly sad faces of those around him and listened to reports that the Russians were still standing, a terrible feeling, similar to the feeling experienced in dreams, covered him, and all the unfortunate accidents that could destroy him came to his mind. The Russians could attack his left wing, could tear his middle apart, a stray cannonball could kill him. All this was possible. In his previous battles, he pondered only the accidents of success, but now countless unfortunate accidents presented themselves to him, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like in a dream, when a person imagines a villain attacking him, and the man in the dream swung and hit his villain, with that terrible effort that, he knows, should destroy him, and he feels that his hand is powerless and soft , falls like a rag, and the horror of inevitable death seizes the helpless person.” Using different types of syntactic connections, Tolstoy creates a feeling of the illusory nature of what is happening to the hero, the nightmarish indistinguishability of sleep and reality.

The style of A.P. Chekhov (1860–1904) is largely determined by the meager precision of details, characteristics, a huge variety of intonations and the abundance of use of improperly direct speech, when the statement can belong to both the hero and the author. A special feature of Chekhov’s style can be recognized as “modal” words, expressing the speaker’s vacillating attitude to the topic of the statement. At the beginning of the story Bishop(1902), in which the action takes place shortly before Easter, the reader is presented with a picture of a quiet, joyful night: “Soon the service was over. When the bishop got into the carriage to go home, the cheerful, beautiful ringing of expensive, heavy bells spread throughout the entire garden, illuminated by the moon. White walls, white crosses on the graves, white birch trees and black shadows, and the distant moon in the sky, standing just above the monastery, it seemed Now, they lived their own special life, incomprehensible, but close to man. It was early April, and after a warm spring day it became cool, slightly frosty, and the breath of spring was felt in the soft, cold air. The road from the monastery to the city went along the sand, it was necessary to walk; and on both sides of the carriage, in the moonlight, bright and calm, pilgrims trudged along the sand. And everyone was silent, deep in thought, everything around was friendly, young, so close, everything - the trees, the sky, and even the moon, and I wanted to think that it will always be like this." In the modal words “it seemed” and “I wanted to think” the intonation of hope, but also uncertainty, can be heard with particular clarity.”

The style of I.A. Bunin (1870–1953) was characterized by many critics as “bookish,” “super-refined,” like “brocade prose.” These assessments pointed to an important, and perhaps the main stylistic tendency in Bunin’s work: the “stringing” of words, the selection of synonyms, synonymous phrases for an almost physiological sharpening of the reader’s impressions. In the story Mitya's love(1924), written in exile, Bunin, depicting night nature, reveals the state of mind of the hero in love: “One day, late in the evening, Mitya went out onto the back porch. It was very dark, quiet, and smelled of a damp field. From behind the night clouds, over the vague outlines of the garden, small stars were tearing up. And suddenly somewhere in the distance something wildly, devilishly hooted and began to bark, squeal. Mitya shuddered, became numb, then carefully stepped off the porch, entered a dark alley that seemed to be guarding him hostilely on all sides, stopped again and began to wait and listen: what is it, where is it - what so unexpectedly and terribly announced the garden ? An owl, a forest scarecrow, making his love, and nothing more, he thought, but he froze as if from the invisible presence of the devil himself in this darkness. And suddenly again there was a booming sound, shook Mitya’s entire soul howl,somewhere nearby, at the top of the alley, there was a crackling noise- and the devil silently moved somewhere else in the garden. There He first barked, then began to whine pitifully, pleadingly, like a child, whine, cry, flap his wings and squeal with painful pleasure, began to squeal, roll up with such an ironic laugh, as if he were being tickled and tortured. Mitya, trembling all over, stared into the darkness with both eyes and ears. But the devil suddenly fell, choked and, cutting through the dark garden with a death-languorous cry, seemed to have fallen through the ground. Having waited in vain for a few more minutes for the resumption of this love horror, Mitya quietly returned home - and all night he was tormented in his sleep by all those painful and disgusting thoughts and feelings into which his love had turned in March in Moscow.” The author is looking for more and more precise, piercing words to show the confusion of Mitya’s soul.

The styles of Soviet literature reflected the profound psychological and linguistic shifts that took place in post-revolutionary Russia. One of the most indicative in this regard is the “fantastic” style of M.M. Zoshchenko (1894–1958). “Fantastic” – i.e. imitating someone else's (common, slang, dialect) speech. In the story Aristocrat(1923) the narrator, a plumber by profession, recalls a humiliating episode of a failed courtship. Wanting to protect himself in the opinion of his listeners, he immediately refuses what once attracted him to “respectable” ladies, but behind his refusal one can sense resentment. Zoshchenko, in his style, imitates the crude inferiority of the narrator’s speech, not only in the use of purely colloquial expressions, but also in the most “chopped”, meager phrase: “I, my brothers, do not like women who wear hats. If a woman is wearing a hat, if she is wearing fildecoke stockings, or has a pug in her arms, or has a golden tooth, then such an aristocrat to me is not a woman at all, but a smooth place. And at one time, of course, I was fond of an aristocrat. I walked with her and took her to the theater. It all happened in the theater. It was in the theater that she developed her ideology to its fullest extent. And I met her in the courtyard of the house. At the meeting. I look, there is such a freck. She’s wearing stockings and has a gilded tooth.”

It is worth paying attention to Zoshchenko’s use of the poster-denunciatory phrase “unfolded her ideology in its entirety.” Zoshchenko's tale opened up a view of the changing everyday consciousness of Soviet people. A different type of change in worldview was artistically conceptualized in his style, his poetics, by Andrei Platonov (1899–1951). His characters painfully think and express their thoughts. The painful difficulty of utterance, expressed in deliberate irregularities of speech and physiologically specific metaphors, is the main characteristic of Plato’s style and his entire artistic world. At the beginning of the novel Chevengur(1928–1930), dedicated to the period of collectivization, depicts a woman in labor, the mother of several children: “The woman in labor smelled of beef and raw milk heifer, and Mavra Fetisovna herself did not smell anything from weakness, she was stuffy under a multi-colored patchwork blanket - she exposed her full leg in wrinkles of old age and maternal fat; were visible on the leg yellow spots of some kind of dead suffering and blue thick veins with numb blood, growing tightly under the skin and ready to tear it apart in order to come out; along one vein, similar to a tree, you can feel your heart beating somewhere, forcing the blood through narrow collapsed gorges of the body" Platonov’s heroes are haunted by the feeling of a “disconnected” world, and that’s why their vision is so bizarrely sharpened, that’s why they see things, bodies and themselves so strangely.

In the second half of the 20th century. the cult of genius and masterpiece (the completed work as an artistic world), the idea of ​​a “feeling” reader are greatly shaken. Technical reproducibility, industrial delivery, the triumph of trivial culture call into question the traditionally sacred or traditionally intimate relationship between the author, work and reader. The warmth of cohesion in the mystery of communication that Tolstoy wrote about begins to seem archaic, too sentimental, “too human.” It is being replaced by a more familiar, less responsible and generally playful type of relationship between the author, work and reader. In these circumstances, style becomes increasingly alienated from the author, becomes an analogue of a “mask” rather than a “living face” and essentially returns to the status that was given to it in antiquity. Anna Akhmatova said this aphoristically in one of the quatrains of the cycle Secrets of the craft (1959):

Do not repeat - your soul is rich -
What was once said
But maybe poetry itself -
One great quote.

Understanding literature as a single text, on the one hand, facilitates the search and use of already found artistic means, “other people's words,” but, on the other hand, imposes tangible responsibility. After all, in dealing with strangers just shows up yours, the ability to appropriately use borrowed materials. The poet of Russian emigration G.V. Ivanov very often in his late work resorted to allusions (hints) and direct quotes, realizing this and openly entering into a game with the reader. Here is a short poem from Ivanov’s latest book of poems Posthumous diary (1958):

What is inspiration?
- So... Unexpectedly, slightly
Radiant Inspiration
Divine breeze.
Above a cypress tree in a sleepy park
Azrael flaps his wings -
And Tyutchev writes without blot:
“The Roman orator said...”

The last line turns out to be the answer to the question asked in the first line. For Tyutchev, this is a special moment of “visiting the muse,” and for Ivanov, Tyutchev’s line itself is a source of inspiration.

Literature:

Ancient theories of language and style. M. – L., 1936
Ginzburg L.Ya. About psychological prose. L., 1971
Likhachev D.S. Development of Russian literature of the X–XVII centuries. Eras and styles. L., 1973
Ginzburg L.Ya. About the lyrics. L., 1974
Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. M., 1975
Auerbach E. Mimesis. M., 1976
Chicherin A.V. Essays on the history of Russian literary style. M., 1977
Averintsev S.S. Rhetoric and the origins of the European literary tradition. M., 1996
Mikhailov A.V. Novel and style
Mikhailov A.V. The problem of style and stages of development of modern literature. – In the book: Mikhailov A.V. Languages ​​of culture. M., 1997
Pumpyansky L.V. On the history of Russian classicism. – In the book: Pumpyansky L.V. Classic tradition. Collection of works on the history of Russian literature. M., 2000

The concept of “style” in literary criticism. The style of a literary work. Style functions, style carriers, style categories. The concept of the stylistic dominant of a work of art. Types of style dominants.

Style (from gr - a pointed stick for writing on tablets covered with wax) became used by Roman writers metonymically, to designate the features of written speech of a particular author. Features of the verbal structure of the pr-y. The aesthetic unity of all figurative and expressive details of the form of the pr-y, corresponding to its content, is style

STYLE- in literary criticism: a set of individual characteristics of artistic techniques (linguistic, rhythmic, compositional, etc.) or a certain work, or genre, or period of the writer’s work, determined by the content. For example, Gogol the satirist is characterized by comparisons of heroes with the world of domestic animals, tongue-tied speech of characters, attention in their appearance not to the eyes, but to the nose, anti-aesthetic actions (spit, sneezed), etc., which are connected together by the thought of the lack of spirituality of the people depicted ( “Dead Souls”, “How Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforov and why”, etc.). In linguistics, the concept of S. is somewhat narrower (linguistic style).

G.N. PospelovSTYLE OF LITERARY WORKS

Word style(gr. stylos - a pointed stick for writing on tablets covered with wax) began to be used by Roman writers metonymically, to designate the peculiarities of written speech of a particular author. This word is still used in this meaning today. Many literary critics and linguists still believe that only the features of the verbal structure of a work should be called “style”.

But since the second half of the 18th century. the same word began to be used to describe the features of form in works of other types of art - sculpture, painting, architecture (in architecture, for example, Gothic, Romanesque, Moorish and other styles are distinguished). Thus, a broader, general art meaning of the word “style” was established. In this sense, it is not only possible, but also necessary, to be used in theory and in the history of fiction. It is necessary because the form of a literary work is not limited to its speech structure; it also has other aspects - substantive visualization and composition. All these aspects of the form in their unity can have one or another style.

There is also the opposite extreme in the use of this word. Some literary scholars believe that style is a property of a work of art as a whole - in the unity of its content and form. This understanding is not convincing. Can we say that the characters that the writer reproduces in the images of his work have a certain style, or those aspects and relationships of these characters in which he is especially interested and which he highlights, strengthens, develops by constructing the plot of the work and resolving its conflict? or that emotional attitude towards these aspects of characters, for example romantic or satirical, which the writer expresses through all components of the form of the work? Of course not. The content of the work in all these aspects has no style. The style has a figurative and expressive form of the work, completely and completely expressing its content, completely corresponding to it.

The form of works of art has a certain style precisely because of its imagery and expressiveness. A work in terms of its form is a system of images, consisting of many different subject and verbal semantic details, compositional and intonation-syntactic devices, and these figurative details and devices carry one or another ideological and emotional expressiveness. The aesthetic unity of all the image and expressive details of the form of a work corresponding to its content is style.

The perfection and completeness of style are distinguished to the greatest extent by works that have depth and clarity of problematics, and even more so with historical truthfulness of ideological orientation. The shallowness of the issues easily leads to a pile-up of random, internally unjustified plot episodes, subject details and character statements. All this deprives the form of the work of its aesthetic integrity.

But the dignity of content does not mechanically give rise to the dignity of form. To create a perfect form that matches the content, the writer needs, as already said, to show talent, ingenuity, and skill. What is also very important is the writer’s ability to rely on the creative achievements of his predecessors, to choose from the creative experience of his national literature and other national literatures the forms that best suit his own, original artistic ideas, and to rebuild them accordingly. To do this, the writer needs a broad literary and general cultural horizon. If the writer has neither great talent nor a broad creative outlook, works may arise with great merits in content, but not perfect in form, devoid of style. This is the “lag” between form and content.

But on the other hand, a literary and artistic form can also have independent aesthetic significance. This especially applies to the verbal side of the form, to artistic speech, which is of greatest importance in lyricism with its meditativeness and poetry. The poetic and verbal form is often extremely sophisticated and refined in its entire structure; it can, with its external aesthetic significance, seem to cover up the shallowness and insignificance of the content expressed in it. This is the “lag” of content from form. Such were, for example, many works of Russian decadent poetry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Literary works, distinguished by the artistry of their content and the corresponding perfection of form, always have a certain style that has developed under certain conditions of the development of national literature.

To judge a writer’s style, one must understand the patterns of historical development of national literatures.