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p V. Krutous

p Motivation means the sum total of the motives and arguments used for substantiating something. The concept of “artistic motivation" spread into literary criticism and aesthetics from the theory of drama. According to t’-e theory of drama we call those contextual elements which are relevant to the given event or action of the hero motivation and base them on the laws of artistic causality. In other words, the element and the whole must be coordinated in a certain manner. In the analogical sense this term is also applicable to other forms and genres of literature and the arts. Usually artistic motivation is determined as an explanation of events, of the stimuli and motives for the actions of the characters, of changes in these characters, and of stimuli figuratively revealed and confirmed. Motivation is the principal means of making a work of art sound truthful and convincing.

p As a substantiation, motivation presupposes the presence of its “addressee”, that is, the one it has to convince. Therefore, an analysis of this concept not only from the aspect of the creative process but also from that of the psychology of perception is completely justified. This article will draw attention to the correlation between motivation and aesthetic perception. I would like specifically to elucidate one principally important side of the question—the complicated, integrated character of the criteria of motivation. We usually connect motivation with the demand for plausibility and for the illusion of “likeness to life”. However, all the complex content of the concept of “motivation” is not exhausted by this. One can talk about “compositional motivation”, about the motivation of form by content, etc. That is, not only the 133 criterion of plausibility but also other aesthetic principles and laws appear as grounds for. justifying the introduction of an element into the artistic whole. Thus motivation takes on a broad, general aesthetic interpretation.

p Various aspects of motivations (“real”, “purely artistic" and others) comprise a single (but internally divided) whole. They are understood in the course of the perception of the whole and are tied in with the process of comprehension which is inherent to aesthetic perception itself.

p Comprehension is always a semantic synthesis (which is impossible, of course, without analysis). This process is many-sided and is realised on different levels. In understanding a work of fiction, one can single out the following aspects, I think.

p 1. Comprehension as the very moment of transition from noncomprehension to comprehension.

p 2. Comprehension as an aspect of reconstituting imagination.

p 3. Comprehension as a correlation of the imagery of a work with the life experience of the one doing the perceiving (percipient).

p 4. Comprehension as a correlation of an element of the work with the aesthetic experience of the one doing the perceiving.

p In its turn comprehension is inseparably linked with evaluation. And the success or failure of semantic synthesis and of the formation of an integral artistic image can themselves serve as a criterion for evaluating the perceived aesthetic object.

p Artistic motivation is realised during the course of comprehension and the evaluation based on it and corresponds to their structure. The following aspects of motivation differ accordingly:

p 1. Motivation as the comprehensibility and intelligibility (on one level or another) of an element of the artistic whole, its “assimilation” through semantic synthesis.

p 2. Motivation as the inclusion of an element into the context of artistic causality.

p 3. Motivation as the coordination of an element of artistic causality with the life experience of the percipient, taking into account the supremacy of the artistic specificity of the whole.

p 4. Motivation as the conformity of an element of artistic structure with the strictly aesthetic norms and criteria of the percipient.

p Of course, during genuine aesthetic perception it is difficult to differentiate between all these aspects since they are closely interconnected. Yet each one of them is specific.

p The realisation of motivation is the result of analysis and synthesis and is accomplished first and foremost with the aid of the intellect. “Discoursive” thinking comes into play already during 134 the direct act of perceiving speech; true, in a “superficial understanding" it appears in an “abbreviated” form. The role of thinking is even more significant on the higher levels of semantic synthesis. Thus the analysis of the perceptive aspect of artistic motivation not only assists the understanding of its specificity but also concretises our idea of the mechanism of aesthetic perception and its rational aspects in particular.

p Let us consider the separate aspects of motivation and the mechanism of its realisation.

p 1) Motivated means explainable, comprehensible, meaningful. The first aspect of artistic motivation is based on just such an interpretation. It conforms .to the communicative nature of art. “... The listener (reader) always naturally supposes that the communication passed on to him should by definition have some sort of meaning or, as we say now, carry some information. This has been shown by numerous tests. The attempt to understand the speaker by all means ... is inherent in the very nature of intercourse by means of language.... The very idea of intercourse is based on the receptivity of the listener who, by the nature of things, always strives to find, construe, and even reconstruct that which, in his opinion, should have been implicit in the intention of the speaker."  [134•1  Proceeding from the presumption of comprehensibility the percipient realises the elements as motivated by the “semantic field" of the work.

p For example, the action of a hero given ex abrupto can be nonmotivated. It can become fully understood during the course of further narrative or after a specific explanation. However we cannot ignore the fact that for a time it exists in the consciousness of the percipient as non-motivated, and as such it produces a certain effect.

p We call non-motivated a deviation from the norms of usual object-conceptual logic in a work of art. At the same time the reader recognises that absence of motivation has its own motivation as well. And what is more, the reader demands that each such deviation be motivated from the point of view of the logic of artistic images. In accordance with this he “switches over" the mechanism of his understanding. This is the general natural law of all forms of understanding.

p The opinion of the Soviet psychologist S. L. Rubinstein on this question is characteristic. He notes that images of fantasy can contradict usual “empirical” logic. “However, both in fairy tales 135 and the most fanciful of stories deviations from reality must be objectively motivated by the author’s intentions and the idea embodied in the images. And the more significant these deviations from reality the more objectively must they be motivated."  [135•1 

p The principle of “switching over" from “non-artistic” to “artistic” levels of motivation is important for the perception of the literary text and serves as a unique artistic method used by the writer.

p We call also the elements of obvious absurdity, particularly poetic “abstrusiveness”, the dramatic “absurd”, etc., nonmotivated. In realistic art the absurd can exist only in the capacity of temporary non-motivation which is subsequently “dismissed” by the semantic context (dream, delirium, insanity, etc.).

p However, we must not forget that the evaluating of one or another element of a work as non-motivated can also be the result of the aesthetic “underdevelopment” of the percipient, when the “key” to deciphering the artistic image is unknown to him. It is not without reason that Goethe said that if someone complains about the incomprehensibility and vagueness of a work it still remains to be determined in whose head that obscurity is—in the author’s or in the reader’s. The perception of motivation will be aesthetically sound and objective only in the case where not only lower but higher levels of semantic synthesis take part in this process as well.

p 2) The perception of motivation as integral artistic causality is based on the perception of the elements of that causality included in the work. However, the author does not always directly show (on his own behalf or through a character) the causal relationship of the elements in the work. Usually he presents a broad scope for the reader’s imagination.

p The associative process constitutes the basis for the perception of motivations as the links of artistic causality. Few but essential “supports” are enough for a successful semantic synthesis.

p The author who underestimates the creative activity of the percipient introduces a redundancy of motivational links in his work, thus hampering and impeding the associative process. It wasn’t for naught that Anton Chekhov reproached Alexei Suvorin: “Out of fear that you are not precise enough and that you will not be understood you find it necessary to motivate every situation and movement."  [135•2 

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p The psychological mechanism of anticipation (prediction, preconception, expectation) is active in the perception of motivation. The realisation of motivation is accomplished in the contradictory process of the confirmation and non-confirmation of our expectations.

p Anticipation in the perception of motivation can be described in terms of the theory of probability and the theory of information. The theory of information, in particular, singles out the antinomy of excess (predictability) and originality in artistic communication. A predominance of excess lessens the perceptive activity; a predominance of originality hinders the semantic synthesis, comprehension. Motivation is a synthesis of excess and originality.

p The level of development of the analytic and synthesising activity of the percipient is important for the realisation of motivation, for “until the last page is read ... the process of coordinating each separate detail of the work with its whole does not stop. That impression of the whole, or more accurately ‘presentiment’ of the whole, which the author of a true work of art communicates in the very first lines of a poem, the first scene of a play, the first four bars of a symphony, etc., remains only a presentiment until it attains the level of genuine ‘vision’, of ‘visible’ interconnection".  [136•1 

p It must be emphasised that the unity of one or another element of artistic imagery, particularly the unity of the image in a literary work, which takes shape in the consciousness of the percipient during semantic synthesis, is not static, but is determined by the general dynamics of the work. The writer, by special artistic methods, cultivates in the reader an orientation on perceiving the character as an integral whole, and the reader no longer notices the separate non-motivations and non-conformities which are sometimes quite substantial.

p Intellectual intuition and discoursive thinking interact in the realisation of motivative connections. Motivations are realised “automatically”, intuitively, thanks to a usual terseness of expression. However, if during the process of perception a certain difficulty or “semantic gap" appears then it is overcome with the aid of discoursive, detailed thinking.

p Writers take the peculiarities of the reader’s perception into account and often consciously create “semantic gaps" or types of problematic situations, thus stirring the percipient’s creative thinking. The literary “technique of secrets”, typical not only of purely adventure or detective literature, is based on this.

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p Great professional skill is needed for the writer to withhold as long as possible the realisation of motivation and at the same time gradually, imperceptibly introduce into the reader’s consciousness all its elements necessary for future semantic synthesis. This is possible thanks to the fact that in each moment of perception one of the elements of motivation is in the centre of attention, the others, on the periphery. Important components of motivation can, up to a certain time, appear to the percipient to be insignificant details. Often a writer will divert the reader’s attention by means of so-called “false motivations”. A motivation prepared in this manner is particularly effective.

p The entire mental apparatus of the percipient participates in his becoming aware of motivations. This finds its expression in toe creation of a special integral ihood in the percipient—co-experience (co-emotion). On the basis of the activity of the reader’s reconstituting imagination a setting appears for perception of the imagined situation as supposedly real, and all the mechanisms of mentality acquire the proper tuning.

p 3) The process of comprehension has as its final result the inclusion of the newly cognised into the person’s already acquired reserve of conceptions, ideas and thoughts. This is also true of aesthetic perception. Our experience, and this is particularly important, has a systematic character, and in this capacity it can be used as a criterion for evaluating events, actions, etc. from the point of view of their psychological probability and plausibility, in which objective immanence and indispensability of phenomena are reflected. When Aristotle insisted that a playwright speak about the possible according to probability or necessity he had in mind this very aspect of motivation. The “concurrence” of artistically motivated links in a work and the logics of our life experience gives the impression of cogency and motivation; their divergence is fixed as improbability or as insufficient motivation.

p Undoubtedly the level of objectivity in the realisation of motivation as plausible depends upon the richness and profundity of the percipient’s life experience, his social and personal goals and his world outlook.

p Karl Marx applied the criterion of motivation in evaluating Eugene Sue’s novelMysteres de Paris.He wrote, in particular: “It is to be noted incidentally that Eugene Sue motivates the career of the Countess just as stupidly as that of most of his characters. An old nurse gives her the idea that she must become a ’crowned head’. Convinced of this, she undertakes journeys to capture a crown through marriage. Finally she commits the inconsistency of 138 considering a petty German ‘Serenissimus’ as a ’crowned head’.”  [138•1  Marx emphasises the artificiality of such motivation.

p The subjective moment exists along with the objective one in perceiving motivation. It was not by accident that Frederick Engels, in evaluating the description of Vienna in Minna Kautsky’s novel The Old Ones and the New, made an essential stipulation: “Whether the plot in this part of your work does not develop too hastily in spots may be left to your better judgement. Many things that to our kind of people appear to be rushed may look quite natural in Vienna considering the city’s peculiar international character and its intermixture with Southern and East-European elements."  [138•2 

p Noting the sufficient or insufficient motivation of this or that train of the plot or step taken by the hero, the percipient takes into account the place the given motivations occupy in the structure of the work, their role in revealing the writer’s intention and a number of other factors. Motivation intended only for a formal “cohesion” of the plot can be considered plausible even in its most abstract form. On the contrary, the central “knots” in the events revealing the ideas must be motivated thoroughly and in detail.

p 4) During perception the elements of a work also correlate with the aesthetic norms and demands of the percipient. Thus another aspect of motivation appears—the “purely artistic”.

p The conformity of each artistic detail to the semantics of the whole, to the idea of the work is one of the criteria of motivation in this sense. “Each element in a work of art lives its own vivid life, being at the same time organically linked with the whole and embodying the idea of the work, which is a sort of motivation of all psychological motivations."  [138•3  In its turn each artistic detail motivates the general “conception” of the work, its idea.

p The orientation towards the integrated perception of the genre, stylistic and other structures of the work which is formed in the recipient as a result of his former aesthetic experience is also an important criterion of motivation. Elements of a work which do not correspond to the given orientation are perceived as non-motivated, that is, outside of the organic links of the integrated structure, and essentially superficial. The uniqueness of a perceived work of art also has an influence on the realisation of motivation.

p Some elements of the work may not correspond to the 139 formulated stylistic norm and be non-motivated to the percipient, however they turn out to be motivated from the point of view of the new norm established by this innovative work.

p It is important to emphasise yet another essential point—the realisation of motivation is not limited to an act of direct aesthetic perception. Vissarion Belinsky, for example, distinguished two “stages” in perceiving literary works: “the stage of rapture" and “the stage of artistic pleasure”. In my opinion, it would be more accurate to speak of two differing types of perception. Aesthetic perception is always a direct contact with a work of art as an object for perception. But the first reading of a work differs substantially from the second, as the structure of the whole already exists in the consciousness of the percipient in the latter case. Asmus, in accentuating this principle, writes that, strictly speaking, the true “first” reading of a work is really the second.  [139•1  More than that, aeshetic perception can be included in the structure of a logical, evaluative analysis. Such perception may be termed “deliberative”. We see in a developed aesthetic perception the synthesis of “spontaneously emotional" and “deliberative” perceptions, and developed aesthetic perception can also include some elements of theoretical analysis.

p Between these two “stages” lies the stage of the revision of immediate impressions, in which a logical analysis of motivations, fixed in the stage of immediate aesthetic perception, is carried out.

p “Critical approach”, characteristic of immediate perception, is to an even greater extent inherent in the “deliberation” over a work. Everything in the structure of immediate. aesthetic perception is subordinated to the semantic synthesis, and if this synthesis if realised in its main outlines then individual nonmotivations remain on the periphery of consciousness. Now they are analysed by purely logical means, and new motivations and non-motivations are discovered in this process.

p However, the comprehension of a work of art in the given stage is not reduced only to a reproducing in the memory and an analysis by logical means of impressions received during immediate aesthetic perception. A special “deliberating” over them can be absent. Memory is a complex mental process consisting of the consolidation, conservation, and subsequent reproduction of the information acquired through experience. The main processes of memory are remembering, reproducing, and forgetting. Even such 140 an outwardly simple process of memory as forgetting is a conversion of that which was earlier perceived, a selection and retention of the essential, a generalisation, etc. The above also applies to the reproduction of the perceived in the form of remembering. This process also has an active character. Though the associative mechanisms of memory possess a certain “inertness”, nevertheless a “closing of the circuit" of newer and newer links among the elements of that perceived takes place at the end of immediate aesthetic perception. However, now our consciousness does not necessarily take those original “knots” as a basis for semantic synthesis. Here new motivations are revealed, and a rethinking of those realised earlier occurs.

p All these processes, in my view, can be united into the conception of the “aesthetic after-effect" of a work of art. In its course the perceived is not only more profoundly comprehended but also more closely fused with our past experience, revising it. Analysis of artistic motivation in its perceptive aspect leads to the necessity of a deeper research into the mechanism of “aesthetic after-effect”.

p The following stage is that of the theoretical realisation of motivation, its systematic, functional analysis. The theoretical comprehension of artistic motivation is based on material obtained during the course of immediate aesthetic perception and “aesthetic after-effect" and begins to be formulated already in the first stage of perception. “We are not aware of the linguistic form itself when it conforms with the graphic content. However, this does not mean that it is not perceived, since language is a means of creating and revealing an image and its reality.

p “If that harmony is destroyed, the linguistic form immediately becomes an object of conscious analytical perception. The places in the text that are particularly successful from the point of view of the reader’s aesthetic demands are also realised."  [140•1  In “aesthetic after-effect" the realisation of what elements of form arouse a stronger impression is at first lacking. There is only an “emotion of form”. “Such criteria are widespread on all levels of understanding, but principally on the lower level. On a higher level of understanding the artistic quality of a work is evaluated by means of indicating those elements of form which arouse aesthetic impression."  [140•2 

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p The concept of a work of art as a complicated structural whole where every element performs a definite function is the prerequisite for a systematic, functional approach. A comprehensive analysis of stylistic motivation, incidentally, cannot be carried out on the linguistic level alone. The justification for the introduction of a certain element of artistic speech is found by taking into consideration the composition and other aspects of a work of art. The systematic functional approach to motivation is a general aesthetic principle.

p Art should be studied with due account for its various aspects and their dialectial interaction. Specifically, the gnosiological and communication approaches to aesthetic motivation should be combined. The communicative process in art includes the perceptive stage in the form of conscious perception and comprehension around which the artist must orient himself. To make art unintelligible is to distort its essence, which always has definite social and gnosiological causes.

p The realisation of artistic motivation has its specific features depending on whether or not it is accomplished in the process of immediate aesthetic perception or during the process of “aesthetic after-effect”. In the first case the possibility itself of carrying out a semantic synthesis which then becomes the criterion for motivation is in the foreground. In the second case the correlation of the perceived artistic image to our previous life and artistic experience in its complex is accentuated (motivation as artistic veracity—-in the bounds of this or that measure of conventionality; the compositional, stylistic unity of the work).

p Both these processes should be studied in more detail. However, it is evident that even when the orientation on representing reality in the forms of life itself is realised in a work, the impression of motivation is produced not by the direct parallelism between the elements of perception and the person’s past experience, but as a result of the working of a complex psychological mechanism, dynamically generating an artistic effect. This process includes the following components: comprehensive association, proceeding on the conscious and unconscious levels with the participation of both aesthetic and extra-aesthetic experience; the phenomenon of anticipation; the emotional background, etc.

p The realisation of artistic motivation is the result of the active analysis and synthesis performed by the subject. The mechanical and curtailed nature of this process does not exclude the possibility of the appearance of situations, soluble also by the aid of discoursive thinking interwoven with aesthetic perception. All this forces us to pay due attention to the rational side of 142 aesthetic perception, which should not be ignored as a specifics of art.

The formulation of the criterion of motivation is raised to a qualitatively new and higher level with the transition from immediate aesthetic perception and “aesthetic after-effect" to an exclusively theoretical analysis, where the motivation of each element of the work is explored in the structure of the artistic whole and in its relation to aesthetic perception.