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p A vital characteristic of the artistic image is the individualised identity it provides. This thought also underlies Belinsky’s famous statement to the effect that the artist, as opposed to the scholar does not speak in syllogisms, but portrays reality in living pictures. Art always confronts man with concrete facts taken from life, with events and experiences. Each artistic image is either a concrete depiction of certain phenomena from the real world, or an expression of specific events in man’s emotional life; alternatively it can interweave and interrelate the two.

p Yet it does not simply represent individual, specific features of this or that phenomenon of life or group of such phenomena, but unfolds general essential features and laws underlying them. These profound essential features of reality, its underlying laws are not unfolded in images in the same way as in logical concepts. Science reflects life in its “pure” form, it discovers and formulates laws. Art, on the other hand, reproduces not the laws of life taken in isolation, but the concrete law-bound processes and patterns at work within life.

p So if the artist is anxious to unfold and express his 81 interpretation of the essence of the heroic, he will not start by analysing the concept of “heroism” or by providing a logical substantiation of its nature. No, he will acquaint us with Achilles or Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods to bring happiness to men on earth. He will fashion from stone a David, as did Michelangelo, expressing thereby the humanist artistic and social ideals of the Renaissance.

p Lenin reminded us that to a certain extent the phenomena of life are richer than laws. What does this imply? These phenomena are richer than laws in the sense that they possess concrete individuality, that they possess a multitude of specific features intrinsic to them alone, while laws reflect only universal and essential aspects intrinsic to the whole group of phenomena in question. The artistic image incorporates a concrete, sensual entirety, the individual wealth of each phenomenon depicted.

p In the individualised fabric of the image we find a certain similarity with concrete phenomena of life. However, the individual in art and the singular in life are not identical concepts. A profound qualitative difference exists between the reality of art and that of life.

p Any event or phenomenon drawn from life represents a mass of all possible elements interwoven the one with the other—the necessary and the coincidental, the inevitable and random, the universal and particular, the inner and outer etc. In any phenomenon these aspects are so firmly welded together that sometimes it is extremely difficult to separate them. The essence of a phenomenon is sometimes concealed under a mass of layers which impede man in his efforts to penetrate to the nature of the object of his study. Marx pointed out that the difficulties accompanying cognition consist precisely in the fact that the essence of a phenomenon is not to be found upon its surface.

p This is the difficulty to be overcome not only for the scientific investigator but also on the path to artistic discovery, to the creation of an image. If an artist transposes aspects of reality to his canvas in the form in which they 82 exist in real life, merely making a mechanical copy, but without creatively reproducing a picture of life, he will not in any way enrich the experience of the reader, beholder or listener. Men will not turn to art which provides them with nothing but mechanical copies, but will prefer to preoccupy themselves with the facts of real life.

p Balzac made a famous remark to the effect that the artist’s chisel expresses the life of a hand, while a plaster cast transforms that hand into a corpse. In order to avoid lifeless reflection, an artist has recourse to the principles of selection. While in any real fact we find an interweaving of essential and less essential aspects when it comes to the facts of genuinely realist art there is nothing in them that could possibly be omitted. The artist as it were “divests” the phenomenon which interests him from random and particular features that might obscure the essence of what he is seeking to portray. He does not reproduce phenomena of life in their actual entirety, but only those most characteristic features which constitute their "living soul". The more talented the artist the more rigorous his selection of facts from his real-life material. Conversely, the less talented an artist the more superfluous, unnecessary detail will be found in his work.

p In foreign writings on aesthetics in recent years widespread support has been afforded the device known as the "stream of life". The French film critic Marcel Martin maintains that in the cinema it is important to devote a definite place to random shots (for example showing passers-by who do not necessarily have any direct bearing on the action), to reject the idea of a carefully elaborated plot, of consistent and logically complete action, etc. In his opinion films in which plot gives way to a free stream of life, that is not subject to directorial “ censorship”, will prove more true to life and convincing.

p Yet this "stream of life" in practice leads to eventual rejection of selection, to rejection of generalisations, which without selection are impossible, and this in its turn will mean a’rejection of ideological commitment and 83 realism in art. Replacement of artistic selection by a simple presentation of the "stream of life" will destroy the image-bearing fabric of a work.

p A true artist always creates on the basis of selection and even in those cases where a "stream of life" appears appropriate, this actually constitutes a special variety of selection. A fine example of this is found in Eisenstein’s Battleship "Potemkitt". In that film there is no story-line in the traditional sense, the action moves forward with its own momentum, as was the case in real life; the film really does present us with a "stream of life". However, it is not a mosaic. In fact, between the episodes in the actual structure of the film there exists a profound logical sequence: all the episodes are related one to the other in such a way that the audience is presented with a comprehensive picture of the life and characters that unfold before him. Here the "stream of life" is deliberate, as it were, and we are faced not with a mere accumulation of events, but rather a subtly devised selection. Indeed, it is selection that constitutes the starting point in the fashioning of an image or character in realist art.

p However, selection not merely helps an artist but also confronts him with new problems. In real life each phenomenon is of an integral nature, while as a result of an artist’s selection it becomes fragmented. All that is external, coincidental is dropped and as a result it ceases to be true to life. It ceases to be a real phenomenon, but is rather the lifeless skeleton of what it used to be. A skeleton or abstraction will not convince anyone. The artist is then faced with the task of lending the selected material artistic truth, making it convincing.

p Material selected from life is then creatively reshaped by the artist, enriched by the power of his imagination and lent new associations and implications: when reproducing this comprehensive picture the artist interweaves once more certain elements of the original phenomenon. Images in art constitute not a copy of material taken from real life: rather new facts shaped by the artist’s imagination.

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p Balzac’s Comedie Humaine is a truthful chronicle of life of French society over a large period of the nineteenth century. The writer himself noted that his novels were written by "Madame French History", while he referred to himself jokingly as no more than her personal secretary. Thousands of men and women recognized themselves in the characters of Balzac’s novels, although these were all the fruit of the writer’s imagination. They bore resemblances to certain prototypes, but were not copies.

p If we take Gogol’s characters.. .? Belinsky wrote that Plyushkin and Khlestakov as presented by Gogol were not drawn from life, yet were based on actual individuals. This applies to all images and characters in realist art. Roberto Rosselini’s films Paisd and Rome Open City, Gillo Pontecorvo’s Queimada! and Gerasimov’s The Young Guard are all based on real events, yet the images and characters created by these film-makers have a life and identity of their own.

p An enormous role in art is that played by the artist’s imagination, which transforms material drawn from real life and fashions artistic images from real facts and situations.  [84•* 

p Does not this idea contradict Chernyshevsky’s famous principle to the effect that art reproduces life in forms taken from life itself? There is no contradiction here at all. Chernyshevsky’s idea is merely establishing the truth that artistic images, just as phenomena from life vary in their sensual concreteness, their inimitable individual identity. Yet this in no way implies that the retention of outward truthfulness is essential for the realistic image (or character). In certain art forms, as for example some musical genres, external veracity is ruled out by the very 85 nature of the art form concerned, so that Chernyshevsky’s formula in the sense defined above remains relevant.

p Of course the heroes of folk tales, supernatural characters and many figures from romantic art cannot provide direct reflections of real life. Indeed artists often have recourse to deliberate, open deviations from outward verisimilitude. Let us take for example Goya’s grotesque figures or the gargoyles of Notre Dame de Paris. An equally forceful example is Rabelais’ deliberate abandonment of the real world in Gargantua and Pantagruel. These artists do not start out from the forms and situations found in the real world, but nevertheless Chernyshevsky’s principle with regard to the reflection of life in real-life forms is not contradicted by these examples.

p The artistic image can be realistic both when external resemblances are retained and when they are abandoned. Yet a reflection of life, however individualistic the form or genre in which it is embodied, always remains. As noted earlier, this principle should not be interpreted in a vulgarly simplistic way, but merely as recognition of the similarity between specific facets of the sensual- concrete image and phenomena of the real world.

p The vivid and unique individuality of an artistic image —which serves to reflect the degree of talent enjoyed by its creator—determines to a large extent the power and degree of art’s impact on us.

p Conversely, no abstract scheme of things, no popular principle, or to use Marx’s and Engels’ phrase, no " mouthpiece of the spirit of the time" will move men’s hearts or set their imagination alight. The Soviet literary critic, Academician Mikhail Khrapchenko pointed out that the individualised element in literature is not something supplementary, not some recherche sauce for something more substantial, not an appendage for objective material, but a method for the aesthetic understanding of life which makes it possible to reveal the world in its true wealth of colours, in its close relationship with man. Such an approach is relevant with respect to all branches of art. Individualisation is a powerful means for 86 overcoming schematism, rhetoric and merely illustrative techniques in art.

p In their letters to Ferdinand Lassalle in connection with his tragedy Franz von Sickingen, Marx and Engels pointed out that the characters in a work of art should be clearly delineated, defined and contrasted one with the other, that the personality of a character should not dissolve in some abstract principle, but should be elaborated with vivid clarity. In their eyes Lassalle had seriously miscalculated insofar as he had written mainly a la Schiller transforming "individuals into mere mouthpieces of the spirit of the time”.  [86•*  One of the reasons Marx and Engels cited for Lassalle’s creative failure was the character Ulrich von Hutten, who was "just a representative of ‘inspiration’ ", no more no less. Marx held that he ought to have been portrayed as an "ingenious person of devilish wit", which he had been in real life. Then von Hutten would not have been merely a tedious vehicle of ideas, but a real person, complete with convincing, interesting traits of character.

p In this respect Marx and Engels demanded of the artist not “Schillerisation” but “Shakespearisation”, namely vivid portrayal, characters of distinct individuality, with a dynamism of their own. In a letter to Minna Kautsky Engels wrote with reference to "sharp individualisation" in a work of art: each character "is a type, but at the same time also a definite individual, a ‘Dieser’, as old Hegel would say”.  [86•**  “Dieser” ("this one") is really a vital character, a person in his own right, who can easily be picked out from among the crowd by his distinctive characteristics, peculiar to him alone.

p Hegel held Shakespeare and Goethe in high esteem on account of the fact that they created characters full of life, and he reproached contemporary and classical French dramatists for contenting themselves with mainly formal 87 and abstract representations of generalised types and emotions, rather than creating really vital individuals.  [87•* 

p Inadequate artistic talent inevitably leads to sketchiness in the delineation of characters, in slapdash inconsistency in their development. All characters in such works tend to resemble each other and with no real difficulty can conveniently be transposed to subsequent works.

p “Look at Balzac," wrote Belinsky, "at how much he wrote, yet despite all that there is not a single character or individual in his stories who in any way resembles another. What amazing art he possesses for depicting characters with all the nuances of their individuality!"  [87•**  Mastery of this unbelievable degree was attained by Tolstoy as well. In his novel War and Peace we find a total of 550 characters and each of them is a unique human being. In a letter to Inessa Armand, Lenin wrote that in this novel (and this idea also applies to art as a whole), "the whole essence is in the individual circumstances, the analysis of the characters and psychology of particular types".  [87•***  In art one and the same type, or social truth can be expressed in a variety of ways.

p In Virgin Soil Upturned Sholokhov created typical characters who were at the same time highly individual, namely Davydov and Nagulnov, to name but two. These men shared essential characteristic, a common goal and purpose in life. Yet the artist endowed each of them with specific individual qualities peculiar to him alone: each has a clearly delineated character, habits, mannerisms, inclination, build, height, eye-colour all of his own. Although Davydov and Nagulnov live one and the same life in this novel, each is a “Dieser”, an individual in his own right, who cannot be confused with the other. Passing references to tiny details are enough for the reader 88 to pick either of them out from the crowd. Thanks to the fact that the characters in this novel are not masks but real people, they make a powerful impact on the reader, are easily apprehended and remembered, and come to occupy a lasting place in the reader’s mind. If characters are not well-defined individuals then there can be nothing full-blooded or realistic about them; however, as pointed out earlier, concrete realism in art should not be the be-all and end-all of creativity. The realistic character or image endowed with individual form embodies a generalisation drawn from phenomena of real life and unfolds their inner essence. It expresses traits that characterise whole social groups, classes, peoples. The artistic image not only serves to depict events but also unfolds the essential nature of phenomena. Each character or image is endowed with a life of its own, yet groups of characters have common roots with similar manifestations in other ways of life, expressed as they may well be in other individual forms. It is the task of the artist to show these roots.

p The means to achieve such generalisation in realist art is typification. Belinsky wrote that the essential feature of typification lay in its transformation of characters into representatives of a whole host of people all of a particular kind. He regarded the relationship between type characters and those taken from real life as parallel to that between the genus and the species: in each type are concentrated generic features, features common to many phenomena.

p It has already been pointed out that the individual in art differs from real-life material in that it is reproduced from life but at the same time is enriched through the imagination of the artist. Yet there is more to it than that. Individuality in art is gleaned straight from life, yet at the same time it is, as it were, amended by the artist in such a way that superfluous details do not obscure our understanding of the fundamental and essential. The general is unfolded through what is individualised. In any artistic image we find a concentration of the 89 general and essential in the particular and the unique. It is this concentration which constitutes the type. The typical in art is a unity of generalisation and individualisation. The concrete individual form of material drawn from real life and reflected in art is transformed. Incorporating as it does an element of generalisation, it acquires inimitable individuality and expressive power:

p To see a World in a Grain of Sands,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in a hour.  [89•* 

p Yet what are the possible paths for artistic typification?

p The fact that life as a rule does not provide the artist with ready-made material that requires no processing before being incorporated into a work, does not mean that the direct transposition of "slices of life" into art is ruled out altogether. There are some art forms which by their very nature are documentary, and this makes it not only permissible in such cases, but even advisable to reproduce life in its immediate and actual manifestations. This applies to the documentary cinema, to art photography, literary sketches, memoirs—in other words to art forms based on direct reproduction of real facts from life. Meanwhile these art forms create through their own media serious, profound generalisations, expressing typical pictures from life, and making a powerful impact on their audiences. A good example is provided by Mikhail Romm’s film Ordinary Fascism, which has won worldwide recognition as an artistic investigation of the psychology of fascism, its roots and consequences, an investigation which culminates in relentless condemnation. Another art form which comes into this category is photo-montage; the anti-fascist and anti-war photomontages created by Gartfild and Zhitomirsky are 90 universally recognised not as mere photojournalism, but as genuine works of art, which produce a strong artistic impact.

p The documentary approach in art is valid when the artist, thanks to his own heightened vision, is able to select the most illuminating facts and events and juxtapose these, bringing out distinct correlations and logical connections. It is often the case that people who are not endowed with sufficiently sharp eyes and ears simply walk past, as it were, much that is extremely interesting. The artist is set apart from the non-artist precisely by the fact that he is acutely responsive to what is interesting and significant in the life around us. If he singles out from this real world facts and phenomena which shed light on many or even certain essential aspects of life, then the documentary element in his work can acquire the properties of an image.

p The documentary cinema and the art of photography have become an integral part of our culture. Furthermore the question as to the nature of the documentary reproduction of reality is of interest with regard to other art forms as well, since certain principles inherent in the chronicler’s approach to character-moulding, and devices used in documentary art, can be and indeed are used in various other creative concepts, for example in the documentary theatre. This brings us to a most important and apposite question, namely: where do the limits of the documentary approach lie? In the second half of the sixties this approach spread to many art forms. Certain authors began to contrast documentary art with creativity based on invention often giving preference to the first category. Documentary art in such cases is seen as superior insofar as it is based on painstaking reproduction of real material and events, and because it supposedly is extraconvincing and evokes a more confident, trusting response from its audience than does fiction. The documentary approach itself is sometimes regarded as something quite new, an element that has appeared in art only in this day and age as a special expression of art’s 91 contemporary essence. In this connection it is essential to draw attention to at least three points.

p First, it should be remembered that the documentary approach is by no means new in artistic creativity. Russian nineteenth-century literature, for example, includes such masterpieces as Herzen’s The Past and Thoughts, a work which, if classified in modern terms, would undoubtedly come under the heading of documentary prose. If we assume that the documentary approach finds expression in direct reproduction of real events, then the Iliad and Odyssey could be termed documentary, and likewise the historical novels of Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas.

p Second, it is important to stipulate that in literature, stagewriting and even in the cinema, documentary material acquires artistic significance, provided it does not contravene the laws of art. Documentary plays, for instance, and actual stage productions still more so, can hardly be called documentary in the strict sense of the word. The playwright can indeed depict real events and historical characters, use nothing but documented text, however the selection of concrete material, the composition of a work, the editing of the text, the peculiarity of dialogue, the unfolding of character, etc., can hardly fail to reflect the artist’s imagination and inventive faculties, his creative interpretation of the material. It would perhaps be more fitting to talk not of the documentary drama or production, but rather of ordinary plays or productions which keep to the general laws of art while being composed of documentary material.

p Third, it surely cannot escape our attention that an indispensable element of artistic creativity is always the artistic interpretation of reality which cannot but involve a rejection of any tedious, narrow preoccupation with facts, and incorporates inventive elements, including the boldest manifestations of the artistic imagination, provided, of course, the latter are justified.

p In principle any hard and fast choice between the fictional and documentary approach is artificial, and 92 could indeed lead to a naturalistic approach. This in no way belittles the aesthetic significance of documentary art, whose underlying principle is the direct presentation of actual facts. However in all other art forms such representation occupies a modest and limited place. It is far more common for the artist imaginatively to recreate prototypes. A real phenomenon of life is transformed in his hands, features and properties are carefully selected which serve to bring out its essence, certain other necessary characteristics are added, as a result of which one or more prototypes are transformed into a type. This means that a type in art is not identical with its real-life prototype. A prototype is source material for a portrait, while a type is an image.

p Even in portrait-painting the similarity between prototype and artistic image does not reach the point of identity. The portrait-painter’s role is not simply to convey external appearance, but to delineate his subject from the psychological point of view as well. This explains why portraits can resemble their originals more than photographs. A talented portrait-painter, as Belinsky pointed out in his day, brings to the surface with deft strokes things which often constitute a secret even for the sitter himself. The intimate is made obvious in a portrait, outward signs serve to bring out emotional and spiritual qualities.

p Indeed this explains the fundamental difference between the portrait and the ordinary photograph. An artist studies a face and depicts it as it really appears to him at those comparatively rare moments when it really does mirror the subject’s inner life. He paints a man not as he usually is, but as he can be or should be in those moments when the essence of his character comes to the surface. Photographs capture the individual at chance moments, and this is why, as Dostoyevsky aptly remarked, they show him as he might sometimes chance to be and we must remember that Napoleon could have been caught in a moment of foolishness, or Bismarck in a moment of tenderness.

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p Typification based on real prototypes demands that an artist attain a deep understanding of the life of his prototypes and not simply convey outer facets and characteristics that may often be no more than coincidental.

p However typification is not only concerned with real prototypes. More often than not the artist selects essential characteristics and traits peculiar to similar phenomena or representatives of a specific social group, from which he then generalises so as to recreate them in a new integral picture of life, in an utterly new individualised human character. Gorky wrote that the artistic image or character is created according to the laws of abstraction and concretisation. Characteristic feats of many heroes are “abstracted” or singled out, then these are “ concretised” or summarised in the form of a single hero, such as Hercules or Russian bogatyr Ilya Muromets. Characteristics and actions that come most naturally to individual merchants, nobles or peasants are singled out and then summarised or generalised in the person of a single merchant, noble or peasant, thus giving us the "literary type”.

p Defining this aspect of the artistic image Belinsky wrote that the “type” is a "familiar stranger". “Familiar” because it reveals features and traits to be found in reallife phenomena; “stranger” because these traits and features are concentrated in a new individual character or in a new picture of life which are the fruits of creativity.

p The artistic image is a resume of many lives all at once. In it is represented one situation, but an infinite multitude of similar situations is implied. An image in art is a portrayal of one concrete personality, which however embodies a whole host of characters encountered in everyday life.

Earlier it was pointed out. that individualisation insures the artist against schematism and blatant didacticism. And typification helps him avoid a naturalistic, photographic approach. In this connection Belinsky wrote that one of the most distinctive characteristics of creative 94 originality, or to be more precise, of creativity itself, consists in “typism” which is an author’s “hall-mark”. For the writer of true talent each character is a “type”. The depth of the type-portrait is the best measure of an artist’ maturity as a realist. The more typical his characters the more profound his realism.