p The cognitive and aesthetic importance of the image as a vehicle for ideas depends on the degree and expressive power of the real truth incorporated in it. The truthfulness of works of art does not depend on the truth of specific facts and events portrayed. In art there is a particular pattern to be observed. It can happen that a painter depicts facts drawn from life in the very way they are present in reality, or an actor behaves on the stage exactly as he does in life, but an image or character created by these artists can appear unconvincing or ring false. On .the other, hand, an artist may write in, for 108 instance, fairy-tales of things which do not exist in Nature, yet at the same time create characters which appear profoundly realistic, artistically convincing, true to life.

p This discrepancy between artistic truth and concrete facts in their material down-to-earth form has long been recognised both in materialist and idealist aesthetics. However, from this one sound premise materialists and idealists have drawn diametrically opposed conclusions.

p Idealist aestheticians maintain that truth in art is fundamentally different from truth in real life and they put down their own aesthetic interpretation of the old maxim concerning two kinds of truth—one for life and one for art. They then go on to conclude that art does not follow life’s truth, and that the artist is independent of reality.

p Materialist aesthetics resolutely rejects any contrasting of life’s truth to the art’s truth. There are no two kinds of truth. Truth is always one. Artistic truth is truth drawn from life itself expressed through artistic means.

p Stanislavsky wrote that truth on stage has to be genuine, not touched up but swept clean of any dispensable day-to-day details. It must be realistically convincing but rendered poetic by creative imagination.

p “Dispensable day-to-day details" constitute the sphere of the particular and the coincidental, they tend to obscure the general and universal, to impede our apprehension of what is essential. In order to help man comprehend the profound truth of life, art reproduces reality— as the founders of materialist aesthetics have emphasised on several occasions—by realising possibilities inherent in that reality.

p Aristotle stressed: "The poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible as being probable or necessary.”  [108•*  In other words artistic truth expresses not simply what exists, but what could exist as a manifestation 109 of life’s immutable laws. Truth in the artistic image is the result of typification. Without generalisation art cannot be true to life. Naturalistic coincidence of an image with fact does away with the profound significance of truth; all that is left is imitation of truth while the real thing has gone.

p When work was in progress on a production of Nikolai Pogodin’s play The Kremlin Chimes at the Moscow Art Theatre, Lenin’s study was reconstructed so as to provide as faithful a copy as possible of the original in the Kremlin. Nemirovich-Danchenko gave instructions to have first one prop removed, then another, then another. .. . He countered the bewilderment of those present at rehearsal explaining that what he needed on stage was not Lenin’s study, but Lenin. The naturalistic precision of the set hampered his scope for capturing the true essence of character. The faithful copy was a source of untruth.

p In art characters are far more important than factual details. Lessing wrote that identical actions could emerge as logical for different characters. For this reason in any work of art he set store not by each individual action of a character or each individual fact, but only by those which served to express and pinpoint the essence of a character. If characters are well-delineated then the actions stemming naturally from their essence will be true to life. Artistic truth comes into its own when characters unfold in a work in the way in which they would have done in life in the particular circumstances concerned.

p The lyrical digression in the last chapter of Mikhail Sholokhov’s Virgin Soil Upturned has a powerful impact upon the reader. Together with the writer the reader takes his leave of the tragic heroes in the novel experiencing as he does so a sense of intolerable pain. Indeed, the writer cannot help but ask himself, whether it would have been so difficult after all for him to have let Nagulnov and Davydov live on and to find a different denouement for the plot that was less uncompromising, and less “cruel”. Perhaps another writer might have done so, 110 but not Sholokhov, the forceful realist, who never deviates from life’s truth.

p Faithful adherence to life’s truth is the very foundation of the realist image or character. Yet a character in art also possesses some, albeit relative, independence, follows his own logical patterns, something in the way of an "organic life of his own", to use the words of the distinguished Russian writer, Vladimir Korolenko. This organic life of the character in art finds expression in, among other things, the fact that revelation of life’s inner truth, the pinpointing of the inner significance of a phenomenon depicted in art frequently demand disruption of the external similarity between them.

p Schiller created a Don Carlos who was young and handsome, although the historical figure was a dwarf. However the poet did not violate essential truth: he disregarded coincidental features of the character in question and emphasised the most important aspect—Don Carlos’ hatred of despotism.

p Then again we might turn to Pushkin’s description in Evgeni One gin: "the cavalry guards’ jingling spurs". The poet himself noted that this description was inexact for cavalry officers did not wear spurs at balls. Yet he declined to adhere to factual truth, regarding the line as poetic and maintaining that where there was poetry, there was truth.

p The famous scene headed: "A tarpaulin sets apart those condemned to the firing squad" in the film Battleship "Potemkin" possesses rare expressive power. Sergei Eisenstein saw this episode as an image of a giant bandage tied over the eyes of the condemned men, an image of a giant shroud thrown over a group of living men. Yet in actual fact tarpaulins were never used to cover those sentenced to execution; tarpaulins were used as protective covering to keep bloodstains off the deck. The military advisor begged the director not to expose himself and the other film-makers to ridicule with a display of such blatant ignorance, not to let slip such a glaring distortion of life on board ship. Eisenstein deliberately deviated from 111 fact here, yet without distorting real life in the process: this episode was to prove full of profound meaning, full of symbolism and tension.

p Diderot when upholding truthfulness in art wrote: "All compositions worthy of praise correspond to Nature in all respects and everywhere; I need to be able to say—I have not seen this phenomenon but it exists.”  [111•* 

p Two hundred years later these words are just as relevant. The scene with the tarpaulin in Eisenstein’s film did not lose Eisenstein his audience’s confidence, all were gripped by the inner truth of the events enacted before them.  [111•** 

p The French writer Hippolyte Castille reproached Balzac with the fact that he was only a convincing writer when depicting settings, interiors, costumes, etc., but that he let truthfulness go to the wind when he started to delineate character. His characters Castille regarded as exceptional beings that would not be found in real life. If Balzac started describing a politician, he would dwarf Richelieu, while any artist from his pen would outshadow Michelangelo. Emile Zola, who subscribed to this criticism referred to the writer as Homer-Balzac, maintaining that everything in his work was on a Homeric, gigantic scale and that his heroes were larger than life. While paying .tribute to Balzac’s genius and calling him the Shakespeare of French literature, Zola, true to his 112 naturalist theory of art, criticised the creative approach of the greatest of French realists, seeing in it an impediment on the path to any truthful portrayal of life.

p There is no need to point out that these reproaches are inconsistent and unmerited. Balzac indeed magnified the scale of the phenomena he depicted, but his work remained true to life nevertheless, for his sense of proportion never deserted him. The words Diderot used in connection with Homer—let his mortals throw rocks, for his gods stride over mountains—can be just as well applied to Balzac.

p Nearly a century has passed since then, yet the same views of verity in life and art are still to be encountered today; poetic speech is sometimes identified with ordinary speech, the logic of art with the logic of ordinary speech. Adherents of these views often overlook the fact that ordinary speech is as a rule direct and immediate in its implications, whereas poetic speech figurative, rich in images, nuances of meaning and metaphor. In such cases the image-bearing language of art is reduced to the level of the straightforward language of ordinary human communication. In that case it would be impossible to explain, for instance, Faust’s securing of youth in Goethe’s tragedy, Hamlet’s conversation with his father’s ghost, or the visit to the realm of darkness by the heroes of Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird. It should not be inferred from this that the artist should disregard historical facts, real situations and details of everyday life. Indeed the artist should pay the keenest attention to these, but art gives expression to life not only in accordance with the laws of life, but also in accordance with the laws of its own essential nature. When the well-known Russian patron of the arts, Savva Mamontov noticed that the jacket in his portrait by Anders Zorn had buttons missing he asked why, whereupon the artist exclaimed: "I am an artist not a tailor!" In ordinary, everyday speech details and words are simple designations, while in art they acquire a quite different significance and are open to a far wider interpretation.

p There are a myriad ways of attaining truth. Since art is not identical to real facts from life itself, it incorporates elements of conventionality. However, in the history of art misuse or abuse of conventions has given rise to anti-realist phenomena. This applies to the pre- revolutionary decadent theatre in Russia and to many aspects of contemporary modernism in the West. The fact that realist aesthetics opposes formalistic tendencies does not mean that it rejects the use of conventions out of hand. Here it is important to arrive at a correct definition of the limits for conventionality.

p Convention is a concept open to many interpretations. In the broad sense it is something essential to all forms of art. Art is not actual landscapes on the banks of the Volga or Oka rivers, but landscapes depicted by Levitan and Polenov; the London fogs do not constitute art, but rather Turner’s pictures of them, which in fact made those fogs famous. Yet the brush of Levitan, Polenov or Turner produces such a convincing impact upon us that we, to use Pushkin’s phrase, take it upon ourselves to accept images of reality as reality itself. We are prepared to accept the passing of ten years in the ten-minute interval between two acts of a play. We do not object to the condensing of a long period, several years in fact, into the ninety minutes it takes for Sergei Bondarchuk’s film, The Fate of a Man to unfold before us. We cry or laugh, depending upon whose life in art we are contemplating: that of Carmen, Robinson Crusoe, or Mikhail Sholokhov’s Davydov or Grandad Shchukar. It is difficult to hold back laughter or tears when confronted by Charlie Chaplin’s "little feller", whose emotional hold over us is far more powerful than that of any real-life figure.

p All these examples serve to illustrate the role of conventions in art. With the exception of architecture and applied art—varieties of creativity which combine the artistic principle with a utilitarian, practical one—every art form is a reflection of reality, but not reality itself. Rejection of this fact leads to vulgarised identification of art and reality, to an abandonment of ideological and 114 aesthetic interpretation of material drawn from life, in a word to naturalism.

p Yet it is important to distinguish between artistic convention in general and conventions in the more narrow sense of the word, a specific system of descriptive and expressive means.

p Here the all-important word is means. Earlier it was pointed out that realist art reproduces reality not only in the "forms of life itself" but also with recourse to hyperbole, the grotesque, symbols, etc. Konstantin Simonov’s play, The Fourth, employs various conventions. The character in the play is constantly looking back to the past and communicating with his dead friends. Yet while reading the play the reader is never disturbed by the fact that time cannot move backwards from present to past, or by his knowledge that those who have left this life can never return to it. In the play a realistic life-story is unfolded before us, a convincing individual puts himself on trial before the judge of his own conscience, conducting the investigation and pronouncing the verdict. The conventional form of Simonov’s play is perfectly justified by the subject matter and his overall message; in fact, it is predicated by the idea of the play.

p In the Japanese Kabuki theatre sets are changed during the course of a performance: one set will be carried off while another is brought on and put in position. This function is carried out by special characters known as the “kurombo”, who are dressed completely in black and treated as if invisible. The audience does not even “notice” their appearance. Their work is “hidden”, yet at the same time this particular convention is an organic ingredient of the production.

p Degrees of convention vary from one art form to another. In opera and ballet for instance expressive means are always conventionalised: in ordinary life men and women do not convey their thoughts to each other by means of song and dance. The situation is quite different in straight drama. Images inherent in a play can be 115 transmitted to an audience both through traditional imitation of life and also through conventions.

p The scope and relevance of conventions are not infinite. Unfortunately conventions are sometimes overused on the mistaken assumption that the more there are of them in a work of art, and the less the artist keeps to direct portrayals of life, the more innovation will result. This of course is not the case: conventions as such are not evidence of innovation, just as traditional routine techniques are not necessarily indications of conservatism.

p Marxist-Leninist aestheticians regard conventions as an important expressive means widely applied in contemporary art. Moreover they start out from the fact that both the reflection of life in the "forms of life itself" and also its reproduction via conventionalised means and nothing else are rarely encountered. These different paths for the creation of artistic truth should not be presented as opposites, nor should either of them be singled out as the "only possible" one, or the modern of the two, etc.

p While attributing tremendous importance to conventions as means of expression, it should not be overlooked that “pure” conventions are a form of anti-realist art. The wide penetration of art by conventionalised methods is to be welcomed, but not so far as to replace life’s truth, to substitute vague allusions, symbols and abstract constructions for artistic images. In such cases convention assumes the character of a purely decorative element and is seen as a purely external device not connected with the nature of the image.

p In realist art convention provides a means for the profound penetration of the life of a character. Conventionalised elements cease to be conventions. They begin to be seen as natural, inevitable, the only possible aspects of character, without which it would be impossible to believe in it.

Characters in realist art provide artistic pictures of the real lives of their prototypes regardless of whether the prototype is an individual or formed of a type of individuals. Characters born of real life are “restored” to life 116 when they become an example for the living, stimulating their thoughts and arousing their emotions, and they help men to an awareness of their goals and ideals, in a word in a variety of ways they exert a definite influence on people’s lives. Great characters from realist art are not merely pictures drawn from life, they also have a creative potential. Exerting as they do a powerful influence on men’s lives, they contribute to the transformation of that life and the creation of a new one.