Philosophy/1.Philosophy by literature and art

PhD (Oxford, UK) Komleva A.V.

International University of Fundamental studies, Member of the Union of theatrical figures of the Russian Federation, art critic, theater critic, Russia, Saint-Petersburg

Anthropology of the phenomenon of the hero in literature and on the theater stage in our time. Europe, Russia, United Kingdom

Key words: anthropology, philosophy, messianic, literature, art, theater, stage, hero, comedia dell’arte

The paper deals with the abstract phenomenon of the hero in literature and on the stage, his anthropological characteristics, epistemological nature of theatre art and, in particular, theatrical set design. Identified aesthetic features of anthropological characteristics of literary characters. Found a phenomenological relationship between the literary and theatre three world regions.

Philosophical thought of Europe and Russia differed significantly from each other as the Moon from the Sun for a long time. The thought of Immanuel Kant, the genius of Henrich Heine, the outcome of Artur Schopenhauer, Fridrich Nietzsche’s Superman, the expedition of Hitler in North Africa, on mount Athos, the middle East, to India is the quest for the fundamental worldview, the universe Aryan. Earlier, Napoleon’s expedition to Northern Egypt, where he sought the answer to the question: who was the first winner and what it has become after a century in the hearts of men? This segment of related scientific disciplines – philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies has formed a philosophical discourse – who is the hero in your life? Who is the hero in your life?

Because Life is mirrored in the literature and on the stage.

In the XVIII cent. came on the scene the hero of L. Stern’s ‘The Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman’ and ‘Sentimental journey through France and Italy’. Young Werther (the prototype of the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) from the drama ‘The sorrows of young Werther’ in Europe is a reflection of the white man of high society. Heroes of Scandinavian sagas and epics of the white man as a conqueror of wide steppes and mountain peaks had excellent physical abilities: an excellent shot and rider, the father of the nation who care about the welfare and prosperity of its people. Aryan root – the leaven of the foundation of the European system of worldview. At the end of XVIII century – early XIX there is a new literary hero of ‘The ransom of red chief’ of an Indian tribe. Fearless heroes of Fenimore Cooper ‘Chingachkuk – Big Snack’, Jack London ‘Martin Iden’ – appears on the scene in the form of exotic untamed savages, representatives of the red race.

In Russia thought of the archpriest Abbakum, the vedic philosophy of ancient Henry Russes, where ‘man is an eternal spirit in the eternal search for its peak’; conscious of the messianic feat of self-sacrifice in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, S. Nilus, moral and ethical opinion of Ivan Ilyin is that Russia entered the twentieth century.

Apart from them stands the United Kingdom in which ‘the sun never sets’. In which his Messianic destiny is treated quite distinctly and intelligently and in the twenty-first century. Philosophical and literary thought of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Jonathan Swift, sir Issak Newton, Oxford philosophical school.

In the British Isles, the descendants of immigrants of the white race through mixing with the tribes of the black race took the elements of the lunar cult. The most strongly manifested among the Celts. The priestly caste of the druids created a hybrid spiritual teaching, blending the vedic view of their ancestors with the african cult of voodoo, which is completely based on the lunar cult. In the literary tradition, the struggle between duty and rock as an act of punishment by self-determination, is shown in William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’.

British Israelism as the messianic principle of the board and management of the countries, peoples and continents since the glorious revolution Oliver Cromwell gave an understanding of ruling class elite. The bar shuddered from what they were shown their faults, and even in mirror image. Through the looking glass. At the beginning of the twenty-first through the looking glass becomes the basis of applied rethinking of philosophy in literature and literature in art in the British Isles, but also moving on to the European continent, penetrating and in Russia.

The hero is strong, powerful, unstoppable, physically strong, a lot of thinking at first, but gradually squeeze pressures [cinema: ‘Macbeth’ – Michael Fassbender, 2015, UK]. He pressed himself: and now he was torn in an endless reflection of monologues [cinema: ‘Hamlet’ – Laurence Olivier, 1948, UK]. Both examples are indicative: we show how through a woman – this vessel of sin, acts dark power mirror (lady Macbeth, Ophelia). Heroes-men go mad unable to bear the horror of the microcosm.

Literature and art in the current global attitude intermarried at three points: Europe, Russia, the United Kingdom. On stage and in the pages of books demanded action. At venues governs the chaos of ideas, of individual sonorities, strong points, pulled pictures, only real people-characters-actors. Their existence often becomes the flour for themselves and for the scene. Sometimes a purely mechanical way of uttering the text, poorly trained, not skilled (there is no estimate on the psychophysical level, the actor was not accustomed to feel in the given circumstances, poor meager acting nature). But most importantly – the actors play themselves. In them there is no fate. The fate of a person who holds any other related profession. And this modern Hero? It’s a travesty she’s a vanity fair defects, false feelings, imaginary ideas.

Labor is the basis of performance. Daily work is saving energy strong theatrical troupe, learns to survive, learns to work, and painfully pull the idea role on the stage. Stage design is sometimes unable to pull out weak acting. The abundance of stage technology: video projection, film, photomontage, 3D technology helps to empathize with, but are subsidiary tools.

For example, Robert Lepage (canadien, which is part of the Commonwealth countries the British crown) placed on the stage of Theatre of Nations (Russia, Moscow, 2014) performance ‘Hamlet/Collage’ on William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. Starring Yevgeny Mironov stages commedia dell’arte: he constantly shifts, peeps, tumbles between the four walls of a cube that is deployed to the viewer. Along the way, changing costumes, sex from male to female – here he is in the role of Ophelia with white hair listening to your favorite ‘The Rolling Stones’. From now on, ‘the tragedy does not need physical size: she is tormented by the claustrophobia of space’ [18] and the infinity of the transformer square-cube.

The play is about? About Hamlet? The tragedy of human existence? Maybe that the modern technology is the tragedy of the modern world, where the Hero is forced to Be what he is ordered to be a toy in the hands of the Demiurge? For thought of the German Hans Lehmann, ‘first, that tragedy should be understood as a mode of aesthetic representation, and not as a part of human experience; second, that it should not be seen as an element of literature, but in relation to the specific aesthetic reality of the performance’ [12, pp. 333-335]. However, the performance of symbolic, pain – the art of acting Mironov does not leave anyone indifferent spectator. He’s not muscular and handsome, but sincere, close, of course.

The discussion about the image of Hamlet and the characters of the play ‘Hamlet / Machine’ began in the early 80’s and continues to this day. Increased attention to this work of the German Heiner Müller explained by the fact that in a small volume of the play the playwright was able to summarize and present the experience of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe through intellectual perception. All statements devoted to the image of Hamlet and the symbolism of the play, relate mainly to the ideological identity of the product.

The play Heiner Müller ‘Hamlet / Machine’ – the product of the interweaving of fate and history, the perception of the subject of the conventions surrounding it, Hamlet world. The story depicted in the play, is subjective, and Hamlet is a bearer of the ideas of the author, and has nothing to do with the literary hero. It is rather, the entropy of civil rather than a personal drama.

The starting point in the definition of the coordinate system of the future visual image of the play is the development of the complex is, by definition soviet philologist Vinogradov, ‘conjugate different-sized and different-type images, which are discussed in the framework of works of art existing simultaneously’ [16, pp. 119-120]. The kernel image consists of many small, or ‘small’ images, showing an integrity of the play. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato has defined integrity as ‘that which is lacking in one part’ [13, p. 330-334]. Integrity is something specific, which embraces all distinguished their parts, but whatever part nor perceived in her, she continues to be indivisible’ [Ibid]. Predecessor Plato Aristotle understood as a whole ‘that has a beginning, middle and end’, compare with ‘a single unified living being’ action in the tragedy, which must be ‘whole and complete’, that is, applies the concept of the living organic integrity directly to the work of art [1, p. 118].

From the mid-fifteenth century planned steady main road. After the Augsburg religious explosion of the message of Martin Luther gives a boost to the development of one’s personality. Grow the city, travelers make geographical discoveries, the collective consciousness of Nations spills in street riots, revolutions, wars. Discoveries in science, in art, in botany posing questions and then trying to resolve them into active complicity with nature. The comedia dell’arte in the second half of the XVI century prepares the minds and souls of people to a new perception of reality. More precisely, the action to creatively with the Creator – now reality, reality are changeable according to their ideas of Good, beauty.

In the XVI century, the Cartesian picture of the world is rapidly gaining in their ranks of supporters who sought absolute order and structure of thought, and embodying the order in biosocial aspects of life. In art there was a genre of baroque poetry, the courtly mannerist, sentimental poetry. Intermediate, transitional forms of fine literature showed the hidden possibilities of side branches of poetry. Appear genres sketches, travel notes, diaries, road, sea and air travel.

Hegel defined the ‘organic integrity’ as ‘the infinite inside the body, full of meaning and deploys this content in the relevant phenomenon; the complete unity of illumination rising from its not the fact that the form and the appropriateness of the abstract subordinate to itself special, but the fact that all individual retains the same living independence, as a whole, which with seeming inadvertency merges into something quite rounded...’ [6, p. 379-380].

His thought continues the russian literary theorist Vissarion Belinsky, focuses on identifying the nature of poetic ideas, on the disclosure of the specific artistic content of the image works [7, p. 68]. The image is deposited in the recipient’s memory, displaying in his subconscious, acquiring new meanings, and synthesized is stored in the memory or goes out.

In the nineteenth century, Immanuel Kant defined aesthetics as ‘the science of beautiful’; G.W.F. Hegel continues his thought, realizing ‘the creation of art, as a whole, organized in itself’ [5, p. 6]. Contradiction to him the idea of the philosopher Spencer about beautiful as about the idea, ‘excluding any real object of desire’.

Russian idealist Fyodor Sologub turned into a rough and poor life in a sweet legend. Not specular reflection, and the spiritual exaltation of life require the idealists. The whole XX century was marked by a painful separation from reality and a sweet-bitter approximation to the imaginary image of the object. The fundamental justification of this can be found in the philosophical platforms of the time. Russian literature and theater of the time respond productions of plays by A. Chekhov ‘Platonov/Fatherless’, by M. Gorky ‘The Children of the Sun’.

English esthetician E. Bradley ‘Oxford lectures on poetry’ in the early 20-ies of the last century has drawn a line under philosophical arguments about the relationship of reality and art, radically spreading them on different sides of existence. Between them they stubbornly refuse hybridize [4, p. 5], each taking clear himself a way of life. And even world of poetic images picture reflects not reality, but local, limited their time and space – a fictional theatrical world, obeying its own laws of development. For thought David Bevington, we have ‘role as theatre academic from a wealthy British institution’ [3, pp. 65-66].

At the beginning of the twentieth century european philosopher Christiansen identified admits that ‘the vocation of the artist: to allow the soul from the bondage of life’ [6, p. 158], other european, neokantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer, examines art in a subjective-idealistic vein, as an instrument of artistic creation reality [5, p. 170]. Briton Herbert reed in the middle of the twentieth century was determined by the presence of poetic abilities to the activity of only those who can suppress his intellect, to impose fetters on the mind, back to a reflective form of thought, characteristic of the childhood of mankind.

American aesthetics, pupil of E. Cassirer, Suzanne Langer, escalates the thought of his teacher: ‘In art everything is created, nothing is ever borrowed from reality [11, p. 84]. In this sense, the most consistently made the armed Forces. ‘In Soviet Russia, which, in the opinion of the critic V. Beryozkin, used the principles of game design stage during the preparation of the performance [2, p. 64-65]. In a specially organized for this Studio at Borodino with his disciples on the basis of the tradition of commedia dell’arte introduced the elements of the action area.

In the twentieth century there was a constant counterpoint in the way the physical design stage: designed as a general view on the location and specific embodiment. According to art historian A. Zis’, ‘any art under any conditions is always a reflection of reality, but the reflection can be both true and false; it can lead to true and to false trends; the content and ways reflect life in a realistic and antirealistic art different, opposite, differ from each other’ [17, p. 37].

Art is not only the fact that he has his own reflection, but also the playback of the phenomena of reality. Artistic method in the art is expressed not just in that he, unlike the scientific method, leads the artist towards the representation of reality in its aesthetic originality through artistic images. Imagery is not a method of artistic creation, and a specific form of reflection of reality in art. And this form is universal: it characterizes the art of all times and peoples.

A poetic image is a hardened form of the word, unchanging, for all its fluctuation and ease. ‘Image is the most essential element of poetry, the only thing which is not in danger – neither time, nor poetic fashion. Changing currents and trends, themes and plots, motives and moods, changing the conventions governing the choice of words and the versioning, but the image is always in the direct form, in metaphor – comparison. The image of hero – the blood of poetry.

All that is involved in the play actor-hero, should be fused in subjection to the essence of theatre – stage action. The task of the stage designer is involved in the act of co-creation with personality hero, as a private in General, as a small to large.

Literature:

1. Aristotle. About the art of poetry. M., 1957. S. 118.

2. Beryozkin V. Theatre artist. Russia. Germany. Moscow: Agraf, 2007.

3. Bevington David. Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages // Theatre Research Intermational. Vol. 38. Issue 01. March 2013. Pp. 65-66.

4. Bradley A.C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry. Leningrad, 1926. P. 5.

5. Cassirer E. An essay on man. New Haven, 1947. P. 170.

6. Christiansen I. Philosophy of art. P., 1911.

7. Gay N. To. The art of the world. M., 1967. S. 91.

8. Hegel G. W. F. Course aesthetics. M., 1869. Part I.

9. Hegel G. W. F. Aesthetics. M., 1971. Vol. 3.

10. Kirkkopelto Esa. The Question of the Scene: On the Philosophical Foundations of Theatrical Anthropocentrism // Theatre Research International. 2009. Vol. 34. No. 3.

11. Langer, S. K. Feeling and Form. New York, 1953. P. 46-47.

12. Lehmann Hans-Thies. Tragӧdie und dramatisches Theater. Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2013 // Theatre Research International. Vol. 40. Issue 03. Oct. 2015. Pp. 333-335.

13. Losev A. F. History of ancient aesthetics (the sophists, Socrates, Plato). M., 1969. P. 330-334.

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15. Read H. The Philosophy of modern Art. London, 1952.

16. Vinogradov V. V. The Style. The theory of poetic speech. Poetics. M., 1963.

17. Zis A. Art and aesthetics. M: Art, 1975.

18. Online edition: Colta.ru