CC BY
0POETICS OF COLOR IN THE NOVEL M.A. SHOLOKHOV'S NOVEL "THE QUIET
DON"
Chekurova Yu-A.1, Prokopenko Yu.N.2
Chekurova Yulia Alexandrovna - student, 2Prokopenko Yulia Nikolaevna - candidate of sociological sciences, associate professor, DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, BELGOROD STATE NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, BELGOROD
Abstract: the article is devoted to the study of the poetics of color in M.A. Sholokhov's novel "The Quiet Don". M.A. Sholokhov's poetics of color in the novel is extremely diverse and has its own symbolic meaning. The color painting in the novel "The Quiet Don " is composed of all-Russian, dialectal, ethnic and individual vocabulary, which serves to convey a pictorial and expressive function. The author, describing the way of life of the Don Cossacks, uses both all-Russian literary color designations and his own neoplasms, creating a special poetics close to the form of the Don speech and reflecting the spiritual culture of the Cossacks. Keywords: color, Cossacks, Mikhail Sholokhov, semantics, poetics, symbolism.
The concept, being represented in the art text, realizes associative and symbolic connections, conditioned by linguocultural and individual-author's characteristics. The color background of a work can also be considered as an author's code, a key to understanding the work, which is not always subject to reader's perception. E.I. Tarasenko notes: "in view of the fact that the concept directly is a unit of culturally marked and world outlook oriented, the question of research of the concept "Color" as a key cultural concept arises" .
In his works I.I. Chumak-Jun summarizes the contribution of scientists to the study of this phenomenon and describes the main properties of colorative lexicon: "As the initial constituent unit of the lexical-semantic field of color is considered colorative - a two-dimensional sign category, characterized by both the certainty of color meaning and the certainty of its expression by means of a particular lexical morpheme". The poetics of color in the novel "The Quiet Don" by M.A. Sholokhov is diverse and has its own symbolic meaning. This is due to the author's use of both general Russian vocabulary and neologisms to describe the way of life of the Don Cossacks. Such a combination allows to build a special poetics, the color-painting, reminiscent of the Don pattern on traditional Cossack clothing, such as a shawl, immerses in the spiritual culture of the Cossacks, at the same time organically weaving in the author's individual vision of the novel's space.
The color writing in the novel "The Quiet Don" is a mixture of individual-author's vocabulary, dialectisms, regionalisms (ethnic Cossack vocabulary), and common vocabulary. As many scholars note, "it is difficult to imagine a work with more colorisms than The Quiet Don". This is indeed true: 3 thousand words, 900 color-designations "mark the peak of Sholokhov's use of color".
The colorisms presented in the novel can be divided according to the morphological principle:
1) coloratives-nouns: In the forest, curtained with lacy hoarfrost, austere belle. Belle - whiteness, dazzling white color of something; "And over Belarus, drenched in blood, the stars were tearing mournfully. The night celestial blackness was gaping, smoking and floating away". Black - darkness, gloom; "After fussing, she fell on the bed and, stretching out the faded yellow of her lips, looking at the ceiling with eyes beastly with pain, moaned, shrank into a lump". Yellowness is yellowness.
2) verb color-definitions: "The sky behind the zaymishche was threateningly black". To blacken - to show through with its black color, to be visible (about something black); "On the square, behind the fire shed, where fire barrels with broken ogles are drying up, the roof of the Mokhov's house is green". To turn green - to stand out with its green color; "Grishkin's trousers, tucked into white woolen stockings, were scarlet with sashes". Scarlet - to stand out with its scarlet color (about something scarlet).
3) coloratives - attributes of the predicate, defining actions and states in qualitative terms: Somewhere behind the Don, lightning was whirling, rain was falling, and behind the white fence, merging with the hum of voices, bells on horses stepping from foot to foot were ringing invitingly and gently. Sinyo - lazorevo (about the color of lightning); "In the shrouded subway under the opal ash rdyano glowed coals." Rdyano - scarlet, red.
Sholokhov's style, its uniqueness, is associated with the creation of its own neologisms, for example, sinyo, yolten. Such neologisms make the poetics of the text original, bring it closer to the Don speech. The author also uses general Russian literary color-definitions (black, green, alet, bel, cherny, rdyano) to describe in more detail the way of life of the Don Cossacks. In addition, coloratives can acquire additional meaning by introducing individual author's semes into the semantic structure of the word: "In half a month, a small hill was overgrown with plantain and young wormwood, fescue sprouted up on it, turnip yellowed on the side, lubush yellowed on the side, lubushka-donnik hung with fleshy tassels, smelled like choborom, molochai and honeydew". To yellow - to blossom with yellow flowers.
The analysis of color denotations leads to the conclusion about high emotionality, expressiveness, saturation of colors in the novel.
We should note M.A. Sholokhov's special love for complex adjectives, which allows the author to convey the depth, shimmering, superimposition of colors. Such coloratives-adjectives convey the most subtle shades of the background of the novel space, visualize, color it, thus creating the effect of presence: "Grigory put a slit caterpillar
on the palm of his hand. Yellow-brown, just hatched from an egg the other day, it was still melting in the gun a living warmth". Allocation of certain color shade often occurs by complicating the structure of the word, for example, izzhelta - with a yellow tinge, the second part of the adjective - red, it clarifies, more specifically conveys the color range: "A large izzhelta-red carp rose to the surface, foamed the water and, having bent his blunt shovel head, again staggered into the depths.
In addition, complex adjectives-coloratives, naming the color of the objects of the novel space, additionally characterize it, compare it with other objects of the surrounding reality, close to the folk consciousness: "Somewhere above, behind the cumulus clouds, the rising sun was shining, and the valley was filled with yellow-creamy fog. The second part of the compound adjective yellow-creamy is represented by the relative adjective creamy - soft, shiny, light yellow color, which characterizes a natural phenomenon (fog) through the everyday situation surrounding a person. Or, for example: "Behind Grigory in the rustle of skirts floated Krasnomakovaya Ilyinichna and Vasilisa, inexorably firmly soldered lips." The part of the adjective krasnomakova - poppy - creates an image peculiar to folklore texts, comparing the blush on the woman's cheeks with a poppy flower (bright red).
So, each color in Sholokhov's text carries a certain semantic and symbolic load, and as Trofimova P.V. says, becomes a detail of worldview and worldview.
Color in the novel "The Quiet Don" represents a certain symbolism closely connected with Cossack traditions and worldview. However, Sholokhov's color symbolism often goes against traditional cultural meanings. For example, black color is used in the novel in a stable and folkloric interpretation "gloomy, gloomy". Before her suicide attempt, "Natalya groped, without thought, without feeling, in the black longing that clawed at her soul filled with shame and despair, and reached the corner." Often in the novel, the adjective black is an epithet to the word blood and serves to denote mutilation and advanced age. Black blood is associated with the death of the murdered, in this case the color foretells the end, symbolizes the terrible: "At the door of the weighing room lay a young Tavrichan with a broken head; spreading his legs, dipping his head in the black clotted blood, bloody icicles of hair falling on his face; as one can see, he was leaving his own on the blue cheerful earth". The all-Russian form of the colorative black can acquire Sholokhov's occasional semantics: "As if awakened from a heavy dream, he (Grigory) raised his head and saw above him a black sky and a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun". The black sun and the black sky symbolize the depth of the hero's grief. With Aksinya's death, the black sun and the black sky lose their will to live and foreshadow his doom.
The royal color traditionally considered to be violet. In the writer, this color and its shades (purple and lilac) acquire the author's meaning of "a portent of misfortune": "While we had breakfast and put ourselves to bed, it dawned. The morning light played with blue shimmers. Clearly, as cut into the snow, the wattle was jagged, and, covering the delicate lilac haze of the sky, the roof of the stable was darkening". The lilac haze of the sky prophesies Grigory's upcoming trials. The large number of shades of green represents a palette of colors, each of which has its own meaning. Dark shades of green are associated with firmness and reliability, gentle shades of this color are soothing: emerald speaks of wealth and luxury, yellow-green evokes a feeling of well-being, optimism and spring renewal. M.A. Sholokhov associates the green color with spring and renewal: "It was spring. The first bright green sharp sprouts of honeydew grass appeared on the mounds, on the mounds, from under the nugget stones embedded in the loam. In the ravines and gullies the snow was blue and saturated with moisture; the cold still wafted harshly from there, but already the spring brooks, invisible to the eye, were ringing subtly and singsongily in the holes under the snow, and the trunks of poplar trees in the forests were turning green in a very spring-like, slightly noticeable and tender way. The author's connotation of the emerald color, shade is reflected in the following contexts: "Behind the undulating ridge of the mountain there was a branched road, - in vain it beckoned people to go there, beyond the emerald, unclear, like a dream, thread of the horizon into unexplored spaces, - people, chained to their homes, to their everyday life, were languishing in their work, tearing their strength at threshing, and the road - a deserted longing trail - flowed, cutting the horizon, into invisibility".
Blue color in the work is associated with peace and harmony, the fun of simple human life, it acts as a symbol of the unity of man and nature: "Blue sunny day floated in the incoherent memories of childhood: starlings in the stone masonry, barefoot Grishkin's feet in the hot dust, majestically frozen Don in the green down of the forest, reflected by the water, children's faces of friends, young statuesque mother. We can trace the symbolic meaning in the following contexts: "Steppe ridges, farms, villages, stanitsa, never seen before, alien to his heart, floated away before Grigory's closed eyes. And behind the ramparts of the ridges, behind the gray road - a fairy tale blue friendly country and Aksinyina, in late, rebellious bloom, love in addition4. The dream for Melekhov is the blue country associated with the beloved woman, the search for a happy share, inner harmony.
The analysis of colorative vocabulary in the novel "The Quiet Don" by M.A. Sholokhov has shown that color is an important link of meaning formation, it reflects the realities of Cossack life, vividly and convexly conveys all the details of life and way of life of the Cossacks. The author shows us a deep knowledge of Cossack cultural traditions, at the same time bringing into the text his individual perception, his emotions, love for the bright, multicolored, natural life of this people. M.A. Sholokhov's talent, as A.A. Dyrdin writes, is akin to the talent of a painter who uses colors to highlight the depth of the phenomenon: "Sholokhov's view of nature is similar to impressionistic aesthetics. In the artistic works of M.A. Sholokhov and early spring, and late autumn, and winter sun, and different states of water, and silence, and unusual transparency of the air are present in landscape sketches. For the artist of the word is characterized by a keen interest in all phenomena of current life. In ordinary, everyday phenomena, he chooses the moment when the harmony of the world around him manifests itself most impressively ".
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