Author and Character within the Scope of Historical Poetics

Abstract

The author's English summary from the article:

The article deals with Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “author and character” within the scope of historical poetics. Author’s and character’s interrelation is subject’s relation towards subject. When Bakhtin singled out the category of “dialogue” in aesthetic object, he regarded this phenomenon of object not as natural-subjective but as a brand new being- aesthetic formation based on the relation of subjects’ “ego” and “alter ego”, personal and immanent-social, or of author and hero. It is truth universally acknowledged that authorship was formed prior to the establishment of the phenomenon of self-valued identity, but “authorship-with its own meaning” is still understood as personal authorship and we consider uniqueness of creative initiative and individual manner as its primary signs.

Afetr analyzing the concept of author-character in the theories of Aleksandr Veselovsky, Olga Freidenberg and Mikhail Bakhtin, we can conclude why there existed aesthetically valuable author in the culture, where the person was not singled out yet and did not have self-valued status. The perception of world by human is principally syncretic and appears while creating image structure of art. Syncretism, as artistic principle, means perception of the world, which includes aesthetic consciousness as well. Creativity does not happen within the boundaries of one consciousness. There are a number of participants in aesthetic event and it is revealed in the form of “ego-alter ego” “author-character”.

At the early stage of the development of art, when aesthetic consciousness was beginning to awaken and be formed, the author, being in the process of formation, found shelter in others consciousness. Mikhail Bakhtin, who made emphasis on the subject-subjective interrelation in architectonics of aesthetic object, regarded “ego-alter ego” and not “abstract I” as the form of real existence. This principle formed basis for his general methodological researches and we should regard scientific actualization of principle of subjective syncretism as his essential discovery.

Published in the journal Sjani, vol. 9 (2008), pp. 67–68. Open the paper