Portrait in literature: concept, technique for describing the hero and examples

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

World literature has a rich arsenal of various techniques that help create artistic images. The best characterization of the hero is his portrait. After all, a character is not only a specific person, but also a generalization. The writer tries to show his character traits and interest the reader in his appearance, fate, environment.

An important means of characterization is a portrait. Very often, the authors describe the figure, face, clothes, movements, gestures, mannerisms of the characters. Description of appearance can tell a lot about a person. In the article we will try to define what a portrait is in literature, we will give examples of it. We will also define the main types of descriptions of a person in books.

Turn to theory

What is a portrait in literature? A portrait of a character means an image of his appearance: figure, face, outfit. Visible properties of behavior are added to it: gestures, facial expressions,gait, demeanor. There are a lot of examples of a portrait in literature. They help the reader visualize the thoughts, feelings, actions, speech, appearance of the character.

Let's try to define a portrait in literature. This is a means of artistic expression through which the writer manages to reveal the typical character traits of his characters, as well as convey his ideas through their appearance. This technique helps to reveal the inner world of the character. From the description of a person, you can find out his age, nationality, social status, tastes, habits, temperament and even character.

Depending on the type, genre of the work, a portrait of a person in literature is also selected. For this, for many years the masters of the word used certain canons and patterns. Until the end of the 18th century, common features prevailed over individual ones. But then the transition from abstraction to specificity, feelings, authenticity and originality began to be observed.

The very word "portrait" was borrowed from the French language (portraire). It has the meaning - "to reproduce something the hell with it." The portrait in works of literature and on canvas has differences. They both describe a person's appearance, but in different ways. The writer paints his portraits with words. Here is an example of a portrait in literature from Vladimir Korolenko's story "In Bad Society":

He was a boy of about ten years old, bigger than me, lean and thin as a reed. He was dressed in a dirty shirt, his hands were in the pockets of his tight and short pants. Dark hair shaggy over blackthoughtful eyes.

This portrait of the boy Valik gives an idea not only of his appearance, but also of the life of the hero. The reader imagines a poor boy with a destitute childhood. It is immediately felt that his mother is not caring for him.

The mirror of the soul is called the eyes of a person. Writers very often pay attention to them.

According to the description of the appearance, one can judge how the author himself relates to his hero: sympathizes, empathizes or condemns. Affectionate descriptions may contain words with diminutive suffixes.

Means of artistic characterization

Literature is a verbal art, in which the portrait is used along with other artistic means. The writer also uses the deployment of actions in the plot, describes the thoughts, mood of the characters, uses the dialogues of the characters, shows the situation. Even in the school curriculum, the concept of an artistic image is introduced, one of the sides of which is a description of appearance.

The artistic portrait in literature has a special visual clarity. Combining with everyday descriptions and landscapes, he brings a special power of representation to the work. The description may contain typical features and individual ones. A literary hero is most often portrayed as a social, historical person, a representative of a certain social era. It belongs to a certain class, group. With the help of appearance, movements, manners, the social environment that the writer generalizes and evaluates is characterized.

Sometimes character descriptionscattered throughout the work. If you collect pieces of sketches, you get a whole portrait essay. Here, for example, is the portrait of Margarita assembled from fragments obtained in Bulgakov's work "The Master and Margarita":

…on her black spring coat…

…his black bell-gloved hand…

…shoes with black suede overlays-bows tied with steel buckles…

…a wispy strand, her beret and her determined eyes…

…short curled hair…" "…barber perm…

…the black purse lay next to her on the bench…

…biting meat with white teeth, Margarita…

…thin fingers with sharply honed nails…

…Eyebrows plucked into a thread with tweezers…

The history of appearance descriptions in works

Portrait characteristics appeared in the works gradually and most often referred to the direct assessment of the author himself. The first portraits in works of literature were published in magazines. C. Sainte-Beuve became the European pioneer of portrait sketches. At the beginning of the 19th century, he published descriptions of Lafontaine, Boileau, Corneille in the Revue de Paris magazine.

Russian portraiture began with Karamzin. It was he who published the biography of I. F. Bogdanovich in Vestnik Evropy. Since then, in many Russian magazines there were special sections called "Biography", where there were portrait essays. After that, the genre of describing appearance moved from magazines tobooks.

At first, the portrait technique was inherent in the genre of literary criticism, but then a new romantic method began to emerge. It included metaphors, comparisons, vivid epithets. Portrait word painting has become very colorful.

How does the portrait change in different genres?

Each literary genre and genre has its own artistic methods for portrait sketches. Naturalist writers tried to show the characters believable and realistic. By doing this, they revealed deep social contradictions. The hero was shown as a typical representative of his environment with its usual, everyday everyday features without exceptions and something surprising. A similar description can be seen in Gogol's "Overcoat":

The official can not be said to be very wonderful, short, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat reddish, even somewhat blind-sighted, with a slight bald spot on his forehead, with wrinkles on both sides of his cheeks and a complexion that is called hemorrhoidal.

Sci-fi writers, romantics moved away from everyday life and everyday descriptions. Their characters were portrayed as exceptional, unusual. Much was exaggerated and had features of fantasy. We see a similar description in "Taras Bulba":

Boursaks suddenly changed: instead of the old soiled boots, they wore red morocco boots with silver horseshoes; bloomers as wide as the Black Sea, with a thousand folds and with gatherings, were pulled up with a golden spectacle; fastened to the spectacle were long straps, with tassels and other trinkets, for the pipe. Cossack of scarlet color, clothbright as fire, girded with a patterned belt; chased Turkish pistols were pushed into the belt; the saber rattled at his feet. Their faces, still slightly tanned, seemed to have grown prettier and whiter; the young black mustache now somehow more vividly set off their whiteness and the he althy, powerful color of youth; they were good under black lamb hats with gold tops.

Portraits at Pushkin and Lermontov

In the first half of the 19th century, a system of genres took shape in Russian painting and literature. The realistic direction began to prevail more and more. New techniques for creating artistic images appeared. The description of the appearance helped the writers to create the first impression of the characters, to reveal their inner world.

Pushkin and Lermontov have already filled their portrait sketches with comparisons, metaphors, epithets. Both poets have amassed an excellent portrait gallery. The development of their portrait image was influenced by new ideas about the significance of the human person. The characters in their works are fictional and genuine.

Descriptions of the characters are in Pushkin's story "The Captain's Daughter". Masha Mironova was a young girl, both fragile and bold.

“Where is Masha? A girl of about eighteen entered. Round-faced, ruddy, with light blond hair combed slickly behind her ears, which were on fire.

One gets the impression of Masha as a shy girl with an easy-going character. Also in Pushkin's story is a portrait of Shvabrin, a representative of the officers. We see him as a duelist, a traitor with no spiritualBeliefs:

A young officer of short stature entered me, with a swarthy face and remarkably ugly, but extremely lively.

The historical hero of the novel is Emelyan Pugachev himself. Pushkin draws it simple, fair, "home". From the description it can be seen that this is a courageous and sharp-witted person from the people and wholly belonging to the people:

He was about forty, medium height, thin and broad-shouldered. There was gray in his black beard; living large eyes and ran. His face had an expression rather pleasant, but roguish. Her hair was cut in a circle; he was wearing a tattered coat and Tatar trousers.

He was wearing a beautiful Cossack caftan trimmed with galloons. A tall sable cap with gold tassels was pulled down over his sparkling eyes. His face seemed familiar to me.

Many liked Pushkin's image of Tatyana Larina from the novel "Eugene Onegin". The poet in the work gives, rather, not her appearance, but an inner portrait.

So, her name was Tatyana.

Nor the beauty of your sister, Nor the freshness of her ruddy

She wouldn't attract eyes.

Dika, sad, silent, Like a forest doe is timid, She is in her native family

Seemed like a stranger girl.

She couldn't caress

To my father, not to my mother;

A child by herself, in a crowd of children

I didn't want to play and jump

And often alone all day long

Sitting silently by the window.

This is not a typical image of a Russian noblewomanfascinates meekness, thoughtfulness, charm and unusualness. For a more vivid perception of the image of Tatyana, Pushkin gives a description of the appearance of her sister Olga:

Always modest, always obedient, Eyes like the sky, blue, Always cheerful as morning.

Smile, linen curls, How simple the life of a poet, Movement, voice, light stun, Like a kiss of love is cute…

The reader sees Olga Larina as the epitome of femininity and grace. The image is filled with cheerfulness. The girl brightens up the surrounding life and brings affection and warmth into it. With her femininity, she conquers Lensky. Only in many ways the heroine is inferior to Tatyana with her spiritual world with feelings and thoughts.

Another master of portraiture in Russian literature is Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov. He is the author of the first psychological novel, A Hero of Our Time. In it, the poet showed a typical young man of the 30s of the XIX century. He had beauty, education, we alth, but there was no satisfaction from life. Pechorin sees no way for happiness. Here's what it looks like:

…a young man in his twenties…

…he was generally very handsome and had one of those original physiognomies that secular women especially like…

…And it's funny to think that I'm still a boy: my face, although pale, is still fresh; members are flexible and slender; thick curls curl, eyes burn, blood boils…

…He was of average height; his slender, thin frame and broad shoulders proveda strong constitution, able to endure all the difficulties of nomadic life and climate change, not defeated by either the depravity of metropolitan life or spiritual storms …

…His skin had a kind of feminine tenderness; blond hair, curly by nature, so picturesquely outlined his pale, noble forehead, on which, only after a long observation, one could notice traces of wrinkles that crossed one another and, probably, were much more pronounced in moments of anger or mental unrest. Despite the light color of his hair, his mustache and eyebrows were black - a sign of breed in a person, just like a black mane and a black tail in a white horse …

Descriptions of appearance by Gogol, Turgenev

In the works of the followers of Pushkin and Lermontov, not detailed characteristics of appearance came, but only some important semantic details. Turgenev in the story "Bezhin Meadow" draws five boys: Fedya, Pavlusha, Ilyusha, Kostya, Vanya. The reader gets acquainted in detail with the appearance and clothing of each of them.

First, the eldest of all, Feda, you would give fourteen years. He was a slender boy, with handsome and thin, slightly small features, curly blond hair, bright eyes and a constant, half-joyful, half-scattered smile. He belonged, by all indications, to a we althy family and went out into the field not out of need, but just for fun. He wore a colorful cotton shirt with a yellow border; a small new Armenian woman, put on backwards, barely rested on his narrow shoulders; a comb hung from a pigeon belt. His low-top boots were like his boots -not paternal.

The reader learns that the boys were between 7 and 14 years old. Fedya shows that he comes from a we althy peasant family. Pavlusha was a poor child:

…He couldn’t flaunt his clothes: they all consisted of a simple zamushka shirt and patched ports…

Vanya is the youngest with a thin childish voice. This is a quiet and inconspicuous child. The author emphasizes it like this:

…blonde curly head…

… fresh face…

…big silent eyes…

The hunter observes the boys and gives them a detailed description, highlights their natural talent.

We see a very detailed description of the portrait in literature in Turgenev's story "Asya". The author painted a poetic image of the Russian hero's companion. The reader sees how the female soul blossoms at the moment of waiting for the chosen one. Turgenev appears before us as a subtle psychologist and connoisseur of the female heart. He surprisingly tenderly describes the sublime, trusting, bashful female love. The author draws a touching image of a loving "Turgenev" girl:

…Asya took off her hat; her black hair, cut and combed like a boy's, fell in large curls around her neck and ears…

…we saw Asya's dark head…

…curls fell in her eyes…

…Asya continued to sit motionless, tucking her legs under her and wrapping her head in a muslin scarf; her slender appearance was clearly and beautifully drawn against the clear sky…

…lowered her long eyelashes…

…her face, the mostchangeable face that I have ever seen. A few moments later, it was already all pale and took on a concentrated, almost sad expression…

…She is built like a little Raphaelian Galatea in Farnesina, I whispered…

…shook her cold fingers…

A special gallery of literary types was created by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. He pays special attention to details. By this Gogol recreated not so much the character of the hero as the social environment. He describes Chichikov from "Dead Souls" as follows:

…not handsome, but not ugly either, neither too fat nor too thin, not too old, but not too young…

Gogol shows a typical character. Chichikov changes clothes very often. He is wearing a shirt, a tailcoat, a Scottish suit. This description of clothing gives the reader the idea that the character is fickle. He is constantly changing places, circumstances, appearance. This is a man of mystery.

Portrait Master - Tolstoy

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy all his life strove to abandon the descriptive portrait of the hero in literature in favor of the current one, revealed in time. With the help of dynamic descriptions, the writer showed the "dialectics of the soul", the inner world of a person. Lev Nikolaevich gives portraits of characters at different times, in parts, in the course of the development of the plot. The portrait characteristic given by him at the beginning of the work can be supplemented with new details after a certain period of time.

Tolstoy tried to give a portrait "onHe emphasized some characteristic signs, used cunning details. Such multifunctional subtleties make it possible to understand the character of the hero, give an idea of the appearance of the character. Tolstoy carefully selected details: after all, he strove for conciseness. clarity and simplicity of presentation".

The most famous heroine of Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" is Natasha Rostova. The writer skillfully shows Natasha's evolution from a young 14-year-old girl to a married woman with many children. Here she is at the beginning of the piece:

Fragile, with angular features, thin and generally ugly. Black eyes shine on Natasha's face, and a large, inharmonious mouth stands out. But there is something in Natasha that qualitatively distinguishes her from other girls, distinguishes her from the background of the environment: young Rostova is lively, energetic and inquisitive.

…unable to hold on any longer, jumped up and ran out of the room as fast as her quick legs could carry…

Young Natasha grew up as a real laughter and a cheerful girl.

.. Stop laughing, stop it, Natasha screamed. - You shake the whole bed. You look terribly like me, the same laughter…

…Sometimes she would get into her usual insanely cheerful frame of mind…

But what does the heroine look like at 17-20 years old, when she appears at balls and when Andrei Bolkonsky pays attention to her?

she was in a long dress for the first time, at a real ball, she was even happier. They were in white muslin dresses withpink ribbons… (at Yogel's ball on December 31, 1809)

…How sweet she is, she will be a savita,” said Denisov…

…And how she dances, what g’ation! - after a pause, he said again … "(" g'ation "- that is, grace)

…Prince Andrew especially admired her timid grace…

…looking at this thin, graceful, so alien to her, well-bred countess in silk and velvet…

But the mature heroine after the death of Prince Andrei:

… Natasha walked in her purple silk dress with black lace the way women can walk, the calmer and more majestic, the more painful and ashamed she felt in her soul. She knew and was not mistaken that she was good… …Good, young, and I know that now she is good, before I was bad, and now I am good, I know…

…throwing her short, thin braid over her shoulder in front, she began to weave it. Thin long habitual fingers quickly, deftly took apart, weaved, tied a braid …

Being married to Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha has changed a lot both externally and internally.

…Everyone who knew Natasha before marriage was surprised at the change that had taken place in her, as something extraordinary…

…She, what is called, sank. Natasha did not care about her manners, nor about the delicacy of speeches, nor about showing her husband in the most advantageous positions, nor about her dress…

…she didn't sing, or toilet, or think about her words.

…The subject that Natasha completely immersed herself in was the family…

Whatare portraits found in literature?

Analyzing all of the above about the description of literary characters, we can conclude that they can be:

1. Short, with a minimum of detail. They are characterized by brevity, leading to an increase in the role of the artistic detail.
2. Detailed, richly detailed. They are dominated by details, sometimes even redundant.
3. Static. A detailed, exhaustive idea of the appearance of the character in them is given at a time and in detail. An example is Plyushkin from Gogol's novel Dead Souls.
4. Dynamic. The appearance of the character is detailed, "accumulates" throughout the work. You may have followed a similar portrait: this is the image of Natasha Rostova.
5. Drawing unchanged static details: colors and facial features, eyes, figure features.
6. Show appearance in development. A smile, laughter, gestures, facial expressions, crying, gait, facial expression are depicted.

Psychological portrait in literature

The most common, complex and interesting type of literary depiction of a character's appearance is a psychological portrait. Its first brilliant specimens appeared in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. The psychological appearance of portraits in literature includes the following sketches: Herman in The Queen of Spades, Onegin and Tatiana in Pushkin, Pechorin in Lermontov's Hero of Our Time, Oblomov in Goncharov's novel of the same name, Raskolnikov and other Dostoevsky characters.

Psychological portrait is called because itreveals the character traits of the characters. Also, this description shows the psychological state that the hero is experiencing at the moment, how it changes over time. In a psychological portrait, the appearance of the hero is connected with the inner world of the characters. Sometimes in such a portrait description, the correspondence of the hero's appearance to his internal state is emphasized. In another case, the external and internal worlds are opposed. A hero can be evil and kind, stingy and disinterested, scoundrel and noble. The writer depicts the inner world of the character in different ways:

• he describes his appearance and condition;
• shows other people's reviews of it;
• the hero gives himself a self-portrait.

Bright representatives of foreign psychological prose - Honore de Balzac, Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque. Apart from Russia, psychological novels were popular in 19th century France.

The Mastery of Fyodor Dostoevsky

High school students get acquainted with the master of the psychological novel - F. M. Dostoevsky. His most controversial hero is Rodion Raskolnikov from the work "Crime and Punishment". The author shows his portrait at different times. The poor student was a handsome young man, aged 23. He was remembered for his pale face, beautiful dark eyes, dark blond hair. He was tall and slim. Only his clothes looked very poor, so he could be confused with a chimney sweep or a ragamuffin:

he was remarkably good-looking, with beautifuldark eyes, dark blond, above average height, thin and slender…

…in the subtle features of a young man…

…Raskolnikov answered…without lowering his black inflamed eyes…

…some kind of wild energy suddenly shone in his inflamed eyes and in his emaciated pale yellow face…

Also, Dostoevsky draws the inner world of Rodion. He was a talented and intelligent man with great potential. Only vanity, arrogance, pride alienated the student from God. Among his negative traits, Dostoevsky draws gloominess, gloominess, irascibility, isolation, and excessive melancholy. However, he was a kind and generous person.

He was very poor and somehow arrogantly proud and unsociable; as if he was hiding something to himself. It seemed to some of his comrades that he looked down on them all, as if they were children, from above, as if he had outstripped them all in development, and knowledge, and convictions, and that he looked at their convictions and interests as something lower …

At the beginning of the novel, Rodion is in a state of hypochondria. He sees no other way out, but how to kill the old pawnbroker, take her money and start a new life. But mental anguish makes him confess to the crime. He is sent to hard labor in Siberia. There he reads the Gospel and reconsiders his whole life, repents.

…well, so I decided, having taken possession of the old woman's money, to use it for my first years, without tormenting my mother, to provide for myself at the university, for the first steps after university - and to do all this widely, radically, so so that completelyarrange a new career and on a new, independent path to become … Well … well, that's all …

With a psychological portrait of Rodion and his inner state, Dostoevsky tries to reach out to readers so that they do not act recklessly and do not err. A person should be filled with high morality, genuine faith in God and show love for others.