естетическото

P. Zarev's book "Style and Artistry" expresses that new spirit in Marxist aesthetics that has been felt over the last five or six years in the Soviet Union and in our country. Its characteristic features are a dislike for dogmatic Phraseology, an aspiration to overcome sociologism and epistemology, and an increased interest in the specific aspects of artistic depiction. In addition to clarifying general methodological positions, this new spirit also means emphasized attention to special aesthetic issues that will bring us closer to the intimate and unique in the poetic image. P. Zarev strives to follow the new trends not by theorizing on the basic principles, but by implementing them in more specific studies. In the pathos of the individual articles, we perceive a general concept that determines both the interests and conclusions of the author. And although it does not have a monographic character, although it is composed of individual articles, each of which arose on a specific occasion and treats an independent issue, the book is internally unified. From beginning to end, it is permeated by a characteristic aesthetic concept - the concept of the aesthetic wealth of literature. We constantly feel the conscious struggle against simplification and dogmatism, the desire to impress upon us a more precise artistic criterion. One may not agree with all the conclusions and solutions on the topics considered, one may even think that the author has not been able to fully fulfill the task set, this is a separate issue. However, there is no doubt that he has identified a correct and fruitful direction in the understanding and study of fiction and that in his efforts he has achieved a number of positive results. One cannot properly assess the book "Style and Artistry" if one does not penetrate its inner pathos, nor understand the fundamental meaning of the individual articles if one does not look at them in the light of this basic pathos. The main supporting points of the author's concept are two. The first emphasizes the aesthetic nature of artistic content, and the second - the subjective - creative nature of artistic reflection.

Much has been written about associations, especially in psychological aesthetics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Translating what has already been published, one would be left with the impression that nothing more could be said. And in fact there is a problem directly related to associations, which is quite modern, and at the same time undeveloped: to study the associative flow - its "layers" and character - but with a view to certain changes in the structure of the artistic image. For even such major aestheticians as T. Lips and J. Folkelt think about associations at all, without taking into account that they - in their nature and type - depend too much on certain changes occurring in art. Such a dependence exists and some artists (more or less consciously) perceive it, striving to take advantage of it with a view to achieving a certain aesthetic effect. Below, of course, we will deal with this dependence between associations and the artistic image, but here we must guard against the possible assumption that every work is associative-potential, i.e., that it is capable of associating in the perceiving subject one or another ideas, feelings, etc. subjective states. On the contrary, such states may not arise at all. The reasons for this may be of a different nature: subjective, rooted in the low artistic culture of the perceiver, in his inability to "decipher" the conventional language with which the image is created, etc.; objective, inherent in the work of art itself.