The first step in the literary modeling stage is the production of material. To make a psychological aesthetic analysis of the material, we must first explain: in what form does social life enter the writer's brain and turn into literary material?
objective social life cannot enter the brain in the form of inherent material reality. Notre Dame de Paris, built of stone, can't fit into the novelist's forehead at night anyway. On the one hand, everything in the universe seems to be the object of description by writers; On the other hand, in terms of physical space and time, compared with the vast celestial bodies or human history measured in light years or centuries, the volume or life span of individual people is just like a drop in the ocean. However, the human brain has the ability to condense the extremely rich external information it undertakes into the memory system in the form of impression or word coding. The human brain with 1 billion nerve cells is enough to store all the information from inside and outside the body. From the spectacular BIGBANG, the replacement of old and new systems to the delicate feelings of ladies, it can find a place in the writer's spiritual kingdom. No wonder Hugo lamented: "What is broader than the ocean is the sky, and what is broader than the sky is the human mind." This is not so much an ode to a romantic person, but rather a guess or suggestion in the language of poetry. The social life with mixed colors and endless waves entered the human brain in a certain psychological form before it was internalized into the material that knocked on the door of literature.
Materials are primitive and fragmentary living materials in the writer's artistic accumulation, and also refer to meaningless details and phenomena of life. They are purely objective and natural in form. The material has direct internal material and indirect external material. Direct refers to the facts witnessed or experienced by the writer himself. Indirectly, it refers to the facts that the writer has heard or accumulated from written materials. The material is the literary material that has not been written into the work. It seems that there are two ways to determine the artistic psychological characteristics of the material: one is to get into the hearts of writers who are experiencing life and directly learn the secret procedures of their material production, but modern technology has not provided such super-detection means so far; The second is to analyze the notes of famous writers. As a memorandum of literary creation, it is the embryo that breeds artistic treasures.
Chekhov's notes are valuable materials that are helpful to our psychological and aesthetic analysis of the material. The Notebook (1892-194) left by the Russian master of critical realism collects his instant feelings about life, the draft of his future works, his reading experience and the essence picked from other people's works at the mature stage of his creation. Chekhov's notes are not only as simple, concise and upright as his works in spiritual style, but also contain a profound life and social criticism and pure humor, and we can also see the shadows of many of his masterpieces. Chekhov's notes are indeed a material library for his creation.
A careful study of Chekhov's notes reveals that the material is not a cognitive fact of social life as the popular literary theory says. In fact, it is a psychological complex that not only contains the truth of life, but also embodies the writer's perception, understanding, imagination and feelings about reality. Chekhov's notes contain about 6 articles, including 35 records of daily scenes, events, dialogues and portraits, accounting for about 59%; There are more than 15 social and life thoughts, accounting for about 25%; There are nearly 1 humorous essays, accounting for about 16%; Obviously, life short comments and essays, which account for 41% of the capacity of notes, are not the objective reappearance of social reality, but the light of wisdom from writers rooted in lofty moral hearts, but they are undoubtedly special departments that constitute Chekov's material library. Even the record of daily scenes, events, dialogues and portraits, which accounts for 59% of the capacity of the notebook, is not a camera-like mechanical photo-taking, but a feeling-taking, humorous and full of fun, which permeates the writer's unique brown humor and moral judgment. For example, a tall and fat waitress left him with the impression that he was a "hybrid between a pig and a white sturgeon", which was certainly not an objective perceptual trace, but a golden touch to the writer's imagination, judgment and experience. Another example is "Petrusa's mother has reached the age of being a grandmother, and she has to wear dark circles", which is quite short, with only one sentence. At first glance, it is just an objective interception of a social phenomenon, and no word involves the subject. However, after remembering the writer's handwriting with great concentration, we can still realize the subtext from Chekov's quietly worded lines, which is the implicit ridicule of the vanity of vulgar women. His ridicule is elegant and deep at the same time. Without words, it can be understood that "without a word, it is romantic", which is Chekov's charm. This shows that the psychological connotation of great writers' instant feelings about life is indeed rich, and it also shows that the material is far from a simple reproduction of social life facts. From the perspective of psychological aesthetics, the material is not a simple record of cognitive perceptual traces, but a spiritual secretion revealed by the writer when he embraces life with his whole heart. It is a kind of apperception experience or impression that integrates the writer's knowledge, feelings and intentions into one body, that is, multiple psychological integration.
Theme is the living materials that writers and artists have accumulated in their lives, that is, on the basis of materials, which have been selected, processed, compared, transformed and developed by writers and artists and organized into a content factor of their works. It is branded with the writer's thoughts and feelings, so it is an ideological thing with the unity of subjective and objective, belonging to the category of spiritual phenomena.
Wei Wei talked about more than 1 vivid and touching battle stories he collected on the Korean battlefield in his creative experience of How I Write Who Is the Most Lovely Person, which is the life material he accumulated. After his selection and refinement, three typical life events, which were finally written into Who's the cutest person, became the subject of this literary communication, namely, "Battle of Songgufeng", "Ma Yuxiang threw himself into the fire cave three times to save Korean children" and "Daily life of volunteer soldiers in bomb shelters". It can be seen that the material is the basis of the theme, and the theme is refined from the material. The richer the material is, the more writers can grasp the profound essence of life and its vivid expression in a wider scope, and the more conducive it is to concentrate and refine art and obtain profound and substantial themes. Outstanding writers always pay great attention to accumulating rich life materials. They often observe, experience and study all kinds of life scenes, people, details and events in their lives as the original materials for the theme of their future works.
there are broad and narrow themes. The broad theme refers to the social field depicted in literary works, that is, a certain aspect of real life, such as rural theme, industrial theme, military theme, historical theme, modern theme and so on. However, different perspectives can also have different understandings. "Director Qiao's Appointment" is both an industrial theme and a reform theme. In a broad sense, it refers to the nature, scope and aspects of the subject matter. Narrow theme refers to the concrete living materials used in literary works to form artistic images and reflect the theme. What we are talking about is the narrow theme, that is, the theme as a component of the work.