Art is such a sphere of human activity that addresses its emotional, aesthetic side of personality. Through auditory and visual images, through associative ranks and intense mental and spiritual work, a kind of communication takes place with the creator of the work of art and for those for whom it was created: listener, reader, spectator.
The meaning of the term
A work of art is a concept connected, first of all, with literature. This term is understood not just as a coherent text, but bearing a certain aesthetic load. It is this nuance that distinguishes such a work from, for example, a scientific treatise or a business document.
The artwork is imaginative. It doesn’t matter if this is a multi-volume novel or just a quatrain. By figurativeity is meant the saturation of the text with expressive-visual linguistic means. At the vocabulary level, this is expressed in the author's use of such paths as epithets, metaphors, hyperbolas, avatars, etc. At the syntax level, a work of art can be saturated with inversions, rhetorical figures, syntactic repetitions or joints, etc.
A
literary text is characterized by a second, additional, deeper meaning. The subtext is guessed by a number of signs. A similar phenomenon is not characteristic of business and scientific texts whose task is to communicate any reliable information.
A work of art is associated with such concepts as the theme and idea, the position of the author. The topic is what this text is about: what events are described in it, what era is highlighted, what subject is considered. So, the subject of the image in landscape lyrics is nature, its states, complex manifestations of life, a reflection of the mental states of a person through the states of nature. The idea of a work of art is thoughts, ideals, views that are expressed in the work. So, the main idea of the famous Pushkin's “I remember a wonderful moment ...” is to show the unity of love and creativity, understanding of love as the main driving, reviving and inspiring principle. And the position or point of view of the author is the attitude of the poet, writer to those ideas, heroes that are depicted in his creation. It may be controversial, it may not coincide with the main line of criticism, but it is it that is the main criterion in assessing the text, revealing its ideological and semantic side.
A work of art is a unity of form and content. Each
type of literary text is built according to its own laws and must meet them. So, the novel traditionally raises problems of a social nature, depicts the life of a class or social system through which, as in a prism, the problems and spheres of life of society as a whole are reflected. In the lyric poem, the intense life of the soul is reflected, emotional experiences are conveyed. According to the definition of critics, nothing can be reduced or added to in a real work of art: everything is in place as it should.
The aesthetic function is realized in a literary text through the language of a work of art. In this regard, such texts can serve as textbooks, as give unsurpassed in beauty and charm samples of magnificent prose. It is no coincidence that foreigners who want to learn the language of a foreign country as best as possible are advised to read primarily the time-tested classics. For example, the prose of Turgenev and Bunin are wonderful examples of owning all the richness of the Russian word and the ability to convey its beauty.