In this article, we will consider such a literary concept as psychological parallelism. Often this term causes some problems with the interpretation of its meaning and functions. In this article, we will try to explain as accessible as possible what this concept is, how to apply it in the artistic analysis of the text, and what you should pay special attention to.
Definition
Psychological parallelism in literature is one of the stylistic devices. Its essence lies in the fact that the plot of the work is based on a consistent comparison of motives, patterns of nature, relationships, situations, actions. Commonly used in poetic folk texts.
As a rule, consists of 2 parts. The first depicts a picture of nature, conditional and metaphorical, creating an emotional and psychological background. And in the second, the image of a hero already appears, whose state is compared with the natural one. For example: a falcon - well done, a swan - a bride, a cuckoo - a longing woman or a widow.
History
However, it is necessary to go a little deeper into the past in order to fully understand what psychological parallelism is. The definition in the literature, by the way, usually begins with a little historical background.
So, if this technique came to the literature from folklore, then it has rather deep roots. Why did it occur to people to compare themselves with animals, plants or natural phenomena? This phenomenon is based on naive syncretic ideas that the world around us has its own will. This is confirmed by pagan beliefs, which endowed all life phenomena with consciousness. For example, the sun is the eye, that is, the sun appears as an active living being.
Such parallels consisted of:
- The complex similarity of characteristic features with life or action.
- The correlation of these signs with our understanding of reality, the laws of the world.
- Adjacencies of various objects that might be similar in terms of identified features.
- The life value and completeness of the described object or phenomenon in relation to humanity.
That is, initially psychological parallelism was built on the subjective idea of a person about the world.
Kinds
We continue to study psychological parallelism. We have already given a definition, now let's talk about its types. There are several different approaches to the study of this stylistic phenomenon and, accordingly, several classifications. We give here the most popular of them - the authorship of A. N. Veselovsky. According to her, psychological parallelism happens:
- two-member;
- formal;
- polynomial;
- monomial;
- negative.
Two-term parallelism
It is characterized by the following construction method. First comes the image of a picture of nature, then a description of a similar episode in human life. These two episodes seem to echo each other, although they differ in object content. You can understand that they have something in common, according to certain consonances, motives. This feature is a hallmark of psychological parallels from simple repetitions.
For example: “When they want to pick roses, they must wait until spring, when they want to love the girls, they must be sixteen years old” (Spanish folk song).
However, it is worth noting that folklore concurrency, which is most often bipartite, is built mainly on the category of action. If you remove it, then all other elements of the stylistic figure will lose their meaning. The stability of this design is provided by 2 factors:
- To the main resemblance, vivid similar details of the category of action are added, which they do not reproach him.
- The native speakers liked the comparison, it became part of the cult and for a long time remained in it.
If both of these points are observed, then parallelism will turn into a symbol and become a household word. However, this fate awaits by no means all binomial parallelisms, even those constructed according to all the rules.
Formal concurrency
There are times when psychological parallelism is not immediately understood and for its understanding it is necessary to hear the whole text. For example: one of the folk songs begins with the line “The river flows, it won’t stir”, then there is a description of the bride, whom many guests came to the wedding, but no one can bless her, since she is an orphan; thus, there is a similarity - the river will not stir, and the bride sits unhappy, silent.
Here we can talk about default, and not about the lack of similarity. The stylistic device is complicated, the understanding of the work itself is difficult, but the structure takes on great beauty and poetry.
Polynomial concurrency
The concept of “psychological parallelism”, despite the apparent complexity, is quite simple. Another thing when we talk about the varieties of this stylistic device. Although with regard to polynomial parallelism, there are usually no problems with its detection.
This subspecies is characterized by the one-sided accumulation of several parallels that come simultaneously from several objects. That is, one character is taken and compared immediately with a number of images. For example: "Do not flatter, dove, with a dove, do not twist, grass, with a blade of grass, do not get used, well done, with a girl." That is, before the reader there are already three objects for comparison.
Such a one-sided enlargement of images suggests that parallelism has gradually evolved, which gave the poet greater freedom of writing and the ability to show his analytical abilities.
That is why polynomial parallelism is called a relatively late phenomenon of folk poetic stylistics.
Monomial concurrency
One-term psychological parallelism is aimed at developing imagery and enhancing its role in the work. This technique looks as follows. Imagine the usual two-term construction, where the first part talks about the stars and the month, and in the second they are compared with the bride and groom. Now we remove the second part, leaving only the images of the stars and the month. From the content of the work, the reader will guess that we are talking about a girl and a boy, but there will be no mention in the text itself.
Such silence is similar to formal concurrency, but unlike it, we will not mention the human characters that are meant. Therefore, here we can talk about the appearance of the symbol. Over the centuries, established allegorical images have appeared in folklore that are identified with only one meaning. Such images are used in one-term parallelism.
For example, a falcon is identified with a young man, the groom. And often the works describe how the falcon fights with another bird, how it is abducted, how it leads the falconer down the aisle. There is no mention of people here, but we understand that we are talking about human relations between a boy and a girl.
Concurrency is negative
Let us proceed with the description of the latter type, which psychological parallelism can act (examples are given in the article). The negative designs of our stylistic device are usually used to create puzzles. For example: "Roars, not a bull, is strong, not a rock."
Such a construction is constructed as follows. First, ordinary two-term or polynomial parallelism is created, and then the characterized image is removed from it and negation is added. For example, instead of “roaring like a bull” - “roaring, not a bull.”
In Slavic folklore, this technique was particularly popular and love. Therefore, it can be found not only in riddles, but also in songs, fairy tales, etc. Later, he migrated to the author's literature, being used mainly in fairy tales and stylistic attempts to recreate folk poetry.
From a conceptual point of view, negative parallelism seems to distort the very parallelism formula, which was created to bring images closer together, and not to separate them.
From folklore to author's literature
When did psychological parallelism move from folk poetry to classical literature?
It happened during the time of vagantas, vagrant musicians. Unlike their predecessors, they graduated from classical music and poetry schools, so they mastered the basic literary devices depicting a person who were characterized by great abstractness. There was little specificity and connection with reality. At the same time, like all roaming musicians, they were quite familiar with folklore. Therefore, they began to bring its elements to their poetry. Comparisons have appeared with the natural phenomena of the character’s character, for example, winter and autumn with sadness, and summer and spring with fun. Of course, their experiments were rather primitive and far from perfect, but they laid the foundation for a new style, which later migrated to medieval literature.
So, in the 12th century, folk song techniques gradually began to intertwine with the classical tradition.
What is the function of comparisons, epithets, and metaphors of psychological parallelism?
To begin with, it is worth saying that without metaphors and epithets there would not have been parallelism itself, since this technique is completely based on them.
Both of these paths serve to transfer the sign of one object to another. Actually, it is already evident in this function that without them it is impossible to compare nature with man. Metaphorical language is the writer's main tool in creating parallelisms. And if we are talking about the function of these paths, then it consists precisely in the transfer of signs.
The basic concepts (psychological parallelism) are associated with descriptions, therefore it is not surprising that metaphors and epithets occupy the main place among them. For example, take the epithet “the sun has set” and make parallelism out of it. We will succeed: as the sun has set, so the life has set, the falcon is clear. That is, the fading of the sun is compared to the fading of the life of a young man.
Psychological parallelism in the “Word on Igor's Regiment”
A perfect example of folk stylistic devices is the “Word”, since it is itself a part of folklore. For example, take the main character Yaroslavna, as her image is associated with nature and is often compared with her. Take the episode of the heroine crying. One day, she “at the dawn of a lonely taped call” - parallelism between Yaroslavna and the bird.
Then you can recall the image of the narrator himself. His fingers, which lay on the strings, are compared with ten falcons that have set upon pigeons.
And another example: the retreat of the Galichs to the Don is described as "not a storm of falcons brought across wide fields." Here we see a pattern of negative concurrency.