Reconstruction of the Logic and Process of Building an Artistic Image (Based on the Image of Sarah in Meir Shalev's Novel "Esav")

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

The key to uncovering the amazing mystery of the impact of a work of art on our consciousness largely lies in understanding what an artistic image is, how it is created by the writer and understood by the reader. And although mountains of works have been written on this topic, it is unlikely that the mystery of art and the artistic image of interest to the author can be considered disenchanted, and therefore relevant research can be removed from the agenda of art criticism and philosophy. Moreover, art does not stand still, it is constantly changing, and artistic images are probably also being transformed. In connection with the above, the author sets his task to analyze (reconstruct) the logic of construction and structure of a specific artistic image in one of the modern, in his opinion, novels. This is one task, another ? within the framework of the author's concept of art, to get an answer, already generalized, theoretical, to the question of the nature (essence) of the artistic image, realizing, however, that any generalization is limited to the range of specific works subject to theoretical reflection.     

         In Shalev's novel "Esav" there is a beautiful image of one of the main characters, Sarah, that struck the author. So that the reader can rely on the material and understand the author, I will give three fragments from the novel: the first meeting of Sarah, still a girl, with her future husband, an unusual act of Sarah, who broke with her surroundings, decided their fate for her husband and children, and Sarah's reaction to the unfair punishment of her son in elementary school. I'll start with the second fragment, which opened the story of Sarah in the novel.

"The father of the main character, Abraham Levi, a baker, when he was still young, returning from the war to his hometown of Jerusalem, fell into a family of Russian immigrants and at first sight fell in love with Sarah, the only girl in the family (there were also father, brothers and mother). A few years later, he marries her and takes her to Jerusalem, where she gives birth to two twin sons for him. Brought up in love and freedom and, in fact, on a farm, far from big cities, Sarah cannot get along with the traditional Jerusalem society. Unable to stand the attitude towards her, including her mother-in-law, she takes her children and forcibly her husband, steals the Greek patriarch's carriage, harnesses it like a horse and runs through Israel in search of a place where she could live with her family" ^{[3, p. 35]}.

"On the twelfth of July, 1927, at about three o'clock in the morning, a "Tak" suddenly burst out of the Jaffa Gate – a chic light carriage belonging to the Greek Patriarchate. She lacked, however, the usual group–the patriarch himself, his Arab coachman and a white Lipitian horse. Instead of a rider and a coachman, two children sat on the box, clutching the reins in their hands, and instead of a horse, a tall, fair-haired, broad-shouldered and beautiful young woman was harnessed to the wooden shafts… Covered with empty flour sacks and the foam of impotent rage, little frail Abraham cursed the day when he brought his wife from Galilee to Jerusalem. He no longer had the strength or patience to endure her manners– these habits of a loving mare, as the neighbors said– because of which he became a laughing stock in the courtyards of the Jewish Quarter, and the whole of Jerusalem, too…  Bulisa Levi, Mrs. Levi, Abraham's grumpy mother, couldn't sleep a wink either. “My daughter–in–law is with me - if you can't buy cheese from her, you will certainly get cuffs," she sighed. "I'm telling you, Abraham, this woman you brought into the house, I'll see the white crows before I'll have peace from her.”…

“Just think, Princess de Sutlach, she has a holiday all year," relatives and household ladies were indignant, gathered at the well. ”She drinks milk all day long, even if she's not sick."

Walking through the stone alleys, accompanied by a faithful and vicious goose, brought by her from Galilee, Sarah made her way through the intricacies of customs and the thicket of decency, feeling the probing glances that measured her from head to toe and drilled into her skin. Looks surprised, lustful, curious, hostile. Passersby made way for her, pressing against the walls. Some with a nasty wet smile, some with a breathless sigh of lust, and some – splashing curses. With a confused grimace trembling at the corners of her lips, she hunched over and absorbed her broad shoulders, as if trying to shrink in size…

It was three o'clock in the morning. The young woman stopped the carriage at the city wall and looked around cautiously. Her gaze lingered on several fellahs who had come to the city before dark and were now waiting for the markets to open… Suddenly the donkeys roared, wrapped their necks and jumped on the spot in incomprehensible fear. The Fellahs, who rushed to calm them down, saw a stroller and a young blonde woman frozen between its shafts. They were terrified…

    The young woman lowered the shafts of the stroller to the ground and, trying to clear her way, furiously stamped her foot, threw her head high and let out a terrible wolf howl. In response, she immediately heard a terrible rumbling from the depths of the earth. Mighty stones suddenly rolled from the top of the city wall, frightened screams of people were heard from all sides, roosters and dogs howling, flocks of pigeons and bats rose from the cracks in the city, from the cracks in the towers, from the shaken dungeons…

–Get inside," the woman shouted to the little twins. She herself was horrified for a moment, thinking that her scream had broken the shackles of the earth, but she immediately came to her senses – her eyes froze angrily and stubbornly, and a deep crease lay between her eyebrows. The red-haired boy got scared, hurriedly crawled inside the stroller and hid behind a cloth canopy near his bound father. But his brother only opened his dark eyes wider and remained on the driver's seat.

The young mother tightened the harness to her shoulders, picked up the shafts again and squeezed them with a vengeance. Then she took a deep breath and started running. Rushing past the crumbling walls, under a rain of stones and screams, she swallowed the road with long light steps, jumped elastically over the crevices that opened under her feet and tore with her body the shroud of smells that enveloped the city, vapors that rose over burning bakeries, over burst spice jars, over stinking sewage that escaped from sewage drains, over puddles of spread coffee left over from those who came to morning prayer ahead of time. She, who had been drinking only milk all her life, hated the Jerusalem custom of starting the day with a cup of coffee and now rejoiced at the misfortune of all her haters…

The woman turned her head towards the city and spat angrily. Then she smiled contentedly, wrapped up the hem of her dress, pushed it into her belt and started running again. Her bare feet moved in the dark with noiseless confidence, like the strong white wings of that owl that lived in the Karaite cemetery, de los Karaites, and which used to frighten us in childhood. Through the small holes in the cloth canopy to me (we are talking about the memories of Sarah's second son. ? V.R.), the envious and encouraging cries of the mentally ill could be heard – when they saw us, they pressed themselves against the bars of their windows and accompanied our flight with longing and greedy glances. I saw the blur of Jerusalem receding, the face of my twin brother Jacob, laughing, clutching at his mother's reins, saw the long, tirelessly moving wings of her hips, inhaled her abundant sweat, heard the hum of her pink lungs, the pounding of a mighty heart, driving blood into her indomitable body. I imagined in my mind the strong tendons of her knees, the elastic pads of her heels, the biceps breathing under the skin of her thighs, all of her–my mother, the converted Sarah Levy, the "white witch", the "yellow-haired Jew", Sarah Levy of the Nazarov family"^[7]. 

         Even from this fragment it is clear that Sarah is beautiful, at the same time wild and wayward, and it seems, indeed, a being of another world, if not a witch, then clearly has unusual abilities reminiscent of the capabilities of goddesses from ancient myths (did she not cause the earthquake in Jerusalem on July twelfth?). As an ancient goddess, Sarah is ready to punish the wicked, who in a particular case turns out to be a teacher, while manifesting herself as a crazy mother and a woman who completely does not recognize social conventions and norms.

"It happened on the first day of our studies (back in Jerusalem. ? V.R.), when we were brought to the Talmud Torah to the local ruby, a small, cruel and vile man, whose name I could not forget, but I do not want to mention. The mother was very excited. Although she herself was illiterate, but, unlike other illiterate neighbors in the yard, she did not reconcile herself to the statement that ignorance is written for a person. “It is impossible without learning," she kept telling us. ? We need to learn the alphabet.”

The classroom was either a basement or a pit, and its crumbling floor was covered with torn reed mats. For days the boys stood on these mats until their legs were numb, and crammed the Talmud. Yakov and I were still tied up then with that red woolen thread and, having come to the heder, refused to untie its knots and separate from each other. When Ruby pulled out the scissors and set out to separate us himself, we raised a terrible scream, got tangled in the thread and fell to the floor together.

There was a commotion. Ruby tore a cow's tail whip from the wall and shouted: “Here's razon for you, here's justice for you!” - with all his might, he whipped Yakov on the back and on the head, and deeply scratched my ear.

At noon, my mother returned from Watchtower Mountain and hurried to school to treat us to cantonico ? a hunk of bread sprinkled with salt and dipped in olive oil. Yakov refused to eat, burst into tears, and his mother immediately suspected something was wrong. She interrogated him until he walked up to the wall and pointed at the whip. His mother took off his shirt and saw the red stripes of blows.

I remember the slow turn of her broad shoulders, her arms outstretched in the air, the deep purple rising from her chest to her neck and flooding her face. There was a loud hissing in the air. It was the mother's white goose, which suddenly appeared in heavy flight over the wall of the courtyard and landed in its center. The mother's eyes flashed with an unfamiliar and burning chill. The teacher immediately realized that trouble had come, and was about to rush from his banquita to save his soul. But the goose did not fail to immediately cling to his legs, and the mother in two long steps, like a lioness, overtook him and threw him to the floor. She grabbed him by the head and began to whip him with a cow “razon” with such passion that she could not stop herself.

From fear and pain, Ruby screamed so much that all the inhabitants of the alley ran away. People were afraid to approach their mother, she was so terrible and menacing in her anger, and the goose did not let anyone approach her. Here it is: a curved neck between raised shoulder blades, huge wings half open and bent like scimitars. Do you see him? He walks around his mother, his orange beak wide open. I can still hear his voice. He's looking for a fight. Hissing and puffing, he guards his mistress.

Mother was like crazy. Molly Sieram and Rebbe Alter's wife in one person. She jumped on the unconscious teacher, as she was, in wooden shoes, shouting: “I'm a Tatar, I'm a Tatar!” ? and other words that no one understands. She was spewing out all the anger that had accumulated in her. She picked him up, put him on wobbly legs and began to beat his head against the wall. The sound of the blows was dull and pleasant. Chunks of blood-stained plaster fell to the floor.

If they hadn't hurried to call his father urgently, Ruby would probably already be in the next world. The father approached the mother, and everyone saw that even he was afraid of her. But as soon as she saw him, she immediately calmed down, sat down on the floor like a child, legs apart, shook her straw head from side to side and began to cry and beat her chest with her fists, like an Arab mourner, out of shame and anger that had not yet cooled down. Meanwhile, Dr. Korkidi appeared, who took care of the teacher. In the end, the father, pale and trembling with shame, persuaded the mother to get up. She put Yakov on her shoulders, took me on her arm, wrapped her other arm around her father's narrow shoulders, and in this form we returned home.

In the evening, Dr. Korkidi came, scolded his mother for her temper, treated the traces of beatings on Yakov's body and said something to his father that we could not hear.

It was then, as my mother told us much later, when we were already young men, that she finally decided to flee Jerusalem…We fled the city on the night of the great earthquake, July 12, 1927. Everyone was sure that Father, mother, Yakov and I were buried under the ruins. It was only two weeks later, when the piles of stones were finally dismantled and connected one with another? memories with gossip and that little thing with this one?that everyone realized what had happened. But by that time we were already far from Jerusalem… from Bulisa Levi, whom, you're right, I really should call grandma, but I don't have the slightest desire for that." ^[8]. 

         Sarah's character somehow gets along, on the one hand, a strong and direct love for her husband, like nature itself, on the other - independence and readiness, however, as an exception, to force him to act as Sarah sees fit. It is Sarah who decides to break with Jerusalem and Abraham's mother, finds a new place of life in Israel, builds a new family life. Abraham, although he has not loved Sarah in words for a long time, and does not even tolerate her, nevertheless, lives with her, builds a bakery in a new place, earns money, takes care of children, and, in fact, obeys his wife. What's the matter, how is it, why doesn't he divorce Sarah, he doesn't even have such a thought? One thing remains to be assumed: in fact, he continues to love her, and the first meeting connected them forever. That's how it was.

A very young Abraham was returning after the war, walking through the desert and unfamiliar lands and came across a sleeping woman.

"Suddenly his skin went goosebumps. He looked around and saw a young woman lying on the ground in a rough, dirty dress, who was sleeping in the sparse shade of a plum tree. He quietly approached her, looked at her – and his soul was filled with delight and longing. She was tall, fair-haired and broad-shouldered, and her chest rose in deep and measured breathing. A wave of golden hair shaded his forehead, lying on broad blond eyebrows, the likes of which he had previously seen only over the tired, reddened eyes of Russian pilgrims in Jerusalem. The woman slept with her arms and legs spread out freely, which was a sign of carelessness and childhood, but Abraham could not read the signs of the female body. He was used to the dull and submissive presence of the little Jerusalem women, and now he was all overcome with excitement from her unusual color, healthy clean body and long hips that loomed under the dress. He had not yet foreseen what would happen in the future, and at that sweet and necessary moment, without which no love can do, "the moment when reason dies like a butterfly in winter," he came even closer, so that his shadow fell on her face, and said: ?

“Shalom Aleichem” is soft and a little hoarse, because his throat and palate are parched from intense desire and surprise.

The lying woman jumped up like a deer from the thicket of her dream and disappeared in the blink of an eye. Startled, Abraham began to look around and finally saw a straw head peeking out from behind a basalt boulder, and wide-open eyes, the blue of which darkened and became alien – frightened and threatening at the same time.

– I'm a friend. I am a Jew!  he exclaimed in embarrassment. – Don't be afraid.

She straightened up and smoothed her threadbare dress. Abraham looked at her and smiled.

–Shalom," he repeated, but the woman did not answer and did not approach him. They stood there for a while, testing each other, but the rain began to fall, and a tense expression appeared on her face.

– Di kachkes, di kachkes! – she cried out in fright. – My father and mother will kill me!

The voice that came out of that big body stunned Abraham. It was the voice of a girl, not a young woman. But the girls are from the tribe of giants. He looked around again and only now noticed the geese grazing in the field – like white spots through the curtains of rain. Rushing after them, he saw that the girl was running barefoot in front of him, and her steps were light and wide, like a desert wolf, and her breathing was deep and noiseless, like a wild donkey, and her whole body was so shapely, beautiful and strong that his eyes darkened with fear and passion. Together they surrounded the geese, rounded them up and led them to the village in the continuous rain" ^[9].

         Let's try to understand how Shalev comes to this wonderful image of Sarah. Both a scientific and an artistic work is an answer to certain problems of an individual, and, most often, it is not about one problem, but several. The answer is, as a rule, the solution to these problems. Shalev himself points out two problems in an interview. The first is the desire to meet and communicate with a woman whose image has sunk into Shalev's soul. The second is to write and compose stories that readers may like.

"In Greek mythology," says Shalev, there is a nymph named Atalanta. As far as I can tell, heroines like her appear in my books every now and then: in "Esava", in "Fontanelle", to a lesser extent in "Russian Novel". This is a physically strong woman, of mighty build, of enormous stature. I've been thinking about her ever since I first read The Golden Fleece by Robert Graves at the age of 15—and Atalanta, as you remember, was the only woman among the Argonauts. I guess I have some kind of fixation. I have never met her in my life, but I do not stop dreaming about her" ^[10]. 

One day, the writer notes, he saw a woman very similar to his dream, however, she did not want to communicate with Shalev and left. But if a meeting is impossible in ordinary life, it can be organized in the field of art, which Shalev does. "But this is an illusion," our reader may object, "all the same, like a dream, we woke up ? and there is no Sarah." I could object to this: unlike dreams, where we can dismiss unusual characters and images (and even then not always ^[4]), events in art have a different meaning and status ? although they suggest imagination, but at the same time force us to look at reality differently, for example, to see in life, and in an ordinary woman, a beautiful Atalanta or Sarah. And here's the second problem: in another interview, Shalev says that he was inspired to write the novel "Two bears Came Out of the Forest", where the main theme is revenge.

   "Tell an interesting story. It's good to write it. I'm a craftsman: that's how you want to write a good article, a photographer wants to take a good shot, that's how I wanted to write a good story. Strong. And I see that after people have read the book, they cannot forget it. I am very happy about this, which means that I have penetrated their soul after all and they have nowhere to run away from me. Readers say that the book, on the one hand, caused them suffering while reading, and on the other hand, they could not put it down. This is a great compliment for me. I felt it in the process of working on the novel. It was very difficult for me to write it, I left it, and then came back again, it became a special experience for me, more serious than other books" ^[11]. 

   "Anna Solovey (interviewer). There is another plot in your novel that remains behind the scenes, but is invisibly present all the time. It is indicated in the title: “Two bears came out of the forest.” This is a direct quote from the biblical story of the prophet Elisha, who cursed the children who mocked him. After his curse, “two bears came out of the forest and tore forty-two children from them.” This, as I understand it, is the key to the whole book.

Meir Shalev. In the story of Elisha and the bears, G-d behaves the same way as the inhabitants of this village. He sits on the sidelines, watches and even supports the murder. If you, say, curse someone, then no bears will come out of the forest. When the prophet Elisha curses, bears come out and tear the children apart. G-d stands aside at the same time. You could even say he supports the killing of children, releases bears from the forest. In both cases, we are talking about completely arbitrary cruelty that could have been prevented,

but this did not happen <...> I have friends who, after the book was published, began to wonder if I was all right. Maybe I went through some kind of crisis or a disaster happened to me? They didn't understand where this novel came from…

Indeed, I included cases of extreme cruelty in it, although it was not easy for me to write about them myself. But this is not my personal experience that needs to be thrown out. I am very interested in revenge as a literary idea. It turns me on. The desire for revenge, in my eyes, is much stronger than jealousy or some religious feelings. Its consequences are tragic. There are three murders in the novel: in the thirtieth year, grandfather Zeev, then still young, kills his wife's lover, then the girl who is born to her, and seventy years later, Eitan, the husband of his granddaughter, commits a blood feud and destroys the bandits who killed grandfather Zeev. Revenge turns out to be healing for Eitan, heals him from the mental coma in which he remains for many years after the death of his son. Yes, the only thing that pulls him out of his illness is blood feud. And this angered some of my Israeli readers, they said: it is immoral to write that murder has a therapeutic effect, murder cannot cure! Okay, you say, “impossible.” But the fact is that it is possible for certain people, as happened in my novel" ^[11].

         In the first fragment of the interview, Shalev admits that one of the motives of his work is the desire to write an interesting story, to make readers worry. But from the second fragment it can be seen that in addition to these two problems, there is a third one, namely revenge (at the same time Shalev thinks that it is important for the reader as well).

What other problems did Shalev solve by creating the image of Sarah? The analysis of the product allows you to specify them. One, understanding the new meaning of women in culture. Maybe I'm wrong, but in Shalev's works, women look more active and proactive, more natural and organic in life than men. So in "Esava" it is Sarah who initiates the break with the old world. She is rushing through Israel to find a place for a new life, to build it. The creation of a new world is, perhaps, another problem that Shalev reflects on in an artistic form. This is the theme of many of his novels, especially the "Russian Novel" and "Fontanella".

The next problem (I don't know if Shalev is aware of it or not) ? this is a special, outwardly mystical interpretation of events. Let's recall a coincidence: Sarah stamped her foot in anger, and an earthquake began immediately. And there are many such mystical coincidences in the works of Shalev. Are they random? I think not.

My wife, Natasha, suggested that this is due to the fact that Shalev sees all events, both past and present, through the prism of the Bible, on which his father, the outstanding Israeli writer Yitzhak Shalev, raised him. And although Meir Shalev himself is rather an atheist, he is so imbued with biblical reality that he involuntarily interprets modern events in the logic of the Old Testament. And this logic is special: here, for example, the acts of Abraham and Sarah (not the heroes of Esau, but the Bible) are simultaneously world events of the creation of the world. However, how can such coincidences be understood in modern times, within the framework of rational and artistic thinking, which Shalev shares? I think it was just like mystical coincidences: I stamped my foot in anger and an earthquake started.

There are even more stunning coincidences in Shalev's book "The Pigeon and the Boy". Here the hero, a boy who dies during the War of Independence, manages to transfer his seed to his beloved girl in the last hour of his life, but how ? through a carrier pigeon, and she correctly understood his message and desire; it turned out that the boy is the father of the protagonist of the novel. Continuous mystical coincidences: the boy is the father of the hero, the conception of his mother is an almost immaculate conception, the dove carrying the seed is the biblical herald of a new life. But if we return this plot to the soil of the Old Testament, then there are no coincidences: it's just that God, out of love for the heroes, arranged events in this direction.           

         Finally, the problem seen in the image of Sarah is the confrontation and opposition of natural being and civilization (sociality). Sarah is nature and spontaneity itself, Bulisa Levi is the hypocritical quintessence of civilization, Sarah grew up on a farm, far from the city with its temptations, in Abraham ? in Jerusalem, where social life was boiling.

         Now let's look at how the image of Sarah is arranged semiotically and objectively and is created. Creating it, Shalev uses, firstly, expressive means (the metaphor of Sarah as a centaur, the above-mentioned antonyms, for example, nature and civilization, the ordinary world and the mystical, feminine and masculine, a certain plot and drama ? a break with the old world and the construction of a new one), secondly, he creates schemes that allow relying on expressive means to set an artistic reality in which the above problems are solved. The scheme of Sarah, "harnessed" to a carriage, rushing across the Israeli land, plus her mystical and wild actions, plus a strange goose, allows you to see Sarah as a centaur and, therefore, create a vivid metaphor ^[3]. The oppositions viewed in the image of Sarah are another scheme that sets antonyms. The narrative of breaking with the old world and building a new one is another scheme. Together, these three schemes define the core of the reality of Sarah's image. In all details, this reality is clarified with the help of other schemes and expressive means that can be reconstructed in "Esava" (after all, there are many other images in the work), however, the main one, the core of the image of Sarah, is still set by the three schemes considered.

  It may seem that together these expressive means and schemes set the artistic image of Sarah, making it lively, expressive and interesting. This is unlikely to be the case, there is one more link missing here, namely the "life world" of the individual. In this case, it is the life world, which we call art. Only in it, based on the considered expressive means and schemes, is created, the Sarah that we (the author) like appears. To clarify these provisions, I think they are not clear, I will consider one case.

When my daughter was about three years old, I caught myself: she didn't know how to draw, although I had read fairy tales to her for a long time. It was in the village, we have an old, renovated hut there, not far from the Volga. I called Lena, took gouache, drew a red sun and said, "Look, here's a red sun." Lena looked at the paper with bewilderment, then at me and asked: "Where's the sun?". It took me a while, but I realized that she couldn't see the sun. And why should she see the sun, I thought, it's high in the sky, hot, blinding, and I point to the paper, where there's just a red spot. I didn't know what to do next, but just in case, I continued to draw the sun and showed it to my daughter. Two days later we went to the Volga River in the evening to watch the sunset. Admiring the sunset, I said without any second thought: "Look, what a big red sun, like on paper." The next day I see Lena herself taking paper and gouache, dipping a brush in paint, splashing paint on paper and shouting: "Hooray, red sun." And so it went: the sun, the house, the grass, even a girl, like the aborigines – sticks with a cross and a circle on top. But I was struck by another drawing. A neighbor came with her daughter, Masha. Lena began to play this game with her: when the sun went behind the clouds and it got colder, they shouted: "Cold", and when it was shown: "Warm". But now it became overcast and no matter how much Lena and Masha shouted "Cold", the sun did not appear. The next day Lena drew the sun, grass and a girl and began to explain to me: "Look Dad, Masha is frozen, the sun came out and warmed her." Bah, I thought, because Lena is playing, and her drawing is probably the first artistic opus.

  Let's try to comprehend this material theoretically, applying the above provisions. The first fragment of our relationship can be understood as the crystallization of Lena's "problem situation" (this is in the language of methodology), and in the language of psychology – as the formation of a "primary attitude" or "tension". In addition, here we can talk about the impossibility of implementing the "installation", because Lena, trusting me, expected the sun to appear where I indicated (but it was not there). In other words, one of the conditions of the installation was our "communication" ("communication") with Lena. The initial installation had another consequence – "misunderstanding", "meaning" in my text ("look at the sun") was absent for Lena.

The second situation is the resolution of a problematic situation with the help of a "scheme" – "look, what a big red sun, as on paper." The scheme, as I show, is a semiotic formation invented by man, which allows solving a problematic situation, it sets a new reality (in this case, a "painted sun"), provides understanding and the opportunity to act in a new way [pp. 57-70]. Psychologically, we can talk here about the formation of a "new meaning" and a "new object" in consciousness. Lena's "life world" is still the same, but a new object has appeared in it – a painted sun, which Lena probably understood (of course, not immediately) in the same conventionality in which she perceived the objects and characters of fairy tales. There is an ordinary sun in the sky, and there is a sun on paper; the ordinary sun is high, shines and warms, and the painted sun is cold and lives on paper, but you can create it yourself. What is the mechanism of formation of a new subject and meaning? The main link in it is, firstly, the transfer of the "experience" (mental structures) formed during the perception of the ordinary sun to the "semiotic material" represented in this case by the drawing, and secondly, the "comprehension" of what is seen as the sun, however, different from the usual one.            

         The next situation was preceded by another one, namely, the formation of a "problem situation": I really wanted to make the sun come out from behind the clouds so that it warmed the girls. Psychologically, we can talk about the crystallization of "desire" and "attitude" and their "blocking" in terms of implementation.

         The fourth situation is the resolution of this problematic situation at the expense of artistic creativity, albeit still very imperfect, but still creativity within the framework of art. From a psychological point of view, this process consisted, on the one hand, in satisfying the desire (realization of the installation) in a roundabout way, that is, not in the reality of nature, but in a semiotic reality, where virtual events were created by means of painting and imagination. On the other hand, Lena discovered (according to my observations, also not immediately) that these events can not only be lived instead of the usual ones, but also that such living ("experiencing") is a source of new interesting impressions.

         Did my daughter realize that she was already dealing with another reality? To some extent, yes. This is evidenced by her conversation with Masha. Lena showed Masha a drawing that she had explained to me the day before. At the same time she said: "It's Masha, the sun is warming you." To which Masha was offended, saying that she was not so thin, not a stick. Lena began to calm her down, saying: "Don't cry, it's you in a fairy tale, and so you're fat." So far, the sphere of art for Lena existed only as a fairy tale world. A few years later, having learned to read, having discussed her dreams with me, having gone to the theater several times, Lena better understood the difference between art and non-art. She realized that both fairy tale, drawing, and music belong to art, and in dreams and ordinary life everything can be different.

     So, in order for a new living image to appear, no matter whether it is the sun or Sarah, I assume at least three conditions are necessary: firstly, the creation and operation of expressive means and schemes, secondly, the appearance of a new object in the established life world (we begin to see the sun or Sarah), thirdly, comprehension of a new object in a certain reality (in this case, like the sun in a fairy tale or Sarah in a novel by Shalev, more precisely in the reality of a work of art).   

A separate question is why I like the image of Sarah so much. Is it because I involuntarily see Sarah in my spouse? But they are very different, they don't seem to be similar at all. And I'm not Shalev, I don't have his problems (there are problems, but others), there is no genius of his. Maybe I like it because in both cases purity, loyalty, reliability, the mother of your children, in the end, love. So what if Abraham says he can't stand Sarah for a long time. He is a simple man and probably unable to identify his true feelings. But perhaps Shalev, in the image of Sarah, managed to reproduce the eternal feminine principle that attracts us so much, fascinates us so much, and sometimes all our lives, a beginning that is at the same time inexpressible in words and images. However, Shalev was lucky enough to express.     

In conclusion, let's compare an artistic image with an "ideal object" created in the field of cognition (philosophy or science). Again, for a better understanding, I will give a case ? construction of the definition of love in Plato's "Feast". One of the heroes of the "Feast", Aristophanes, gives such a definition of love ? "this is the search for one's half and the pursuit of integrity." Interestingly, as in art, this definition was preceded by a scheme.

"Before," says Aristophanes, "people were of three sexes, and not two, as now, male and female, because there was still a third sex that combined the signs of both; he himself disappeared, and only the name that became abusive, androgynes, remained from him…Terrifying in their strength and power, they harbored great designs and even encroached on the power of the gods…And so Zeus and the other gods began to confer what to do with them…Finally, Zeus, having come up with something, says:…I will cut each of them in half, and then, firstly, they will become weaker, and secondly, more useful for us…So, each of us is a half of a person divided into two flounder-like parts, and therefore everyone is always looking for the corresponding half. Men, who represent one of the parts of that previously bisexual being, which was called androgynous, hunt for women, and fornicators mostly belong to this breed, and women of this origin are greedy for men and dissolute. Women, representing the half of the former woman (androgynous female. ? V.P.), are not very disposed to men, they are more attracted to women, and lesbians belong to this particular breed. But men, who represent the half of the former man, are attracted to everything masculine: already in childhood, being slices of a male being, they love men, and they like to lie and cuddle with men. These are the best of boys and boys, because they are by nature the most courageous…Thus, love is called the thirst for wholeness and the desire for it. Before, I repeat, we were something united, and now, because of our injustice, we are settled by God separately... having reconciled and made friends with this god (Erot. - V.R.), we will meet and find those we love, our half, which few people manage to do now" ^{[1, p. 100, 101]}.

Love, understood as the search for one's half and the pursuit of integrity, is an ideal object, here properties borrowed from the scheme are attributed to love. Plato omits all other properties of love, for example, the influence on the love of the gods or sensual relationships. Fixed properties of love make it possible to define love as an ideal object, which is then used in reasoning to obtain new knowledge about love ^{[6, pp. 58-71]}. Thus, Plato writes, "we have just acted when talking about Eros: first we determined what it was, and then, whether it was bad or good, we began to reason; therefore, our reasoning came out clear and did not contradict itself" ^{[2, p. 176]}.

An ideal object is similar to an artistic image only, as Aristotle would say, "by coincidence." Firstly, the scheme in this case is used not so much to set an ideal object, as to convince of the fidelity of the new definition (Plato wants a new understanding of love to be accepted instead of the traditional one, understood as the actions of the gods-love, Aphrodite and Eros). Secondly, the ideal object does not need to be perceived as an event, it is used in reasoning and cognition, where the main thing is not the vision and experience of the phenomenon, but the constancy, consistency of its properties. And the problems that a philosopher or scientist solves are different: to get consistent knowledge, rationally comprehend facts, come up with schemes that would be effective in practice, create a rational explanation of the world, and so on.