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Alizadeh Afer Azer,
Doctor of Philosophy in Philology, Associate Professor
Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts (Baku, Azerbaijan)
e-mail: alizadeafer@rambler.ru
In this article, the problem of the artist’s self-understanding and his creative existence is studied based on novel “The Horse’s Mouth” by Joyce Cary. The purpose of the study is to reveal artist’s originality and many sidedness by means of study of his psychological essence as well as to determine the ideological position of the British writer. The work is based on the analysis of typological, system-figurative, problem-thematic material, which makes it possible to bring to light comprehensively Cary’s creative individuality. The artist’s aspiration to defend creative independence, the motive of failed happiness, delusions and failed expectations, the problem of choice, the commercialization of art are issues that interest the writer. In writer’s works the artist does not appear in a romantically sublime aura: he appears in social and everyday terms, in the context of his time, in the context of the artistic and aesthetic development of his epoch. The conflict between the artist and the public, which is immune to beauty, is inevitable. The artist most often acts as a hostage to certain fatal circumstances — insensitivity, indifference and ignorance. Completely dependent on the fateful destiny of fate, artist loses faith in himself, in his talent and calling. Understanding painfully the invalidity of his art, he loses faith in the Almighty and at the same time loses his spiritual core. The study of the image of the artist in Cary’s prose makes it possible to come to the following generalizations. The writer’s artist is a person who notices vigilantly the individual, the random and the changeable matter. The artist, who is misunderstood by his contemporaries — unprincipled entrepreneurs, businessmen, which are far from real art, and sometimes by ill-wishers-colleagues filled with malice and irony, or having become a victim of his own illusions, cannot fully realize his gift. As a result, the artist’s fate, dependent on public opinion, takes a tragic turn. The economic elite, filled with indifference to people of art (consumers seeking their own benefit — entrepreneurs, employers, gallery owners, collectors) unceremoniously neglects his talent. As it is seen, in the novel “The Horse’s Mouth”, the author reveals the social motives and logic of the artist’s conflict with society and its false morality. The artist, in the understanding of the English novelist, aspires to express absolute truths in painting. The artist does not pursue material gain and makes no effort to please the tastes of the unenlightened public. Cunning and inventive gallery owners use his talent in their own interests, make money from his paintings and enrich themselves with them. The rejected artist, persecuted by a spiritually wretched and narrow-minded society, answers it in kind, i.e. by blackmail and robbery.
Keywords: Joyce Cary, “The Horse’s Mouth”, painting, self-expression, creation, mythology, expression of will, self-improvement, fate
References
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