The Conceptual Sphere of Emotions in Hermann Hesse's Novel “The Last Summer of Klingsor”

Abstract

We consider the conceptual sphere, which is a set of concepts, as the result of the implementation of the communicative intention of the author of the text. The ideological content of Hermann Hesse's novel “The Last Summer of Klingsor” is the difficult, frustrating fate of an intellectual creator, a talented artist doomed to loneliness, constantly searching for the meaning of life, who created his own deep, inner world, living a complex contradictory life in it, experiencing the torments of creativity. The talent of a painter with a capital letter is opposed (in our understanding) to a "standard" person. Talent is doomed to loneliness, misunderstanding of others, and numerous psychological complexes of its owner. This communicative concept by Hermann Hesse generates many concepts, some of which are emotional concepts. They occupy a significant place in the story “The Last Summer of Klingsor”. Based on the material of the novel by the German-Swiss writer, the key emotional concepts are revealed – “fear” and “mental suffering”. The criteria for determining the key concepts are the judgments of the Hessian scholars and quantitative indicators of the verbal embodiment of this mental formation in the story. Fear and mental suffering are psychologically relevant phenomena that turned out to be in communicative demand in the work of G. Hesse. Their communicative relevance is determined by the author's intention to reveal the image of a talented intellectual artist, doomed to constant loneliness and deep feelings. Perceptual-figurative features are revealed in the content of key emotional concepts. Some of them are individually authored features. The linguistic means of objectification of the emotional concepts of “fear” and “mental suffering” are defined. The fact of high-frequency use of original metaphors in the speech embodiment of the studied concepts has been established.