The moments of universal, solemn silence of nature have come, those moments when the creative mind works stronger, poetic thoughts boil hotter, when passion flares up more vividly in the heart or melancholy aches more painfully, when in a cruel soul the seed of a criminal thought ripens more equanimously and stronger, and when... in Oblomovka everything they rest so soundly and peacefully.
Questions and tasks:
1. Read the text expressively. What work is it taken from, who is the author?
2. Determine the stylistic affiliation of the text, prove your point of view.
3. Define a stylistic role homogeneous members
4. Find words of outdated vocabulary in the text, select synonyms for them from the modern Russian language.
5. What state of nature and man does the author convey using impersonal sentences? Find in the text and comment on their stylistic role.
1. – the resulting assessments of my knowledge and skills are fair;
2. – lessons make me think and reflect;
3. – the teacher helps me understand and master the material;
4. – I understand the teacher’s presentation of the material;
5. – I learn a lot of new things in lessons;
6. – the teacher and I have a respectful relationship.
Application
By creativity
Graduate students face several challenges. Firstly, you need to remember previously studied literary material, and secondly, be able to logically, demonstrably and competently construct your work, demonstrating the ability to think, evaluate, generalize and give examples. During the exam, the student must show how deeply he understood, and not just memorized, the content of the work, how he knows how to use critical materials devoted to this work, and how independently he can evaluate this or that literary phenomenon. These materials were compiled by the students themselves for peer learning.
Card No. 1
The “Napoleonic problem” is the central moral...but (psychological) problem of the novel “A Hero of Our Time”. This is a problem of extreme individualism and selfishness. A person who refuses to judge himself according to the same laws by which he judges others loses his moral guidelines and loses the criteria of good and evil. Pechorin not only brings (not) happiness to others, but he himself is (not) happy.
1. What is individualism? How is it different from egoism? (Use to answer Dictionary).
2. Is it possible to agree that Pechorin refuses to judge himself by the same laws as everyone else? Give reasons for your opinion.
3. What moral guidelines should a person be guided in life? Does Pechorin have them?
4. How did you understand the expression “lose the criteria of good and evil”? What's happened criteria? If you have any difficulties, consult a dictionary. Has Pechorin lost such “moral criteria”?
Card No. 2
Copy using punctuation marks and inserting missing letters.
The modern researcher of creativity I. Vinogradov wrote with the Life Story of Pechorin Lermontov, telling us readers that the path of individualism contradicts human nature and its actual needs. He once again convinced us that the true and highest joys, the fullness of life, the living human soul begins to acquire only where the connection between people is built according to the laws of goodness, kinship, justice, humanism. He told us that only on this path does free will and independence of decisions acquired by a person who has realized his sovereignty reveal its true value. Just like the sobriety of thought... the realistic outlook on the world is the deep and sober meaning of the human heart.
sovereignty?
2. Do you agree that Pechorin’s misfortunes lie in his individualism?
3. What do you think human happiness consists of?
4. Why couldn’t Pechorin find true happiness? Is this only his fault?
5. What, in your opinion, should be the basis of people's relationships?
6. Can freedom, will and independence always bring happiness to a person?
Card No. 3
Write it down using punctuation marks and inserting missing letters, inserting dashes instead the right words to confirm the idea. Instead of (?), write down a quote.
Pechorin realized that under conditions of autocratic despotism, meaningful activity in the name of the common good was (not) possible for him and his generation. This determined the unbridled skepticism and simism characteristic of him, the conviction that life is “boring and disgusting.” Doubts devastated Pechorin to the point that he was left with only two beliefs: birth _________ and death ________. Having diverged from the “environment” to which he belongs by birth and upbringing, he condemns it and creates cruel justice ________________. (Not) satisfied ___________passionately..but thirsty for an ideal but (not) seeing..having (not) found it, Pechorin asks: (?).
The morally crippled Pechorin lost his good goals and turned into a cold, _________, _________, frozen in the proud loneliness of a misanthrope (not) hanging over himself.
1. What is it like lexical meaning words skepticism? Is he typical for Pechorin?
2. How to understand the expression “morally crippled Pechorin”? Do you agree with this definition of a hero? Give reasons for your opinion.
Card No. 4
Copy using punctuation marks and inserting missing letters. Instead of (?), insert suitable quotes, and instead of dashes, insert the necessary words or phrases.
Pechorin can overcome boredom and feel the fullness of life only at the expense of other people: (?).
Therefore, he experiences “(un)obvious pleasure” from suffering for the most...reasonable _________: he strives..to achieve..Xia ________, enjoying the power that he received over __________. After all, happiness is “saturated... pride”: (?).
Pechorin's vampirism lies in the pleasure... which he receives from the suffering of other people. His romances with women are not only one of the (few) many outlets of his passion for action, but that area of life where a person expresses himself...and fully reveals the very essence of his character.
The immensity of Pechorin's egoism...is manifested...but in relation...to women whom he loved as ________ or with whom he was fond of as __________ and __________. He admits this to himself: (?).
1. Do you agree that Pechorin is characterized by “vampirism”? If yes, then how does it manifest itself?
2. How does Pechorin overcome boredom?
Card No. 5
Copy using punctuation marks and inserting missing letters.
A researcher of creativity wrote that Pechorin is alien to vulgar and dull misanthropy, petty femaleness.. panic. He is too significant for narcissism. It contains not only a proud feeling of superiority over others, which plays the role of a protective measure against the smug “crowd,” but also the need to elevate the critical assessment of one’s own actions above oneself.
1. Determine the meaning of the word misanthropy. (You can use an explanatory dictionary to answer). Is this state characteristic of Pechorin?
2. What can be seen in Pechorin’s “proud sense of superiority over others”?
3. Find compound words, the first part of which has a root - myself- and explain their meaning.
4. Is Pechorin capable of critically assessing his own actions? Give examples.
Card No. 6
Copy using punctuation marks and inserting missing letters.
The creativity researcher wrote (Do not) one should be so trusting of what Pechorin says, although there is no (n..) pose (n..) no falsehood, no phrases and every word is sincere..e. And his pr..knowledge can (not) always be trusted. These self-accusations are properties of a deep nature. They are caused by demands on oneself, inner..honesty. I am a person who is accustomed to looking reality straight in the eye.
1. What is the lexical meaning of the word self-accusation?(You can use an explanatory dictionary to answer). Is this quality characteristic of Pechorin?
2. What does the hero expose himself to? Is he sincere? Do you agree with him?
3. How do you understand the expression “inner honesty”? Is it typical for Pechorin? Prove your opinion.
Application
Card No. 1.
Explain how a reasoning text is constructed. Use this text as an example.
Pushkin's talent was not limited to the narrow sphere of any kind of poetry; an excellent lyricist, he was already ready to become an excellent playwright, when sudden death stopped his development.
Epic poetry was also a type of poetry characteristic of his talent. IN Lately Throughout his life, he leaned more and more toward drama and novels and, as he did so, moved away from lyrical poetry. Likewise, he then often forgot prose poems.
This is the most natural course of development of great poetic talent in our time.
(A comment:reasoning, as a type of speech, is built according to the type of inference. Therefore, it is characterized by an introductory thesis beginning, the use of arguments to substantiate, explain the thesis and, as a rule, the presence of a conclusion. This is exactly how the sample text is structured.)
Card No. 2.
Read the text. What type of speech does it belong to? How the author builds a chain of evidence using homogeneous members main idea? What role does the last sentence play in the text? What language means is its general meaning achieved?
In the field of art, in the creativity of the heart, the Russian people discovered amazing power, creating, under the most terrible conditions, beautiful, amazing painting and original music, which is admired by the whole world. The people's lips were closed, the wings of the soul were tied, but their heart gave birth to dozens of great artists of words, sounds, and colors.
The giant Pushkin, our greatest pride and the most complete expression of the spiritual forces of Russia, and next to him the wizard Glinka and the beautiful Bryullov, Gogol, merciless to himself and people, the yearning Lermontov, the sad Turgenev, the angry Nekrasov, the great rebel Tolstoy... All this grandiose was created by Russia in less than in a hundred years.
(M. Gorky.)
Card No. 3
Mark the means of artistic style in the text. How are techniques used, including syntactic means, that enhance the aesthetic impact of the author’s speech?
Anyone who happened, like me, to wander through the desert mountains and peer for a long, long time at their bizarre images, and greedily swallow the life-giving air spilled in their gorges, will, of course, understand my desire to convey, tell, and draw these magical pictures. Finally, we climbed Mount Gud, stopped and looked back: a gray cloud hung on it, and its cold breath threatened a nearby storm, but in the east everything was so clear and golden that we, that is, me and the staff captain, they completely forgot about him... Yes, and staff captain6 in the hearts of simple people the feeling of the beauty and greatness of nature is stronger, a hundred times more vivid than in us, enthusiastic storytellers in words and on paper.
Russian literature of the 19th century is marked by a phenomenal phenomenon: the work of a number of major writers, such as N. A. Nekrasov, A. I. Herzen, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, is characterized by a synthesis of ideas and images of Orthodox Christianity and revolutionary enlightenment. This phenomenon is of great interest, since it uniquely expressed the complexity and tension of the spiritual life of Russian society in the mid-19th century, which cannot be reduced only to a schism and naked antithesis of the ideas of Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment. Revolutionary calls for rebellion and rebellion in the work of revolutionaries are paradoxically combined with a passionate desire for harmony and spiritual harmony. This synthesis has deep national roots, philosophical and aesthetic traditions.
Nekrasov’s work of the 1840-1850s - his lyrics, poems, especially “Silence”, which stands on the threshold before the creation of large poems, contains a whole array of themes, images, motifs associated with religious ideas, with the text of the Bible. And this requires explanation, since it is a reflection of the poet’s attitude and aesthetics.
Nekrasov's interest in the Christian tradition in art had an unusually pronounced effect in his early work and practically predetermined the most important centers of his ethics and aesthetics. The poems of early Nekrasov, collected in the book “Dreams and Sounds,” are immersed in the element of romantic and religious images that reveal a connection with the Russian and European elegiac tradition. This point, namely that the religious element of Nekrasov’s poetry from the very beginning is connected with the traditions of Russian and European romantic lyrics, will turn out to be extremely important for the poet in all eras of his work.
Zhilyakova E. M., 1998
The elegiac tradition opened up the possibility of creating an image of a reflective lyrical hero, psychologically subtly outlined, but most importantly, it made the lyrical source open for confession, created an “idealistic” territory of the spirit, protecting it from the dictates of social determinism.
The well-known and noted observation by many that the young Nekrasov imitated the romantics, and especially Zhukovsky and Hugo 1 (a whole series of poems: “Angel of Death”, “Meeting of Souls”, “True Wisdom” - a direct analogue of Zhukovsky’s texts), in the aspect of the problem posed takes on special significance. Nekrasov not only developed the themes of Russian and European poetry - “secrets of the universe”, “air route”, “meeting of souls”, etc. His philosophical and moral values were formed, the foundations of artistic thinking were laid, which, with the so-called overcoming of romanticism, were not leave his poetic world, on the contrary, they determine the special tonality, style, and intensity of the confessional tone associated with the eternal search for God and justice. D. S. Merezhkovsky, speaking about Nekrasov’s religiosity, pointed to its genetic predetermination as a quality of a poet of Russian culture 2 .
On the pages of Nekrasov’s early lyrics, a unique dialogue of educational and religious ideas is outlined, where the basis and connection between them is the ethics of Christianity, which determined the most important centers of both enlightenment (philosophy, ideology) and the Orthodox religion. This ambiguous dialogue, including both moments of agreement and sharp contradiction in the most important positions, will turn into the deepest dramatic collisions and the highest artistic discoveries in the lyrics of the mature Nekrasov.
1 Commentary on the Complete Works and Letters of N. A. Nekrasov // Nekrasov N. A. Complete. collection op. and letters: In 15 t. L., 1981. T. 1. P. 640-666; Watsuro IN. E. TO literary history Nekrasov’s poem “Earthquake” // Nekrasov collection, V. L., 1973. P. 276-280; Prozorov YU. M. Nekrasov’s book “Dreams and Sounds” and Russian romantic poetry // The influence of N. A. Nekrasov’s creativity on Russian poetry. Yaroslavl, 1978. P. 3-14; Paykov N. N. On the poetic evolution of early Nekrasov // N. A. Nekrasov and Russian literature of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Yaroslavl, 1982. P. 3-23; Eikhenbaum B. M. Nekrasov // Eikhenbaum B. M. About poetry. L., 1968. P. 35-74.
2 Merezhkovsky D. WITH. Two secrets of Russian poetry // Merezhkovsky D. S. In the still waters. M., 1991. P. 424.
In the spirit of the romantic tradition, the poetry of early Nekrasov is centered around the problem of human self-determination. In the foreground was the question of the soul, posed from a philosophical and religious perspective. The question of the soul is considered in the context of the main alternatives of early Nekrasov: soul and body, God and man, heaven and earth. Nekrasov’s soul invariably opposes the body and personifies in a person the ideal side of his existence - the soul is always turned to God. This formulation of the problem reflected the national uniqueness of Russian literature with its cult of warmth and sincerity (“Thought”, “Deaths”, “Conversation”).
One of the most early poems“Thought” (1838) is built as a philosophical allegory on the sharp contrast of the “decrepit world” and “young life.” Death is viewed not in its tragic sense for a specific human fate, but as a transition to another, heavenly, higher existence. In the poem of the same name, the lyrical hero, turning to death, begs her to appear not in the hours of the “evil spirit,” when “the mind is obedient, like a low slave, and there is nothing sacred in it,” not in the hours of “heartstorms and rebellions,” but in moment of spiritual enlightenment: “I am close to heaven - the time of death!” 3
However, with the obvious dominance of the religious-romantic concept of the soul in Nekrasov’s early poems, another tendency is also visible - the poet’s interest in the worries and joys of life. The programmatic poem is “Conversation” (1839), built on the dialogue of Soul and Body. As a romantic, idealist, religiously and sublimely thinking, Nekrasov gives preference to the Soul, which grieves and is angry over the wicked desires of the Body. The Soul part is written in a high odic tone. But despite the fact that the Body “destroys through inaction” “my bright mind, my pure gift, my spirit,” the lyrical part of the Body is also distinguished by the energy of conviction, inspiration and emotion:
There is rapture in the whirlwind of dance,
In game, dinner and wine
And in the paint of a timid blush
To the beloved maiden under the moon. (1, 269)
At the level of intonation structure, the dialogue sounds on a parity basis, thereby the artistic form balances
______________________
3 Nekrasov N. A. Complete collection of works and letters: V 15 vol. L., 1981. T. 1. P. 189. In the future, all quotations are given according to this edition, indicating the volume and page in brackets.
and the demands of the spirit and mortal life, and Nekrasov’s position acquires complexity and ambiguity.
The highest place in the moral and philosophical system of early Nekrasov is occupied by God. The image of the ideal, the beautiful is always correlated with Christ, with the picture of paradise, endowed with biblical details: “a quiet evening of prayers and inspirations,” “and the silence of the solemn summer, and the talking of the waters, and the singing of the nightingale, and a bird soaring above the earth, and a burning star in the heavens.” ”(1, 223).
In the lyrics of early Nekrasov, the elegiac tradition is especially strong, in line with which the type of lyrical hero was created - always gloomy, rejected, lonely. The basis of the psychological picture in its many variants is the dramatic understanding of the hero of the imperfection of earthly life, and therefore the impossibility of living according to the commandments of Christ; he is torn between the divine ideal and the coldness of life (“his heart is frostbitten”). The development of the plot of the poem “Exile” is based on the dramatic gap between the existence of the “son of dust” in the country of “azure semi-earthly existence”, where his soul once miraculously ended up - and the suffering to which he, now the “son of faith”, is doomed in the “downworld” ” amidst the suffering and battles of life. The lyrical hero is instructed and consoled by “providence sent to him.” The words spoken by an “invisible voice” are essentially a moral code, a commandment of an Orthodox Christian, expressed in poetic words:
But you are in iron chains
Embrace the excitement of dark thoughts,
Don't trust your soul with doubt
Don’t blame life for the grief,
Pray to holy providence
And keep your faith in the Lord. (1, 197)
Nekrasov, like Zhukovsky, combines the elegiac tradition with ballad and odic tradition. Connecting to the elegiac intonation of others blurs the dull monotony of the lyrical hero. Suffering and humility are replaced by joy, quiet rejoicing, which is not alien to Christianity and was especially accepted, like the idea of duty, by the enlighteners. The poem “Meeting of Souls”, built on a ballad basis, in its plot, rhythm, mixed intonation of sadness and joy, mysterious solemnity and humor, is comparable to “Svetlana” by Zhukovsky. Elegance of style, creating a feeling of lightness, illusory ethereal space, through which
“like a stream of light, something rushes along the air path”, is subordinated to the creation of a special lyrical mood - ideality, grace, the joy of finding soul mate. The lexical composition of the poem is determined by the motives of flight (“air path”, “solemn years are barely audible”, “span of light wings”), light (“pearl robe”, “stream of light”, “azure edge”, “flame of a new radiance”, “ light”, “golden”, “fire-colored radiance”), love (“welcome”, “ray of bliss”, “captivated by the beauty”, “selfless love”, “happiness with pure rays”). Sublimely romantic vocabulary is associated with the verbal element of the religious sphere: God, prayer, robe, vows, light ether, crown, torment. Another poem from 1839, “Poetry,” is full of internal dynamics and joyful energy; it contains motifs from Goethe’s “Goddess of Fantasy” translated by Zhukovsky. Thus, from within the expanded Christian-religious concept, tendencies characteristic of the Enlightenment understanding of man emerge. It is no coincidence that Nekrasov’s poems use ancient images. And although in “Blessed Days” (1839) the memory of “the joyful days of fleeting youth” appears “for a moment,” the entire work is permeated with light and hope, and next to “pale Diana” is “young Svetlana.” In other poems, when describing a happy past or moments of creative insight, “violent Bacchus” and “favorite Apollo” come to life in the texts.
Behind the poetic synthesis of Christian and ancient texts is Nekrasov’s concept of history and culture. A man of the 30s, brought up in romantic traditions, Nekrasov in the poem “Colosseum” discovered an interest in the philosophical problems of history. The romantic concept of historical development, which was based on the educational ideas of Herder and the French encyclopedists, turned out to be akin to the early Nekrasov and was expressed in the interpretation of antiquity as a colossal stage that preceded Christianity. Image Ancient Rome and the Colosseum appears in the poem in greatness (“great picture”, “majestic beauty”, “giant labor”, “glory to art and ancient minds!”, “you are a large letter on the dark tablet of past centuries”) and in ruins (“former greatness grave”, “skeleton, ugly monster”, “terrible decline”). The history of the Colosseum and Rome is seen as a philosophical model of the fate of man and humanity in its heyday and at the end of life. In the last part of the poem, in the confession of the Colosseum itself, the
the thought of punishing Rome for its “disastrous glory”, for the cruelty of morals:
Goodness suffered, tyranny rejoiced,
Christian blood flowed in rivers. (1, 204)
On the pages of Nekrasov’s early lyrics, a dispute unfolded on the problem of faith and unbelief, on the possibility or impossibility of solving the riddle of existence with an “arrogant mind.” In a number of poems (“True Wisdom”, “Incomprehensible Song”, “Riddle”) Nekrasov develops the concept of divine origin and the meaning of life. In the sonnet “Riddle,” the poet, describing the picture of peace reigning over the world, is interested not so much in depicting the landscape as in reflecting on the greatness of everything created by a higher power:
An incomprehensible shrine
Before us, without speeches,
The sky is a round plain
Shines in a robe of rays.
What is there beyond the blue distance,
A distance visible to the eyes,
Where it merges with the desert
During the day and in the twilight of the night? (1, 252)
The biblical image of “grain” is placed at the top of the poem as an answer to the question about the “wonderful mystery” of nature:
And overtaken by extremes,
We see only one thing,
That the world was not created by chance,
There is an initial grain... (1, 252)
The poet’s theoretical and at the same time passionate, deeply polemical treatise is the poem “True Wisdom.” In terms of the content and intensity of the dispute with enlightenment rationalism, “True Wisdom” is close to Zhukovsky’s “The Ineffable.”
The arrogant mind has not comprehended everything,
Not everything is bright for the sage,
There are many secrets in the universe,
The keys of which are with the creator. (1, 209)
Measure God with the earthly mind,
To comprehend the secrets of existence, -
No, it's daring, it's a lot,
No, this is not your share! (1, 210)
Nekrasov’s solution to the central moral and philosophical problem is connected with the question of the divine beginning of existence - the self-determination of man in the world, the content of his
positions, his philosophy of life. In accordance with religious-Orthodox principles, the ideal existence of a person is presented to Nekrasov as complete harmony of a person with the world, integrity, the ability to elevate the soul and emerge from suffering transformed and reconciled. Concluding the poem “True Wisdom,” Nekrasov defines the program of a person’s life destiny as the path of endless improvement of the soul in faith. The theme of faith is one of the most exciting for the poet:
There is no glory in a daring attempt
The incomprehensible to comprehend! (1, 211)
In a number of poems, Nekrasov considers reflection, doubt, and rebellion as a manifestation of an “unclean spirit,” a “vicious spirit,” a demon that corrupts the soul:
Wonderful, terrible, these speeches!
Often the mind listens to them
And from each of this meeting
There are more dark thoughts in the heart.
The insidious spirit of temptation
They will surround the soul
And rebellious doubt
It will settle you in a pure heart. (1, 217)
The poem “Doubt” is built on a sharp contrast between two different states of a person in his relationship with the world - in a position of harmony, bliss, and in a situation of “rebellious doubt”. The description of these states is indicative of the poet’s ethical position and the characteristics of his lyrics. The idea of the ideal is determined, on the one hand, by the religious idea of the Creator, who created the world as beautiful, and on the other hand, by a pronounced idea of the spiritual capabilities of man. Nekrasov creates the image of a “luxurious life of a feast” with the help of a landscape, which, thanks to biblical, folklore, as well as classic and romantic details, receives symbolic meaning as an expression of a moral and aesthetic ideal:
You started to live. A luxurious feast of life,
You are invited to this feast for bliss,
Great, good, graceful is God's world,
Abundant with everything and full of perfection.
Azure skies, boundless ocean,
The dense forest, so magnificently dressed,
Gray winter's angry hurricane,
And the solemn silence of summer... (1, 223)
The second part of the poem is a detailed psychological elaboration of states of spiritual confusion and the process of devastation of a person who has succumbed to the demon of doubt:
It’s scary to live with him, it’s a sin to talk to him
Everything will be polluted by unclean doubt
And the chest is shackled with the cold of the graves
You'll be confused by disturbing dreams
Neither the beauty of nature, nor art -
Nothing will occupy a murdered soul
And your chest will fill with jealous melancholy.
You'll curse mad love
There is again coldness and emptiness in my heart
The world will turn into a desert for you... (1, 232)
It is no coincidence that the apocalyptic theme of retribution arises. In the poem “Earthquake” (1839), the end of the world comes as a punishment for the “magnificent city” for its sins, for “the absence of a saint, the domination of one vicious and evil.” The poem is structured as a cycle, the parts of which replace each other in contrast, painting pictures of the growing depravity and serenity of people and at the same time a terrible punishment ripening in the bowels of the earth. And only horror shocked and forced the city to repent of
That they were wildly, madly trading in sin
And God the Creator was forgotten more than once -
Everyone humbled themselves before him and a song about forgiveness
Sent to the all-powerful god-king. (1, 232)
Thus, in Nekrasov’s early lyrics, based on Christian ethical principles and at the same time absorbing educational ideas about man, not without the influence of romantic lyrics, the moral and aesthetic ideal of the poet was formed, the most important feature which was a sense of duty (the idea of sacrifice) and a passionate striving for a feeling of harmony with the world, completeness and integrity of being. In a poem written a decade later, Nekrasov created a portrait of his “Muse of Youth”:
So I remember, exhausted in vain
All the riot of sorrow and passions,
She humbled herself meekly and beautifully
Suddenly the Muse of my youth.
The cheeks are moistened with tears,
Eyes drooping to the ground,
And entwined with fresh thorns
The crown of suffering on the brow... (1, 158)
Nekrasov's lyrics of the 1840-1850s retained a strong interest in religious images and motifs. This was due to the deepening democracy of the poet. The nature of Nekrasov’s appeal to religious material was a reflection of the special quality of the philosophical, ethical and social position characteristic of the revolutionary commoners: their work was imbued with Christian ideas of brotherhood 4 . Nekrasov's democracy is nourished and goes back to the people's ideal of paradise as the bliss of the poor, orphaned, and offended. The task of deeply recreating the life and spirit of the people dictated the principles and techniques for depicting the religious element of the peasant consciousness.
The most common in the lyrics are two elegiac themes: the theme of inescapable suffering and the theme of moral rebirth through an appeal to God, longing for an ideal. Their development is included in a religious context associated with popular ideas about true life. This is the famous poem “Vlas” of 1854, which attracted the attention of F. M. Dostoevsky, who dedicated an entire article to it in “The Diary of a Writer” 5. The type of hero - people's intercessor in the poems about Belinsky, “The Poet and the Citizen”, in the poem “The Unfortunate” is created by Nekrasov with a direct focus on the image of Christ 6.
Particularly acute in the lyrics of the 1850s is the motif of dramatic discord in the spiritual world of the lyrical hero. Psychological dissonance reflects a crisis that was dictated by the demands of a violated sense of social justice, the need to break the laws on which
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4 Lebedev YU. IN. N. A. Nekrasov and Russian poem of 1840-1850. Yaroslavl, 1971. P. 122-126; On some ethical sources of N. A. Nekrasov’s poetry // F. M. Dostoevsky. N. A. Nekrasov. L., 1974. S. 128-138; Stingrays N. N. Poets of the Nekrasov school. L., 1968. S. 77-76; Stingrays N. N. Nekrasov. M., 1994. S. 18-19, 27, 37; Morozov N. G. Folk ethical ideals in N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Song to Eremushka” // N. A. Nekrasov and Russian literature of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Yaroslavl, 1981. pp. 78-87.
5 Starikova E. IN. Dostoevsky about Nekrasov // N. A. Nekrasov and Russian literature. M., 1971. S. 302-308.
6 Stingrays N. N. Nekrasov. P. 387.
Christian ethics is founded. One of the central works of the 1850s, “The Muse” (1852), is filled with the deepest drama. The internal meaning of the poem is not only in the bitterness of the opposition of the two Muses - “tenderly singing and beautiful” and “the other, unkind and unloved” (social and aesthetic collisions are visible behind this contrast), but also in the fact that the idea of rebellion, revenge (“violent with her tongue she called the Lord’s thunder to be her accomplice!”), necessary and inevitable in the world of “dark Violence and Evil,” turn out to be painful and destructive for the person himself:
In an embittered soul, but loving and tender
The impulse of rebellious cruelty was fragile.
Weakening slowly, a painful illness
He humbled himself, calmed down... and was suddenly redeemed
All the riot of wild passions and fierce sorrow
One divinely beautiful minute,
When the sufferer, with her head bowed,
“Farewell to your enemies!” - whispered above me... (1, 100)
Thus, on the new soil of deep social determinism and realism, the melodies of early Nekrasov clearly sounded.
The introduction of Christian images into Nekrasov’s poetic text has several levels. In addition to the direct use of religious motifs, plots that directly express the author’s idea, the level where the biblical “word” becomes an artistic symbol is very important, and the content of the work, the author’s idea, appears in the process of mythological filling of the text. In this regard, the poem “Silence” (1857) is extremely interesting.
The lyric-epic poem “Silence” is the result of Nekrasov’s deep thoughts about the fate of Russia. “Long poems filled with love (not joking) for the Motherland” were written after a long stay in Europe. The epic plot of the poem is connected with the Sevastopol campaign, with the results of the Crimean War - a great feat and great suffering of the Russian people. The epic concept required an artistic solution. Very significant in this regard is Nekrasov’s 1855 review “The Siege of Sevastopol, or Such Are the Russians,” dedicated to the analysis of the book of the “poor scribbler,” which tells “one of the episodes of the colossal epic - the death of Admiral Kornilov, - an epic, the denouement of which is still in the hands of the fates.” (11, book 2, 127). Further, speaking about the possibilities of recreating an epic similar to Sevastopol, Nekrasov recalls
“Iliad” and quotes an excerpt from Homer’s poem 7. Nekrasov's review reflected the poet's reflection on the epic artistic tradition. When creating his poem, in which Nekrasov turned to events of national significance, the poet finds his own epic, national traditions and forms, the most important of which is biblical, which made it possible to equally reveal the lyrical and epic nature of the poem.
The lyrical plot is based on the biblical motif of the prodigal son returning home:
I am yours. Let the murmur of reproach
He ran at my heels,
Not the skies of someone else's homeland -
I composed songs for my homeland! (4, 51)
In the process of the epic description of Russian post-war life (pictures of calm and at the same time tense expectation of change) and the experiences of the lyrical hero, an image of a special spiritual state of silence arises, containing both fossilization, stopping and the divine moment of feeling a person’s deep involvement in the common world - his homeland, people, nature , humanity 8:
There is silence over all of Russia...
The depth and ambiguity of this image was well mastered by Nekrasov from his youth, when he epically broadly painted a picture of “the silence of the solemn summer” or wrote about the terrible silence of the earth before fatal retribution (“quiet, everything is quiet, silent”) or depicted a happy moment of the union of kindred souls ( “The solemn year is barely audible”).
The symbolic meaning of the title of the poem corresponds to the biblical image of silence. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke repeat the motif of the great silence that follows the acts of Jesus.
From Matthew: “Another of His disciples said to Him: Lord! let me first go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” And when He entered the boat, His disciples followed Him. And then there was a great disturbance on the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves; and he
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7 Stingrays N. N. Nekrasov and Tyutchev // N. A. Nekrasov and Russian literature. M., 1971. S. 253-255.
8 Lebedev YU. IN. N. A. Nekrasov and Russian poem of 1840-1850. pp. 104-134; Stingrays N. N. Nekrasov. pp. 163-166, 190-193.
slept. Then His disciples, approaching Him, woke Him up and said: Lord! save us; we die. And he says to them: Why are you so fearful and of little faith? Then, getting up, he rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became great silence” (8:21-26).
From Mark: “And He stood up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be still, cease.” And the wind died down, and it became great silence” (4:39).
From Luke: “But He stood up and rebuked the wind and the troubled waters; and they stopped, and became silence” (8:24).
The image of the “great silence” is traditional for Russian literature. Zhukovsky began with “Ode. Prosperity of Russia”, which opened with the lines:
Where does the golden silence come from?
In the blissful northern country?
Nekrasov combines elegiac motifs and the image of silence with the odic intonation of “The Bronze Horseman” 9 . Nekrasov’s “Silence” was also created in the context of the Russian novel, where the motif of silence with its biblical pedigree means two sides of Russian life: silence as a terrible immobility, sleep, drowsiness and silence as a state full of the great mystery of eternal existence. This is an example of “Oblomov’s Dream” (1849), with which it is so natural to compare Nekrasov’s aesthetics in his poem. The lines “No matter how warm the alien sea is, No matter how red the alien distance” echoes the text of “Oblomov”: “What a wonderful land! No, really, there are seas there, no high cliffs, mountains and abysses...” 10 And then Goncharov reveals to the reader in this silence two sides of Russian and universal life: “ Quiet and everyone in the village is sleepy; imperturbable silence- everything is as if extinct... Reigned dead silence. The hour of general afternoon sleep has arrived” (4, 114). ― “The minutes have come universal, solemn silence nature, those moments when the creative mind works stronger, poetic thoughts boil hotter…” (4, 118).
The epic plot of the poem is closely linked to the lyrical one, in which the main motive is repentance, but repentance is not complete repentance, but tenderness: “I send greetings to everyone in tenderness,” “I listened... I was touched as a child...”, “seize the moment of tenderness.” Not only the romantic tradition is visible here
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9 Eikhenbaum B. M. Decree. op. P. 63.
10 Goncharov AND. A. Collected works: In 8 volumes. M., 1979. T. 4. P. 101. In the future, all citations are given to this edition, indicating the volume and page in brackets.
(Zhukovsky, Baratynsky), but also hagiographic, requiring just such a state of tenderness and tranquility. The poet’s appeal to the “temple” is crowned with the motif of repentance:
Temple of sighing, temple of sorrow -
Poor temple of your land:
Harder moans have never been heard
Neither the Roman Peter, nor the Colosseum!
Here are the people you love,
Your insurmountable melancholy
He brought a holy burden -
And he left relieved!
Come in! Christ will lay on hands
And he will remove it by the will of the saint
From the soul there are shackles, from the heart there is torment
And ulcers from the sick conscience... (4, 52)
The description of the temple turns into the prayer of the lyrical hero:
I listened... I was touched like a child...
And for a long time I cried and fought
About the old slabs,
To forgive, to intercede,
So that he overshadows me with a cross
God of the oppressed, god of the mourners,
God of the generations to come
Before this meager altar! (4, 52)
“In a certain and very simple sense, these poems by Nekrasov,” writes N. N. Skatov, “may be the most religious poems in Russian poetry. Or in other words: poems that most powerfully expressed the element of primordial Russian religiosity, the most elemental poems” 11. Indeed, the very combination of poetic “biblical” pairs (“meager altar,” “god of the oppressed,” “god of the mourners”) with rhythmic repetitions and anaphors gives rise to a whole complex of ideas on a social, aesthetic, and philosophical level. This is true. But at the same time, like the magic of music, spells, the energy of a new poetic quality, indefinable, multi-valued and deep, as if recreating the very moment of faith - a spiritual impulse, a state not of the mind, but of the soul. This is a very important point, allowing us to raise the question of Nekrasov’s deep spiritual ties with the people at the level of faith, true Christian spirituality. In this regard, the ending of the poem is very important:
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11 Stingrays N. N. Nekrasov. P. 178.
Hurry there - to your native wilderness!
Where the plowman likes to cut
The work is monotonous.
Doesn't grief bother him? -
He is cheerful, he is walking behind the plow.
He lives without pleasure
He dies without regret.
Be strengthened by his example,
Broken under the yoke of grief!
Don't chase personal happiness
And yield to God - without arguing... (4, 56)
A year later Turgenev will write “ Noble Nest”, where in the words of Lavretsky - “humble yourself before the people's truth” - will repeat in the novel the depth of the philosophical thoughts of the poet Nekrasov.
“Silence” was the spiritual and artistic prologue of great epic poems because Nekrasov in all its depth comprehended and expressed the meaning of the Christian principles by which the people lived and which were sacred to the poet himself from his first poetic experiments: Nekrasov understood them as the highest, all-human humanism.
And the sun was already setting behind the forest; it cast several slightly warm rays, which cut a fiery stripe through the entire forest, brightly bathing the tops of the pines with gold. Then the rays went out one after another; the last ray remained for a long time; he, like a thin needle, pierced the thicket of branches; but that too went out.
Objects lost their shape, everything merged into gray, then into a dark mass. The singing of the birds gradually weakened; soon they became completely silent, except for one stubborn one, who, as if in defiance of everyone, in the midst of the general silence, alone chirped monotonously at intervals, but less and less, and she finally whistled weakly, silently, for the last time, perked up, slightly stirring the leaves around her... and fell asleep.
Everything fell silent. Some grasshoppers made louder noises when they started. White vapors rose from the ground and spread across the meadow and river. The river also calmed down; a little later, someone suddenly splashed inside her one last time, and she became motionless.<…>
The first star sparkled brightly in the sky, like a living eye, and lights flickered in the windows of the house.
The moments of general, solemn silence of nature have arrived..."
Attention is drawn to the main thing, the most significant phenomena are reflected: the sun and its reflexes on the river, on the tops of the trees; fog over the river and meadow; gradual onset of darkness - objects merge; The birds fall silent, the river subsides - a “general solemn silence” sets in. Both individual details and the change in landscape itself are subordinated to a single and specific task.
Chekhov's landscape is constructed differently.
"It was already dark; There was a strong smell of evening dampness and the moon was about to rise. In the clear, starry sky there were only two clouds and just above us: one large, the other smaller; They were alone, like a mother and child, running after each other in the direction where the evening dawn was burning down.
<…>through the bars of the fence one could see the river, the water meadows on the other side and the bright, crimson fire from the fire, around which black people and horses were moving<…>
There was fog rising on the river and here and there in the meadow. Tall, thin wisps of fog, thick and white as milk, wandered over the river, obscuring the reflections of the stars and clinging to the willows. They changed their appearance every minute, and it seemed that some were hugging, others were bowing, others were raising their hands to the sky with wide priestly sleeves, as if they were praying...” (“Fear”).
The picture of a summer evening contains not only features that can be called defining for it (clear, starry sky, fog on the river, evening dawn). Almost more space is occupied by objects that seem to be optional - either completely, or in such precise detail: two clouds, of which it is reported that one is small, the other is large, and which run after each other, like “a mother and child” ( indicated exactly where); fire fire in the meadows; bizarre shapes of wisps of fog, looking like people hugging, sometimes praying, etc.
Turgenev has a random one belonging to at this moment- manifestation of the essential. A hare in the greenery, belated larks - important signs of the season, an observation by a phenologist.
In Chekhov, temporary, unexpected details of the landscape are of a completely different quality. This - actually random. The fact that the wisps of fog looked like “arms with wide priestly sleeves” is an accidental phenomenon in in every sense that arose that evening - and never again. This is an observation that defies any systematic approach.
A generalized landscape can be drawn without a precisely designated position of the describer. This is exactly the landscape of Turgenev and Goncharov. In our example from Oblomov, an indicator of a lack of focus is the following detail: “and she finally whistled weakly, silently, for the last time, perked up, slightly moving the leaves around her.” A real observer cannot see this from a distance, especially in the forest, merging “into a dark mass.” The picture depicted is given from a certain vague point of view.
Another thing is Chekhov's landscape. In the existing Chekhovian artistic system natural world cannot be depicted without a real observer whose position in space is precisely determined. In the second period of Chekhov's work, this is a character (see Chapter II), in the third - a character and a narrator (see Chapter III).
Before the observer of a picture of nature, the details that come to the fore are not always the main ones; it all depends on the location of the observation post, the mood of the observer, etc.
The hero of the story “Verochka,” a city dweller who sees a moonlit summer evening “almost for the first time in his life,” notices the unusual and fantastic in it:
“The gaps between the bushes and tree trunks were full of fog, thin, gentle, saturated through and through with moonlight, and what remained in Ognev’s memory for a long time, wisps of fog, like ghosts, quietly, but noticeably to the eye, walked one after another across the alleys. The moon stood high above the garden, and below it, transparent foggy spots rushed somewhere to the east. The whole world seemed to consist only of black silhouettes and wandering white shadows, and Ognev, observing the fog on a moonlit August evening almost for the first time in his life, thought that he was not seeing nature, but a scenery where inept pyrotechnicians, wanting to illuminate garden with sparklers, sat under the bushes and, along with the light, released white smoke into the air.”
In the first chapter of “Murder,” all that is said about the forest is that it is barely illuminated by the moon and makes “a harsh, lingering noise” - only this is noticed by the hero, full of terrible forebodings. Even the degree of reality of the pictures given in his perception is not clear: “Matvey looked back, but there was no longer a sleigh or a man, as if he had imagined all this...»
The hero of “House with a Mezzanine” will say about the Volchaninovs’ house that it is “white and with a terrace.”
The landscape gives the feeling of a light sketch, made immediately, based on the first instant impression. In pre-Chekhov literature, this could serve as nothing more than a full-scale sketch, which should be rewritten and generalized in the workshop.
Chekhov's nature is given in temporary, constantly new states, which she herself creates every second: a cloud that will soon go away, moonlight reflected in a lamp or a fragment of a bottle, a bright yellow stripe of light creeping along the ground, glare of the sun on crosses and domes, an incomprehensible sound , sweeping across the steppe. Chekhov's landscape captures the vibrant, changing face of the world.
The subject structure of the landscape is subject to general principles the use of things in Chekhov's artistic system.
The last type of text in which the role of the subject needs to be considered is the characterization of the character. This type of narration, by its very essence, should include only strictly selected things that speak about the essential aspects of the external and internal appearance of the hero. In addition, the characteristic is excluded from plot movement and narrative time, does not belong to any situation and therefore must be free from situational objects.
Therefore, it is especially curious whether this type of text obeys the general random principle of item selection.
In the story “Big Volodya and Little Volodya,” the heroine is characterized in this way: “Rita, Mrs. Yagich’s cousin, a girl already over thirty, very pale, with black eyebrows, wearing a pince-nez, smoking cigarettes without a break even in the bitter cold; She always had ashes on her chest and knees. She spoke through her nose, drawing out every word, was cold, could drink liqueurs and cognac as much as she wanted without getting drunk, and told ambiguous jokes in a sluggish, tasteless manner. At home, from morning to evening, she read thick magazines, covering them with ashes, or ate frozen apples."
The last detail (note that it is given in an extremely specific form: “ice cream”) does not in any way stand on par with the rest, which have a very specific meaning.
It's not that this detail is small. The concept of “large” and “small” details in an artistic system has a different meaning than in empirical reality; The artistic scale is incompatible with the real scale. The fact is that this detail is not significant either socially (like pince-nez, cigarettes), or portrait-psychologically (like pallor, black eyebrows, nasal pronunciation, thick magazines, etc.). She is a sign of the same random image that we have seen in other types of text.
Objects lost their shape; everything merged first into a gray, then into a dark mass. The singing of the birds gradually weakened; soon they became completely silent, except for one stubborn one, who, as if in defiance of everyone, in the midst of the general silence, chirped monotonously at intervals, but less and less, and she finally whistled weakly, silently, for the last time, perked up, slightly moving the leaves around me... and fell asleep. Everything fell silent. Some grasshoppers made louder noises when they started. White vapors rose from the ground and spread across the meadow and river. The river also calmed down; a little later, someone suddenly splashed inside her one last time, and she became motionless. It smelled damp. It got darker and darker. The trees were grouped into some kind of monsters; It became scary in the forest: there, someone would suddenly creak, as if one of the monsters was moving from its place to another, and a dry twig seemed to crunch under his foot. The first star sparkled brightly in the sky, like a living eye, and lights flickered in the windows of the house. These are the moments of general, solemn silence of nature, those moments when the creative mind works more powerfully, poetic thoughts boil hotter, when passion flares up more vividly in the heart or melancholy aches more painfully, when the seed of a criminal thought ripens more calmly and strongly in a cruel soul, and when... in Oblomovka everyone rests so soundly and peacefully. “Let’s go for a walk, mom,” says Ilyusha. - What are you, God bless you! Now go for a walk,” she replies, “it’s damp, you’ll catch cold in your legs; and it’s scary: a goblin is now walking in the forest, he’s carrying away little children. -Where is he taking it? What is it like? Where does he live? - asks the child. And the mother gave free rein to her unbridled imagination. The child listened to her, opening and closing his eyes, until, finally, sleep overcame him completely. The nanny came and, taking him from his mother’s lap, carried him sleepy, with his head hanging over her shoulder, to bed. - Well, the day has passed, and thank God! - said the Oblomovites, lying in bed, groaning and making the sign of the cross. - Lived well; God willing it will be the same tomorrow! Glory to you, Lord! Glory to you, Lord! Then Oblomov dreamed of another time: on an endless winter evening he timidly clings to his nanny, and she whispers to him about some unknown side, where there is neither night nor cold, where miracles happen, where rivers of honey and milk flow, where no one knows anything. he doesn’t do it all year round, but every day they only know that all the good fellows, such as Ilya Ilyich, and beauties are walking, no matter what a fairy tale can say or describe with a pen. There is also a good sorceress, who sometimes appears to us in the form of a pike, who chooses some favorite, quiet, harmless - in other words, some lazy person who is offended by everyone - and showers him with all sorts of things for no apparent reason. good, but he just eats and dresses up in a ready-made dress, and then marries some unheard-of beauty, Militrisa Kirbityevna. The child, with his ears and eyes pricked up, passionately absorbed the story. The nurse or the legend so skillfully avoided in the story everything that actually exists that the imagination and mind, imbued with fiction, remained in his slavery until old age. The nanny with good nature told the tale of Emel the Fool, this evil and insidious satire on our great-grandfathers, and perhaps even on ourselves. The adult Ilya Ilyich, although he later learns that there are no honey and milk rivers, no good sorceresses, although he jokes with a smile at the nanny’s stories, but this smile is not sincere, it is accompanied by a secret sigh: his fairy tale is mixed with life, and he unconsciously Sometimes I feel sad, why is a fairy tale not life, and why is life not a fairy tale? He involuntarily dreams of Militris Kirbityevna; he is constantly drawn in the direction where they only know that they are walking, where there are no worries and sorrows; he always has the disposition to lie on the stove, walk around in a ready-made, unearned dress and eat at the expense of the good sorceress. Both old Oblomov and grandfather listened in childhood to the same fairy tales that passed down in the stereotypical edition of antiquity, in the mouths of nannies and uncles, through centuries and generations. The nanny, meanwhile, is already painting a different picture for the child’s imagination. She tells him about the exploits of our Achilles and Ulysses, about the prowess of Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, about Polkan the hero, about Kolechisha the passer-by, about how they wandered through Rus', beat countless hordes of infidels, how they competed in who in one breath he will drink a glass of green wine and not grunt; then she spoke about evil robbers, about sleeping princesses, petrified cities and people; finally moved on to our demonology, to the dead, to monsters and werewolves. With the simplicity and good nature of Homer, with the same lively fidelity to the details and relief of the pictures, she put into the children's memory and imagination the Iliad of Russian life, created by our Homerids of those foggy times, when man was not yet comfortable with the dangers and mysteries of nature and life, when he trembled and before the werewolf, and before the goblin, and with Alyosha Popovich, he sought protection from the troubles surrounding him, when miracles reigned in the air, and in the water, and in the forest, and in the field. The life of the man of that time was terrible and unfaithful; It was dangerous for him to go beyond the threshold of the house: look, he would be whipped by an animal, a robber would kill him, an evil Tatar would take everything from him, or a person will disappear missing, without any trace. And then suddenly heavenly signs will appear, pillars of fire and balls; and there, over a fresh grave, a light will flash, or someone is walking in the forest, as if with a lantern, laughing terribly and sparkling his eyes in the darkness. And so many incomprehensible things were happening to the man himself: a person lives and lives long and well - nothing, but suddenly he starts talking in such an unworthy way, or starts shouting in a voice that is not his own, or wanders sleepy at night; the other one, for no apparent reason, will begin to warp and hit the ground. And before this happened, a hen had just crowed a rooster and a raven cawed over the roof. The weak man was lost, looking around in horror at life, and looked in his imagination for the key to the mysteries of the surrounding nature and his own. Or maybe sleep, the eternal silence of a sluggish life and the absence of movement and any real fears, adventures and dangers forced a person to create among natural world another, unrealizable, and in it to look for revelry and fun for the idle imagination or for the solution to ordinary combinations of circumstances and causes of a phenomenon outside the phenomenon itself. Our poor ancestors lived gropingly; They did not inspire or restrain their will, and then they naively marveled or were horrified by the inconvenience, evil and interrogated the reasons from the silent, unclear hieroglyphs of nature. For them, death occurred from the dead person who had previously been carried out of the house with his head, and not with his feet from the gate; fire - because a dog howled under the window for three nights; and they took pains to ensure that the deceased was carried out of the gate with their feet, and ate the same things, and slept the same as before on the bare grass; the howling dog was beaten or driven out of the yard, but the sparks from the splinter were still thrown into a crack in the rotten floor. And to this day, in the midst of the strict, devoid of fiction reality that surrounds him, Russian people love to believe the seductive legends of antiquity, and it may be a long time before he renounces this faith. Listening to tales from the nanny about our golden fleece - the Firebird, about the obstacles and hiding places of the magic castle, the boy was invigorated, imagining himself a hero of the feat, and goosebumps ran down his spine, and he suffered for the failures of the brave man. Story after story flowed. The nanny told the story with fervor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, and in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories. The old woman's eyes sparkled with fire; my head was shaking with excitement; the voice rose to unusual notes. The child, overwhelmed by unknown horror, huddled close to her with tears in his eyes. Whether the conversation was about the dead rising from their graves at midnight, or about victims languishing in captivity with a monster, or about a bear with a wooden leg who goes through villages and villages to look for the natural leg that was cut off from him, the child’s hair cracked on his head with horror. ; the children's imagination either froze or boiled; he experienced a painful, sweetly painful process; my nerves were tense like strings. When the nanny gloomily repeated the words of the bear: “Creak, creak, linden leg; I walked through the villages, walked through the village, all the women were sleeping, one woman was not sleeping, she was sitting on my skin, she was cooking my meat, she was spinning my fur,” etc. .; when the bear finally entered the hut and was preparing to grab the kidnapper of his leg, the child could not stand it: with trepidation and a squeal, he threw himself into the nanny’s arms; Tears of fright begin to flow from his eyes, and at the same time he laughs with joy that he is not in the claws of the beast, but on a couch, next to the nanny. The boy's imagination became filled with strange ghosts; fear and melancholy settled into the soul for a long time, perhaps forever. He sadly looks around and sees everything in life as harm, misfortune, everything dreams of that magical side where there is no evil, troubles, sorrows, where Militrisa Kirbityevna lives, where they feed and clothe so well for nothing. .. The fairy tale retains its power not only over children in Oblomovka, but also over adults until the end of their lives. Everyone in the house and in the village, from the master, his wife to the burly blacksmith Taras, everyone trembles for something on a dark evening: every tree then turns into a giant, every bush into a den of robbers. The knocking of the shutters and the howling of the wind in the chimney made men, women and children turn pale. No one will leave the gate alone after ten o'clock in the evening for baptism; Everyone on Easter night will be afraid to go to the stable, for fear of finding a brownie there. In Oblomovka they believed everything: werewolves and the dead. If they are told that a haystack was walking across the field, they will not think twice and will believe it; If anyone hears a rumor that this is not a ram, but something else, or that such and such a Marfa or Stepanida is a witch, they will be afraid of both the ram and Martha: it will not even occur to them to ask why the ram became so a ram, and Martha became a witch, and they would even attack anyone who thought of doubting this - so strong is the faith in the miraculous in Oblomovka! Ilya Ilyich will see later that the world is simply structured, that the dead do not rise from their graves, that giants, as soon as they get started, are immediately put in a booth, and robbers in prison; but if the very belief in ghosts disappears, then some kind of residue of fear and unaccountable melancholy remains. Ilya Ilyich learned that there are no troubles from monsters, and what kind there are, he barely knows, and at every step everyone expects and is afraid of something terrible. And now, when left in a dark room or seeing a dead person, he trembles from the ominous melancholy implanted in his soul in childhood; laughing at his fears in the morning, he turns pale again in the evening. Next, Ilya Ilyich suddenly saw himself as a boy of thirteen or fourteen years old. He already studied in the village of Verkhlev, about five versts from Oblomovka, with the local manager, the German Stolz, who started a small boarding school for the children of the surrounding nobles. He had his own son, Andrei, almost the same age as Oblomov, and they also gave him one boy who almost never studied, but suffered more from scrofula, spent his entire childhood constantly blindfolded or blindfolded, and kept crying in secret about the fact that he lived not at his grandmother’s, but in someone else’s house, among the villains, that there was no one to caress him and no one would bake him his favorite pie. Apart from these children, there were no others in the boarding house yet. There is nothing to do, father and mother put the spoiled one Ilyusha in front of a book. It was worth the tears, the screams, the whims. Finally they took me away. The German was a practical and strict man, like almost all Germans. Maybe Ilyusha would have had time to learn something well from him if Oblomovka had been about five hundred versts from Verkhlev. And then how to learn? The charm of Oblomov’s atmosphere, lifestyle and habits extended to Verkhlevo; after all, it, too, was once Oblomovka; there, except for Stolz's house, everything breathed the same primitive laziness, simplicity of morals, silence and stillness. The child's mind and heart were filled with all the pictures, scenes and customs of this life before he saw the first book. Who knows how early the development of the mental seed in a child’s brain begins? How to follow the birth of the first concepts and impressions in the infant soul? Perhaps, when the child was still barely pronouncing words, or perhaps not yet pronouncing them at all, did not even walk, but only looked at everything with that intent, dumb child’s gaze, which adults call stupid, he already saw and guessed the meaning and connection of the phenomena around him sphere, but he just didn’t admit it to himself or others. Maybe Ilyusha has long noticed and understands what they say and do in front of him: like his father, in corduroy trousers, in a brown woolen woolen jacket, all he knows all day is that he walks from corner to corner, with his hands behind him, sniffing tobacco and blows his nose, and mother goes from coffee to tea, from tea to dinner; that the parent would never even think of believing how many kopecks were mowed or compressed, and to recover for the omission, but give him a handkerchief soon enough, he will scream about the riots and turn the whole house upside down. Perhaps his childish mind had long ago decided that this is how he should live, and not otherwise, the way the adults around him live. And how else would you tell him to decide? How did the adults live in Oblomovka? Did they ask themselves: why was life given? God knows. And how did they answer it? Probably not at all: it seemed very simple and clear to them. They had not heard of the so-called difficult life, of people who carry languid worries in their chests, scurrying for some reason from corner to corner across the face of the earth, or devoting their lives to eternal, never-ending work. The Oblomovites had little faith in spiritual anxieties; they did not mistake for life the cycle of eternal aspirations somewhere, for something; they were afraid, like fire, of passions; and just as in another place people’s bodies quickly burned out from the volcanic work of internal, spiritual fire, so the soul of Oblomov’s people sank peacefully, without interference, into a soft body. Life did not brand them like others, neither with premature wrinkles, nor with morally destructive blows and illnesses. Good people they understood it only as an ideal of peace and inaction, disrupted from time to time by various unpleasant accidents, such as illness, losses, quarrels and other labor. They endured labor as a punishment imposed on our forefathers, but they could not love, and where there was a chance, they always got rid of it, finding it possible and necessary. They never confused themselves with any vague mental or moral questions; that’s why they always blossomed with health and joy, that’s why they lived there for a long time; men at forty looked like youths; old people did not struggle with a difficult, painful death. and, having lived to the point of impossibility, they died as if on the sly, quietly freezing and imperceptibly breathing their last breath. That is why they say that the people were stronger before. Yes, in fact, stronger: before, they were in no hurry to explain to the child the meaning of life and prepare him for it, as for something sophisticated and serious; did not torment him over books that give birth to a darkness of questions in his head, and questions gnaw at the mind and heart and shorten his life. The standard of life was ready and taught to them by their parents, and they accepted it, also ready, from their grandfather, and grandfather from their great-grandfather, with a covenant to guard its integrity and inviolability, like the fire of Vesta. Just as what was done under our grandfathers and fathers, so it was done under Ilya Ilyich’s father, so, perhaps, is still being done now in Oblomovka. What did they have to think about and what to worry about, what to learn, what goals to achieve? Nothing is needed: life, like a calm river, flowed past them; they could only sit on the bank of this river and observe the inevitable phenomena that, in turn, without calling, appeared before each of them. And so the sleeping Ilya Ilyich’s imagination began to reveal itself, one by one, like living pictures, the three main acts of life that played out both in his family and among relatives and acquaintances: homeland, wedding, funeral. Then a motley procession of its cheerful and sad divisions stretched out: christenings, name days, family holidays, fasting, breaking the fast, noisy dinners, family gatherings, greetings, congratulations, official tears and smiles. Everything was done with such precision, so important and solemn. He even imagined familiar faces and their expressions during various rituals, their care and bustle. Give them whatever delicate matchmaking you want, whatever kind of solemn wedding or name day you want - they will celebrate it according to all the rules, without the slightest omission. Who should be planted where, what should be served and how, who should go with whom in the ceremony, whether the rules should be observed - in all this, no one has ever made the slightest mistake in Oblomovka. Will they not be able to leave the child there? One has only to look at the pink and weighty cupids the mothers there wear and lead around. They insist that the children be plump, white and healthy. They will retreat from spring, they will not want to know it, if they do not bake it at the beginning of its lark. How can they not know and not do this? Here is their whole life and science, here are all their sorrows and joys: that is why they drive away from themselves all other worries and sorrows and do not know other joys; their life was teeming exclusively with these fundamental and inevitable events, which provided endless food for their minds and hearts. With their hearts beating with excitement, they awaited a ritual, a feast, a ceremony, and then, having baptized, married or buried a person, they forgot the person himself and his fate and plunged into the usual apathy, from which they were brought out by a new similar event - a name day, a wedding, etc. P. As soon as a child was born, the first concern of the parents was to perform all the rituals required by decency as accurately as possible, without the slightest omissions, that is, to organize a feast after the christening; then the caring care for him began. The mother set herself and the nanny the task of raising a healthy child, protecting him from colds, eyes and other hostile circumstances. They worked hard to ensure that the child was always happy and ate a lot. As soon as they put the young man on his feet, that is, when he no longer needs a nanny, a secret desire creeps into the mother’s heart to find him a girlfriend - also healthier, more rosy. Again the era of rituals, feasts, and finally the wedding begins; The whole pathos of life was focused on this.. Then repetitions began: the birth of children, rituals, feasts, until the funeral changed the scenery; but not for long: some people give way to others, children become young men and at the same time grooms, they get married, produce people like themselves - and so life according to this program stretches on in an uninterrupted monotonous fabric, imperceptibly breaking off at the very grave. True, sometimes other worries were imposed on them, but Oblomov’s people met them for the most part with stoic immobility, and worries, twirling over their heads, rushed past, like birds that fly to a smooth wall and, not finding a place to shelter, flutter their wings in vain near a solid stone and fly further. So, for example, one day part of the gallery on one side of the house suddenly collapsed and buried a hen and her chickens under its ruins; Aksinya, Antip’s wife, would have gotten it too, who sat down under the gallery with the Donets, but at that time, fortunately for her, went for the lobes. There was a hubbub in the house: everyone came running, young and old, and were horrified, imagining that instead of a hen with chickens, the lady herself could be walking here with Ilya Ilyich. Everyone gasped and began to reproach each other for how it had not occurred to them for a long time: to remind one, to tell another to correct, to a third to correct. Everyone was amazed that the gallery had collapsed, and the day before they wondered how it had held up for so long! Concerns and discussions began about how to improve the matter; they regretted the mother hen with the chicks and slowly went to their places, strictly forbidding them to bring Ilya Ilyich to the gallery. Then, three weeks later, Andryushka, Petrushka, and Vaska were ordered to drag the fallen boards and railings to the sheds so that they would not lie on the road. They lay there until spring. Every time Old Man Oblomov sees them from the window, he will be preoccupied with the thought of amendment: he will call the carpenter, begin to consult on how best to do it - whether to build a new gallery or tear down the remains; then he will let him go home, saying: “Go ahead, and I’ll think about it.” This continued until Vaska or Motka informed the master that when he, Motka, climbed the remains of the gallery this morning, the corners were completely behind the walls and, look, they would collapse again. Then the carpenter was called to a final meeting, as a result of which it was decided to support the rest of the surviving gallery with old debris, which was done by the end of the same month. - Eh! Yes, the gallery will start again! - the old man said to his wife. - Look how Fedot beautifully arranged the logs, like columns in the leader’s house!
