Artistic features of S.D. Krzhizhanovsky

1. The literary process at the end of the 20th century

2. Features of L. Ulitskaya's short prose

3. The originality of the artistic world in the stories of T. Tolstoy

Bibliography

1. Literary process at the endXXcentury

In the mid-80s of the 20th century, with the “perestroika” taking place in the country, the Soviet type of mentality collapsed,

the social basis of a universal understanding of reality collapsed. Undoubtedly, this is reflected in literary process end of the century.

Along with the normative socialist realism that still existed, which simply “left” into mass culture: detective stories, serials - a direction where the artist is initially sure that he knows the truth and can build a model of the world that will show the way to a brighter future; along with postmodernism, which has already declared itself, with its mythologization of reality, self-regulating chaos, the search for a compromise between chaos and space (T. Tolstaya "Kys", V. Pelevin "Omon Ra", etc.); along with this, in the 90s a number of works were published that are based on the traditions of classical realism: A. Azolsky "Saboteur", L. Ulitskaya "Merry Funeral", etc. Then it became clear that the traditions of Russian realism XIX century, despite the crisis of the novel as the main genre of realism, not only did not die, but also enriched, referring to the experience of returned literature (V. Maksimov, A. Pristavkin, etc.). And this, in turn, indicates that attempts to undermine the traditional understanding and explanation of cause-and-effect relationships failed, because. realism can only work when it is possible to discover these causal relationships. In addition, post-realism began to explain the secret inner world person through the circumstances that form this psychology, he is looking for an explanation of the phenomenon human soul.

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But until now, the literature of the so-called " new wave”, which appeared in the 70s of the XX century. This literature was very heterogeneous, and the authors were often united only by the chronology of the appearance of works and the general desire to search for new artistic forms. Among the works of the "New Wave" there were books that began to be called "women's prose": T. Tolstaya, V. Tokareva, L. Ulitskaya, L. Petrushevskaya, G. Shcherbakova and others. And there is still no unanimous decision on the issue of the creative method these writers. After all, the absence of “established taboos” and freedom of speech enable writers of different directions to express their own without restrictions. artistic position, but the slogan artistic creativity became an aesthetic search for oneself. Perhaps this explains the lack of a unified point of view on the work of the New Wave writers. So, for example, if many literary critics define T. Tolstaya as a postmodernist writer, then with L. Ulitskaya the situation is more complicated. Some see her as a representative of "women's prose", others consider her as a "postmodernist", and still others as a representative of modern neo-sentimentalism. There are disputes around these names, mutually exclusive judgments are heard not only about the creative method, but also about the meaning of the allusions, the role of the author, the types of characters, the choice of plots, the manner of writing. All this testifies to the complexity and ambiguity of perception. artistic text representatives of "women's prose".

2. Features of L. Ulitskaya's short prose

One of the brightest representatives modern literature is L. Ulitskaya. In her works, she created a special, in many ways unique artistic world.

First, we note that many of her stories are not about today, but about the beginning of the century, the war or the post-war period.

Secondly, the author immerses the reader in the simple and at the same time oppressed life of ordinary people, in their problems and experiences. After reading the stories of Ulitskaya, a heavy feeling of pity for the heroes and at the same time hopelessness arises. But always behind this, Ulitskaya hides problems that concern everyone and everyone: the problems of human relationships.

So, for example, in the stories “The Chosen People” and “The Daughter of Bukhara”, with the help of very insignificant private stories, a huge layer of life is raised, which for the most part we not only do not know, but do not want to know, we are running from it. These are stories about the disabled, the poor and beggars (“The Chosen People”), about people suffering from Down syndrome (“Daughter of Bukhara”).

Not a single person, according to L. Ulitskaya, is born for suffering and pain. Everyone deserves to be happy, healthy and prosperous. But even the happiest person can understand the tragedy of life: pain, fear, loneliness, illness, suffering, death. Not everyone humbly accepts their fate. And the highest wisdom, according to the author, consists precisely in learning to believe, to be able to reconcile with the inevitable, not to envy someone else's happiness, but to be happy yourself, no matter what. And only those who understand and accept their destiny can find happiness. That is why, when Down syndrome patients Mila and Grigory in the story "The Daughter of Bukhara" walked down the street, holding hands, "both in ugly round glasses given to them for free," everyone turned to them. Many pointed their fingers at them and even laughed. But they did not notice someone else's interest. After all, even now there are many healthy, full-fledged people who could only envy their happiness!

That is why the wretched, beggars, beggars at Ulitskaya are the chosen people. Because they are wiser. Because they knew true happiness: happiness is not in wealth, not in beauty, but in humility, in gratitude for life, whatever it may be, in the awareness of their place in life, which everyone has - Katya, the heroine, comes to this conclusion story "The Chosen People" It is simply necessary to understand that those who are offended by God suffer more, so that it would be easier for the rest.

hallmark L. Ulitskaya's prose is a calm manner of narration, and the main advantage of her work is author's attitude to her heroes: Ulitskaya captivates not just with her interest in the human person, but with compassion for her, which is not often seen in modern literature.

Thus, in the stories of L. Ulitskaya there is always an exit to the philosophical and religious level of understanding life. Her characters, as a rule - "little people", old people, sick, poor, outcast people - are guided by the principle: never ask "for what", ask "for what". According to Ulitskaya, everything that happens, even the most unfair, painful, if it is correctly perceived, is certainly aimed at opening a new vision in a person. This idea is at the heart of her stories.

3. The originality of the artistic world in the stories of T. Tolstoy

One of the brightest representatives of "women's prose" can be called T. Tolstaya. As noted above, the writer herself identifies herself as a postmodernist writer. It is important for her that postmodernism has revived "verbal artistry", a close attention to style and language.

Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts

Faculty of Culture

Test

on Russian literature

"Peculiarities of Women's Prose"

Fulfilled : 2nd year student

SSO Group No. 208

Extramural

Pryamichkina L.V.

Checked: L.N. Tikhomirova

Chelyabinsk - 2008

Literary process at the end XX century

Features of L. Ulitskaya's short prose

The originality of the artistic world in the stories of T. Tolstoy

The specifics of "women's prose"

Bibliography

1. Literary process at the end XXcentury

In the mid 80s XX century, with the “perestroika” taking place in the country, the Soviet type of mentality collapsed, the social basis of a universal understanding of reality collapsed. Undoubtedly, this was reflected in the literary process of the end of the century.

Along with the normative socialist realism that still existed, which simply “left” into mass culture: detective stories, serials - a direction where the artist is initially sure that he knows the truth and can build a model of the world that will show the way to a brighter future; along with postmodernism, which has already declared itself, with its mythologization of reality, self-regulating chaos, the search for a compromise between chaos and space (T. Tolstaya "Kys", V. Pelevin "Omon Ra", etc.); along with this, in the 90s a number of works were published that are based on the traditions of classical realism: A. Azolsky "Saboteur", L. Ulitskaya "Merry Funeral", etc. Then it became clear that the traditions of Russian realism XIX century, despite the crisis of the novel as the main genre of realism, they not only did not die, but were also enriched, referring to the experience of returned literature (V. Maksimov, A. Pristavkin, etc.). And this, in turn, indicates that attempts to undermine the traditional understanding and explanation of cause-and-effect relationships have failed, because. realism can only work when it is possible to discover these causal relationships. In addition, post-realism began to explain the secret of the inner world of a person through the circumstances that form this psychology, he is looking for an explanation for the phenomenon of the human soul.

But until now, the literature of the so-called “New Wave”, which appeared back in the 70s, remains completely unexplored. XX century. This literature was very heterogeneous, and the authors were often united only by the chronology of the appearance of works and the general desire to search for new artistic forms. Among the works of the "New Wave" there were books that began to be called "women's prose": T. Tolstaya, V. Tokareva, L. Ulitskaya, L. Petrushevskaya, G. Shcherbakova and others. And there is still no unanimous decision on the issue of the creative method these writers .. After all, the absence of "established taboos" and freedom of speech enable writers of different directions to express their own without restrictions. artistic position, and the aesthetic search for oneself became the slogan of artistic creativity. Perhaps this explains the lack of a unified point of view on the work of the New Wave writers. So, for example, if many literary critics define T. Tolstaya as a postmodernist writer, then with L. Ulitskaya the situation is more complicated. Some see her as a representative of "women's prose", others consider her as a "postmodernist", and still others as a representative of modern neo-sentimentalism. There are disputes around these names, mutually exclusive judgments are made not only about the creative method, but also about the meaning of the allusions, the role of the author, the types of characters, the choice of plots, and the manner of writing. All this testifies to the complexity and ambiguity of the perception of the artistic text of the representatives of "women's prose".

2. Features of L. Ulitskaya's short prose

One of the brightest representatives of modern literature is L. Ulitskaya. In her works, she created a special, in many ways unique artistic world.

First, we note that many of her stories are not about today, but about the beginning of the century, the war or the post-war period.

A distinctive feature of L. Ulitskaya's prose is a calm manner of narration, and the main advantage of her work is the author's attitude towards her characters: Ulitskaya captivates not just with interest in the human person, but with compassion for her, which is not often seen in modern literature.

3. The originality of the artistic world in the stories of T. Tolstoy

Researchers of Tolstoy's work note not only the intertextuality of her stories, which reveals itself both in the themes of the works and in poetics. Literary critics distinguish the following cross-cutting motives in her work:

The motif of the circle (“Fakir”, “Peters”, “Sleep well, son”, etc.). The circle in Tolstoy acquires the meaning of fate, which does not depend on a person. The circle is the myth of the hero, his extremely condensed space-time.

motive for death;

The motive of the game ("Sonya", etc.)

A through motive, one might even say a through problematic of Tolstoy's stories, a problematic that comes from the Russian classical literature, is the question of "discord between dreams and reality", the motive of loneliness. The hero of Tolstoy is a “small”, ordinary person looking for himself in the world. Her characters live in a fictional illusory world, cannot break out of the vicious circle destined once and for all, the flight from reality. But, despite this, they do not lose faith in life, hope for the embodiment of a romantic dream in reality.

Let us consider in more detail the features of T. Tolstoy's prose using the story "Peters" as an example.

Before us is a story about the life of a “little” person raised by a grandmother. At first glance, there is nothing strange: “mother ... fled to warm lands with a scoundrel, dad spent time with women of easy virtue and was not interested in his son,” so the boy was raised by his grandmother. But, after reading the story, you remain in some confusion from the disorder of this life and the hero himself. In order to trace how the psychological world of the hero is revealed, and to understand why such an impression remains from the story, it is necessary to find out what the hero’s relationship is with the world of things, with other people, and, finally, the relationship between the hero’s dreams and reality.

We note right away that the main methods of revealing the characters of the characters in the story are detail and detail. With flat feet, a femininely spacious belly, his grandmother's girlfriends liked him. They liked the way he came in, how he "keep quiet when the elders talk," how he "didn't crumble the biscuits." Grandmother raised Peters as an old man, an adult, which is why she was outraged when the boy began to behave like a child at the holiday: spin in one place and scream loudly. Grandmother treated the child equally and the grandfather, who died. She didn't need a little boy, she needed a card-playing partner who would brighten up her lonely days and keep her out of trouble. Just as she completely absorbed her grandfather's personality (“she ate it with rice porridge”), she also absorbed Peters's personality. But something is happening inside the boy: he was “waiting for events”, “in a hurry to be friends”, he wants to be friends, he just doesn’t know how to do it: “Peters stood in the middle of the room and waited for them to start making friends.” And Peters did not know how to be friends, because communication with people was replaced by a plush hare. And there is a completely obvious parallel: the hare is Peters himself. The hare listened to Peters, believed and was silent, and Peters listened to his grandmother, was silent and believed. The image of this plush hare will accompany Petrs all his life.

Another vivid metaphor in creating the image of the hero is the Black Cat, Black Peter, the hero of the card game played by the boy and his grandmother. “Only the cat, Black Peter, did not get a couple, he was always alone, gloomy and ruffled, and the one who, by the end of the game, drew Black Peter, lost and sat like a fool,” and the Cat always, as the hero admits later, always got only to him. So are people: women always “shied away” from him when he wanted to get acquainted, and men “thought to beat him, but, looking closer, thought about it.” He also did not have a partner, no one wanted to "play" with him. The leitmotif of the story and his whole life was the phrase "no one wanted to play with him."

Even as an adult, Peters cannot break out of this circle, as childhood driven inside does not allow him to grow up. He is infantile and goes through life with this childhood. He has a childish perception of reality, childhood dreams.

He perceives women as dolls, as a thing (“well, give me at least something,” Peters turns to an imaginary rival), because he himself is like a thing. He wants a relationship with Faina, but is inactive, waiting for her to start "befriending" him. He can only see off the “godlessly young” Valentina with his eyes. He married “somehow in passing, by accident” to a woman who replaced his grandmother (“a firm woman with big legs, with a deaf name ... her purse smelled of stale bread, she took Peters everywhere with her, tightly squeezing his hand, like a grandmother once). And it becomes clear that “the cold chicken youth who has not known either love or will - neither the green ant, nor the cheerful round eye of his girlfriend”, which Peters carries home in a musty bag, is Peters himself, who in fact did not see life itself.

Peters' life is a "shadow theater", a dream. It is emphasized all the time that life is going on, everything is moving: “someone else’s mothers were running, fast, dexterous children were screeching and running”, “ice passed along the Neva”, “and dawn, dawn ...”, “new snowdrifts”, “spring came, and spring was leaving”, “celebrated New Year" etc. But this life, this movement passed by Peters. Since childhood, he was surrounded only by old things, black paints: “silver spoons eaten from one side”, old chests, old smells, “black girl”, “black greens”, spring “yellow bouquet”, etc. There is a lot of pink around Peters: delicate red moles, a hairless body, a pink belly, rich vanilla air. And a very important detail are the eyes. Grandfather has shiny glass eyes, Peters has small, short-sighted, upside-down eyes. Inverted glass soul. Everything happens detached from him, without touching him.

In this vein, two episodes with a window are significant. If in the middle of the story the hero, “carefully wrapping his throat with a scarf so as not to catch a cold of the tonsils,” decided to fall out of the window, but could not open it, since he himself carefully sealed it for the winter and was sorry for his work; then at the end of the story already "old Peters pushed the window frame", and the most real life burst into the open window. At the end of the story, the antithesis of life and sleep clearly emerges. Throughout his life, Peters "slept soundly and heard nothing" and "lived through a dream." And suddenly one day, when his wife left him, and with her the image of his grandmother, he "carefully opened his eyes and woke up." Here, at the open window, behind which the "new children" were busy, the hero is reborn, he leaves the vicious circle, the programmed life. If earlier, frightened by life, he closed himself from her, and she passed by, now “Peters smiled gratefully at life,” and even though she is a stranger, indifferent, running past, she is “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” We understand that the hero has not lost faith in life, and maybe he will continue to live in his invented illusory world, but now he does not repel life, but accepts it as it is. And therein lies the rebirth of Peters.

4. The specifics of "women's prose"

Such different, not alike writers. And at first glance, there is nothing that could unite them. And yet, it is not by chance that the term “women's prose” appeared in literary criticism. These are not just works written by women writers. There is something else in them that unites V. Tokareva, L. Petrushevskaya, D. Rubina, L. Ulitskaya, N. Gorlanova, T. Tolstaya and others.

It so happened historically that the works were written by more men. But "female prose" has always occupied a special place in literature, because no man can convey the world the way a woman perceives it. The "female" view of the world is manifested in the fact that a lot of attention is paid to such concepts as home, family, fidelity, husband and wife, love, personal life, individual, and not public. Often the characters, building their relationship with the outside world, must first of all deal with their attitude towards themselves, which speaks of the deep psychologism of "women's prose".

“Women's prose” is, one might say, books “about life”. Here famously twisted plots with invincible lone heroes. Most often this is a household story, a plot that can happen behind any windows. But that's not important. What is important is what the characters think about everything that happened, what lessons they, and the reader with them, learn, what is the author's position in relation to their characters. Therefore, the genre of "women's prose" can be defined as a work of everyday life with frequent philosophical digressions.

The hero of "women's prose" is a thinking hero, reflecting on the meaning of life; a hero deprived of a harmonious "form of personal existence"; the heroes of "women's prose" are ordinary people.

In the works related to "women's prose", we will not encounter vulgarity, stamping, clichédness, since they contain life itself, unique and unrepeatable.

Thus, the features of the study of socio-psychological and moral coordinates can be attributed to the features of "women's prose". modern life: detachment from topical political passions, attention to the depths of private life modern man. The soul of a specific, "little" person for "women's prose" is no less complex and mysterious than the global cataclysms of the era. And also, the range of general issues solved by "women's prose" is the problems of relations between a person and the world around him, the mechanisms of degrading or preserving morality.

Bibliography

Abramovich G. L. Introduction to literary criticism. - M., 1976.

Zolotonosova M. Dreams and phantoms // Literary review. - 1987, No. 4.

Lipovetsky M. "Freedom's black work" // Questions of Literature. - 1989, No. 9

Leiderman N.L. etc. Russian literature XX century. - Yekaterinburg, 2001

Tolstaya T. Peters // New World. - 1986, No. 1

Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts

Faculty of Culture

Test

on Russian literature

"Peculiarities of Women's Prose"

Fulfilled: 2nd year student

SSO Group No. 208

Extramural

Pryamichkina L.V.

Checked: L.N. Tikhomirova

Chelyabinsk - 2008

1. The literary process at the end of the 20th century

2. Features of L. Ulitskaya's short prose

3. The originality of the artistic world in the stories of T. Tolstoy

4. The specifics of "women's prose"

Bibliography

1. The literary process at the end of the 20th century

In the mid-80s of the 20th century, with the “perestroika” taking place in the country, the Soviet type of mentality collapsed, the social basis of a universal understanding of reality collapsed. Undoubtedly, this was reflected in the literary process of the end of the century.

Along with the normative socialist realism that still existed, which simply "left" into mass culture: detective stories, serials - a direction where the artist is initially sure that he knows the truth and can build a model of the world that will show the way to a brighter future; along with postmodernism, which has already declared itself, with its mythologization of reality, self-regulating chaos, the search for a compromise between chaos and space (T. Tolstaya "Kys", V. Pelevin "Omon Ra", etc.); along with this, in the 90s a number of works were published that are based on the traditions of classical realism: A. Azolsky "Saboteur", L. Ulitskaya "Merry Funeral", etc. Then it became clear that the traditions of Russian realism of the XIX century, despite the crisis novel as the main genre of realism, not only did not die, but also enriched, referring to the experience of returned literature (V. Maksimov, A. Pristavkin, etc.). And this, in turn, indicates that attempts to undermine the traditional understanding and explanation of cause-and-effect relationships failed, because. realism can only work when it is possible to discover these causal relationships. In addition, post-realism began to explain the secret of the inner world of a person through the circumstances that form this psychology, he is looking for an explanation for the phenomenon of the human soul.

But until now, the literature of the so-called “New Wave”, which appeared back in the 70s of the XX century, remains completely unexplored. This literature was very heterogeneous, and the authors were often united only by the chronology of the appearance of works and the general desire to search for new artistic forms. Among the works of the "New Wave" there were books that began to be called "women's prose": T. Tolstaya, V. Tokareva, L. Ulitskaya, L. Petrushevskaya, G. Shcherbakova and others. And there is still no unanimous decision on the issue of the creative method these writers .. After all, the absence of "established taboos" and freedom of speech enable writers of different directions to express their own without restrictions. artistic position, and the aesthetic search for oneself became the slogan of artistic creativity. Perhaps this explains the lack of a unified point of view on the work of the New Wave writers. So, for example, if many literary critics define T. Tolstaya as a postmodernist writer, then with L. Ulitskaya the situation is more complicated. Some see her as a representative of "women's prose", others consider her as a "postmodernist", and still others as a representative of modern neo-sentimentalism. There are disputes around these names, mutually exclusive judgments are made not only about the creative method, but also about the meaning of the allusions, the role of the author, the types of characters, the choice of plots, and the manner of writing. All this testifies to the complexity and ambiguity of the perception of the artistic text of the representatives of "women's prose".

2. Features of L. Ulitskaya's short prose

One of the brightest representatives of modern literature is L. Ulitskaya. In her works, she created a special, in many ways unique artistic world.

First, we note that many of her stories are not about today, but about the beginning of the century, the war or the post-war period.

That is why the miserable, beggars, beggars at Ulitskaya are the chosen people. Because they are wiser. Because they knew true happiness: happiness is not in wealth, not in beauty, but in humility, in gratitude for life, whatever it may be, in the awareness of their place in life, which everyone has - Katya, the heroine, comes to this conclusion story "The Chosen People" It is simply necessary to understand that those who are offended by God suffer more, so that it would be easier for the rest.

3. The originality of the artistic world in the stories of T. Tolstoy

motive for death;

The motive of the game ("Sonya", etc.)

A pervasive motif, one might even say a pervasive problematic of Tolstoy's stories, a problematic that comes from Russian classical literature, is the question of "discord between dreams and reality," the motive of loneliness. The hero of Tolstoy is a "small", ordinary person looking for himself in the world. Its characters live in an invented illusory world, they cannot escape from the vicious circle destined once and for all by fate, an escape from reality. But, despite this, they do not lose faith in life, hope for the embodiment of a romantic dream in reality.

Let us consider in more detail the features of T. Tolstoy's prose using the story "Peters" as an example.

He perceives women as dolls, as a thing (“well, give me at least something,” Peters turns to an imaginary rival), because he himself is like a thing. He wants a relationship with Faina, but is inactive, waiting for her to start "befriending" him. He can only see off the “godlessly young” Valentina with his eyes. He married “somehow in passing, by accident” to a woman who replaced his grandmother (“a firm woman with big legs, with a deaf name ... her purse smelled of stale bread, she took Peters everywhere with her, tightly squeezing his hand, like a grandmother once). And it becomes clear that “a cold chicken youth who has not known either love or will - neither a green ant, nor a merry round eye of a girlfriend”, which Peters carries home in a musty bag, is Peters himself, who, in fact, has not seen life itself.

Peters' life is a "shadow theater", a dream. It is emphasized all the time that life goes on, everything moves: “someone else’s mothers were running, fast, dexterous children were screeching and running”, “ice passed along the Neva”, “and dawn, dawn ...”, “new snowdrifts”, “spring came, and spring was leaving”, “celebrating the New Year”, etc. But this life, this movement passed by Peters. Since childhood, he was surrounded only by old things, black paints: “silver spoons eaten from one side”, old chests, old smells, “black girl”, “black greens”, spring “yellow bouquet”, etc. There is a lot of pink around Peters: delicate red moles, a hairless body, a pink belly, rich vanilla air. And a very important detail are the eyes. Grandpa's eyes are shiny glass eyes, Peters's are small, short-sighted, upside-down. Inverted glass soul. Everything happens detached from him, without touching him.

In this vein, two episodes with a window are significant. If in the middle of the story the hero, “carefully wrapping his throat with a scarf so as not to catch a cold of the tonsils,” decided to fall out of the window, but could not open it, since he himself carefully sealed it for the winter and was sorry for his work; then at the end of the story, “old Peters pushed the window frame”, and the real Life burst in through the open window. At the end of the story, the antithesis of life and sleep clearly emerges. Throughout his life, Peters "slept soundly and heard nothing" and "lived through a dream." And suddenly one day, when his wife left him, and with her the image of his grandmother, he "carefully opened his eyes and woke up." Here, at the open window, behind which the "new children" were busy, the hero is reborn, he leaves the vicious circle, the programmed life. If earlier, frightened by life, he closed himself from her, and she passed by, now “Peters smiled gratefully at life,” and even though she is a stranger, indifferent, running past, she is “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” We understand that the hero has not lost faith in life, and maybe he will continue to live in his invented illusory world, but now he does not repel life, but accepts it as it is. And therein lies the rebirth of Peters.

4. The specifics of "women's prose"

The hero of "women's prose" is a thinking hero, reflecting on the meaning of life; a hero deprived of a harmonious "form of personal existence"; the heroes of "women's prose" are ordinary people.

In the works related to "women's prose", we will not encounter vulgarity, stamping, clichédness, since they contain life itself, unique and unrepeatable.

Thus, the features of the study of the socio-psychological and moral coordinates of modern life can be attributed to the features of "women's prose": detachment from topical political passions, attention to the depths of the private life of a modern person. The soul of a specific, "little" person for "women's prose" is no less complex and mysterious than the global cataclysms of the era. And also, the range of general issues solved by "women's prose" is the problems of relations between a person and the world around him, the mechanisms of degrading or preserving morality.

Bibliography

1. Abramovich G. L. Introduction to literary criticism. - M., 1976.

2. Zolotonosova M. Dreams and phantoms // Literary review. - 1987, No. 4.

3. Lipovetsky M. "Freedom black work" // Questions of Literature. - 1989, No. 9

4. Leiderman N.L. and others. Russian literature of the XX century. - Yekaterinburg, 2001

5. Tolstaya T. Peters // New World. - 1986, No. 1

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Artistic features of proseA.Chekhov

Chekhov psychologism poetics

Life, what surrounds a person in everyday life, everyday specifics that form his habits and character, the whole ordinary external way - this side human life discovered in literature by realism.

Enthusiastically, with pleasure, Pushkin described the patriarchal way of the Russian province; with slight irony, he discussed with the reader the daily routine, the furnishings of the office, the outfits and bottles on the dressing table of Onegin's "secular lion" ... This artistic discovery of Pushkin's realism was deeply comprehended by Gogol. In his work, everyday life appears animated, actively shaping a person and his destiny. The outside world becomes one of the main actors Gogol's artistic method, a defining feature of his poetics. By the time Chekhov entered literature, Dostoevsky had brilliantly developed the Gogol tradition of the active influence of the external world on man. Extremely detailed, to the smallest detail, recreated and studied in the work of Tolstoy, life made it possible for Chekhov to approach the problem of the relationship between the hero and the environment without prehistory, to immediately deal with the essence of these relationships. Life and being are inseparable in the artistic world of Chekhov. Life is a way of human life. Life is matter from which the hero cannot be separated at any moment of his existence.

Thus, the existence of Chekhov's heroes is initially materialistic: this materialism is predetermined not by convictions, but by real life itself.

And how did Chekhov see the real life of the end of the century? He tried to tell small unpretentious stories - and in his choice there was a peculiar artistic principle. He described private life - that was the artistic discovery. Under his pen, literature became a mirror of the moment, which matters only in the life and fate of one specific person. Chekhov avoids generalizations, seeing them as untrue and inaccurate; generalizations disgust his creative method. The life of each of the characters seems to the author himself a mystery, which is to be unraveled not only by him, an outside observer. Chekhov's Russia consists of questions, of hundreds of solved and unsolved destinies.

Chekhov is indifferent to history. The plot with a pronounced intrigue does not interest him. “It is necessary to describe life, even, smooth, as it really is” - this is the writer's credo. His plots are stories from the life of an ordinary person, into whose fate the writer gazes intently.

The "great plot" of Chekhov's prose is a private moment of human life. “Why write this ... that someone boarded a submarine and went to the North Pole to seek some kind of reconciliation with people, and at this time his beloved throws herself from the bell tower with a dramatic scream? All this is not true, in reality it does not happen. It is necessary to write simply: about how Pyotr Semenovich married Marya Ivanovna. That's all". .

genre short story allowed him to create a mosaic picture of the modern world. Chekhov's characters form a motley crowd, they are people of different destinies and different professions, they are occupied with various problems - from petty household concerns to serious philosophical questions. And the life of each hero is a special, separate feature of Russian life, but in sum, these features denote all the global problems of Russia at the end of the 19th century.

Features of psychologism - the image of the inner world of man. The attitude of Chekhov's heroes - a sense of unsettledness, discomfort in the world - is largely due to time, the predominance of the story genre in the writer's work is also connected with this: “The absolute predominance of the story genre in Chekhov's prose was determined not only by the writer's talent and working conditions, but also by the diversity life, the public consciousness of his time ... The story was in this case that "form of time", the genre that managed to reflect this inconsistency and fragmentation of the public consciousness of the era.

Throughout a short story (anecdotal and parable at the same time), Chekhov does not draw the inner world of the character, does not reproduce the psychological foundations, the movements of feelings. He gives psychology in external manifestations: in gestures, in facial expressions (“mimic” psychologism), body movements. Chekhov's psychologism (especially in early stories) is "hidden", that is, the feelings and thoughts of the characters are not depicted, but are guessed by the reader on the basis of their external manifestation. Therefore, it is wrong to call Chekhov's stories small novels (“fragments” of a novel) with their rootedness in human psychology, attention to the motives of actions, detailed depiction of emotional experiences. The writer also generalizes the images of the characters, but not as social types, but as "general psychological", deeply exploring the mental and bodily nature of man. Revealing the inner world of the hero, Chekhov abandoned a solid and even image. His narrative is discontinuous, dotted, built on episodes correlated with each other. In this case, details play a huge role. This feature of Chekhov's skill was not immediately understood by critics - for many years they kept saying that the detail in Chekhov's works was accidental and insignificant.

Of course, the writer himself did not emphasize the significance of his details, strokes, artistic details. In general, he did not like anything underlined, did not write, as they say, in italics or detente. He talked about many things as if in passing, but it was precisely “as if” - the whole point is that the artist, in his own words, counts on the attention and sensitivity of the reader. Chekhov's detail is not deeply random, it is surrounded by the atmosphere of life, way of life.

Chekhov the artist amazes with the diversity of the tone of the narrative, the richness of the transitions from the harsh recreation of reality to subtle, restrained lyricism, from light, barely perceptible irony to smashing mockery. Chekhov, a realist writer, is always irreproachably authentic and convincing in his depiction of a person. He achieves this accuracy primarily through the use of a psychologically significant, absolutely precisely chosen detail. Chekhov possessed an exceptional ability to grasp the general picture of life in its "little things", recreating a single whole from them. This addiction to the "insignificant" detail was inherited by the literature of the 20th century.

So, we are approaching one of the defining properties of Chekhov's poetics: the author's position, and even more so, the holistic concept of the author's worldview cannot be judged by individual works. The author's position in Chekhov's stories, as a rule, is not emphasized. Chekhov was not a passionate teacher and preacher, a "prophet", unlike, for example, L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky. The position of a person who knows the truth and is confident in it was alien to him. But Chekhov, of course, was not deprived of the idea of truth, the desire for it in his work. He was a courageous person both in his life and in his books, he was a wise writer who retained faith in life with a clear understanding of its imperfection, sometimes hostility to man. Chekhov, above all, valued the creative, free from all dogma (both in literature, and in philosophy, and in everyday life) human personality, he was characterized by a passionate faith in man, in his capabilities. The value of a person, according to the writer, is determined by his ability to withstand the dictates of everyday life, without losing his face in the mass of human faces. This was Chekhov himself, and this is how his contemporaries perceived him. M. Gorky wrote to him: “You seem to be the first free and non-worshipping person I have ever seen.” Chekhov's stories are distinguished by a special tone of narration - lyrical irony. The writer, as if with a sad smile, peers into a person and recalls the ideal, beautiful life as it should be, and he did not delicately impose his idea of \u200b\u200bthe ideal, he did not write journalistic articles on this subject, but shared his thoughts in letters to those close to him. the spirit of people.

And although Chekhov never created the novel he dreamed of, and his stories practically do not add up to cycles, all of his creative heritage appears before us as an organic whole.

And in this integrity is the key to understanding Chekhov. Only in the context of all his work is it possible to deeply comprehend each specific work.

The genre of the story in the work of Chekhov

The story is a work of epic prose, close to the novel, gravitating towards a consistent presentation of the plot, limited by a minimum of storylines. Depicts a separate episode from life; differs from the novel in less completeness and breadth of pictures of everyday life, mores. It does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate position between a novel, on the one hand, and a short story or short story, on the other. It gravitates towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. The plot of the classic story, the laws of which have developed in realistic literature the second half of the 19th century, is usually centered around the image of the protagonist, whose personality and fate are revealed within the few events in which he is directly involved. Side effects storylines in the story (unlike the novel), as a rule, are absent, the narrative chronotope is concentrated on a narrow period of time and space. The number of characters in the story, in general, is less than in the novel, and the clear distinction between the main and minor characters in the story, as a rule, is absent or this distinction is not essential for the development of the action. The plot of a realistic story is often associated with the "topic of the day", with what the narrator observes in social reality and what he perceives as a topical reality. Sometimes the author himself characterized the same work in different genre categories. So, Turgenev first called Rudin a story, and then a novel. The titles of the stories are often associated with the image of the protagonist ("Poor Lisa" by N.M. Karamzin, "Rene" by R. Chateaubriand) or with a key element of the plot ("The Hound of the Baskervilles" by A. Conan Doyle, "The Steppe" by A.P. Chekhov ).

The genre of the story implies a special relationship to the word. Unlike a long narrative, where the reader's attention is focused on detailed descriptions, the framework of the story does not allow the slightest carelessness, requiring full dedication from each word. In Chekhov's stories, the word, as in a poem, is the only possible one.

Long work in the newspaper, the school of feuilleton and reportage largely contributed to the improvement of Chekhov's style. His word is always the most informative. It was this virtuoso mastery of the word, the honed mastery of detail that allowed Chekhov not to indulge in lengthy authorial reasoning, but always clearly adhere to the role of the narrator: the word in his stories speaks for itself, it actively forms the reader's perception, calls for living co-creation. Chekhov's objective manner is unusual for the reader. Following the passionate outpourings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, he always knew where the truth was and where the lie was, what was good and what was bad. Left alone with Chekhov's text, having lost the author's pointing finger, the reader was at a loss.

The inertia of misunderstanding, incorrect - in the opinion of the author himself - interpretation of Chekhov's work existed in Russian criticism almost always. This is true even today. A paradoxical story happened to "Darling". This story was understood in absolutely different ways by two such wise and subtle readers as Tolstoy and Gorky. It is significant that in their interpretation of "Darling" they were infinitely far away not only from each other, but also from the opinion of the author himself.

Excellent comments V.Ya. Lakshin: “Tolstoy did not want to see in “Darling” those features of philistine life, into which Olenka seems to have grown and which causes Chekhov’s ridicule. In Olenka Tolstoy was attracted by the "eternal" properties of the female type.<…>Tolstoy is inclined to regard Darushechka with her sacrificial love as a universal type of woman. For the sake of this, he tries not to notice Chekhov's irony, and accepts humanity, softness of humor as a sign of involuntary justification by the author of the heroine.<…>Quite differently from Tolstoy, another reader, Gorky, looked at Darling. In the heroine of Chekhov's story, he is antipathetic to slavish traits, her humiliation, the lack of human independence. “Here, anxiously, like a gray mouse, “Darling” scurries - a sweet, meek woman who knows how to love so slavishly, so much. You can hit her on the cheek, and she won’t even dare to moan loudly, meek slave, ”Gorky wrote. What Tolstoy idealized and "blessed" in "Darling" - promiscuous love, blind devotion and affection - Gorky could not accept with his ideals of a "proud" person.<…>Chekhov himself had no doubt that he wrote a humorous story<…>, counted on the fact that his heroine should make a somewhat pathetic and ridiculous impression.<…>Chekhov's Olenka is a timid, submissive creature, obedient to fate in everything. It is deprived of independence both in thoughts, and in opinions, and in studies. She has no personal interests, except for the interests of her husband-entrepreneur or her husband-timber trader. Life ideals Olenka are simple: peace, the well-being of her husband, quiet family joys, “tea with rich bread and various jams ...” “Nothing, we live well,” Olenka told her friends, “thank God. May God grant everyone to live like Vanechka and I. A measured, prosperous existence always evoked a feeling of bitterness in Chekhov. In this respect, the life of Olenka, a kind and stupid woman, was no exception. There could be no demand from her in the sense of any ideals and aspirations.

In the story "Gooseberries", written almost simultaneously with "Darling", we read: "I am oppressed by silence and calmness, I am afraid to look at the windows, because now there is no more difficult sight for me than a happy family sitting around the table and drinking tea ". Chekhov sees such a window in the house where Olenka is in charge. In the tone in which this is all told, we will not hear malicious irony, dry mockery. The story of "Darling" rather evokes pity, compassion for a colorless and monotonous life, which can be told on several pages - it is so monosyllabic and meager. A soft, good-natured smile does not seem to leave the author's lips. He is not embittered and not gloomy, but perhaps saddened by the tragicomedy human destinies. He wants to look into the souls of ordinary people, truthfully convey their needs, anxieties, small and big worries, and under all this reveal the drama of the meaninglessness and emptiness of their lives, often not felt by the heroes. ”Lakshin does not oppose his personal understanding of the story to the interpretations of Gorky and Tolstoy. He very subtly restores Chekhov's idea, the author's concept, analyzing "Darling" not in itself, but in the context of Chekhov's late work. Thus, we again come to the conclusion that a complete, adequate understanding of Chekhov is possible only when each of his works is perceived as an element of an integral creative system.

Chekhov's artistic manner is not instructive; he is sickened by the pathos of a preacher, a teacher of life. He acts as a witness, as a writer of everyday life. Chekhov takes the position of the storyteller, and this returns Russian literature to the path of fiction from which it was taken. philosophical quest Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The drama of Russian life is obvious to Chekhov. Modern world they feel like a dead end. And the external “arrangement” only emphasizes the internal trouble: this is a mechanical life, devoid of a creative idea. And without such an idea, without a higher meaning, even creative labor necessary for society becomes meaningless. That is why the theme of “leaving” sounds in Chekhov’s later work: one can break out of a dead end, out of the hopelessness of a vicious circle (but, as a rule, into the unknown, as happens in the stories “The Lady with the Dog” and “The Bride”). The hero has a choice: either accept life, submit to it, dissolve, become a part of it and lose himself, or break all ties with everyday life, just get away from it, look for a worthy purpose of existence. This is the most important moment: Chekhov's hero is not allowed to remain himself within the framework of everyday life; having chosen the generally accepted path, he loses his face. This is what happens to Dr. Startsev, the hero of the story "Ionych". Having obeyed the flow of life, a series of everyday worries and thoughts, he comes to complete spiritual devastation, to an absolute loss of personality. Even the memory of his own recent past, of the only vivid feeling, the author does not leave him. The successful Ionych is not only soulless, but also insane, obsessed with the mania of senseless hoarding.

Just as soulless are some of Chekhov's other heroes who did not dare to challenge their usual life: Belikov, Chimsha-Himalayan. Life itself opposes man.

So strong, prosperous, well-equipped and comfortable, it promises all the benefits, but in return it requires the rejection of oneself as a person. And therefore, the theme of "withdrawal", the denial of the established way of life, becomes the main one in the work of the late Chekhov.

We have already talked about the drama of teacher Nikitin. Having fulfilled all the desires of the hero, giving him the happiness that Nikitin so passionately dreamed of, Chekhov led him to a certain threshold, to the line, remaining beyond which, Nikitin would renounce his own face and become the same idol that Dr. Startsev became. And for the author it is infinitely important that the teacher Nikitin is able to step over the threshold, that the quiet, safe loss of himself is more terrible for him than the complete uncertainty of the break with his former life. What new life Nikitin will come to, what will be revealed to him beyond the threshold - we don’t know, just as we don’t know what, besides the joy of deliverance, the heroine of the story “The Bride” found. This is a separate topic for Chekhov, he almost does not touch it.

Only in the story "My Life" did Chekhov follow his "stepping over the threshold" hero. And he discovered that Misail Poloznev gained only one thing in his new life: the right to independently manage his own destiny, to answer only to his own conscience for his every step. The new, half-starved and homeless life of Misail gave the hero the main thing that was missing in the habitual path prepared for him by his father: a sense of self-worth, the unconditional significance of his own personality - not because he is obsessed with megalomania, but because every human personality is the highest, absolute value.

The problem of "leaving" in Chekhov's work is deeply connected with the theme of love. Love for his heroes is always a turning point, a path to another reality. Having fallen in love, a person inevitably interrupts the usual course of life, stops. This is a time of rethinking, self-awareness: even the quietest Belikov, having fallen in love, felt this breakthrough into other worlds, saw himself, thought about his own soul and personality. Having fallen in love, Chekhov's hero ceases to be a man without a face, one of the crowd. He suddenly discovers his own individuality - unique and inimitable. This is a man who has woken up, entered into a spiritual reality: “Love shows a person how he should be,” wrote Chekhov.

But Chekhov's hero can be frightened by this abyss of his own soul that has opened up to him, frightened by the sudden transformation of the familiar and comfortable world into a complex and unknowable one. And then he will renounce love and himself, like Belikov, like Startsev. If the feeling that gripped the hero is truly strong, it transforms him, does not allow him to return to his usual track. Subtly, but unstoppable, there is a spiritual growth, a rebirth of the personality. So the cynic and bon vivant Gurov, having fallen in love with Anna Sergeevna, gradually turns into a thinking, suffering, tormented person. Gurov is unhappy, and Anna Sergeevna is also unhappy: they are doomed to live apart, to meet occasionally, furtively, like thieves, doomed to lie in the family, to hide from the whole world. But there is no way back for them: the souls of these people have come to life and a return to the former unconscious existence is impossible.

The very course of life in Chekhov's world opposes love: this life does not involve feelings, it opposes it, which is why the story "About Love" ends so dramatically. Alekhin is sympathetic to Chekhov, the author sympathizes with the desire of his hero to "live in truth." Alekhine becomes a landowner by force. After completing a course at the university, he puts the estate in order in order to pay off his father's debts, that is, for Alekhine it is a matter of honor, a deeply moral task. It is alien and unpleasant to him new life: "I decided that I would not leave here and would work, I confess, not without some disgust." The lifestyle does not allow Alekhine to visit the city often, to have many friends. His only close acquaintances are the Luganovich family. After some time, he realizes that he is in love with Luganovich's wife Anna Alekseevna and this love is mutual. Neither Alekhine nor Anna Alekseevna dare not only open up to each other - they hide from themselves a “forbidden feeling”. Alekhin cannot violate the happiness of her husband and children, does not consider himself worthy of such a woman. Anna Alekseevna also sacrifices her feelings for the sake of her family, for the sake of her lover's peace of mind. So the years pass. And only when they say goodbye forever, they confess their love to each other and understand "how unnecessary, petty and deceptive was everything that ... interfered with love."

The moral problem of the story is the right to love. Chekhov put it in "The Lady with the Dog", in the story "About Love" he goes further. Before the heroes there are other questions than before Anna Sergeevna and Gurov. They do not dare to love, they drive it away from themselves in the name of moral principles, which are unshakable for them. These principles are really beautiful: do not build happiness on the misfortune of your neighbor, doubt yourself, sacrifice yourself for the sake of others ... But in Chekhov's world, love is always right, love is the need of the soul, its only life. And the situation in which Alekhin and Anna Alekseevna find themselves is hopeless, they face a task that has no solution.

What should a person do to keep living soul? Not wanting to hurt others, he will betray himself; he must either give up high morality, or give up his feelings, which fate gives him as a chance. After all, the compromise chosen by the heroes of The Lady with the Dog is also not a solution - it is the same dead end, the same hopelessness: “It was clear to both that the end was still far, far away and that the most difficult and difficult was just beginning.” Every hero of Chekhov who has fallen in love comes to this hopelessness: he sees everyday life with new eyes, the routine of habitual worries and conversations seems unnatural to him. The feeling that awakens the soul requires a different reality, and a person is already bound by life and he cannot escape without destroying the destinies of loved ones. Gurov is so horrified: “What wild customs, what faces! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, imperceptible days! A frantic game of cards, gluttony, drunkenness, constant talk all about one thing. Unnecessary deeds and conversations all about one thing grab the best part of the time, the best strength, and in the end there remains some kind of short, wingless life, some kind of nonsense, and you can’t leave and run away, as if you are sitting in a madhouse. In the light of this Chekhovian dilemma, the theme of happiness takes on a special meaning. Chekhov peers with horror at the faces of the lucky ones: Belikov, Startsev, Chimshi-Himalayan. Here are those who have found peace, who have managed to live joyfully in this world! Chekhov's heroes are always happy, inferior, spiritually flawed people: they are organic to this world. That is why the writer's favorite characters "by definition" cannot be happy in this world, even the love that illuminated their lives is obviously doomed. Chekhov leaves us with these questions. Here are the lines from Chekhov's letter to A.S. Suvorin: “You are confusing two concepts: the solution of an issue and the correct formulation of the issue. Only the latter is obligatory for the artist.” The personal drama of Chekhov's heroes is one of the manifestations of the global conflict between living feeling and the entire established life form. The writer's heroes are hostages of the system of values that was formed long before them, against their will. They are her prisoners. Unable to escape, they crave deliverance from the outside. Maybe that's why the philosopher L. Shestov called Chekhov "the killer of human hopes"?

Functions of an artistic detail-landscape in the story "Steppe"

At the end of the 19th century, stories and short stories became widespread in Russian literature, replacing the novels of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. Actively used the form of a short work and A.P. Chekhov. The limited scope of the narrative required a new approach to the word from the writer. In the fabric of the novel there was no place for multi-page descriptions, lengthy reasoning, revealing author's position. In this regard, it is extremely important to choose a detail, including a detail of a landscape that has not disappeared from the pages of even the smallest sketches of a mature Chekhov.

The author's attitude to the characters and the world around him, his thoughts and feelings are expressed through the selection of certain artistic details. They focus the reader's attention on what the writer thinks is most important or characteristic. Details are the smallest units that carry a significant ideological and emotional load. “The detail ... is designed to represent the depicted character, picture, action, experience in their originality, originality. An expressive, happily found detail is evidence of the writer’s skill, and the ability to notice and appreciate details is evidence of the culture, philological literacy of the reader ”rightly drawing attention to its great semantic and aesthetic significance, some artistic details become multi-valued symbols that have a psychological, social and philosophical meaning. Interior (fr. - internal) - image interior decoration any room. In works of fiction, this is one of the types of recreation of the subject environment surrounding the hero. Many writers used the characterological function of the interior, when each item bears the imprint of the personality of its owner.

A.P. Chekhov, master of capacious detail. Landscape (fr. - country, locality), one of the meaningful and compositional elements artwork: a description of nature, more broadly - any open space of the outside world.

In Russian prose of the 19th-20th centuries, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, A.P. Chekhov, I.A. Bunin, M.A. Sholokhov. Each of them is interesting for the originality of the author's manner, unique handwriting, the artistic world who created on the pages of his works. In the literature, the principle of figurative parallelism is widespread, based on a contrasting comparison or likening of the internal state of a person to the life of nature. The “discovery” of nature is associated with the realization of a person as a particle of the Universe included in her life. The description of the landscape in this case creates an idea of the state of mind of the characters. The psychological landscape correlates the phenomena of nature with the inner world of man.

E. Dobin reveals the features of Chekhov's manner of working with detail: “And in the landscape ... we meet a wide range of details that go beyond the boundaries of the landscape proper and enter the psychological sphere. The phenomena of nature are animated - a feature that permeates the entire fiction... The novelty of Chekhov's descriptions of nature is primarily in the fact that he avoids elation, scope, "scale". Chekhov's descriptions of nature are rarely majestic. They are not characterized by beauty ... He liked Turgenev's descriptions of nature ... But, Chekhov believed, "I feel that we are already weaning from descriptions of this kind and that something else is needed." .

“Chekhov's landscape detail is closer to the viewer and to the ordinary course of life. It is tuned in unison with everyday life, and this gives it a new, unusually individualized flavor. "A streak of light, creeping up from behind, darted through the cart and horses." “The moon rose very purple and gloomy, as if sick.” “It was as if someone had struck a match in the sky ... someone walked on an iron roof.” “Softly burring, the brook murmured” ... “The green garden, still wet from dew, is all shining from the sun and seems happy.” “In a clear, starry sky, only two clouds ran ... they, alone, like a mother and child, ran after each other.” .

The landscape can be given through the perception of the character in the course of his movement.

Chekhov's story "The Steppe". Yegorushka, a boy “about nine years old, with a face dark from a tan and wet with tears”, was sent to study in the city, at a gymnasium, “... and now the boy, not understanding where and why he is going”, feels himself “an extremely unhappy person and he wants to cry. He leaves the familiar places dear to him, past which the "hated cart" runs. The author shows a flickering landscape through the eyes of a child. Here is “a cozy green cemetery ... white crosses and monuments that are hidden in the greenery of cherry trees peeped out from behind the fence ...” The sun that looked out for a short time and caressed both Yegorushka and the landscape changed everything around. “A wide bright yellow stripe” crawled where “the sky converges with the earth”, “near the mounds and the windmill, which from a distance looks like a little man waving his arms.” Under the rays of the sun, the steppe "smiled and sparkled with dew." “But a little time passed ... and the deceived steppe took on its dull July appearance.” The impersonal sentence "How stuffy and dull!" conveys both a bleak picture of nature under the scorching sun, and the state of mind of a boy deceived by his "mother" and his sister, who "loved educated people and a noble society." It is impossible not to feel the aching feeling of loneliness that seized Yegorushka, who saw on the hill “a lonely poplar; who planted him and why he is here - God knows him. Chekhov's story "The Steppe" is a vivid example of a psychological landscape that excludes description for the sake of description; it is an example of the writer's knowledge of the secrets of a child's soul.

Description of the landscape can perform an even more complex function. It can explain a lot about the character of the hero. Pictures of the steppe nature pass through a number of Chekhov's works - from early prose to mature creativity - and, of course, they take their origins in the depths of the still childish and adolescent worldview of the writer. Views of the steppe world gradually grow in Chekhov with new semantic colors, the ways of their artistic embodiment become more and more diverse, while color and sound details often come to the fore, conveying the multidimensionality of the steppe space, its associative links with the historical past, the secrets of the human soul. Color-sound views acquire a comprehensive character, which is clearly observed in the perception of the narrator in the story "Steppe": "Nothing was seen or heard, except for the steppe ...".

The association of the steppe world with the experience of youth, young forces also appears in the story "The Steppe" (1888), having an effect on the system of color and sound images.

In the exposition of the story, Egorushka’s gaze, which contains the psychological features of the children’s worldview, sets the color dominants of the picture of the surrounding reality with an enlightening effect: “comfortable, greenish cemetery”, “white crosses”, “white sea” of flowering cherry trees ... In the initial image of the actually steppe landscape, the horizon of infinity, the steppe distance melts in a more complex color incarnation than in the story "Happiness": "the hill ... disappears into the purple distance." The image of the lilac distance of the steppe will turn out to be end-to-end in the story and will be displayed in changing spatial perspectives, in a dialectical combination of the transtemporal immobility of the steppe world and its unsteady variability: “the hills were still sinking in the lilac distance”, “the lilac distance ... swayed and rushed along with the sky”. This image disappears in the story and in the prism of a childish, “naturalized” perception of nature, as a result of which the impressionistic elusiveness of the color image is whimsically mixed with the everyday coloring of everyday life: the whole steppe hid in the darkness, like the children of Moses Moiseich under a blanket.

In one of the initial paintings of dawn in the steppe, a dynamic landscape is built on the active interpenetration of colors, colors, light, temperature feelings. Color properties become the main method of depicting a specific type of steppe nature, which becomes here in a long perspective, in transitional tones (“tanned hills, brownish-greenish, lilac in the distance”), with a predominance of a rich yellow and greenish color palette that captures the abundance of the steppe - and in "bright yellow carpet" "strips of wheat", and in " slim figure and greenish clothes" poplar, and how "green thick, lush sedge." Even the color micro-detail in the image of the seething life of the steppe (the "pink lining" of the grasshopper's wings) falls into the narrator's field of vision.

In a similar abundance of light-saturated colors of the steppe, the deep antonymism of the author's gaze is revealed. In this lush richness of color flowers, the relentless pulsation of vital forces, the feeling of the bottomlessness of the natural cosmos are phenomenally mixed with the experience of loneliness, inescapable "longing", "heat and steppe boredom" of existence tormented by its monotony.

The multidimensionality of the color design of landscapes in the story "The Steppe" is largely due to the tendency to subjectivity of the pictorial series, due to which the steppe world, its "incomprehensible distance", "pale green sky", individual objects, sounds melt into moving, changing outlines, which are completed by the power of imagination: “In everything you see and hear, the triumph of beauty, youth, the flowering of strength and a passionate thirst for life begin to seem.” The active presence of the perceiving "I" fills the image of the steppe landscape, in its color and light shades, with philosophical reflections and generalizations about the "incomprehensible sky and darkness, indifferent to short life person."

The story develops a kind of poetics of "double" vision, in which the ordinary is refracted into the mysterious and transtemporal. A similar "double" vision allows Yegorushka to discover a hidden dimension in the color palette of the evening dawn, where "guardian angels, covering the horizon with their golden wings, were placed for the night." Noteworthy in this connection are Yegorushka's observations of the "double" vision of Vasya's driver, who saw the poetic even in the "brown desert steppe", which, in his perception, "is constantly full of life and content."

An unusual sphere of artistic contemplation in the story is the views of the night steppe, which is associated with the mood of Panteley's stories about folk life, "terrible and wonderful", as well as thunderstorm elements. Passed through a child's perception of a thunderstorm background, with the "magic light" of lightning, it acquires a fabulously breathtaking spectrum, which is transmitted in the expression of personifications: "The blackness in the sky opened its mouth and breathed white fire." In the coloring of the thunderstorm, a new perspective of seeing the animated steppe distance arises, which now “turned black ... blinked with a pale light, like for centuries”, in a generalizing perspective, the polar manifestations of natural existence are highlighted: “The clear sky bordered on darkness ...”. The picture of the agitated steppe nature is built here on the mutual enrichment of color, sound and olfactory details (“whistling” of the wind, “the smell of rain and wet earth”, “moonlight ... has become, as it were, dirtier”).

In the story “The Steppe”, this steppe distance, changing in its own color incarnations, acquires a special psychological meaning in the finale, indirectly associated with the inscrutableness of that “new, unknown life that was just beginning” for Yegorushka and which, it is no coincidence, emerges here in an interrogative modality: “What is will this life be?

In synergy with color design steppe landscapes in Chekhov's prose, a system of sound images and associations is formed.

In the story “Steppe”, the sounds of the steppe are an endless abundance of psychological colors: “Old men rushed about with a joyful cry, gophers called to each other in the grass, lapwings sobbed far to the left ... creaky, monotonous music.” The steppe “music” captures a great perspective of the steppe space and conveys the dialectic of a major, filled with excited joy of being “chittering” and inescapable steppe sadness of loneliness (“one lapwing sobbed somewhere not close”), melancholy and a drowsy state of nature: “Gently burr, the brook murmured."

For Egorushka, the steppe sound symphony in its general and particular manifestations becomes the subject of concentrated aesthetic perception, as, for example, in the case of the grasshopper, when “Egorushka caught a violinist in the grass, raised him in his fist to his ear and listened for a long time as he played on his own violin." Constant listening to the sound of the steppe leads the narrator to a deeper sense of the aesthetic significance of sound details even in the sphere of everyday life, expands the associative range of his psychological observations: “On a hot day ... the splash of water and the loud breathing of a bathing person act on the ear like excellent music.”

The most important place in the system of sound images is occupied by a female song in the story, the sound of which is a conjugation of the natural and the human, rhyming with the way “alarmed lapwings sobbed somewhere and complained about fate.” The psychological background of this “viscous and mournful, like a cry” female song is deeply antonymous, in which the melancholy and drowsiness of the steppe worldview become combined with a passionate thirst for life. This long-drawn-out melody, filling the steppe space with its echo, absorbs the feeling of difficult personal and national destinies and marks a breakthrough into the supertemporal dimension (“it seemed that a hundred years had passed since the morning”), melts in Yegorushka’s holistic perception, as a continuation of natural music, the embodiment invisible spiritual world: "... as if an invisible spirit was hovering over the steppe and singing ... it began to seem to him that it was grass singing."

In the detailing of steppe sounds - “cod, whistling, scratching, steppe basses” - the fullness of self-expression of all living things is achieved and, which is especially significant, the depth of the inner self-perception of nature is revealed. This is a small river, which, “quietly grumbled”, “as if ... imagined itself to be a powerful and stormy stream”, and grass, which “is not visible in the darkness of its own old age, a joyful, youthful chatter rises in it”, and the “dreary call” of the steppe , which sounds like "as if the steppe is aware that it is alone." As in the case of color views, here there is a subjectification of the picture of the July steppe, the interpenetration of different perceptions: Yegorushka, with his childlike direct listening to the music of the steppe; the narrator, with his multifaceted experience of communicating with the steppe world (“you go and feel ...”, “it’s great to remember and be sad ...”, “if you peer for a long time ...”, “otherwise you used to go ...”); hidden sense of nature. Lyrical colors paint not only color, sound types, but also the details of the smells of the steppe: "It smells of hay ... the smell is thick, sweet-sweet and gentle."

In the story, single sound types become the basis for a large-scale, deeply antonymous embodiment of the steppe “rumble” type, in which different melodies are combined together and express the general worldview of the steppe. On the one hand, this is a “cheerful rumble” imbued with a sense of the triumph of beauty, but on the other, through this satisfaction, the “dreary and hopeless call” of the steppe comes through more and more clearly, which is generated by a woeful intuition about natural “wealth ... not sung by anyone and not suitable for anyone” , about the smallness of man in the face of the "heroic", "sweeping" elements of nature. This existential longing of the soul for the infinite is refracted in bewildered, "fabulous thoughts." Yegorushka about the steppe distance: “Who rides on it? Who needs that kind of space? It is incomprehensible and strange ... ".

In terms of the sound design of the steppe world, a triune series is built in the story, based on the inseparability of the three levels of the embodiment of steppe music: “chirping” (impressing the inflorescence of single manifestations of the steppe) - “hum” (opening a generalizing perspective of the vision of the existence of the steppe landscape) - “silence”, which filled with a sense of the cosmic abyss of the universe, the scale of eternity, absorbing the earthly and heavenly. The motif of the steppe silence was especially vividly expressed in the story in the philosophical depiction of the night sky landscape (“stars… the very incomprehensible sky and darkness… oppress the soul with their silence”), as well as in the symbolic form of the silence of a lonely grave in the steppe, the deep meaning of which, filling the surrounding steppe life, is comprehended in the lyrically sublime word of the narrator: “In a lonely grave there is something sad, dreamy and highly poetic ... She is silent, and in this silence one feels the presence of the soul of an unknown person lying under the cross ... And the steppe near the grave it seems sad, dull and thoughtful, the grass is sadder, and it seems that the blacksmiths scream more restrained ... ".

In Chekhov's prose, color and sound dominants play a significant role in the artistic embodiment of steppe landscapes. The bases of this figurative sphere were formed in the early Chekhov's work, and above all in the story "The Steppe", then they were enriched with new semantic facets in later stories. The color and sound forms imprinted the colorful gamut of steppe life, in its secret conjugation with the rhythms of individual-personal, folk and natural-cosmic existence. Objective accuracy is combined here with an impressionistic variety of elusive tones, colors, which are drawn in the interpenetration of different “points of view”, levels of perception, which certainly fits the works of the considered figurative and semantic series into the general context of the search for renewal of the artistic language at the turn of the century.

The story "The Steppe" was a synthesis of those ideas and artistic features that characterized the "new" Chekhov. The Steppe is connected with Chekhov's earlier works by separate themes. But if in previous works Chekhov, a patriotic writer, denounced the social vices of contemporary society, in The Steppe he does not confine himself to denunciation; he asserts directly, directly, his poetic thoughts about his native land, about its people. The organic fusion of themes and images given in The Steppe and reflecting the ideas of denunciation and affirmation characteristic of Chekhov became a kind of creative program implemented by the writer in subsequent works, which developed and deepened in various ways the artistic problematics that were concentrated in ideological content"Steppes".

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Artistic features of S.D. Krzhizhanovsky

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