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Full text of the dissertation abstract on the topic ""The history of my contemporary" V.G. Korolenko: artistic originality"

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SAVELYEVA Elena Sergeevna

"HISTORY OF MY CONTEMPORARY" V. G. KOROLENKO: ARTISTIC ORIGINALITY

Krasnodar 2009,

The work was carried out at the Department of Literature and Teaching Methods of the Pedagogical Institute of the Southern Federal University

Scientific adviser: candidate of philological sciences, associate professor

Tukodian Nvart Khazarosovna

Official opponents: Doctor of Philology, Professor

Prokurova Natalya Sergeevna Candidate of Philological Sciences Panaetov Oleg Grigorievich

Lead organization: Krasnodar State

university of culture and arts

The defense will take place ")[>> TsuTsR^SL 2009 at hours at a meeting of the dissertation council D 212.101.04 at the Kuban State University at the address: 350018, Krasnodar, st. Sormovskaya, 7, room. 309.

The dissertation can be found in the scientific library of the Kuban state university(350040, Krasnodar, Stavropolskaya St., 149).

Scientific Secretary of the Dissertation Council< 7 М.А.Шахбазян

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF WORK

Currently, there is a trend in the literature to address the problems classical literature. AND; now, after many years, the works of writers who created the culture of the Russian people, laid the foundations of the modern Russian language, and participated in historical events are worthy of attention. Undoubtedly, one of these writers is Vladimir Galaktshyevich Korolenko, a great humanist, a fighter for justice and freedom, the author of many artistic and journalistic works, in particular, the memoir novel “The History of My Contemporary”.

The research of scientists in the field of classical works is carried out in two directions: firstly, these are attempts to reinterpret texts that have already become textbooks, studied by many generations of scientists, and secondly, the search for new classical works that have not yet been covered by science. “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, undoubtedly, is one of the works insufficiently covered in literary criticism: in the works of recent years, researchers have limited themselves to problematic and hematic analysis or analysis of the genre specifics of individual works or cycles.

“The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, being a highly moral work that reflects the essential features of the past, is modern in ideological orientation and should be present in the reading circle of the modern reader, therefore, we consider it promising to further study as an integral art of V. G. Korolenko’s work, so and some of his works in terms of the author's worldview, the moral evolution of the hero and narrative structure.

In our time, it is necessary to turn more often to works of classical literature for many reasons. So, firstly, many undeservedly overlooked

Literary critics and the public works raise problems that are not alien to modernity. Works with documentary elements help a person, having looked into the past and understood the problems of past years, to understand their own time. Secondly, the appeal to the "History of my contemporary" as a work of a major genre allows us to assess some of the trends in the modern literary process. Thirdly, the works of the classics are highly ideological, and by reading them, a person raises his cultural level.

In this dissertation research, an attempt was made, based on classical works and the works of modern researchers: philologists, partly philosophers, teachers, linguists and culturologists, to determine the place of the "History of my contemporary" in Russian autobiographical literature and in the work of V. G. Korolenko, as well as explore the main features of the poetics of "The History of My Contemporary".

The relevance of the dissertation. 1. The novel in question, “The History of My Contemporary”, is rightfully considered one of the pinnacle creations in Russian literature, but no special studies have been devoted to this work. 2. Turning to this novel by V. G. Korolenko as a work with documentary elements allows, looking into the past and understanding the problems of past years, to understand one’s own time both from the point of view of literary criticism and from the point of view of history.

The novelty of the dissertation. 1. In the dissertation research, the autobiographical novel-memoir “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko is subjected to such an integral study for the first time. 2. Significantly new judgments about the specifics of this work as a kind of genre symbiosis. We define the genre of "The History of My Contemporary" as an autobiographical reminiscence novel. Z. In the literary analysis of the work, we for the first time presented the classification of the literary portraits of the novel, made a number of significant conclusions,

concerning the architectonics of the work, the features of the image of the characters and the specifics of the chronotope.

The object of the study is the autobiographical novel-memoir "The History of My Contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko.

Purpose of the study. Having comprehended the theoretical aspects of the problem genre affiliation works with an autobiographical orientation, determine the place of the "History of my contemporary" in the context of V. G. Korolenko's work and consider the poetics of this novel-memoir.

To achieve this goal, it seems necessary to solve a number of tasks:

4) consider the features of the genre of the work;

5) explore the system of images, features of the literary portraits of the "History of my contemporary", classify them;

6) study the chronotopic structure of the novel.

The theoretical and methodological basis of the dissertation research is the principles of cultural-historical and comparative-historical research methods, as well as the provisions and concepts developed in the works of M. M. Bakhtin, B. O. Korman, Yu. M. Lotman, D. S. Likhachev , G. O. Vinokura, V. V. Vinogradova, G. N. Pospelova, G. A. Belaya, B. M. Eikhenbaum, Yu. G. Tartakovsky, N. A. Nikolina, A. B. Esin, I. O. Shaitanov and others.

The used literary categories are considered in historical and theoretical terms, the history of the formation of the genre of artistic autobiography is traced, attempts are made to analyze the principles of creating images of heroes, to identify artistic means expressions of the author's position in an autobiographical novel-memoir.

In determining the place of "The History of My Contemporary" in the writer's work, we studied the works of D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovskiy, N. D. Shakhovskaya, G. A. Vyaly, as well as dissertations of recent years (G. 3. Gorbunova, Yu. G Gushchina, P. E. Lyon, V. E. Tatarinov, A. V. Trukhanenko and others), dedicated to the work of V. G. Korolenko. The theoretical significance of the dissertation lies in the fact that the work is a single study devoted to the autobiographical novel-memoir "The History of My Contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko, determines its significance and artistic originality.

"The scientific and practical value of this dissertation research lies in the possibility of using its results when reading university courses on the history of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century, special courses on the work of V. G. Korolenko and writers of the sixties, as well as for further research on the work of V. G. Korolenko.

The main provisions for defense:

1) “The history of my contemporary” occupies a central position in the work of V. G. Korolenko due to the analytical form of the writer’s thinking, the specific ideological orientation of the work and its value paradigm.

2) "History" of my contemporary "V. G. Korolenko ---

autobiographical novel-memoir with typical for this genre specific features: the fusion of various genres, the selection of images, the methods of psychological depiction of heroes, the creation of a special chronotope.

Approbation. The main provisions of the dissertation research were the subject of discussion at meetings of the Department of Russian Literature and Teaching Methods of the Pedagogical Institute of the Southern Federal University, and are also reflected in 3 publications of the author and presented in 4 reports at conferences of various levels (international scientific conference ^ "Conceptual problems of literature: fiction cognition”, Rostov-on-Don, international scientific conference (correspondence) XXIII Chekhov readings in Taganrog, scientific conference - XI Sheshukov readings “Historiosophy in Russian literature of the 20th and 19th centuries: traditions and a new look”. Moscow) with subsequent edition articles.

The structure and scope of the dissertation. The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a bibliographic list of 214 titles. When working with texts, we studied two collected works of V. G. Korolenko: in 9 volumes, 1914, and in 10 volumes, 1954. References in the text of the dissertation are taken from later collected works.

The total volume of the dissertation is 189 pages.

The introduction defines the subject, goals and objectives of the study, establishes the degree of study of the problem, relevance, scientific novelty, research material, and also identifies a number of issues related to the problem of studying biographical literature in Russian literary criticism.

In the first chapter of the dissertation research, "The History of My Contemporary" in the Context of the Epoch, there are four paragraphs.

In the first paragraph. “The prerequisites for the appearance of the “History of my contemporary” in the work of V. G. Korolenko: analyticism as a form of thinking of the writer”, we consider novel thinking

gschsatel, acting as a prerequisite for the creation of a work of a major genre. In developing this thesis, we rely on the judgments of V. Belinsky and M. Bakhtin about the syncretism of the genre of the novel, its versatility and ability to influence other genres (the concept of romanization of genres). Using the example of Korolenko's short stories and short stories, we consider the formation of a large genre form in his work and find in the "History of my contemporary" the features of a complex genre symbiosis, a combination of many genres in the structure of the work: autobiography, memoirs, novel, diary, story, essay, article. Reading “The History of My Contemporary”, we can observe how the idea of ​​certain works was born, their details were laid down, we see elements of intertextuality: “After passing Tobolsk, our barge began to climb north along the Irtysh, and the wonderful views of the Volga and Kama changed for us dull banks of Siberian rivers with rare settlements. Here I gave myself up to reminiscences and wrote the essay “The Fake City”, in which, strongly imitating Uspensky, Glazov described” (vol. 7, p. 159). In the work, we found more than 65 references to the texts of stories, articles, letters of V. G. Korolenko. So, we conclude that “The History of My Contemporary” is the logical outcome of all the work of V. G. Korolenko, it follows from previous works while at the same time enclosing them. It is also impossible not to pay attention to the journalistic elements in all of Korolenko's work. Almost every work has a subtitle that speaks of its genre affiliation or the place of writing or the origin of the idea (“From a trip to Vetluga and Kerzhents”, “From Siberian life”). The system of genres to which the author himself refers his works seems to us extensive and diverse. Here we meet both generally accepted names (story, story, essay) and rare variations of small genres (pictures, pages, excerpts). In addition to the aforementioned genres of documentary prose, V. G. Korolenko has works belonging to allegorical genres(fairy tale, legend, fantasy), but most of their

In terms of genre, Korolenko classifies his works as documentary-biographical prose (portrait, writing, memoirs, observations):

Korolenko's work is characterized by a multi-stage cyclization system. The works are combined according to the belonging of the main characters to a particular social group, for example, cycles of essays (“Pavlovsk Essays”, “At the Cossacks”, “In a Hungry Year”), cycles of stories “about vagrants”, “about random people”. There are also macrocycles that unite works by genre: essays, stories, lyrical miniatures, works of conditional genres (Siberian, children's). In addition, in the Korolenko genre system, the Volga, American and Romanian macrocycles can be distinguished by subject matter.

The cycle is a step towards mastering the great novel form. The writer was not limited to partial development of the theme in one or two stories. He strove to express everything, to scoop out the topic to the end. One story led another - and multiple cycles arose: Siberian, children's, "Pavlovian essays", cycles of essays "In the year of hunger", "Sorochinsky tragedy" and others.

This fact of the cyclization of works, undoubtedly, speaks of V. G. Korolenko's inclination towards a large epic form. Thus, novelistic thinking determines the movement of genres in the writer's work.

"The History of My Contemporary" is built from many essays, stories, united by the image of the main character - the author, presented by him in chronological order. At the same time, many components of the novel are unthinkable outside of it (they do not have an ending or beginning, their motives are closely connected with the motives of other stories), but others can exist separately. Also in the novel, we see elements of parallel construction (separation of characters into groups, diverse events taking place simultaneously). These parallels follow from the ideological views, value orientations of the writer.

Second paragraph. “The historiosophical, value paradigm (orientation) of Korolenko in the embodiment of fate, choice, law.

Responsibility of Man and the Picture of the World”, is devoted to the artistic and stylistic system of the writer’s concept and his moral and ethical program, reflected in the “History of my contemporary” in comparison with some stories.

In the literary life at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, there are many qualitative changes associated with the process of updating and transforming the already existing literary movements, the emergence and movement of new ones. The complication of the literary process (multiplicity of currents and trends, extraordinary mobility and rapid change of forms and styles, sharp polemicalness) is also due to the diversity inherent in a vast country, the combination of elements of different historical stages, which caused the extraordinary complexity of the manifestation of socio-ideological conflicts. At the same time, there were such diverse, heterogeneous, sometimes opposite tendencies as the boundless aestheticism of adherents " pure art”and the asceticism of the late Tolstoy, the desire of Chekhov, Korolenko to go beyond the circle of only literary work, the emergence of literature of the Gorky direction.

However, one can single out a feature that unites these many-sided phenomena: in literature, as in life, the problem of a person, his personality, dignity, and value is raised with particular force. great merit Tolstoy, Chekhov, Korolenko consisted in the fact that in their artistic model of social life they portrayed the people as a value center, with which everything else was correlated.

The question of personality in literature cannot be considered out of touch with the writer's humanistic conception, with his "idea of ​​man."

“The fact of the matter is that there is no “muzhik”, single and inseparable, just a peasant; there are Fedots, Ivans, poor people, rich people, beggars and kulaks, virtuous and vicious, caring and drunkards, living on a full allotment, and donors, with allotments in one bast shoe, masters and workers ... That's just the point, that we the people seem to be all on the same face, and by the first peasant we judge all the peasants” (vol. 9, p.

166). The writer depicts the people not as a homogeneous faceless mass, but embodies its fate in specific vivid artistic images.

The object of our attention is the problems of fate, freedom, in particular free choice, morality.

"To love this people - isn't that our task?" - here is the problem posed by the author. Even having sunk to the bottom of life, dark, rude, people remain people, live as best they can, love, give birth to children, no matter how hard their lot is. We see that revealing this or that problem, Korolenko returns to it more than once in his subsequent works, and this feature again makes it possible to assert the novelty of VG Korolenko's thinking.

The third paragraph of the first chapter is called " Idea content"History of my contemporary" and its compositional expression in the novel. Based on the philosophical and literary definitions of the idea, ideology, aesthetic ideal, we see that they are closely related.

The dictionary of philosophical terms defines the ideal as follows: “a model, something sublime, good and beautiful, the highest goal of striving” (p. 245).

In art, the aesthetic ideal is the artistic world that arises from the correlation of life as it is and as it should be, however, the ideal must be derived from reality, based more on reality than on a fictional world.

Our thought in determining the ideological content is guided by the author's understanding of the idea of ​​his novel.

“Now I see much of what my generation dreamed about and fought for bursting into the arena of life anxiously and stormily. I think that many episodes from the time of my exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future” (vol. 5, p. 7).

Depicting the events of the life of his "contemporary", V. G. Korolenko unfolds before the reader a panorama of the life of society in the 1860s-1880s of the XIX century, including the event aspect (outstanding historical events that took place at that time), the socio-political aspect (the change in the status of many people, the development of the social revolutionary movement), the literary and aesthetic aspect (the influence of literature on people and people on literature).

In the preface to The History of My Contemporary, V. G. Korolenko wrote: “There will be nothing here that I have not actually encountered, that I have not experienced, felt, or seen” (vol. 5, p. 8). The autobiographical nature of this work did not prevent it from becoming the chronicle of a whole generation. D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (141) argued that Korolenko’s memoirs can be placed next to L. N. Tolstoy’s “Childhood” and “Adolescence”, and by the brightness of the reconstruction of the era, as well as the depth and materiality of reflections, they resemble “The Past and Thoughts » Herzen.

"History ..." is a broad epic narrative about the dramatic fate of the generation of the 1870s, filled with genuine tragedy. In the foreground in the novel are thoughts about the people, about their capabilities. Korolenko draws attention to the overly bookish, abstract and theoretical nature of the heritage of the "sixties". Korolenko dismissed “going to the people” and terrorism as naive and utopian theories. The writer does not join any of the existing underground revolutionary organizations, seeing in them a sectarian character, revolutionaries without a people. Korolenko preferred to act openly, with the pen of a publicist and artist. His work, in particular the "History of my contemporary", is a reflection of political and social views writer.

Korolenko begins the story of himself from infancy. This technique corresponds to the canons of the genre and is used by the author to identify the origins of the formation of his personality, nature, predispositions. In the first parts, the author uses, of course,

reception of direct recollection, but given the young age of the hero and often the spontaneity, inaccuracy of his judgments, Korolenko sometimes has to introduce inserted episodes to create a complete picture of what happened (for example, highlighted in separate chapters “My father”, “Father and mother”), narratives, colorful facts, dates and events that could not be known to a little boy.

Another form of such explanations is a small episode that does not stand out compositionally, explaining the feelings of the child. Here, an adult from the height of his years explains what he felt then and what, according to his present ideas, caused it. “During this painful period of my childhood life, the memory of God was very formless. At this word, somewhere in the depths of consciousness, an idea was born of something vast and completely bright, but impersonal. The closest thing would be to say that he seemed to me like a distant and huge spot of sunlight. But the light did not act at night, and the night was entirely dominated by a hostile, different world, which, together with darkness, moved into the limits of ordinary life” (vol. 5, p. 45).

V. G. Korolenko also describes works of art that had a great influence on him (the book “Fomka from Sandomierz” by Jan Gregorovich, historical theatrical play"Ursula, or Sigismund III"). Describing the process of his acquaintance with these works, the writer, relying on real events and his immediate impressions, gives a story with elements of analysis, determining their belonging to literary movements (book-sentimentalism, play-romanticism).

The individual's striving for an emotionally anticipated universal ideal indicates a romantic current in a work written, undoubtedly, in realistic traditions.

In the dissertation, we consider the transformation of the ideal of V. G. Korolenko. When the writer was childhood, it can be argued that his father had the traits of an ideal for him. However

Korolenko from a very early age was inherent in looking at everything from different angles, so he perfectly saw his ambiguous qualities or disadvantages. Drawing attention to several false ideals (Teodor Negri, Vasily Veselitsky), we come to the conclusion that the image of Kliment Arkadievich Timiryazev is closest to the ideal in the writer's understanding.

When, already in the first days of his exile, Korolenko concludes: “No, I will no longer go to the service of this state with the Livens and Valuevs at the top, with a network of petty irresistible predation at the bottom. This is a decaying past... And I will go towards an unknown future”, we are convinced that real ideal is the author himself. The minute when a person visits such strong feeling, is very important for his self-determination and the course of his entire future life. In The History of My Contemporary, a feature that can be called programmatic stands out clearly: the author gives the character of social value and interest to the personal, intimate. In the era reproduced by the writer, living people are felt, living life and, above all, one's own human, righteous soul of a contemporary, - and in the personal and one's own, the socially valuable experience is refracted, and not the accidental and narrowly individualistic.

We analyze the features of the plot and the construction of the plot by Korolenko, based on the compositional solution of the author. "History of my contemporary" is equipped with a detailed system of titles of parts and chapters. This attraction to headings and subheadings is explained by the high publicism of the works of V. G. Korolenko.

Intertextual headings (chapters) can be divided into several main groups related to the thematic range of the novel and its chronotopic structure. We distinguish the following groups:

1) A static description of the current situation in one place or another, also a description of a group of people: “Old students”, “Workers”, etc.

2) Individual portrait descriptions of specific personalities: “Father and Mother”, “Alexander Kapitonovich Malikov”.

3) The narrative of events extended in time: “I find myself in a robber's den”, “Arrival in Perm”.

"We carried out calculations and calculations that allow us to testify to the distribution of material in the novel, and concluded that the distribution of textual material in the novel reflects the real content of the described life period. The author, dividing the "History ..." into chapters in accordance with the periods of development of the hero, simultaneously highlights the dominants of each period, ( Childhood development, description of the situation; student years, the first link - development, eventfulness; reference period - portrait sketches, description of the situation.)

Also in this paragraph, we emphasize the connection between content and form, arguing that the division of a work into architectonic parts (books, chapters) is subject to the main idea of ​​the author: to reflect the history of his life in his time, therefore, the main criterion for distinguishing between chapters is the importance of certain events for the author, their stages in his life, influence on the future.

Fourth paragraph. "The author's concept of the creative personality of V. G. Korolenko (the hero and the image of the author^", is dedicated to the author's concept of the creative personality of Korolenko, lyrical expression. We use the term "author", meaning by it "a certain view of reality, the expression of which is the whole work" , using the definition of Bakhtin. We consider the image of the author in his formation. "History ..." covers the period 1854-1885, that is, the time from the early childhood of the writer until his arrival in Nizhny Novgorod as a thirty-three-year-old man.

the main idea of ​​the "History of my contemporary", expressed in paragraph 1.3, concerning the creation of the image of the hero of the era of the 60-80s. XIX century, let us turn to the image of the author, presented in the novel.

Korolenko.

In 1905, when Korolenko began work on the novel, he was 53 years old. Naturally, the views of the depicted young man and a mature person do not always coincide. At the beginning of the story, monologues, reflections, digressions, owned by the author; the proportion of incidents that happened directly to the described child is not very large.

In the works of the children's cycle, the specificity consists in a double view of what is happening: from the point of view of the main character or the hero-narrator in childhood and the adult narrator or hero-narrator, and the adult only balances the child's ideas and conclusions, corrects some accents. In the first volume of the "History of my contemporary", which consists of five parts, which tells about the early childhood of the writer, about studying at the boarding school of Mrs. Okrashevskaya, in the Zhitomir and Rovno gymnasiums, this image of the author appears. The reader perceives the work in two time plans, either moving to the 50-60s of the 19th century and taking the position of a child, or rising to the author's point of view on the events that took place then.

Such authorial returns from the events described to their own contemporary opinion continue throughout the novel. We note some of their features. In the first chapters, V. G. Korolenko, by right of seniority, expresses his opinion about the actions and thoughts of the child that the author once was, as a rule, in the form of a statement, explanation, assessment, and the form of a maxim, morality, aphorism is also acceptable. The author's intervention may be in the nature of a report on historical facts, introduced to illuminate and

clarification of events that cannot be told by a child - There are also remarks in the text in the first person, in which irony, paternal mockery of the hero is felt: “How long ago it was“ and how stupid I was then ... And how much smarter I am now that boy who leaned his ear against telegraph poles or was proud of ... what? The title of a boarder kid... And now I'm already an "old schoolboy" and I'm going to new places for some new life... "(Vol. 5, p. 144-145).

In the chapters devoted to the description of student time, the author expresses his attitude to the actions of the hero in a different way. Irony is clearly felt in the narrative, it permeates the entire text, sometimes being inseparable from the hero's own words. Often, ironic thoughts are framed in first-person remarks: “I have an arrogant conviction that I am perhaps the smartest in this city. My measure was this: I can understand all the people flashing in front of me in this stream, swaying like water in a plate, from the barrier to the post office and back.<...>And they have no idea what thoughts about them and what dreams are wandering in my head” (vol. 6, p. 12). The character seems to be talking about his superiority over the people around him, but we can easily isolate hidden meaning put into the mouth of the hero by the author. The author does not hide his thoughts that really arose in his youth, even if they run counter to his modern beliefs. Further, the author adds from the height of his life experience: “I was stupid. Subsequently, when I became smarter, I easily found people above myself in the most remote corners of life” (vol. 6, p. 12).

Further, the picture changes - the divergence of views is reduced to a minimum and the proportion of events, actions of the hero increases. To address the reader directly, to express his point of view, Korolenko resorts to digressions, in which he speaks of the hero in the third person. In subsequent chapters, the coincidence of the opinions of the hero and the author increases, so the author less and less resorts to irony and characteristics of the hero's actions. The author's digressions now pursue one goal: to make the narrative more harmonious by introducing into the text

messages, reviews and generalizations about historical events that did not affect the hero personally, but are important for explaining further events. So, for example, without naming the source of the message, V. G. Korolenko talks about the Chigirinsky case, about the attempt on Solovyov, the events that occurred at the time when the hero was under arrest in the Lithuanian castle. So, we see that the image of the author in the "History ..." is changing, growing along with the writer. The text of the novel reflects the course of memory, the process of recollection, therefore, there is a “double look” at what is happening: from the point of view of the hero and from the point of view of the author, although they are, in essence, the same person at different periods of his life.

The second chapter, "The Poetics of "The History of My Contemporary"", is devoted to a versatile literary analysis of the work. It includes four paragraphs.

In the first paragraph. ""History of my contemporary" in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature". an attempt was made to determine the place of the autobiographical novel-memoir in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature. Problems of the genre nature of the autobiographical fiction V modern literary criticism are complex and debatable. The main problems that are in the spotlight are the relationship between historical truth and fiction, auto documentation biographical information, the role of the author's principle in the artistic interpretation of the life and work of the hero, and others. These problems are due to the fact that the genre criteria and the range of its understanding are very broad. Obviously, the explanation for this must be sought in the synthesis of the genre, its constant evolution, interaction with others. literary genres. We consider The History of My Contemporary in comparison with other works of a major autobiographical genre. S. T. Aksakov, A. I. Herzen, L. N. Tolstoy, V. G. Korolenko, I. A. Bunin - all of them in their works tell in detail about the history of their family, about

relatives, about their origin. The History of My Contemporary is undoubtedly one of the great works of autobiographical literature. !

The second paragraph - "Genre specificity of the "History of my contemporary"". Considering the "History of my contemporary"; we define the genre of this work as an autobiographical novel-memoir. In the first place in the "History of my contemporary", undoubtedly, the autobiographical component is taken out. The desire for factual accuracy, consistency is easy to trace in the text of the work, this is repeatedly emphasized by the author.

Having studied the history of the genre of Russian artistic biography from hagiographies to modern autobiographical novels, we argue that in the process of its development, autobiography was enriched with the traditions of other genres (in Russia): hagiography, novel-education, historical novel, biography, diary, literary portrait, etc.

We see that from the point of view of the genre nature, "The History of My Contemporary" combines the features of several genres, the fundamental of which are three: autobiography, that is, a description of the facts of one's life, memoirs (memoirs) - a description of the "work of the soul", reflections, reasoning , relations to surrounding events, characteristic of the described character in a certain period of his life, and a novel, main feature which is the absence of prohibitions on the image of anything.

In the third paragraph. "Literary portrait as part of the artistic originality of the "History of my contemporary"", we consider the system of images of the work, the features of their implementation. We support the point of view of V. S. Barakhov, who considers a literary portrait in three interrelated manifestations of it: 1) a literary portrait as a means of creating an image of a character in a novel, novel, short story; 2) a literary portrait as an integral part, a component of a more complex genre structure; 3) literary portrait as an independent genre.

In our opinion, all three types of literary portrait are reflected in Korolenko's work. We will consider the first two manifestations on the basis of the novel-memoir "The History of My Contemporary". Directly in the novel, the literary portrait appears, firstly, as an integral part, a component of a more complex genre structure, and, secondly, as a means of creating the character's image in the novel. We are making an attempt to give a typology of the characters portrayed in the "History of my contemporary", highlighting the portraits-stories and memories. The main differentiating factor underlying the division of portraits into stories and memories is the passage of time. If in a portrait-story time moves independently of the narrative or stops altogether, then in the memory the passages selected by the writer to characterize the character continue storyline. Also, regardless of the course of time, we have singled out portraits-types into a separate category. VG Korolenko creates galleries of images: officials, judges, teachers, students, exiles, political, folk images: Pochinkovtsy, Glazovtsy, Amgintsy. In our study, we consider literary portraits of the writer's parents, teachers, some representatives of petty officials, teachers (classifying them into "old", "maniacs", "chronographs" and "new", based on the attitude of the author and borrowing his definitions), as well as teachers of higher educational institutions.

Portrait elements abound in the third book, which is devoted to exiled wanderings and at the same time tells about the places where the author visited at that time (Berezovsky Pochinki, the Vyshnevolotsk political prison, Perm, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, Irkutsk). So, we see, “but the portrait of a character prevails in chapters whose main goal is to create a picture of the life of a particular group, layer of people (landlords, court workers, teachers). All these pictures are given to us in refraction through the prism of the author's personality, respectively, each of them adds features to the image of a contemporary. ;

We consider it necessary to pay attention to another interesting feature Korolenko's stories. The principle underlying his work in general and The History of My Contemporary in particular is the desire to reproduce. events from the point of view of "then perception". We will talk about the problem of comparing time plans a little later, but here we will highlight this technique insofar as it is a means of expressing the author's subjectivity.

» Talking about the past years, Korolenko always clearly distinguishes between his current position and the position of his autobiographical hero at this stage of his development. The author's point of view may supplement or explain the point of view of the "contemporary", but it by no means replaces it. It is remarkable that Korolenko never tries to hide his "then" views and beliefs, even if they run counter to his modern thoughts. He can only afford to express his point of view on his former self. Describing the first year of study at Institute of Technology, talking about the fact that he had to go hungry, Korolenko says, as if by the way: “In essence, it was a slow dying of hunger, only stretched out for a long time” (vol. 6, p. 90), “But then I was stupid and did not noticed it..." The author is not ashamed of even his most absurd, ridiculous mistakes and delusions, laughing at his susceptibility to literary motifs and types. In an effort to find such words “that would come closest to the phenomena of life” (vol. 5, p. 295), the “contemporary” finds a definition even for his suit of cheap fabric, sewn for a trip to the capital by a provincial tailor: “Leaving in side of fashion, I felt dressed to the nines, "quite simply, but with taste" (vol. 6, p. 11). The author encloses these words in quotation marks, showing that this is the definition chosen by a young man who wants to look good, while despising fashion and having no means for this. After the remark of familiar ladies about the unsuitability of such a suit for the capital, Korolenko speaks of his feelings: “But I was left with a terrible longing for loneliness in my heart and an unpleasant consciousness,

that my “unfashionable, but simple and elegant” costume attracts ironic attention ... ”(v. 6, p. 14). The author again takes the description of the costume in quotation marks. Of course, the person who wrote these lines no longer thinks so, and with these quotation marks he emphasizes the difference between himself and this youth, so young and naive.

In the same vein, the author recalls his youthful vivid impressions of students, reaching to enthusiasm. In The History of My Contemporary, a work undoubtedly based on real facts, there are passages that speak of deliberately fictitious events. First of all, these are the dreams of the author. So the young man is carried away in his thoughts on a journey on a steam locomotive in the role of a "smart and strong" worker-machinist, seeing a third-year trainee, or experiencing a temporary admiration for the image of Lazovsky, "a dance-class Mephistopheles, with such beautiful negligence making scandals" (vol. 6, p. 63 ). Such passages are typical of the hero's youth.

In the study, we also pay attention to the methods of psychological portrayal of characters on the example of the owner of the proofreading bureau, Studensky.

So, the main component of the "History of my contemporary" is the artistic portraits of people who helped the writer form his views and beliefs.

Fourth paragraph. "Features of the chronotope "History of my contemporary"". In the work we see several interrelated and flowing into each other types of chronotopes. The chronotope of an autobiographical novel-memoir has several components: calendar time (such a variety of it as biographical time is presented), event time (historical, household time, chronotope of the road, meetings), perceptual time (chronotope of the author). We give a brief description of the main types of chronotopes identified by Bakhtin (biographical, event, historical, chronotope of the author, household, chronotope of the road). The biographical chronotope prevails in the work under study. So

as the story is about a truly completed past, the author uses the techniques of prospection and retrospection, thus focusing attention on one or another stage of the hero's life. So, the attention of V. G. Korolenko for a long time dwells on education, early years, the process of growing up of a “contemporary”.

The flow of biographical time stops, and we get acquainted with the reading circle of the hero and his friends, thus falling into the spiritual atmosphere of entire generations.

* The reading circle of the hero allows the author to more deeply imagine the formation of a worldview, the formation of him as a person. In The History of My Contemporary there is a chapter partly devoted to a work of art ("Fomka from Sandomierz" and the landowner Deschert "), in which the author shares his childhood direct impressions of the first book he read in his life. However, the children's perception of the book is specified by the author's opinion. The essay "My First Acquaintance with Dickens", supplementing Chapter XXIX of the first book, which the author has included in the Appendix, has a different chronotope structure. Here, undoubtedly, a lot of attention is paid to books, works of art, but their perception is given almost without stopping time. Perhaps this form was dictated by the specifics of the hero’s reading at that time: the older brother of the writer, trying to separate himself from the younger ones, did not allow Korolenko to read his books, only allowing him to change them in the library / The boy began to read on the go. “This manner gave the very process of reading a peculiar and, so to speak, gambling character” (vol. 5, p. 366). The writer notes that such a superficial reading did not allow him to understand the work in all its versatility, allowing him to note only the main characters and the main storyline. However, such a shallow reading did not at all form the hero's careless attitude to a literary text, on the contrary, having received the opportunity to read the desired books, the hero understands the value of this.

Events can be described as taking place in biographical time, following the events of life, or they can represent

are flashbacks, memories of events that took place in reality, but at the time described in the text, have already ended. The course of action, its distribution in time is associated with artistic purpose set before the author. We have identified some differences in reflecting the passage of time in the "History of my contemporary" in passages relating to various types of text (narration, description, reasoning). After analyzing the various chapters of the History of My Contemporary from the point of view of the length of the action in time, we see that the choice of speech means largely depends on the type of text. When choosing one or another means, V. G. Korolenko is guided by his communicative intentions.

In conclusion, the results of the study are summed up, the place of the autobiographical novel-memoir “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko in the history of Russian literature of the 20th century is determined, and ways for further research in this area are outlined.

The main provisions of the dissertation research are reflected in 9 publications of the author:

1. Savelyeva E. S. The concept of man in the work of V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Gnoseology of poetics: artistic semantics and genre syncretism. Intrauniversity collection scientific papers. Issue. 5. Rostov-on-Don, 2005, pp. 64-70.

2. Savelyeva E. S. Features of the manifestation of the author's subjectivity V. G. Korolenko in the aspect of the genre / E. S. Savelyeva // Conceptual problems of literature: artistic cognition. G. Rostov-on-Don, 2006. S. 198-201.

3. Savelyeva E. S. The portrait-content part of the novel-memoir by V. G. Korolenko “The history of my contemporary” and the means of creating an image / E. S. Savelyeva // Gnoseology of poetics:

artistic semantics and genre syncretism. Intrauniversity collection of scientific papers. Issue. 6. Rostov-on-Don, 2006, pp. 44-52.

4. Savelyeva E. S. The theme of childhood in the work of A. P. Chekhov and V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Creativity of A. P. Chekhov. Collection of materials of the International Scientific Conference (correspondence) - XXIIIChekhov's readings in Taganrog. Taganrog, 2007. S. 28-32.

5. Savelyeva E. S. The concept of man as an expression of the historiosophical and aesthetic orientation of V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Historiosophy in Russian literature of the XX and XIX centuries: traditions and a new look. Materials of scientific conference - XI Sheshukovsky readings. Moscow, 2007, pp. 54-58.

6. Savelyeva E. S. The exile wanderings of V. G. Korolenko - part of the ideological content of the “History of my contemporary” / E. S. Savelyeva // Conceptual problems of literature: artistic cognition. Rostov-on-Don, 2007. S.274-277.

7. Savelyeva E. S. Features of the reflection of novel thinking in the “History of my contemporary” V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Conceptual problems of literature: typology and syncretism of genres. - Rostov-on-Don, 2007. S. 211-215.

*8. Savelyeva E. S. Psychologism and lyrical expression of images of the "History of my contemporary" V. G. Korolenko. Scientific and methodological journal "Bulletin of the Kostroma State University named after N. A. Nekrasov". Main issue, No. 1, January-March, 2008. Volume 14). pp. 131-134.

9. Savelyeva E. S. Temporal organization of the autobiographical novel-memoir by V. G. Korolenko “The History of My Contemporary” / E. S. Savelyeva // Gnoseology of poetics: artistic semantics and genre syncretism. - Intrauniversity collection of scientific papers. Issue. 8. Rostov-on-Don, 2009. S. 52-61.

Symbols: * marked the work published in the publication recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for the publication of the main materials of candidate dissertations.

Savelyeva E. S. "The history of my contemporary" V. G. Korolenko: artistic originality: Author. day. ... cand. philologist, sciences: 10.01.01. Rostov n / a .: SFU, 2009.24 p.

Signed for publication on 08.05.2009. Format 60x84 1/16. Offset printing. Volume 1.5 arb. oven l. Circulation 100 copies. Order Ns fáí.

Publishing and Printing Department of the Rostov State Pedagogical University 344082, Rostov-on-Don, st. B. Sadovaya, 33

1 chapter. "The history of my contemporary" in the context of the era

1. Prerequisites for the appearance of the "History of my contemporary" in the work of V. G. Korolenko: analyticism as a form of thinking of the writer

2. Historiosophical, value paradigm (orientation) of Korolenko in the embodiment of fate, choice, rights, responsibility of a person and a picture of the world

3. The ideological content of the "History of my contemporary" and its compositional expression in the novel

Chapter 2 Poetics of "The History of My Contemporary"

1. "History of my contemporary" in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature

2. Genre specificity of the "History of my contemporary"

3. Literary portrait as part of the artistic originality of the "History of my contemporary"

4. Features of the chronotope "Stories of my contemporary"

Dissertation Introduction 2009, abstract on philology, Savelyeva, Elena Sergeevna

Currently, there is a tendency in the literature to address the problems of classical literature. And now, after many years, the works of writers who created the culture of the Russian people, laid the foundations of the modern Russian language, and participated in historical events are worthy of attention. Undoubtedly, one of these writers is Vladimir Galpktionovich Korolenko, a great humanist, a fighter for justice and freedom, the author of many fiction and journalistic works, in particular, the memoir novel “The History of My Contemporary”.

The research of scientists in the field of classical works is carried out in two directions: firstly, these are attempts to reinterpret texts that have already become textbooks, studied by many generations of scientists, and secondly, the search for new, not yet covered by the attention of the spiders of the classics. “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, undoubtedly, is one of the works insufficiently covered in literary criticism.

The relevance of this study. 1) The novel in question, The History of My Contemporary, is considered to be one of the pinnacle works in Russian literature, but no special studies have been carried out on this work. 2) This study allows us to visually reflect the analysis of the features of the author's consciousness, the specifics of its manifestation; since, on the one hand, all scientists and researchers recognize the ultimate activation of the author's personality in autobiographical prose, on the other hand, this problem has rarely become the subject of special consideration. 3) Turning to this novel by V. G. Korolenko as a work with documentary elements allows, looking into the past and understanding the problems of past years, to understand one’s own time both from the point of view of literary criticism and from the point of view of history.

The novelty of the dissertation. 1. In the dissertation research, the autobiographical novel-memoir “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko is subjected to such an integral study for the first time. 2. Significantly new judgments about the specifics of this work as a kind of genre symbiosis. We define the genre of "The History of My Contemporary" as an autobiographical reminiscence novel. 3. During the literary analysis of the work, we for the first time presented a classification of the literary portraits of the novel, made a number of significant conclusions regarding the architectonics of the work, the features of the depiction of characters and the specifics of the chronotope.

The theoretical and methodological basis of the dissertation research is the principles of cultural-historical and comparative-historical research methods, as well as the provisions and concepts developed in the works of M. M. Bakhtin, B, O! Kormap, Yu. M. Lotman, D. S. Likhachev, G. O. Vinokura, V. V. Vshknrpdopya, G. I. Pospelova, G. A. Belaya, B. M. Eikhenbaum, Yu. II. Tynyanov, L. Ya. Ginzburg, S. S. Averiitsev, A. G. Tartakovsky, I. A. Nikolina, A. B. Esin, I. O. Shaitanov and others.

The used literary categories are considered in historical and theoretical terms, the history of the formation of the genre of artistic autobiography is traced, attempts are made to analyze the principles of creating images of heroes, to identify artistic means of expressing the author's position in an autobiographical memoir novel.

In determining the place of the "History of my contemporary" in the writer's work, we studied the works of D. P. Ovsiaiko-Kulikovskiy (141), I. D. Shakhovskaya (210), A. V. Khrabrovitsky (196), G. A. Byaly (40 ), and also got acquainted with the dissertation research of recent years, dedicated to the work of V. G. Korolenko. These are the works of G. Z. Gorbunova (“Korolenko and Dostoevsky” (56)), S. N. Guskov (“V, G, Korolenko and L. N. Tolstoy: the problem of the ethical position of the writer” (63)), Yu. G Gushchina (“Essay cycle by V. G. Korolenko “In the year of hunger”: Creative history and genre originality” (64)), N. N. Gushchina (“V. G. Korolenko and literary populism (1870-1880s) )" (65)), D. A* Zavelskaya ("The semantic and artistic unity of the text in the first works of V. G. Korolenko" (79)), I. V. Kochergina ("V. G" Korolenko and literary criticism and journalism end of the 19th century” (102)), P. E. Lyon (“Literary position of V. G. Korolenko” (109)), L. I. Skreminskaya (“West - East” - spiritual and creative searches of V. G. Korolenko" (170)), V. R. Tagarinova ("Poetics of stories and essays by V. G * Korolenko" (180)), A. V. Trukhapenko ("Some style features of stories and novels by V. G. Korolenko: (Principles portraiture and coloring as a means of expressing the author's idea)" (184)), O. L. Fetiseiko ("The story "Artist Ala mov "and the unrealized plan of V. G. Korolenko" In quarrels with a younger brother "" (192)).

After analyzing the direction of these works, we see that the researchers limited themselves to problem-thematic analysis or analysis of the main specifics of individual works or cycles.

The object of research is the autobiographical novel-memoir “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko.

The novel is recognized as the leading genre of literature of the last centuries. Despite the fact that this genre is the subject of deep reflections of writers, it attracts close attention literary scholars and critics, he still remains a mystery,

Hegel, comparing the novel with the traditional epic, wrote that the novel lacks the “originally poetic state of the world” inherent in the epic, there is a “conflict” between the poetry of the heart and the prose of everyday relations opposing it, and “prosaically ordered reality.” V. G. Belinsky , calling the novel an epic of private life, defined the subject of this genre in this way: “the fate of a private person”, “everyday life.” M. M. Bakhtin expressed similar thoughts in his work “Epos and the Novel (On the Methodology of Studying the Novel)” (19). The scientist claims that “the hero of the novel is shown not as ready and unchanged, but as becoming, changing, educated by life”, he “combines both positive and negative traits, both low and high, both funny and serious ”, The novel shows a “living contact” of a person “with an unprepared, becoming modernity”, “more deeply, essentially, sensitively and quickly” than any other genre, “reflects the formation of reality itself”.

The genre of the novel arises and consolidates where there is interest in a person who in one way or another differs from the average image of a citizen, who breaks out of the framework accepted in society, stereotypes of behavior.

The synthetic character of the genre nature of the novel is undeniable. This genre incorporates features of many other genres. “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Gone with the Wind” by M. Mitchell, “Quiet Flows the Don” by M. A. Sholokhov - in these works, which captured not only the private life of people, but also the events of the national historical mastggab, there are features epics. Novels are also able to embody the meanings characteristic of the parable. According to O. A. Sedakova, “in the depths of the Russian novel there is usually something like a parable” (167, 12). It is impossible to deny the involvement of the novel in the traditions of hagiography - the hagiographic beginning is clearly expressed in the works of Dostoevsky and Leskov.

As a genre prone to synthesizing, the novel, unlike other, less complex genres (story, essay, story) that preceded it, operating in various limited areas of understanding the artistic world, turned out to be able to bring together! literature with life in its diversity and complexity, inconsistency and richness. This genre is able not only to combine the content principles of many genres, both serious and humorous, with unconstrained freedom, but also to transform their structural properties.

The most important feature of the novel is the author's close attention to the microenvironment surrounding the characters, in which they act, live, and communicate. Without recreating the microenvironment, it is very difficult for a writer to reveal inner world character. Novels, focusing on the relationship of a person with a reality close to him and, as a rule, giving preference to internal action, have become a kind of center of literature. They most seriously influenced all other genres, even transformed them. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, there was a romanization of verbal art: when the novel comes into literature, other genres change dramatically, “romanize to a greater or lesser extent.”

The subject of study is the author, who is also the hero of this work, in terms of his role in the artistic organization of the text, the means of expressing the author's position and creating the image of the main character. And although logic requires considering the problem in the “author-hero” order, we first consider the problem of the hero, then the author, leaving the traditional order of concepts in the formulation of the topic.

One of the central problems of social thought, artistic creativity and culture in Lately became the spiritual formation of a person, changes taking place not only in his life, but also in his soul. Internal action successfully competes with external action here, the hero's consciousness in its diversity and complexity, with its endless dynamics and psychological nuances, comes to the fore.

The purpose of the dissertation research is to comprehend the theoretical aspects of the problem of the genre belonging of a work with an autobiographical orientation, to determine the place of the “History of my contemporary” in the context of the work of V. G. Korolenko and to consider the poetics of the novel-memories.

To do this, the following tasks have to be solved:

1) generalize and systematize literary studies on the problems of artistic autobiographical literature;

2) comprehend the theoretical aspects of the stated problem;

3) determine the position of the novel "The History of My Contemporary" in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature and in the work of V. G. Korolenko;

4) consider the features of the genre of the work under study;

5) explore the system of images, features of the literary portraits of the "History of my contemporary", classify them;

6) study the chronotopic structure of the novel.

The structure of the work is determined by the nature of this dissertation research and is organized in accordance with its purpose and objectives. The dissertation consists of an introduction, two chapters, conclusion, bibliography. When working with texts, we studied two collected works of V. G. Korolenko: in 9 volumes, 1914, and in 10 volumes, 1954. References in the text of the dissertation are taken from later collected works.

Conclusion of scientific work dissertation on the topic ""The history of my contemporary" V.G. Korolenko: artistic originality"

Conclusions on the 2nd chapter:

1. Generalization, systematization and analysis of literary works on the problem of the genre nature of artistic autobiography give reason to believe that the genre of autobiography at the present stage of its formation is complex, it has features of confession, chronicle, memoirs, and in Russian literature - lives, confessions and sermons. The main stages of the evolution of the genre: ancient biography, medieval life, autobiographies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, autobiographies of the 19th and 20th centuries. The main elements of the specifics of the works of this genre are: 1) documentary (to varying degrees); 2) aesthetic significance; 3) the identity of the author and the narrator, 4) the features of the chronotope (fundamentally retrospective organization of the narrative, the principle of double vision),

5) setting to recreate the history of individual life, 6) some features of poetics, etc.

2. After considering autobiographical genres, the genre of "The Stories of My Contemporary" is defined by us as an autobiographical novel-memoir. The synthesis of various genres in the autobiographical prose of V. G. Korolenko, in our opinion, most accurately confirms the stated thesis about the orientation of this author to a large epic form and novelistic thinking.

3. An important part of the "History of my contemporary", which carries a significant semantic and organizing narrative load, are literary portraits that make up a broad detailed picture of the life of Russia in the 60-80s of the XIX century. In our study, we single out story-portraits, memory-portraits and type-portraits. The classification is based on the passage of time in the portrait relative to the main narrative.

4. The chronotope of an autobiographical novel-memoir has several components: calendar time (such a variety of it as biographical is presented), event time (historical, everyday time, chronotope of the road, meetings), perceptual time (author's chronotope). After analyzing the various chapters of the History of My Contemporary from the point of view of the length of the action in time, we see that the choice of speech means largely depends on the type of text. When choosing one or another means, V. G. Korolenko is guided by his communicative intentions. He achieves the greatest accuracy of description, expressiveness of narration and clarity of logical reasoning. When describing phenomena, objects, verbs predominate in the text imperfect form with the meaning of a repeated and specific procedural action (example 1. 1 and 1. 2). For such a type of text as narration, the use of perfective verbs with the meaning of instantaneous action (example 2.5), or a process limited in time (2.6), is typical, when we are talking about isolated cases, or imperfective verbs with the meaning of a constant, everyday action (2. 2), when it comes to ordinary and repeatedly repeated events. In reasoning, the temporal structure to the greatest extent depends on the communicative intentions of the speaker and is subject to the general logical structure of the text.

Conclusion

In the works of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, which have great weight in the Russian literary heritage, captures the historical memory of Russia, the spiritual creation of its best representatives, the inextricable link between generations.

The creative heritage of V. G. Korolenko is great and varied - here are rare variations of small genres (pictures, pages, excerpts), and allegorical (fairy tales, legends, fantasies), journalism and works belonging to the genres of documentary and documentary-biographical prose (portraits , letters, memoirs, observations, stories, essays, stories). However, everywhere - in journalism and everyday life - everywhere you can see a novelist, a prose writer with his own style - in the traditions of the classics, but at the same time sharply modern, propagandistic, oratorical.

The autobiographical novel-recollection "The History of My Contemporary", which is the pinnacle of the writer's entire work, is a work of a complex genre that includes most of the above. That is why "The History of My Contemporary" is the final work of V. G. Korolenko.

The history of my contemporary” occupies a central place in the work of V. G. Korolenko, absorbing everything written by him before her and illuminating part of the author’s life framed by a wide panorama of the life of society in the 60-80s. XIX century.

In the center of the analyzed work is a creative person. Fate outstanding personality attracted the attention of writers throughout the history of literature. The image of the hero embodies the aesthetic and social ideals of the artist. Ideals are a moving, developing category, just like a person himself. The personality of the author is an active principle.

In the novel under study, an artistic image of a creative personality is created. Even such traditional for biographical narrative methods of creating the image of the hero as a biographical element, portrait characteristics, a system of leitmotifs allow you to accurately recreate the image of the hero, and psychological characteristics make it convincing and reliable. The author managed to show the complex interaction of a creative person and the environment through a biographical, cultural and historical context.

Literary portraits are an important part of the "History of my contemporary" We are creating a classification that separates the literary portraits of the "History of my contemporary" portraits-history, portraits-memoirs and portraits-types. The classification is based on the passage of time in the portrait relative to the main narrative.

artistic time and art space- essential forms of creating the image of the hero. The plot is based on a part of the hero's life - from early childhood to his arrival in Nizhny Novgorod. We analyze the various chapters of The History of My Contemporary from the point of view of the length of the action in time and come to the conclusion that the choice of speech means largely depends on the type of text. When choosing one or another means, V. G. Korolenko is guided by his communicative intentions. He achieves the greatest accuracy of description, expressiveness of narration and clarity of logical reasoning.

In our time, no doubt, it is necessary to turn more often to the works of classical literature for many reasons. Many works undeservedly bypassed by the attention of literary critics and the public raise problems that are not alien to modernity. Works with documentary elements help a person, having looked into the past and understood the problems of past years, to understand their own time. Turning to the "History of my contemporary" as a work of a major genre allows us to assess some of the trends in the modern literary process. It is also important that the works of the classics are highly ideological, and by reading them, a person raises his cultural level.

Let us outline a range of problems for further research. First, there are issues related to national idea, very clearly expressed in the "History of my contemporary". Secondly, these are the problems of studying a national autobiographical novel written by representatives of different cultures and nations, comparing the works of different authors.

Thus, we argue that "The History of My Contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko, being a highly moral work that reflects the essential features of the past, is modern in ideological orientation and should be present in the reading circle of the modern reader, and is also of interest to researchers of Russian literature at the turn of the XIX -XX centuries.

List of scientific literature Savelyeva, Elena Sergeevna, dissertation on the topic "Russian literature"

1. Averin B. V. Personality and work of V. G. Korolenko // Collected. cit.: In 5 volumes. M., 1989. T. 1.S. 5-22.

2. Averin B. V. Novels by V. V. Nabokov in the context of Russian autobiographical prose and poetry: Abstract of the thesis. dis. for the competition doctorate degrees. philol. Sciences. SPb., 1999. 32 p.

3. Averintsev S. S. Plutarch and ancient biography // Averintsev S. S. image of antiquity. St. Petersburg, 2004. S. 225-479.

4. Azbukin V. N. Literary and critical activity of Russian writers of the 19th century: Proc. allowance. Kazan, 1989. 228 p.

5. Allahverdov V. M. Psychology of art. An essay on the secret-emotional impact of works of art. SPb., 2001. 201 p.

6. Andronikov I. L. Sobr. cit.: In 3 vols. M., 1980. T. 2. S. 370-378.

7. Andronikova M. I. From the prototype to the image. On the problem of the portrait in literature and cinema. M., 1974. 200 p.

8. Arefieva I. T. Education of Russian symbolist writers as a historical

V. G. Korolenko. Collected works in ten volumes.

Volume five. History of my contemporary M., GIHL, 1954

Preparation of the text and notes by S. V. Korolenko

OCR Lovetskaya T. Yu.

From the author

In this book, I am trying to recall and revive a number of pictures of the past half century, as they were reflected in the soul, first of a child, then of a young man, then of an adult. Early childhood and the first years of my youth coincided with the time of liberation. The middle of life passed in a period of dark, first governmental, and then social reaction, and among the first movements of the struggle. Now I see much of what my generation dreamed about and fought for bursting into the arena of life anxiously and stormily. I think that many episodes from the time of my exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future. Our life trembles and shudders from sharp clashes between new beginnings and obsolete ones, and I hope to at least partly shed some light on some elements of this struggle.

But earlier I wanted to draw the attention of readers to the first movements of the nascent and growing consciousness. I knew that it would be difficult for me to focus on these distant memories under the rumble of the present, in which the peals of an approaching thunderstorm are heard, but I did not imagine how difficult it would be.

I am not writing the history of my time, but only the history of one life at that time, and I want the reader to first get acquainted with the prism in which it was reflected ... And this is possible only in a consistent story. Childhood and youth constitute the content of this first part.

One more note. These notes are not a biography, because I did not particularly care about the completeness of biographical information; not confession, because I do not believe in the possibility or usefulness of public confession; not a portrait, because it is difficult to paint one's own portrait with a guarantee of likeness. Any reflection differs from reality by the very fact that it is a reflection; reflection is obviously incomplete - even more so. It always, so to speak, reflects the chosen motives more densely, and therefore often, with all the truthfulness, more attractive, more interesting and, perhaps, purer than reality.

In my work, I strove for the fullest possible historical truth, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or bright features of artistic truth. There will be nothing here that I have not actually encountered, that I have not experienced, felt, or seen. And yet I repeat: I am not trying to give my own portrait. Here the reader will find only features from the "history of my contemporary", a person known to me better than all other people of my time ...

Part one
Early childhood

I
First impressions of life

I remember myself early, but my first impressions are scattered, like brightly lit islands among a colorless emptiness and fog.

The earliest of these memories is a strong visual impression of a fire. I could then go into my second year, but I still clearly see the flames above the roof of the shed in the yard, the walls of a large stone house strangely lit in the middle of the night and its windows reflecting with flame. I remember myself, warmly wrapped up, in someone's arms, among a bunch of people standing on the porch. From this indefinite crowd, the memory distinguishes the presence of the mother, while the father, limping, leaning on a stick, climbs the stairs of a stone house in the courtyard opposite, and it seems to me that he is walking into a fire. But that doesn't scare me. I am very interested in the helmets of firefighters flashing like firebrands around the yard, then one fire barrel at the gate and a schoolboy entering the gate with a shortened leg and a high set heel. I did not seem to feel any fear or anxiety, I did not establish a connection between the phenomena. For the first time in my life so much fire fell into my eyes, fire helmets and a schoolboy with a short leg, and I carefully examined all these objects against the deep background of night darkness. At the same time, I don’t remember the sounds: the whole picture only silently shimmers in my memory with floating reflections of a crimson flame.

I remember, then, several completely insignificant cases when they held me in their arms, appeased my tears or amused me. It seems to me that I remember, but very vaguely, my first steps ... My head was big in childhood, and when I fell, I often hit it on the floor. Once it was on the stairs. I was in a lot of pain and cried loudly until my father comforted me. special reception. He beat the step of the stairs with a stick, and this gave me satisfaction. Probably, I was then in a period of fetishism and assumed an evil and hostile will in a wooden board. And now they beat her for me, and she can’t even leave ... Of course, these words very roughly translate my feelings at that time, but I clearly remember the board and, as it were, the expression of her humility under the blows.

Subsequently, the same feeling was repeated in more complex form. I was already a few more. It was an unusually bright and warm moonlit evening. This is generally the first evening that I remember in my life. My parents had gone somewhere, my brothers must have been sleeping, the nurse went to the kitchen, and I was left with only one lackey, who bore the dissonant nickname Gandylo. The door from the anteroom to the courtyard was open, and from somewhere, out of the moonlit distance, came the rumble of wheels along the paved street. And for the first time I also singled out the rumble of wheels in my mind as a special phenomenon, and for the first time I did not sleep for so long ... I was scared - probably, they were talking about thieves during the day. It seemed to me that our yard in the moonlight was very strange and that a “thief” would certainly enter through the open door from the yard. It was as if I knew that the thief was a man, but at the same time he seemed to me not quite a man, but some kind of human-like mysterious creature that would do me harm with just its sudden appearance. This made me cry out loud.

I don’t know by what logic, but the footman Gandylo again brought his father’s stick and led me out onto the porch, where, perhaps in connection with a previous episode of the same kind, I began to beat the stairs hard. And this time it was satisfying again; my cowardice had subsided so much that a couple more times I fearlessly went out alone, without Gandyl, and again beat the imaginary thief on the stairs, reveling in the peculiar feeling of my courage. The next morning, I enthusiastically told my mother that yesterday, when she was not there, a thief came to us, whom Gandyl and I beat hard. Mother condescendingly agreed. I knew that there was no thief and that my mother knew it. But I loved my mother very much at that moment because she did not contradict me. It would be hard for me to give up that imaginary being, which I first feared, and then positively “felt”, with a strange moonlight, between my stick and the rung of the stairs. It was not a visual hallucination, but there was some kind of ecstasy from his victory over fear ...

Another island in my memory is a trip to Chisinau to my paternal grandfather ... From this trip I remember crossing the river (I think Prut), when our carriage was installed on a raft and, smoothly swaying, separated from the shore, or the shore separated from it - I haven't figured it out yet. At the same time, a detachment of soldiers was crossing the river, and, I remember, the soldiers sailed in twos and threes on small square rafts, which, it seems, does not happen when troops cross ... I looked at them with curiosity, and they looked into our carriage and they said something incomprehensible to me ... It seems that this crossing was in connection with the Sevastopol war ...

On the same evening, shortly after crossing the river, I experienced the first feeling of sharp disappointment and resentment ... It was dark inside the spacious travel carriage. I was sitting in someone's arms in front, and suddenly my attention was attracted by a reddish dot, now flashing, then fading away in the corner, in the place where my father was sitting. I started laughing and reached out to her. Mother said something warning, but I was so eager to get to know an interesting object or creature more closely that I began to cry. Then my father moved towards me a small red star, tenderly hiding under the ashes. I reached out to her with the index finger of my right hand; for a while it did not come, but then suddenly it flared up brighter, and a sharp bite suddenly burned me. I think that in terms of the strength of the impression now, this could only be equal to a strong and unexpected bite of a poisonous snake, lurking, for example, in a bouquet of flowers. The light seemed to me deliberately cunning and evil. Two or three years later, when I remembered this episode, I ran to my mother, began to talk and began to cry. These were again tears of resentment ...

A similar disappointment caused me the first bath. The river made an enchanting impression on me: I was new, strange and beautiful small greenish waves of swell breaking under the walls of the bath, and the way they played with sparkles, fragments of sky blue and bright pieces of the bath, as if broken. All this seemed to me cheerful, lively, cheerful, attractive and friendly, and I begged my mother to quickly bring me into the water. And suddenly - an unexpected and sharp impression of either cold or burn ... I cried loudly and thrashed so in my mother's arms that she almost dropped me. My bath this time did not take place. While my mother was splashing in the water with an incomprehensible pleasure for me, I sat on the bench, puffed up, looked at the crafty swell, which continued to play just as temptingly with fragments of the sky and the bath, and got angry ... At whom? It looks like a river.

These were the first disappointments: I rushed towards nature with the trust of ignorance, she answered with spontaneous dispassion, which seemed to me deliberately hostile ...

Another one of those primary sensations, when a natural phenomenon for the first time remains in consciousness isolated from the rest of the world, as a special and sharply finished one, with its main properties. This is a memory of the first walk in pine forest. Here I was positively fascinated by the lingering noise of the forest tops, and I stopped in my tracks on the path. No one noticed this, and our entire society moved on. The path, a few sazhens ahead, steeply dipped downwards, and I watched how, at this break, first the legs, then the bodies, then the heads of our company disappeared. I was waiting with a terrible feeling when the last bright white hat of Uncle Heinrich, the tallest of my mother's brothers, would disappear, and, finally, I was left alone ... I seem to have felt that “alone in the forest” is, in fact, scary, but, as if spellbound, he could neither move nor utter a sound, and only listened to now a quiet whistle, now a ringing, now a vague voice and sighs of the forest, merging into a drawn-out, deep, endless and meaningful harmony, in which both the general rumble and the separate voices of living giants, and swaying, and quiet creaking of red trunks ... All this, as it were, penetrated me in an exciting powerful wave ... I ceased to feel separate from this sea of ​​\u200b\u200blife, and it was so strong that when they missed me and my mother's brother returned behind me, then I stood in the same place and did not respond ... Uncle approaching me, in a light suit and a straw hat, I saw like a stranger, an unfamiliar person in a dream ...

Subsequently, this minute often arose in my soul, especially during hours of fatigue, as a prototype of deep, but living peace ... Nature affectionately beckoned the child at the beginning of his life with her endless, incomprehensible mystery, as if promising somewhere in infinity the depth of knowledge and the bliss of unraveling …

How, however, rudely our words express our feelings ... There is also a lot of incomprehensible speech in the soul that cannot be expressed harsh words, like the speeches of nature ... And this is exactly where the soul and nature are one ...

All these are scattered, separate impressions of a semi-conscious existence, as if connected by nothing but a personal sensation. The last one is moving to new apartment... And not even a move (I don’t remember it, just as I don’t remember my previous apartment), but again the first impression of the “new house”, of the “new courtyard and garden”. All this seemed to me a new world, but strange: then this memory falls out of my memory. I remembered it only a few years later, and when I remembered, I was even surprised, because it seemed to me at that time that we had lived in this house forever and that in general there were no major changes in the world. The main background of my impressions over several childhood years is an unconscious confidence in the complete completeness and immutability of everything that surrounded me. If I had a clear understanding of creation, then I would probably say that my father (whom I knew was lame) was created with a stick in his hand, that God created my grandmother precisely as a grandmother, that my mother was always just as beautiful a blue-eyed woman with a blond plait, that even the shed behind the house was born lopsided and with green lichen on the roof. It was a quiet, steady rise vitality, which smoothly carried me along with the surrounding world, and the shores of the third-party immense world, along which one could notice the movement, were not visible to me then ... And I myself, it seemed, was always the same boy with a big head, and my older brother was somewhat taller me, and the younger one below ... And these mutual relations were to remain forever ... We sometimes said: “when we grow up”, or: “when we die”, but it was a stupid phrase, empty, without living content ...

One morning my younger brother, who both fell asleep and got up before me, came to my bed and said with a special expression in his voice:

- Get up, hurry ... What can I show you!

- What's happened?

- You'll see. Hurry, I won't wait.

And he again went out into the yard with the air of a serious man who does not want to waste time. I hurriedly dressed and followed him out. It turned out that some men unknown to us completely destroyed our front porch. He was left with a pile of boards and various wooden rot, and the exit door hung strangely high above the ground. And most importantly - under the door gaped a deep wound made of peeling plaster, dark logs and piles ... The impression was sharp, partly painful, but even more amazing. The brother stood motionless, deeply interested, and followed with his eyes every movement of the carpenters. I joined in his silent contemplation, and soon my sister joined us both. And so we stood for a long time, saying nothing and not moving. Three or four days later, the new porch was ready in place of the old one, and it seemed to me positively that the physiognomy of our house had completely changed. The new porch was obviously "attached", while the old one seemed to be an organic part of our venerable whole house, like a person's nose or eyebrows.

And most importantly, the first impression of the “inside out” and the fact that under this smoothly planed and painted surface are hidden raw, rotten piles and gaping voids were deposited in the soul ...

II
My father

By family tradition, our family came from some Mirgorod Cossack colonel, who received the heraldic nobility from the Polish kings. After my grandfather's death, my father, who went to the funeral, brought back an intricate seal, which depicted a boat with two dog heads at the bow and stern, with a crenellated turret in the middle. When one day we, the children, asked what it was, the father replied that it was our “coat of arms” and that we had the right to print our letters to them, while other people did not have this right. This thing is called in Polish rather strangely: “Korabl i Lodzia” (ark and boat), but what this makes sense, the father himself cannot explain to us; perhaps it doesn’t make any sense ... But there is also a coat of arms, so it’s called more simply: “pchła na bęnbenku hopki tnie”, and it makes more sense, because fleas bit the Cossacks and the gentry during campaigns ... And, taking a pencil, he quickly sketched on paper a flea dancing on a drum, surrounding it with a shield, a sword and all heraldic attributes. He drew decently, and we laughed. Thus, to the very first idea of ​​​​our noble “kleinods”, my father added a hint of mockery, and it seems to me that he had it deliberately. My great-grandfather, according to my father, was a regimental clerk, my grandfather was a Russian official, like my father. It seems that they never owned serf souls and lands ... To restore their hereditary - the rights of the nobility, the father never aspired, and when he died, we turned out to be “sons of a court adviser”, with the rights of a placeless service nobility, without any real connections with the nobility, yes, it seems, and with any other.

The image of my father remained quite clear in my memory: a man of medium height, with a slight tendency to be overweight. As an official of that time, he carefully shaved; his features were fine and handsome: an aquiline nose, large brown eyes, and lips with strongly curved upper lines. It was said that in his youth he looked like Napoleon the First, especially when he put on a Napoleonic cocked hat. But it was hard for me to imagine Napoleon lame, and my father always walked with a stick and slightly dragged his left leg ...

On his face there was always an expression of some kind of hidden sadness and concern. Only occasionally did it clear up. Sometimes he would take us to his office, let us play and crawl on our own, draw pictures, tell funny anecdotes and fairy tales. Probably, in the soul of this man there was a large reserve of complacency and laughter: he even gave his teachings a semi-humorous form, and at that moment we loved him very much. But these glimpses became less and less over the years, natural gaiety was increasingly twitching with melancholy and care. In the end, he was only enough to somehow live up to our upbringing, and in more conscious years we no longer had any inner closeness with my father ... So he went down to the grave, little known to us, his children. And only long later, when the years of youthful carelessness had passed, did I collect feature after feature that I could about his life, and the image of this deeply unhappy man came to life in my soul - both dearer and more familiar than before.

He was an official. The objective history of his life is therefore preserved in the "track records". Born in 1810, in 1826 he entered the scribes... He died in 1868 with the rank of court counselor... Here is a meager canvas, on which, however, the patterns of all human life were embroidered... Hopes, expectations, glimpses of happiness, disappointment... Among the yellowed papers, one , actually unnecessary later, but which the father saved as a memory. This is a semi-official letter from Prince Vasilchikov regarding the appointment of his father as a county judge in the city of Zhitomir. “This court,” writes Prince Vasilchikov, “on the occasion of the magistrate joining it, accepting a wider, and consequently more important range of actions, requires a presiding judge who, fully understanding his appointment, would give the legal proceedings a satisfactory start.” In these types, the prince chooses his father. At the end of the letter, the “nobleman” with great attention enters the position of a modest official, as a family man, for whom the transfer is fraught with inconvenience, but at the same time indicates that the new appointment opens up wide prospects for the future for him, and asks to come as soon as possible ... the lines are written by the author of the letter with his own hand, and the tone is imbued with respect. It was a modest, now forgotten, unsuccessful, but still reform, and the brilliant nobleman, tyrant and satrap, like all the nobles of that time, however, not devoid of some "good intentions and impulses", called a modest official in whom he recognized a new man for a new business...

It was ... in 1849, and my father was offered the position of a county judge in a provincial city. Twenty years later he died in the same position in a remote county town ...

So, he was an obvious loser in the service ...

For me, there is no doubt that this is due to his quixotic honesty.

The environment does not really appreciate exceptions that it does not understand, and therefore is worried ... Each time at the new place of the father's service, the same scenes were invariably repeated: representatives of different urban classes appeared to the father "according to the time-honored custom" with offerings. Father refused at first quite calmly. The next day, the deputations came with offerings in an increased amount, but the father met them already rudely, and on the third unceremoniously drove the “representatives” with a stick, and they crowded at the door with an expression of amazement and fright ... Subsequently, having familiarized themselves with the activities of the father, everyone was imbued with him deep respect. Everyone admitted, from a petty merchant to the provincial authorities, that there is no such force that would force a judge to prevaricate against conscience and the law, but ... and at the same time they found that if the judge, in addition, accepted moderate “thanks”, then it would be clearer, simpler and in general "more human" ...

Already in the period of my rather conscious life, quite a bright episode of this kind. In the county court there was a trial of a rich landowner, Count E-sky, with a poor relative, it seems, the widow of his brother. The landowner was a magnate with great connections, means and influence, which he actively used. The widow conducted the process “by the right of poverty”, without paying stamp duties, and everyone predicted her failure, since the case was still complicated, and pressure was put on the court. Before the end of the matter, the count himself appeared at our place: his carriage with coats of arms stopped two or three times at our modest house, and a lanky haiduk in livery stuck out at our rickety porch. The first two times the count behaved majestically, but cautiously, and his father only coldly and formally pushed his approaches away. But the third time, he probably made a direct offer. The father, suddenly flaring up, cursed the aristocrat with some indecent word and pounded with a stick. The count, red and furious, left his father with threats and quickly got into his carriage ...

The widow also came to her father, although he did not particularly like these visits. The poor woman, in mourning and with tearful eyes, oppressed and timid, came to her mother, told her something and wept. It seemed to the poor thing that she still had something else to explain to the judge; probably it was all unnecessary trifles, which the father only brushed aside and uttered his usual phrase in such cases:

- A! Interpret the patient with the assistant doctor! .. Everything will be done according to the law ...

The process was decided in favor of the widow, and everyone knew that she owed this solely to the firmness of her father ... The Senate somehow unexpectedly soon approved the decision, and the modest widow immediately became one of the richest landowners not only in the district, but, perhaps, in the province.

When she again appeared in our apartment, this time in a carriage, everyone hardly recognized her as the former modest petitioner. Her mourning was over, she seemed even younger and shone with joy and happiness. Her father received her very cordially, with the benevolence that we usually feel for people who owe us a lot. But when she asked for a “private conversation”, she soon left the office with a reddened face and tears in her eyes. Kind woman she knew that the change in her position entirely depended on the firmness, perhaps even some official heroism of this modest lame man ... But she herself was unable to express her gratitude to him in anything significant ...

It upset her, even offended her. The next day she came to our apartment when my father was at work, and my mother accidentally left home, and brought various materials and goods with which she filled up all the furniture in the living room. By the way, she called her sister and brought her a huge doll, beautifully dressed, with big blue eyes that closed when she was put to bed ...

The mother was very frightened when she found all these gifts. When my father came home from court, one of the most violent outbursts that I can remember broke out in our apartment. He scolded the widow, threw things on the floor, blamed his mother, and calmed down only when a cart appeared in front of the entrance, on which they piled all the gifts and sent them back.

But here an unexpected difficulty arose. When the turn came to the doll, the sister resolutely protested, and her protest took on such a dramatic character that the father, after several attempts, nevertheless yielded, although with great displeasure.

“Through you I became a bribe-taker,” he said angrily, going to his room.

Everyone looked at it then as an aimless eccentricity.

“Well, to whom, please tell me, harm from gratitude,” one virtuous judge told me, “who did not take bribes,” think: after all, the matter is over, the person feels that he owes you everything, and goes with a grateful soul ... And you almost like dogs... For what?

I am almost certain that Father never discussed this matter in terms of immediate harm or benefit. I guess that he entered into life with great and, probably, not quite usual expectations for that time. But life erased it in a gray and dirty environment. And he cherished, as the last shrine, this feature, which distinguished him not only from the crowd of notorious "bribe-takers", but also from the environment virtuous people the then golden mean ... And the more difficult it was for him with a large and ever-growing family, the more sensitively and exceptionally he fenced off his spiritual independence and pride ...

At the same time, one feature was a kind of psychological mystery for me later: all around stood (precisely “stood” like a rotten swamp) rampant bribery and untruth. The "officials" of the very court where my father served, undoubtedly, took right and left, and, moreover, not only thanks, but also notorious "sweeps". I remember how one “respectable” gentleman, a good friend of our family, a lively and witty man, at one evening with us in a rather large company, extremely picturesquely told how he once helped a Jewish smuggler to evade responsibility and save a huge consignment of seized goods ... The smugglers promised to enrich the petty official who was just beginning his career, but… he fulfilled their request before they did their promise… For the sake of calculation, he was appointed a date at night in some secluded place, where he waited until dawn… I remember very vividly picture description this night; The official was waiting for the Jew, as "in love with his beloved." He sensitively listened to the sounds of the night, he feverishly rose to meet every rustle ... And the whole society followed with breathtaking attention the transitions from hope to disappointment in this bribery drama ... When it turned out that the official had been cheated, the drama was resolved by general laughter, under which, however, , guessed and indignation against the Jews, and some sympathy for the deceived. My father was right there, and my memory draws a clear picture: a card table, lit by tallow candles, behind it are four partners. Among them is my father, and against him is the hero of a smuggled anecdote, accompanying with witticisms every card thrown. Father laughs...

In general, he treated the environment with great complacency, protecting from untruth only a small circle on which he had a direct influence. I remember several times when he came home from the court deeply distressed. Once, when his mother, looking with anxious concern at his upset face, gave him a bowl of soup, he tried to eat, ate two or three spoonfuls and pushed the bowl away.

“I can't,” he said.

- Is it over? the mother asked quietly.

- Yes ... hard labor ...

- My God! - scared mother said. – And what about you?

- A! Interpret the patient with the assistant doctor, - the father answered with irritation: - I! I!.. What can I do!

But then he added softly:

“I did what I could… The law is clear.

He did not dine that day and did not, as usual, go to bed after dinner, but walked around the study for a long time, tapping his stick as he went. When, about two hours later, my mother sent me to the study to see if he had fallen asleep, and, if he was not sleeping, to invite him to tea, I found him on my knees in front of the bed. He fervently prayed to the image, and his whole somewhat obese body trembled ... He wept bitterly.

But I am sure that these were tears of regret for the "victim of the law", and not a corrosive consciousness of one's guilt, as its tools. In this regard, his conscience was always unshakably calm, and when I now think about it, it becomes clear to me the main difference in the mood of honest people of that generation with the mood of our day. He recognized himself as responsible only for his personal activities. The caustic feeling of guilt for public untruth was completely unfamiliar to him. God, the king and the law stood for him at a height inaccessible to criticism. God is omnipotent and just, but on earth there are many triumphant scoundrels and suffering virtue. This is included in the unknown plans of the Supreme Justice - and nothing more. The king and the law are also inaccessible to human judgment, and if sometimes, with some applications of the law, the heart turns in the chest from pity and compassion, this is a natural misfortune that is not subject to any generalizations. One perishes from typhus, the other from the law. Unfortunate fate! It is the business of the judge to see that the law once put into motion is properly applied. But if this is not the case, if the bribed bureaucratic environment perverts the law to please the strong, he, the judge, will fight this within the limits of the court with all means available to him. If he has to suffer for it, he will suffer, but in case number such and such, any line entered by his hand will be pure from falsehood. And in this form, the case will go beyond the county court to the Senate, and maybe even higher. If the Senate agrees with his considerations, he will be sincerely glad for right side. If the senators are bribed by force and money, this is a matter of their conscience, and someday they will answer for this, if not before the king, then before God ... That laws can be bad, this again lies with the responsibility of the king before God, - he, the judge is just as not responsible for this as for the fact that sometimes thunder from a high sky kills an innocent child ...

Yes, it was an integral mood, a kind of stable balance of conscience. Their inner foundations did not waver by analysis, and honest people of that time did not know the deep spiritual discord arising from the consciousness of personal responsibility for “the whole order of things” ... I don’t know if this wholeness now exists in at least one bureaucratic soul in such inviolability and completeness. I think no. The time of this mood has gone forever, and the already conscious youth of my generation was captured by a corrosive, heavy, but creative consciousness of common responsibility ... My father died early. If he had lived longer, then undoubtedly we young people, engulfed in criticism, would have heard from him more than once the usual formula:

The preface was written at the end of 1905 and prefaced with the first chapters of The History of My Contemporary, which appeared in the January book Modern notes in 1906.

I could then go to the second year - Vladimir Galaktionovich was born on July 15 (old style), 1853 in Zhytomyr, Volyn province.

. ... to my paternal grandfather ... - Afanasy Yakovlevich Korolenko - grandfather of Vladimir Galaktionovich. Born in 1787, died around 1860 in Bessarabia. Served in the customs department. He was married to a Polish woman, Eva Malskaya.

. ... Heinrich's uncles - Heinrich Iosifovich Skurevich - a lawyer, judicial investigator ("Uncle Heinrich" in the story "At Night"). He died in the early 70s.

. ... the elder brother is Julian Galaktionovich Korolenko. Born February 16, 1851, died November 25, 1904. He studied first in the Zhytomyr, and then in the Rivne gymnasium, but did not finish the course. In the mid-70s he moved to St. Petersburg, where he worked as a proofreader. He had acquaintances with participants in the populist movement and provided them with some services. On March 4, 1879, he was arrested with his brothers and imprisoned in the Lithuanian Castle, but on May 11 of the same year he was released and left in St. Petersburg under covert police supervision. Subsequently, he lived in Moscow, where for many years he was a proofreader for Russkiye Vedomosti and delivered notes to this newspaper for the Moscow Chronicle department. Yulian Galaktionovich had literary abilities. In early youth, he was fond of writing poetry, translations and correspondent activities (see chapter XXIX in this volume, "My elder brother is becoming a writer"). Translated together with Vladimir Galaktionovich (under the common signature of Cor-o) Michelet's book "Loiseau" ("Bird", published by N.V. Vernadsky, St. Petersburg, 1878). Vladimir Galaktionovich appreciated his brother's literary abilities and subsequently tried to encourage him to more serious literary work. In one of his letters in 1886, V. G. wrote to his brother: “The question comes to me, why don’t you add literature to your studies ...” “I still can’t forget that the first impulses of thought that directed me along this path, I got it from you, you went ahead of me in this direction for a very long time, and I remember very well how some of your thoughts, your arguments in the heated “Kharaluzh” disputes raised whole strings of new ideas in me. Your literary abilities are undeniable, and I think now you can still use them. However, having left his literary hobbies quite early, Yulian Galaktionovich never returned to them.

. ... the youngest - Illarion Galaktionovich Korolenko (his family nickname was "Pepper", "Pepper"). Born October 21, 1854, died November 25, 1915. He studied at the Rovno real gymnasium, and then at the St. Petersburg construction school. In his youth, he worked as a proofreader. He was preparing to "go to the people" and for this purpose he studied locksmithing. In 1879, at the same time as Vladimir Galaktionovich, he was arrested and exiled to Glazov, Vyatka Province, where he served an administrative exile for five years. Living in Glazov, he was engaged in locksmith work, working in a workshop organized by him with a friend (see Book II of “The History of My Contemporary”, chapter “Life in Glazov”, about this). Upon his return from exile at the end of 1884, he lived in Nizhny Novgorod while working as a cashier at a steamship pier. Subsequently, he was an inspector of the Northern Insurance Company, in connection with which he traveled a lot. Incidentally, he lived in Astrakhan, was familiar with N. G. Chernyshevsky, whom he helped in compiling an index to his translation of Weber's "General History". Through Illarion Galaktionovich, VG Korolenko met Chernyshevsky. He also lived in Siberia, where he had many connections among political exiles. He spent the last years of his life in the Caucasus, in Dzhanhot, near Gelendzhik. Vladimir Galaktionovich was especially friendly with his brother Illarion from the earliest years; subsequently, he tried to reflect his image in two stories dedicated to childhood memories - "At Night" and "Paradox".

. … joined and sister. - V. G. Korolenko had two sisters. The eldest of them - Maria Galaktionovna (Vladimir Galaktionovich called her "Mashinka") - was born on October 7, 1856, died on April 8, 1917. She graduated from the Catherine Institute in Moscow, then studied at obstetric courses in St. Petersburg. She married Nikolai Alexandrovich Loshkarev, a student of the Military Surgical Academy, and in 1879 followed him into exile, to Krasnoyarsk. Upon returning from exile, the Loshkarev family lived for several years in Nizhny Novgorod. The second sister of V. G. Korolenko - Evelina Galaktionovna was born on January 20, 1861, died in September 1905. She studied at the gymnasium and then graduated from obstetric courses in St. Petersburg. When in 1879 almost all members of the Korolenko family were sent into exile, Evelina Galaktionovna, needing to earn money, took up proofreading (the usual work in the Korolenko family) and in 1882 she married a workmate, Mikhail Efimovich Nikitin.

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

Collected works in ten volumes

Volume 5. History of my contemporary. Book 1

History of my contemporary. Book 1

In this book, I am trying to recall and revive a number of pictures of the past half century, as they were reflected in the soul, first of a child, then of a young man, then of an adult. Early childhood and the first years of my youth coincided with the time of liberation. The middle of life passed in a period of dark, first governmental, and then social reaction, and among the first movements of the struggle. Now I see much of what my generation dreamed about and fought for bursting into the arena of life anxiously and stormily. I think that many episodes from the time of my exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future. Our life trembles and shudders from sharp clashes between new beginnings and obsolete ones, and I hope to at least partly shed some light on some elements of this struggle.

But earlier I wanted to draw the attention of readers to the first movements of the nascent and growing consciousness. I knew that it would be difficult for me to focus on these distant memories under the rumble of the present, in which the peals of an approaching thunderstorm are heard, but I did not imagine how difficult it would be.

I am not writing the history of my time, but only the history of one life at that time, and I want the reader to first get acquainted with the prism in which it was reflected ... And this is possible only in a consistent story. Childhood and youth constitute the content of this first part.

One more note. These notes are not a biography, because I did not particularly care about the completeness of biographical information; not confession, because I do not believe in the possibility or usefulness of public confession; not a portrait, because it is difficult to paint one's own portrait with a guarantee of likeness. Any reflection differs from reality by the very fact that it is a reflection; reflection is obviously incomplete - even more so. It always, so to speak, reflects the chosen motives more densely, and therefore often, with all the truthfulness, more attractive, more interesting and, perhaps, purer than reality.

In my work, I strove for the fullest possible historical truth, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or bright features of artistic truth. There will be nothing here that I have not actually encountered, that I have not experienced, felt, or seen. And yet I repeat: I am not trying to give my own portrait. Here the reader will find only features from the "history of my contemporary", a person known to me better than all other people of my time ...

Part one

Early childhood

I. First Impressions of Being

I remember myself early, but my first impressions are scattered, like brightly lit islands among a colorless emptiness and fog.

The earliest of these memories is a strong visual impression of a fire. I could then be in my second year, but I still clearly see the flames above the roof of the barn in the yard, the walls of a large stone house strangely lit in the middle of the night and its windows reflecting with flame. I remember myself, warmly wrapped up, in someone's arms, among a bunch of people standing on the porch. From this indefinite crowd, the memory distinguishes the presence of the mother, while the father, limping, leaning on a stick, climbs the stairs of a stone house in the courtyard opposite, and it seems to me that he is walking into a fire. But that doesn't scare me. I am very interested in the helmets of firefighters flashing like firebrands around the yard, then one fire barrel at the gate and a schoolboy entering the gate with a shortened leg and a high set heel. I did not seem to feel any fear or anxiety, I did not establish a connection between the phenomena. For the first time in my life so much fire fell into my eyes, fire helmets and a schoolboy with a short leg, and I carefully examined all these objects against the deep background of night darkness. At the same time, I don’t remember the sounds: the whole picture only silently shimmers in my memory with floating reflections of a crimson flame.

I remember, then, several completely insignificant cases when they held me in their arms, appeased my tears or amused me. It seems to me that I remember, but very vaguely, my first steps ... My head was big in childhood, and when I fell, I often hit it on the floor. Once it was on the stairs. I was in great pain and cried loudly until my father comforted me with a special reception. He beat the step of the stairs with a stick, and this gave me satisfaction. Probably, I was then in a period of fetishism and assumed an evil and hostile will in a wooden board. And now they beat her for me, and she can’t even leave ... Of course, these words very roughly translate my feelings at that time, but I clearly remember the board and, as it were, the expression of her humility under the blows.

Subsequently, the same sensation was repeated in a more complex form. I was already a few more. It was an unusually bright and warm moonlit evening. This is generally the first evening that I remember in my life. My parents had gone somewhere, my brothers must have been sleeping, the nurse went to the kitchen, and I was left with only one lackey, who bore the dissonant nickname Gandylo. The door from the anteroom to the courtyard was open, and from somewhere, out of the moonlit distance, came the rumble of wheels along the paved street. And for the first time I singled out the rumble of wheels in my mind as a special phenomenon, and for the first time I did not sleep for so long ... I was scared - probably, they were talking about thieves during the day. It seemed to me that our yard in the moonlight was very strange and that a “thief” would certainly enter through the open door from the yard. It was as if I knew that the thief was a man, but at the same time he seemed to me not quite a man, but some kind of human-like mysterious creature that would do me harm with just its sudden appearance. This made me cry out loud.

I don’t know by what logic, but the footman Gandylo again brought his father’s stick and led me out onto the porch, where, perhaps due to a previous episode of the same kind, I began to beat the stairs hard. And this time it was satisfying again; my cowardice was so gone that a couple more times I fearlessly went out alone, without Gandyla, and again beat the imaginary thief on the stairs, reveling in the peculiar feeling of my courage. The next morning, I enthusiastically told my mother that yesterday, when she was not there, a thief came to us, whom Gandyl and I beat hard. Mother condescendingly agreed. I knew that there was no thief and that my mother knew it. But I loved my mother very much at that moment because she did not contradict me. It would be hard for me to give up that imaginary being, which I first feared, and then positively “felt” with a strange moonlight between my stick and the step of the ladder. It was not a visual hallucination, but there was some kind of ecstasy from his victory over fear ...

In the rich literary heritage of V.G. Korolenko, there is one work in which the most character traits his life and work. This is a four-volume "History of my contemporary", on which Korolenko worked for more than fifteen years of his life. Korolenko showed the peasant “enmity”, different forms and stages of peasant protest even before “The History of My Contemporary”, the indefinite romantic impulses of the intelligentsia youth - the same way. But the merging of these two principles - this was, in essence, the new topic that had long worried him and led to the "History of my Contemporary". This was the very “middle of the process” with which Korolenko began the true “History of My Contemporary”; everything that preceded it was only an introduction to it. This "introduction" was the content of the first volume.

The first volume was published in 1906-1908 in the journals Modernity and Russian Wealth. He was highly appreciated by A. M. Gorky. Korolenko considered the chapter “On the Yammalakh Cliff” to be perhaps the most important part of his work, because it told the story of his liberation from such ideas that prevented him from finding himself as a writer and public figure. “This is the chapter that made me a writer,” he says. – After that I wrote “The Dream of Makara”…

The ideological content and meaning of the first volume of the "History" are closely related to the range of issues that occupied Korolenko even during the eve and maturation of the revolution of 1905 and were reflected in his Romanian essays, in Siberian stories, in the story "Not terrible". Korolenko spoke there about the power of tradition, about spontaneity, about the power of the everyday, familiar, about everything that creates a psychological basis for passive submission to the established social order, no matter how unfair it may be. In the first volume of History, the writer turns to the past, showing the roots of these phenomena in pre-reform Russia.

The second volume was published in 1910 (the first chapters in "Russian wealth") and in 1919 (in its entirety, in the publication "Zadruga"), the third volume - in 1921 ("Zadruga" and the fourth volume, hastily finished by a terminally ill writer, appeared in print after his death in The Voice of the Past.

The work on The History of My Contemporary proceeded outwardly under extremely unfavorable conditions. She was constantly pushed back by the circumstances of the current literary life, and, above all, by the turbulent events of living modernity: the events of 1905, which required a journalistic response, the fight against the death penalty (“Everyday Phenomenon” and “Features of Military Justice”, 1910-1911), the Beilis case, World War, during which the writer also lived away from Russia; colossal world upheavals of the revolutionary era. The History of My Contemporary was written over the course of seventeen years. Between the first volume and the subsequent one lay the years of war and two revolutions.

The autobiographical material of the "History of a Contemporary" was selected by the artist from the point of view of its typicality and historical significance.

The fact that the idea of ​​the "History" took shape under the influence of the events of 1905 is evidenced by the original author's preface to the first volume. Korolenko directly points to the topicality of his work; he believes that the image of "what his generation dreamed about and fought for" is of interest to the most living reality for the current time, when "our life wavers and shudders from the sharp collision of new beginnings with obsolete ones." The author even "came to mind - to start from the middle, with those events that are already connected by a direct living connection with the malice of the present day, as the first actions of the drama with its denouement." But since he wrote “not the history of his time, but the history of life at that time,” he wanted “the reader to first get acquainted with the prism in which it was reflected.” In the center for Korolenko was “time”, while the presentation of his personal biography was, according to his plan, only a prism reflecting the era. This resulted in self-restriction in the choice of biographical material: “All the facts, impressions, thoughts and feelings set forth in these essays are the facts of my life, my thoughts, my impressions and my feelings, as far as I am able to restore them with a certain degree of liveliness and without an increase in later layers. But here are not all the facts, not all the thoughts, not all the movements of the soul, but only those that I consider connected with one or another general interest motives.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Korolenko again felt the need to look back, to look back at the past of his generation, where the roots of his own new ideas and moods were located. The theme of “a quarrel with a younger brother”, partly reproduced by him in “Artist Alymov”, directed his attention towards the petrels of the 70s.

Korolenko repeatedly tried, in one form or another, to portray personal history against the backdrop of the struggle of the revolutionary part of Russian society with the autocratic system.

As Korolenko wrote in the preface: “In my work I strove for the fullest possible historical truth, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or bright features of artistic truth. I am not trying to give my own portrait... I have called to mind and revived a number of pictures of the past half-century... Now I see much of what my generation dreamed about and fought for, breaking into the arena of public life anxiously and stormily. I think that many episodes from the time of my exiled wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that struggle, have not lost even now the interest of the most living reality ... our life wavers and shudders from sharp clashes of new beginnings with obsolete ones. I hope to shed some light on some of the elements of this struggle.”

The History of My Contemporary remained unfinished. The book ends on the events connected with the return of V.G. Korolenko from Yakut exile in 1884.

Depicting the life path of his "Contemporary", in whose poetic outline it is easy to recognize the biography of the writer himself, Korolenko acquaints the reader with the development of the social movement of the 60-80s, with outstanding historical events of that time. The writer tried to give a typical image of the hero of his generation, a commoner in terms of living conditions, associated with the democratic aspirations of the eras of the sixties and seventies. The writer gives a broad generalization, reviving in his memory the most important episodes of his own life, brilliantly analyzing the spiritual searches of Korolenko, a high school student, a student, an "intelligent proletarian" and, finally, a "state criminal".

The range of topics depicted in the "History of my contemporary" is extensive and diverse. It depicts a family and a gymnasium, a student audience and illegal gatherings of the seventies, attic slums and prisons, offices of officials and the life of a peasant hut in a wide plan. The epic covers almost a thirty-year period: from the 50s to the mid-80s. The geographical scale is enormous. Here is the provincial Ukrainian village of Garny Lug and provincial city Zhitomir, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Kronstadt and Vyatka, Perm, Irkutsk, Berezovsky Pochinki abandoned to the ends of the world and, finally, the remote settlement of Amga, Yakutsk region.

In the depiction of the awakening and growing consciousness of the child, to which the first book of the History is dedicated, a critical attitude towards the structure of life is palpable. The idea of ​​the complete completeness and indestructibility of everything that surrounded the child is replaced by an understanding of the “wrong side” of life, some kind of untruth that underlies bourgeois reality. This feeling of the "wrong side" of life gradually passes into the consciousness of the young man. social injustice, in the conviction that the state of the landowners and the bourgeoisie is based on "lies from top to bottom."

The hero of the "History" goes through various stages of development, starting with a passion for the romance of the past.

The hero of the "History" - the young "contemporary" Korolenko - is carried away in the imagination "to unknown lands and unknown times"; he is already attracted by battles, chases, slashes. And somewhere out there, outside the estate, there is its own working life, unknown and alien. Alienation, contempt, enmity emanates from it into our enchanted confines... And there is nothing that would connect the life of imagination, dreams, impulse with this harsh, but real life of labor and patience...».

Many times previously depicted people from the people's environment are generalized under the influence of the revolution, into the collective image of the revolutionary people. As elsewhere in The History of My Contemporary, in the depiction of such a hero, old memories acquire the interest of the most vivid modernity.

A vivid memory of the collective image of the people was reflected by Korolenko on the pages of “The History of My Contemporary”, which unfolds against the joyful background of spring. This image of the people Korolenko was looking for throughout his literary activity and found it in his last work.

During his years of exile, he was "tempted" several times to run away and go underground. For the first time this thought seized him when he moved from Glazov to Berezovskie Pochinki; this plan, however, was absolutely fantastic, since it was possible to run to a certain Pyotr Ivanovich Nevolin, who was considered a dangerous revolutionary leader, but turned out to be a completely “peaceful” person. Then in Perm, after Korolenko's refusal of the oath, Yuri Bogdanovich appeared to him with a proposal to join the revolutionary organization. On the way to the Yakut region, he could have made a dangerous attempt to escape from the Tobolsk prison; the result of this attempt would be either death, in case of failure, or, if good luck, the final transition to an illegal position. In all these cases, Korolenko overcame his "temptations". For the first time, he was kept from escaping by the desire to come into closer contact with people's life in its very thickness; he refused the proposal of Yuri Bogdanovich because of his disagreement with the terrorist tactics of the Narodnaya Volya; chance prevented the escape from the Tobolsk prison. Korolenko recalls that at the decisive moment of his life, on the Yammalakh cliff, he went over all these facts in his memory and came to the decisive conclusion: no, he was not a revolutionary. In The History of My Contemporary, summing up all his previous reflections, he decides this question already in a final and general form.

Korolenko “had no faith either in terror or in its consequences…” One of the chapters of “The History of My Contemporary” has the following subtitles: “The Tragedy of the Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia. “Fight without the people.” Korolenko understood this tragedy in the position of the revolutionary intelligentsia already in his youth, he did not want to remain “without the people”.

It was precisely history - the history of society and the history of the individual in their inseparable fusion, the history of the people and the history of a person who seeks to link his fate with the people, while maintaining his individuality and dignity. This condition was extremely important for the hero of The History of My Contemporary. Sometimes he openly opposes himself to people from the people, if for some reason they offend his dignity. He is an educated man, he is an exile, he also knows a craft, and he demands respect for himself, without introducing the slightest shade of lordliness into his behavior.

If the "History of my contemporary" had not been cut short by the death of the author, he could have given other similar episodes related to a later time in his further narration.

The memory of the writer has preserved pictures of the life of the bureaucratic family. With great skill, Korolenko embodied in specific images figures of officials of the county court familiar to him from childhood - funny characters worthy of comedy plots - gloomy figures of the highest authorities. With special skill, Korolenko spoke about the gymnasium, creating a whole gallery of types of government teachers, supporters of dogmatic education.

The life of a remote province in the image of Korolenko in its own way reflected the events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, all sorts of orders from the "higher authorities" and government charters - all this was reflected in the life of the county town, and "The History of My Contemporary" creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these "actions" of the tsarist administration looked when they were put into practice. One of the episodes of the reform of 1861 is vividly depicted. The father, as usual, waved his hand: "Interpret the patient with the assistant doctor!" The old time bequeathed to the new part of its sad inheritance ... "

In a magnificent essay dedicated to his father, Korolenko tells how the concept of the immutability of the social order was destroyed and how responsibility for one’s own personal activity was replaced by “a caustic feeling of guilt for social untruth.

The life of a remote province in the image of Korolenko in its own way reflected the events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, government charters aimed at strengthening the power of the police and governors - all this was reflected in the life of the county town, and "The History of My Contemporary" creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these "actions" of the highest authorities looked when they were carried out in life.

It is known with what mood Korolenko went to Vyatka exile. He was ready to experience all the hardships of the "backwoods", just to "sink to the bottom of the people's life." However, the populist passions of the author of the "History" could not stand contact with reality. Illusions collapsed as soon as Korolenko found out harsh life villages. And only after getting rid of "preconceived notions", Korolenko was able to feel and understand the life of the Berezovsky Pochinki with such penetration that almost forty years later he reproduced it in the "History" with all the fullness of realistic colors and vivid details.

With a feeling of deep pain, Korolenko told about "sparks ... direct talent" that "were born and died in the deep forest." In conditions of almost primeval existence Korolenko saw a talented storyteller, painted the image of Gavri Biserov with his desire for poetry.

The story gives portraits of many participants in the social movement of the 60-70s. In this milieu there were also "amateurs from the revolution", random people who, after they fell into the hands of the police, gave treacherous testimony and considered it their duty to come out with lengthy repentances. However, Korolenko's exile wanderings brought him together with people of significant revolutionary temperament and unbending will, with participants in major political processes. He met with people involved in the case of Chernyshevsky and Pisarev.

A large place in the "History of my contemporary" is occupied by the student period of Korolenko's life. In vivid pictures, Korolenko depicts the half-starved existence of Korolenko during his studies at the Technological Institute, work in the proofreading bureau, and the “student rebellion” at the Petrovsky Academy.

The student years of the writer coincided with the period of the rise of the Russian social movement. Young people familiar with the ideas of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov came to the audience of institutes and universities. These young people huddled in attics and cellars, lived half-starving, and in their midst vague ideas about the liberation of the people ripened, issues of worldview and norms of behavior were discussed. The chapters devoted to the “artel of poor students” who lived in attic No. 12 give one of the most characteristic pictures in Russian literature of the life of raznochinstvo students.

The last chapters of the story most fully illuminate the activities of the populist intelligentsia. Artistic memoirs of Korolenko, of course, cannot claim to be a comprehensive coverage of the era. The author is sometimes subjective in assessing persons and contemporary phenomena of reality, sometimes he sets out historically significant material with less detail than material of limited significance. Nevertheless, in general, Korolenko's artistic memoirs are of great interest to the Soviet reader, who will find in them a vivid image of a significant period of Russian history.

I tried to shorten something, but, given that few people read 4 volumes, I left it like that.

Similar information.

In this book, I am trying to recall and revive a number of pictures of the past half century, as they were reflected in the soul, first of a child, then of a young man, then of an adult. Early childhood and the first years of my youth coincided with the time of liberation. The middle of life passed in a period of dark, first governmental, and then social reaction, and among the first movements of the struggle. Now I see much of what my generation dreamed about and fought for bursting into the arena of life anxiously and stormily. I think that many episodes from the time of my exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future. Our life trembles and shudders from sharp clashes between new beginnings and obsolete ones, and I hope to at least partly shed some light on some elements of this struggle.

But earlier I wanted to draw the attention of readers to the first movements of the nascent and growing consciousness. I knew that it would be difficult for me to focus on these distant memories under the rumble of the present, in which the peals of an approaching thunderstorm are heard, but I did not imagine how difficult it would be.

I am not writing the history of my time, but only the history of one life at that time, and I want the reader to first get acquainted with the prism in which it was reflected ... And this is possible only in a consistent story. Childhood and youth constitute the content of this first part.

One more note. These notes are not a biography, because I did not particularly care about the completeness of biographical information; not confession, because I do not believe in the possibility or usefulness of public confession; not a portrait, because it is difficult to paint one's own portrait with a guarantee of likeness. Any reflection differs from reality by the very fact that it is a reflection; reflection is obviously incomplete - even more so. It always, so to speak, reflects the chosen motives more densely, and therefore often, with all the truthfulness, more attractive, more interesting and, perhaps, purer than reality.

In my work, I strove for the fullest possible historical truth, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or bright features of artistic truth. There will be nothing here that I have not actually encountered, that I have not experienced, felt, or seen. And yet I repeat: I am not trying to give my own portrait. Here the reader will find only features from the "history of my contemporary", a person known to me better than all other people of my time ...

I remember myself early, but my first impressions are scattered, like brightly lit islands among a colorless emptiness and fog.

The earliest of these memories is a strong visual impression of a fire. I could then be in my second year, but I still clearly see the flames above the roof of the barn in the yard, the walls of a large stone house strangely lit in the middle of the night and its windows reflecting with flame. I remember myself, warmly wrapped up, in someone's arms, among a bunch of people standing on the porch. From this indefinite crowd, the memory distinguishes the presence of the mother, while the father, limping, leaning on a stick, climbs the stairs of a stone house in the courtyard opposite, and it seems to me that he is walking into a fire. But that doesn't scare me. I am very interested in the helmets of firefighters flashing like firebrands around the yard, then one fire barrel at the gate and a schoolboy entering the gate with a shortened leg and a high set heel. I did not seem to feel any fear or anxiety, I did not establish a connection between the phenomena. For the first time in my life so much fire fell into my eyes, fire helmets and a schoolboy with a short leg, and I carefully examined all these objects against the deep background of night darkness. At the same time, I don’t remember the sounds: the whole picture only silently shimmers in my memory with floating reflections of a crimson flame.

I remember, then, several completely insignificant cases when they held me in their arms, appeased my tears or amused me. It seems to me that I remember, but very vaguely, my first steps ... My head was big in childhood, and when I fell, I often hit it on the floor. Once it was on the stairs. I was in great pain and cried loudly until my father comforted me with a special reception. He beat the step of the stairs with a stick, and this gave me satisfaction. Probably, I was then in a period of fetishism and assumed an evil and hostile will in a wooden board. And now they beat her for me, and she can’t even leave ... Of course, these words very roughly translate my feelings at that time, but I clearly remember the board and, as it were, the expression of her humility under the blows.

Subsequently, the same sensation was repeated in a more complex form. I was already a few more. It was an unusually bright and warm moonlit evening. This is generally the first evening that I remember in my life. My parents had gone somewhere, my brothers must have been sleeping, the nurse went to the kitchen, and I was left with only one lackey, who bore the dissonant nickname Gandylo. The door from the anteroom to the courtyard was open, and from somewhere, out of the moonlit distance, came the rumble of wheels along the paved street. And for the first time I singled out the rumble of wheels in my mind as a special phenomenon, and for the first time I did not sleep for so long ... I was scared - probably, they were talking about thieves during the day. It seemed to me that our yard in the moonlight was very strange and that a “thief” would certainly enter through the open door from the yard. It was as if I knew that the thief was a man, but at the same time he seemed to me not quite a man, but some kind of human-like mysterious creature that would do me harm with just its sudden appearance. This made me cry out loud.

I don’t know by what logic, but the footman Gandylo again brought his father’s stick and led me out onto the porch, where, perhaps due to a previous episode of the same kind, I began to beat the stairs hard. And this time it was satisfying again; my cowardice was so gone that a couple more times I fearlessly went out alone, without Gandyla, and again beat the imaginary thief on the stairs, reveling in the peculiar feeling of my courage. The next morning, I enthusiastically told my mother that yesterday, when she was not there, a thief came to us, whom Gandyl and I beat hard. Mother condescendingly agreed. I knew that there was no thief and that my mother knew it. But I loved my mother very much at that moment because she did not contradict me. It would be hard for me to give up that imaginary being, which I first feared, and then positively “felt” with a strange moonlight between my stick and the step of the ladder. It was not a visual hallucination, but there was some kind of ecstasy from his victory over fear ...

Another island in my memory is a trip to Chisinau to visit my paternal grandfather ... From this trip, I remember crossing the river (I think Prut), when our carriage was installed on a raft and, smoothly swaying, separated from the shore or the shore separated from it - I haven't figured it out yet. At the same time, a detachment of soldiers was crossing the river, and, I remember, the soldiers sailed in twos and threes on small square rafts, which, it seems, does not happen when troops cross ... I looked at them with curiosity, and they looked into our carriage and they said something incomprehensible to me ... It seems that this crossing was in connection with the Sevastopol war ...

On the same evening, shortly after crossing the river, I experienced the first feeling of sharp disappointment and resentment ... It was dark inside the spacious travel carriage. I was sitting in someone's arms in front, and suddenly my attention was attracted by a reddish dot, now flashing, then fading away in the corner, in the place where my father was sitting. I started laughing and reached out to her. Mother said something warning, but I was so eager to get to know an interesting object or creature more closely that I began to cry. Then my father moved towards me a small red star, tenderly hiding under the ashes. I reached out to her with the index finger of my right hand; for a while it did not come, but then suddenly it flared up brighter, and a sharp bite suddenly burned me. I think that in terms of the strength of the impression now, this could only be equal to a strong and unexpected bite of a poisonous snake, lurking, for example, in a bouquet of flowers. The light seemed to me deliberately cunning and evil. Two or three years later, when I remembered this episode, I ran to my mother, began to talk and began to cry. These were again tears of resentment ...