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“Involuntary shame seizes me at the beginning of this story. Alas! All the Christmas props are involved in it: Christmas Eve, snow, a merry crowd, the illuminated windows of toy stores, poor children staring from the street at the rich people's trees, and a ruddy ham, and prophetic dream, and a happy awakening, and a virtuous cabman ... " Publisher: "Public Domain"
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"Giants"
Involuntary shame seizes me at the beginning of this story. Alas! All the Christmas props take part in it: Christmas Eve, snow, a merry crowd, the illuminated windows of toy shops, poor children staring from the street at the rich people's trees, and a ruddy ham, and a prophetic dream, and a happy awakening, and a virtuous cab driver.
But enter into my position, gentlemen readers! How can I do without this props if my true story It just happened on Christmas Eve. It could happen at any time: on Easter or on Trinity, on the most everyday of weekday Mondays, but also on the anniversary of the memory of a loved one. national hero. It does not matter. My only trouble is that fate was pleased to bring everything that I will now tell, for some reason, by all means by Christmas, and not by another date.
On that very night, from December 24 to 25, Mr. Kostyka, a gymnasium teacher in the subject of Russian grammar and literature, was returning to his home from the Christmas tree. He was ... drunk, not drunk, but overweight, dejected and irritable. They made themselves known: piglet with porridge, ham, pollendvitsa and sausage with garlic. Beer and homemade liquor propped up under the throat. He was angry at the loss in preference: it's true, Kostyka was haunted by some kind of fatal bad luck all evening. And most importantly, it was annoying that during dinner, in a dispute about the upbringing of youth, he, an old teacher, was defeated by some kind of sucker teacher, who had barely jumped off the university bench, a liberal and skygazer. That is, no, he did not win the upper hand, because the words and beliefs of Kostyka are based on the unshakable foundations of the teacher's wisdom. But... others - boys and girls... they applauded, and laughed, and sparkled in their eyes, and teased Kostyka: "What, old man? Have you been locked up?"
And that is why, with a growling belly, with heartburn in his chest, with a swollen head, he first cursed the custom of arranging Christmas trees - a custom, if not pagan, then must be German, but in any case, not established by the holy church. Then, leaning against a lamp-post for a moment, he spoke in black words about beer and ham. Then he mentally reproached the owner of today's party, the good-natured teacher of mathematics, for extravagance. "What kind of money is it, one wonders, to roll up such feasts? Probably, he laid the wife's rotunda!" Kostyka called the kids hanging out in the street by the shop window hooligans and thieves and sighed about the good old days, when the rod and morality went hand in hand. The virtuous driver (who Christmas stories usually returns to a poor but honest bank official a briefcase with two million dollars, forgotten the day before in his sleigh), this same cab driver asked for “one and a half tidy coins” for Peski, because it was on a brisk and on the occasion of a holiday, and when Kostyka offered him two kopecks, the cab driver for some reason he called Kostyka "nosed", and Kostyka vainly appealed to the policeman about his insult: the cab driver sped away in a brisk, policeman dragged a drunken woman somewhere far away - and then Kostyka at the same time anathematized the Russian people with their identity, and the Duma, and cut, and volost, and all sorts of freedoms.
In such a gloomy and captious mood, he climbed up to his house, on the fifth floor, cursing by the way in passing and urban culture, in the face of a sleepy and grouchy porter. For a very long time he balanced with a lighted lamp, like a circus juggler pretending to be drunk. He woke up his wife, who had left the party before him, but she immediately kicked him out of the bedroom. I tried to make love with the "servant for everything", the Novgorod stone woman Avdotya, but received a fierce rebuff, after which for seven seconds I was looking for balance throughout the office, from the door to the wall. And then, with great effort, he found a secret spare bottle of beer in the hallway, opened it, poured a glass, sat down at the table, fixed his bleary eyes on the fiery circle of the lamp, and gave himself over to mournful, clumsy, viscous thoughts.
"For what?" he thought bitterly. "Why, O Lapidarsky, did you offend me in front of your students and society? Or are you smarter than me? Or do you think that if you broke a few girlish smiles, then you are right? Maybe you Do you think that I myself was not stupid and young, that I did not revel in unrealizable hopes and daring plans? Look, brother, here they are, living witnesses.
He waved his hand broadly around himself, around the walls, on which hung neatly nailed - preserved partly out of avarice, partly out of mechanical habit, partly for the sake of completeness - portraits of great Russian writers, acquired once, long ago, in the years of enthusiastic words ... And it suddenly seemed to him that on the faces of these giants, from eyes to eyes, quickly run, like flying lightning, terrible sparks of mockery and contempt.
Kostyka shuddered, turned away, rubbed his eyes, and at once, for his own comfort, returned to his former thread of thoughts, on which he began to string his complaints, reproaches, and petty accounts. But the glass still trembled in his hand.
“No, Lapidarsky, no! I, brother, will look at you in five or ten years, when you understand what kind of joke poverty, dependence and power are ... when you find out what a family costs, and with it illnesses, homelands, christenings, boots, skirts... Now you're shouting: Marx, Nietzsche, freedom, the people, the proletariat, great covenants... Wait a minute, dear! you will sculpt. Let them shoot, poison and jump out of windows. Idiots. They will tell you: be loving - you will; they will say: march - you will. That's all. And you will be full, and warm, and pleasant to the authorities. And you will, like me, miss the holidays that there is no one to catch in a mistake, no one to put "one", no one to turn off with a wolf passport.
And again he involuntarily turned to the walls, on which photographs hung symmetrically. human faces- angry, contemptuous, divinely clear, beautifully wise, suffering, tormented, proud and insane. - Are you laughing? Kostyka suddenly shouted and slammed his fist on the table. - So? Okay! So, I declare to you that all of you are amateurs, self-taught and illiterate. This I tell you - a professional and authority! I, I, I, who will now give you an exam. Even if you are a progenitor, but if your life, your morals, thoughts and words are criminal, immoral and illegal - then one, a wolf passport and - get out of the gymnasium in all four directions. Let the parents cry.
Here you are, young man! good family. They got a good education. They had a knack for poetry. What did you use it for? What did they write? "Gabriiliada"? An ode to some kind of freedom or liberty? I put zero with two minuses. OK then. Corrected ... So be it - a troika. Steel on good road. No, if you please: the chamber junker uniform seemed ridiculous to you. After all, they were poor, think about it. Another zero. Poems written sharp against the nobles? Zero with two. And the duel? What about malice? For non-Christian feelings - one.
And you, officer? They could have served, they would have risen to the rank of divisional commander, and who knows, maybe even higher. Who prevented you from developing your genius? Well ... there is an ode to the case of illumination, an impromptu on the occasion of a regimental holiday? .. And you preferred exile, disgrace. And again they died shamefully. True, someone said: a dog - a dog's death. So: talent - three with a minus, behavior - zero, attention - zero, morality - one, God's law - zero.
You, Mr. Gogol. Please come here. For Little Russian tendencies - zero with a minus. For ridiculing those in power - zero, for one well-known act against morality - zero. For the fact that the Jews were scolded - four. For repentance before death - five.
So he gloatingly and authoritatively examined the silent giants one after another, but already he felt cold, mortal fear creeping into his soul. He praised Turgenev for his outward appearance and good style, but reproached him with love for a foreign woman. He regretted the engineering career of Dostoevsky, but approved for the Poles. "Yes, and your Orthodoxy was some kind of sectarian," Kostyka remarked.
But suddenly his eyes collided with angry, dilated, bulging eyes, almost colorless from pain - the eyes of a man who, raising his majestic bearded head high, was gazing intently at Kostyka. A slippery blanket covered his shoulders.
Your Excellency ... - Kostyka babbled and trembled all over cold and wet.
Slave, traitor and...
And then the flaming lips of Shchedrin uttered another terrible, nasty word, which great person if he utters it, it is only in moments of the greatest disgust. And this word hit Kostyk in the face, blinded his eyes, starred his pupils with lightning...
He woke up because, dozing over a glass, he pecked his nose at the glass and bruised the bridge of his nose. “Thank God, sleep!” he thought joyfully. “Thank God!
And with a venomous smile, with trembling hands, he unhooked the portrait of Saltykov from the nail, took it to the most secluded corner of his apartment and hung the great satirist there forever, to general laughter and reproach.
See also Kuprin Alexander - Prose (stories, poems, novels ...):
How I was an actor
This sad and funny story- more sad than funny, - ras...
Caprice
The huge double-height assembly hall of the university seemed to be immersed in...
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin
giants
The text is verified with the publication: A. I. Kuprin. Collected works in 9 volumes. Volume 4 . M.: Hood. literature, 1971. S. 393 - 39 7 . Involuntary shame seizes me at the beginning of this story. Alas! All the Christmas props take part in it: Christmas Eve, snow, a merry crowd, the illuminated windows of toy shops, poor children staring from the street at the rich people's trees, and a ruddy ham, and a prophetic dream, and a happy awakening, and a virtuous cab driver. But enter into my position, gentlemen readers! How can I do without this prop, if my true story happened exactly on the night before Christmas. It could happen at any time: on Easter or on Trinity, on the most everyday of weekday Mondays, but also on the anniversary of the memory of a beloved national hero. It does not matter. My only trouble is that fate was pleased to bring everything that I will now tell, for some reason, by all means by Christmas, and not by another date. On that very night, from December 24 to 25, Mr. Kostyka, a gymnasium teacher in the subject of Russian grammar and literature, was returning to his home from the Christmas tree. He was ... drunk, not drunk, but overweight, dejected and irritable. They made themselves known: piglet with porridge, ham, pollendvitsa and sausage with garlic. Beer and homemade liquor propped up under the throat. He was angry at the loss in preference: it's true, Kostyka was haunted by some kind of fatal bad luck all evening. And most importantly, it was annoying that during dinner, in a dispute about the upbringing of youth, he, an old teacher, was defeated by some kind of milk-sucker teacher, who had barely jumped off the university bench, a liberal and skygazer. That is, no, he did not win the upper hand, because the words and beliefs of Kostyka are based on the unshakable foundations of the teacher's wisdom. But... the others—boys and girls... they applauded, and laughed, and twinkled in their eyes, and teased Kostyka: "What, old chap? Have they pinned you down?" And that is why, with a growling belly, with heartburn in his chest, with a swollen head, he first cursed the custom of arranging Christmas trees - a custom, if not pagan, then must be German, but in any case, not established by the holy church. Then, leaning against a lamp-post for a moment, he spoke in black words about beer and ham. Then he mentally reproached the owner of today's party, the good-natured teacher of mathematics, for extravagance. "What kind of money is it, one wonders, to roll up such feasts? Probably, he laid the wife's rotunda!" Kostyka called the kids hanging out in the street by the shop window hooligans and thieves and sighed about the good old days, when the rod and morality went hand in hand. A virtuous cab driver (who, in Christmastide stories, usually returns to a poor but honest bank official a briefcase with two million dollars, forgotten the day before in his sleigh), this same cab driver asked for “one and a half hundred rubles” for Peski, because on a brisk and on the occasion of a holiday, and when Kostyka offered him a two-kopeck piece, then the driver called Kostyka for some reason "nosed", and Kostyka vainly appealed to the policeman about his offense: the cabby sped off on a brisk car, the policeman was dragging a drunken woman somewhere into the distance - and then Kostyka at the same time anathematized the Russian people with its originality, and the Duma, and the cut, and the parish, and all sorts of freedoms. In such a gloomy and captious mood, he climbed up to his house, on the fifth floor, cursing in passing the urban culture, in the face of a sleepy and grumbling porter. For a very long time he balanced with a lighted lamp, like a circus juggler pretending to be drunk. He woke up his wife, who had left the party before him, but she immediately kicked him out of the bedroom. I tried to make love with the "servant for everything", the Novgorod stone woman Avdotya, but received a fierce rebuff, after which for seven seconds I was looking for balance throughout the office, from the door to the wall. And then, with great effort, he found a secret spare bottle of beer in the hallway, opened it, poured a glass, sat down at the table, fixed his bleary eyes on the fiery circle of the lamp, and gave himself over to mournful, clumsy, viscous thoughts. "For what?" he thought bitterly. "Why, O Lapidarsky, did you offend me in front of your students and society? Or are you smarter than me? Or do you think that if you plucked a few girlish smiles, then you are right? maybe you think that I myself was not stupid and young, that I did not revel in unrealizable hopes and daring plans? Look, brother, here they are, living witnesses. He waved his hand broadly around himself, around the walls, on which hung neatly nailed - preserved partly out of avarice, partly out of mechanical habit, partly for the sake of completeness - portraits of great Russian writers, acquired some time ago, in calfskin. years of enthusiastic words... And it suddenly seemed to him that terrible sparks of mockery and contempt quickly ran over the faces of these giants, from eyes to eyes, like flying lightning. Kostyka shuddered, turned away, rubbed his eyes, and at once, for his own comfort, returned to his former thread of thoughts, on which he began to string his complaints, reproaches, and petty accounts. But the glass still trembled in his hand. “No, Lapidarsky, no! I, brother, will look at you in five or ten years, when you understand what kind of joke poverty, dependence and power are ... when you find out what about it is a family, and with it diseases, kind and us, christenings, boots, petticoats... Now you're shouting: Marx, Nietzsche, freedom, the people, the proletariat, great covenants... Wait a minute, dear! Drink-eat! You will be like me. They will tell you: sculpt units - you will sculpt. Let them shoot, poison and jump out of the windows. Idiots. They will tell you: be loving - you will; they will say: march - you will. That's all. And you will be full, and warm, and pleasant to the authorities. And you will, like me, miss the holidays that there is no one to catch in a mistake, no one to put “one”, no one to turn off with a wolf passport. contemptuous, divinely clear, beautifully wise, suffering, tormented, proud and insane." "Are you laughing?" Kostyka suddenly shouted and slammed his fist on the table. "You are dilettantes, self-taught and illiterate. I tell you this - a professional and an authority! I, I, I, who will now give you an exam. Even if you are progeny, but if your life, your morals, thoughts and words are criminal, immoral and illegal - then one, a wolf passport and - get out of the gymnasium in all four directions. Let your parents cry later. Here you are, young man! Of a good family. You received a decent education. You had an ability for poetry. What did you use it for? What wrote "Gavriiliad"? Ode to some kind of freedom e or liberties? I put zero with two minuses. OK then. Corrected ... So be it - a troika. We got on a good road. No, if you please: the chamber junker uniform seemed ridiculous to you. After all, they were poor, think about it. Another zero. Poems written sharp against the nobles? Zero with two. And the duel? What about malice? For non-Christian feelings - one. And you, officer? They could have served, they would have risen to the rank of divisional commander, and who knows, maybe even higher. Who prevented you from developing your genius? Well ... there is an ode to the case of illumination, an impromptu on the occasion of a regimental holiday? .. And you preferred exile, disgrace. And again they died shamefully. It is true that someone said: a dog - a dog's death. So: talent - three with a minus, behavior - zero, attention - zero, morality - one, God's law - zero. You, Mr. Gogol. Please come here. For Little Russian tendencies - zero with a minus. For ridiculing those in power - zero, for one well-known act against morality - zero. For the fact that the Jews were scolded - four. For repentance before death - five. So he gloatingly and authoritatively examined the silent giants one after another, but already he felt cold, mortal fear creeping into his soul. He praised Turgenev for his outward appearance and good style, but reproached him with his love for a foreign woman. He regretted the engineering career of Dostoevsky, but approved for the Poles. “Yes, and your Orthodoxy was some kind of sectarian,” Kostyka remarked. But suddenly his eyes collided with angry, widened, bulging, almost colorless with pain. eyes, eyes a man who, raising his majestic bearded head high, gazed intently at Kostyka. A slippery blanket covered his shoulders. "Your Excellency..." stammered Kostyka, and trembled all over coldly and wetly. And a hoarse, rough voice rang out, which uttered slowly and sullenly: "A slave, a traitor, and..." And then Shchedrin's flaming lips uttered another terrible, nasty word, which a great man, if he utters, only in moments of the greatest disgust. And this word hit Kostyk in the face, blinded his eyes, lit up his pupils with lightning... ...He woke up because, having dozed over the glass, he pecked his nose on the glass and bruised the bridge of his nose. “Thank God, a dream!” he thought joyfully. “Thank God! he unhooked the portrait of Saltykov from the nail, took it to the most secluded corner of his apartment and hung the great satirist there for all eternity, to general laughter and reproach.<190 7 >Involuntary shame seizes me at the beginning of this story. Alas! All the Christmas props take part in it: Christmas Eve, snow, a merry crowd, the illuminated windows of toy shops, poor children staring from the street at the rich people's trees, and a ruddy ham, and a prophetic dream, and a happy awakening, and a virtuous cab driver.
But enter into my position, gentlemen readers! How can I do without this prop, if my true story happened exactly on the night before Christmas. It could happen at any time: on Easter or on Trinity, on the most everyday of weekday Mondays, but also on the anniversary of the memory of a beloved national hero. It does not matter. My only trouble is that fate was pleased to bring everything that I will now tell, for some reason, by all means by Christmas, and not by another date.
On that very night, from December 24 to 25, Mr. Kostyka, a gymnasium teacher in the subject of Russian grammar and literature, was returning to his home from the Christmas tree. He was ... drunk, not drunk, but overweight, dejected and irritable. They made themselves known: piglet with porridge, ham, pollendvitsa and sausage with garlic. Beer and homemade liquor propped up under the throat. He was angry at the loss in preference: it's true, Kostyka was haunted by some kind of fatal bad luck all evening. And most importantly, it was annoying that during dinner, in a dispute about the upbringing of youth, he, an old teacher, was defeated by some kind of sucker teacher, who had barely jumped off the university bench, a liberal and skygazer. That is, no, he did not win the upper hand, because the words and beliefs of Kostyka are based on the unshakable foundations of the teacher's wisdom. But… others – boys and girls… they applauded, and laughed, and sparkled in their eyes, and teased Kostyka: “What, old man? Have you been pinned down?"
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin
giants
Involuntary shame seizes me at the beginning of this story. Alas! All the Christmas props take part in it: Christmas Eve, snow, a merry crowd, the illuminated windows of toy shops, poor children staring from the street at the rich people's trees, and a ruddy ham, and a prophetic dream, and a happy awakening, and a virtuous cab driver.
But enter into my position, gentlemen readers! How can I do without this prop, if my true story happened exactly on the night before Christmas. It could happen at any time: on Easter or on Trinity, on the most everyday of weekday Mondays, but also on the anniversary of the memory of a beloved national hero. It does not matter. My only trouble is that fate was pleased to bring everything that I will now tell, for some reason, by all means by Christmas, and not by another date.
On that very night, from December 24 to 25, Mr. Kostyka, a gymnasium teacher in the subject of Russian grammar and literature, was returning to his home from the Christmas tree. He was ... drunk, not drunk, but overweight, dejected and irritable. They made themselves known: piglet with porridge, ham, pollendvitsa and sausage with garlic. Beer and homemade liquor propped up under the throat. He was angry at the loss in preference: it's true, Kostyka was haunted by some kind of fatal bad luck all evening. And most importantly, it was annoying that during dinner, in a dispute about the upbringing of youth, he, an old teacher, was defeated by some kind of sucker teacher, who had barely jumped off the university bench, a liberal and skygazer. That is, no, he did not win the upper hand, because the words and beliefs of Kostyka are based on the unshakable foundations of the teacher's wisdom. But… others – boys and girls… they applauded, and laughed, and sparkled in their eyes, and teased Kostyka: “What, old man? Have you been pinned down?"
And that is why, with a growling belly, with heartburn in his chest, with a swollen head, he first cursed the custom of arranging Christmas trees - a custom, if not pagan, then must be German, but in any case, not established by the holy church. Then, leaning against a lamp-post for a moment, he spoke in black words about beer and ham. Then he mentally reproached the owner of today's party, the good-natured teacher of mathematics, for extravagance. “What kind of money is it, you ask, to roll up such feasts? Probably laid the wife's rotunda! Kostyka called the kids hanging out in the street by the shop window hooligans and thieves and sighed about the good old days, when the rod and morality went hand in hand. A virtuous cab driver (who, in Christmastide stories, usually returns to a poor but honest bank official a briefcase with two million dollars, forgotten the day before in his sleigh), this very cab driver asked for “one and a half rubles” for Pesky, because on a brisk and on the occasion of a holiday, and when Kostyka offered him two kopecks, then the driver called Kostyka for some reason a “sock-pecker,” and Kostyka vainly appealed to the policeman about his offense: the cabby sped off on a brisk, policeman was dragging a drunken woman somewhere into the distance - and then Kostyka at the same time anathematized the Russian people with its originality, and the Duma, and the cut, and the parish, and all sorts of freedoms.
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