Kurganov Nikolai Gavrilovich H

born 1725 (according to other versions - 1726), in Moscow in the family of a non-commissioned officer - writer, author of the famous "Pismovnik".

Educated at the Peter's School of Navigational Sciences, after which he was left there as a teacher.

In 1741, the navigation school was transferred to St. Petersburg and transformed into the Naval Academy, and later into the Naval Corps. The whole subsequent life of Kurganov was connected with him. Through tireless work, he achieved the title of professor of mathematics and navigation.

Together with Krasilnikov he went to determine the shores of the Baltic Sea; later he was an inspector of the naval corps, received the title of professor of mathematics and navigation from the Academy of Sciences.

He published several original and translated works in his specialty ("Universal Arithmetic", "On Military Science", etc.).

Nikolai Gavrilovich spoke with accusatory works in satirical magazines of that time.

In 1769, the book "Pismovnik" was published (originally the book was called "Russian Universal Grammar, or General Writing, Offering the Easiest Way to Thoroughly Learn the Russian Language with Seven Additions of Various Educational and Useful-Fun Things".)

It was a reference book not only in the circles of democratic readers, but also among the middle and petty nobility. Until 1837, he went through 18 editions. The basis of the book is grammar, presented intelligibly and clearly. The grammatical rules were explained with examples that testified to the author's democratic positions. In "Additions" to "Pismovnik" Nikolai Gavrilovich appears as a political thinker and moralist.

The first "Addition" is a collection of proverbs arranged in alphabetical order. Their choice also testifies to the democracy of Kurganov (proverbs about work, idleness, nobility, monasticism ...).

The second "Addition" consists of "short intricate stories", most of which are drawn from foreign sources.

The third "Addition" contains historical anecdotes and sayings of public and politicians the ancient world, in the fourth - brief information about mythology.

The fifth section of the book is called "Collection of various poems." In essence, this is a great poetic anthology. It includes works by Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Kheraskov, Trediakovsky, Bogdanovich and others.

The next section of the book contains information on literary theory, philosophy, physics, civil and "sacred" history, and others. Kurganov willingly sets forth those facts that contributed to the destruction of people's superstition. The last "Addition" is called "Dictionary multilingual". The author explains incomprehensible words, suggests replacing foreign words with Russian ones. A large role in the "Letter" Kurganov N.G. samples and examples of oral folk art play. In addition to proverbs, it has a "special department" of songs, entitled "Kiev-Kalek". Some comic and parodic songs are also included here. Among the secular songs entitled "The Case of Idleness", there are soldier's and historical songs. With each new edition, their number increased.

A variety of content, well-chosen facts, a clear presentation of thoughts turned Nikolai Gavrilovich Kurganov's "Pismovnik" into a kind of encyclopedia, accessible a wide range readers. He taught the language, taught to read. "Pismovnik" played a big role in spreading literacy among the people.

Died -, Petersburg.

The long and steady popularity of the "Pismovnik" testified to the emergence of a new reader from the philistines and raznochintsy. N. I. Novikov, who had extensive experience in publishing books, wrote that “we only publish books in the fourth and fifth editions that these simple-hearted people, because of their ignorance of foreign languages, like.”

Kurganov found his reader, guessing his taste and needs. The author of the "Pismovnik" showed himself to be a talented teacher, having managed to convey a lot of information in a lively and entertaining way and to introduce the simple reader, thirsty for knowledge, to the sciences and literature.

Truly - the fate of books is amazing!

Leafing through the "Pismovnik" now, you think that even Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy failed to make his "Circle of Reading" as he dreamed of, a reference book of wisdom for many generations, but here he is an amateur in literature, "observator, navigator, astronomer" Kurganov fed the minds of Russian readers with his "Pismovnik" for almost a hundred years. I still imagine an enthusiastic lover of Turgenev's poetry Lunin with a "Letter" in his hands, and the simple-hearted deacon Achilles from Leskov's "Cathedrals" drew his song about "Cupid", of course, from the same source: it is printed in the "Cathedral of Various Poems".

Every year, Kurganov's "Pismovnik" sank lower and lower on the steps of the social ladder. Now its readers are literate people, scientists with copper money. Here is what the author of the "Bibliographic Chronicle" of "Notes of the Fatherland" wrote about them in 1841: "We have a special class of readers: these are people who are just starting to read, along with the change of the national homespun caftan to something in between a merchant's long-brimmed frock coat and a frieze They usually begin with "My Lord of England" and "Paradise Lost" (furiously translated into prose from some rhetorical French translation), Kurganov's "Letter Book", "Darling" and "Fables" by Chemnitzer - with these same books they end , all his life rereading delightful for their rough and uneducated taste of creation. That is why these books are published almost annually by our sharp-witted book dealers "(" Domestic notes", 1841, No 5. Bibliographic chronicle, p. 4.).

V. Dahl discovered "The Letterman" in the beggarly inheritance of a varnak-exile who "lived as a bean and did not leave fifty dollars for a spruce domino": better, we distributed three shirts and a pair of boots to the same naked people as the one on whom we now made a wooden sheepskin coat and separated the patrimony into an oblique fathom, Kurganov’s letter book and a small pile of sheets written by the hand of the deceased, I took with me "(In "Dal. Paintings from folk life. "Varnak" - "Russian conversation", 1857, Book 8, pp. 34--35.).

Nowadays "Pismovnik" by Kurganov is a rare book, especially in a good, unread condition. Usually, its appearance indicates that it has been in many hands, read and re-read many times and is not offended by the indifference of the reader. After long searches I managed to get "The Letterer". My copy is the ninth edition, issued in 1818 "by Ivan Glazunov's support, again corrected, multiplied and divided into two parts."

The fictional part of the Letterbook is Short Intricate Tales, to which this book most of all owes its popularity. This is a collection of all kinds of stories and short parables, good-natured and cheerful, caustic and sharp, entertaining and concise.

Herzen calls Kurganov "a brilliant forerunner of the moral-satirical school in our literature." His democratic views, his hatred of the feudal serf system is also evident in the choice of these anecdotes, in their tone and general direction. With surprise and even some haste, we read in this folk anthology of the 18th century such a "Jacobin" anecdote: one, hung on the guts of another. "We will find this anti-monarchist formula later among the hidden poems attributed to Pushkin, in a slightly different, sharper version:

We will amuse good citizens

And at the pillar of shame

The gut of the last priest

We will strangle the last king.

In many of these short stories we find responses to the malice of that day. They also contain folklore: about the church burial of a dog; a charming conversation between two poor old Moscow women; a dispute between a gentry and a servant about a black and white bone; the newlywed, disappointed on the first night; a devout old woman putting a candle to the demon.

In an anecdote about a clever courtier, a transparently disguised incident at the court of Catherine is told; in this and similar anecdotes, contemporaries recognized living actors.

So, in a story about a dispute between an eminent and arrogant judge with an unborn "glorious whim", we guess in the latter Lomonosov by his answer: "If you were my father's son, you would still be catching walruses with him." In general, the characteristic features of life and customs we find here in abundance.

The fictional part of the "Letter" is especially attractive to the illustrator by the richness of characters and situations. This is a variegated carnival procession, where kings and dads appear, awesome nobles and court ladies, petitioners and clerks, astrologers and calendar, red tape and handicraftsman, bought -ups and motives, thin singers and vile -shaped exciters, noble alien and dummy monks, rhyme and healers, surgery musicians and listeners, horned husbands and crafty wives, thieves and beggars, harlequins and columbines.

It seemed tempting to me to bring back from oblivion these noteworthy miniatures, in which the Russian eighteenth century is so prominently reflected - wretched and smart, rude and "scrupulous", wild and refined.

N. KUZMIN

BRIEF INSTRUCTIONAL STORIES

The lawyer, seeing himself despised by the president for his youth, said: "True, sir, I'm young, but I read old books."

Someone, being a great amplifier, and at one time for no reason was so angry that, forgetting himself, he went into a rage. Then a wise man, whom he knew, seeing him in such a state, asked what had happened to him, and was informed that he was angry at the swear word: "How! Is this poor man able to carry a thousand pounds, cannot bear one word."

Francis I, king of France, wanting to laugh at the aged lady, the former great beauty, said: "How long, madam, have you returned from the realm of beauty?" She answered: "On the same day that Your Majesty arrived from Pavia," where he lost the battle against the Emperor Charles V, was a prisoner there, and from there was sent to Ishpania.

The young astrologer, being in a conversation, assured that the sun, and not the earth, turns, and even though it should come out; then one joker said to him: "Perhaps stay with us a little, I want to prove the contrary to your opinion. Do you know that the sun revives, warms and bakes everything on earth?" - "True," answered the star. “So it’s clear,” continued the jester, “that it’s not the sun, but the earth is spinning; for when birds are roasted, then they are spinning, and not the hearth.” “That’s like the truth,” said another, “but very far from the opinion of many pundits and from the truth, and I know such writers who reasonably affirm themselves on that opinion. "-" It may happen, - answered the jester. - Do you believe that the truth is in wine? - "I heard ..." - "Well, then get drunk, then you will see that the earth, and not the sun, is spinning."

Nikolai Gavrilovich Kurganov

Brief intricate stories

Illustrations. 1976

Publishing house "Fiction literature".

"USEFUL FUN WORD"

Reading the letter-book has long been my favorite exercise. I knew it by heart and, despite the fact, every day I found in it new unnoticed beauties. After General Plemyannikov, whose father was once adjutant, Kurganov seemed to me the greatest person.
A. S. Pushkin. The history of the village of Goryukhina

There is a story that Pushkin wanted to write a biography of Kurganov, but abandoned his intention because of the scarcity of information collected about him. Isn't that why in the "History of the village of Goryukhin" through the mouth of the author of the "History" he says: "I asked everyone about him, and, unfortunately, no one could satisfy my curiosity, no one knew him personally, all my questions were answered only, that Kurganov composed the latest writer, which I knew for sure before. The darkness of the unknown surrounded him like some ancient demigod; sometimes I even doubted the truth of his existence. His name seemed to me fictitious and the legend about him was an empty myth, awaiting the research of the new Niebuhr." Of course, the famous and unknown Kurganov should have interested Pushkin. Nikolai Gavrilovich Kurganov (1725-1796) - a talented nugget, a soldier's son, who, thanks to his abilities and diligence, made his way into science and at the age of twenty received the title of "learned apprentice", and at thirty-nine - professor of mathematics and navigation, - not was a professional writer. He left many books of educational content; his "Universal Arithmetic" replaced the famous "Arithmetic" of Magnitsky, according to which Lomonosov comprehended science. "Pismovnik" is his respite from professorial works, a favorite thing in which he invested, in addition to knowledge, a lot of warmth and never ceased to supplement and improve from edition to edition. After all, the fate of the "Pismovnik" was unusual: with a book of 800 pages from 1769 to the year of Pushkin's death - 1837 - "Pismovnik" was published eleven times. It became a reference book for many generations of Russian people over four reigns - from Catherine to Nicholas the First. Herzen recalled the “Letter Book” in a kind word in “Notes of a Young Man”: “... by the way, he also dug Kurganov’s “Letter Book” - this brilliant predecessor of the moral and satirical school in our literature. Kurganov adorned my memory; even some are still not forgotten, for example: “A certain Polish gentry of a carminative temper, wanting to embarrass one scientist, asked him what obol, parabol, faribol means? This one answered him ... "etc. You can get a sharp answer from the source itself" (A. I. Herzen. Collected works in 30 volumes, vol. I, M., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1954, p. 266.). Herzen's tone is slightly ironic: for seventy years, the grandfather's wisdom of the "Pismovnik" has become fundamentally outdated. The "Letter" was started for home use: Kurganov "thought to teach his children the rules of our language according to the previously published Russian Grammar, but it seemed to him difficult for them, then he was forced to transform it," the preface says. But why is the book called "Letterer", when it contains only one single letter - this is "Translation of a petition in verse, which Excise Secretary Ganken submitted to the Polish King"? Kurganov translated the Greek word "grammar" into the Russian word "pismovnik". This was an era when an avalanche of foreign words and expressions poured into Russian speech, and patriotic people considered it their duty to look for words equivalent to foreign ones in their native language. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Kurganov's dictionary contains many such invented words that have not taken root in the Russian language: bracelet - cuff, gestures - body curves, etymology - vocabulary, oval - egg-like, parallel - one-way, paradox - mistrust, perpendicular - - upright, pulse - vein, actor - representative, archivist - clerk, klyster - weakened, microscope - small-eyed. Together with Sumarokov, Kurganov believes that "our language has enough words" and that "perception foreign words, and especially without need, there is not enrichment, but spoilage of the language. "The author of the "Pismovnik" returns to this topic more than once, ridiculing the broken fashionable speech of petimeters: "I am in distraction and desespere, my amantha made me infidelity ..." - and etc. Or he tells in grammatical examples how "a certain candidate speaks semi-Russian like this: I served, I say, for forty years, but there is no capital, and why I asked lawyers about it, but they don't gamble now on an excursion, just like new-fangled conduct very politically ekskuzuyasya tomorrow, "- and so on. In the same years, N. I. Novikov in his "Purse" jokingly proposed to establish a fine of a penny for each foreign word uttered without extreme need - and send the collected money to the Orphanage A graduate of the Navigation School founded by Peter the Great, then the Naval Academy, professor of mathematics and navigation, Kurganov in matters of grammar as an amateur and a practitioner is very radical and one hundred and fifty years before the orthographic reform, without hesitation, speaks out in favor of the abolition of the letter "yat": ".. The prescribed difficulty in distinguishing e from yat seems completely unnecessary and bypassed wisdom ... It would be better to stay with one letter e, destroying ... the difference in words, which is intelligible by itself in the meaning of speech. Perhaps the most interesting part of the "Grammar" are examples of the application of rules in which one hears live speech of that era: "I, disk, went there, but received nothing; to God, disk, high, but far from the king." Or an example of using a particle de:“Sidor, in interrogation, showed that when Karp came to him, he spoke such a fable: it’s really insulting that they always have low-powered people; sometimes with others, but never with many; and besides, that from one, then from the desetary yard, one club and a tithe go, and this is the reason ... "An example for the use of prepositions:" ... recently a sack of flour was five or five rubles; and in the old days forty altyns without half a hryvnia, or without half a hryvnia at forty. French vodka for nine hryvnias is a damask, and many people find it unbearably three rubles a bucket. Grammar begins and ends the study part of the Letter Book, and then various addition, which the author generously multiplies, "knowing that difference amuses, enriches thoughts and enlightens the mind, because they contain a lot of moralizing and what will serve as a useful and pleasant exercise." It was these additions that created the "Pismovnik" great glory among readers. The "pismovnik" is bizarrely overgrown with all sorts of "useful-amusing verbiage", so that the result is a kind of encyclopedia on the most diverse fields of knowledge. On title page the book is not without reason written: "Are you spiritual, are you worldly? Read diligently, you will find everything here, one and the other: but be smart to understand." In the appendix, the first is given "Collection different proverbs and sayings". As always, you marvel at the ageless strength and imagery of the indigenous folk speech, next to which the bookish language of the compiler seems archaic. Among the proverbs, many sound free-thinking, and their selection reveals the democratic and anti-clerical spirit of the author: The earth loves manure, the horse loves oats, and the bar brings. As the lapotnik does not become, so the velvet will not get up. And by the snout to know that they are not ordinary pigs. Do not promise the kingdom of heaven and do not beat with a whip. There is no prayer, but there is no benefit. Iumenia for a cup, and sisters for ladles. A found black hood does not jump, and when he has lost, he does not cry. Pop and rooster and not eaten sing. Near the king, near honor, near the king, near death. From one tree an icon and a shovel. It is bad for the sheep, where the wolf is the governor. In praise of Kurganov, it should be noted that this is one of the earliest publications of Russian proverbs. The second addition is "Short Intricate Tales", which form the content of our book. And then follows the most varied divertissement, such as: "Various jokes", "Different sentences", "Memorable speeches", "On women and on marriage", "Definitions and comparisons or likenings", " good opinions"," Inventory of the qualities of the most noble European peoples. "This is a storehouse of wisdom, set forth in an aphoristic form: Sloth is the rust of reason. Jealousy is cupid's fever. The old adulterer is Mount Etna, whose top is covered with snow, and inside is a flame. Mothers know better than fathers about the breed of children. Mental adornment is incomparably more useful than bodily. Every thing from rare use is pleasant. Four things cannot be hidden: love, cough, fire and sadness. The authors of Kuzma Prutkov, while composing his Thoughts and Aphorisms, undoubtedly kept in mind these and similar aphorisms from the Pismovnik. "On Women and Marriage": A woman is produced in an earthly paradise, not a man, and in the noblest way. God did not take her from his head, fearing to be proud of her, nor from his feet, so that she would not be despised; but from his rib, so that he would coax her. That's why we like it! The Germans are gentlemen, the English are the servants, the French are the comrades, the Italians are the jailers, the Spanish are the tormentors, the Russians are mediocre. And this is from the "Inventory of the qualities of the most noble European peoples." The Dutch are a rude people; their wives are ladies. Holland is a land where the four elements are good for nothing and there a golden demon sits on a cheese throne in a crown of tobacco. The third appendix contains "Ancient corrected and multiplied apothegms", "Epictite's moral teaching" and "Senechino's Reasoning". From "Ancient Apophegms": DIOGENES called evil love an exercise of people walking, which the poet Ovid also states: PITTAC philosopher used to say that forgiveness is much better than revenge, because the former is characteristic of a meek nature, and the latter is brutal. To the question what is right? Earth. What is wrong? Sea. The fourth addition contains "Various educational conversations". 1. "A conversation between a scribe and a boy." 2. "The Conversation Called MORNING Between the Vigorous and the Sleepy." 3. "The conversation of Kevit, a student of Socrates, about the Picture or the image of human life, shortened for the sake of youth; and this, like Epiktit's teaching, due to their usefulness for almost everyone European languages available", 4. "Conversation about wisdom", in which, in the form of questions and answers, information is given about natural phenomena: What is a meteor? What is wind? Rain? dew? hail? rainbow? What is the ebb and flow of the sea? 5. " Talk about navigation". 6. "Talk about heraldry". 7. "Talk about mythology or mitology". 8. "Talk about the difference between saying and writing" - all this in questions and answers. Question: Should I study poetry? Answer: This knowledge is pleasing to everyone, and it is clear that in ancient times great minds only exercised in it. However, in spite of that, it is now revered as the last science, and to which it is only decent to diligently incapable of any other better exercise, or who has an excellent inclination and talent for this art. As you can see, the dispute between physicists and lyricists had already taken place even then, and the professor of mathematics and navigation Kurganov was, of course, on the side of the physicists. However, for those who want to "have different examples of poetry" "Pismovnik" recommends the satires of Kantemir, works in verse by Lomonosov, Sumarokov and Tredyakovsky and other "poet writers, like the local (i.e., Petersburg .-- N. K.), and Moscow Parnassus. Derzhavin's name is not mentioned: he became known later - in the 80s. The second part of the "Letter" opens with the addition of the fifth - "Collection of various poems". Here are examples of different types of poetry: odes, elegies, eclogues, stanzas, hymns, madrigals, epigrams, etc. The section "Secular Songs, or the Matter of Idleness" is especially extensive. "Tomny echoes" are collected here love lyrics XVIII century: Oh, how happy those grains of sand are yellow, Where did you step foot! Oh, and beautiful soft blades of grass, Which lay under you! My eyes are captivated They always want you And thoughts are seduced They always fly to you. All night darling I see you in my dream: all day seductive, You multiply the passion in me. There are also the first recordings of folk songs and "Kiev-Kalek" cants. There are satirical verses against card game and against Freemasons: Full of lies your laws Turned out to be freemasons; That is your secret and honor, What 666. This is followed by the sixth addition: "The General Drawing of the Sciences and Arts", consisting of small chapters, which provide concise information on a number of diverse issues: on the origin human knowledge, about poetry and philosophy, about the properties of the soul and about the use of sciences, about foreknowledge of the weather and about the system of the world, a medical order and a German ore gun. One hundred and thirty-five moralizing aphorisms taken from the work of Chancellor Count Oxenstierna again offer the reader a solid portion of worldly wisdom: The liar is the repository of the wind, the echo of the devil, and the sworn enemy of all honesty. History in the discussion of the affairs of great men is often like a microscope in the discussion of things visible in it. Pride is the very first being in the world and the universal of all corruptions: but at the same time, there is nothing more crazy and ridiculous than this. A virtuous person is in the reasoning of his fatherland, just as the moon is in the reasoning of the night: he, leading him out of darkness, gives him a radiance, which it would not have without his merits. The player is a thief who steals without fear of justice. Hoping for people's praise is nothing but relying on the bucket days of spring and autumn. He who in happiness is subject to self-will, he hastens with quick steps towards his fall. In the following "Short Chronicle" it is reported that the first king of the Assyrian monarchy was NEMVROD, and among the Gauls the first king was called FORAMUND, in Ishpania - AFGAULPHUS, in Poland - LECHUS, and in Bohemia - TSECHUS. The Russian chronology begins with Rurik, and ends with a message, either seriously or jokingly, that since 1762 the Vice-Admiral, Treasurer-General and Cavalier Ivan Loginovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov has been the Director of the Naval Noble Cadet Corps. It is possible that Kurganov, who taught mathematics at the Naval Corps, wanted to honor his immediate superior in this manner. There is something extremely touching in the zeal with which Kurganov tries to lay out for the benefit and instruction of readers all his information of an educated and experienced person. The seventh addition follows: "Dictionary of different languages", "Interpretation of human names", "Sense of the seven days and months", "Opinions about colors", "Explanation of the dictionary". It is curious, in the current view, that the dictionary gives an interpretation of such now well-known words as a bottle - a suleika, a glass; picture - drawing, image; mail - holes, setup; portrait - image, likeness; chair - seat, armchair; student - student of high sciences; stool - bench; school - school; soup - stew, slurry. Sumarokov, condemning those, "Who meditates Russian gold with French copper, Swears at his tongue and raves in French," asks: "The Russian language seems stupid: Is the stew delicious, or is the soup delicious?" The word soup was then a new little-known foreign word. "Opinions about colors": what color means what. For example, scarlet means pleasantness, lingonberry - caress, blue - constancy, yellow - doubt, crimson - hypocrisy, gray - inconstancy, and smoky - serviceability. In the explanatory note to the dictionary, Kurganov recommends to the attention of readers Novikov's Drone and Emin's Infernal Mail - "both of these books, by the way, amusingly explain various human tricks and delusions." In the eighth and subsequent editions, after the death of the author of the "Pismovnik", a large section was included: "Fearlessness of spirit, heroic deeds and exemplary Anecdotes of Russian and foreign great men and other persons." To Kurganov's credit, it should be noted that his "Brief Intricate Tales" reveal immeasurably more taste in choice and presentation; the language of his stories, even when he retells them from foreign sources, is short and expressive, while the style of later anecdotes is sluggish and verbose. The long and steady popularity of the "Pismovnik" testified to the emergence of a new reader from the philistines and raznochintsy. N. I. Novikov, who had extensive experience in publishing books, wrote that “we only publish books in the fourth and fifth editions that these simple-hearted people, because of their ignorance of foreign languages, like.” Kurganov found his reader, guessing his taste and needs. The author of the "Pismovnik" showed himself to be a talented teacher, having managed to convey a lot of information in a lively and entertaining way and to introduce the simple reader, thirsty for knowledge, to the sciences and literature. Truly - the fate of books is amazing! Leafing through the "Pismovnik" now, you think that even Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy failed to make his "Circle of Reading" as he dreamed of, a reference book of wisdom for many generations, but here he is an amateur in literature, "observator, navigator, astronomer" Kurganov fed the minds of Russian readers with his "Pismovnik" for almost a hundred years. I still imagine an enthusiastic lover of Turgenev's poetry Lunin with a "Letter" in his hands, and the simple-hearted deacon Achilles from Leskov's "Cathedrals" drew his song about "Cupid", of course, from the same source: it is printed in the "Cathedral of Various Poems". Every year, Kurganov's "Pismovnik" sank lower and lower on the steps of the social ladder. Now its readers are literate people, scientists with copper money. Here is what the author of the "Bibliographic Chronicle" of "Notes of the Fatherland" wrote about them in 1841: "We have a special class of readers: these are people who are just starting to read, along with the change of the national homespun caftan to something in between a merchant's long-brimmed frock coat and a frieze They usually begin with "My Lord of England" and "Paradise Lost" (furiously translated into prose from some rhetorical French translation), Kurganov's "Letter Book", "Darling" and "Fables" by Chemnitzer - with these same books they end , all his life rereading creations that are delightful for their rough and uneducated taste. That is why these books are published almost annually by our quick-witted book dealers "(" Domestic Notes, 1841, No 5. Bibliographic Chronicle, p. 4.). V. Dahl discovered "The Letterman" in the beggarly inheritance of a varnak-exile who "lived as a bean and did not leave fifty dollars for a spruce domino": better, we distributed three shirts and a pair of boots to the same naked people as the one on whom we now made a wooden sheepskin coat and separated the patrimony into an oblique fathom, Kurganov’s letter book and a small pile of sheets written by the hand of the deceased, I took with me "(In . Dal. Pictures from folk life. "Varnak" - "Russian conversation", 1857, Book. 8, p. 34--35.). Nowadays "Pismovnik" by Kurganov is a rare book, especially in a good, unread condition. Usually, its appearance indicates that it has been in many hands, read and re-read many times and is not offended by the indifference of the reader. After a long search, I managed to acquire the Letter Book. My copy is the ninth edition, issued in 1818 "by Ivan Glazunov's support, again corrected, multiplied and divided into two parts." The fictional part of the Letterbook is Short Intricate Tales, to which this book most of all owes its popularity. This is a collection of all kinds of stories and short parables, good-natured and cheerful, caustic and sharp, entertaining and concise. Herzen calls Kurganov "a brilliant forerunner of the moral-satirical school in our literature." His democratic views, his hatred of the feudal serf system is also evident in the choice of these anecdotes, in their tone and general direction. With surprise and even some haste, we read in this folk anthology of the 18th century such a "Jacobin" anecdote: We will find this anti-monarchist formula later among the hidden poems attributed to Pushkin, in a slightly different, sharper edition: we find responses to the malice of that day.There is also folklore in them: about the church burial of a dog, a charming conversation between two poor old Moscow women, a dispute between a gentry and a servant about a black and white bone, a newlywed, disappointed on the first night, a devout old woman putting a candle to a demon. an anecdote about a clever courtier tells a transparently disguised incident at the court of Catherine; in this and similar anecdotes, contemporaries recognized living characters. So, in a story about a dispute between an eminent and arrogant judge with an unborn "glorious whim", we guess in the last Lomonosov by his answer: "If you were my father's son, then you would still caught walruses with him." In general, the characteristic features of life and customs we find here in abundance. The fictional part of the "Letter" is especially attractive to the illustrator by the richness of characters and situations. This is a variegated carnival procession, where kings and dads appear, awesome nobles and court ladies, petitioners and clerks, astrologers and calendar, red tape and handicraftsman, bought -ups and motives, thin singers and vile -shaped exciters, noble alien and dummy monks, rhyme and healers, surgery musicians and listeners, horned husbands and crafty wives, thieves and beggars, harlequins and columbines. It seemed tempting to me to bring back from oblivion these noteworthy miniatures, in which the Russian eighteenth century is so prominently reflected - wretched and smart, rude and "scrupulous", wild and refined.

N. KUZMIN

BRIEF INSTRUCTIONAL STORIES

The lawyer, seeing himself despised by the president for his youth, said: "True, sir, I'm young, but I read old books."

Someone, being a great amplifier, and at one time for no reason was so angry that, forgetting himself, he went into a rage. Then a wise man, whom he knew, seeing him in such a state, asked what had happened to him, and was informed that he was angry at the swear word: "How! Is this poor man able to carry a thousand pounds, cannot bear one word."

Francis I, king of France, wanting to laugh at the aged lady, the former great beauty, said: "How long, madam, have you returned from the realm of beauty?" She answered: "On the same day that Your Majesty arrived from Pavia," where he lost the battle against the Emperor Charles V, was a prisoner there, and from there was sent to Ishpania.

The young astrologer, being in a conversation, assured that the sun, and not the earth, turns, and even though it should come out; then one joker said to him: "Perhaps stay with us a little, I want to prove the contrary to your opinion. Do you know that the sun revives, warms and bakes everything on earth?" - "True," answered the star. “So it’s clear,” continued the jester, “that it’s not the sun, but the earth is spinning; for when birds are roasted, then they are spinning, and not the hearth.” “That’s like the truth,” said another, “but very far from the opinion of many pundits and from the truth, and I know such writers who reasonably affirm themselves on that opinion. "-" It may happen, - answered the jester. - Do you believe that the truth is in wine? - "I heard ..." - "Well, then get drunk, then you will see that the earth, and not the sun, is spinning." The same is proved in the following verses: Two astronomers happened together at a feast And argued greatly among themselves in the heat. One kept repeating: the earth, spinning, the circle of the sun walks. Another, that the sun all the planets with him leads: There was one Copernicus, another was known as Ptolemy, Here the cook settled the dispute with his grin. The owner asked: do you know the course of the stars? Tell me, how do you talk about this doubt? He gave this answer: that Copernicus is right about that; I'll prove the truth, having never been in the sun, Who has seen such a simple cook, Who would turn the hearth around Zharkov?

Velezyachy, going hunting together with the crooked one, said to him: "They say that you catch more than me." , said another. And a curve to him: "Whatever you deign to fight, I will win, because I see two eyes in you, and you have one in me."

The solicitor, very vile in appearance and very snub-nosed, could not almost finish his reading of a certain case in court. Then the counselor, who had a distinguished nose, said: "Does anyone have glasses for this gentleman?" But he, without getting angry, answered: "Yes, please, sir, lend me already with your nose."

A rich father's son, walking around the cemetery, said to the poor man's son: "My father's grave is lined with marble, the inscription is in gold words, and around is a very rich fence, and your father's grave is earthen, covered with turf." Then the poor man said: "Be quiet, before your father can turn his stones on the day of judgment, then mine will already be in paradise."

In a certain conversation, they said that doctors are good for nothing. Then one lawyer said: "It's not true, they are at least necessary to reduce the crowd." - "But I, without defending myself, I will say," the doctor said, "that no one complains about me." - repeated the quarrel, - for you sent your rivals to the next world. The old woman, seizing a good glass of wine, came to vespers, and there, dozing off, snored; others pushed her to wake up, then she exclaimed: "Bring it to your granddaughter, but I won't do it anymore."

The clerk, during the interrogation of a certain schismatic, said: "If your conscience is as great as your beard, then tell the truth." shameless - for the fact that they are bare-bearded.

The schoolboy, bringing to repair boots, whose heels had broken through, said to the shoemaker: “O you, curious translater, with considerable work and then in science and art you have reached such obvious perfection in repairing dilapidated calculus, put me two seven-circles to my suppeditors.”

The priest testified to the boy in the catechism, who answered him pretty well and then asked the teacher himself: "Father, perhaps, interpret one question for me!" -- "Which?" "We have a gelding, who made it?" -- "God". And the small one: "No way. God made him a stallion, and my bachko created him a gelding."

Once a foolish deacon happened to come to intercede for himself the priesthood; and how did they know - an ignoramus, the bishop asked him: "How! you dared to enter the sacred rank, believing yourself so crazy?" He replied, "God wanted it that way." And he: "Let it not be false in the Scriptures that he needed an ass."

Since coffee is the main cure for sadness, then a certain lady, being informed that her husband was killed in the war, - "Oh, unfortunate!" she cried, “give me coffee soon,” and immediately became cheerful.

Diogenes said that in the reasoning of philosophy, politics and medicine, a person is a pre-rational animal in the world, but, looking at guessers and interpreters, one can again honor him for a stupid beast.

Sister, scolding her brother for playing cards, from which he squandered: "When will you stop playing?" - told him. "Then, when you stop loving," he answered. "O wretched one! It is evident that you will play until your death."

The one-eyed one, getting up early, went into the field and on the way he met a humpbacked man, whom he, congratulating on a good morning, said, mocking: "You got up early with your burden." before you had another window open."

Some philosopher used to say that at the royal courts there are four good mothers who have four unworthy children, namely: truth, which gives birth to hatred; happiness is pride; severity is danger; and love breeds contempt. Three Jesuits rode through the forest in the morning and, as thieves attacked them, asked who they were, then one of the fathers answered: “We are of the Jesus company.” - “Not true,” said the thieves, “for Jesus never had cavalry, but show me your travellers. "-" What are these questions for? You can recognize us by the dress, "- answered the fathers. "Well, we know that you are pretended fugitives, get off your horses, we will grant you life, save yourself!"

A beggar asked a rich alms from a certain sovereign, calling himself his brother. The king, laughing, asked him: "How could this happen and who was your father?" “Adam,” he answered, “he is a common father to all of us.” Then the tsar, through his lackey, ordered him to give one kopeck. But the beggar said with annoyance that this was not a royal alms. To this the sovereign answered: “If I give all such brothers so much, then I will be forced to sell all my possessions, and that would not be enough for more alms; go, if every brother of yours gives you the same amount, then you will be richer than me.”

Belisarius said about the extermination of selfishness that without unselfishness there is no direct virtue and that the most reliable way to curb vices is to reduce needs and luxury. "I have no time," he continued, "asked a shepherd why his dogs were so faithful to him." their meat, they would be wolves."

The thief, being questioned before the judges, began to spit, cough and blow his nose without ceasing, then one of them said: "Oh, how vile!" "Your Grace, I'm trying to cleanse myself." Another picked up: "What a rogue you are!" And he: "No, - (and coughing): - your mercy." Third: "Kanalya you." And he: "As your philanthropy said, it beat two."

A man complained to the head of the university like this: "Boyarin! Some loafers offended me in this house, but they say that you are their chief," etc.

The clerk said to one petitioner: "Your opponent transferred his case to another order." And he answered: "Let him transfer even to hell; my attorney for money and will go there for him."

The lady boasted to her servants that I had overthrown my rival. Then one of them said: "All right, ma'am, otherwise he, the pig, took you by the ears."

A preacher somewhere in the republic, for the sake of disagreement between the judges, said in the forerunner: "God, grant your mercy to our clerks, so that they hang in union." But the fool, being here, cried out: "Give me, God, and what is sooner is better, that prayer of all good people." Then he: "Pious listeners! I'm not speaking in the same strength as this peasant thinks, I ask that they hang on the concorde." And he said: "What are the needs? No matter how proudly, if only they would hang themselves."

The unlearned youngster, wanting to write a letter to his mistress and not knowing how to compose one, bought a book of letters and read her contented letter, which he copied off and sent to her. But how did she have the same book and in which, having found that letter with the answer, she wrote to her lover like this: "My lord, I have received your letter, and turning the page, you will see the answer."

The boyar, upon her husband’s grant to the governor, on the first Sunday, standing in the church, saw (being herself in thought) that all the people and the priest, falling on their knees, began to pray for rain, and said to almost everyone aloud: “When I don’t If I die, and while my husband is governor, I will serve you all.”

A certain king asked a wise man why philosophers resort to sovereigns, and it is not clear that sovereigns were looking for philosophers. He then: "For the fact that philosophers know their need, and such kings do not recognize their lack of virtue, wisdom and good advice and do not think to look for those who could correct them in that."

Francis I imposed a new tax on himself. Then he was informed as an insult to majesty that the people, despite his person, were very grumbling. To this, he laughingly said: "Let them talk, they need to have some consolation for their money."

During dinner, someone, wanting to laugh at the jester standing on the other side of the table, asked him: "What is the difference between you and a fool?" The jester answered: "Only the table."

The woman, not wanting to endure the fawn that bothered her about love, refused him reasonably like this: “When I was a child, then I obeyed my mother, at an age I obeyed my father, and now I am submissive to my husband. So if you want anything from me, then advise with him".

A jester, being asked about the number of all the stupid in the city, answered: "It is very difficult, but it would be better if I were asked about the smart ones, of whom there are very few."

Someone came to confession and, among other sins, repented that he now only beat his wife. The confessor asked the reason for this. But he said, I’m used to this, because I don’t remember much, and I can’t remember all the sins, and when I beat my wife, she will reprimand me everything that I have done wrong in my life, and through that I can easily confess.

The Frenchman, wanting to laugh at a Russian who came to Paris, asked: "What does parabola, faribol and obol mean?" But he soon answered him: "Parabol is what you do not understand; faribol is what you say, and obol - what you stand for."

The philosopher, being at sea during a great storm with thin people, who then called on God to save them from the flood, said to them: "Be silent so that he forgets if it happens that you are here."

No people receives as many baptismal names as the Ispanis. It happened to one Spaniard, who came at night in heavy rain, which penetrated him to the skin, in a tavern to ask for an overnight stay and knock at the gate. Then the owner, standing up, asked: "Who?" And he answered: "Don Sanho Al von Ramir Pedro Carlos Francis Dominic Stuniga" - and so on. The owner, having only one empty bed, replied rudely that he had no lodging for the night for such a gang, and again went to bed, and that fool was forced to wander far to another tavern.

A certain rich man, speaking of philosophers: “I don’t know,” he said, “what kind of books they are and what their philosophy and wisdom are good for; because these people knock at my gate as often as the unlearned.”

Some king bothered a noble lady about love. She answered him reasonably: "Your Majesty! Being your wife I am very poor, and my mistress - noble."

A certain gentleman, having sent his gardener to work in the garden on a lucid day, wanted to see for himself. Entering there, he looked everywhere in order to see the worker, and, not seeing him anywhere, went under the trees, where he found him sleeping and, waking him up, said to him: “Is this how you work, idler? worthy of sunlight." - "I myself, sir, admit it, and for this I lay under the shade."

The emperor, laughing at one of his nobles, who served him in many embassies, said: "You look like a donkey." And he told him: “I don’t know who I look like, only I know that I had the honor to represent you on many occasions.”

A certain villager, having arrived in the city to his relative, incidentally asked him what position he had, but he answered: "Great ..." - "However, what?" "A wife with nine children."

Some minister of a short-sighted mind, being at a feast, began to mock the thickness of his belly and, striking him, boasted that it cost society a lot. Then a certain lady said to that: "It would be much more useful if such a dependency were spent for the head of this pillars."

The chemist, having published such a book in the name of Pope Leon X, in which he boasted of teaching how to make gold, and expected a great reward for that, but the pope, sending him an empty large purse, ordered to say that now he only needs that, in which to put this treasure. Thieves attacked the offended merchant with rogues and asked him for money, then he answered them very politely: "My lords, now I have only met such honest people as you, they have deprived me of my wallet and money."

A certain woman of a vile figure asked her husband: "Which of your relatives do you want me to visit?" He then: "My friend, whomever you will, only I will be very pleased with your absence."

A certain mistress, talking to a gentleman, incidentally told him that she wanted to know his mistress. But he made several excuses, and finally, to please her curiosity, he promised to send her a portrait. In the morning I received from him a bundle with a small mirror, and looking into it, I recognized his love for myself.

The peasant was very weepy and despaired because his wife had strangled herself on a pear tree in his garden; then the neighbor, seeing him in such sadness, went up to him and said softly in his ear: “Aren’t you ashamed to crash about this, you would be glad! Give me the grafts of that pear to plant in my garden, maybe I will either ". An Ishpanian, being on a ship possessed by a great storm, and when the captain, to reduce the load, ordered all the restless and grave things to be thrown into the sea, then, seizing his wife, he wanted to throw her into the sea. But when the chief asked the reason for this, he answered: "I have nothing more restless and painful than my wife, and for this I want to fulfill your commander's order with her."

Two pages, walking around the city, meeting with a peasant who was beating his donkey hard, both said to him: “How can you not take pity on torturing only poor cattle?” Then the peasant, taking off his hat, said: "Forgive me, Mr. Donkey, I did not think that you knew them and had such friends with you."

Thieves came to the funny poor man at night; then he, not in the least angry, said to them: “I don’t know what you can find here, brothers, at such a time, where I myself find almost nothing during the day.”

A certain king asked a wise man, "How rich are you?" - "Just as much as you," he answered, "for you and I live on God's dependence: leaving this world, no one will take too much with him."

The lame man met the humpbacked man somewhere and, wanting to laugh at him, said: "Hello, brother, is there anything new in your suitcase?" “You,” answered the humpbacked man, “need to know more, for you always deign to go here and there.”

Once upon a time, a courtier said to Emperor Augustus: there is a rumor that your Majesty intends to welcome me with something. He then: "How can you be afraid to believe that!" A certain Spanish admiral, on a solemn day, wanted to visit the royal galleys with the intention of showing his mercy by freeing some slaves, and asked them why they were here? Then everyone apologized with various excuses and tried to assure him of his innocence; but one of them, frankly confessing to him all his faults, said that I was deserving of much more than this punishment, which I am now undergoing. "Drive out this worthless man," said the admiral, giving him freedom, "so that all those honest people do not become infected from him."

The Gascon, having come to the shoe shop, chose boots and, having put them on, said that now I have no money. The seller began to ask for boots, but he, thinking of taking them away, ran through the market, followed by the owner, shouting: "Hold it." Some wanted to win this thief, but as he told them, do not interfere, we have a mortgage, who will get ahead of whom, I am in boots, and he is in bast shoes, then the whole market shouted: "Hurrah! Boots won."

Jupiter, having made a feast, called the other gods to him; then Cupid and Momus, having met at the doors of the ward, argued for a long time about the precedence. The first began to speak to him with great courtesy, but the other, honoring him for a child, began to scold him, and it came to a fight, in which Momus, never understanding jokes, scratched out the eyes of Cupid, who went to complain to the gods, who reasoned that when Cupid Momusa lost his sight, then let him be his eternal guide. From that time on, stupidity everywhere leads Cupid, or love.

The gentry, about to go hunting early, ordered the servant to wake himself up at 6 o'clock. The servant, having risen an hour before, saw his boyar still sleeping and, waking him up, said: "If you please, sir, get some sleep as soon as possible, you have only one hour left to rest."

Two scholars, one Russian and the other Prussian, were arguing about the old and the new calm. The Prussian argued with many arguments that the Gregorian reckoning was more correct than the old one, saying that in 1592, skillful mathematicians found 10 days of surplus in the old calendar, counting from Julius Caesar to this time. “So much the better for us,” answered the Russian, “for when the new reckoning is correct, then the last judgment will be with you earlier than with us, and when it comes to us, hell will already be full.”

A nobleman, driving from a village to another, and meeting on the road with a pretty peasant woman, who was driving a donkey in front of her, said to her: "Where are you going, beauty?" She told him that - in such and such a village. "Do you know, my friend, there is such and such a young lady?" he said. "I know, sir." - "Is she at home now? So, perhaps, I beg you," he said and wanted to kiss her, "take my kiss to her." But she said: "Please send this with my donkey, he will get there before me."

The cavalier, being cruelly in love with a certain girl, and once walking in the garden and seeing her, suddenly asked: "Let me tell you, madam, by what means can I get to your bedroom?" "The Church," she replied.

A certain gentleman happened to be in the same conversation with his young wife. But as the other ladies spoke to each other, I also wanted to show myself to this lady, who began to tell about all the tricks that a certain lover used to enter the bedroom at night to the mistress he loved in her husband’s non-existence, and unfortunately, when they were alone, then suddenly the husband began to knock at the gate: "So imagine, mothers, in what embarrassment I was then."

A certain princess, being at one of the ambassadors and seeing an expensive picture, praised it very much. The ambassador sent it to her as a token of love. But when she received it, she showed it to her husband, who looked at it very intently. "What do you say, my soul," she said, "about this gift that I received from such and such an ambassador?" “My friend, I don’t have more to say,” answered the prince, surprised himself by the kindness of this picture, “like this: either this ambassador is very stupid, or I.”

Well done, marrying unknowingly to a very fickle girl and learning that, he tried in every possible way to correct her, but, seeing this as a bad success, he complained to her father that he wanted to divorce her. The father-in-law said to console him: “You must be patient, friend, because her mother was the same, and I could not find any means, but later, in the 60th year, she corrected herself, and so I think that the daughter her in such years will be honest, and I assure you to be trustworthy.

The young man at the table asked for food, and his father said to him: "It's impolite to ask for it yourself, you have to wait for what they give you." The hungry boy sees that everyone is eating, but they don’t give him anything, he said to his father: “Father, please salt.” - “What do you need?” replied the father. "Salt the dish, which you please." Then his father, seeing his empty plate, gave him food without his distant request.

A man asked his neighbor to lend him a donkey. Neighbor: "I de sent it to another and I regret that you did not say before." But at that time the donkey bleated. "Ah! - said the neighbor, - so your donkey says that it's not true, it's clear, brother, how sloppy you are." trust a donkey than me!"

It happened at the table to talk about astrologers, that they predict a lot, but nothing comes true. The owner himself said: "It is not false, gentlemen, such guessers are always revered for brainless cattle." The servant, hearing this, carried the calf's head on the table and ate the brain out of it on the way; but like a host, looking around, he asked what kind of brainless head it was - "a calf, sir," answered the fellow, "for the calf was an astrologer."

The stupid old woman, being in the church and holding two candles, placed one in front of the image of St. Michael, and the other, without considering, in front of the stricken demon. The deacon, seeing, said to her: "Ah! What are you doing, grandmother, because you put this candle in front of the devil." She replied: "Don't worry, father, it's not bad to have friends everywhere, in paradise and in torment, we still don't know where we'll be."

Once Alexander the Great was asked by what means he reached such a degree of glory and majesty? He answered: "My good deeds with my villains and diligence, which I used to win indispensable love for me in my friends."

The buffoon, carrying a bundle of firewood under his cloak, said to the peasant who descended with him: "Further, fool, you will break my lute." The peasant stopped, and the player did not have time to move ten steps away, when a log fell from him, that he, seeing, cried out to him: "Sir, raise the fallen string from your lute."

Three wise men: one Greek, another Indian, the third from Persia - among other things, they talked about what kind of human condition is the poorest. Then the Greek said: "Old age oppressed by disease and poverty." Indian: "To be in an unbearable disease." But when the Persian sage said: "To die without good deeds," then the others agreed in that.

Young gentlemen often have such teachers who caress them more than correct them. The gentry, after graduating from science, asked his servant: "What did I learn best?" The servant then: "Ride, because horses do not know how to caress."

One called the other a thief, but he could not prove it, and so this truth was more annoying to him than a lie. The thief, taking witnesses, called the one before the judge, who ordered him to prove it or recognize him as an honest person. But he, inventing to avoid untruth, double-bluntly: "It's true, he's an honest man, I lied."

A certain princess, being a girl all her life, and in her advanced age she became blind. Somewhere, a beggar blind to her success, cried out: "Gracious Empress, have pity on a poor man who has lost secular gaiety." She, hearing that, asked her slave: "What kind of person is this, isn't he a eunuch?" - "No, madame ... A beggar blind." - "Ah, poor man! But I thought otherwise."

Someone unmarried advised the sage Epictitus to marry, imagining that this is very fitting for philosophers. “When so,” he said, “then, perhaps, marry your daughter to me.”

A certain lady, restless in her chatter, asked the doctor why her teeth were falling out. He answered her: "Because, madam, you often deign to beat them with your tongue."

Emperor Conrad III, having taken the city of Munich with great difficulty, thought to order to cut all the men on their heads, and allow women to leave the city, taking with them what is better. The wives, taking advantage of this permission, took their husbands by the squats and carried them on themselves, saying that only we and the light of the eye and the best treasure. This fiction so convinced the sovereign that he forgave all those inhabitants and their king, whom he wanted to completely ruin. The German asked his pastor for guidance: what prayer to read in the morning, getting out of bed? He told him: "Speak: Lord God, save me from an evil nobleman, from a shameless clerk, from an Algvazil, from a farmer, from doctors and a pharmacy, from those who listen to two masses every morning and from solicitors."

A certain priest took it into his head to scold one woman for her sins, but her husband, being with her, said: "Father, she is very tender, and if you like, I will endure this for her." The confessor began to dismiss his post, and the woman cried out: "Beat him, friend, harder, for my sake - the accursed polysinner."

A certain commander camped in a very turbulent place and, hearing a murmur from some soldiers, said to them: "When you want to scold your boss, then move away from his headquarters, so that he, having heard, does not order you to be punished for this."

The priest, having quarreled with a woman at a feast, threatened to beat her for it. But she, striking herself on the thigh, said: "God grant her health, I am not at all afraid of you." Pop: "Go to hell, spit," - and she shouted: "If you please, gentlemen, listen, he opened my confession."

A certain commander never complained about requests for awards, then a subordinate decided to report to him like this: “I, the lowest, in my service recognize myself worthy of a reward, but knowing that you do nothing at the request, and don’t remember those who don’t dare to work for you So I ask your generosity to instruct me on how to proceed with this. "-" What an impatient one, - said the chief, - call our deacon, I will now order you to please it.

A green-bellied monk walking along the street was asked by a certain mocker: "Holy Father, when will you give birth?" "When I find a midwife," he replied.

Emperor Hadrian asked Epictitus why Venus appears naked. “For better respect for her,” answered the philosopher, “but more so because she usually makes those almost naked who are very passionately captivated by her cheerfulness.”

One young man, having eaten too much fruit, got constipation. The doctor wanted to give her a clyster, but it seemed to her so disgusting that she would rather die. Her mother said that something must be done without fail. The poor girl could no longer dissuade herself, crying, and said: "Now I know how the innocent suffer for the guilty."

A sailor going to a ship bound for Svalbard was asked by a philosopher: "Wait, brother, tell me where did your father die?" - "In the sinking of the ship..." - "And grandfather?" - "He drowned, fishing in stormy weather..." - "And great-grandfather?" - "He also disappeared with the ship ..." "How dare you go into the sea, knowing that all your ancestors died there, is this a sign of reckless courage?" - "Mr. sage," replied the sailor, "whatever it is, however, I have no less reasons; perhaps tell me how your ancestors passed away?" "Very blissful in their beds!" "Ah, why are you not afraid to lie down on your bed?"

It happened to one bishop to come to the pope, and at that time they counted a lot of gold coins from him. Then the pope said: "You see that the church is not in the age when they said - I have neither gold nor silver." (Act 2.) "True, holy father," answered the bishop, "and it is in vain now to say to the paralytic, arise and walk."

A certain orator, an excessively fat man, came out to give a speech during a mutiny, then the people, seeing him, laughed. "Gentlemen," he said. And that tamed the popular uprising. The musician complained about the listener, who promised, but did not give him anything in return. But he said: "We are simple, for you consoled my ears with a pleasant sound, and I comforted you with my promise."

A certain noble gentleman, being in great debt, and at his death said to his confessor: "I ask God to at least continue my life until I pay off my debts." The priest, thinking it really, answered: "That's a good promise, maybe God will hear your prayer?" “If God had shown such mercy,” said the sick man, turning to his friend, “I would never have died.”

Someone boasted of his courage, and during the battle he ran away. Another, seeing, asked: "Where is that cheerfulness?" "In the legs," replied the coward. And he: "True, every wound is fatal to him, because he is whole heart."

Some gentry, a well-known bastard, having decided to laugh at Cicero that he was from a vile family, asked him: "Who would your father be?" But Cicero, reversing his question, said: "Your mother has made it very difficult for you to guess who your father would have been."

The Frenchman said that many Russians deteriorate in foreign lands. "That's true," answered the Rusak, "but every foreigner corrects himself in Russia."

Sixtus V obtained papacy in this way: he often became ill and most he lived in his villages for a year, and for the best pretense he walked hunched over and coughed, knowing that they usually elect elderly and decrepit cardinals as popes, so that many can reach this dignity. As soon as the then pope died, the other cardinals elected Sixtus head of the clergy, thinking that he was very ill. But after that, he soon began to walk upright and seemed healthy. Then one of his favorites asked: "Holy Father, why did you straighten up when you became a pope?" “Because,” answered the pontiff, “for I, being a cardinal, hunched over for this, in order to find the keys of St. Peter, and now I have already found them.”

The Ishpanian nobleman wanted to have a learned person with him for a conversation, his friend introduced him to a poet, who, being asked if he knew how to make poetry, answered: "You can see from my works." And in the morning he brought to him a great number of novels (fairy tales and fables) and other Spanish poems of every kind. The nobleman, seeing that, said to his friend: “I don’t like this rhymer.” - “Why? be stupid." This story is a kind satire on those who are the only exercise in poetry.

A Greek became a Muslim. After six months, the neighbors, noticing that he did not send the usual five prayers every day, brought him before the judge to punish him for it. The judge asked why. He answered: "My lord! When I became a Muslim, didn't you yourself then tell me that I became as pure as I was reborn?" - "It's true ..." But he: "When it's like that, and then there are no more than six months, as I am in your faith, is it possible to demand prayer from a six-month-old baby."

Some joker took the wise man of the vile figure of Aesop by the hand and, leading him to the carver, said: “How is it, do you understand?” And then he left. The philosopher, wondering at this, asked the reason. The carver then: "That gentleman asked me to cut out the devil, but I refused him for lack of a sample, so know how he laughed at you."

A jester came to a certain feast, whom the butler saw, and began to send him away as uninvited guest telling him he's superfluous. But the jester answered him: "You are mistaken, my friend, read again, starting with me, so you will know that I am not superfluous."

The Numanians, a very brave people, were put on the run from Scipio. Their old men, seeing this, began to reproach them with cowardice, saying: "Didn't you fight with the same Roman sheep, whom we drove away many times?" - "It's true," answered one soldier, "that the sheep are the same, but they have a different shepherd." The Greek, being in the service of Darius, kept his law. Then the king, calling him before him, began to advise him imperiously about accepting their faith. “What is this to you?” said the Greek. “For when I lie to God, how can I be faithful to my sovereign?”

Someone mocked the stranger that they did not have good lingual teachers across the sea. He proved to him: "Because you have our perukmaher, coachmen and barbers are often honorary teachers."

Thales the wise man, when asked how far truth is from falsehood, answered: “Like eyes from ears,” that is, it is much more true what we see than what we hear.

Cicero used to say that false friends are like swallows that appear in summer and fly away in winter. So they come in crowds in happiness, but in misfortune they all run away. And the inconstancy of fortune is like a young girl who, leaving her former lovers, is looking for a younger one. Someone came to a glorious painter and, seeing his unattractive children, said: "It's amazing that you make good portraits, but bad children." The painter told him: "What is wonderful to you? After all, I make portraits during the day, and children at night."

The thrifty one is asked why, being in extreme old age, he lives sparingly? “In order,” he answered, “in death it is better to leave something to enemies than to lose friends alive.” He understood: where there is money, there are friends.

Cambyses, a formidable sovereign and persecutor of injustice, ordered one of his judges and favorites to be skinned alive for bribes and injustice and to cover a chair with it; and, conferring that son on the judge, ordered him to always sit on that chair.

Antigonus the king, being asked how to defeat his enemies, answered: "With strength and courage, and if there is not enough lion's skin, then it is necessary to sew fox to it."

A certain elderly lady, being in conversation, strongly argued that she was not more than forty years old. Then the owner, knowing that she was over fifty years old, said: "You can believe this, because she has been assuring us of this for more than ten years."

Socrates advised young people to look in the mirror so that if they are handsome, they would be afraid to do something that is dissimilar to their beauty, and when they are bad, they would try to reward bodily flaws with the best virtue and reason. Why should they keep to their youth an honest mirror, that is, the teachings of an honest life (a book in Russian).

A certain Diogenes, walking along the road, asked: "Where are you going, where, why?" He answered: "From the tub, to friends, for money."

The solicitor and the doctor had no place to argue about who should go ahead, and they chose Diogenes as third, who immediately decided in favor of the solicitor: "The thief must go ahead, and the executioner behind him." The old man said: "When children are witty in their youth, then in old age they become great fools." And they told him: "If this is true, then you were an excellent wise man as a baby."

Alexander the Great asked one glorious pirate (sea robber), taken in full: "Why are you robbing?" - "For your own benefit," answered the pirate, "as well as you used to do the same, and they call me a robber because I have one privateer (seagoing vessel), and you, who have a great army, are called king." The king liked this bold answer so much that he let him go without any punishment.

Prince Romodanovsky happened to judge one case, in the refutation of which the clerks, daring, represented to him that he himself had suffered many insults from this wrong side. "Leave it," said the non-hypocritical judge, "and talk about your case, I'm judging here not for myself, but for society."

Women, sitting in the autumn time by the valley on the grass and seeing a gray-haired old man walking by, said to him in mockery: "Is there already snow on the mountains?" “It may turn out,” answered the old man, “even the cows have already descended to the ant in the valleys.”

The Athenian envoys who were with Philip, upon their return, praised this sovereign for being handsome, eloquent and able to drink a lot. “This praise,” said one wise man, “is indecent for the sovereign, for the first talent is appropriate for women, the second for rhetoricians, and the third for walnut sponges.”

The Turkish ambassador was visited by many ladies of the court, overly flushed. Then he, being questioned, which seems to him prettier than others, answered: "I cannot say this, for I am inexperienced in painting."

Athenodorus the wise man, leaving Caesar Augustus for his homeland, gave him the last instruction: "Caesar, when you get angry, then remember not to do anything until you have read all the alphabetic letters."

Diogenes was scolded because people marveled at him like cattle. "It's not true," replied Diogenes, "but the cattle are as surprised at me as they are at a man." Socrates' friends showed displeasure that one person, whom he congratulated, did not bow to him. “Why be angry?” said the wise man. “You see that I am more courteous than him.”

The peasant, being offended by his neighbor, went to the governor to complain and gave him a jug of milk, and the guilty one, having taken down the pig, got out. He, regretfully, asked the clerk: "Ah! Where is my milk?" The clerk, revealing the secret, said: "Drank the pig."

Two solicitors were arguing about their sharpness of mind and agility, and one said: "I can sell you a hundred times than you can sell me once."

Someone, mocking one lady, who was magnified by due nobility and arrogance, said to her servant in front of her: “My lord footman, report to my lord the coachman that he deigned the masters of my horses to pawn in my mistress my carriage.”

Philip, hearing indignation from his son Alexander that he had many brothers from different mothers, said: "Alexander! When you see many of your peers and successors of the empire, then try to be so virtuous and brave that you can get a scepter better through your dignity than by my mercy."

An old man had many children with him and, being near death, called them before him and, having distributed them a bundle of rods, asked: "Can you break them all at once?" But how they refused it, calling it an impossible thing, then the father said to them: “From now on, my children, learn that if you begin to live in unanimity, you will be happy and afraid of your enemies, and if you disagree, then you will weaken and you can easily be in enslavement".

The wise man who does not drink much is told: "If all people drink like this, then the wine will become very cheap." He answered: "It is even more expensive when everyone will drink as he wants, and I drink as much as I want."

A stupid young man, wanting to laugh at an old man in front of one beauty, asked him how old he was. “I don’t remember very much,” answered the husband, “but I only know that a twenty-year-old donkey is much older than a sixty-year-old man.”

A certain navigator was asked which sea vessel would be the safest. He answered: "Which is already in the harbor assigned to breaking."

One professor was asked why she was childless, having long a young and portly husband. She answered: "I confess that my husband is skilled in mathematics, but not strong in animation."

Some priest had a very painful fight with his wife. Her relatives began to scold him that he, more than anyone else, should satisfy his passions and be an example of goodness. “But this is what I do,” the presbyter said to them, “imitating the apostolic teaching: I punish my flesh and take it captive into obedience, for husband and wife are two in one flesh.” A certain judge called doctors happy in the world because the sun sees their successful cases, and the earth hides their erroneous ones. He said to a doctor who boasted that his art was more profitable, said: “True, your trade is more profitable than mine, because although you sent many to the next world, you have not yet been hanged for such a murder and have never been flogged by anything.”

Plato threatened one of his servants, who was worthy of punishment, like this: "You should be beaten, fool, if I were not angry."

Some joker asked another what time it was. He answered him: "Now is the hour at which donkeys bathe in Ispaniya." - "I am very surprised," said the first, "that you are not yet in the water."

The nobleman reproved his pet by the fact that he often lies. "It is true," replied the hypocrite, "that in praising you I have sinned a great deal."

Diogenes, being asked at what hour should have dinner, answered: "Rich when he wants, and poor when he can." One day he called himself a dog. Then someone asked why he blamed himself so. “In order,” said the sage, “I bite the evil ones, bark at those who don’t give me anything, and caress the benefactors.”

Well, it happened to him, sitting in the street, having dinner, then the people gathered around him began to laugh and call him a dog. "You're lying," he said, "except those dogs who, standing next to me, are waiting for me to throw something at them."

Antisthenes asked: "How should one come to court?" - "As to the fire," answered the sage, "not very close, so as not to burn yourself, and not very far, so as not to freeze."

Diogenes, walking along the road, bowed to one judge, but he did not even crumple his hat in front of him. "I think," said the wise man, "that our judge is either with horns, or with a skullcap, because he is ashamed to bare his head." They asked him: "To whom is a miser like?" He answered: "A pig, for it is much more useful to us after its death."

Someone asked a mote who had lost money and taken off his dress and was standing by the tavern in great sorrow: "What has happened to you?" “There is nothing,” he replied. "What are you grieving about?" - "That's what I grieve about, that there is nothing but a shirt."

Someone reasonably likened cards and bones to medicinal pills, for just as the stomach and intestines are cleansed of pills, so cards empty pockets and chests.

A simpleton, having come to a wise man living in solitude, asked: "Who can live like that alone, how do you live?" The philosopher answered: "I began to live alone from the very time you came to me." A wise man is then considered alone when he is among the ignorant.

A certain gentleman, seeing a woman walking behind a herd of donkeys on the street, said to her: "Forgive me, mother donkey." She told him: "Forgive me, my dear child." Socrates, when asked which people can be called the noblest of all, answered: "Those who patiently endure poverty, dishonor, labor and death, and despise the opposite of this." He also called women likenesses of death, because they themselves chase after those who run away from them, and move away from those who are looking for them.

A certain rhymer, on the orders of one bishop, having described in verse seven virtues and as many vices contrary to them, brought to him and, in order to induce him to reward him like a miserly person, said: ingratitude"?" The bishop, having learned that something very much concerned him, said to him: “But do not forget to attribute the eighth virtue, called “patience.”

A certain king said to those who reprimanded him that his simple attire was indistinguishable from his subjects: "I would rather that my glory and virtues distinguish me from my subjects than a crown and purple."

It was reported to a certain sovereign that a certain captive leader, seeing great royal favors towards himself, does not love him. “I want,” answered the king, “to do him so much good deeds that I will force him and involuntarily love me.” He used to say that more flies are caught with one honey spoon than with ten barrels of vinegar.

A certain wise man, asked why he drinks very little wine, answered: "And Alexander the Great, in his desire for wine, darkened a lot of the radiance of his glory, for it overshadows reason and virtue and, moreover, has stingy daughters: rage and bestial love."

Charles V used to say: "To make up a good army, I would like the Italians to represent the head, the Spanish - the arms, the Russians - the chest because of their loyalty and strength, and the other states would make up the stomach and legs."

A certain woman asked another well-behaved lady about the means by which she enters into the love of her husband. “So,” she answered, “I do everything that pleases him, and I patiently endure everything that seems bad to me.”

A certain commander praised military ranks in the presence of his sovereign, and blasphemed civilians. "Be quiet," the tsar said to him, "and know that if the civil servants were good at their posts, then we would not have need of military people."

The general, after some battle, reproached the volunteer with the fact that he allegedly was not in the battle. “I’ll prove to you,” that knight proudly told him, “that I was there, and even in a place where you didn’t dare to appear.” The leader, being touched by such a derogatory word, threatened him with cruel revenge for this. But the coward, seeing that the general had fallen into great passion, quenched his anger with these words: "I was, sir, with the convoy, where your courage did not allow you to be."

A peasant, hearing that one vile stranger boasted of his nobility, laughed very much at that, saying: "Glorious are the tambourines beyond the mountains." The foreigner, angry, said to him: “Do you, brute, know on whom nobility is based.”—“Very much, sir, I know,” he answered, “I think on the one for whom it is inappropriate to live in his own country: there are some of your brethren are root-eared and branded."

To some nobleman, who was in litigation, it seemed that at the table every meal was tasteless. And as he was angry with his cook for that, his friend said: "The food, brother, is tasty and well made, but aren't your rivals to your taste."

Someone married a girl who soon gave birth to another, and, according to a rumor that spread, some laughed at the newlywed that he had married a mare with a foal. Others said that his fruit ripened very early. But someone said to him: "Do not be angry, sir, you played your wedding very late." They asked the hunchbacked man what he liked best, either that God made him like other people, or that they were the same hunchbacks. He answered: "When it is no longer possible to be without a hump, then I would like to see them with the same pleasure, with which they look at me."

Alexander VIII, was elected pope in the year 79, and who, after three weeks, having produced many of his relatives, asked one of his favorites what they were saying about him. He answered: "They say that you do not hesitate in the production of your relatives." Papa said, "Oh! oh! sono vinti tre hЖre emezza: it's already 11:30 pm." The rhymer, calling on the healer, said: “Something, brother, I have in my heart and makes everyone weak and tears up all the skin, throwing it into a chill.” The doctor, knowing him and being a funny person, asked: "Do you have any poems that you have not yet read to anyone?" The rhymer confessed to this and was forced to read them. At the end of that, the doctor said to him: "Well, now you are healthy, otherwise these verses tormented you."

Tamerlane, fighting against Bayazet, devastated the best empire in the world, finally capturing him, ordered to bring him before him and, seeing him, laughed. Bayazet replied: “Do not laugh at my misfortune, God gives and removes crowns, it’s not a magnanimous thing to mock the unfortunate.” “I’m not laughing at your misfortune,” said Tamerlane, “but when I saw you, it occurred to me that, it is evident that God does not hold scepters in great reverence when he distributes them to such vile people as we are: to you, a worthless krivets, and to me, a poor lame man.

Some old leader on a campaign with many young princes, which was the new dance. Then one prince, having the best regiment in command, said to this old man: “I have such people on your command who don’t know how to retreat.” “But they won’t learn from me,” answered the leader. The prince, recognizing this as an insult, seeing a plain horse under him, said with a sneer: "Mr. leader, it is surprising that you were a good gentleman before this, and now you look like a Vologonian." because I'm taking so many calves to the slaughterhouse."

King Pyrrhus, having won two battles against the Romans, and seeing that his army was in great decline: "I am lost," he said, "if I win the third in the same way." A certain lady asked the senator about her case, to which he did not know what to answer. She answered: “When you don’t know what to answer, why are you in such a position, and it’s clear that you deserve the royal dependency and favors very badly.” - “I ... deserve it for what I know, and senator, not for something I don't know at all."

Philip, king of Macedon, some of his courtiers denounced his majesty in slander against one leader. “You must first know,” said Philip, “whether I am the cause of this.” And knowing that he did not see any honor from him, although he was very worthy of it, he sent him great gifts. But after that, the king, hearing that the same soldier extols him with great praises: “You see,” Philip then said to the same favorites, “I know better than you the means of how to tame slander.”

Some stranger sought to be governor, then his friends advised him to ask God for a happy success in that. “No,” he answered, “I am very afraid of this, I need him not to know about it.”

Somewhere, a small thief was led to the gallows, then his confessor asked him among other things: "Don't you regret that you were condemned to hang for such a fault?" “It’s much more regrettable for me,” answered the shishimora, “that I didn’t steal so much that I could bribe my judges.” Agesilaus looked out the window, then several soldiers, completely wounded, appeared before him, saying that the wounds prove our courage in battle. "My friends," the king said to them, "I would like even better to have in my service those who have so maimed you." Then one of them said: "They are no more, for they cost our lives."

Someone had great wealth and, not wanting to make anyone an heir after his death, he squandered all his wealth, thinking that he would no longer live 80 years; but after, living for another 6 years, he went around the world, asking like this: "Give something to me, the poor, who did not think to live so long."

The stingy Turk, sitting down to dinner, always said twice: "Bismalag", - that is: "In the name of God." Once his wife asked the reason for this, and he answered: "To wed the demon with the first word, and the eaters with the second."

The Duma clerk called his secretary - "what a fool you are." He, turning around, said: "It's true, sir, I want to say the same thing."

The nobleman, seeing a shepherd boy who came from another village, who was very similar to him, asked: "Didn't your mother live here?" “No, sir,” answered the young man, “but my father often stayed in your village.”

A conversation about love between Harlequin and Columbine. TO.:"No kidding - do you love me?" A.:"It's true, I love you like clerks take bribes and drink; but do you love me?" TO.:"I love you the way stingy people love money." A.:"And I, like doctors love the sick." TO.:"But I, like the priests love funerals and like the gentry love to wind, take a walk and despise non-nobles." A.:"And I, as bosses, love waywardness." TO.:"But I, as comedians, love big gatherings." A.:"Ah! Stop, that's enough, I can no longer love this."

Some thin painter, unable to feed himself on his work, went to foreign lands and became a doctor. But there, being questioned by his countryman about this change, he said: "I wanted to trade in such an art in which all errors are covered with earth."

Louis XI, king of France, asked his ministers what they would give as a gift to the English ambassadors without further loss. Then one of them said: "Your Majesty will get more profit if you give them your comedians, whose maintenance becomes very dear to you."

A certain pastor, having ordered his servant David to borrow intestines from the butcher for dinner, himself went to the pickaxe. Being in it, he brought many prophets to explain his sermon, and in conclusion he said loudly: "Let's see, listeners, what David will say to us." The servant only then came to the Kirk and, thinking that the priest was telling him, shouted: "Father! After all, Mamleev does not give guts without money."

The jester, being in the same conversation with the pastor in the summer, asked him: "Isn't it a sin, father, to beat flies?" The priest answered: "What a sin, I allow this worthless creature to be beaten, wherever it is." The jester, seeing a fly on his forehead, went up to him and gave him such a dance that he made the whole conversation laugh.

Often thin-voiced and illiterate singers are great hunters to sing. Some clerk on Guryev's Day sang on the right krylos so plaintively that no matter how often he proclaimed, then the shepherd, being in church, began to cry. He accepted this, thinking that, of course, the pleasantness of the voice touches the simple heart and sheds tears. And so, at the end of mass, out of curiosity, he wanted to ask the peasant why he was crying so much. “Ah, father,” answered the shepherd, “how can I not cry, the wolves recently ate such a rich goat from a poor man that I would not sell him for any money, and no matter how I remember him, I come to tears, and that's why, sir, as you sang, it seemed to me that that poor beast was bleating, for her voice was exactly like yours. A certain thief, when asked whether he confessed to what he was accused of, answered: "I am even more guilty that I let myself be caught."

A certain doctor called a horseman for advice on how his horse could be cured. The horse doctor told him that she should be given more to drink and throw blood. After that, the doctor began to give him gifts for his labors, but the horseman replied: "We, sir, do not take money from our brothers of the same trade."

A certain warrior, being in conversation, boasted that he never had fear. "Of course," said another, "you did not suck the burning candle with your fingers, for you would be afraid not to burn yourself."

A certain gentry, being at the cemetery and seeing several head skulls, of which some were white and others black, said to his servant: “Do you know, Pakhomka, the difference between these heads? But later it happened that this gentry with the same servant was in a wretched house for seven, where out of the many human skulls there were more white ones, which, seeing, Pakhomka asked his master: “Isn’t this all, sir Faleley Egupyich, noble heads?” But the landowner, angry, did not know what to answer to that. The gentry, during a feast he had, seeing that his footman was carrying a dish, asked: "What are you bringing us?" “Chicken, sir,” answered the servant. At the end of the guests, the landowner, calling that servant to him, said to him: “Fedul! You are stupid when I asked you what you were carrying, and you answered me“ chicken ”- by this you dishonored me; you should have said the same in the plural: "chickens". After that, he happened to dine again with his friends; Fedul carried a dish of stew with beef and mutton, the master, seeing that, asked: "What are you bringing us, Fedul?" The servant, although a simple one, but, mindful of the landowner's instruction, he answered him: "Bulls and rams, sir."

Two, a Rusak and a Pole, being in a tavern, asked for supper. The hostess told them that she only had a small piece of boiled lamb and one roast partridge left. Everyone wanted to eat wild game and, quarreling among themselves for a long time about this, finally agreed to eat mutton, and tomorrow to eat partridge to the one who had the best dream of them, and went to bed. Rusak, taking note of where that bird was placed, and getting up at night, removed it. The Pole, having thought up in the morning to say a magnificent dream: "I, brother, was taken by angels to heaven into eternal bliss, and you will not be able to have such a good dream." - and after that he ate a partridge, thinking that you would not return from there.

Somewhere, an executioner ordered a carpenter to make a gallows for a criminal convict. But the carpenter refused, saying that I had not been paid even for the previous three gallows. But as soon as the execution stopped, the judge, having called the carpenter, gave him a cruel reprimand for not obeying his order, spoken through the kata. "True, sir, I refused to make a gallows, because I had not yet received it for the previous ones, but if I had known that it was necessary for you, I would have left other work and put it on long ago."

To some eminent judge, who happened to be together at a feast with a glorious whirlwind, who from a vile offspring came to a certain dignity through his noble services to the fatherland, it seemed very insulting that

He dared to contradict his opinions. "You, brother," said the angry majestic, "before you remembered your breed!" “I remember her very well,” the sage answered him, not at all hesitating, “and I know that if you were my father’s son, you would still catch walruses with him or herd pigs with him.” For the vile nature of such a person does not humiliate, but exalts the brilliance of his qualities.

Two flirtatious quarrels were asked by their acquaintance: "What are you quarreling about?" “Honesty,” they answered. "I'm sorry you didn't get mad."

A peasant bought five loaves of bread a week from his daily trade, and when he asked why he was doing this, he said: “I take one (that is, for myself), I throw the other (that is, I give it to my mother-in-law), I give the third (that is, I return it to my father), and I lend the other two (that is, to feed his sons in the hope that they will someday give them back to him).

The husband told his wife that he was very fond of books. She told him: "I myself would like to become a book, to be the subject of such your passion." But he said: "So I would like to have you as a calendar, so that you can change it every year."

The snub-nosed rich man gave the beggar a penny. "God save your sight," said the poor man. But the miser asked him about the reason for this prayer. “For this,” he answered, “when your eyes become dull, you will no longer be able to wear glasses.” A certain king asked a wise man: 1. What is the undeniable truth? 2. Who is more flatterer in the world? 3. What food is tastier than all foods? 4. Who is the bigger liar? 5. Who is the richest of all? 6. Who is the poorest of all? 7. Who is the haughtiest of all? 8. Who is smarter than everyone? 9. Who is the dumbest? But he answered - to 1. Those born die. 2. Painter. 3. First bite to the hungry. 4. Poet. 5. Who is satisfied with the small and the necessary. 6. Envious and rich miser. 7. Who out of meanness will become a great master. 8. Who yields to a mad and fool. 9. A husband who completely relied on the fidelity of his wife.

Alphonse the King was once at the jeweler's with many courtiers, and as they left the shop, the merchant, running out, complained to the king about the loss of the then rich diamond. The king, returning to him, ordered to bring a bowl of bran and ordered everyone to put a clenched fist in the bran, and remove the palm. When he started, everyone followed him, and after pouring out the bran, that diamond was found, only with a common dishonor.

A certain king showed poetry to a courtier, who asked him: "What fool did this?" “I myself,” he answered. “So, of course, you,” he said, “wanted to do badly what you were completely successful in. Your Majesty has a gift to do whatever he wants.” And so he pretty much got out.

A certain virtuous lady asked her husband, a roaring ratsger, for one poor widow like this: "Have mercy, father! How long will it take to solve the case of such and such an orphan widow, etc. I heard that she has been dragging him for ten years already." Her husband answered her: “My friend, I am glad with all my heart, but there is no time to think about it, because you know that, in addition to many holidays, christenings, motherlands, name days and other parties, we sometimes go to the opera, masquerade, comedy, at the court, then at the ball, and in the summer at recreation, and so on. "-" Hey, my soul! - she said. when sims are having fun."

A green-bellied clerk, sentenced to bread and water, suggested to his boss that he might fall ill from such a temptation out of habit. But the judge said to him: "Do not be afraid, you can live with the present supply in yourself, without eating for a week, and after emitting excess fatty and wine vapors from yourself, you will be healthier than before." A certain bishop said the same thing to a fat monk who was sentenced for his guilt to a sawmill or flour mill.

Two beggar old women A. and B., having met on Red Square, greeted each other, and the old woman A. asked: "Did my friend give away her daughter?" B.:"Did it, mother." A.:"For whom, dove?" B.:"To the translator, my light." A.:"Well, happily, sister, but where is he at the place?" B.:"He, friend, from place to place, and probably transfers the blind from Vshivaya Gorka to the Arbat."

One courtier, having left the power of attorney with all lenders, asked his sovereign for something that cost him nothing. “So I beg your majesty,” he said, “welcome me here, to strike with your hand lovingly on my shoulder in front of many.” The king made him that pleasure. Then the people of that poor man considered him a great favorite; and through this he was able to borrow great money and became a noble and rich master.

The Moroccan king, laughing at his jester, said: "You, brother, are a great king over fools." But he told him: "Oh! If I were such a king, then my possession would be a great state, and you would be the main nobleman with me."

The tailor, cutting his dress and using more cloth than proper, said to his wife, inquiring about the reason: "So as not to lose my good habit in proper theft."

Someone, marrying a coquette and wanting to laugh at a certain wise man, said: "Although you are revered as a learned man, I do not think that you could know anything completely."

“You are deceived, friend,” he answered, “for I know perfectly well that you are with horns.” An apology of one inconstant to her husband: I love your friend, loving your spirit. Kissing him, I kiss you: One soul in you, I know that thing; So I think you have one body.

The judge said to his petitioner: "I don't see any benefit from your case." But he, understanding these words, took out two gold coins from his pocket and, giving them to the judge, said: "So, sir, I will give you a good pair of points."

Some rich and vile tax-farmer ordered himself to be painted standing in natural size and after that did not want to pay what the painter demanded. The master said: "All right, sir! I will take your image to myself." The man asked: "What do you need in it?" “I won’t lose,” he answered, “when I attach a tail to it, there will be a portrait of a dressed monkey, or I will put an iron grate on it with the signature: “Give it to the poor prisoner,” then I know who to sell it." After death, the farmer, having descended into the underworld, And standing before Satan, He asked: tell me, my friend of the heart, Is it possible to buy off eternal torment in hell. I remember how I lived in the world; I served you with all my heart and soul. Perhaps, grandfather, give it to your grandson; I multiplied the price there, and here I will multiply flour.

A certain prince asked one peasant what they were saying about him. "Neither good nor bad," he replied. Then the prince, giving him a few pieces of gold, and hitting his back with his cane five times, said: "Now you can speak good and bad about me."

Once upon a time in France they played a comedy in the presence of the king scientists people. And when the game came to a great censure of learned parasites, then one comedian, dressed up in such a way that he looked very much like a certain famous Parisian professor, and going out to the theater, cried out to the actors: “It is obscene for you to laugh at the wise men like that, you will give an answer to that. ". And then he began to angrily pester them so that they would immediately stop playing such a worthless comedy. "But I want them to play," the king proclaimed, thinking that it really was that professor and he dared to shout so in front of him. But when they found out that it was a comedian, everyone began to laugh more, and so did the king himself about this joke, in which he was deceived.

The sage, being asked why he was not a member of such and such a school, answered: “To me, as Cato, this question is pleasant, who was asked why statues would not be put up for him, answered - for me this is more honest than they would ask, for what have been set".

A certain powerless judge, being in a conversation, wanted, like the others, to kiss the lady who had come there, but she, holding him back, said: “Be quiet, you don’t get a kiss so soon, you know that this is your last pleasure.”

Somewhere one calendar clerk, when asked why his weather predictions do not come true so much in summer as in winter, answered: "Because in summer they usually pray either for rain or for a bucket, but not in winter."

The painter copied a sick person and presented him in such a way that one physician, having never seen the original, said that he had fever. The question is: which of them was more skillful in his craft?

A doctor said to his friend about another doctor: "How did you entrust your life to a man who knows neither Latin nor Greek?" He told him: "This fool speaks Greek and Latin, but he uses me in Russian."

Harlequin said that if Adam had been a clerk with an attribution or had bought the rank of commissar, then we would be noble, and if he had the reputation of Murza, then we would be illustrious.

A certain merchant, who used to often say this proverb "thanks to God and you," was asked by the governor how many children he had. "Five," replied the simpleton, "thanks to God and you."

A peasant, riding with a cart, let his horse cross the mud, and he himself went along the path, but as she stopped there, he shouted: "Well, mother, well, friend, dove, well, oder, shot." But without being inspired by this, he said: "God help me," while he himself, without helping, stands on dry land. Almost all of us have such an invocation.

A manor pastor buried his beloved dog in the cemetery. The bishop wanted to punish him for such lawlessness. But the priest, knowing that he was greedy, announced: “Your reverend! If you knew how smart this dog was, you would consider it a rational animal: it made a spiritual one, according to which it left you a silver bowl, from which it ate, and so I hand it over to you." The bishop, convinced by this gift, consigned that sin to oblivion.

The leader, commanding the soldiers, poorly dressed, seeing the enemy army in new uniforms, said, leading his people to battle: "Friends, try to dress well."

The life of Pope Boniface VIII was of such bad conduct that it was finally said that he entered the papacy like a fox, lived like a lion, and died like a dog.

A certain Turkish pirate ordered the execution of Ibrahim, who gave him the city of Magiliya, and in his defense before him that he had promised him life before taking that city and reward him enough, he said: "No one is obliged to keep his word to someone who has changed to his fatherland."

Some vile and impoverished father's son, marrying the maid of his commander, became a clerk and, having made money with this craft better than professorship, with a lot of money, he built huge house, like an elephant's yard, and fenced it with a vast stronghold. Once he showed it to his friend, leading him around all the chambers, he suddenly said: “You see (pointing out the window to the front garden), three stamens have already been stolen.” “Just like the whole house,” answered the friend.

The smart nobleman said to the fonnard, who was attached only to glasses and cards, and magnified by his genealogy: "It seems to me that your genealogy is older than you think, and older than Adam." "How so?" asked the simpleton. “So,” he answered, “because many animals were created before Adam, so maybe you are descended from goats or donkeys.”

The wicked old lady was at the opera, dressed up like a young lady. A foreigner, sitting next to her son and seeing her, asked, laughing, not knowing him: "Doesn't this old woman in such a dress seem ridiculous to you?" - "I would have thought the same thing," he answered, if she wasn't my mother."

Columbus, the first discoverer of America, happened to be at a feast, where many people praised him for inventing that new land, and one ignoramus said: "Everyone would do the same if he were provided with the same." Hearing this, Columbus grinned and, taking an egg from the dish, gave it to him, saying: "Can you put this egg on the table straight and without any other support?" But he, after thinking a little, answered: "It is impossible, and you yourself will not do it." Columbus, taking the egg from him and carefully flattening it on the table with a pug, said: "You see, I think that now everyone can do the same, but before that, a rare person will guess it." Having said this, it is more convenient to adopt than to invent it yourself.

Simonides the wise man, being surrounded by a certain person that his daughter put him to shame by her indecent behavior, answered as follows: “You are mistaken, brother! She does no more dishonor to me with her vices, as I honor her with my virtues.”

Charles II, the English king, reproached the poet that in the panegyric signed to him he praised more than Cromwell. But he said: "Your Majesty! In poetry, we are better at our dreams than the truth."

A certain prudent girl, being asked by her girlfriends, who seems to be the most pleasant beauty of all others, answered: "She who comes from modesty."

The Spartans responded to the threatening letters of the king of Macedon with two words written on a large sheet: "After all, Dionysius is in Corinth." Instead: remember how Dionysius, having been expelled from the state for his presumptuousness, left for Corinth, where he started a children's school, changing the scepter to a vine for the sake of his livelihood. So we'll bring you before then, if you don't stop threatening us.

Somewhere in the medical position they were made only from foreigners, although they were not skillful. So someone from that place, a native of that place, said to his donkey: "Oh! How unhappy you are, my undercoat! If you were born or studied abroad, then you would truly be either a doctor or a professor with us."

Cartesius was telling his friend about a certain matter, and he, listening, did not argue about anything and praised everything, for which he, getting angry, said to him: I'm only talking to myself."

Timon of Athens, a nobleman, nicknamed the Magnificent, once fooled himself so that those donkeys, who at the former carousel (horse race) were honored by him, ordered to build a magnificent tomb near his own. But, having heard that, one wise man said: "Oh! If Timon himself were laid in the same tomb, then it would be possible to write on it:" Here lie three victorious cattle, two donkeys with their master.

A certain nobleman, more famous for his breed than for his mind, was with the queen, who asked him if his wife was healthy. He then: "She is very heavy." - "When will she give birth?" -- she said. "Whenever your majesty will." Is not this courtier skillful? An astrologer, seeing Socrates for the first time and judge by the appearance of his face, said: "This man, of course, is the most evil in the world?" His disciples, having heard that, almost killed him for this false forecaster, but Socrates, keeping them from that, said: "He spoke the truth - I was such by nature, only after that I corrected myself with my philosophy."

The skillful preacher ended his sermon in the following way: “I hope, pious listeners! that this teaching is enough for the illiterate, but superfluous for the learned, for they only notice the beauty and order of speech, knowing the Holy Scripture, and when they no longer follow it, then whether I will they listen to a sinner? Amen."

Two, of whom one walked on a piece of wood, visited together a certain widow; and as she appeared with the fetus, they entered into a dispute - whose child will be. The lame man said: "If he is born with a piece of wood, then he will be mine, and without it, yours."

The hunchback, sitting in the pickaxe, heard the pastor say in his sermon: "Whatever God did, it was well done." This seemed doubtful to him, and for that, waiting for the priest at the door, he asked: "Father! You said that all things are well created, but do you see what I am?" The pastor told him: "My friend! You are quite a man and, like a hunchback, pretty well arranged."

Dionysius the tyrant greatly abhorred the superstition and idolatry that the Greeks had in his time, and, having come to one temple, showing it with a funny look, said: “I think it’s not a sin to use something that the gods do not need,” and took off the golden an epancha from the statue of Olympian Jupiter and put on a woolen one, saying: "A golden thing does not warm in winter, but is heavy in summer." And cutting off the golden beard from the statue of Aesculapius, he said: "It is indecent for a son to have a beard when his father Apollo was beardless."

Cadiz, a Turkish judge, interrogating a Mohammedan who called himself a prophet under the Sultan, demanded that he prove his mission by miracles. The imaginary prophet said: "I can raise the dead." - "Well," said the judge, "yes, you really need to show it." - "When you don't believe," he said, me a saber, then I, cutting off your head, can resurrect you. Then the sultan asked the Cadiz: "What do you say to that?" - "No need," he answered, "another miracle, I believe that he is a prophet."

A certain princess, talking with the Moroccan ambassador, among other things, laughed at the polygamy allowed to the Mohammedans. “We would, madam,” said the ambassador reasonably, “have one each, if they were all like you.”

Louis XII, being a duke, received many bitterness and annoyance from two gentlemen of the court, who were in favor under the former king. Then one of his favorites urged him to render them wrath and revenge. "It is unworthy of a king," he answered, "to avenge the insults shown to the duke."

They laughed at one courtier that he was powerless, but he did not want to admit it at all and, once meeting with one scoffer, he said: “Do you know, worthless detractors, that my wife has recently given birth to a son to me.” - “Congratulations, my lord, - he answered, - yes, they never doubted about your wife. In vain, your husband is sad and heartbroken, That I love others, because you do not decrease, The house is full of robots, calm down and eat, What is the loss when you don’t live this and live?

The Sultan, having heard that the glorious leader Skanderbeg had a saber, with which he immediately cut off the head of a very fat ox, demanded it, but, having received it, made an unsuccessful experiment and returned it with a reprimand for such a mockery. "Your Majesty," he replied, "I sent you my saber, not my ramen."

One noble girl was reading love story and, by the way, fell into a tender conversation that took place for a long time alone at the red tape with his mistress, who were equally burning with passion for each other. “What a foolish thing to say,” she cried, throwing down that book, “why so much talk when they were already together, and, moreover, alone.”

Some dying landowner was approached with an announcement that a court case had been decided in his favor. Then he said to that: "Now I do not need such news, but my enemies," thus recognizing his heirs, who are waiting for his death.

Well done, marrying, he said to his wife on the first night: "If I had known you like that before, I would never have married you." they had already deceived me five times before, and I was afraid to go into such deception again.

Someone, driving incessantly in foreign lands, gave such an answer to his laughing windy custom: "I will sweat until I find such a land in which power and power of attorney are in the hands of honest people and in which merits are rewarded."-- "Of course you will die on the way," they said.

Some court jester was threatened by one courtier like this: "I'll beat you to death, useless." The jester, frightened, ran to the sovereign and complained to him. The king answered him: "If he kills you, then I will order him to be hanged." - "I do not want that," answered the jester, "but I wish that you ordered him to be hanged before, while I am alive."

A certain cook, being in the service of a miser, did not want to serve him anymore, and when he was asked about the reason, he answered that if I live longer with him, I will completely forget my trade. The miserly estate prepares his whole life, And has fun, only counting his belongings: He spends nothing, lives wretchedly until death, To only say at the end: there is a lot left.

Some sensible person, not being in any position and finding out that there was an empty place, asked his sovereign about it. The tsar flatly refused him, not encouraging him in the least. The petitioner, thanking the king in a very humiliated way, went out. But the sovereign, knowing that he was a learned man, thought that, of course, he did not understand that refusal, and, returning him, asked: “Did you listen well to what was said to you?” "Very clear, Your Majesty," he answered. "What did I tell you?" said the king. "You deigned to refuse me that need, about which I troubled Your Majesty." - "Why did you thank me?" -- he asked. "For the fact that you soon refused me and did not force me to worry anymore, both by bothering, your majesty, and by caressing myself with vain hope." The king was so pleased with his answer that he then granted him to that position.

A certain philosopher took for himself a wife of very small stature. His friends asked him why, being a reasonable man, he chose such a dwarf for himself. "My friends!" he said to them.

An Italian, being asked by a Frenchman, to whom he would rather be a subject, whether the king of France or that of Spain: "I would like to see one, hanged on the guts of another."

A simpleton, very sore in one eye, asked the jester if he knew what to use. He answered: “I had a toothache last year, then I ordered it to be pulled out and thus I was cured, so I advise you to use the same medicine.”

An elderly widow, loving one gentry, gave him a rich village. And the other, the young mistress, being one of her own, argued with him about that gift, which he got by rights. "My lord! - she told him in court. - You got this village for a very cheap price." The gentry answered her: "Madame! I'll give it to you, if you please, for the same price."

The farmer told his wife that he had heard that all the husbands in their estate were considered cuckolds, except for one. "What do you think, darling, who would it be?" he asked her. "It's hard to recognize him, my friend," she answered.

Henry VIII, King of England, being in quarrel with Francis I, King of France, appointed to send a bishop to him as an ambassador with a very rude and menacing reprimand. The bishop represented to him that I should not be alive if I only reprimanded the proud sovereign, and asked for that dismissal. “Don’t be afraid of anything,” Heinrich told him, “if he tells you, then I will repay him with the heads of many Frenchmen who are with us.” “I believe that,” the bishop said, smiling, “yes of all those, not one of them will stick to me so well as this one, ”pointing to hers.

At a feast, the fat priest happened to sit at a table near a lean old man, who, being pressed by her, said: "Mother! What do you need such a body for?" "To cover your bones," she replied.

Some priest, being ill and lacking his own money, sent to borrow from a sufficient almshouse. A friend said to him: "How not ashamed to borrow from such a person?" "No, it's nothing, it's to pay the doctor." What money is, so are people.

Harlequin, who loves one thin coquette, was asked what tied him to such a lean pair, he could find more sweaty. "When she is dry," he answered, "then the road is closer to her heart and the road there is shorter."

A certain gentleman did not like one of his sons, who was smaller and uglier than the others. Once upon a time, this child, seeing his father, looking at him with contempt, said: "Father! After all, a reasonable dwarf is preferred to a stupid and rude giant, not everything that is thick and large is precious. A sheep is small, but sweet, and an elephant is great, yes nasty." The noble stranger, having arrived at the shop and having chosen a rich hat, said to the merchant: "Hey, brother! I will take this hat, and you will receive the money later." The merchant answered: "It is impossible, sir." And he: "How dare you not believe me in such a trifle." - "Do not be angry, sir," said the merchant, "I need money, and besides, I'm not used to wandering every day to bow to my hat."

The merchant, having received a great loss in the bargain, ordered his son not to tell anyone about it. The son, promising to fulfill this, asked him about the benefits of this silence. “That,” answered the father, “that instead of misfortune we will not suffer three: one is our damage, the second is the deprivation of credit, and the third is the joy of our envious people.”

Someone, being asked by his wife why he does not go to the lottery and put something in, answered: "My friend! Only cuckolds are happy there." - "Oh, father!" she cried. taste your happiness, I strongly hope that we will get a good lot."

A certain bishop rebuked a certain king that he acted in his office more politically than Christianly. The king told him: "I see, father, that you have read only the Holy Scriptures, and not the Book of Kings."

Volokita, talking alone with a young and handsome free-thinker, took it into his head to announce to her his desire to put a gold piece in one eye and look at her with the other. She, recognizing his intention, told him: "My lord! Love is not a crooked thing, but a blind one."

Mr. Diderot sold his library for 15,000 livres to the Russian Empress. This empress ordered him to ask her to keep and be her librarian in France and for that to receive a pension of 1000 livres. But as he received nothing after a year and a half, then soon afterwards she wrote to him like this: "Wishing that you would never suffer such a slowdown in your pension, she indicated to give it to you fifty years in advance."

A cavalier of a rude nature, seeing an expensive diamond on the hand of a pretty lady, said: "For me, a ring is more pleasant than a hand." The lady, looking at him, answered: "But I like olstra better than cattle."

The Frenchman, a glorious rooster, never liked to drink water, but at death he asked for a large glass of it, saying that now he must say goodbye to his enemies. Martial describes the drunken old man Appius thus: Appius has winter on his white hair And summer in his eyes burning with wine. As he drinks, violets bloom on his nose, And they represent the middle of spring just like that. As in autumn, the cheeks of all lingonberries are full of ripe, Doesn't everyone see - the whole year is depicted here. Prince Maurice, for the battle fought near Newport, ordered his fleet to be withdrawn from the coast, which could serve as a refuge for his army. And then, leading it to battle, he said: “My brave warriors, you see that the enemy Newport is behind you, the sea is on your left, the river is on your right, and the enemies are in front, so there is only one road left for you, which consists in such difficulty as to pass straight through it. With this encouraging speech he won the victory, which was the salvation of the Republic.

One poet to the superstition, who reproached him with fanaticism, said this: Perhaps, do not call me unfaithful more, For the fact that I do not owe faith to faith, I believe in a deity, I am submissive to a higher will. And I still believe that you are a fool. The vile superstition flees from reason, And he believes what is not proper, Who tries to believe everyone's nonsense, Strives to be a hypocrite before God himself. Ofriza had a daughter, whom she instilled all sorts of virtues from childhood; direct piety, diligence in work, decency, temperance and wisdom were her qualities. Chloe lost her worthy mother and with her a small estate, which she hoped for. She could not enter a monastery, she decided to live alone from the noise of men, in a little room, by the labors of her own hands, which could hardly bring her to self-sufficiency. Kloe is young and handsome, and this poverty makes her dangerous. The young Lezidor fell in love with her and, aware of her miserable condition, considered her among his victories, but found it impossible to gain access to her and persuade him to him. Tender letters, gifts were all generously despised. Such stubbornness only irritated the passion in Lezidor more, and he, having overcome all that, married Chloe. Chastity forced itself to revere vice.

The Dutchman asked the Frenchman: “Why do other strangers blindly imitate you in everything, like monkeys? " The Frenchman answered: "Do you know politics, man! Indeed, the best pleasure consists in changing behavior."

The thief, while in Paris, came in the evening to a merchant who had many silver chandeliers in his office, with the intent to steal some of them. He asked to see some goods, and while they were looking for them, he entered into a conversation with the hostess and with others who were here, brought up a speech about the cunning of swindlers and, moreover, said: “Gentlemen, you will be surprised how one rogue stole two silver chandeliers from the office almost like in front of the eyes of many spectators. "-" It can not be so, "- said others. "Yes, I was here myself, but in this way ... - and began to imagine that action, - he, like me now, put his hat on the table, grabbed two candlesticks and, having extinguished the fire, carried them out under the skirt." This narrator, doing the same thing, ran out into the street and soon disappeared from his listeners, who admitted their mistake, but it was too late to run after him.

Under the Polish king August XII, there was a jester who, having decided to laugh at the ladies of the court, dressed up in a French caftan and trousers without back halves; and just as the king entered the great hall, he, presenting himself to him, turning his back to the ladies, began to bow low. They, seeing the unusual, began to close. The king, looking at them, asked the reasons for this, and meanwhile the jester disappeared.

A certain lady, having one son and seeing a dying man, was very upset about it. The priest, as a consolation, said to her: "Remember Abraham, whom God ordered to kill his son, and he obeyed without murmuring." "Ah, father!-- she answered.-- God would never have required this sacrifice from a mother."

A certain young and handsome lady, being in a conversation, speaking of ladies' attire, said: "So now everything is expensive that comes to us to go naked." That one funny man said: "This would be for us, madam, it would be a most pleasant subject."

The crooked bet with the sighted one that he sees more than that one, and he won, because the crooked one sees two eyes, and the crooked one has only one.

A certain beauty had many lovers and assured everyone of her fidelity. But suddenly Cupid took the bandage from one of her sweethearts and revealed to him her inconstancy, he began to reproach her with that. "Ah! My lord," she answered him, laughing, "when you have received your sight, I beg you not to disturb me: I accept only the blind."

In the 2nd century, Godina, the wife of the Duke of England Mercy, glorious in her beauty and virtue, showed her love for her subjects with excellent action. Her husband imposed a heavy tax on the inhabitants of the city of Coventry. She persistently asked him to cancel this, but he finally agreed to it on such a condition that she rode naked through the whole city. Godina was subjected to this shame with the prohibition of the inhabitants to look at her under the death penalty. She got on her horse and rode all the streets, having no cover, besides her long hair. A certain citizen, out of curiosity, opened the window, but was immediately killed, and in memory of this being, a statue was placed in the city in the same place in the form of a looking man. The bishop, despising some simple-minded and meager priest, said to him: "I think that you do not understand even the first principles of the catechism and how many major sins there are?" "Eight," replied the priest. "So," said Vladyka, "I was not deceived in my opinion of your knowledge. Tell me, perhaps, which ass-bishop made you priests, and what are those eight sins?" -- “I am consecrated to this dignity by your reverend, and as for the main sins, then to the seven, which are known to everyone, you must add an eighth, that is-- despise the poor priests."

"Aren't you ashamed," said a passerby to a beggar, "you can work." He answered him: "My lord, I need money, not your advice."

An officer came to a certain general who was preparing for battle, asking for permission to see his dying father in the last, in order to try and get a blessing about him. "Go, - said this leader, knowing the reason for this absence, - honor your father and mother so that you may live long on earth." Extremely falling in love with a certain attractive and permanent petty-bourgeois woman, the great gentleman said to her: "Your qualities are everything that I like in you." - "So," she answered him, " Please don't put me in danger of losing everything you love."

Someone, seeing the displeasure of his friend in the wrong demand, said to him: "When your friendship is useless to me, then I don't need it." "Yes, and yours to me,-- answered a true friend,-- because it is impossible to preserve it with justice.

In the village they brought a baby to the church to be christened. The priest, having drunk a little more than usual with his friends, and being unable to find the rules of baptism in his missal book, said, turning over the pages in it: "Oh, how difficult it is to baptize this child!"

Finally, I offer this memorable story: A certain sensible person said this about the end of life: “The day is approaching, on which I will no longer be the master of my estate and will be disappointed to see that I have sown my seeds for others. Soon, soon I will understand clearly what I had wealth, not mine, but borrowed. The hour will come, and who knows how soon? When I, my dearest, will be the cause of fear, sorrow and weeping? What will my heart be like when my widow, my orphans and relatives stand near my bed and then about will they begin to weep for me? How can I endure the looks and tears of those who, without me, perhaps, will remain in poverty? How will it be for me then when the doctor hides from me, and the priest clearly announces death? What will I think then? When will they announce to me that I must already give up all the gaiety of this world, part with everyone, forget my honor and only think about one eternity? You will fall soon, O Neva jets! into the wide sea you will pass forever, never return from the sea. So our fate leads our days to eternity. And so from there life does not come back.

KURGANOV Nikolai Gavrilovich, Russian educator, teacher, publisher of Pismovnik (the first name was “Russian Universal Grammar…”). Born in the family of a non-commissioned officer of the Semenovsky regiment. In 1741 he graduated from the Navigation School in Moscow, in 1746 - the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg, was left as a junior teacher at the academy, where he served all his life, taught "mathematical and navigational sciences", and from 1790 - experimental physics. He finished his professional career as a professor of navigation and higher mathematics (since 1773) with the rank of lieutenant colonel (1791). But the main work of Kurganov is rightfully considered his famous "letter" (1769). Initially, the book was called "Russian Universal Grammar, or Universal Writing, Offering the Easiest Way to Study the Russian Language with Seven Additions of Various Educational and Useful Fun Things."

"Pismovnik" was intended for home use, became an encyclopedia for self-education and entertainment. The grammar, which forms the basis of the book, was presented at the level of the then science quite intelligibly and clearly. Grammar is followed by “Additions” - collections of anecdotes, proverbs, riddles, teachings, reference materials, an explanatory dictionary, etc. The authors of the famous Kozma Prutkov, writing “Thoughts and Aphorisms”, used many expressions from the “Pismovnik”. It is significant that this section of the Letterbook was republished in 1976 with magnificent illustrations by N. V. Kuzmin. The Letter Book was compiled as a book that was supposed to instill a taste for reading and lay the foundations for education and moral education. Moving from simple and entertaining reading to more and more complex subjects, the "Pismovnik" introduced the reader to advanced scientific positions, ideas of enlightenment philosophy, revealed the panorama of the development of human thought, and formed an aesthetic taste. He provided the reader with material for small talk and models of wit. The book played a significant role in the history of Russian culture. Grammar, as well as articles on rhetoric and poetics, were used as teaching aids in schools. The poetic anthology was popular; poems from it were copied into notebooks and albums. And although by the beginning of the 19th century the material collected in the “Pismovnik” began to become obsolete both in scientific and cognitive and aesthetic terms, this publication satisfied the needs of the mass reader for a long time, becoming primarily a book “for the people”.

31.Magically adventurous and satirical everyday stories of the collection of M.D. Chulkov "Mockingbird. Or Slavensky tales ":" picaresque "novel" Pretty cook "

"Mockingbird, or Slavic Tales" - a fairy tale collection in five parts. In "Mockingbird" Chulkov collected and combined the most diverse material. The most widely used by him are international fabulous motifs presented in numerous collections. The composition of "Mockingbird" is borrowed from the famous "Thousand and One Nights". Chulkov takes from it the very principle of constructing the "Mockingbird": he motivates the reason that prompted the narrator to take up fairy tales, and also divides the material into "evenings" corresponding to the "nights" of the Arabic collection. In "The Mockingbird" there are not one, but two narrators: a certain Ladan, whose name was derived by Chulkov from the "Slavonic" goddess of love - Lada, and a fugitive monk from the monastery of St. Babyla. Once in the house of a retired colonel, after the sudden death of the colonel and his wife, they take turns telling stories to their daughter Alenone to console and entertain her. At the same time, Ladan's tales are distinguished by magical, and the monk's stories - by real-everyday content. Main character fantastic tales- Tsarevich Siloslav, looking for his bride Prelepa, kidnapped by an evil spirit. Random meetings of Siloslav with numerous heroes who tell him about their adventures allow inserting short stories into the narrative. One of these short stories - the meeting of Siloslav with the severed but living head of Tsar Raxolan, goes back to the tale of Yeruslan Lazarevich. Pushkin will later use it in the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila". Many motifs were taken by Chulkov from French collections of the late 17th - early 18th centuries, known as the “Fairy Cabinet”, as well as from old Russian stories, translated and original. However, the Russian folk tale in "The Mockingbird" is presented very poorly, although the main task the writer was in an attempt to create a Russian national fairy tale epic, as indicated primarily by the title of the book - “ Slavic fairy tales". Chulkov seeks to give a Russian flavor to the extensive material, for the most part drawn from foreign sources, by mentioning Russian geographical names: Lake Ilmen, the Lovat River, as well as the “Slavonic” names he invented, such as Siloslav, Prelep, etc. In the monk’s tales, differing in real everyday content, Chulkov relied on another tradition: on the European picaresque novel, on the Comic Novel by the French writer P. Scarron, and especially on facets - satirical and everyday stories. First of all, the largest of the real-everyday stories is connected with the latter - "The Tale of the Birth of the Taffeta Fly." The hero of the story is student Neoh - a typical picaresque hero. The content of the story is divided into a number of independent short stories. Having experienced a series of ups and downs, Neokh achieves a strong position at the court of the sovereign and becomes the son-in-law of a great boyar. Three satirical everyday stories were fundamentally new in it: "A Bitter Fate", "Gingerbread Coin" and "Precious Pike". These stories differed from other works of the "Mockingbird" in sharply accusatory content. The story "A Bitter Fate" speaks of the exceptionally important role of the peasant in the state and, at the same time, of his plight. The next story "The Gingerbread Coin" touches on an equally important social problem - wine farming and taverns. In the third story - "The Precious Pike" - bribery is denounced. This was a vice that plagued the entire bureaucratic system of the state. Officially, bribes were forbidden, but Chulkov shows that there were many ways to circumvent the law.

"Pretty cook"

The novel by Mikhail Dmitrievich Chulkov (1743-1792) "A Handsome Cook, or the Adventures of a Depraved Woman" was published in 1770, a year after the publication of "Letters of Ernest and Doravra". In its genre model, "The Pretty Cook" combines the tradition of an adventurous picaresque travel novel with the tradition of a psychological novel: the form of narration in "The Pretty Cook" - Marton's autobiographical notes - is close to the epistolary form in its personal character, the absence of a moralistic author's voice and the way of creating the character of the heroine in her self-disclosure.

His heroine Marton, whose character is in general correlated with the image of picaro, the hero of a picaresque novel in Western Europe, is the widow of a sergeant killed near Poltava. The beginning of the novel finds Marton in Kyiv. The vicissitudes of fate subsequently throw her to Moscow. The novel mentions a wandering on foot, which Martona undertook not entirely of her own free will; however, the circumstances of this particular "adventure" in the novel are not disclosed.

Moscow period of life: Martona lives in the parish of Nikola on chicken legs, her lover Akhal lives in the Yamskaya Sloboda, the duel between Akhal and Svidal takes place in Maryina Grove due to Martona's favor, this gives Chulkov's novel an additional everyday authenticity.

In the image of Martona, in the means that Chulkov uses to convey the warehouse of her character, the writer's desire to emphasize national start. Martona's speech is richly equipped with proverbs and sayings; she tends to explain all the events of her life with the help of universal wisdom, recorded in these aphoristic folklore formulas: “Shey de widow, wide sleeves, it would be where to put fairy-tale words”, “a red flower and a bee flies”, “wealth gives birth to honor”, “before this time Makar dug the ridges, and now Makar got into the governors”, “the bear is wrong that he ate the cow, the cow that wandered into the forest is also wrong.”

The passion for the material, which Marton is obsessed with at the beginning of the novel - "I would have agreed then to die rather than part with my estate, I honored and loved him so much" (264) - is not Marton's fundamental vicious property; it was instilled in her by the very conditions of her life, her poverty, the lack of support in life and the need to somehow support this life; as the heroine herself explains this property, “I firmly knew this proverb that “wealth gives birth to honor” (266). Thus, at the very beginning of the novel, its fundamentally new aesthetic orientation was set: not so much to evaluate the character as virtuous or vicious, but to explain it, showing the reasons that influence its formation and formation.

Chulkov gave in the novel to the heroine herself the story of her hectic life and dubious profession.

Such a position, new in itself, should have been perceived even more sharply due to the fact that both the heroine and the story of her life were an unprecedented phenomenon for Russian literature. lung woman behavior and the petty nobles surrounding her, judicial officials who take bribes, thieves, swindlers and rogues - Russian literature has not yet seen such heroes before Chulkov, at least in the national novel.

Life, reflected by the author and told to the reader by the heroine, appears as a kind of self-moving reality. Life position Martony is rather passive than active: for all her active initiative, the heroine Chulkova is only able to build her own destiny to a certain extent, she is too dependent on the circumstances to which she is forced to adapt in order to defend her individual private life in the struggle against fate and chance. The entire biography of Martona in the social sense is built as a continuous chain of ups and downs, changes from poverty to wealth and vice versa, and all these changes do not happen at all at the request of the heroine, but in addition to it - in this respect, the heroine Chulkova can really be likened to a sailor who wears on the stormy waves of the sea of ​​life.

The spiritual path of Martona, the changes taking place in the character of the heroine, is one of the earliest examples of the so-called "secret psychology", when the process of character change itself is not depicted in the narrative, but can be determined from a comparison of the starting and ending points of evolution and reconstructed based on changing reactions of the heroine in similar circumstances.

And here it is important that Marton in his autobiographical notes appears simultaneously in two of his personal hypostases: the heroine of the story and the narrator, and between these two stages of her evolution there is an obvious temporary and hidden moral gap. Marton the heroine appears before the reader in the present tense of her life, but for Marton the narrator this stage of her life is in the past.

From frank autocharacteristics accompanying just as frankly described morally dubious actions, grows an unsympathetic moral image of a woman-adventurer, who is least of all concerned about observing the rules of universal humanistic morality. But this Marton, who appears before the reader in the present tense of reading the novel, for Marton - the author autobiographical notes is "Marton then". What is Marton like now, from what moral positions she tells about her stormy and immoral youth - nothing is reported to the reader about this. But, by the way, the novel itself contains landmarks by which it is possible to reconstruct the general direction of changes in the character of the heroine, and the fact that she is changing is evidenced by the leitmotif of the narrative about her life. The story about the next incident in her fate is strictly accompanied by a final conclusion. Marton gains life experience in front of the reader, drawing concise conclusions from lengthy descriptions of the facts of his biography.

The text of Chulkov's novel that has come down to us ends with the scene of the meeting of Svidal Akhal, dying of remorse for the alleged murder of his imaginary victim, after which there is the phrase: "The end of the first part." And it is still not exactly established whether the second part of the novel was written, but for some reason not published by Chulkov, or it did not exist at all: thus, it is not known whether Chulkov's novel was completed or not. From a purely plot point of view, it is cut short in mid-sentence: it is not known whether Akhal succeeded in his suicide attempt, it is not clear how the relationship between Martona, Akhal and Svidal will develop further, and, finally, what does the “pretty cook” have to do with it, since Martona’s service as a cook is sparingly mentioned in one of the initial episodes of the novel, and then this line does not find any continuation. However, from an aesthetic point of view, and that for a writer of the 18th century. no less, and perhaps more important, - didactic, in the novel "The Pretty Cook" all the most important things have already happened: it is obvious that Marton has changed, and changed for the better, and the woman writer is already a completely different person, from a height of his life experience, able to objectively understand and describe himself, despite all the delusions of his difficult and stormy youth.

32. Comic opera as a genre. The movement of the opera from the reproduction of everyday life (MM Popov "Anyuta"). To the denunciation of serfdom (“Misfortune from the carriage” by Ya.B. Knyaznin)

In Russian art of the second half of the XVIII century. a prominent and peculiar place is occupied by the comic opera - the genre of a small theatrical and musical performance that combined music and singing with colloquial speech. The comic opera was notable; a stage on the way to the creation of Russian realistic comedy in general, just as it happened in Western European art. For comic opera, the usual motive was the opposition of simple but honest people from the bottom to evil and depraved noble gentlemen. The genre of comic opera in Russian art, having passed the stages of translation and initial development, brings soon and original works.

One of the very first attempts to depict peasant life on the Russian stage belongs to M. Popov in his comic opera Anyuta (1772).

Popov forces his peasant heroes to speak in a common language, conveying its phonetic features in writing and moving closer in this direction to similar attempts by Lukin. He is far from trying to create a shepherd's idyll and depicts the labor nature of peasant life as opposed to the extravagance and carelessness of the nobility. The peasants do not sit idle on the stage; the author points out in remarks: “Myron is chopping wood and following the blows with his voice: ha... ha... ha...”; "Filat stacks firewood." In a conversation between Miron and Filat, the hardships that fall on the peasantry, the oppression of the headman, the extortion of clerks who "collect bribes from both the living and the dead" are revealed. The relationship between the peasant and the landowner is clearly outlined in Miron's song:

Boyar Zobota:

Drink, eat, walk and sleep,

And all of them in that robot

To steal money.

Sushi man, krushisa

Sweat and work:

And after even a frenzy,

Come on, money.

The peasants are far from being content with their lives. “Ohti, ohti, peasants,” says the same Miron, “why are you not noblemen?” ...

They would work about you

And you would just shake.

And our troubles do not raise our chest ... "

“Money” is extorted from a peasant not only by the master. The headman demands a clubbing from the peasants for a gift to the clerk: “The world began to say that today we, Pafnutich, know that there is hunger,” but you still have to pay. From the bottom of their hearts there are complaints from the peasants about unbearable exactions, about the “evil sprinkling family” of the judges.

In "Anyuta" there is a contrast between urban and peasant life and a preference for rural life. However, the social protest inherent in "Anyuta" is timid and moderate. Popov's democracy is limited by concessions to noble ideology, and the plot conflict is resolved in favor of the latter. Anyuta, who has been living with the peasant Miron since childhood and appointed as the wife of the farm laborer Filat, turns out to be a noblewoman, the daughter of an officer, oppressed by personal enemies and forced to hide, giving her daughter to be raised by the peasants, so she is quite worthy of the love of the nobleman Victor.

Popov did not dare to challenge class prejudices and removed the social severity of the plot by equalizing the social position of the lovers. The peasants gladly accept money from Victor, and the failed groom Filat humbly thanks the master. The play ends with a moralizing choir:

What you weren't made to own

Don't try to have it;

There is a darkness of worries,

Where we hope to be happy.

Everyone is happier in the light of that

Who is happy with his part.

Despite the conciliatory conclusion, Popov's comic opera Anyuta is of great interest already by virtue of the author's attempt to bring representatives of the serfs to the stage and build a plot on Russian everyday material.

Among the best examples of the genre - in terms of the power of criticism of public relations - should be attributed the comic operas of Knyazhnin's "Misfortune from the Carriage", Nikolev's "Rozana and Lyubim" and Krylov's "Coffee House".

The comic opera by Ya. B. Knyazhnin "Misfortune from the Carriage" (1779) is also distinguished by a significant sharpness of posing the question of the serfdom of the peasantry. This work is original, although it has similarities in some motifs with other works on this topic. The misfortune of a young peasant couple - Anyuta and Lukyan - is brought by a carriage, which their master Firyulin intended to buy, who ordered several peasants to be recruited for this purpose. The clerk, who wants to take possession of Anyuta, first of all decides to get rid of Lukyan, and only an accident saves the lovers: having heard a few French words from them, the master, obsessed with imitating everything French and despising everything Russian, agrees to free Lukyan from soldiery. “The trifle ruined us, but the trifle saved us,” the peasants sing in the final chorus.

Knyaznin maliciously ridicules the gallomania of the Russian nobility. The landowner Firyulin, having been abroad, calls his peasants "the barbarian people", Russia - the "wild side", although for the "enlightenment of the rude people" he took out only red heels, and his wife - fashionable caps. In order to satisfy a momentary whim, he, without hesitation, is ready to sacrifice the well-being of the peasants subject to him, and only a case, a "trinket", keeps him from a cruel decision. The motif of contrasting the honest and artless peasant life with the depraved splendor of the city is noticeable in the opera. In the city "noise, splendor. Gold flows like rivers, but not a drop of happiness. Awareness of the plight of the peasants, blatant social injustice sounds clear in the words of Lukyan: “How unhappy we are! We must drink, eat and marry according to the will of those who rejoice at our torment and who would die of hunger without us.

Kurganov Nikolai Gavrilovich The son of a non-commissioned officer of the Semenovsky regiment; Jan 7 1738 entered the Navigation School in Moscow, after which he was sent to St. Petersburg in May 1741 to continue his education at the Naval Academy (since 1752 - Naval Cadet Corps). In 1743, while still a student, K. was involved in the teaching of astronomy, and the following year he was enrolled in the class of "Great Astronomy", where the most gifted students who were trained for teaching activities. After graduating from the academy in the spring of 1746, K. was left with her as an "apprentice" (junior teacher); in the Naval Cadet Corps, he served all his life, teaching "mathematical and navigational sciences", and from 1790 also experimental physics. His progress through the ranks was slow and difficult. As a native of a non-noble family, he was released from the academy without an officer's rank and only in 1756 was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant; in 1764 he became a "teacher with the rank of captain," that is, a senior teacher; thereafter, the intervals between increases were also long. In 1765, K. was entrusted with the leadership of all teachers. mathematical sciences Naval cadet, corps, in 1771 he was appointed class inspector. He finished K.'s service as a professor of higher mathematics and navigation (since 1773) and with the rank of lieutenant colonel (since 1791). Among his students were many prominent Russian figures fleet: admirals D. N. Senyavin, F. F. Ushakov, navigators F. F. Bellingshausen, V. N. Golovin, I. F. Kruzenshtern and others. In 1747–1750, in parallel with work at the Naval Academy, K. in his spare time he was engaged in astronomical calculations and observations at the observatory of the Academy of Sciences. On this basis, he became close to A. D. Krasilnikov, and later. and with M. V. Lomonosov. Twice K. participated in geographical expeditions to clarify maps of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea (June 1750 - March 1751, July 1752 - July 1753). In Apr. In 1760 he was seconded to the Academy of Sciences to participate in one of its expeditions to compile the Great Atlas of Russia. The expedition did not take place, and K., while waiting for her at the Academy until March 1, 1762, carried out various astronomical observations, including on behalf of Lomonosov, together with Krasilnikov, observed the passage of Venus across the disk of the Sun on May 26, 1761. From the first steps of the teaching activity K. to deepen their professional knowledge translated from fr. language three books on geometry and marine science (remained unpublished). In March 1757, in the magazine Monthly. op." (Ch. 5) the “Conversation between Arist and Eugene about the sea” translated by him was printed (original in the book: Buyhours D. Les entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène. Paris, 1671). In the 1760s–1770s. he translated and published several other major works on navigation, as well as Euclid's Elements of Geometry. In addition, he independently wrote a number of manuals on navigation, naval tactics, coastal fortification and coastal defense, and was the first to teach at the Naval Cadet. corps, a method for determining geographic longitude by lunar distances (1753), was the first in Russia to study and recommend a chronometer (1767) for the practice of navigation. His textbooks on maritime affairs were valued for "the complete absence of pedantry and an ardent effort to present the driest things in a way that is generally understandable and pleasant for the reader" (F. F. Veselago in a letter to A. I. Kirpichnikov). "Universal Arithmetic" (1757; reprinted with changes and under different titles: 1771, 1776, 1791, 1794) contributed to the wide dissemination in Russia of the method of teaching mathematics proposed by L. Euler. "General Geometry" (1765), first Russian. a textbook on geometry and trigonometry, was widely used at one time, although it was originally intended only for the Naval Cadet. corps. All K.'s textbooks were distinguished by their content, logical harmony, and intelligibility of the presentation of the material. A comprehensive textbook, literary reader and a kind of encyclopedia of popular knowledge was "Russian Universal Grammar, or Universal Writing, offering the easiest way to thoroughly teach the Russian language with seven additions of various educational and useful amusing things" (1769). The book has been reprinted several times. "Pismovnik" and under it entered the history of Russian. culture. In the 2nd (1777), 4th (1790), and 5th (1793) editions, K. made changes and significant additions; in the 8th (1809) the publishers added the section "Fearlessness of spirit, heroic deeds and exemplary anecdotes of Russian and foreign great men and other persons"; The 10th (1831) and last, 11th (1837) editions came out with censored notes. According to the statement of K. himself in the preface, supported by the testimony of V. N. Verkh, "The Letter Book", in its first version, grew out of K.'s activities with his children. The main section of the "Scribe" is "Grammar", compiled according to the "Russian Grammar" by M.V. Lomonosov, which K. "seemed difficult" for children and which, therefore, he was "forced<…>transform, imitating Slavic and foreign grammars, for teaching youth into the most convenient location and explanation with many additions. Among the "additions": the first printed collection of Russian. proverbs (Appendix I); 353 "short intricate stories" - anecdotes, schwanks, facets, aphorisms, etc., translated from various foreign sources, as well as borrowed from the collection P. S. Semenova"Comrade reasonable and intricate" (Appendix II); educational "conversations" - "On wisdom", "On navigation, or navigation", "On heraldry", "On mythology", etc. (Appendix IV); "Collection of various poems" - the first printed anthology in Russian. poetry, which included poems by M. V. Lomonosov, A. P. Sumarokov, V. K. Trediakovsky, M. M. Kheraskov A. A. Rzhevsky, A. I. Dubrovsky, M. I. Popov and others, as well as the first publication in Rus. folk songs (Appendix V); “Russian word-interpretation” is a dictionary of foreign words that also contains interpretations of individual archaisms, dialectisms, etc. (Appendix VII). In the remaining sections, K. included a variety of excerpts from moralizing writings (“Ancient Apophegms,” “Epicteto’s Moral Teaching,” “Senechino’s Discourse on the Four Main Virtues,” “Horalistic Reflections Taken from the Works of Chancellor Count Oxenstiern,” and others) and popular science articles (“A detailed explanation of the order of human knowledge, or a General drawing of sciences and arts”, “Signs about future weather”, “On the state of the Academic Library and the Kunstkamera”, “Medical order”, “Noble inventions made in Europe since some time”, "A Brief Narrative Chronicler", etc. "The Letterer" was conceived and compiled as a book that was supposed to make reading more enjoyable and lay the foundations for education and moral education. Gradually moving from simple and entertaining, but at the same time instructive reading (proverbs, " short intricate tales”, apothegms) to more and more complex subjects, “Pismovnik” introduced the reader to the circle of advanced natural-science ideas and the provisions of enlightenment philosophy, introduced him to the basics of various sciences, revealed the panorama of the development of human thought and promoted its achievements, opposed obscurantism, formed aesthetic taste and introduced to poetry in samples of different genres. "Pismovnik" supplied the reader with material for small talk and models of wit. An important aspect of it was the struggle of K. for the purification of Russian. language from immoderate foreign borrowings. In the "Pismovnik" a satirical stream clearly emerges. Some of the “tales” were of a topical nature, ridiculing the same phenomena as satirical magazines: noble arrogance, bribery of judges, worship of foreigners, greed and depravity of clergy, etc. The topicality of a number of stories was intensified by the fact that during translation they were adapted to the conditions of Russian . reality. Satirical attacks are also contained in other sections of the Letter Book, including in proverbs and examples that illustrate grammatical rules. "Pismovnik" played a significant role in the history of Russian. education and culture. It combines the advantages of the best foreign manuals for primary education with the traditions of mass handwritten literature ensured his success with readers of various strata, especially, of course, in a grassroots, poorly educated environment. Grammar, as well as articles on rhetoric and poetics, were used as textbooks in schools. The poetic anthology was very popular, the poems from it were copied into notebooks and albums; “short intricate stories” were also copied. 155 of them were reprinted M. P. Semenov in the 3rd edition of the collection “The Reasonable and Intricate Comrade” (1787. Part 3), including the stories that K. borrowed from the 1st edition of “Comrade ...” (1764). 16 stories were reprinted in the journal Cool Hours (1793. Part 2. Aug.). Addressed to the Writer G. I. Gromov, compiling the collections "Love, a golden book" and "Lovers and spouses ..." (both - 1798). To the beginning 19th century the material collected in the "Pismovnik" began to become obsolete both in scientific and cognitive, and in aesthetic terms. Nevertheless, the "Pismovnik" for a long time satisfied the cultural needs of the grassroots reader, becoming primarily a book "for the people." However, even in Ser. XIX century, according to A. I. Kirpichnikov, he continued to occupy a place of honor on the bookshelves educated people. A. S. Pushkin was interested in the “pismovnik” and the personality of K. during the period of work on the “History of the village of Goryukhin”. V. K. Küchelbecker, having become acquainted with the “Pismovnik” in 1832, recognized him “according to the time when it was written<…>a very decent, even good, book”; his attention was attracted by a collection of proverbs, as well as a section that did not belong to K. ("Anecdotes of the Russians"). The historical and cultural significance of the Pismovnik was noted by V. G. Belinsky. If in the reviews of Pushkin, Kuchelbecker and Belinsky at the same time there was irony, then A. I. Herzen saw in the "Letter" "a brilliant predecessor of the moral and satirical school in our literature." This interpretation was developed in detail in the article by E. Ya. Kolbasin. From this point of view, the historical significance of the "Pismovnik" in Russian was assessed. literature, Soviet researchers (G. P. Makogonenko, A. P. Denisov). All R. 19th century "Pismovnik" had a certain influence on the writers and figures of the Bulgarian Renaissance (P. Slaveikov, Neofit Rilski). There are no grounds for the assumption (M. Iskrin) that K. belonged to two translations signed with the cryptonym “K. N." (“Notes worthy prediction of the glorious Martyn Zadeki”, 1770; “Divinatory way”, 1778). Lit.: Berkh V.N. Biography of N. G. Kurganov. St. Petersburg, 1829; Kolbasin E. Kurganov and his "Letter" // Book for reading. 1857. No. 1. Det. 3 (reprint: Kolbasin E. Lit. figures of the past: (Martynov, Kurganov and Voeikov). St. Petersburg, 1859); Pippin A. Pre-Petrine tradition in the XVIII century. // Vestn. Europe. 1886. Vol. 4 (120). No. 7; Kirpichnikov A. I. Past celebrities lit.: (Kurganov and his "Letter") // Ist. vestn. 1887. No. 9 (reprinted in the book: Kirpichnikov A. I. Essays from the history of the new Russian. lit. SPb., 1896; 2nd ed., add. M., 1903. T. 1); Maslova E. M. To the history of anecdotal lit. XVIII century: (“Comrade Reasonable and Intricate”, part III, Mikh. Semenov and Kurganov’s “Letter Book”) // Sat. articles in honor of Acad. A. I. Sobolevsky. L., 1928 (Sat. Department of Russian language and literature; T. 101. No. 3); Makogonenko G.P. Radishchev and his time. M., 1956; Rusakiev S. P. R. Slaveikov and Russian Literature. Sofia, 1956; Kuznetsov P. S. At the origins of Russian grammatical thought. M., 1958; Denisov A.P. N. G. Kurganov is an outstanding Russian. scientist and educator of the XVIII century. L., 1961; Khamitsaeva O. A.: 1) To question. about the genre of "Short intricate stories" by N. G. Kurganov // Vopr. artist's style lit. M., 1964 (Uchen. zap. Mosk. ped. in-ta named after V. I. Lenin; T. 231); 2) To question. about “Conversations” by N. G. Kurganov // Vopr. Russian lit. M., 1966 (Uchen. zap. Mosk. ped. in-ta named after V. I. Lenin; T. 248) (reprinted in the book: Problems of Russian literature. Yaroslavl, 1966. [T.] 1) ; 3) “Collection of various poems” by N. G. Kurganova // Problems of studying art. prod. (methodology, poetics, methodology): Proc. report … / Moscow. ped. in-t im. V. I. Lenin. [M., 1968]. Part 1; Dylevsky H. M."Pismovnik" by Kurganov in Bulgaria // Rus. speech. 1971. No. 2; Isrin M. Who is Martin Zadeka? // Alm. bibliophile. M., 1975. Issue. 2; Rak V.D.: 1) On the history of the quatrain attributed to Pushkin // Vremennik of the Pushkin Komis. 1973. L., 1975; 2) "Second addition" in N. G. Kurganov's "Letter" // A. N. Radishchev and lit. his time. L., 1977 (XVIII century; Sat. 12); 3) “Russian Grammar” by Lomonosov and “Pismovnik” by N. G. Kurganov // Lomonosov and the book: Sat. scientific tr. L., 1986; 4) Bibliography. notes // XVIII century. SPb., 1995. Sat. 19; Stennik Yu."Encyclopedia of all wisdom" // White Nights: Essays, sketches, documents, memoirs / Comp. I. I. Slobozhan. L., 1975; Graudina L. K., Miskevich G. I. Theory and practice rus. eloquence. M., 1989.