MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SAKHA (YAKUTIA)

SECONDARY EDUCATIONAL SCHOOL № 17 YAKUTSK

ON LITERATURE

TOPIC: "INDIVIDUALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOKHOV"

(Examination paper)

Completed:

student 11 "A"

Rozhin Peter.

Checked:

teacher of Russian language

and literature

Vasilyeva M. I.

Yakutsk - 2004

I. INTRODUCTION.

II. INDIVIDUALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF MA SHOLOHOV.

1. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE NOVEL "QUIET DON".

2. NATURE IN STORIES.

III. CONCLUSION.

I. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this work is an abstract review of the originality of the landscape in

the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" by Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov and the stories of the middle

twenties.

A landscape is a view, an image of a locality, a picture of nature. IN

literary work landscape is a description where the main subject

images are nature (2.38).

The abstract is summary document or work or parts thereof,

including the main factual information and conclusions necessary for

familiarization with them (2.711; 1.55). Therefore, the work presents the content

read works in line with a given topic.

According to experts, abstracts of any kind “should not reflect

subjective views of the referent on the question being posed, is not given in the abstract and

evaluation of the refereed document” (1, 57).

Of course, the scope of the abstract does not allow revealing the full diversity

use of landscape descriptions in the writer's works, but selected

episodes allowed to create complete picture landscape at Sholokhov.

The abstract consists of an introduction, which sets out the purpose of the work and its structure,

definitions of the basic concepts necessary for the disclosure of the topic are given. IN

the main part reports (abstracts) the content of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" and

works of small forms in the context of the topic under consideration. Shuts down

the final part, where conclusions are briefly drawn throughout the abstract.

In this work, editions of the novel by M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don",

stories, articles by I. I. Khavruk, V. A. Chalmaev, A. K. Demidova, dictionary

Russian language, edited by A.P. Evgeniev.

II. INDIVIDUALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOHOV

1. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE NOVEL "QUIET DON"

The novel begins with a description of the Melekhovsky yard on the very edge of the farm (7,

with the Melekhovs. Here and the "steep descent", meaning turning points in history

people, and "a scattering of shells", symbolizing the people, and "laid with waves

pebbles", denoting severe trials, and "blued ripples of the stirrup of the Don",

symbolizing the events that will occur in the life of the Cossacks. Writer

used the allegory: so, the east personifies the emergence of a new force,

which is approaching the Don with "horse hooves", and the "living wayfarer"

(living plantain) means Cossacks.

The landscape in the novel does not exist separately from the events described in it, but

closely associated with them.

Here is an excerpt from chapter XIX of the third book: “Cossacks in their native steppe

Eastern wind. Loga was covered with snow. Padins and yars leveled. None

roads, no paths. Around, across, slicked down by the winds, white naked

plain. Like a dead steppe. Occasionally a raven will fly overhead, ancient as

this steppe is like a mound over a letnik in a snow cap with beaver princely

Chernobyl edge. A raven will fly by, whistling through the air with its wings,

dropping a throaty moaning scream. The wind will carry his cry far away, and for a long time and

sadly it will sound over the steppe, as at night in silence accidentally touched

bass string.

But the steppe still lives under the snow. Where, like frozen waves,

ploughing, silver from the snow, is hummocked, where a dead swell lies a fenced

since autumn, the earth, - there, clinging to the soil with greedy, tenacious roots, lies

frost-tumbled winter fat. Silky green, all in tears

frozen dew, it chilly clings to the fragile black soil, feeds on it

life-giving black blood and waiting for spring, the sun to rise, breaking

melted cobweb-thin diamond crust to turn lush green in May. And it

get up, waiting for time! The quail will beat in it, it will ring over it

April lark. And the sun will shine on him in the same way, and the same will

cradle his wind. For the time being, until ripe, full-grained ear, crumpled

downpours and fierce winds, will not droop with a mustachioed head, will not lie under a scythe

owner and dutifully drop cast, heavy grains on the current ”(8, 116).

“The sky is darkened. Lightning obliquely plowed up the hummocked chernozem-

a black cloud, silence accumulated for a long time, and somewhere far away the warning rumbled

thunder. Vigorous rain sowing began to crush the grass ... Thunder fell from

terrifying force, lightning swiftly went to the ground. After a new blow from

rain broke through the depths of the clouds, the steppe murmured indistinctly ... ”(8, 31).

Both passages imply a time that will bring many changes,

reflecting on people's lives. These descriptions are preceded by tragic

events with the arrival of the Reds.

Pictures of nature mean both symbolic images and a description of the state

heroes: “A warm wind blew from the south for two days. The last snow has fallen on the fields.

Foamy spring streams died down, steppe logs and rivers played out. At dawn

On the third day, the wind died down, and thick fogs fell under the steppe, silvered

damp bushes of last year's feather grass, drowned in an impenetrable whitish haze

mounds, gullies, villages, spiers of bell towers, soaring peaks

pyramidal poplars. A blue spring has risen over the wide Don steppe.

Another, miraculously renewed and seductive, the world appeared before her.

With sparkling eyes, she excitedly looked around, childishly going over

dress folds. Fog-shrouded distance, apple trees flooded with melt water

garden, a wet fence and a road behind it with deeply washed last year

ruts - everything seemed to her unprecedentedly beautiful, everything bloomed thick and tender

colors, as if illuminated by the sun.

A piece of clear sky peering through the fog blinded her with cold

blue; the smell of rotten straw and thawed black soil was so familiar and

it is pleasing that Aksinya took a deep breath and smiled at the corners of her lips;

the uncomplicated song of a lark, which came from somewhere in the foggy steppe,

awakened in her unconscious sadness. This is she - heard in a foreign land

song - made Aksinya's heart beat faster and squeezed two

ugly tears...

Mindlessly enjoying the life that had returned to her, Aksinya experienced

a great desire to touch everything with your hands, to look around everything. She wanted

touch the currant bush blackened from dampness, press your cheek against

a branch of an apple tree, covered with a bluish velvety coating, wanted to step over

through the ruined span and go through the mud, off-road, to where, beyond the wide

log fabulously green, merging with the foggy distance, the winter field ... "(8, 571).

Landscape sketches speak of the artist's great love for the nature of the Don

edge: “Steppe, dear! The bitter wind settling on the manes of the mowing queens and

stallions. On dry horse snoring, the wind is salty, and the horse, inhaling bitterly -

salty smell, chews with silky lips and neighs, tasting them

wind and sun. Native steppe under the low Don sky! Views of beams

dry valleys, red-clay ravines, feather-grass expanse with baited

nestled trace of a horse's hoof, mounds, in wise silence protecting

buried Cossack glory ... I bow low and my sons kiss your insipid

land, the Don, Cossack steppe, not rusting with blood! (8, 49).

The landscape is animated, for example, “the wind coos”, “the water cooed”, “hollow

the water stood as if spellbound”, “the water bubbled like crazy”, “the steppe dressed

silver" and helps to reveal the feelings, moods of the characters, convey them

relation to current events.

In the novel Quiet Flows the Don turning points in the fates of the heroes of Sholokhov

compares their inner life with natural processes (3, 27 - 31).

For example, let's focus on the main female images.

Aksinya's life and her inner state after the break with Grigory

compares with a field of wheat trampled down by a herd and with the feeling of its owner:

“Holy-leaved green wheat sprouts, grows; after a month and a half

buried in it with his head, and not visible; sucks juices from the earth, it will pop out;

then it blooms gold dust covers the ear; the grain will swell fragrant and sweet

milk. The owner will go out into the steppe - he looks, he is not overjoyed. Wherever you come from

a herd of cattle wandered into the bread: they tormented, overweight

ears. Where they lay, - circles of flattened bread ... wildly and bitterly

look."

"In the golden bloom" of Aksinya's feelings came, "incinerated, defiled"

“But the bread, poisoned by cattle, rises. From the dew, from the sun rises

a stem driven into the ground; bends at first, like a man overstrained

unbearable weight, then straightens up, raises his head, and also shines on him

day, and the wind blows in the same way ... ".

A special place in the novel is occupied by Natalya's state of mind, which

compared to a thunderstorm in nature.

It is restless in nature: “Across the blue sky, torn by the wind floated and melted

White clouds. The sun's rays heated the red-hot earth. Found from the east

rain". Natalya feels bad in her soul: having learned that Grigory again reached out to

Aksinya, she becomes withdrawn and gloomy. The storm is getting closer

“... quickly lay down gray shadow"," the sun obliquely pierced blindingly

white border of a cloud drifting west", "along the blue spurs of the Obdon mountains

the shadow accompanying the cloud still reigned and stained the earth.

Natalya is no longer able to cope with her feelings: “Suddenly

jumped up, pushed away Ilyinichna, who was holding out a cup of water to her, and,

turning his face to the east, prayerfully folded his palms wet from tears,

quickly, chokingly shouted:

God! He exhausted my whole soul! I have no more strength to live like this! God,

punish him damn! Beat him to death there! So that he no longer lives, no

tortured me!"

Nature responds to her curses, the element rages: “Black swirling

a cloud crept in from the east. Thunder rumbled dully. Piercing round clouds

peaks, writhing, burning white lightning slid across the sky. The wind blew on

roaring grasses west, carried bitter dust from the road, almost to the very ground

bent down the sunflower hats weighed down with seeds. Over the steppe with dry

thunder crackled." Now Ilyinichna is also seized with fear:

Get on your knees! Listen, Natasha!?

lives by its own laws, people live by theirs. At some point these worlds

approaching, intersect, and then a symbol appears, based on

poetic parallelism (3, 27 - 28).

Along with comparisons of natural processes with the spiritual life of Aksinya

The writer compares Natalya's feelings for Grigory with "inaccessible

stellar prey." He writes that "from there, from the blue-black highest wasteland

Cranes, late in flight, called with silver bells.

The obsolete grass smelled drearily-deadly.

Metaphor "silver bells called after themselves", epithets

“dreary” “deadly” and the definition of “obsolete” most accurately convey

mental state of the heroine.

Sholokhov uses landscape description when revealing his characters

Aksinya and Natalia.

The sensations of Natalya and Aksinya after typhus are at first almost the same:

Natalia "sweet ... silence settled after the gun roar", "with greed

listened to the ingenuous song of the larks", "inhaled the nourished

wormwood bitterness" wind, "the intoxicating smell of red-hot black soil"; Aksinya,

before which the world appeared "wonderful and seductive", intoxicated by "the

sweetness of fresh spring air", "rotten straw", "song of the lark

woke up in her unconscious sadness.

Sholokhov spring - love.

Aksinya perceives and absorbs beauty with all the strength of her sensitive soul.

and the life-giving forces of nature, merging in it with the forces of its love, tenderness and

affection for Gregory. Perceives with sight ("on the corollas of meadow flowers

swarthy wild bumblebees swayed"), hearing ("tickled in the reeds wild ducks»,

“a drake called hoarsely to his girlfriend”, “far, far, indistinctly and sadly

considered someone unlived years cuckoo"), sight and hearing ("persistently

asked a lapwing flying over the lake: “Whose are you? Whose are you? "buzzed velvety-

dusty bumblebees"), feels it physically (" bare feet pleasantly cold damp

greenery, bare full caviar and neck with searching lips kissed dry wind "-

this metaphor is extremely accurate and expressive: inanimate (dry wind)

personified and perceived as living, human). Perceives

smells ("from under the hawthorn bush oozed a musty and tart scent of rotting

last year's foliage") (3, 28).

lips, she carefully fingered the stalks of serene doves,

modest flowers, then leaned over in a stout figure to sniff, and

suddenly caught the lingering and sweet aroma of lily of the valley. Fumbling her hands, she

found him. It grew right there, under an impenetrable shady bush. wide,

once green leaves still jealously protected from the sun the undersized

hunchbacked stem crowned with snow-white drooping cups

colors. But the leaves covered with dew and yellow rust were dying, and even

the flower has already been touched by mortal decay: the two lower cups have wrinkled and

turned black, only the top in sparkling tears of dew suddenly flared up under

the sun blinding captivating whiteness" (8, 350).

So, the image of a lily of the valley, personifying the harmony and beauty of life, and

at the same time the beginning of its withering, associating with the life of Aksinya, with her

thoughts and feelings, acquires the meaning of a symbol.

Here are a few passages reflecting Sholokhov's description

landscape in the novel.

“Dry leaves rustled on corn buds. Beyond the hilly plain

the spurs of the mountains turned blue with overflows. Redheads wandered around the village

cows. The wind whipped frosty dust behind the copse. Sleepy and peaceful

a dull October day; blissful peace, silence emanated from the spattered

the stingy sun of the landscape. And not far from the road in stupid anger

people were trampling about, preparing to poison with their blood, fed from the rains,

seeded, fat earth (8, 490).

Yellow-white, busty, like plows, quietly floated over

Novocherkassk clouds. In the sky-high blue, right above the shining

the dome of the cathedral, a gray-haired, curly-haired one hung motionless and rose-silvered somewhere

over the village of Krivyanskaya.

The sun was rising dimly, but the windows of the ataman's palace, reflecting it,

shone brightly. The sloping iron roofs glittered on the houses, the dampness of yesterday

rain kept on itself a bronze Yermak, stretching the Siberian crown to the north

Half a verst from the farm, on the left side of the Don, there is a gap, into it

in springs, hollow water rushes to the market. Near the break from the sandy shore

the keys are beating - the ice does not freeze there all winter, it glows with a wide green

half-arc of a polynya, and the road along the Don cautiously runs around it, making it steep

jump to the side. In the spring, when a mighty stream goes back through the abyss

water selling to the Don, in this place the bell turns, the water roars, weaving

heterogeneous jets, washing out the bottom; and all summer at a deep depth

carp hold on, clinging to the rubbish close to the break, piled with

shores (8, 568).

His hops are like a wedge knocked out. He ran to the hole. spicy

sparkling freshly broken ice. The wind and the stirrup drove along the wide black

around the polynya pieces of ice, the waves shook with green whirlwinds, rustled. IN

in a distant farmhouse the lights turned yellow in the darkness. Frantically burned and trembled on

the plush sky is grainy, like freshly blown stars. The breeze pushed

it was windy, it hoarsely, flew like powdery dust into the black hail of the polynya. A

the polynya slightly smoked with steam and just as cordially and terribly blackened.

hollow water just started selling. In the meadow, near the garden

wicker, the brown, silty earth was exposed, the surfacing lay in a border: the remaining from

spill fragments of dry reeds, branches, kuga, last year's leaves nailed

a wave of rubbish The willows of the flooded Obdon forest were slightly noticeably green, with

tassels hung from the branches. On the poplars were just about ready

buds unfold, at the very courtyards of the farm sprouts leaned towards the water

surrounded by a flood of red. Fluffy yellow like ducklings without plumage

his kidneys dived in the waves, swayed by the wind.

At dawn, wild geese, geese,

it was like a wave nurturing and nursing across the wind-tousled expanse of the Don

white-bellied teal (8, 600).

Clouds were thickening in the west. It was getting dark. Somewhere far, far away, in the strip

Lightning whirled around the bottom, the wing of an unfinished bird fluttered orange

lightning. On the other side, a glow shone faintly, covered with a black field

clouds. The steppe, like a bowl, filled to the brim with silence, hid in the folds of the beams

sad reflections of the day. Something reminded this evening of autumn time. Even the herbs

not yet given color, emitted an indescribable smell of decay” (8, 634).

In the above passages, it is easy to trace Sholokhov's favorite Don

open spaces.

The landscape in the "Quiet Don" performs different functions: it reveals the characters and

the internal states of the characters, poeticizes the events.

2. NATURE IN STORIES

In the stories I read by Sholokhov, the landscape occupies little space. But also

in brief descriptions of nature, a rather capacious meaning emerges,

pervading these works. They have in common: the landscape is associated with

the mood of the characters, with their perception of the world around them and themselves.

"The Fate of a Man" begins with landscape paintings of spring (6, 5-8), which

Sholokhov always means even "in this bad time of off-road"

“assertiveness, warm winds and the first after winter, really warm

day". A friendly spring in the story means the steadfastness of a person in front of

hard fate. The writer claims through the description of nature, as in fate

spring comes to these two people (6, 47).

The writer sees the same steppe in different stories in different ways, as if

personifying the Cossack in the image of the steppe. The life of the Cossacks is different.

For example, in "Alyoshkin's Heart" (1925), the landscape "smells of earthy dampness,

nettle color and the intoxicating smell of dog fury, ”confirming the severe

the fate of Alyoshka (5, 236 - 350).

In "Crooked Stitch" (1925), despite the autumn time, the emergence of feelings

Vaska to Nyurka is described with paints more like spring ones. The landscape is full

pictures of nature begin to be perceived bleakly: “Fog, low

bending down, curled over the mowed grass, pawed with plump gray tentacles

thorny stalks, like a woman wrapped a mop of steam. Behind the three poplars, where did you go

at night the sun, the sky led away with wild roses and the steep, rearing clouds seemed

withered petals" (5, 349). A few lines of such a picture portends in

myself tragic end Nyurki.

In the story "The Shepherd" (1925), the steppe "scorched by the sun, charred, grass

yellowness warped; and the grain ear ... faded, wilted, to the ground

bent down, hunched over like an old man" (5, 211). Grisha's fate repeats

this is a description. Grisha was killed. But Dunyatka's road will be different: "The steppe is wide and

has not been measured by anyone. There are many roads and trails along it” (5, 221). One of them,

Possibly Dunyatkin.

Another landscape with "neglected gardens" blooming "in the color of milky

pink, drunk" and with "fine days", with "sunny joy" in the story

"Two-husband" (1925). The description of the July shower is similar to the fate of Anna,

which, like a “window torn off by a whirlwind” (5, 363), will toil between

unloved husband and Arseny.

The landscape in Sholokhov's stories allegorically introduces the reader into the plot

storytelling.

A feature of the originality of the landscape in the works of Sholokhov is

self-repetition, which he was not at all afraid of (4, 14): his landscapes

often "cossack", "the blued ripples of the stirrup of the Don" "roam" from one

work into another, the east wind in many works brings

abrupt changes in the fate of the Cossacks, and the steppe landscape is always the main

image in the description of nature.

III. CONCLUSION

The abstract considers the landscape originality in the novel by M. A. Sholokhov

"Quiet Don" and the stories "The Fate of a Man", "Alyoshkino Heart", "Curve

stitch”, “Shepherd” and “Two-husband”.

After reading the works and studying the articles of some authors, you can make

the following conclusions:

The originality of the landscape in the works of Sholokhov lies in

the use of poetic parallelism in the description and disclosure

characters, internal states of heroes;

The writer uses self-repetitions when describing landscapes in various

an event taking place in the future in the life of the Cossacks;

In describing the landscape, Sholokhov uses various figurative

expressive means of language: epithets, metaphors, personifications,

comparisons, anaphoras.

In conclusion, we can say that M. A. Sholokhov is a singer of the steppe,

who captivates his reader with a vivid description of the nature of the Don, the reader,

who never saw her.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Demidova A.K. Russian language manual. M.: Rus. lang. 1991.

2. Dictionary of the Russian language: In four volumes. T. III. ETC. M.: Rus.yaz. 1983.

3. Khavruk I. I. Disclosure of the characters of Aksinya and Natalia in "Quiet Don"

Mikhail Sholokhov. / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6.

4. Chalmaev V. A. Short stories by Mikhail Sholokhov. "Internal Stories"

moral issues, poetics. / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6.

5. Sholokhov M. A. Collected works. T. 7. M.: Khudozh. Lit. 1986.

6. Sholokhov M.A. The fate of man: M .: Det. Lit. 1981.

7. Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don. Book. 1-2. M.: Artist. lit. 1980.

8. Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don. Book. 3-4. M.: Artist. lit. 1980.

In terms of worldview, M.A. Sholokhov was an exceptionally restrained person and was in no hurry to reveal himself to people. He preferred to express himself not in a naked journalistic word, but in an artistic word, which was his element. In response to the request of the literary critic E.F. Nikitina to write his autobiography, Sholokhov replied: "My autobiography is in my books."

Mr Tem s great reason Sholokhov could say: "My confession of faith is in my books," which he, in fact, proved with the epic Quiet Flows the Don.

Detailed reproduction of life love description Don nature, which is perceived as a full-fledged protagonist of the novel, well-aimed figurative speech, sparkling with humor, allow the reader to feel the peculiar charm of the Cossack way of life, to understand the essence of those traditions that have long determined the life of a Cossack. This is loyalty to the military duty of protecting the fatherland from the enemy and peaceful peasant labor up to a seventh sweat, giving the farmer the opportunity to strengthen his economy, marry, raise children who will have to go through the same clearly defined life cycle.

"Quiet Don" went down in the history of Russian literature as a bright, significant work, revealing the tragedy of the Don Cossacks during the years of the revolution and civil war. The epic contains a whole decade - from 1912 to 1922. The beginning of the novel does not yet portend the coming storms and upheavals. The majestic quiet Don calmly carries its waters, shimmers multi-colored paints azure steppe. The life of the Cossack farm Tatarsky flows peacefully and calmly, interrupted only by the rumor about the impudent connection of the married soldier Aksinya Astakhova with Grishka Melekhov. Passionate, all-consuming feeling conflicts with the moral foundations of the Cossack antiquity. That is, already at the beginning of the novel, we see an application for original, vibrant characters, complex and subtle relationships between the characters, their difficult destinies. It was in Grigory and Aksinya that the characteristic, typical features of the Cossacks, who had gone through a long and painful path of searches and mistakes, insights and losses, were most fully and deeply expressed.

Nature is constantly present in the action of the novel as an equal participant in events. The Quiet Don becomes gloomy and stormy, the reeds can be a place for children's games or a refuge for warriors, the steppe is far from always calm, it is terrible during a fire, which easily spreads to the blissful peace of wealthy farms.

The central place in the Sholokhov epic is occupied by life path Gregory, the evolution of his character. Before our eyes, this skittish, masterful guy, cheerful and simple, is being formed as a person. During the First World War, he fought bravely at the front, even received the St. George Cross. In this war, he honestly fulfilled his duty, for he was absolutely sure who his enemy was. But October Revolution and the civil war destroyed all his usual ideas about Cossack honor. He, like all people of that turbulent and difficult era, had to make his choice - with whom did he go along the way? With the whites, who defend the old established legal order, seeking to restore the monarchy, or with the reds, who, on the contrary, want to destroy the old way of life to the ground in order to build it on the ruins new life.

Gregory serves now with the Whites, now with the Reds. Like a real Cossack, who absorbed the traditions of this estate with his mother's milk, the hero stands up for the defense of the country, since, in his opinion, the Bolsheviks not only encroach on the shrine, but also tear it off the ground. These thoughts worried not only Gregory, but also other Cossacks, who looked with pain at the unharvested wheat, the uncut bread, the empty threshing floors, thinking about how the women were torn at overwork at a time when they were waging a senseless slaughter begun by the Bolsheviks. But then Grigory has to witness the brutal massacre of the whites with the Podtelkov detachment, which makes him bitter.

However, Grigory remembers something else - how the same Podtelkov cold-bloodedly destroyed white officers. Here and there, hatred, atrocities, cruelty, violence. This is disgusting, disgusting for the soul of a normal, good, honest person who wants to work on his land, raise children, love a woman. But in that perverted, vague world, such simple human happiness is out of reach. And the hero is forced to live in a camp of hatred and death. He hardens, falls into despair, realizing that, against his will, he sows death around him. He is forcibly cut off from everything that is dear to his heart: home, family, loving people.

Instead of whole working life on arable land and in the field, he must kill people for ideas that he cannot understand and accept. Gregory rushes between the warring camps, feeling the narrowness and limitations of the opposing ideas. He is acutely aware that "the course of life is wrong," but he is not able to change it. Gregory understands that it is naive to cling to the old, tirelessly, like an ant, to drag everything into the house, taking advantage of the general devastation, as his father does. But at the same time, he cannot agree with the point of view of the proletarian, who suggests that he give up everything and run to the Reds, because he has nothing, which means he has nothing to lose.

Grigory cannot so easily leave what he has earned by hard work, but he also does not want, having fenced himself off from the whole world, to improve his life in small things. He wants to get to the bottom of the main thing, to understand what are the forces that undertook to control life. His tenacious, observant peasant gaze immediately marks the contrast between lofty communist slogans and real deeds: the chrome boots of a red commander and windings of a private "Vanka". If the property stratification of the Red Army catches the eye just through the bastard, then after the Soviet power takes root, equality will finally disappear. These ironic arguments of Melekhov amaze with the accuracy of foresight, when a new ruling class was formed from Soviet officials - the party nomenklatura. But on the other hand, while serving in the White Army, it is painful and humiliating for Melekhov to hear the colonel's contemptuous words about the people

Flipping through the pages of the epic novel, reading carefully, growing into the unusual way of Cossack life, you begin to understand that the descriptions of nature are still secondary and only once again emphasize the stylistic mastery of the author. The main thing is the person. A man who strives to work on his own land, raise children, love a woman in his "native steppe under the low Don sky."

Otherwise lay down the novel "Virgin Soil Upturned". It was a tragic attempt to sing the unsung, to idealize reality. It clearly showed the contradiction between a great artistic talent and the ideological scheme that fettered him, which was also reflected in the composition of the novel. Let's remember its beginning. Almost simultaneously, the Cossack captain Polovtsev, an enemy of the Soviet government, who is trying to involve the farmers in a counter-revolutionary uprising, and the locksmith Davydov with a noble and humane mission - to create a strong collective farm in Gremyachiy Log, enter Gremyachiy Log. The contrast of the goals of ideological opponents emphasizes the fact that the insidious enemy of the Polovtsy gallops to the farm at night, cowardly hiding his face. On a clear, sunny day, communist Davydov arrives in Gremyachiy Log. This visible detail was supposed to clearly demonstrate the baseness of the goals of one hero and the nobility of another.

Nature is constantly present in the action of this novel as an equal participant in the events. And at the same time, it remains, as it were, a background, an arrangement, a decoration, when the main characters, people, come into play.

In "Virgin Soil Upturned" there are many picturesque pictures of folk life, poetic descriptions of the Don nature, and unique humor. But despite this, the general color of the era depicted in the novel evokes by no means an optimistic feeling. And not only because the pages of the novel, figuratively speaking, are covered in blood: in the 8 months during which the action takes place, 11 people die, but because Sholokhov's great artistic talent constantly came into conflict with the narrowness of the ideological scheme. The author even avoids talking about the specific results of the collective farm.

For example, there is not a word about the harvest, that is, the author, as it were, is ashamed of full voice trumpet about the "victory" of the collective farm system. Therefore, the idea of ​​the triumph of the Party's policy in the countryside was created largely thanks to the name The life of the peasantry was compared to the uncultivated, unplowed virgin land, fraught with powerful forces and opportunities. Such forces, of course, were in society. And now they are making their way out in order to understand and rethink the tragedy of a turning point, which has drastically changed the current lifestyle.

I would like to finish the essay with an appeal to the story, which is more correctly called an epic, for what is the "Destiny of a Man" if not an image of the fate of a people at a turning point? Andrey Sokolov represents the whole people. His confession is the plot center of the work.

On the pages of the story, two life positions collide. The first can be expressed in the words of Sokolov "" One can smoke and die alone." The second - in the words of Kryzhnev: "Your own shirt is closer to the body." There is a clash between the idea of ​​national unity and the idea that destroys this unity

An unconscious sense of self-esteem makes the hero do this and that - "... although I was dying of hunger, I'm not going to choke on their sop, I have my own, Russian dignity and pride, and they didn’t turn me into a beast, no matter how tried."

The story of Sokolov becomes an accusation of the war, which "crippled, distorted a person." Here one immediately recalls the portrait of the protagonist of the story, drawn by Sholokhov at the beginning of the work: "big dark hands", "eyes, as if sprinkled with ashes, filled with inescapable longing." Before us is a metaphor reinforced by hyperbole. The eyes are a reflection of the soul, and we understand that everything inside Sokolov seemed to have burned out.

Here it is impossible not to recall the words of M. Lotman: "History passes through a man's house, through his privacy, fate. Not titles, orders or royal favor, but the "self-standing of a Man" turns him into a historical figure.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SAKHA (YAKUTIA)

SECONDARY EDUCATIONAL SCHOOL № 17 YAKUTSK

ON LITERATURE

TOPIC: "INDIVIDUALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOKHOV"

(Examination paper)

Completed:

student 11 "A"

Rozhin Peter.

Checked:

teacher of Russian language

and literature

Vasilyeva M. I.

Yakutsk - 2004

PLAN

I. INTRODUCTION.

II. INDIVIDUALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF MA SHOLOHOV.

1. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE NOVEL "QUIET DON".

2. NATURE IN STORIES.

III. CONCLUSION.

I . INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this work is an abstract review of the originality of the landscape in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov and the stories of the mid-twenties.

A landscape is a view, an image of a locality, a picture of nature. In a literary work, a landscape is a description where the main subject of the image is nature (2.38).

An abstract is a summary of a document or work or parts thereof, including the main factual information and conclusions necessary for familiarization with them (2.711; 1.55). Therefore, the work presents the content of the read works in line with the given topic.

According to experts, abstracts of any kind “should not reflect the subjective views of the referent on the issue being presented, and the assessment of the document under review is not given in the abstract” (1, 57).

Of course, the scope of the abstract does not allow revealing the diversity of the use of landscape descriptions in the writer's works, but the selected episodes made it possible to create a complete picture of Sholokhov's landscape.

The abstract consists of an introduction, which sets out the purpose of the work and its structure, gives definitions of the basic concepts necessary to disclose the topic. The main part reports (abstracts) the content of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" and works of small forms in the context of the topic under consideration. The work ends with the final part, where conclusions are briefly drawn throughout the abstract.

This work uses editions of the novel by M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don", stories, articles by I. I. Khavruk, V. A. Chalmaev, A. K. Demidova, a dictionary of the Russian language edited by A. P. Evgeniev.

II . INDIVIDUALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOHOV

1. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE NOVEL "QUIET DON"

The novel begins with a description of the Melekhovsky yard on the very edge of the farm (7, 29).

The author in one small paragraph, as it were, invested the events that will happen to the Melekhovs. Here is a “steep descent”, which means turning points in the history of the people, and a “scatter of shells”, symbolizing the people, and “pebbles covered with waves”, indicating difficult trials, and “blued ripples of the stirrup of the Don”, symbolizing events that will occur in the life of the Cossacks . The writer used an allegory: for example, the east personifies the emergence of a new force that is advancing on the Don with “horse hooves”, and “living roadside” (living plantain) means the Cossacks.

The landscape in the novel does not exist separately from the events described in it, but is closely connected with them.

Here is an excerpt from chapter XIX of the third book: “The east wind is cossing across the native steppe. Loga was covered with snow. Padins and yars leveled. There are no roads or paths. All around, crosswise, slicked down by the winds, a white bare plain. Like a dead steppe. From time to time a raven will fly overhead, ancient as this steppe, like a mound over a summer-timer in a snow cap with a beaver princely edge of Chernobyl. A raven will fly by, with a whistle cutting the air with its wings, dropping a throaty moaning scream. The wind will carry his cry far away, and for a long time and sadly it will sound over the steppe, like a bass string accidentally touched in silence at night.

But the steppe still lives under the snow. Where, like frozen waves, plowing silver from snow humps, where the earth, fenced since autumn, lies like a dead swell, - there, clinging to the soil with greedy, tenacious roots, lies winter zhito tumbled down by frost. Silky green, all covered in tears of frozen dew, it chilly clings to the fragile black soil, feeds on its life-giving black blood and waits for spring, the sun to rise, breaking the melted cobweb-thin diamond crust to turn lush green in May. And it will rise, waiting for time! The quail will beat in it, the April lark will ring over it. And the sun will shine on him in the same way, and the same wind will cradle him. For the time being, until a mature, full-grained ear, crumpled by showers and fierce winds, droops with a mustachioed head, lies under the owner’s scythe and dutifully drops cast, heavy grains on the current ”(8, 116).

“The sky is darkened. Lightning obliquely plowed open a churned black-earth cloud, silence accumulated for a long time, and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled warningly. Vigorous rain sowing began to crush the grass ... Thunder fell with terrifying force, lightning swiftly went to the ground. After a new blow from the bowels of the cloud, rain erupted in streams, the steppe murmured indistinctly ... ”(8, 31).

Both passages imply a time that will bring many changes that will affect the destinies of people. These descriptions precede the tragic events with the advent of the Reds.

Pictures of nature mean both symbolic images and a description of the state of the heroes: “A warm wind blew from the south for two days. The last snow has fallen on the fields. Foamy spring streams died down, steppe logs and rivers played out. At the dawn of the third day, the wind died down, and thick fogs fell under the steppe, the bushes of last year's feather grass turned silver with moisture, mounds, gullies, villages, spiers of bell towers, the tops of pyramidal poplars soaring upwards drowned in an impenetrable whitish haze. A blue spring has risen over the wide Don steppe.

Another, miraculously renewed and seductive, the world appeared before her. With sparkling eyes, she looked around excitedly, childishly fingering the folds of her dress. The distance shrouded in mist, the apple trees in the garden flooded with melt water, the wet fence and the road behind it with last year's deeply washed ruts - everything seemed to her unprecedentedly beautiful, everything bloomed with thick and delicate colors, as if shining with the sun.

A patch of clear sky peeping through the mist blinded her with a cold blue; the smell of rotten straw and thawed black soil was so familiar and pleasant that Aksinya sighed deeply and smiled with the corners of her lips; the uncomplicated song of a lark, coming from somewhere out of the foggy steppe, awakened an unconscious sadness in her. It was she - a song heard in a foreign land - that made Aksinya's heart beat faster and squeezed two mean tears out of her eyes ...

Thoughtlessly enjoying the life that had returned to her, Aksinya felt a great desire to touch everything with her hands, to look around everything. She wanted to touch the currant bush, blackened by dampness, to press her cheek against the branch of an apple tree covered with a bluish velvety coating, she wanted to step over the ruined fence and go through the mud, off-road, to where, beyond the wide log, the winter field was fabulously green, merging with the foggy distance, the winter field ... " (8, 571).

Landscape sketches speak of the artist's great love for the nature of the Don region: “Dear steppe! A bitter wind settling on the manes of mowing queens and stallions. On dry horse snores, it is salty from the wind, and the horse, inhaling the bitter-salty smell, chews with silky lips and neighs, feeling the taste of wind and sun on them. Native steppe under the low Don sky! There are beams of upland, red-clay ravines, a feather-grass expanse with a haunted nesting trace of a horse's hoof, barrows, in wise silence, protecting the buried Cossack glory ... I bow low and my sons kiss your fresh land, the Don, Cossack, watered steppe that does not rust with blood! (8, 49).

The landscape is animated, for example, “the wind coos”, “the water cooed”, “the hollow water stood as if spellbound”, “the water bubbled like crazy”, “the steppe was dressed in silver” and helps to reveal the feelings, moods of the characters, convey their attitude to the events.

In the novel The Quiet Flows the Don, at turning points in the fate of the heroes, Sholokhov compares their inner life with natural processes (3, 27 - 31).

For example, let's focus on the main female images.

The author compares the life of Aksinya and her internal state after the break with Grigory with a field of wheat trampled down by a herd and with the feeling of its owner: “The sharp-leaved green wheat sprouts, grows; after a month and a half, the rook is buried in it with its head, and is not visible; sucks juices from the earth, it will pop out; then it will bloom, gold dust covers the ear; the grain will swell with fragrant and sweet milk. The owner will go out into the steppe - he looks, he is not overjoyed. Out of nowhere, a herd of cattle wandered into the bread: they digged, pounded overweight ears into the arable land. Where they were lying around, there are circles of flattened bread ... it’s wild and bitter to look at.

"In the golden bloom" of Aksinya's feelings came, "incinerated, defiled" Grishka with his boot (7, 100). But the author shows that life goes on: “The bread, poisoned by cattle, rises. From the dew, from the sun, a stalk driven into the ground rises; at first it bends, like a man overstrained by an unbearable weight, then he straightens up, raises his head, and the day shines on him in the same way, and the wind shakes in the same way ... ".

A special place in the novel is occupied by Natalia's state of mind, which is compared to a thunderstorm in nature.

Nature is restless: “White clouds torn by the wind floated and melted across the blue sky. The sun's rays heated the red-hot earth. Rain came from the east." Natalya's soul is bad: having learned that Grigory again reached out to Aksinya, she becomes withdrawn and gloomy. The storm is coming closer: “... a gray shadow was rapidly falling”, “the sun obliquely pierced the dazzling white border of a cloud floating to the west”, “a shadow accompanying the cloud still reigned and stained the earth along the blue spurs of the Obdon Mountains”.

Natalya is no longer able to cope with her feelings: “Suddenly she jumped up, pushed Ilyinichna, who was holding out a cup of water to her, and, turning her face to the east, prayerfully folded her palms wet with tears, shouted quickly, choking:

God! He exhausted my whole soul! I have no more strength to live like this! Lord, punish him damn! Beat him to death there! So that he no longer lives, does not torment me!

Nature responds to her curses, the element rages: “A black swirling cloud crept from the east. Thunder rumbled dully. Penetrating the round cloud tops, burning white lightning slithered across the sky. The wind blew the rumbling grasses to the west, carried bitter dust from the road, bent the sunflower hats weighed down with seeds almost to the ground. Thunder struck over the steppe with a dry crack. Now Ilyinichna is also seized with fear:

Get on your knees! Listen, Natasha!?

The author compares natural processes with the feelings of the heroines. Nature lives by its own laws, people by theirs. At some point, these worlds, approaching, intersect, and then a symbol appears, based on poetic parallelism (3, 27 - 28).

Along with comparisons of natural processes with the spiritual life of Aksinya and Natalya, the author uses comparisons from the natural world (3, 28).

The writer compares Natalya's feelings for Gregory with "an inaccessible starry place." He writes that “from there, from the blue-black upper wasteland, the cranes, late in flight, called with silver bells behind them. The obsolete grass smelled drearily-deadly.

The metaphor “silver bells called after themselves”, the epithets “drearily”, “deadly” and the definition “obsolete” most accurately convey the state of mind of the heroine.

Sholokhov uses a landscape description when he reveals the characters of Aksinya and Natalya.

The feelings of Natalya and Aksinya after typhus are at first almost the same: Natalya “is sweet ... the silence that has settled after the gun roar”, “she eagerly listened to the ingenuous song of the larks”, “breathed the wind saturated with wormwood bitterness”, “the intoxicating smell of red-hot black soil”; Aksinya, before whom the world appeared "wonderful and seductive", is intoxicated with "the greedy sweetness of fresh spring air", "rotten straw", "the lark's song awakened unconscious sadness in her."

Sholokhov spring - love.

Aksinya, with all the strength of her sensitive soul, perceives and absorbs the beauty and life-giving forces of nature, merging in her with the forces of her love, tenderness and affection for Grigory. He perceives by sight (“swarty wild bumblebees swayed on the corollas of meadow flowers”), by hearing (“wild ducks tickled in the reeds”, “a drake hoarsely called his girlfriend”, “far, far away, indistinctly and sadly, a cuckoo counted unlived years to someone”), eyesight and hearing (“a lapwing flying over the lake persistently asked: “Whose are you? Whose are you?”; “velvety-dusty bumblebees buzzed”), feels it physically (“bare feet were pleasantly cooled by wet greenery, bare full calves and neck with searching lips kissed dry wind" - this metaphor is extremely accurate and expressive: the inanimate (dry wind) is personified and perceived as living, human). Perceives smells (“from under the hawthorn bush oozed a musty and tart scent of rotting last year’s foliage”) (3, 28).

She could not resist quoting the words of the author: “Smiling and silently moving her lips, she carefully sorted through the stalks of serene, blue, modest flowers, then leaned over in her plump body to sniff, and suddenly caught the lingering and sweet aroma of lily of the valley. Fumbling with her hands, she found it. It grew right there, under an impenetrable shady bush. Broad, once green leaves still jealously guarded from the sun a short hunchbacked stalk topped with snow-white drooping cups of flowers. But the leaves covered with dew and yellow rust were dying, and the mortal decay had already touched the flower itself: the two lower cups were wrinkled and turned black, only the top, in sparkling tears of dew, suddenly flared under the sun with blinding captivating whiteness ”(8, 350).

So, the image of a lily of the valley, personifying the harmony and beauty of life, and at the same time the beginning of its withering, being associated with the life of Aksinya, with her thoughts and feelings, acquires the meaning of a symbol.

Here are a few passages reflecting Sholokhov's description of the landscape in the novel.

“Dry leaves rustled on corn buds. Behind the hilly plain, the spurs of the mountains gleamed blue. Near the village, red cows roamed the riches. The wind whipped frosty dust behind the copse. Sleepy and peaceful was a dull October day; blissful peace, silence emanated from the landscape spattered by the stingy sun. And not far from the road, people were trampling around in stupid anger, preparing to poison the rain-fed, seeded, fat land with their blood (8, 490).

Yellow-white, busty, like planes, clouds floated quietly over Novocherkassk. In the sky above the clouds, right above the radiant dome of the cathedral, a grey-haired curly man hung motionless and silvered pink somewhere above the village of Krivyanskaya.

The sun was rising dimly, but the windows of the ataman's palace, reflecting it, shone brightly. The sloping iron roofs shone on the houses, the dampness of yesterday's rain was kept on by the bronze Yermak, who extended the Siberian crown to the north (8, 505).

Half a verst from the farm, on the left side of the Don, there is an abyss, hollow water rushes into it in the springs. Near the break, springs are beating from the sandy shore - the ice there does not freeze all winter, it glows with a green wide half-arc of the polynya, and the road along the Don cautiously runs around it, makes a sharp leap to the side. In the spring, when the selling water goes back to the Don through the abyss in a mighty stream, in this place the beater spins, the water roars, weaving various streams, washing out the bottom; and all summer long carp hold on at many sazhens depths, nailing to the dry land close to the gap, heaped from the shore (8, 568).

His hops are like a wedge knocked out. He ran to the hole. Freshly broken ice shone sharply. The wind and the stirrup drove chunks of ice along the wide black circle, the waves shook with green whirlwinds and rustled. In a distant farmhouse, the lights turned yellow in the darkness. The grainy stars, like freshly blown stars, burned and trembled frantically in the plush sky. The breeze fluffed up with a drizzle, it whistled, flew like powdery dust into the black hail of the polynya. And the polynya slightly smoked with steam and just as cordially and terribly blackened.

Hollow water has just started to sell. In the meadow, near the garden wattle fences, brown, silty earth was bare, a surfacing lay in a border: fragments of dry reeds left over from the spill, branches, kuga, last year's leaves nailed to rubbish by a wave. The willows of the flooded Obdon forest were slightly noticeably green, and catkins hung from the branches in tassels. Buds were about ready to unfold on the poplars, at the very courtyards of the farmstead, the shoots of the reddish, surrounded by the flood, leaned towards the water. Fluffy yellow, like unfeathered ducklings, its buds dived in the waves, swayed by the wind.

At dawn, wild geese, goose, flocks of ducks swam up to the gardens in search of food. Copper-voiced loons cackled like dawns in the tuba. And at noon one could see how a wave of white-bellied teals was nursing and nursing across the wind-tossed expanse of the Don (8, 600).

Clouds were thickening in the west. It was getting dark. Somewhere far, far away, in the Obdon zone, lightning curled, an orange lightning fluttered on the wing of an unfinished bird. On that side, a glow shone faintly, covered with a black hollow of clouds. The steppe, like a bowl, filled to the brim with silence, hid in the folds of the beams the sad reflections of the day. Something reminded this evening of autumn time. Even grasses that had not yet given color emitted an indescribable smell of decay” (8, 634).

In the passages cited above, it is easy to trace the expanses of the Don, beloved by Sholokhov.

The landscape in The Quiet Don performs different functions: it reveals the characters and the internal states of the characters, poeticizes the events.

2. NATURE IN STORIES

In the stories I read by Sholokhov, the landscape occupies little space. But even in brief descriptions of nature, a rather capacious meaning emerges that permeates these works. They have in common: the landscape is associated with the mood of the characters, with their perception of the world around them and themselves.

"The Fate of a Man" begins with landscape paintings of spring (6, 5-8), which for Sholokhov always means even "in this bad time of off-road" "assertiveness, warm winds and the first truly warm day after winter." A friendly spring in the story means the steadfastness of a person in the face of a difficult fate. The writer claims through the description of nature that spring comes in the fate of these two people (6, 47).

The writer sees the same steppe in different stories in different ways, as if personifying the Cossack in the image of the steppe. The life of the Cossacks is different.

For example, in "Alyoshkin's Heart" (1925), the landscape "smells of earthy dampness, nettle blossoms and the intoxicating smell of dog fury", confirming Alyoshka's plight (5, 236 - 350).

In "Crooked Stitch" (1925), despite the autumn time, the emergence of Vaska's feelings for Nyurka is described with colors more similar to spring. The landscape is full of spring and youth, as the author himself writes, "green and resilient." Then, gradually, the pictures of nature begin to be perceived bleakly: “The fog, bending low, curled over the mowed grass, pawed the thorny stems with plump gray tentacles, wrapped the shocks like a woman’s steam. Behind the three poplars, where the sun had set for the night, the sky was taken away by wild roses and the steep, rearing clouds looked like wilted petals” (5, 349). A few lines of such a picture foreshadow the tragic end of Nyurka.

In the story “The Shepherd” (1925), the steppe “scorched by the sun, charred, the grass warped with yellowness; and the grain ear ... faded, wilted, bent down to the ground, hunched over like an old man ”(5, 211). Grisha's fate repeats this description. Grisha was killed. But Dunyatka's road will be different: “The steppe is wide and not measured by anyone. There are many roads and trails along it” (5, 221). One of them, perhaps Dunyatkina.

Another landscape with “neglected gardens” blooming “in milky pink, drunk” and with “fair days”, with “sunny joy” in the story “Two-husband” (1925). The description of the July downpour is similar to the fate of Anna, who, like “a shutter torn off by a whirlwind” (5, 363), will toil between her unloved husband and Arseny.

The landscape in Sholokhov's stories allegorically introduces the reader into the plot of the story.

A feature of the originality of the landscape in the works of Sholokhov is self-repetition, which he was not at all afraid of (4, 14): his landscapes often “cossack”, “the blued ripples of the stirrup of the Don” “roam” from one work to another, the east wind in many works brings steep changes in the fate of the Cossacks, and the steppe landscape is always the main image in the description of nature.

III . CONCLUSION

The abstract examines the landscape originality in the novel by M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" and the stories "The Fate of a Man", "Alyoshkin's Heart", "Crooked Stitch", "Shepherd" and "Two Husbands".

After reading the works and studying the articles of some authors, we can draw the following conclusions:

The originality of the landscape in the works of Sholokhov lies in the use of poetic parallelism in the description and disclosure of characters, the internal states of the characters;

The writer uses self-repetitions when describing landscapes in various works;

In describing the landscape, Sholokhov uses various figurative and expressive means of language: epithets, metaphors, personifications, comparisons, anaphoras.

In conclusion, we can say that M. A. Sholokhov is a singer of the steppe who captivates his reader with a vivid description of the nature of the Don, a reader who has never seen it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Demidova A.K. Russian language manual. M.: Rus. lang. 1991.

2. Dictionary of the Russian language: In four volumes. T. III. ETC. M.: Rus.yaz. 1983.

3. Havruk I. I. Disclosure of the characters of Aksinya and Natalia in Mikhail Sholokhov's "Quiet Don". / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6.

4. Chalmaev V. A. Short stories by Mikhail Sholokhov. "Internal stories", moral problems, poetics. / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6.

5. Sholokhov M. A. Collected works. T. 7. M.: Khudozh. Lit. 1986.

6. Sholokhov M.A. The fate of man: M .: Det. Lit. 1981.

7. Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don. Book. 1-2. M.: Artist. lit. 1980.

8. Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don. Book. 3-4. M.: Artist. lit. 1980.

Introduction

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Mikhail Sholokhov is one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century. Sholokhov's books: "Don Stories", "Quiet Don", "Virgin Soil Upturned", "They Fought for the Motherland", "The Fate of a Man" - depicting the fate of the people and the self-consciousness of the individual in a turbulent era full of tragic events, answering the questions of human existence in the world, for each generation of readers open up new depths of their content. Sholokhov's works received not only wide approval in the country, but also worldwide recognition. The work of M. Sholokhov has a modern sound, a new reading of his epic trilogy from the position of the turn of the century is required.

Born on May 11 (24), 1905 in a simple peasant family in the village of Veshenskaya on the Don. Received elementary education. From the age of twelve he participated in the Civil War, which broke out on the Don after the 1917 revolution. For several years he was engaged in revolutionary activities; in 1923 he continued his education.

In 1925 he returned to the Don, and in the same year his Don Stories were published. The collection of short stories "Azure Steppe" (1926) was republished in 1931. These two volumes include all of his early stories. They describe the life of the Don Cossacks during the Civil War, this is the germ of a future masterpiece, "Quiet Don".

Started in 1926, Quiet Don was completed in 1940. The first part appeared in print in 1928 thanks to the petition of Sholokhov's friend A.S. Serafimovich. In 1929 the second volume came out; the third was published in 1932-1933 thanks to Gorky. The fourth and final volume was published in 1938-1940. The novel was translated into many languages ​​and formed the basis of Ivan Dzerzhinsky's opera, films and theatrical performances.

In a row actual problems modern literary criticism the task is to study the artistic thinking of M.A. Sholokhov. Until now, such a sphere of attitudes and worldview of the writer as "a sense of nature" (perception, understanding and image of nature) remains unexplored. In domestic science, a lot of attention is paid to the artistic understanding of nature by poets of the 20-30s and such writers as M. Prishvin, L. Leonov, A. Platonov, K. Paustovsky.

The relevance of the topic of the course work lies in the fact that in the center of it is the little-studied problem of artistic understanding of the landscape in the epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don".

The object of the study is the landscape in the epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don".

The subject of the research is the functions and role of the landscape in the epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don".

The purpose of the course work is to show the functions of the landscape in the epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don"

The goal determined the following research objectives:

study the literature on the topic;

consider the concept of "landscape" and its functions in the literature;

to determine the features of the image of the landscape in the "Quiet Don" M.A. Sholokhov;

to identify the functions of the landscape in the epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don".

Methodological basis course work are the works of A.F. Britikova, L.G. Yakimenko, L.G. Satarova, F.G. Biryukova, A.A. Khvatova and others.

Structurally, the course work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

Chapter 1. Landscape and historical events in the "Quiet Don"

Mikhail Sholokhov is an active participant in the revolution, the civil war. He himself went through its crucible, saw the whole horror of revolutionary achievements. Although he was on the side of the revolutionary masses, in his novel he truthfully, without embellishment, captured the tragedy of the events of that time. War for M. Sholokhov is a "great destruction of morality", a tragedy of the people, blasphemy against morality, reason, it is inhuman, entails the destruction of families, war, according to Sholokhov, is "in the mud, in suffering, in death." In turn, L.N. Tolstoy expressed his own opinion in the words of his hero: “War is not courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and one must understand this and not play war. One must take strictly and seriously this terrible necessity. war, not a toy.The purpose of war is murder, the weapons of war are espionage, treason and promotion of it, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing for food for the army, the morals of the military class are the lack of freedom.They will converge, as tomorrow, to kill each other, they will kill , crippled tens of thousands of people, and then they will serve thanksgiving prayers for having beaten many people, and proclaim victory, believing that the more people are beaten, the greater the merit. How God from there looks and listens to them ".

The nature of the Quiet Don, the distant steppe and open spaces act as individual heroes Sholokhov's novel Quiet Flows the Don. The writer lovingly describes those Cossack lands full of freedom, radiant sun, fields, where one feels the complete unity of man with nature - the ideal of the writer himself.

Sholokhov's landscape creates a picture of the world, complements the sense of reality of what is happening. During hostilities, the writer focuses on drizzling rain, piercing wind, something rumbling in the distance, frosty gray fog. The description of nature anticipates the upcoming events of the novel, prepares the reader for the perception of grandiose subsequent changes. For example, a description of the borderline state of nature, frozen in "waiting" for the Upper Don uprising. But in the last part of the novel, “the world appeared different, miraculously renewed and seductive, a patch of clear sky peering through the fog blinded with cold blue ...” Sholokhov more than once compares the “majestically open” dove sky, full of boundless expanses, with boiling life on earth, alluding to thought of eternal life, eternal confrontation.

The very title of the novel is symbolic and ambiguous. Quiet - "majestic", the Don is only outwardly calm and quiet, in fact the river is full of whirlpools, pitfalls. The life of heroes is like the flow of a river, which Sholokhov proves in his epic. But at the same time, no matter how life changes, there is something eternal, immortal in it. The events of history change, the fate of the heroes, but every year the steppe blooms, the cold comes and goes, the quiet Don flows into eternity. In this, Sholokhov philosophizes that nature and man are closely connected with each other, and this connection is especially clearly shown in Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Flows the Don.

All experiences during the war, the severity of wartime, Sholokhov displayed in the landscape. For example, “Where the battles were going on, shells blew up the gloomy face of the earth with smallpox: rusted in it, longing for human blood, fragments of iron and steel. August - when the fruit ripens and the bread ripens - the sky unsmilingly turned gray, the rare fine days were tormented by steamy heat ... In the gardens, the leaf turned fat yellow, from the cutting it was poured with a dying crimson, and from afar, it seemed that the trees were in torn wounds and were bleeding with ore tree blood.

Thanks to metaphors, vivid personifications, one gets the feeling that nature itself is participating in the war.

Another example of mutual influence is how military events affect the natural world (5 hours): “A thin, yellow-brown goat jumped out of a gullet overgrown with Tatar and thorns, looked at the choppers from a hillock for several seconds, and tensely fingered with thin, chiseled legs<…>- What is this thing? - Dropping the ax, asked Matvey Kashulin. With inexplicable delight, Khristonya barked at the entire enchanted-silent forest: - A goat, therefore! Wild goat, thrive on her grace! We saw them in the Carpathians! - So, the war drove her, the unfortunate woman, into our steppes? Christone had no choice but to agree." And, in general, the war in "TD" violates the harmony that, according to Shlokhov, should exist between man and nature.

Sholokhov repeatedly contrasts the world of war and death with the natural world of nature (the end of book 2, after describing the funeral): “And yet - in May they fought near the chapel of the little bustard, knocked out a dot in the blue wormwood, crushed the green spill of the ripening wheatgrass near: they fought for the female, for the right to life, to love, to reproduce.And a little later, right there near the chapel, under a tussock, under the shaggy cover of an old wormwood, a female little bustard laid nine smoky-blue spotted eggs and sat on them, warming them with the warmth of her body, protecting them with a glossy feathered wing."

After the funeral of grandfather Sashka - a fragment in which the "boiling of life" is shown + an image of the sky (sharing with "V. and M."): "Dejected by memories, Grigory lay down on the grass not far from this small cemetery dear to the heart and looked for a long time at the majestically prostrate the blue sky above it Somewhere out there, in the high boundless expanses, the winds blew, cold clouds shone with the sun floated, and on the earth, which had just received the cheerful horseman and drunkard grandfather Sashka, life still boiled furiously: in the steppe, with a green overflow approaching the garden itself, in the thickets of wild hemp near the thorns of the old threshing floor, the rattling shot of a quail battle sounded incessantly, gophers whistled, bumblebees buzzed, grass caressed by the wind rustled, larks sang in a streaming haze, and, asserting human greatness in nature, somewhere far away - far away along the upland, a machine gun pounded persistently, angrily and muffledly.

The beginning of the First World War is foreshadowed in the novel by an alarming summer landscape, forcing to remember "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". Autumn is the time of a bloody harvest in the novel: "August was drawing to a close. In the gardens, a leaf turned fat yellow, from a cutting it was filled with a dying crimson, and from a distance it looked like the trees were in torn wounds and bleed with ore tree blood." One gets the impression that not only Russians and Germans, reds and whites, but nature itself is in a state of war.

The continuity of the Cossack way of life and nature is also manifested in the following. Cossacks largely depend on the state of nature. Crop failures, droughts, frosts, fires - all this affects the life of the Cossacks. Therefore, they appreciate nature, its beauty, they subtly feel with all their souls. An example of this is the way Grigory Melekhov reacted to the dead duckling that he had killed. "Grigory, with a sudden feeling of acute pity, looked at the dead lump lying in his palm." Nature foresaw any change in people's lives. And it is precisely in describing the landscape that Sholokhov warns of danger. Through the state of nature, he foresees those events that must inevitably come into the life of the Cossacks. The environment surrounding the Cossacks is looking forward to the onset of the war. Nature is changing dramatically. “Against the farm, the Don was shallow, and where a crazy stirrup used to be fast, a forest formed ... At night, clouds thickened behind the Don, burst dry and rolling thunder strikes, but did not fall on the ground, bursting with hot heat, rain, lightning fired empty, breaking the sky on sharp-angled blue edges.

The Sholokhov landscape in the novel is always associated with a number of events in the novel: events in the life of people and in the life of nature are given in unity, the world of people and the world of nature are comprehended by the author as a single life stream. A finely outlined picture of nature - "And the spring that year shone with unprecedented colors" - evokes thoughts of the monstrous absurdity of bloodshed, conceals a condemnation of the inhumanity of war.

landscape quiet Don Sholokhov

Through the landscape, Sholokhov reflects the image of the main character - Grigory Melekhov. Land and labor on it, military duty, a farm, a hut - these are the components of the Cossack's spiritual world, these are the conditions that shaped the character of Gregory. Love for all living things thrill someone else's pain, the ability to compassion reveals the author throughout the novel. Speaking about the character of the protagonist, one should note his inherent sense of indissoluble connection with the outside world: “Gregory stood by the water for a long time. A subtle sense of nature can also be heard in Grigory's direct speech: "Your hair smells like a drunkard. You know, a flower so white ..."

In most cases, landscape inserts are found at the beginnings of domes, i.e. the description of nature, as a rule, precedes the description of human actions. Quite often, a change in nature anticipates future changes in people's lives. So, for example, we see an omen of the First World War in the following fragment: “At night, clouds were thickening over the Don, bursting dry and rolling thunder strikes, but rain did not fall on the ground, bursting with feverish heat, lightning fired in vain, breaking the sky into sharp-angled blue edges At night, an owl roared over the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farm, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery, soiled by calves, groaned over the brown, baited graves. will pin."

Having in mind similar fragments of the novel, L.P. Egorov and P.K. Chekalov write that Sholokhov's "historical, social is conjugated with the natural -" steppe cosmos ". Epic time and epic space in the first book of The Quiet Don, Sholokhov scholars following Bakhtin, define it as an "idyllic chronotope", when the life of the Cossacks is presented in its natural, manifestations close to nature, and the everyday way of life is inextricably linked with the natural cycle.

The roll call between the events of the natural world and the events of the human world is often expressed in the novel in the form of direct parallelism or comparison: "It smelled of melted black soil, it smelled of the blood of close battles," "like the steppe scorched by black fires, Grigory's life became black."

The writer notices moments when the perception of nature becomes especially sharp and impressive, as if seen for the first time. Suffice it to recall the most tragic episodes of the novel: the brutal murder of the red commander Likhachev by the Cossacks. Going to his death, he sees the beauty of the spring forest. Passing by a birch, he plucked a branch: “Brown buds, sweet with March juice, were already swelling on it; spring blossoming promised their thin, barely distinct aroma, life repeating under the solar circle ... Likhachev put plump buds in his mouth, chewed them, looked with blurred eyes at the departing from the frost, brightened trees and smiled with a corner of unshaven lips. Is it possible to imagine a situation more tragic than this, when a person with such an attachment to the natural charms of life must leave it forever. Pictures of the massacre of the communists, the Red Army soldiers who fell to the whites, were in many books. But the actual act of violence was usually depicted there. Sholokhov approached this as a psychologist. Pictures of nature free the writer from the need to give direct author's characteristics of the characters.

In the narration of historical events, the landscape plays a multifunctional role: it is one of the main means of depicting, analyzing and summarizing reality, the most important means of embodying the author's concept of history. Consideration of the meaning and role of pictures of nature in the historical plot line allows us to assert that Sholokhov was not an impassive chronicler. The main meaning of the epic novel "Quiet Flows the Don" is truthful image the tragic fate of the people and the motherland during the revolution and fratricidal civil war. The catastrophic nature of the depicted era is embodied in the extremely expressive forms of landscape painting, to which we include portentous landscapes, landscapes containing epic parallels and contrasts, saturated with color, light and Christian symbolism.

Chapter 2

In M. Sholokhov's epic novel "Quiet Flows the Don" as well as in "War and Peace" big role plays a landscape, but not quite ordinary. Important in the novel symbolic detail. Nature for Sholokhov, as well as for Tolstoy, ? character, character.

Sholokhov, giving deep artistic analysis way of life, customs and mores of the Don people, could not help but pay attention to the close connection of their life as farmers with the life of nature. Therefore, nature in his novel appears in the image of a powerful element, leading its own existence, independent of man, and yet with thousands of invisible threads connected with the life and fate of the Cossacks. This is manifested in the landscape sketches and large-scale pictures of nature given in the novel, against which the complex, dramatic life of the Cossacks unfolds, which, according to the law of "psychological parallelism", reveals the necessary correspondences with the processes occurring in nature.

Oh you, our father quiet Don! Oh, what are you, quiet Don, mutnehonek flowing? Oh, how can I, quiet Don, not cloudy leaks! From the bottom of me, quiet Don, cold springs are beating, In the middle of me, quiet Don, a white fish stirs.

Ancient Cossack songs

The nature of the Quiet Don, the distant steppe and expanses act as separate characters in Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Don. The writer lovingly describes those Cossack lands full of freedom, radiant sun, fields, where one feels the complete unity of man with nature - the ideal of the writer himself. Sholokhov's landscape creates a picture of the world, complements the sense of reality of what is happening. During military operations, the writer focuses on drizzling rain, piercing wind, something rumbling in the distance, frosty gray fog. The description of nature anticipates the upcoming events of the novel, prepares the reader for the perception of grandiose subsequent changes. For example, a description of the borderline state of nature, frozen in "waiting" for the Upper Don uprising. But in the last part of the novel, “the world appeared different, miraculously renewed and seductive, a patch of clear sky peering through the fog blinded with cold blue…” the idea of ​​eternal life, eternal confrontation, which is akin to the motif of an endless sky with slowly flowing clouds in the novel - the epic of Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace".

Completely and masterfully, Mikhail Sholokhov characterizes inner world heroes through natural phenomena. The landscape, as a means of expressing the author's position, conveys their mood, hearty storms and calms. The description of the "snowy giant, dragged down by a single push, crushing everything in its path" is parallel to the description of Aksinya's feelings that have not been manifested for many years, which suddenly breaks out at a single meeting with Grigory. By the end of the novel, the strength of Melekhov's feelings and the degree of his sense of loss is described as " black sky and the dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun.

The author uses psychological parallelism in the scene where Natalya curses her husband. The desire of the heroine to renounce God, from natural principles is echoed by a raging thunderstorm. The writer tries to show that if a person is merged with his native nature, he draws his spiritual strength from this source, otherwise: he dies. Mikhail Sholokhov humanizes nature, conveys every change in her mood.

In every digression one can feel the writer's love for open spaces, for the earth, for every stalk, for every leaf. Man is nature itself, and we are inseparable from it. The author especially stands out the image of the steppe, which comes from the popular idea of ​​​​the steppe - mother, nurse, watered with sweat and blood of the people living on it. Also, when describing the landscape, the author rests on folklore source:

Oh, my dear side, I won't see you anymore, I won't see you, I won't hear your voice In the morning dawn of the nightingale.

The quiet Orthodox Don was agitated, agitated.

And obediently responded to the call of the monarch, he

Sholokhov is endowed with an amazing ability to see the world, and at the same time, through the subjective perception of this world by his heroes, he reveals in its entirety their rich inner world. Recall the scene in spring forest. Tired Aksinya decided to rest: “Aksinya, sitting motionless, insatiably inhaled the diverse smells of the forest, her eyes were lost in this wonderful interweaving of flowers and herbs ...” The languid aroma of flowers awakens in Aksinya thoughts of past youth: tears looked at the flower and breathed in its sad smell, Aksinya remembered his youth and all his long and poor life of joys ... As if in clean water Aksinya suddenly saw her reflection from a forest spring - this flower said so much to her sore heart, unexpectedly attracting her with its sad and sweet smell.

The landscape plays an exceptionally important role in The Quiet Don. Sholokhov's landscape has not only an autonomous descriptive value. It is always connected with the events of the novel according to the principle of psychological parallelism inherited by literature from folklore. The world of people and the world of nature are inextricably linked.

"The Melekhovsky yard is on the very edge of the farm. The gates from the cattle base lead north to the Don. A steep eight-yard descent between mossy green chalk blocks, and here is the shore: a mother-of-pearl scattering of shells, a gray broken border of pebbles kissed by waves and further - boiling under the blued wind rippling stirrup Don.

The metaphor "the stirrup of the Don" translates the life of the inhabitants of the Melekhov house into an epic storytelling plan: life is like a river, history is like perpetual motion. Historical events flash like in a kaleidoscope, characters die and are born, but the imperturbable course of the Don continues, the steppe blooms again and again, the sun still shines brightly over the Don steppe. Sholokhov's colorful landscapes soften the plot drama, remind the reader of the cycle of life, its eternal renewal and inescapable beauty. It is no coincidence that the novel begins and ends with a picture of spring.

The pictures of nature mean both symbolic images and a description of the state of the heroes: “A warm wind blew from the south for two days. The last snow fell on the fields. mists, the bushes of last year's feather-grass were silvered with moisture, mounds, gullies, villages, spiers of bell towers, the tops of pyramidal poplars soaring upwards were drowned in an impenetrable whitish haze.

Another, miraculously renewed and seductive, the world appeared before her. With sparkling eyes, she looked around excitedly, childishly fingering the folds of her dress. The distance shrouded in mist, the apple trees in the garden flooded with melt water, the wet fence and the road behind it with the last year's deeply washed ruts - everything seemed to her unprecedentedly beautiful, everything bloomed with thick and delicate colors, as if illuminated by the sun.

A patch of clear sky peeping through the mist blinded her with a cold blue; the smell of rotten straw and thawed black soil was so familiar and pleasant that Aksinya sighed deeply and smiled with the corners of her lips; the uncomplicated song of a lark, coming from somewhere out of the foggy steppe, awakened an unconscious sadness in her. It was she - a song heard in a foreign land - that made Aksinya's heart beat faster and squeezed two mean tears out of her eyes ...

Thoughtlessly enjoying the life that had returned to her, Aksinya felt a great desire to touch everything with her hands, to look around everything. She wanted to touch the currant bush blackened by dampness, to press her cheek against the branch of an apple tree covered with a bluish velvety coating, she wanted to step over the ruined fence and go through the mud, off-road, to where, beyond the wide log, the winter field was fabulously green, merging with the foggy distance, the winter field ... "

The landscape is animated, for example, "the wind coos", "the water cooed", "the hollow water stood as if spellbound", "the water bubbled like mad", "the steppe was dressed in silver" and helps to reveal the feelings, moods of the characters, convey their attitude to the events.

In the novel "Quiet Flows the Don", at turning points in the fate of the heroes, Sholokhov compares their inner life with natural processes.

For example, let's focus on the main female images.

The author compares the life of Aksinya and her internal state after the break with Grigory with a field of wheat trampled down by a herd and with the feeling of its owner: “Holy-leaved green wheat sprouts, grows; after a month and a half, the rook is buried in it with its head, and is not visible; sucks juices from the earth, will sprout; then it will bloom, gold dust covers the ear; the grain will swell with odorous and sweet milk. The owner will go out into the steppe - he looks, he is not overjoyed. Out of nowhere, a herd of cattle wandered into the bread: - circles of flattened bread ... wild and bitter to look at.

"In the golden bloom" of Aksinya's feelings came, "incinerated, defiled" Grishka with his boot. But the author shows that life goes on: “The bread, poisoned by cattle, rises. From the dew, from the sun, a stalk driven into the ground rises; at first it bends, like a man overstrained by an unbearable weight, then straightens up, raises his head, and the day shines on him in the same way, and so does the wind...

A special place in the novel is occupied by Natalia's state of mind, which is compared to a thunderstorm in nature.

Nature is restless: "White clouds torn by the wind floated and melted across the blue sky. The sun's rays heated the hot earth. Rain came from the east." Natalya's soul is bad: having learned that Grigory again reached out to Aksinya, she becomes withdrawn and gloomy. The storm is coming closer: "... a gray shadow was rapidly falling", "the sun obliquely pierced the dazzling white border of a cloud drifting to the west", "a shadow accompanying the cloud still reigned and stained the earth over the blue spurs of the Obdon Mountains".

Natalya is no longer able to cope with her feelings: “Suddenly she jumped up, pushed Ilyinichna, who was holding out a cup of water to her, and, turning her face to the east, prayerfully folded her palms wet with tears, quickly shouted, choking:

God! He exhausted my whole soul! I have no more strength to live like this! Lord, punish him damn! Beat him to death there! So that he no longer lives, does not torment me!

Nature responds to her curses, the elements rage: "A black swirling cloud crawled from the east. Thunder rumbled muffledly. Piercing round cloudy peaks, wriggling, burning white lightning slid across the sky. sunflower hats weighed down with sunflower seeds to the very ground. Now Ilyinichna is also seized with fear:

Get on your knees! Listen, Natasha!?"

The author compares natural processes with the feelings of the heroines. Nature lives by its own laws, people by theirs. At some point, these worlds, approaching, intersect, and then a symbol arises, based on poetic parallelism.

Along with comparisons of natural processes with the spiritual life of Aksinya and Natalya, the author uses comparisons from the natural world.

The writer compares Natalia's feelings for Gregory with "an inaccessible starry place". He writes that "from there, from the blue-black higher wasteland, the cranes, late in flight, called with silver bells. The obsolete grass smelled drearily-deadly."

The metaphor "silver bells called after themselves", the epithets "drearily", "deadly" and the definition "obsolete" most accurately convey the state of mind of the heroine.

Sholokhov uses a landscape description when he reveals the characters of Aksinya and Natalya.

The feelings of Natalya and Aksinya after typhus are at first almost the same: Natalya “is sweet ... the silence that has settled after the rumble of guns”, “she eagerly listened to the ingenuous song of the larks”, “breathed the wind saturated with wormwood bitterness”, “the intoxicating smell of red-hot black soil”; Aksinya, before whom the world appeared "wonderful and seductive", is intoxicated with "the sweet sweetness of fresh spring air", "rotten straw", "the song of the lark awakened unconscious sadness in her."

Sholokhov spring - love.

Aksinya, with all the strength of her sensitive soul, perceives and absorbs the beauty and life-giving forces of nature, merging in her with the forces of her love, tenderness and affection for Grigory. He perceives by sight (“swarty wild bumblebees swayed on the corollas of meadow flowers”), by hearing (“wild ducks tickled in the reeds”, “a drake hoarsely called his girlfriend”, “far, far away, indistinctly and sadly, a cuckoo counted unlived years to someone”), eyesight and hearing (“a lapwing flying over the lake persistently asked: “Whose are you? Whose are you?”; “velvety-dusty bumblebees buzzed”), feels it physically (“bare feet were pleasantly cooled by wet greenery, bare full calves and neck with searching lips kissed dry wind" - this metaphor is extremely accurate and expressive: the inanimate (dry wind) is personified and perceived as living, human). Perceives smells ("from under the hawthorn bush oozed a musty and tart scent of rotting last year's foliage").

She could not resist quoting the words of the author: “Smiling and silently moving her lips, she carefully sorted through the stems of serene, dove, modest flowers, then bent over with a plump figure to sniff, and suddenly caught the languid and sweet aroma of lily of the valley. Fumbling her hands, she found him. He grew right there, under an impenetrable shady bush. Broad, once green leaves still jealously guarded from the sun a short humpbacked stalk crowned with snow-white drooping cups of flowers. But the leaves covered with dew and yellow rust were dying, and the mortal decay had already touched the flower itself: two the lower cups were wrinkled and turned black, only the top, in sparkling tears of dew, suddenly flared under the sun with a blinding captivating whiteness.

So, the image of a lily of the valley, personifying the harmony and beauty of life, and at the same time the beginning of its withering, being associated with the life of Aksinya, with her thoughts and feelings, acquires the meaning of a symbol.

Here are a few passages reflecting Sholokhov's description of the landscape in the novel.

Dry leaves rustled on the corn buds. Beyond the hilly plain, the spurs of the mountains shone blue with tints. Near the village, red cows roamed the riches. The wind swirled frosty dust behind the copse. It was a dull October day, drowsy and peaceful; blissful peace, silence blew from the landscape spattered by the stingy sun. And not far from the road, people were trampling around in stupid rage, preparing to poison the rain-fed, seeded, fat land with their blood.

"Yellow-white, busty, like plows, clouds floated quietly over Novocherkassk. In the sky-high blue, right above the shining dome of the cathedral, a gray-haired curly-haired one hung motionless and silvered pink somewhere above the village of Krivyanskaya."

"The sun was rising dimly, but the windows of the ataman's palace, reflecting it, shone fiercely. The slopes of iron roofs shone on the houses, the dampness of yesterday's rain was kept on by the bronze Yermak, which extended the Siberian crown to the north."

“A half-verst from the farm, on the left side of the Don, there is a gap, hollow water rushes into it in the springs at the outlet. Keys beat from the sandy shore near the gap - the ice does not freeze there all winter, the polynya warms with a wide green half-arc, and the road runs around the Don cautiously In the spring, when the selling water goes back to the Don through the abyss in a mighty stream, the bell turns in this place, the water roars, intertwining jets of different sides, washing out the bottom; from the abyss to the rubbish heaped from the shore.

“His hops were like a wedge knocked out. He ran to the opening. Freshly broken ice shone sharply. in the plush sky the stars were grainy, like freshly blown stars. The breeze was fluffy with a heavy draft;

"The hollow water has just begun to sell. In the meadow, near the garden wattle fences, brown, silty land was exposed, the border lay overflow: fragments of dry reeds left over from the spill, branches, kuga, last year's leaves nailed to rubbish by a wave. Willows, the flooded Obdon forest were slightly noticeably green ", catkins hung from the branches in tassels. Buds were about to unfold on the poplars, at the very courtyards of the farm sprouts surrounded by a flood were leaning toward the water. Yellow, fluffy, like unfeathered ducklings, its buds dived in the waves, swayed by the wind."

“At dawn, wild geese, geese, and flocks of ducks swam up to the gardens in search of food.

"Clouds were thickening in the west. It was getting dark. Somewhere far, far away, in the Obdon zone, lightning was twisting, an orange lightning fluttered with the wing of an unfinished bird. In that direction, a glow shone, covered with a black hollow of a cloud. The steppe, like a bowl, filled to the brim with silence, concealed in the folds of the beams the sad reflections of the day. This evening somehow resembled autumn. Even the grasses, which had not yet given color, radiated an indescribable smell of decay."

In the passages cited above, it is easy to trace the expanses of the Don, beloved by Sholokhov.

The landscape in "The Quiet Don" performs different functions: it reveals the characters and the internal states of the characters, poeticizes the events.

In the depiction of a folk character, the image of nature plays a decisive role. Landscapes represent the land that raised the peasants, poeticize labor in nature. The properties of the national character are formed by the conditions of life and work. The people of the earth are represented by heroes capable of confrontation with the elements and cooperation with the life-giving forces of nature. These features are revealed in labor landscapes and in paintings depicting the heroes overcoming the elements. The feeling of nature in the peasant character determines the composition of the personality: the Cossacks M.A. Sholokhov, participating in history, are drawn to the ground. The values ​​of work, family and home are the main ones for them; farmers in everyday work do not lose the ability to aesthetically perceive the beauty of nature. The characters of M. Sholokhov possess worldly wisdom and rich emotional world, which opens in philosophically and psychologically filled pictures of nature.

The great artistic discovery of Sholokhov is the images of the main characters of the epic novel. When creating images-types, the writer skillfully used the characterological and psychological possibilities of the landscape. The symbolism of natural images, individual details and entire paintings reveal the author's attitude towards the characters, while revealing the Christian intuitions of the creator of the epic novel.

In picture peasant heroes the landscape interacts with the folklore context, the representatives of the nobility are drawn in a different way. The perception of nature by the educated part of society is mediated by a broad literary context. M.A. Sholokhov does not oppose folk and intellectual culture, but only notes the class difference in the sense of nature. How deep folk artist, Sholokhov does not excommunicate heroes from nature for political or class reasons. Only those characters who are completely absorbed in the idea of ​​struggle are distant from nature.

Conclusion

For the creative manner of M. Sholokhov, the following types of psychological landscape are most characteristic: the author's symbolic-psychological landscape; landscape-impression, memory; dispersed image of the natural process in the text, running in parallel with the human plot; landscape-comparison, which is part of the reasoning of the author or hero.

artistic vision M. Sholokhov is characterized by spatial openness and temporal perspective. The place of action is determined by the scale of space, the author points to all cardinal directions and to the earth-sky vertical. The hero of the novel feels his connection with nature as with the cosmos. Earth, sky, sun, stars are the obligatory objects of Sholokhov's landscape. This speaks of the "cosmism" of the artist's thinking. The presence of a temporal perspective indicates the author's holistic vision of the world, his desire for completeness of the image.

The image of nature plays a generalizing role in the epic, it is landscapes that "translate" a concrete historical narrative into an existential plan. The artist considers social conflicts in the antithesis of life and death, evaluates revolutionary destruction as universal, contrary to eternity and mercy. In light of this, the fact that the landscapes are located at the key points of the composition acquires a deep philosophical meaning: the plot and denouement of the plot episodes and the work as a whole, the culminating parts. Nature as the embodiment of eternity and the naturalness of life appears in all the scenes of the death of the heroes of The Quiet Flows the Don, in cemetery landscapes.

Sholokhov's nature as an artist-thinker is a mirror through which he learns history, people and personality. The narrator in the epic thinks in natural images, so the most common method of understanding reality is comparisons with nature.

Compared most often dynamic natural phenomena And historical processes, movements of the souls of heroes. deployed to the whole picture comparisons are part of the reasoning of the author or characters. The author's final philosophical generalizations are also based on images of nature.

In Sholokhov's understanding of the relationship between nature and man, there is no unambiguous answer to the question: what is higher? Nature is comprehended dialectically: as a harmoniously ordered, expedient, creative force and an unconscious, destructive element. In nature there is light and darkness, heat and cold, life and death. This antinomy allows the author to use comparisons, finding the same and the opposite in society and nature. At the same time, Sholokhov more often emphasizes the unity of man with nature than their discord, so symbolic parallels are more common in the text than contrasts.

M. Sholokhov's dialectical thinking is evidenced by the content of the images-symbols of the Don, the sun and the steppe, each of which is not unambiguous. The fact that these images-symbols are pivotal in understanding the world and man reveals the deep connection between Sholokhov's artistic consciousness and the pantheistic and Christian national vision of the world.

The landscapes reveal the author's poetic vision of nature, close to the peasant's. Nature appears as living face, an independent character with his own "plot" - the eternal cycle of life. The recurrence of seasonal changes is depicted not as a dull monotony, but as an ordered infinite variety. Loving attention to wildlife is expressed in the metaphorical style.M. Sholokhov relies on the ancient mythological and Christian symbols light and color, silence and noise, seasons and destructive elements. In the author's descriptions and pictures, passed through the consciousness of the hero-farmer, there is a common figurative structure, clearly visible at the level of micropoetics. The polysensory nature of Sholokhov's landscapes speaks of his heightened sensory perception of nature. In verbal painting M.A. Sholokhov leading value have visual images that give an idea of ​​the spatial position, shape, size, color and lighting of natural objects. Sholokhov's favorite gamut includes blue, gold, pink, green colors, which are associated with peace and positive emotions; black, yellow, red, dark blue, purple are often used, which have a stable negative color associated with tragedy, death, anxiety. In the landscapes of the epic, many auditory impressions are conveyed, sounds and silence interact with each other. The writer, like his heroes, appreciates the silence, against which the natural life sounds. Peaceful silence is opposed to military noise (this is how auditory images "participate" in the expression of the author's thoughts about war and peace). Odoristic images characterize the people of the earth, reflecting their strong connection with nature, the smell evokes diverse feelings and the best memories of the heroes, returning them from the time of war to the time of peace.

Sholokhov's artistic understanding of nature is associated with folklore and classical traditions. The writer continued in his work the thought of L. Tolstoy and A. Chekhov about the moral and aesthetic value of the natural world; like I. Turgenev and I.A. Bunin, M.A. Sholokhov saw opposite principles in nature and considered the connection between man and nature inseparable. During the period of a radical attitude to nature, the artist remained in the traditional pantheistic, nature-protective position. Singing nature, the writer defended the values ​​of agricultural culture.

Sholokhov's innovation, connected with the comprehension of the social and spiritual problems of his time, with the knowledge of the human personality, the deep disclosure of the national character and the relationship of a person to the family, society, nature, was prepared by classical traditions and became a tradition.

Bibliography

1. Bekedin P. Philosophy in images // Modern Soviet novel. Philosophical aspect. L., 1979, - S. 82-92.

Biryukov F.G. About the feat of the people. Life and work of M.A. Sholokhov: A book for high school students / F.G. Biryukov. M.: Enlightenment, 1989. - S. 87

Biryukov F.G. Artistic discoveries of Mikhail Sholokhov / F.G. Biryukov. M.: Sovremennik, 1980. - S. 134

Vasilenko E.V. Towards death // Literature at school, 2004. - No. 5. - P. 14

Ancient Russian Literature: Reader M .: Enlightenment, 1988. - S. 321

Ermolaev G.S. Mikhail Sholokhov and his work. - St. Petersburg: 2000. - S. 76

Kiseleva L.F. On the importance of the key and dominant foundations of the artistic world of Sholokhov for the past and present // Philological Bulletin of the Rostov State University, 2005. - P. 56

Satarova L.G. Man and nature in M. Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Flows the Don": tutorial on a special course / L.G. Satarov. Voronezh: VGPI, 1989. - S. 84

Semyonova S.G. Philosophical and metaphysical facets of the "Quiet Don" // Questions of Literature, 2002 - No. 1. - p. 45

Ognev A. Don sun // Soviet Russia, 2005. - S. 70-71.

Khavruk I.I. Disclosure of the characters of Aksinya and Natalya in Mikhail Sholokhov's "Quiet Don". / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6. - P. 23

Chalmaev V.A. Novels by Mikhail Sholokhov. "Internal stories", moral problems, poetics. / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6. - P. 8

Sholokhov at school: A book for teachers / Ed. - comp. Nyankovsky M.A. M.: Bustard, 2002. - S. 204

Sholokhov M.A. Quiet Don. Books 1-2 M.: Khudozh. lit., 1991. - 606 p.

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Early Sholokhov exaggerated not only intra-family hostility. Some of his naturalistic descriptions of horrors, for example, in "Nakhalenka", "Alyoshkin's Heart", "Azure Steppe", almost surpass the descriptions of Babel, whose hyperbolism was noted by critics as his main feature. This later, in large works, in proportion to their volume, will be much less, and in the tragic “The Fate of a Man” it will not be at all; however, before the "Fate of a Man" the theme of the suffering of innocent children will also weaken somewhat. The horrors of hunger, starvation in Alyoshkin's Heart are sharpened as a result of silence and conjecture. The family of Alyoshka Popov’s prototype, A. Kramskov, died “not because there was a drought for two years (actually one year) in a row, but because the breadwinner father at the very hard time went into retreat for the family, his mother died of typhoid...”, the elder sister of A. Kramskov, according to his first wife, the evil neighbor “Makaruha didn’t kill - Mishka Sholokhov came up with this.” “To take the murdered Polka out of her house on a bright day, to bring her through the alley and throw Makaruha into Alyoshkin’s well, too, could hardly have dared.

All his life and upbringing, Alyoshka Kramskov was not prepared to accomplish a feat, saving a woman and a child at the cost of his own life. Kramskov was not a Komsomol member, and it is unlikely that bypassing the secretary of the RKSM cell, political committee Zagotzerno could hand over a Komsomol ticket to the “battlefield”. There are similar stretches in other stories. The too pathetic love of the little “impudent” Minka for Comrade Lenin was noted even in Soviet times.

From early stories“Alien Blood” (1926) stands out for its universal human content, to some extent ideologically anticipating the one started at the same time “”, although the plot of the story is exceptional: grandfather Gavrila and his old woman, who lost their only son, a white Cossack, and his old woman nurse the wounded food orderer Nikolai, who came to them to rob, become attached to him as to a son, and even call him Peter by the name of the murdered man, and he, a communist, a worker, not only cannot stay with them, but, as the grandfather understands, will not respond to his request to return. The image of grandfather Gavrila demonstrates the non-absolute distinction between “whites” and “reds” for Sholokhov. The episode of the death of Peter, who released the girth on the saddle at the wrong time, will be transferred to the Quiet Flows the Don as the scene of the death of Alexei Shamil; downy gloves - a cover from blows, dried up to the bloodied head of the captive Danila, the son of Mikishara, from "The Family Man" (1925) will also turn into an epic novel: the captive Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov at the stage will cover his head with woolen gloves from the scorching sun, flies and midges and they will dry up on the wound. A detail that could have been comic sharply increases the drama: a feature inherent in the already mature skill of M. A. Sholokhov.

In 1925, Sholokhov created the first sketch called “Quiet Flows the Don” - really about the Kornilov rebellion and really without Grigory Melekhov, as L. G. Yakimenko suggested, but the main character of the surviving and found passage is called Abram Ermakov, and Grigory’s prototype was an officer from ordinary Cossacks Kharlampy Yermakov, who was shot in 1927 for old offenses against the Reds; his participation in the Upper Don uprising is shown in detail in The Quiet Don, where he acts along with Grigory Melekhov as his comrade and subordinate. Since 1923, Sholokhov met with him several times and, obviously, received valuable information from him. X. Ermakov did not live long enough to see the first book of the epic.

In an excerpt from 1925, an ordinary but long-standing Cossack, Abram Ermakov, kills a German with a rifle, after which the sergeant-major, dissatisfied with the consequences February Revolution and by the fact that “the Cossacks have become muzhik”, he notices that Yermakov “as if he had lost his face”. In the text of the novel, such experiences will be - more convincingly - conveyed to the recruit Grigory, who has just begun to kill, but in the passage they are needed as one of the motivations for the disobedience of Ermakov and his comrades to the regimental authorities. They fought and do not want to go with the officers to Petrograd. In the novel, Grigoriy was not shown the Kornilov mutiny, and his blood-weariness was reflected in a number of episodes, especially in the scene of his hysteria after he cut down the red sailors (at great risk!) - when he begs his friends to put him to death.

In 1925, Sholokhov quickly realized that he had taken on the task beyond his strength. But already in the autumn of 1926, he began The Quiet Don anew - with a description of the pre-war life of the Don Cossacks. When the very word "Cossack" caused bitterness, and few people imagined what they were, these Cossacks, Sholokhov decided to show them to everyone not as a police force of tsarism, but as the whole world, the world of special habits, norms of behavior and psychology, the world of the most interesting personalities and the most complex human relationships.

The closest analogue of the "Quiet Flows the Don" "War and Peace"

In the light of the entire content of the epic, its title sounds like a mournful irony, and, probably, Sholokhov took this into account, although in general the “quiet Don” is a folk speech idiom that has been repeatedly encountered in the press; so, in 1914, I. A. Rodionov published a book of essays on the history of the Cossacks under this title. In the epic novel, there are more than six hundred characters, many are described in detail or in such a way that they are remembered even thanks to one or two episodes (for example, the brutally chopped Likhachev, dying "with black bud petals on his lips"), and almost all of these characters die - by hand similar to themselves or from grief, deprivation, absurdity and disorder of life. This has never happened before on such a large scale. The closest analogue is “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy, where, for all the drama of the events taking place, the picture of the world is still not tragic, rather even “idyllic”.

In The Quiet Don, even pre-war life is far from idyllic, and the world and civil wars lead to truly catastrophic consequences. created, as it were, in the light folk song about the Quiet Don, which Sholokhov could not use directly on his pages, "In the song, the Quiet Don is depicted as an orphan, left without the" clear falcons - Don Cossacks "". And it was no longer hyperbole. In 1932 Sholokhov wrote to Ye. He sings amazingly!

Although in the "Quiet Don" at first the Cossacks-front-line soldiers "were dismissive of the civil war: the scope, the strength, and the losses - everything was a toy in comparison with the German war" (vol. 3, part 6, ch. X), the victims world war in our artistic perception appear as if smaller: those to whom the reader had not yet had time to get used to, or completely nameless characters, died there, and during the civil war or because of its consequences, most of the Melekhovs, the elder Korshunovs, Natalya, Aksinya, relatives of Mikhail Koshevoy, passed away, Jack, Kotlyarov, two brothers Shamil (in German - one), Anikushka, Khristonya and many, many others, even if we talk only about the Tatars. Among those killed and dead who did not live permanently in the same farm with the Melekhovs, the father and son Listnitsky and their servant grandfather Sashka, Shtokman, Anna Pogudko and Bunchuk, Platon Ryabchikov, etc., including real, historical characters: Podtelkova, Krivoshlykova and members of their expedition, Chernetsov, Fomin, etc. - whites and reds, rebels and those who fought in the "gangs". Stepan Astakhov returned safely from German captivity, although he was very afraid of getting caught: the Germans did not take Cossacks prisoner; besides, he settled down quite well in Germany thanks to a woman, but from the “retreat” after the defeat of the uprising, he did not return to the farm. During the German war, Grigory is shocked by the collective rape of Frani, and during the civil war he recalls this event, suggesting that if he left the farm, the same account could befall him Natalya. Yes, and death comes to women and children much more often when "classes" are fighting, and not armies of different peoples.

The handwritten originals of the first parts of The Quiet Flows the Don, discovered by the journalist L. E. Kolodny, make the grounds for doubts about the authorship of Sholokhov, which arose immediately after the first two books of the epic novel appeared in print, extremely unsteady. Doubts were raised by the ability of a 22-year-old provincial with a four-year education (which, however, is more than that of the first Russian Nobel laureate Bunin, not to mention Gorky) to write such a large-scale work that required, among other things, the broadest and most versatile knowledge. But Sholokhov really grew up - colossally and rapidly. At that time, many sources were available, including the memoirs of white emigrants. In any case, before collectivization, it was possible to question the remaining participants in the First World and Civil Wars, the Upper Don uprising. A well-known curiosity - the presence, according to the novel, in East Prussia of the "city of Stolypin", - used as an argument against the authorship of Sholokhov, can also speak in favor of this: this is a typical case of folk etymology, some illiterate Cossack changed an incomprehensible name in a familiar way, and so told it to an inquisitive young man. As for the life and customs of the Cossacks, before Sholokhov there was simply no writer who knew and understood them so well.

At the same time, the writer was aware of the task he set for himself, unlike even the best critics of those years, such as D. A. Gorbov, who preferred Fadeev’s “Defeat” over “Quiet Don” and doubted that that Sholokhov will be able to realize his too enormous plan. Often his word, wrote Gorbov, does not reveal the position or character, "but lives on its own", like many descriptions that do not participate in the movement of the novel; the presence of many figures "is not entirely necessary", everyday material "suppresses the human side of the idea with its naturalistic full-bloodedness ..." These features of Sholokhov's manner are explained by "his young greed for showing as much as possible, while genuine art seeks not in breadth, but in depth ... ". The observations (apart from what was said about the “suppression” of human relations by everyday life) are correct, the interpretation and assessment are not: Gorbov sees a novel in the first two books of The Quiet Flows the Don and judges them accordingly, while Sholokhov, whose reference book at that time was War and world”, from the very beginning built his work as an epic novel, in which “width” and “depth” do not exclude each other, but are interconnected and interdependent.

The epic acceptance of the world in the novel Quiet Flows the Don

The epic acceptance of the world is indiscriminate, the substantial beginnings of life are stable and manifest in everything - in big and small. Life is valuable in itself, outside the projection on some abstract ideals. The connection of events in the epic is carried out not by the plot, but by the whole attitude of the world, in which the primacy of the general over the individual is expressed. And life, and every event here, in contrast to a novel with a concentric plot, is needed not only for something subsequent, but also in its own, self-sufficient content.

In the first part of The Quiet Flows the Don, the action unfolds slowly.

By novel standards, two fishing scenes are really optional, the Cossacks' trip to the camp, in any case, the quarrel between Pyotr Melekhov and Stepan Astakhov that took place there (it is true that the fight between the Melekhov brothers and Stepan, who beats Aksinya, will thereby receive a double motivation, but for Peter it will remain in plot without consequences) and the trouble with Stepan's lame horse, left for treatment by a hunchbacked old woman, and the forgotten author, and the episode with the race, when Mitka Korshunov overtook Yevgeny Listnitsky. The second part (after Grigory's marriage - his departure with Aksinya to Yagodnoye and the call for service) is the most "romantic", but it also contains an episode of taking the oath by young Cossacks, when the boot presses Mitka Korshunov's leg and he returns to the farm from the village in a stocking, in a lot of value in itself, as well as the scene when "the pedigree bull of Miron Grigorievich cut the neck of the best mare-womb with a horn." In the third part, an insert that has nothing to do with the heroes (some other Astakhov is acting there, Mitka Korshunov is “tied” to the previous episode along the way) shows the battle of several Cossacks with the Germans and the official promotion of only one of its participants as heroes - famous Kuzma Kryuchkov, a favorite of the commander of a hundred (although before that Kryuchkov’s collision with a hundred was shown - Yesaul Popov, whose pronunciation he mimicked: “Did I teach kego in the past? pages Sholokhov suddenly declared him a favorite). The chapter on the glorification of Kryuchkov with the participation of the "reddish sleepy emperor" was definitely written in imitation of the revealing chapters of "War and Peace": , collided, struck blind blows, mutilated themselves and horses and fled, frightened by a shot that killed a man, dispersed, morally crippled.

This was called a feat” (book 1, part 3, chapter IX).

Another insert is the diary of Timofey, the lover of Elizaveta Mokhova, who was killed in the war, a self-revealing diary that exposes Moscow intellectual youth. The plot connection is that Grigory Melekhov found the diary, which spoke about his farmer, for some reason while searching the decaying corpse (whether the illiterate Cossack read this book remains unknown). Further, not only in the murdered Timothy, but also in Elizabeth there will be no need. And after Aksinya’s betrayal of Grigory with Listnitsky and the breakup of the protagonist and heroine in November 1914, until their meeting at the Don (“- Hello, Aksinya dear!”) And the resumption of relations in April 1919, four and a half years out of ten covered by action of the work, and they will occupy the entire second volume and most of the third. The main novel action is so delayed by the events of the epic.

A detailed description of peaceful life on the Don is replaced by a display of the "German" war. The main attention of the author is given to her: in the farm, while the young Cossacks are fighting, nothing new happens. The closer to the end, the more deaths of the main characters, and it is usually said about this (also in "War and Peace") succinctly, less detailed than before it was said about certain cases from their lives: the feelings of the heroes are overtired (thus, Gregory in the “retreat” he was afraid that his children would not be saved from typhus, “and at the same time he felt that, with all his love for children, after the death of Natalya, no grief could shake him with such force ...”), and the author seems to spare the readers who empathize with them, although, for example, in the absence of Grigory's reaction in the finale to the news of the death of little Polyushka - the last death that is mentioned in the work - the tragedy, in fact, is no less than in his memories of childhood and brother Peter in front of the corpse of the murdered Peter. General disasters, as it were, diminish the grief of individual people, but in fact it is precisely from their sufferings that they are made up.

Love and other passions boiled in peacetime. In the war, Petro forgives the prodigal Daria, as soon as she came to him at the front, Stepan Astakhov, who returned from captivity, forgives Aksinya and Grigory, and the young pan, and then, when she again got together with Grigory, behaves magnanimously; Grigory also forgives Aksinya's betrayal: for ordinary Cossacks this is not a tragedy of life, while Listnitsky, who married a friend's widow according to his will at the beginning of the third book and did not appear almost until the end of the fourth, is remembered in the story of the joker Prokhor Zykov as having shot himself "from displeasure" after Olga's sudden betrayal, and the old pan - as if dead from typhus. “Well, to hell with them,” Grigory said indifferently. - It's a pity good people which have disappeared, but there is no one to mourn for these ”(book 4, part 8, chapter VII). Meanwhile, from General Listnitsky, who lost his wife as a result of a terrorist act against him, Grigory did not see anything bad, and Yevgeny, to whom a dying friend, “bleeding blood and urine”, said: “You are honest and glorious” (book 3, part 6, ch. V), - in the work he does not allow himself anything worse than the seduction of Aksinya, who responded to affection, and the harsh treatment of the lower ranks, who forgot about discipline (he used to give the Cossacks, who suffered without a cigarette, his entire supply of cigarettes ). Wounded more than once, having lost an arm, and having married the widow of the murdered Gorchakov, upon his return to Yagodnoye, Yevgeny is already seduced by Aksinya and looks comical (coming out from behind a bush, “puffing on a cigarette, he rubbed his trousers with a handkerchief, greened in the knees with juicy grass”), and Aksinya, having achieved her “finally”, is poeticized: “... throwing up her hands, Aksinya straightened her hair, looked at the fire, smiled ...”

The death of the Listnitskys is not even shown directly by the author. In the third part (the end of the first book), Sholokhov describes with pleasure the beating of a young master with a whip - Grigory's revenge for himself and for Aksinya, although she also got a whip in the face. In general, the story of Aksinya and Listnitsky gives, as it were, a reduced, coarsened, with real betrayal, parallel to the story of Natasha Rostova and Anatole, but, like her, does not have a “nodal” plot meaning for the novel line: a simple person, according to Sholokhov, can overcome insult with natural, good, deep feelings.

The historical and the fictional are connected in Sholokhov differently than in War and Peace, where Prince Andrei serves as Kutuzov’s adjutant and sees Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz, Pierre goes to Marshal Davout, and Nikolai and Petya Rostov see Alexander I, whom they adore. Don" "top" history is much more sharply separated from the history of the people. Only mention is made of the meeting between Grigory and Budyonny, the highest generals of the white army act in separate chapters (special imperial family visiting the eye hospital, not named), only Podtelkov, who is socially, intellectually and psychologically closer to Grigory than educated officers, yes real faces of the second plan, retaining their original names and surnames, act together with the main characters, fictitious. There is no correspondence to the pair "Napoleon and Kutuzov" in "Quiet Don".

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