"Nevsky Prospekt" N. V

PAVLIN VINOGRADOV AVENUE After a trip with Poskakukhin to the island of Mudyug, I returned to Arkhangelsk, found some more of the former Mudyug convicts, worked in the Arkhangelsk Eastpart and in the regional archive. In search of documents relating to civil

"NEVSKY PROSPECT" story. Published: Gogol N.V. Arabesques. St. Petersburg, 1835. The first sketches of the N. item date back to 1831. They were preserved in the same notebook with the sketches “The Night Before Christmas” and “Portrait.” The story was completed in October 1834. Censorship permission dated 10

The sketches of the story "Nevsky Prospekt" appeared when N.V. Gogol was working on "The Night Before Christmas" in 1831. At this time, the writer lived in St. Petersburg and briefly served in various government departments. Personal impressions affected the accuracy of the description of the St. Petersburg landscape and life.

Ode to Nevsky Prospekt

At the beginning of the story, the author gives a fine, precise description of the main street of the city. In her description, both the lyricist and the satirist are already visible at the same time. Composing a hymn to the life of the street, and it is described downright by the hour, ironically and poetically, the writer tells who, when and in what mood is walking or running along the beautiful avenue - the main artery of the capital.

It smells like fun in here. Governesses and governesses take their pets for walks, couples and those lucky ones whose service ends at two in the afternoon take a walk a little later. Later, at three o'clock, at any time of the year it blooms, as in spring, with green uniforms, which mostly rush and run through hungry, not looking at signs and shops, and in the evenings, at dusk, young people stroll here in search of adventure.

From this description of the center of the capital begins brief retelling. Nevsky Prospekt becomes for a while a character in the story, along which two acquaintances walk in the evening - Piskarev and Pirogov.

Artist Piskarev

They both noticed two beautiful girls and decided to get acquainted. But as the girls walked in different sides, then the young people dispersed, catching up with young beauties. This is how the action takes place.

Let's continue with a short summary. Nevsky Prospekt led the artist Piskarev for a very beautiful, as it seemed to him, unearthly brunette. Piskarev is a very delicate and timid person by nature, but N.V. Gogol generalizes this image. He gives a portrait not of a particular artist, but of a person belonging to a particular social group. Such are all the poor artists of St. Petersburg - they are kind, meek, shy, they drink tea with each other and talk quietly, sitting in a small room.

While Piskarev follows the girl, he wants to see only one thing - where she lives. But she beckoned him along, and the artist got into a terrible surprise for the tender heart of the artist, he runs away in horror to his home. Thus continues the brief retelling. Nevsky Prospekt with its temptations will destroy an artist unfit for life. At home, he will have an amazing dream that the girl invited him to the ball. And then he will dream about her continuously until he comes to the idea that he needs to marry a girl and thus pull her out of the abyss into which she fell. But not required. She does not want to live a quiet semi-beggarly life.

Let's recap the brief. Nevsky Prospekt brings Piskarev home. He locks himself up and the neighbors don't see him. Finally, the door to his room was broken open, and everyone saw that he had committed suicide.

He was quietly buried at the Okhta cemetery. Unadapted to real life, he could not cope with it.

Lieutenant Pirogov

It's completely different social type, shown by N.V. Gogol, arrogant and unprincipled. This womanizer began to pursue the blonde he liked. In this part, "Nevsky Prospekt" is a story about the self-satisfied and impudent Nikolaev military. Lieutenant Pirogov ends up in the house of the German tinsmith Schiller, whose nose is going to be cut off by his friend Hoffmann. Schiller calculated the money spent on tobacco and decided that it was cheaper to live without a nose. Both friends are completely drunk, but sober up when they see a stranger in their house. Pirogov, to explain how he got here, says he wants to order new spurs. But, looking almost every day, she can’t find the blonde she likes alone. Finally, he finds out when her husband is not at home, and calmly comes to look after the pretty tinsmith's wife. He persuades her to dance with him, hoping that everything will go on by itself.

But in the midst of dancing, the husband returns with his friends and interrupts this fun, which the hostess herself does not like at all. They flogged, as it is in the first edition of the story, the lieutenant, and in the second it is said vaguely, and they kicked him out. At first, Pirogov wanted to run to complain even to the general, even to the tsar, but, on reflection, he decided to put the insult out of his head. This is how Nevsky Prospekt, a story by N.V. Gogol, continues. The lieutenant completely calms down, going into the confectionery and eating puff pastries. In the evening, in the company, he was already dancing, and everyone admired him.

Conclusion

Such is the story "Nevsky Prospekt". The heroes, Piskarev and Pirogov, are very different, and are shown by N.V. Gogol extremely vividly. If the artist evokes sympathy, then the self-confident and completely shameless lieutenant - disgust. This is a very short story - "Nevsky Prospekt" (Gogol). The content consists in what result he summed up himself

Handouts

Materials (in the form of cards) for N. Gogol's story "Nevsky Prospekt" (Grade 10)

Subject: originality of the plot and images of the story "Nevsky Prospekt"

Target: 1. Analysis of the main episodes and characters.

2. Comparison of test fragments with literary criticism

Epigraph of the lesson

Proverbs 13:7 "Someone pretends to be rich, but he has nothing."

Monitoring

Write an essay on a speech model

The story of N. Gogol "Nevsky Prospekt" has..... composition.

She combines….

There is something in common between the stories. This…

The main idea of ​​the story displayed in... lesson.

“Another pretends to be rich, but he has nothing.” The meaning of this expression is that

The main characters of the story are representatives of different literary trends: ...

In the story there are such artistic and expressive means as ...

I was impressed by ... (episode, detail, hero)

Test tasks

1.What is the composition of the story "Nevsky Prospekt"?

1.Two-part

2.Framework

3. Ring

4. Antithesis

2.What unites both stories in the story "Nevsky Prospekt"

1.Common hero

2. Uniformity of the conflict

3. Having a love triangle in every story

4. Location - Nevsky Prospekt

3.What step did Piskarev decide to take in order to win the girl he liked?

1. Buy her an expensive gift

2. Steal her

3.Propose marriage to her

4. Perform a feat in her honor

4.How did the story of Pirogov and the pretty blonde end?

1. Pirogov married her

2. The blonde rejected Pirogov's courtship

3. Pirogov committed suicide

4.Pirogov was whipped by the blonde's husband

5. " I don't want, I don't need a nose!" Why did Schiller want to get rid of his own nose?

1. The nose interfered with the common cold

2. The nose was ugly and disfigured the hero

3. The wife did not like the nose

4.Nose consumed too much tobacco

6.Who was Schiller

1.Tinsmith

2. Writer

3.Musician

4.Artist

7. “The next day Schiller was in a severe fever ... expecting the arrival of the police any minute.” What was Schiller afraid of?

1. Punishment for drunkenness

2. Punishments for dishonestly done work

3.Punishments for a Russian officer flogged by him and his friend

4. Punishment for insulting your wife

8. Name artistic means of expression“He considered Siberia and whips the smallest punishment for Schiller too”

1. Epithet

2. Comparison

3. Expressive vocabulary

4.Litotes

9.Name the artistic expression

“He wanted to submit a written request to the General Staff at once. If the General Staff determines insufficient punishment, then directly to the Council of State, and not to the sovereign himself. »

1. Irony

2. Hyperbole

3.gradation

4. Antonyms

10.Name the artistic and expressive means “He lies at all times, this Nevsky Prospekt, but most of all when the night in a condensed mass will fall on him ”

1.personification

2. Comparison

3.Metaphor

4. Hyperbole

Write an interpretation to the story "Nevsky Prospekt"

(an interpretation of a 10th grade student Sergei Gening)

"Rabochaya street"

Proverbs 13:7 "Someone pretends to be rich, but he has nothing."

Beautiful and attractive Rabochaya Street, which stretches like a long ribbon in the village of Talom. It was not named so by chance, since it was built mainly for workers who worked in the distant times of the USSR on farms, MTMs and collective farms that once existed. 35 even "boxes" stand on both sides of the road, consisting of concrete slabs, and before these slabs were not, and until 1992 the road was a continuous mud mess, which can now be found in our village only on Lnozavodskaya Street. Some owners of single-apartment "huts" that stand on other streets call workers' "boxes" cottages. Why? Because these owners are older than Rabochaya Street, and they remember how this street was built, and how even semi-detached houses were built, and even with water supply ... In fact, these are far from cottages. Whatever house you enter, a closet, an area of ​​​​no more than 50 square meters, on which there is a tiny, insignificant kitchen (which, I think, sees many far from tiny quarrels of its owners), a small hall, a narrow corridor and two tiny, humiliated bedrooms , in which, apart from the table, the wardrobe and the actual bed, nothing else fits.

So families of three to five people live in these “boxes”. And each family has its own story, its own life. We can say that this is the life of the whole street. Life is interesting and fun.

One owner of his half of the house, for example, is the custodian and bearer of all the events and incidents taking place on Rabochaya Street, and of all Taly too ... I don’t know how, but this owner knows everything about everyone. And about some he knows even more than they know about themselves! Whatever you ask, this owner knows everything. With confidence, you can begin to write the annals of your native street.

Residents of another apartment solve the issue of cramped rooms in a very original way - they remove the furniture and leave only the most necessary. In the house, more and more there is an atmosphere of a feeling of cold, spaciousness and freedom, like in Antarctica.

Some owners do not worry at all about the interior decoration of their hut. Some of the apartment sights are probably preserved from the era of those same workers.

And the owners of another apartment can generally consider their house the winner in the competition of unusual street, since their apartment has two stoves: one in the kitchen and the other in the bedroom. So drown them, drown them - one in the kitchen, the other in the bedroom. Otherwise it will be cold in the house!

Families of 5 can fit in several "boxes" on Rabochaya Street. How they do it is a big secret for many, but not for a street dweller who knows everything about everyone.

There is also a family on the street whose stove, according to the observations of several neighbors, almost never stops blowing out puffs of smoke. Either the owners love the warmth, or the apartment is dilapidated, it is not known. You need to ask a resident who knows everything about everyone.

Another apartment is fraught with mystery. At any time of the day, the light is on in this apartment. Be it 8pm, 3am, 6am. In addition, the owner of this very apartment behaves opposite to the family. Which constantly feeds the stove with firewood - he rarely heats his stove. And firewood appears as needed.

Several houses located at the bottom of the street are usually called Petersburg among the youth, I don’t know why. This is for sure the one who knows everything about everyone knows. But this has been the case since the new residents moved into these houses. This happened relatively recently - just a few years ago. At the yard of one apartment there was temporarily no gate, at the other apartment there was a gate. Another courtyard of the so-called Petersburg apartment has two pairs of gates! And in this apartment, parties are constantly held for those who have been in the army and do not know what to do next.

Three houses on Rabochaya Street stand on the outskirts. The road and these houses are separated by a spacious meadow, where in winter the owners of these houses admire the snow dunes and separate them by a narrow path to the road.

In general, how do you understood - life on the street beats the key. Some residents treat their neighbors well, but in their apartment they giggle when they have some kind of problem. Some people really do love their neighbors. Some are too suspicious, others belong to the class of people who do not care at all. Someone is unemployed due to circumstances, someone is happy about it. Some have managed to climb to the top of the career that is possible in the countryside. There are people who are not indifferent to strong drinks, even was a drug addict, moved out. All the inhabitants of the street are different people, with different views, characters. But all of them, I think, are neighbors to each other, not strangers.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Rabochaya Street was illuminated by 4 lanterns. Only 2 have survived to this day. The rulers of the taiga settlement decided that 4 was too much, thereby adding a decent mystery, mystery and surprise to the appearance of the street.

And finally, I’ll add that two new houses are being built on Rabochaya Street, which you can no longer call cells, but you can’t call them too big either. Once upon a time, people will settle in them, who will bring their own special flavor to Rabochaya Street.

Bibliography

1 M.B.Khrapchenko. Nikolay Gogol. literary path. greatness of the writer. M., 1984

2. S. Mashinsky. Artistic world of Gogol. M., 1971

3. N.V. Gogol Petersburg stories. M., 2002

4. Book of Proverbs of Solomon

Mikhailova N. I. (Moscow), employee of the State Museum of A. S. Pushkin / 2004

In "Nevsky Prospekt", a story by Gogol, as you know, highly appreciated by Pushkin, there is a tragicomic episode in which the motive of the nose is significant for the writer. In essence, this is a small dramatic performance with its own plot, characters and audience. The plot is cutting off the nose. Actors: a drunken tinsmith Schiller, Schiller's nose as a future victim, a drunken shoemaker Hoffmann as an executioner. The spectator is lieutenant Pirogov, who at the same time plays the role of deus ex mahina, interrupting with his sudden appearance the impending execution of the nose through its cutting off.

The comedy of the situation is reflected in the names of German artisans, people of purely prosaic professions, named by Schiller and Hoffmann, the names of the great German romantics. At the same time, Gogol emphasizes that his hero Schiller “is not the Schiller who wrote Wilhelm Tell and The History of the Thirty Years’ War, but the famous Schiller, a tinsmith in Meshchanskaya Street,” and his other hero Hoffmann is “not the writer Hoffmann, but a pretty good shoemaker from Ofitserskaya Street...” The very construction of phrases based on opposition is intended to convince the reader that in the world of Gogol's heroes, not writers, but artisans are known. The names of the great romantic writers, which are worn by artisans, intensify the comedy of the logical reasoning of the prudent and thrifty tinsmith, appealing to the shoemaker, convincing him that the nose consumes too much tobacco, for which one has to pay too much money:

“- I don’t want, I don’t need a nose!<...>I get three pounds of tobacco a month for one nose.<...>Six and fourteen - twenty rubles forty kopecks for one tobacco! This is robbery, I ask you, my friend Hoffman, isn't it?

The very word "robbery" in this case creates a comic effect, evoking Schiller's drama "Robbers".

Since the motif of the nose declared in "Nevsky Prospekt" was further developed in the story "The Nose", then, as a rule, studies in connection with the story "The Nose" also mention "Nevsky Prospekt". About Nevsky Prospekt we are talking and in the work of V. V. Vinogradov “Naturalistic grotesque. The plot and composition of Gogol's story "The Nose"". V. V. Vinogradov widely presented the so-called "nosology" in European and Russian literature, in anecdotes and puns of the first half of the 19th century, which in one way or another affected Gogol's work. Meanwhile, two possible sources of the episode we are considering from Nevsky Prospekt have remained, it seems to us, unnoticed. In our opinion, they are not without interest for commentary on Gogol's text.

One of the possible sources is an anecdote about the strong man Lukin, who was distinguished by eccentric behavior (Gogol could hear this anecdote):

“It was said that during Lukin’s stay in England, one Englishman argued with him about the courage and determination of the Russians and the British, he argued that the Russian would never decide what the Englishman would do. “Try it,” said Lukin. “For example, you can’t cut off my nose,” the Englishman objected. "Why not, if you want," answered Lukin. “Here, cut!” the Englishman exclaimed in excitement. Lukin coolly took a knife from the table, cut off the end of the Englishman's nose and put it on a plate.

Let us note that in Nevsky Prospekt, as well as in the anecdote cited above, the motive for cutting off the nose is characterized by the fact that the nose is proposed to be cut off by the owner of the nose himself: “I don’t want a nose! Cut my nose! Here is my nose!

At the basis of the drunken Schiller's reasoning is the consciousness that the nose exists for tobacco, and since tobacco is expensive, then the nose that consumes tobacco should be cut off. In this regard, one more possible source of Gogol's text should be pointed out. This is the translation of P. A. Vyazemsky from the Polish fable by I. Krasitsky, published in the almanac "Urania" for 1826:

Is tobacco for the nose, or tobacco for the nose? -

They argued to tears, to know, two milk-drinkers.

Tobacco shopkeeper, a witness to hot vrak,

He was appointed from them to resolve the issue.

What is there to argue about? - decided our good deacon: -

It is possible that Gogol could have known from Vyazemsky another version of his translation of the Polish fable. Under the title "Decision" P. A. Vyazemsky brought it in a letter to A. I. Turgenev from the beginning of November 1819:

Is a nose made for a snuffbox

Plot and composition
Gogol's story "The Nose"

In the literature about Gogol, the subjective opinion of the reader, far from the beginning of the last century, about the strangeness of the plot of the story "The Nose" was strengthened. Whether this short story was considered as "a joke of a peculiar author's fantasy and author's wit", or as the implementation of a certain artistic goal aimed at reproducing the surrounding vulgarity, the origin of the anecdote about the nose, which served as the reason for the development of comic techniques, remained mysterious. Meanwhile, the statement that "Gogol's composition is not determined by the plot - his plot is always poor, rather - there is no plot" ( Eichenbaum. How Gogol's "Overcoat" was made) - can also be applied to the story "The Nose". It is based on a walking anecdote, which combines those philistine rumors and puns about the nose, about its disappearance and appearance, which literary educated people start 19th century were further complicated by reminiscences from the region artistic creativity. After all, even in the 50s, Gogol's short story "The Nose" seemed to N. Chernyshevsky "a retelling of a well-known anecdote." And the literary atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s was saturated with "nosology"***.

The department of "nosology" in magazines and newspapers of the first quarter of the last century opens with a translation into Russian wonderful novel Stern's Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, published in six parts from 1804 to 1807. This novel caused numerous imitations in Russian literature, for example, Yakov Sanglen's novel Life and Opinions of the New Tristram (Moscow, 1825), and strengthened in it a number of comic tricks. "Tristram Shandy" was also often mentioned in translated stories, for example, in Bothe's "Tales of My Grandfather" ("Moscow Telegraph", 1828, part 20, No. 1), in " Shagreen leather» Balzac, and was invariably recommended to the reader.

Meanwhile, the nose was one of Tristram Shandy's sore spots. “Pulling out Tristram Shandy, Dr. Slop made scrambled eggs out of his nose” (“The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.” St. Petersburg, 1804, part II, p. 242). And his father grieved about this: “Let him be a fool, a donkey, a goose, and whatever you want, give him only a decent nose, and the doors of Fortune are open before him” (vol. III, p. 177). The problem of the nose, and regardless of the misfortune with Tristram, interested the Shandi father. And a review of the literature “on the benefits and decent uses of long noses” occupied a significant place in the reasoning of Father Shandi, who sought to “find a mystical and allegorical meaning” (p. 26) in writings on this issue and “allow noses” (p. 49) . “There is something to work on here, brother” (p. 26). For the lower beings ... think with their noses ... » (page 44). Moreover, none of the home theater scenes "was so funny ... like those who were born from noses” (p. 42). Meanwhile, "few great geniuses have written about big noses" (p. 16). In addition, "the matter of long noses was interpreted too easily by everyone who took it up," excluding, however, Slavkenberg. And to fill the "idle time" Tristram Shandi tells the "ninth tale of the tenth decade" by Slavkenberg, describing the misadventures of Diego, whose large nose aroused the suspicions of the beautiful Julia. At the same time, Diego himself is completely hidden behind his nose, which, causing general curiosity and rumors, is constantly distracted from its carrier and personified.

“- I see acne on him,” she said (the wife of the innkeeper. - V.V.).

It's a dead nose, answered the innkeeper.

He is as alive as I am alive, - said the innkeeper, - and now I will feel him ”(pp. 75-77).

IN the highest degree the anxiety spread under the influence of rumors about the nose is vividly depicted.

“The nose of a suave foreigner settled in her brain (abbesses. - V.V.) and caused so much trouble in the imagination of the four chief ladies of her chapter that they could not close their eyes all night, so that in the morning they got out of bed like shadows” (p. 82). Many of the sisters, tossing and turning in their beds, "scratched themselves and were skinned almost to death. ... » (page 83).

« ... The nose revived general confusion in the imagination ...

In houses, on the streets, in the squares, with equal frankness, with equal eloquence, so many strange things were said and asserted about him,

that, finally, all conversations turned to him” (pp. 85-86). “In a word, everyone was eager to learn about this incident” (p. 89).

"Deep explorers of nature ... divided in their opinions” (pp. 94-95). Some scientists “even claimed that there is no reason in nature that would prevent a human nose from growing as long as a person himself” (p. 92). "All Strasbourg was filled with confusion at his nose" (p. 78).

With prickly premeditation, it cuts into the presentation of the catastrophe, which means “the release of the hero from the labyrinth” and “bringing him from an embarrassed and sad state to a state of calm and prosperous” (p. 113), a peculiar technique of exposing the scheme: the author schematically explains to the reader the composition of his fairy tale and leads him to the consciousness of the proximity of the final chord, but then immediately abruptly cuts off the story.

Even with a cursory review of the situations and motives of "nosology" in Stern, the similarity with them in the development of the same motives in Gogol's short stories is striking. And, of course, "Tristram Shandy" was known to Gogol: he could find it in the library of D. P. Troshchinsky (see. G. I. Chudakov. The relation of Gogol's work to Western European literatures. Kyiv, 1908, p. 180). But Gogol's "Nose" is separated from Stern's Russian translation by a thirty-year gap, and during this time "nosology" has managed to develop its own history. "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" aroused in Russian literature an interest in the motif of the nose and involved him in new situations that differed sharply from the old literary tradition of "adventures of a pleasure jester and a great rogue in matters of love, Sovestdral, a big nose."

First of all, stories about the misadventures of the nosy adjoin here. In them, a big nose had the meaning of a knot that unites comic effects, or served as an instrument of accusatory satire. Such, for example, is the French joke “The Nose” published in No. 72 of the “Literary Supplements to the Russian Invalid” dated September 9, 1831 (Gogol mentions this newspaper for 1831 in a letter to A. S. Pushkin dated August 21) (Letters of N.V. Gogol. Under the editorship of V.I. Shenrok, vols. I-IV. St. Petersburg, 1901; vol. I, p. 186. - Further: Gogol's letters, indicating volume and page - Ed.). Here, a comically sad confession of a man was transmitted, causing everyone to be disgusted, ridiculed and persecuted by one look of his face, all the features of which merged into a monstrously large nose.

The same motif is woven into Gogol's unfinished passage from a proposed book entitled " Moonlight in a broken attic window on Vasilyevsky Island, in line 16 ”(Works of N. V. Gogol. Edited by N. S. Tikhonravov. Ed. X. M. - St. Petersburg, 1889-1896; vol. V, p. 96 -97.- Further: Op. Gogol, indicating volume and page - Ed.). Here, the big nose determines the character and outline of the “happy Petersburger”, which, as a negative pole in the romantic antithesis of the “young dreamer” and the “smug existence of the capital” that disturbed Gogol’s creative fantasy ( Gogol's letters, vol. I, p. 124), immediately becomes the target of Gogol's artistic bullying.

In the face of the existence of the capital "it was impossible to notice a single corner ... The forehead did not drop straight down to the nose, but was completely sloping, like an ice mountain for skiing. The nose was a continuation of it - large and blunt.

In addition to novels about the adventures of nosers, Stern's novel also gave rise to another form of development of the motif about the nose. Trying to absolve themselves of Tristram Shandy's reproaches for treating noses too lightly, Russian journals willingly gave place to panegyrics on the nose, in which the enormous significance of the nose for a person was pathetically revealed. Chudakov also noted the translation of Tsshokke’s short playful work “Praise to the Nose” placed in “Molva” for 1831 ( G. I. Chudakov. The relation of Gogol's work to Western European literatures, p. 107). Playing with a metaphor, the author of this joke either places the nose in the realm of inorganic nature, drawing it as a rock or stone, "on which countless kisses are broken", then - represents it as an animated benefactor of mankind - "natural first mentor", "from whom they take lessons our children" in infancy, and a helper in friendship: " let one nose ask for tobacco from the other, let him enter into intercourse with him, and your acquaintance has already been made” (“Molva”, 1831, part 2, p. 197). Explaining in detail the great importance of the nose in different ages and positions human life, the panegyric to the nose especially emphasizes the connection of the nose with the honor of a person (“the nose is a sign of honor worn on the face” - p. 196) and, following Tristram Shandy, points to the dependence of thought processes on the nose: “ ... for many it is a clear seat of thought, for, when nothing can be taken out of the head, then they usually put a finger on the nose, from which abundant arguments flow» (p. 196). As a final chord, a mocking remark in the style of Tristram Shandy sounds: “If this experience reaches the hands of some genius and gives rise to the idea in him to dedicate his talent and his pen to the benefit of the nose and thereby reward the injustice and ingratitude of the human race to this part of the body, then my goal will be achieved, and readers will probably forgive me for often making them wrinkle their noses with my long and boring story” (p. 201).

"Praise to the Nose", placed in "Molva", was familiar to Gogol. Gogol not only read "Molva" for this year, but sometimes rewrote it. So, here he found a sample of not only the sign that Chichikov saw when inspecting the city (cf .: V. V. Kallash. Notes on Gogol. - "Historical Bulletin", 1902, No. 2, p. 681), but also another - nameless, which the ill-fated barber chose for himself: "one, with a Diogenes manner, simply writes ... : here is Jacob; the other, on the contrary, is the rank of the rank: Ivan Vasilich is here” (“Molva”, 1831, part 6, pp. 8-9). Wed in one of the first editions of The Nose: ... on the sign ... nothing more is exhibited except: Ivan Yakovlevich lives here" ( Op. Gogol, vol. II, p. 568).

"Praise to the nose" was not isolated. The same motifs and the same images are repeated in Karlgof’s Panegyric to the Nose, published in No. 62 of Literary Supplements to the Russian Invalid, 1832. The idea of ​​the connection between the nose and the nobility of a person is widely commented on:

« ... a brave bully and a man whose honor is offended threaten the enemy with deprivation of the nose; they know that with the loss of a nose, the nobility of a person is lost, that the nose is a personified honor attached to a person". Already in the very wording of this provision, there are hints of rumors about the loss and restoration of the nose, which were zealously supported by the magazine-newspaper mixture in connection with the spread of rhinoplasty and corrected with spicy anecdotes. These laughing words modestly glide along the same plane: “O nose, purest in morality! you cry out for the vices of the man who bears you! Your evidence is silent but eloquent. Your crimson color reveals a man who has completely surrendered to Bacchus ... But in this one vice do you accuse mortals? The idea of ​​the independence of the nose, of its incomplete merging with “mortals” is persistently suggested: “Oh nose, you are a cape that stands out from a person so that you can admire you from many sides, so that mortals notice you're not at all in common with them... You are the first to be hit by the enemy ... » With such tenacity, the personal independence of the nose is defended.

In the closest relationship with Karlgof's Panegyric to the Nose, the introduction to the story of the Derbent Bek Gadzhi-Yusuf in the story of Marlinsky "Mulla-Hyp", published in the "Library for Reading" for 1836, volume XVII, should be put in the introduction to the story, censorship permission for which given on June 29, i.e., several months before Gogol's Nose appeared in print. In the tone of a panegyric with a transparent allusion to the “articles” printed in the supplements to the “Invalid”, a tale about the nose begins: “Where, you think, a beautiful little thing - a nose! And what a useful one! But no one has yet thought of bringing him a laudatory ode, no congratulatory verses, or even some kind of magazine article, at least invalid prose!.. And what did you think<люди>for the nose, may I ask, for the venerable nose? Nothing! positively nothing but rose oil and snuff, with which they corrupt the nasal morality of many and kill the sense of smell of the rest. It is ungrateful, gentlemen, as you wish: ungrateful! Doesn't he serve you faithfully ?.. Naughty hands - he gets clicks ... Lord, your will ... for everything about everything the poor nose is responsible, and he endures everything with Christian patience; does he sometimes dare to snore - to grumble and not think».

The connection of this lyrocomic tale with Karlgof's Panegyric to the Nose is undeniable: in addition to the allusion to "invalid prose", it is also betrayed by the generality of individual expressions ("the nose is always in the forefront", "he is the speaker and conductor of the soul of flowers to our soul") , and the proximity of the images, and the nature of the style.

However, in "Mulla-Hype" the established association between commendable odes to the nose, the motif about noses and notes on rhinoplasty appears quite clearly. The transition from general panegyric outpourings to the nose to the development of a motif about noses is curious: “if you want to admire the noses, in all the strength of their vegetation, in the full bloom of their beauty, take a traveler with the rank of collegiate assessor and go to Georgia. But I predict a heavy blow to your vanity if you from Europe, from the country of degenerate people, decide to bring your nose to Georgia for glory, for curiosity. One involuntarily recalls that collegiate assessor Kovalev also brought

his not bad nose from the Caucasus. And “what kind of noses are there, in fact, what wonderful noses! Dignified, tall, with a wheel, and they themselves shine and blush; well, it seems, touch your finger, they will sprinkle with Kakhetian.

Nearby are heard the responses of rumors about rhinoplasty:

“Yes, and in Dagestan, there is nothing to anger God, even if rarely, but such noses come across that not a single European nasifex or rhinoplast, that is, a nose builder, will dare to carve out without rafters.”

Very valuable is Marlinsky's reference to the dependence on the same sources of Gogol's scene with Schiller's nose in Nevsky Prospekt: ​​"Let you announce at the Tiflis barrier ... the nose of Schiller or Caracalla: vanity of vanities! On the first platform, you will already be convinced that all Roman and German noses should dig into the ground with shame when they meet with Georgians. However, the motif of a cut off or cut off nose, which Gogol first outlines in the episodic scene of Nevsky Prospekt, emerges even earlier in a number of anecdotes that swirled about rhinoplasty.

The first information about the art of rhinoplasty was reported by the “Russian invalid” dated September 8, 1817. Here, in the “Scientific and artistic news” section, it was said that “one 27-year-old girl, 9 years before this, due to an abscess who had lost her entire nose, was given by Dr. Reiner in Munich another, natural nose!!! On the 12th day after the operation, the nose received natural warmth, sensitivity and color” (p. 840).

In “Son of the Fatherland” for 1820, part 64, no. 35 (pp. 95-96), this event was accompanied by comments: “ ... this incident at first glance will seem miraculous and unrealizable, but it is justified by eyewitnesses, and the possibility of it is proven by common sense ... What a bold enterprise - to take a flap of skin from another part of the body, transplant it onto the base of the former nose and form a new one out of it. living organic nose! But it's possible." Further, it was reported about the translation into Russian of the "excellent work" of the famous Gref: "Rhinoplasty, or the Art of Organically Restoring the Loss of the Nose" .

In "Son of the Fatherland" for 1822, part 75, no. 3, the same theme developed already with literary parallels, excursions into the field of history and was furnished with puns: "The late Kotzebue said in his journal "Literarisches Wochenblatt" (1819, no. 15 , p. 119) the following: “ ... art lead by the nose, as you know, is very ancient, and has been successfully produced at all times. But art restore the nose there is something new and much more difficult than the old. Who has been deprived so far

nose, he was revered as the most miserable and poor man, even if he sat up to his ears in gold. He had one advantage that they could not give him clicks on the nose, but this benefit is insignificant in comparison with the misfortune of being expelled from the society of people. Fake noses could not make up for this deficiency: people talked about them like the wife of a trumpeter in Tristram Shandi; and it happened that the nose remained in the unfortunate hand when he wanted to blow his nose ... » (page 134). Then in brief outline the history of rhinoplasty was outlined: “Since ancient times, Indian Brahmins have restored lost noses from the frontal skin, and this art was very important in such a country where noses are often cut. Probably, through the Arabians, this art passed from the East to Italy ... The Venetian physician Molinetti was the last to deal with this treatment in early XVII centuries. Since then, most doctors have laughed at this operation, and the Parisian medical faculty decisively declared that it was impossible. Our time was given to see the recovery and improvement of rhinoplasty ”(pp. 134-135) .

Notes of the same nature, conveying “for the benefit of youth or so, for general curiosity” “on rare works of nature”, such as disappearing and appearing noses, as well as cut off noses, were, for example, in No. 35 of the “Northern Bee” for 1829. and in No. 30 of April 15, 1833, “Literary additions to the Russian Invalid”. The last newspaper dwelled for a particularly long time on historical investigations about cut off noses: “In Italy and India there was once a fashion to cut the noses of criminals. ... Charles II could not think of the most severe punishment for the gentleman of Coventry, who allowed himself some bold jokes at the expense of two actresses who were under the protection of the king ... When the Danes attacked, many women and girls cut off their noses in the hope of saving their honor. ... Who does not know the story of the wife of a Parisian notary, who, out of revenge, cut off the nose of the one she was jealous of ?.. In the land of pariahs, people of the upper classes consider it the most common punishment to cut off the nose of a delinquent subordinate, so to speak, punch him in the nose his offense. They also do not consider it a sin on the occasion of losing their own nose to replace it with the most beautifully shaped nose.

To this frisky string of "nosological" trinkets one cannot but add verse correspondences. The genre of epigrams often drew its poison and its puns from "nosology".

In Gogol's artistic prose, "nosological" puns begin to ring clearly in "The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." The relationship between Ivan Nikiforovich and Agafia Fedoseevna is determined by "nosology": "I confess, I do not understand why it is so arranged that women grab our noses as deftly as if they were teapot handles? Or their hands are so created, or our noses are no longer good for anything. And despite the fact that the nose Ivan Nikiforovich was somewhat similar to a plum, however she grabbed him by that nose and led him like a dog. He even changed with her involuntarily his ordinary way of life. ... »

The seal of "nosology" was worn by portraits - Agafia Fedoseevna: "Agafia Fedoseevna carried a cap on the head, three warts on the nose and a coffee hood with yellow flowers "- and especially the judge:" The judge's lips were under the very nose, and therefore his nose could sniff his upper lip as much as he liked».

« ... the judge made a tongue and smiled, and his nose sniffed his usual snuffbox... »

“The judge himself gave a chair to Ivan Ivanovich, his nose pulled upper lip all tobacco, which was always a sign of great pleasure with him».

« ... said the judge, turning to the secretary with an air of displeasure, and his nose involuntarily sniffed his upper lip, which he used to do before only out of great pleasure.. Such arbitrariness of the nose caused the judge even more annoyance: he took out a handkerchief and swept all the tobacco from his upper lip so that punish his insolence».

So in Gogol's characters, as in a kind of animated automata, individual members, and especially the nose, begin to fall out of the personality structure, moving themselves into the semantic category of the face (cf. more about the mayor: “ ... he stretched out his foot and stamped it on the floor. This courage, however, cost him dearly, because his hull swayed, and nose pecked railings").

If in the story about two Ivans the “arbitrariness” of the judge’s nose is not tamed by anything or anyone (Agafiya Fedoseevna acted as the tamer of Ivan Nikiforovich’s nose), then in Nevsky Prospekt the “taming of the obstinate one” is connected with the inclusion of motifs about the cut off nose in the plot.

These devices are revealed in relief in the episodic scene of Nevsky Prospekt, in which the characters were Schiller and Hoffmann, and the main character is Schiller's nose.

A German craftsman from Meshchanskaya Street immediately aroused the dislike of the young man Gogol. And no wonder: the previous literature brought him out in a comic form; besides, he was Gogol's landlord during the woeful time of the first, most burning Petersburg disappointments. (Compare: Gogol's letters, vol. I, p. 118; cf. image

German craftsman from Meshchanskaya Street in an excerpt from the book "Moonlight". - Op. Gogol, vol. V, p. 96.)

The cutting off of the drunken Schiller's nose is here motivated by the nose's great appetite for tobacco, prompting the thrifty German to take steps to get rid of his ruiner. The same motif about sniffing tobacco, but in a different treatment, Gogol effectively used in the story "The Nose" to show how the official, touched by his predicament, tried to console the noseless Kovalev with snuff.

In addition, in the episode of "Nevsky Prospekt" one can trace the threads that pulled the images of a shoemaker and a barber around the plot about the nose. Even in the story “The Night Before Christmas,” the snowstorm that pinched Chub’s nose and washed his beard and mustache with snow evoked in Gogol’s creative imagination the idea of ​​a “barber” tyrannically grabbing “his victim by the nose.”

The affinity of this image with Ivan Yakovlevich, who “when shaving, pulled his nose so hard that they could hardly hold on” is undoubted. But Ivan Yakovlevich adopted his system of catching the client's nose with two fingers from a shoemaker, the German Hoffmann, who also held Schiller's nose with two fingers.

This is how the direction of associative links is determined, into which the theme of the nose entered. External influences could, as I will explain below, insert new links into this chain.

Echoes of "nosology" are heard not only in Nevsky Prospekt, but also in Notes of a Madman. Here the theme of the independent life of the nose, separated from its carrier, is outlined: “ ... the moon is such a delicate ball that people cannot possibly live, and now only noses live there. And that is why we ourselves cannot see our own noses, for they are all in the moon. And when I imagined that the earth was a heavy substance and could, having sown, grind our noses into flour, then such anxiety seized me that, putting on stockings and shoes, I hurried to the hall of the state council in order to give an order to the police not to allow the earth to sit down. to the moon".

But all the individual motifs of "nosology" were woven by Gogol into one short story - "The Nose", which, as is clear from the previous presentation, not only does not contain anything strange and unusual in its plot, but is a lively artistic response to topical conversations and lively literary themes.

The plot structure of this story had a psychological motivation in the original text, where all the events turned out to be happening in a dream: “However, everything that is described here was seen by the major in a dream. And when he woke up, he was in such joy that ... rushed to dance in one shirt all over the room ... » .

A dream as a means of unfolding the plot was Gogol's favorite device in the first period of his work and was introduced by him in such a way that dreams

initially perceived by the reader as real facts, and only when he had an expectation of a near end, the author unexpectedly returned the hero from sleep to reality, which was usually contrasted with sleepy dreams. In the same way, in The Nose, Gogol did his best to disguise Major Kovalev's dream and instill in the reader an attitude towards the described dream as a real incident. To this end, he begins a speech about each of his heroes with an indication of his awakening: “The barber Ivan Yakovlevich woke up quite early ... »; Collegiate assessor Kovalev woke up quite early ... ". Dispelling from the reader the suspicion that the depicted action takes place in a dream, the author forces Major Kovalev himself to experience this assumption and resolutely reject it. In the original edition, this technique was completely exposed: “ ... Indeed, this incident was improbable to the point of impossibility, so that it could be called a dream if it did not actually happen and if a lot of the most satisfactory proofs were not presented.

This posterior goal of the author explains another artistic detail of the novella. In it, the laws of artistic interweaving are deliberately opposed to the conditions of the “real” relationship of things, but in such a way that the heroes of the incident themselves discuss and feel each this situation as a real fact, although striking them with its strangeness. Ivan Yakovlevich was “killed” by the strangeness of the incident: “ ... an unrealizable incident, for bread is a baked business, but the nose is not at all the same. I will not understand anything !.. »

Major Kovalev - all frozen horror and amazement. " ... It seemed to me like this: it can’t be that the nose was lost foolishly. "He almost lost his mind" "at the extraordinary spectacle of the transformation of the nose." "He did not know how to think about such a strange incident," about such an "inexplicable phenomenon."

The official of the newspaper expedition and he is surprised: “ ... in fact, extremely strange. Even the quarterly succumbed to the power of the "strange case." Thanks to this technique, fantasy and realism are “mixed into a vinaigrette”, and the reader begins to succumb to the illusion that “where there are no inconsistencies ?.. And yet, as you think about it, there really is something in all this, ”because this background of fright and surprise is extremely realistic, and the everyday features of everyday life stand out even brighter on it.

But it is curious that one of actors, to whom Major Kovalev turned for assistance in finding the nose, did not show any surprise - this is a private bailiff. And it's clear why: ... he, after a fighting, swearing life, was preparing to taste the pleasures of the world, "that is, he was about to fall asleep. So contrast image Gogol sharpened the reader's conviction that, despite all the "strangeness", "natural-scientific" inexplicability of the incident, the action takes place in reality, and from this all the characters initiated into this story, except for those who fall asleep, are immersed in amazement.

Gogol achieved a certain artistic effect by using a dream as a method of plot development in a peculiar way: the reader applied the measure of a bygone narrative to the artistic reproduction of a dream and was amazed at the whimsical composition. But it was Gogol's own intention to imitate incoherent fragmentation.

and senseless gluing of real elements, as in a dream. “Sleep,” according to Gogol’s own definition in a letter to his mother dated November 10, 1835, “is nothing more than incoherent passages that make no sense from what we thought, and then stuck together and made up a vinaigrette” ( Gogol's letters, vol. I, p. 355) .

But Major Kovalev's dream falls out of the plot structure of The Nose in the final editions. From this, the semantics of verbal movement acquires greater tension and sharpness. The rows of real-everyday connections and explanations move deeper, beyond the limits of those semantic lines that are involved in the dynamics of the plot, constantly rebuilding in it. The “everyday” logic of events, involved in the construction of the artistic world, freezes, does not keep pace with its movement. Breaks are formed, and the two plans of the plot structure are correlated with each other according to the principle of inconsistency (“What does all this lead to? For what purpose? What does this story prove? I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all. there are a lot of completely inexplicable incidents in the world" ... ) . A world of fantastic “nonsense” is being erected, the meaning of which is comprehended from the internal semantic-syntactic connections of words, and not from their nominative everyday confinement and not from causal connections between “things” substituted for words. The characteristic of this process made by L. Spitzer (“Motiv und Wort”, in the article about Morgenstern) is applicable here: “Linguistic” is, first of all, the object of the phenomenological study of essence ... The writer, proceeding from the language, constructs a new logic of things: what is obtained is not the construction of words, but the adaptation of meaning to the words that appear.

However, the tendency towards a "real" justification of new forms of subject-semantic relationships remains embedded in the composition of Gogol's "Nose". First of all, the story of the severed nose seems to lose its beginnings and ends in the twilight of Ivan Yakovlevich’s drunken life (“He thought, thought - and did not know what to think. “The devil knows how it happened,” he said at last, scratching his hand behind his ear - Whether I returned drunk yesterday or not, I can’t say for sure." Compare from the author: "Ivan Yakovlevich, like any decent Russian artisan, was a terrible drunkard .... Instead of going to shave bureaucratic chins, he went to an institution with the inscription: "Food and tea" ask for a glass of punch... "). In the story of the missing nose of Major Kovalev, sometimes painful doubts of Kovalev come to the surface of the plot movement, whether in a dream, in a daydream or in reality

“nosological” fantasy above him (“Frightened, Kovalev ordered water to be served and rubbed his eyes with a towel: for sure, there was no nose! He began to feel with his hand, pinched himself to find out if he was sleeping? It seems he was not sleeping. ” or so it seemed to me: it can’t be that the nose disappeared foolishly, he thought ... - It's true, or in a dream, or just daydreaming; maybe I somehow, by mistake, drank vodka instead of water, with which I wipe my beard after shaving.

But in the general picture of the "nasological" "absurdity" this background is understood ironically. It contrasts with the semantics of the fantastic.

Thus, the motivation of the plot movement by a dream, like a scaffolding of an artistic structure, was removed by Gogol. But the compositional technique of fragmentary gluing of pieces is preserved and even more sharply emphasized. In this respect, Gogol joins the tradition of romantic "Schandeism" ("Sternianism"), exposing the diversity of the plot structure. This tradition in the literature of the 1930s had various forms of expression, relying, of course, not on the “alogical nature” of the social environment artistically shaped in Gogol’s work (as V. F. Pereverzev thinks in his naive piety), but on the principles of combating the structural integrity of the works of “former scholastic and classical times” (cf. in “Son of the Fatherland”, 1839, vol. IX, the characterization of “modern Russian literature” by the opponent of “romantic naturalism”: “ ... it is all made up of fragments, but this excerpts ingenious and embracing more than whole former scholastic and classical times").

The story "The Nose", in addition to the author's introduction and conclusion, consists of two "independent" parallel passages that have a similar beginning ("The barber Ivan Yakovlevich, who lives on Voznesensky Prospekt ... woke up pretty early”; “The collegiate assessor Kovalev woke up quite early”), ending with an almost identical refrain (“But here the incident is completely covered by fog, and what happened next is absolutely unknown”; cf. the end of the second passage: “ ... but here again the whole incident is hidden in a fog, and what happened next is decidedly unknown”) and shifted into one row in the third, final chapter. And before the logical connection between them is deliberately broken. Two lines of adventures of the same hero (“nose”) go separately, which, as it were, forks.

The illusion of a connection between the two parts is created not so much by the typological unity of the motif about the nose, but by a formal indication of the commonality of the hero (namely, the nose of Major Kovalev) and some of the characters - the barber and the quarter warder. On the "live thread", as if "mechanically" two segments are fastened at the beginning and end.

The barber Ivan Yakovlevich found a nose in warm bread and recognized in it the nose of his client, Major Kovalev, who really

at the same time the nose disappeared. Involuntarily, a conviction is born in the connection of these events. But then the segments diverge, and the nose doubles not only in the style of the author and in the eyes of Kovalev, but also in the understanding of the reader. The nose lives on the “edges of dual existence”, now moving into the world of persons, now again appearing in the category of things. However, at the end, the idea of ​​the unity of the nose reappears under the influence of the instructions of the quarter warden on the involvement of the barber in the loss of the nose of Major Kovalev.

But, while fastening the passages at the ends, Gogol strives to completely separate them in the middle. Therefore, he forces Major Kovalev himself to resolutely deny participation in the disappearance of his nose on the part of Ivan Yakovlevich: “ ... in no way could it be assumed that the nose was cut off: no one entered his room; the barber, Ivan Yakovlevich, had already shaved him on Wednesday, and throughout the whole of Wednesday, and even for the whole quarter, his nose was intact - he remembered this and knew very well; besides, he would feel pain, and, no doubt, the wound could not heal so soon and be smooth as a pancake. In other words, here the plot about the severed nose, developed in the first passage, is deliberately contrasted with the story of Major Kovalev's nose. The intentionality of such a distinction is evident from Gogol's work on draft editions, aimed at eliminating details that weaken him, for example, Kovalev's phrase was thrown out: " ... but how can the nose stick? I forgot that if something is cut off, then you can’t put it on».

Such an architectonics of the short story, designed to arouse bewilderment and suspicion in the reader about the author’s powerlessness to get out of the labyrinth of inconsistencies, was not alien to the “Sternianism” of Russian literature even before Gogol. The author of "The Life and Opinions of the New Tristram" reveals this technique, imitating the "tetanus" of the artist: " ... like Theseus in a labyrinth, I am entangled in my stories and do not know how to get out on my former path more successfully? There was a hunt to such an extent to confuse everything! I don’t know where to start, so that somehow, at least on a live thread, sew the end to the beginning. But alas! Everything is late! Trust me, reader! This is the author's trick. We often work like ants, collecting in one heap the most opposite objects, between which there seems to be no connection, and all this for what? In order to find at least a shadow of resemblance to the truth in the sweat of one’s face, to express our wit and amaze the public with surprise” (pp. 60-61). In Gogol's Nose, compositional forms of this type are transferred to a different plot circle. A form of "unnatural grotesque" was forged from them.

By the same principle, a diagram of the components is built. Within each of the passages, the gluing together of individual elements, sometimes not corresponding to one another, and the illogicality resulting from this are elevated to a creative technique. The habitual associations and concatenations of words and facts are intentionally destroyed. The gradual increase in the feeling of bewilderment should, according to the author's intention, resolve into seething indignation at the writer, who is creating an experiment of artistic mockery. In fact, the whole action develops not only according to the “old rule”, constantly applying “unexpected obstacles” and “removal of the desired object”, but also according to a plan that deliberately destroys the usual real correlations of words and events.

The first passage, which develops the theme of the severed and baked nose, can be seen as a parody of adventure novels about the wanderings of severed body parts. It is especially tempting to see in it a parody of those scenes of Maurier's adventurous novel "Hadji Baba", which, under the title "Baked Head", were published in the "Moskovsky Vestnik" for 1827, No. 4 and in "Son of the Fatherland" and "Northern Archive" for 1831 (“Son of the Fatherland”, part 142, “Northern Archive”, part 56, No. 21 - “The Tale of the Fried Head”) and are recommended as one of the most amusing episodes of the novel (“Northern Bee”, 1831, No. 117). This novel was widely popular among the reading public in the 30s (“Mirza Hadji Baba Isfahani in London.” In 4 parts. St. Petersburg, 1830; Morier. The Adventures of Mirza Hadji Baba Isfahani in Persia and Turkey, or the Persian Zhil-Blaz. Translation from English. In 4 parts. SPb., 1831). The passage about the baked head told the story of the wanderings of one severed head, which the tailor mistakenly took in place of the knot with the dress. He himself and his wife were frightened by this extraordinary occurrence. The tailor makes every effort to free himself from the head; finally, in a bread pot, he tosses it to the baker to bake it. The baker puts her in the barbershop of a half-blind barber, who mistakes her for a client and tries to shave her.

The plot in the first passage of The Nose unfolds, as one would expect in a parody of a primitive adventure-type novel, at a slow pace. The narrative opens with the style of a protocol, an official (or newspaper) report: “On March 25, it happened in St. Petersburg ". Syntagma extraordinarily strange incident requires its immediate semantic disclosure. In essence, this whole beginning, as it were, rests on the "intonation" of the colon. But the explanation is not directly given: it is pushed aside by the "unhurried, albeit playful" tale. The story from the nomination of the hero immediately proceeds to the registration of his slightest movements and sensations (“ ... barber Ivan Yakovlevich awoke quite early and heard the smell of hot bread. Sitting up a little on the bed, He saw... »; “Ivan Yakovlevich, for decency, put on over his shirt tailcoat And, sitting down in front of the table poured salt, cooked two onion heads took... knife and having made a significant mine, he began to cut bread"). Such a drawing technique gives the narrative a comically slow pace of descriptions of the stage action, in which laconic remarks with a contrasting emotional structure (“Today I, Praskovya Osipovna I won't drink coffee ... A instead I want eat hot bread with onion ... ”- this pleadingly respectful expression of desires by Ivan Yakovlevich is contrasted with the remark of his wife a parte in such a contemptuous tone: “Let a fool eats bread; I'm better... there will be an extra portion of coffee") are furnished with complex forms of motor expression. But this word chain is being invaded author's "introductory words", kind of narrative comments,

which perform the function of semantic hooks that deviate the tale from its direct flow, forming logical breaks in it.

They look like a mosaic word groups, according to the syntactic appearance of its organized, but without logical justification. It turns out a sharp form of comic symmetry, built on semantic surprises: “ ... his surname has been lost, and even on his signboard - where the gentleman is depicted with a soapy cheek and the inscription: "and the blood is opened"- nothing else posted ... »

Then the author's inserts fall into "indirect" speech, where they stand out sharply from the verbal chain in their expressive coloring, especially since they are not connected with each other by direct semantic transitions: " ... he saw that his wife a rather respectable lady who was very fond of drinking coffee) just taken out of the oven baked loaves."

Then the author's comments are clothed in the form of a contrasting explanation of the peculiarities in the speeches of the characters. This is the author's motivation for the words of Ivan Yakovlevich - instead of, where the tendency to logically justify unusual verbal-expressive compounds seems to be emphasized: “ ... I won't drink coffee ... A instead of I want to eat hot bread ... (That is, Ivan Yakovlevich would like both, but he knew that it was absolutely impossible to demand two things at once ... »)

After the verbal chain has swung so far away from the semantics of the beginning, a return to the "extraordinarily strange incident" begins. The appearance of the nose is being prepared, which does not open immediately, but, so to speak, is unraveled by Ivan Yakovlevich.

"To my surprise, I saw something whitened"(Compare in the story of two Ivans:" As soon as Ivan Ivanovich managed his household and went out, as usual, to lie under a canopy, how, to his indescribable surprise, he saw something blushing in the gate"). An indefinite thing is being examined (“carefully picked it with a knife and felt with a finger”), commented (“ dense!.. what would it be?"). The more unexpected and emotionally striking is the recognition of the nose (“and pulled out - the nose !.. "). Throughout this chapter, the lexeme "nose", including the definition "cut off", moves along a semantically smooth line of meanings, without unexpected jumps. It does not run out of the category of a thing in the forms of a narrative tale. The transition of the nose into the category of a face is built in accordance with the general nature of the composition of the novel as a swift semantic leap, in the second passage. However, in the structure of the first passage, one can find a "foreshadowing", allusions to this transformation, though carefully veiled and provided with motivation that deflects suspicion. So, in the remarks of Praskovya Osipovna, there is some ambiguity, logical instability of phraseological constructions, however, justified by a strong expression of indignation and anger.

"I don't want to listen! So that I let my cut off nose lie in my room ?.. So that I become responsible for you to the police ?.. Get him out! out! take it wherever you want! so that I can’t hear him in the spirit!”

In a syntactic passage: “So that I allow a severed nose to lie in my room ?.. ”- the order of words strongly contradicts his understanding in the sense:“ So that I let my cut-off nose lie in my room ?.. » But the absence of an indirect object at «allowed» ( to whom- what) and the usual semantic orientation of this verb give the linkage an ambiguity of unusualness, as if shaking the real meaning of the lexeme "nose". Imperative forms of interjections: “get him out! out!" - are explained in the following syntagma: " ... take it wherever you want!" This connection eliminates their interpretation in the sense: " ... drive get him out!" But still, the smack of comic inconsistency remains. This discrepancy appears even sharper in the following emotionally elevated demand: ... so that I can’t hear him in the spirit!” (cf. colloquial: “May his spirit not be here!”). And here the plaque, though ambiguous (“to the spirit”), of the expressive personification of the nose has not been removed. But embedded in the angry speech of the wife (whose image, previously defined only through the love of coffee, now finds its complete stage completion in the colorful colors of “hard exhortations”), these fluctuations in the semantics of the nose do not have the character of disturbing, intriguing foreshadowing of future metamorphoses of the severed nose. So their "echo" will only respond after the appearance of the master of the nose! Moreover, Praskovya Osipovna, having created a version of the crime of Ivan Yakovlevich (“Where is you, the beast, cut off your nose?.. Scammer! drunkard! I'll report you to the police myself. What a robber!") - with its comic justification: "I heard from three people that you are pulling at your noses so much that you can barely hold on while shaving," Praskovya Osipovna, in her indignation, remained beyond Ivan Yakovlevich's guesses about the nose he opened. And Ivan Yakovlevich, after a punning description of his horror (“Ivan Yakovlevich and lowered his hands; became rub your eyes and touch: nose, exactly, nose !.. ”), various signs of the nose began to open up, narrowing the concept of it as an object to the idea of ​​a specific thing: from shapeless "something" nose turns into given name single item.

« ... nose, right, nose! and further, seemed to be someone's friend... Ivan Yakovlevich was neither alive nor dead. He learned that this nose was none other than collegiate assessor Kovalev».

Knowledge presupposes comprehension. But “Ivan Yakovlevich stood absolutely as if dead. He thought and thought - and did not know what to think.

The meaning of the nose is “determined” negatively, by contrasting bread (“according to all signs, there must be an unrealizable incident: for bread is a baked thing, but the nose is not at all the same. I can't figure it out!").

The unfulfillment of the incident, vaguely covered by a hint of "yesterday's" drunkenness, does not eliminate the reality of the severed nose, although it eliminates the possibility of an explanation ("The devil knows how it happened").

Thus, Praskovya Osipovna's version of the crime of Ivan Yakovlevich, of his participation in cutting off his nose, is not approved. But the possibility of accusation is not ruled out. However, his character remains ambiguous. Ivan Yakovlevich is now frightened not so much by the story of the cut off nose, but by the prospect of discovering someone else's thing from him. “The thought that the police would find his nose and charge him drove him completely unconscious.” The adventures of the nose in a rag begin - when Ivan Yakovlevich tries to "slip it somewhere." But the development of the theme of the destruction of evidence (tossing "stolen" things) is complicated not only by the introduction of obstacles that cause repeated attempts of the same action (meetings of familiar people, vigilance of the watchman "in trouble"), but also by a set of realities that reveal the "everyday" content and plot functions of the main narrative lexemes. Things and persons in The Nose immediately enter into action, at first only named, as if presented to the reader only by name. Their individual nature in this artistic world is revealed later. It turns out a kind of reverse order of descriptions. So, a tailcoat appears on Ivan Yakovlevich - after his transition from bed to table, but is determined in its properties only in connection with a set of details for characterizing Ivan Yakovlevich himself: “Ivan Yakovlevich’s tailcoat (Ivan Yakovlevich never wore a frock coat) was piebald, that is, he was black, but all in brown-yellow and gray apples; the collar was shiny, and instead of three buttons, only threads hung. Ivan Yakovlevich was a big cynic." It is curious that the shaving scene of the collegiate assessor Kovalev, who was previously only mentioned as a barber's client when identifying his nose, also fits into the description of Ivan Yakovlevich's character. It not only comically affirms Ivan Yakovlevich's "cynicism", but also inspires new suspicions about his "crime", involving the stage image of the victim himself in the fabric of the narrative.

This technique of re-"displaying" a thing, from unexpected angles, after it has become familiar in the dynamics of the narrative, having served here, changes the structure of the thing, its plot functions, makes things not only move along with the plot, but also break the very movement of the plot in a bizarre way. .

Parallel stylistic device in the image process consists in the reverse development of the action, so that the usual process turns out to be starting from the end and slowly reaching the beginning (“Ivan Yakovlevich, for decency, put on a tailcoat over his shirt”; “ Finally he took out his underwear and boots, pulled all this rubbish on himself ... »).

So the plot of "The Nose" within the first segment is constantly moving by some lanes, either leading away from the "straight" path, or resting

to a dead end, then returning to the already passed points of the narrative. At the same time, at the heights of plot tension, the thread of the plot is either interrupted by an insertion (such is the “untimely” break in the narrative tale, accompanied by the author’s apologies and formed by the insertion of an imaginary characteristic of the protagonist), or it breaks off into the unknown (“But here the incident is completely covered by fog, and that what happened next is not known at all. In this fragile and tortuous dynamics of the plot, the everyday connectedness of the unfolding events weakens; the straight lines of the plot logic of action are erased.

This is the composition of the first passage.

The second segment begins to be built according to the scheme of parallelism, contrasting with the first (“Ivan Yakovlevich woke up quite early”; “College assessor Kovalev woke up quite early”; Ivan Yakovlevich, “to his surprise, saw ... nose"; Kovalev, "to the greatest amazement, saw that instead of his nose he had a completely smooth place!" "Ivan Yakovlevich ... began to rub his eyes and feel: nose, exactly, nose! “Kovalev ordered water to be served and wiped his eyes with a towel: for sure, there is no nose! He began to touch with his hand ... "Ivan Yakovlevich" took out his underwear and boots, pulled all this rubbish on himself ... And came out outside"; Kovalev "ordered to give himself at once to get dressed and flew»).

The contrast is not limited to the content, but also affects the course of the development of the action: in contrast to the slow pace of the narration in the first chapter, interrupted by the stage reproduction of the dialogue, the action at the beginning of the second chapter unfolds extremely quickly. It seems to be striving to catch up with the Nose storyline from the first passage. This speed also corresponds to the style - energetic, strong-willed, built on motor images - before the transition of the narrative tale into reasoning (“But in the meantime, something must be said about Kovalev”). From here, the game begins with the same methods of detention, as in the story about the cut off nose.

Discourse on collegiate assessors about Kovalev's Caucasian assessorship, which broke off at the author's timid maxim (“if you talk about one collegiate assessor, then all collegiate assessors, from Riga to Kamchatka, will certainly take it personally”); the refusal to call Kovalev a collegiate assessor in favor of the rank of major - against the backdrop of a euphemistic depiction of the major's "secret" habits, which can also lead to noselessness; characterization of Kovalev through the stringing of details (“the collar of his shirt-front was always extremely clean”; “Major Kovalev wore a lot of carnelian seals and with coats of arms”); description of accessories of appearance by enumeration, brought to the point of absurdity (“His whiskers were of the kind that can still be seen now among provincial and district surveyors, architects and regimental doctors, also performing various duties”), or by mechanical mosaic of words, independent

from logic (“all those husbands who have full, ruddy cheeks and very good play in boston»); the introduction of accidents (“as a misfortune, not a single cabman showed up on the street, and he had to walk”; but compare the previous indication: “ flew”) - all these methods of “crooked”, side movement of the plot, as if broken into several currents, due to the quick change from one to the other, do not feel painful, like incessant shuffling, but create the illusion of natural overflows of tone.

However, the parallelism in the development of the plot about the disappeared nose is interrupted due to an unexpected switch of the whole action to a new plane. In Praskovia Osipovna's remarks, for the first time, an attitude to the nose as to an animated substance flashed. But it acted as a comic form of heightened expressiveness. Now, in the thoughts of the alarmed Major Kovalev, the words begin to combine in such a way that the nose is either elevated to the category of a face, or rapidly falls from it into an impersonal “nothing”, into an indefinite thingness (“But perhaps it seemed to me that way; it can’t be that nose went missing... He timidly approached the mirror and looked. " The devil knows what, what rubbish! he said, spitting. - At least already anything was instead of a nose, otherwise Nothing!.. »).

And again, this verbal bifurcation of the nose, contained in the speech of an agitated character, is understood as a peculiar device of the author's comic mockery of the hero. It does not oblige to transfer this semantic duality to the narrative plane, although it prepares it. And in any case, it does not in the least determine the image of the "personality" of the nose. It is characteristic that the first appearance of the personified nose and its identification occurred in the aspect of Major Kovalev's consciousness. “Suddenly he stood up, as if rooted to the spot, at the door of a house; an inexplicable phenomenon occurred in his eyes: a carriage stopped in front of the entrance; the doors opened; jumped out, bent over, a gentleman in uniform and ran up the stairs. What was the horror, and at the same time the amazement of Kovalev when he found out that it was his own nose!

This device of verbal metamorphoses, in relation to the nose prepared by the "nosological" tradition of punning transformations, is generally characteristic of Gogol's work and has several functionally different incarnations in it. So, in the fabric of "The Nose" one of Gogol's favorite verbal images, noted by prof. Mandelstam: “transformation” into that feeling, that state (or a realized idea. - V.V.), which should at the moment be predominant in the personality" ( I. Mandelstam. On the nature of Gogol's style. Helsingfors, 1902, p. 140). I will add: not only to the feeling, but also to the corresponding organ, as well as to the object of the haunting thought. “You will stand,” Gogol wrote to Danilevsky, “before Raphael, silent and turned all in the eyes” ( Gogol's letters, vol. I, p. 439). Balabina, he admitted: “ Amazing Spring! Roses now covered all of Rome; but my sense of smell is even sweeter from the flowers that have now bloomed. Do you believe that often comes a frantic desire to turn into one nose, so that there is nothing else - no

eyes, no arms, no legs, except for only one huge nose, whose nostrils would be in good buckets, so that you could draw in as much incense and spring as possible ”(p. 498).

We find a plot processing of a verbal construction of the same type in Notes of a Madman, where Poprishchin, absorbed in the thought of the Spanish king, turns into the Spanish king, and in the supposed comedy Vladimir of the 3rd degree, in which the hero, who set himself the goal of life to receive cross of st. Vladimir of the 3rd degree, turned into Vladimir of the 3rd degree. Thus, the realization (or rather, the objectification) of an idea and its personification is one of Gogol's common devices, which underlies many of his images and plot assignments. In the latter case, the use of this technique is motivated by the madness of the hero, for example, in Notes of a Madman, in Vladimir of the 3rd degree.

A disturbing thought can be objectified not only in her media, but also outside, when it was called by the requirements of the plot. For example, in the “Portrait” all people turned into portraits: “All the people who surrounded him (the artist. - V.V.) bed, seemed to him terrible portraits. This portrait doubled, quadrupled in his eyes, and, finally, it seemed to him that all the walls were hung with these terrible portraits, fixing their motionless, living eyes on him. Sick ... shouted in an inexpressibly tearing voice and begged that they accept from him an irresistible portrait with lively eyes ... »

A perfect analogy to this phenomenon is the transformation of the nose. But, as one would expect in a comic novel, it is not motivated by madness, but, on the contrary, motivates it itself. “Poor Kovalev almost lost his mind. He didn't know how to think about such a strange incident." So the word "nose", having moved into the category of a person, is superimposed on the image of a gentleman in the rank of state councilor. It turns out a kind of "homonymy", created through the poetic development of one semantic sphere and, therefore, gravitating towards resolution in unity. A game of duality of meanings attached to this word is woven into the fabric of the plot of The Nose. And it is hardly correct to see in the bifurcation of the nose the direct influence of Hoffmann's "The Story of the Lost Image" and even less of Chamisso's "The Miraculous Story of Peter Schlemil", moreover, translated only in 1841, as prof. N. I. Zamotin (“Three Romantic Motifs in the Works of Gogol.” Warsaw, 1902) and S. I. Rodzevich (“On the History of Russian Romanticism.” - Russian Philological Bulletin, 1917, No. 1-2, p. 221 ).

Playing with the metaphorical and real meaning of the word is quite common in Stern's "Tristram Shandy" (cf. the example - "horse" given by V. B. Shklovsky - "Tristram Shandy" and the theory of the novel "). Stern sometimes reveals this technique: “There are two meanings here,” Eugene cried, pointing the finger of his right hand at the word “slits”, on page 91 of the second volume of this book of books” (“The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy”,

vol. IV, p. 4). Stern's statement about the rejection of this technique when developing "nosology" is very curious: "By the word nose, throughout this long chapter on noses and in all parts of my book, where only the word nose occurs, I declare that by this word I mean a real nose - no more, no less” (vol. III, p. 5).

Gogol did the opposite: he made the word "nose" get in Kovalev's eyes double meaning. On the realization of the duality of meanings connected with the word is based further development plot. Elements of the word game are revealed with particular relief in the dialogue (sharper in the original version). The word "nose" is put in such combinations that emphasize the artistic conventionality of its meaning. Two planes of comprehension arise, two contexts that collide in many ways, intersect, overlap one another. Artistic reality, having approved its punning nature, is criticized from the point of view of "common sense" and real plausibility by Major Kovalev himself, who now seeks not only to regain his nose, but also to expose the senselessness of the poetic game. The character, as it were, protests against the "absurdities" of the plot.

“How is it possible, in fact, that the nose, which only yesterday was on his face and could neither ride nor walk, be in a uniform?”

“Only, no, it can’t be,” he added, after a moment’s thought, “it’s unbelievable that the nose is gone, in no way, unbelievable.”

But "artistic reality" every time confronts Major Kovalev with a fait accompli. She distracts him from logical evaluations into the world of plot transformations of the nose, which, having become ambiguous, was worn like a madman between the category of a person and a thing, and in the form of a face he acquired all the accessories of a person and a high rank, except for the nose. "He was in uniform, embroidered with gold ... he was wearing suede trousers, on the side of the sword... Nose hid face your own in a large stand-up collar ... The nose looked at the major, and brows they frowned at him,” etc. All attempts by Major Kovalev to point his nose to his place, to expose the “rogue and scoundrel,” were parried by the impostor with the clarity of an official who distinguishes different departments well.

Dialogic forms developed a special sharpness of semantic surprises and pun collisions. After all, here Kovalev was faced with the task of explaining to the “gracious sovereign”, who was higher in rank than him, that he was his own nose. And to his nose, he applies methods of verbal influence imbued with self-esteem, appealing to the rules of duty and honor. In the original edition, the intentionality of the pun combinations was especially transparent: “He was looking for nose master in all corners ... Mister absolutely sir! dressed like mister, and moreover, a state adviser "( Op. Gogol, vol. II, p. 577). Accordingly, the transition from the figurative meaning of the word to the real, prepared by hints (“You must know your place ... and I suddenly find you and where? - in the church ... ”), weakened by pointing out the possibility of a mistake on the part of Kovalev: “After all, you are (my, if I’m not mistaken) my own nose.”

But then Gogol makes the game of semantic "inconsistencies" more subtle, eliminating those verbal linkages that easily lost their ambiguous character. So, in the final version, the combination

the words “sir” and “nose” are destroyed, because it too quickly established the relation to the word “nose” as a surname and weakened the acute unusualness of the subsequent phrases: “The nose completely hid his face ... and with deep attention examined some goods ... In addition, it did not put up with one of the further scenes - Kovalev's conversation with an official of the newspaper expedition:

“- Yes, the escapee was your courtyard man?

What a yard man !.. But this ... nose.

Hm, what strange last name! And on a large amount this Nosov robbed you?

Nose, that is ... you don't think so ... »

Having eliminated the combination "Mr. Nosov", Gogol instead replaced it with an investment in the mouth of an official: "Mr. Nosov" - and the appearance of this latter was motivated by a misunderstanding.

In addition, due to the elimination of direct warnings about the use of the word "nose" in one sense or another, the boundary between its real and figurative meanings became difficult to define. The more spectacular were the unexpected transitions: “It’s strange to me, dear sir ... You must know your place ... And suddenly I find you, and where? I walk without a nose, you see, it's indecent. Your Majesty ... here the whole thing seems to be quite obvious ... Or do you want ... After all, you are my own nose!”

« ... The main thing is that he now travels around the city and calls himself a state councilor. ... You judge, in fact, how can I be without such a noticeable part of the body? The camouflaged nose is elusive without the help of the police.

After appearing openly new nose mask, Major Kovalev continues his search from the point at which he stopped upon leaving the house. He goes to the chief of police, but does not find him at home. Whereas fairy tale hero, is at a crossroads.

"Go straight ahead!

How straight? Is there a turn to the right or to the left?

The description of the major's thoughts on how to find his runaway nose is based on the constant clashes of two different semantic series associated with the word nose.

« ... from own nose responses it could already be seen that this man nothing was sacred and he could Also lie and in this case, how he lied, assuring, What he never saw him».

"Heaven admonishes" the major to go on a "newspaper expedition". A genre scene is inserted into the composition of the short story, made up of a mosaic of comic trailers and resolved by a reminder of Kovalev's loss of a sense of smell through the characteristic "air density in the room".

« ... but collegiate assessor Kovalyov could not hear the smell, because he covered himself with a handkerchief and because the most his nose was God knows where».

The comic effects of Kovalev's scenes with the official of the newspaper expedition and the quarter warden are built on a mixture of the own and "figurative" meanings of the word "nose". In the first scene, the confusion remains without motivation: “I can’t understand something well” - “Yes, I can’t tell you how ... "In the second, it is explained by the myopia of a police official, and from the logical absurdity of this explanation, Gogol seeks to distract the reader's attention in his usual way, masking it with an abundance of details characterizing myopia: "and it is strange that I myself took him at first for Mr.. But, fortunately, I had glasses with me, and I immediately saw that it was the nose. After all, I am short-sighted, and if you stand in front of me, then I only see that you have a face, but no nose, no beard, I don’t notice anything. My mother-in-law, that is, my wife’s mother, also does not see anything.”

However, in the dialogue between Kovalev and the official of the newspaper expedition, the game of symbolic ambiguity is revealed by giving another example of the same verbal misunderstanding, although the credibility of such a comparison is disputed by the major: “And here, last week same was the case. An official came in the same way as you just came, brought a note, money according to the calculation was 2 rubles 73 kopecks, and the whole announcement was that a black-haired poodle had run away. Seems like what's going on here? And a libel came out: this poodle was the treasurer, I don’t remember any institution.

Why, I’m not making an announcement to you about a poodle, but about my own nose: therefore, almost the same as about myself.

Immediately, all the time, the nose is drawn either as a scoundrel calling himself a state adviser, or as a sniffing part of the body.

The word game is not limited to fluctuations between the use of the nose in a conventionally metaphorical and proper sense.

Sometimes the word "nose" in the understanding of Major Kovalev (and the "author") loses its individual, concrete, real meaning and retains only an indication of its belonging to the category of thing. With such an extended, “metonymic” use of the word “nose”, the motif of the disappeared nose is imperceptibly replaced by the reader with the motif of the loss of the thing in general, and the very method of losing it is not revealed, but becomes mysterious under the influence of inconsistent allusions either to an accidental loss or to theft ( cf. compositional "fluctuations" in this direction of the first chapter). Accordingly, the general outline of the plot changes and an explanation for the loss is introduced by the action of evil spirits (cf. “The Missing Letter”): “Nose, my own nose disappeared to no one knows where. The devil wanted to play a trick on me!” This extended usage is even exposed:

“It was definitely not clear. If a button were lost, a silver spoon, a watch, or something like that, - but the abyss, and who is the abyss? and, moreover, in his own apartment!

In the process of this game, Gogol, by the way, also used those puns that he found in the “nosological” literature, mainly in notes on rhinoplasty: “If I were without an arm or without a leg, everything would be better, even if I were without both ears , All more tolerable, but without a nose man- just throw it away !.. » ( Op. Gogol, vol. II, p. 582) .

“You also mention the nose. If you mean by sim that I wanted leave you with your nose... then I am surprised that you yourself are talking about this, since, as far as you know, I had a completely opposite opinion ... »

Wed the same puns in Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" in the conversation of the ailing marquis with the spiritual father of the Jesuit:

“- If strict fate has deprived you of a nose, then your benefit is that no one will dare to tell you all your life that you are left with a nose.

Holy father ... I would, on the contrary, be delighted to remain with my nose every day of my life, if only I had it in its proper place.

My son ... if you cry ... that you would gladly be ready to remain with your nose all your life, then your desire has already been indirectly fulfilled: for, having lost your nose, you, thereby, nevertheless, as it were, remained with your nose ... »

From the moment the runaway nose was caught and delivered to the major by the administrative quarters, a semantic change occurs again in the ratio of the two semantic chains associated with the "nose". The main flow of the plot again begins to return to the mainstream of the direct meaning of the lexeme "nose", but incessantly deviates towards personification. So, when Major Kovalev put his nose in his former place of residence: “ Well! come on! get down, fool! he told him.

At the same time, the motif of gluing the nose is woven into the outline of the plot (cf. the expression: “glue the nose”).

In such a peculiar way, Gogol used the elements given by "nosological" literature, especially newspaper notes about rhinoplasty.

But Gogol deliberately obscured this connection, trying to free his short story from that circle of thoughts, among which, for the most part, everyday, unprinted "nosology" revolved. He eliminates from the original edition the words that cast a shadow on the major: “There are many different majors in the world who do not even have underwear in decent condition and drag around all sorts of obscene places” ( Op. Gogol, vol. II, p. 581). Euphemistically denied the assumption that Kovalev himself "was the cause" of the disappearance of the nose. No! He “disappeared for nothing, for nothing, wasted for nothing, not for a penny!” True, in the final version, Gogol forced Kovalev to follow the advice of the official of the newspaper expedition, which initially had the character of an accidental reference: “If it disappeared (nos. - V.V.), then this is a medical matter. They say there are people who can put any nose they want. In the revised story, this advice entailed a whole scene of inviting a doctor. But it is developed in a diametrically opposite way to the directions and broad promises that magazine reports about rhinoplasty gave. Gogol's doctor turned out not only to have his own method of medical examination, depriving the noseless of the only benefit of their condition (clicks on the nose), but also a peculiar view of medicine in general and rhinoplasty in particular, providing

wide scope for the action of nature itself. To substantiate it, Gogol hurried to resort to his usual method of constructing his speech - assurances, advice and intimidation, diverting attention to the side, tried to disguise the deliberate inconsistency and logical absurdity of the doctor's diagnosis:

"No ... It, of course, can be attached; I would, perhaps, put it on you now; but I assure you that it is worse for you.”

The obvious nonsense of this diagnosis in the second remark of the doctor takes on the character of visible persuasiveness, blurring among the mass of words expressing outbursts of noble indignation, and assurances of well-being and health, and a number of practically valuable advice. At the same time, Major Kovalev is ready to be content with much more modest results of rhinoplasty than those advertised: “ ... is there no means? attach somehow; at least not well, if only to hold on; I can even support it slightly with my hand in dangerous cases. And besides, I don’t dance so that I can harm with some careless movement.

Like the background of the drama, scenes of the major's erotic "expressions" are built one after another. But the loss of the nose is never directly connected with them. On the contrary, it acts all the time as an obstacle to exploits in the field of love. And even when, for a short moment, the major connected the tragedy of his lack of nose with the name of the staff officer Podtochina, from whose daughter he quietly set sail with his compliments, the female participation in this crime is presented to him as the action of "witches-women".

The motif of "magic", rejected by the major himself, is resolved by Gogol's characteristic fantasy of rumors - with their comic, but topical justification: "Then the minds of everyone were precisely tuned to the emergency: recently, the public had just been occupied with the experiments of the action of magnetism."

Thus, in connection with the content of newspaper and magazine literature, which Gogol called "fair and exchange, turning the taste of the crowd", a number of scenes of the story "The Nose" are clarified. Having artistically translated this material, Gogol created for it two passages, not finished and deliberately freed from logical coherence, but united by a common technique and composition.

Obliged - according to the canon of the comic novel - to bring Kovalev to the conclusion "from an embarrassed and sad state to a state of calm and prosperous", Gogol, in accordance with artistic task he first chose sleep as a means of "liberating his hero from the labyrinth." But the introduction of sleep for the denouement of the story seemed to the writer of that era a hackneyed device. The reviewer of The Northern Bee (1834, August 27) wrote about Pushkin's The Undertaker: “To untie the story by awakening the hero from his sleep is a sure way to lull the reader. Sleep - what is this plot? Awakening - what is this denouement? And Gogol, even before printing, frees his short story from such a denouement, sharpening the "nonsense" of fantastic naturalism.

Despite this, an anonymous author who wrote in 1840 in imitation of Gogol

“A humorous miracle of the 19th century” - “The Adventures and Strange Adventures of the Bald and Noseless Fiancé Foma Fomich Zavardynin”, where echoes of the story “The Nose” are heard, resorts to sleep as a usual method of resolving the plot.

"Foma Fomich ... went to the mirror and, looking into it, found himself so ugly that he was afraid of his own person ... - Well, really, where am I now with this hairless head, God forgive me, with this noselessness ... No no! he continued, “everything is ruined! gone!”

And Foma Fomich hit the table so hard with his hand that she blushed. ... - I woke up!

Yes, I'm awake! The adventures of Foma Fomich I saw in a dream ... And no wonder: such adventures cannot be in reality.

But even this author is dissatisfied with such a denouement and assumes that the reader will not be satisfied with it either. And he adds the motivation of the dream: “You really want to know, gracious sovereigns and gracious sovereigns, how could it happen that I saw the adventures of Foma Fomich in a dream? Please ... I will satisfy your desire and explain everything to you ... Listen!” It turns out that the demon of Russian literature told the author about all the strange adventures of Foma Fomich in a dream, breaking out of the glass in which he was planted by Baron Brambeus.

But Gogol, avoiding what was already becoming habitual, throws away the dream as the motivation for the composition and the justification for the contrasting end. From a series of links one drops out, to which several others were attached. A gap is formed: it is no longer reality that is opposed to sleep, but “inexplicable” contrasts are realized within the same real world (“light”): “After that, in some strange and completely inexplicable way, it happened that Major Kovalev again place the nose" ( Op. Gogol, vol. II, p. 585; edition of Sovremennik).

The same principle of "inexplicable" contrast, the same method of the hero's unmotivated return to his former "prosperous" state

emphasized in the story of Iv. Vanenka "Another nose" ("Adventures with my friends." Stories by Iv. Vanenka. Part II, M., 1839). The relation of this short story to Gogol's "Nose", except for the title, is revealed by an epigraph from Gogol: "He put his fingers in and pulled out - his nose!" (p. 69) - and a frame for the story:

“- Have you read the story of our dear writer N. V. Gogol?

Certainly.

Well, what do you think about it?

God knows !.. this is some kind of oddity, a pleasantly told tall tale - and nothing more.

So you think it can't happen?

That is, losing your nose?

Of course, it is very possible, go to Turkey and quarrel with some pasha there, they will cut off your nose; and there are few reasons in the world to become without a nose !..

No, sir, not that, not at all; I say: lose your nose without understanding how it happened !..

Tricky.

So I'll tell you a story on a similar subject.

Also about the missing nose?

No, something else, about an extra nose, about a cheeky nose that suddenly appeared, from nowhere, next to the real nose, given by beneficent nature as an instrument to one of the five senses, which, like a Turkish bean, grew in one night and spoiled the whole figure of one a very solid person.

Understand ... Is this story going to be a parody?

Name it whatever you like; I assure you, this is a true incident, which in its time made quite a stir ... » (page 71).

And the story develops about Artamon Dosifeich, a 12th grade official who wrote amazingly “clearly and cleanly” (p. 72), who had one oddity (he “wrote the letter TO two sticks, so: II. The secretary and the chairman said that it was inconsistent, that they don't write like that these days! Artamon Dosifeich said nothing and continued to write K with two sticks. If the secretary was seriously angry about this, he would answer: “Make someone else write, I don’t know how to write yours.” flyers", - so he called the letter in his hearts TO". - p. 74) and two addictions - to wine and memories of the "deceased", his wife. At a party, when Artamon Dosifeich was talking about the deceased, one of the guests said that “the deceased often led by the nose Artamon Dosifeich” (p. 76). He was offended and left angry. And at home Aksinya, the cook, the housekeeper and the housekeeper, met him unfriendly: ... slammed the door under my nose Artamon Dosifeich and went to her kitchen” (p. 77).

The next morning, Artamon Dosifeich, who had calmed down, “wanted, after sniffing tobacco, to soak up in bed for another hour and a half.” But the nose kept asking for more tobacco. “It seemed strange to Artamon Dosifeich. He ran his hand over his nose and ... imagine his astonishment - the sensation presented him instead of one - two noses! (pp. 78-79). The mirror claims a “miracle”: “two perfect noses, with all the details, with large nostrils, with nose bridges and with all accessories.

And it’s not that one nose sits, for example, in its usual place where it should, and the other would be on it or under it, no, sir, two noses located symmetrically, which, starting from the eyebrows, diverged in opposite directions, like the rays of the sun from a trihedral prism” (p. 80). "Natura" eliminates all doubts: Artamon Dosifeich "takes with his right hand ... time - nose, takes on the other side ... two - nose. Two hands - and two noses! This is not double vision. This is not a bump on the nose, like “the late head clerk”, but a new “nose, a whole nose !.. ” And “Artamon Dosifeich continued to knead and pull both noses.” He wanted to take a razor and cut off the extra nose, but did not dare. In addition, first you need to find out which nose is your own, which one is someone else's. In appearance, they are twins: both even have warts in the same places. Artamon Dosifeich cuts both noses with a razor to compare their degree of sensitivity. The pain is the same: I had to cover the scratches with tobacco on both, "to calm the blood." Hiding his growths from Aksinya, Artamon Dosifeich wraps his face in a napkin, then with a red checkered handkerchief, and complains about the cut on his lip. Aksinya does not believe: she is upset strange behavior his master:

“- What, you didn’t cut your lip, but apparently, in the other way, you deigned to glue your nose?

What nose?

We know what! You have not two, but one nose for tea” (p. 91).

Artamon Dosifeyich is angry and does not want to have breakfast. Aksinya persuades: “Well you hung up your nose! Have some breakfast! What? it’s clear that his head hasn’t been his own since yesterday” (p. 93). The two-nosed official breaks dishes in anger, orders Aksinya to be silent. "Now I'll really be what a fool to say something, - at least stick your nose in two- I don’t have a need! ” (p. 95).

Artamon Dosifeich decides to go to Krestyan Krestyanovich for medical care. Pre-lays with cotton wool a gorge between the two noses. " ... an elevation formed from cotton wool connected both of his noses and presented from them one long big nose ”(p. 98). Before he had time to wrap up his rhinoceros, Matvey Kuzmich, a soulmate, came and began to talk about the old judge Nikita Prokhorych, to whom pulled up her nose the mayor's daughter. “By the way, Artamon Dosifeich! What are you doing with your nose?" (p. 100). Questions, sympathy, advice begin. At this time, another friend enters, an invalid with a wooden leg, Mikhey Isaich, literary relative Gogol's mayor from the story of two Ivans. He is optimistic in matters of "nosology": "Well, what's the trouble of hurting your nose, it will heal - after all, it, tea, was not completely torn off, like my leg" (p. 105). Funny "jokes" of friends only torment Artamon Dosifeyich, and he runs away from home along " the right thing". Guests with Aksinya marvel at the strange, "wonderful", "tricky" incident. Meanwhile, Artamon Dosifeich, wrapped up, made his way to the familiar pharmacy of Krestyan Krestyanovich and tries to "skillfully" ask the pharmacist if it hurts to take away any member, "even if, for example, ... so, for example - the nose ?.. One of my friends got chills, that is, he froze his nose ... It has become so ugly, so disgusting,” that it is better to cut it off. Krestyan Krestyanovich does not agree to take the point of view of a friend and cannot understand why it is better to live without a nose,

than with a nose. At the end of the conversation, he demands that Artamon Dosifeich show him his hidden nose. But he hastily shows his back, running out into the street. And the friends, impatiently awaiting the return of Artamon Dosifeich, made inquiries with Krestyan Krestyanovich, received with horror the news of attempts by Artamon Dosifeich to cut off his nose and decided to forcefully reveal his secret, that is, his nose. Meanwhile, the unfortunate wanders the streets, with grief he wants to sniff tobacco, but the snuffbox is forgotten. He goes to the shop, decides to take the best tobacco, "Collection of Love". But suddenly, taking a step back, he stopped in his tracks in amazement: "The tobacconist had two noses!!" (p. 133). The seller, however, was not embarrassed by the abundance of noses, and even, at the request of Artamon Dosifeyitch, to sniff his own tobacco first, filled both of his noses with it. Taking tobacco, Artamon Dosifeich went into the hotel, asked for "beevsteaks" and began to read "The Northern Bee". His eyes suddenly stopped at the words: "They cut off his nose." " ... In England they caught one of the well-known local swindlers, and instead of hanging him, they cut off his nose” (p. 140). Artamon Dosifeich throws down the newspaper in disgust and busies himself with the steak. But suddenly the attendant comes up with a question:

“- You, sir, ordered to fry your nose for you?

Did you order to fry your nose?

Are you crazy!

Sorry, maybe I'm wrong. It seemed to me that you ordered a fried nose to be served after the bisteak” (p. 141).

"- Such a fool!" - Shouts Artamon Dosifeich, hurriedly pays and goes straight to his house. But at the gate, “just above his ear, a vociferous peddler shouted: Steam noses!.. Wouldn't you like it, sir? Excellent steam noses!" (p. 142). Artamon Dosifeich rushes into the house and in his room, to his own horror, finds both Matvei Kuzmich and Mikhei Isaich. “He came by force! said the last one, ... what are you backing? I don't think I'll bite your nose!" (p. 142).

Friends unanimously attacked Artamon Dosifeich, forcibly tore off his handkerchief - with the help of Aksinya. And "they saw ... that Artamon Dosifeich's nose was all wrapped in cotton wool and had no damage, but only on both sides of it there were small scratches from a razor” (p. 147).

The afterword describes how, a year later, friends lured Artamon Dosifeyich, who was on a spree, to confess, “that at that time he had two noses, and where one of them had gone, he does not comprehend. And this adventure Artamon Dosifeich did not regard as an empty dream and did not want to hear if he was disproved of it” (p. 148).

So in the story of Iv. Vanenka emphasizes, on the one hand, the absurdity, the inexplicable suddenness of "nosological" metamorphoses, on the other hand, a vaguely parodic motivation of them as an empty dream of a drunken Artamon Dosifeich comes through. Gogol's plot is turned inside out, but the same "nosological" lining and the general techniques of its cutting remain.

In the final version of The Nose, the suddenness of such a comic break, formed as a result of the removal of the boundary between a fabulously meaningless dream and reality contrasting with it, Gogol ironically justifies by referring to the "nonsense" and "implausibility" of what is "being done in the world." With such changes, the labyrinth

inconsistencies" became even more confusing, and this forced Gogol to resort to a peculiar technique of exposing the plot scheme, a technique that was widely used in works that carried out the same compositional tasks as the short story "The Nose". But in the structure of the third chapter, which, in parallel with the first two, begins with the awakening of the hero and "nosological" discoveries, there are indirect allusions to both the cut off and the restored nose. On the one hand, Ivan Yakovlevich behaves timidly in front of the major, like "a cat that has just been flogged for fat theft". From Kovalev’s shouts, he “dropped his hands, was dumbfounded and embarrassed, as he had never been embarrassed.” All this is full of unsaid allusions to the "crime" of Ivan Yakovlevich. But, on the other hand, the same Ivan Yakovlevich reveals not so much surprise as skepticism at the sight of the major's nose. " You see! Ivan Yakovlevich said to himself, glancing at his nose., and then turned his head to the other side and looked at him from the side: “Wow! Ek it, right, what do you think' he continued and looked at the nose for a long time».

In a contrasting parallel with the second segment, the third one leads the major to the same places, including the “presidential”, so that he can now triumph everywhere: “ ... have a nose! now he, Major Kovalev, everything that is, sits in its place».

And the nose does not betray its secret to anyone - neither to the counter, nor to the reader: “And the nose, too, as if nothing had happened, sat on his face, not even showing the appearance of going to the sides».

Having made ends meet, Gogol reveals the lack of motivation in the course of the plot movement, the insolubility of "artistic reality" in terms of "everyday" plausibility and everyday "decency". And at the same time, he affirms the “authenticity” of all this: “But everything, however, as you think, in all this, really, there is something.”

Here Gogol uses the characteristic technique of "Sternianism", supported by the tradition French romanticism 30s (school of J. Janin).

Sometimes weaving into the outline of the emerging motive and hindering its development or even completely pushing it aside, sometimes being placed at the beginning of a short story or going into its epilogue, a passionate dialogue flares up, in which the “author” alternately plays the role of a captious critic, revealing the shortcomings of creative methods and style " writer”, then a feigned hot and supposedly thoughtful apologist for his work.

This technique is typical of Stern's Tristram Shandi. He defines the composition of the Russian imitation of Stern by Jacob de Sanglen "The Life and Opinions of the New Tristram" (Moscow, 1825). Here is the first phrase: “Exactly so ... or not ... yes, exactly like this: 1775 Maya was born on the 20th day ... ”- causes the imaginary reader to grumble: “Let me, m.g., notice you. In our Russian language, and hardly in any other, there is not a single book that would have such a strange beginning. ... no one will read your book” (pp. 3-4). Exclamations of protest and a comic apology (“But on what do these gentlemen base their threats? Isn’t it on the fact that my book will come out of print more stupid than all hitherto published and henceforth published?” - p. 6. “But how can I under no circumstances and I do not agree with anyone that my book was worse than all hitherto published and henceforth published,

then how the public can derive the greatest benefit by reading it with a proper note from beginning to end "- p. 24), changing the nature of the plot development and displacing the intended motive," to the annoyance of the reader "are resolved in the final chord of the story, deliberately meaningless and returning it to beginning: “In justification, I will only say that this is a story before my birth. Consequently, as not yet born, I have the right to the indulgence of a reader who, surely, has been living for more than a year in the world - is it wiser to be smarter than me? Therefore, I ask you to postpone any judgment about me until the time when I will be so happy to see the light of day. This important era will come, I will say, reader, May 20, 1775” (p. 70).

We find a modification of the same technique (criticism of style) in the preface (“it’s impossible without a preface!”) To “The Adventures and Strange Adventures of the Bald and Noseless Fiancé Foma Fomich Zavardynin”. The author wrote: " ... I ask you to sedately sit in the chair of patience,put your heart for a while in the office of meekness and condescension". And the “future reader” has already made a “note”: “What kind of author is this! You see how it is expressed! That's what enlightenment means! .. magnificent nonsense !.. » (p. I).

In the short story "The Nose", this technique, without interfering with the development of the plot, was carried out in the epilogue, which turned into a kind of parody of a literary review and the author's answer. From this point of view, the style of the final lines in the latest edition of The Nose, masterfully forged to match the usual tone of a review, is especially curious. It is enough to compare with the afterword of The Nose the review of The Northern Bee (1834, No. 192) on A. S. Pushkin's Snowstorm: “In this story, every step is improbable. Who will agree to marry in passing, not knowing whom? How could a bride not see her groom under the crown? How did the witnesses not recognize him? How did the priest go wrong? But there are thousands of such “likes” when reading “Metelya”. Wed in the story "The Nose": ... it has a lot of unbelievable things in it. How Kovalev did not realize that it was impossible to announce a nose through a newspaper expedition ?.. And again, too: how the nose ended up in baked bread, and how Ivan Yakovlevich himself ?.. But what is weirder, what is most incomprehensible of all, is how authors can take such plots.

And, in accordance with the general nature of the described technique, the author’s defensive remark in conclusion with “tongue-tied impotence” (imaginary, since a poisonous sting of ironic allusions is hidden under it) returns the reader to the starting point of the narrative: “ ... such incidents happen in the world - rarely, but they do happen.

CONCLUSION

From the proposed analysis of Gogol's story "The Nose" the following conclusions follow:

1. The plot construction of The Nose assumes a complex semantic context of the literary and non-literary "nosology" of the 20-30s of the 19th century. Its disclosure establishes different forms of Gogol's artistic orientation to previous literary traditions (especially the "Sternian"), to the "low" genres of newspaper and magazine literature (like "mixture"), to topical non-literary material, to

oral household anecdote, sometimes "obscene" in nature (especially - in terms of norms fiction 30s). All these tendencies characterize Gogol's search for "low nature" - in the struggle against the high traditions of sentimental romanticism.

2. Turning to the genre of “fantastic, unnatural grotesque”, attached to the name of Hoffmann in the 30s, Gogol built the world of “fantastic nonsense” through the artistic development of the “new logic of things”, which he extracted from the forms of colloquial everyday, often “non-literary » language. The approval on this basis of new forms of stylistic construction, abstracted and freed from the nominative-everyday connections of words, was at the same time the process of creating a new "artistic reality", which, although it was associated with literary traditions, at the same time correlated directly with the reality of life - on the principles of "inconsistency".

Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature: " ... Gogol has not the slightest resemblance to Hoffmann: one himself invents, independently invents fantastic adventures from purely German life, the other literally retells Little Russian legends (“Viy”) or well-known anecdotes (“The Nose”) ... » .

It is curious that the study of the history of the text of "The Nose" leads to the idea that Gogol consciously eliminated from the first passage explicit allusions to the future personification of the nose. Wed in Pogodin's manuscript: " ... to the greatest surprise I saw something peeping out from there, shiny and whitish ... » .

It is necessary to recall the indications that the story "The Nose" was not placed in the "Moscow Observer" because of its "vulgarity and triviality", recognized as "dirty". - Cm.: Op. Gogol, vol. V, p. 570; V. Belinsky. Literary and Journal Notes. Wed Chernyshevsky "Essays on the Gogol period"